THINGS RADIOACTIVITY CANNOT DATE

We have already seen that radiometric techniques cannot independently date anything. We have also seen that evolutionary philosophy is the only basis for million-year or billion-year chronologies. But even more to the point, most fossils are found in sedimentary rocks. Sedimentary rock is formed from hardened sediments deposited by moving water. On the other hand, a few fossils are found entombed in igneous rock (like the skull KNM ER-1470 mentioned above). We have seen that, though evolutionary philosophy likes to believe igneous rocks can be dated up to billions of years, this is not really possible. But most fossils -- around 99% -- are in sedimentary rocks. Now we ask, can sedimentary rocks be dated more accurately than igneous rocks?

Actually the problems for radiometrically dating sedimentary rocks surpass even the problems of dating igneous rocks. Major sedimentary deposits occur around the world. They account for about 90% of all rocks at the surface. Examples include the deposits of the Grand Canyon, and the Navajo Sandstone in Zion National Park, Utah. But evolutionists never date sedimentary rocks radiometrically, though sedimentary rocks abound, and though radiometric dating is supposedly the way to prove the earth is old. Why is this?

Evolutionists acknowledge that the water involved in forming sedimentary rocks dissolves radioactive compounds out of the rocks. This changes the radioactivity in a way having nothing to do with radioactive decay. In other words, even evolution agrees that sedimentary rocks have been disturbed since their formation, so we cannot hope to know the original level of radioactivity in these rocks.

For sedimentary rocks, evolution cannot accept as true the very assumptions -- we examined these above -- required for evolutionary dating. Ironically, if sedimentary rocks were dated the same way as igneous rocks -- by their uranium, potassium or strontium content -- they would appear quite old, because the water they contact in formation dissolves out radioactive compounds and lowers their radioactivity. Yet as much as evolutionary philosophy likes old ages, it rejects the idea that sedimentary rocks can be dated like igneous rocks. So how does evolution deal with sedimentary rocks and the fossils they contain?

Evolution arrives at ages for such rocks solely by looking at the fossils in them. This is not an independent dating procedure at all. The fossils themselves, as it turns out, are assigned huge evolutionary ages, so this method of "dating" sedimentary rocks is actually circular (see Note 12). Over the years evolutionists have simply agreed by consensus how old various fossils should be. Incredibly, the very rocks of most interest to evolutionary philosophy -- sedimentary rocks with all of their fossils, the evolutionary "book of life" -- are never dated radiometrically. (The only exception, as mentioned above, is radioactive carbon tests done by some creationists. Since carbon compounds usually do not dissolve in water, these tests are valid. But the results show that sedimentary rocks are quite young, and evolutionary philosophy rejects them.)