Let’s now turn to “clocks” that humans have invented to measure the passing of time on Earth. One method of supposedly measuring time is called “radiometric dating” or “radioisotope dating.” The basic concept is fairly simple to understand, and measures an assumed amount of radioactive decay.
We know that atoms are made up of protons, neutrons and electrons. A chemical element usually has the same number of protons and electrons, but the number of neutrons can vary somewhat. For example, a regular carbon atom has six protons, six neutrons and six electrons, and can be written as “carbon-12,” which reflects the total number of protons and neutrons.
When the number of protons and neutrons are equal, the atom is stable. However, the number of neutrons can vary. For example, a carbon atom can hold six, seven or eight neutrons.
These slightly different atoms are called “isotopes” of that element, usually written as the symbol or name of the element, combined with the total number of protons and neutrons. For example, the carbon isotope with six protons and eight neutrons can be written as carbon-14.
Some isotopes, such as carbon-14, are unstable, because they have too many neutrons. They gradually emit particles, eventually transforming into stable elements in a process called “radioactive decay.”
There are several types of decay. In “alpha decay,” the nucleus of the isotope emits a helium-4 nucleus, traditionally called an “alpha particle,” turning the original particle into a different one with two less protons and two less neutrons. (Incidentally, I proposed earlier that the living creatures in Ezekiel’s vision represented helium-4 nuclei, plenty of which were present in the early universe.)
Another type of decay is “beta decay,” where an electron, or its counterpart known as a “positron,” is emitted from the nucleus, turning the atom into a different element but with the same total number of protons and neutrons.
Incidentally, the word “decay” is a little misleading, because atoms are really just transforming into different atoms. Ultimately, like many of us, atoms just want to settle down and become stable. Isotopes that decay are called “radioisotopes,” and they eventually transform into stable atoms of a particular element.
The original isotope is called the “parent,” and the one it decays into is called the “daughter.” The rate of decay is measured by the “half-life,” which is the time it takes for half of the parent atoms to transform into daughter atoms, assuming we started out with a sufficiently large collection of atoms.
For example, uranium-238 is radioactive and decays to lead-206, with a half-life of about 4.5 billion years. In other words, if you carelessly left a block of uranium-238 on your kitchen table for four and a half billion years, half of the block would have turned into lead-206 by the time you returned.
Certain radioactive isotopes are used to date rocks. In a rock, the amount of parent and daughter isotopes can be measured, and the ratio of parent to daughter is used as a guide to the rock’s age.
For this ratio to reflect the true age of the rock, three assumptions must be made. The first is that the amount of parent and daughter atoms must be known at the beginning, when the rock was formed. The second assumption is that all of the daughter atoms measured today must have come about by in situ (“in place”) radioactive decay of the parent atoms. In other words, it assumes a closed system, where the rock has been sitting there free from outside contamination for the entire length of its supposed age. The third assumption is that the rate of radioactive decay has been constant, and has always been the same as the rate we observe today; or there has been no disruption to the atoms throughout the rock’s history, to cause them to emit particles in any process that might appear similar to radioactive decay.
If we knew only the amount of parent and daughter atoms, the first two assumptions wouldn’t be possible to verify, without being able to travel back in time and observe the rock; especially as geologists tend to use radioisotopes with very long half-lives, ranging from tens of millions to over 100 billion years.
For example, let’s use red and black balloons to represent atoms, because balloons are easier, prettier and more fun to imagine. Let’s say that red balloons represent the parent isotope, and they have a half-life of 10,000 years. In other words, if we start with a reasonable number of red balloons, after 10,000 years, half of them will have turned into black balloons, which will represent the daughter isotope.
Now let’s imagine a large cluster of balloons, some of which are red and black, while others are colors we’re not really interested at the moment. Let’s take a sample of balloons from the cluster. In our sample, we count 500 red and 500 black balloons. How old is the balloon cluster, based on this information?
The answer is, it depends on our assumptions. If we assume it started out with 1,000 red balloons and 0 black balloons, we would conclude that the balloon cluster has been through one half-life, and was therefore 10,000 years old. But the reality is, we don’t know how many black balloons were there to begin with. It might have started out with 500 black balloons, and no radioactive decay has happened, meaning the cluster is still brand new.
In other words, with this method of measuring the number of parent and daughter isotopes, the only way to know how many of each were present when the rock formed is to go back in time; and the only way to know whether the rock has remained uncontaminated and unshaken is to observe it throughout its entire history. These things are impossible for us to do, especially if the rock is assumed to be very old, on the scale of millions or even billions of years.
Let’s put down our pretty balloons for now, and turn to something more real. Let’s say we were able to take a sample from a meteorite, and we found it had the same amount of uranium-238 as lead-206. What would this tell us?
Again, it would depend on our assumptions. Since uranium-238 decays into lead-206, we could assume it started with no lead-206, meaning that all of the lead-206 now present was from decay from uranium-238. This would mean half of the uranium-238 has decayed. It has gone through one half-life of around 4.5 billion years. Therefore, the meteorite would be about 4.5 billion years old.
But what if the meteorite was formed yesterday afternoon, with the same amount of uranium-238 and lead-206? In that case, we would be incorrect in our assumption that the lead-206 came from radioactive decay, and assigning an age of 4.5 billion years to the meteorite would be a grossly inaccurate figure, because it was actually formed yesterday afternoon, just after lunch!
By the way, it’s important to note here, there is no physical way to look at a lead-206 atom and say whether it was around from the beginning, or whether it came about from radioactive decay, because one lead-206 atom looks the same as another lead-206 atom. There is no clear physical difference.
Let’s take another example. The radioisotope potassium-40 decays into the stable isotope argon-40, and so the ratio between the two is used in the “potassium-argon” dating method. Argon is a gas, and so geologists assume that when rock such as basalt is formed from a volcanic eruption, any initial argon leaches out of the rock, so the amount of argon in it today must have come from the decay from potassium, with the exception of a small but known amount from the atmosphere. This is the supposed benefit of the potassium-argon dating method. Geologists don’t worry about how much argon the rock started with. They assume it didn’t start with any.
However, this assumption has proved to be false in rocks we already know the age of. (Incidentally, when geologists use a model or method, the age produced by that method is often called the “model age,” which doesn’t automatically mean the real age of the rock.)
For example, when rocks are dated from lava flows across the world, known to have occurred within the last few thousand years, potassium-argon dating often gives model ages ranging from hundreds of thousands to several million years old. This is presumably because the rocks inherited the excess argon from volcanic gases, over and above any that came from radioactive decay. When the lava cooled, it must have trapped in some of the argon from the volcano.
In summary, when using the potassium-argon dating method, geologists assume the initial argon all disappeared when the rock first cooled. But this assumption isn’t true when we know the age of the rock already, so it is also likely to be false when we don’t know the age of the rock. If a rock inherited argon from when it was formed, and this argon is assumed to be from radioactive decay, radiometric dating will give the rock a much older age than it really is.
