Dating Methods

Carbon-14 to Nitrogen-14 - Potassium-40 to Argon-40 - Uranium-238 to Lead-206 - Rubidium-87 to Strontium-87 - Geologic Column - Biostratigraphy - Cosmogenic Nuclide Dating - Palaeomagnetism

 

Radiometric Dating Methods

We have seen multiple times that evolutionary dating methods are unreliable and inconsistent. From multiple experiments it has been proven that if the age of a fossil is known radiometric dating does not work; however, if the age of a fossil is not known radiometric dating (they assume) works. How come when someone takes a sample in of a known date and has it tested (without telling the testers the age is known) and it comes back with a incredibly far off date they write it off as a freak mistake, but they claim that when we do not know the dates it actually works. Radiometric dating methods are based on uniformitarianism. They assume (Note: assume = can not prove) there has been no catastrophes and that evolution is true.

It is fairly simple math once you have done your measurements. If the formula is 1A+2B+3C=X and you can find out A and B and X is known then it is easy to find C. To use radiometric dating you have to assume X is a constant to determine C. Lets say there are two books sitting on a table in a room and they have the same amount of dust on them. We could do some empirical science and measure how long it takes dust to accumulate and how thick the dust is right now and calculate how long those books have been sitting there, right? Well... what if one book was sitting there for 2 years and 6 months ago someone came in and dusted it off and put another book right next to it? The dating method would give us the complete incorrect date. What about a candle burning in a room. You could measure how long it is now and at what rate it burns but you still don't know how long it was when it started or even if it was always burning at the same rate. It may have been tapered off at the top causing it to burn faster and since that is gone we would never know. The Uniformitarian view is that the radioactive C¹⁴ background in the atmosphere that all plants are exposed to is constant because the earth is billions of years old. If the earth is not billions of years old the dating method falls apart because the background radiation has not yet reached equilibrium.

Not all dating methods give astronomical dates; however, evolutionists will only use the dating method that gives them the date they are looking for and that is usually the one with the oldest date even though we have seen it proven that rocks that are only hundreds of years old have given dates of millions of years old. Just the fact that they can date the fossils gives a problem to the uniformitarianism view because what happens when you leave a dead animal out in the wild for years? First the large animals eat the flesh and maggots clean off the bones then bacteria break down the bones and leave nothing to fossilized. The only reason we find billions of dead things buried in rock layers is because they had to be completely buried by mud in order to get preserved and fossilized. A world wide flood model can explain many things that the evolution model can not explain.

There are several factors that will render the following dating methods inaccurate:
- Radiocarbon
- Uranium-lead
- Lead 210
- Helium
- Rubidium-strontium
- Potassium-argon
- Potassium-calcium

There are 7 basic assumptions that must be true EVERY time (Evolution Handbook):
- Each product has to be in a closed system (no contaminants)
- Each product must have no of the daughter products originally
- Rate must never have changed
- Long decay rate elements are known to have decayed faster in the past
- Any change in atmosphere would change the results
- Any change in the Van Allen belt would affect radioactivity
- The clock starts in the beginning (No radioactive products around)

Since it is known that some of these dating methods use decay half lives that have changed (see RATE from ICR) and known age samples yield wild results radiometric dating is not used to date fossils. Fossils are not dated by their looks, or their location either. Fossils are dated by the layer they are found in. What is the problem with that? Its because the layer is dated by the fossils.

Carbon-14 to Nitrogen-14 Dating

 

The Carbon-14 Cycle:

1. Cosmic rays hit our atmosphere and brake the neutron out of an atom.

2. The free neutron combines with Nitrogen-14 to create Carbon-14.

3. This unstable ¹⁴C combines with Oxygen to create CO₂.

4. Plants absorb the radioactive CO₂.

5. Animals eat the plants and absorb the radiocarbon.

6. We eat the animals and the plants and absorb the radiocarbon.

7. When you die you stop eating and therefore stop absorbing ¹⁴C.

8. Carbon-14 continues to decay into stable Nitrogen-14.

9. Every 5,730 years half of the ¹⁴C will decay.

10. An Accelerator Mass Spectrometer can be used to measure the remaining ¹⁴C.

 

Note:

Carbon dating only works on fossils that used to be alive. You can not carbon date a rock or sedimentary layer.

 

Does it work?

