A POCKET GUIDE TO . . .

A Young Earth
Evidence that supports the biblical perspective

PROBLEMS WITH RADIOACTIVE DATING • CARBON-14 DATING • WHERE

DID THE IDEA OF “MILLIONS OF YEARS” COME FROM? • HOW OLD IS
THE EARTH? • THE HEAVENS DECLARE A YOUNG SOLAR SYSTEM
A
 A POCKET GUIDE TO . . .

A Young Earth
Evidence that supports the biblical perspective

Petersburg, Kentucky, USA

Copyright © 2010 Answers in Genesis–USA. All rights reserved. No
part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever
without written permission from the publisher. For more information
write: Answers in Genesis, PO Box 510, Hebron, KY 41048

Third printing July 2011

ISBN: 1-60092-303-8

All Scripture quotations are taken from the New King James Version.
Copyright ©1982 by Thomas Nelson, Inc. Used by permission. All
rights reserved.

Printed in China

www.answersingenesis.org
Table of Contents

Introduction. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
Back to Basics. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
by Andrew A. Snelling
Problems with the Assumptions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
by Andrew A. Snelling
Making Sense of the Patterns. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23
by Andrew A. Snelling
Doesn’t Carbon-14 Dating Disprove the Bible? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31
by Mike Riddle
Where Did the Idea of “Millions of Years” Come From? . . . . . . . . . 47
by Terry Mortenson
Raising the Bar on Creation Research . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 61
by Don DeYoung
How Old Is the Earth? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 69
by Bodie Hodge
The Heavens Declare a Young Solar System . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 85
by Ron Samec
Trusting in Authority. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 93
Introduction

The question of the age of the earth has produced heated dis-
cussions on debate boards, in classrooms, on TV and radio, and in
many churches, Christian colleges, and seminaries. The primary
sides are young-earth proponents (biblical age of the earth and
universe of about 6,000 years) and old-earth proponents (secular
age of the earth and universe of about 4.5 billion years and 14 bil-
lion years, respectively).
The difference could not be greater! Where do these ideas
come from, and upon what authority are they based? Can we ac-
curately calculate an age for the earth?
From the earliest times, man has tried to estimate the age of
the earth from historical records, secular chronologies, biblical
sources, and more recently from scientific measurements. Only
in the past few decades have secular scientists come to agreement
based on radiometric dating methods. But are these methods ac-
curate? Are there other methods for measuring the age of the earth
that give different results?
This Pocket Guide to a Young Earth will aid you in understand-
ing the debate, the dating methods, the problems with these
methods, and upon what authority the different views are based.
You will find that when we start from biblical assumptions, and
look at the world through the lens of Scripture, we can come to
solid conclusions that are not only true to the scriptural record,
but also agree with sound science.
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8 • A Pocket Guide to a Young Earth

 Radiometric Dating, Part 1

Back to Basics
© Hartmutok | Dreamstime.com

by Andrew A. Snelling

M
Most people think that radioactive dating has proven the earth
is billions of years old. After all, textbooks, media, and museums
glibly present ages of millions of years as fact.
Yet few people know how radiometric dating works or bother
to ask what assumptions drive the conclusions. So let’s take a clos-
er look and see how reliable this dating method really is.

Atoms—basics we observe today

Each chemical element, such as carbon and oxygen, consists of
atoms. Each atom is thought to be made up of three basic parts.
The nucleus contains protons (tiny particles each with a single
positive electric charge) and neutrons (particles without any elec-
tric charge). Orbiting around the nucleus are electrons (tiny par-
ticles each with a single negative electric charge).
The atoms of each element may vary slightly in the num-
bers of neutrons within their nuclei. These variations are called
isotopes of that element. While the number of neutrons var-
ies, every atom of any element always has the same number of
protons and electrons.
So, for example, every carbon atom contains six protons
and six electrons, but the number of neutrons in each nucleus
can be six, seven, or even eight. Therefore, carbon has three iso-
topes (variations), which are specified carbon-12, carbon-13,
and carbon-14 (Figure 1).

Back to Basics • 9
 + Proton Neutron - Electron
- - -

- - - - -
- - -
+ + + + + + + + +
+ + + + + + + + +
- - -

- - -

C-12 Stable C-13 Stable C-14 Unstable

Figure 1: Stable & unstable atoms: Radiometric dating is based on a simple

fact about atoms. If an atom has too many neutrons in its nucleus (blue circle
below), it is unstable and will change into a stable form. To date a sample,
scientists calculate how much time would be required for the unstable atoms in
the sample to change into a stable form.
For example, most carbon atoms are stable because they + Proton Neutron

+ Proton
have only six or seven neutrons in their nuclei (carbon-12 Neutron
-
- Electro
-

and carbon-13, above). But some carbon atoms-have too

many neutrons +
Proton Neutron
and are unstable (carbon-14).
-
- -
Electron
+ + +
-

-
- -
+ + +
-

- - - - - -
+ + + - + + +
-
- -
+ + + + + + + + +
- - + + + - - + + + - + + +
- - -- - -
-
+ + + + + + + + +
+ + +
+ + + -
Radioactive decay -
+ + +
- -
- -
C-12 Stable C-13 Stable
- - -
Some isotopes are radioactive; that
C-12 is, they are unstable
Stable be-
C-13 Stable C-14 Unsta
cause their nuclei are too large. To
C-12 Stable achieve
C-13 stability, the
Stable atom
C-14 must
Unstable
make adjustments, particularly in its nucleus. In some cases, the
isotopes eject particles, primarily neutrons and protons. (These are
the moving particles measured by Geiger counters and the like.)
The end result is a stable atom, but of a different chemical element
(not carbon) because the atom now has a different number of pro-
tons and electrons.
This process of changing one element (designated as the par-
ent isotope) into another element (referred to as the daughter iso-
tope) is called radioactive decay. The parent isotopes that decay are
called radioisotopes.
Actually, it isn’t really a decay process in the normal sense of
the word, like the decay of fruit. The daughter atoms are not lesser
in quality than the parent atoms from which they were produced.
Both are complete atoms in every sense of the word.

10 • A Pocket Guide to a Young Earth

 Geologists regularly use five parent isotopes to date rocks:
uranium-238, uranium-235, potassium-40, rubidium-87, and
samarium-147. These parent radioisotopes change into daugh-
ter lead-206, lead-207, argon-40, strontium-87, and neodymi-
um-143 isotopes, respectively. Thus geologists refer to uranium-
lead (two versions), potassium-argon, rubidium-strontium, or
samarium-neodymium dates for rocks. Note that the carbon-14
(or radiocarbon) method is not used to date rocks because most
rocks do not contain carbon.

Chemical analysis of rocks today

- Electron Geologists can’t use just any old rock for dating. They must
-
find rocks that have the isotopes listed above, even if these iso-
- - - topes
-
are present only in minute amounts. Most often, this is a
+ + +
-
-
+ + +
rock- body, or unit, that has formed from the cooling of molten
-
- rock material (called magma). Examples are granites (formed by
cooling under the ground) and basalts (formed by cooling of lava
at the earth’s surface).
C-14 Unstable
e The next step is to measure the amount of the parent and
daughter isotopes in a sample of the rock unit. Specially equipped
laboratories can do this with accuracy and precision. So, in gen-
eral, few people quarrel with the resulting chemical analyses.
It is the interpretation of these chemical analyses that raises
potential problems. To understand how geologists “read” the age
of a rock from these chemical analyses, let’s use the analogy of an
hourglass “clock” (Figure 2).
In an hourglass, grains of fine sand fall at a steady rate from
the top bowl to the bottom. After one hour, all the sand has fallen
into the bottom bowl. So, after only half an hour, half the sand
should be in the top bowl, and the other half should be in the
bottom bowl.
Suppose that a person did not observe when the hourglass was
turned over. He walks into the room when half the sand is in the

Back to Basics • 11
Figure 2: Wrong assumptions, wrong dates
Unstable atoms, such as uranium (U), eventually change into stable atoms, such
as lead (Pb). The original version is called a parent atom (or isotope), and the new
version is called a daughter atom.

U Pb
U Pb
U U U U
“Parent” uranium
changes into
U U “daughter” lead. Pb U
U U Pb U

GRANITE ROCK GRANITE ROCK

When scientists date rocks, they don’t

actually observe the atoms changing.
They measure the products of the
change, which they assume took place
in the past. But what if they are wrong
about their assumptions?

Assumption 1: The original

U U U U number of unstable atoms can

U UUUU U be known. Scientists assume how
U U U many unstable (parent) atoms
U UU existed at the beginning based on
DECAY

how many parent and daughter

atoms are left today.
U U
Assumption 2: The rate of
Pb Pb change was constant. Scientists
assume that radioactive atoms

Pb PbPbPbPb have changed at the same rate

Pb Pb PbPbPb Pb throughout time, ignoring the

Pb impact of Creation or changes
during Noah’s Flood.
Assumption 3: The daughter
atoms were all produced by
radioactive decay. Scientists
Parent atoms (Uranium) assume that no outside forces,
such as flowing groundwater,
Daughter atoms (Lead) contaminated the sample.

12 • A Pocket Guide to a Young Earth

top bowl, and half the sand is in the bottom bowl. Most people
would assume that the “clock” started half an hour earlier.
By way of analogy, the sand grains in the top bowl represent
atoms of the parent radioisotope (uranium-238, potassium-40,
etc.) (Figure 2). The falling sand represents radioactive decay, and
the sand at the bottom represents the daughter isotope (lead-206,
argon-40, etc).
When a geologist tests a rock sample, he assumes all the daughter
atoms were produced by the decay of the parent since the rock
formed. So if he knows the rate at which the parent decays, he can
calculate how long it took for the daughter (measured in the rock
today) to form.
But what if the assumptions are wrong? For example,
what if radioactive material was added to the top bowl or if
the decay rate has changed? Future articles will explore the
assumptions that can lead to incorrect dates and how the Bible’s
history helps us make better sense of the patterns of radioactive
“dates” we find in the rocks today.

Dr. Andrew Snelling is one of the world’s

most respected creation scientists specializing
in geology. He is the director of the Research
Division at Answers in Genesis–USA and
editor-in-chief of Answers Research Journal.
Dr. Snelling completed a BS degree in
Applied Geology at the University of New
South Wales (Sydney, Australia). He earned a PhD in geology
from the University of Sydney. Dr. Snelling has worked as a con-
sultant research geologist to organizations in both Australia and
the U.S, and is the author of numerous scientific articles.
Dr. Snelling is a member of many professional organizations,
including the Geological Society of Australia, the Geological Soci-
ety of America, and the Creation Research Society.

Back to Basics • 13
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14 • A Pocket Guide to a Young Earth

© Okea | Dreamstime.com

Radiometric Dating, Part 2

Problems with the

Assumptions
by Andrew A. Snelling

M
Most people think that radioactive dating has proven the earth is
billions of years old. Yet this view is based on a misunderstanding
of how radiometric dating works. The previous chapter explained
how scientists observe unstable atoms changing into stable atoms
in the present. This chapter explains how scientists run into prob-
lems when they make assumptions about what happened in the
unobserved past.

The hourglass “clock”—an

analogy for dating rocks
An hourglass is a helpful analogy to explain how geologists
calculate the ages of rocks. When we look at sand in an hourglass,
we can estimate how much time has passed based on the amount
of sand that has fallen to the bottom.
Radioactive rocks offer a similar “clock.” Radioactive atoms,
such as uranium (the parent isotopes), decay into stable atoms,
such as lead (the daughter isotopes), at a measurable rate. To date
a radioactive rock, geologists first measure the “sand grains” in the
top glass bowl (the parent radioisotope, such as uranium-238 or
potassium-40).
They also measure the sand grains in the bottom bowl (the
daughter isotope, such as lead-206 or argon-40, respectively).
Based on these observations and the known rate of radioactive

Problems with the Assumptions • 15

decay, they estimate the time it has taken for the daughter isotope
to accumulate in the rock.
However, unlike the hourglass whose accuracy can be tested by
turning it upside down and comparing it to trustworthy clocks, the
reliability of the radioactive “clock” is subject to three unprovable
assumptions. No geologist was present when the rocks were formed
to see their contents, and no geologist was present to measure how
fast the radioactive “clock” has been running through the millions
of years that supposedly passed after the rock was formed.

Assumption 1: conditions at time zero

No geologists were present when most rocks formed, so they
cannot test whether the original rocks already contained daugh-
ter isotopes alongside their parent radioisotopes. For example,
with regard to the volcanic lavas that erupted, flowed, and cooled
to form rocks in the unobserved past, evolutionary geologists
simply assume that none of the daughter argon-40 atoms were
in the lava rocks.
For the other radioactive “clocks,” it is assumed that by ana-
lyzing multiple samples of a rock body, or unit, today it is possible
to determine how much of the daughter isotopes (lead, stron-
tium, or neodymium) were present when the rock formed (via
the so-called isochron technique, which is still based on unproven
assumptions 2 and 3).
Yet lava flows that have occurred in the present have been test-
ed soon after they erupted, and they invariably contained much
more argon-40 than expected.1 For example, when a sample of the
lava in the Mt. St. Helens crater (that had been observed to form
and cool in 1986) (Figure 1) was analyzed in 1996, it contained
so much argon-40 that it had a calculated “age” of 350,000 years!2
Similarly, lava flows on the sides of Mt. Ngauruhoe, New Zealand
(Figure 2), known to be less than 50 years old, yielded “ages” of up
to 3.5 million years.3

16 • A Pocket Guide to a Young Earth

 So it is logical to conclude that if recent lava flows of known
age yield incorrect old potassium-argon ages due to the extra ar-
gon-40 that they inherited from the erupting volcanoes, then an-
cient lava flows of unknown ages could likewise have inherited
extra argon-40 and yield excessively old ages.
There are similar problems with the other radioactive
“clocks.” For example, consider the dating of Grand Canyon’s
basalts (rocks formed by lava cooling at the earth’s surface). We
find places on the North Rim where volcanoes erupted after the

Assumption—conditions at time zero

Scientists do not know how many “daughter
atoms” were present when most rocks first
formed. So when they test rocks produced
by lava flows in recent years, their bad
assumptions yield old “ages.”
Bad results: “old”
dates for recent
eruptions
Pi PiPi Pi
Pi Pi
A rock formed at
Mount St. Helens Pi Pi
DECAY

FIGURE 1
in 1986 yielded a
radiometric age of Pi
350,000 years.
Di
A rock formed by
lava flows at Mt.
Ngauruhoe in 1954 Di DiDi Di
Di
yielded a radiometric Di
FIGURE 2 age of 3.5 million
years.
A rock at the top Pi Parent Isotope
of Grand Canyon,
Di Daughter Isotope
formed by a recent
volcanic eruption,
yielded the same age
as volcanic rocks deep
below the canyon FIGURE 1: USGS/Cascades Volca-
wall—1.143 billion no Observatory FIGURES 2–5:
FIGURE 3 courtesy Andrew Snelling
years.

