From: stassen@alc.com (Chris Stassen)
Subject: Bales vs. Meritt on isochrons (was: "Re: Back to "Bales' scales"")
Organization: The Lion's Den, San Jose
Date: Sun, 27 Sep 1992 18:51:10 GMT

Robert W Bales writes:
[Regarding his inability to explain five concordant isochron results:]
> I mentioned a number of times that isochron dates are based on measurements
> of radioactive isotopes and that radioactive isotopes are known, both from
> theoretical considerations and actual measurements, to at times be poor
> indicators of age.

Bob's claim is technically correct, but not relevant.  All objections
which Bob has produced, supposedly to argue against the validity of
isochron dating, have in fact been objections which apply to non-isochron
methods.  His assertion that "both kinds of methods involve isotopes"
is simply a semantic ploy in attempt to make his irrelevant criticisms
appear relevant.
	Bob has only produced non-isochron examples in support of his
claim that isochron methods are "known [...] to at times be poor indicators
of age."  He has been directly challenged several times to back up that
claim with a *relevant* example that passes consistency checks but gives
an "age" that is known to be wrong.  He has consistently failed to do
this.  He continues to make this claim in spite of that failure.

Second, even if Bob had examples to support his claim, they would not be
relevant to addressing Mr. Meritt's question.  As has been explained to
Bob several times, reasons why a method might produce an incorrect result
do not explain how it could be expected to produce consistent but incorrect
results.  Examples:

    (a) Jim is referring to the Amsitoq Gneiss, which different
	investigators have dated via no less than five isochron
	methods to exactly the same age -- about 3.7 billion years.

    (a) I have posted tables of K-Ar and Ar/Ar ages versus distance from
	active volcanoes in the Hawaiian Island/Emperor Seamount chain.
	All of the data points fall on a line, whose slope is roughly the
	same as the current measured movement rate of the Pacific Plate.

    (b) I have posted tables of K-Ar age versus stratigraphic position
	for the North American Land Mammal ages.  The radiometric ages
	of 60 different samples from 13 different ages gives the *exact*
	same ordering as stratigraphy.

    (c) I have posted tables of the ages of the oldest meteorites, taken
	from hundreds of different samples by many different radiometric
	methods.  There is consistent agreement on about 4.5 billion
	years in age, in concordance with the "model lead age" of the
	solar system.

Even if we are to allow Bob's assertion (that the dating results are
unrelated to the actual age of the sample), he has never provided an
explanation for the internal consistency of the results and their strong
correlation with independent methods (such as stratigraphy or drift).

And, yet, this was *exactly* Jim's challenge.  Jim didn't ask how an
isochron could give a bad date (this is the question that Bob has been
"answering," and even with a question of his own choosing he has not
succeeded).  Jim's challenge was *specifically* to explain how the methods
could give concordant but wrong results.  Jim is correct that Bob has
never really addressed this topic.
	The thing that perplexes me is that Bob has an easy answer to this
that for some reason he is not using.  Bob has argued that light from
distant stars was "created in transit" -- meaning that he has no problem
with a Creator who forges an appearance of antiquity or even of a history
that never was.  And yet Mr. Bales never suggests that the rocks could
have been created with the appearance of age.
--
Chris Stassen			408-943-0630			stassen@alc.com
Newsgroups: talk.origins