Diamonds are the hardest substance known and can not be penetrated with contaminants. Evolutionists teach diamonds formed millions or billions of years ago out of carbon deep in the crust. If this is true than the radioactive ¹⁴C should be undetectable after 100,000 due to its fast decay rate. Diamonds were sampled from 12 locations all over the world and they contained measurable amounts of ¹⁴C. http://www.icr.org/carbon-14/

Coal supposedly formed millions or hundreds of millions of years ago according to evolutionists but coal samples have also been tested and they also contain measurable amounts of ¹⁴C. These results support what the Bible says about the young age of the Earth and the world wide flood. http://www.icr.org/rate/

Potassium-40 to Argon-40 Dating

 

1. Molten rock contains an average potassium ratio ⁴⁰K/³⁹K (0.0117%/93.2581%).

2. It is assumed molten rock contains no Argon gas because gas escapes from the liquid rock.

3. When the rock cools and turns solid some of the unstable ⁴⁰K decays into ⁴⁰Ar.

4. Every 1.25 billion years half of the ⁴⁰K will decay.

5. Mass spectrometry, or atomic absorption spectroscopy is used to measure captured ⁴⁰Ar.

6. The ³⁹K is measured and using the ⁴⁰K/³⁹K ratio the ⁴⁰K is calculated.

 

Note:

Potassium-Argon dating can only be used to calculate ages of igneous rocks (rock that used to be magma). It does not work on sedimentary layers because they are composed largely of smaller particles of other rock layers.

 

Does it work?

Samples from the 1986 dacite flow on Mount St Helens, Washington were K-Ar tested to a date of 350,000 years old! http://www.answersingenesis.org/tj/v10/i3/argon.asp

Mt Ngauruhoe erupted several times in the past 25-50 years and several of these samples have been K-Ar dated to ages of 250,000 – 3,500,000 years old! This is an 1,000,000% error! http://www.answersingenesis.org/creation/v22/i1/dating.asp

Uranium-238 to Lead-206 Dating

 

1. Molten zircon strongly rejects lead but allows uranium to mix.

2. It is assumed that molten zircon contains no lead.

3. When the rock solidifies the ²³⁸U decays into ²⁰⁶Pb through several steps releasing helium.

4. Every 4.47 billion years half of the ²³⁸U will decay.

5. The amount of lead is measured and the age is calculated.

 

Note:

Uranium-Lead dating can only be used to date igneous or metamorphic rock. It does not work on sedimentary layers because they are composed largely of smaller particles of other rock layers.

 

Does it work?

Helium is a light weight atom that is much smaller than argon. It can escape easily out of the zircon and diffuse between the zircon crystals and gets released out to the atmosphere. If the earth is billions of years old all the helium from this decay process should have escaped into the atmosphere but helium is still found in large quantities in the rock. This indicates these zircons must be 4,000 – 14,000 years old and not billions of years old like the ²³⁸U-²⁰⁶Pb method claims. http://www.icr.org/pdf/research/Helium_ICC_7-22-03.pdf

Rubidium-87 to Strontium-87 Dating

 

1. When some molten rocks form they contain unstable ⁸⁷Rb and stable ⁸⁶Rb.

2. The amount of ⁸⁶Rb in the rock always stays constant.

3. The amount of ⁸⁷Rb in the rock decreases as it decays.

4. The amount of ⁸⁷Sr in the rock increases.

5. Several samples from the same rock formation are taken and the ratios are plotted.

6. The lines on the plot are called isochrons.

7. A steeper slope of the isochron indicates more half lives.

 

Note:

Rubidium-Strontium dating can only be used to date igneous or metamorphic rock. It does not work on sedimentary layers because they are composed largely of smaller particles of other rock layers.

 

Does it work?

In the Grand Canyon the Cardenas Basalt layer is at the bottom of the canyon below many different layers. At the top of the canyon is a volcanic flow that flows on top of the upper most layers. The ⁸⁷Rb-⁸⁷Sr dating method showed the bottom layer to be 1.07 billion years old and the top layer to be 1.34 billion years old! Scientists generally thought the top layer was only a million years old but the Rb-Sr method failed to produce the correct results. http://www.answersingenesis.org/creation/v23/i3/dating.asp

The Geologic Column

The entire geologic column was built upon what fossil looks like it belongs below the others and then established as fact. Circular reasoning is used to date the rock by the fossil and then turned around to date the fossil by the rock. The problem is that like the trilobite index fossils range from anywhere from 45 million years to 500 million years old and sometimes the index fossil turns up not to be a fossil at all. The Coelacanth is a lobed fin fish that was found off the coast of Madagascar and is exactly the same as the lobed fin fishes found in 325-410 million year old rock. This is still used as a index fossil for determining how old a rock layer is. How do you know that the rock is 300MY old or 10 years old if the Coelacanth is still alive today? The Graptolite is also considered a good index fossil for 410 million year old rock however in 1995 Graptolites were found in the South Pacific still alive. They can be found in any rock layer not just 410 MY old rock.

