Many people believe that the data obtained from the radiometric dating of rocks indicates (1) that the earth is approximately 4.5 billion years old, (2) that the ages of the earth's geologic strata have been positively determined, indicating that fossils within these strata are in the sequence one would expect if evolution had taken place, (3) that these strata are many, many millions of years old, demonstrating that the process of evolution has had plenty of time to take place, and (4) that the Flood theories of geologists prior to the time of Charles Lyell are invalid, since they assume that the geologic strata were laid down during the time of Noah's Flood only a few thousand years ago.
One of the tenets of Charles Lyell's uniformitarianism is that all events of the past must be interpreted in the light of present-day geological processes. This principle, which is taken for granted in all radioisotopic dating methods, assumes that there have been no catastrophic geological events in the past, such as a universal Flood in Noah's day.
The radiometric dating of rocks assumes that the present-day rates of decay of various radioisotopes has always remained constant throughout the history of the earth. It is assumed, for example, that the intensity of cosmic rays, which will significantly alter this rate of decay, has always remained constant. If there was a time when cosmic rays bombarded the earth with great intensity, then, of course, the results of radiometric dating would be completely unreliable.
It is possible that, prior to the time of Noah's Flood, the earth's atmosphere was surrounded by a thick layer of water vapor which served as the source for the heavy rains of the Flood. This vapor canopy would explain the longevity of those who lived before the Flood, since it would have acted as a filter, protecting the earth from cosmic rays, which are known to hasten the aging process. With the collapse of the vapor canopy, the earth would have been bombarded with cosmic rays, upsetting all radioactive "clocks," moving them ahead many, many millions of years. This bombardment by cosmic rays would later have been retarded by the formation of ozone in an upper layer of the atmosphere (a result of the bombardment of normal O2 in the upper atmosphere), bringing about more stable conditions.
The existence of a vapor canopy over the entire earth prior to the time of the flood would explain the uniformly temperate climate that was enjoyed during the "Jurassic" period of the earth's history, or, as flood geologists would say, before the time of the Flood.
Radiometric dating can only be reliable in determining the age of rocks if geological conditions have been uniform over the entire course of the earth's history. Yet this is a tremendous assumption for those who believe the earth to be billions of years old. Harold S. Slusher has written:
The geologist says that essentially the past should be interpreted in the light of the present--"the present is the key to the past." Though the study of these present processes has continued at an ever-increasing pace for decades, we are still appallingly ignorant of many of the simplest details of what is happening today. . . . Furthermore, many data around the earth indicate that the rates of the processes operating in the past have been radically different from those of the present. Catastrophic happenings in the past may have radically altered the distribution of radioactive minerals and their decay products. Volcanism, for example, which has obviously occurred in the past on a large scale, would radically alter the carbon-14 to carbon-12 ratio (C14/C12) in the atmosphere, thus affecting the C14 "clock." . . .The determination of the times of occurrences of the various geological events depends first on the determination of rates, such as the rate of decay of uranium and other radioactive elements into their daughter products, influx rates of salts into the oceans, etc. These rates may have been very different in the past from what they were when the measurements were actually made. Secondly, the determination depends on the initial conditions, which cannot be ascertained in any direct way, e.g., the initial ratios of parent-to-daughter elements of radioactive series. The third factor involves hypotheses about the origin of the crust of the earth and the physical/chemical processes that have taken place and are presently occurring.1
Other methods used to determine the age of the earth are equally problematic due to their inherent assumptions. For example, the measurement of the influx of sodium chloride and other salts into the ocean also assumes that the processes presently observable have gone on at exactly the same rate at all times in the past. If there had been a flood that covered the entire earth at one point in the earth's past, then again, the results of age analysis would differ markedly from those that would arise if it were assumed that no such catastrophe had occurred.
