R. Sungenis: There are two things to consider in reading the pope’s statements to the Pontifical Academy of Science. First, they hold no binding authority on any Catholic, but are simply statements of pastoral of advice to the PAS, mainly because the PAS is made up of scientists, many of them either agnostic or atheist. Second, the speeches to the PAS are usually not written by the pope himself, but are drafted by the PAS president, and then given to the pope to read. Hence, they often contain scientific assertions that reflect the status quo of modern science as understood by the PAS (which is almost invariably bent toward evolutionary theory). We should not expect the Academy to say anything differently to the pope, since all 80 of them, which elect their own members without reference to “race or religious creed,” are evolutionists, with not a single Creationist permitted in their ranks. That being the case, we can understand Archbishop Luigi Barbarito when he spoke for John Paul: “About this body I would say that it has no authority in matters of faith and doctrine and expresses only the views of its own members who belong to different religious beliefs.”

To show the bias of the Pontifical Academy of Science, in 1982 it made a general statement to the public: “...we are convinced that masses of evidence render the application of the concept of evolution to man and other primates beyond serious doubt.” Yet just two years prior, the two leading evolutionists in the world, Stephen J. Gould and Niles Eldredge, after taking account of the utter failure of modern science to show any credible evidence of intermediate fossils between one species and another, stated most succinctly: “the lack of intermediate fossils is the trade secret of paleontology.” In 1977, Gould wrote in the American Museum’s monthly magazine, Natural History, an article titled “The Return of the Hopeful Monster,” in which he admitted that Goldschmidt’s former theory would have to be embraced due to the lack of fossil evidence.

Since then, and just prior to 1996 when the pope gave his address to the PAS, still, no one has found any intermediate fossils. So it remains a mystery as to what “new evidence” is making evolution “more than a hypothesis.” In fact, so much “new evidence” has been accumulated against evolutionary theory, including Catholic Guy Berthault who has clear evidence refuting evolution’s interpretation of the geologic column, that one would have to hide from it not to see it. Yet time and time again, the PAS simply refuses to consider any other “evidence” than their own evolutionary “hypothesis.” Not one scientist who holds to Creationism is allowed to be a member of the 80-member PAS. Obviously, Pius XII’s words are not being heeded.

The pope continues:

"Taking into account the state of scientific research at the time as well as of the requirements of theology, the Encyclical Humani Generis [Pope Pius XII, 1950] considered the doctrine of 'evolutionism' a serious hypothesis, worthy of investigation and in-depth study equal to that of the opposing hypothesis. Pius XII added two methodological conditions: that this opinion should not be adopted as though it were a certain, proven doctrine and as though one could totally prescind from Revelation with regard to the questions it raises. He also spelled out the condition on which this opinion would be compatible with the Christian faith, a point to which I will return."

R. Sungenis: Here is the first indication that someone slipped wording into the PAS address that Pius XII did not say. Pius XII did not say that evolution was a “serious hypothesis” and neither did he say that a six-day Creation (the only other option) was an “opposing hypothesis.” The only time Pius XII uses the word “hypotheses” is in a caution against allowing the assumptions of science to determine truth. He writes in Humani Generis:

35. It remains for Us now to speak about those questions which, although they pertain to the positive sciences, are nevertheless more or less connected with the truths of the Christian faith. In fact, not a few insistently demand that the Catholic religion take these sciences into account as much as possible. This certainly would be praiseworthy in the case of clearly proved facts; but caution must be used when there is rather question of HYPOTHESES, having some sort of scientific foundation, in which the doctrine contained in Sacred Scripture or in Tradition is involved. If such conjectural opinions are directly or indirectly opposed to the doctrine revealed by God, then the demand that they be recognized can in no way be admitted.

Porvaznik: JPII begins this section by reminding us that the encyclical of Pius XII considered the theory of evolution worthy of investigation and in-depth study, but on the condition that evolution should not be considered "certain" or "proven" or that it contradicts or totally prescinds divine revelation. Before I continue with the JPII message, I want to summarize the teaching of the 1950 encyclical Humani Generis. Pope Pius XII can be summarized as follows:

R. Sungenis: Pius XII neither said that evolution is “worthy of investigation” or “in-depth study,” since those words are not found in the encyclical Humani Generis. He simply said “Church does NOT FORBID that...research and discussions...take place with regard to the doctrine of evolution. He did not encourage it, or consider it “worthy” or require an “in-depth study,” but simply allowed those who wished to investigate it to do so.

Here is what he said:

36. For these reasons the Teaching Authority of the Church does not forbid that, in conformity with the present state of human sciences and sacred theology, research and discussions, on the part of men experienced in both fields, take place with regard to the doctrine of evolution, in as far as it inquires into the origin of the human body as coming from pre-existent and living matter - for the Catholic faith obliges us to hold that souls are immediately created by God.”

In fact, Pius XII said, if one is going to do an investigation, he must reveal the evidence for AND against evolution. Is this what we see today in Catholic circles? Not anything close. Evolution is accepted as fact among most “investigators,” yet it doesn’t have any proof. Pius XII noted this himself:

“However, this must be done in such a way that the reasons for both opinions, that is, those favorable and those unfavorable to evolution, be weighed and judged with the necessary seriousness, moderation and measure, and provided that all are prepared to submit to the judgment of the Church, to whom Christ has given the mission of interpreting authentically the Sacred Scriptures and of defending the dogmas of faith. Some however, rashly transgress this liberty of discussion, when they act as if the origin of the human body from pre-existing and living matter were already completely certain and proved by the facts which have been discovered up to now and by reasoning on those facts, and as if there were nothing in the sources of divine revelation which demands the greatest moderation and caution in this question.

Porvaznik: (1) The question of the origin of man's body from pre-existing and living matter is a legitimate matter of inquiry for natural science. Catholics are free to form their own opinions, but they should do so cautiously; they should not confuse fact with conjecture, and they should respect the Church's right to define matters touching on Revelation.

(2) Catholics must believe, however, that the human soul was created immediately by God. Since the soul is a spiritual substance it is not brought into being through transformation of matter, but directly by God, whence the special uniqueness of each person.

(3) All men have descended from an individual, Adam, who has transmitted original sin to all mankind. Catholics may not, therefore, believe in "polygenism," the scientific hypothesis that mankind descended from a group of original humans [that there were many Adams and Eves].

R. Sungenis: Unfortunately for Mr. Provaznik’s appeal, most Catholics who believe in evolution and teach in our seminaries and universities believe in polygenism.

Porvaznik: Now we continue with the 1996 JPII message to the Pontifical Academy of Sciences:

"Today, almost half a century after the publication of the [Humani Generis] Encyclical, new knowledge has led to the recognition of more than a hypothesis in the theory of evolution. It is indeed remarkable that this theory has been progressively accepted by researchers, following a series of discoveries in various fields of knowledge. The convergence, neither sought nor fabricated, of the results of work that was conducted independently is in itself a significant argument in favor of this theory.

R. Sungenis: Unfortunately, the pope didn’t specify what “new knowledge” he has been told by his advisors that makes evolution “more than a hypothesis.”

The pope continues:

"What is the significance of such a theory? To address this question is to enter the field of epistemology. A theory is a metascientific elaboration, distinct from the results of observation but consistent with them. By means of it a series of independent data and facts can be related and interpreted in a unified explanation. A theory's validity depends on whether or not it can be verified, it is constantly tested against the facts; wherever it can no longer explain the latter, it shows its limitations and unsuitability. It must then be rethought.

R. Sungenis: And thus, the tenets of the theory of evolution must be “rethought,” since it has been 150 years running since Darwin proposed his theory but which theory has produced none of the required evidence – intermediate fossils. Darwin himself said in 1859 that if the intermediate fossils could not be found, then evolution was false.

The pope continues:

"Furthermore, while the formulation of a theory like that of evolution complies with the need for consistency with the observed data, it borrows certain notions from natural philosophy. And, to tell the truth, rather than the theory of evolution, we should speak of several theories of evolution. On the one hand, this plurality has to do with the different explanations advanced for the mechanism of evolution, and on the other, with the various philosophies on which it is based. Hence the existence of materialist, reductionist and spiritualist interpretations. What is to be decided here is the true role of philosophy and, beyond it, of theology."

(Pope John Paul II to the Pontifical Academy of Sciences, October 22, 1996)

R. Sungenis: If there are “several theories of evolution,” then evolution cannot be “more than a hypothesis,” since the latter would require one theory that has ascended above all the rest and to which neither the word “theory” or “hypothesis” can be used to describe it.

Porvaznik: One translation of the above text can be found at the Catholic Information Network site -- another translation from the French is James Akin's Nazareth site. NOTE: Some translations read: "more than one hypothesis" -- James Akin has confirmed that "more than A hypothesis" is the correct translation -- the original French reads: "Aujourd’hui, pr Ps d’un demi-si Pcle apr Ps la parution de l’encyclique, de nouvelles connaissances conduisent B reconnaître dans la théorie de l’évolution plus qu’une hypoth Pse." A Vatican news report from 1996 clarifies:

"VATICAN CITY (CNS) -- The English-language edition of the Vatican newspaper, L'Osservatore Romano, has pointed out a discrepancy in its translation of a message by Pope John Paul II on evolution...U.S. Father Robert Dempsey, editor of the English-language L'Osservatore, said Nov. 19 that the newspaper had published an overly literal translation of the French-language message that 'obscures the real meaning of the text.' The pope's real meaning, he said, was that it is now possible to recognize that the theory of evolution is more than a hypothesis. This was also the meaning provided in the official Italian translation, published Oct. 23 by the daily L'Osservatore Romano."

