Radiometric Dating Debunked: Evidence for God

SPEAKER A We're told radiometric dating proves the Earth is billions of years old and that the Bible can't be taken seriously. But what happens when we actually look at the assumptions behind those dates and the evidence for dramatically accelerated decay during the Flood? In this episode, we'll unpack the key problems with radiometric dating and explore how the same data can powerfully support a young Earth. Welcome to Faith and Science. I'm Kaysie Vokurka, and joining me once more to discuss this is Dr. John Ashton. Welcome, Dr. Ashton. SPEAKER B Hello, Kaysie. SPEAKER A Dr. John has written this book, "The Big Argument: Does God Exist?" And in today's program, we'll be looking at some insights from chapter 9 by Andrew Snelling. So, Dr. John, what assumptions behind radiometric dating are talked about in this chapter? And how do these assumptions actually affect the final age result from this kind of testing? SPEAKER B Sure. I think radiometric dating is probably the main argument why secular scientists cling to the long ages for life on Earth. And also the public, that's what they've been taught. Oh, what about radiometric dating? Carbon-14 dating, this sort of thing. Doesn't this show that the Earth is millions of years old? And indeed, these are where the dates are found largely come from for the age of the Earth. One of the things is that there's a couple of aspects here. And one is how can we know something? And we can't actually know the age of the Earth. We can't actually know. And this is an important thing to understand in that there's no independent observer. We have no way of knowing time events in the past unless there are some human milestones recorded. SPEAKER A Mm. SPEAKER B You know, some record there or something like that. Now we can do calculations, and that's what radiometric dating is all about. And in actual fact, as part of my chemistry honors degree back many, many years ago, part of that was radiochemistry, was part of that degree. SPEAKER A Interesting. SPEAKER B Now, one of the things that we, we have to make assumptions that underpin our calculations. So we measure today the rate at which elements are decaying. So we can measure the rate of decay of radiometric elements. So that's something we measure today. We then have to assume that this rate has always been constant. Now, according to quantum mechanics, that may not necessarily be so. There are other factors that do affect decay rates and this sort of thing. The other thing that we have to look at assuming is the, and we don't know the initial concentration of these particular elements in the rock. So we don't know what the starting concentrations were or ratios. That's something that we don't know. And also we don't know if we are measuring something over a long period of time, has leaching or other environmental processes added to or removed the amount of radiometric material. Now, one of the ways that scientists get round some of these assumptions is that within a particular rock, you may have different radiometric elements or different types of crystals. And we can, looking at those crystals, measure the rates of the different ones and plot them. And using averages, we can work out, you know, better timelines. Hmm. What people don't realize, Sue, is that often these, using different radiometric series like uranium-lead or samarium-neodymium or potassium-argon, they often give different ages for the same rock. And traditionally what you do if you have that situation is you look up what is, on the basis of the fossil record, the age of that rock, and which radiometric dating age is closest to that. And that's the one that you'll publish in your thesis. But how were those ages worked out? Those ages were worked out on, before they did radiometric dating largely, on the basis of the thickness of the sediments and the layers and looking at deposition rates being very slow and hence the millions of years value was calculated to produce the different layers. Now since that time, a number of radiometric dates actually seem to line up, but we know that, and this is quite interesting, that some of them do appear to line up. But when we look at the other evidence, such as erosion rates, for example, that the continents would erode away in less than 10 million years on the current rainfall, and we know the climates were much wetter in the past, therefore would've eroded away more quickly. We've got major evidence that we've got a major problem there. The other thing is that if we look at carbon-14 dating of the same area, we'll get vastly different results. So if we go to radiometric dating, For example, if we say date coal seams, we'll get radiometric dating results of probably at least hundreds of thousands of years through to hundreds of millions of years, right? For the coal deposit, depending on the type of coal. Using radiometric dating of rock layers above and below the coal seam. SPEAKER A Right. SPEAKER B Right? If we then do carbon-14 dating on that coal, we'll only get thousands of years. SPEAKER A So it just doesn't fit. SPEAKER B And it's very interesting that carbon-14 dating in a way is more accurate because it's carbon-14, we know a lot about its decay rate, has a half-life about 5,700 years. And we can measure it quite accurately. And the thing is that if these coal deposits were hundreds of thousands and millions of years old, there should be no detectable carbon-14 there because it would've all decayed away. Due to the short half-life. The fact that we find it there in all the ones where we tested is very, very powerful evidence. And this is much stronger evidence. Now, there again, though, a carbon-14 isn't an absolute value because again, carbon-14 is based on the carbon-14 level in the atmosphere. How do we know what the carbon-14 atmosphere could have changed in the, in the past was? And this is something, again, carbon-14 dates have to be calibrated. SPEAKER A But what you're saying is the carbon-14 does verify that it must be much shorter. SPEAKER B Right, because it has a very short lifespan. So essentially, I think the calculations go, even if the entire Earth was made of carbon-14, after a million years there'd be none left, you know? So we know in absolute terms that these old ages can't be correct. SPEAKER A Yes. SPEAKER B The other fascinating thing is that we can take historical lava flows. So lava flows, somebody said, what, this was recorded as