[OT] Plato's Pub and Philosophical Society

[Jack Simth]

Originally posted by Imperator Fyron:
No, as they are based off of sound scientific principles. We have no direct evidence of the existence of electrons. But, we still know that they exist. This has nothign to do with faith, or being religious in any sense of the word.

You appear to have missed the second half of my post.
Let me quote myself:

There are about a dozen that are used, essentially anything that decays in a radioactive fashon could theoretically be used for radioscopic dating. However, besides each specific method's individual problems, they all have a particular set of problematic assumptions lying at their cores:

1) Initial values of parent and daughter elements
These values haven't been observed in the distant past that the object comes from. Without these, determining the age via the half-life and the amounts of present parent and daughter products is impossible. These values are assumed, although normally based off of modern values (which may or may not be valid, but there is no way to tell)

2) Non-migration of both the parent and daughter elements.
More of the parent element produces a false young age, less produces a false old age. More of the daughter element produces a false old age, less produces a false young age. If you assume that a rock has been around for a long time, not being observed, how can anyone be certain that this migration hasn't happend? You can't.
While specimin collectors try to get samples from the field where this assumption is reasonable, the testing facility virtually always throws out much of the data from every sample because the ages resulting from that data are essentially zero. They levy charges of leaching or contamination on that portion, and throw it out. However, if the specimine collectors can't tell a contaminated sample from an uncontaminated sample, how can one tell in the lab which sample is not contaminated? They differentiate based on assumed old ages, and throw out any results that don't match that assumption. Accepting their assumption is an act of faith, yet these methods are commonly used as valid. That would make the people doing this people of faith, and thus religious (after a fashion) wouldn't it?

[ March 14, 2003, 21:38: Message edited by: Jack Simth ]