Time: Part 2: Is It Really Written in Stone?

 Science is divided into three general categories: hard science, soft science, and historical science. Hard science predicts results that can be tested and repeated. Just because a scientist uses measurements doesn't mean he is doing actual science. Soft sciences are the study of people and sometimes animals such as paleontology, archaeology, anthropology, psychology, and sociology. Historical science may use the numbers from radiometric dating and computer modeling, but it is not predicting any kind of result and cannot be tested  or repeated, so it is merely using numbers from the present to explain the past. Neither soft sciences nor historical sciences are actually science; they are the informed telling and interpreting of stories. The archaeologist Heinrich Schliemann studied the presumably mythological story of Homer's Iliad and discovered the site of the city of Troy. Historical scientists, both evolutionists and creations, use stories to explain the evidence we see in the rocks, whether it is the layers (strata) of the rocks in the Grand Canyon, radiometric dating, computer models or the Ice Age, or the archaeology of Bible lands. Biblical creationists, however, use the Bible as their foundation, and it is an eyewitness account. The first chapters of Genesis were actually written by Adam, Shem, and Noah, who witnessed the events and even archaeologists prefer to make their conclusions based on written accounts rather than radiocarbon dating because of how many anomalies, or inconsistencies, are found in the numbers (Answers; p. 77).

Radiometric dating is touted as proving dates irrefutably, but most laymen don't even know what radiometric dating measures. As a result of this ignorance, we are not in a position to question the conclusions that evolutionary scientists come to. 

Carbon dating measures anything that was once alive whether wood, coal, diamonds, bone, or wool. Sedimentary rocks have no way of being measured unless there are fossils in them that still contain carbon. All other radiometric dating methods are done on igneous rocks because when molten rock cools, it is said to be formed. That is the age that radiometric dating is supposed to be determining. It can be compared to baking a cake: when the batter is liquid, it cannot be said to have been made; not until it solidifies in the baking process is the cake formed. 

What does radiometric dating measure? First, a brief chemistry lesson. I learned in high school that the atomic number of an atom tells us how many protons are in the nucleus. The atomic weight of an atom is a way of measuring how much the neutrons, protons, and electrons weigh all together. Chemistry, in its simplest form, says there are the same number of protons inside the nucleus as there are electrons outside. Sometimes, however, that gets out of whack and an element will have the wrong number of protons, neutrons, or electrons. It is then called an isotope. However, it is now out of balance. When it is out of balance, it is radioactive--it is unstable. It wants to stabilize and get into balance by losing the extra particle. This process is called radioactive decay (Sarfati, p. 337).

Radiometric dating measures how much unstable radioactive parent isotope is present relative to the stable daughter. There are several different materials that may be measured:

Potassium breaks down into Argon

Rubidium breaks down into Strontium

Uranium and Thorium break down into Helium and Lead

Samarium breaks down into Neodynium        (Rock Solid Answers; p. 186)

Carbon dating is completely different from radiometric dating in that, instead of measuring how much daughter element has been created, it measures how much parent is still remaining. When cosmic rays that make it through the earth's magnetic field zap nitrogen atoms in the atmosphere, they are turned into Carbon-14, rather than the stable Carbon-12 that is the basis of life on earth. Every living organism consumes the C-14 through the air and through consuming plants that have breathed it in. At the moment of death, the C-14 starts to break down into C-12 (Answers; p. 75-76). In both types of dating, the scientists are measuring the ratio of unstable parent to stable daughter. They are very good at it and can measure it to the molecule. But what does this have to do with the age of rocks?

Scientists have discovered that in the present each unstable parent breaks down at a steady rate. It is called the half-life of the isotope because half of the parent material will break down in that amount of time. Of whatever is remaining, half of that will break down in the next period of time, and so forth (Answers; p. 76-77). Given that, theoretically, you should be able to measure the starting point--when the rock solidified or the animal or plant died--and thus get an age. Unfortunately for scientists and the conclusions they would like to draw, this requires making assumptions--telling stories--to make the information usable for their purposes. 

Assumption #1--There was no daughter element in the rock when it was formed. 

Assumption #2--Neither parent nor daughter has been altered in any way except radioactive decay since it was formed. The rock is a closed system with no outside influences.

