GoodScienceForYou(warning extreme stupidity)

[Mafiaaffe]

He claims to have an IQ of 180 and likes to compare hisself to einstein but just see it yourself.

 

[Ciraric]

I couldn't stand past, "fossils are actually very common" along with the text that "pre-human hominids have been around 8 million years so where are the fossils?"

1) Hundreds of millions of fossils doesn't mean they are common. Given that in the time since life began on this rock we have had hundreds of TRILLIONS of life forms capable of fossilising. Less than 100,000th of one percent of life forms become fossils (or something like that).

2) 8 million years? As I have said, fossils are not common and 8 million years is actually a very short geological time period especially when dealing with biological geology.

So in the first minute he has two different (but linked) easily destroyed opinions.

 

[theatheistguy]

holy crap that's painful, i'm not even going to try to tackle that, instead just post this



"Oi! There's no fucking carbon in it!"

 

[SatanicBunny]

"Oi! There's no fucking carbon in it!"

I laughed, a lot.

How stupid do you need to be to carbon date an item which has no carbon in it? I would have thought even Hovind had more sense in him than that, but I've yet again overestimated the capacity of Hovind's brain cells. Apparently he wasn't using both of them :lol:

 

[orpiment99]

He's so brilliant that he is now up for a Golden Crocoduck...

And that video and the quote "Oi! There's no f**king carbon in it!" is one of my all time favorites. I still watch it when I need a good laugh.

 

[bipolarGod]

I uh....Yeah.....I think I could watch Batman on Drugs and retain a little more information than what this fine slender young man is dishing out.

 

[Mithcoriel]

Can someone refresh my memory? Why is it fallacious to say you can't date fossils cause they've been replaced with surrounding minerals that are much older?

 

[darthrender2010]

Can someone refresh my memory? Why is it fallacious to say you can't date fossils cause they've been replaced with surrounding minerals that are much older?

because that's not what happens?

 

[nasher168]

Can someone refresh my memory? Why is it fallacious to say you can't date fossils cause they've been replaced with surrounding minerals that are much older?

You can't carbon-date fossils, because there simply isn't any carbon in it. It's all just rock. However, you can date it radioactively, but creationists tend to ignore this and just say that the carbon dating method doesn't work and therefore all dating methods don't.

 

[darthrender2010]

You can't carbon-date fossils, because there simply isn't any carbon in it. It's all just rock. However, you can date it radioactively, but creationists tend to ignore this and just say that the carbon dating method doesn't work and therefore all dating methods don't.

that's not what this guy has a problem with, his issue is with radiometric dating. He claims that the bones are buried in material that is much older than they are and when they fossilize it's just the old minerals switching and therefor of course fossils are going to be dated to be incredibly old.

 

[GoodKat]

You can't carbon-date fossils, because there simply isn't any carbon in it. It's all just rock. However, you can date it radioactively, but creationists tend to ignore this and just say that the carbon dating method doesn't work and therefore all dating methods don't.

that's not what this guy has a problem with, his issue is with radiometric dating. He claims that the bones are buried in material that is much older than they are and when they fossilize it's just the old minerals switching and therefor of course fossils are going to be dated to be incredibly old.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't think fossils are dated directly.

 

[nasher168]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't think fossils are dated directly

You're probably right. Geology/Palaeontology aren't exactly my strong points.

 

[Mithcoriel]

that's not what this guy has a problem with, his issue is with radiometric dating. He claims that the bones are buried in material that is much older than they are and when they fossilize it's just the old minerals switching and therefor of course fossils are going to be dated to be incredibly old.

Oh, now I remember. They get buried in material that's the same age as the bone, right? As opposed to ancient material. So when the bone gets replaced by minerals, it will be minerals that are about as old as itself, right?

 

[orpiment99]

First off, no you can't date fossils with radiometric dating. You have to use a mineral that is radioactive to do radiometric dating and fossils are typically replaced with silicon dioxide (quartz) or iron disulfide (iron pyrite) in reducing conditions.

The sedimentary rocks that fossils are almost invariably found in cannot be dated, either. These are the lithified remnants of other, older rocks. At best, you may get a date for the parent rock of the material, presuming the parent rock is igneous or metamorphic. But, you don't know how long ago it was eroded, when it was lithified, or how many times it may have went through that process. We date sedimentary rocks primarily by relative dating (as in, this bed is over an older bed and under a younger bed). We use dateable layers (ash beds, lava flows, etc) called marker beds to get more precise dates using radiometric dating. We also use fossils that we have pretty good age spans for as dating tools (index fossils).

More information:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radiometric_dating
http://www.acad.carleton.edu/curricular/BIOL/classes/bio302/Pages/FossilizationHome.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quartz
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pyrite
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biostratigraphy
http://pubs.usgs.gov/gip/geotime/fossils.html

 

[Mithcoriel]

Ah. So is there any way to date fossils themselves? When they've been replaced by minerals? As opposed to dating the rocks around them?

 

[orpiment99]

No. There was an idea to use conodonts for radiometric dating, but as far as I'm aware it didn't work (this was back in the 80's, IIRC).

We date fossils with marker beds and get a fairly good idea of the age range of a particular fossil, then use the fossil to date other beds (where those fossils are present) where marker beds don't exist. It is a bit more complex than that. If anyone is really interested, the links above should answer most questions.