Deep Time and Radiometric Dating

Deep Time, Evolution, and the Museum Narrative

Everywhere you look, sometimes on each wall of a museum, the idea of millions of years and evolution combine to explain the origin of all life on earth. Random chance propels through the magic machine of natural selection and mutations over millions of years, turning slimy organisms into worms, then tadpole-like creatures that branch into fish that eventually lead to crawl onto land and turn into shrew-like mammals, then apes, and finally humans.

This special combo of deep time plus evolution conveniently leaves out the need for a creator, especially the God of the Bible. This way, people aren't obligated by a certain moral code or lawgiver to whom they must give an account.

It also removes the idea of an afterlife, like heaven or hell. Interestingly, the Bible predicted this would happen, with mankind denying a recent supernatural creation of a world that was later judged by a global flood.

It's curious how these happen to be the exact two things that museums deny so strongly today. A recent supernatural creation and a global flood that is obviously responsible for most of the billions of fossils buried in earth's layers.

Romans 1 forecasted how people would replace the recognition and worship of the supernatural creator with worship of created things like four-footed animals and creeping things, as if they were our creators.

And this is exactly what happens at museums, with tall idols blatantly giving such testament. You see, this is completely opposite to the Bible. This belief in deep time plus evolution circumvents the need for a divine creator who spoke creation into existence with forethought and intention, and leaves mankind on their own, doing and saying whatever they want in this life, and not responsible for the next.

It is the ticket that releases them, at least so they think, from God and his rules. The Bible, on the other hand, provides a stark contrast to these ideas. We have clear genealogies in Genesis, which are even repeated in the New Testament, that go all the way back to Adam, the first man who was breathed into existence by God.

He was made from the dust of the earth in the image of God, not evolved from some ape-like creature. Adam named everything, and Adam and Eve were given charge to be stewards over the earth. Less than 2 ,000 years later, earth was flooded because of our rebellion, and all life on earth was wiped out, except those on the ark.

This happens to be about the same time even secular historians admit that human writing disappears from the face of the earth. A strange coincidence, no doubt. It's fascinating that when observational science, rather than historical science, which requires vast inference, is used to investigate things like the creation of humans, that the data actually lines up with the recent biblical account.

Mitochondrial DNA mutations, for example, point to the recent spontaneous creation of the first woman, about 6 ,500 years ago. And this is even drawn from multiple secular studies. They've also identified a massive DNA variety expansion that coincides with the Bible's Tower of Babel dispersion.

Even without these evidences, the information and packaging of DNA alone should convince one of a divine creator. With this, let's take a look at the mechanics of radiometric dating and its assumptions.

Radiometric Dating and Its Assumptions

The typical idea of deep time presented in museums begins with a 4 .5 billion year old earth, early life forms evolving about 3 .7 billion years ago, dinosaurs living between about 220 and 65 million years ago, and the human line starting to branch off several million years ago.

Where do they get these ages? It's based mostly on radiometric dating, which calculates how quickly unstable atoms, such as uranium, change into stable atoms, such as lead. A decay process they believe starts when igneous rocks are formed.

So, what's wrong with these methods? Well, for starters, we can't go back in time to watch these rocks form, or check the decay rates of these atoms over time. We can only observe what the decay rate is today based on laboratory studies.

We don't know what the decay rate might have been in the past, or might have been under different earth conditions. The decay rate has to be assumed, along with the starting amount of the parent element, like uranium, and the starting amount of the daughter element, like lead.

We also have to assume that the dating system is closed, without contaminations impacting the outcomes. But since we can't go back in time to test these assumptions, we have to assume them to be true when radiometric dating is used.

And, if these major assumptions are not correct, then the ages we get from the study are also not correct. But, there is a way to test the assumptions of radiometric dating. We can take rocks that were formed from a volcanic eruption, rocks that people actually watched form that are pegged to a certain time in recorded history, and then date those rocks.

If the assumptions hold up, the radiometric age of those rocks should be the same as the known age of the rock, the age we can know for sure because people actually watched the rock form. If the radiometric age of the rock is the same as the known age of the rock based on when people watched it form, it would validate the assumptions in the analysis, giving credibility to the results.

Radiometric Dating Tests That Miss Known Ages by Millions of Years

But did you know that these types of studies have already been done, and radiometric dating missed the known ages of rocks by millions and millions of years? Several studies have been done on rocks around the world to try to validate radiometric dating, and it fails all the time.

Here is a short list. Notice that in each of these studies, the radiometric age of the rocks far exceeds the actual known ages of rocks by millions and millions of years. In fact, here is an example. In the 1980s, Mount St. Helens erupted and produced all kinds of volcanic material, including a rock called dacite that was sent in for radiometric dating.

The result? This 10-year-old rock showed ages from 340 ,000 to 2 ,800 ,000 years, all for a rock that we know was only about 10 years old. While radiometric dating can be useful for estimating the relative ages of rocks or ash layers, like which layers were laid down first, the absolute ages will always be elusive and will typically exceed the known ages by millions of years.

They can also never be verified because we cannot go back in time. The Bible is clear that God breathed creation into existence, with all the planets spiraling through the universe in perfect order to sustain life on Earth.

Creation, Fine-Tuning, and the Call to Download the App

The oxygen levels, magnetic fields, days, nights, seasons, and temperatures are all perfectly calibrated to sustain life on Earth, and it all had to be here at the same time for everything to work. Looking for answers about what the Bible teaches about creation, the fossil record, dinosaurs?

Download the Genesis Apologetics app from the iTunes or Google Play stores for answers to these questions and more.