Assumption #3-- The rate of decay that we see today has not changed since the rock was formed.         (Rock Solid Answers; p. 186)

Creationists have always seen problems with Assumptions #1 and 2 and now we are finding evidence that shows problems with Assumption #3, as well.

The image often used to help explain how radiometric dating works is that of an hourglass. The space at the top is the starting point with the unstable parent isotope, the space at the bottom is the daughter and the channel through which the sand passes is the decay process. If we come upon an hourglass that is already running (as we do when we measure the isotopes in a rock) we don't know if there was any daughter when it was formed. We don't know if someone took the top off and added more parent or daughter to the system after it started running. We also don't know just how firm that channel is allowing only a certain number of grains through at a time (Sarfati; p. 378).

We now know that there are all kinds of variables that lead to what are called anomalies. Dr. Andrew Snelling in Rock Solid Answers references college level geology textbooks and their admission that every one of the three assumptions has problems:

Concerning Assumption #1--Geologists know that often daughter isotopes are present in the magmas even before they cool, meaning that, for their purposes, there would be more daughter than could be accurately compared to the parents, making the apparent age too great. 

Concerning Assumption #2--"Both parent and daughter isotopes easily migrate out of and/or into rocks and their constituent minerals" (Rock Solid Answers; p. 188)--meaning that the rock is not a closed system, both parent and daughter may come and go, and we can make no conclusion on how old the rock is given the information discovered when testing those rocks.

Concerning Assumption #3--Heat makes radioactive decay speed up, both from hot ground water and volcanic sources.

Given this information written by secular geologists, the logical conclusion is that no rock can be accurately radiometrically dated since we never know what processes the rock on our hand has gone through (Rock Solid Answers; p. 188). 

Do we have actual evidence of inaccurate ages based on radiometric dating? Heaps!

A rock from Mt. St. Helens that cooled in 1986 was radiometrically tested in 1996 and given a date of 350,000 years old (Rock Solid Answers; p. 194).

A rock from a lava flow in New Zealand that cooled in 1954 tested as being 3.5 million years old! (Solid Rock Answers; p. 194).

Wood found in Australia buried by a lava flow (it was charred, showing it was there before the lava) was carbon dated at 45,000 years old while the lava was dated with Potassium-Argon dated at 45 million years old (Sarfati; p. 385). 

The Grand Canyon has igneous rocks at the very bottom of the canyon, with a  mile of sedimentary rocks layered on them followed by a recent lava flow that actually poured down over the north rim into the Colorado River. The basement rocks down at the river are dated 715 million to 1.7 billion years old depending on the method used. The lava flow on the rim ranges from 100,000 years to 2.6 billion years old, depending, once again, on the method used. Aside from the fact that, if the dating systems were accurate, the same rocks would indicate the same age, no matter what method was used, the rocks on top are dated billions of years earlier than the rocks at the bottom. This is not only illogical, but goes against a law of geology and archaeology that says that whatever is lower in the layers is older than whatever is higher (Grand Canyon; Monument to Catastrophe; p. 126).

Carbon dating, which measures previously living things, has a very short half-life, only 5,730 years. Since half the C-14 will break down into C-12 in that time, by the time there is no C-14 left, the material would be a maximum of 50,000 years old (Answers; p. 77). Even with a mass spectrometer, which can measure extremely minute quantities, the maximum possible measurable age would be only 250,000 years (Lubenow; p. 281-2). However, there is no fossil anywhere, all the way down to the oldest Cambrian rocks that has as little as 1/1000% of C-14, the smallest part a mass spectrometer can measure. They all have far more, indicating that they are much younger than 250,000 years old, even though the evolutionary scientists think they are 600 million years old! (Lubenow; p. 128). Geophysicist Dr. John Baumgardner tested ten different coal samples. Coal is presumed to have formed from compressed peat bogs over millions of years. There should be no C-14 in any sample. Yet not only did all the samples show appreciable amounts of C-14--well above the measuring capability of a mass spectrometer--but they all showed similar ratios of C-14 to C-12. This implies that all the organisms that formed the coal died recently and about the same time--such as when the Flood wiped out all the rooted plant life (Sarfati; p. 387)

Addressing the issue of C-14 in the atmosphere, we have scientific information and the Biblical account to compare to each other to explain why the ages given by carbon dating seem so old. To recap: Assumption #1 says there was no daughter isotope in the sample. This doesn't apply to carbon dating since every life form has C-12 in it. Assumption #3 says that the decay rate has never changed. We can guess at it, but we are not going to address this assumption. 