Perhaps the best known radiometric dating method is “carbon dating,” which measures the ratio of the radioisotope carbon-14, also called “radiocarbon,” to its stable daughter nitrogen-14. Carbon-14 has a half-life of less than 6,000 years. As a result, it can only be used for ages well under 100,000 years, because after this there shouldn’t be enough carbon-14 left to measure. Certainly after a few million years there should be virtually no carbon-14 left at all in a sample of material, at least none from when the material was originally formed.
Now, to continue our discussion, I need to use specific language to distinguish between two very different views of geology and the age of the Earth. Most geologists subscribe to the principles of modern geology as initially set out by James Hutton and Charles Lyell. Although geologists no longer take their strict uniformitarian approach, most of them believe the Earth’s geology was formed naturally over millions and billions of years. I will refer to these as “deep time” geologists.
However, an alternative viewpoint, held by those who believe in a Young Earth, is that the Flood shaped much of the geology of our present world. I should also point out, the term “deep time” isn’t always used by geologists. But it’s a term I will use from now on, as a reminder that this assumption of vast age determines how they see the world; and the term will also serve to distinguish between what we might call “orthodox” and “creationist” geology.
Carbon dating is used to date material that used to be in living plants and animals, such as wood and bones. But deep time geologists don’t use it to date things they assume to be millions of years old, because the original carbon-14 atoms should have all decayed. Nevertheless, carbon-14 is indeed reported as being present in materials as diverse as marble, graphite, coal, gas and whale bones, all supposedly millions of years old.1
Deep time scientists have many potential explanations for this. They argue it could be background from the machinery used to measure carbon-14, which means it isn’t real carbon-14, it’s just being reported as carbon-14 by the instruments used to measure these things.
Or perhaps it’s real after all, but was introduced when the sample was transferred, stored or prepared; or perhaps it’s in situ contamination, meaning the sample already contained carbon-14 before it arrived at the laboratory. The testing lab isn’t particularly concerned about explaining outside sources, because this isn’t their responsibility. However, it’s called in situ contamination because it’s assumed the carbon-14, which shouldn’t exist, must have seeped into the sample when it was originally in the ground.
Whatever the cause, to eliminate this carbon-14 signal, laboratories tend to apply a high “standard background” to the samples they process, which could be the equivalent to a carbon age of as much as 40,000 years. This “background” amount is then subtracted from what they consider to be the “real” carbon-14 amount, based on their assumptions. If the result is zero or less, the lab calls it an “infinite age.” This means it is assumed to have no carbon-14 even if it actually did, and therefore can’t be dated.
This strongly biases the method away from being able to detect a young Earth. For example, let’s suppose there was a worldwide Flood, and the intense pressure, water and heat from the crushing of vast amounts of organic matter produced the coal seams we have today. They would still contain significant carbon-14, because they would only be thousands of years old, rather than millions of years as assumed by deep time geologists. This is indeed what is found in such coal samples, but it is usually dismissed as in situ contamination. This means there is indeed significant carbon-14 in the sample, and it isn’t instrument background.
Some have argued that the so-called contamination was from the decay of other material such as uranium, but it’s unlikely that any natural source is going to contaminate wood, bones, marble, oil and coal to roughly the same extent, or throughout the whole length of a coal seam in roughly equal measure. However, the persistence of so-called “background” carbon-14 in different sources would be evidence of a universal Flood and a young age of the material in question.
This phenomena was already reported in the scientific literature, but was dismissed by deep time geologists. However, around the year 2000, a group of geologists who believed in a Young Earth launched a project to research the age of the Earth, called “Radioisotopes and the Age of The Earth” or RATE for short. They used commercial labs to get dates for samples, as do deep time geologists.
As part of their research, they detected significant levels of carbon-14 in coal seams that were assumed by deep time geologists to have ages ranging from 40 to 320 million years. Ten samples from these coal beds contained carbon-14 equivalent to ages of around 50,000 years, indicating the beds were all formed fairly recently and at about the same time.
The RATE researchers also investigated the presence of carbon-14 in diamonds. Diamonds are the hardest known natural substance on Earth, highly resistant to corrosion and weathering, and not easy to contaminate. They are formed deep inside the Earth and are considered by most geologists to be ancient, maybe hundreds of millions or even a few billion years old, meaning they should be completely free of carbon-14. The researchers found that the diamonds they investigated contained levels of carbon-14 equivalent to an age of around 55,000 years.
Not long after the RATE researchers published their results, deep time scientists also conducted a similar experiment on nine natural diamonds conventionally dated to the Paleozoic age, making them supposedly well over a hundred million years old.2
Eight of the diamonds yielded radiocarbon ages ranging from 64,900 to 80,000 years. The ninth diamond was cut into six equal fragments, and each piece gave a radiocarbon age of around 70,000 years, suggesting that the carbon-14 was evenly distributed throughout the diamond.
In their paper, they mentioned that previous research by radiometric dating laboratories had yielded ages of about 70,000 years for graphite, 50,000 years for marble, and even 60,000 years for the wood blanks they used, that were supposed to contain no carbon-14 at all. For this reason, the deep time researchers who examined the diamonds also analyzed samples of graphite from Precambrian rock conventionally dated to around one billion years from the present. The samples gave ages of about 60,000 to 70,000 years.
These researchers believed in deep time. They assumed the diamonds were already of “great geologic age.” They considered it a “reasonable assumption” that the samples should contain no measurable carbon-14, and that the nature of diamonds “significantly reduce or eliminate exogenous contamination from more recent carbon sources.” In other words, they recognized that diamonds should be resistant to contamination.
Their conclusion, based on their own assumptions, was that the carbon-14 must have been “background.” They recognized the possibility of their instruments causing it, but they concluded that carbon-14 “from the actual sample is probably the dominant component of the ‘routine’ background.”
In other words, the bulk of what they were detecting was probably real carbon-14, but the researchers had to classify it as “background” because of the assumed “great geologic age” of the diamonds.
An alternative explanation, not contemplated by these deep time researchers, would be that the diamonds are actually young, which would also explain the presence of real carbon-14 as the “dominant component” of the so-called “background,” along with its presence in graphite, marble, bones, coal and oil.
Now, if the Young Earth viewpoint really is correct, an important question we could ask here is: why do the ages of the samples from coal, marble, graphite and diamonds come in at 50-80,000 years, when the Flood was supposed to be only 4-5,000 years ago, and the Earth is supposedly only 6-10,000 years old?
The point made by Young Earth advocates is that carbon dating assumes we know how much of the parent and daughter isotopes were present to begin with. If there was more carbon-14 in the atmosphere in the past, or more nitrogen-14 in the material than from radioactive decay, especially in samples older than the Flood, the age given by this dating method wouldn’t accurately reflect a sample’s true age. The modern industrial and nuclear age has significantly altered the amount of carbon-14 in samples, so what would a global Flood do? And what was the environment like before the Flood?
In other words, radiocarbon dating may work fairly well for dates after the Flood, once the environment had become more stable again, but since the environment may have been different before the Flood, and the Flood would have disrupted it in a dramatic way, a nice linear path from the present to the past, which is what radiometric dating requires, would be false.
