[the 4th point]Many things about Evolution
are actually unscientific!
|
Radiometric dating is the method used in finding out how old a rock or fossil is.
They give the ages in millions of years old, except for carbon dating which gives a maximum age of about 50,000 years.
This is one of the Evolutionists weakest areas.
If the actual dates of rocks and fossils are a lot younger than this, then it casts doubt on the whole of Evolution.
Why? Because Evolution needs millions and billions of years for things to have enough time to evolve into other things.
But if it can be proved that the ages of these rocks and fossils are a lot less than that, then Evolution is impossible.
So that is why this Radiometric dating is important.
This is how it works:
The original element (the 'parent') decays more and more to the second element (the 'daughter').
Therefore the older the rock the greater amount of 'daughter' material is produced.
Each parent has an assumed half-life figure (in years), a 50% decay figure.
For Potassium 40, this is reckoned to be about 1.3 billion years.
For the method to work:
a) it needs stable, constant conditions for the decay rate to remain constant, with no contamination from outside parent and daughter elements being leaked in.
b) The starting conditions need to be known, for example, that there was no daughter element present at the start, or if any was present, then that amount has to be known.
c) Also the relationship between the data obtained and the specific event which caused the crystallization must be known.
The actual measuring of the elements is accurate, but the calculations are based on assumptions.
It is true that the deeper rocks often tend to give older 'ages', but the questionable science is to give the rocks an age in millions of years.
When a 'date' differs from the expected plan of Evolution the result is rejected, and it is known as 'posterior reasoning'.
There are examples of a date starting at 212 to 230 million years old, but ending up as 1.9 million years old, because it hasn't fitted into the correct part of Evolution!
This really shows that radiometric dating has many serious problems.
(For actual examples and more detail, follow the link at the end of the In the beginning - evolution? menu).
Why does radiometric dating give differing results?
It is because scientists do not measure the age of rocks, they measure the amounts of certain elements which is extremely accurate.
But the "age" is calculated using various assumptions which makes the end result speculative, and not scientific and not fact.
When a fossil is offered to a radioisotope laboratory for submission, a form may be issued for those submitting the fossil, to indicate the expected age.
If the technique was reliable, such information would not be necessary.
This is how radiometric dating works. It is very much driven by the evolutionary scheme.
Another form of dating is measuring Carbon 14
This cannot be used to date rocks, but only on things that were once living.
Anything over about 50,000 years old, should have no detectable carbon 14 left.
So if something has been dated by a different method, which gives a date of millions of years old, and it contains carbon 14, then that is good evidence for it not being that old!
Evolutionists say that the youngest coal is millions of years old, (and they say that most is 10's or 100's of millions of years old).
But no source of coal has been found that completely lacks carbon 14!
This seems to be an unsolvable mystery to evolutionists!
So many things about Evolution are actually unscientific!
We have nothing to fear from factual science.
Science is only discovering things that the Creator has designed and created!
And there are many scientists who worship God.
We have nothing to fear from true science!
To see the next point,
please return to the Bible centred menu
and go to "In the beginning".
Back to Church & faith issues
Image: thanks to Serif RESOURCE CD.
© 2003 bible-explained.co.uk