Christians: Why did God speed up the half-life of the radiometric isotopes in fossils? It leads us to think?

Question

the world is over 6000 or 10000 years or whatever!

Were all these radiometric isotopes found in fossils altered by God?

1. radiocarbon dating
2. argon-argon (Ar-Ar)
3. fission track dating
4. helium (He-He)
5. iodine-xenon (I-Xe)
6. lanthanum-barium (La-Ba)
7. lead-lead (Pb-Pb)
8. lutetium-hafnium (Lu-Hf)
9. neon-neon (Ne-Ne)
10. optically stimulated luminescence dating
11. potassium-argon (K-Ar)
12. rhenium-osmium (Re-Os)
13. rubidium-strontium (Rb-Sr)
14. samarium-neodymium (Sm-Nd)
15. uranium-lead (U-Pb)
16. uranium-lead-helium (U-Pb-He)
17. uranium-thorium (U-Th)
18. uranium-uranium (U-U)

I heard that God actually RECREATED Earth in Genesis and God actually took the dinosaur bones out of the old earth and buried them in the new earth he just created. After of course he must've created humans and all other life. Is that true? Or did God speed up the half-life of radiometric isotopes in fossils?

Can anyone please help me understand?

What does the speed of light have to do with ANYTHING about my question. Are you scientifically illiterate?

You still make absolutely no sense.

Answer 1

The problem is the assumption that the half-life of these isotopes is 100% constant. It is not. There is a significant difference whether they were exposed to air, buried, what they were buried in, proximity to other radioactive isotopes, exposure to UV radiation, etc., etc., etc. Radioactive isotopes follow the same rules as other compounds: the conditions of the environment determines how fast a compound deteriorates. Because the conditions of the environment have not been constant over the course of time, we cannot accurately determine the half-life of compounds that take a long time to deteriorate. We can get an educated guess under ideal conditions in a lab setting, but we cannot measure them out in real-world conditions. Thus, the assumption that carbon-14 (or any other isotope) deteriorates at a constant rate is false. If you keep up with the scientific world, you'll discover that most scientists are actually moving away from carbon dating because even they say it is inaccurate.

Answer 2

Your outlook is incorrect as to Christianity and the history book. As you say that technology is getting better and better, so is the accuracy of the bible.It stands to reason that people get confused as to scriptural understanding, because they rely on leaders that teach commands of men rather than test for themselves their beliefs. The bible supports many theory's that science proclaims and is in agreement with the earths age, being millions if not billions of years old. you heard wrong as to God creating or recreating the earth. He made it once and he made it to last. The only changes he has ever made is time periods of the species. you have a dinosaur age and then you have the mammal age. people who have a narrow view of creation are called creationist, and as you already know that they don't make an effort to look for answers because they are quite happy with their little world. The whole point of this discussion is not to prove anyone wrong, but to suggest that looking deeper into scripture might provide the answers that make the most sense. For example: 3500 years ago the experts taught that the earth was flat, "The Flat Earth Theory" However Isaiah said it was round. Isa. 40:22 As far as all the dating methods you list, I am blown away, and will search some of them out, however I do know a couple of them, Argon, Carbon, Carbon being accurate up to 70 thousand years, argon depends on a steady state theory, at least I think?

Answer 3

Actually, you have it backwards. Instead of those things speeding up, the speed of light is slowing down. Dr. John McArthur does a wonderful job of explaining this in his books and teachings.

*Illiterate... no. The speed of light has to do with how fast things break down... hence half-lives of radioactive elements. I actually have done some research on this because carbon dating seemed to be legit to me. I cannot explain it because... no, I'm not a scientist, but the man I cited above as my source IS a scientist and one of the top 20 intellectuals of the 20th century. He is also a preacher, Christian, and holds to the idea of creation. So, next time, before you start calling out names and degrading people, maybe you should look into what they are saying to see if there is any corolation.

Answer 4

Half-life corresponds to the decay constant which is fixed for a particular process. It cannot speed up or slow down. This decay constant is analogus to the time constant associated with first order filters in electronics.

That Dr. MacArthur guy is a loon. It the speed or light is slowing down, (I'm assuming he is refering to phase velocity as opposed to group velocity, but I have a feeling he doesn't know what the difference between the two are, or even what they are) then none of our waveguides, or optical devices in general would work based on the analysis we use.

Phase velocity is fixed for a given frequency in a given medium. In a vacuum, it is the same for all frequencies.

A bit of advice: just because someone has a PhD, doesn't mean they know sh*t about physics.

Answer 5

Um... only a small minority of Christians adhere to the Biship Ussher 6,000 year interpretation. When will you people finally accept the fact that MOST - the VAST MAJORITY -- of Christians are just fine with the universe being 14.5 billion years old, or whatever.

Answer 6

You need to read "The Evolution Cruncher" by Vance Ferrell. There is a whole chapter in there on radioisotopic dating.
In a nutshell, All those dates that they come up with are compared against the pre-conceived "geologic column". If the dates do not fit this man-made, unscientific standard, the dates are thrown out. Please go to this website for more information. http://emporium.turnpike.net/C/cs/agetalk/sld007.htm