However, if there really is a significant presence of actual carbon-14 in things ranging from marble and coal through to diamonds, the hardest natural substance, this would suggest it isn’t local contamination; and more importantly, it would place an upper limit on the age of the things being sampled of around 100,000 years or so, since virtually all of the initial carbon-14 should have decayed.
Now, the main drawback with the methods I have discussed so far is, if we want to date something, we have to make assumptions about the amount of parent and daughter isotopes present when the material was formed.
However, one method that supposedly gets around this is called “isochron dating.” To explain this method, let’s return to our analogy of red and black balloons. If you recall, the red balloons represented the parent isotope, and they decayed into black balloons, the daughter isotope, with a half-life of 10,000 years.
We took a sample of balloons from an imaginary balloon cluster, and we found that our sample had 500 red and 500 black balloons. At the moment we have no way of knowing how old the balloon cluster is, without making assumptions about how many black balloons were there at the beginning.
But what if we could introduce a third balloon color? Let’s say brown balloons also existed in the balloon cluster, and they were related to the black balloons, except that the brown balloons don’t decay. They are a stable isotope of the black balloons.
The number of brown balloons doesn’t change over time. Since they’re stable, there should be the same number of them now as when the cluster was formed, assuming brown balloons aren’t added by contamination, or lost somehow.
With the isochron method, the brown balloons are used as a kind of reference point for the red and black balloons. Instead of looking at the number of balloons, ratios are used. The idea is, as red balloons gradually decay into black balloons, the ratio of red to brown balloons decreases, and the ratio of black to brown balloons increases. We don’t need to know the exact number of isotopes present at the beginning. All we care about is what proportions they existed in, relative to each other.
An important assumption of the isochron method is that, when the rock was formed, the daughter isotope, represented in our example by the black balloons, and its stable counterpart, the brown balloons, were mixed throughout the rock in equal ratios. We will see why this is important shortly.
Geologists think this is a reasonable assumption, because the isotopes are supposed to be chemically similar. For example, in the rubidium-strontium dating method, strontium-87 and strontium-86 are used as the black and brown balloons, and they are assumed to be similar. However, there are dozens of strontium isotopes, with half-lives ranging from about 29 years (strontium-90) to ones measured in days (strontium-89), hours (strontium-91) or even milliseconds. If isotopes are roughly the same, why do they have such dramatically different half-lives?
Furthermore, there are only four stable isotopes of strontium in nature: strontium-84 (although this might actually decay), strontium-86, strontium-87 and strontium-88. They occur in very different proportions: about 0.6%, 10%, 7% and 82.6% respectively. Only strontium-87 is a daughter isotope in a radioactive decay process (the term is “radiogenic”), in this instance from rubidium-87.
If deep time geological assumptions are true, that these isotopes are similar and so would be mixed in similar proportions to begin with, the same would surely be true overall. We should see roughly the same proportions of strontium-86, strontium-87 and strontium-88 in the Earth today, although we would expect a higher proportion of strontium-87 because it is radiogenic.
The fact that we don’t, and actually see more strontium-86 than strontium-87, and vastly more strontium-88, suggests the initial assumption, that the stable daughter and its counterpart would be distributed in the same ratio, is false, or at least questionable.
However, for the sake of argument, let’s run with the assumption for now, so we can understand how the isochron dating method works. We’ll continue to use balloons because they’re easier to visualize, but keep in mind they just represent different types of atoms.
Let’s assume we have a large cluster of balloons containing red, brown and black balloons. We know that red balloons decay into black balloons, and the half-life for red balloons is 10,000 years. We know that brown balloons are a stable isotope of the black balloons. We’ll start out with a brand new balloon cluster.
Now, let’s take three different samples from the cluster. In our first sample, we have 800 red balloons, 100 black balloons and 200 brown balloons. In the second sample, we have 600 red balloons, 150 black balloons and 300 brown balloons. In the third sample, we have 500 red balloons, 200 black balloons and 400 brown balloons. Notice that the ratio between black and brown balloons is the same for each sample. This is a necessary starting condition for isochron dating to work. In this example, I decided the ratio would be 0.5, which means that to begin with, there are half as many black balloons as brown balloons in each sample.
Now let’s leave our samples for one half-life, which means finding something better to do for 10,000 years. When we come back, we find that in the first sample there are now 400 red balloons, 500 black balloons and 200 brown balloons. This is because half of the initial 800 red balloons have now decayed into black balloons. In the second sample there are now 300 red balloons, 450 black balloons and 300 brown balloons. In the third sample there are now 250 red balloons, 450 black balloons and 400 brown balloons. The number of brown balloons in each sample remains the same as before, because they represent stable atoms that don’t decay.
Let’s suppose we managed to find something else to do for another 10,000 years, allowing our samples to go through one more half-life. When we came back, we would find that in the first sample there are now 200 red balloons, 700 black balloons and 200 brown balloons. The number of red balloons has halved again, and 200 more of them have become black balloons. In the second sample there are now 150 red balloons, 600 black balloons and 300 brown balloons. In the third sample there are now 125 red balloons, 575 black balloons and 400 brown balloons.
In real life, geologists are only able to directly obtain the last set of data from a rock, which is represented in our analogy by the balloon cluster. They wouldn’t have the first two sets of data. However, something quite clever can be done with this last data set.
First of all, if we were to create an X, Y graph, and plot the ratios of parent (red balloons) to the stable isotope of the daughter (brown balloons) on the X axis, and the ratios of daughter (black balloons) to its stable isotope (brown balloons) on the Y axis, we would have 3 points on the graph. (For reference, I have put the coordinates in a footnote.)3
We could then draw a straight line through these points. Through the magic of math, and as a result of our assumption that the initial ratio between brown and black balloons were the same to begin with, the line would cut through the Y axis (called the “intercept” of Y) at 0.5, which is precisely the initial ratio of brown and black balloons we chose when we created the balloon cluster 20,000 years ago. And since the number of brown balloons in a sample are assumed to never change, we can now deduce how many black balloons were there to begin with.
The line itself is called an “isochron.” Intriguingly, the slope of the line can also tell us how many half-lives the samples have been through, and we can then put this number into a formula, to tell us the age of the balloon cluster. In our example, we can calculate that the balloon cluster is 20,000 years old. (I have put the math and formula in a footnote.)4
This is how isochron dating works in theory. As I have demonstrated here, the math itself works perfectly well, if radioactive decay really is being measured. However, real-life dating using this method relies on several critical assumptions that may simply be untrue.
The first and most important assumption, one that is usually just taken for granted, is that the rock is already very old, and therefore lots of radioactive decay has taken place. This is necessary, at least for the radioisotopes geologists tend to use when dating rocks they consider to be old.
The second assumption is that the daughter isotopes, the ones being used for isochron dating (the black and brown balloons in our example), were mixed throughout the rock in the same ratio to begin with. This assumption is critical, so that if the data points can be made to fit on a straight line, the intercept on the Y axis accurately tells us this starting ratio, and then the slope can tell us the rock’s age.
The other assumptions are that the rock hasn’t been contaminated or significantly disturbed since it was formed, and that the rate of radioactive decay has remained the same throughout the time of the rock’s existence, or that the atoms haven’t been excited in some other way, to give off particles.
