One thing is from my understanding (and Im an IT person, not a biologist so someone correct me if I am wrong) but there is now microevolution and macroevolution.  There is just evolution.  The seperation comes from those who want to make evolution not the fact that it is.

As far as carbon dating, there are several methods.  Its not like there is just one test of "carbon dating".  Theres several different methods, all of which have different accuracies and methods.  Maybe if Mr. YellowNumber5 can throw in his two cents as hes one of the scientist types on here.  As far as good information, and I know its against some peoples ideas around here but a good place to start is Wikipedia and some Google/library searches (mind you I say start; I unlike many have a little more respect for Wikipedia tho like anything getting information from one source is bad, be it Wikipedia or any other source). 

It is actually called Carbon-14 dating. The reason it is unreliable is because of it's half life. The half life of Carbon-14 dating is 5800 years, meaning every 5800 years it degrades to half it's mass. After 70,000 years it is to large of a error margin to be even considered fact. However we have radiometric dating, isotopic, and other dating methods. Such as using other elements which half life is much higher accuracy. rubidium-87 decaying to strontium-87 has a half life of 50 billion years, meaning it is acurrite to within 50 billion years, then every 50 billion years it would lose a certain percent of accuracy. Other methods use plutonium, uranium, and other elements decaying to other elements, or changing in some way to determine the age. You can also use refraction, isotopic, and other methods.

 

Couple all methods together, and if they all lead to a close range of dates(these dates are usually within 20-30 million years for stuff 4 billion years old) and you get a accurite date range.

 

Carbon-14 was one of the first dating methods to be used, it is for short range dating because it is quite acurrite short range(such as 50-5000 years old) and after that you use other methods.

 

 

www.fishdontwalk.com has some interesting fallacious arguments regarding evolution and other things related to the dates.  http://www.fishdontwalk.com/aviewer.asp?i=20 is an article in which he states some fallacious arguments against carbon dating.

I removed it cause I did not want to post something I had no reference for. The fact that someone says that says Carbon decays at a half life of 5730 years so anything after that means that its wrong does not understand the concept of half-life. However on fishdontwalk he does claim that because Carbon-14 dating after say 25000 years is no longer sufficiently accurate, its bad. He does not even mention the fact that there are other dating methods that use other elements and are accurate further out.

Again, I would like to see Y#5's thought on some of this.

Hey dude. I wrote a refutation of Christian arguments against C-14 dating here:

 

Large atoms with concentrated, crowded nuclei are highly unstable. To correct the instability, they will either

a) Release a highly ionizing but low energy particle consisting of a helium nucleus with two protons and neutrons. This is called alpha radiation.

b) If the nucleon number is isotopically unstable, the atom will change a proton into a neutron or vice versa allowing an electron to be released or a positron depending on beta minus versus positive.

Another thing they can do is released an ultra-high energy wave called gamma which is irrelevant to my question below.

For instance, a carbon-14 isotope. 99.999% of all carbon is stable carbon-12. but carbon-14 isotopes are not stable and make up 1ppt (part per trillion) of all carbon. They release beta radiation to correct the nucleon instability by firing off an electron. This causes it to decay into Nitrogen-14. The great thing about radioactive decay is that it is a random process that obeys probability laws. The other good thing about it is that you can dip a radioactive material in molten lead, in acid, shoot it, burn it, fire particles at it, try to irradiate it again, pass a current through it...and none of these things will change the isotope clocks. They are fixed.

Now let me explain how we use this to measure the age of the Earth and organic material. Radioactive half-life is the amount of time it takes for the Geiger counter count rate (CPS) to fall by half. Radioactivity is a Zeno's paradox, because it falls to 1/2 then 1/4 then 1/8, but never to 0. It takes the same amount of time to fall from full to half as from half to quarter because the probability remains the same, because radioactive decay is an elemental nuclear cycle.

Depending on their isotopic properties, different isotopes and elements decay at different rates. Uranium 238 has a half life of 4500 million years...almost exactly the age of the Earth. Certain Thorium isotopes, and Polonium 221 for example, half in hours to seconds.

All life is made out of carbon, and all life is made out of roughly the same percentage of carbon-14, which is 1ppt (part per trillion). When something is alive, the amount of carbon-14 it has remains at a constant 1ppt, but once it decays, biological processes stop so the carbon influx/outflux stops too, and the C-14 starts to decay into N-14 and is not replaced. So if we examine a dead plant by giving it a radiocarbon test, and we find the amount of carbon 14 (can be calculated using the mass of total carbon) and the amount of C-14 has reduced to 1/8, it means that the plant is 18,000 years old roughly, because C-14 has a half life of 6000 years (actually about 5300 years). The N-14 that C-14 decays into is simply released into the atmosphere. It’s very odd that creationsts attack C-14 dating, beause C-14 has absolutely nothing to do with a) evolutionary science or b) the Age of the Earth, because after 60,000 years (half-life slashed 10 times), our ability to register it fails. Presumably, attacking C-14 is an argumentum ad ignoratium, probably because it’s the only one everyone has heard of. The only thing C-14 is used for is dating recently deceased organic matter, or archeology.

It's often criticized for inaccuracy, but actually, C-14 is one of the most accurate measuring techniques in existence, to the tune of 1% margin of error. 

But if you don’t like Carbon 14 dating, there are over 20 types of radioisotope dating, including Pb-Ur, Ar-Ar, K-Ar etc. Some of which can date back millions and billions of years because the isotope is more stable.

Radiometric dating is not exact science. However, dinosaur bone dating never drops below 65 million years. They cannot provide exact answers for ancient (millions to billions of years) dating, but using a range establishes consensus. If the Earth was only 6,000 years old, the radioactivity emitted by unstable materials would be huge. We would immediately notice it because almost none would have decayed...in fact, we would not be here because life could not survive in that environment.

