Stop Chasing Your Tail Doug

In this installment, we're going to address some misunderstandings and flagrant falsehoods that Doug Batchelor asserts regarding fossil dating methods. Without understanding how dating works, he considers them “circular” and parrots a very typical YEC (Young Earth Creationist) line.

Referring back to the content of the Introduction to the Series - "Read the Book Doug", this is the perfect example of attempting to comment on the book without having actually read the book.  If one has never studied the easy to follow principles of geological and faunal succession, then one really can't rationally comment on their workings or value. We'll see in this episode just how ignorant Doug is in this regard.

As always, for context here is the link to the video I will be discussing in this installment.

Click for original video direct from Batchelor's website

And here is the 30 second clip taken from the linked video that I will be addressing directly.

Here's the script from the above video:

[Batchelor]
“Do you know how they date many of the fossils? Listen carefully. They date the fossils based on the strata of earth where they find them – and if they're deeper, they're older.”

“Do you know how they date the strata of earth … the layers of earth? Based on the fossils.” (laughter)

“Are you listening carefully? You ask them 'so how do we date these strata?”

[imaginary earth scientist's response]
“Well, it's based on the fossils that we found there.”

[Batchelor]
“So how do we date the fossils?”

[imaginary response]
“Based on the strata where we find them.”

[Batchelor]
“It's circular reasoning. Talk about a desperate effort to prove something that isn't true.”

As with many of the silly assertions against the findings of science that Doug Batchelor throws out without evidence, I get a chuckle thinking about this one. I imagine a Geologist and a Paleontologist standing next to each other looking down at a fossil half buried in a layer of rock:

Paleontologist: “How old is your rock?”
Geologist: “I don't know, how old is your fossil?”
Paleontologist: “I have no idea, how old it your rock?
Geologist: “How would I know … tell me how old your fossil is and I'll tell you how old my rock is.”
Paleontologist: “No way man, you're move. How old is your rock?
Geologist: Are you kidding me? I have no way to know … that's your department. You first.

… on and on goes the earth science version of a Mexican standoff.

As absurd as it seems, in using this false argument, Doug and many other YEC proponents are truly attempting to convince people that there is no basis in the dating methods and that they are circular in nature. My natural response to this claim is I want to ask Bachelor “Who is exactly is this “them” and “they” who you claim told you these things? Speak up Doug! You're making claims regarding what geologists and paleontologists are saying about dating mechanisms so tell us who “they” are. Since I know scientists who do this work and I know they would never claim such nonsense, I suspect you haven't spoken to a single working scientist in these fields. If you have Doug, cowboy up and let's have their names. I'm all for first hand information.

Now if Doug Batchelor's assertion were true, it wouldn't be funny – that sort of dating method would just be silly and baseless. Turns out it's the assertion that is silly and baseless however. While particular species of fossils are certainly associated with certain ages of rocks and visa versa, there is nothing circular about the dating methods themselves. Let me use an automobile scenario to demonstrate.

Here in the US, there was the better part of a decade (~1977 - ~1985) when domestic passenger cars used square or rectangle sealed beam headlights – we'll call them all 'squarish' for simplicity. Previous to that, vehicles were all equipped by law with round sealed beams while later the law allowed for a variety of more aerodynamic headlamp options. This left us here with a very distinctive eras in automobile design and we'll use that era to make our point.

Here are three pictures in a row illustrating the three referenced eras of US domestic headlights in chronological order: Round era, squarish era and aero era – all using the same model car, the Chevy Impala.

Round era:

Squarish era:

Aero era:

As one can learn from research and illustrate with pictures, headlight usage for domestic passenger cars in the US has been 'stratified' into very distinct 'layers' of time. You don't find squarish sealed beams in the '60s (they weren't legal) and you won't find them today (because there are more aerodynamic and stylish options). Squarish headlights were used only during a relatively narrow window of time.

