Tentpegs

This came into tentpegsquestion@yahoo.com a couple of weeks ago. I think we have time to get to it today…

In a recent blog, you talked about creation and warfare and mentioned radioactive dating. Could you elaborate on the problems with radioactive dating and also give your thoughts on the recent “missing link” fossil discovery?

I’ll deal with the umpteenth missing link story another day. Let’s talk about radioactive dating and why I have a problem with it. Again, to review, this world could have been created to be/appear fully grown (re:old) with all its resources in place or it could BE old. One way it could be old is if there had been a creation that fell into chaos somewhere between Genesis 1:1 and 1:2. This is not the Gap Theory that some hold, but a warfare based theory that Gregory Boyd calls the Restoration Theory. A few blogs ago, we discussed that.

I also mentioned that I am not impressed with radioactive dating. Why not? Remember that science is supposed to work a certain way. The scientist observes the present state of the system (a rock in this instance). Then, they measure the rate of a process occurring in the rock (any change). The scientist must then build a model using assumptions about the past history of this system and then, last, calculate how long it would take the present, observed process to operate — through a long unobserved past — to bring it to the present state.

In other words… here is a rock. How did it get here and how did it come to be formed in just this way? Some of this is science — observation and measurement. Some of this is scientific guess work — done with the best of intentions, usually. But there are real problems with this. Many assume that the model built of the system and the history posited for the rock are as scientific as the observation and measurement stages. Uh… no. John D. Morris illustrates some problems with this in his Parable of the Potatoes (which I have used extensively in discussions with university profs to good effect). With all credit to Dr. Morris, here it is:

Let’s say you were listening to a boring lecture. Your mind wanders and you see a person sitting beside the speaker peeling potatoes. You watch the man and notice that every time the second hand of the clock reaches 12, he reaches into the basket and peels a potato. Just before it reaches 12 again, he tosses a fully peeled potato in a second basket and then reaches in the basket of unpeeled potatoes and gets another one… just as the second hand reaches 12 again. You have observed the process and timed it. So far, so good. That’s science!

You wonder… how long has he been doing this? You get up (everyone else is so bored by the lecture they’ve fallen asleep so you feel free to move around) and go to the basket of peeled potatoes. You count 18 of them. You build a model of the unobserved past and say, “It takes one minute to peel a potato and deposit it in the basket. There are 18 in the basket. Therefore, this man has been peeling potatoes for eighteen minutes.” Most people would nod their heads and say “That makes sense.” Except… it doesn’t.

Too many assumptions were made in this example. You might be correct, but you might be way off. Was the rate of potato peeling constant throughout the unobserved history of this event? You have no way of knowing. It could be that the man peeled potatoes much faster at first but has now slowed down because he is tiring. It could be that he was much slower at first but is speeding up because he is getting better at it. You simply have no way of knowing. For you quantum buffs, you also have to assume that time progresses in a strictly linear fashion and — you know who you are — that just can’t be assumed!

Also… did anyone or anything add peeled potatoes to the basket? Did anyone or anything take away peeled potatoes from that basket? You don’t know. You weren’t there and neither was any other observer other than the potato-peeler himself and he isn’t talking. Were there peeled potatoes in the basket before the peeler got there?

And those are the very same (possibly) false assumptions used by those who use radiometric dating. They assume a constancy in the rate, an isolation from the environment that might have caused a change in the rate, and they assume what the original state of the rock was. All three of these are assumptions made without observation or measurement. They are, then, not strictly science. They are useful assumptions, for sure, but they are open to being wildly wrong. Leeching from water, chemicals, elements, and the action of weather and other environmental causes not only CAN but DOES change the makeup of rocks, the rates of change within them, etc. We can observe this. Why, then, is it assumed to have never happened in the unobserved past when we want to date it?

This was the first thing that bothered me as I studied science (and remember, I am not coming to this subject as a theologian — which I’m not — but as a scientist — which I am). The second thing that really bothered me was when I found out that rocks are dated according to evolutionary theory and NOT by radiometric dating. I’ll explain. Say you found an interesting rock and took it in to be dated. They would tell you it can’t be dated because it isn’t an igneous rock. Only igneous rock — rock that once was heated to the point of being a liquid before cooling again — can be dated radiometrically. Disappointed, you go back to the original site and dig around some more. You find a fossilized clam (they are everywhere) and take that in to be dated.

You are surprised to find out that you don’t get your clam dated by the geologist but are, instead, sent to the biologist. He looks at your fossil and declares it an index fossil. An index fossil is a fossil that once was widespread but then suddenly became extinct providing, as it were, a bookmark in earth’s history that other fossils can be compared to. He opens his book on the history of clams (yes, those books exist) and goes through the evolutionary history written there, declaring your clam to be 50 million years old. You are disappointed because you have just seen the clam dated by Darwin’s theory and not by any real science done on the clam itself. You ask if it can be dated radiometrically and are surprised to hear that it cannot. Only igneous rock…

You go back and find an igneous rock near the original site. You take it in and have it dated. Each dating method used (potassium-argon, uranium-lead, rubidium-strontium, etc.) gives different dates in wide ranges going from 20 — 230 million years old. Really. This is a true story. You are frustrated with that wide range and ask if there is any way to narrow that down. The prof says “Sure. Did you find any fossils near this rock?” You show him your clam, tell him how old the biology teacher said it was and he then declares the potassium-argon dates are right since it gave the closest result to 50 million years.

Frustrated? You should be. That is how it works. Rocks, fossils, and strata are dated by evolutionary theory and not by hard data. The hard data doesn’t exist — or it varies so widely and wildly that it is unusable. There are other problems but I’ll save those for another blog since this one has gone so long.