Radiometric dating is one of the most popular techniques in paleontology to establish the age of materials like stones and bones. Reported dates often fall in the millions or billions of years.
However, questions surround the art of radiometric dating − for good reasons. The Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) recently ran the story “1.8 million-year-old skull may revise understanding of human evolution.”
Since the skull was unearthed in a medieval ninth-century A.D. village in the former Soviet Republic of Georgia known as Dmanisi, the obvious question centers on the validity of the million-year radiometric dating of the skull found within the same geological stratum as the village.
What’s driving the demand for millions of years of dating; is it science or is it a theory? Without question, the theory of evolution from a single cell to a sophisticated carnivore demands millions and billions of years − not thousands of years. This prerequisite was recognized by evolutionists even before Charles Darwin published The Origin of Species in 1859.
Sir John Herschel
Sir John Herschel (1792-1871), a nineteenth-century Victorian elitist, argued for “many thousand millions of years” for the age of the earth; an argument that paralleled the then-popular uniformitarian theory advanced by the English geologist Charles Lyle. When the HMS Beagle ported in Cape Town in South Africa in 1836, Darwin spent time with Herschel.
Herschel’s “many thousand million years” and Lyle’s uniformitarianism shaped the cornerstone of Darwin’s theory. In the first paragraph of the Introduction to The Origin of Species, Darwin highlighted the centrality of Lyle’s and Herschel’s influence on his theory: “to throw some light on the origin of species — that mystery of mysteries, as it has been called by one of our greatest philosophers.” Herschel had used this signature phrase, “that mystery of mysteries,” in a letter to Lyle endorsing his Principles of Geology.
In the art of radiometric dating, therefore, an ancient date for the Earth is a prerequisite for the theory of biological evolution. Based on evidence from radiometric dating, the age of the Earth has been estimated to be approximately 4.5 billion years.
Chemical Elements
Radiometric dating is a process of measuring radioactive isotope decay rates of unstable atoms that loses energy by emitting radiation. The chemical element Argon (Ar) formed from the radioactive isotope Potassium-40 (40K) and the chemical element Lead (Pb) from radioactive isotope Uranium (92U) are the most common types of elements studied in rocks for the radiometric dating of the rock. The use of Carbon dating is now recognized as too inaccurate and unreliable.
The use of the radioactive decay of Uranium to Lead was first published in 1907 by radiochemist Bertram Boltwood (1879-1927) to measure the age of rocks. Boltwood’s first rock measurements estimated the age of the Earth at 400 to 2200 million years old. Since then, other measurements have extended the age of the Earth.
Radiometric dating is not an absolute science since it must be based on assumptions; radiometric dating can only estimate an “apparent age.” As the executive director of the National Center for Science Education, Eugenie Scott explains in Evolution vs Creationism: “If certain assumptions are made about it [radiometric dating], then, it can yield a date which could be called the apparent age. Whether or not the apparent age is the true age depends completely on the validity of the assumptions.” The quantitative study of geological time is known as geochronometry−a branch of geochronology.
The essential factors required to calculate an age include 1) measuring the element concentrations, 2) certainty of element stability over long periods of time, 3) knowledge of the half-life – how long it takes for the initial (parent) radioactive substance to be reduced to the daughter element by 50% (half-life), and 4) initial concentration of the parent and daughter radioactive elements, i.e., the initial concentrations on Earth’s first day.
Assumptions
Science can measure the concentration of elements, but science can only speculate on assumptions regarding the element stability, half-life, and the original concentration at the beginning. A Scott surprisingly notes –
“Since there is no way in which these assumptions can be tested, there is no sure way (except by divine revelation) of knowing the true age of any geological formation.”
What is the chance of validating these assumptions? Scott explains –
“In view of this fact, the highly speculative nature of all methods of geochronometry becomes apparent when one realizes that not one of the above assumptions is valid! None are provable, or testable, or even reasonable.”
“We must remember that the past,” Scott continues to elaborate, “is not open to the normal processes of experimental science, that is, repeatable experiments in the present… A scientist cannot do experiments on events that happened in the past… Scientists do not measure the age of rocks, they measure isotope concentrations… [and] the age is calculated using assumptions about the past that cannot be proven.”
As Scott Tumey, director at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory’s Center for Accelerator Mass Spectrometry, speaking of radiometric dating explains –
“Through our calculations, we’re eliminating possibilities, not identifying absolutes.”
