Dating Schemes
Various chemical elements are radio active to some degree. These elements are constantly disintegrating into other elements or isotopes. The rate of this disintegration can be measured. If a mineral contains enough of the original or the parent element and the new or the daughter element to be measured then a simple mathematical computation will tell how long the daughter element--that is the new element that the old element has disintegrated into--has been accumulating radiation.
The Case of the lost Whatchamacallit
This is not as complicated as it sounds. To demonstrate that fact, we use a simple illustration. Suppose a barrel of apples is taken off a truck and set along side another barrel. A man is taking apples out of one barrel and putting them into the other. Let us suppose that you come along as this transfer is in progress. You decide that you will time this operation to see how long it takes to remove an apple from barrel A (the parent barrel) and put it into barrel B (the daughter barrel). Your measurement tells you that it take 10 seconds to transfer an apples. Then you count the apples in the second barrel and there are 30 of them. So you conclude that this process has been going on for 5 minutes. This seems like a simple and basically fool proof deduction; but there are a number of considerations left out of this formula that makes it much more complex than it first seems. I will try to explain this in a simple language.
The Great Difficulty in Mineral Measurements
First of all, measurement of the amount of the elements in a given mineral is very complicated, difficult, and imprecise. In fact it is mostly a matter of theoretical interpretation. There are many uncertainties and limitations which are largely ignored by scientists who make these measurements. It is as if I were to say to you, "Based on the size of barrel A, I am sure that this man must have started this transfer with 10,000 apples." But you say to me, "Well, maybe not. The truck carrying the barrel was stopped up the road and I think they may have put some apples off there. And then, I saw some apples scattered on the road by the big bump down near the bridge, and I think some apples may have bounced off the truck when they hit the bump. Also, someone said that the barrel was not full when the truck left the produce market." So I say to you: "You can pretty much tell by how full barrel B is." But you reply, "Perhaps, but what if barrel B already had some apples in it when the man started the exchange?"
These things illustrate in some small way the kinds of problems such measurements present. There are a number of different elements and minerals in which the elements are found that are used in these measurements. Let us take a case in point. One such measurement scheme is based on the disintegration of uranium and thorium into lead. Both uranium and thorium are parent or original elements, and they break down through a change of elements and isotopes until they reach a condition where they are stable, which, in this case, is lead. It is sort of like a heavy air conditioning unit falling through the sky light of a five story building. It continues to break through floors and fall downward until it reaches the cement floor in the basement. It cannot break through the cement floor, so it stops and become stable with respect to its downward movement. In our analogy, lead is the cement floor. When the element reaches lead it cannot disintegrate any further. In order for this process to mean anything at all there must be a highly accurate measurement of how much of these elements were present in the mineral to start with and then the exact and precise rate of which they decayed. Another problem is that of common lead or lead that is non radiogenic. This lead cannot be used in the formula and so it must be discounted; but it has not been in the past.
Still another problem in making such measurements is that uranium is known to have leached out or leaked out of the rocks by way of weak acid solutions often found in rain water or sea water. The techniques necessary to make these measurements are extremely difficult and subject to very large error. Even so, these measurements have been accepted on faith by the scientists for whom this process suited their theories. And it is upon this basis that billion of years of age have been claimed for the earth. But now most of these same scientists have admitted that all the work done from 1930 to 1950 is useless because the errors were great, the methods were wrong, and conclusions were misleading.
This has prompted L. T. Aldrich, in an article entitled Measurement of Radio Active Age of Rocks, Science Digest volume 123 May 18, 1956, to say, "In fact the time scale given by Homes is based in part on these discordant or conflicting ages which are very difficult to interpret." In other words, his information and his methods were wrong, and he used conclusions which did not agree among themselves. Therefore, it is virtually impossible to make anything useful out of this time scale. Yet historic geology, historic paleontology, and astronomy continue to use the age theories that were formulated before the turn of the century. There have been no new age theories that are in any significant use or degree of acceptance that have been developed since 1950.
To try to give sophistication and credibility to these radioactivity measurements, the half-life theory has been hatched up and thrown in. The half-life theory indicates how long it takes for half of a given element or isotope to disintegrate. There is not enough space for us to wade through all these various elements and isotopes and describe what has been theorized, and the flaws that render those theories useless. If we were to do so, we would see that common considerations relate to all of them.
1: How many apples were in barrel A, the parent, or original, to start with?
2: Were all the apples transferable or are some of them rotten and to be thrown away?
3: Has the rate of transfer always been the same or has it varied at times? And if it's varied, how much is it varied? 4: How full is the second barrel, which is the new or the daughter, or in other words barrel B?
5: Is everything in barrel B apples or is there something else in there?
6: Did all the apples in barrel B come from barrel A or did Barrel B have some apples in it already?
Until you know the definite answer to all of these questions, you have no way of knowing how long this transfer has been going on. It may have been going on for hours, or it may just have started when we got there, and unless we can find someone who was there when it all started and knows exactly what the situation was from the beginning, we will never be able to do anything but guess.