These are the main assumptions of the isochron model. However, as I will show, the method geologists use to date rocks also involves a huge amount of bias and selection, heavily skewed toward producing and reinforcing the deep geological ages that the researchers already expect.
For example, in a 1956 paper entitled “Age of meteorites and the earth,” the ratios of lead isotopes were measured in five meteorites, and using the isochron method, a model age of 4.55 billion years was produced.5
Since the ratios of oceanic sedimentary lead on Earth also matched up with the isochron, it was assumed that 4.55 billion years was also “the time since the earth attained its present mass.”
The paper also shared the ages of meteorites by other researchers who had used potassium-argon dating, producing model ages ranging from 2 billion to 4.8 billion years. To account for the differences, assumptions were made about argon being lost, or less effective processing methods.
These reasons may perhaps be valid, but as we will see, this is the general pattern when it comes to deep time dating: data that falls into line with the researcher’s expectations is considered valid, while data that contradicts their assumptions is usually explained away or just ignored.
In the end, 4.55 billion years became the age of the Earth, and therefore the reference point for all other ages. Logically, every other geological event on Earth or in the solar system now had to fit around this age. Indeed, the 1956 paper even provided researchers with two equations, to help them know whether their samples could be aligned with the new “age of the Earth” model.
I think this partly helps to explain why many meteorites line up with this date. It’s a form of self-selection. The ones that do, do, by definition, and those meteorites get added to the list “confirming” the 4.55 billion year age. The meteorites that don’t, don’t make it to the list.
However, what about the model age itself? Could there be an alternative explanation? I think so. Keep in mind, isochron dating only cares about ratios. It also needs several data points, so a line can be plotted on a graph. The data could simply reflect isotope ratios that are close to the same values as when the rock was formed.
As I said earlier, uranium-238 decays to lead-206, with a half-life of about 4.5 billion years. In other words, if we start out with 1,000 uranium-238 atoms and nothing else, after 4.5 billion years we would have 500 uranium-238 atoms and 500 lead-206 atoms. But if the rock had started out with this ratio, and we just assumed the lead-206 had come from radioactive decay, the age of the rock would seem to be 4.5 billion years older than the real age.
If the Earth, Moon and these meteorites were all formed at about the same time in the recent past, and no significant radioactive decay of elements such as uranium-238 has taken place, surprisingly, isochrons could still consistently report billions of years. To explain why, we need to look a little deeper at how isochron dating works.
Let’s look at another popular radiometric dating method: the rubidium-strontium clock. Rubidium-87 is radioactive, and has 37 protons and 50 neutrons, for a total of 87 “nucleons” which make up its nucleus. It decays to strontium-87, which has 38 protons and 49 neutrons, with a half-life of about 49 billion years. It decays by beta decay, which means one neutron in a rubidium-87 atom becomes a proton, turning the atom into strontium-87, while also ejecting an electron.
The daughter isotope strontium-87 is stable, and strontium-86 is also a stable isotope of strontium, so these and the parent rubidium-87 are used in rubidium-strontium dating.
Using this clock means we are already assuming an old age for whatever we’re trying to date. Since rubidium-87 has such a long half-life, the method would be unable to detect if the rock was young. Hardly any of the rubidium-87 atoms would have decayed if the rock was only thousands of years old.
On the other hand, obtaining a model age of tens of millions of years is practically built into the formula for calculating age, when using the rubidium-87 half-life. For example, even if the slope of the isochron is tiny (a=0.001), it would still produce a model age of about 70 million years.6
The key to getting an “age” from an isochron, whether accurate or not, is to get some kind of upward slope from the line. If the data points can be roughly plotted on a line, making them “linear,” you can get an age calculation.
For example, let’s plot three points on an X,Y graph, at (0.1, 0.7142), (0.2, 0.7228) and (0.4, 0.7317). In many rocks, the abundance ratio of strontium-87 to strontium-86 hovers around 0.71 or a little higher, so I chose slightly higher figures than this for the Y axis. If we were to make a line on a graph which represented a rubidium-strontium isochron, these three points would give a model age of 3.9 billion years, although the data is actually meaningless!
Even if we added 2 to each of the first numbers, so we had points at (2.1, 0.7142), (2.2, 0.7228) and (2.4, 0.7317), the isochron would still report exactly the same age.7 In other words, the isochron method is able to give you a deep “age,” as long as the points line up reasonably well, and produce an upward slope.
Geologists assume that if the data points fit on an upward sloping line, then it indicates radioactive decay over tens or even hundreds of millions of years. However, if the rock is young, just thousands of years old, as long as the rock samples have some variation in their ratios, an upward sloping line could perhaps still be plotted, which if interpreted as an isochron, could report an age of tens of millions of years, even if virtually no radioactive decay has taken place.
Before I show you a real-life example of this, let’s look at how deep time geologists tend to date rocks. First of all they assume the rocks have been formed by natural forces over millions or perhaps billions of years. Of course, these forces could be different – volcanic eruptions, lava flows and so on. But a global Flood isn’t part of their thinking, which if we recall, was assumed away by the founders of modern geology.
Therefore geologists use the structures of rocks, rock formations and sedimentary layers to deduce relative ages, which are inevitably on a scale of tens to hundreds of millions of years, because of their assumptions; and they also use dates set by previous researchers as reference points.
As a result, when they take an interest in poking and prodding a particular rock to date it, they already have a rough estimate of its age, based on their assumptions about its geological surroundings, including the assumed ages for the rocks above or below it, and the strata it is found in. In other words, the rock they’re interested in already has an “expected age” even before geologists touch it.
Now let’s say they have in mind a rock they assume to be about 200 million years old, based on their deep time assumptions about how the rock layers were formed in the first place. But they want to get a more “precise” date.
Next they have to decide on a dating “clock” they wish to use. Since they already believe the rock is tens of millions of years old, they will inevitably pick one that can detect this age. They won’t use carbon dating, because if they believe the rock is 200 million years old, it should be completely free of carbon-14, except from sources like contamination; and besides, geologists don’t usually carbon-date rocks with mixed origins, such as sedimentary rock.
Instead, they will pick a method with a long half-life. Let’s say they decide on the rubidium-strontium method to date the rock. As I have already pointed out, due to the incredibly long half-life of rubidium-87, if the researchers are able to collect samples that form even a tiny upward slope on a graph, they should be able to get an age at least somewhat within their expectations. Remember, they only need the line to slope by 0.001 to get 70 million years.
Next they select an appropriate rock or set of rocks that look undisturbed, and perhaps minerals that are going to have a useful rubidium to strontium ratio. They also select minerals that look undisturbed, and reject the ones that seem to have been disturbed or weathered, even though the rock itself was apparently undisturbed. These choices bias the selection towards samples that are going to behave well when it comes to crunching the data. If a schoolteacher removes all the naughty children in her class, she can say she has a well-behaved class.
Several samples from the rock or minerals are taken. They are processed in a laboratory, and the rubidium-87 to strontium-86 ratios along with the strontium-87 to strontium-86 ratios in each sample are found.
