1. Decay Rate

One of the many dogmatic beliefs taught by the evolutionists is “the decay rates of radioisotopes is constant.” This is plainly an assumption, but it has been elevated to nearly the status of a “law of science” by the supporters of the Evolution Model. It is just not true.

Many things have been shown to speed up the decay rates of radioactive unstable elements. The most extreme is high-energy heating, such as in the plasma state. At this temperature, unstable atoms will decay at even trillions of times their usual rate. Evolutionists believe that the whole universe was once in the plasma state. Our sun is currently in the plasma state – so is every bolt of lightning in our atmosphere.

Other effects have been noted in other changing conditions such as underground temperature, pressure, and magnetic field. In 2010, it was discovered that every 38 days in the solar cycle, Cesium atoms here on Earth decay faster – the effect is even greater during times solar flare activity. The evolutionists’ mantra of “constant decay rates” has now been proven – by science – to be nothing but an urban myth. It is not true. It cannot be offered in evidence for an Earth older than 6000 years.

2. Original Amount of Radioisotope

In radiometric dating techniques, it is necessary to know how much of the unstable element was in the rock sample to begin with. If testing reveals very little of the isotope present, this does not necessarily mean that the rock is very old. It could mean that there was not much of the isotope in the rock at the start. So, how can we be sure? – we can’t. Many assumption-methods have been devised by the evolutionists, to try to get an estimate on how much was there at the start. But all of these methods are based upon a guess of one sort or another.

What is being done here is a simple subtraction problem – “A minus B equals C.” Simple as it is, it still just cannot be done, unless you know for sure what “A” is.

3. Original Amount of Decay Product

The problem here is similar to the problem of original amount of the unstable “parent” isotope. Radiometric tests are often run on the basis how much of the decay product is found in the sample. Unstable radioactive elements all eventually change into stable non-radioactive things, like stable Lead metal, or stable Argon gas, etc …

If there is a high content of a known decay product in a rock sample, then evolutionist researchers are likely to assume that much of the stable element or that the entire amount of it actually did come from the unstable atom decaying, and not from just being there in the rock to begin with. It is clear than many rocks do already contain elements that are decay products, without having to get them from the decay of unstable elements within the rock.

4. Closed System Assumption

One of the most highly unlikely assumptions upon which all radiometric dating methods depend, is the “closed-system” assumption. What this belief requires, is that the rock sample has remained undisturbed by anything that could have affected its decay rate or parent isotope amount or daughter isotope amount – for billions of years. This is unlikely. As a matter of fact, it would be a sure bet that something did disturb the sample, if it sat there in the rock layers, waiting three billion years to be dug up by a modern-day researcher.

Earthquakes nearby, magma chambers getting too close, ground water leaking into the layer or out of the layer, chemical changes, dissolving of isotopes, or crystallization of incoming isotopes – are all examples of things that could easily happen to a rock sample underground, in only a matter of centuries, not necessarily millennia nor eons of time. Scientific measurements are not allowed to be based upon the hopes of being extremely lucky. Radiometric dates are therefore based upon extreme wishful thinking – something very far from the objectivity of true science.

5. Helium Diffusion

Most radioactive elements are alpha-emitters. This means that they release alpha particles, in the form of alpha radiation, as they go through the decay sequence and become the product element (like Uranium turning into Lead, for example). An alpha particle is made of two neutrons and two protons stuck together. This is the same thing as the nucleus of an atom of Helium gas. Many radioactive elements release Helium into the rocks where they are found.

Helium can soak through solid rock, but not very quickly. If the earth is 4.6 billion years old however, there would have been plenty of time for most of the helium from such a long history of radioactive decay to escape from the granite rock formations where alpha-emitting Uranium is found. If the earth is 6000 years old, there would not have been enough time for all that Helium to get out. How much Helium is still in the rocks? A lot – enough to set the age of the earth at only 5680 years. This is much closer to the Biblical time frame of 6000 years, than to evolutionists’ 4.6 billion.

