How We Know What We Know — ages of rocks and dishonest measuring
Let’s continue the story from the last blog. Scientists have a real problem when it comes to dating old things – our methods are very unreliable and give a wide range of dates (as seen last time). That means that artifacts are dated by theory rather than by hard science.
Science has every right to observe the present state of a system (or thing), including any changes it is undergoing at the moment such as slowing changing from one element to another – uranium to lead, rubidium to strontium, etc. They also have the right to measure the rate of the processes they observe. However, when they try to extrapolate their observations into the very distant past or future, they have to put assumptions into their raw data and that makes all the difference. I’ll use an illustration originally given by John Morris (I think).
Let’s say you are listening to a boring lecturer – me, perhaps. You don’t want to listen any more so you look around the meeting hall and see a man sitting in a chair peeling potatoes. There is a basket of unpeeled potatoes to his left and a basket of peeled potatoes to his right. As you watch him, he picks up an unpeeled potato about the time the second hand of the hall’s clock gets to 12. He finishes peeling the potato and tosses it into the basket with other peeled potatoes in time to pick up another unpeeled potato as the second hand once again gets to 12. You watch this for ten or fifteen minutes and see that the pattern remains unchanged. You have now observed and measured the available data but you have a question: how long has this been going on? You go look at the basket of peeled potatoes and see 20 in there. You take the data you have and determine that he has been peeling potatoes for twenty minutes and that seems good – it sounds like science… but it isn’t.
You have made an assumption about the rate: it has always been constant, it has never sped up or slowed down throughout its history, and there has never been a single interruption or interference in this process.
You assumed the rate of potato peeling had always been constant because it was constant during the short period of time you observed it. But what if the man used to take longer to peel a potato but now was much better at it and had found his rhythm? What if he had been much faster in the past but was now tired and slowing down?
You also assumed that the basket of peeled potatoes consisted only of those peeled by that man at that rate. You weren’t there when the basket was placed and so you don’t know if it already contained some potatoes or if it once contained many more and, somehow, some of them were removed.
These three assumptions kill your “scientific” findings. You assumed something about the process rate which cannot be verified. You assumed the process was isolated from other systems (no one added potatoes) and you assumed you knew the conditions that existed at the beginning of the process (the basket now containing peeled potatoes was empty).
And those are the same assumptions made by those who use radiometric dating systems and Carbon 14 to date artifacts.
But it gets worse – some of the evidence is shamefully mishandled in order to make it seem as if the earth were older than it is. A case in point is Niagara Falls. I used to live just a matter of a 4 hour drive from the falls and went there often. They are now artificially stabilized (at great cost and great effort – it’s really quite impressive the engineering that went into that) but it had been observed for a long time that the falls eroded at the rate of 4 to 5 feet each year. They erode the Niagara escarpment, bringing the falls closer to Lake Erie as they wear away the boundary between Lake Erie and Lake Ontario. They are now seven miles from Lake Ontario so scientists who measured their rate of erosion back in the 1700 and 1800s extrapolated the rate backward in time and said that they began their erosion (and were thus “formed”) 9,000 years ago. If the rate has always been constant, they were right.
But what if there were more water in the past? Why is it necessary to think that the entire seven miles were eroded out by these falls; in other words, what did it look like when this geology was laid down by God, ice, or time?
When the father of modern geology – and the inventor of the concept of vast ages for rocks and the earth – arrived at the falls in 1841, Charles Lyell completely disregarded all the earlier measurements of how quickly the escarpment eroded. It didn’t give him the age he needed the falls to be, so he junked the 4-5 feet measured rate and claimed they only eroded 1 foot a year, giving the falls the age of 35,000 years. It was deceptive and not based on observation but on the need of his theory – the same way rocks are dated today as we saw in the last blog.
And Lyell’s dates are now discarded because we have now seen that 35,000 years isn’t old enough for the evolutionary processes (and geologic time) required by Darwin’s theory. So the numbers are now multiplied several times over without even pretending to measure the rate of erosion.
When we measure something radiometrically, such as the rate of uranium turning into lead, we make assumptions: that the rate of decay never changed from the day the rocks were laid down (by what or Whom is another question) to the present day. There is no reason to assume this, but it is assumed anyway. Remember that the half life of uranium (we are speaking here of uranium 238 which changes to lead 206) is 4.51 billion years. We are assuming – though we have only been measuring for much less than 100 years – that the rate has not changed during that time.