Problems with the Assumptions • 17

Canyon was formed, sending lavas cascading over the walls and
down into the Canyon.
Obviously, these eruptions took place very recently, after the
Canyon’s layers were deposited (Figure 3). These basalts yield
ages of up to 1 million years based on the amounts of potassium
and argon isotopes in the rocks. But when we date the rocks us-
ing the rubidium and strontium isotopes, we get an age of 1.143
billion years. This is the same age that we get for the basalt layers
deep below the walls of the eastern Grand Canyon.4
How could both lavas—one at the top and one at the bottom
of the Canyon—be the same age based on these parent and daugh-
ter isotopes? One solution is that both the recent and early lava
flows inherited the same rubidium-strontium chemistry—not
age—from the same source, deep in the earth’s upper mantle.
This source already had both rubidium and strontium.
To make matters even worse for the claimed reliability of these
radiometric dating methods, these same basalts that flowed from the
top of the Canyon yield a samarium-neodymium age of about 916
million years,5 and a uranium-lead age of about 2.6 billion years!6

Assumption 2: no contamination
The problems with contamination, as with inheritance, are
already well-documented in the textbooks on radioactive dating
of rocks.7 Unlike the hourglass, where its two bowls are sealed,
the radioactive “clock” in rocks is open to contamination by gain
or loss of parent or daughter isotopes because of waters flowing
in the ground from rainfall and from the molten rocks beneath
volcanoes. Similarly, as molten lava rises through a conduit from
deep inside the earth to be erupted through a volcano, pieces of
the conduit wallrocks and their isotopes can mix into the lava
and contaminate it.
Because of such contamination, the less than 50-year-old
lava flows at Mt. Ngauruhoe, New Zealand (Figure 4), yield a

18 • A Pocket Guide to a Young Earth

rubidium-strontium “age” of 133 million years, a samarium-neo-
dymium “age” of 197 million years, and a uranium-lead “age” of
3.908 billion years!8

Assumption 3: constant decay rate

Physicists have carefully measured the radioactive decay rates
of parent radioisotopes in laboratories over the last 100 or so
years and have found them to be essentially constant (within the

Assumption—constant decay rate

Scientists do not know how quickly radioactive
atoms decayed in the past. So they assume
a constant rate. But when they tested zircon
crystals from a borehole in New Mexico, they
found two very different dates, depending on
what measurement they used.
Bad results: contradictory decay rates
Measuring the uranium
Pi PiPi Pi in these crystals yields an
Pi Pi “age” of 1.5 billion years. But
Pi Pi measuring the amount of
DECAY

helium that leaked out as a

Pi result of the decay yields an
Di age of 6,000 years.
FIGURE 5

Di DiDi Di Assumption—no
Di contamination
Di
Scientist do not know
how much the rocks have
Pi Parent Isotope
been contaminated. So
they usually assume no
Di Daughter Isotope contamination.
Bad results: different FIGURE 4
dates from the same rocks
Contamination of lava flows at Mt. Ngauruhoe,
known to be less than 50 years old, yielded
three different “ages” for rocks—133 million
years, 197 million years, and 3.908 billion years.

Problems with the Assumptions • 19

measurement error margins). Furthermore, they have not been
able to significantly change these decay rates by heat, pressure,
or electrical and magnetic fields. So geologists have assumed
these radioactive decay rates have been constant for billions
of years.
However, this is an enormous extrapolation of seven orders
of magnitude back through immense spans of unobserved time
without any concrete proof that such an extrapolation is cred-
ible. Nevertheless, geologists insist the radioactive decay rates
have always been constant, because it makes these radioactive
clocks “work”!
New evidence, however, has recently been discovered that
can only be explained by the radioactive decay rates not having
been constant in the past.9 For example, the radioactive decay
of uranium in tiny crystals in a New Mexico granite (Figure 5)
yields a uranium-lead “age” of 1.5 billion years. Yet the same
uranium decay also produced abundant helium, but only 6,000
years worth of that helium was found to have leaked out of the
tiny crystals.
This means that the uranium must have decayed very rapidly
over the same 6,000 years that the helium was leaking. The rate of
uranium decay must have been at least 250,000 times faster than
today’s measured rate!10
The assumptions on which the radioactive dating is based are
not only unprovable but plagued with problems. As this article has
illustrated, rocks may have inherited parent and daughter isotopes
from their sources, or they may have been contaminated when
they moved through other rocks to their current locations. Or
inflowing water may have mixed isotopes into the rocks. In addi-
tion, the radioactive decay rates have not been constant.
So if these clocks are based on faulty assumptions and yield
unreliable results, then scientists should not trust or promote the
claimed radioactive “ages” of countless millions of years, especially

20 • A Pocket Guide to a Young Earth

since they contradict the true history of the universe as recorded
in God’s Word.

1. A. A. Snelling, “Geochemical Processes in the Mantle and Crust,” in Radioisotopes and the
Age of the Earth: A Young-Earth Creationist Research Initiative, L. Vardiman, A. A. Snelling,
and E. F. Chaffin, eds. (El Cajon, California: Institute for Creation Research; St. Joseph,
Missouri: Creation Research Society, 2000), pp. 123–304.
2. S. A. Austin, “Excess Argon within Mineral Concentrates from the New Dacite Lava Dome
at Mount St. Helens Volcano,” Creation Ex Nihilo Technical Journal 10.3 (1996): 335–343.
3. A. A. Snelling, “The Cause of Anomalous Potassium-Argon ‘Ages’ for Recent Andesite Flows
at Mt. Ngauruhoe, New Zealand, and the Implications for Potassium-Argon ‘Dating,’” in Pro-
ceedings of the Fourth International Conference on Creationism, ed. R. E. Walsh (Pittsburgh:
Creation Science Fellowship, 1998), pp. 503–525.
4. A. A. Snelling, “Isochron Discordances and the Role of Inheritance and Mixing of Radio-
isotopes in the Mantle and Crust,” in Radioisotopes and the Age of the Earth: Results of a
Young-Earth Creationist Research Initiative, eds. L. Vardiman, A. A. Snelling, and E. F.
Chaffin (El Cajon, California: Institute for Creation Research; Chino Valley, Arizona: Creation
Research Society, 2005), pp. 393–524; D. B. DeYoung, “Radioisotope Dating Case Studies”
in Thousands . . . Not Billions (Green Forest, Arkansas: Master Books, 2005), pp. 123–139.
5. Ref. 4, 2005.
6. S. A. Austin, ed., Grand Canyon: Monument to Catastrophe (Santee, California: Institute for
Creation Research, 1994), pp. 123–126.
7. G. Faure and T. M. Mensing, Isotopes: Principles and Applications, 3rd ed. (Hoboken, New
Jersey: John Wiley & Sons, Hoboken, 2005); A. P. Dickin, Radiogenic Isotope Geology,
2nd ed. (UK: Cambridge University Press, 2005).
8. A. A. Snelling, “The Relevance of Rb-Sr, Sm-Nd and Pb-Pb Isotope Systematics to Elu-
cidation of the Genesis and History of Recent Andesite Flows at Mt. Ngauruhoe, New
Zealand, and the Implications for Radioisotopic Dating,” in Proceedings of the Fifth Interna-
tional Conference on Creationism, ed. R. L. Ivey, Jr. (Pittsburgh: Creation Science Fellow-
ship, 2003), pp. 285–303; Ref. 4, 2005.
9. L. Vardiman, A. A. Snelling, and E. F. Chaffin, eds., Radioisotopes and the Age of the
Earth: Results of a Young-Earth Creationist Research Initiative (El Cajon, California: Institute
for Creation Research; Chino Valley, Arizona: Creation Research Society, 2005); D. B.
DeYoung, Thousands . . . Not Billions (Green Forest, Arkansas: Master Books, 2005).
10. For more details, see Don DeYoung, Thousands . . . Not Billions (Green Forest, Arkansas:
Master Books, 2005), pp. 65–78.

Problems with the Assumptions • 21

22 • A Pocket Guide to a Young Earth
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Radiometric Dating, Part 3

Making Sense of
the Patterns
by Andrew A. Snelling

T
The last chapter showed that the same rocks can yield very
different ages, depending on which radiometric dating tech-
nique you use. These inconsistent results are due to the prob-
lems of inheritance and contamination, which cause the
rocks’ chemistry to differ from the assumptions of standard
radioactive “clocks.”
Furthermore, new evidence indicates that radioactive elements
in the rocks, which are used to date the rocks, decayed at much
faster rates during some past event (or events) in the last 6,000
years. So the claimed ages of many millions of years, which are
based on today’s slow decay rates, are totally unreliable.
Does this mean we should throw out the radioactive clocks?
Surprisingly, they are useful!
The general principles of using radioisotopes to date rocks
are sound; it’s just that the assumptions have been wrong and
led to exaggerated dates. While the clocks cannot yield ab-
solute dates for rocks, they can provide relative ages that al-
low us to compare any two rock units and know which one
formed first.
They also allow us to compare rock units in different areas
of the world to find which ones formed at the same time. Fur-
thermore, if physicists examine why the same rocks yield different
dates, they may discover new clues about the unusual behavior of
radioactive elements during the past.

Making Sense of the Patterns • 23

 With the help of this growing body of information, creation
geologists hope to piece together a better understanding of the
precise sequence of events in earth’s history, from Creation Week
to the Flood and beyond.

Different dates for the same rocks

Usually geologists do not use all four main radioactive clocks
to date a rock unit. This is considered an unnecessary waste of
time and money. After all, if these clocks really do work, then they
should all yield the same age for a given rock unit. Sometimes
though, using different parent radioisotopes to date different sam-
ples (or minerals) from the same rock unit does yield different
ages, hinting that something is amiss.1
Recently, creationist researchers have utilized all four common
radioactive clocks to date the same samples from the same rock
units.2 Among these were four rock units far down in the Grand
Canyon rock sequence (Figure 1), chosen because they are well
known and characterized. These were as follows:

Radiometric Ages of rock samples. Samples from the same rock unit can
yield very different radiometric “ages,” depending on the atoms being measured.
The table below shows varying “ages” from rock units found in the Grand Canyon.
Why is there so much variation? The measurements are not wrong, so there is
only one reasonable answer: each radioactive element decayed at a different,
faster rate in the past!

FIGURE 1

Brahma
Cardenas
Amphilolites
Basalt
Elves Chasm
Bass Rapids
Granodiorite
diabase sill

24 • A Pocket Guide to a Young Earth

 • Cardenas Basalt (lava flows deep in the east Canyon sequence)
(Figure 2).
• Bass Rapids diabase sill (where basalt magma squeezed be-
tween layers and cooled) (Figure 3).
• Brahma amphibolites (basalt lava flows deep in the Canyon
sequence that later metamorphosed) (Figure 4).

FIGURE 2—Cardenas Basalt FIGURE 3—Bass Rapids diabase sill

photos courtesy Andrew Snelling

FIGURE 4—Brahma amphibolites FIGURE 5—Elves Chasm Granodiorite

Ages (million years)

Potassium- Rubidium- Uranium- Samarium-
Rock Unit argon strontium lead neodymium
Cardenas Basalt 516 (±30) 1111 (±81) — 1588 (±170)
Bass Rapids 1250
842 (±164) 1060 (±24) 1379 (±140)
diabase sill (±130)
Brahma 1883
— 1240 (±84) 1655 (±40)
Amphibolites (±53)
Elves Chasm 1933
— 1512 (±140) 1664 (±200)
Granodiorite (±220)
TABLE 1—Radioactive ages yielded by four Grand Canyon rock units. (The error
margins are shown in parentheses.)

Making Sense of the Patterns • 25

• Elves Chasm Granodiorite (a granite regarded as the oldest
Canyon rock unit) (Figure 5).
Table 1 lists the dates obtained from each rock unit.
It is immediately apparent that the ages for each rock unit do
not agree. Indeed, in the Cardenas Basalt, for example, the samari-
um-neodymium age is three times the potassium-argon age.
Nevertheless, the ages follow three obvious patterns. Two
techniques (potassium-argon age and rubidium-strontium) al-
ways yield younger ages than two other techniques (uranium-
lead and samarium-neodymium). Furthermore, the potassium-
argon ages are always younger than the rubidium-strontium ages.
And often the samarium-neodymium ages are younger than the
uranium-lead ages.
What then do these patterns mean? All the radioactive clocks
in each rock unit should have started “ticking” at the same time,
the instant that each rock unit was formed. So how do we explain
that they have each recorded different ages?
The answer is simple but profound. Each of the radioactive
elements must have decayed at different, faster rates in the past!
In the case of the Cardenas Basalt, while the potassium-
argon clock ticked through 516 million years, two other clocks
ticked through 1,111 million years and 1,588 million years.
So if these clocks ticked at such different rates in the past, not
only are they inaccurate, but these rocks may not be millions
of years old!
But how could radioactive decay rates have been different in
the past? Creationist researchers don’t fully understand yet. How-
ever, the observed age patterns provide clues. Potassium and ru-
bidium decay radioactively by the process known as beta (β) decay,
whereas uranium and neodymium decay via alpha (α) decay. The
former always gives younger ages. We see another pattern within
beta decay. Potassium today decays faster than rubidium and al-
ways gives younger ages.

26 • A Pocket Guide to a Young Earth

 Both of these patterns suggest something happened in the past
inside the nuclei of these parent atoms to accelerate their decay.
The decay rate varied based on the stability or instability of the
parent atoms. Research is continuing.

Relative ages
Look again at Figure 1, which is a geologic diagram depicting
the rock layers in the walls of the Grand Canyon, along with the
rock units deep in the inner gorge along the Colorado River. This
diagram shows that the radiometric dating methods accurately
show the top rock layer is younger than the layers beneath it.
That’s logical because the sediment making up that layer was
deposited on top of, and therefore after, the layers below. So read-
ing this diagram tells us basic information about the time that
rock layers and rock units were formed relative to other layers.
Based on the radioactive clocks, we can conclude that these four
rock units deep in the gorge (Table 1) are all older in a relative sense
than the horizontal sedimentary layers in the Canyon walls. Con-
ventionally the lowermost or oldest of these horizontal sedimentary
layers is labeled early to middle Cambrian,3 and thus regarded as
about 510–520 million years old.4 All the rocks below it are then
labeled Precambrian and regarded as older than 542 million years.
So accordingly all four dated rock units (Table 1) are
also Precambrian. And apart from the potassium-argon age
for the Cardenas Basalt, all the radioactive clocks have cor-
rectly shown that these four rock units were formed earlier
than Cambrian, so they are pre-Cambrian. (But the passage
of time between these Precambrian rock units and the horizon-
tal sedimentary layers above them was a maximum of about
1,700 years—the time between creation and the Flood—not
millions of years.)
Similarly, in the relative sense the Brahma amphibolites and
Elves Chasm Granodiorite are older (by hours or days) than the

Making Sense of the Patterns • 27

Cardenas Basalt and Bass Rapids diabase sill (Figure 1). Once
again, the radioactive clocks have correctly shown that those two
rock units are older than the rock units above them.
Why then should we expect the radioactive clocks to yield rela-
tive ages that follow a logical pattern? (Actually, younger sedimen-
tary layers yield a similar general pattern.5) The answer is again
simple but profound! The radioactive clocks in the rock units at the
bottom of the Grand Canyon, formed during Creation Week, have
been ticking for longer than the radioactive clocks in the younger
sedimentary layers higher up in the sequence that were formed
later during the Flood.

