Dimitrovgrad Russia, May 16, 2006
Genesis / Creation Seminar
Part IV - Dinosaurs In The Bible, Radioisotope Dating

There is a lot of historical evidence that men and dinosaurs lived together. But, if men and dinosaurs lived together you'd think that the Bible would mention them as it does other animals. So, do we read about dinosaurs in the Bible? Yes.

Keep in mind that the word dinosaur was not invented until the 19th century. So if dinosaurs existed before the 19th century they must have been called something different. Let's read Job chapter 40 verses 15-18 and see if we can figure out what is being described.

"Behold now, Behemoth, which I made as well as you; He eats grass like an ox. Behold now, his strength in his loins and his power in the muscles of his belly. He bends his tail like a cedar; the sinews of his thighs are knit together. His bones are tubes of bronze; his limbs are like bars of iron."

The Bible goes on to describe Behemoth as resting in marshy areas in which lotus plants, reeds and willows grow. He is so big that when the rivers flood, Behemoth is not concerned. He is so big that a flood does not bother him.

What is this describing?

It sounds like the largest dinosaur ever found, a brachiosaurus (Brak-key-0h-saurus). 20 meters long and weighted 74 tons as much as 20 elephants.
When the Bible talks about dinosaurs it uses the Hebrew word "Tannium" Keep in mind that the word "dinosaur" was not created until the 19th century. Early translators of the Bible ddn't have the word "dinosaur" available to them, but they accurately translated the word "Tannium" as dragon, because this was an animal they knew about. We've now come to think of dragons as mythological, and it has only been recently that the evidence is surfacing and we are learning that dinosaurs lived with man, and the term people used to describe them is dragon.

The word "tannium" is used about 50 times in the Bible. But because modern translators did not know what this word means they sometimes translated it as "dragon", but other times it was translated is serpent or jackal. Here are some examples:

Psalm 90:13 (91:13): "Thou shalt tread upon the lion and adder; the young lion and the dragon shalt thou trample under feet."

Psalm 73:13 (74:13) "Thou didst divide the sea by thy strength; thou breakest the heads of the (serpent) dragons in the waters.

Jeremiah 14:6 "And the wild asses did stand in the high places, they snuffed up the wind like (jackels) dragons; their eyes did fail, because there was no grass."

Malachi 1:3 "And I hated Esau, and laid his mountains and his heritage waste for the dragons (jackels) of the wilderness."

Yes, the Bible talks about dinosaurs and it does so in the same manner as it does any other real animal. Dinosaurs are mentioned throughout the Old Testament.

By the way, translating "tannium" as behemoth, serpent, jackal or dragon has no effect on how we understand what the Bible is saying. The Bible is not intended to be a book telling us about dinosaurs. It is a book about God and His plan for us. Dinosaurs are mentioned only because they were part of everyday life. For example, in Job chapter 40, where behemoth is mentioned, God is giving an example of how he created the largest animal that ever lived, a brachiosaurus, so that Job will better understand who God is--because God is someone who can create such a huge and powerful animal.

So far evolutionism is not matching reality. What is the best evidence for evolution? Let's talk about evidence for the age of the earth. Is the earth about 6,000 years old as the Bible indicates, or is it billions of years old as evolutionism says. Let's look at the evidence and see which best matches reality.

If a fossil is found, how do we find out how old it is? There are no methods by which the age of the fossil can be directly measured. So a fossil is dated based on the rock layer it is found in. If a fossil is encased in a 350 million year old rock, then the fossil also has to be 350 million years old. That makes sense.

So, how is the age of the rock determined? That's easy. If the fossil in the rock is of a type commonly dated at 350 million years old, then that rock must also be 350 million years old.

Do you see the problem here? The age of the rock sets the date of the fossil and the age of the fossil sets the date of the rock. That's circular reasoning. But, that's the way fossils were dated for a long time.

But scientists have come up with a better way to date rocks. Fossils still can not be dated directly, and neither can the layers of sediment in which fossils are found. However certain kinds of rocks, such as those that come from lava flows, can be measured using radioisotope dating. So if we can find a lava flow next to or within a sediment layer, the age of the sediment can be determined by dating the lava.