It is also assumed that neither the parent (in this case, uranium) nor the daughter (in this case, lead) element had their concentrations changed in the bit of rock we are measuring… and since the earth is made of rocks, we are always only measuring a trillionth of one percent of the available rock. Even picking our rock sample is adjusting the percentage of uranium to lead but that is never mentioned in textbooks. Most scientists are good and decent people and they try very hard to find a specimen that looks like it is clean and hasn’t been interfered with by the cosmos, ground water, etc. Still, it is a tiny specimen and we have to assume what the ratio of elements was at its beginning before we can measure the rate and guess at an age.
And when the guesses don’t match fossils found in the area, the ages are changed, NOT the presumed ages of the fossils, but the ages of the rocks. The theory dates the rocks every single time.
We KNOW that leeching and contamination occur in every rock system. That should be enough to junk all our dates, but, instead, this is just ignored.
But there’s more… and it’s even worse. We can actually see new rock being laid down. How exciting! Here’s a chance to get new rock and see the ratio of elements in it, measure it, and come up with zero or nearly zero. And yet, every time we do this we come up with dates radically different from that which we know is true.
For example, Sunset Crater in Arizona is a relatively young volcano that blew in the recent past. Native American artifacts are found in its lava including the remains of their villages and agricultural tools. The Native Americans say this happened just over 900 years ago and tree ring data (which records events such as local eruptions) agrees, dating the eruption at 1065AD. The lava flows were dated by every known radiometric method and the results were embarrassing. Rather than telling us that the rocks were 900-1000 years old, as we KNOW they are, they gave us dates of around 230,000 years old. When questioned about this, they will normally tell you that excess argon threw off the dates…but they will not discuss the possibility of excess elements throwing off other dates they’ve touted for over a century now.
This happens every single time we know the age of the rocks being measured. In New Zealand, Mount Rangitoto blew up 300 years ago (proven by tree damage, carbon 14, and native accounts). Radiometric dating puts the 300 year old rocks at more than 485,000 years old.
You will be told by Grand Canyon guides that volcanoes in that region are very, very young and blew only 10,000 years ago but Native Americans, who have only lived in that region for a few thousand years, talk about the eruptions as happening in their history. When some of the rocks were dated, they came back with an age of 117 million years. Somebody is a wee bit off here.
Kaupelehu blew up in Hawaii in 1800 and 1801. When those rocks were dated, they showed dates from 140 million to 3 billion years old even though the scientists dating them knew them to be just over 200 years old. Lake Crater in Oahu has the same problem. So does Kilauea. Rocks from Kilauea known to have been formed about two hundred years ago routinely give dates of 12 to 21 million years (+/- 8 million).
So we see dishonest handling of evidence here, yet again. When the rate is known (Niagara), it is changed or ignored to fit the theory. When the age is known and the dating methods we currently possess are shown to be farcical, we confidently assert the dates anyway.
This sort of thing happens around Darwinists far too often. It made me uncomfortable when I walked with them and tried to be one of them. And then I saw how they handled other evidence and I cringed even more. We’ll look at that next time.
I know some of you are wondering if Christians handle evidence faithfully at all times. No, they don’t. But they are much better at dealing with evidence fairly than the folk referenced in this blog. I’ll prove that eventually. Hang in there. We have a fair distance to go before we are done with this subject.
June 21st, 2012 at 2:30 am
I’m nearing 40 and my biological mother swears she will be 39 on her birthday this year. She even got herself a 39th birthday card to prove it. And what Mama says goes.
June 21st, 2012 at 2:59 am
I have read of how long it takes for wood to petrify into rock as sometimes being quoted as millions of years. When I was a boy, my brother and I used to go to a swimming hole in a Florida lake. There was a log lying half in and half out of the water. The part not in the water was rotting; the part in the water was petrified.
Millions of years to petrify? Seems to me the wood would rot before that much time had passed.
June 22nd, 2012 at 2:40 am
It would rot unless it is sealed away from the air. Water and dirt can, over time, petrify the wood but only if it is kept from oxygen.