erupting in the 1500s, or this was recorded in erupting in the 1900s. And we can go and radiometric date those lava flows and we'll usually get millions of years, sometimes billions of years. SPEAKER A Wow. And that's clearly false. SPEAKER B Yeah, yeah. And so what has clearly happened is that we've got mixing with, you know, older rocks occurring or something like that. So there's massive complications there. And even the assumptions of billions of years, we don't know what the initial concentration of materials were at that particular time. But the other fascinating thing is that we have evidence of accelerated radiometric decay occurring in the past. And this is where we have different results, for example, where we have, you know, different uranium materials radiometrically decaying into another metal plus a gas. And when we find the— if we measure the concentrations of them, we find that, hang on, we've got to— if we use the gas method, it'll give us a different age to the metal method. Even though it's the same reaction. And the gas age gives us much younger dates, much, much younger dates. So we know from diffusion rates and measuring gas and this sort of thing that we can measure quite accurately today, on this basis, there is very, very strong evidence of accelerated radiometric decay in the past. And that explains a lot of radiometric data then, particularly the differences when you have elements that have different half-lives giving different ages on the same rock. If we have accelerated radiometric decay, that explains a lot of that phenomena. SPEAKER A Yeah. SPEAKER B So again, we have independent evidence that suggests that the radiometric dating ages are seriously flawed and they're not actually representing millions of years at all. All the evidence is pointing to much younger ages. Now, one of the fascinating areas of this, of course, is the measured decline in the Earth's magnetic field. SPEAKER A Hmm, yeah. SPEAKER B So this affects a couple of things. Firstly, if we look at the rate of decay now, it would suggest that the Earth's magnetic field on the Earth itself can't be more than about 10,000 years old. Because if it was much older than that, the Earth's magnetic field would be so strong, there'd be so much heat generated, that life on Earth wouldn't be possible. SPEAKER A Wow. SPEAKER B So it's very suggestive. Earth's magnetic field decay is very actual powerful evidence for the biblical model. Firstly, it relates to a short life on Earth. SPEAKER A Mm-hmm. SPEAKER B Secondly, we find evidence in the rocks of rapidly oscillating Earth magnetic field, which again, and the dates of that that we would get seemed to align very much so with the time of the flood. Right. And this catastrophic event of the flood was something happening then at that particular time. SPEAKER A So we're talking maybe 6,000 or 4,000 or 5,000 years ago. SPEAKER B Yeah, yeah, yeah. SPEAKER A Potentially something. SPEAKER B Yeah, yeah. Which is quite fascinating. Now, the other way that this comes into effect is, as I mentioned, when we get carbon-14 dating of, say, coal seams, we get, tens of thousands of years. People say, well, hang on, that's still a lot longer than the age of the Earth. But carbon-14 is actually produced by the effect of cosmic rays, very high-energy positive particles coming from the sun, right? Hitting the upper Earth's atmosphere. Now, because they're positively charged, most of them are repelled by the Earth's magnetic field, which actually protects the Earth from this radiation. So in the past, there would've been fewer of these high-energy particles. They're involved through a series of chain reactions. What they essentially do is they hit other nuclei, they produce high-energy neutrons, which knock out a proton out of a nitrogen atom, forming, changing it from 7 protons to 6 protons in the nucleus, which transforms it now into carbon. SPEAKER A Carbon, yes. SPEAKER B Carbon-14, but at the weight of the— And so, So in the past, there would've been much lower levels of carbon-14 in the atmosphere. SPEAKER A Because of the stronger— SPEAKER B Right, because of the stronger magnetic field. SPEAKER A Magnetic field, right, yes. SPEAKER B Right, producing lower levels of carbon-14 in the atmosphere. So these then would've gone into things like your dinosaurs and your old fossils, right? And your coal, the plants that were growing at that time. And when they stopped, that traps that carbon-14. There's no more respiration, there's no more carbon dioxide goes in. So, but those lower levels based on today's much higher level of carbon-14, because the Earth's magnetic field has been declining, the level of carbon-14 in the atmosphere is now higher than in the past, right? What it means is those lower artificial levels in the past are interpreted as a longer age. SPEAKER A Ah, okay. SPEAKER B So when we try to correct for that factor, right, we can't know, but we can do estimate calculations. Interestingly enough, it brings those, you know, 25,000, 30,000-year dates back to about 5,000 years. SPEAKER A Interesting. SPEAKER B Which is quite fascinating again. So when we correct for this dilution factor as a result of a stronger magnetic field producing less carbon-14, it's quite complex. But when we do that, again, it lines up with the biblical dating. This is really exciting stuff. So what we're saying is from a number of factors, We're lining up the, hang on, the carbon-14, the traditional radiocarbon dates are very problematic. Millions of years just doesn't work really. It contradicts with a whole lot of other evidence. When we look at carbon-14, it lines up very well with the biblical picture and particularly when we have Earth magnetic field data and other factors. SPEAKER A Wow, thank you for giving such a comprehensive rundown on this complex topic if a person is more new to it. Yeah, highlighting the assumptions that are being made, the inaccuracies in the radiometric dating of many things, and also the perspective that carbon-14 adds to this picture, which is very interesting given that it's a little bit more accurate. So yeah, thank you so much for explaining that and the context that it gives us for the idea of a global flood in a biblical timeframe. Have you ever struggled with doubts about God's existence or known someone who has? What helped you through it? Share your thoughts and stories in the comments. Your journey could inspire someone else who's searching for answers.