Now let's say that you walk into a scrap yard and see a passenger car on a pile that is crushed beyond recognition. You can't tell if it's a Ford, a Chevy or anything else about it – it's just a mangled mash-up of metal. You can however see one of the corners of the front grill, and there you notice the clear opening for a rectangular sealed beam – quick, what automobile era is it from? Easy, the 'squarish era'. But according to Batchelor, you've just dated the car by the headlight and you should be derided for it. Conversely, let's suppose you and a friend are cleaning up the vacant lot next to his house and you see a squarish headlight in a pile of rubble. Quick, what era passenger car headlight is this? Again it's easy, but the obvious answer will get you presented with derision to Batchelor's audience no matter that it's correct.

But let's look at what we've actually done here - by looking at either the car or the light, we can associate one with the other and then reference their known era. Isn't this circular? Not at all. Why? Because they go together – they are pairs/mates, and because the actual range of dates for both the light and the car are identical and were established previously and independently through careful documentation of the years these headlights were used by the manufacturers. Once the research has been done and documented, we can confidently assign the correct date range to the car by looking at the light that is in it or conversely we can do the same to the light by knowing what car it fits in (within experimental error rates of course). While we do reference one to the other, the actual foundation of the dating system is arrived at independently after great research, investigation and confirmation.

It's an essentially identical situation with a great many fossils. These fossils are stratified into incredibly distinct layers. Over the last two centuries, layers have been dated using an extensive variety of both relative and absolute methods (we'll get into these methods, their limitations and their accuracy further along in the continued series). There are particular species of fossils that are especially suited and selected to be what are called 'index fossils'. Index fossils are distinctive but very widespread and common. Like squarish headlights which are easy to spot, plentiful and associated with a particularly narrow era of the automobile, index fossils are visually distinctive, common and reliably associated with specific layers in the earth.

We'll get into Index Fossils more in a later installment, but if you wish to learn more about them now, click here.

Just as squarish headlights are valuable as a quick reference to a particular era of the automobile, index fossils are useful as a quick reference to an associated geological era. Find the layer containing ammonites, and you are in the era immediately preceding the K-T Boundary (yes, more on that later). Find Paradoxides, and you're smack in the heart of the Cambrian period. As we'll show later in the series, just as we have good data and reasons to know when the 'squarish headlight era' occurred, so we also have sound data and reasons for dating the geologic eras and periods.

Just for additional illustration, let's look at how index fossils are utilized using another more SDAcentric hypothetical.

Suppose I told you that Uriah Smith, Joseph Bates and JN Andrews attended a Friday night worship service hosted by William Miller at his home in Low Hampton, New York. EG White, along with her two oldest sons, Henry and Edison, and husband James also attended.

A good geologist (just like any one of us with an inquisitive mind) could quickly deduce that this particular get-together occurred in the last half of 1849. How? … by knowing that there would be only one very narrow window of time where the 'species' Edson White (arrived July, 1849) and the 'species' William Miller (extinct Dec., 1849) could ever be found side by side. The other species found in the layer would be incidental as they overlap these bounds significantly. If fossils Edisonwhitius and Williammillerius are found in the same layer, the layer can be dated to that narrow 1849 window. If however we were to find another layer containing all the aforementioned fossil species but without a specimen of Williammillerieus, then that particular layer could be dated no narrower than the ~15 year span that starts with the arrival of species Edisonwhitius in 1847, and ends with the extinction of Henrywhitiuis in 1863. (explanatory concept borrowed and modified from John Mcphee's “basin and range”, 1981)

Now, let's be clear, no one in proper science is claiming that fossils (or layers) can be dated to such a narrow window as the above or anything close to that. Even our best dating methods can have experimental error rates in the 2-10% range which can mean millions of years of error on our older layers, but we'll get more into that topic later in the series. For now I'm only offering hypothetical examples for the purposes of illustrating the principles involved.

In summary, the charge that fossils are dated through circular reasoning is false and demonstrates either an ignorance of how the principles of dating are actually applied or outright dishonesty for the sake of theater. While referencing fossils and layers to each other as established pairs would be common in science, this pairing of the two is not the underlying dating method itself and if you are mocking it as such, the joke is once again on you.

One can certainly challenge dating methods (as all science should be challenged), but to be productive and honest, one much challenge the actual methods in use rather than pretend methods that are just made up and presented to a giggling choir.