Perceptions of God, Creationism and Evolution

[Soldier of Macedon]

Anything beyond a few thousand years and we have no accurate measurement. All we know for sure is that which is a few thousand years old.

I understand that some tests on the same item have come up with varying results which puts into question the integrity of such a method. You may have already covered this part, but if you could just briefly clarify, why would the measurement be accurate only to a few thousand years, and not anything beyond? Is it because there is no corroborative evidence (like written records) beyond a few thousands years?

The rest is quite frankly fantastical, based on unprovable assumptions and unkown variables.

I think some aspects of both evolutionism and creationism are based on unprovable assumptions.

[Vangelovski]

I understand that some tests on the same item have come up with varying results which puts into question the integrity of such a method. You may have already covered this part, but if you could just briefly clarify, why would the measurement be accurate only to a few thousand years, and not anything beyond? Is it because there is no corroborative evidence (like written records) beyond a few thousands years?

In terms of geology, radiometric dating in general depends on three major assumptions:

1. When the rock forms (hardens) there should only be parent radioactive atoms in the rock and no daughter radiogenic (derived by radioactive decay of another element) atoms;
2. After hardening, the rock must remain a closed system, that is, no parent or daughter atoms should be added to or removed from the rock by external influences such as percolating groundwaters; and
3. The radioactive decay rate must remain constant.

If any of these assumptions are violated, then the technique fails and any ‘dates’ are false.



Research has demonstrated that the long-age radioactive methods for dating rocks is often faulty, since there are problems with the three crucial assumptions on which they are based:

1. There are uncertainties as to the absence or presence of daughter atoms when the rocks formed, because there is much evidence of the rocks having inherited daughter atoms that were not formed by radioactive decay in those rocks.
2. There is abundant evidence of widespread “open-system” behavior of parent and daughter atoms. Rocks are often contaminated with extra parent and daughter atoms produced apart from radioactive decay. Parent and daughter atoms are also removed by various geologic processes (for example, leaching by fluids) subsequent to the rocks forming.
3. Nuclear decay rates may well have changed in the past.

Much research (I've posted some examples here, but most of my articles/books are in hardcopy photocopied from the ANU and the National Library of Australia) has found that rocks of known age often yield erroneously old radioactive age estimates because either one of the first two assumptions, or both, can be demonstrated to be false.

And if the radioactive decay rates have not always been constant, i.e., the same as the currently measured slow rates but were accelerated in the past, then these radioactive dating methods cannot be used to provide reliable age estimates for rocks. After all, if the use of current decay rates don’t work on rocks of known ages, how can they be trusted on rocks of unknown ages?

I will post in relation to Carbon 14 dating (which is used for fossils) in a bit.

[Vangelovski]

Carbon 14 dating works a little differently. Its used to date previously living organisms such as fossils.

As long as an organism is alive it will continue to take in Carbon 14 however, when it dies, it will stop. Since Carbon 14 is radioactive, the amount of Carbon 14 in a dead organism decays over time. Therefore, part of the dating process involves measuring the amount of Carbon 14 that remains after some has decayed. Scientists use a device called an “Accelerator Mass Spectrometer” (AMS) to determine the ratio of Carbon 14 to Carbon 12, which increases the assumed accuracy to about 80,000 years.

In order to actually do the dating, we need to know:

• How fast does Carbon 14 decay; and
• What was the starting amount of Carbon 14 in the organism when it died?

The decay rate of radioactive elements is described in terms of half-life. The half-life of an atom is the amount of time it takes for half of the atoms in a sample to decay. The half-life of Carbon 14 is 5,730 years. Since the half-life of Carbon 14 is known (how fast it decays), the only part left to determine is the starting amount of Carbon 14 in a fossil. If scientists know the original amount of Carbon 14 in a creature when it died, they can measure the current amount and then calculate how many half-lives have passed.

Since no one was there to measure the amount of Carbon 14 when a creature died, scientists need to find a method to determine how much Carbon 14 has decayed. To do this, scientists use the main isotope of carbon, called carbon-12. Because Carbon 12 is a stable isotope of carbon, it will remain constant; however, the amount of Carbon 14 will decrease after a creature dies. All living things take in carbon (Carbon 14 and Carbon 12) from eating and breathing. Therefore, the ratio of Carbon 14 to Carbon 12 in living creatures will be the same as in the atmosphere. This ratio turns out to be about one Carbon 14 atom for every 1 trillion Carbon 12 atoms. Scientists can use this ratio to help determine the starting amount of Carbon 14.

When an organism dies, this ratio (1 to 1 trillion) will begin to change. The amount of Carbon 12 will remain constant, but the amount of Carbon 14 will become less and less. The smaller the ratio, the longer the organism has been dead.

A critical assumption used in carbon-14 dating has to do with this ratio. It is assumed that the ratio of Carbon 14 to Carbon 12 in the atmosphere has always been the same as it is today (1 to 1 trillion). If this assumption is true, then the AMS Carbon 14 dating method is valid up to about 80,000 years. Beyond this number, the instruments scientists use would not be able to detect enough remaining Carbon 14 to be useful in age estimates.

This is a critical assumption in the dating process. If this assumption is not true, then the method will give incorrect dates. What could cause this ratio to change? If the production rate of Carbon 14 in the atmosphere is not equal to the removal rate (mostly through decay), this ratio will change. In other words, the amount of Carbon 14 being produced in the atmosphere must equal the amount being removed to be in a steady state (also called “equilibrium”). If this is not true, the ratio of Carbon 14 to Carbon 12 is not a constant, which would make knowing the starting amount of Carbon 14 in a specimen difficult or impossible to accurately determine.

Dr. Willard Libby, the founder of the carbon-14 dating method, assumed this ratio to be constant. His reasoning was based on a belief in evolution, which assumes the earth must be billions of years old. Assumptions in the scientific community are extremely important. If the starting assumption is false, all the calculations based on that assumption might be correct but still give a wrong conclusion.

In Dr. Libby’s original work, he noted that the atmosphere did not appear to be in equilibrium. This was a troubling idea for Dr. Libby since he believed the world was billions of years old and enough time had passed to achieve equilibrium. Dr. Libby’s calculations showed that if the earth started with no Carbon 14 in the atmosphere, it would take up to 30,000 years to build up to a steady state (equilibrium).

If the cosmic radiation has remained at its present intensity for 20,000 or 30,000 years, and if the carbon reservoir has not changed appreciably in this time, then there exists at the present time a complete balance between the rate of disintegration of radiocarbon atoms and the rate of assimilation of new radiocarbon atoms for all material in the life-cycle.

Dr. Libby chose to ignore this discrepancy (nonequilibrium state), and he attributed it to experimental error. However, the discrepancy has turned out to be very real. The ratio of Carbon 14 / Carbon 12 is not constant.
The Specific Production Rate (SPR) of Carbon 14 is known to be 18.8 atoms per gram of total carbon per minute. The Specific Decay Rate (SDR) is known to be only 16.1 disintegrations per gram per minute.
What does this mean? If it takes about 30,000 years to reach equilibrium and Carbon 14 is still out of equilibrium, then maybe the earth is not very old.

Other factors can affect the production rate of Carbon 14 in the atmosphere. The earth has a magnetic field around it which helps protect us from harmful radiation from outer space. This magnetic field is decaying (getting weaker). The stronger the field is around the earth, the fewer the number of cosmic rays that are able to reach the atmosphere. This would result in a smaller production of Carbon 14 in the atmosphere in earth’s past.

The cause for the long term variation of the Carbon 14 level is not known. The variation is certainly partially the result of a change in the cosmic ray production rate of radiocarbon. The cosmic-ray flux, and hence the production rate of Carbon 14, is a function not only of the solar activity but also of the magnetic dipole moment of the Earth.

Earth’s magnetic field is fading. Today it is about 10 percent weaker than it was when German mathematician Carl Friedrich Gauss started keeping tabs on it in 1845, scientists say.

If the production rate of Carbon 14 in the atmosphere was less in the past, dates given using the Carbon 14 method would incorrectly assume that more Carbon 14 had decayed out of a specimen than what has actually occurred. This would result in giving older dates than the true age.

