#1. All debate must stick to the topic and evidence given. Any topic not dealing with radiometric dating are strictly forbidden.
#2. Evidence that is taken from any website cannot automatically be discredited simply because of the source. If you feel the evidence is incorrect, you are free to provide counter-evidence to refute the claim.
#3. As problems arise more boundaries may be given to keep the debate on track. If anyone has a problem with the boundaries given feel free to PM me but please do not post them here.
#4. If debate peters out with the methods given, more will be added in a Part 2. So please do not bring up other methods besides the ones in the OP.
I believe radiometric dating to be inaccurate. I am not a scientist so I will be quoting quite extensively from apologetic websites. All debate will center around those points. My first topic will be the K-Ar method of dating.
The next method of dating I would like to address is uranium U-Pb.K-Ar dating is based on the decay of potassium 40 to argon 40. When lava is hot, argon escapes from it, so it starts out with potassium but no argon. Over time, potassium gradually decays to argon, and the rate at which this occurs can be measured in the laboratory. By measuring how much potassium and argon is in a rock, and knowing how fast potassium decays, one can compute how old the rock is. The more argon, the older the rock is. The more potassium, the younger the rock is, since a larger amount of potassium would produce argon faster.
However, the reality is much more complicated than this. The argon does not always escape when the lava is hot. The potassium can be removed later on, invalidating the calculation. Also, rocks absorb argon very easily from the environment. In fact, geologists have to take considerable precautions to get rid of the argon that accumulates on their lab equipment so that they can accurately measure K-Ar ages. Rocks can absorb a considerable amount of argon in this way, so all of the argon in a rock did not necessarily come from the potassium it contains. Atmospheric argon absorbed in this way can be corrected for, because it has a certain amount of argon 36 which can be measured. However, argon also comes up from the interior of the earth, and this argon has very little argon 36 in it, and cannot be detected. So we can explain the old K-Ar dates just by the fact that rocks absorb so much argon that comes up from the interior of the earth. Older rocks would have more time to absorb argon, and there was probably more argon coming through the earth at the time of the Flood and shortly thereafter than there is today. In fact, a number of geologists themselves now say that K-Ar dating is not very reliable, or mainly of historical importance. This is quite an admission, since most of the geological time scale is based on K-Ar dating.
Another problem with K-Ar dating is that many volcanoes that we know erupted in the past several hundred years give K-Ar dates in the hundreds of thousands or millions of years.
A large number of K-Ar dates on which the geological time scale is based, are dates from a mineral called glaucony. However, many geologists say that this mineral is highly unreliable for dating. So here we have a large part of the geological time scale based on a mineral which geologists themselves say is highly unreliable.
So I guess we'll have to discard K-Ar dating as a reliable dating method.
I will address one more method of debating, fission tracking dating.Now let's consider another method that some textbooks say is reliable. This is the dating of zircons by uranium-lead (U-Pb) dating and some other related methods. Zircon is a gemstone, a mineral that can have a considerable amount of uranium in it. However, when zircons form, they exclude lead. Over time, uranium decays to lead. By measuring the amount of uranium and lead in a zircon and knowing the rate of decay, we can measure the age of the zircon. Lead is somewhat mobile, however, as is uranium, and so other methods have been devised that can date zircons even if some lead leaves the rock.
The problem with this method is that zircons can include lead when they form, throwing off the date. They can also lose uranium. In addition, they can travel through lava without melting, so the date computed for a zircon may be measuring a much older event than the lava flow itself. Even geologists recognize that ages given by zircons are often much too old, even for them. Furthermore, a batch of zircons from the same place will often yield widely different ages.
So I guess we'll have to discard zircons as a reliable dating method.
Some minerals contain uranium 238 which decays by fission. It splits in two, and the pieces fly apart through the mineral, creating fission tracks. These tracks can be made visible by etching with an acid solution, and then counted. By knowing how much uranium 238 there is in a rock and by counting the number of fission tracks, one can measure the age of the rock.
There are a number of problems with this method, and even geologists have had intense disagreements about its reliability. The ages often do not agree with what geologists expect. One problem is that certain constants involved in this method are not known or are hard to estimate, so they are calibrated based on the "known" ages of other rocks. If these other "known" ages are in error, then fission track dates are in error by the same amount.
Another problem is that fission tracks fade at high temperatures. So if there are too few tracks, the geologist can always say that most of them faded away. To get a fission track date, one has to know something about the temperature history of a rock.
Another problem is that uranium 238 can be removed from a rock by water. If a sample loses 99 percent of its uranium, then the fission track date will be 100 times too old. In fact, if a rock loses only about 1/350 of its uranium each year, then in 4000 years only one part in one hundred thousand of the uranium will remain, meaning that the date can approach a hundred thousand times too old. Now, 1/350 of the uranium each year is not much, especially when you consider that water occurs practically everywhere in the earth below a few hundred feet, and rocks shallower than this also become wet due to rainfall filtering down through the soil.
Another problem is knowing what is a fission track and what is just an imperfection in the rock. Geologists themselves suggest that imperfections are at times mistaken for fission tracks, and admit that fission tracks are not always easy to recognize. Textbooks have beautiful, clean pictures of fission tracks, but I doubt that these illustrations correspond to reality.
Along this line, it is interesting to note that for every fission of uranium 238, there are over a million decays by a process called alpha decay, in which a helium nucleus is ejected from the nucleus of uranium. The alpha particle creates a long, thin trail of damage, and the former uranium nucleus recoils in the other direction, creating a short, wide track about one thousandth as long as a fission track. Not only this, but what's left of the uranium nucleus (having lost the helium nucleus) decays by thirteen more steps until it becomes lead, so there are over fourteen million other decays for every fission track. Over four million of these occur within a few days. All of these decays emit particles that damage the crystal structure. Some of these decays emit alpha particles, and some emit beta particles, which are energetic electrons. In addition, many millions of gamma rays are emitted, which are high-energy electromagnetic radiation like X rays, and also damage the crystal structure. Perhaps the damage created by all this radiation can be increased by chemical action and be etched by acid to appear like fission tracks. Or if two alpha particle trails are close enough together, perhaps they can damage the crystal enough so that their combined trail will be etched away by acid like a fission track.
Minerals are also subject to alteration by water, which may contain chemicals that react with the rock. Over long periods of time, all of these processes can damage the crystal structure, and it may be that when the mineral is etched with acid, track-like formations appear as a result.
Another problem is that fission tracks in some minerals, like zircons, can survive in lava, so the fission track date can be measuring an older event than the lava flow. Thus we cannot necessarily use this method to date the age of the fossils.
I think fission track dating has more potential than the other methods, but in view of all of these problems, I think we'll have to discard fission track dating as a reliable method.