What about Creationist radiometric dating?

Question

In "Teaching Creation Science in Public Schools," Duane Gish suggests Creationist alternatives to radiometric dating, specifically those taking into account:"the amount of helium in the earth's atmosphere produced by radioactive decay of uranium and thorium, the decay of the earth's magnetic field, the pressure of oil in petroleum deposits, the presence in rocks of pleochroic haloes of very short-lived radioisotopes, the rate of cooling of the earth (taking into account heat produced by the decay of radioactive substances), the Poynting-Robertson effect, the lifetime of comets, and the time required for clusters of galaxies to disperse."

Are these factors really being ignored by Evolutionists?
And if so, why doesn't anyone make instruments taking these factors into account?
Would they really register significantly different results?

Answer 1

The short answer to your question is no, these things are not ignored by evolutionists. All of these processes HAVE been studied by scientists using the same instruments they use to study a variety of other things.

I should clarify that none of the "dating methods" you list are radiometric. Not only that, none of them are even dating methods, and cannot be used to accurately date anything. They are not "alternatives" to radiometric dating, they are arguments that creationists have contrived to provide "evidence" for a young earth. The argument for each of them generally goes like this:

"We observe today a certain amount of X. If we make an incredibly simplistic assumption that the rate of production of X is equal to Y and has been constant throughout the history of the earth, and then extrapolate this backward through time, we arrive at an age of the earth of Z, which is younger than scientists claim. (We will ignore the fact that Z is also much older than creationists claim, and focus on the fact that we found a contrived way of coming up with a number less than 4.5 billion years)."

Most of these processes HAVE been looked at in detail, and when you include all factors that should be included, you inevitably get an age that gets older and older the more accurate you make your calculation. In fact, calculations of the age of the earth based on heat loss of the earth and decay of radioisotopes HAVE been done, and guess what... the answer they get is 4.5 billion years, exactly the same as the radiometric methods.

The ones that have not been fully worked out give a variety of different results, and we don't trust these results because there must be processes and factors that are not taken into account. For instance, we cannot assume that the decay of the earth's magnetic field, or the rate of dispersal of galaxies, has been constant for the entire history of the solar system. Drawing conclusions based on these assumptions is foolhardy. On the other hand, the decay rates of radioisotopes are based on fundamental physical constants have been shown experimentally to be constant through time to very high precision. This is why we trust radiometric dating much more than the other processes you mention, whose rates could easily have varied widely over the history of the earth.

Answer 2

The problem with the Creationist alternatives to radiometric dating is that while all those things do mean something, the Creationist already has an answer, and they're trying to find the evidence for what they already believe is true. A scientist looks at the evidence, and tries to explain why these things are the way they are without preconceived ideas.

Evolutionists aren't necessarily ignoring these things, but to an evolutionist or geologist, these things aren't that useful for determining the age of the earth or determining the age of a rock or fossil when there are better methods of doing so. A biologist may determine the age of a tree by counting the rings of the tree; one such tree, named by researchers as "Prometheus" was determined to be about 4,900 years old

A geologist may determine the age of parts of the sea floor by looking at the rate at which new sea floor is created at mid-ocean ridges, and the rate at which sea floor is consumed at continental or other oceanic boundaries. If new sea floor is created at a rate of 10 cm a year, then it is reasonable to assume that a piece of sea floor 100 miles away is 1.6 million years old

Answer 3

Nearly all of those things, all by themselves, indicate ages thousands of times longer than creationists claim. Suppose there was a revision of a date. it would be like this. Originally a fossil was thought to be 250,000,000 years old. With the revision, it is now 230,000,000. Gish's creation still sits at 6000 years. Big deal. Now his date is only off by a factor of 38,000 times instead of 42,000 times. Big win for creationism, huh!

There is no such thing as creation science. It is based on the first two pages of the bible. Nothing else. Everybody knows that. So all his attempts to undermine science or to falsely claim that he has come up with serious faults in the scientific view, are nothing but cooked up misrepresentations, all aimed at preaching the bible story and imposing the Ussher chronology on everyone else.

Answer 4

Creationists don't care about science. They ignore scientific fact and continue to live their fantasies.

Why is it that no article on intelligent design, and Genesis has ever been published in a real credible scientific journal? Because no creationist has ever written such an article, and it wouldn't stand the rigours of peer editing in the scientific community.

Radioisotopes can be used to detect the dates of various dead animals yes, becuase of carbon - 14, which beta decays. With a half life of about 5700 years (can't remeber off the top of my head), we simply get the log of the amount of carbon 14 in the dead creature, vs the normal concentration of carbon 14 to carbon 12 in living organisms. Of course, this method is no good after 50000 years, when the C14 level is too low for accurate detection.

Uranium and thorium are good becuase of their long half lives in this respect, and I suppose you could use them (don't know how much U or Th is in a living organism though, not much, I can tell you - lol).Maybe its too small for detection.

Answer 5

haha, i admire how human beings say we cant teach this or evolution. radiometric relationship is in step with some issues a million. the decay value has remained consistent (it can not substitute) 2. the organic abundance of the climate used hasnt replaced (thats why we use isotopes with long 0.5 lives, theres no way the organic abundance ought to alter) 3. not one of the determine or daughter isotopes have been remote from the pattern (thats why we dont date lava flows and such) i admire how human beings dont have self assurance in radiometric relationship yet you need to use quite a few different the thank you to agree on a date. and evolution? its shown recover from it. in the adventure that your attempting to argue it you of course dont be attentive to what it rather is. EDIT: rev. al, thank you for accept as true with scientists. your good, you dont date something too old with C-14 relationship, after approximately 40,000 years its ineffective. thats why you utilize different approaches.

Answer 6

Those factors are taken into consideration, but its not like the creationist care. They are going to continue to believe the earth isn't that old no matter what science discovers.