The Half-Wittedness of the Half-Life Theory
The half-life theory tells us nothing about the past, even if the rates were unchanged, because it cannot tell us when it started. It is double talk-gobbledygook-filibustering that is deliberately designed to confuse, to mislead, and to buy time. By way of illustration, suppose we are walking in a building and we come into a room. On the fireplace mantle there is a candle in a brass holder. It is already burning when we come into the room. We are interested in this candle so we make some measurements. First, we measure the candle to see how long it is and we determine it is 10 inches long. We then note the time on our watches and decide to come back and check on this candle in five hours. When we come back, we discover that it is only five inches long. So now there are some things that we know. We know that the candle was already burning when we first saw it. We know that when we first saw it the candle was 10 inches long. We know that it is burning at the rate of an inch an hour. We know that if the environment remains the same, and nothing else happens to change the burn rate, it can continue to burn for five hours. Now, armed with that information, let us ask some questions:
1. How long was the candle when it started burning?
2. When did it start burning? How long has it been burning?
3. Has it always burned at the rate of an inch an hour?
4. Does the fact that it took five hours for five inches to burn mean that it has been burning for 10 hours, since it was 10 inches long when we first encountered it?
Every child who has learned to do simple algebra knows that we cannot come up with the answers to the questions 1, 2 and 3 with the amount of information that has been given. It is impossible to tell how long it has been burning, how long the candle was, or what the burn rate has been in the past before we got a chance to measure it. Of course, question 4 is abstract and illogical. Maybe the candle was 10.1 inches long and has been burning for six minutes, or maybe it was 60 inches long and has been burning for several days. It is easy to see the gross misinterpretation that has accompanied these troubled and arbitrary theories.
How Wide Is The Gap?
Nevertheless the question arises: how much can these theories be off? Even if they are off by a factor of 100 times, we would still have an earth that is a million years old or so. To answer this, we quote from Morris-Whitcomb and The Genesis Flood, pages 344 and 345: "We reply, however, that the Biblical outline of the history of the earth with the geologic framework provided thereby, would lead us to postulate exactly this state of radioactivity evidence. We have already shown that the Bible quite plainly and irrefutably teaches the fact of a grown creation, one with the appearance of age of some sort analogous to the appearance of age of a mature Adam at the first instance of his existence. These processes include the phenomena of radioactivity. It is perhaps possible that only the parent elements were originally created, but it is eminently more harmonious with the whole concept of a complete creation to say that all of the elements of the chain were created simultaneously."
Adam, when he was one second old, looked like he was 26, or however old he looked. Trees when they were made, put in the earth, and commanded to grow, looked like they were many years old; and a brand new rock looked like it had been there for thousands of years. The elements in the rock, such as lead, immediately contained parent and daughter elements and isotopes or uranium and thorium.
Let us go back to the example of the candle in the room. Without knowing it, we have walked out onto a stage. A drama is about to unfold. The scenery director has set a candle on a mantle made of distressed wood to make it look old, in a holder that is tarnished so it will look as though it has been there for a while. He has placed an accumulation of wax at its base so it will appear to have been burning for some time. All of this has been done to set the proper mood, atmosphere, and environment for the drama that is to take place. The actors cannot come onto the stage until the scene is set. Thus, Genesis says that God created man and placed him in the Garden that God had made for him. God told Adam to begin at that point in time and history, to go forward, and to set in motion the drama of life.
Astrophysics
Astronomic methods are more bizarre still and farther afield. Says T. S. Jacobsen in an article titled "Review of space time creation," Science Monthly, Volume 128, September 5, 1958, page 527: "The current estimates of the expanding universe, whether on the old or new time scale are very far from being in any sense factual. While it is true that the Hubbell constant enters into the computation of age, McVilly has stressed that a factor depending upon the model, a pure guess, that the present radius of curvature is about 100 times the original Einsteinian radius, has the result that we know nothing for sure about the age of the universe." This is the same Hubbell in whose honor the giant telescope that was just put into space was named. As a result we have heard about supposed discoveries and facts on the evening news, based on formulas that are pure guesswork, according to these very people--guessing that Einstein was wrong by a factor of 100 times and using density of matter for calculations that will result in very off-the cuff information being given out that may be, in the minds of many scientists, one thousand times wrong.
In space measurement there is also a new theory out that is being enthusiastically supported and promoted by many astrophysicists who also question the Euclidean model of the universe. These people view the universe with much more realism than Einstein did. They see it as three dimensional (where Einstein saw it as two dimensional) just like the real world. They strongly question the constant velocity of light in space and time--the theory that light never changes its speed for any reason. They believe that light moves in a velocity that is consistent and constant with its source rather than with respect to its observer, as Einstein did. In other words, Einstein believed that light movement could and should be observed and measured. These observances and measurements were made by man on the earth as he moved from one place to another and the appearance of movement by the stars.