Basically, we need to rely on archaeological evidence to confirm dates derived from these dating methods and beyond a few thousand years (i.e., written records), its really not possible. Another method that has been used is to compare the dendrochronology (tree ring) and radiocarbon dates of wood samples from the bristlecone pine tree, which can live for more than 4000 years. But again, this is limited to a few thousand years.

*Taken from a variety of sources, including:

http://www.icr.org/article/117/

http://physicsworld.com/cws/article/news/2676

http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/h2g2/A637418

http://www.answersingenesis.org/arti...ammonites-wood

http://www.answersingenesis.org/crea.../i1/dating.asp

http://www.answersingenesis.org/arti...rove-the-bible

[TrueMacedonian]

http://www.spaceref.com/news/viewpr.html?pid=15080

Uranium/lead dating provides most accurate date yet for Earth's largest extinction

Source: University of California Berkeley

By Robert Sanders


BERKELEY - A new study by geologists at the Berkeley Geochronology Center and the University of California, Berkeley, improves upon a widely used dating technique, opening the possibility of a vastly more accurate time scale for major geologic events in Earth's history.

In a paper published this week in Science, geochemist Roland Mundil of the Berkeley Geochronology Center (BGC) and his colleagues at BGC and UC Berkeley report that uranium/lead (U/Pb) dating can be extremely accurate - to within 250,000 years - but only if the zircons from volcanic ash used in the analysis are specially treated. To date, zircons - known to many as a semiprecious stone and December's birthstone - have often produced confusing and inaccurate results.

"Zircons have produced complicated data that are hard to interpret, though people have pulled dates out," said Mundil, a former UC Berkeley postdoctoral fellow now at the BGC, a non-profit scientific research institute dedicated to perfecting dating techniques for establishing the history of Earth and life on Earth. "Many of these studies will now have to be redone."

The U/Pb isotopic dating technique has been critical in dating geologic events more than 100 million years old, including volcanic eruptions, continental movements and mass extinctions.

"The beauty of this new technique is that we now can analyze samples we previously could not get an accurate date for," Mundil said. "This will have a big impact on radio-isotopic dating in general."

Mundil and his colleagues, including BGC director Paul Renne, adjunct professor of earth and planetary science at UC Berkeley, used this improved U/Pb technique to establish a more accurate date for the end of the Permian period and the beginning of the Triassic period - 252.6 million years ago, plus or minus 200,000 years. This boundary coincides with the largest extinction of life on Earth, when most marine invertebrates died out, including the well-known flat, segmented trilobites.

Based on the improved U/Pb technique, the team also established that the argon/argon (Ar/Ar) isotopic dating technique that Renne employed for an earlier study of the Permian-Triassic boundary consistently gives younger dates, by about 1 percent. Renne ascribes this to a lack of a precise measurement of the decay constant of potassium. The technique is based on the fact that the naturally occurring isotope potassium-40 decays to argon-40 with a 1.25 billion year half-life. Comparison of the amount of argon-39 produced in a nuclear reactor to the amount of argon-40 gives a measure of the age of the rocks.

Uranium, on the other hand, is so well studied that its decay constant is much better known, making the U/Pb dating technique more accurate, Mundil noted. U/Pb dating relies upon the decay of naturally occurring uranium and different isotopes of lead.

"Further application of Mundil's approach will make the geologic time scale more accurate, letting us calibrate extinctions and important events in Earth's history, ranging from 100 million to several billion years ago, with unparalleled accuracy," Renne added.

The new U/Pb date, though about 2.5 million years older than Renne reported nine years ago based on Ar/Ar dating, nevertheless confirms his conclusion that the Permian extinction occurred at the same time as a major series of volcanic eruptions in Siberia. This is strong evidence that these eruptions caused, at least in part, the global die-off, which some scientists have ascribed to a meteor impact.

Mundil noted that in 1998, one group used U/Pb dating to assign a date of 251.4 million years ago for the main pulse of the Permina extinction, in apparent conflict with the new U/Pb age. That 'age,' however, "is based on interpretation of a very complicated data set," Mundil said.

Mundil and his colleagues set out to resolve the issue, using a new zircon pretreatment invented by UC Santa Barbara isotope geologist James M. Mattinson. The problem with using microscopic zircons, which are prevalent in volcanic ash, is that the decay of uranium to lead is so energetic that the lead atoms smash through and destroy the zircon crystal structure, which apparently allows some lead to leak out of the crystal, throwing off the analysis. Geologists have tried various zircon treatments, including abrading the outer surfaces of the crystals, which are typically a tenth of a millimeter across, or leaching the crystals with strong acid. Despite these treatments, the U/Pb method still produced a wide range of dates for zircons from the same layer of ash.

Mattinson's idea was to first heat or anneal the zircons, sealing off the least damaged areas of the crystal, then using a strong reagent, hydrofluoric acid, to eat away the heavily damaged areas.

When Mundil used this treatment, the zircon dates were much more consistent, requiring no selective interpretation of the data. The calculated uncertainty is about a quarter of a million years, which means the extinction took place over a very short time, the researchers concluded.

The zircons were obtained from ash layers located in central and southeastern China. The Meishan section in the latter region is accepted as the type locality for the Permian/Triassic boundary.

Whereas the U/Pb method yields ages which are more accurate, "Ar/Ar is still king in dating rocks younger than 100 million years and is about as precise as U/Pb methods, though we need to get better data for the decay constants to establish an absolute calibration," Renne said. "As soon as that calibration is put in place, the Ar/Ar method could become as accurate as U/Pb."

The work was supported by the National Science Foundation, the Australian Research Council and the Ann and Gordon Getty Foundation. Kenneth R. Ludwig of the BGC and Ian Metcalfe of the University of New England in Armidale, Australia, also participated in the study.

[Vangelovski]

Uranium, on the other hand, is so well studied that its decay constant is much better known, making the U/Pb dating technique more accurate, Mundil noted. U/Pb dating relies upon the decay of naturally occurring uranium and different isotopes of lead.

The fine print... They have not addressed three key assumptions that they HAVE to make:

1. conditions at time zero;
2. contamination; and
3. rate of decay.

[TrueMacedonian]

Tom, this is one of the sources you used on page 11;

Henry M. Morris, editor, Scientific Creationism, General Edition (Santee, California: Master Books, 1974), pp. 131-149.

http://www.nwcreation.net/audio/creation_and_schools.html

Henry M. Morris, Ph.D. Hydraulic Engineering (Founder and President Emeritus of ICR)
He has a B.S. from Rice University with honors in Civil Engineering and M.S. and Ph.D. degrees from the University of Minnesota. Dr. Morris majored in engineering hydraulics/hydrology while minoring in Geology and Mathematics. He has served on the faculties of Rice University, the University of Minnesota, the University of Southwestern Louisiana, and Southern Illinois University. From 1957 to 1970 he was Head of the Department of Civil Engineering at the Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University (Virginia Tech). While at Virginia Tech, Dr. Morris was able to get approval for Ph.D. programs in Civil Engineering and Hydraulics. Dr. Morris authored Applied Hydraulics in Engineering, which has been used by over 100 colleges and universities at one time or another. It is still used today as a reference and even the main text in some university classes. As of 1993 and 30 years after the first edition was printed, there was no comparable textbook available.



I think it's safe to say that Morris was not an expert in the field of judging whether or not the Earth is a few thousand or a couple billion years old.

[Soldier of Macedon]

Uranium, on the other hand, is so well studied that its decay constant is much better known, making the U/Pb dating technique more accurate, Mundil noted. U/Pb dating relies upon the decay of naturally occurring uranium and different isotopes of lead.

TM, if this is the case, why has western academia accepted this as an accurate method? In just a few points, can you summarise the arguments which support their POV? Is it sufficent to eliminate enough necessary doubt?

Vangelovski - Did all of the different types of humanoids who were once living among each other die out as a result of the prevalence of modern human types? If so, when would this have all taken place, or better yet, when would have the last of them died out? You may not have specific answers to the above, even if it is a general opinion, that's fine.

