1980s Mt St Helens Flow: Dated Millions of Years Old

[Jefferson]

1980s Mt St Helens Flow: Dated Millions of Years Old

Wednesday July 12th, 2006. This is show #138.

Summary:
* Implanted electrodes in a paralyzed man's brain enables him to control a mouse and open email by thinking about it! Mankind is at the dawn of major neurotechnology for handicapped people! Unlike an increasing number of liberals, right-wing Christians always oppose killing the handicapped.
* Atheists, etc., believe that radiometric dating is one of the best arguments to show the Earth is millions of years old. Well, radiometric dating of the lava dome at Mount St. Helens by Geochron Laboratories of Cambridge, Mass., dates 10-year-old rock as somewhere between 300,000 and 3,000,000 years old. With the KNOWN age of this rock, potassium-argon radiometric dating gets the age 99.999% wrong! That's REALLY WRONG.
* Bob reads his wife's response to a Focus on the Family questionnaire about whether public schools are really bad in EVERY state, and whether Christian parents should take their kids out of public schools. After reading James Dobson's devastating account of how our public schools are destroying kids, Cheryl Enyart wrote, "Dr. Dobson, We love you and your ministry. When will you finally implore parents to just rescue their children from public schools? Why can't you just say it?"
* Washington DC declares a crime emergency after 13 murders (in the first 12 days this month). ... (Wait, this just in, now it's 14 murders in 12 days.) And Operation Save America (OSA) reports that the small city of Jackson Mississippi declares a state of emergency (and they've seen the second homicide since this declaration last Friday). Bob Enyart is traveling to Jackson on Sunday to join Flip Benham, director of OSA, in an attempt to close down the last abortion clinic in Mississippi!
* BEL Office Manager Al Sharin (aka Pops, Bob's step-dad), had a heart attack a few weeks back. He's now doing wonderfully, after the docs inserted three stents! When Pops read the hospital invoice for his 48-hour stay, we were surprised the $68,205.87 total didn't give him another coronary! Medical costs are so high precisely because the government pays so much of them! Let's get the government out of the loop to lower costs!
Today's Resource: Watch the FABULOUS video, Mount St. Helens from the Institute for Creation Research! You'll LOVE IT or your money back!

 

[Johnny]

Well, radiometric dating of the lava dome at Mount St. Helens by Geochron Laboratories of Cambridge, Mass., dates 10-year-old rock as somewhere between 300,000 and 3,000,000 years old. With the KNOWN age of this rock, potassium-argon radiometric dating gets the age 99.999% wrong! That's REALLY WRONG.

We've been over this.

 

[Jukia]

I thought, based on Pastor Bob's introduction, that the Mt. St. Helen's info was new. However it appears to be 10 years old. Can someone, briefly, let me know if there have been any further reviews of this issue. Thanks

 

[Granite]

Anybody?

 

[Toast]

I dunno, but I'd be interested in hearing more news about this too.

 

[eisenreich]

I dunno, but I'd be interested in hearing more news about this too.

Where's bob b at? He's good at saying a lot without saying anything at all.

 

[Jukia]

Hey Johnny, can you get us some real info?
My recollection is that for some reason K-Ar is not the appropriate way to date recent lava flows. Obviously from Pastor Bob's viewpoint that throws all radiometric dating out the window. Well, except perhaps those used to date things less than about 6000 years old, those are probably OK, after all they support his position on the age of the earth. Well, not quite support, but you all know what I mean.

 

[Toast]

Well Jukia, to be fair, you obviously have your own views/biases too. But i've read a bit about this issue, and it does seem that the Potassium Argon method is widely used to date the age since a rock formed, and it doesnt seem to be all that it is cracked up to be. Read some the articles at answersingenesis.com, and you'll see what I mean, because they actually explain the theory behind it, and its shortcomings. But, its not supposed to be used to date the remains of living things, you use radio carbon dating for that, but here comes the problem, after 10 thousand some odd years, only a quarter of it (the radio-carbon) should be left, and any living remains that are millions of years old should theoretically not contain any radio-carbon. So really, if there is any radio carbon left in a specimen, thats a good indication that it is relatively young. For a good creationist perspective on this issue, you can check out the article I read at this link: http://www.answersingenesis.org/docs2002/carbon_dating.asp

Its kinda long, but in my opiinion, it sufficiently debunks the idea that any kind of dating method can accuratly show the age of something, or at least its very difficult to make sure your starting assumptions are correct when you date it.

 

[Jukia]

Toast: Nah, dont think I'll bother to read the AiG stuff. If therefore you think my bias is showing so be it. I would rather think my rationality is showing.

