ROCKS returned from the moon by the Apollo 15 and 16 missions have precisely determined radioisotope ages as great as 4.1 billion years. 1 The average of the extensive radioisotope analyses that have been performed on meteorites suggests that these objects have been in existence as solid material for 4.55 billion years. 2 Five different techniques for determining radioisotope age when applied to samples of pegmatite from the Beartooth Mountains in Montana have yielded ages ranging between 2.5 and 2.8 billion years. 3 Four independent dating techniques applied to minerals in the granite, schist and gneiss of the Front Range west of Boulder, Colorado, have yielded radioisotope ages closely grouped between 1.2 and 1.6 billion years, while quartz monzonite which has intruded into this rock near Eldora, Colorado, has a radioisotope age of 54 million years.4 Extensive measurements have established a radioisotope age of 193 million years for the Palisade sill near Fort Lee, New Jersey, which intrudes rocks containing fossil fish, reptiles, and many footprints. 5
Can one believe these radioisotope ages? The answer is a firm Yes. A radioisotope age is simply a convenient description of certain radioactive and radiogenic components. The amounts of these components that have been determined by appropriate analytical techniques may be described in parts per million, a fractional ratio, or time that would be required for the observed state to develop under a set of simplifying assumptions. The latter means of description is known as a radioisotope (or radioactive) age. A radioisotope age is "true," and is as accurate as the basic measurements from which it is derived. It describes a contemporary characteristic of the specimen on which the reported measurements were performed.
If the actual experience of the specimen is adequately described by the simplifying assumptions under which the measured atomic concentrations or ratios were converted into a radioisotope age, the radioisotope age is equal to a period of real time. Without independent historical data one cannot be certain that all the simplifying assumptions have been satisfied. The available evidence must be analyzed to determine the probability that the simplifying assumptions have or have not been fulfilled. Essential agreement between various chemically and physically independent radioisotope age techniques on numerous samples of differing components of a mineral formation give confidence that the radioisotope ages obtained do have meaning in terms of real time. Examples are cited in references 2, 3, and 4. However satisfying the supporting evidence may be, translation of a radioisotope age into a real time period is always speculative.
If radioisotope ages have, at least in some cases, meaning in terms of real time they present a problem for those who are concerned over the reliability of the testimony given by Moses and Ellen G. White concerning the history of our planet. This problem may be resolved in either of two ways without disturbing implicit confidence in the inspired testimony.
The inorganic features of our planet are relatively simple in comparison with the living organisms that it supports. God's capacity to create these living forms as described in Genesis implies an ability to arrange atoms, both radioactive and radiogenic, in inorganic matter according to any pattern He might choose. Accordingly, the radioisotope age characteristics that we observe could be the result of God's preference expressed in creative activity 4,000 years ago, 6,000 years ago, or yesterday.
An alternate resolution that allows more meaning to radioisotope age data recognizes the Genesis account as a description of a creative episode in which this planet was transformed from a chaotic state without life to an ideal world.6 According to this viewpoint there is accessible to present investigation matter that appeared during the Genesis Creation week and matter that was brought into existence in a manifestation of creative power at a remote time in the history of the universe. Material from this earlier creative episode is available in rocks from the moon, meteorites, and minerals exposed by the Flood, as well as subsequent volcanic and erosional activity on Earth. Radioisotope ages ranging from tens of thousands to billions of years may be due to natural processes that this ancient material has experienced since its original creation, and also to abnormal events to which it may have been subjected during the Genesis Creation week and the Flood epoch.
The second solution proposed above may appear to encounter difficulty with mineral formations that have radioisotope ages in millions of years and which either contain or overlay fossils. The difficulty exists only if the radiogenic daughter products have accumulated since the mineral was brought into association with the related fossils. It is unduly naive and simplistic to assume that all daughter products are removed from their radioactive parents in a transport of material by erosional or volcanic activity. A radioisotope age of mineral associated with a fossil may provide information concerning the history of the mineral, but have little or no relation ship to the time when this material was brought into association with the fossil. For example, the radioisotope ages that can be determined for the various components of the soil in which a human body has been buried may give information concerning the matter of which this soil is composed, but would not be expected to date the burial of the body.