Creationists typically answer this with two fallacious arguments:

1.                  Radiometric dating is erratic, different techniques give you totally different numbers. It cannot be trusted

2.                  Scientists assume uniformitarianism, while radiometric dating might have been greatly speeded up in the past.

Both of these are ridiculous. The error in the spectrum of radiometric dating is normal experimental error. Radioactivity, after all, is a completely random process. However, the use of multiple isotope tests is not designed to establish a precise age. It is meant to establish the magnitude. If you have three tests, one which says 50 million years, another says 70 million and another says 92 million, then that is your age range. Radiometric errata does not help creationists, because it is used only to establish the magnitude of age. Even with such error, we would notice if the Earth was 6000 years old because the spectrum would bluntly stop between 2000 years and 12000 years. Radiometric errata is not an argument for creationism. The magnitude of age always comes up on the order of millions and billions.

Uniformitarianism. The anti-uniformitarian position is ridiculous. There is no way to speed up or slow down radioactivity. I can take a hunk of radioactive element, shoot it, burn it, blow it up, dip it in acid, fly it into the sun, but there is no way to alter the rate of decay. That is against the laws of quantum physics, impossible to break. 

Actually it's 4.5 Billion years old, but glad to see you're a more reasonable theist rather than a YEC.

Actually it's 4.5 Billion years old, but glad to see you're a more reasonable theist rather than a YEC.

Ar-Ar dating is dead solid, because the gas is so inert. It's better than K-Ar because it is irradiated before spectroscopy, and the isotope K-39 is converted (which is good because we know the fraction of K-39/K-40 in any isotope mixture in the same way that we know the C-12/14 ratio). This means that we don't have to do 2 seperate measurments, unlike in K-Ar dating.  

Yes, in comparison to theist dating i.e., the bible, carbon dating is infinitely more accurate. 

Irrelevant, because carbon dating measures the RATIO of carbon 12 to carbon 14. Taking minerals away from the fossil will not affect anything, unless you postulate something that preferentially takes away only carbon 14. Water will not do this, obviously.

The argon isotopes are absorbed into the crystal matrix. They cannot effuse out of the rock. Even if this were true, lower amounts of argon in the rock would result in LATER dates for the samples being measured, which would support the young-earth theories of creationists. It isn't true, so the rocks appear to be far older. 

The dating method you are referring to measures the decay of uranium into lead, not of lead into lead. Modern chemistry has absolutely no problem differentiating between uranium and lead in a sample.

There is no such thing as a "continent recycling process." There is lots of rock that is billions of years old that we can find right on the surface. Parts of the crust do sink into the lithosphere and get melted, but this occurs at much deeper levels than those at which fossils occur. Other parts of the crust have been floating around on the lithosphere since the earth originally cooled and hardened.

There is no such term in science or philosophy as "uniformitarianism." This is another bit of scientific-sounding bafflegab invented by creationists to try to make them sound smarter than they are. We know that oxygen levels have been different in the past than they are now. The Earth's oxygen levels are fluctuating all the time. 

If scientists disagree about past oxygen levels, this doesn't make them clueless at all. It is theists that insist that everyone must agree on everything. That's why religion is so oppressive and tends to stifle progress. Scientists disagree all the time about the correct interpretation of the data they have, and the conflict fuels energetic efforts to make new discoveries. Disagreement is science's strength.  

I don't think it is, I know it is. You have shown quite conclusively that you really don't understand the techniques at all. Given your obvious lack of background in chemistry or geology, one wonders why you would come on here pretending you have the necessary knowledge to question experts in the field. I mean, if you are really interested in answers, presumably you would want to listen to people who have spent their lives studying these issues. Since you don't want to listen, the only possible conclusion is that you have an ulterior motive for trying to tear down their work. 

In other words, SVT, you have shown that clinging to your religious delusions is more important to you than objectively looking for answers to questions about the world. Here's a suggestion: why not just ignore science rather than attack it? 

That's wikipedia. A 12 year old could have added that.

You didn't even answer any of the refutations...good work... 

Carbon-14 dating is not open ended, it decays too quickly.  Scientists realize we have technological/physical limitations.....

Operative word in that definition is FORCES.  We ralize that ratios and frequencies of this that and the other are going to change over time, but the forces stay the same.

Ditto...

  No, your statement that there can be no rock older than 200 million years is made out of pure ignorance.  It can happen (and if you actually read the article, most of it was talking about the sea floor not land), but it doesn't have to happen.  

 

Sea floor spreading is how new continent is made (best exemplified by the present Atlantic) but unless crust was being destroyed as well earth would be swelling, hence subduction as occuring near Japan. I can see some rock dodging subduction for a few cycles, but for a three billion year old rock it must have dodged it for 15 consecutive times, which seems incredible at least.

 Scientists making discoveries are human, so why don't you use your own intelligence as a judge of what they say rather than accepting the "scientific common wisdom" as absolute truth.

Hahaha… Speaking of assuming! Don't you assume there's an invisible man? I think you call it a god. Where’s the evidence for such a thing, if you can call it a thing? It amazes me that you'd question the work of 10's of thousands of scientists but fail to question your bible and the people telling you about god. Are you so desperate?

 

Please respond. 

Generally correct can come from reason and past experience.

Universally applicable - Why must anything be universally applicable? That is absolutism, I do not hold absolutism to be true. 

This does not constitute a dating method. There are portions of the crust more stagnet than others. 

Very funny. LOL. Sure point out my foibles....

Sorry, I typed in a hurry, STAGNANT. 

 

SVT, please respond to this, I would love to hear your more accurate dating method. 

Spent more time away than I had wanted and came back to just what I wanted

Glad to see the science I was looking for and some, I'll assume, current debates from those contesting.