June 21st, 2012 at 11:54 am
Our limitations make God’s work even more awesome, eh? I am truly amazed by these writings. Thanks!
June 21st, 2012 at 12:25 pm
The real problem is that they teach those “scientific” methods in school and pupils believe them. I had this recently happening with my 10 years old: he came back from school one day, so excited that he understood how “we know” that the rocks/fossils are so many millions years old. After I told him about the assumptions and flaws you mentioned here very well, he realized the dishonesty in their approach.
I am afraid I just decreased his level of trust in the school system – but that’s OK because I think I increased his level of trust in the Word of God.
Nevertheless, what is he supposed to do next time when they study this subject again? Keep silent? Follow along for good grades? Step up and expose the flaws and become the subject of ridicule?
June 21st, 2012 at 7:50 pm
Tell him to learn what he needs to learn to pass his classes, BUT know that there is so much more accurate information out there and instill in him a love of learning and reading and informing himself. My dad knew more about history than any history teacher I ever had and he was “only” a high school graduate, BUT he read – A LOT, and he remembered and thought about what he read and searched out more info to learn more. READING is important!
Just look at Patrick!
June 22nd, 2012 at 2:39 am
He can show them that he is listening, reading, and processing the information by giving them the answers they crave. At the same time, he can learn that there are other ways to tell the story — young earth creationism, old earth creationism, Intelligent Design… Make sure he has that literature as well.
June 21st, 2012 at 1:20 pm
Scientists now even know that they have to fudge the carbon 14 data for things measured in recent readings, because they know that carbon 14 has changed over time. For example, years ago, I read a National Geographic article that measured the ages of Bristlecone Pines in Arizona. They found a living pine and one that had been dead for many years in the same area. And by overlapping the tree rings could measure the age of the older one to a little over 8,000 years. But when they measured them through carbon 14, they found that the older one grew from the outside in. No not really; but that would have been the proof from the carbon 14. By carbon 14 dating the inside of the older Bristlecone Pine showed to be younger than its outside. Now scientists tell us that the reason for the change in C-14 is the nuclear explosions during texting in the southwest in the 40s and 50s.
But even scientists know that occasionally they have to change their measurements to be honest. And all modern C-14 tests now take into consideration the know variance.
June 21st, 2012 at 5:47 pm
Patrick,
Fascinating discussion. Scientific models of reality are just that, models. Of course, dates are just a part of that modeling process, which, as you’ve clearly pointed out, is driven by preconceptions or presuppositions. (Facts which do not conform to the theory must be disposed of!) It is amazing to me how the model becomes the reality (or at least is presented as such.) How close does this match interpretation of Scripture? (Do we have a Newtonian view of Scripture or a Einsteinian – made up word – Relativistic view?)
Have you discussed the philosophical underpinnings of science in detail before elsewhere (for general readers: philosophy is the basis for science)? Since your touching on it now, I’m curious if you’ve already covered it and I missed it in a previous blog.
Again, very much enjoying these!
David
June 22nd, 2012 at 2:38 am
I’ve done that in bits and pieces over the years, but never in a step by step process. I try to avoid series like this one because it means other questions pile up and go unanswered. It’s a judgement call and I am not at all certain I make the right one very often.
June 21st, 2012 at 8:07 pm
Patrick, do you know geologists who question the dates? What do they say? Also, how old is the magma that volcanic rock is formed from? Seems almost like a chicken/egg question.
June 22nd, 2012 at 2:36 am
Danny, there are quite a few geologists who believe in Intelligent Design or even six day creation. Andrew Snelling is a PhD geologist and a creationist. You can start following him around here: http://www.answersingenesis.org/home/area/bios/a_snelling.asp
Don Daae is a geologist and a believer in Intelligent Design. Start here: http://www.gira.ca/cmsms/index.php?page=intelligent-design
And the way geology works, when the rock is melted and then reformed, it is born anew right then. It resets.
June 22nd, 2012 at 9:26 pm
Thanks, Patrick. I figured it was something like that, but didn’t know. I can remember John Clayton talking about Geology. It was his field. He said if it helped him find oil, that was good enough, or words to that effect.