Now comes another series of decisions for the geologists. When the ratios are plotted on an X, Y graph, the data points might form a fairly straight line. If so, as long as the line has an upward slope, it can be treated as an isochron and produce a “model age.” But now the researchers have to decide whether this fits their “expected age” or not.
If the data doesn’t fit onto a neat line, they have a “miss.” They can reject the data as a whole, and there are plenty of excuses for doing so. Maybe other material got mixed in, or the samples were disturbed somehow. If none of their samples produce anywhere close to their expected age, they are likely to think the data is wrong and simply not publish it, unless it can be used to create some kind of controversy or intrigue, which isn’t easy when it comes to rocks.
In other words, there is an inherent natural bias towards publishing research that has some element of “success” to it, because there is less value in research that appears to be all “wrong” or a “failure.” Unfortunately, we can never know how much research doesn’t get published because it didn’t produce any “hits” at all.
However, if they have collected enough samples, then at least some of the data might plot nicely enough on an isochron, and the resulting age or ages might be close enough to their expectations to count as at least a partial “hit,” and make the research worth publishing. Before it gets published, the data can also be grouped in a way that produces a well-behaved isochron matching expectations, while data points that don’t line up can be explained away, and left off the isochron.
If the isochron produces an age of, let’s say 100 million years, when the strata the rock is found in is supposed to be 200 million years old according to their assumptions, then from the geologist’s point of view, the isochron must be wrong. They can reject the data for plenty of reasons, such as materials being mixed together, producing what they call a “mixing line.”
In other words, over time, the whole field becomes a series of assumptions and biases built on previous assumptions and biases, all conveniently excluding even the merest possibility that the rocks could be as young as those pesky creationists say they are. This is an example of The Crooked Trial, taken to ideological and industrial levels.
Incidentally, I don’t mean to imply geologists are being deliberately dishonest. I think, for the most part, they are honest; but they are definitely not impartial. Every system, tool and model they use assumes deep time, which is a built-in expectation; and they are also often selective in which data to include or exclude in their isochrons, or which data to accept or reject, depending on how it fits or doesn’t fit their expectations.
Now, if this all sounds far-fetched, let’s look at a real example. Let’s examine the data from a study of samples taken from the Tarim Basin in Northwest China. I have picked this study because it contains a lot of data points, and I think the researchers are also honest about their selection process. Plus, the research report has a catchy title.8
Previous researchers had dated three areas in the Tarim Basin using the potassium-argon system, producing model ages of 125 Ma (where “Ma” means millions of years from the present), 389 Ma and 234 Ma. Later researchers wanted to date the same areas using rubidium-strontium dating, so they took five samples, each containing five subsamples. (For easy reference, I have included the data from each sample in the footnotes.)
Incidentally, I should point out that the dates represented the apparent timing of “hydrocarbon charge” rather than the exact time of the sample formation, but this is directly related to the formation of the material being studied.
The first sample, labeled “YM 35-1,” didn’t produce a straight line, because one of the five subsamples was too high. When it was removed, the remaining four subsamples produced an isochron giving an age of around 100 million years. This was rejected by the researchers as being far too young, and very different from the potassium-argon age. It was a “miss.” The explanation was perhaps “hydrothermal alteration” causing “extensive subsample-scale redistribution of Rb-Sr atoms,” where Rb is the chemical shorthand for rubidium and Sr for strontium.9
The second sample, “H6,” gave an age of 148 Ma, with a 68 million year uncertainty. Since this was close enough to the 125 Ma reported by potassium-argon dating, it was considered a “hit,” even with such a high level of uncertainty.10
The third sample, “KQ1,” gave an age of 351 Ma with a 97 Ma uncertainty. One subsample deviated slightly from the main trend. Without it, the line would yield a lower age of 332 Ma with a 32 Ma uncertainty. This was considered a “hit” when compared with the potassium-argon date of 389 Ma.11
The fourth sample, “Q1,” produced a straight line, which came in at around 480 million years. However, this was older than the apparent age of the early Silurian host strata. The researchers interpreted this as a mixing line. They also speculated that it may have been due to “isotopic heterogeneity, which results in an apparent age that is older than the formation age of its host.” In other words, perhaps the stable isotopes weren’t mixed in equal ratios beforehand. In any case, the data was rejected. It was a “miss.” 12
The fifth sample, “TZ 67,” gave an age of around 235 Ma, and matched up very well with the potassium-argon age of 234 Ma. Obviously this was considered a “hit.” 13 In other words, taking the study as a whole, data that lined up with their expectations was accepted, while data that didn’t was rejected.
However, I think the data also supports an alternative hypothesis, which is that the samples are close to their initial element ratios, meaning very little radioactive decay of rubidium-87 has actually taken place. In this hypothesis, the differences between the subsamples are mainly due to sorting of the elements, chemicals and minerals, along with some random variation.
Let’s look more carefully at the data. What’s curious is, comparing subsamples within a sample, the isotope ratios are quite similar, but they differ substantially between samples. For example, in the sample labeled “YM 35-1,” the five subsamples had very similar rubidium-87 to strontium-86 ratios that fell within a narrow window between 13.35 and 13.86, while these ratios in the “H6” sample fell within the small window between 7.169 and 7.342, and in “KQ1” the window was 4.449 to 4.971.
These differences between samples aren’t due to radioactive decay. If we start out with 1,000 rubidium-87 atoms, and then wait half a billion years, we would still have about 993 rubidium-87 atoms by the end, because half a billion years is only about 1% of its half-life.14
In other words, the ratio of rubidium-87 to strontium-86 atoms wouldn’t change all that much, even after a supposed half a billion years of radioactive decay. Therefore, even if we assume all this radioactivity took place, the ratios measured today would still be very close to the ones the samples and subsamples started out with.
Therefore, in the main, the differences between samples can’t be due to radioactive decay. They must be due to some kind of element, chemical or mineral sorting. This would explain why the “YM 35-1” sample has a rubidium-87 to strontium-86 ratio averaging around 13.54, while the “H6” sample averages around 7.24 and the “KQ1” sample averages at about 4.68.
While the strontium-87 to strontium-86 ratios could potentially differ much more after half a billion years of radioactivity, they are also clustered around very narrow windows, which may also be similar to the ratios they started out with.
Even if we assumed the isochron method produces accurate ages, the starting ratios for each sample are different. For example, based on the data from the research paper, the “YM 35-1” sample, with the third data point removed, began with a strontium-87 to strontium-86 ratio of about 0.742, while the “Q1” sample started out at around 0.699.
To switch back to our balloon analogy for a moment, to make things a little easier to follow, we know with a high degree of certainty that the samples all started out with different red to black balloon ratios, and different black to brown balloon ratios; and yet the isochron model insists that in all the subsamples in any one sample, the black and brown balloons were initially mixed throughout the material in perfect proportions, even though this perfect proportionality doesn’t show up anywhere else, except in the world of assumptions.
This assumption is what allows geologists to draw a straight line and call it an isochron, which in turn produces a model age of millions of years.
