Tuesday, 12 March 2019 00:00

How Did the Earth Get So Old So Fast? – Part 2

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In the previous President’s Corner, we were left with somewhat of a cliffhanger: how is one to interpret the vast gulf of time between the 10,000 year age of the oceans obtained from uranium salts, and the 4,500,000,000 year age of the earth surmised through radiometric dating? Obviously both numbers cannot be correct. Even taking into account the secular assumption that the oceans could be younger than the rocks1, this nearly 6 orders-of-magnitude discrepancy remains inexplicable.

 

Now, scientific procedures deal with how data are collected, at what levels of accuracy, and how data are converted to a result, i.e., elapsed time since inception. However, an entire volume could be written comparing uranium salts with radiometric dating, and no procedural disparities would be uncovered even remotely accounting for their factor of 450,000 inconsistency. And it appears most scientists operate at this level, simply applying their training to procedures that have already been devised.

Therefore to explain the inconsistency we must look deeper, this time at the assumptions. An assumption is a reasonable guess about a condition of the experiment, which cannot be obtained directly. For example, in a geophysical model we might assume a 2.67 g/cc density for a buried rock unit, because the unit is thought to be granitic, and granite samples tend to have this same density. Similarly, essentially all geochronographic methods, including uranium salts and radiometric dating, require three major assumptions (which we will discuss in the future).
 

Yet a close examination of both methods will reveal that there is good reasoning, even solid logic, used to ascertain values required by the respective sets of assumptions. And, a few scientists deal regularly with these assumptions, to improve them. But even in this endeavor they will ignore the ridiculous time disparity evidenced in the inconsistency between radiometric dating and the uranium salts age.
 

So the enigma remains inexplicable until we delve into the underlying philosophy. And having navigated down through a hierarchy of solidly scientific processes, we now reach a rotten foundation to which little thought is ever given.
 

This rotten foundation is called the “principle of uniformity”, or uniformitarianism. It is described as “The present is the key to the past”, meaning that rates and processes observable now are similar at any time in the past. Although it is called a principle and sounds scientific, it is actually presumption and human philosophy2. It conveniently rules out The Deluge, because this event was massively uncharacteristic of rates and processes observable today! Therefore, seeing that procedures and assumptions cannot be at fault, there is little option but to conclude that the principle of uniformity is grossly in error, and is therefore responsible for the inconsistency we have observed3.
 

It cannot be emphasized too greatly that uniformitarianism is the primary philosophical underpinning of so-called modern geology. Without it, even Darwinian evolution would have little deceptive power. Finally, uniformitarianism was prophesied in the very Bible it seeks to discredit! Peter speaks of the principle of uniformity by writing, “They will say, ' … everything goes on as it has since the beginning of creation.'” - II Peter 3:4b (NIV). Moreover, this passage is describing men who will deny the occurrence of the great flood, which is precisely what Charles Lyell set out to do in his writings of the 19th century; and Charles Darwin praised him for it.
 

Therefore we conclude that the earth got so old so fast because the uniformitarian presumption was easily concealed in scientific investigations. This philosophy provided an appearance of validity to a concept called prehistory, which falsely alleges the occurrence of events antedating the creation account given in Genesis, and thereby discredited the Biblical testimony – deceiving huge numbers of people. Finally, when radiometric dating methods were found to provide an appearance of extreme antiquity, increasingly older ages began being published (in spite of ubiquitous geologic indicators to the contrary), while the general population provided little objection.

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1Both earth and moon rocks figure into secular age estimations of the earth.

2In reality, ubiquitous evidences of catastrophic geological events (primarily apparent in the aftermath of the great flood) are contrary to uniformitarian thinking; and apologists for modern geology are now admitting some of what has long been obvious to creationary scientists: that much of the geologic record has been driven by catastrophism. These admissions were probably catalyzed by the work of such men as Henry Morris and John Witcomb (The Genesis Flood), Steve Austin (research on Mount Saint Helens), and Eugene Shoemaker (uncovered evidence of the Lake Bonneville flood). Nevertheless, although this mountain of contradictory evidence should have compelled a full-blown paradigm shift, its primary effect has been merely to elicit lip service; the momentum of radiometric dating remains undaunted!

3The procedures and assumptions used in secular dating methods to obtain an age, are the logical outworking of the principle of uniformity; much the same as the deductive process followed in the scientific method to obtain a scientific prediction, is the logical outworking of an hypothesis. A contradiction in ages then shows the principle of uniformity to be in error; much the same as the failure of a scientific prediction to be verifiable in observation shows its hypothesis to be incorrect.

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Rob Bracken

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