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There are two techniques for dating strata. The first is relative dating, which involves comparing strata containing fossils assemblages to determine the floral/fauna sequence within the strata. This tells us whether one formation is older than another, but doesn't give us an absolute date. The second method is absolute dating using radioisotopes (radiometric dating). As an example, we can compare strata using the relative dating method, and if the strata contains volcanic ash, we can date that ash using radiometric dating to give us an absolute date for the ash within the strata. That will give us a more precise age range for the strata and the fossil contained therein. This is the down and dirty explanation.
Thanks!
I remember many years ago watching some creationist video or other that said the dating was unreliable? Something along the lines of the radiometiric dating only being capable of dating things that are less than, I dunno, maybe 30,000 years old or something like that? But, as I said, that was many years ago, so I assume there have been advances in the methods?
The other thing I remember being said was that the relative dating you refer to uses circular reasoning. As Hueff said, they use the age of the rocks in the strata to date the fossils but, as you say, they use the age of the fossils to date the strata. It does sound circular to me ... what am I missing? Be gentle with me... did I mention I barely passed high school science?
I remember many years ago watching some creationist video or other that said the dating was unreliable? Something along the lines of the radiometiric dating only being capable of dating things that are less than, I dunno, maybe 30,000 years old or something like that? But, as I said, that was many years ago, so I assume there have been advances in the methods?
Radiocarbon dating has a limit of approximately 60,000 years. But since radiocarbon dating is not used to date non-organic materials, that's irrelevant.
There are many other types of radiometric dating, some of which have limits larger than the age of the Earth itself, and so have no effective terrestrial limits. Radiometric dating - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
I remember many years ago watching some creationist video or other that said the dating was unreliable? Something along the lines of the radiometiric dating only being capable of dating things that are less than, I dunno, maybe 30,000 years old or something like that? But, as I said, that was many years ago, so I assume there have been advances in the methods?
Carbon dating is reliable up to 50,000 years. But carbon dating can only be used on organic matter anyway, and is useless for dating most rocks. Other dating methods include amino acid racimization (also for organic matter), uranium-lead radiometric dating (one of its great advantages is that any sample provides two clocks, one based on uranium-235's decay to lead-207 with a half-life of about 700 million years, and one based on uranium-238's decay to lead-206 with a half-life of about 4.5 billion years, providing a built-in crosscheck that allows accurate determination of the age of the sample even if some of the lead has been lost.), Samarium-neodymium dating (This involves the alpha-decay of 147Sm to 143Nd with a half-life of 1.06 x 1011 years. Accuracy levels of less than twenty million years in two-and-a-half billion years are achievable.), Potassium-argon dating (this involves electron capture or positron decay of potassium-40 to argon-40. Potassium-40 has a half-life of 1.3 billion years, and so this method is applicable to the oldest rocks.), Rubidium-strontium dating (based on the beta decay of rubidium-87 to strontium-87, with a half-life of 50 billion years. This scheme is used to date old igneous and metamorphic rocks, and has also been used to date lunar samples. Closure temperatures are so high that they are not a concern. Rubidium-strontium dating is not as precise as the uranium-lead method, with errors of 30 to 50 million years for a 3-billion-year-old sample.), and uranium-thorium dating (A relatively short-range dating technique is based on the decay of uranium-234 into thorium-230, a substance with a half-life of about 80,000 years. It is accompanied by a sister process, in which uranium-235 decays into protactinium-231, which has a half-life of 34,300 years.).
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The other thing I remember being said was that the relative dating you refer to uses circular reasoning. As Hueff said, they use the age of the rocks in the strata to date the fossils but, as you say, they use the age of the fossils to date the strata. It does sound circular to me ... what am I missing? Be gentle with me... did I mention I barely passed high school science?