Alternatively, what may be happening is, the samples may be young. They just didn’t start out with daughter isotopes in perfect ratios, and the variations we see in the samples are primarily due to the geological sorting of elements, chemicals and minerals, along with small natural variations; and the ratios haven’t changed much at all. No radioactive decay has taken place, or at least only a negligible amount, at least for radioisotopes with very long half-lives.
This would also explain why geologists keep getting isochrons that don’t fit their expectations, and so have to be explained away. They are continually trying to fit square pegs into round holes, except because of the nature of the system, they will get “hits” if they are careful about how much sampling to do, or about how to interpret the data.
The “YM 35-1” sample from the Tarim Basin report doesn’t fit on an isochron, but it does if you delete one data point. Then it gives a model age of about 100 million years, which can’t be the real age, because it’s far too young, compared with the potassium-argon model age. The “Q1” sample yields a model age of around 480 million years, which is far too old, older than the strata it is in. But the dating method can’t be at fault, in the mind of geologists. It must be the sample’s fault.
Only the “TZ 67” sample lined up with the potassium-argon model age. The “KQ1” sample agrees with the potassium-argon date, give or take 97 million years; and agrees with it even less if you remove one data point. The “H6” sample also agrees, or it might be up to 68 million years out, because of the uncertainty.
This begs the question: why do researchers not take many more samples from the same area, to remove the uncertainty? After all, 10 or 20 data points on a line would be far more impressive than 4 or 5. I suppose a good excuse is budget; but I suspect another reason is that, in many cases, it would break the nice straight line needed for an isochron, or it would yield a very different date, especially if the “age” is just an illusion produced by using isotopes with multi-billion year half-lives, and isn’t really the sample’s real age. It’s also easier to get the isochron you want with just 4 or 5 data points, because you can always say that any one or two of the points that don’t fit your expectations are anomalies.
Whatever the case, let me briefly outline a model of creation that assumes the Earth, Sun, Moon and solar system were created by God and are 6-10,000 years old. I am not trying to provide a comprehensive model here. This is simply an outline.
To evaluate this, we would first need to remove the assumption of deep time, and any ideas and methods that rely on this assumption, so we aren’t fitting square pegs into round holes. This would mean most isochron dating methods are invalid, at least the ones geologists tend to use to date rocks.
There would be two primary events impacting Earth geology. The first would be the creation of the Earth, Moon and Sun, presumably out of some “primordial” matter existing prior to their formation, although I use the term “primordial” not to imply any vast age.
The primordial matter may have contained ratios of isotopes and elements similar to the ones we see today. This would explain why the Moon and many meteorites have roughly the same model age in isochron dating. They were formed at around the same time out of the same primordial matter, and are still young, so not much has changed for many of the isotope ratios.
This would explain the coincidence of the supposed age of the Earth to the half-life of uranium-238, which is around 4.5 billion years. This is because it isn’t a coincidence. Assuming the primordial matter contained roughly the same proportions of uranium and lead isotopes we see today, very little natural radioactive decay of uranium has really taken place, and the lead could have been around from the start. If there was an initial 50/50 ratio of uranium-238 to lead-206, this could be interpreted as 4.5 billion years of radioactive decay, when it isn’t.
Variations in these ratios could be due to the loss of some of those elements, particularly for meteorites flying in space, passing close to the Sun, entering the Earth’s atmosphere, and then hitting the Earth. If sample data from these meteorites could be plotted on an upward sloping line, the line could be interpreted as an isochron giving a model age of billions of years, because the sample would still have most or some of its primordial lead left in it.
God may have also caused a process that would appear to be radioactive decay, in the act of making the Earth ready for habitation. For example, to generate heat and produce an atmosphere, God could have used his energy to cause atoms in certain elements such as uranium to vibrate and give off a limited burst of radioactive decay very quickly. While this would obviously violate the ordinary laws of physics, this is precisely what God says he did when clothing the sea with clouds. In the book of Job, the original Hebrew says, “I broke my statute over it.” 15 In other words, I think God is telling us that, in order to produce an atmosphere of clouds, he violated the laws of physics he had already put in place.
This could have started on Day 1, and could have burned off enough water to create an atmosphere on Day 2 and allow dry land to appear early on Day 3, but the process was halted before the creation of life on Earth, so that no living thing would be harmed. It would also be a way of producing heat, prior to the creation of the Sun on Day 4. Some of this atomic excitation could appear to be radioactive decay spanning millions or billions of years.
The second event that would impact on geology and isotope ratios would be the Flood, which would have changed the entire face of the Earth. The floodwaters would cause immense quantities of rocks and sediment to be churned for many months, and then deposited in enormous sedimentary layers, which would be sorted perhaps according to mass or chemical composition. In other words, it would involve a huge amount of element, chemical and mineral sorting, perhaps with heavier elements sinking lower.
Indeed, even deep time scientists acknowledge this sorting process in the formation of the Earth, which is how they explain why the core of the Earth contains large amounts of heavy metals such as iron. They say it sank down to the core, although curiously, not lead. A global Flood would have a somewhat similar sorting effect, although restricted to nearer the surface of the Earth.
Creationists debate which geological layers were formed in the Flood, and which ones existed prior to it, and I don’t intend to follow that debate here; but since fossils exist in the Cambrian strata, presumably everything in and above this layer would have been laid down shortly after the Flood. This would also explain why the strata from the Permian down to the Cambrian are considered, even by deep time geologists, to have originated in water or be transitional between water and land. In a Young Earth model, this was probably due to the inclusion of floodwaters in the sediment.
In any case, much of the world’s geology would have been reshaped by the Flood. Chemicals, elements and minerals would also be sorted to a certain extent, and this would obviously have an impact on the ratios of elements and perhaps their isotopes, which is all that isochrons are really measuring. They are ultimately just detecting different isotope ratios based on different rock layers and compositions, and these have been interpreted as representing age, because the isochrons that geologists use assume millions of years of radioactive decay has taken place.
These deep age assumptions were also baked in from the start of modern geology. James Hutton, sometimes referred to as the “Founder of Modern Geology,” said that the past history of the Earth must be explained by what can be seen to be happening now, and that no powers were to be employed that weren’t natural to the globe. A global Flood wasn’t natural, and so was simply assumed away.
In his own words, Charles Lyell said he wanted to “free the science from Moses.”16 Of course, this could only happen if the Earth was millions of years old or more, and not thousands as implied by Moses. In other words, modern geology was invented to get away from the Creation and Flood accounts, and ultimately, I would suggest, from God himself. If I may speak bluntly, I think this has been the real agenda ever since, because there can be no molecules-to-man evolution if the Earth is merely thousands of years old, and therefore no atheism.
Radiometric dating, and particularly the isochron method, relies on the assumption that vast amounts of radioactive decay has taken place. These dating methods, and the assumptions they help to support, are then used to “prove” the Earth is old. But this produces circular reasoning.
Furthermore, they assume the daughter isotopes were initially distributed throughout the rock in perfectly equal ratios, and that the rock has been sitting undisturbed in a near pristine condition for vast ages of time.