June 22nd, 2012 at 10:48 pm
Oh, Patrick.. I hate that I, perhaps for the first time, have to take (a little) issue with one of your wonderful blog entries. But I do so in the interest of us all learning something! I do not disagree that various forms of radiometric dating have problems and/or limitations. That does not, however, make them completely useless tools. It’s important to use the right tool for the right job. I have read that the C14 method was used to date the shell of a LIVING mollusk to be several thousand years old. It’s tempting for some Christians to point and laugh at the scientists for their ‘obvious’ failure. Not going into the technical details of why… but the C14 method is an entirely inappropriate test for certain circumstances… that being one of them. It’s not important THAT the test failed. It’s important WHY. If we filter out enough of ‘why’…. then we begin to have a reliable measuring tool for the passage of time in the appropriate circumstances. As we move on we humans are going to get better and better at determining the age of certain things… and it will be harder and harder to -credibly- refute the results.
“The heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of his hands.” I take from this (among other things) that the universe around us works exactly as God designed it. If God is truthful, the physical world doesn’t lie to us. We are just continually evolving in our understanding of it. Here’s my point: The -planet- Earth on which we reside is much more than 6 or 8000 some-odd years old. My personal favorite proof of a very old earth is the 1972 discovery of -naturally occurring- uranium fission reactors underground in Gabon, Africa. How cool is that!? Thing is… Presently, uranium is mostly (stable, useless) U238 and only always exactly 0.720% fissionable U235. It has to be refined to a minimum of about 3% to carry on a nuclear chain reaction. U235 decays at a predictable rate… therefore… run back the clock to the point at which you have at minimum 3% of the stuff… and you end up at (drum-roll)… at least 1.7 Billion years.
Anyway… Sorry, Patrick. May not have been where you were going, but I’ve frequently heard young Earth proponents unfairly throw various dating methods under the bus. Besides… scientists saying the Earth is REALLY old -shouldn’t- threaten our faith. In my opinion.
June 25th, 2012 at 9:44 pm
One thing to consider, perhaps, is that the earth is 6 or 8000 years old FROM creation, but that doesn’t mean that it can’t still be much older than that.
The Mature Creation or Apparent Age Theory suggests that fully-grown animals were miraculously formed on land and in the air, complete with symbiotic relationships. The
seas instantly swarmed with creatures, great and small, that had never been born or developed from infancy. Our first parents, Adam and Eve, were adults from their first breaths. The sun’s nuclear fusion furnace began on Day 4, at full power and in thermodynamic equilibrium. To an observer, the completed creation on Day 6 was fully functioning in a steady state.
Basically, everything had an age to it when God first created it. Just something to think about.
June 25th, 2012 at 3:12 pm
It seems that resorting to science to either prove or disprove the existence of God, or that God is the Creator, must presuppose that God is bound by the laws of physics. Or am I missing something?
June 25th, 2012 at 11:57 pm
Patrick,
I’m curious as to why my comment has not been approved and is still awaiting moderation. Please let me know if you think my comment violated any of your rules and I will modify it accordingly.
my email: jay8101113@yahoo.com
-Jay
June 26th, 2012 at 12:04 am
Nevermind, apparently my links were the reason it was flagged for moderation. I replaced all of the dots with [dot] and that allowed the comment to be posted.
June 26th, 2012 at 12:02 am
Patrick, you complain that scientists are exhibiting a “dishonest handling of evidence” and I have to say, what you’ve been doing in these latest blogs, especially this one, is extremely dishonest. I’ll assume however that you’ve just taken this information from other creationist blogs and sources and aren’t aware that every point you’ve brought up here is not at all what scientists are saying.
The only people, as far as I’ve seen from a Google search, who say that scientists claim that Sunset Crater erupted 230,000 years ago are creationists. Google “‘sunset crater’, 230,000 years ago” and every source you’ll find that claims that scientists are saying this will be creationist websites.
