Radioactive 'dating' in conflict! 

 

[Radioactive 'dating' in conflict! Fossil wood in 'ancient' lava flow yields radiocarbon by Andrew Snelling]  "When miners were sinking a ventilation shaft for the new Crinum Coal Mine in Central Queensland in 1993 (see map on link) they unearthed a rare find. After digging through the thin surface sands and clays, followed by basalt, 21 metres (almost 69 feet) down they found pieces of wood entombed in the bottom basalt flow...

So how could these tree trunks have survived being engulfed by molten lava? At approximately four metres (13 feet) thick, the basalt flow is relatively thin,1,3 and thus cooling would have been rapid (perhaps days, but a few weeks at most).

 

[Lab] results

 

[T]he results...are staunchly defended by the laboratories as valid, indicating an ‘age’ of perhaps 44,000–45,500 years for the wood encased in the basalt retrieved from the drill core.

In stark contrast to the ‘age’ of the wood are the potassium-argon (K-AR) ‘ages’ of the basalt (see [link]) It is readily apparent that there are significant variations in the results, as evident in the calculated ‘ages’ of the outcrop 2 sample provided by each laboratory. The problem of obtaining consistently ‘acceptable’ K-AR ‘ages’ is also highlighted by the observation that both outcrop and both drill core samples probably represent the same basalt flow in each respective location (hence the calculated average ‘ages’ in the last column of Table 2 [see link]).  The staff of both laboratories (again Ph.D. scientists) defended their analytical results, and did not hesitate to affirm that these basalt samples are, according to their radioactive K-AR ‘dating’, around 45 million years old...

While the quality and accuracy of the analytical work undertaken by all the laboratories involved is unquestionably respected, all the calculated ‘ages’ are mere interpretations based on unproven assumptions about constancy of radioactive decay rates, and on the geochemical behaviour of these elements (and their isotopes) in the unobservable past. To young-earth creationists the geological context of these fossil wood fragments in the basalt lava flow clearly indicates that these represent post-Flood trees overwhelmed by a post-Flood volcanic eruption nearby, and thus both the fossil wood and the basalt are less than 4,500 years old.

Nevertheless, within the conventional (uniformitarian) framework of interpretation, a clear-cut conflict can be seen between these two radioactive ‘dating’ methods. Normally fossil wood found in such an ‘ancient’ basalt would not be radiocarbon ‘dated’, because the wood would be considered far too old for any radiocarbon to be left in it. Yet here these radioactive ‘dating’ methods are again demonstrated to be unreliable and clearly useless at determining the true age of the wood and basalt. Therefore, any published results from these ‘dating’ methods should not be seen as casting any doubts whatsoever on the reliability of the biblical chronology so carefully provided for us by the (always present) Creator Himself."

Full text:  Radioactive 'dating' in conflict! Fossil wood in 'ancient' lava flow yields radiocarbon, Snelling. http://www.answersingenesis.org/articles/cm/v20/n1/dating

 

Whose answers is more logical?  The naturalist's or the creationist's?  Which "date" result are you more likely to believe and why?

 

Response to comment [from a Christian]:  "There are plenty of threads on the pagan belief of evolution."

 

I know but let's not assume that scientists in the lab are :dizzy: pagans and that's why the come up with the results that they do in dating methods.  If you were testing in the lab and believed as the naturalists does, would you bother to test for radiocarbon in samples that are assumed to be too old? 

 

Radioactive 'dating' in conflict