Conclusion
Although it is a mistake to accept radioactive dates of millions
of years, the clocks can still be useful to us, in principle, to date the
relative sequence of rock formation during earth history.
The different clocks have ticked at different, faster rates in the
past, so the standard old ages are certainly not accurate, correct,
or absolute. However, because the radioactive clocks in rocks that
formed early in earth history have been ticking longer, they should
generally yield older radioactive ages than rock layers formed later.
So it is possible that relative radioactive ages of rocks, in addi-
tion to mineral contents and other rock features, could be used to
compare and correlate similar rocks in other areas to find which
ones formed at the same time during the events detailed in Genesis,
God’s eyewitness account of earth history.

28 • A Pocket Guide to a Young Earth

1. T. Oberthür, D. W. Davis, T. G. Blenkinsop, and A. Höhndorf, “Precise U-Pb Mineral
Ages, Rb-Sr and Sm-Nd Systematics of the Great Dyke, Zimbabwe—Constraints on
Late Archean Events in the Zimbabwe Craton and Limpopo Belt,” Precambrian Research
113:293–305, 2002; S. B. Mukasa, A. H. Wilson, and R. W. Carlson, “A Multielement
Geochronologic Study of the Great Dyke, Zimbabwe: Significance of the Robust and
Reset Ages,” Earth and Planetary Science Letters 164:353–369, 1998; J. Zhao, and M. T.
McCulloch, “Sm-Nd Mineral Isochron Ages of Late Proterozoic Dyke Swarms in Australia:
Evidence for Two Distinctive Events of Mafic Magmatism and Crustal Extension,” Chemical
Geology 109:341–354, 1993.
2. A. A. Snelling, “Isochron Discordances and the Role of Inheritances and Mixing of Ra-
dioisotopes in the Mantle and Crust,” in Radioisotopes and the Age of the Earth: Results
of a Young-Earth Creationist Research Initiative, eds. L. Vardiman, A. A. Snelling, and E.
F. Chaffin (El Cajon, California: Institute for Creation Research and Chino Valley, Arizona:
Creation Research Society), pp. 393–524, 2005; D. B. DeYoung, “Radioisotope Dating
Case Studies,” in Thousands . . . Not Billions (Green Forest: Arkansas: Master Books), pp.
123–139, 2005.
3. L. K. Middleton and D. K. Elliott, “Tonto Group,” in Grand Canyon Geology, 2nd ed., eds.
S. S. Beus and M. Morales (New York: Oxford University Press), pp. 90–106, 2003.
4. F. M. Gradstein, J. G. Ogg, and A. G. Smith, eds., A Geologic Time Scale 2004 (Cam-
bridge University Press, United Kingdom), 2004.
5. J. Woodmorappe, “Radiometric Geochronology Appraised,” Creation Research Society
Quarterly 16:102–129, 147–148, 1979; D. R. Humphreys, “Accelerated Nuclear Decay: A
Viable Hypothesis?” in Radioisotopes and the Age of the Earth: A Young-Earth Creationist
Research Initiative, eds. L. Vardiman, A. A. Snelling, and E. F. Chaffin (El Cajon, California:
Institute for Creation Research and St. Joseph, Missouri: Creation Research Society), pp.
333–379, 2000.

Making Sense of the Patterns • 29

 S
© Lillian Obucina | Dreamstime.com

30 • A Pocket Guide to a Young Earth

 Doesn’t Carbon-14
Dating Disprove
the Bible?
by Mike Riddle

S Scientists use a technique called radiometric dating to estimate the

ages of rocks, fossils, and the earth. Many people have been led
to believe that radiometric dating methods have proved the earth
to be billions of years old. This has caused many in the church to
reevaluate the biblical creation account, specifically the meaning
of the word “day” in Genesis 1. With our focus on one particular
form of radiometric dating—carbon dating—we will see that car-
bon dating strongly supports a young earth. Note that, contrary to
a popular misconception, carbon dating is not used to date rocks
© Lillian Obucina | Dreamstime.com

at millions of years old.

Basics
Before we get into the details of how radiometric dating
methods are used, we need to review some preliminary concepts
from chemistry. Recall that atoms are the basic building blocks
of matter. Atoms are made
6 proton
- up6 proton
of much smaller particles - + 6 neutrons
+ 6 neutrons
called protons, neutrons, -
-
+ and electrons. Protons and +
- + ++ -neutrons make up the center - + ++ -
- electronof the atom, and - - electron
- (nucleus) + proton
+ proton
- electrons form shells around - neutron
neutron
Carbon atom the nucleus. Carbon atom

Doesn’t Carbon-14 Dating Disprove the Bible? • 31

 The number of protons in the nucleus of an atom determines
the element. For example, all carbon atoms have 6 protons, all
atoms of nitrogen have 7 protons, and all oxygen atoms have 8
protons. The number of neutrons in the nucleus can vary in any
given type of atom. So, a carbon atom might have six neutrons, or
seven, or possibly eight—but it would always have six protons. An
“isotope” is any of several different forms of an element, each hav-
ing different numbers of neutrons. The illustration below shows
the three isotopes of carbon.
Some isotopes of certain elements are unstable; they can spon-
taneously change into another kind of atom in a process called “ra-
dioactive decay.” Since this process presently happens at a known
measured rate, scientists attempt to use it like a “clock” to tell
how long ago a rock or fossil formed. There are two main applica-
tions for radiometric dating. One is for potentially dating fossils
(once-living things) using carbon-14 dating, and the other is for
dating rocks and the age of the earth using uranium, potassium,
and other radioactive atoms.

Atomic mass 12 13 14

Atomic number 6 6 6
Carbon-12 Carbon-13 Carbon-14

The atomic number corresponds to the number of protons in an atom. Atomic

mass is a combination of the number of protons and neutrons in the nucleus.
(The electrons are so much lighter that they do not contribute significantly to
the mass of an atom.)

Carbon-14 dating
Carbon-14 (14C), also referred to as radiocarbon, is claimed to
be a reliable dating method for determining the ages of fossils up

32 • A Pocket Guide to a Young Earth

to 50,000 to 60,000 years. If this claim is true, the biblical account
of a young earth (about 6,000 years) is in question, since 14C dates
of tens of thousands of years are common.1
When a scientist’s interpretation of data does not match the
clear meaning of the text in the Bible, we should never reinter-
pret the Bible. God knows just what He meant to say, and His
understanding of science is infallible, whereas ours is fallible. So
we should never think it necessary to modify His Word. Genesis
1 defines the days of creation to be literal days (a number with the
word “day” always means a normal day in the Old Testament, and
the phrase “evening and morning” further defines the days as lit-
eral days). Since the Bible is the inspired Word of God, we should
examine the validity of the standard interpretation of 14C dating
by asking several questions:
1. Is the explanation of the data derived from empirical, obser-
vational science, or an interpretation of past events (historical
science)?
2. Are there any assumptions involved in the dating method?
3. Are the dates provided by 14C dating consistent with what we
observe?
4. Do all scientists accept the 14C dating method as reliable and
accurate?
All radiometric dating methods use scientific procedures in the
present to interpret what has happened in the past. The proce-
dures used are not necessarily in question. The interpretation of
past events is in question. The secular (evolutionary) worldview
interprets the universe and world to be billions of years old. The
Bible teaches a young universe and earth. Which worldview does
science support? Can carbon-14 dating help solve the mystery of
which worldview is more accurate?

Doesn’t Carbon-14 Dating Disprove the Bible? • 33

 Proton Neutron Electron

C-12 Stable C-13 Stable C-14 Unstable

The use of carbon-14 dating is often misunderstood. Car-

bon-14 is mostly used to date once-living things (organic ma-
terial). It cannot be used directly to date rocks; however, it can
potentially be used to put time constraints on some inorganic
material such as diamonds (diamonds could contain carbon-14).
Because of the rapid rate of decay of 14C, it can only give dates in
the thousands-of-year range and not millions.
There are three different naturally occurring varieties (iso-
topes) of carbon: 12C, 13C, and 14C.
Carbon-14 is used for dat-
ing because it is unstable (ra-
dioactive), whereas 12C and 13C
are stable. Radioactive means
that 14C will decay (emit radia-
tion) over time and become a
different element. During this
process (called “beta decay”) a
neutron in the 14C atom will
be converted into a proton. By
losing one neutron and gain-
ing one proton, 14C is changed
into nitrogen-14 (14N = 7 pro-
tons and 7 neutrons).
If 14C is constantly decay-
ing, will the earth eventually

34 • A Pocket Guide to a Young Earth

run out of 14C? The answer
is no. Carbon-14 is con-
stantly being added to the
atmosphere. Cosmic rays
from outer space, which
contain high levels of ener-
gy, bombard the earth’s up-
per atmosphere. These cos-
mic rays collide with atoms
in the atmosphere and can
cause them to come apart.
Neutrons that come from
these fragmented atoms
collide with 14N atoms (the
atmosphere is made mostly
of nitrogen and oxygen) and
convert them into 14C at-
oms (a proton changes into
a neutron).
Once 14C is produced,
it combines with oxygen
in the atmosphere (12C
behaves like 14C and also
combines with oxygen) to
form carbon dioxide (CO2). Because CO2 gets incorporated into
plants (which means the food we eat contains 14C and 12C), all
living things should have the same ratio of 14C and 12C in them as
in the air we breathe.

How the carbon-14 dating process works

Once a living thing dies, the dating process begins. As long
as an organism is alive it will continue to take in 14C; however,
when it dies, it will stop. Since 14C is radioactive (decays into

Doesn’t Carbon-14 Dating Disprove the Bible? • 35

14
N), the amount of 14C in a dead organism gets less and less over
time. Therefore, part of the dating process involves measuring the
amount of 14C that remains after some has been lost (decayed).
Scientists now use a device called an “Accelerator Mass Spectrom-
eter” (AMS) to determine the ratio of 14C to 12C, which increases
the assumed accuracy to about 80,000 years. In order to actually
do the dating, other things need to be known. Two such things
include the following questions:
1. How fast does 14C decay?

2. What was the starting amount of 14

C in the creature
when it died?
The decay rate of radioactive elements is described in terms
of half-life. The half-life of an atom is the amount of time it
takes for half of the atoms in a sample to decay. The half-life of
14
C is 5,730 years. For example, a jar starting full of 14C atoms
at time zero will contain half 14C atoms and half 14N atoms at
the end of 5,730 years (one half-life). At the end of 11,460 years
(two half-lives) the jar will contain one-quarter 14C atoms and
three-quarter 14N atoms.
Since the half-life of 14C is known (how fast it decays), the
only part left to determine is the starting amount of 14C in a fossil.
If scientists know the original amount of 14C in a creature when
it died, they can measure the current amount and then calculate
how many half-lives have passed.

Starting amount
of C-14
Three pieces of data needed
Current amount to calculate the number of
Known
of C-14 half-lives or age of the
creature

Half-life of C-14 Known

36 • A Pocket Guide to a Young Earth

 Since no one was there to measure the amount of 14C when a
creature died, scientists need to find a method to determine how
much 14C has decayed. To do this, scientists use the main isotope
of carbon, called carbon-12 (12C). Because 12C is a stable isotope of
carbon, it will remain constant; however, the amount of 14C will de-
crease after a creature dies. All living things take in carbon (14C and
12
C) from eating and breathing. Therefore, the ratio of 14C to 12C in
living creatures will be the same as in the atmosphere. This ratio turns
out to be about one 14C atom for every 1 trillion 12C atoms. Scientists
can use this ratio to help determine the starting amount of 14C.
When an organism dies, this ratio (1 to 1 trillion) will begin to
change. The amount of 12C will remain constant, but the amount
of 14C will become less and less. The smaller the ratio, the longer
the organism has been dead. The following illustration demon-
strates how the age is estimated using this ratio.
Percent 14C Percent 12C Number of Years Dead
Ratio
Remaining Remaining Half-Lives (Age of Fossil)
100 100 1 to 1T 0 0
50 100 1 to 2T 1 5,730
25 100 1 to 4T 2 11,460
12.5 100 1 to 8T 3 17,190
6.25 100 1 to 16T 4 22,920
3.125 100 1 to 32T 5 28,650
 T = Trillion

A critical assumption
A critical assumption used in carbon-14 dating has to do with
this ratio. It is assumed that the ratio of 14C to 12C in the atmo-
sphere has always been the same as it is today (1 to 1 trillion). If
this assumption is true, then the AMS 14C dating method is valid
up to about 80,000 years. Beyond this number, the instruments
scientists use would not be able to detect enough remaining 14C
to be useful in age estimates. This is a critical assumption in the

Doesn’t Carbon-14 Dating Disprove the Bible? • 37

dating process. If this assumption is not true, then the method will
give incorrect dates. What could cause this ratio to change? If the
production rate of 14C in the atmosphere is not equal to the re-
moval rate (mostly through decay), this ratio will change. In other
words, the amount of 14C being produced in the atmosphere must
equal the amount being removed to be in a steady state (also called
“equilibrium”). If this is not true, the ratio of 14C to 12C is not a
constant, which would make knowing the starting amount of 14C
in a specimen difficult or impossible to accurately determine.
Dr. Willard Libby, the founder of the carbon-14 dating method,
assumed this ratio to be constant. His reasoning was based on a be-
lief in evolution, which assumes the earth must be billions of years
old. Assumptions in the scientific community are extremely impor-
tant. If the starting assumption is false, all the calculations based on
that assumption might be correct but still give a wrong conclusion.
In Dr. Libby’s original work, he noted that the atmosphere
did not appear to be in equilibrium. This was a troubling idea
for Dr. Libby since he believed the world was billions of years old
and enough time had passed to achieve equilibrium. Dr. Libby’s
calculations showed that if the earth started with no 14C in the at-
mosphere, it would take up to 30,000 years to build up to a steady
state (equilibrium).
If the cosmic radiation has remained at its present intensity
for 20,000 or 30,000 years, and if the carbon reservoir has not
changed appreciably in this time, then there exists at the present
time a complete balance between the rate of disintegration of ra-
diocarbon atoms and the rate of assimilation of new radiocarbon
atoms for all material in the life-cycle.2
Dr. Libby chose to ignore this discrepancy (nonequilibrium state),
and he attributed it to experimental error. However, the discrepancy
has turned out to be very real. The ratio of 14C /12C is not constant.
The Specific Production Rate (SPR) of 14C is known to be
18.8 atoms per gram of total carbon per minute. The Specific

38 • A Pocket Guide to a Young Earth

Decay Rate (SDR) is known to be only 16.1 disintegrations per
gram per minute.3
What does this mean? If it takes about 30,000 years to reach
equilibrium and 14C is still out of equilibrium, then maybe the
earth is not very old.

Magnetic field of the earth

Other factors can affect the production rate of 14C in the at-
mosphere. The earth has a magnetic field around it which helps
protect us from harmful radiation from outer space. This magnetic
field is decaying (getting weaker). The stronger the field is around
the earth, the fewer the number of cosmic rays that are able to
reach the atmosphere. This would result in a smaller production
of 14C in the atmosphere in earth’s past.
The cause for the long term variation of the C-14 level
is not known. The variation is certainly partially the result
of a change in the cosmic ray production rate of radiocar-
bon. The cosmic-ray flux, and hence the production rate
of C-14, is a function not only of the solar activity but also
of the magnetic dipole moment of the earth.4
Though complex, this history of the earth’s magnetic
field agrees with Barnes’ basic hypothesis, that the field has
always freely decayed. . . . The field has always been losing
energy despite its variations, so it cannot be more than
10,000 years old.5
Earth’s magnetic field is fading. Today it is about 10 percent
weaker than it was when German mathematician Carl Friedrich
Gauss started keeping tabs on it in 1845, scientists say.6
If the production rate of 14C in the atmosphere was less in the
past, dates given using the carbon-14 method would incorrectly as-
sume that more 14C had decayed out of a specimen than what has actu-
ally occurred. This would result in giving older dates than the true age.