Volcanic and plutonic material has provided most of the radioisotope ages for establishing the currently accepted evolutionary time scale, on the assumption that the radioisotope chronometer systems were set to zero in the transport of material by volcanic and plutonic activity. It is now becoming recognized that this assumption is justified only in special cases.
Lava that cools rapidly or erupts at great ocean depths will have a potassium-argon age in excess of the time since its eruption. Recent submarine flows from Kilauea Volcano in Hawaii have been found to have radioisotope ages as great as 43 million years. 7 It is worthy of note that much of Earth's volcanic flows basalts in the Columbia River region of northwestern United States and the Daccan plateau of India, e.g. may have taken place under water in association with the Flood. The author has observed pillow basalt (a formation produced by lava eruption under water) on the upper levels of the Blue Mountains southeast of the Columbia River plateau.
One would expect submarine volcanic flows and plutonic intrusions at large depths below the surface to retain radioisotope-age characteristics developed prior to the eruption or intrusion. More surprising is the retention of great radioisotope age by subaerial volcanic material. Basalt that erupted from Hualalei Volcano (Hawaii) in 1801 contains components that have a potassium-argon age in excess of one billion years.8 A lava flow on Mount Rangitoto in New Zealand, dated by radiocarbon analysis of trees that were destroyed by the flow to have resulted from volcanic activity approximately 200 years ago, yields potassium-argon ages as great as 465,000 years. 9 A recent study of the Ethiopian volcano Fantale indicates that the radioisotope ages of tuff on the sides of this volcano relate to chemical character istics and zonation within the magma chamber that produced the volcanic material, and do not date the eruptions that produced successive layers of tuff. As eruptions proceeded, the volcanic material brought to the surface had progressively lesser radioisotope ages. 10 Other data of similar nature could be presented. 11
Accordingly, radioisotope ages of minerals associated with fossils do not disallow the limitations given in the Bible concerning the time life has existed on this planet. Both inspired testimony and recent scientific discovery indicate that these radioisotope ages relate more to the history of the mineral prior to its association with fossil material than to the time that has elapsed since this event.
Radioisotope age determinations, together with data obtained from artificial satellites, lunar exploration, and space probes to nearby planets, present a picture of physical activity in this portion of the universe over a long period of time prior to the Creation week described in the first chapter of Genesis. These observations can expand our concept of God, and need not threaten implicit confidence in the inspired testimony He has given us.
REFERENCES
1. Frederic R. Siegel, "Geochemistry," Geotimes, January, 1973, pp. 20-22.
2. R. H. Brown, "The Age of Meteorites," Spectrum, Winter, 1971, pp. 19-27.
3. ————, "Radioactive Time Clocks," Creation—Accident or Design? Harold G. Coffin, ed. (Washington, D.C.: Review and Herald Publishing Association, 1969), pp. 273-298.
4. S. R. Hart, G. L. Davis, R. H. Steiger, and G. R. Tilton, "A Comparison of the Isotopic Mineral Age Variations and Petrologic Changes Induced by Contact Metamorphism," in Radiometric Dating for Geologists, ed. by E. I. Hamilton and R. M. Farquhar (New York: Interscience Publishers, 1968), pp. 73-110.
5. W. B. Harland, A. Gilbert Smith, and B. Wilcock, editors, The Phanerozoic Time-scale (London: Geological Society of London, 1964), p. 277.
6. Brown, "The Creation of Elementary Matter," The Ministry, February, 1958, p. 11; , "Key Words in the Genesis Account of Creation," The Ministry, February, 1964, p. 12.
7. G. Brent Dalrymple and Marvin A. Lanphere, Potassium-Argon Dating (San Francisco, Cal.: W. H. Freeman and Company, 1969), pp. 134, 135.
8. Ibid., p. 133.
9. H. Polach, J. Chappell, and ). F. Lovering, "AND Radiocarbon Date List III," Radiocarbon, 11 (1969), p. 254.
10. D. R. Dickinson and I. L. Gibson, "Feldspar Fractionation and Anomalous Sr87/Sr86 Ratios in a Suit of Peralkaline Silicic Rocks," Geological Society of America Bulletin, 83 (1972), pp. 231-240.
11. Dalrymple and Lanphere, op. cit., pp. 143, 144; C. W. Naeser, "Geochronology of the Navajo-Hopi Diatremes, Four Corners Area," Journal of Geophysical Research, 76 (1971), pp. 4978-4985.