The translation from the French that the theory of evolution is "more than a hypothesis" lines up with the context of the next sentence which states that "this theory [singular] has been progressively accepted by researchers, following a series of discoveries in various fields of knowledge" and further that the convergence of the results of independently-conducted scientific work "is in itself a significant argument in favor of this theory" [again singular]. JPII does later suggest "we should speak of several theories of evolution" but in the sense of the possible mechanisms of evolution (natural selection, etc) and the various philosophical constructs and viewpoints of people who accept biological evolution (materialist/naturalist, reductionist, spiritualist/theistic, etc).

R. Sungenis: It makes little difference, since there is no “new evidence” that makes evolution “more than a hypothesis.” A “hypothesis,” according to the dictionary is: “something assumed because it seems likely to be a true explanation.” So if evolution is MORE than a hypothesis, that means it is a definition even closer to fact than a hypothesis. As such, what other level of supposition is there between a hypothesis and a fact? And what other “new evidence” has pushed evolution out of the hypothetical realm and either into or closer to the factual realm? Would Mr. Provaznik care to tell us?

Porvaznik: The relevant sections in the Catechism of the Catholic Church (1994) on origins, faith and science read:

159. Faith and science: "...methodical research in all branches of knowledge, provided it is carried out in a truly scientific manner and does not override moral laws, can never conflict with the faith, because the things of the world and the things of faith derive from the same God. The humble and persevering investigator of the secrets of nature is being led, as it were, by the hand of God in spite of himself, for it is God, the conserver of all things, who made them what they are." [ Vatican II GS 36:1]

283. The question about the origins of the world and of man has been the object of many scientific studies which have splendidly enriched our knowledge of the age and dimensions of the cosmos, the development of life-forms and the appearance of man. These discoveries invite us to even greater admiration for the greatness of the Creator, prompting us to give him thanks for all his works and for the understanding and wisdom he gives to scholars and researchers....

284. The great interest accorded to these studies is strongly stimulated by a question of another order, which goes beyond the proper domain of the natural sciences. It is not only a question of knowing when and how the universe arose physically, or when man appeared, but rather of discovering the meaning of such an origin....

According to the Catechism, there is no conflict between honest science and faith because God is the creator, ruler, and sustainer of both: the things of the world and of faith derive from the same God; science has splendidly enriched our knowledge of the age of the cosmos and the development of life; and religion, faith and revelation provide us with the meaning of our origins which is beyond the proper domain of natural science.

R. Sungenis: That’s right. True science will never conflict with theology, but that just begs the question, does it not? Whether evolution is true science is the question at issue.

But now let us look at what the Church has said before the statement “evolution is more than a hypothesis” was uttered to the PAS in 1996.

Lateran Council IV and Vatican Council I assure us that all things, visible and invisible, were created in the six days of Creation week, and there is nothing being created by God at the present time.

Lateran VI says: Firmly we believe and we confess simply that the true God is one alone, eternal, immense, and unchangeable, incomprehensible, omnipotent and ineffable, Father and Son and Holy Spirit: indeed three Persons but one essence, substance, or nature entirely simple. The Father from no one, the Son from the Father only, and the Holy Spirit equally from both; without beginning, always, and without end; the Father generating, the Son being born, and the Holy Spirit proceeding; consubstantial and coequal and omnipotent and coeternal; one beginning of all, creator of all visible and invisible things, of the spiritual and of the corporal; who by His own omnipotent power at once from the beginning of time created each creature from nothing, spiritual, and corporal, namely, angelic and mundane, and finally the human, constituted as it were, alike of the spirit and the body. For the devil and other demons were created by God good in nature, but they themselves through themselves have become wicked. But man sinned at the suggestion of the devil.

Vatican Council I says: If anyone does not confess that the world and all things which are contained in it, both spiritual and material, as regards their whole substance, have been produced by God from nothing, or, shall have said that God created not by a volition free of all necessity, but as necessarily as He necessarily loves Himself, or, shall have denied that the world was created to the glory of God: let him be anathema.

In 1441, the Council of Florence stated in its decrees: "God...is the creator of all things visible and invisible, who, when he wished, out of his goodness created all creatures, spiritual as well as corporal; good, indeed...since they were from nothing..."

In 1860, the Council of Cologne condemned the idea of human evolution in very straightforward words: "Our first parents were formed immediately by God. Therefore we declare that...those who...assert...man...emerged from spontaneous continuous change of imperfect nature to the more perfect, is clearly opposed to Sacred Scripture and to the Faith.”

Pope Pius X in Pascendi Dominici Gregis, remarks how the theory of biological evolution has infected theological studies:

"First of all they lay down the general principle that in a living religion everything is subject to change, and must in fact change, and in this way they pass to what may be said to be the chief of their doctrines, that of Evolution. To the laws of evolution everything is subject - dogma, Church worship, the books that we receive as sacred, even faith itself..."

Pope Leo XIII, in Providentissimus Deus in 1893 stated:

"The commentator...must carefully observe the rule...not to depart from the literal and obvious sense, except only where reason makes it untenable or necessity requires, a rule to which it is the more necessary to adhere strictly in these times, when the thirst for novelty and unrestrained freedom of thought make the danger of error most real and proximate."

Accordingly, the 1994 Catholic Catechism, in quoting St. Thomas Aquinas from the Summa Theologica, says in paragraph 116:

"The literal sense is the meaning conveyed by the words of Scripture and... ‘all other senses of Sacred Scripture are based on the literal.'"

Pope Leo also explained in the same encyclical:

"Moreover, the literal sense itself frequently admits other senses, adapted to illustrate dogma or to confirm morality."

Porvaznik: I shall now discuss the scientific evidence for an ancient earth, then I will cover the evidence for macroevolution.

See also Part 2: The Scientific Evidence for Evolution

The Evidence for an Old Earth

There are various scientific evidences for an ancient earth and/or solar system and universe (distance from the stars, speed of light, evidence from astronomy and physics, etc), but I will concentrate on the direct geological evidence: the material and rocks of the earth, the moon, and meteorites, and the various methods of radiometric dating that geochronologists use to determine their ages. This is considered the most powerful evidence for an ancient earth (c. 4.5 billion years old) and I will give a brief summary of the authoritative work on the subject: The Age of the Earth (Stanford Univ Press, 1991) by G. Brent Dalrymple which covers this material in much detail.

The Case of the Missing Nuclides

Before we discuss the specifics of radiometric dating, it would help to talk about some of the elements involved. There is a substantial literature on the abundance of various elements in the cosmos, drawing upon studies of the earth, the moon, and meteorites. From this list we can extract information about which of the isotopes of the various elements, known as nuclides, are found in nature at detectable levels. The half-life of an element (if you remember from your high school or college chemistry courses) is the time it takes for one-half of the atoms of an unstable element or nuclide to decay radioactively into another stable element or nuclide. When we strike from the list every nuclide that is continually produced by natural processes, we are left only with those that persist from the date of the formation of our solar system (from Kenneth Miller, page 69-72). What does this list tell us? (See an online periodic table of elements here)

Listing of Persistent Nuclides by Half-Life

[ From Dalrymple (page 377), also Kenneth Miller (page 71) ]

Nuclide Half-Life Found in Nature?

50V 6.0 x 10^15 yes

144Nd 2.4 x 10^15 yes

174Hf 2.0 x 10^15 yes

192Pt 1.0 x 10^15 yes

115In 6.0 x 10^14 yes

152Gd 1.1 x 10^14 yes

123Te 1.2 x 10^13 yes

190Pt 6.9 x 10^11 yes

138La 1.12 x 10^11 yes

147Sm 1.06 x 10^11 yes

87Rb 4.88 x 10^10 yes

187Re 4.3 x 10^10 yes

176Lu 3.5 x 10^10 yes

232Th 1.40 x 10^10 yes

238U 4.47 x 10^9 yes

40K 1.25 x 10^9 yes

235U 7.04 x 10^8 yes

244Pu 8.2 x 10^7 yes

146Sm 7.0 x 10^7 no

205Pb 3.0 x 10^7 no

247Cm 1.6 x 10^7 no

182Hf 9 x 10^6 no

107Pd 7 x 10^6 no

135Cs 3.0 x 10^6 no

97Tc 2.6 x 10^6 no

150Gd 2.1 x 10^6 no

93Zr 1.5 x 10^6 no

98Tc 1.5 x 10^6 no

154Dy 1.0 x 10^6 no

As seen above, every nuclide with a half-life less than 80 million years (8.0 x 107) is missing from our region of the solar system, and every nuclide with a half-life greater than 80 million years is present. That means the solar system is much older than 80 million years, since the shorter-lived nuclides have simply decayed themselves out of existence. Since a nuclide becomes undetectable after about 10 to 20 half-lives (Dalrymple, page 378), multiplying 80 million times 10 (or 20) gives us about 800 million years (or 1.6 billion years). The earth must be at least that old since these nuclides have disappeared from nature.

