The Creationist work at Mount St Helens

[evolved yet?]

Wow, christian doc is using the Quote Feature! It is a miracle.

 

[Krok]

Krok
Er.... surely you can use any dating method on any rock?

No, you can’t. I strongly recommend you to read something about dating methods. I also strongly recommend that you read scientific material, not the pseudoscience ramblings from creationists who tend to lie.

Sure, the result may not be great but that shouldn't necessarily stop you using the method.

Let me try to explain it this way. Dating methods utilize relative weights of different isotopes in crystals. When you go to a post office to send a package, the package normally gets weighed. If it is a small package, they can weigh it on a scale on the counter. That scale was specifically designed to weigh packages up to a few kilograms. When the package is large and heavy, the clerk would go to the back, weigh it on another scale, specifically designed to weigh packages weighing from a few kilograms up to about 100 kilograms. You can’t weigh a package weighing 100 kilograms on the scale on the counter, because that scale was not designed to weigh heavy packages. Trying to measure the age of a young rock using the K/Ar method, is equivalent to try and weigh a truck on the scale on the counter at the post office. You just “break” the scale. That doesn’t mean that all scales are wrong. You have to use the right scale.

Also, how do you know it is a young rock until you date it? (Yes, I know you may say by the type of rock)

Not only by the type of rock. It depends on the half-life of the radioactive isotope present in the rocks you are dating. Isotopes with long half-lives, like K40, will not work on young rocks. This happens primarily because the percentage Ar in those rocks will be too small to measure accurately utilizing current technology and a few other geological phenomena.

Surely if you KNOW it is a young rock then you KNOW that the dating method should give rise to a young age.

Exactly. That’s when you use dating methods specifically designed to date young rocks. If you use the wrong method, you won’t get the correct ages. That’s exactly what Austin did. He deliberately used the wrong method with the sole aim of getting the wrong answer. Then he went on pretending that his work is “scientific”.

Therefore, there is no problem using an accurate dating method - is there?

No.

If you have any problems with the dating of these rocks - why don't you date them accurately? If this has been done already, I would love to know the results.

I doubt that there would be any problems dating those rocks accurately. I don’t even know if it has been done on those rocks. It kind of defeats the purpose though; why try to date a rock while you know what the answer is? Dating is expensive, time-consuming and real scientists don’t have to do anything to please the pseudo-sciences. They tend to rather spend the money on some real research.

 

[Krok]

Oh, I missed this.

This is where there is a disagreement. You state as fact that a global flood would result in a single layer of unsorted sediment.

That’s what we get in reality and what every little bit of evidence we’ve ever accumulated indicates to us. One global flood would deposit one sedimentary layer, consisting of deposits deposited by water. Working under the influence of gravity. Do the experiment with a glass full of sand, pebbles, rocks and water in your home. Easy enough? Shake it. Leave it for a while. One layer. Big, heavy material at the bottom. Finer, lighter material at the top. One layer. It won’t have any unconformities in between, it would just be one big layer. No disagreement about a very simple concept. Unless you’re a YEC believing in miracles and ignore reality. More than that, one global flood would also deposit one, similar, layer of sediment all over the world. Consisting of unsorted deposits at the bottom, and as the water looses energy, upwards fining deposits. Thus, one unsorted mess at the bottom and upwards fining grains to the top. All in one layer. These are the characteristics of any sedimentary deposit that come about with the workings of water in one flood.

However, I think the point of what was going on in what Steve Austin was talking about was rapid deposition of layered sediment with fast moving water resulting in this relative sorting of material giving rise to sedimentary layers.

You get layered sediment anywhere. It can happen very quickly; it can happen slowly. All different rates of erosion and different rates of deposition. Depending on where and what it is. Turbidites result in different deposits than meandering rivers, for example. However, one flood will always produce one layer.

Hence it is relevant to discussions about possible mechanisms going on at the time of the global flood.

No, not at all. Volcanic deposits are only deposited by volcanoes. Sediments deposited by water would always only deposit sediments deposited by water. A flood would deposit, guess what, sedimentary deposits deposited by large amounts of water. A flood won’t give you volcanic deposits, as volcanic deposits are deposited by volcanoes. Aeolian deposits would be deposited by wind, as guess what, aeolian deposits are deposited by wind. Always. They would also always produce very distinguishing features to know which one is which.

Now, I have also read about the flooding in texas carving out a small canyon.

Canyon carved in just three days in Texas flood: Insight into ancient flood events on Earth and Mars
Does this show rapid erosion of harder rock material?