Doesn’t Carbon-14 Dating Disprove the Bible? • 39

Genesis Flood
What role might the Genesis Flood have played in the amount
of carbon? The Flood would have buried large amounts of carbon
from living organisms (plant and animal) to form today’s fossil
fuels (coal, oil, etc.). The amount of fossil fuels indicates there
must have been a vastly larger quantity of vegetation in existence
prior to the Flood than exists today. This means that the biosphere
just prior to the Flood might have had 500 times more carbon in
living organisms than today. This would further dilute the amount
of 14C and cause the 14C/12C ratio to be much smaller than today.
If that were the case, and this C-14 were distributed
uniformly throughout the biosphere, and the total amount
of biosphere C were, for example, 500 times that of today’s
world, the resulting C-14/C-12 ratio would be 1/500 of
today’s level . . . .7
When the Flood is taken into account, along with the decay of
the magnetic field, it is reasonable to believe that the assumption
of equilibrium is a false assumption.
Because of this false assumption, any age estimates using 14C
on organic material that dates from prior to the Flood will give
much older dates than the true ages. Pre-Flood organic materials
would be dated at perhaps ten times the true age.

The RATE group findings

In 1997 an eight-year research project was started to investi-
gate the age of the earth. The group was called the RATE group
(Radioisotopes and the Age of The Earth). The team of scientists
included:
• Larry Vardiman, PhD Atmospheric Science
• Russell Humphreys, PhD Physics
• Eugene Chaffin, PhD Physics

40 • A Pocket Guide to a Young Earth

 • Donald DeYoung, PhD Physics
• John Baumgardner, PhD Geophysics
• Steven Austin, PhD Geology
• Andrew Snelling, PhD Geology
• Steven Boyd, PhD Hebraic and Cognate Studies
The objective was to gather data commonly ignored or censored
by evolutionary standards of dating. The scientists reviewed the as-
sumptions and procedures used in estimating the ages of rocks and
fossils. The results of the carbon-14 dating demonstrated serious
problems for long geologic ages. For example, a series of fossilized
wood samples that conventionally have been dated according to
their host strata to be from Tertiary to Permian (40–250 million
years old) all yielded significant, detectable levels of carbon-14 that
would conventionally equate to only 30,000–45,000 years “ages”
for the original trees.8 Similarly, a survey of the conventional radio-
carbon journals resulted in more than forty examples of supposedly
ancient organic materials, including limestones, that contained
carbon-14, as reported by leading laboratories.9
Samples were then taken from ten different coal layers that,
according to evolutionists, represent different time periods in the
geologic column (Cenozoic, Mesozoic, and Paleozoic). The RATE
group obtained these ten coal samples from the U.S. Department
of Energy Coal Sample Bank, from samples collected from major
coalfields across the United States. The chosen coal samples, which
dated millions to hundreds of millions of years old based on stan-
dard evolution time estimates, all contained measurable amounts
of 14C. In all cases, careful precautions were taken to eliminate any
possibility of contamination from other sources. Samples, in all
three “time periods,” displayed significant amounts of 14C. This is
a significant discovery. Since the half-life of 14C is relatively short
(5,730 years), there should be no detectable 14C left after about

Doesn’t Carbon-14 Dating Disprove the Bible? • 41

100,000 years. The average 14C estimated age for all the layers
from these three time periods was approximately 50,000 years.
However, using a more realistic pre-Flood 14C/12C ratio reduces
that age to about 5,000 years.
These results indicate that the entire fossil-bearing geologic
column is much less than 100,000 years old—and even much
younger. This confirms the Bible and challenges the evolutionary
idea of long geologic ages.
Because the lifetime of C-14 is so brief, these AMS
[Accelerator Mass Spectrometer] measurements pose an
obvious challenge to the standard geological timescale that
assigns millions to hundreds of millions of years to this
part of the rock layer.10
Another noteworthy observation from the RATE group was
the amount of 14C found in diamonds. Secular scientists have es-
timated the ages of diamonds to be millions to billions of years
old using other radiometric dating methods. These methods are
also based on questionable assumptions and are discussed else-
where.11 Because of their hardness, diamonds (the hardest known

42 • A Pocket Guide to a Young Earth

substance) are extremely resistant to contamination through
chemical exchange. Since diamonds are considered to be so old by
evolutionary standards, finding any 14C in them would be strong
support for a recent creation.
The RATE group analyzed twelve diamond samples for possible
carbon-14 content. Similar to the coal results, all twelve diamond
samples contained detectable, but lower levels of 14C. These find-
ings are powerful evidence that coal and diamonds cannot be the
millions or billions of years old that evolutionists claim. Indeed,
these RATE findings of detectable 14C in diamonds have been con-
firmed independently.12 Carbon-14 found in fossils at all layers of
the geologic column, in coal and in diamonds, is evidence which
confirms the biblical timescale of thousands of years and not bil-
lions.
Because of C-14’s short half-life, such a finding would
argue that carbon and probably the entire physical earth as
well must have a recent origin.13

Conclusion
All radiometric dating methods are based on assumptions about
events that happened in the past. If the assumptions are accepted
as true (as is typically done in the evolutionary dating processes),
results can be biased toward a desired age. In the reported ages
given in textbooks and other journals, these evolutionary assump-
tions have not been questioned, while results inconsistent with
long ages have been censored. When the assumptions are evaluated
and shown to be faulty, the results support the biblical account of
a global Flood and young earth. Thus, Christians should not be
afraid of radiometric dating methods. Carbon-14 dating is really
the friend of Christians because it supports a young earth.
The RATE scientists are convinced that the popular
idea attributed to geologist Charles Lyell from nearly two

Doesn’t Carbon-14 Dating Disprove the Bible? • 43

 centuries ago, “The present is the key to the past,” is simply
not valid for an earth history of millions or billions of years.
An alternative interpretation of the carbon-14 data is that
the earth experienced a global flood catastrophe which laid
down most of the rock strata and fossils. . . . Whatever the
source of the carbon-14, its presence in nearly every sample
tested worldwide is a strong challenge to an ancient age.
Carbon-14 data is now firmly on the side of the young-
earth view of history.14

1. Earth Science, Teachers Edition (Upper Saddle River, New Jersey: Prentice Hall, 2002),
p. 301.
2. W. Libby, Radiocarbon Dating (Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press, 1952), p. 8.
3. C. Sewell, “Carbon-14 and the age of the earth,” online at www.rae.org/bits23.htm.
4. M. Stuiver and H. Suess, “On the relationship between radiocarbon dates and true sample
ages,” Radiocarbon 8:1966, 535.
5. R. Humphreys, “The mystery of earth’s magnetic field,” ICR Impact #292, Feb 1, 1989,
online at www.icr.org/article/292.
6. J. Roach, National Geographic News, September 9, 2004.
7. J. Baumgardner, “C-14 evidence for a recent global Flood and a young earth” in L. Vard-
iman, A.A. Snelling, and E.F. Chaffin (Eds.), Radioisotopes and the Age of the Earth, Vol. 2
(Santee, California: Institute for Creation Research, 2005), p. 618.
8. A.A. Snelling, “Radioactive ‘dating’ in conflict! Fossil wood in ancient lava flow yields ra-
diocarbon,” Creation Ex Nihilo 20 no. 1 (1997):24–27; A.A. Snelling, “Stumping old-age
dogma: radiocarbon in an ‘ancient’ fossil tree stump casts doubt on traditional rock/fossil
dating,” Creation Ex Nihilo 20 no. 4 (1998):48–51; A.A. Snelling, “Dating dilemma: fos-
sil wood in ancient sandstone,” Creation Ex Nihilo 21 no. 3 (1992):39–41; A.A. Snelling,
“Geological conflict: young radiocarbon date for ancient fossil wood challenges fossil dat-
ing,” Creation Ex Nihilo 22 no. 2 (2000):44–47; A.A. Snelling, “Conflicting ‘ages’ of Tertiary
basalt and contained fossilized wood, Crinum, central Queensland, Australia,” Creation Ex
Nihilo 14 no. 2 (2000):99–122.
9. P. Giem, “Carbon-14 content of fossil carbon,” Origins 51 (2001):6–30.
10. J.R. Baumgardner, ibid., p. 587.
11. M. Riddle,”Does radiometric dating prove the earth is old?” in K.A. Ham (Ed.), The New
Answers Book 1 (Green Forest, Arkansas: Master Books, 2006), pp. 113–124.
12. R.E. Taylor and J. Southon, “Use of natural diamonds to monitor 14C AMS instrument
grounds,” Nuclear Instruments and Methods in Physics Research B 259 (2007):282–287.
13. J.R. Baumgardner, ibid., p. 609.
14. D. DeYoung, Thousands . . . Not Billions (Green Forest, Arkansas: Master Books, 2005),
p. 61.

44 • A Pocket Guide to a Young Earth

 Mike Riddle, a former captain in the U.S.
Marine Corps, is a well-known creation speak-
er for Answers in Genesis–USA. He holds a
bachelors degree in mathematics and a masters
in education. Mike was also a U.S. national
track-and-field pentathlon champion.

Doesn’t Carbon-14 Dating Disprove the Bible? • 45

 T
© Stocksnapper | Dreamstime.com

46 • A Pocket Guide to a Young Earth

 Where Did the Idea
of “Millions of Years”
Come From?
by Terry Mortenson

T
Today, most people in the world, including most people in the
church, take for granted that the earth and universe are millions
and millions (even billions) of years old. Our public schools, from
kindergarten on up, teach these vast ages, and one is scoffed at if
he questions them. But it has not always been that way, and it is
important to understand how this change took place and why.

Geology’s early beginnings

Geology as a separate field of science with systematic field
studies, collection and classification of rocks and fossils, and de-
velopment of theoretical reconstructions of the historical events
that formed those rock layers and fossils, is only about 200 years
old. Prior to this, back to ancient Greek times, people had noticed
fossils in the rocks. Many believed that the fossils were the remains
© Stocksnapper | Dreamstime.com

of former living things turned to stone, and many early Christians

(including Tertullian, Chrysostom, and Augustine) attributed
them to Noah’s Flood. But others rejected these ideas and regarded
fossils as either jokes of nature, the products of rocks endowed
with life in some sense, the creative works of God, or perhaps
even the deceptions of Satan. The debate was finally settled when
Robert Hooke (1635–1703) confirmed by microscopic analysis
of fossil wood that fossils were the mineralized remains of former
living creatures.

Where Did the Idea of “Millions of Years” Come From? • 47

 We will see that science does not require millions of years,
but rather it is a necessity of uniformitarian geology and evolu-
tionary theory.
Prior to 1750 one of the most important geological think-
ers was Niels Steensen (1638–1686), or Steno, a Dutch anato-
mist and geologist. He established the principle of superposition,
namely that sedimentary rock layers are deposited in a succes-
sive, essentially horizontal fashion, so that a lower stratum was
deposited before the one above it. In his book Forerunner (1669)
he expressed belief in a roughly 6,000-year-old earth and that
fossil-bearing rock strata were deposited by Noah’s Flood. Over
the next century, several authors, including the English geologist
John Woodward (1665–1722) and the German geologist Johann
Lehmann (1719–1767), wrote books essentially reinforcing that
view.
In the latter decades of the 18th century, some French and
Italian geologists rejected the biblical account of the Flood and
attributed the rock record to natural processes occurring over a
long period of time. Several prominent Frenchmen also contrib-
uted to the idea of millions of years. The widely respected scien-
tist Comte de Buffon (1707–1788) imagined in his book Epochs
of Nature (1779) that the earth was once like a hot molten ball
that had cooled to reach its present state over about 75,000 years
(though his unpublished manuscript says about 3,000,000 years).
The astronomer Pierre Laplace (1749–1827) proposed the nebular
hypothesis in his Exposition of the System of the Universe (1796).
This theory said that the solar system was once a hot, spinning
gas cloud, which over long ages gradually cooled and condensed
to form the planets. Jean Lamarck, a specialist in shell creatures,
advocated a theory of biological evolution over long ages in his
Philosophy of Zoology (1809).
Abraham Werner (1749–1817) was a popular mineralogy pro-
fessor in Germany. He believed that most of the crust of the earth

48 • A Pocket Guide to a Young Earth

had been precipitated chemically or mechanically by a slowly re-
ceding global ocean over the course of about a million years. It was
an elegantly simple theory, but Werner failed to take into account
the fossils in the rocks. This was a serious mistake since the fossils
tell much about when and how quickly the sediments were depos-
ited and transformed into stone. Many of the greatest geologists of
the 19th century were Werner’s students, who were impacted by
his idea of a very long history for the earth.
In Scotland, James Hutton (1726–1797) was developing a
different theory of earth history. He studied medicine at the uni-
versity. After his studies he took over the family farm for a while.
But he soon discovered his real love: the study of the earth. In
1788 he published a journal article and in 1795 a book, both by
the title Theory of the Earth. He proposed that the continents were
being slowly eroded into the oceans. Those sediments were gradu-
ally hardened by the internal heat of the earth and then raised
by convulsions to become new landmasses, which would later be
eroded into the oceans, hardened and elevated. So in his view,
earth history was cyclical; and he stated that he could find no
evidence of a beginning in the rock record, making earth history
indefinitely long.

Catastrophist—Uniformitarian debate
Neither Werner nor Hutton paid much attention to the fos-
sils. However, in the early 1800s Georges Cuvier (1768–1832),
the famous French comparative anatomist and vertebrate palae-
ontologist, developed his catastrophist theory of earth history. It
was expressed most clearly in his Discourse on the Revolutions of the
Surface of the Globe (1812). Cuvier believed that over the course
of long, untold ages of earth history, many catastrophic floods of
regional or nearly global extent had destroyed and buried creatures
in sediments. All but one of these catastrophes occurred before the
creation of man.