If the universe is only a few thousand years old, one might ask how it might be possible that the light from stars millions of light years away could already be reaching the earth. One obvious answer is that, if God created the heavens and the earth, and the stars in the heavens, and if He did so instantaneously, out of nothing, then there is no reason why He could not have created the stars in such a way as to cause their light already to be shining upon the earth at the moment of creation. They were thus, in a sense, created with the appearance of age, just as Adam and Eve were created as adults, not as infants or embryos. The same could be said for the universe as a whole. For it to have been functioning properly at the time of its creation, it would have been necessary that it be created with the appearance of age.
Some people object that there are many obvious indications that the earth is millions, if not billions of years old, such as the Grand Canyon. Questions of this nature are usually posed with uniformitarian assumptions. It is true that the Grand Canyon is made up of many, many geologic strata. But if these strata were all laid down as flood deposits during the time of Noah's Flood, the layers of sediment would have been soft at the time that the canyon was carved out, and its formation would then have taken place within a very short time.
Most of the sedimentary strata of the Grand Canyon are of marine origin. It is very, very difficult to believe that its layers of sedimentary rock could have been uplifted from the depths of the ocean without disturbing the horizontality of its layers. That the layers of sedimentary rock in the Grand Canyon are perfectly horizontal is obvious even to the most casual observer. Could this plateau have been lifted up such an enormous distance, yet kept perfectly level? Or was there a worldwide Flood that laid down these strata, which were then carved out by the receding flood waters while the strata were still soft, forming the Grand Canyon? No geologist can explain why these layers of sedimentary rock are so high, yet so perfectly horizontal. But believers can explain it very easily. These strata were laid down by the waters of the Deluge. Moreover, it stretches one's credulity to imagine that the huge rift of the Grand Canyon is the result of the work of the tiny Colorado River now visible at the bottom of the canyon. Nor does it make any sense at all that these perfectly horizontal strata could have been laid down over the course of millions or billions of years. How could they possibly have remained so uniform and horizontal over such great periods of time? Would there not have been a single shift in the earth's crust during literally millions of millennia? This is inconceivable. Considerations of this nature demonstrate how unbelievably gullible we have been in the twentieth century to take seriously the assertions of uniformitarian geologists and paleontologists. It takes far more faith to believe their assertions than to take at face value the statements of the Bible concerning such matters.
The bones of dinosaurs also testify to the historicity of the Flood. Whitcomb and Morris wrote:
Another mystery connected with the dinosaurs is the number of great dinosaur graveyards found in various parts of the world. The entombment of such numbers of such great creatures literally demands some form of catastrophic action. One such location, the Dinosaur National Monument, in Utah and Colorado, in the Morrison formation of the Jurassic, for example, has yielded remains of more than 300 dinosaurs of many different kinds.2
If dinosaurs of various representative species were taken on the Ark, they would probably have been very young specimens. Their extinction could then have resulted from very sharp changes in climate after the Flood, although it is possible that some persisted for a long time after the Flood, perhaps accounting for the universal occurrence of "dragons" in ancient mythologies. In any case, it is clear that, with the exception of whatever remnant may have been aboard Noah's Ark, the dinosaurs were destroyed along with everything else during the time of the Flood. One of the great dinosaur graveyards is described as follows by a pamphlet from the U.S. Government Printing Office:
The quarry area is a dinosaur graveyard, not a place where they died. A majority of the remains probably floated down an eastward flowing river until they were stranded on a shallow sandbar. Some of them, such as the stegosaurs, may have come from far-away dry-land areas to the west. Perhaps they drowned trying to ford a tributary stream or were washed away during floods. Some of the swamp dwellers may have mired down on the very sandbar that became their grave while others may have floated for miles before being stranded.3
1 Harold S. Slusher, Critique of Radiometric Dating, 2d ed. (San Diego, Ca.: ICR, 1981), pp. 1-2.
2 John C. Whitcomb, Jr. and Henry M. Morris, The Genesis Flood (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Baker Book House, 1961), p. 280.
3 J. M. Good, T. E. White, and G. F. Stucker, "The Dinosaur Quarry," U. S. Government Printing Office, 1958, p. 26, as cited by Whitcomb and Morris, p. 280.