R. Sungenis: Not provable. The only thing we can safely say that the above numbers tell us is the half-life of the nuclides is in the 10^15 to 10^6 range and that some appear in our solar system and some do not. From a Creationist standpoint, God simply made the elements and designed them with the half lives we still see today. Some He included in our vicinity, some He didn’t. The only thing we CAN say based on the half lives is that, if the Earth were to last 10^15 billion years, than half of the present Hafnium, for example, would still be present in 10^15 billion years. Any other conclusions are just speculation.

Porvaznik: For a more precise age of the earth, the technique of radiometric dating has been successfully used since the 1950s (i.e. C.C. Patterson of the California Institute of Technology in 1953 is considered the first scientist to calculate the true age of the earth at c. 4.5 billion years).

Radiometric Dating Methods

The ages of meteorites and rocks from the earth and moon are measured by radiometric dating, a family of techniques based on the spontaneous decay of long-lived naturally occurring radioactive isotopes. These radioactive parent isotopes decay to stable daughter isotopes at rates that can be measured experimentally and remain effectively constant over time regardless of physical or chemical conditions. Each parent-daughter pair constitutes an independent clock in which atoms of the parent are transformed at a constant and predictable rate into atoms of its daughter. The amounts of parent and daughter isotopes in a rock, along with the known rate of decay, provides the information necessary to determine the time that has elapsed since the rock formed (Dalrymple, page 79).

Here is a table of the parent-daughter isotopes, their calculated half-life, and their known decay constants used to determine the ages of rocks and minerals.

Principle Parent and Daughter Isotopes

Used to Determine the Ages of Rocks and Minerals

[ From G. Brent Dalrymple (page 80) ]

Parent Isotope Daughter Isotope Half-Life

(millions of years) Decay Constant

40K 40Ar 1,250 5.81 x 10^-11

87Rb 87Sr 48,800 1.42 x 10^-11

147Sm 143Nd 106,000 6.54 x 10^-12

176Lu 176Hf 35,900 1.93 x 10^-11

187Re 187Os 43,000 1.612 x 10^-11

232Th 208Pb 14,000 4.948 x 10^-11

235U 207Pb 704 9.8485 x 10^-10

238U 206Pb 4,470 1.55125 x 10^-10

Of the 339 isotopes of 84 elements found in nature, 269 are stable and 70 are radioactive. Eighteen of the radioactive isotopes have long half-lives and have survived since the elements of the solar system were created. These long-lived radioactive nuclides are the basis for radiometric dating (Dalrymple, page 80).

The basic formulas used to calculate the ages are (warning, a little algebra and a logarithm here):

Pt = P0 e-dt

P0 = number of parent atoms at some starting time

Pt = number of parent atoms at some later time t

d = the decay constant (above)

Since P0 = Pt + Dt

and Dt = the daughter atoms formed

Substituting Pt + Dt for P0 we get

Pt = ( Pt + Dt ) e-dt

Now solving for t we get

t = ( 1 / d ) loge ( Dt / Pt + 1 )

which is the basic radiometric-age equation and contains only quantities that can be measured today in the laboratory. If the rock incorporated some of the daughter isotope when it formed, then this initial amount of the daughter must be subtracted from the total amount measured. However, for the principal methods, the value of the initial daughter is either zero, negligible or not required (Dalrymple, page 84-86).

A Catholic creationist in an Email to me states:

<< In the first place, radiometric dating is based upon pure assumption and speculation. The scientist must assume he knows the ratio between potassium and argon that existed in the beginning. But, how can he know this? He must supply the original ratio based upon a supposition rooted in uniformitarian philosophy. It is the same for carbon14 dating. >>

This is a convenient dismissmal of the science of radiometric dating (no doubt picked up from some young-earth creationist literature). Radiometric dating is not "based upon pure assumption and speculation." And Carbon-14 dating is not used to date the oldest rocks (the half-life of 14C is about 5,700 years and can be used to date objects up to around 50,000 years old). There are several types of radiometric dating methods with various accumulation clocks that are self-checking (especially with "isochron" or "concordia-discordia" methods) when used to measure multiple samples of the same rock or minerals. These methods are the K-Ar (Potassium-Argon) Method, the Rb-Sr (Rubidium-Strontium) Method, the Sm-Nd (Samarium-Neodymium) Method, the Lu-Hf (Lutetium-Hafnium) Method, the Re-Os (Rhenium-Osmium) Method, and the U-Th-Pb (Uranium-Thorium-Lead) Methods.

On the reliability of these methods, see the detailed TalkOrigins articles Isochron Dating FAQ and Radiometric Dating and the Geological Time Scale

K-Ar (Potassium-Argon) Method

This method is based on the decay of 40K to 40Ar and is probably the most commonly used radiometric dating technique available to geologists. It is the only decay scheme that can be used with little or no concern for the initial presence of the daughter isotope. This is because 40Ar is an inert gas that does not combine chemically with any other element and so escapes easily from rocks when they are heated.

Like all radiometric methods, the K-Ar method does not work on all rocks and minerals under all geologic conditions. It works particularly well on igneous rocks that have not been heated significantly since their formation. It does not work on most sedimentary rocks because these rocks are composed of debris from older rocks. It also does not work on many metamorphic rocks because rocks of this type formed from other rocks under heat and pressure. The K-Ar method is of limited use for the dating of meteorites, lunar rocks, or the oldest rocks from the earth due to its susceptibility to resetting by later heating. The 40Ar / 39Ar variant of the method overcomes many of these problems (Dalrymple, page 90-94).

R. Sungenis: Potassium 40 breaks down into 88.8% Calcium 40 and 11.2% Argon 40. Although one could date rocks by calculating the Calcium 40 method, scientists realize that they do not know how much Calcium 40 was originally present. Instead, they date according to Argon 40, assuming that, when igneous rock melts and then hardens, the Potassium 40 decay to Argon 40 begins again. But the problem with this is that: (1) there is no way to know that all of the Argon 40 escaped when the rock melted; (2) there is always an amount of air-Argon remaining in the rock when it hardens, especially since air contains 1% Argon. Knowing these anomalies in the Potassium-Argon method, scientists tried to solve the problem by the Argon-Argon method. This method subjects the rock against a nuclear reactor for several hours. The nuclear reactor emits a large number of neutrons, which stimulates Potassium 39 to decay into Argon 39. The rock is then heated to release both Argon 40 and Argon 39 (representing the Potassium). The ratio of these are measured to determine the amount of Potassium 40 originally present. But the problem with this method is that if the rock has experienced high temperatures during any part of its formation, this will give a null result to the dating. As it stands, Potassium-Argon and Argon-Argon are thought to be the best dating methods, since it is believed that one can determine the original amount of daughter element in the sample, but as we have seen, the anomalies remain.

Porvaznik: Rb-Sr (Rubidium-Strontium) Method

The Rb-Sr method is based on the radioactivity of 87Rb which undergoes decay to 87Sr with a half-life of 48.8 billion years. Rubidium occurs as a trace element in most rocks. Strontium is present as a trace element in most minerals when they form (unlike Argon, which escapes easily and entirely from most molten rocks). The Rb-Sr dating is done primarily with the "isochron method" which completely eliminates the problem of initial Strontium. Because of the long half-life of 87Rb, the Rb-Sr dating is used mostly on rocks older than about 50 to 100 million years, for only in these rocks has sufficient time elapsed for measurable quantities of 87Sr to accumulate. Because of its relative resistance to post-formation events, the Rb-Sr dating (by the isochron method) is used extensively to determine the ages of the oldest rocks in the solar system (Dalrymple, page 94-95).

Sm-Nd, Lu-Hf, and Re-Os Methods

In recent years the Sm-Nd (Samarium-Neodymium) method has appeared in the geological literature, and has become a common tool for geochronologic studies of old rocks and meteorites. The Sm-Nd method is more resistant to metamorphism than are other dating methods which gives it a decided advantage for age measurements of very old rocks. Ancient basalt and the achondrite meteorites contain so little K, Rb, and U that precise dating can only be done with the Sm-Nd method. The Lu-Hf (Lutetium-Hafnium) and Re-Os (Rhenium-Osmium) methods while infrequently used, provide some valuable data relevant to the age of meteorites (Dalrymple, page 95-97).

R. Sungenis: All the other dating methods, e.g., Rubidium-Strontium; Samarium-Neodymium; Lutetium-Hafnium, etc, are all less accurate since, by their own admission, scientists realize that there is always some undetermined amount of the daughter element in the original sample.

Porvaznik: U-Th-Pb Methods

These methods are based on the radioactivity of 235U, 238U, and 232Th which all decay to different isotopes of Pb (Lead). Although these involve a decay series with intermediate radioactive daughter products, the decays of 238U to 206Pb, 235U to 207Pb, and 232Th to 208Pb can be treated as a simple one-step decay since each of the three series are entirely independent of the others and the half-lives of the intermediates are very much shorter than the three parents. Because of the problems of initial Pb and Pb loss the U-Th-Pb methods of dating are most often applied with the use of "isochron" or "concordia-discordia" diagrams which circumvent the initial daughter problems mentioned earlier (Dalrymple, page 99-102).