[Vangelovski]

Tom, this is one of the sources you used on page 11;



http://www.nwcreation.net/audio/crea...d_schools.html

Henry M. Morris, Ph.D. Hydraulic Engineering (Founder and President Emeritus of ICR)
He has a B.S. from Rice University with honors in Civil Engineering and M.S. and Ph.D. degrees from the University of Minnesota. Dr. Morris majored in engineering hydraulics/hydrology while minoring in Geology and Mathematics. He has served on the faculties of Rice University, the University of Minnesota, the University of Southwestern Louisiana, and Southern Illinois University. From 1957 to 1970 he was Head of the Department of Civil Engineering at the Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University (Virginia Tech). While at Virginia Tech, Dr. Morris was able to get approval for Ph.D. programs in Civil Engineering and Hydraulics. Dr. Morris authored Applied Hydraulics in Engineering, which has been used by over 100 colleges and universities at one time or another. It is still used today as a reference and even the main text in some university classes. As of 1993 and 30 years after the first edition was printed, there was no comparable textbook available.


I think it's safe to say that Morris was not an expert in the field of judging whether or not the Earth is a few thousand or a couple billion years old.

His academic background does not limit him to one field, he is free to research other fields. Most people, once they leave uni, do their own research into a wide variety of topics. Just because they have not done any formal training in a particular field, it does not mean their intelligence is limited.

Btw, do you even know what hydraulics and hydrology are and how they relate to his work? Do you understand in what capacity he is researching the topic?

[Vangelovski]

Vangelovski - Did all of the different types of humanoids who were once living among each other die out as a result of the prevalence of modern human types? If so, when would this have all taken place, or better yet, when would have the last of them died out? You may not have specific answers to the above, even if it is a general opinion, that's fine.

Which 'humanoids'? Maybe you can provide an example. To date, there have never been found any transitional fossils (i.e., "missing links") between apes and humans. The transitional 'humanoids' (or 'hominids') that evolutionists refer to are nothing more than imagined cartoon pictures in "science" textbooks based on one or two bones that have since been classified as ape, human or unable to be determined, with plenty of hoax's inbetween.

[George S.]

How Old Is The Earth, And How Do We Know?
he generally accepted age for the Earth and the rest of the solar system is about 4.55 billion years (plus or minus about 1%). This value is derived from several different lines of evidence.

Unfortunately, the age cannot be computed directly from material that is solely from the Earth. There is evidence that energy from the Earth's accumulation caused the surface to be molten. Further, the processes of erosion and crustal recycling have apparently destroyed all of the earliest surface.

The oldest rocks which have been found so far (on the Earth) date to about 3.8 to 3.9 billion years ago (by several radiometric dating methods). Some of these rocks are sedimentary, and include minerals which are themselves as old as 4.1 to 4.2 billion years. Rocks of this age are relatively rare, however rocks that are at least 3.5 billion years in age have been found on North America, Greenland, Australia, Africa, and Asia.

While these values do not compute an age for the Earth, they do establish a lower limit (the Earth must be at least as old as any formation on it). This lower limit is at least concordant with the independently derived figure of 4.55 billion years for the Earth's actual age.

The most direct means for calculating the Earth's age is a Pb/Pb isochron age, derived from samples of the Earth and meteorites. This involves measurement of three isotopes of lead (Pb-206, Pb-207, and either Pb-208 or Pb-204). A plot is constructed of Pb-206/Pb-204 versus Pb-207/Pb-204.

If the solar system formed from a common pool of matter, which was uniformly distributed in terms of Pb isotope ratios, then the initial plots for all objects from that pool of matter would fall on a single point.

Over time, the amounts of Pb-206 and Pb-207 will change in some samples, as these isotopes are decay end-products of uranium decay (U-238 decays to Pb-206, and U-235 decays to Pb-207). This causes the data points to separate from each other. The higher the uranium-to-lead ratio of a rock, the more the Pb-206/Pb-204 and Pb-207/Pb-204 values will change with time.

If the source of the solar system was also uniformly distributed with respect to uranium isotope ratios, then the data points will always fall on a single line. And from the slope of the line we can compute the amount of time which has passed since the pool of matter became separated into individual objects. See the Isochron Dating FAQ or Faure (1986, chapter 18) for technical detail.

A young-Earther would object to all of the "assumptions" listed above. However, the test for these assumptions is the plot of the data itself. The actual underlying assumption is that, if those requirements have not been met, there is no reason for the data points to fall on a line.

The resulting plot has data points for each of five meteorites that contain varying levels of uranium, a single data point for all meteorites that do not, and one (solid circle) data point for modern terrestrial sediments. It looks like this:


Pb-Pb isochron of terrestrial and meteorite samples.
After Murthy and Patterson (1962) and York and Farquhar (1972) .
Scanned from Dalrymple (1986) with permission.

Most of the other measurements for the age of the Earth rest upon calculating an age for the solar system by dating objects which are expected to have formed with the planets but are not geologically active (and therefore cannot erase evidence of their formation), such as meteorites. Below is a table of radiometric ages derived from groups of meteorites:

Type Number
Dated Method Age (billions
of years)
Chondrites (CM, CV, H, L, LL, E) 13 Sm-Nd 4.21 +/- 0.76
Carbonaceous chondrites 4 Rb-Sr 4.37 +/- 0.34
Chondrites (undisturbed H, LL, E) 38 Rb-Sr 4.50 +/- 0.02
Chondrites (H, L, LL, E) 50 Rb-Sr 4.43 +/- 0.04
H Chondrites (undisturbed) 17 Rb-Sr 4.52 +/- 0.04
H Chondrites 15 Rb-Sr 4.59 +/- 0.06
L Chondrites (relatively undisturbed) 6 Rb-Sr 4.44 +/- 0.12
L Chondrites 5 Rb-Sr 4.38 +/- 0.12
LL Chondrites (undisturbed) 13 Rb-Sr 4.49 +/- 0.02
LL Chondrites 10 Rb-Sr 4.46 +/- 0.06
E Chondrites (undisturbed) 8 Rb-Sr 4.51 +/- 0.04
E Chondrites 8 Rb-Sr 4.44 +/- 0.13
Eucrites (polymict) 23 Rb-Sr 4.53 +/- 0.19
Eucrites 11 Rb-Sr 4.44 +/- 0.30
Eucrites 13 Lu-Hf 4.57 +/- 0.19
Diogenites 5 Rb-Sr 4.45 +/- 0.18
Iron (plus iron from St. Severin) 8 Re-Os 4.57 +/- 0.21
After Dalrymple (1991, p. 291); duplicate studies on identical meteorite types omitted.
As shown in the table, there is excellent agreement on about 4.5 billion years, between several meteorites and by several different dating methods. Note that young-Earthers cannot accuse us of selective use of data -- the above table includes a significant fraction of all meteorites on which isotope dating has been attempted. According to Dalrymple (1991, p. 286) , less than 100 meteorites have been subjected to isotope dating, and of those about 70 yield ages with low analytical error.