 

[CRASH]

:ha:So you ask for additional information and then slam your head into the sand when it is presented! :rotfl:

Typical liberal - you just hate to even consider evidence which might undermine your false God's of humanism, evolution and yourself!:doh:

 

[Jukia]

:ha:So you ask for additional information and then slam your head into the sand when it is presented! :rotfl:

Typical liberal - you just hate to even consider evidence which might undermine your false God's of humanism, evolution and yourself!:doh:

Yes, I asked for specific info on using K-Ar to date lava, have not seen that.
I have looked at AiG info in the past. It is usually garbage.
I do not consider humanism, evolution or myself to be God.

 

[logos_x]

I have a stupid question....

Is lava newly created stuff? Isn't it just rock that is melted?
What would be the purpose of dating lava flows?

 

[The Berean]

Yes, I asked for specific info on using K-Ar to date lava, have not seen that.
I have looked at AiG info in the past. It is usually garbage.
I do not consider humanism, evolution or myself to be God.

Jukia,

I don't know if I asked this before but are you a Christian?

 

[Jukia]

I have a stupid question....

Is lava newly created stuff? Isn't it just rock that is melted?
What would be the purpose of dating lava flows?

Some lava flows are old. Therefore one might want to try to find out how old. This recent lava flow is obviously young. I see no particular reason not to try to date it just for s____s and giggles. However, consider the following:
1. Most attempts to date things radiometrically are attempt to date things that are obviously old. The methods are believed to work on old rock for example, and I think that different methods work on different types of rock and are valid within different age ranges. There may be technical reasons why they do not work on samples that are clearly recent. However before one can evaluate that, one really needs a better grounding in the science than either I or Bob Enyart have.
2. Once these results came back the anti-science creationists were quick to jump on them. Without necessarily trying to determine why the results were anomoulous (sp?).
3. This issue has been discussed here before, and I think pretty well explained, although I have neither the recollection nor the time to find it. However, the fundamentalist literal Genesis believers would rather just repeat it. Again, I had the impression from Pastor Bob's show that this was something new, but it appears not to be--appears to be a 10 year old issue.

 

[Jukia]

Jukia,

I don't know if I asked this before but are you a Christian?

Technically a lapsed Catholic, I guess. But I buy into most of the basic Christian theology. However, I understand the evidence to show the earth to be 4.5 billion years old, the universe about 15 billion and the evidence indicates that all living things are interrelated and evolved.

 

[Turbo]

The Berean, this may refresh your memory.

Belief in God goes beyond such substantial independent evidence and in my case is a function of early and continuous education (brain washing--perhaps), some thought, reflection, etc.

 

[Johnny]

I hope this is the final time this will have to be addressed on this forum. I am not a geology expert, but it doesn't take one to see that Austin's science is pathetic.

What we have is a case of bad science being done by a dishonest scientist being used to discredit a good technique. My source for this is Kevin Henke's excellent paper titled, "Young-Earth Creationist 'Dating' of a Mt. St. Helens Dacite: The Failure of Austin and Swenson to Recognize Obviously Ancient Minerals" (here). Austin's use of K-Ar dating for this sample was flawed from the outset. Go to the internet wayback machine and take a look at geochron labs K-Ar dating page (they no longer perform this dating technique, so I had to use the internet archive). At the bottom of the page, they directly state, "We cannot analyze samples expected to be younger than 2 M.Y." Ok, so here we have a lab that says "Our machines won't give an accurate readout of samples expected to be less than 2 million years old". So what does Dr. Austin decide to do?

Heck, date it anyways! Who cares! It's not like we're doing science! Creation science is so much more fun than real science!

Austin also used admittedly impure samples which he failed to properly fractionate. An excerpt from Henke's paper reads:

"Because Austin admits that his separations were impure, how can he, Swenson and other YECs justify their claims that these dacite samples were a fair test of the validity of the K-Ar method? Why did Austin waste precious time and money analyzing samples that were known to contain mineral and glass impurities? As a geologist, Austin should have known that minerals, especially zoned minerals, take more time to crystallize than quenched disorder glass. How could he expect the relatively large and sometimes zoned minerals to be as young as the glass?!!"

 

[Nick M]

Technically a lapsed Catholic, I guess. But I buy into most of the basic Christian theology. However, I understand the evidence to show the earth to be 4.5 billion years old, the universe about 15 billion and the evidence indicates that all living things are interrelated and evolved.

Actually the earth is suspected to be 12 or even 20 billion years old, by athiests. The dates change to fit the theory.

 

[One Eyed Jack]

Actually the earth is suspected to be 12 or even 20 billion years old, by athiests. The dates change to fit the theory.

You're talking about the universe (consensus seems to be settled around 13.8 billion years old at this time). The Earth is generally believed to be around 4.6 billion years old.

 

[Jukia]

Actually the earth is suspected to be 12 or even 20 billion years old, by athiests. The dates change to fit the theory.

You should rewrite this, based in part on One Eyed Jack's response. "Actually the earth is suspected to be 4.6 billion years old by those who understand the science." One does not need to be an atheist to agree with the science.