Where Did the Idea of “Millions of Years” Come From? • 49

TFE Graphics

Georges Cuvier (1768–1832) Charles Lyell (1797–1875)

William Smith (1769–1839) was a drainage engineer and sur-

veyor, who in the course of his work around Great Britain became
fascinated with the strata and fossils. Like Cuvier, he had an old-
earth catastrophist view of earth history. In three works published
from 1815 to 1817, he presented the first geological map of Eng-
land and Wales and explained an order and relative chronology
of the rock formations as defined by certain characteristic (index)
fossils. He became known as the “Father of English Stratigraphy”
because he developed the method of giving relative dates to the
rock layers on the basis of the fossils found in them.
A massive blow to catastrophism came during the years 1830
to 1833, when Charles Lyell (1797–1875), a lawyer and former
student of Buckland, published his influential three-volume work
Principles of Geology. Reviving and augmenting the ideas of Hut-
ton, Lyell’s Principles set forth the principles by which he thought
geological interpretations should be made. His theory was a radi-
cal uniformitarianism in which he insisted that only present-day
processes of geological change at present-day rates of intensity and
magnitude should be used to interpret the rock record of past geo-

50 • A Pocket Guide to a Young Earth

logical activity. In other words, geological processes of change have
been uniform throughout earth history. No continental or global
catastrophic floods have ever occurred, insisted Lyell.
Lyell is often given too much credit (or blame) for destroying
faith in the Genesis Flood and the biblical timescale. But we must
realize that many Christians (geologists and theologians) contrib-
uted to this undermining of biblical teaching before Lyell’s book
appeared. Although the catastrophist theory had greatly reduced
the geological significance of Noah’s Flood and expanded earth
history well beyond the traditional biblical view, Lyell’s work was
the final blow for belief in the Flood. By explaining the whole rock
record by slow gradual processes, he thereby reduced the Flood to
a geological nonevent. Catastrophism did not die out immediate-
ly, although by the late 1830s only a few catastrophists remained,
and they believed Noah’s Flood was geologically insignificant.
By the end of the 19th century, the age of the earth was con-
sidered by all geologists to be in the hundreds of millions of years.
Radiometric dating methods began to be developed in 1903, and
over the course of the 20th century the age of the earth expanded
to 4.5 billion years.

Christian responses to old-earth geology

During the first half of the nineteenth century the church re-
sponded in various ways to these old-earth theories of the cata-
strophists and uniformitarians. A number of writers in Great
Britain (and a few in America), who became known as “scriptural
geologists,” raised biblical, geological, and philosophical argu-
ments against the old-earth theories. Some of them were scien-
tists, some were clergy. Some were both ordained and scientifically
well informed, as was common in those days. Many of them were
very geologically competent by the standards of their day, both
by reading and by their own careful observations of rocks and
fossils. They believed that the biblical account of Creation and

Where Did the Idea of “Millions of Years” Come From? • 51

Noah’s Flood explained the rock record far better than the old-
earth theories.1
Other Christians in the early 1800s quickly accepted the idea
of millions of years and tried to fit all this time into Genesis, even
though the uniformitarians and catastrophists were still debat-
ing and geology was in its infancy as a science. In 1804 Thomas
Chalmers (1780–1847), a young Presbyterian pastor, began to
preach that Christians should accept the millions of years; and
in an 1814 review of Cuvier’s book, he proposed that all the time
could fit between Genesis 1:1 and 1:2. By that time Chalmers was
becoming a highly influential evangelical leader and, consequent-
ly, this “gap theory” became very popular. In 1823 the respected
Anglican theologian George Stanley Faber (1773–1854) began to
advocate the day-age view, namely that the days of creation were
not literal but figurative for long ages.
To accept these geological ages, Christians also had to reinter-
pret the Flood. In the 1820s John Fleming (1785–1857), a Pres-
byterian minister, contended that Noah’s Flood was so peaceful it
left no lasting geological evidence. John Pye Smith (1774–1851),
a Congregational theologian, preferred to see it as a localized inun-

52 • A Pocket Guide to a Young Earth

dation in the Mesopotamian valley (modern-day Iraq).
Liberal theology, which by the early 1800s was dominating
the church in Europe, was beginning to make inroads into Britain
and North America in the 1820s. The liberals considered Gen-
esis 1–11 to be as historically unreliable and unscientific as the
creation and flood myths of the ancient Babylonians, Sumerians,
and Egyptians.
In spite of the efforts of the scriptural geologists, these various
old-earth reinterpretations of Genesis prevailed so that by 1845 all
the commentaries on Genesis had abandoned the biblical chro-
nology and the global Flood; and by the time of Darwin’s Origin
of Species (1859), the young-earth view had essentially disappeared
within the church. From that time onward, most Christian lead-
ers and scholars of the church accepted the millions of years and
insisted that the age of the earth was not important. Many godly
men also soon accepted evolution as well. Space allows only men-
tion of a few examples.
The Baptist “prince of preachers” Charles Spurgeon (1834–
1892) uncritically accepted the old-earth geological theory
(though he never explained how to fit the long ages into the Bi-
ble). In an 1855 sermon he said,

Where Did the Idea of “Millions of Years” Come From? • 53

 Can any man tell me when the beginning was? Years ago
we thought the beginning of this world was when Adam
came upon it; but we have discovered that thousands of
years before that God was preparing chaotic matter to make
it a fit abode for man, putting races of creatures upon it,
who might die and leave behind the marks of his handiwork
and marvelous skill, before he tried his hand on man.2
The great Presbyterian theologian at Princeton Seminary
Charles Hodge (1779–1878) insisted that the age of the earth was
not important. He favored the gap theory initially and switched
to the day-age view later in life. His compromise contributed to
the eventual victory of liberal theology at Princeton about 50 years
after his death.3
C. I. Scofield put the gap theory in notes on Genesis 1:2 in
his Scofield Reference Bible, which was used by millions of Chris-
tians around the world. More recently, a respected Old Testament
scholar reasoned,
From a superficial reading of Genesis 1, the impres-
sion would seem to be that the entire creative process took
place in six twenty-four-hour days. If this was the true in-
tent of the Hebrew author . . . this seems to run counter to
modern scientific research, which indicates that the planet
Earth was created several billion years ago . . . .4
Numerous similar statements from Christian scholars and
leaders in the last few decades could be quoted to show that their
interpretation of Genesis is controlled by the fact that they assume
that geologists have proven millions of years. As a result, most sem-
inaries and Christian colleges around the world are compromised.

Compromise unnecessary
The sad irony of all this compromise is that in the last half cen-
tury, the truth of Genesis 1–11 has been increasingly vindicated,

54 • A Pocket Guide to a Young Earth

often unintentionally by the work of evolutionists. Lyell’s uni-
formitarian Principles dominated geology until about the 1970s,
when Derek Ager (1923–1993), a prominent British geologist,
and others increasingly challenged Lyell’s assumptions and argued
that much of the rock record shows evidence of rapid catastrophic
erosion or sedimentation, drastically reducing the time involved
in the formation of many geological deposits. Ager, an atheist to
his death (as far as one can tell from his writings), explained the
influence of Lyell on geology this way:
My excuse for this lengthy and amateur digression
into history is that I have been trying to show how I think
geology got into the hands of the theoreticians [unifor-
mitarians] who were conditioned by the social and politi-
cal history of their day more than by observations in the
field. . . . In other words, we have allowed ourselves to be
brain-washed into avoiding any interpretation of the past
that involves extreme and what might be termed “cata-
strophic” processes.5
These “neocatastrophist” reinterpretations of the rocks have
developed contemporaneously with a resurgence of “Flood ge-
ology,” a view of earth history very similar to that of the 19th
century scriptural geologists and a key ingredient of young-earth
creationism, which was essentially launched into the world by the
publication of The Genesis Flood (1961) by Drs. John Whitcomb
and Henry Morris. This movement is now worldwide in scope,
and the scientific sophistication of the scientific model is rapidly
increasing with time.
Many Christians today are arguing that we need to contend
against Darwinism with “intelligent design” arguments and leave
Genesis out of the public discussion. But this strategy was tried
in the early 19th century with many writings on natural theol-
ogy, culminating in the famous eight volumes of the 1830s that

Where Did the Idea of “Millions of Years” Come From? • 55

collectively became known as the Bridgewater Treatises. These
books were “preaching to the choir” and did nothing to retard the
slide in the culture toward atheism and deism. In fact, by com-
promising on the age of the earth and ignoring Scripture in their
defense of Christianity, they actually contributed to the weaken-
ing of the church. The same is happening today.
The renowned atheist evolutionist and Harvard University bi-
ologist Ernst Mayr said this:
The [Darwinian] revolution began when it became ob-
vious that the earth was very ancient rather than having
been created only 6000 years ago. This finding was the
snowball that started the whole avalanche.6
Mayr was right about the age of the earth (not Darwin’s
theory) being the beginning of the avalanche of unbelief. He
was wrong that the idea of millions of years was a “finding” of
scientific research. Rather, it was the fruit of antibiblical philo-
sophical assumptions used to interpret the rocks and fossils.
Historical research has shown that Laplace was an open athe-
ist, that Buffon, Lamarck, Werner, and Hutton were deists or
atheists, and that Cuvier, William Smith, and Lyell were deists
or vague theists. These men (who influenced the thinking of
compromised Christians) were NOT unbiased objective pursu-
ers of truth.
Typical of what Lyell, Buffon, and others wrote is Hutton’s
statement. He insisted, “The past history of our globe must be
explained by what can be seen to be happening now. . . . No pow-
ers are to be employed that are not natural to the globe, no action
to be admitted except those of which we know the principle.”7 By
insisting that geologists must reason only from known, present-
day natural processes, Hutton ruled out supernatural creation
and the unique global Flood of Genesis, before he ever looked
at the rocks.

56 • A Pocket Guide to a Young Earth

Disastrous consequences of compromise
The scriptural geologists of the early 19th century opposed old-
earth geological theories not only because the theories reflected er-
roneous scientific reasoning and were contrary to Scripture, but
also because they believed that Christian compromise with such
theories would eventually have a catastrophic effect on the health
of the church and her witness to a lost world. Henry Cole, an
Anglican minister, wrote:
Many reverend geologists, however, would evince their
reverence for the divine Revelation by making a distinc-
tion between its historical and its moral portions; and main-
taining, that the latter only is inspired and absolute Truth;
but that the former is not so; and therefore is open to any
latitude of philosophic and scientific interpretation, modi-
fication or denial! According to these impious and infidel
modifiers and separators, there is not one third of the Word
of God that is inspired; for not more, nor perhaps so much,
of that Word, is occupied in abstract moral revelation,

Where Did the Idea of “Millions of Years” Come From? • 57

 instruction, and precept. The other two thirds, therefore,
are open to any scientific modification and interpretation;
or, (if scientifically required,) to a total denial! It may how-
ever be safely asserted, that whoever professedly, before
men, disbelieves the inspiration of any part of Revelation,
disbelieves, in the sight of God, its inspiration altogether. .
. . What the consequences of such things must be to a reve-
lation-possessing land, time will rapidly and awfully unfold
in its opening pages of national skepticism, infidelity, and
apostasy, and of God’s righteous vengeance on the same!8
Cole and other opponents of the old-earth theories rightly un-
derstood that the historical portions of the Bible (including Gen-
esis 1–11) are foundational to the theological and moral teachings
of Scripture. Destroy the credibility of the former and sooner or
later you will see rejection of the latter both inside and outside
the church. If the scriptural geologists were alive today and saw
the castle diagram shown below, they would say, “That pictures
exactly what we were concerned about!” The history of the once-
Christian nations in Europe and North America has confirmed
the scriptural geologists’ worst fears about the church and society.
It is time for the church, especially her leaders and scholars, to
stop ignoring the age of the earth and the scientific evidence that
increasingly vindicates the Word of God. The church must repent
of her compromise with millions of years and once again believe
and preach the literal truth of Genesis 1–11. It is time to take the
church back to Genesis.

58 • A Pocket Guide to a Young Earth

1. See T. Mortenson, The Great Turning Point: The Church’s Catastrophic Mistake on Geol-
ogy—Before Darwin (Green Forest, Arkansas: Master Books, 2004) for a full discussion
of these men and the battle they fought against these developing old-earth theories and
Christian compromises.
2. C.H. Spurgeon, “Election,” The New Park Street Pulpit 1 (1990): 318.
3. See J. Pipa and D. Hall (Eds.), Did God Create in Six Days? (White Hall, West Virginia:
Tolle Lege Press, 2005), pp. 7–16, for some of the documentation of this sad slide into
apostasy.
4. G. Archer, A Survey of Old Testament Introduction (Chicago: Moody Publishers, 1985), p.
187.
5. D. Ager, The Nature of the Stratigraphical Record (London: Macmillan Press, 1981), pp.
46–47.
6. E. Mayr, “The nature of the Darwinian revolution,” Science 176 (1972):988.
7. J. Hutton, “Theory of the Earth,” Trans. of the Royal Society of Edinburgh vol. 1, part 2
(1788), quoted in A. Holmes, Principles of Physical Geology (New York: Ronald Press
Co.,1965), pp. 43–44.
8. H. Cole, Popular Geology Subversive of Divine Revelation (London: Hatchard and Son,
1834), pp. ix–x, 44–45 footnote.

Terry Mortenson earned a PhD in the history of geology from

the University of Coventry in England and an
MDiv from Trinity Evangelical Divinity School
in Chicago. Dr. Mortenson has lectured on the
creation-evolution controversy in 19 countries
since the late 1970s. He has also participated in
seven formal debates with PhD evolutionary sci-
entists in secular venues in four countries.
Dr. Mortenson is the author of numerous magazine, journal,
and web articles, as well as several book chapters. The revised ver-
sion of his PhD thesis was published as The Great Turning Point:
the Church’s Catastrophic Mistake on Geology—Before Darwin. Dr.
Mortenson co-edited and contributed two chapters to the schol-
arly 14-author book Coming to Grips with Genesis: Biblical Au-
thority and the Age of the Earth. Currently he serves as a speaker,
researcher, and writer for Answers in Genesis–USA.

Where Did the Idea of “Millions of Years” Come From? • 59

 O
© Paul Moore | Dreamstime.com

60 • A Pocket Guide to a Young Earth

 Raising the Bar on
Creation Research
by Don DeYoung

O
One essential component of evolution is an extremely long times-
cale for earth history. Multibillions of years likewise are required
by the big bang theory. However, this assumption of unlimited
time is strongly challenged by recent creation research. From 1997
to 2005 a team of creation scientists explored the centerpiece of
geologic time—radioisotope dating. This technique, developed
over the last century, is used to date thousands of rocks, fossils
and artifacts. The creation research project was given the acronym
RATE, which stands for Radioisotopes and the Age of The Earth.
Rock and mineral samples were collected from around the world
and then dated by top laboratories. The RATE results conflict
with geologic time and instead support a recent creation.

Carbon-14
Carbon-14 (14C) is by far the most familiar radioisotope dating
method. There is a common misconception that 14C supports an
ancient age for the earth. This is not the case, however, because 14C
has a short half-life compared with other dating isotopes—“just”
5,730 years. Carbon-14 is limited to dating objects thousands of
years old, but not millions or billions of years. For samples that
© Paul Moore | Dreamstime.com

are truly ancient, any initial 14C content should have completely
decayed away.
And here arises a major challenge to a long timescale: in recent
years, carbon-14 atoms have been found in samples of rocks, fos-

Raising the Bar on Creation Research • 61

sils, coal, and oil, which are thought to be very old. The RATE
research team explored this anomaly with new measurements of
14
C in ten distinct coal samples. These coals are traditionally dated
at 34–311 million years old. With utmost care to avoid contami-
nation, traces of carbon-14 were found in all ten samples.
The pervasive presence of carbon-14 in earth materials sup-
ports biblical creation.
The RATE team next sought a more extreme challenge to age
assumptions. Twelve diamond samples were obtained and prepared
for 14C analysis. Such measurements had not been previously re-
ported because diamonds are assumed to be at least a billion years
old and therefore entirely free of 14C. Similar to the coal results,
however, carbon-14 atoms were found in every diamond tested.
The conclusion is clear: carbon-14 atoms in coal, diamonds, and a
host of other materials provide strong evidence for a limited earth
age of just thousands of years. The pervasive presence of carbon-14
in earth materials supports biblical creation.