Further, the oldest age determinations of individual meteorites generally give concordant ages by multiple radiometric means, or multiple tests across different samples. For example:

Meteorite Dated Method Age (billions
of years)
Allende whole rock Ar-Ar 4.52 +/- 0.02

whole rock Ar-Ar 4.53 +/- 0.02

whole rock Ar-Ar 4.48 +/- 0.02

whole rock Ar-Ar 4.55 +/- 0.03

whole rock Ar-Ar 4.55 +/- 0.03

whole rock Ar-Ar 4.57 +/- 0.03

whole rock Ar-Ar 4.50 +/- 0.02

whole rock Ar-Ar 4.56 +/- 0.05

Guarena whole rock Ar-Ar 4.44 +/- 0.06

13 samples Rb-Sr 4.46 +/- 0.08

Shaw whole rock Ar-Ar 4.43 +/- 0.06

whole rock Ar-Ar 4.40 +/- 0.06

whole rock Ar-Ar 4.29 +/- 0.06

Olivenza 18 samples Rb-Sr 4.53 +/- 0.16

whole rock Ar-Ar 4.49 +/- 0.06

Saint Severin 4 samples Sm-Nd 4.55 +/- 0.33

10 samples Rb-Sr 4.51 +/- 0.15

whole rock Ar-Ar 4.43 +/- 0.04

whole rock Ar-Ar 4.38 +/- 0.04

whole rock Ar-Ar 4.42 +/- 0.04

Indarch 9 samples Rb-Sr 4.46 +/- 0.08

12 samples Rb-Sr 4.39 +/- 0.04

Juvinas 5 samples Sm-Nd 4.56 +/- 0.08

5 samples Rb-Sr 4.50 +/- 0.07

Moama 3 samples Sm-Nd 4.46 +/- 0.03

4 samples Sm-Nd 4.52 +/- 0.05

Y-75011 9 samples Rb-Sr 4.50 +/- 0.05

7 samples Sm-Nd 4.52 +/- 0.16

5 samples Rb-Sr 4.46 +/- 0.06

4 samples Sm-Nd 4.52 +/- 0.33

Angra dos Reis 7 samples Sm-Nd 4.55 +/- 0.04

3 samples Sm-Nd 4.56 +/- 0.04

Mundrabrilla silicates Ar-Ar 4.50 +/- 0.06

silicates Ar-Ar 4.57 +/- 0.06

olivine Ar-Ar 4.54 +/- 0.04

plagioclase Ar-Ar 4.50 +/- 0.04

Weekeroo Station 4 samples Rb-Sr 4.39 +/- 0.07

silicates Ar-Ar 4.54 +/- 0.03
After Dalrymple (1991, p. 286); meteorites dated by only a single means omitted.
Also note that the meteorite ages (both when dated mainly by Rb-Sr dating in groups, and by multiple means individually) are in exact agreement with the solar system "model lead age" produced earlier.

Common Young-Earth "Dating Methods"
Young-Earthers have several methods which they claim to give "upper limits" to the age of the Earth, much lower than the age calculated above (usually in the thousands of years). Those which appear the most frequently in talk.origins are reproduced below:

Accumulation of helium in the atmosphere
Decay of the Earth's magnetic field
Accumulation of meteoritic dust on the Moon
Accumulation of metals into the oceans
Note that these aren't necessarily the "best" or most difficult to refute of young-Earth arguments. However, they are quite popular in modern creation-"science" literature (even though they should not be!) and they are historically the ones posted to talk.origins more than any others.

1. Accumulation of Helium in the atmosphere
The young-Earth argument goes something like this: helium-4 is created by radioactive decay (alpha particles are helium nuclei) and is constantly added to the atmosphere. Helium is not light enough to escape the Earth's gravity (unlike hydrogen), and it will therefore accumulate over time. The current level of helium in the atmosphere would accumulate in less than two hundred thousand years, therefore the Earth is young. (I believe this argument was originally put forth by Mormon young-Earther Melvin Cook, in a letter to the editor which was published in Nature.)

But helium can and does escape from the atmosphere, at rates calculated to be nearly identical to rates of production. In order to obtain a young age from their calculations, young-Earthers handwave away mechanisms by which helium can escape. For example, Henry Morris says:

"There is no evidence at all that Helium 4 either does, or can, escape from the exosphere in significant amounts." ( Morris 1974, p. 151 )

But Morris is wrong. Surely one cannot "invent" a good dating mechanism by simply ignoring processes which work in the opposite direction of the process which the date is based upon. Dalrymple says:

"Banks and Holzer (12) have shown that the polar wind can account for an escape of (2 to 4) x 106 ions/cm2 /sec of 4He, which is nearly identical to the estimated production flux of (2.5 +/- 1.5) x 106 atoms/cm2/sec. Calculations for 3He lead to similar results, i.e., a rate virtually identical to the estimated production flux. Another possible escape mechanism is direct interaction of the solar wind with the upper atmosphere during the short periods of lower magnetic-field intensity while the field is reversing. Sheldon and Kern (112) estimated that 20 geomagnetic-field reversals over the past 3.5 million years would have assured a balance between helium production and loss." ( Dalrymple 1984, p. 112 )

Dalrymple's references:

(12) Banks, P. M. & T. E. Holzer. 1969. "High-latitude plasma transport: the polar wind" in Journal of Geophysical Research 74, pp. 6317-6332.
(112) Sheldon, W. R. & J. W. Kern. 1972. "Atmospheric helium and geomagnetic field reversals" in Journal of Geophysical Research 77, pp. 6194-6201.
This argument also appears in the following creationist literature:

Baker (1976, pp. 25-26)
Brown (1989, pp. 16 and 52)
Jansma (1985, p. 61)
Whitcomb and Morris (1961, pp. 384-385)
Wysong (1976, pp. 161-163)
2. Decay of the Earth's magnetic field
The young-Earth argument: the dipole component of the magnetic field has decreased slightly over the time that it has been measured. Assuming the generally accepted "dynamo theory" for the existence of the Earth's magnetic field is wrong, the mechanism might instead be an initially created field which has been losing strength ever since the creation event. An exponential fit (assuming a half-life of 1400 years on 130 years' worth of measurements) yields an impossibly high magnetic field even 8000 years ago, therefore the Earth must be young. The main proponent of this argument was Thomas Barnes.

There are several things wrong with this "dating" mechanism. It's hard to just list them all. The primary four are:

While there is no complete model to the geodynamo (certain key properties of the core are unknown), there are reasonable starts and there are no good reasons for rejecting such an entity out of hand. If it is possible for energy to be added to the field, then the extrapolation is useless.

There is overwhelming evidence that the magnetic field has reversed itself, rendering any unidirectional extrapolation on total energy useless. Even some young-Earthers admit to that these days -- e.g., Humphreys (1988).

Much of the energy in the field is almost certainly not even visible external to the core. This means that the extrapolation rests on the assumption that fluctuations in the observable portion of the field accurately represent fluctuations in its total energy.
Barnes' extrapolation completely ignores the nondipole component of the field. Even if we grant that it is permissible to ignore portions of the field that are internal to the core, Barnes' extrapolation also ignores portions of the field which are visible and instead rests on extrapolation of a theoretical entity.
That last part is more important than it may sound. The Earth's magnetic field is often split in two components when measured. The "dipole" component is the part which approximates a theoretically perfect field around a single magnet, and the "nondipole" components are the ("messy") remainder. A study in the 1960s showed that the decrease in the dipole component since the turn of the century had been nearly completely compensated by an increase in the strength of the nondipole components of the field. (In other words, the measurements show that the field has been diverging from the shape that would be expected of a theoretical ideal magnet, more than the amount of energy has actually been changing.) Barnes' extrapolation therefore does not really rest on the change in energy of the field.

For information, see Dalrymple (1984, pp. 106-108) or Strahler (1987, pp. 150-155) .

This argument also appears in the following creationist literature:

Baker (1976, p. 25)
Brown (1989, pp. 17 and 53)
Jackson (1989, pp. 37-38)
Jansma (1985, pp. 61-62)
Morris (1974, pp. 157-158)
Wysong (1976, pp. 160-161)
3. Accumulation of meteoritic dust on the Moon
The most common form of this young-Earth argument is based on a single measurement of the rate of meteoritic dust influx to the Earth gave a value in the millions of tons per year. While this is negligible compared to the processes of erosion on the Earth (about a shoebox-full of dust per acre per year), there are no such processes on the Moon. Young-Earthers claim that the Moon must receive a similar amount of dust (perhaps 25% as much per unit surface area due to its lesser gravity), and there should be a very large dust layer (about a hundred feet thick) if the Moon is several billion years old.

Morris says, regarding the dust influx rate:

"The best measurements have been made by Hans Pettersson, who obtained the figure of 14 million tons per year1."
Morris (1974, p. 152) [italic emphasis added -CS]

Pettersson stood on a mountain top and collected dust there with a device intended for measuring smog levels. He measured the amount of nickel collected, and published calculations based on the assumption that all nickel that he collected was meteoritic in origin. That assumption was wrong and caused his published figures to be a vast overestimate.