R. Sungenis: One of the more popular radioactive methods is the measurement of the decay of Uranium into Lead. Evolutionary theory holds that the half-life of Uranium 238 is 4.5 billion years, which, since they estimate the earth to be the same age, serves as a coincidental dating device. Other elemental pairs used in radiometric dating are: Samarium 147 to Deodymium 143 (half-life of 106 billion years); Rubidium 87 to Strontium 87 (half-life of 48.8 billion years); Rhenium 187 to Osmium 187 (half-life of 42 billion years); Lutetium 176 to Hafnium 176 (half-life of 38 billion years); Thorium 232 to Lead 208 (half-life of 14 billion years); Potassium 40 to Argon 40 (half-life of 1.26 billion years); Uranium 235 to Lead 207 (half-life of .7 billion years); Beryllium 10 to Boron 10 (half-life of 1.52 million years); Chlorine 36 to Argon 36 (half-life of 300,000 years); Carbon 14 to Nitrogen 14 (half-life of 5715 years). Data taken from N. E. Holden’s Pure Appl. Chem. 62 (1990): 941-958. Whether these decay rates are correct or not remains to be seen. Decay rates measured within the last 50-80 years depend on a pure parent sample which is set aside for a length of time to produce the daughter element, but this assumes that the present decay rate has always been the same, which cannot be proven.

Taking the known decay rate of Uranium from laboratory experiments, these results can then be compared to the remaining Uranium in the rock specimen, along with the amount of Lead in the rock, and it can be estimated how long it has taken for the Lead to form from the original Uranium. Although this sounds quite logical, it is only so in theory. The reason is that such a method depends on three unprovable assumptions:

(1) all the Lead found in the specimen must be assumed to be originally from Uranium, but there is no way to know this for certain. There may have been some Lead already in the rock when it was formed, before the Uranium in the rock began to decay. Since it is known that natural Lead appears in rock, it is quite presumptuous to attribute all of it to Uranium decay. Of course, if the amount of Lead in the rock pre-existed the decay of Uranium, then the age of the rock will turn out to be much less than if all the Lead in the rock was due to Uranium decay.

(2) Due to the process of leaching, Uranium, as well as other radioactive elements, are quite capable of dissolving in water. Hence, if the rock was subjected to water for any length of time (of which there is an abundant supply on earth), this would directly effect the amount of Uranium the rock would contain at any given time. In this scenario, if one were to measure the age of the rock unaware that Uranium had leached out, the estimation of age would be much too great. Biblical scientists, who hold to a world-wide deluge as recorded in Genesis 6-9, assert that these flood waters would disrupt all such isotope dating in which the parent element was subject to leaching.

(3) Current radiometric dating assumes the rate of decay has remained constant for millions of years, without any appreciable deviation due to outside forces. This is commonly known as uniformitarianism. Although it is true that radioactive atoms have been subjected to temperature, pressure and chemical changes in the laboratory without changing their decay rate, still, natural forces, such as neutrinos from cosmic radiation disturb the decay process. The decay rates of ions are known to differ from neutral atoms. Decay rate is also based on the speed of light, which, as of this past decade, numerous laboratory experiments and astronomical anomalies show that it is not constant. In addition, such things as the reversal of the earth’s magnetic field, which has been documented as occurring in both the past and near present, as well as any galactic event, such as a supernovae explosion, could cause alterations to the decay rate of radioactive elements.

Although other elements are often used to measure radioactive decay, such as Potassium, Thorium, Strontium, and a half dozen others, they are all subject to the same above caveats as Uranium. In fact, some of these elements are even more soluble in water than Uranium salts.

Porvaznik: Age of the Oldest Earth Rocks

The Archean rocks (c. 2.5 to 4.0 billion years old) of Precambrian (c. 570 million years ago) earth history occur on all continents but over small and roughly equi-dimensional areas. Although subject to metamorphism and deformation long ago, these Archean cratons, also called blocks or shields, now constitute very stable parts of the present-day continents and except for the ravages of erosion, have undergone little internal change for hundreds of millions of years. A typical early Archean terrane can be subdivided into several broad categories of rock units, including gneisses, supracrustal sequences (greenstone belts), and intrusive rocks. Some 80 to 90 percent of Archean rocks are gneisses which occur as vast "seas" that surround the basement for both older and younger rocks.

North Atlantic

The North Atlantic Archean craton includes parts of eastern and western Greenland, part of the coast of Labrador in Canada, and small sections of northwestern Scotland and northern Norway. Once a single block, this Archean terrane was torn into sections when North and South America were separated from Europe and Africa nearly 200 million years ago to form the Atlantic Ocean. When rejoined (see diagram at right) the North Atlantic craton consists of a roughly triangular area with sides about 600 km in length. The rocks of the craton are primarily (85%) granitoid gneisses.

The area near Godthaab, the capital of Greenland, is dominated by gneiss complexes of two distinct ages. The older complex is called the Amitsoq gneisses. Because of their antiquity, the early Archean rocks near Godthaab and Isua (about 100 km northeast of Godthaab) have been the objects of a great many radiometric age measurements, the effort being led primarily by S. Moorbath of Oxford University, who with his colleagues has spent more than a decade studying these rocks. The radiometric age data confirm the sequence of rock units as determined by field relationships, and show that the Isua supracrustals and the Amitsoq gneisses are some of the oldest rocks found so far on earth (Dalrymple, page 128-142).

North America

The Superior Province of North America is the world's largest known Archean crustal block (area about 2.6 x 106 km2). Two areas where the oldest gneisses occur have been studied in some detail. These include an elongate exposure within the Minnesota River Valley near Morton and Granite Falls and a small area exposed near Watersmeet in northern Michigan. The Morton Gneiss (in Minnesota) is a complex rock consisting of multiple rock units that were formed at different times and are now interlayered on a fine scale.

Picture to the left is the Grand Canyon in northern Arizona, an impressive testimony to an ancient earth. The top layer of the Grand Canyon, the Kaibab Limestone, contains many marine fossils which indicate that it originated at the bottom of the sea. This layer is around 250 million years old. The Rocky Mountains begin to form 60-70 million years ago and at some point later the Colorado River is born. One popular theory is that around 20 million years ago the Colorado River begins to carve into the Grand Canyon at its eastern end, Marble Canyon, and probably exiting via Kanab Canyon. At 17 million years ago the Colorado Plateau begins to uplift and causes the river to cut deeper. Around 5 million years ago the uplift ceases and another river working its way northward along the San Andreas fault and eastward along the western Colorado Plateau captures the Colorado River. See also Young Earth Creationism and the Geology of the Grand Canyon by amateur geologist Jon Woolf.

R. Sungenis: From Hutton’s and Lyell’s work, it was assumed that the rate of erosion and sedimentation in past time was the same as it is today. Hence, the age of a stratum was calculated from current rates of sedimentation deposition. There was one problem for Hutton and Lyell, however. This calculation was hypothetical, since all the assumed stages of stratum were never found together in one geological formation. Nevertheless, the method used to date the rocks of the Cambrian period to the present time was based on the principle of superposition, that is, that lower stratum were older than higher stratum.

Concurrent with these theories were the studies of Johannes Walther. Walther studied sedimentary deposits that advanced from land toward the ocean. To acquire a test sample of the deposit, Walther drilled-out a top-to-bottom vertical cylinder midway in the advancement. He found that the various facie from the test sample were in the same order as the leading edge of the advancement into the ocean. He reasoned that the facie were being laid side-by-side. Walther did the same testing in the bay of Naples. He found that after drilling-out a vertical column of sediment it had the same sequence of facies arrangement as the sediments laying horizontally. He soon reasoned that the previous theory that facies on the top were forming later than the facies on the bottom was wrong. Instead, he found that the facies were being formed simultaneously and being deposited horizontally, not vertically.

This phenomenon was confirmed in the observance of coastal marine floods. In the 1970's and 1980's several holes bored in the bottom of the Pacific ocean produced samples which showed that Walther’s discovery also applied to deep sea sediments. Later, samples from the Grand Canyon showed the same phenomenon. In 1965, the American geologist Edwin McKee found the same horizontal sedimentation occurring as a result of a river in Colorado overflowing its banks from a torrential rain. The stratified deposits, which reached a thickness of twelve feet in forty-eight hours, showed particle sorting and bedding planes. Classical theory would have to interpret this sedimentatino as interruptions of sedimentation wherein one strata would have hardened before the next layer was placed on top of it, but this would be impossible within the space of forty-eight hours.

Taking McKee’s observations, French geologist Guy Berthault devised a laboratory experiment to observe how particles settled in both dry and wet conditions. In both cases, sand particles of differing size sorted themselves out into micro-strata according to their sizes with the larger ones forming at the bottom and the smaller ones at the top. This showed that micro-strata would form by particle sorting, irrespective of the speed of sedimentation. It was the exact opposite of the theory, believed for more than two centuries, that strata were formed by layers forming one on top of the other. The results of these experiments were registered with the French Academy of Sciences.

