Radiometric Dating is Accurate

1. I asked what it is about science that is based upon faith in the way that religion is based upon faith. Con clarified that the average person is told the results of science and takes the scientific results on faith. I had not supposed that Pro had confused the practice of science by scientists with belief in science by the public. What the average person does in believing or disbelieving science is not relevant to the way science itself is practiced. I agree that people sometimes have misconceptions about science, but that has nothing to do with the methods of science itself. If a person has insufficient time to study some particular scientific result, the correct attitude for that person is to have no opinion on the issue, not to suppose that his opinion is as good as anyone's. Opinions are informed by facts, and while absolute certainty is generally unachievable, the more informed opinion is better. If you want to know what time the bus is leaving, you are better off asking a person who has seen the bus schedule than one who has not. It does not make sense to value both opinions equally on the grounds that both are somehow based on faith. Scientific results are published, so anyone can review them directly. Before the results are published a review committee examines the results to see if they meet scientific standards. Peer review is generally done anonymously to minimize bias. Scientists usually also make the raw data they collected available for review as well. There was a well-publicized case recently of the global warming "hockey stick" graph being disproved when another scientist examined the data and found a math error in the original result. Con summarizes, "..because humans have neither the lifespan nor the patience if they HAD the longevity to properly and scientifically prove the accuracy of RD, it cannot be asserted with confidence that it is in fact an accurate estimate of the true age of the earth." This is false, because many humans have in fact done so. It's a narrow specialty, so it is well within the grasp of a single person. It's true that no one person could verify all of science, but there is no problem checking out individual results like the age of the earth. It's done repeated by qualified people for peer review, to understand the accuracy of the results, and to understand how new data and new methods agrees or disagrees with the previous work. If Con read the book I referenced, I suspect he would understand RD well enough to verify its accuracy, at least many people could. It isn't 1% as difficult as something like global warming science, for example. 2. We agree the Theory of Evolution is not relevant to the present discussion. 3. "I already warned against the viability of verifying a theory with another theory." Verifying one theory with another is common sense and universally accepted. Con characterizes everything as a theory, and there is some truth in that characterization, as nearly everything is at least theoretically subject to error. Let's suppose that in a court case the prosecution offers the theory that X killed Y. The prosecutor offers three witnesses who claim they saw X kill Y, a surveillance video showing the crime, forensic evidence of fingerprints, powder burns, and the bullet coming from the defendant's gun, and the defendants signed confession. Would this be a solid case? Not according to Con's logic, because each piece of evidence is just another theory, and, according to Con, one theory cannot be used to confirm another. Con's logic is that accepting any of the evidence amounts to an act of faith entirely equivalent to embracing any one of a thousand religions. The jury did not actually witness the crime, so by the logic applied, it is all just faith. The independent methods for verifying radiometric dating involve theories like trees growing with yearly rings, snow falling in yearly cycles, and so forth. All agree. That is not a matter of faith, it is solid evidence. "There needs not be a change in the laws of conservation of energy for my argument to be valid, just undiscovered concepts of physics." An exception to the law of conservation of energy has to be one of the undiscovered concepts of physics. Also, there have to undiscovered concepts that change tree rings, winter snowfall, heat flow from the core of the earth, and a dozen other fundamental understandings. Moreover, the new undiscovered concepts have to be different for each isotope used in RD. Some isotopes have to decay a hundred times faster and other a million time faster than has ever been observed. It is not the case that just one new undiscovered concept would do, there have to be dozens, and all the new concepts have to fortuitously work to bring all the different measurements in line. Heat must flow faster to exactly match faster isotope decay. Trees must grow four times faster in past years while snow falls fifty times as much in those same years. Undiscovered principles of physics usually extend the applicability of theories to new domains, not change past results. Con's supposition requires a dozen established laws to change dramatically in ways that still cross-check each other. 4. Con supposed that massive bias affected use of RD methods. I asked if any unbiased people ever used the methods, "No, because the only people who care, or have access and technical knowledge for the equipment required for that matter, are the people who lack objectivity." (1) There are plenty of people who care, Con being one of them. (2) There are no restrictions on the training required. Anyone can take the technical courses without any test of beliefs. (3) The labs that date objects advertise on the Internet and will sell services to anyone. Pieces of one object could be sent to labs in different countries to assure independence. (4) The books and journal articles explaining the technology and how to use it are freely available to anyone. It really doesn't take much training to count tree rings, for example. There is some skill involved, but scarcely a PhD in Astrophysics. How can it be that all the people ho count them are somehow "biased"? The same goes for sediment layers and ice cores. 5. "The answer is that the scientists who are looking for any answer other than "God created it" MAY HAVE used it improperly and everyone is trying to back them up because it detracts from Creationism. It simply cannot be ruled out, because there are no unbiased observers." Polls reveal that a majority of scientists believe in God. So how can it be that all 100,000 (or so) of the earth scientists in the world are willing to lie to uphold radiocarbon data. It is simply not even slightly credible. In science, you get famous and successful not for upholding theories, but rather for overthrowing them. Think Einstein or Bohr, for example, or Michelson upsetting the widely held theory of the ether. The practice of science works exactly the opposite from what Con supposes. In this debate, Con has consistently overlooked all the confirming data from methods unrelated methods of dating. The cross-checking is dismissed with no more than the completely false notion that one cannot confirm a theory with a theory. Data from one method confirms the data from other unrelated methods. I challenge Con to explain how it happens that sediment data from Australia confirms ice cores from Antarctica, tree rings from Europe, as well as RD in establishing a time line for events. it is on thing to claim that a clock is broken. It is another thing to claim that a dozen clocks operating on different principles are all broken, and all broken in such a way that they nonetheless always show the same time.