Physical Impossibility
Similar to the radiometric problem of the 1.8 million-year-old Dmanisi skull found in the same strata in a medieval ninth century A.D. village, geologist Steve Austin, Ph.D. from Pennsylvania State University and professor of Geology at the Institute for Creation Research, discovered a radiometric problem in the Grand Canyon − the rocks on top of the canyon wall are measured to be several hundred million years older than the rocks at the base of the canyon − a physical impossibility.
Yet another major problem emerges with radiometric dating: different techniques often yield different dates. As Scott points out –
“If the dating methods are an objective and reliable means of determining ages, they should agree… However, with radiometric dating, the different techniques often give different results.”
Case-In-Point
The age measured from radiometric dating of rocks from the Grand Canyon by Austin was 10,000 years using the Potassium-Argon (K-Ar) method but 2,600,000 years with the Lead-Lead (Pb-Pb) method. Can science arbitrarily disregard bad dating? Within the realm of science, arbitrarily selecting data is an act of flagrant fraud.
As Scott argues, while “all sorts of reasons can be suggested for the ‘bad’ dates… this is posterior reasoning. Techniques that give results that can be dismissed just because they don’t agree with what we already believe cannot be considered objective.” Scott mentions this since selectively discarding dates is a common practice within the radiometric dating industry.
Declaring radiometric dates as a scientific fact now remains only as an advanced hoodwinking art perfected by the evolution industry. As Scott points out further, radiometric dating can only yield unproven dates since
- No one has ever measured decay rates directly
- If assumed decay rates are in the range of billions of years, it is impossible to determine the actual decay rate from measurements over only a few decades
- Decay rates are poorly known
- Decay rates are affected by the physical environment
- Original parent element concentration is not known and no method exists to measure the original concentration
- The original daughter decay product concentration is not known and no method exists to measure the original concentration
Mount Saint Helens
To test the validity of radiometric dating on newly formed rocks, in 1993, Austin submitted newly formed molten rocks recovered from the 1980 eruption of Mount Saint Helens volcano to the Geochron Laboratories of Cambridge, MA, for dating using the K-Ar method. While expecting an age of 13 years, the laboratory reported a staggering dating range from 340,000 to 2.8 million years.
While criticizing Austin’s findings as “inappropriate,” David Bailey of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in California points out the problem with the radiometric industry –
“Radiometric dating, like any other experimental discipline, is subject to a variety of errors, ranging from human errors to rare anomalies resulting from highly unusual natural circumstances.”
Since assumptions used in the calculation cannot be scientifically validated, the calculated date may have no relationship to the actual date of the sample tested. Consideration of non-radiometric evidence often undermines the validity of radiometric dating. Non-radiometric indicators include –
- Ocean sedimentation rates
- Ocean salinity
- Magnetic field decay
- Meteorite collisions
- Moondust
- Earth-Moon separation
- Preservation of soft tissue in pre-Cambrian fossils
- Carbon 14 in diamonds
- Spiral galaxies
- Blue stars
- Preservation of DNA in dinosaurs
Genesis
Estimating the age of the Earth to be millions and billions of years old was popular during the nineteenth century. Investigators, however, increasingly recognized the limitations of radiometric dating. When dating artifacts associated with the Genesis account written by Moses, the dating must include non-radiometric indicators.
During the Scientific Revolution in the words of Albert Einstein, the German-born theoretical physicist developer of the general theory of relativity, one of the two pillars of modern physics, and best known in popular culture for his mass-energy equivalence formula E = mc2 – dubbed “the world’s most famous equation” –
“Everyone who is seriously engaged in the pursuit of science becomes convinced that the laws of nature manifest the existence of a spirit vastly superior to that of man, and one in the face of which we with our modest powers must feel humble.”
Evidence from the fossil record to validate the theory of evolution scientifically still remains speculative.
Click to study further evolutionary perspectives on the fossil record and other crucial Evolution and Science categories.
Darwin Then and Now is an educational resource on the intersection of evolution and science and the challenges facing the theory of evolution.
Links
- Glossary defines terms associated with explaining the theory of biological evolution.
- Understanding Evolution is a journey that showcases how different investigative approaches play a pivotal role in enriching our understanding of the process, leading to diverse conclusions.
- Studying Evolution delves into the terms species and natural selection and how they have changed since The Origin of Species was published in 1859.
- What is Science investigates Charles Darwin’s approach to science and how the principles of modern science are used for different investigative purposes.
- The Evolution and Science category features articles studying how the intersection of evolution and science influences the current understanding of evolution.
- The Theory and Consensus category features articles examining how scientific findings are influencing the scientific consensus on the essential tenets of evolution, including Natural Selection.
2021 Update
Dating Fossils article discusses a broader presentation of the issues facing dating methods.