In cooperation Pierre Julian, Ph.D of the Colorado State University, larger scale experiments were performed to confirm the above results. Different sized particles of sand were poured into water circulating in a long flume. Under all kinds of varying conditions, it was found again that the mechanical nature of stratification was such that particle segregated according to their size when transported by water currents of variable speeds, and that sedimentation would form both horizontally and vertically. Repeated experiments by different groups gave the same results. It was found that various kinds of strata would form depending directly on the speed of the current. This would discount the idea that similar strata found in various parts of the world would be of the same age, rather, it would have been due simply to identical environmental conditions. Although it was understood that superposition would occur in still water, nevertheless, motionless water would not have been the case for hardly any area of the world. In fact, it could be said that classical stratiography failed to take into account any of the water currents in the worlds oceans, seas and rivers. Various water currents around the world would make stratification non-continuous, the opposite of present geological column theory.

Experiments were also performed on dry particulates. It was found that as various sizes of particles were vertically dropped on a target, stratifications were formed parallel to the slope, exceeding an angle of 30 degrees, again contradicted the prevailing idea in geology that strata is formed in horizontal layers. Hence, sloping strata could simply be the result of sediments forming on an inclined plane.

In respect of fossils, organisms would be swept along laterally (the same as the sediments of the above experiments) and would be deposited successively in sediments where they would become fossilized. As with sediments, the position of the fossil would provide no indication of age. In this case, fossils in higher strata could be older than fossils in lower strata.

We must also add that the above type of fossilization process accounts for the many fossils found in sediments, since the burial of the fossils occurred very quickly, before the organic specimen had a chance to decompose. Conversely, evolutionary theory has the impossible task of explaining how a fossil could be formed in strata that takes millions of years for it to cover the organic specimen. Surely the specimen would have completely decomposed, if not eaten by other specimens first, before it had a chance to be fossilized. Some evolutionists attempt to explain the anomaly by hypothesizing that highly alkaline water allowed the specimens to be preserved. But this is surely a desperate attempt at an answer, since it is well-known that highly alkaline solutions are corrosive.

In the 1994 publication, Grand Canyon, by geologist Stephen Austin, Ph.D., which referred to the work of sedimentologist D. M. Rubin on the relation between hydraulic conditions and stratified structures in San Francisco Bay, which was published in Sedimentary Geology; and to Jay Sufford in Sedimentary Patrology, which summarized a series of thirty-nine flume experiments on the same relations between hydraulics and stratification. Rubin summarized these relations diagramatically showing: (a) speed of current; (b) depth of water; and (c) size of sedimentary particles, which would have been necessary to form the different structures found in the sedimentary deposits. Austin discovered the same structures in the sedimentary rocks in the Grand Canyon as those in Rubin’s diagram. The 800 kilometer sample of the Grand Canyon, known as the Tonto Group, comprises three facies which extend east to west. The upper facie was made of limestone; the middle facie, clay; and the lower facie, sandstone. As predicted by Walther’s law, the same sequence of facies are found side-by-side as those found from top to bottom.

From this evidence, Austin determined the hydraulic conditions which would have existed when the Tonto group of the Grand Canyon was deposited in order to make the specific sequence of stratification. The condition was a velocity of water current in the sample of two meters per second, causing the water to rise nearly 2,000 meters above current ocean level, and which would have been accomplished in as little as two days. Not surprisingly, the speed of current needed to build the Tonto group corresponded precisely with those recorded in the thirty-nine flume experiments performed by Sufford. The advancing water current travels at differing velocities. Heavier or coarser particles would deposit before lighter particles in a fast-moving current. A rapid speed of current would have occurred as the water level was rising. As the water level became higher, the speed of the current decreased, and at that point the sediments deposited would have been proportionately finer, yet all of the particles would have been deposited at or near the same time, resulting in the sandstone-clay-limestone sequence. During the point at which the ocean arrived at its maximum level there would have been little or no current. The finest particles would deposit at a rate of about 2 centimeters per day and shows that superposition does, indeed, occur. But this process would be interrupted when, as the waters began to subside, the current reappeared. In addition, when the water began to recede, it would have created velocities sufficient to erode deep valleys into the lightly-packed sediments deposited during the initial stratification.

Evolutionists believe that the Tonto Group of the Grand Canyon occurred during the Cambrian period, since it contains many fossils associated with the “Cambrian explosion.” The Cambrian period is said to have lasted 70 million years. Obviously, if the above data from Austin and Berthault is correct, it would categorically deny such a long time period to the Tonto Group. In fact, the experiments show that the Tonto group would have been formed in as little as days or weeks. Since the assumptions of stratification used by evolutionists had never been verified experimentally, just assumed, then there remains little objection they can raise. As a result, the whole of their geologic column, including the multi-millions of years separating the Cambrian from such periods as the Jurassic or Pleistocene, will have to be discarded until they can provide experimental results to the contrary. [The information contained herein was taken from the material published by the Geological Society of France, 1993, and Julien Lan and Guy Berthault, “Experiments on stratification of heterogeneous sand mixtures,” CEN Technical Journal 8 (1):3750, 1994; Guy Berthault, “Experiments on lamination of sediments,” CEN Technical Journal 3:2529, 1988]

There are two kinds of radiometric dating: organic and inorganic. Organic dating involves the measurement of Carbon 14, an isotope of Carbon 12 that is unstable. Carbon 14 has two extra electrons in orbit that cannot be held for long by the Carbon nucleus. Thus, the two electrons eventually escape, leaving the stable element of Carbon 12 we use regularly on earth. The rate that these two electrons escape can be measured, and then matched against the known decay rate of Carbon 14, since it is assumed that the decay rate never changes. Carbon 14 exists in all living matter. During its life, the living specimen absorbs and expels Carbon, a small amount of which is Carbon 14. After the specimen dies, the Carbon 14 begins its uninterrupted decay. It dissipates into the environment. Current science has calculated that it takes 5,760 years for half of the original amount of Carbon 14 in the organic specimen to decay into the stable form, Carbon 12. This is know as the half-life. Thus, by measuring how much Carbon 14 has decayed an indication can be obtained of how long ago the organism was alive. This is easy to do for recently deceased or specially preserved specimens, but since fossils are organic specimens that have since turned into stone, they do not contain any Carbon, and therefore they cannot be dated using the Carbon 14 method.

Almost all known fossils are found in sedimentary rocks. These rocks contain radioactive elements which also decay from isotopes to non-isotopes, the same as Carbon 14 decays to Carbon 12. For example, the isotope of Potassium decays into Argon, Uranium decays into Lead, etc). Hence, when an evolutionists claims that a particular fossil is so many millions of years old, he is not saying that the specimen itself is that old, but only the rock within and surrounding the fossil. The specimen is assumed to be the same age as the rock surrounding it.

The other method of dating rock encrusted fossils is to estimate when the horizontal layer of sediment was formed in which the fossil is found, but this is all based on the unproven theory that deeper horizontal layers are older than higher ones. Several scientist have shown evidence in recent years that this theory is in fact wrong.

Porvaznik: Australia

The western part of the Australian continent consists of two Archean cratons surrounded largely by Proterozoic mobile belts. The Archean rocks of the Pilbara Block are exposed over an area of about 56,000 km2, but nearly half of the craton is covered on the south by Proterozoic sedimentary rocks, so its total area may exceed 100,000 km2. The formations that compose the Archean greenstones of the Pilbara Block are collectively called the Pilbara Supergroup.

Perhaps the best preserved and most complete greenstone succession known is the Barberton greenstone belt. This remarkable sequence of Archean volcanic and sedimentary rocks is exposed in the Barberton Mountain Land in northern Swaziland and the southeastern part of the Transvaal Province of South Africa (Dalrymple, page 154-174).

The oldest, reliably dated, in-situ granitoid rocks of magmatic origin (orthogneisses), regarded as broadly representative of the type of continental crust formed throughout the rest of earth history, mostly give ages in the range 3.65 to 3.75 billions of years old (Ga), and probably up to 3.81 Ga. The oldest reliable dates, from in-situ chemical and detrital sedimentary and volcanic rocks (i.e. supracrustal rocks), give ages in the range 3.71 to 3.81 Ga (from "The Oldest Rocks on Earth" by B.S. Kamber, S. Moorbath, M.J. Whitehouse in The Age of the Earth from 4004 BC to AD 2002, edited by C.L.E. Lewis and S.J. Knell [Geological Society, 2001], page 197, 198).

Learn about the types of minerals here -- including Zircon (ZrSiO4, Zirconium Silicate), Ilmenite (FeTiO3, Iron Titanium Oxide), Pyroxene, Plagioclase (a form of Feldspar, NaAlSi3O8 abundant on the Moon), and many others.