Radioisotope dating involves measuring isotopes formed by the decay of radioactive materials in rocks and minerals. By measuring the amount of the material that results from radioactive decay, and the amount of the remaining undecayed original radioactive material, scientists say the age of the rock can be determined. For example, if a radioactive material has a half-life of 100 million years, meaning half of it will decay to a radioactive product over a time span of 100 million years, then if we have a rock with equal amounts of the original radioactive material and the product of radioactive decay, we should be able to say the rock is 100 million years old.

Radioisotope dating falls into the area of fact. Both creationism and evolutionism agree that we are very good at measuring radioactive materials in rocks. We agree on the facts. Our scientific abilities in this area are outstanding. However, there are several assumptions built into the radioisotope method of dating rocks that may effect the final results. For example, we don't know the initial conditions and we are assuming that conditions have been exactly as they are today throughout all of history.
Let's say you are outside and you see an airplane flying south at 600mph, how long has that airplane been flying? Can anyone answer that question? We know the current speed. How long has it been flying? That question can't be answered. In addition to the speed, you need to know the starting point and whether or not the speed has varied.

Or take a candle. As a candle burns it always gets smaller. Let's say we have a clock and a lighted candle. We watch the candle burn. We have a candle that is 8cm tall and we determine that it is getting shorter by 1 cm every hour. Question, how long has the candle been burning?
You say to me that's a foolish question, just like the airplane question. You say, tell me how tall it was to start with, I'll tell you how long it has been burning. Same with radioisotope dating, we don't know the original amount--the starting point, and we don't know if there have been any variations in the rate in the past.

We need to be able to calibrate radioisotope dating. We need to have to have some known dates.

So let's try to calibrate radioisotope dating and see if it gives us results that match reality. We'll find rocks that have a known age, radioisotope date them, and find out whether the known age matches the radioisotope date.
I live near an active volcano named Mount Saint Helens. On May 18th 1980 Mount Saint Helens erupted blowing off the top 3000 meters of the mountain. It has been continually erupting since then. That means it is making new rocks all the time.

Why is Mount Saint Helens a good test for radioisotope dating? First, radioisotope dating methods can be used mainly on volcanic (igneous) rock. Fossil-bearing sedimentary rock cannot be directly dated using radioisotope methods. Second, the date of formation of the Mount Saint Helens rocks is known, it is essentially zero.

A common method of dating rocks is potassium-argon dating. Radioactive potassium decays to argon. That's the method that scientists used for this test. A sample was collected and submitted for potassium-argon analysis to Geochron Laboratories of Cambridge, MA, a high quality, professional radioisotope dating laboratory. The only information provided to the laboratory was that the samples came from volcanic rock and that "low argon" should be expected.

What should have been the result? The result should have been that the level of argon was too low to be measured. What was the result? That the age of the rocks ranged from 350,000 years old to 2.8 million years old. That's not right. The calibration has failed.

Why wasn't the age measured as zero? A good possibility is that solidification of magma does not reset the radioisotope clock to zero. Probably some argon-40 was incorporated from the start into the newly formed rocks giving the "appearance" of great age. In other words, we have assumed that rocks start at zero, but this may not be true. And unlike Mt. St. Helens, we don't know the starting condition of ancient rocks.

This type of test has been repeated many times with the same result. Rocks from Mt. Etna, which erupted in 1792 date as being 1.4 million years old. Rocks from Mt. Naguruhoe in New Zealand, which erupted in 1949, 1954 and 1975 potassium-argon date to be 3.5 million years old.
The age of these rocks should be zero. But not only do that not date as being new rocks, various rocks from the same eruption date as having different ages.

The big problem I have with this is that scientists never ask an important question. That question is, why? Doesn't good science follow the evidence wherever it leads, seeking the truth? Shouldn't we be trying to understand why new rock is dated as being millions of years old? Shouldn't we be trying to understand why the results are sometimes not consistent?

Here is another interesting anomaly. Carbon-14 dating is a method of radioisotope dating that works in a fundamentally different way. It can be used to determine the age of things that are up to about 100,000 years old, and it can only be used to date objects that used to be living. It can date organic material. For example, carbon dating can be used to determine the age of wood, charcoal, coal or even diamonds.

