Problems with the Dating Game

No, gentlemen, I’m not talking about the fact that apparently most women swipe left 90% of the time, or that, ladies, many men have chosen to get passports and run off to foreign countries to find a traditional woman instead of dealing with Western feminism.

No, I’m talking about those dating methods you often hear referenced in support of the story of evolution that have supposedly disproven the biblical timeline.

Now, biblical creationists have long pointed out the many problems with the unprovable assumptions behind these techniques like carbon-14 and other radioisotope dating methods which were actually developed long after the idea of millions of years had been accepted as “fact” by evolutionists—primarily because of the rock layers seen around the world.

And of course, we’ve dealt with the many problems concerning their interpretation of those rock layers before.

Dating Methods Aren’t Absolute

However, despite what the average person thinks about these methods because of the way they are often presented, expert geologists and archaeologists that believe in long ages (and understand the limitations of these methods) don’t count on them exclusively as a way of supposedly determining the age of something. How can you know that?

Well, here are a couple of quotations (from a book on Egyptian archaeology,1 an associate professor of geology,2 and a quote from a general book on geology,3 respectively) that should help put this in perspective.

If a C14 date supports our theories, we put it in the main text. If it does not entirely contradict them, we put it in a foot-note. And if it is completely ‘out of date’, we just drop it.

In general, dates in the “correct ball park” are assumed to be correct and are published, but those in disagreement with other data are seldom published nor are the discrepancies fully explained.

If the laboratory results contradict the field evidence, the geologist assumes that there is something wrong with the machine date. To put it another way, “good” dates are those that agree with the field data [fossils in the strata].

Now when you think about it, it’s extremely obvious from just these three examples that in many cases radiometric dating isn’t the primary method being used to determine the age of whatever sample is being tested.

For example, in the first case, we see the statement, “If a C14 date supports our theories,” and then the quotation proceeds to describe whether the date was “correct,” compatible, or corrupt. And from there, they either put it in the main text, footnote it, or drop it completely.

Which means they must already have determined how old they think it is, and the radiometric date won’t dissuade them. Otherwise, they wouldn’t have known whether the “date” was good, bad, or ugly (so to speak) to begin with as they wouldn’t have had anything to compare the calculated dates to.

This type of “choose your own adventure” reporting isn’t “science” in its truest form—it’s actually just cherry-picking your data!

Measuring Time?

Now, despite the average person often assuming these dating methods are absolute, most people have no clue how they actually work. And many assume that these methods somehow measure “time” itself. But this isn’t so. These types of dating methods are based on measuring certain elements that decay over time, not time itself.

These types of dating methods are based on measuring certain elements that decay over time, not time itself.

And to explain the principles upon which all radiometric dating methods work, before we get into more detail, I’m going to use an analogy of a burning candle to help us understand this better.

Let’s say we light a 10-inch candle to record how long it takes to burn down (it’s “decay” rate). And let’s say that the candle burns away at 1 inch per hour (after three hours the candle is only 7 inches tall, etc.).

Now, if we then walk into a room we’ve never been in before and see a lit candle that is 5 inches high, we might logically conclude (based on our previous research) that the candle had been burning for five hours.

After all, we measured the decay rate of the candle at 1 inch per hour, and the candle was 10 inches tall to start, so it’s a simple case of arithmetic. How could anyone not see how easy it is to tell how much time has passed based on the carefully measured data we’d collected earlier?

But if we were not there to see the candle lit, this conclusion, of course, would be assuming several unprovable things. For example, we don’t know that the candle wasn’t lit, snuffed out, and then relit sometime later, maybe just a few minutes before we walked in.

We don’t know that the environment was the same as the one we made our calculation in either. For example, maybe the window was open in this room, and the wind caused the candle to burn at a faster rate than the environment we measured in where the windows were sealed.

We don’t even know that this candle wasn’t 20 inches tall when it started!

