Radiometric dating has been around for a while now. Everyone has heard of Carbon 14 dating, a form of radiometric dating.
This method of dating earth's age amounts to a clock using atoms. Certain atoms change to other atoms over time. The amount of time to change them is called their half-life. A radioactive rock is obtained, its purity is assessed, and then it is tested to see how many atoms have changed into other atoms. The math is done for the amount of time for this process and an age of the rock is determined.
Many of these tests have been done in which earth rocks are dated to be over 3 billion years old. These tests serve as the main beachhead upon which old-earth geology is built. I can't write a long paper here, and don't want to be over-technical, so I will say straightforwardly that radiometric dating is very convincing evidence for an old earth.
However, it must be said that this method carries some big assumptions.
1. All radioactive rocks started off completely one atom type and changed to another.
2. The process has been undisturbed for eons.
3. The laws of physics have never altered.
These assumptions cannot be proven or dis-proven by science. I frankly don't know if they are true. However, I believe in a supernatural Creator who could play havoc with these assumptions. So God can do anything, and radiometric dating might give false results based on wrong assumptions that exclude God.
The alternative, which many Christian people take, is that the scientific results are correct, and Genesis is saying something different than the literal 24-hour six day theory many Creationist Christians assert. Various theories have been invented to change Genesis's interpretation to fit with old-earth scientific data, which has resulted in the "gap theory," the "day age theory," and other old-earth theories. Some of these theories are older than radiometric dating, but all give a Bible time-line that works well with an old earth.
I am still studying this issue (radiometric dating) and my conclusions are not complete. I will try to provide, in my next post, a basic pro-con argument set-up for the validity/falsity of radiometric dating according to scientific perspectives.
In a later post, I will try to address the various Scriptural theories devised based on the acceptance or rejection of radiometric results.
God's peace to you,
Greg
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