Below is the online edition of In the Beginning: Compelling Evidence for Creation and the Flood,
by Dr. Walt Brown. Copyright © Center for Scientific Creation. All rights reserved.
Click here to order the hardbound 8th edition (2008) and other materials.
To date an event or thing that preceded written records, one must assume that the dating clock has operated at a known rate, that the clock’s initial setting is known, and that the clock has not been disturbed. These three assumptions are almost always unstated, overlooked, or invalid.
For the past century, a major (but incorrect) assumption underlying all radioactive dating techniques has been that decay rates, which have been essentially constant over the past 100 years, have also been constant over the past 4,600,000,000 years. Unfortunately, few have questioned this huge and critical assumption.a
It is also critical that one understands how dating clocks work. For radiometric dating clocks on Earth, this is explained in the chapter “The Origin of Earth’s Radioactivity” on pages 387–441. After studying that chapter, you will see that Earth’s radioactivity—and the many daughter products that so many misinterpreted to mean that the Earth was billions of years old—are a result of powerful electrical activity during the flood, only about 5,000 years ago.