Helium in zircons
Just as carbon-14 is found where it was not expected, similar
results also occur for helium in granite. When granite rock forms
underground from cooling magma, it locks in traces of radioac-

Figure 1: Zircon crystals occur

inside granite. Uranium atoms
within the zircons decay to
helium and lead. Figures are
taken from L. Vardiman, A.
Snelling, and E. Chaffine, (Eds.),
Radioisotopes and the Age of
the Earth, Vol. 2, Institute for
Creation Research and Creation
Research Society, 2005.

62 • A Pocket Guide to a Young Earth

tive elements, mainly uranium-238. This uranium decays through
a series of steps and eventually becomes lead, Pb-206 (Figure 1).
The half-life for U-238 is measured today at 4.47 billion years.
Along the path of uranium decay, eight alpha particles also
are emitted. Many of these alpha particles capture an electron and
become helium atoms. The uranium and resulting helium actually
reside inside tiny crystals called zircons within the granite rock.
These zircons are typically 50–75 microns, which is about the
thickness of this page (Figure 2).
If a sample of granite is truly millions of years old, then most
of the helium resulting from uranium decay should have escaped
long ago from the rock. This follows because helium atoms are
relatively small and mobile,
and they do not combine
with other elements. Recall
how a helium balloon grad-
ually loses its helium con-
tent and sinks to the floor.
Some years ago large
amounts of helium were
found still existing in “an-
cient” granite samples. Figure 2: Dust-size zircon crystals
The RATE team expanded extracted from granite rock are shown
this unexpected discovery. under polarized light. Photo by creation
scientist Robert V. Gentry.
Granite rock samples were
obtained from a mile un-
derground—the product of a government drilling project in New
Mexico. This particular granite formation is dated at 1.5 billion
years old. Zircon crystals were painstakingly separated from the
rock after crushing. State-of-the-art instruments were then used
to measure the helium content and also the ability of helium at-
oms to diffuse outward from the zircons. The results are shown in
Figure 4. The vertical axis measures diffusion, the ease with which

Raising the Bar on Creation Research • 63

helium atoms exit the zircon crystals. The horizontal axis shows
increasing temperature of the zircons as they were heated in the
laboratory. The black circles show the actual RATE measurements
of helium diffusion. This data trends upward because heat in-
creases the movement of helium atoms. The upper squares are the
calculated diffusion values, based on the amount of helium found
in granite rocks, and an assumed timescale of 6,000 years. In con-
trast, the lower squares show the much smaller diffusion values
required for the helium to be retained in the zircon crystals for a
billion years. Clearly the creation
model gives a much closer fit to
the measured diffusion data. The
long-age assumption is in con-
flict with the experimental dif-
fusion data by a factor of at least
100,000.
These RATE studies indicate
that helium atoms can only be
retained in zircon crystals within
granite for a few thousand years.
Yet helium atoms are found in
Figure 3: A radiohalo burn due to
radiation damage within a crystal.
abundance inside granite zir-
The inner black circle is 70 microns cons. The presence of this helium
across, about the thickness of a within granite points directly to a
sheet of paper.
young earth.

Radiohalos
Radioactive decay, which occurs within crystalline rocks, may
leave a permanent record in the form of radiohalos, or halos for
short. These are tiny spherical regions of damage or “burns” in the
crystal structure (Figure 3). The RATE team conducted a survey
of halos in more than 100 granite rock samples collected from
Finland, Australia and six western states. More than 40,000 halos

64 • A Pocket Guide to a Young Earth

Figure 4: Data (large black dots) and theory (squares) showing the escape of
helium atoms from zircon crystals.

were cataloged, and a fascinating trend became evident: most of

the halos reside in granite rock which intrudes layers of Paleozoic
and Mesozoic strata. RATE scientists believe that these sedimen-
tary rock layers formed rapidly during the Genesis Flood. Up-
ward-moving magma from tectonic activity intruded the layers
and then cooled to become granite. The numerous radiohalos in
this granite indicate that large-scale radioactivity accompanied the
Flood event. This implies that radioactive decay was greatly accel-
erated during the year-long Flood.
The concept of accelerated nuclear decay was further explored
by the RATE team. This is a radical idea because nuclear half-lives
are assumed to be constant throughout history.

Raising the Bar on Creation Research • 65

 If nuclear lifetimes indeed varied in the past, then traditional
radioisotope dating is fatally flawed. It is as if the world’s clocks
temporarily ran faster in the past, which makes their present read-
ings unreliable. The mechanism of accelerated decay may have in-
cluded temporary changes in the fundamental constants of nature.
Further study is needed, including the Creator’s possible reasons
for modifying radioactivity.
Accelerated nuclear decay is one of several creation predictions
that challenge the most basic assumptions of secular science. Simi-
lar predictions include evidence for ex nihilo creation, a young age
for the earth, alteration of nature at the time of the Curse, the
global Flood and the rapid formation of the earth’s sedimentary
rocks and fossil record. This reappraisal of earth history opens en-
tirely new horizons for inquiry, research, and data interpretation.

Conclusion
RATE research further explored such topics as fission tracks,
isochrons, nuclear theory and biblical data. Without exception the
results give significant support for the young-earth model of earth
history. The multi-year effort clearly has raised the bar on the qual-
ity and depth of creation research.
RATE members include: Steve Austin, John Baumgardner,
Steve Boyd, Gene Chaffin, Don DeYoung, Russ Humphreys, An-
drew Snelling, and Larry Vardiman.

66 • A Pocket Guide to a Young Earth

 Dr. Don DeYoung is chairman of Physi-
cal Science at Grace College, Winona Lake,
Indiana. He is an active speaker for AiG and
has written 14 books on Bible-science top-
ics. Dr. DeYoung is currently president of the
Creation Research Society with hundreds of
members worldwide.

Raising the Bar on Creation Research • 67

 I
© istockphoto.com | Benjamin Goode

68 • A Pocket Guide to a Young Earth

 How Old Is the Earth?
by Bodie Hodge

I
In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth
(Genesis 1:1).
The question of the age of the earth has produced heated dis-
cussions on debate boards, in classrooms, on TV and radio, and
in many churches, Christian colleges, and seminaries. The primary
sides are:
• Young-earth proponents (biblical age of the earth and uni-
verse of about 6,000 years)1
• Old-earth proponents (secular age of the earth of about
4.5 billion years and a universe about 14 billion years old)2

The difference is immense! Let’s give a little history of where

these two basic calculations came from and which worldview is
more reasonable.

Origin of the young-earth view

Simply put, it came from the Bible. Of course, the Bible
doesn’t say explicitly anywhere, “the earth is 6,000 years old.”
Good thing it doesn’t; otherwise it would be out of date the fol-
© istockphoto.com | Benjamin Goode

lowing year. But we wouldn’t expect an all-knowing God to make

that kind of a mistake.
God gave us something better. In essence, He gave us a “birth
certificate.” For example, using my personal birth certificate, I
can calculate how old I am at any point. It is similar with the
earth. Genesis 1 says that the earth was created on the first day of
creation (Genesis 1:1–5). From there, we can begin calculations of

How Old Is the Earth? • 69

the age of the earth.
Let’s do a rough calculation to show how this works. The age
of the earth can be estimated by taking the first 5 days of creation
(from earth’s creation to Adam), then following the genealogies
from Adam to Abraham in Genesis 5 and 11, then adding in the
time from Abraham to today.
Adam was created on Day Six, so there were five days before
him. If we add up the dates from Adam to Abraham, we get about
2,000 years, using the Masoretic Hebrew text of Genesis 5 and
11.3 Whether Christian or secular, most scholars would agree that
Abraham lived about 2000 BC (4,000 years ago).
So a simple calculation is:
5 days
+ ~2,000 years
+ ~4,000 years
______________
~6,000 years
At this point, the first five days are negligible. Quite a few people
have done this calculation using the Masoretic text (which is what
most English translations are based on) and, with careful attention
to the biblical details, have arrived at the same time-frame of about
6,000 years, or about 4000 BC. Two of the most popular, and per-
haps the best in my opinion, are a recent work by Dr. Floyd Jones
and a much earlier book by Archbishop James Ussher (1581–1656):

Table 1. Jones and Ussher

  Who? Age calculated Reference and date
Archbishop James The Annals of the World,
1 4004 BC
Ussher 1658 A.D.4
Dr. Floyd Nolan The Chronology of the Old
2 4004 BC
Jones Testament, 1993 A.D.5
Often, there is a misconception that Ussher and Jones were
the only ones to do a chronology and arrive a date of about 6,000

70 • A Pocket Guide to a Young Earth

years. However this is not the case at all. Jones gives a listing of
several chronologists who have undertaken the task of calculating
the age of the earth based on the Bible and their calculations range
from 5501 to 3836 BC. A few are listed in Table 2.

Table 2. Chronologists’ calculations according to Dr. Jones6

  Chronologist When calculated? Date BC
1 Julius Africanus c. 240 5501
2 George Syncellus c. 810 5492
3 John Jackson 1752 5426
4 Dr William Hales c. 1830 5411
5 Eusebius c. 330 5199
6 Marianus Scotus c. 1070 4192
7 L. Condomanus n/a 4141
8 Thomas Lydiat c. 1600 4103
9 M. Michael Maestlinus c. 1600 4079
10 J. Ricciolus n/a 4062
11 Jacob Salianus c. 1600 4053
12 H. Spondanus c. 1600 4051
13 Martin Anstey 1913 4042
14 W. Lange n/a 4041
15 E. Reinholt n/a 4021
16 J. Cappellus c. 1600 4005
17 E. Greswell 1830 4004
18 E. Faulstich 1986 4001
19 D. Petavius c. 1627 3983
20 Frank Klassen 1975 3975
21 Becke n/a 3974
22 Krentzeim n/a 3971

How Old Is the Earth? • 71

 23 W. Dolen 2003 3971
24 E. Reusnerus n/a 3970
25 J. Claverius n/a 3968
26 C. Longomontanus c. 1600 3966
27 P. Melanchthon c. 1550 3964
28 J. Haynlinus n/a 3963
29 A. Salmeron d. 1585 3958
30 J. Scaliger d. 1609 3949
31 M. Beroaldus c. 1575 3927
32 A. Helwigius c. 1630 3836

As you will likely note from Table 2, the dates are not all 4004
BC. There are several reasons chronologists have different dates7
but the two primary ones are:
1. Some used the Septuagint or another early translation, in-
stead of the Hebrew Masoretic text. The Septuagint is a Greek
translation of the Hebrew Old Testament, done about 250
BC by about 70 Jewish scholars (hence it is often cited as
the LXX). It is good in most places, but appears to have a
number of inaccuracies. For example, one relates to the Gen-
esis chronologies where the LXX indicates that Methuselah
would have lived past the Flood, without being on the Ark!

2. Several points in the biblical time-line are not straight-

forward to calculate. They require very careful study of
more than one passage. These include exactly how much
time the Israelites were in Egypt and what Terah’s age was
when Abraham was born. (See Jones’s and Ussher’s books
for a detailed discussion of these difficulties.)
The first four in Table 2 (bolded) are calculated from the

72 • A Pocket Guide to a Young Earth

Septuagint, which gives ages for the patriarchs’ firstborn much
higher than the Masoretic text or the Samarian Pentateuch
(another version from the Jews in Samaria just before Christ).
Because of this, the LXX adds in extra time. Though the Sa-
marian and Masoretic texts are much closer, they still have a
couple of differences.

Table 3. Septuagint, Masoretic, and

Samarian early patriarchal ages8
Samarian
Name Masoretic Septuagint
Pentateuch
Adam 130 130 230
Seth 105 105 205
Enosh 90 90 190
Cainan 70 70 170
Mahalaleel 65 65 165
Jared 162 62 162
Enoch 65 65 165
Methuselah 187 67 167
Lamech 182 53 188
Noah 500 500 500

Using data from Table 2 (excluding the Septuagint calcula-

tions and including Jones and Ussher), the average date of the
creation of the earth is 4045 BC. This still yields an average of
about 6,000 years for the age of the earth.

Extra-biblical calculations for

the age of the earth
Cultures throughout the world have kept track of history as
well. From a biblical perspective, we would expect the dates given

How Old Is the Earth? • 73

for creation of the earth to align much closer to the biblical date
than billions of years.
This is expected since everyone was descended from Noah and
scattered from the Tower of Babel. Another expectation is that
there should be some discrepancies among the age of the earth
as people scattered throughout the world, taking their uninspired
records or oral history to different parts of the globe.
Under the entry “creation,” Young’s Analytical Concordance of
the Bible9 lists William Hales’s accumulation of dates of creation
from many cultures and in most cases Hales says which authority
gave the date.

Table 4: Selected dates by Hale for the age

of the earth by various cultures
  Culture Age, BC Authority listed by Hales
1 Spain by Alfonso X 6984 Muller
2 Spain by Alfonso X 6484 Strauchius
3 India 6204 Gentil
4 India 6174 Arab Records
5 Babylon 6158 Bailly
6 Chinese 6157 Bailly
7 Greece by Diogenes Laertius 6138 Playfair
8 Egypt 6081 Bailly
9 Persia 5507 Bailly
10 Israel/Judea by Josephus 5555 Playfair
11 Israel/Judea by Josephus 5481 Jackson
12 Israel/Judea by Josephus 5402 Hales
13 Israel/Judea by Josephus 4698 University History
14 India 5369 Megasthenes
15 Babylon (Talmud) 5344 Petrus Alliacens

74 • A Pocket Guide to a Young Earth

 Vatican (Catholic using the
16 5270 N/A
Septuagint)
17 Samaria 4427 Scaliger
German, Holy Roman Empire
18 3993 Playfair
by Johannes Kepler10
German, reformer by Martin
19 3961 N/A
Luther
20 Israel/Judea by computation 3760 Strauchius
21 Israel/Judea by Rabbi Lipman 3616 University History

These were not the only ones. Historian Bill Cooper’s re-
search in After the Flood provides intriguing dates from several
ancient cultures.11 The first is that of the Anglo-Saxons, whose
history has 5,200 years from creation to Christ, according to
the Laud and Parker Chronicles. Cooper’s research also indi-
cated that Nennius’ record of the ancient British history has
5,228 years from creation to Christ. The Irish chronology has a
date of about 4000 BC for creation which is surprisingly close
to Ussher and Jones! Even the Mayans had a date for the Flood
of 3113 BC.
This meticulous work of many historians should not be ig-
nored. Their dates of only thousands of years are good support for
the biblical date of about 6,000 years, but not for billions of years.