This has happened before. Lots of times. In the US, something like Lake Missoula confirms to that description. Huge flood. We know how and when it happened. The evidence is still there for everyone to see. Nobody can see the evidence for a global flood, though. And in your example, the remaining canyon walls consist of no volcanic deposits. Exactly the opposite of what happened at Mount Saint Helens.

Remember that I am merely suggesting a mechanism that could have occurred during the global flood and its aftermath.

Remember that I’m merely asking one important question. Which global flood? There’s no evidence for any big, country-wide flood in both the rocks, nor in the historical myths in my country.

The Creationist view is that the sedimentary rock we see is due to the global flood and formations like the Grand Canyon formed after this time.

The Creationist view is built around a 2000 year old book written by bronze-age goat herders in the Middle East and is not applicable to modern reality. It does not include any form of science. Not even pseudo-science. The creationist “view” could only be valid if the formations in the walls of the Grand Canyon indicated evidence of layers consisting of pumice ash laminae. They don’t. They are totally different. A totally different mechanism of formation. You can only contemplate using Mount Saint Helens as evidence for the formation of the Grand Canyon when you are totally ignorant of what geology is.

 

[Duck]

Hi Gunfingers,

Thank you for your reply.

Looking at the reply from TalkOrigins.

They separate it into 5 different points but basically they are just saying that the Grand Canyon is bigger and the Colorado river would cause a slower erosion rate.

They are basically conceding that the canyons formed around Mount St Helens were formed rapidly. They are just arguing about the fine details.

The point has not been refuted. They are merely pointing out things that Creationists are aware of - that this is a scaled down model of the Grand Canyon.

However, it is possible to conceive that a far larger version of Mount St Helens could account for the Grand Canyon because we have seen processes working around Mount St Helens that cause canyon formation.


I of course know that this forum will look for why Creationist work is wrong and the largest reference seems to be the Talk Origins website.

However, I do not think that they have refuted the Creationist work here. They are just questioning the extrapolation to the Grand Canyon and the Global flood.

So, where is the "larger version of Mount St Helens" that you point out? I, as an enthusiast of Geology admittedly lack knowledge beyond the Bachelor of Science level, but willingly state my excitement at the discovery of a very large volcanic event that would have had noticeable effects on Mesoamerican culture, and likely would have been heard by every living person on the planet at the time. I am also interested in what one would estimate the effect on global climate would have been, as much smaller eruptions, such as that of Mt. Pinatubo in the Philippines caused a noticeable (although short lived -- only a year or two) change in temperatures world wide.

 

[9-10ths_Penguin]

The relevance to the Global Flood theory accounting for what we see should be clear to most here.

If geological catastrophe can cause massive deposits of layered rocks, such as Mount St Helens and other events, then it is reasonable to assume that the global flood would be able to deposit far more than that.

There will be another thread coming on the proposed mechanism by which a global flood could occur and how that might leave the layered rock that we around us currently.


However, the purpose of this thread is to show you that there is evidence that large amounts of layer rocks can be formed rapidly.

But here's the big problem with this: if you're saying that a global flood would cause soil deposition like Mount St. Helens but on a global scale, then if a global flood actually happened, we'd expect to see Mount St. Helens-type soil and rock everywhere... but we don't.

BTW - creationists don't only need to explain the Grand Canyon. They need to explain all sorts of other features all over the world.

For instance, here in the Great Lakes, most soils are overconsolidated. This means that at some point since they were deposited, they were subjected to more effective stress than they're subject to now. In fact, we can measure just how much higher this maximum effective stress was and note that it exactly agrees with what would've been experienced when this area was under a glacier until about 12,000 years ago.

How do you account for this with a 6,000-year-old Earth and a global flood more like 4,000 years ago? And before you say that the weight of floodwater pressing down could've done it, you should know that an increase in water pressure doesn't increase effective stress; it decreases it.

 

[Duck]

Er.... surely you can use any dating method on any rock? Sure, the result may not be great but that shouldn't necessarily stop you using the method.

Also, how do you know it is a young rock until you date it? (Yes, I know you may say by the type of rock)

Surely if you KNOW it is a young rock then you KNOW that the dating method should give rise to a young age. Therefore, there is no problem using an accurate dating method - is there?


If you have any problems with the dating of these rocks - why don't you date them accurately? If this has been done already, I would love to know the results.