Assumption #2 says that neither parent (C-14) nor daughter (C-12) has been affected in any way. That is the assumption we are going to address.

C-14 is formed when cosmic rays entering the atmosphere hit Nitrogen atoms and change the N-14 into C-14. Here are some facts about cosmic rays:

1--The sun is not uniformly active. When it is burning hotter, such as when it has more solar flares, more cosmic rays are emitted.

2--Magnetic fields deflect cosmic rays from entering the earth's atmosphere.

3--As the earth goes on its journey through the solar system, it goes in and out of magnetic fields.

4--The earth's own magnetic field is measurably decreasing in strength, which means more cosmic rays are getting through now than in the past.     (Answers; p. 78)

Put these together and we see that the rate of C-14 in the atmosphere is going to change over millenia and even from year to year!

Other things that affect the ration of C-14 to C-12 in the atmosphere are:

1--The burial of so much living material during the Flood. Suddenly, there was almost no C-12 in the biosphere, while C-14 was still being produced in the upper atmosphere (Answers; p. 78). 

2--Volcanoes spit out carbon dioxide that has had the C-14 already broken down. There was huge amounts of volcanism during the Flood that would have increased the relative amount of C-12. We can guess at or do computer modeling to see if #1 would balance #2, but we really have no way of knowing for sure.

3--Plants don't like C-14 so when they take in CO2, the ratios measured will be higher in C-12 and appear older than they are, compared to animals which are both eating the plants and breathing in the C-14. 

4--Before the Industrial Revolution when CO2 depleted of C-14 began being belched into the atmosphere, the C-14/C-12 ration would have been higher, making something only 400 years old appear even older when compared to sample of today.

5--Since the explosions of multiple atomic bombs, a new isotope, CO2-14 has increased making younger items (since the 1950s), which are our baseline, appear younger compared to an item of known age even from as recently as 100 years ago (Answers; p. 77).

Conclusion: It is impressive that modern scientists have been able to build machines that measure the number of molecules in a material. Their technical knowledge and ability is not to be questioned. The conclusions they come to, however, based on assumptions we have seen are not supported by the facts, are far from scientific and do not even match the evidence. A two billion year difference in rock ages is not simply not in the ballpark, it is just totally unhelpful. One is left with the impression that you could pick any number you wanted out of a hat and it would do. The Bible, on the other hand, is an archaeological record that has been supported from multiple ancient records as being accurate. Our foundation should not be on the numbers, but in the Creator who made them.

1. The Answers Book; Don Batten, ed.; Master Books; 1990.

2. Grand Canyon; Monument to Catastrophe; Steven A. Austin, ed.; Institute for Creation Research; 1994.

2. Lubenow, Marvin L.; Bones of Contention; Baker Books; Grand Rapids, MI; 2004.

3. Rock Solid Answers; Mike Oard and John K. Reed, eds.; Master Books; 2009.

4. Sarfati, Jonathan; Refuting Compromise; Master Books; 2004.

The Trouble With Time: Part 1--Time in Outer Space

 

It is fascinating how so many people want to pin down when in the world things have happened. We are often presented with dates as if they are incontrovertible--this time and no other. But how do we know when something happened?

Time is a huge issue in the study of both the hard and soft sciences. How do you determine the age of an object, whether it is a star, a rock, or a leather shoe? Most of us consider that time is a constant thing that just keeps ticking away at the same rate wherever you are. It is actually unbelievably complex and time has to be considered astronomically, geologically, and historically to see how the science in each area affects our conclusions in other areas. For that reason, we are going to take each area and discuss it separately.

First is the physics of time that we see in light. Light is the only thing that really indicates the passage of time. The sun rises, it sets--we have a day. The moon waxes and wanes--we have a lunar month. The sun rises at its furthest point south--the winter solstice--and rises at its furthest point north--the summer solstice--and back again--and we have one year. How do scientists who tell us that the universe is 13.7 billion years old come to that conclusion? Because of light. Space is so vast that it is measured in light years--the distance light travels in a year. It is possible for astronomers to measure the light from stars to determine how far away it is. What they have calculated is that the light at the farthest distance from earth started 13.7 billion years ago. 

