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0:02
("Digging For Truth" theme music)
0:26
Hi, welcome to Digging For Truth. I'm your co-host Henry Smith. The Bible, and particularly the book of Genesis, presents earth history in the following manner. A creation, thousands of years ago, a cosmic and universal fall due to Adam's sin, and a global cataclysmic flood. Now I know some of you might be saying already, wait a minute. Science has proven that the world is billions of years old. Are you guys nuts or practicing blind faith, or just some wild-eyed fundamentalists?
0:57
Well I hope you don't turn the channel and take some time to stay with us today to hear Dr. Andrew Snelling from Answers In Genesis talk about the scientific methods that are used to determine the age of the earth and how they don't work with the Bible and the book of Genesis. Dr. Snelling, welcome to Digging For Truth. Good to see you again. Nice to be with you again, yes. Great to be with you. Yes, we had you on a couple years ago to talk about the flood.
1:23
We talked about the geology of the flood, the worldwide scope of that, and we're glad to have you back on the program. We appreciate you so much. Now, we're gonna jump right in because we want to talk today about, in my introduction, you know, I talked about the world being thousands of years old, which is a very strange thing for a lot of people to hear. One of the justifications for the long age is what we call radiometric dating. Give the audience a introduction
1:53
and tutorial to this scientific method. Yep, well first of all, most people don't know that the age of the earth was not determined on rocks on the earth. It was actually determined from meteorites. So that's the first problem. But radiometric dating is the method that geologists use to date rocks. It's a big long term but basically what happens is you've got atoms in rocks that are unstable. And so they spit out particles, subatomic particles so that they can become smaller and stable.
2:28
And that's called radioactive decay. And it's supposed to happen at a measurable rate today. And it's inferred that that's the rate that it's been happening all the time. So it's a process in rocks. And there are three crucial assumptions that every geologist makes.
2:46
They don't recognize these assumptions because they think the method's, you know. You send a rock to a lab and they chemically analyze it very carefully. And those lab results are reproducible, they're excellent. But you have to interpret. It's a chemical analysis you have to interpret. You've got the parent atoms. That's the unstable atoms. And you've got the daughter atoms. Because the unstable atom
3:13
decays into a stable daughter atom. And so you measure the number of parent and daughter atoms in a rock, chemically analyze it, and then you have to interpret it. What does this mean? Well first of all, you have to know the rate of decay. Well that's fair enough. We can measure it today. But the question is, has it been constant all the way back through the past?
3:40
And the answer is, well, we don't know. Were the geologists there four and a half billion years ago to check the decay rate of uranium? 'Cause that's one of the elements that most people have heard of. Uranium decays to lead. Were they back there millions of years ago to check how this occurred, you know, how it occurs and the rate? No they weren't. So how can they be sure. They can't be sure.
4:04
Henry, one of the methods I like,
4:07
pictures I like to give people is an analogy. Everyone's familiar with an egg timer or an hour glass. You know, you've got two glass bowls with sand grains in the top glass bowl. And you put all the sand grains up there at the beginning and you watch them fall. And over an hour, all the sand grains fall to the bottom. That's an old clock. And that's a very good analogy because you have to make sure that the rate of falling of those sand grains has always been constant.
4:40
And of course we can check that today with an independent chronometer like a watch,
4:46
or electronic timer and that's fine. That works today. But what about in the past? Now of course with this hourglass clock, for want of the better term, we start with all the sand grains at the top glass bowl.