Our 5-hour guess, although logically concluded, would have assumed to know three specific things: (1) The starting amount of the substance (10 inches tall); (2) the original conditions (no open windows, etc.); and (3) that the decay rate was constant (1 inch per hour) throughout the entire life of the candle.

And although analogous, this method of assuming the age of something, by knowing the current decay rate of a certain element and measuring the amount of that element within a given sample, is how all these radiometric dating methods work.

From the Future?

Now one can simply assume that we shouldn’t question the assumptions behind these dating methods and take them at face value. However, there’s good reason not to trust them blindly, namely, because they can often give impossible results. How can this be? Well, let me explain a bit more about C-14 dating.

Firstly, I’ve found that many people are surprised to learn that carbon dating does not generally work directly on sedimentary (fossil bearing) rocks. Carbon dating only works on things that were once alive, while the other radiometric dating methods can generally only be used on igneous (once molten) rocks. More on those later.

When creatures are alive, they absorb C-14. However, once an organism dies, radiocarbon slowly decays to nitrogen-14 without being replenished. So, the ratio of carbon-14 atoms to regular carbon atoms will decrease over time. If you know the decay rate and the amount of carbon-14 and the number of nitrogen-14 atoms in a sample, you can then attempt to determine its age.

The rate of this decay is what geologists attempt to determine and use to date samples containing C-14, using the assumptions mentioned previously. And any organic material thought of as older than 100,000 years should contain no significant amount of C-14 because the carbon should have decayed away by then.

But this has been shown false according to the evolutionary timeline on several occasions (hence the impossible results I mentioned earlier).

C-14 has been detected in samples thought to have been millions of years old. For example, dates of around 20,000 years have been given to wood samples from the Marlstone Rock Bed in Southern England, but they’re found in layers thought to be 189 million years old.4

And diamonds thought to be 1–3 billion years old by evolutionists have given C-14 results 10 times over the detection limit when there should be none if that vast time span were to be true.5

As a matter of fact, just between 1984 and 1998 alone, scientific literature reported C-14 in 70 samples that came from fossils, coal, oil, natural gas, and marble representing the fossil-bearing portion of the geologic record, supposedly spanning more than 500 million years.6

Now, evolutionists can try to explain this away as due to contamination for example, but due to the numerous examples known, that would only lend support to the fact that we should be very suspicious of any dates given by C-14 dating. One has to ask, if contamination is possible in so many instances, should C-14 dating be trusted for anything?

Would Noah’s Flood Have Made a Difference?

And one question I love to pose to my evolution-believing friends is this: How accurate do you think C-14 dating would be if there had been a worldwide flood approximately 4,400 years ago?

And after them howling there was never a global flood and me asking but what if there had been, they typically concede that it would have messed up the whole method. Why?

Well, the reason is radiocarbon dating assumes that the current carbon-14 to carbon-12 ratio (after adjusting for the Industrial Revolution) of about one in a trillion is the starting ratio for the objects being dated.7

But this ratio would have been much smaller before the flood, which removed almost all living carbon from the biosphere through burial of the existing biomass. And because pre-and para-flood objects would have started with a much lower initial carbon-14 to carbon-12 ratio, the measured amount today would also be smaller and could be misinterpreted as much older.8

Different Names, Same Games

Now, each different dating method (as there are many, like rubidium-strontium, uranium-lead, etc.) has a different rate of radioactive decay, depending on what element is being measured. So, what about the dating methods we hear about that supposedly give us dates ranging into the billions of years?

Well, as stated, carbon-14 can only “date” up to a supposed 100,000 years. Uranium-lead dating, however, is a method that could theoretically give dates up to 4.5 billion years (because of how slowly we have observed uranium’s decay rates).

However, all these other methods also assume the same thing—consistent decay rates. But that’s a big assumption.

For example, as early as 2006, a New Scientist magazine carried an article called “Half-Life Heresy.” And in it, Professor Claus Rolfs of Ruhr University explained why what he had discovered was considered “heresy” (against the common view) among scientists using these dating methods.

