Welcome to Science, Scripture, and Salvation, a radio ministry of the Institute for Creation Research. In this program, we want to encourage you in your Christian faith by showing how scientific evidence supports the Bible, particularly the Genesis account. The book of Genesis lays the foundation for all matters addressed in the rest of the Bible. The nature of God, His sovereignty in creation, man's purpose, sin, marriage, family, and why we need a Savior are all introduced and explained in Genesis. When we see that the first and most foundational book of the Bible can be trusted in all matters, including science, it builds confidence in the rest of the inspired word all the way to Revelation.
On today's show, we'll get some insights from Brian Thomas, science writer with the Institute for Creation Research. Here's Brian Thomas. This week we're talking about recent creation. It's a stand that we scientists at the Institute for Creation Research take for good scientific reasons. But certainly biblical reasons.
The Bible does teach, straightforwardly speaking, a world that's only thousands of years old and a creation that only took six days. Exodus twenty verse eleven For in six days the LORD made the heavens, the earth, the sea, and everything that's in them. And he rested on the seventh day, and that became the basis for our work week. But we run into so many Christians who feel like, I don't understand the science.
So, I better not make the scientists offended. I better not offend them by suggesting that they're wrong.
So, basically, all these scientists can't possibly be so wrong because they insist on a world and a universe that's billions of years old.
So, I'm going to have to, they say to themselves, pretend that the scripture doesn't really say what it says.
Well, that produces more problems, as we've been talking about. For example, the New Testament authors all referred to these early Genesis chapters as history.
So what do we do with these radioisotope clocks? The scientists come forward and say, Hey, these rocks must be this old because look at the data from the rocks. Secularists claim that radioisotope ages objectively and scientifically confirm millions of years. But we at the Institute have carefully examined the processes that they use and we have found the holes in it. We found different flaws at different points in their process.
Radioisotopes, let's talk about these as simply as we can, they're varieties of atoms. A variety of an atom is an isotope, but radioisotope is a variety of an atom that emits radiation and particles. And it eventually decays into a stable non-radioactive atom.
Sometimes the decay takes a long time.
Some isotopes decay very quickly.
So age estimates are based on measuring the amounts of radioactive versus stable atoms in a rock.
So really, you're not measuring an age. They measure the isotope ratios. They're measuring how much radioactive isotope of, let's say, uranium is in this rock versus how much lead, which is what uranium becomes after it's all finished decaying. And they just measure the isotope ratios. And then they have to take that measurement, which is a very accurate measurement, but then they have to crank it through a formula in order to convert that ratio into an age.
And it's in the process of plugging it into a formula where we have the introduction of. Assumptions.
So they have to make assumptions. Anyone does if you use any process to estimate an age. I mean, even when you look at somebody, your brain automatically tries to figure out how old they are. That's just how we think. And so what do you use?
You use processes like how wrinkly is their skin? A lot of wrinkles, a lot of age. Of course, that's an assumption, and there's violations to that, right? A lot of times people have habits, bad habits, that cause them to have extra wrinkly skin.
So they may look 60, but they're only 50 or 40. When I went and traveled to Asia a couple years ago, you talk to someone and you think that they're 13 years old and they say, well, I'm actually 25. It's like, they don't get wrinkly skin where I went. It's just amazing.
So these assumptions, you have to test each one carefully.
So that's what we've done here. Secularists do select the slower decaying radioisotope systems.
So that's a bias right there. They select the systems that already give them some numbers that they're willing to plug into the evolutionary bias. They use radioisotope age assignments, for example, to ancient lava flows that are found above or beneath sedimentary rocks. In order to convert the measurement of a radioactive versus a stable atom into ages, you have to assume a constant history for these crystalline rocks, these volcanic or lava flow rocks. You have to assume that the isotopes haven't been leaking out or didn't leak out extra fast when they were first deposited, or that isotopes of the radioactive parent or the dead daughter isotope didn't leak into the System or leak out of the system.
You have to assume that the decay rate's been constant. You don't know that. Those are all assumptions that you have to make.
Well, how accurate are these assumptions? Here's what I think. And all you got to do is look at these data that I'm about to show you as soon as we come back from a quick break. You're going to hear results from radioisotope age dating that directly conflict with known ages of lava rocks. It's pretty exciting.
We're going to take a short break. Stay with us. The design of the human body inspires awe and fascination, and for good reason. It's made up of so many different parts and systems, all working together for a greater purpose. Check out our book, Guide to the Human Body, to discover astonishing facts about the construction of the cell, the mechanics of hands and feet, and the incredible abilities of the brain.
