Jose wrote:Indeed, dating mechanisms are really important. It is, perhaps, a good idea to bring in other dating methods–or at least, other methods of measuring pre-historic time. Dendrochronology (tree rings) can get us back 9000 years or so. Ice cores from Greenland and the Antarctic can get us back 160,000 years. These dates are nowhere near the ages of, say, Cambrian strata, but they are certainly beyond Oct 26, 4004 BC. These are different lines of evidence, independent from one another, that push back the possible date of the Flood beyond 6000 years ago.
I think it would be hard to pinpoint any exact dates using any dating method. But, we can achieve ballpark figures. I think generally the issue is, are we talking about a scale of millions of years or thousands of years for the age of the earth. And, what if the flood was not 6000 years ago, but perhaps 60,000 years ago? I do not think it would make much of a difference. But, if we say it was 60,000,000 years ago, then it would not make any sense.
One question about the dating techniques you mentioned above is why are they in the thousands of years instead of the millions of years?
Also, another dating technique I introduced was the use of the population growth equation to guess the start date of the human population. This also produces numbers in the thousands of years range.
https://debatingchristianity.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=14189#p14189
jwu wrote:Dendrochronology is unlikely to produce very long timescales simply because we require a complete lineage.
So, I guess we can say then that dendrochronology has no value for dating things beyond the thousands of years.
As far as i know an ice core sequence found in antarctica is about 422.000 annual layers long.
Could you supply any references to this?
They are not used by any biologist to predict population growth (instead logistical functions are being used), and they are sensitive enough to even minor adjustments to the values that you can use them to get almost any result which you desire.
For use in human population estimate calculations, is there a better equation to use?
I would disagree that almost any result can be achieved. Even when considering multiple sets of data, the numbers are far below the millions of years.
I would agree that there are many things that are not taken into account by the calculations. The equation is purely an estimate to determine a ballpark range. However, it cannot simply be discounted because it does not take into account all possible factors.
https://debatingchristianity.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=14349#p14349