Origin of the old-earth view

Prior to the 1700s, few believed in an old earth. The approxi-
mate 6,000-year age for the earth was challenged only rather re-
cently, beginning in the late 18th century. These opponents of
the biblical chronology essentially left God out of the picture.
Three of the old-earth advocates included Comte de Buffon, who
thought the earth was at least 75,000 years old. Pièrre LaPlace
imagined an indefinite but very long history. And Jean Lamarck
also proposed long ages.12

How Old Is the Earth? • 75

 However, the idea of millions of years really took hold in ge-
ology when men like Abraham Werner, James Hutton, William
Smith, Georges Cuvier, and Charles Lyell used their interpreta-
tions of geology as the standard, rather than the Bible. Werner
estimated the age of the earth at about one million years. Smith
and Cuvier believed untold ages were needed for the formation of
rock layers. Hutton said he could see no geological evidence of a
beginning of the earth; and building on Hutton’s thinking, Lyell
advocated “millions of years.”13
From these men and others came the consensus view that the
geologic layers were laid down slowly over long periods of time
based on the rates we see them accumulating today. Hutton said:
The past history of our globe must be explained by what can
be seen to be happening now. ... No powers are to be employed
that are not natural to the globe, no action to be admitted except
those of which we know the principle.14
This viewpoint is called naturalistic uniformitarianism, and
would exclude any major catastrophes like Noah’s Flood. Though
some, such as Cuvier and Smith, believed in multiple catastrophes
separated by long periods of time, the uniformitarian concept be-
came the ruling dogma in geology.
Thinking biblically, we can see that the global Flood in Gen-
esis 6–8 would wipe away the concept of millions of years, for this
Flood would explain massive amounts of fossil layers.
Most Christians fail to realize that if there was a global Flood,
it would rip up many of the previous rock layers and redeposit
them elsewhere, destroying the previous fragile contents. This
would destroy any evidence of alleged millions of years anyway.
So the rock layers can theoretically represent the evidence of either
millions of years or a global Flood, but not both. Sadly, by about
1840 even most of the Church had accepted the dogmatic claims
of the secular geologists and rejected the global Flood and the bib-
lical age of the earth.

76 • A Pocket Guide to a Young Earth

 After Lyell, in 1899, Lord Kelvin (William Thomson) calculated
the age of the earth, based on the cooling rate of a molten sphere, at
a maximum of about 20–40 million years (this was revised from his
earlier calculation of 100 million years in 1862).15 With the develop-
ment of radiometric dating in the early 20th century, the age of the
earth expanded radically. In 1913 Arthur Holmes’ book, The Age of
the Earth, gave an age of 1.6 billion years.16 Since then, the supposed
age of the earth has expanded to its present estimate of about 4.5
billion years (and about 14 billion years for the universe).

Table 5. Summary of the old-earth

proponents for long ages
Who? Age of the earth When was this?
Comte de Buffon 78 thousand years old 1779
Abraham Werner 1 million years 1786
James Hutton Perhaps eternal, long Ages 1795
Pièrre LaPlace Long ages 1796
Jean Lamarck Long ages 1809
William Smith Long ages 1835
Georges Cuvier Long ages 1812
Charles Lyell Millions of years 1830–1833
Lord Kelvin 20-100 million years 1862–1899
Arthur Holmes 1.6 billion years 1913

But there is growing scientific evidence that radiometric dat-

ing methods are completely unreliable.17
Christians who have felt compelled to accept the millions of
years as fact and try to fit them in the Bible need to become aware
of this evidence. It confirms that the Bible’s history is giving us the
true age of the creation.
Today, secular geologists will allow some catastrophic events
into their thinking as an explanation for what they see in the

How Old Is the Earth? • 77

rocks. But uniformitarian thinking is still widespread and secu-
lar geologists will seemingly never entertain the idea of the global
catastrophic Flood of Noah’s day.
The age of the earth debate ultimately comes down to this
foundational question. Are we trusting man’s imperfect and
changing ideas and assumptions about the past or trusting God’s
perfectly accurate eyewitness account of the past, including the
creation of the world, Noah’s global Flood and the age of the earth?

Uniformitarian methods for

dating the age of the earth
Radiometric dating was the culminating factor that led to
the belief in billions of years for earth history. However, radio-
metric dating methods are not the only uniformitarian methods.
Any radiometric dating model or other uniformitarian dating
method can and does have problems as referenced before (Refer-
ence 16). All uniformitarian dating methods make assumptions.
The assumptions related to radiometric dating can be seen in
these questions:
1. Initial amounts?
2. Was any parent amount added?
3. Was any daughter amount added?
4. Was any parent amount removed?
5. Was any daughter amount removed?
6. Has the rate changed?
If the assumptions are truly accurate, then uniformitarian
dates should agree with radiometric dating across the board for
the same event. However, radiometric dates often disagree with
dates obtained from other uniformitarian dating methods for the
age of the earth, such as the influx of salts into the ocean, the rate

78 • A Pocket Guide to a Young Earth

of decay of the earth’s magnetic field, the growth rate of human
population, etc.18
Henry Morris accumulated a list of 68 uniformitarian esti-
mates for the age of the earth by Christian and secular sources.19
The current accepted age of the earth is about 4.54 billion years
based on radiometric dating meteorites,20 so keep this in mind
when viewing Table 6.

Table 6. Uniformitarian estimates for earth’s

age accumulated by Dr Henry Morris

Number of uniformitarian
methods21
0–10,000 years 23
>10,000–100,000 years 10
>100,000–1 million years 11
>1 million–500 million years 23
>500 million–4 billion years 0
>4 billion–5 billion years 0

As you can see, uniformitarian maximum ages for the earth

obtained from other methods are nowhere near the 4.5 billion
years estimated by radiometric dating; of the other methods only
two calculated dates were as much as 500 million years.
Some radiometric dating methods completely undermine
other radiometric dates too. One such example is carbon-14 (14C)
dating. As long as an organism is alive it takes in 14C and 12C from
the atmosphere; however when it dies, it will stop. Since 14C is
radioactive (decays into 14N), the amount of 14C in a dead organ-
ism gets less and less over time. Carbon-14 dates are determined
from the measured ratio of radioactive carbon-14 to normal car-
bon-12 (14C/12C). Used on samples which were once alive, such as
wood or bone, the measured 14C/12C ratio is compared with the
ratio in living things today.

How Old Is the Earth? • 79

 Now, 14C has a derived half-life of less than 6,000 years, so
it should all have decayed into nitrogen by 100,000 years, at the
maximum.22 Some things, such as wood trapped in lava flows, that
are said to be millions of years old by other radiometric dating
methods still have 14C in them.23 If the items were really millions
of years old, then they shouldn’t have any traces of 14C. Coal and
diamonds, which are found in or sandwiched between rock lay-
ers allegedly millions of years old, have been shown to have 14C
ages of only tens of thousands of years.24 So which date, if any,
is correct? The diamonds or coal can’t be millions of years old if
they have any traces of 14C still in them. So this shows that these
dating methods are completely unreliable and indicates that the
presumed assumptions in the methods are erroneous.
Similar kinds of problems are seen in the case of potassium-
argon dating, which is considered one of the most reliable meth-
ods. Dr. Andrew Snelling, a geologist, points out several of these
problems with potassium-argon, as seen in Table 7.24

Table 7. Potassium-argon dates in error

When the rock Date by radiometric
Volcanic eruption
formed dating
Mt Etna basalt, Sicily 122 BC 170,000–330,000 years old
Mt Etna basalt, Sicily AD 1972 210,000–490,000 years old
Mt St. Helens,
AD 1986 300,000–400,000 years old
Washington
Hualalai basalt, Hawaii AD 1800–1801 1.44–1.76 million years old
Mt Ngauruhoe, New
AD 1954 3.3–3.7 million years old
Zealand
Kilauea Iki basalt, Hawaii AD 1959 1.7–15.3 million years old

These and other examples raise a critical question. If radio-

metric dating fails to get an accurate date on something of which
we do know the true age, then how can it be trusted to give us the
correct age for rocks that had no human observers to record when

80 • A Pocket Guide to a Young Earth

they formed? If the methods don’t work on rocks of known age, it
is most unreasonable to trust that they work on rocks of unknown
age. It is far more rational to trust the Word of the God who cre-
ated the world, knows its history perfectly, and has revealed suf-
ficient information in the Bible for us to understand that history
and the age of the creation.

Conclusion
When we start our thinking with God’s Word, we see that
the world is about 6,000 years old. When we rely on man’s fal-
lible (and often demonstrably false) dating methods, we can get a
confusing range of ages from a few thousand to billions of years,
though the vast majority of methods do not give dates even close
to billions.
Cultures around the world give an age of the earth which
confirms what the Bible teaches. Radiometric dates, on the other
hand, have been shown to be wildly in error.
The age of the earth ultimately comes down to a matter of
trust—it’s a worldview issue. Will you trust what an all-knowing
God says on the subject or will you trust imperfect man’s assump-
tions and imaginations about the past that regularly are changing?
Thus says the LORD: “Heaven is My throne, and earth
is My footstool. Where is the house that you will build Me?
And where is the place of My rest? For all those things My
hand has made, and all those things exist,” says the LORD.
“But on this one will I look: On him who is poor and of
a contrite spirit, and who trembles at My word” (Isaiah
66:1–2).

How Old Is the Earth? • 81

1. Not all young-earth creationists agree on this age. Some believe that there may be small
gaps in the genealogies of Genesis 5 and 11, and put the maximum age of the earth at
about 10,000—12,000 years.
2. Some of these old-earth proponents accept molecules-to-man biological evolution and
so are called theistic evolutionists. Others reject neo-Darwinian evolution, but accept the
evolutionary time-scale for stellar and geological evolution, and hence agree with the evolu-
tionary order of events in history.
3. Russell Grigg, “Meeting the Ancestors,” Creation 25:2 (March 2003):13–15.
4. James Ussher, The Annals of the World (Green Forest, Arkansas: Master Books, 2003),
translated by Larry and Marion Pierce.
5. Floyd Nolan Jones, Chronology of the Old Testament (Green Forest, Arkansas: Master
Books, 2005).
6. Ibid., 26.
7. Others would include gaps in the chronology based on the presences of an extra Cainan
in Luke 3:36. But there are good reasons this should be left out. It is included in late copies
of the Septuagint. But early copies of the LXX do not have it, so it was added later. The
English 18th-century Hebrew expert John Gill points out: “This Cainan is not mentioned by
Moses in Gen 11:12 nor has he ever appeared in any Hebrew copy of the Old Testament,
nor in the Samaritan version, nor in the Targum; nor is he mentioned by Josephus, nor in
1Chron 1:24 where the genealogy is repeated; nor is it in Beza’s most ancient Greek copy
of Luke: it indeed stands in the present copies of the Septuagint, but was not originally
there; and therefore could not be taken by Luke from thence, but seems to be owing to
some early negligent transcriber of Luke’s Gospel, and since put into the Septuagint to
give it authority: I say “early,” because it is in many Greek copies, and in the Vulgate Latin,
and all the Oriental versions, even in the Syriac, the oldest of them; but ought not to stand
neither in the text, nor in any version: for certain it is, there never was such a Cainan, the
son of Arphaxad, for Salah was his son; and with him the next words should be con-
nected,” bible.crosswalk.com/Commentaries/GillsExpositionoftheBible/gil.cgi?book=lu&ch
apter=003&verse=036&next=037&prev=035
8. Biblical chronogenealogies, TJ 17 no. 3 (2003):14–18.
9. Robert Young, Young’s Analytical Concordance to the Bible (Peadoby, Massachussets:
Hendrickson, 1996), referring to William Hales, A New Analysis of Chronology and Geogra-
phy, History and Prophecy (1830), vol. 1, 210.
10. Luther, Kepler, Lipman, and the Jewish computation likely used biblical texts to determine
the date.
11. Bill Cooper, After the Flood (UK: New Wine Press, 1995), 122–129.
12. Terry Mortenson, “The origin of old-earth geology and its ramifications for life in the 21st
century,” TJ 18 no. 1 (2004):22–26, online at www.answersingenesis.org/tj/v18/i1/old-
earth.asp
13. James Hutton, Theory of the earth, Trans. of Roy. Soc. of Edinburgh, 1785; quoted in A.
Holmes, Principles of Physical Geology (UK: Thomas Nelson & Sons Ltd., 1965), 43–44.
14. “William Thompson: king of Victorian physics,” Mark McCartney, Physics Web, December
2002, online at physicsweb.org/articles/world/15/12/6.
15. Terry Mortenson, “The history of the development of the geological column,” in Michael
Oard and John Reed, eds., The Geologic Column (CRS, 2006).
16. For articles at the layman’s level see “Radiometric Dating Questions and Answers,” online
at www.answersingenesis.org/home/area/faq/dating.asp. For a technical discussion see
Larry Vardiman, Eugene Chaffin, and Andrew Snelling, eds., Radioisotopes and the Age of
the Earth Volume 2, (El Cajon, Califonia: Institute for Creation Research/Creation Research
Society, 2005). See also “Half-Life Heresy,” New Scientist (21 Oct. 2006), 36–39, Abstract

82 • A Pocket Guide to a Young Earth

 online at www.newscientist.com/channel/fundamentals/mg19225741.100-halflife-heresy-
accelerating-radioactive-decay.html.
17. Russell Humphrey, “Evidence for a Young World,” Impact #384, Institute for Creation
Research, June 2005, online at www.answersingenesis.org/docs/4005.asp
18. Henry M. Morris, The New Defender’s Study Bible (Nashville, Tennessee: World Publishing,
2006), pp. 2076–2079.
19. “The Age of the Earth,” USGS, geology.wr.usgs.gov/parks/gtime/ageofearth.html.
20. When a range of ages is given, the maximum age was used, to be generous to the evo-
lutionists. In one case, the date was uncertain so it was not used in this tally, so the total
estimates used were 67. A few on the list had reference to Saturn, the Sun, etc., but since
biblically-speaking the earth is older than these, dates related to them were used.
21. This does not mean that a 14C date of 50,000 or 100,000 would be entirely trustworthy.
I am only using this to highlight the mistaken assumptions behind uniformitarian dating
methods.
22. Andrew Snelling, “Conflicting ‘ages’ of Tertiary basalt and contained fossilized wood,
Crinum, Central Queensland Australia,” Technical Journal 14 no. 2 (2000):99-122.
23. J. Baumgardner, “14C Evidence for a Recent Global Flood and a Young Earth,” in Vard-
iman et al., Radioisotopes and the Age of the Earth: Results of a Young-Earth Creationist
Research Initiative (Santee, California: Institute for Creation Research, and Chino Valley,
Arizona: Creation Research Society, 2005), pp.587–630.
24. Andrew Snelling, “Excess Argon: The ‘Achilles’ Heel’ of Potassium-Argon and Argon-
Argon Dating of Volcanic Rocks,” Impact #307, Institute for Creation Research, online at
www.icr.org/index.php?module=articles&action=view&ID=436.

Bodie Hodge attended Southern Illinois

University at Carbondale (SIUC) and received
a BS and MS (in 1996 and 1998 respectively)
there in mechanical engineering. His specialty
was a subset of mechanical engineering based
in advanced materials processing, particularly
starting powders.
Bodie conducted research for his master’s degree through a
grant from Lockheed Martin and developed a New Method of
Production of Submicron Titanium Diboride. The new process
was able to make titanium diboride cheaper, faster and with high-
er quality. This technology is essential for some nanotechnologies.
Currently, Bodie is a speaker, writer, and researcher in AiG’s
Outreach Department.

How Old Is the Earth? • 83

 P
© Christos Georghiou | Dreamstime.com

84 • A Pocket Guide to a Young Earth

 The Heavens Declare
a Young Solar System
by Ron Samec

P
Psalm 19 tells us that the heavens declare the glory of God. But
what do the heavens declare about the age of the universe? Re-
cent observations confirm that the universe is only a few thousand
years old, as the Bible says.