5:04
Well, that's another assumption the geologists make. They have to assume, like we put all the sand grains at the top and there's none at the bottom. Were the geologists there back millions of years ago when the rock formed to be sure that there are only unstable parent atoms to begin with in the top glass bowl
5:28
and no daughter atoms to begin with. What if there were daughter atoms as well as parent atoms? You know, I like to use the analogy of someone coming into a room and seeing an hourglass clock and they see half the sand grains have fallen to the bottom, there's half still at the top. And so they assume the process started 30 minutes ago because half of one hour is 30 minutes. But how do they know that someone left the room a minute ago
6:00
had already started shakin' all the sand grains up and had some already at the top. They don't know. And so that's the problem. If God created the earth,
6:11
there would have been an initial starting composition, just like we read that he created trees already bearing fruit because three days later Adam and Eve would need food to eat. And so why wouldn't he put all these varieties of atoms in the rocks to begin with? And so that's a problem, the starting conditions. The other problem is that,
6:36
well I like to use the analogy, you know. You're out of the room, you set your hourglass clock going, you're out of the room, and your mischievous 10 year old came in and lifted up the lid and put more sand grains in. He contaminated the system. You come in and you see all these sand grains still at the top and very few at the bottom. You think, oh it hasn't been going on for very long. But little do you know it's been contaminated. So here the rocks have been sitting out
7:07
at the earth's surface for supposedly millions of years. Were the geologists there for millions of years to check that there was no contamination? Now for example, uranium is very soluble in water. And so uranium can be leached from rocks. It can be added to rocks. I mean, that's how ore deposits are formed by water concentrating these elements. So the geologists weren't there for millions of years to check that there's been no contamination. And so immediately we see
7:38
that all these three assumptions, a constant decay rate, the starting conditions, and no contamination, they're all assumptions 'cause they're not provable.
7:51
And in fact, they're not even reasonable. Because everyday experience we know that rates can change.
7:59
We know that the starting conditions could be different to what we're assuming. And we certainly know that contamination occurs. And the interesting thing is, Henry, that in their own scientific literature, there are a lot of examples of these problems that are inherent, that show that there are problems with these assumptions.
8:23
You did a great job with that tutorial. Sorry to cut you off. We're comin' up on a break here. That was a great tutorial. What we're gonna do is pick that up a little bit, do a quick rerun of that in the next segment, and then start talking about actual science that shows that these methods just don't work. And with that word, friends, we'll be right back after this message. NARRATOR: In a culture of intense Bible-denying skepticism, Associates for Biblical Research exists
8:49
to strengthen followers of Jesus by affirming the authority of the Bible. Our archeological field work and original research form a strong foundation in upholding the reliability of the scriptures, for students or anyone asking if they can really trust the Bible. Please visit our website and partner with us by joining our prayer team or financially supporting this ministry. And thank you for standing with us.
9:30
Hi, welcome back to Digging For Truth. I'm your co-host Henry Smith. I'm here with Dr. Andrew Snelling, geologist. We're talking about radiometric dating methods and the problems with them. Now Dr. Snelling, you were talking in the first segment just about the basic principles involved, the assumptions, like you know, uranium to lead dating method for example. And there's many others. Let's reiterate those assumptions again for the audience just to solidify that in their mind please.
9:56
A parent atom like potassium decays to a daughter atom like argon. And we have to assume there's been a constant rate of decay in the past as measured today. We have to assume we know the starting conditions. So for example, there was only potassium in the rock to begin with and no argon. And we have to assume that there's been no contamination through all the millions of years. And we said that these assumptions are not provable because there were no geologists back there millions of years ago
10:26
to check that the decay rate's been constant, there was the starting conditions, and thirdly, no contamination.
10:34
And so these assumptions are not even reasonable based on real world examples that we can talk about. Well let's do that. Let's talk about those real world examples. You know, you used the example of a watch, which I don't have on. But if I did, you know, you point to it as a sort of baseline to test the method. An objective outside standard. Yeah, that's good, exactly right. So our friend, Mount St. Helens. Tell us about lava flow from there and some of the results of dating rock from there
11:08
from something we know when the rock was formed. Well Henry, you know, we just passed the 40th anniversary, May 1980, when Mount St. Helens blew its top. A third of the mountain blew off. And in subsequent years, inside the crater, more lava oozed out and formed new lava domes. And there were further eruptions. But in the last few years as it quieted down, there was lava flow, after lava flow to build up more than a thousand foot high new dome inside the crater.
11:43
And geologists watched this happen. And one of the last of these flows, October 1986, we knew exactly where it was. And so a colleague of mine went up into the crater and took a sample in 1994 of the lava flow
12:03
that erupted in 1986. And then he sent it to the lab in 1996. So by that time, that rock was only 10 years old based on observation, watching it flow, and crystallize and cool. And he also separated the different minerals in the rock and submitted them as well for potassium to argon dating.
12:32
And the results came back up to 2.8 million years for a rock that we observed was only 10 years old. And so that illustrates the problem. Now the problem here is well-known, that argon is a gas. And when a volcano erupts, argon is in the gases that erupts as well. Most of it is water in the form of steam. But what happened is, and this is well-known in the literature,
13:01
as the lava cooled and crystallized, some of that argon gas was trapped in the lava and basically contaminated, or was inherited by the lava. And if you didn't know that, and you just assumed there was no argon to begin with, you get an age of 2.8 million years old.