To explain how there are 13.7 billion years of light in space while the Bible accounts for only about 6,000 years of history will take some explaining. Bear with me.

Dr. D. Russell Humphreys, physicist, in his book Starlight and Time explains Einstein's theory of General Relativity. We think of E=mc(squared) when we think of Einstein's theory of Special Relativity. He came up with General Relativity eleven years later. General Relativity says that the closer an object is to a gravitational center, the slower time goes. That doesn't mean that the perceived time slows down--one second is still one second for the person experiencing it--but time goes relatively faster the further away from the center of gravity something is. (If you want to see how this works, watch the movie Interstellar.) This phenomenon has been proven by comparing the atomic clocks at Greenwich, England (sea level) and the National Bureau of Standards at Boulder, Colorado. The clock in Colorado, one mile farther from the center of the earth, goes five microseconds faster than the one in England. When they take atomic clocks up in airplanes into zero gravity, the difference is even more noticeable. [Humphreys, p. 104.] It is rather complicated, but Edwin Hubble used Einstein's General Relativity when he looked through a telescope and saw that the light in certain galaxies was shifted to the red side of the spectrum, what are called "red shifts". It is the Doppler effect; waves get compressed as an object comes closer and get stretched out as they move away. This applies to all waves; we just don't usually notice it with light because on earth we don't have enough space to observe them with the naked eye. However, in space we can see that light waves get pushed to the high frequency (blue) end of the spectrum when an object is coming toward us and stretched to the low frequency (red) end when an object is moving away. [Sarfati, p. 151] The assumption of Einstein's theory of General Relativity is the first part of figuring out time and when the universe began. We just saw that it predicted the results that were exhibited in the clock experiments. The Big Bang Theory requires in addition a belief (and I do mean belief) in the Cosmological (or Copernican) Principle which says that there is no edge and no center to the universe [Humphreys, p. 18]. Evolutionists look at space and see the galaxies evenly distributed around us and there are only two conclusions possible: 1) there is no edge or center to the universe, or 2) we are at the center of a universe that has boundaries. Jonathan Sarfati, in Refuting Compromise, quotes Edwin Hubble: "Such a condition [these red shifts] would imply that we occupy a unique position in the universe . . . But the unwelcome supposition of a favored location must be avoided at all costs . . . it is intolerable . . . moreover it represents a discrepancy with the [Big Bang] theory because the theory postulates homogeneity" [Sarfati, p. 148]. Most laymen think the Big Bang Theory means there was a single point and that exploded and led out to the edge of the universe, but it actually, with the help of the Cosmological Principle, means no center and no edge. The Cosmological Principle says the universe exploded from every point at the same time to the same extent [Sarfati, p. 147], requiring the addition of another dimension [Humphreys, p. 17], which is beyond the comprehension of most of us ordinary mortals. However, the Cosmological Principle is not science; it is philosophy. It doesn't predict anything and it can't be disproved or proved (the definition of science), unlike General Relativity. There is no science that requires us to accept that the universe has no center and no edge. Why is this such a big deal? Because that means that the alternative, that the universe does have a center and an edge, is a viable perspective. If that is the case, what does that mean for Biblical creationists?

No matter which direction we look out into the cosmos from earth, we see the same amount of stuff: about the same number of celestial bodies, the same amount of empty space, the same amount of light shifted to red, as well as other factors. Now, I am not saying we are in the precise center of the universe, but if even our solar system is in the center of the universe, the red shifts of light will still be the same in every direction from earth.

Back to Einstein's theory of General Relativity: Stephen Hawking explained how this works in A Brief History of Time paraphrased by Dr. Humphreys. He explained that if an astronaut were approaching a black hole and the engineers at Houston were watching through a telescope, with every second ticking on the astronaut's watch, Houston's clock would go increasingly fast--first an hour for a second, then a day for a second, and so on [Humphreys, p. 27]. This is how we get lots of time in space and a little time on earth. 

From a Biblical standpoint, when did this happen? Dr. Humphreys has several scriptures that would support the idea of an expanding universe. 

"Then God said, let there by light in the expanse of the heavens . . let them be for lights in the expanse of the heavens" (Genesis 1:14-15). Humphreys emphasizes "in" to demonstrate that the expanse is not just the daytime sky--it is interstellar space. (I am condensing considerably and for more detail, please refer to Dr. Humphreys' book, Starlight and Time.) Also, God, "Who alone stretches out the heavens" (Job 9:8). This idea is repeated several times in scripture--check out your concordance!

