A Basic Overview of Radioisotope Dating

Many people, including Christians, erroneously believe that the age of the earth has been conclusively proven to be about 4-1/2 billion years old. Although serious mathematics is involved, the essence of the method is rather simple.

Chip away a rocky outcropping and take a sample to the lab and ask them nicely (as well as paying a fee) for them to tell you its age. From there, you know the age of the earth. Just kidding, such a thing does not happen.

Assembled and modified with components from Clker clipart

The unstable radioactive element and the stable isotope in a rock are measured. The unstable decays and leaves the stable. Rate of decay and other factors are calculated to give the number of years.

But that rock that you chipped away? Not happening, at least regarding Earth's age. Secularists and their churchian allies believe that rocks on the earth are not reliable indicators, so they assume meteorites are more pure, and calculate from those. There are other assumptions to be made as well. In reality, numerous dating methods reveal that the earth is much younger than these fatally flawed methods indicate.

When most people think about radioisotope dating, they think of carbon-14 (C-14), or radiocarbon dating. However, C-14, a radioactive variety of carbon, decays too quickly to use on rocks that secular scientists think are millions of years old. With such a fast decay rate, any radiocarbon in a sample would be undetectable in less than 100,000 years.

That’s why geologists use other radioisotope dating methods with really slow decay rates (long half-lives) to claim great ages for rocks and, hence, the earth. . . .

Each method makes several basic assumptions.

You can read the rest by clicking on "Does Radioisotope Dating Prove an Old Earth?". For additional information, I wrote a fun article and provided several links: "Would Evidence for Radiometric Dating Stand Up in a Court of Law?"