13:22
But it's because of this contamination or inheritance of argon externally that didn't come from potassium decay to argon as a result of radioactive decay.
13:35
And so this is well-known in the scientific literature. In fact, there are numerous examples of lava flows. Not only in Mount St. Helens but in Sicily,
13:49
in other parts of the world, Hawaii, where we've observed historically the eruptions
13:58
and then the rocks have been dated using potassium argon and given erroneous ages. Sometimes millions and millions of years older than the true age of the rock. And the secular scientific community knows that it's because the argon was inherited and added to the rock during the process. But this begs the question.
14:23
If we know the age of the rock and we get it wrong, if we know the age of the rock and we know there's contamination, how do we know that the ancient rocks that they say are hundreds of millions of years old, based on the same dating method, haven't also got a lot of argon in them that was inherited when they were formed? And the answer is we don't know. It's just an assumption. Yeah, so it seems to be kind of a circular argument. Now two things that I hear you saying, Andrew.
14:51
One is you and your colleagues have done your own research.
14:56
Two is that you've combed the secular literature. So, in a way, you can't be accused of fudging the data, or skewing the data or something like that. The secular scientists know about these results. Yes, they've been in the literature since the 1960s and well documented and it's recognized. I mean, but it's not just with potassium and argon.
15:23
Recent lava flows on islands in the various oceans have been dated using uranium lead and they also give ages of hundreds of millions of years old for recent lava flow. So it's not just confined to potassium decaying to argon. It's also uranium lead dating gives you these wrong dates for observed lava flows.
15:48
Now another example which startled the scientific community is that they looked at diamonds from what is now called the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Back then it was called Zaire. And they used potassium argon dating on those and they got results of six billion years. Well I immediately knew that was wrong because the earth was only supposed to be four and a half billion years old. So how could the diamonds be older than the earth itself? And so they examined the situation more closely
16:20
and they discovered there were fluids with gases inside little bubbles inside the diamonds that had argon in them that was inherited as contamination in these diamonds. And so at once again they showed that this is a problem even in ancient materials. And so if it's a problem when we can actually find the source of the problem, then can we make the same, can we say that the ancient lava flows are equally as old as they claim? Or could they also have come from contamination?
16:58
As I said before, when God made the earth, he made a fully functioning, operating universe that was only days old when Adam walked in the Garden of Eden. And yet there were trees already bearing fruit. So there would have been rocks already with all these elements in them. And they would have been stable to begin with. The appearance of age. Well, I don't like that term. I prefer to say a mature creation, a fully operational, mature. Mature. Which we impose an age on it.
17:30
We're the ones that use current experience to impose an age on something. I mean, if we went into the Garden of Eden 30 minutes after Adam was formed, he'd look like a 25 year old man. But that's by our reckoning today. By God's reckoning, he was only three days old. Very good, all right hold that thought Dr. Snelling. We'll be right back after this quick break.
17:54
NARRATOR: Bible and Spade is a non-technical quarterly publication published by the Associates for Biblical Research. Written from a scholarly and conservative viewpoint, Bible and Spade supports the inerrancy of the biblical record and is a must-read for both the serious Bible student and anyone asking if they can really trust the Bible. Archeological evidence, properly interpreted, upholding the history of the Bible. Subscribe today at biblearcheology.org.
18:39
Hi, welcome back to Digging For Truth. I'm your co-host Henry Smith. I'm here with Dr. Andrew Snelling. We're talking about the problems with dating methods that yield dates that say that the world is millions or billions of years old. Now Dr. Snelling, let's pick it up here with an interesting result from a Himalayan granite. Why don't you tell the audience about that one? Yes, there's multiple examples from the Himalayas like this. But one example in the scientific literature,
19:07
in their own conventional scientific literature, this Himalayan granite's supposed to be 20 million years old, 20 million years old, based on other dating methods. And yet they took mineral grains from within these granites. You'd expect the grains to be the same age as the rock itself. And one mineral grain gave an age, with uranium lead dating, of up to 1,483 million years for a 20 million year old granite rock. And other grains gave an age, using the same uranium lead dating method,
19:42
of minus 97 million years. In other words, the grains hadn't formed yet. You know, it was still gonna come. They still gotta form in 97 million years to come. (Henry laughing) So I mean, it shows you the problems because of these flawed assumptions. Yeah yeah. I wish we could apply that dating method to my age too. That would be nice. Oh, I'd love that, you know. I'm still 21, 21 every year. That'd be lovely. For 97 million years, that would be good. I wish I sure felt that way.
