How Do You Date a Rock?

How do scientists find out how old something is? Rocks don’t tell you how old they are and they don’t come with labels. Science is limited to the present--geology is not empirical science--it cannot be observed or repeated by historical reconstruction of the past.

All Dating Methods:

1. Observe the present state of a system

2. Measure a process rate within that system

3. Make assumptions about the past

4. Ask how long that process has been going on to produce the present state

Radioisotope Dating Assumptions:

1. Constant decay rate

2. System closed to environment (nothing added or taken away)

3. No daughter-product from the start or know starting concentrations

4. There's been sufficient time to produce present state through measured process

Speak to the earth, and it will teach you. (Job 12:8)

Potato Basket Parable

1. Observe a time & a process. Assume rate is constant.

2. Assume nothing has been added.

1. Observe a time & a process. Assume rate is constant.

3. Assume nothing was taken away.

4. Assume there were no peeled potatoes in the basket when he started.

5. Assume he has been peeling potatoes long enough to produce the number found in the basket.

You’ve observed that he’s been peeling potatoes at the rate of one per minute for 5 minutes. Is it valid to count the number of peeled potatoes & use that to determine how long he has been peeling potatoes? Are you sure he wasn’t faster or slower in the unobserved past? That he wasn’t slower when he was learning how & gotten faster as he improves or slowed down as he’s gotten tired.

Are you sure no one added more before you got there? And no one took any away either?

Are you sure no other person or process was involved in peeling potatoes? His peeling machine didn’t break and now he’s doing it manually &/or nobody else helped?

IF all the above assumptions are true, then maybe it is valid to assume he has, but it is contingent on them all being true. If you weren’t there, you can’t know.

No matter which radioisotope method is used, the same assumptions are made. If no one was there to observe and confirm the conditions, is it really valid to assume everything has stayed the same for millions of years? It is a matter of faith, not empirical, observable, testable science.

All dating Methods make these same assumptions & are themselves based on certain assumptions:

1. Constant decay rate>Uniformity—“the present is the key to the past” & “everything goes on as it always has.”

2. Closed system>No Flood—no major upheavals in the environment that would have sped up processes or added or washed away evidence.

3. Starting Conditions>No Creation—meaning God didn’t create the world with all elements present at the beginning, so daughter products (such as lead) were only produced from radioactive decay.

4. Time available>Old Earth—since daughter products are present (and God creating them out of nothing is excluded), the assumption is that the earth is old enough to produce them through radioactive decay.

Conclusion

If the testing method is flawed, how can I trust the results? Why would I put faith in millions of years? Even radiocarbon dating (which can be used to test fossils) makes similar assumptions. Assumptions that are known to be based on incorrect data cannot produce correct results. On the other hand, God does not lie. His Word has always proved true. The All-Powerful, Creator did not need millions or billions of years to create everything in the universe. Only a commitment to evolution despite evidence to the contrary, i.e. blind faith, would explain a commitment to millions of years. If you refuse to believe the truth, all you are left with is a lie.