Radiometric dating as practiced is reliable.

I will cite no new references for this round. This is to stay in accord with the rules of no new argument in the last round. My rebuttals would need none. I am not claiming "radiometric dating should judged reliable only if it provides a perfectly accurate measurements every time it is used. .. " I do realize that there will be errors. This is not the point of my argument about its unreliability which I will go into near the end with the Egyptians. I would just refute one part of the analogy here. The start end of the tape cannot be analogous to the start ratio of radiometric isotopes. This is because time flows in one direction only. We can alway realign the end to fit where we want it to be to get an accurate measurement, within the bounds of uncertainty. Not for radiometric dating. I will discuss this further with the Egyptians. My R3 ref. 1. still documents anomalous dates, regardless. Now I will proceed to examine the logic behind. You say that erroneous dates merit publication. This does not take into account the frequency with which bad dates are discarded and not reported. I will now let this portion of the matter rest. Decay rates indeed are small. Furthermore, I have already said that the variations does not permit an earth under 10,000 years (With the assumption of initial conditions). See my R2 Ref. 7. Therefore I agree with your section on decay rates. I will, however, note that the Be variation is not 0.7%, but 1.5%. Now I will defend my source concerning the consistency of dates. You note an article with discrepant dates. I will note that the dates variations are far less than mine own. My source uses, if I read correctly, a single rock. The dates were obtained from different methods, hence the different explanations. I will now compute the difference in dates in percentages. From my source, (let us take the dates without the uncertainties), we find that ((824-481)/824)*100 =~ 41.6% difference. For your source, ((1135-989)/1135)*100 =~12.86% The difference in percentage points is 28.74. That is a BIG difference. As far as I understand, your source talks about the dates of different rocks in the same location. This is possible. My source is about differing dates within the same rock, which is fascinating and totally different from your source. I will quote directly from your source 14 to explain what the experiments found. "As the molten rock ascends from the depths of the Earth, water (and other volatile substances) trapped inside form bubbles in the rock. These bubbles weaken the rock while simultaneously providing a pathway for the gas to escape in a process called "degassing". If the bubbles expand more rapidly than the gas can escape, a volcanic eruption occurs;" From this it is absolutely clear that degassing does not totally occur if there is an eruption. Thus the assumption is still false. You state, "Con doesn't seem to have specific evidence that C14 doesn't decay, that c14 does not achieve equilibrium with the environment, or that C14 can be injected into isolated samples. He doesn't have evidence that any of the assumptions behind other methods are substantially wrong. " This is simply because I am not disputing most of these points. It is also because I was focusing more on K-Ar and Ar-Ar dating than the others. Now, even if you are right about initial ratios for Ar dating, which you are not, the same assumption still has not been addressed in U-Pb dating. I can hardly say from this that you have provided no evidence that U-Pb initial ratios were the same as Ar ratios. This is simply because you did not focus on that argument. So now I will focus on the final, most important, claim. Do radiometric dating support archeological dates, or is it a more secondary dating method? To thoroughly refute this idea, I will be once again using R3 ref. 8. Pro states that the source cautions the use of radiocarbon dating. Which is true. Which also does not explain the last section of the source. After due care is taken, there are times where archeologists will discard the dates. Simply because it does not fit with the chronology of the site. The logic behind this is very simple. If radiocarbon dating does not agree with other methods of dating, radiometric dating is discarded in favor of the other methods. The implications of this is clear. So clear that I might not need to state it, but I will anyway. Radiometric dating is secondary to other primary dating methods. This is because it is not as reliable as other dating methods. Now that I have that cleared, I will discuss the need of an expected sample age and contaminations. In geology, when a sample produces an anomalous date, it is deemed to have contamination. However, due to time, we are unable to prove it. It is therefore an assumption. Furthermore, considering it as contamination is circular reasoning, which I pointed out in the previous round and will repeat here. "If a sample has an anomalous age, it must have contamination. This sample has anomalous dates. It has contamination. " Thank you for reading to the end.