Pettersson's calculation resulted in the a figure of about 15 million tons per year. In the very same paper, he indicated that he believed that value to be a "generous" over-estimate, and said that 5 million tons per year was a more likely figure.

Several measurements of higher precision were available from many sources by the time Morris wrote Scientific Creationism. These measurements give the value (for influx rate to the Earth) of about 20,000 to 40,000 tons per year. Multiple measurements (chemical signature of ocean sediments, satellite penetration detectors, microcratering rate of objects left exposed on the lunar surface) all agree on approximately the same value -- nearly three orders of magnitude lower than the value which Morris chose to use.

Morris chose to pick obsolete data with known problems, and call it the "best" measurement available. With the proper values, the expected depth of meteoritic dust on the Moon is less than one foot.

For further information, see Dalrymple (1984, pp. 108-111) or Strahler (1987, pp. 143-144) .

Addendum: "loose dust" vs. "meteoritic material"
Some folks in talk.origins occasionally sow further confusion by discussing the thickness of the "lunar soil" as if it represented the entire quantity of meteoritic material on the lunar surface. The lunar soil is a very thin layer (usually an inch or less) of loose powder present on the surface of the Moon.

However, the lunar soil is not the only meteoritic material on the lunar surface. The "soil" is merely the portion of powdery material which is kept loose by micrometeorite impacts. Below it is the regolith, which is a mixture of rock fragments and packed powdery material. The regolith averages about five meters deep on the lunar maria and ten meters on the lunar highlands.

In addition, lunar rocks are broken down by various processes (such as micrometeorite impacts and radiation). Quite a bit of the powdered material (even the loose portion) is not meteoritic in origin.

Addendum: Creationists disown the "Moon dust" argument
There is a recent creationist technical paper on this topic which admits that the depth of dust on the Moon is concordant with the mainstream age and history of the solar system. In the Abstract, Snelling and Rush (1993) conclude with:

"It thus appears that the amount of meteoritic dust and meteorite debris in the lunar regolith and surface dust layer, even taking into account the postulated early intense bombardment, does not contradict the evolutionists' multi-billion year timescale (while not proving it). Unfortunately, attempted counter-responses by creationists have so far failed because of spurious arguments or faulty calculations. Thus, until new evidence is forthcoming, creationists should not continue to use the dust on the moon as evidence against an old age for the moon and the solar system."

Snelling and Rush's paper also refutes the oft-posted creationist "myth" about the expectation of a thick dust layer during to the Apollo mission. The Apollo mission had been preceded by several unmanned landings -- the Soviet Luna (six landers), American Ranger (five landers) and Surveyor (seven landers) series. The physical properties of the lunar surface were well-known years before man set foot on it.

Further, even prior to the unmanned landings mentioned above, Snelling and Rush document that there was no clear consensus in the astronomical community on the depth of dust to expect. So those making the argument do not even have the excuse that such an consensus existed prior to the unmanned landings.

Even though the creationists themselves have refuted this argument, (and refutations from the mainstream community have been around for ten to twenty years longer than that), the "Moon dust" argument continues to be propagated in their "popular" literature, and continues to appear in talk.origins on a regular basis:

Baker (1976, p. 25)
Brown (1989, pp. 17 and 53)
Jackson (1989, pp. 40-41)
Jansma (1985, pp. 62-63)
Whitcomb and Morris (1961, pp. 379-380)
Wysong (1976, pp. 166-168)
See the talkorigins.org archived feedback for February and April 1997, for additional examples.

4. Accumulation of metals into the oceans
In 1965, Chemical Oceanography published a list of some metals' "residency times" in the ocean. This calculation was performed by dividing the amount of various metals in the oceans by the rate at which rivers bring the metals into the oceans.

Several creationists have reproduced this table of numbers, claiming that these numbers gave "upper limits" for the age of the oceans (therefore the Earth) because the numbers represented the amount of time that it would take for the oceans to "fill up" to their present level of these various metals from zero.

First, let us examine the results of this "dating method." Most creationist works do not produce all of the numbers, only the ones whose values are "convenient." The following list is more complete:


Al - 100 years Ni - 9,000 years Sb - 350,000 years
Fe - 140 years Co - 18,000 years Mo - 500,000 years
Ti - 160 years Hg - 42,000 years Au - 560,000 years
Cr - 350 years Bi - 45,000 years Ag - 2,100,000 years
Th - 350 years Cu - 50,000 years K - 11,000,000 years
Mn - 1,400 years Ba - 84,000 years Sr - 19,000,000 years
W - 1,000 years Sn - 100,000 years Li - 20,000,000 years
Pb - 2,000 years Zn - 180,000 years Mg - 45,000,000 years
Si - 8,000 years Rb - 270,000 years Na - 260,000,000 years
Now, let us critically examine this method as a method of finding an age for the Earth.

The method ignores known mechanisms which remove metals from the oceans:

Many of the listed metals are in fact known to be at or near equilibrium; that is, the rates for their entering and leaving the ocean are the same to within uncertainty of measurement. (Some of the chemistry of the ocean floor is not well-understood, which unfortunately leaves a fairly large uncertainty.) One cannot derive a date from a process where equilibrium is within the range of uncertainty -- it could go on forever without changing concentration of the ocean.

Even the metals which are not known to be at equilibrium are known to be relatively close to it. I have seen a similar calculation on uranium, failing to note that the uncertainty in the efflux estimate is larger than its distance from equilibrium. To calculate a true upper limit, we must calculate the maximum upper limit, using all values at the appropriate extreme of their measurement uncertainty. We must perform the calculations on the highest possible efflux rate, and the lowest possible influx rate. If equilibrium is within reach of those values, no upper limit on age can be derived.

In addition, even if we knew exactly the rates at which metals were removed from the oceans, and even if these rates did not match the influx rates, these numbers are still wrong. It would probably require solving a differential equation, and any reasonable approximation must "figure in" the efflux rate. Any creationist who presents these values as an "upper limit" has missed this factor entirely. These published values are only "upper limits" when the efflux rate is zero (which is known to be false for all the metals). Any efflux decreases the rate at which the metals build up, invalidating the alleged "limit."


The method simply does not work. Ignoring the three problems above, the results are scattered randomly (five are under 1,000 years; five are 1,000-9,999 years; five are 10,000-99,999 years; six are 100,000-999,999 years; and six are 1,000,000 years or above). Also, the only two results that agree are 350 years, and Aluminum gives 100 years. If this is a valid method, then the age of the Earth must be less than the lowest "upper limit" in the table. Nobody in the debate would agree on a 100-year-old Earth.

These "dating methods" do not actually date anything, which prevents independent confirmation. (Is a 19 million year "limit" [Sr] a "confirmation" of a 42,000 year "limit" [Hg]?) Independent confirmation is very important for dating methods -- scientists generally do not place much confidence in a date that is only computed from a single measurement.

These methods depend on uniformity of a process which is almost certainly not uniform. There is no reason to believe that influx rates have been constant throughout time. There is reason to expect that, due to a relatively large amount of exposed land, today's erosion (and therefore influx) rates are higher than typical past rates.

There is no "check" built into these methods. There is no way to tell if the calculated result is good or not. The best methods used by geologists to perform dating have a built-in check which identifies undatable samples. The only way a creationist can "tell" which of these methods produce bad values is to throw out the results that he doesn't like.
One might wonder why creationist authors have found it worthy of publishing. Yet, it is quite common. This argument also appears in the following creationist literature:

Baker (1976, p. 25)
Brown (1989, p. 16)
Morris (1974, pp. 153-156)
Morris & Parker (1987, pp. 284-284 and 290-291)
Wysong (1976, pp. 162, 163)
Conclusion
Obviously, these are a pretty popular set of "dating" mechanisms; they appear frequently in creationist literature from the 1960s through the late 1980s (and can be found on many creationist web sites even today). They appear in talk.origins more often than any other young-Earth arguments. They are all built upon a distortion of the data.