Radiometric Ages of Some Early Archean/Related Rocks

[ From G. Brent Dalrymple (page 140-1, 159, 169, 180-1), some omitted for brevity ]

Unit and Locality Method Number of Samples Age (billions of years)

R. Sungenis: In his very technical book, The Mythology of Modern Dating Methods (1999), John Woodmorappe investigated 494 geological dating tests written in various journals. Within those tests he found an assortment of fallacious claims and reasonings, everything from scientists who allowed only themselves to check their work, to data manipulation, to the absence of standard reliability criteria and norms, to basing conclusions on premises without proof. He found that geologists have invented a whole new vocabulary to describe the anomalies they find, such as delayed-uplift ages, rejuvenated dates, inherited isochrons, etc., of which all are for one purpose – to hide the real facts from the public. You can imagine the pressure on these scientists, whose very jobs depend on them finding the “right” data. If one of these scientist ever presented data which showed that the earth was 10,000 of less years old, he would not be employed for long. There are plenty of other scientists churned from the mill of bastions of modern science who would gladly conform the evidence to fit evolutionary theory. In short, scientists have put themselves within a vicious cycle

Directly related to the anomalies of radiometric dating is the case of Polonium halos. Dr. Robert Gentry, who tested over one hundred thousand samples of granite from a variety of places on the earth, found that each contained micaurbiatite, which in turn contained rings of Polonium. The Polonium isotopes consisted of Polonium 210, Polonium 214, and Polonium 218. The oddity is that the halos, due to the decay rate of these Polonium isotopes, last but a very short time. The half-life of P210 is 22 days; P218's half-life is 3 minutes; P214's is .000164 micro seconds. This means that unless the granite was created instantaneously, it would not be possible for the Polonium isotopes to be captured so as to appear as a viable specimen of radioactivity many years later.

Some evolutionary scientists attempt to explain this by hypothesizing that the halos were not produced by an initial concentration of the radioactive element. Instead, if water seeped through cracks in the minerals, it would have caused a chemical change such that newly-formed Polonium would drop out of solution at a certain place and almost immediately decay. In the process, a halo would build up over a long period of time. The problem with this hypothesis is that it assumes the Polonium would not decay in the water before it dropped “out of solution.” Considering that Polonium 214 half-life is .000164 micro seconds, this hardly gives any time for the hypothesized process to occur.

Porvaznik: West Greenland

Qorqut granite

Godthaab Rb-Sr

Rb-Sr

Pb-Pb

U-Pb 23 whole rock

3 minerals same rock

23 whole rock

7 zircon 2.53 +/- 0.03

2.52 +/- 0.03

2.58 +/- 0.08

2.53 +/- 0.03

---

Nuk gneisses

Bjorneoen Pb-Pb

Rb-Sr

Rb-Sr

Rb-Sr 11 whole rock

11 whole rock

14 whole rock

6 whole rock 3.02 +/- 0.26

2.98 +/- 0.05

2.94 +/- 0.09

3.08 +/- 0.03

---

Fiskenaesset Pb-Pb

U-Pb

Rb-Sr 9 whole rock

5 zircon

11 whole rock 2.82 +/- 0.07

2.80 +/- 0.10

2.84 +/- 0.07

---

Amitsoq gneisses Godthaab U-Pb

U-Pb

Pb-Pb 9 zircon

8 zircon

13 whole rock 3.60 +/- 0.05

3.60

3.56 +/- 0.10

---

Isua Pb-Pb

Rb-Sr

Rb-Sr 9 whole rock

13 whole rock

12 whole rock 3.74 +/- 0.12

3.64 +/- 0.06

3.62 +/- 0.14

---

Labrador

Kiyuktok, Saglek Pb-Pb

Rb-Sr

Rb-Sr 5 whole rock

15 whole rock

6 whole rock 3.50 +/- 0.11

2.75 +/- 0.12

3.06 +/- 0.16

---

of the Superior Province of North America

---

Sacred Heart Granite

Morton, Minnesota Pb-Pb

Rb-Sr

Rb-Sr 6 minerals same rock

5 minerals same rock

4 minerals same rock 2.60 +/- 0.01

2.64

2.32 +/- 0.10

---

Older granitoid gneisses

Morton, Minnesota U-Pb

U-Pb

U-Pb

Rb-Sr 8 zircon

19 zircon

7 zircon

26 whole rock 3.59 +/- 0.12

3.54 +/- 0.04

3.66 +/- 0.04

3.48 +/- 0.11

---

of the Pilbara Block of Western Australia

---

Pilbara Supergroup

Duffer Formation U-Pb

Rb-Sr

Rb-Sr 11 zircon Marble Bar

6 wr Marble Bar

6 wr Warrery Gap 3.45 +/- 0.02

3.23 +/- 0.28

3.51 +/- 0.06

---

North Star Basalt Rb-Sr

Sm-Nd

Sm-Nd 3 wr Marble Bar

4 wr Marble Bar

6 wr Marble Bar 3.57 +/- 0.18

3.56 +/- 0.54

3.56 +/- 0.03

---

Granitoids

Tambourah Dome Pb-Pb

Pb-Pb

Rb-Sr

Rb-Sr 6 whole rock

5 whole rock

4 minerals same rock

4 minerals same rock 2.94 +/- 0.03

3.07 +/- 0.01

2.70 +/- 0.01

2.61 +/- 0.01

---

Shaw Batholith U-Pb

U-Pb

Rb-Sr

Rb-Sr 2 zircon

52 zircon

10 whole rock

13 whole rock 3.42 +/- 0.04

3.47 +/- 0.02

2.89 +/- 0.08

3.09 +/- 0.05

---

 

of the Barberton Mountain Land of Southern Africa

 

---

Swaziland Supergroup

Komati Formation

Rb-Sr

Ar-Ar

Ar-Ar

Ar-Ar

Ar-Ar

Ar-Ar

Pb-Pb 6 minerals same rock

1 whole rock

1 whole rock

1 whole rock

1 whole rock

1 whole rock

12 whole rock 3.43 +/- 0.20

3.49 +/- 0.01

3.41 +/- 0.03

3.42 +/- 0.01

3.30 +/- 0.02

3.45 +/- 0.01

3.46 +/- 0.07

 

---

Komati and Theespruit formations Sm-Nd 10 whole rock 3.53 +/- 0.05

Age of Moon Rocks

The manned lunar missions had significant scientific worth for they gave scientists an exciting opportunity to study rock samples collected from another planet. Both the theoretical and experimental evidence is quite good that the moon, the earth, along with the entire solar system formed more or less simultaneously. Therefore, the age of the moon has a direct bearing on the age of the earth. There are many rocks from the moon that are in fact older than the very oldest rocks found on earth.

Nine missions, six from the United States and three from Russia, returned a total of nearly 382 kg of samples. This priceless material consists of crystalline rocks, breccias and soil, the latter in the form of both scooped samples and cores, from a variety of geological environments (Dalrymple, page 212). The following is a table of some radiometric ages calculated with different methods from the lunar rocks and material of the Apollo missions.

Learn about the types of minerals here -- including Zircon (ZrSiO4, Zirconium Silicate), Ilmenite (FeTiO3, Iron Titanium Oxide), Pyroxene, Plagioclase (a form of Feldspar, NaAlSi3O8 abundant on the Moon), and many others.

Radiometric Ages of Lunar Rocks

[ From G. Brent Dalrymple (page 230-1, 239), some omitted for brevity ]

Mission/Sample Method Material Dated Age (billions of years)

R. Sungenis: Moon rocks don’t add anything to the discussion, since the same unproven presuppositions are used to date moon rocks as earth rocks.

---

Some Mare Basalts Dated by Two or More Methods

---

Apollo 11

(10072 high-K)

Ar-Ar

Ar-Ar

Ar-Ar

Ar-Ar

Ar-Ar

Ar-Ar

Rb-Sr

Sm-Nd whole rock

whole rock

plagioclase

plagioclase

ilmenite

pyroxene

7 isochron

6 isochron 3.49 +/- 0.05

3.52 +/- 0.04

3.57 +/- 0.05

3.56 +/- 0.06

3.58 +/- 0.05

3.55 +/- 0.05

3.57 +/- 0.05

3.57 +/- 0.03

---

Apollo 12

(12051 quartz)

Ar-Ar

Ar-Ar

Ar-Ar

Ar-Ar

Rb-Sr

Rb-Sr whole rock

whole rock

whole rock

whole rock

7 isochron

4 isochron 3.13 +/- 0.05

3.12 +/- 0.07

3.23 +/- 0.05

3.25 +/- 0.06

3.19 +/- 0.10

3.09 +/- 0.04

---

Apollo 15

(15555 olivine)

Ar-Ar

Ar-Ar

Ar-Ar

Ar-Ar

Ar-Ar

Ar-Ar

Ar-Ar

Rb-Sr

Rb-Sr

Rb-Sr whole rock

whole rock

whole rock

whole rock

whole rock

plagioclase

pyroxene

6 isochron

6 isochron

7 isochron 3.29 +/- 0.05

3.25 +/- 0.06

3.28 +/- 0.06

3.24 +/- 0.06

3.19 +/- 0.02

3.27 +/- 0.02

3.24 +/- 0.09

3.23 +/- 0.08

3.27 +/- 0.09

3.25 +/- 0.04

 

---

Apollo 17

(75075 high-Ti)

Ar-Ar

Ar-Ar

Ar-Ar

Ar-Ar

Ar-Ar

Rb-Sr

Sm-Nd whole rock

whole rock

whole rock

plagioclase

plagioclase

8 isochron

4 isochron 3.71 +/- 0.04

3.66 +/- 0.05

3.61 +/- 0.04

3.69 +/- 0.02

3.67 +/- 0.02

3.76 +/- 0.12

3.70 +/- 0.07

 

