Unreliability of Radiometric Dating

For decades, scientists have used the process of radioactive decay to measure the ages of rocks. From the process of unstable isotopes(parent isotopes) decaying into more stable isotopes(daughter isotopes), they estimate the ages of rocks based on the ratio of parent isotopes remaining in the rock to daughter isotopes. Dr. Andrew Snelling wrote an article titled "Radiometric Dating: Problems with the Assumptions" in the Oct.-Dec 2009 edition of Answers.
Dr. Snelling holds a Ph.D. in Geology from the University of Sydney. He has worked as a consulting geologist to organizations in the U.S. and Australia and has written numerous scientific articles. Dr. Snelling claims that radiometric dating, which is used to "prove" that the Earth is billions of years old, is based on three faulty assumptions.

Faulty Assumption 1: Conditions at Time Zero

• No geologists were present when most rocks formed.
• Scientists do not know how many daughter isotopes were in the rocks when they formed.
• They assume that no daughter isotopes were in the rocks when they formed, so the fact that daughter isotopes exist in present day lava flows is ignored, yielding rock dates that are way too old.

• Documented cases that support this theory:

1. A rock formed at Mount St. Helens in 1986 yielded a radiometric age of 350,000 years.
2. A rock formed by lava flows at Mt. Ngauruhoe in 1954 yielded a radiometric age of 3.5 million years.
3. A rock at the top of the Grand Canyon, formed by a recent volcanic eruption, yielded the same age as volcanic rocks deep below the canyon wall --- 1.143 billion years.

Faulty Assumption 2: No Contamination

• The process of radioactive decay in rocks is open to contamination by gain or loss of parent or daughter isotopes because of waters flowing in the ground from rainfall.
• As molten lava rises through a conduit, pieces of conduit wallrocks and their isotopes can mix into the lava and contaminate it.
• Scientists do not know how much the rocks have been contaminated, so they usually assume no contamination.

Faulty Assumption 3: Constant Decay Rate

• Physicists have not been able to change decay rates in lab settings using heat, pressure, electricity, or magnetism. So geologists assume these decay rates have been constant for billions of years.
• This is an enormous extrapolation of seven orders of magnitude through an enormous span of time.
• New evidence of helium leakage in radioactive uranium decay suggests that uranium decays at a much faster rate under conditions of the past. (see "Thousands...Not Billions" by Don DeYoung).

My Thoughts

Radiometric dating is the backbone of old earth scientists who suggest that life evolved over billions of years. However, enough evidence is documented to suggest that this method of dating is faulty and unreliable. Yet, to acknowledge this, scientists would have to scrap much of the evolutionary suppositions. As a result, science textbooks would need to be rewritten casting even more doubt on the theory of evolution. It is no wonder that even after 12 years of indoctrination in public and non-religious private schools, a majority of people do not accept evolution as fact. In the words of a very wise pastor, "I do not believe in evolution because I simply do not have that much faith". Evolution: it still comes down to a "belief".