A curious and unbiased observer could quite reasonably refuse to even listen to the creationists until they "clean house" and stop pushing these arguments. If I found "Piltdown Man" in a modern biology text as evidence for human evolution, I'd throw the book away. (If I applied the same standards to the fairly large collection of creationist materials that I own, none would remain.)

Common Creationist Criticisms of Mainstream Dating Methods
Most creationist criticisms of radiometric dating can be categorized into a few groups. These include:

Reference to a case where the given method did not work .
Claims that the assumptions of a method may be violated :
Constancy of radioactive decay rates .
Contamination is likely to occur .
1. Reference to a case where the given method did not work
This is perhaps the most common objection of all. Creationists point to instances where a given method produced a result that is clearly wrong, and then argue that therefore all such dates may be ignored. Such an argument fails on two counts:

First, an instance where a method fails to work does not imply that it does not ever work. The question is not whether there are "undatable" objects, but rather whether or not all objects cannot be dated by a given method. The fact that one wristwatch has failed to keep time properly cannot be used as a justification for discarding all watches.
How many creationists would see the same time on five different clocks and then feel free to ignore it? Yet, when five radiometric dating methods agree on the age of one of the Earth's oldest rock formations ( Dalrymple 1986, p. 44 ), it is dismissed without a thought.

Second, these arguments fail to address the fact that radiometric dating produces results in line with "evolutionary" expectations about 95% of the time (Dalrymple 1992, personal correspondence). The claim that the methods produce bad results essentially at random does not explain why these "bad results" are so consistently in line with mainstream science.
2. Claims that the assumptions of a method may be violated
Certain requirements are involved with all radiometric dating methods. These generally include constancy of decay rate and lack of contamination (gain or loss of parent or daughter isotope). Creationists often attack these requirements as "unjustified assumptions," though they are really neither "unjustified" nor "assumptions" in most cases.

2.1 Constancy of radioactive decay rates.
Rates of radiometric decay (the ones relevant to radiometric dating) are thought to be based on rather fundamental properties of matter, such as the probability per unit time that a certain particle can "tunnel" out of the nucleus of the atom. The nucleus is well-insulated and therefore is relatively immune to larger-scale effects such as pressure or temperature.

Significant changes to rates of radiometric decay of isotopes relevant to geological dating have never been observed under any conditions. Emery (1972) is a comprehensive survey of experimental results and theoretical limits on variation of decay rates. Note that the largest changes reported by Emery are both irrelevant (they do not involve isotopes or modes of decay used for this FAQ), and minuscule (decay rate changed by of order 1%) compared to the change needed to compress the apparent age of the Earth into the young-Earthers' timescale.

A short digression on mechanisms for radioactive decay, taken from USEnet article <[email protected]> by Steve Carlip (subsequently edited in response to Steve's request):

For the case of alpha decay, [...] the simple underlying mechanism is quantum mechanical tunneling through a potential barrier. You will find a simple explanation in any elementary quantum mechanics textbook; for example, Ohanion's Principles of Quantum Mechanics has a nice example of alpha decay on page 89. The fact that the process is probabilistic, and the exponential dependence on time, are straightforward consequences of quantum mechanics. (The time dependence is a case of "Fermi's golden rule" --- see, for example, page 292 of Ohanion.)

An exact computation of decay rates is, of course, much more complicated, since it requires a detailed understanding of the shape of the potential barrier. In principle, this is computable from quantum chromodynamics, but in practice the computation is much too complex to be done in the near future. There are, however, reliable approximations available, and in addition the shape of the potential can be measured experimentally.

For beta decay, the underlying fundamental theory is different; one begins with electroweak theory (for which Glashow, Weinberg and Salam won their Nobel prize) rather than quantum chromodynamics.

As described above, the process of radioactive decay is predicated on rather fundamental properties of matter. In order to explain old isotopic ages on a young Earth by means of accelerated decay, an increase of six to ten orders of magnitude in rates of decay would be needed (depending on whether the acceleration was spread out over the entire pre-Flood period, or accomplished entirely during the Flood).

Such a huge change in fundamental properties would have plenty of noticeable effects on processes other than radioactive decay (taken from <[email protected]> by Steve Carlip):

So there has been a lot of creative work on how to look for evidence of such changes.

A nice (technical) summary is given by Sisterna and Vucetich (1991) . Among the phenomena they look at are:

searches for changes in the radius of Mercury, the Moon, and Mars (these would change because of changes in the strength of interactions within the materials that they are formed from);
searches for long term ("secular") changes in the orbits of the Moon and the Earth --- measured by looking at such diverse phenomena as ancient solar eclipses and coral growth patterns;
ranging data for the distance from Earth to Mars, using the Viking spacecraft;
data on the orbital motion of a binary pulsar PSR 1913+16;
observations of long-lived isotopes that decay by beta decay (Re 187, K 40, Rb 87) and comparisons to isotopes that decay by different mechanisms;
the Oklo natural nuclear reactor (mentioned in another posting);
experimental searches for differences in gravitational attraction between different elements (Eotvos-type experiments);
absorption lines of quasars (fine structure and hyperfine splittings);
laboratory searches for changes in the mass difference between the K0 meson and its antiparticle.
While it is not obvious, each of these observations is sensitive to changes in the physical constants that control radioactive decay. For example, a change in the strength of weak interactions (which govern beta decay) would have different effects on the binding energy, and therefore the gravitational attraction, of different elements. Similarly, such changes in binding energy would affect orbital motion, while (more directly) changes in interaction strengths would affect the spectra we observe in distant stars.

The observations are a mixture of very sensitive laboratory tests, which do not go very far back in time but are able to detect extremely small changes, and astronomical observations, which are somewhat less precise but which look back in time. (Remember that processes we observe in a star a million light years away are telling us about physics a million years ago.) While any single observation is subject to debate about methodology, the combined results of such a large number of independent tests are hard to argue with.

The overall result is that no one has found any evidence of changes in fundamental constants, to an accuracy of about one part in 1011 per year.

To summarize: both experimental evidence and theoretical considerations preclude significant changes to rates of radioactive decay. The limits placed are somewhere between ten and twenty orders of magnitude below the changes which would be necessary to accommodate the apparent age of the Earth within the young-Earth timescale (by means of accelerated decay).

2.2 Contamination may have occurred.
This is addressed in the most detail in the Isochron Dating FAQ , for all of the methods discussed in the "age of the Earth" part of this FAQ are isochron (or equivalent) methods, which have a check built in that detect most forms of contamination.

It is true that some dating methods (e.g., K-Ar and carbon-14) do not have a built-in check for contamination, and if there has been contamination these methods will produce a meaningless age. For this reason, the results of such dating methods are not treated with as much confidence.

Also, similarly to item (1) above, pleas to contamination do not address the fact that radiometric results are nearly always in agreement with old-Earth expectations. If the methods were producing completely "haywire" results essentially at random, such a pattern of concordant results would not be expected.

Suggested Further Reading
An excellent, detailed exposition of the means by which the Earth's age is known, as well as the history of attempts to estimate that value, is given in Dalrymple (1991) . This book is a must-read for anyone who wishes to critique mainstream methods for dating the Earth. A review of this book in the young-Earth creationist journal Origins ( Brown 1992 ) includes the following text:

"Dalrymple makes a good case for an age of about 4.5 billion years for the material of which the Earth, Moon, and meteorites are composed. [...] His treatment in The Age of the Earth has made it much more difficult to plausibly explain radiometric data on the basis of a creation of the entire Solar System, or the physical matter in planet Earth, within the last few thousand years. In my opinion, the defense of such a position is a losing battle."

(Note: R.H. Brown believes life on Earth and the geological column to be young, but argues that a proper reading of Genesis allows the Earth itself to be much older.)

For those who wish to develop more than a layman's understanding of radiometric dating, Faure (1986) is the prime textbook/handbook on the topic.

There are several shorter works which describe creationist "dating" methods and/or creationist challenges to mainstream dating methods. The best in my opinion is Dalrymple (1986) . Brush (1982) and Dalrymple (1984) are also very good.