---

The Oldest Lunar Rocks

 

---

Apollo 17

(76535 troctolite)

Sm-Nd

Rb-Sr

K-Ar

Ar-Ar

Ar-Ar

Ar-Ar

Ar-Ar 5 isochron

10 isochron

whole rock

whole rock

whole rock

whole rock

plagioclase 4.26 +/- 0.06

4.51 +/- 0.07

4.27 +/- 0.08

4.16 +/- 0.04

4.19 +/- 0.02

4.20 +/- 0.03

4.19 +/- 0.02

 

---

Apollo 17

(77215 norite breccia clast)

Sm-Nd

Rb-Sr

Ar-Ar

Ar-Ar

Ar-Ar

Ar-Ar 5 isochron

8 isochron

plagioclase

whole rock

whole rock

whole rock 4.37 +/- 0.07

4.33 +/- 0.04

3.92 +/- 0.03

3.99 +/- 0.03

3.97 +/- 0.03

3.90 +/- 0.03

 

---

Apollo 17

(78236 norite)

Sm-Nd

Sm-Nd

Rb-Sr

Ar-Ar 9 isochron

3 isochron

3 isochron

plagioclase 4.34 +/- 0.05

4.43 +/- 0.05

4.29 +/- 0.02

4.36

Age of Meteorites

Most of the other measurements for the age of the earth rest upon calculating an age for the solar system by dating objects which are expected to have formed with the planets but are not geologically active (and therefore cannot erase evidence of their formation), such as meteorites. The following is a table of dates of meteorite groups (from Chris Stassen, see also his detailed Isochron Dating FAQ).

Learn about the types of meteorites here (82% are stony Chondrites, about 8% are Achondrites such as Eucrites, 5% are Iron, etc).

Whole-Rock Isochron Ages of Different Meteorite Groups

[ From G. Brent Dalrymple (page 291), some omitted for brevity ]

Meteorite class or group Number

Dated Method Age (billions

of years)

Chondrites (CM, CV, H, L, LL, E) 13 Sm-Nd 4.21 +/- 0.76

Carbonaceous chondrites 4 Rb-Sr 4.37 +/- 0.34

Chondrites (undisturbed H, LL, E) 38 Rb-Sr 4.50 +/- 0.02

Chondrites (H, L, LL, E) 50 Rb-Sr 4.43 +/- 0.04

H Chondrites (undisturbed) 17 Rb-Sr 4.52 +/- 0.04

H Chondrites 15 Rb-Sr 4.59 +/- 0.06

L Chondrites (relatively undisturbed) 6 Rb-Sr 4.44 +/- 0.12

L Chondrites 5 Rb-Sr 4.38 +/- 0.12

LL Chondrites (undisturbed) 13 Rb-Sr 4.49 +/- 0.02

LL Chondrites 10 Rb-Sr 4.46 +/- 0.06

E Chondrites (undisturbed) 8 Rb-Sr 4.51 +/- 0.04

E Chondrites 8 Rb-Sr 4.44 +/- 0.13

Eucrites (polymict) 23 Rb-Sr 4.53 +/- 0.19

Eucrites 11 Rb-Sr 4.44 +/- 0.30

Eucrites 13 Lu-Hf 4.57 +/- 0.19

Diogenites 5 Rb-Sr 4.45 +/- 0.18

Iron (plus iron from St. Severin) 8 Re-Os 4.57 +/- 0.21

As shown in the table, there is excellent agreement on about 4.5 billion years, between several meteorites and by several different dating methods. The accusation cannot be made that this represents selective use of data -- the table includes a significant fraction of all meteorites on which isotope dating has been attempted. According to Dalrymple (page 286), less than 100 meteorites have been subjected to isotope dating, and of those about 70 yield ages with low analytical error. Further, the oldest age determinations of individual meteorites generally give concordant ages by multiple radiometric means, or multiple tests across different samples (from Chris Stassen).

Meteorites Whose Radiometric Ages Exceed 4.4 Billion Years

[ From G. Brent Dalrymple (page 287-9), some omitted for brevity ]

Meteorite Name Material Dated Method Age (billions

of years)

Allende whole rock Ar-Ar 4.52 +/- 0.02

whole rock Ar-Ar 4.53 +/- 0.02

whole rock Ar-Ar 4.48 +/- 0.02

whole rock Ar-Ar 4.55 +/- 0.03

whole rock Ar-Ar 4.55 +/- 0.03

whole rock Ar-Ar 4.57 +/- 0.03

whole rock Ar-Ar 4.50 +/- 0.02

whole rock Ar-Ar 4.56 +/- 0.05

Guarena whole rock Ar-Ar 4.44 +/- 0.06

13 isochron Rb-Sr 4.46 +/- 0.08

Shaw whole rock Ar-Ar 4.43 +/- 0.06

whole rock Ar-Ar 4.40 +/- 0.06

whole rock Ar-Ar 4.29 +/- 0.06

Olivenza 18 isochron Rb-Sr 4.53 +/- 0.16

whole rock Ar-Ar 4.49 +/- 0.06

St. Severin 4 isochron Sm-Nd 4.55 +/- 0.33

10 isochron Rb-Sr 4.51 +/- 0.15

whole rock Ar-Ar 4.43 +/- 0.04

whole rock Ar-Ar 4.38 +/- 0.04

whole rock Ar-Ar 4.42 +/- 0.04

Indarch 9 isochron Rb-Sr 4.46 +/- 0.08

12 isochron Rb-Sr 4.39 +/- 0.04

Juvinas 5 isochron Sm-Nd 4.56 +/- 0.08

5 isochron Rb-Sr 4.50 +/- 0.07

Moama 3 isochron Sm-Nd 4.46 +/- 0.03

4 isochron Sm-Nd 4.52 +/- 0.05

Y-75011 9 isochron Rb-Sr 4.50 +/- 0.05

7 isochron Sm-Nd 4.52 +/- 0.16

5 isochron Rb-Sr 4.46 +/- 0.06

4 isochron Sm-Nd 4.52 +/- 0.33

Angra dos Reis 7 isochron Sm-Nd 4.55 +/- 0.04

3 isochron Sm-Nd 4.56 +/- 0.04

Mundrabrilla silicates Ar-Ar 4.57 +/- 0.06

olivine Ar-Ar 4.54 +/- 0.04

plagioclase Ar-Ar 4.50 +/- 0.04

Weekeroo Station 4 isochron Rb-Sr 4.39 +/- 0.07

silicates Ar-Ar 4.54 +/- 0.03

R. Sungenis: This data doesn’t prove anything for the evolutionist. As I stated at the beginning of this critique, the only thing it shows is that these elements presently have the half-lives listed above, but whether this is proof that they existed billions of years ago is simply conjecture. The Creationist simply insists that, as God created DNA, cellular mechanisms, nucleons, and many other processes whole and functional, they would each carry with them the characteristics with which they were created. With radioactive elements, their half-lives were instilled in them at their ex nihilo creation. God chose these extended half-lives at that time because He wanted these radioactive elements to remain in mostly in their original state with little decay.

Porvaznik: Summary of the Evidence for the Age of the Earth

The development and refinement of modern instrumentation and radiometric dating methods based on the decays of isotopes of uranium, potassium, rubidium, samarium, rhenium, and lutetium to their respective daughter products lead, argon, strontium, neodymium, osmium, and hafnium beginning in the mid-1950s and continuing to the present finally produced the answer to the question of the antiquity of the earth.

We can be confident that the minimum age for the earth exceeds 4 billion years -- the evidence is abundant and compelling. Rocks exceeding 3.5 billion years in age are found on all the continents, but four especially well-studied areas: the Superior region of North America, the Isua-Godthaab area of western Greenland, the Pilbara block in the northern part of Western Australia, and Swaziland in southern Africa, where rocks 3.5 billion years or more in age have been found, carefully mapped, thoroughly studied, and dated by more than one radiometric method.

Meteorites are the oldest and most primitive rocks available for earthbound scientists to study. The majority of the 70 or so well-dated meteorites have individual Rb-Sr, Sm-Nd, Pb-Pb and 40Ar / 39Ar ages of 4.4 to 4.6 billion years. Internal and whole-rock isochron ages determined by Rb-Sr, Lu-Hf, Sm-Nd, Pb-Pb, and Re-Os methods, as well as other isotopic evidence, shows the major meteorite types were formed within a few tens of millions of years between 4.5 and 4.6 billion years ago.

All hypotheses for formation of our solar system call for the planets, including earth and the asteroids, to be formed within a very short interval of time. Thus, the ages of meteorites are relevant to the age of the earth and suggest that the earth and the other solid bodies of the solar system formed about 4.5 to 4.6 billion years ago (Dalrymple, pages 398-401).