The geologic column is found nowhere in the world but in textbooks. Next time you see a 300 million year old fossil make sure to ask how they dated it.

Biostratigraphy is a big fancy word for saying: The rocks date the fossils and the fossils date the rocks.  William Smith lived from 1769-1839 and was a Drainage Engineer and on the side a Surveyor and Geologist and he was the first to use fossils to date the rock layers. Charles Lyell lived from 1797-1875 and was a Lawyer and Geologist who made the greatest impact on Darwin by his book Principals of Geology. He was the one that started the world view of uniformitarianism that says there was no catastrophe and everything that happened in the past is the same as it happens today. If there was not a world wide flood then that would mean the layers were laid down over long periods of time. When Lyell assigned ages to the fossils there was no other dating methods of determining their age so he guessed what order they should be in and correspondingly assigned them ages based on what layer they were in. Later Darwin came along and gave those ages more exact numbers (based off of no evidence) and that is the basis of the entire geological column we have today.

Biostratigraphy is the primary way that all fossils are dated. If radiometric or other dating methods do not give the correct date they are discarded and the fossil is dated based off of what layer it is in. This form of circular reasoning is the only way to keep fossils as proof of evolution.

Cosmogenic Nuclide Dating

Cosmogenic nuclide dating is basically radiometrically dating the elements in the ground like beryllium instead of in the atmosphere like carbon. Since rocks are not alive they do not absorb the elements in the atmosphere like living plants. Rocks are, however, constantly being bombarded with galactic cosmic radiation (high-energy protons and alpha particles) that hit certain particles to form cosmogenic nuclide's. Elements like beryllium and aluminum can have radionuclide's such as ¹⁰Be and ²⁶Al.

¹⁰Be has a half life of 1.5 million years and ²⁶Al has a half life of 0.7 million years. These results were not obtained by actual observation over the past million years but were determined (using the uniformitarian world view) by watching them for a short time and assuming that the production rate from ⁹Be to ¹⁰Be by natural processes has been constant.

Several assumptions need to be made:
- There was none of the radionuclide's in the layer to start with
- The exposure time is known
- The production rate has not changed

The problem with this is that there is no way to know the original conditions of the layer being tested. If there was even the slightest amount of the radioactive element in the layer it would greatly skew the final result. If the layer was only exposed for a very short time or a very long time it would have much less or much more of the radioactive element than predicted. If the decay rate of an element is unknown it renders the entire process useless. The RATE team from ICR has done much research experimentation on this subject and have determined that the decay rate in the past may have been thousands of times faster then it is today. Since it is not possible to determine the original nuclide count in the sample it is impossible to calculate the age.

Palaeomagnetism (Magnetostratigraphy)

Palaeomagnetism is the study of the magnetic orientation and inclination of magnetite crystals. When a volcano erupts the lava may contain iron that will become magnetized in the direction of the earth's magnetic pole and will be locked in when it cools and hardens into rock. Currently the earth's magnetic field is changing direction at the rate of about a few degrees every century. In the lava layers around the world there is evidence that there have been several magnetic reversals that are believed to take thousands of years to complete and then when they are finished thy can stay that way for millions of years.

With a uniformitarian view of the world:
Slow change today = Always slow change
Orientation in rock is much different then today = Change occurred long time ago

What is unacceptable in a uniformitarian world view? THE FLOOD.

When the fountains of the deep broke open there could have been a world wide shift of the crust due to "the fountains of the great deep" ejecting all their water. This kind of catastrophic event could have also caused multiple reversals to occur rapidly.

At Steens Mountain in Oregon there has been palaeomagnetic analysis done on the 9 of the volcanic layers. In these layers there is observed a rapid transition from normal to 90 degrees out of orientation in the magnetic signature. Using the observed rate of flow from lava in Hawaii it has been determined that each of those 9 layers could have been laid down in as little as 15 days. The researchers that discovered this believed in millions of years so finding that a magnetic reversal could happen in a few weeks was shocking. This means we have some evidence that it is possible for reversals to occur very rapidly and that it does not take thousands of years.

If rapid reversals were occurring during the flood event then we would expect to find many layers that have different magnetic orientations.