But if there really was a global Flood, it would have disrupted the landscape of the whole Earth, so rocks wouldn’t have had the luxury of sitting around quietly for a billion years. And given that rubidium reacts violently with water, and strontium burns spontaneously in air, what would a Flood do for rubidium-strontium dating?
Now, one objection that could be raised here is that geologists can use different methods to date the same rock. This is true, but I think the same biases exist here that I mentioned before. If new researchers get a model age that is somewhat similar to a previously published model age, they will see their results as a “hit” and publish it. But if the date is significantly different, they are likely to view the results as a “miss” and not publish it, and we won’t ever see the “failed” research; or they may publish it but reject the data that doesn’t line up with their expectations; and so the whole field becomes a house of cards, with assumptions built on top of assumptions.
We saw this in the Tarim Basin data I examined earlier. The potassium-argon and rubidium-strontium dates agreed in one instance, while having only some agreement in two instances, but with large amounts of uncertainty which could have been resolved by taking a lot more subsamples to begin with; and they differed dramatically in two other instances.
Let me sum up the issues with using isochrons to date rocks. Isochrons can give the illusion of vast age, which can easily be nudged in the right direction by geologists. The method already has millions of years built into it, simply by using radioisotopes with long half-lives.
Some kind of linear upward slope isn’t difficult to achieve, as long as the daughter isotope ratios are fairly close but have some variation, which would probably be the case even if no radioactivity had taken place at all, and the rock was young. It would be the result of chemical, element or mineral sorting, and some random variation, rather than radioactive decay.
Geologists then have plenty of tools to align the data with their expectations, including but not limited to: not taking enough samples to eliminate uncertainty and therefore leaving room for the data to “agree” by ignoring a data point or two, ignoring or explaining away data that doesn’t make an isochron, explaining away data points that don’t line up nicely, and dismissing isochrons that don’t match up with the assumed ages of the rocks or strata around it.
In other words, just as neo-Darwinian evolution is a critical but flawed assumption in biology, deep time geology is a house of cards, built on one critical assumption that is necessary to “free the science from Moses” – namely, that things are millions or billions of years old. Because if rocks aren’t millions of years old after all, then neither is there time for evolution, and the naturalistic worldview sinks like iron in water.
Now, there are many other methods scientists have developed to measure age based on their deep time thinking. I won’t go into them all, because this chapter would then become a book within a book that is supposed to be a letter.
However, let’s quickly look at one more. Tree rings are sometimes used as a dating method, because under normal growth conditions, trees add one ring to their trunk every year. Some trees have several thousand rings, which is then assumed to be their age. Furthermore, nearby dead wood is used to extend the ring count many thousands of years further back in time, by aligning tree rings.
There are several assumptions used in this dating method. The first is that one tree ring represents one year. However, it is well-established that trees can grow multiple rings per year, known as “multiplicity,” in certain conditions.17
For example, Bristlecone Pine trees growing in the White Mountains of Eastern California are thought to be some of the oldest living trees on Earth, supposedly around 5,000 years old. The ones with thousands of rings are living in harsh conditions, where soil and water are somewhat scarce. In conditions of better moisture, the Bristlecone Pines only had hundreds of rings.18
It seems that trees in harsher conditions can grow multiple rings a year when they need to preserve resources such as water. Trees lose a significant amount of water vapor through the bark, so the extra rings may preserve water.
This also helps to explain the “strip growth” habit of trees with more than a few thousand rings. As trees grow older and larger, their surface area gets bigger, which means an increase in water loss. When strip growth takes over, it leaves only one long living strip of bark running up the side of the trunk, allowing resources to be conserved, and adding layers of growth in a different direction, causing the trunk to become more slab-shaped than cylindrical.
What this all means is, the assumption that one ring equals one year may not be true in older trees, particularly in arid conditions. The supposedly oldest Bristlecone Pines with thousands of rings may have simply grown rings at a much faster rate because they are in harsher conditions, where water was much more scarce. In other words, they are not really thousands of years old.
Another assumption in this dating method is that dead wood in the surrounding area has survived intact for thousands of years, to extend the chronology given by the tree rings. The dead wood in the supposedly oldest trees has disintegrated, while wood lying on the ground is supposed to have survived for thousands of years, which is highly implausible.
Furthermore, the White Mountains are eroding at a rate of at least one foot every thousand years, so if this dating method were accurate, it would mean the mountains have eroded several feet while the wood on the ground remained intact, which is very unlikely.19 More likely, the wood on the ground simply isn’t as old as supposed.
Now, the one thing I hope to have made clear in this chapter, is that our assumptions play a critical role in how we interpret evidence. I have spent some time on the issue of dating, because how we measure time makes a big difference to what we believe, as well as on the nature and character of God.
It is not my intention to impose my viewpoint of the world on you. But since we are nearing the end of his “letter,” I feel obligated to give you a summary of my opinion, because this is what I think is the truth, and truth is highly valued by God, who says he will become known as the “God of truth.” 20
I believe the Bible is the inspired word of YHWH, in the sense that its human authors were influenced by God to write what they did. That inspiration may have taken different forms. Some prophets were told to write certain words directly, such as Moses with the Law covenant, or Isaiah at times when he was told to make a pronouncement from YHWH. Other things may have come more from the writer’s own heart and mind, but God still inspired the preservation of those words for the benefit of future generations.
Since no human was around to witness the founding of the heavens and the Earth, I believe God revealed those things to Moses, his first prophet, who then wrote the creation account in Genesis.
The creation of an entire universe might sound like it should take a vast amount of time, but scientists already have a concept, which they call inflation, allowing for the creation of a small but expanding universe in virtually no time at all, without any divine help. God simply needed to extend this inflationary period a moment longer, and he could have created a full-size universe “in the beginning.”
If we use light to measure age, the universe would appear to be billions of years old, since we can see billions of light years away. But light itself would be stretched in the extended inflationary period, and so it isn’t a suitable measure of age. God isn’t fooling anybody with a misleading “appearance of age.” He simply created a fully functional universe almost instantly. Scientists are simply misinterpreting what they see, and are therefore fooling themselves.
God set the first measure of time for Earth and its eventual inhabitants by defining “day one.” There may have been a small window of time prior to Day 1, during which he created spirit life forms that didn’t inhabit the Earth, occasionally referred to in the Bible as “sons of God,” because they were already present at the founding of the Earth. That window may have been a few thousand years, long enough to enable at least one particular cherub to rebel, but the Bible doesn’t say.
God then worked to make the Earth habitable within just six days. He could have taken billions of years, but I don’t think this was necessary. The creation of the Sun is a good example of why. God could have waited millions of years for a supernova to form the raw materials to make the Sun, or he could have pulled all the necessary helium-4 together almost instantly. Is it really too incredible to believe that God Almighty can manipulate matter this way? Humans can manipulate matter on a small scale, and we only play at being God sometimes.
I think God wanted us to know they were actual days, commencing with “day one” and marked by actual evenings and mornings. Those days were filled with a series of miraculous events, work by God, performed in a logical order. This is also why he had Israel work six days and rest on the seventh, because “for six days YHWH made the heavens and the earth, the sea and all that is in them, and he rested on the seventh day.” 21
I believe God later brought about a worldwide Flood, because life and the Earth had been ruined. I think humans were already on the brink of destroying themselves, and so the Flood was not an act of malice, but was done to preserve earthly creation. All land creatures alive today are the offspring of those on the Ark.