When I was studying physics, my teachers said nuclear properties are independent of the environment – you can put nuclei in the oven or the freezer, or any chemical environment, and the nuclear properties will stay the same. That is not true any more.9 (Emphasis mine.)

His experiments showed nuclear decay rates are not always constant and can change under differing circumstances.

His experiments showed nuclear decay rates are not always constant and can change under differing circumstances. That was obviously a real shock to those that had always been taught they were absolutely constant. However, prior to this, creationists had already pointed to several specific examples of problems with these methods as well.

Blind Dates?

Take the lava dome formed after the 1980 eruption of Mount St. Helens. The brand-new rock that formed at its peak after the final eruption provided a perfect testing ground for various radiometric dating methods.

And imagine the surprise when the rocks dated from 340,000 to 2.8 million years old when its actual age was less than 25 years!10 (No results came out “younger” than this.) And please understand (because I have heard this objection from skeptics so many times), there is no “retained age” that could be calculated in these rocks which is admitted by evolutionary geologists—that’s not how these methods work.

This situation isn’t like a blind date where you don’t know exactly what you’re getting into beforehand. So, a good question to ask is, if you can’t trust these methods on rocks that you do know the age of, why would you trust it on rocks you don’t know the age of?

Mixing and Matching

Another example that combined both carbon and radioisotope dating was from an area in Australia. In 1994, some people were drilling through sand and clay when they struck a basalt layer that had apparently flowed over a forest at one point, because it had some charred wood encapsulated inside of it.

This was a good time to check out both methods (carbon dating and other radioisotope dating) versus each other as both samples must have obviously been from the same time period. The results, however, said that the wood was 44–45 thousand years old while the basalt was 45 million years old.11

How could there possibly be 44-thousand-year-old wood inside 45-million-year-old rock? One thing is certain; at least one of these methods wasn’t working. Of course, biblical creationists would say both!

Changing Dates

In short, there are hundreds of earth’s processes that set limits on the age of the earth. And most of them give an age far less than the billions of years required for evolution. Many dating methods have proven unreliable in far too many circumstances to be thought of as foolproof (even by evolutionists).

And to illustrate the fallibility of the idea that we can be absolutely sure of something’s age based on man-made dating methods based on faulty presuppositions, let me share a quote from cave specialist Jerry Trout. He perfectly illustrates the interpretive nature of these dating methods when describing the history of Carlsbad Caverns (New Mexico, US), a cave system full of stalactites and stalagmites, which were at one time interpreted by evolutionists as having formed over many thousands of years.

From 1924 to 1988, there was a visitor’s sign above the entrance to Carlsbad Caverns that said Carlsbad was at least 260 million years old. In 1988, the sign was changed to read 7 to 10 million years old. Then, for a little while, the sign read that it was 2 million years old. Now the sign is gone.12

So, scientists gathered new data over time and updated their estimations, and updates are fine: that’s how science works. But for the average layperson who is putting their trust in these dates as factual, which of these dates were “true”?

Which was “fact,” and which was “scientific” (in the way the average person thinks)? Was it 260, 7–10, or 2 million years old? Or were they all simply the fallible guesses of man attempting to determine things beyond the revelation of God’s Word?

The Bible Isn’t a Science Textbook

The Bible is the truth—the revelation of the only one with all knowledge and was there from the beginning—and we can trust it from the very first verse.

You know, over the years I’ve had many people say something to the effect that “the Bible isn’t a scientific textbook.” And thank goodness for that because then it would be overpriced and change every 10 years!

No, the Bible isn’t a science textbook, and it isn’t even a “religious” book. The Bible is the truth—the revelation of the only one with all knowledge and was there from the beginning—and we can trust it from the very first verse.

Modern dating methods have very little credibility and should not be thought of as authoritative in an absolute sense. Certainly not enough to make someone attempt to change or disbelieve the plain reading of the Bible.

“Thy word is true from the beginning” (Psalm 119:160 KJV).