The way that K/Ar and other types of dating work is roughly thus:

First, K/Ar radiometric dating is primarily used on rocks of igneous origin, so those rock types that have been formed during volcanic processes or other magmatic processes are the target. This type of dating would be less useful in dating a sediment or sedimentary rock of just about any origin. There are other dating methods (and I am sure some of them are radiometric in nature) used for dating sedimentary rocks and sediments.

Certain isotopes of Potassium (atomic symbol K) radioactively decay into a particular isotope of Argon (atomic symbol Ar). The radioactive half life for the isotopes of Potassium used has a length of 1.248 billion (1.248 x 10^9) decaying into Calcium 40 and Argon 40. Calcium 40 is very abundant in the crust, so it is not as useful for age determination, but Argon 40 on the other hand is very uncommon as it is normally a gas, and also doesn't chemically bind to other elements in the crust. While a rock is forming the Argon 40 can diffuse out of the crystal matrix of the magma keeping its concentration at or near zero. Once the crystal matrix of the magma solidifies, the Argon 40 will be trapped (it won't be able to pass through the crystal matrix as Argon 40 is larger than the other atoms in the crystals and effectively gets stuck) in the crystals. As the Potassium 40 decays into Ca-40 and Ar-40 (the ratio between Ca-40 and Ar-40 is known 89.1% Ca-40 and 10.9% Ar-40) the Ar-40 stays in the crystal, unless some outside influence happens (like the crystal is melted, or undergoes a large pressure change etc), in which case it is possible the Ar-40 will escape, resetting the ratio of K40-Ar40 to zero again. Since we know the rate in years at which K-40 decays and we can measure the amount of the other isotopes of K in the rock, and we can measure the amount of Ar-40 in the rock, we can calculate the amount of time since the magma solidified into a rock (or since the last time it was heated up enough to allow the Ar-40 to escape).

Since it takes over 1 BILLION years for half of the K-40 present in the rock to decay into the Ca-40/Ar-40 set, and Ar is only 10.9% the age of the rock can be determined. K/Ar dating due to the very long half life of the parent isotope is most useful for rocks over 100,000 years old. Less than that and the amount of Ar-40 might not be measured accurately.

Whether there have been dating attempts using a different technique, I don't know. Unfortunately, I have not worked in the field in several years, so I am not fully aware of recent techniques or technologies developed.

So, no all dating methods are useful on younger rocks. Typically, lithification takes a longer time, particularly for sedimentary rocks, which the pyroclastic flows at Mt St. Helens aren't really.

 

[Christian Doc]

Krok,


I don't think you are seeing my point.

If a rock that was formed 30 years ago is dated as nearly a billion years - why should I trust the dating method? Surely, the error bars should go to 0.

I think that the calibration of dating methods is an area that I have never been convinced of.

Why should I trust a dating method that has never been accurately calibrated?



It does sound that basically you decide how old you think the rock is and you choose a dating method that will give you the date you want.

If you want an age of 1 billion years old, you choose the dating method that will give you an age of 1 billion years. It doesn't sound particularly rigorous.

That’s what we get in reality and what every little bit of evidence we’ve ever accumulated indicates to us. One global flood would deposit one sedimentary layer, consisting of deposits deposited by water. Working under the influence of gravity. Do the experiment with a glass full of sand, pebbles, rocks and water in your home. Easy enough? Shake it. Leave it for a while. One layer. Big, heavy material at the bottom. Finer, lighter material at the top. One layer. It won’t have any unconformities in between, it would just be one big layer. No disagreement about a very simple concept. Unless you’re a YEC believing in miracles and ignore reality. More than that, one global flood would also deposit one, similar, layer of sediment all over the world. Consisting of unsorted deposits at the bottom, and as the water looses energy, upwards fining deposits. Thus, one unsorted mess at the bottom and upwards fining grains to the top. All in one layer. These are the characteristics of any sedimentary deposit that come about with the workings of water in one flood.

Clearly you have not read my thoughts on the global flood - particularly that of catastrophic tectonic plate movements. This means that your experiment is just completely inadequate and doesn't prove that a global flood would result in a single layer.




Duck,

I am aware of radio-isotope decay half-lifes.

But how do you know what the starting relative concentrations were?

You are assuming that all the isotopes are forming from the Potassium. There are lots of assumptions that I would have to buy in to.

However, I recognise that I am not an expert in this area. But I still think that dating methods need calibration - this has not been achieved in my opinion.

 

[angellous_evangellous]

And people say that American education is bad.

 

[Gunfingers]

Krok,


I don't think you are seeing my point.

