Radiometric Dating: Back to Basics (does it really prove the Earth is millions of years old?)

Answers Magazine ^ | June 17, 2009 | Andrew A. Snelling, Ph.D.

[GodGunsGuts]

Radiometric dating is often used to “prove” rocks are millions of years old. Once you understand the basic science, however, you can see how wrong assumptions lead to incorrect dates.

Most people think that radioactive dating has proven the earth is billions of years old. After all, textbooks, media, and museums glibly present ages of millions of years as fact.

Yet few people know how radiometric dating works or bother to ask what assumptions drive the conclusions. So let’s take a closer look and see how reliable this dating method really is...

[Buck W.]

See 239.

[metmom]

You have to believe that the Bible is true to begin with so no amount of Bible education is going to help.

If you think that it’s all make believe, it’s not going to do you any good.

We’ve tried here and he won’t listen to us. Likely he won’t listen to anyone else either.

[Buck W.]

Do you buy your slaves in the nations near you? Is that a believed truth from the bible? Is that a truth that you believe?

[metmom]

As long as evos like to think that God is in the business of deceiving people when He makes some change in the creation He created, they will never get anywhere in their thinking.

I find it interesting that evos are so convinced that whenever God acts differently than they think He should, He’s out to deceive people.

*sigh* Too much projection.

[tpanther]

Funny how they take things so literally when it suits their agenda, and so figuratively when it suits their agenda.

not to mention injecting religion into the science debate, do as I say, not as I do?

[count-your-change]

Yes, so true. Anger and contempt seem to the twins that worship in The Temple of Darwinism.

You can’t buy them as slaves as they’re already enslaved to a failed philosophy.

[pctech]

I can't give you proof of that except to watch the boards whenever topics like this come up. Last I commented on a biblical view of creation and 6,000 year old earth I got flamed and bombarded by people who ridiculed my position because I couldn't back it "scientifically."

The Bible isn't a document to be questioned. You either believe it or you don't. I choose to believe it and henceforth I won't subscribe to a million trillion year old earth.

But for the sake of argument, there are websites that attempt to show scientific evidence to back up the claims of a young Earth. A person just has to be willing to look them up and read without any preconcieved notions or ideas of the scientific community and their views on how old the Earth is.

[Castlebar]

The decay of the uranium and the resulting energy it releases in the core is one of those "known standards".

Actually, the most critical decay attribute for the operation of Naval pressurized water nuclear reactors is the decay rate of the Delayed Neutron Precursors - those fission products that decay and emit a neutron shortly after the fission. Without that extremely stable decay, the reactor's criticality would not be controlable.

Anyway, what boat is he on? I hope you get to do a "Father's Cruise" at some point (if they still do those.) My Dad thought it was one of the neatest things he had ever done.

[metmom]

The Bible isn't a document to be questioned. You either believe it or you don't. I choose to believe it and henceforth I won't subscribe to a million trillion year old earth.

That's it in a nutshell.

[Buck W.]

Correct.
We will therefore only buy our slaves in the nations near us, and we will rewrite our textbooks to reflect the fact that pi=3.

[tacticalogic]

Anyway, what boat is he on? I hope you get to do a "Father's Cruise" at some point (if they still do those.) My Dad thought it was one of the neatest things he had ever done.

Haven't got that yet. He's on the Olympia. She just got a reactor replacement and major overhaul. He stationed at Pearl, but I got a call from him a few days ago from San Diego, and they were getting ready to leave there for Alaska and then parts unknown.

[tacticalogic]

Whoopee.

[CottShop]

You obviously didn’t read my link as it deals with the dclaims made about hte greene river sedimentation. Pssst- Mt. St. Helens developped multilayered varves in a single day, and the multi layered sand sediments formed very rapidly-

Again- the only way to use varves for dating ‘old ages’ is to ASSUME they take a very long time, and htis simply is untrue- Keep looking, there’s more evidences showing varves can be laid down rapidly

[tacticalogic]

As long as evos like to think that God is in the business of deceiving people when He makes some change in the creation He created, they will never get anywhere in their thinking.

As long as you're in the business of telling people what's wrong with their religious beliefs, I'm not inclined to want to have you teaching a science class based you yours.

[CottShop]

[[What on earth does layers of ash from a volcano got to do with varves?]]

Quite a bit actually, as it turns out:

“Creationist suspicions about the validity of the varve interpretation were confirmed in a study by two geologists published in 1988.9 Near Kemmerer in Wyoming the Green River Formation contains two volcanic ash (tuff) layers, each about two to three centimetres thick.

A volcanic ash layer is an example of what geologists call an ‘event horizon’, because it is laid down essentially instantaneously by a single event, in this case a volcanic eruption. The two ash layers are separated by between 8.3 and 22.6 centimetres of shale layers.

If the standard interpretation is correct, then the number of shale layers between the ash layers should be the same throughout the Green River basin, since the number of years between the two eruptions would be the same.

However, the geologists found that the number of shale layers between the ash beds varied from 1160 to 1568, with the number of layers increasing by up to 35% from the basin centre to the basin margin! The investigators concluded that this was inconsistent with the idea of seasonal ‘varve’ deposition in a stagnant lake.

So how were the great thicknesses of finely laminated shale in the Green River Formation laid down? Creationist geologists need to investigate the issue more closely, but there seems to be great potential for developing a catastrophic model for the origin of these sediments. There is a large body of experimental and observational data that shows that varve-like sediments can build up very rapidly under catastrophic conditions.10, 11, 12, 13, 14 For instance, in 1960 Hurricane Donna struck the coast of southern Florida and deposited a blanket of thinly-laminated lime-mud six inches thick.15 Another example comes from a Swiss lake, in which up to five pairs of layers were found to build up in a single year, deposited by rapid underflows of turbid water.16

Given the right conditions, thinly-laminated muddy sediments can and do form by rapid sedimentation. Contrary to claims by old-earth proponents, long periods of time are not demanded.”

http://www.answersingenesis.org/creation/v19/i3/greenriver.asp

[wendy1946]

You can’t buy them as slaves as they’re already enslaved to a failed philosophy.

I wouldn't WANT em. Anybody dopey enough to buy into something as stupid as evoloserism wouldn't even make a decent slave.

[Alamo-Girl]

Thanks for the ping!

[count-your-change]

Jesus did say the truth could make a person free and obviously he meant the truth he proclaimed, the truth Darwinism just can't accept, but that Darwinists will pay lip service at times or whatever in an attempt to filter the truth through the nihilism of Darwinism.

[aruanan]

Achievements, not publications. Today, we subject scientific articles to peer review. Unreviewed articles are nothing more than musings designed to deceive.

Yes, and they were published also. What we call peer review nowadays is scarcely 50 years old.

[Buck W.]

I suppose I agree—musings designed to deceive are published, and we see them posted here all the time.