Creationist's Blind Dates. The standard scientific estimate is that the universe is about 15 billion years old, the earth about 4. It is important to recognize from the start that there are independent procedures for obtaining each of these estimates, and that the procedures yield ranges of values that overlap.
What is a Christian to make of radioactive dating? To those who have not encountered the topic before the paper can seem very convincing. The problem is that the Bible plainly says that the world was created by God in six days.
Jul 7. Posted by Paul Braterman. Can we trust radiocarbon dating?
Students, particularly Young-Earth Creationists, may come in with misconceptions about how the age of the Earth and of various parts of the fossil record were determined. Your Account. Explore Teaching Examples Provide Feedback.
The topic of radiometric dating and other dating methods has received some of the most vicious attacks by young earth creation science theorists. However, none of the criticisms of young earth creationists have any scientific merit. Radiometric dating remains a reliable scientific method.
The age of the earth is a central issue in creation -evolution discussions, because a young earth would not permit enough time for evolution to occur, and an old earth would contradict a literal reading of the Bible account of creation. The belief in an old earth is based on conventional dates for geological periods, which are in the hundreds of millions of years range, and are obtained by isotopic dating methods. Standard isotopic radiometric dating techniques typically yield such dates on fossil-bearing strata.
Often, critics of biblical creation will comment on my Facebook posts. Some of them have intelligent questions which I am happy to answer. But many critics simply post unsubstantiated, false assertions or emotionally charged rhetoric that is devoid of any rational content.
Radiocarbon dating can easily establish that humans have been on the earth for over twenty thousand years, at least twice as long as creationists are willing to allow. Therefore it should come as no surprise that creationists at the Institute for Creation Research ICR have been trying desperately to discredit this method for years. They have their work cut out for them, however, because radiocarbon C dating is one of the most reliable of all the radiometric dating methods. This article will answer several of the most common creationist attacks on carbon dating, using the question-answer format that has proved so useful to lecturers and debaters.
You've got two decay products, lead and helium, and they're giving two different ages for the zircon. For this reason, ICR research has long focused on the science behind these dating techniques. These observations give us confidence that radiometric dating is not trustworthy.
The young-earth creationist belief that the Earth is 6, years old massively contradicts the scientific conclusion that it's actually 4. In order to maintain this belief of theirs, creationists obviously need to call into question the trustworthiness of the dating methods used by scientists to establish the age of the Earth. As you will learn here, none of the arguments or evidence used by creationists to support their position seriously calls into question the reliability of radiometric dating.