That's not how it works. Radiometric dating is used to date the rocks. Fossils are used to correlate strata at different locations. If a species of fossil is only found in one particular strata, and that strata is dated to, say, 340 million years, if you find it in similar strata at another location, then it follows that that strata is also about 340 million years old. If that strata has material in it that is datable by radiometric means, it can be used as a check on the date. So there is redundancy built into the process. In this way, millions upon millions of rock samples and fossils from locations all over the planet have been analyzed in order to build up a composite stratigraphic column for the entire planet, all dated to a high degree of precision.
I have read about this before, and there are several very interesting documentaries about the dog that I have also seen. One thing you said that I have to question though is where the dog was first domesticated. My understanding is that Today’s domesticated dog is probably a mutated form of the Middle Eastern or East Asian wolf, possibly the latter because there is greater genetic diversity, often a sign of greater antiquity in Asian dogs than in European dogs. Archaeological evidence points to a time-period some 12000 to 15000 years ago when we started creating permanent settlements. This was towards the end of the Mesolithic period and the start of the Neolithic. Some of the earliest of these settlements are to be found in the fertile area now known as Northern Israel. In These Natufian villages is where modern dog may have originally surfaced.
Having said that, I read earlier this year that a jaw fragment found in a Swiss cave dates between 14,100-14,600 years ago. I don't think the evidence is settled yet, since there is likely to be more evidence out there that we have yet to find.
Genetic tests but one of the most ancient breeds the xolo (not the modern one which has been reconstructed) to 30k or more years. I can pm you a pdf if you want.
What most of the genetics suggest is that dogs have been domesticated multiple times in multiple places, not just one.
Natural Selection and Evolution are independent of each other.
Natural Selection always takes place, if for no other reason than the fact that the environment, at the local, regional, national or global level is constantly changing.
Let's say I put some spoon-bills in an environment of clay.
What happens? The spoon-bills all die out, and in very short order.
Why didn't they evolve? Because no mutations occurred which altered them sufficiently to adapt to the new environment.
That is not natural selection.
Natural selection requires a minimum of four things. Competition for resources, more offspring than can survive, inheritance, and variability.
Nothing in your examples meets the basic requirements for natural selection to occur.
I'd like to point out that one of the main arguments and points of confusion I see regarding evolution is not necessarily about mutations but about speciation itself. I think the general misconception of evolution creationists tend to postulate is the typical canard of "If you want to believe humans were once fish..." or even more absurd "We came from pond scum and therefore..."
These analogous and false interpretations of the way evolution works are typical strawmen (false erections of something by which to then argue against) but for some reason also seem to be plausible explanations in the mind of the misunderstood to establish their general understanding of evolution. If we falsely establish that evolution is a theory which generally accepts that humans were once fish and we proceed to argue against that premise, we are arguing against a false conception in the first place.
The creationist should better understand the concept and theory of evolution before they go knocking down falsely established premises in a vain effort to succeed. Someone who suggests that humans were once fish or that we came from pond scum and argues that point is no different than someone who argues that climate change isn't real because it snowed in Dallas this winter. In the latter example, the arguer establishes that snow completely contradicts climate change because the premise of climate change is that the Earth is getting warmer and therefore snow should not exist. The argument ignores the differences between climate and weather and it does not take into account a multitude of other factors caused by climate change which may lead to snow in the central Texas area. In other words, to argue against "coming from pond scum," such as in the former example, is to only argue against a small portion of the knowledge we've acquired about evolution. To falsely represent that as the greater stance of science and to then try and disrepute that is not only inherently shallow but also irresponsible and a generally poor argument.
So what is the stance on evolution and why is it so terribly false to accuse us of believing in pond scum or fish as being our forebears? After all, it is true that if we go far back enough we do get to fish or what one might consider to be pond scum, so is it really a stretch to accuse us of thinking we were all once fish or pond scum?
It is a stretch in the colloquial sense because the context in which the creationist uses the phraseology is to suggest that if we give organisms on this planet enough time they will eventually spit out something different than what they are. In the creationists' mind, that is the "evolution" they are so argumentative against. Rightfully so, too, because anyone who believes that a fish suddenly gave birth to a human or that pond scum asexually reproduced itself into a man would be off their rocker and out of their mind.