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Order your copy from the Institute for Creation Research by calling 800-628-7640 or visiting icr.org. That's 800-628-7007. or visiting icr.org. Welcome back to Science, Scripture, and Salvation, a radio ministry of the Institute for Creation Research. Here's Brian Thomas.
If radioisotope dating really works, then we should see consistent results that confirm one another. You should be able to to use one technique that gives date x and another technique that gives the same date also x for the same rock. But that's not at all what we find.
So here I've got this list of radioisotope quote-unquote dates that conflict not only with other age date assignments to these rocks, but they conflict with the actual historical age, which we know from having observed the rock cool and form into a rock. If it doesn't work. With rocks of known age. then we have no confidence that radioisotope dating works with rocks of unknown age. And here we go.
So, Mount Erebus, let me give you these numbers. At the time that lava rock from Mount Erebus was tested using radioisotope methods, The age of the lava was seventeen years. In other words, when it's still molten, All the isotopes are mixed. But then when it hardens, it erupts and then hardens, that's when the isotope ratios solidify and then the clock supposedly starts ticking.
So you should start with an age of around zero years and then it should tick from there. If radioisotope dating works, then we should get some result that's sort of close to 17 years old. But the radioisotope method produced a result, and this is published in the secular evolutionary scientific literature, not just some kind of number that I'm making up. This is all on our website, icr.org. It came out to 1.6 million years.
Totally wrong and totally inflated. Mount Etna basalt. They tested it after it had erupted 29 years earlier, recorded by eyewitnesses. But the radioisotope dating system that they used produced an age of 35 million years. There's a long list.
Kilauea in Hawaii erupted forty years before it was tested. The test result, eight point five million years. These are all wrong. The isotope ages are all wrong. They stand in direct conflict with the known ages.
Sunset Crater Basalt 950 years earlier it had erupted. People recorded it. We have their testimony in written documents. We can test the rock.
So they tested the rock. 27 million years is the radioisotope age assignment. completely wrong and completely overinflated by orders of magnitude older than the actual age. What's going on here?
Well, what's going on is we have numbers that demonstrate what we're talking about. We have numbers that demonstrate that the assumptions have been violated. It's not that they're measuring the wrong isotope ratios, very accurate measurements. But isotope ratios don't always give you the correct age. In fact, they hardly ever give you the correct age.
In fact, they almost never give you the correct age.
So, creation research has made similar finds. We've done some of our own kinds of analyses. For example, in 1996, We described radioisotope results From basalt um Desite, actually, crystalline rock, anyway, collected at Mount St. Helens, dumb little crater in Mount St. Helens.
Witnesses saw the lava harden to rock in 1986.
So it's 1986, it hardened. And now how old is it when we sample it in 1996? It should be 10 years old. But the secular lab that we sent it to reported radioisotope ages of 350,000, 340,000, and 2.8 million years.
So the radioisotope systems don't work. Every time we test these rocks with those systems, they give ages inconsistent that contradict the known ages. Years of diligent and fruitful research, sponsored in large part by the Institute for Creation Research, have identified core problems with each of the major radioisotope systems used to date rocks. It turns out that the flaws in radioisotope dating come from overconfidence in the assumptions. For example, the isotope system used for the Mount St.
Helens samples. showed inflated ages, it turns out, because the lava from which the rock hardened contained extra amounts of stable versus radioactive atoms. And in this case the melting process did not reset the radioisotope clock to zero. And that's what they're assuming for these really ancient rocks.
So, when they say, this rock is 400 million years old, there's no witnesses to that rock to record a lava eruption or anything like that. We don't have a way to cross-check it.
So, if we get the wrong ages, using radioisotope systems. For rocks that we can cross-check, why should we accept radioisotope results for rocks that we cannot cross-check with actual eyewitnesses? In another major discovery, three lines of evidence. showed that the decay of uranium to lead occurred billions of times faster in the past than it does today.
So, the ages from the uranium-lead radioisotope system. can't be trusted either. Dozens of relevant articles at icr.org demonstrate these issues with technical details. But suffice it to say that radioisotope clocks are worse than broken wall clocks that at least get the time right twice a day. God got his information right.
We as Christians should not feel intimidated by radioisotope clock results because they don't work and it's demonstrated that they don't work. We should have nothing to fear from those results, but we should have full confidence in the eyewitness of the one who was there in the beginning and recorded for us exactly how the world began back in Genesis. Thank you for joining us on Science, Scripture, and Salvation, a radio ministry of the Institute for Creation Research. That's all the time we have for our program today, but we would love to connect with you through our website at icr.org. For over 45 years, ICR has equipped believers with evidence of the Bible's accuracy and authority by showing how science supports the Genesis creation account.
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