Astrophysicists believe that such an approach to the velocity of light is meaningless in terms of deep space. They believe in what is known as Reimanian space and the Reimanian theory. This has as its base the mathematical theories that have to do with Georg Frederick Reiman, a Swiss-German scientist from about the middle of the 19th century. These people have an entirely different theory as to how light moves in space. Without trying to explain this theory any further, their studies show--pay attention to this--that light from the farthest star could reach the earth in 15 years. This in contrast to Einstein's several billion years. Hubbell believed that Einstein was off by a factor of 100. This means that the measurements that they are going to make with the Hubbell telescope will be based on much greater times still.
Wild, Undisciplined, Unenlightened Guesswork
So we go from hundreds of billions of years for light to reach the earth from the farthest star in the Hubbell theory to 15 years for light to reach the earth by the Reimanian theory. Yet the Reimanian theory has much more acceptance in the scientific community than Einstein's theories did when they first appeared and nearly as much credibility as Hubbell's does now (which radically challenges Einstein). In the light of these disparities between equally qualified scientists in the field of astronomy and astrophysics, can anyone possibly think that the wanton guesswork and speculation that you will be hearing with respect to the findings of the Hubbell telescope can have any useful, practical, or trustworthy meaning? Remember the 15 years of the Reimanian theory when you hear scientists droning on about the "billions and billions of light years."
Carbon Dating Methods
Then there is the radio carbons method of dating which is supposed to supply accurate dating in the last 32,000 to 40,000 years. Carbon-14 is the radioactive isotope of ordinary carbon which is used in this method. There are three assumptions which must always function as constants, and also they must function as anticipated for this method to mean anything.
1. The carbon dioxide cycle is always constant. This has to do with the means and the quantity by which carbon dioxide is present in the atmosphere.
2. The cosmic ray flux has been constant on the hundred year scale. This means the radiation from cosmic rays can fluctuate within a 100 year period, but that over that 100 years it must add up to exactly the same as the last 100 years and the next 100 years.
3. The decay rate of carbon 14 has to be constant. There can be no change in it at all. This would mean that the contents of the ocean and the atmosphere have been absolutely constant for 30,000 or 40,000 years.
All of these assumptions are questioned, they are doubtful, and they are in dispute. Even so, those who believe in the so-called carbon-dating system claim that it has been proven beyond doubt that all of these things are true. In light of such an outlandish claim, it is interesting that W.F. Ruby, in an article entitled "Radio Carbon Dating," in the American Scientist, Volume 44, January 1956, page 107 says:
"The first shock, Dr. Allen and I had, was that our advisors informed us that history extended back only 5,000 years. Well, we had thought initially that we would be able to get samples all along the curve back to 30,000 years, put the points in and then our work would be done. You read books and you find statements that such and such society or archeological site is 20,000 years old. We learned rather abruptly that these numbers, these ancient ages are not known. In fact, it is about the time of the first dynasty in Egypt that the last historical date of any real certainty has been established."
And to this, Morris-Whitcomb comment on page 372 of The Genesis flood:
"It is obvious, therefore, that any genuine correlation of the radio carbon method with definite historical chronologies is limited only to sometime after the Flood and the dispersion. The major assumptions in the method are evidently valid in this period, but this does not prove their validity for more ancient times, the periods in which we would infer that the assumptions are very likely wrong and therefore the datings are also wrong."
Commenting on radio carbon dating Dr. Charles B. Hunt, in an article entitled "Radio Carbon Dating in the Light of Stratigraphy in the Weathering Process", Scientific Monthly, Volume 81, November, 1955, page 240, says:
"In order that a technique or a discipline may be useful in scientific work, its limits must be known and understood. But the limits of usefulness of the radio carbon age determinations are not yet known or understood. No one seriously proposes that all determinations of dates are without error, but we do not know how much many of them are in error: 25%? 50%? 75%? And we do not know what dates are in error, and by what amounts or why."
A Down-Hill Slide
In the years since Dr. Hunt wrote this article, things have gone from bad to worse for the radio carbon dating method. It has been abandoned altogether by the vast majority of those seeking to establish accurate dating methods. The conclusion that we come to is that the only accurate dating system in all of those known to be used in historic science is carbon-14 after the Flood or back to about 4,000 years to the days of the pharaohs. The only reason that this process is accurate is that it can be correlated with recorded history which it gives scientists a bench mark to check against. This is classically true of all historic scientific endeavors. They can never be anything more than religious faith when they go back beyond recorded history. Therefore, there is no proof, and there never has been anywhere at any time and there never will be, that can show the earth to be older than 4,300 years. Actually, it is about 6,000 years old by orthodox chronology. But historical records of the first 1700 years are non-existent due to the destruction of the Genesis Flood. Recorded history begins fairly soon after the flood. This is just what we would expect to be the case if the Genesis Flood was real, as the Bible says that it was.
A Colossal Religious Failure
For all their fervor, false claims, threatening, chiding, pleadings, and religious zeal, historical dating methods--radio carbons or radioactivity or space measurements or what have you--do not support the religion of evolution and do not discredit the Biblical account of the Genesis Flood.
