In the previous post, I explained the flaws in carbon dating. Now, I am going to deal with some of the other methods for rock dating. This includes isotope ratio dating (radiometric) and isochron dating.
Isotope dating is based on one radioactive element (parent element) decaying into another more stable one (daughter product) at a certain rate. Scientists measure the concentrations of each, plug them into the ratio and determine the date of the sample. For example, potassium-40 decays into argon-40 at a certain rate.
But when the samples are dated, three major assumptions are made which cannot be proven:
- The starting conditions are known. (e.g. if there was any argon-40 in the original rock)
- The rate of decay has been constant.
- The systems were closed so that no potassium-40 or argon-40 were added or subtracted.
These assumptions are based on a uniformitarian point of view, which most scientists are now moving away from. These assumptions lead to problems and manipulations within the dating technique.
For example, in dating the basalt around Australopithecus ramidus fossils, researchers got dates of about 23 million years. They decided this was too old, so they examined basalt columns further away from the fossils. They chose 17 out of 26 samples from this site to be “good” ones, and the others “bad” ones. Why? Because the dates did not fit the paradigm accepted by geologists worldwide, namely, old earth evolution. There are many, many more examples of twisting the dates to get what you want; but I’ll leave you with that one.
One interesting thing is that on the form for submitting rock samples to dating and testing labs, you have to specify how old you think the sample is. Presumably, this is because the labs know the discrepancies in the dating method, and want to choose the “correct date” from the many “bad dates.”
These problems with dating are evident in many samples that give dates that vary greatly from the know age of the sample, or from other dates extracted different ways from the same rock. For example, in testing lava flows off of New Zealand that are known to have taken place within the past century; researchers got dates of up to 3.5 million years (the smallest age given was 270,000 years old). Just a little bit off. Also, in testing the same rock from the Grand Canyon, four different methods of dating were used and got the following: 117 million, 1,390 million, 1,340 million, and 2.6 billion.
Isochrons were thought to overcome all the problems above by getting a composite ratio of all the different parent and daughter elements, but this method also gives unreliable dates and way-off results.
There are many anomalies in rocks that have been found including:
- Daughter products of elements that have a slow decay rate that don’t have any parent elements with them.
- Missing substances of various types that should be there according to uniformitarianism.
- Radiohalos that contain only daughter products.
These discoveries (and others) lead to the conclusion that rates of decay were faster in the past, which would give older dates. All these things suggest that the assumptions made by scientists in dating rocks are wrong.
God says: “Where were you when I laid the foundations of the earth?” Job 38:4
Most of the material for this article was taken from The Revised and Expanded Answers Book, Masters Books.
2 comments:
Okay ... you're basically painting a picture that you can't get any reliable dating information AT ALL by radiometric or any other means.
That being the case, precisely what do you make of this discrepency between the Judeo-Christian tradition of an Earth perhaps 6000 years old, and the Indian tradition of a universe with at least one god that only BLINKS every 15 billion years?
I'm not saying that there is absolutely NO accurate information. I'm only saying that the dating techniques are flawed and have serious problems. People need to know that.
I would say that you should stop considering a bunch of Indian legends.
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