Radioactive Dating Myths, Biases and Pigs

All too often, I encounter uninformed orthodox evolutionists who have mistaken ideas about the concept that they are attempting to defend. These included the woefully mistaken notions that there is only one theory of evolution, one Big Bang theory, plenty of fossil evidence, indisputable transitional forms, the Miller-Urey experiment proves that life happened by chance and other errors.

Another set of mistakes that I encounter is based on radioactive dating. Fundamentalist evolutionists refuse to admit that the dating methods are highly biased and unreliable. The flaws and presuppositions of evolutionists are nowhere more apparent than in the dating fiasco of the East African KBS Tuff strata. Disputes had to be settled by pigs.

A popular myth is that radioactive dating methods confirm the geologic time-scale and the concept of human evolution. The methods appear so impressive that many Christians accept them as evidence that the earth is very old. The best way to expose this myth is to study the dating of the East African KBS Tuff strata and the famous fossil KNM-ER 1470.

Richard Leakey, son of famed palaeoanthropologists Louis and Mary Leakey, visited the fossil deposits east of Lake Rudolf (now Lake Turkana) in northern Kenya in 1967. He immediately organized an expedition to search for hominid fossils.

The most important fossil discovered there is KNM-ER 1470. Skull 1470 is modern in appearance, but was originally estimated by Richard Leakey to be about 2.9 million years old.

One early geologist with Richard Leakey at East Rudolf was Kay Behrensmeyer. Seeking to unravel the geology of the area, she discovered a layer of volcanic ash or tuff that became known as the Kay Behrensmeyer Site (the KBS Tuff).

If the KBS Tuff were anywhere else, no one would give it a second thought. At East Rudolf it is of utmost importance. First, although human fossils and artefacts (tools) cannot usually be dated radiometrically, the KBS Tuff can. It contains radioactive potassium 40, which decays to argon 40. Second, artefacts have been found in association with the KBS Tuff. The assumption is that the tuff gives an estimate of the age of the stone tools. Third, hundreds of Homo and australopithecine fossils have been found above and below the KBS Tuff. The date of the tuff thus becomes a maximum age for fossils found above it and a minimum for fossils below it.

If you're tuff enuf, you can read the rest of "The Pigs Took It All", here.