Page 126 - Advanced Genesis - Creationism - Student Textbook

Parent Daughter Half-life
Polonium-218 Lead-214 3 minutes
Thorium-234 Protactinium-234 24 days

Carbon-14 Nitrogen-14 5,730 years
Potassium-40 Argon-40 1.25 billion years
Uranium-238 Lead-206 4.47 billion years
Rubidium-87 Strontium-87 48.8 billion years

Major Problems with Dating Methods

We know that radioisotope dating does not always work because we can test it on rocks of known age.
In 1997, a team of eight research scientists known as the RATE group (Radioisotopes and the Age of The
Earth) set out to investigate the assumptions commonly made in standard radioisotope dating practices
(also referred to as single-sample radioisotope dating). Their findings were significant and directly
impact the evolutionary dates of millions of years.

A rock sample from the newly formed 1986 lava dome from Mount St. Helens was dated using the
Potassium-Argon dating. The newly formed rock gave ages for the different minerals in it of between 0.5
and 2.8 million years. These dates show that significant argon (daughter element) was present when the

rock solidified (assumption 1 is false). 140

Mount Ngauruhoe is located on the North Island of New Zealand and is one of the country’s most active
volcanoes. Eleven samples were taken from solidified lava and dated. These rocks are known to have
formed from eruptions in 1949, 1954, and 1975. The rock samples were sent to a respected commercial
laboratory (Geochron Laboratories in Cambridge, Massachusetts). The “ages” of the rocks ranged from

0.27 to 3.5 million years old. Because these rocks are known to be less than 70 years old, it is apparent
that assumption #1 is again false. When radioisotope dating fails to give accurate dates on rocks of
known age, why should we trust it for rocks of unknown age? In each case the ages of the rocks were
greatly inflated. 141

Because the youngest coal is supposed to be millions of years old, and most of it is supposed to be tens
or hundreds of millions of years old. Such old coal should be devoid of C. It isn't. No source of coal has
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been found that completely lacks C.
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Fossil wood found in “Upper Permian” rock that is supposedly 250 million years old still contained C. 142

140 S.A. Austin, Excess argon within mineral concentrates from the new dacite lava dome at Mount St Helens
volcano, Creation Ex Nihilo Technical Journal 10(3): 335–343, 1996.
141 A.A. Snelling, The cause of anomalous potassium-argon “ages” for recent andesite flows at Mt Ngauruhoe, New
Zealand, and the implications for potassium-argon “dating,” in R.E. Walsh (Ed.), Proceedings of the Fourth
International Conference on Creationism, Creation Science Fellowship, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, pp. 503–525,
1998.
142 A.A. Snelling, Stumping Old-age Dogma. Creation, 1998, 20(4):48-50.
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