Science and Religion: Both Dating Methods Are Wrong

Scientists stubbornly stick to the idea that the processes we see today have been occurring the same way for billions of years. This is called uniformitarianism or the Doctrine of Uniformity. It works with things like physics, but has no business being applied to studies of the past such as geology, archaeology and paleontology. We have no way of knowing for sure what our world was like 10,000 or a billion years ago. So, these theories will remain theories. You can not use the scientific method to test a hypotheses of something that can't be duplicated - like the past.

Consider this analogy. Remember Doodle Tops? It's the top with a pen in the tip. As it spins, it leaves a trail of ink on the paper. Let's say you spin one and it goes for a minute before it topples over. Now, what if you are allowed to only watch the last half-second before it falls over. Measure the time and how many spins you witnessed then count the tiny swirls in the line to estimate how long it spun. If you assumed it spun a uniform rate the entire time, you would calculate that the top was spinning for 8 minutes. Wrong! The top was spinning faster at the beginning.

The same would be true about our planet. It must have been more dynamic in ages past. Things have changed so much that you can't apply today's observations to the past.

For example, today we can track seasonal snowfall on ice sheets like Greenland and the Antarctic and see that each stratum counts for a single season. It would be tempting and simple-minded to surmise that it has been identical going back to the beginning of time. What if the lines weren't seasonal way back when? Maybe each line that appears to be a season was really laid down in a matter of months, weeks or even days. Common sense would tell you that after a cataclysm that releases almost all of the melted ice water into the oceans and atmosphere would precipitate out at a much faster rate at first then dwindle to mere traces after most of that water is locked up again in ice.

Another example is regarding the tectonic plates rate of movement. The slow movement today does not preclude that it was always that way. The continents could have moved at a much faster rate the further we go back in time and could have had periods of accelerated drift or they could have not moved at all and all the movement came immediately before, during and after a continental shift - otherwise known as cataclysms. Look at this long list of past extinction events. Periodic cataclysms is the most obvious culprit. But that throw's the currently accepted eons of earth's history off by a considerable amount. So belief in cataclysms is taboo.

This will take a long time for mankind to accept. The theories of Aristotle dominated the natural science community for centuries because the very source of education was the erroneous theories of Aristotle. People didn't question it. Especially the "educated" ones.

The same thing is happening today. The "educated" people don't question the foundations they built on because it is unthinkable. The only ones who do are the people outside the educated elite who can used common sense to poke holes in the theories. They bring fresh eyes and ideas to the table. However, they are immediately dismissed as pseudo-scientists and are refused a place at the table. 

Are we going to have to wait centuries before people realize the error of unguided, chance macro-evolution and all it's sub-errors of uniformitarianism, anti-cataclysm, mis-understood signs of glaciation, over-blown dating methods and other incorrect theories taught as fact?

Creationists Are Wildly Wrong, Too!

I'm not going to let the Young Earth Creationists off the hook. They stubbornly stick to their guns as well. It is clear that the creation of the earth was not necessarily 6 twenty-four hour days. Even the scriptures clearly state that a day in God's time is 1000 years of our time.

2 Peter 3:8
But, beloved, be not ignorant of this one thing, that one day is with the Lord as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day.

Psalm 90:4
For a thousand years in thy sight are but as yesterday when it is past, and as a watch in the night.

Jubilees 4: 29-30
Adam died. . . And he lacked seventy years of one thousand years; for one thousand years are as one day in the testimony of the heavens and therefore was it written concerning the tree of knowledge: 'On the day that ye eat thereof ye shall die.' For this reason he did not complete the years of this day; for he died during it.

Besides, Genesis has two different "creation" stories.  Chapter 1 is the account of when God planned the creation (a spiritual creation). Chapter 2 has the account of the actual physical creation and very little detail is shared. And nowhere does it say how long that process was. So creationists should be open to a much longer creation period.

The above scriptures aren't the only ones that make it clear that the planning of the creation took 6000 years. See here. And to see the clarification about the spiritual (planning) versus the physical creation, look here.

Another problem is that our current Bible was translated from a text from the middle ages - the Masoretic Text. It is clear that the Biblical genealogies have been erroneously shortened. The Greek Septuagint, Samaritan Pentateuch, and Flavius Josephus all add an extra 100 years to the dates of when six descendants of Noah begat their offspring. That is three against one. More weight should be given to the agreeing texts. It is also important that they are older sources, closer to the original time of writing of the Old Testament.

Numbers in the Bible can be suspect. For example, there are figures of many Old Testament battles that have ridiculously high numbers of soldiers and deaths for the actual populations of the time. And this error stems from the fact that the word for soldier was also very similar to the number 100. So the actual numbers were inflated by a factor of 100.

Another weak link is the phrases "begat" and "son of." Consider that Jesus Christ was called the Son of David, but there are many generations between the two. So be careful when estimating dates based on lists of father and son in the scriptures. Scribes could have mistranslated those phrases, treating them as the same. You might think you are counting one generation when there could be many intervening generations.

The final word: evolutionists overestimate, while creationists underestimate dates. It is surely somewhere in between.

PS. One practice that makes me scratch my head is dating the organic material UNDERNEATH a stone block, pillar or other non-organic building material to get a date for age of the site. What? All that tells you is how old the organic material is.  The organic material under the building block could have been extremely old before the block was put in place. Unfortunately, it's in ways like this that you can force data to spit out dates that fit your pre-conceived notions.

Here are some links to some articles arguing against the accuracy of the most common scientific dating practices:

ICE CORES: if there was a global flood 4,000 to 12,000 years ago, the previous ice caps would have melted and the current ice would only be that old. So just because they can correlate one line per season in a core now doesn't mean it has always been that way.  The extra water in the cycle could create ice faster then, than now. There could have been multiple lines per season as the extra snow accumulated more rapidly immediately after the flood until the majority of the water eventually got locked in ice, slowing down the water cycle to the current condition.

RADIOMETRIC
CARBON 14 
TREE RINGS

Sources:
Were the Pyramids Built Before the Flood? (Masoretic Text vs. Original Hebrew)

Additional reading:
Biblical and Scientific Shortcomings of Flood Geology, Part 3

Is There Circular Logic in Fossil Dating?
Is Most Published Research Wrong?
What was unexpectedly found in Dinosaur Bones, Coal and Diamonds? - Dr. Andrew Snelling