If a rock that was formed 30 years ago is dated as nearly a billion years - why should I trust the dating method? Surely, the error bars should go to 0.

I think that the calibration of dating methods is an area that I have never been convinced of.

Why should I trust a dating method that has never been accurately calibrated?

We might know that a given stone, at formation, has X amount of Uranium. We know this because we can see modern examples of this stone form. Thus when we find that stone we can say that it formed with X amount of uranium and compare that to how much is left in relation to the amount of daughter nuclides.

Radiometric dating has been calibrated. For example, if a given formation has multiple possible elements to date against they can all be used, and will all give approximately the same result, something unlikely to happen by chance. In the case of fairly modern objects, they can be dated and the date compared against other known sources of dates. For example, we know from record that king Tut died X years ago. We carbon date his left nut and it says that he died approximately X years ago. Bam, calibration. Now you may say that this is fine for certain things, but can't be extrapolated to the very old, but isotope decay is a physical constant. That it doesn't change is a fairly foundational concept in physics with a lot of evidence to support it none of which i really understand.

Finally, on the subject of bad results, Potassium-Argon dating is used for things millions of years old. Something new will have very little measurable decayed argon so weeding out the contamination, and there is always at least some contamination that must be accounted for, becomes unrealistic. As a result the ages are artificially inflated.

 

[David M]

Krok,


I don't think you are seeing my point.

If a rock that was formed 30 years ago is dated as nearly a billion years - why should I trust the dating method? Surely, the error bars should go to 0.

I think that the calibration of dating methods is an area that I have never been convinced of.

Why should I trust a dating method that has never been accurately calibrated?

Why is this a problem? We know what the half-lives of isotopes are and for isotopes with very long half-lives we know that for short timescales we are unable to detect the ratios of isotopes in small samples.

You are making another basic error, you are conflating the calibration of the dating methods with the ability of instruments to detect radioactive elements.

We do not posess instruments capable of measuring the differences in isotopic ratios below certain levels, that is another thing that gives us a lower bound for a dating method.

It does sound that basically you decide how old you think the rock is and you choose a dating method that will give you the date you want.

No, you choose the dating methods appropriate for the type of sample.

If you want an age of 1 billion years old, you choose the dating method that will give you an age of 1 billion years. It doesn't sound particularly rigorous.

It wouldn't be rigorous, thats why scientists don't do that. But this is exactly what the creationists did with Mt St Helen's, they chose a method that could not possibly give a correct date.

Fortunately isotope half-lives are not all the same so we can use those with shorter half-lives to date rocks that come out at the lower bound when using methods more suitable for older rocks.

When real scientists dated material from the eruption of Mt Vesuvius using Ar/Ar dating they got a value of 1925 years ago. The eruption was 1918 years previously.

But how do you know what the starting relative concentrations were?

You dont need to know the relative starting concentrations, read up on how isocron dating works.

You are assuming that all the isotopes are forming from the Potassium. There are lots of assumptions that I would have to buy in to.

Are you aware that the decay of isotopes follows set patterns? The only decay that produces Ar40 is that of K40.

Alpha emission by calcium and neutron capture by K39 can produce Argon but in both cases this results in Ar39, not Ar40.

However, I recognise that I am not an expert in this area.

Thats quite obvious.

 

[Skwim]

Ah, Christian Doc has left Religious Forums . . . . . . for good.

"good-bye-one-all"

 

[Krok]

However, I recognise that I am not an expert in this area. But I still think that dating methods need calibration - this has not been achieved in my opinion.

He admits he is not an expert in this area. Then he basically accuses thousands of experts in this area, all over the world, that they don't know what they are doing. The reason is that their findings don't agree with his holy text. Really, religion is a mind virus. It turns otherwise supposedly intelligent people into making ridiculously stupid statements.

 

[Anaximander]

He admits he is not an expert in this area. Then he basically accuses thousands of experts in this area, all over the world, that they don't know what they are doing. The reason is that their findings don't agree with his holy text. Really, religion is a mind virus. It turns otherwise supposedly intelligent people into making ridiculously stupid statements.

This post needs to be repeated. Excellent Krok.

best,

 

[Krok]

Thanks, Anaximander!
I'll repeat it, with a minor alteration:

He admits he is not an expert in this area. Then he basically accuses thousands of experts in this area, all over the world, that they don't know what they are doing. The reason is that their findings don't agree with his (interpretation of his chosen) holy text. Really, religion is a mind virus. It turns otherwise supposedly intelligent people into making ridiculously stupid statements.