THE FOUNDATION OF EVOLUTION
Radiometric dating is the main device by which the eons of evolutionary time are buttressed. In the minds of most people it is radiometric dating that proves the earth and the universe are billions of years old. From the perspective of evolutionary philosophy, in fact, radiometric dating is the only satisfactory chronometer for dating the earth, solar system and universe. It is the only approach that seems to validate the eons which evolution needs, yet as we will see, radiometric techniques have fatal flaws. Ironically, evolution ignores, or explains away, the many physical processes that do successfully date the creation -- because none of these processes allows enough time for evolution!
When we examine radiometric techniques for dating the earth, solar system and universe, they are found to be scientifically invalid, because they are carried out using scientifically inaccurate assumptions. We should realize, however, that radiometric techniques do have legitimate applications in other areas of scientific work, but here our interest is in dating the earth, solar system and universe; and it is in this area that radiometric techniques must be called into question.
Though radiometric ages for the earth, solar system and universe are all incompatible with the Biblical chronology of about 6000 years, science itself shows the radiometric age estimates are not valid. The reason they are not valid, as we will see, is the inaccurate and invalid assumptions used in generating them. In fact, we will find that if the inaccurate assumptions were corrected, radiometric results would actually agree with Biblical chronology (see Note 1)! In contrast to Biblical history, evolutionary philosophy invokes about 5 billion years for earth history, about 10 billion years for the solar system, and about 20 billion years for the universe.
We will now delve into some of the inaccurate assumptions -- the scientific problems -- of "conventional" radiometric dating. We begin first of all with the discovery of radioactivity in 1896 by the French scientist Becquerel. Decades before the physicist Becquerel discovered radioactivity, popularizers of evolution had been teaching that the earth and universe are very, very ancient. Of course, radioactive decay is the very basis of radiometric dating, and radiometric methods are supposedly the reason evolution "knows" there have been billions of years of time. Yet the evolutionary geologist Charles Lyell had popularized the idea of a very old earth in the 1830s, long before radioactivity was ever discovered, let alone used for radiometric dating.
Before 1896, before Becquerel's discovery of radioactivity, evolutionists wrote papers and articles claiming that the earth is very old. Many articles before 1896 actually invoked very nearly the same gigantic time intervals evolutionary philosophy believes in today (see Note 2). In many cases the very same names for the alleged geologic eons were employed. In other words, in the scientific literature before radioactivity, we can find terms very closely resembling, and in many cases identical to, the geologic ages used today for describing the evolutionary eons of earth history. We can find in the scientific literature of over a century ago, well before Becquerel's discovery of radioactivity, the use of long eons of time to describe the supposed evolutionary ages, and yet radioactivity was not even discovered until 1896!
The first radiometric dating of rocks was not even attempted until 1908, yet evolutionists believed the earth to be very old nearly a century before 1896. Clearly, the belief in an old earth is actually independent of any proof from radiometric dating. Evolutionary philosophy taught an incredibly old earth even before Marie Curie discovered what turned out to be the first radioactive element in 1887. Even before 1887 it was already believed and reported in the scientific literature that the earth is very old (see Note 3). We can see it is a fallacy to think that radiometric results somehow "proved" the earth to be very old -- in fact, evolution "knew" all along the earth had to be old. Radiometric techniques have not given to evolution any brand new concept that evolutionary philosophy did not already believe.
Evolutionary writers often say that before radiometric dating, evolutionists had no idea how old the earth really is, but a look at papers and articles from over a century ago shows this claim is false. Evolutionary philosophy has always claimed to "know" the earth's age! Radiometric dating has been appealing ever since its inception, however, not because -- as we noted above -- it gave evolution any new information, but because the basic idea of radiometric dating is elegant in its simplicity.