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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:

1. The starting conditions are known. (e.g. if there was any argon-40 in the original rock)
2. The rate of decay has been constant.
3. 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:

1. Daughter products of elements that have a slow decay rate that don’t have any parent elements with them.
2. Missing substances of various types that should be there according to uniformitarianism.
3. 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.

Many people think that the dating methods evolutionists use are infallible. It is also commonly thought that all dating methods point to an old earth. In reality there are many flaws in these processes. This entry will deal with carbon dating.

Carbon dating is one of the most commonly cited methods for the dating of dinosaurs and other organisms. It works only in things that contain carbon. Here’s how it works: Cosmic rays knock neutrons out of atoms high up, which travel downwards at high speeds and collide with nitrogen, forming ¹⁴C. This form of carbon is radioactive and decays over time. One thing this carbon can do is combine with oxygen to make a special form of carbon dioxide. This carbon dioxide is taken in by plants in photosynthesis. Animals eat the plants, and thus the ¹⁴C enters the food chain. ¹⁴C is constantly changing back into nitrogen, but in living animals it is replaced by more ¹⁴C. When an animal dies, it begins to lose the ¹⁴C in its body. Thus, the ratio of ¹⁴C to normal carbon diminishes over time; the ¹⁴C goes away, the normal carbon stays. This is what the scientists measure: the less ¹⁴C, in relation to normal carbon (¹²C), the older the rock.

Now, according to the ratio of decay, the ¹⁴C should no longer be measurable beyond 50,000 years. This is not the only thing; most plants take in less ¹⁴C than 12C thus reducing the ratio more. This causes the specimen to look older than it really is, and thus has to be counted in.

Another thing is that the ratio of ¹⁴C to ¹²C has not always been constant. (e.g. the Industrial Age, and the testing of nuclear in the atmosphere changed the levels). When I mentioned the decay of the magnetic field to Axinar, he said that it wasn’t accurate because of magnetic field reversals in the past. These polarity reversals weaken the magnetic field so that more radiation can get through, causing things to look older than they are. The Flood also lowered the ratio of ¹⁴C to ¹²C because plants were taking in more ¹⁴C and ¹²C after the Flood without the ¹²C being replaced by many animals or decaying plants. Volcanism during the Flood would further change the amount of ¹⁴C in the atmosphere.

Some of these things can be corrected for by taking tree samples etc. that have carbon and seeing the ratio at that time. But this can only be used within about 4,000 years.

Thus carbon dating is useful with things of a relatively young age, but guesswork with things older than that. Plus, as we saw, carbon dating cannot give dates larger than 50,000 years.

Most of the material for this article was taken from The Revised and Expanded Answers Book, Masters Books.

Yes, I’m using the “r” word.

Racism has been a plague to western culture from its very beginning: The Romans against the Goths, the Europeans against the Gypsies, the whites against the blacks, the Arians against the Jews, etc.

Now Christians certainly were, embarrassingly, involved in some of this. Christians held slaves. But if you look at the accounts, true Christians treated their servants with kindness. There were books written by godly people, which told about how to treat a slave in terms of family life. Selling slaves, and splitting up families was strictly despised in the Christian community in the South. There has come to be a common stereotype, which depicts the entire South as beating their slaves and killing them. This was true in some cases, with some non-Christians; but on the whole, it was atypical. George Washington Carver is a good example of this. He kept up correspondence with his master’s family long after his release. Slavery is of course very wrong, and the Christian slaveholders were wrong, but they still condemned the atrocities of brutality. Other Christians were heavily involved in getting slavery abolished in England, for instance.

But one thing that’s interesting, and that no one admits; is that Darwinian evolution was the precedent and excuse for much of the abuse that followed the Civil War. Darwinian evolution teaches that a species develops by acquiring and keeping those characteristics that elevate it above the other species and enable it to survive. (aka survival of the fittest) In the human sector, this can be applied to races. One race is “superior” to another, and therefore must either subject or kill off the other races in order to purify, and thus advance the human race. Most people don’t know that the complete title of Darwin’s book is On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or, The Preservation of the Favored Races in the Struggle for Life.

This led to all kinds of injustices. People took aborigines and Negroes and put them in cages beside monkeys and apes with signs in front of them that said, in effect, “Here is the missing link between the apes and us.” Aborigines in Australia, especially were subject to heinous crimes. Hitler, when he implemented the Holocaust, was cleansing the human race of inferior beings. There are many more examples, but I’ll stop here.

By the way, how did races come about from an evolutionary perspective? Oh yeah, and please don’t say that they were different monkeys.

A few posts ago, I discussed and refuted an argument put forth by an evolutionist who said that the belief in God was “anathema to the foundation of our culture.” In case I didn’t hammer home my point hard enough, I will include a few more of the many, many facts for those who still doubt Christianity’s influence.

