THE VICIOUS CYCLE OF RADIOMETRIC AGES

Since there is this evidence from radioactive carbon dating showing that rocks, fossils, and once-living remains are all "young," how can evolution maintain the claim that radiometric techniques prove old age? We have just seen that evolutionary philosophy does not allow radioactive carbon dating for rocks or fossils. But even more to the point, evolutionists use three scientifically inaccurate assumptions to establish large evolutionary ages.

Each one of these assumptions tends to expand or exaggerate the estimated age. We will see that each assumption is scientifically invalid. We do not have to say these assumptions are invalid only because they lead to ages contradicting the Biblical chronology (though this alone would be good reason for rejecting them), but because they do not agree with real scientific data. Even a person who does not believe the Bible can reject these assumptions for scientific reasons!

What are these three assumptions? Assumption number one is that we can know how much radioactivity a sample had when it was new. For rocks this is when they were newly formed, and for once-living things, when they were newly dead. If assumption number one is false, we cannot know the original (primordial) level of radioactivity. Though we can measure the level of radioactivity in the sample today, this does not help us, because we have no basis for comparing the measured level of today with the level of radioactivity in the sample when it was new. If assumption number one is false, we cannot date the sample radiometrically.

Of course, assumption number one is fallacious because in order to know the original state of the sample, one must know the age of the sample, or at least must have a preconceived idea of what the age is. But the age is what is being sought. We conclude, then, that radiometric techniques cannot independently prove or determine the age of anything. There must always be a preconception of what the age is for the methods of radiometric dating to work.

As we will see below, historical documents or other information external to a sample may help us arrive at a preconceived, but more or less accurate, age for a sample, and radiometric techniques can confirm this preconception. But our preconceived age for the sample comes from information outside the sample. The sample has nothing within itself telling us how old it is, and radiometric techniques cannot give us any new information. They can only confirm the age we suspected in the first place.

We can now see how evolutionary philosophy can get billions of years from rock dating procedures. Believing that the real age of the rocks is billions of years, evolutionary philosophy has a preconceived age which is then used to compute the supposed level of radioactivity when the rock was new, billions of years ago. Since this alleged primordial level is set billions of years ago it is extremely high. It is very much higher than today's level of radioactivity. This means the rock must be billions of years old (see Note 7).

Of course such procedures are circular, and the radiometric technique simply confirms the preconceived age -- which is all that radiometric techniques can ever do. This is why it is so crucial to rely on real historical data (as opposed to evolutionary presuppositions) for getting a real handle on age. With historical data as the basis, we can then use radiometric techniques as additional confirmation of the age we suspect. But radiometric techniques cannot by themselves date anything. We must always "feed in" some preconceived age -- accurate or not -- which comes from information outside the sample and has nothing to do with radioactivity. For rocks, the only "source" of billion-year-ages is evolutionary thought. In other words, it impossible to date rocks at billions of years (or even millions) apart from evolutionary philosophy.