However, I will acknowledge that following our evolutionary tree far enough back will ultimately lead us to fish-like creatures and going further back from that will eventually lead us to "pond scum." So what gives? The problem is in the usage and verbiage of the word "speciation," what it means, and how it is accepted by members of the scientific community and members of the creationist community.
I should note that science has made it clear so many times over that speciation is not the sudden leaping of frogs to horses, or crocodiles to ducks, or pond scum to man, but something entirely different altogether. Try as they might, the creationists continue to pursue this angle as though it's something we "evolutionists" wholeheartedly believe. Yet, the fundamental basis of speciation is not what creationists claim it to be at all. It is far different and the mechanisms act entirely opposite of how they're actually understood to act.
To understand speciation, we have to understand the meaning of a species. A species, in general terms, is often considered to be a group of like individuals who can interbreed. I think, for 98% of purposes, this is a decent enough evaluation and, at least, a simple enough proposition to understand. Humans, homo sapiens, are all the same species and they can all interbreed sans any medical problems. The domesticated dog (Canis lupis familiaris) are all the same species and they can all interbreed - again provided there are no medical problems. However, I must point out that things may get rather amusing if a Great Dane and Chihuahua were to make an attempt at reproduction...
Notice that in the two examples I used above, I used the taxonomical (Greek or Latin) terms to describe the species and not just the general word "human" or "dog." This is important because it forces us to acknowledge these species as their own standalone entities. To wit, we would not want to say that humans are a species of human or that dogs are a species of dog lest we make ourselves look like idiots! But, creationists use this terminology frequently when they begin to erect their straw men. They say "Evolutionists believe that we came from fish." Let's examine that statement, shall we?
We is obviously referring to the human species, that of homo sapiens. Fish is far more vague because a fish is not a species at all. A fish is typically a general term used to describe anything from koi to oscars to marlin to tuna and many, many others. So, right away we notice a discrepancy. If fish is just a general term used to describe a very broad range of individual species and human is a casual term to describe the species homo sapiens how could that argument even be merited in the first place? It is like asking if homo sapiens could ever give birth to a fish. The answer is a resounding and obvious "Hell No!"
But, if we recognize that if we talk about species in their truest form, not a made up, dispensationalist format, we can see that it is rather easy for a species of fish to adapt and change. Most creationists will even agree that things like a certain species of bacteria may adapt to antibiotic regiments but they will soon follow that with "They're still bacteria." The mistake is evident almost immediately. They jump from a species of bacteria to the entire bacteria kingdom in one sentence. A specific species of fish, say the koi, slowly develops an extra fin. The creationists will say "It's still a fish." Again, the error is glaring because a "fish" is merely a term used to describe a greater group of organisms sharing common but less acute similarities.
Even if the fish developed enough physiological changes to clearly not be called that species anymore, the creationist would still say, "It's still just a fish." But, speciation did occur. And what happens when speciation happens to the species that speciated fifteen times from now and now walks on land? Is it still just a fish or is it something different? And that's what creationists don't seem to understand. They don't have any clue what a species is.
One day their argument will become so convolutedly stupid and simple it will argue that any changes at the kingdom level still result in one or the other. Any changes in any species of animal could simply be thought of as "Well, it's still just an animal." Any changes in any species of plant could simply be thought of as "Well, it's still just a plant." The higher up the taxonomical chain we go, the more we can simply say "It's still just a..." Maybe if we're really lucky, we'll see them say "It's still just life."
Natural Selection and Evolution are independent of each other.
Natural Selection always takes place, if for no other reason than the fact that the environment, at the local, regional, national or global level is constantly changing.
Let's say I put some spoon-bills in an environment of clay.
What happens? The spoon-bills all die out, and in very short order.
Why didn't they evolve? Because no mutations occurred which altered them sufficiently to adapt to the new environment.
Where did you come up with that idea? Here is a video that explains the important part that natural selection plays in evolution.