There is plenty of evidence for the Flood, and belief in it was widespread among the people and tribes of the Earth in the past, but humans have a tendency to forget their past, and true accounts become myths and legends over time.
The apostle Peter also predicted that the Flood would pass into legend, and become the basis for ridicule: “In the last days scoffers will come, proceeding according to their own desires and saying, ‘Where is the promise of his presence? For from the time when our forefathers fell asleep, all things have continued from the beginning of creation.’ For they are willingly ignorant of this, that the heavens and the earth of old were, out of water and through water, brought together by the word of God, through which that world perished by being deluged with water.” 22
This is precisely the “willingly ignorant” path that science took in later days. The modern field of geology was founded by James Hutton in the late 1700’s, who insisted that the past must be interpreted by things happening today, thus eliminating the Flood with the stroke of the philosophical pen, and by Charles Lyell in the early 1800’s, whose desire was to “free the science from Moses.”
The evidence for the Flood hadn’t disappeared. It was still there, and remains there to this day, literally and figuratively buried in the geological columns and rocks. It was simply reinterpreted to be the operation of processes that took millions of years. Inspired by this, Charles Darwin applied this thinking to the world of living things, and came up with his idea of evolution by variation and natural selection.
In other words, I think that science took a major misstep from the days of Hutton, Lyell and Darwin. Science no longer became a quest for truth regardless of where it leads, but it became a quest to explain all things as being accomplished by nature alone.
It is certainly not wrong to try and figure out causes in a scientific manner, and not just say “God did it!” Isaac Newton believed in God, yet this didn’t stop him from discovering and writing extensively on gravity. But it can be hard to believe in God when the scientific world repeatedly insists that life is billions of years old, that it all evolved from primordial sludge, and that everything can be explained without God.
However, I have included this chapter to show that, in many ways, geologists have created an elaborate illusion for themselves, as a result of rejecting Creation and the Flood, which is exactly what the apostle Peter predicted. Once we shatter the illusion, and the spurious “clocks” that give the appearance of vast age, it is easier to accept that God did indeed create the heavens and the Earth.
1 For a list of research papers, see Table 1 in the article “Carbon-14 Content Of Fossil Carbon” by Paul Giem, published in Origins, 2001. The article is also an interesting discussion of carbon-14 in relation to both Old Earth and Young Earth viewpoints. 2 Taylor, Southon, “Use of natural diamonds to monitor 14C AMS instrument backgrounds”, Nuclear Instruments and Methods in Physics Research B, 2007. 3 The three points on an X, Y scatter graph would be at (1, 3.5), (0.5, 2) and (0.3125, 1.4375). The X axis should be the red/brown balloon ratio, and the Y axis should be the black/brown balloon ratio. 4 The slope can usually be calculated in a spreadsheet or scientific calculator by using “linear regression.” Each point on the X,Y graph falls on a straight line satisfying the linear equation y=ax+b where a is the slope and b is the intercept through the Y axis. In our example the slope is 3. For calculating ages, a “decay constant” is used, often denoted by the Greek symbol lambda, which is calculated as ln(2)/h where h is the half-life in years. (ln is the natural logarithm.) In our example, h=10,000 and so lambda is 6.931471806*10-5. The age can then be calculated using the formula (1/lambda)*ln(a+1) where a is the slope of the line. In our example this would become (1/6.931471806×10-5)*ln(3+1) = 14,426.95041*1.386294361 = 20,000. 5 Claire Patterson, “Age of meteorites and the earth,” Geochimica et Cosmochimica Acta, 1956. 6 Let’s take the value of lambda as 1.4×10-11. With a slope of a=0.001, this produces a model age of (1/lambda)*ln(a+1) = (1/1.4×10-11)*ln(0.001+1) = 71.42857134×109*0.0009995 = 71,392,857 years. 7 Taking lambda as 1.4×10-11, for the first set of data, the slope a of the isochron would be 0.056357142857143 and the intercept b on the Y axis would be at 0.70975. For the second set, the slope would be the same but the intercept would be at 0.597035714285714. 8 Li et al, “Direct Rubidium-Strontium Dating of Hydrocarbon Charge Using Small Authigenic Illitic Clay Aliquots from the Silurian Bituminous Sandstone in the Tarim Basin, NW China”, Nature: Scientific Reports, 2019. 9 The YM 35-1 sample data can be plotted on an X,Y graph at: (13.35, 0.760815), (13.86, 0.761497), (13.45, 0.762334), (13.49, 0.760862), (13.54, 0.761158). A straight line can’t be drawn. However, if the third data point is removed, we get a line with slope 0.001370929700023 and intercept at 0.742497172315091, which would give a model age of about 98 million years, with lambda = 1.396×10-11 as used in their paper. 10 The H6 sample data can be plotted on the following points: (7.342, 0.728876), (7.28, 0.728789), (7.169, 0.728541), (7.222, 0.72874), (7.205, 0.728636). These produce a line with slope 0.001836334002547 and intercept at 0.715414731019148, giving a model age of about 131 million years. 11 The KQ1 sample data can be plotted on the following points: (4.971, 0.735775), (4.709, 0.73466), (4.449, 0.733376), (4.473, 0.733485), (4.8, 0.735392). These produce a line with slope 0.004855825080354 and intercept at 0.711810396293909, giving a model age of about 347 million years. 12 The Q1 sample data can be plotted on the following points: (11.4, 0.774273), (10.71, 0.769862), (12.15, 0.779446), (11.42, 0.774809), (11.45, 0.775439). These produce a line with slope 0.00667388741186 and intercept at 0.698509962432088, giving a model age of about 476 million years. 13 The TZ67 samples can be plotted on the following points: (4.462, 0.72473), (3.559, 0.721805), (4.629, 0.725351), (4.507, 0.72492), (4.176, 0.723921). These produce a line with slope 0.003278604349936 and intercept at 0.710156906680564, giving a model age of about 234 million years. 14 The formula 1/2n defines the proportion of radioactive atoms remaining after n half-lives. Since we only want 1% of a half-life, we get 1/20.01 = 0.9930925448. Therefore, 1,000 radioactive atoms would leave about 993 of the same atoms after 1% of its half-life has passed. 15 Job 38:10. 16 Life, Letters And Journals Of Sir Charles Lyell, edited by Katharine M Lyell, 1881. Volume 1, p268. 17 Glock et al, “Classification and multiplicity of growth layers in the branches of trees, at the extreme lower forest border”, Smithsonian Miscellaneous Collection, 1960. 18 LaMarche, “Environment in Relation to Age of Bristlecone Pines”, Ecology, 1969. 19 LaMarche, “Rates of slope degradation as determined from botanical evidence” White Mountains, California, Geological Survey Professional Paper 352-I, 1968. 20 Isaiah 65:16. 21 Exodus 20:11. 22 2 Peter 3:3-6.