6. Uranium-Lead

The specific assumption made here is that the original amount of Lead in the zircon crystal alongside the Uranium was the same as in the rock outside the crystal. Now, this is not a bad assumption. But there are others that may be made that are just as good. The truth is, Lead is chemically very similar to Uranium, being another of the heavy metals. Perhaps much of the Lead in the zircon was sequestered there in the same way that all of the Uranium was. Or perhaps there was no Lead at all in the zircon to begin with. Going on the basis of either of these assumptions, would give drastically different age calculations for the granitic rocks that contain the zircons. An assumption is still and assumption, and so should not be described to the public and to students as being a fact

7. Potassium-Argon

The problem here is similar to the problem with the Uranium-Lead dating method. How much Argon was in the rock to begin with? Radioactive Potassium-40 is found naturally in fresh lava and volcanic ash. It automatically decays into Argon-40. Large amounts of Argon found in ancient volcanic rock, will cause the evolutionist to assign a large age to that rock. But it has been well-documented that fresh lava and volcanic ash can already contain significant amounts of stable Argon, right when it exits the volcanic source. Clearly then, Argon content is no reliable way to determine the age of sample. The famous “Lucy” fossil, and many other so-called human “missing link” fossils have been dated by the Potassium-Argon method.

8. Carbon-14

There are many problems with the famous Carbon-14 method. The first thing to note is – no evolutionist uses Carbon dating for their samples anyway. Even if it did work the way they think it does, it would only be good for samples up to 110,000 years old – a mere blink of an eye to the evolution-story of life on our earth.

But Carbon-14 has many other problems, too. Since it is found in the Carbon Dioxide in our atmosphere, if the concentration of this gas has ever been different, it would throw off the Carbon dates. Ex Vice-president Al Gore won an Oscar for his docu-eco-drama “An Inconvenient Truth,” in which he proves to the world that Carbon Dioxide concentrations are changed every time a volcano erupts, and were drastically affected by the Ice Age. The same problem would be true if earth’s atmospheric pressure had ever been on the average, different than it is today.

One of the biggest problems is the equilibrium question. Atmospheric scientists agree, it would take between 30,000 and 90,000 years for Carbon-14 to reach equilibrium in our atmosphere. If the earth is only 6000 years old, as the Bible says, then there has only been time enough for a fraction of the equilibrium concentration to become established in the air which we breathe. If this is true, then Carbon-14 levels are still in the process of rising from the beginning of the earth’s history. This means that old bones have only small amounts of Carbon-14 because they are from an earlier time where the whole atmosphere had much less of the isotope than it does today, not because they are as old as the evolutionist would think they are. Being a matter of numbers, a calculated adjustment can be made to all Carbon dates. When this is done, the dates line up far better with the Biblical time scales than with the evolutionary ones.

Creation scientists have tested fossils, coal, and diamonds for traces of Carbon-14. It has been found in all of these, though evolutionary assumptions would say there should be none in any of them. Additionally, the amount of Carbon-14 found in all fossils in all rock layers, has been the same. This means that all of the fossilized life forms in world, must have died at the same time. The obvious answer is the Great Flood of Noah, found in the Book of Genesis, which the Bible sets at about 4350 years ago.

9. Rubidium-Strontium

The presence of additional isotopes of Strontium-86 and Strontium-87 can artificially inflate the radiometric date assigned to a rock sample, by as much as 70 million to even 3 billion years extra. This is in addition to the error inherent in the main assumptions of all radiometric dating methods from the starting point.

10. Method Disagreement

Usually only one of the radioisotope methods is used on a sample, since most of these tests are expensive and time-consuming to perform. But when more than one method is used on a single sample, the methods can often disagree, by large amounts of time. The question is which method to trust, in these cases – if any of them. The Bright Angel Shale formation of the Grand Canyon, is one of the many examples of this disagreement of methods.

The most curious thing is that when the methods do disagree, they do so in a consistent pattern of ratios between the standard isotope methods that are used. This is consistent with the creationist claim that the decay rates have all been different at some time in the past. For, if the Nuclear Force Factor had indeed been altered as a part of God’s judgment at the Fall of Man in Eden and again as a part of His second judgment on Man at the time of Noah’s Flood – this exact phenomenon would be observed among the radioactive isotopes found in the earth’s crust. It is not proof of the creationist hypothesis. But it is powerful evidence that all of the evolutionist assumptions about the decay rates and reliability of their current methods of radiometric dating – are actually incorrect. The problem is, most “science” documentaries, textbooks, and science teachers are telling the public that these methods have been long ago perfected and that they have been proven safely reliable as “clocks” for the earth’s unwritten times of pre-history.