I got paid to get it right. Or rather, I got paid whether I got it right or not, but if it wasn't right, I wouldn't keep my job for long. Sadly, the rest of your statement is unintelligible.
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Originally Posted by lkb0714
The first geologists, who were evaluating the evidence and finding a long universe did so, without making any money for it. Geology was one of the earliest, widely practiced sciences. No one was getting paid for their ideas 200 years ago and many came to their scientifically support conclusions about the age of rocks, DESPITE wanting their to be a young earth due to their religious beliefs. People like James Hutton, Charles Lyell, etc who did not make money off of their findings. Both of these men had well paying careers outside of their science, and pursued geology for the love of knowledge alone.
How you can cast aspersions about their motives I have no idea.
tgnostic seemed to be trying to discredit Old earth geology by suggesting bias, perhaps through bribes, though from what wealthy body of Bible - debunkers I know not, since science- based skepticism about the Bible were in its infancy.
That particular ad hom ploy crashed and burned pretty quickly.
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Originally Posted by tgnostic
Is it legitimate then to ask (in English): is natural selection a truth of mental or physical Being for the scientist? Is evolution a natural falsehood for all of the universe God created? The laws of Nature are to be found only in Mathematics?
I regret that very little of what you post seems to be English. This is not to belittle as you are clearly dealing with a second language, but to explain that it's hard to know what you are actually asking.
If I take your point correctly, Natural selection is a truth. An evidentially demonstrated reality and fact which it would be as absurd to deny as asking whether the earth is really round or 'Scientists' just tell us that it is.
The evidence also is very strong that all life developed through that mechanism from simple beginnings and all attempts to show that there was any input from a Mind have been shown to range from non-science to nonsense.
'God' in the sense of the specific god of the Bible is no more believable than Santa Claus, so, whether one agrees with WilsonCole who makes an excellent exposition of the case for doubting that speciation (in the sense of from Fish to man evolution) is evidentially demonstrated, or one supposes (like me) that the process is a bit too gradual to see other than within species or sub - species, but the fossil evidence that this actually did happen is good enough, 'God' (Biblegod) can be safely left out of the discussion.
Last edited by TRANSPONDER; 01-01-2012 at 05:44 AM..
tgnostic seemed to be trying to discredit Old earth geology by suggesting bias, perhaps through bribes, though from what wealthy body of Bible - debunkers I know not, since science- based skepticism about the Bible were in its infancy.
That particular ad hom ploy crashed and burned pretty quickly.
I regret that very little of what you post seems to be English. This is not to belittle as you are clearly dealing with a second language, but to explain that it's hard to know what you are actually asking.
If I take your point correctly, Natural selection is a truth. An evidentially demonstrated reality and fact which it would be as absurd to deny as asking whether the earth is really round or 'Scientists' just tell us that it is.
The evidence also is very strong that all life developed through that mechanism from simple beginnings and all attempts to show that there was any input from a Mind have been shown to range from non-science to nonsense.
'God' in the sense of the specific god of the Bible is no more believable than Santa Claus, so, whether one agrees with WilsonCole who makes an excellent exposition of the case for doubting that speciation (in the sense of from Fish to man evolution) is evidentially demonstrated, or one supposes (like me) that the process is a bit too gradual to see other than within species or sub - species, but the fossil evidence that this actually did happen is good enough, 'God' (Biblegod) can be safely left out of the discussion.
It is proven. Natural selection is a truth. By all probability we should have long been dead. Nevertheless, it is because that is a natural selection activity that life continues.
It is precisely disappointing that natural selection is a truth, not God, not laws of Nature which define the ordinary growth and decay of Becoming.
The error of a blind mutation may change a factor for growth , but it not enough to build a complete homo sapiens from a complete neanderthal which is a different species and never came from a blind mutation of DNA which is a naturalism of atheism... but a divine selection of the Lord God created each of these species for different purposes ....like a horse and a donkey species
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The laws of Nature are to be found only in Mathematics?