"We now know, to within 1% or better and from a variety of evidence, that the age of the Earth-Moon-meteorite system is about 4.51 - 4.55 Ga [billions of years old]." (G. Brent Dalrymple, from "The Age of the Earth in the Twentieth Century: A Problem (Mostly) Solved" in The Age of the Earth From 4004 BC to AD 2002 edited by C.L.E. Lewis and S.J. Knell [Geological Society, 2001], page 219)

See also Part 2: The Scientific Evidence for Evolution

BOOKS CONSULTED

On the Age of the Earth and the Universe

The Age of the Earth from 4004 BC to AD 2002 edited by C.L.E. Lewis and S.J. Knell (Geological Society Special Publication No 190, 2001)

The Age of the Earth by G. Brent Dalrymple (Stanford University Press, 1991)

God and the New Physics by Paul Davies (Touchstone, 1983)

Science and Evidence for Design in the Universe by Michael J. Behe, William A. Dembski, Stephen C. Meyer (Ignatius Press, 2000), proceedings of the 1999 Wethersfield Institute

On Creation/Evolution

Darwin on Trial by Phillip E. Johnson (Intervarsity Press, 1991, 1993)

Darwin's Black Box: The Biochemical Challenge to Evolution by Michael Behe (Touchstone, 1996)

Finding Darwin's God: A Scientist's Search for Common Ground Between God and Evolution by Kenneth R. Miller (Cliff Street Books, 1999)

Young Earth Creationist Texts

The Genesis Flood: The Biblical Record and its Scientific Implications by John C. Whitcomb and Henry M. Morris (Presbyterian and Reformed Publishing, 1961)

It's A Young World After All: Exciting Evidences for Recent Creation by Paul D. Ackerman (Baker Book House, 1986)

Creation's Tiny Mystery by Robert V. Gentry (Earth Science Associates, 1986)

See also Part 2: The Scientific Evidence for Evolution

The Talk Origins Age of the Earth FAQs

http://www.talkorigins.org/origins/faqs-youngearth.html

The Talk Origins Evolution FAQs

http://www.talkorigins.org/origins/faqs-evolution.html

R. Sungenis: As we have seen, radiometric evidence is not only an uncertain science, but for years evolutionists have been presupposing that a half-life of billions of years means that the element existed billions of years ago. At best this interpretation is unprovable, at worst, it is a fallacious and underhanded interpretation of the scientific data. The same goes for the geologic column. For years we have been told that the geologic column is a multi-million year chronology of Earth’s history, since it has been assumed that strata were formed horizontally over extended periods of time. This simply is not provable, and there are not only viable alternatives that state that the geologic column formed vertically, but this hypothesis is also testable in the laboratory.

In addition to evolutionists biased interpretation of the field evidence, we also have an inordinate amount of dishonesty taking place in the science community in order to fabricate evidence for evolutionary theory. Just one example will suffice. Allow me to quote from the book Betrayers of the Truth by William Broad and Nicholas Wade (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1982) a book that will enlighten the reader to the inordinate amount of fraud and deception taking place in our esteemed world of “science.” The authors write:

“The discovery of the Piltdown man was made by Charles Dawson, a lawyer who maintained a quiet practice in the south of England and dabbled in geology. A tireless amateur collector of fossils, Dawson noticed a promising-looking gravel pit on Piltdown Common, near Lewes in Sussex. He asked a laborer digging there to bring him and flints he might find. Several years later, in 1908, the laborer brought him a fragment of bone that Dawson recognized as part of a thick human skull. Over the next three years further bits of the skull appeared.

“In 1912 Dawson wrote to his old friend Arthur Smith Woodward, a world authority on fossil fishes at the geology department of the British Museum of Natural History, saying he had something that would top the German fossil found at Heidelberg. Woodward made several visits with Dawson to the Piltdown gravel pit. On one of these expeditions, Dawson’s digging tool struck at the bottom of the pit and out flew part of a lower jaw. Close examination led Woodward and Dawson to believe that it belonged to the skull they had already reconstructed.

“In great excitement, Smith Woodward took everything back to the British Museum, where he put the jaw and cranium together, filling in missing parts with modeling clay and his imagination. The result was truly remarkable. The assembled skull became the “dawn man” of Piltdown. Kept secret until December 1912, it was unveiled before a full house at the Geological Society in London, where it created a sensation. Some skeptics suggested that the human skull and apelike jaw did not belong together; others pointed out that two characteristically abraded molar teeth were not enough to prove the jaw was human. But these objections were ignored, and the find was accepted as a great and genuine discovery.

“The talk in clubs and pubs could note with satisfaction the new proof that the earliest man was indeed British. The Piltdown skull was also of scientific interest because it seemed to be the “missing link,” the transitional form between ape and man that was postulated by Darwin’s still controversial theory of evolution. Subsequent excavations at the gravel pit were not disappointing. A whole series of new fossils emerged. The clinching evidence came from a pit a few miles away – the discovery a few years later of a second Piltdown man.

“Yet some were troubled by the Piltdown finds, among them young zoologist at the British Museum, Martin A. C. Hinton. After a visit to the site in 1913, Hinton concluded that the whole thing was a hoax. He decided to smoke out th tricksters by planting clearly fraudulent fossils and watching the reactions. He took an ape tooth from the collection at the museum and filed it down to match the model canine tooth that Smith Woodward had fashioned out of clay. Hinton had the obvious forgery placed in the pit by an accomplice and sat back to wait for it to be discovered and the entire Piltdown collection to be exposed.

“The tooth was discovered, but nothing else went right with Hinton’s plan. All involved with the “discovery” seemed delighted and soon notified the nation about the new find. Hinton was astonished that his scientific colleagues could be taken in by so transparent a fake, and he suffered the additional mortification of seeing Charles Dawson , whom he suspected to be the culprit, acquiring kudos for his handiwork. He decided to try again, only this time with something so outrageous that the whole country would laugh the discoverers to scorn.

“In a box in the British Museum he found a leg bone from an extinct species of elephant. He proceeded to carve it into an extremely appropriate tool for the earliest Englishman – a Pleistocene cricket bat. He took the bat to Piltdown, buried it, and waited for the laughter.

“It was a long wait. When the bat was unearthed, Smith Woodward was delighted. He pronounced it a supremely important example of the work of Paleolithic man, for nothing like it had ever been found before. Smith Woodward and Dawson published a detailed, serious description of the artifact in a professional journal but stopped short of calling it an actual cricket bat. Hinton was astonished that none of the scientists thought of trying to whittle a bit of bone, fossil or fresh, with a flint edge. If they had, they would have discovered it was impossible to imitate the cuts on the cricket bat. “The acceptance of this rubbish completely defeated the hoaxsters,” notes a historian of the Piltdown episode. “They just gave up, and abandoned all attempts to expose the whole business and get it demolished in laughter and ridicule.” Perhaps Hinton and friends should have considered planting a bone on which the name Smith Woodward had been carved.

“Piltdown man retained its scientific luster until the mid-1920s and the discovery of humanlike fossils in Africa. These indicated a very different pattern of human evolution to that suggested by the Piltdown skull. Instead of a human cranium with an apelike jaw, the African fossils were just the reverse – they had humanlike jaws with apelike skulls. Piltdown became first an anomaly, then an embarrassment. It slipped from sight until modern techniques of dating showed in the early 1950s that the skull and its famous jaw were fakes: an ape jaw, with filed-down molars, and a human skull had each been suitably stained to give the appearance of great age.

“Circumstantial evidence pointed to the skull’s discoverer, Dawson, as the culprit. But many have doubted that he could have been the instigator; although he was best placed to salt the gravel pit, he probably lacked access to the necessary fossil collections as well as the scientific expertise to assemble fossils of the right age for the Piltdown gravel. Indeed, the real mystery is not who did it but how a whole generation of scientists could have been taken in by so transparent a prank. The fakery was not expert. The tools were poorly carved and the teeth crudely filed. “The evidence of artificial abrasion immediately sprang to the eye. Indeed so obvious did they seem it may well be asked – how was it that they had escaped notice before,” remarked anthropologist Le Gros Clark.” (Pages 119-122).

There are many more such cases in anthropology, archeology, radiometrics and geology, but this one example will suffice for the present. It wouldn’t be so bad, except that the evolutionists have admitted their presuppositions and that they will not change their tactics or their minds when confronted with contrary evidence to their theory of evolution. Here are a few example of their hubris:

In 1929, evolutionist D. M. S. Watson, stated: “The theory of evolution is universally accepted not because it can be proven true, but because the only alternative is special creation by God, which is clearly incredible” (Nature, Vol. 123, 1929).

Similarly, geneticist Richard Lewontin stated:

We take the side of science in spite of the patent absurdity of some of its constructs, in spite of its failure to fulfill many of its extravagant promises of health and life, in spite of the tolerance of the scientific community for unsubstantiated just-so stories, because we have a prior commitment, a commitment to materialism. It is not that the methods and institutions of science somehow compel us to accept a material explanation of the phenomenal world, but, on the contrary, that we are forced by our a priori adherence to material causes to create an apparatus of investigation and a set of concept that produce material explanations, no matter how counterintuitive, no matter how mystifying to the uninitiated. Moreover, that materialism is absolute, for we cannot allow a Divine Foot in the door (“Billions and Billions of Demons,” The New York Review of Books, January 9, 1997, pp. 28, 31).

The only absolute certainty we have in this world is what comes from the mouth of God. In His word it states that He created the universe in six days, not six billion years or sixteen billion years. As for science, the facts are plain: we have found no irrefutable scientific evidence to deny this divine revelation, including that from Brent Dalrymple.

Robert A. Sungenis, M.A.