WHY does using indirect and extrapolated information automatically invalidate the conclusions of an experiment?
I don't know of anyone who says it does. With extrapolation, assumptions, and lack of direct observation come potential for error. It's no mystery - it's common sense.
Then why does the extrapolation in the case of radioactive decay invalidate the conclusion that the age of the Earth is more than 4 billion years.
Suppose I observe a car coming to a stop. The initial speed I observe is 27 M.P.H. and the final speed is 0. Can I assume the vehicle used to be traveling 900 M.P.H. or 900 million? I can easily extrapolate such speeds. A safer extrapolation would be 29 or 30. The greater the amount extrapolated, the less certain the conclusion.
The only reason you would use the "safer" extrapolation is because you are not aware of many street safe cars that can travel faster than 120 miles per hour and there are few people that would travel much beyond the speed limit in most public roads. Add to that the likelihood that the street probably isn't made to allow 900 mph speeds for vehicular traffic and a person in control of the vehicle speed who could have changed the speed at any time. All of these are part of your "common sense" determination of the likely speed of the vehicle in the past. Even so, you can make no real estimate of the vehicle speed in the past because the person at the controls could have changed the speed at any time.
Radioactive decay does not have anything to change its rate of decay in any appreciable fashion. That is, unless you have knowledge of such a thing.
Other factors regarding radioactive decay are well known by physicists and geologists. That knowledge allows the extrapolation to be more accurate. It is not a wild-a** guess (WAG).
You seem to be saying that if there is incomplete information that no reliable conclusions can be drawn.
I doubt any objective observer would share your opinion.
Yet you dismiss the conclusions of these scientists out of hand without any explanation other than they made some assumptions. Since you now say that reliable conclusions can be made using incomplete information, please explain why the conclusions about radioactive decay measurements as evidence of a 4-billion-year-old Earth are invalid.
Obtaining the ratio of parent to daughter isotope ratios doesn't require destroying all of the sample even for C-14 dating.
Let's see... we can take part of a sample, destroy & measure it, and
assume the rest of the sample has the same ratio? The part which is actually measured is destroyed, right? When you pile up assumptions, you pile up potential for error.
I have to agree that more assumptions means more error. However, are those assumptions inaccurate to the point that 4 billion becomes 6000? How far off are the assumptions regarding the homogeneity of the rock samples? Can the geologists/physicists do anything to improve the likelihood that their assumption about their sample is more accurate?
Is their extrapolation of the long lived isotope decay curves inaccurate enough to account for the 6 orders of magnitude (1 million times) difference that is claimed by Young Earth Creationists? What indications do you have that radioactive decay curves for long lived isotopes are so inaccurate?
What's untrue, is any claim that precision and certainty are involved when one is actually discussing the most tenuous and doubtful groups of conclusions readily available.
What evidence do you have that the conclusions are tenuous and doubtful? Has there been a change in radioactive decay rates in the past? If so, what is your evidence that this occurred?
Are the decay curves inaccurate for short lived isotopes? How inaccurate would they have to be to make the assumptions and extrapolations for the long lived isotope curves so far off that they are 6 orders of magnitude different than the actual decay?
If the assumptions and extrapolations for long-lived isotope decay curves are so inaccurate, why are they accurate in providing dates for things that we can verify through means other than radioactive decay?
Of course the assumption that no flood happened is enough to categorized the whole business as rubbish. History, properly conducted, doesn't leave any room for such.
What effect did the Flood have on radioactive isotope decay? If it sped the decay up by 6 orders of magnitude what kept the water from boiling off and the land from melting due to the increased energy given off by that increase in radioactive decay? What kept Noah and the animals alive through that increase in gamma radiation?
Lastly, if the stars weren't made until Day Four 6000 years ago, why can we see stars that are more than 6000 light-years away?