The existence of comets

Comets are small, low density, icy “asteroids” that orbit the sun.
But their lifetime is limited. As they come near the sun, some of
their icy material is vaporized and blown away—forming a “tail.”
The actual body of the comet, called the “nucleus,” is very
small, ranging from 1 to 30 miles (1–50 km) in diameter. It also
© Christos Georghiou | Dreamstime.com

Anatomy of a Comet: A comet is a ball of ice and rocky dust particles (as seen
in this image of Hale-Bopp). The ion tail (blue) points away from the sun and
is blown back by its interaction with solar wind. The dust tail (yellow-white) is
swept back by radiation pressure. It sweeps behind the comet due to its orbital
motion around the sun.

The Heavens Declare a Young Solar System • 85

Photo courtesy NASA

Death of a Comet: These time-lapse images show the disintegration of the

Schwassmann–Wachmann 3 (S-W 3) comet. This comet disintegrated over the
past several decades. The Hubble telescope captured detailed photos of its
breakup.

has very low density, certainly less than that of water. Earth-based
observers cannot see the nucleus. Instead they see only the gases
and dust particles that come from the nucleus, including a large
glowing gas ball, called a coma, and the ion and dust tails. The gas
(ion) tail is blown away from the sun by solar wind, and the dust
tail is forced back by the pressure of photons. The presence of tails
and comas tells us that comets are constantly losing mass.
Comets, as well as their orbits, are greatly affected by the plan-
ets. For instance, Jupiter has corralled about 45 comets within its
orbit and evidently can destroy comets; Jupiter’s gravitational field
can cause comets to break apart and even collide with the planet
itself. In addition, the SOHO spacecraft has regularly recorded
comets being completely destroyed as they encounter the sun.
Many comets have been observed to break up or at least par-
tially disintegrate. In 1852 Comet Biela was observed to divide
in two, and in 1872, a meteor shower appeared in its place. In-
deed, nearly all meteor showers are linked to the disintegration of
known comets.
It is apparent that comets are temporary. And from their or-
bits, we find that comets do not just fall in from interplanetary
space. They appear to be true members of the solar system, and
so they are limited in number. If the solar system were 4.6 bil-
lion years old, our complete supply of comets should have been
exhausted long ago. Instead, comets are plentiful.

86 • A Pocket Guide to a Young Earth

 To resolve this challenge, uniformitarian astronomers believe
that long-period comets arise from the Oort cloud, a hypoth-
esized cloud of comet nuclei with a radius of about 50,000 AU
(an astronomical unit is the average distance between the earth
and sun). Evolutionists Carl Sagan and Ann Druvan admit in
their book entitled Comet, “Many scientific papers are written
each year about the Oort Cloud, its properties, its origin, its
evolution. Yet there is not yet a shred of direct observational
evidence for its existence.”
Likewise, the shorter period comets are believed to come from
the Kuiper belt, a disk of icy asteroids beginning at the orbit of
Pluto (40 AU) and extending out to about 55 AU. But such ob-
jects have different characteristics from the comets, so they cannot
explain the wealth of comets we see today.

The moon is still alive

The moon is very much alive, geologically speaking. Ever since
telescopes have been available, observers have been reporting many
color changes, bright and colored spots and streaks, clouds, hazes,
veils, and other phenomena on the moon. Since these phenomena
Photo courtesy NASA

Aristarchus Region of the Moon: Over 300 transient lunar phenomena have
occurred in the Aristarchus region of the moon, indicating that the moon is
young, just as the Bible says.

The Heavens Declare a Young Solar System • 87

are short lived, they are called Transient Lunar Phenomena (TLP).
These speak of geologic activity.
From 1900 to 1960, many of these observations were dis-
missed and ignored because the prevailing belief was that the
moon is 4.5 billion years old and has been geologically dead for
the last 3 billion years. (As the argument went, since the moon is
about one-fourth of the size of the earth, heavy masses would fall
to the center, the moon would cool much faster than the earth,
and no magma would be left.) But the number of TLP observa-
tions became so overwhelming that mainline publications began
to discuss them. In 1968, NASA published the Chronological Cat-
alog of Reported Lunar Events.
As early as March 1787, William Herschel, the discoverer of
Uranus and an ardent lunar observer, reported, “I perceive three
volcanoes in different places of the dark side of the moon. Two of
them are either extinct, or otherwise in a state of going to break
out. . . . The third shows an actual eruption of fire, or luminous
matter.” The next night he continued, “The volcano burns with
greater violence than last night. I believe the diameter . . . to be
about three miles.” More than 300 TLP’s have been seen in the
Aristarchus region alone. This and hundreds of similar observa-
tions point to the youthfulness of the moon, as the Bible tells us.

Jupiter and Neptune are still so hot

We have been taught that solar system bodies shine only by
reflected light. Is this true? No, not for the Jovian gas giants, Ju-
piter and Neptune. In fact, the power excess for Jupiter is 3 x 1017
watts.1 Jupiter actually radiates nearly twice as much power as it
receives from the sun, but mostly in the infrared. That’s enough
power to continuously burn three million-billion 100-watt light
bulbs. Saturn puts out half the energy but is one-quarter the mass,
so it produces twice the energy per unit mass as Jupiter does.
Neptune gives off well over twice as much energy as it receives.

88 • A Pocket Guide to a Young Earth

Uranus’s energy production is somewhat in doubt, but even it
appears to give off slightly more than it receives. This means that
each of these three planets has an alternate energy source. What
is it?
Jupiter puts out nearly twice the energy it receives from the
sun. This makes sense if the planet is only thousands of years old.
The usual explanation for Jupiter’s extra energy is that it is
shrinking. This converts gravitational energy into internal heat
and radiation. Can this explain the extra energy? No. Shrinkage
alone does not produce enough energy. Others have said that heli-
um is raining down on the core, releasing additional gravitational
energy. While that may be the explanation for Saturn and Uranus,
whose surfaces are helium depleted, observations of the vibrations
of the surface (asteroseismology) have shown this is not correct
for Jupiter.2
Researchers3 have hypothesized that nuclear reactions are oc-
curring in the core of Jupiter as a result of burning deuterium
(heavy hydrogen). This requires a core temperature of 160,000
K, some 8 times hotter than the present models of Jupiter. Will
this produce the extra energy? To make this work, most of the
deuterium available throughout Jupiter had to simultaneously de-
scend to its core when Jupiter formed so the deuterium would be
hot enough to ignite. Once it ignited, it would burn happily for
10 billion years or more and keep Jupiter hot. This would give
us a hot Jupiter like the one we see today. At first, this solution
appears to be ingenious. The snag is that the deuterium layer has
to assemble itself at just the right time and at the right place to
sustain Jupiter’s core temperature. The same unlikely event must
be repeated on Neptune.
The definition of a star is any large, self-gravitating gaseous
sphere with continued nuclear reactions in its core. Our sun is a
star. It burns hydrogen in its core. But if Jupiter and Neptune have
nuclear reactions in their cores, then they are dwarf suns. There

The Heavens Declare a Young Solar System • 89

would be three suns in our solar system.
There is a simpler explanation. God created the Jovian planets.
The heat energy comes from the creative work of God and any
gravitational energy produced since then. Since they are young
and quite massive, the Jovian planets have not had time to cool
down. Are hot Jovian planets a problem to creationists? Absolutely
not! They are only a problem to evolutionists.

Fast facts
• Spiral galaxies rotate much too quickly for an old universe.
They would be twisted beyond recognition if they were really
as old as secular astronomers claim.
• The magnetic fields of planets and moons in our solar system
are consistent with their age of a few thousand years, but are
much too strong for an age of billions of years.
• The debris shed by disintegrating comets is what causes me-
teor showers. Since earth intersects such a debris field once
each year, most meteor showers are annual.

A final word
The Bible can be trusted in every area it addresses, including
its scientific and historical truth. It is God’s Book, which means
what it says in a plain, forthright manner. While the Bible’s re-
vealed insights about science and history glorify the Creator and
help us know Him better, its main purpose is to convey to people,
like you and me, our need of Jesus Christ as Savior and God’s
desire for us to live a fulfilled, joyful life with Him.

90 • A Pocket Guide to a Young Earth

1. The excess power output of Jupiter is 3 x 1017 watts. The sun’s output is a hundred million
times larger, or 9.7 x 1025 watts.
2. W. J. Nellis, M. Ross, and N. C. Holmes, Science 269 (1995): 1,249.
3. R. Ouyed, W. R. Dundamenski, G. R. Crips, and P. G. Sutherland, Astrophysical Journal
501 (1995): 367.

Ron Samec, a professor of physics and as-

tronomy at Bob Jones University, earned his
PhD in physics from Clemson University. A
professional astronomer, he has authored over
150 articles and abstracts published in profes-
sional journals.

The Heavens Declare a Young Solar System • 91

92 • A Pocket Guide to a Young Earth
© Monkey Business Images | Dreamstime.com
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© Monkey Business Images | Dreamstime.com

Trusting in Authority

N
New information is being added to human understanding at a
rate that we really cannot comprehend. Even in digested summary
form, it is virtually impossible to keep informed in even one area
of science. Your doctor would never have time to see you as a
patient if he stayed abreast of all of the new research that is pub-
lished—not to mention what never gets published in journals.
When you watch the news and programs on science or listen
to the radio, you are constantly exposed to new ideas and new
information. Web-based services offer you links to the hot new
stories that appear every few minutes. The information that is
constantly coming at us is always presented through a filter and
presented as authoritative. So, how do you know you can trust the
source, and what is its authority?
Many will interview leading scientists and researchers to
present an air of authority, but what if the authority figure has
an agenda?
Actually, everyone who presents information to you has an
agenda. The information we get from these sources is not the raw
data, it is usually a conclusion about the data. The conclusions are
always colored by some sort of bias—despite claims of neutrality.
Take a fossil find as an example. The fossil is simply pieces of
rock or other material found in the ground. This evidence cannot
speak for itself—it must be interpreted! It is quite easy to identify
the bias of the interpretation by looking for certain clues. Phrases
such as “common ancestor” and “million years” tell you that the
authority relies on an evolutionary philosophy to explain the fos-
sil. Words like “Designer” and “created” tell you that the authority

Trusting in Authority • 93
relies on the Bible to understand the fossil. Both have a bias when
interpreting the data.
What about you? Have you ever thought of the biases you
have when looking at the world around you? When you see a tree
do you give praise to God or evolution? What is the ultimate au-
thority in your life? What source do you rely on most when trying
to solve life’s problems or answer difficult questions?
The Bible claims to be the ultimate authority. This makes sense
if it was written by the Creator of the universe, but it is absurd if
the universe is a product of random chance. If the Bible is not true
and the God of the Bible does not exist, there would be no basis
for the idea of morality (among other things). If the universe is a
random collection of chemicals, we could never say that some-
thing is immoral. You might object, but on what basis do you
define morality? There must be an ultimate standard—an ultimate
authority we can appeal to.
God is this authority. He has revealed right and wrong to
us in the Bible. The commands concerning right and wrong be-
haviors are spread throughout the Bible, but they can be sum-
marized in the Ten Commandments (Exodus 20:1–17). Take a
moment to look at the list and ask yourself if you have ever
broken these laws.
1. God should come first in your life.
2. You should not make an idol of anything.
3. You should only use God’s name in reverence.
4. Remember the Sabbath to keep it holy.
5. Honor your parents.
6. Do not murder.
7. Do not commit adultery (including lustful thoughts).
8. Do not steal (regardless of value).

94 • A Pocket Guide to a Young Earth

 9. Do not lie (including “white lies”).
10. Do not covet (desire) what is not yours.
God demands perfect obedience to His commands. Have you
kept His Law perfectly? If you are like the rest of humanity, the
answer is no. Because God is perfectly just, He must punish those
who choose to break His commandments. Because God is infi-
nitely holy, the breaking of His laws demands an infinite punish-
ment in a place called hell.
This bad news entered into a world that God had originally
created as perfect. Through disobedience to God, Adam rebelled
and sin corrupted the universe that we now inhabit. Just as Adam
rebelled and faced God’s wrath, you are also under the penalty of
God’s wrath having broken His laws. But there is a way out!
And you He made alive, who were dead in tres-
passes and sins, in which you once walked according to
the course of this world, according to the prince of the
power of the air, the spirit who now works in the sons of
disobedience, among whom also we all once conducted
ourselves in the lusts of our flesh, fulfilling the desires of
the flesh and of the mind, and were by nature children of
wrath, just as the others.
But God, who is rich in mercy, because of His great
love with which He loved us, even when we were dead
in trespasses, made us alive together with Christ (by grace
you have been saved), and raised us up together, and made
us sit together in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, that
in the ages to come He might show the exceeding riches of
His grace in His kindness toward us in Christ Jesus. For by
grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of
yourselves; it is the gift of God, not of works, lest anyone
should boast. Ephesians 2:1–9

Trusting in Authority • 95
 God, in His mercy, has provided a solution to the problem of
sin in the world. He sent His Son, Jesus Christ, into the world to
live the perfect life that we could not. Jesus willingly died on the
Cross and received the wrath of God against sin upon Himself so
that we do not have to face that punishment after our death.
You cannot work to earn your own salvation; it must be re-
ceived as a free gift from God. Repent of your sins, confessing
them to God and turning away from them, and trust that Jesus
has paid the penalty that you deserve to pay. Will you trust in
the authority of God through Jesus Christ, or in the changing
ideas of man?
Jesus answered them, “I told you, and you do not be-
lieve. The works that I do in My Father’s name, they bear
witness of Me. But you do not believe, because you are not
of My sheep, as I said to you. My sheep hear My voice, and
I know them, and they follow Me. And I give them eter-
nal life, and they shall never perish; neither shall anyone
snatch them out of My hand. My Father, who has given
them to Me, is greater than all; and no one is able to snatch
them out of My Father’s hand. I and My Father are one.”
John 10:25–30

96 • A Pocket Guide to a Young Earth

A Young Earth
Evidence that supports the biblical perspective

Is the earth billions of years old or just thousands? Are

radiometric methods of dating rocks and fossils reliable?
What evidences support a young age for the earth?

Most secular scientists believe the earth to be billions of years old. They
most often use radiometric dating methods to support this assertion. But,
do they have a rock-solid case? Discover the primary reasons why their belief
in billions of years cannot be correct. This Pocket Guide to A Young Earth
examines the age of the earth from a biblical and scientific perspective. It
presents geological information not often presented in public schools and
secular colleges, and will equip you with answers that are based on the
authority of God’s Word.

For in six days the LORD made the heavens and the earth, the sea, and all that
is in them, and rested the seventh day. (Exodus 20:11)

Learn more! Other pocket guides and booklets include

such subjects as:

• Global Warming • Global Flood • Fossils

• Death and Suffering • Astronomy • General Apologetics
• Apemen • Millions of Years • and more!
• Dinosaurs • Charles Darwin

96 pages Answers In Genesis–USA Ages 12 & up

$5.99
ISBN-10 1-60092-303-8
ISBN-13 978-1-60092-303-6

9 781600 923036

Answers in Genesis-USA is a non-profit, Christ-centered, non-denominational ministry dedicated to upholding the authority of Scripture from the very first verse!