20:15
You know, you mentioned earlier that we do our own research. We did, we looked at four different rock units in the Grand Canyon and we submitted those rock units for the four major methods of dating. Most geologists only use one on each rock. And we discovered systematic differences in the ages by hundreds of millions of years. The one rock layer by four different methods would give you ages that are totally different from one another. And it was systematic, indicating a systematic process
20:44
has caused these problems in the datings of the rocks. So you know, and we documented that. Well documented that. In your research. We're gonna put up information on the screen for folks about that. Now let's shift to research you've also done on a volcano in New Zealand. I'm gonna let you pronounce it. Mount Ngauruhoe, it's just to the north of Mount Ruapehu, which is still active, just south of
21:15
the geothermal areas. Mount Ngauruhoe is currently dormant. It erupted 1949, 1975, 1954.
21:28
In fact the dates were observed and the rocks were observed and so, you can see the different lava flows by the amount of vegetation on them because of the different years in which they were formed. And they're well mapped and everything. So I went and sampled flows from. We knew the month, we knew the day, and the month and the year for these flows. And I submitted them for potassium argon dating. And again, results came in at up to
21:56
3.5 million years for lava flows that were less than 50 years old. But I also went on and submitted them for rubidium-strontium dating. Now rubidium decays to strontium. It's another one of the major methods. Most people haven't heard of rubidium but it's an important element.
22:16
I took multiple samples and did the calculations on them. Multiple samples from an age is regarded as much more reliable. The results came in at 133 million years for samples that were less than 50 years old. And again, it's because there was contamination. We know that the type of rock that it is, as the lava came up through the earth's crust, it got contaminated from bits of the rocks around it melting and being added to it. And so we know, it's well documented in the literature,
22:53
that these assumptions not only can't be proven. They're unreasonable from everyday experience. They're just-- It's, it's. Yeah sorry. No, no, that's all right. Go ahead, continue with your thought please. I was just gonna say we just want to remind people of what these assumptions are. That first of all, the rate of decay has to be constant. Sure we can measure it today. But we weren't there millions of years ago to check that it was the same decay rate back then.
23:20
We don't know the starting conditions because the rocks may have had all these elements in them to begin with. Both the parent and the daughter. Whereas they assume that there was only parent there to begin with and no daughter. And then over time the parents decayed to daughter. And of course that there's been no contamination in the millions of years supposedly since the rocks formed.
23:42
So you have those assumptions. We're questioning those assumptions. And it seems to me that if you have rocks that people eye-witnessed their formation in a certain year, that's the anchor of certainty we ought to be working with. Well that's your objective test. If you check these methods today with objective standards and they don't work, you have to question whether they are working properly in the past.
24:11
Good, so we got about a minute left in this episode. We're gonna pick up and we're gonna add to this argument in our next episode. Could you give a final summation of your experience with this and why you feel that you know, Christians oughta be very leery about these claims about these methods. Well it's because the scientists who weren't there don't know everything and sometimes make mistakes. We're fallible finite humans. We're learning new things every year.
24:37
And as Christians we have to have as our anchor point that God was there. He was the creator and he's observed everything that's happened through history and he's told us in his word. So if there's a conflict between what the secular scientists who don't trust God's word are saying and what God's word's saying, we have to start with God's word. And we do that. We recognize there are assumptions that the geologists make. And these assumptions are unprovable and we have examples in the real world
25:06
where they don't work. Therefore we have to question their reliability. That's an excellent way to sum it up. It's just like with archeology. Always checking, going back to the evidence, seeing what the assumptions are, seeing what the worldview paradigm is that drives it. Dr. Snelling, thank you for being with us. Pleasure. We're looking forward to having you for part two. And friends, we hope you'll join us for our next episode of Digging For Truth where we explore the truth of the Bible
25:31
and relate it to the world of science and archeology and show and demonstrate the reliability of scripture and the gospel message in it. Thank you for joining us today for Digging For Truth.
25:44
("Digging For Truth" theme music)
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