In “A Common Misconception,” I pointed out the part of the scientific influence of Christianity.
Many of the scientific concepts we take for granted came from people who believed in creation. On the positive side, creation and a belief in the true God and Bible provide the impetus for the further exploration of the wonderful universe. God commanded us to fill the earth, (Gen. 1:18) and part of peopling the earth is exploring it. On the other hand, if everything is a random event, came about by chance, and has no order, why should we try to figure it out? One interesting thing (I don’t know if its true) is that science was once called a form of worshipping God.

Specifically, Christianity is the impetus for science, because all other religions either say that this world is a delusion, or they just say that you should keep to yourself inside the confines of ancient traditions and machinery. This was a big part of the struggle of the missionaries to Christianize and civilize other peoples. (Although I don’t think they should have tried to make all other peoples English)

I thought it interesting when I first read that phrase that the author used the term “anathema,” which came into wide use in the Roman Catholic Church, for the pope’s curse on someone, something, or an entire community. I’m not saying that the Romanists are actually Christians but all the same, it is interesting.

Christianity is the basis of morals and charity, if there is no God, then you’re not accountable to him for your actions. Yes, you might say that the law is that you don’t violate anyone else’s person or hurt their feelings; but this still leaves leeway for other sins, and doesn’t provide for charity. Nietsche said that charity and compassion are weaknesses. In a Christian based society, like ours, a conscience is cultivated and kept relatively intact by the dictates of a society that still has the trappings of Christian values. Europe is fast losing these. But in a completely secular or barbaric society, the conscience is quickly weakened and eventually almost disappears. This evidenced in the extreme by the kids who torched the churches down South recently. After being caught and asked why they did it, they answered, “For the fun of it.” You see, they were being taught that there are no morals or standards by their college professors etc. This breeds a kind of nihilism that in turn breeds crime, and depression. By the way, how did the conscience evolve?

I could go on, but I’ll stop here right now. I hope you see the importance of Christianity to our culture.

One interesting thing about the ID vs. evolution debates going on in school councils and courts right now is the utter reluctance of the Darwinists to even consider anything but their own theory as true. They won’t even let Darwinism be questioned.

When ID people say that evolution is only a theory and therefore liable to questioning, they retort by saying that gravity and quantum mechanics are technically also theories, and they are being proven every time you stick in a CD, or drop a ball to the ground. They say that evolution is a theory in the same sense. The first statement is true, but the major difference between quantum mechanics and evolution is that we see gravity and quantum mechanics being worked out day by day. But no one has ever seen evolution take place, either presently or in the fossil record. Evolution and Intelligent Design have to do with origins science, which you cannot observe in the present. In other words, you cannot observe them and conduct experiments according to the scientific method on them. Yes, they say that they see traces of evolution everywhere, but I see traces of Intelligent Design everywhere by a Supreme Creator. It all depends on your worldview.

The “scientific community” is doing essentially the same thing to ID that they did to Galileo in the early 1600s. Shut the guy down, burn his books, and threaten all those who follow his idea. All this because the view does not conform to accepted scientific fact of the time. When an editor of a scientific journal published an article with the conclusion of possible intelligent design, he was promptly fired. Why? Not because his facts were wrong, but because the idea of a creator scares the secular mind.

It is commonly assumed that creationists are a bunch of unscientific, superstitious hoboes who are trying to undermine true science.

Does a belief in creation and God hinder scientific research? Well, let’s look at the facts: Sir Francis Bacon, establisher of the scientific method, believed in creation; so did Johannes Kepler, author of New Astronomy explaining the three laws of planetary motion; Sir Isaac Newton, formulator of the laws of gravity, motion, and calculus etc.; Louis Pasteur, father of microbiology; James Maxwell, laws of electricity and magnetism; Raymond Damadian, inventor of the MRI. All of these scientists in the past and more today believed in creation and it did not interfere with their work.

Evolutionists themselves (at heart, although they don’t admit it) resurrect the old idea of spontaneous generation (it’s raining frogs and fish) in their belief that life arrived by lightning bolts. This is the latest one I heard, you never know if it’s current view or not since they have to keep scrapping their theories. The Darwinists are also being unscientific. If you watch programs like Nova, you always hear of so and so’s theory being “scientific heresy,” despite all evidence in support of it. They reject anything that doesn’t fit their infallible dogma without even considering it. Nobody seems to connect these numerous cases with evolution vs. creation, even though there is much scientific evidence for creation and against evolution. Oh, wait a second; evolution itself hasn’t even been proven yet. Question: Where are the “numerous missing links” Darwin had predicted? All the “ape men” have been debunked. They come out with a new one every year though.

But that’s another thing the Darwinists cannot stand: questioning their theory. But we’ll get to that some other time.