Dr. Humphreys points out that both scripture and General Relativity--in a bounded universe that was was smaller in the past (he says fifty times smaller)--would result in one of two possibilities: a black hole or a white hole. Yes, a white hole is a concept, just an unfamiliar one. Both have a singularity at the center and an event horizon, "an intangible spherical border . . .This is the point at which light rays trying to escape a black hole bend back on themselves; it is also where time is massively distorted" [Humphreys, p. 23]. A black hole contracts to its singularity, while a white hole expands to the point where the singularity disappears. What do we see in nature today? We see light moving away in the red shifts, not closing in in blue shifts as it would in a black hole. That would indicate that, even if creation started with a black hole, the last function before the world as we know it was a white hole. 

Is this consistent with the Bible? Yes. The first four days of creation are completely consistent with an expanding universe. Most creationists interpret the description of the earth at the beginning as there being something God created first and then He worked from there. "The earth was without form, and void; and darkness was on the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters" (Genesis 1:2). Humphreys theorized that all matter was in an immense ball of water over two light years across that all matter in the universe came from, and it was in the center of space about 450 million light years across. All of creation was in a black hole--the singularity was at the center of the ball of water and the event horizon was at the edge of space. At the beginning of time, the gravity at the center of that ball would be so intense it would break the water down into its component parts: electrons, protons, and even smaller. Then, as the white hole did what they are theorized to do, space would expand and those atomic particles would begin to condense like water vapor on the outside of a glass of iced lemonade and coalesce into other elements such as minerals and gases. It collapses to its singularity--massive energy, or the light of Genesis 1:3: "Then God said, 'Let there be light'; and there was light." Interestingly, he suggests that the gravity of the black hole keeps the light inside the black hole until the gravity is so intense that light cannot reach the surface of the event horizon. That gives you the light being divided from the darkness. He also discusses angular momentum which would cause rotation; thus, the twenty-four hour day of Day One. Humphreys doesn't have a scientific explanation for the mechanism that turns a black hole into a white hole, but he admits God may have directly caused the change, just as he directly caused the creation of matter and space in the first place. Humphreys has scientific explanations for the next processes, but for those of us for whom that is a bit much, practically speaking, the white hole starts spewing out all its matter and energy (the opposite of a black hole sucking in everything). As the gravity decreases and the atomic particles have more space around them and cool off, they form the different elements. He points out something I had never observed before: God does not declare Day 2 as good; every other day is good, but not Day 2, implying that Days 2 and 3 were part of a single process. Day 2 is the coalescence of the heavier atoms of the earth at normal earth gravity while the expanse keeps spreading out to get ready to make the celestial bodies (waters above and below). Then, Day 3, while the "waters above" keep heading out into outer space, the waters of the earth keep solidifying to form earth and rock and God brings forth plants. [Note: some people ask whether the plants wouldn't die from cold before the sun was made on Day 4. However, the inside of a black hole is unbelievably hot and the radiant heat still in the earth would be enough to keep the plants alive till the sun was made.] Then, God declares it good because it took two days to form the earth and it is now done. Day 4, the atomic particles out in space are zipping away from the center of gravity to form stars, planets, nebulae, etc. [Humphreys, pp. 74-79]. 

All of that was to get us back to Einstein's theory of General Relativity! Since the closer to the center of gravity we are the relatively slower time goes, and the farther away it is from that center of gravity, the faster time goes, if the earth is roughly the center of the universe, the time would go the slowest here. (Humphreys admits it may have moved since creation, and even if we are not the center, but in the neighborhood of the center, considering the size of the universe, we would still be just next door, astronomically speaking) [Humphreys, p. 99]. So, the stars at the far end of the universe are running away from the center, which Humphreys says has no scientific limitation on speed according to General Relativity. In six rotational days, the event horizon may have gone to the end of the universe.

This explains why it is completely possible for there to be 13.7 billions years of light at the edge of the universe, while there are only about six thousand years of history on earth!

Stay tuned for the next step in time: Geological time and radiometric dating. 

1. Humphreys, D. Russell; Starlight and Time; Master Books; c. 1994.

2. Sarfati, Jonathan; Refuting Compromise; Master Books; c. 2004.