Writings by old-Earth creationists demonstrate that argument for an old Earth is quite possible without "assumption of evolution." The best few are Stoner (1992) , Wonderly (1987) , and Young (1982) . In addition, Wonderly (1981) , Newman & Eckelmann (1977) , and Wonderly (1977) are also good.

And, of course Strahler (1987) covers the entire creation/evolution controversy (including all of the topics discussed here) in a reasonable level of detail and with lots of references.

References
Baker, Sylvia, 1976. Evolution: Bone of Contention, New Jersey, Evangelical Press. 35 pp. ISBN 0-85234-226-8
Back to Helium , Magnetic decay , Moon dust , or Metals in oceans .

Brown, Robert H., 1992. "An Age-Old Question -- Review of The Age of the Earth by Brent Dalrymple" in Origins Volume 19, No. 2, pp. 87-90. ( http://www.grisda.org/origins/19087.htm - Editor)
Back to reference to this book review .

Brown, Walter T., Jr., 1989. In The Beginning..., Arizona, Center for Scientific Creation. 122 pp.
Back to Helium , Magnetic decay , Moon dust , or Metals in oceans .

Brush, Steven G., 1982, "Finding the age of the Earth by physics or by faith?" in Journal of Geological Education 30, pp. 34-58.
Back to reference to this work .

Dalrymple, G. Brent, 1991. The Age of the Earth, California, Stanford University Press. 474 pp. ISBN 0-8047-1569-6
Back to meteorites (oldest or multiple dating methods ) or further reading .

Dalrymple, G. Brent, 1986. Radiometric Dating, Geologic Time, And The Age Of The Earth: A Reply To "Scientific" Creationism, U.S. Geological Survey Open-File Report 86-110. 76 pp.
Back to model lead age , multiple dating methods , or further reading .

Dalrymple, G. Brent, 1984. "How Old Is the Earth? A Reply to ``Scientific Creationism''", in Proceedings of the 63rd Annual Meeting of the Pacific Division, AAAS 1, Part 3, California, AAAS. pp. 66-131. [Editor's note (January 12, 2006): This article is now online at http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/dalr...d_earth.html.]
Back to Helium , Magnetic decay , Moon dust , or further reading .

Emery, G. T., 1972. "Perturbation of nuclear decay rates" in Annual Reviews of Nuclear Science 22 , pp. 165-202.
Back to reference to this work .

Faure, Gunter, 1986. Principles of Isotope Geology 2nd edition, New York, John Wiley & Sons. 589 pp. ISBN 0-471-86412-9
Back to isochron dating , or further reading .

Humphreys, D. Russell, 1988. "Has the Earth's magnetic field ever flipped?" in Creation Research Society Quarterly 25, No. 3, pp. 130-137.
Back to reference to this work .

Jackson, Wayne, 1989. Creation, Evolution, and the Age of the Earth, California, Courier Publications. 57 pp.
Back to Magnetic decay or Moon dust .

Jansma, Sidney J., Jr., 1985. Six Days, Michigan, Jansma.
Back to Helium , Magnetic decay , or Moon dust .

Morris, Henry, and Gary Parker, 1987. What is Creation Science?, California, Master Books. 336 pp. ISBN 0-89051-081-4
Back to reference to this work .

Morris, Henry, 1974. Scientific Creationism, California, Creation- Life Publishers. 217 pp. ISBN 0-89051-001-6
Back to Helium , Magnetic decay , Moon dust , or Metals in oceans .

Murthy, V. R., and C. C. Patterson, 1962. "Primary isochron of zero age for meteorites and the Earth" in Journal of Geophysical Research 67, p. 1161.
Back to reference to this work .

Newman, Robert C., and Herman J. Eckelmann, Jr., 1977. Genesis One and the Origin of the Earth , Pennsylvania, IBRI. 154 pp. ISBN 0-944788-97-1
Back to reference to this work .

Sisterna, P., and H. Vucetich, 1990. "Time variation of fundamental constants: Bounds from geophysical and astronomical data" in Physical Review D (Particles and Fields) 41, no. 4, pp. 1034-1046.
Back to reference to this work .

Snelling, Andrew A., and David E. Rush, 1993. "Moon Dust and the Age of the Solar System" in Creation Ex Nihilo Technical Journal 7, No. 1, pp. 2-42. http://www.answersingenesis.org/tj/v7/i1/moondust.asp
Back to reference to this work .

Stoner, Don, 1992. A New Look at an Old Earth: What the Creation Institutes Are Not Telling You about Genesis, California, Schroeder Publishing. 192 pp. ISBN 1-881446-00-X.
Back to reference to this work .

Strahler, Arthur N., 1987. Science and Earth History: The Creation/Evolution Controversy , New York, Prometheus. 552 pp. ISBN 0-87975-414-1
Back to Magnetic decay , Moon dust , or further reading .

Whitcomb, John C., and Henry M. Morris, 1961. The Genesis Flood, New Jersey, Presbyterian and Reformed Publishing Company. 518 pp. ISBN 0-87552-338-2
Back to Helium or Moon dust .

Wonderly, Daniel E., 1987. Neglect of Geologic Data: Sedimentary Strata Compared with Young-Earth Creationist Writings, Pennsylvania, IBRI. 130 pp. ISBN 0-944788-00-9
Back to reference to this work .

Wonderly, Daniel E., 1981. Coral Reefs and Related Carbonate Structures as Indicators of Great Age, Pennsylvania, IBRI. 19 pp.
Back to reference to this work .

Wonderly, Daniel E., 1977. God's Time-Records in Ancient Sediments, Michigan, Crystal Press. 258 pp. ISBN 0-930402-01-4
Back to reference to this work .

Wysong, R. L., 1976. The Creation-Evolution Controversy, Michigan, Inquiry Press. 455 pp. ISBN 0-918112-01-X
Back to Helium , Magnetic decay , Moon dust , or Metals in oceans .

York, D., and R. M. Farquhar, 1972. The Earth's Age and Geochronology, Oxford: Pergamon Press, 178 pp.
Back to reference to this work .

Young, Davis A., 1982. Christianity and the Age of the Earth, California, Artisan. 188

[George S.]

age-of-earth author-terry-mortenson
There is an intensifying controversy in the church all over the world regarding the age of the earth. For the first 18 centuries of church history, the almost universal belief of Christians was that God created the world in six literal days roughly 4,000 years before Christ and destroyed the world with a global Flood at the time of Noah.
But about 200 years ago some scientists developed new theories of earth history, which proposed that the earth and universe are millions of years old. Over the past 200 years Christian leaders have made various attempts to fit the millions of years into the Bible. These include the day-age view, gap theory, local flood view, framework hypothesis, theistic evolution, and progressive creation.

A growing number of Christians (now called young-earth creationists), including many scientists, hold to the traditional view, believing it to be the only view that is truly faithful to Scripture and that fits the scientific evidence far better than the reigning old-earth evolutionary theory.
Many Christians say that the age of the earth is an unimportant and divisive side issue that hinders the proclamation of the gospel. But is that really the case? Answers in Genesis and many other creationist organizations think not.
In this chapter, I want to introduce you to some of the reasons we think that Christians cannot accept the millions of years without doing great damage to the church and her witness in the world. Other chapters in this book will go into much more detail on these issues.
The Bible clearly teaches that God created in six literal, 24-hour days a few thousand years ago. The Hebrew word for day in Genesis 1 is yom. In the vast majority of its uses in the Old Testament it means a literal day; and where it doesn’t, the context makes this clear.
The context of Genesis 1 clearly shows that the days of creation were literal days. First, yom is defined the first time it is used in the Bible (Genesis 1:4–5) in its two literal senses: the light portion of the light/dark cycle and the whole light/dark cycle. Second, yom is used with “evening” and “morning.” Everywhere these two words are used in the Old Testament, either together or separately and with or without yom in the context, they always mean a literal evening or morning of a literal day. Third, yom is modified with a number: one day, second day, third day, etc., which everywhere else in the Old Testament indicates literal days. Fourth, yom is defined literally in Genesis 1:14 in relation to the heavenly bodies.