So what does science actually say? According to the National Park Service, Sunset Crater erupted around 1100 AD, about 900 years ago and they’ve been saying this since at least 1979. (Pilles, Peter J. Jr. 1979, Sunset Crater and the Sinagua: A New Interpretation.) In fact, the nps[dot]gov website says, “For many years, we believed that it erupted in 1064 and continued for 200 years – a very long time for a cinder cone volcano. More recent evidence indicates that the eruption began sometime between 1040 and 1100 and lasted, more typically, only a few months or years.” No mention of anything close to 230,000 years ago. (nps[dot]gov/sucr/faqs[dot]htm)
I wasn’t able to find any source that claims that the age of Niagara Falls is anywhere near 35,000 years old or that that age “isn’t old enough for the evolutionary processes (and geologic time) required by Darwin’s theory”. Scientists claim that Niagara Falls was formed about 12,500 years ago and actually stopped flowing about 10,500 years ago as the result of geological processes related to glacier activity from the end of the ice age. About 5,500 years ago the falls resumed their activity and have been flowing ever since. Once again, modern science is not making the claim you say they are.
Concerning Mount Rangitoto, once again, I can’t find any source that claims that Mount Rangitoto last erupted 485,000 years ago. Mount Rangitoto, according to every legitmiate source I can find last erupted about 600 years ago (gsnz[dot]org[dot]nz/pdf/MP129B_FT3[dot]pdf).
Concerning the Grand Canyon volcanoes, the Smithsonian says that the last volcanic eruption was around 1100 AD, around the same time as the Sunset Crater eruption. Once again, I can’t find any source that claims that the last eruption here was anywhere near 117 million years ago. (volcano[dot]si[dot]edu/world/volcano[dot]cfm?vnum=1209-01-)
Concering Kilauea, I can’t find any source that claims that it has rocks that are 12 to 21 million years old. Kilauea is a young volcano and scientists are very aware of this. The usgs[dot]gov website article, dates 2007, is entitled, “Oldest radiometric ages from Kilauea about 275,000 years” and since it’s an active volcano the rocks created from its lava flows will be very young. (hvo[dot]wr[dot]usgs[dot]gov/volcanowatch/archive/2007/07_08_23[dot]html)
All of these arguments that you’ve brought up are old, outdated talking points that creationists have been using for a very long time based upon who knows what but literally none of it is based upon modern science.
I’ve been reading these latest blogs and I really don’t know what kind of point you’re trying to make? Are you trying to say that since you believe that scientists are using flawed methods to date the earth that the earth must be only a few thousand years old? Surely you’re not going to try to make that argument, are you?
June 26th, 2012 at 1:20 am
We all know, if anyone’s been paying attention, that 1.) We humans are fallible. 2.) The first sin was a lie and it’s still a favorite!) 3.)As Dr.Gregory House says: everybody lies! 4.) God is not man that he should lie; it’s impossible(He 6:18)! As it says in Romans, “let God be true and every man a liar…” Therefore let’s trust God and lean not on our own understanding(hmmm, sounds faintly Biblical no?!). We are all like Joe Walsh searching for clues at the scene of the crime, life’s been good to us so far! And thank God for that! But sometimes we(Scientists, Preachers and all other sorts of professionals)get tripped up by our own zeal+good intentions with a dollop of agenda and POOF! A brand new highway to hermenutic hell, scientific sheol, philosophical purgatory and literary limbo. The one Rock we need and it needs no dating(is the one that the angel moved in Mark 16:4!) The rock which was exceedingly great was moved by angels so that humans could look in to see that The Rock which exceeds even the greatest could not be contained by a stone tomb; BAM! Can we please just all get along? Well we can if we all just love one another as Jesus loved us! And if you don’t believe that Jesus is God, or that what He said was accurately recorded in Scripture, or that Scripture is even trustworthy; well then, tell me what you believe, why you believe it and who you are trusting and we’ll dialogue. It should be verrry interesting. Peace out Peeps.
June 26th, 2012 at 2:12 am
I wonder what Adams apparent age would have been if he had been autopsied 20 minutes after he drew his first breath …
June 26th, 2012 at 11:03 pm
Patrick your work is very much appreciated. Don’t let people discourage you! Come on what do you think is going to happen if you write about this cool stuff? While I know that the ideal situation would be for bloggers to disagree in love, the reality is that this is unlikely to happen at times. However, the majority reads your blog because you are an extremely gifted and intelligent person.
God Bless
July 3rd, 2012 at 5:17 pm
Patrick,
After readying your May blog concerning atheists lack of footnotes, I would like to see you include footnote references to the mistakes made in dating recent volcanoes. It would be nice to go look at that research and how they explain the discrepancies, other than the excess Argon argument for the Sunset Crater. Thanks!