The genealogies of Genesis 5 and 11 make it clear that the creation days happened only about 6,000 years ago. It is transparent from the genealogies of Genesis 5 and 11 (which give very detailed chronological information, unlike the clearly abbreviated genealogy in Matthew 1 and other chronological information in the Bible that the Creation Week took place only about 6,000 years ago.
Exodus 20:9–11 blocks all attempts to fit millions of years into Genesis 1. “Six days you shall labor and do all your work, but the seventh day is a sabbath of the LORD your God; in it you shall not do any work, you or your son or your daughter, your male or your female servant or your cattle or your sojourner who stays with you. For in six days the LORD made the heavens and the earth, the sea and all that is in them, and rested on the seventh day; therefore the LORD blessed the sabbath day and made it holy” (Exodus 20:9-11).
This passage gives the reason for God’s command to Israel to work six days and then take a sabbath rest. Yom is used in both parts of the commandment. If God meant that the Jews were to work six days because He created over six long periods of time, He could have said that using one of three indefinite Hebrew time words. He chose the only word that means a literal day, and the Jews understood it literally (until the idea of millions of years developed in the early nineteenth century). For this reason, the day-age view or framework hypothesis must be rejected. The gap theory or any other attempt to put millions of years before the six days are also false because God says that in six days He made the heaven and the earth and the sea and all that is in them. So He made everything in those six literal days and nothing before the first day.
Noah’s Flood washes away millions of years. The evidence in Genesis 6–9 for a global catastrophic flood is overwhelming. For example, the Flood was intended to destroy not only all sinful people but also all land animals and birds and the surface of the earth, which only a global flood could accomplish. The Ark’s purpose was to save two of every kind of land animal and bird (and seven of some) to repopulate the earth after the Flood. The Ark was totally unnecessary if the Flood was only local. People, animals, and birds could have migrated out of the flood zone before it occurred, or the zone could have been populated from creatures outside the area after the Flood. The catastrophic nature of the Flood is seen in the nonstop rain for at least 40 days, which would have produced massive erosion, mud slides, hurricanes, etc. The Hebrew words translated “the fountains of the great deep burst open” (Genesis 7:11) clearly point to tectonic rupturing of the earth’s surface in many places for 150 days, resulting in volcanoes, earthquakes, and tsunamis. Noah’s Flood would produce exactly the kind of complex geological record we see worldwide today: thousands of feet of sediments clearly deposited by water and later hardened into rock and containing billions of fossils. If the year-long Flood is responsible for most of the rock layers and fossils, then those rocks and fossils cannot represent the history of the earth over millions of years, as evolutionists claim.
Jesus was a young-earth creationist. Jesus consistently treated the miracle accounts of the Old Testament as straightforward, truthful, historical accounts (e.g., creation of Adam, Noah and the Flood, Lot and his wife in Sodom, Moses and the manna, and Jonah in the fish). He continually affirmed the authority of Scripture over men’s ideas and traditions (Matthew 15:1–9). In Mark 10:6 we have the clearest (but not the only) statement showing that Jesus was a young-earth creationist. He teaches that Adam and Eve were made at the “beginning of creation,” not billions of years after the beginning, as would be the case if the universe were really billions of years old. So, if Jesus was a young-earth creationist, then how can His faithful followers have any other view?

Belief in millions of years undermines the Bible’s teaching on death and on the character of God. Genesis 1 says six times that God called the creation “good,” and when He finished creation on Day 6, He called everything “very good.” Man and animals and birds were originally vegetarian (Gen. 1:29–30, plants are not “living creatures,” as people and animals are, according to Scripture). But Adam and Eve sinned, resulting in the judgment of God on the whole creation. Instantly Adam and Eve died spiritually, and after God’s curse they began to die physically. The serpent and Eve were changed physically and the ground itself was cursed (Genesis 3:14–19). The whole creation now groans in bondage to corruption, waiting for the final redemption of Christians (Romans 8:19–25) when we will see the restoration of all things (Acts 3:21, Colossians 1:20) to a state similar to the pre-Fall world, when there will be no more carnivorous behavior (Isaiah11:6–9) and no disease, suffering, or death (Revelation 21:3–5) because there will be no more Curse (Revelation 22:3). To accept millions of years of animal death before the creation and Fall of man contradicts and destroys the Bible’s teaching on death and the full redemptive work of Christ. It also makes God into a bumbling, cruel creator who uses (or can’t prevent) disease, natural disasters, and extinctions to mar His creative work, without any moral cause, but still calls it all “very good.”
The idea of millions of years did not come from the scientific facts. This idea of long ages was developed by deistic and atheistic geologists in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. These men used antibiblical philosophical and religious assumptions to interpret the geological observations in a way that plainly contradicted the biblical account of creation, the Flood, and the age of the earth. Most church leaders and scholars quickly compromised using the gap theory, day-age view, local flood view, etc. to try to fit “deep time” into the Bible. But they did not understand the geological arguments, and they did not defend their views by careful Bible study. The “deep time” idea flows out of naturalistic assumptions, not scientific observations.
Radiometric dating methods do not prove millions of years. Radiometric dating was not developed until the early twentieth century, by which time virtually the whole world had already accepted the millions of years. For many years creation scientists have cited numerous examples in the published scientific literature of these dating methods clearly giving erroneous dates (e.g., a date of millions of years for lava flows that occurred in the past few hundred years or even decades). In recent years creationists in the RATE project have done experimental, theoretical, and field research to uncover more such evidence (e.g., diamonds and coal, which the evolutionists say are millions of years old, were dated by carbon-14 to be only thousands of years old) and to show that decay rates were orders of magnitude faster in the past, which shrinks the millions of years to thousands of years, confirming the Bible.1
Conclusion
These are just some of the reasons why we believe that the Bible is giving us the true history of the world. God’s Word must be the final authority on all matters about which it speaks—not just the moral and spiritual matters, but also its teachings that bear on history, archaeology, and science.
What is at stake here is the authority of Scripture, the character of God, the doctrine of death, and the very foundation of the gospel. If the early chapters of Genesis are not true literal history, then faith in the rest of the Bible is undermined, including its teaching about salvation and morality. I urge you to carefully read the other chapters in this book. The health of the church, the effectiveness of her mission to a lost world, and the glory of God are at stake.
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Footnotes
For the results of the RATE project, see Larry Vardiman, Andrew Snelling, and Eugene Chaffin, eds., Radioisitopes and the Age of the Earth, Vol. 2, Master Books, Green Forest, Arkansas, 2005; and Don DeYoung, Thousands ... Not Billions, Master Books, Green Forest, Arkansas, 2005. Back

[Vangelovski]

George S.,

Whats the source for the first article you posted?

[George S.]

re first articlehttp://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/faq-age-of-earth.html

[Vangelovski]

Thanks George,

I wanted to see some of the tables he produced and was interested to read his attempt to explain some of the assumptions used for radiometric dating. Even though he attempts to explain away some of those assumptions, in order to do so, he resorts to further assumptions and thereby creates even more questions...which creates the same problem for his dating of the meteorites...

[Risto the Great]

Yeah I did Zarni, and I know what you mean by being hard to watch. What sold me initially was the fact that both of them were in the movie, but when I noticed that the whole setting was in that shabby apartment I was thinking how good can this movie actually be. It is no block-buster, but I think it's a good movie and given the discussions on this thread I found myself interested because some of the perspectives shared here are also shared in the movie, except for the hard-core dark side that Tommy Lee had which revealed itself completely at the end of the movie. I also think Samuel L. Jackson did a good job arguing in favour of the Bible, but the person he was trying to save didn't want to be saved. All in all, not a bad movie for anybody interested in the debate between creationism vs evolution.

I just watched it.
Very intense and thought provoking.
To be fair, Black got White at his weakest moment.
Black was troubled somewhat at the end and it is pretty much the same as what is going on in this thread. There are answers that suit each side of the fence and there are people who gain comfort from those answers. Ultimately, faith seems like a wonderful and comforting option but some people will never make the leap. I won't be crucifying anyone because of their choice in the matter.

Great film.
Right up there with Team America