Evolutionism says that coal was formed from vegetation that died and was buried millions of years ago. Most of the coal was formed during the Carboniferous period, which is dated from 299 million years ago to 359 million years ago.

Why do scientists think coal is 299 to 359 million years old? You can not directly radioisotope date coal, but you can date basalt rocks that are in the same layer as the coal. So we know the age of coal based on the age of the basalt rock layers. That makes sense.

What if someone tried to carbon date coal? You should not be able to carbon date coal because it is much older than the 100,000 year range that carbon dating can measure. Because of that no one bothered to carbon date coal because everyone knew it was too old to be carbon dated… until someone actually tried to carbon date coal. The result was that carbon dating different types of coals resulted in ages ranging from 10,000 years up to 46,000 years. Scientists say coal is millions of years old, carbon dating says it is less than 50,000 years old. There is a question someone should ask… that question is WHY?

We're not doing very well calibrating radioisotope dating. So, how do scientists calibrate radioisotope dating?

It is calibrated by Darwin's time scale. In other words, evolutionism says that fossils are millions of years old, thus a radioisotope date must show dates that are millions of years old. How is Darwin's time scale calibrated? Because the radioisotope dating says the rocks are millions of years old. How do you know the radioactive dating is right? Darwin's time scale shows it. Do you see what has happened? We've traded one method of circular reasoning for another method of circular reasoning.

So to have an accurate measurement you have to have a calibration, know the starting point, and know what the rate of decay was in the past. We have none of these for radioisotope dating.

Is there any other method of measurement that might give us an age of the earth and thus give us a calibration point?

We have radio halos. What are radio halos?

Let's look at the oldest rocks on earth, the pre-Cabamrian rocks. These are the oldest rocks, they formed first and then everything else settled on top of them. So if I dig down, down, down through all the layers, to get to the oldest rocks on earth. The first rocks on earth. The pre-Cambrian granite. What would I see?

Do you know what granite is like? It's a crystalline rock. It has silica crystals in it. And muskavite crystals in it. A little over 100 years ago scientists made an amazing discovery. They discovered that if these crystals in the oldest rocks are viewed under a microscope they show a bulls-eye pattern. A round spot in the center with rings around it. Scientists were fascinated by this. Why should the crystals in the oldest rocks show these bull's eye patterns? You have to see them in a microscope because the distance from one side to the other side is less than the width of a human hair. So they are very, very tiny.

They couldn't figure out why this was until1896 when the famous French scientist Henry Beckerell discovered radioactivity. Then scientists knew how to explain these little haloes. That little spec in the center is an impurity in the crystal. That impurity is radioactive. The radiation goes out in all directions. Different types of radiation has different amounts of energy. Some of the rays have a smaller amount of energy and as they travel through the crystal they gradually lose their energy and STOP. A ring is formed at that point. Others have more energy so they can travel a little further before they loose their energy and stop, so there is another ring further out. These are radiation damage patterns in the crystal. They're known as radio halos.
There are different kinds of radioactivity so there are different kinds of radio halos. Scientists determined that the impurity in the granite was polonium.
If you see a piece of ice with a stone in the middle of it, that stone is an impurity. How did the stone get in the ice? Did someone throw a stone at the ice. How would you get a stone into ice? To get it there it had to be liquid. But to hold it there it had to be solid. That's the same logic scientists used with these radio halos. There are three requirements necessary for a radio halo to form.

1. The rock had to be liquid to get the impurity in there.

2. The rock had to be solid and cool once the impurity was in the rock. If the rock had been liquid the pattern would not have formed. Also, if the rock is heated after the halo forms, the halo will go away. So the rock has to stay solid and cool.

3. It had to be done while radioactivity was going on. Because the radioactivity is needed to make these halos.

The impurity in this case is polonium. There are three kinds of polonium. Pulonium 218, Polonium 214 and Polonium 210. We know this is primordial polonium, meaning we are looking at the first rocks that were created when the earth was formed, and the polonium got into the rocks when they were formed. For example, we can see that these rocks did not come down the radioactive decay chain. They were here when the earth got started.
How fast does the radioactivity go away? What's the half life? Polonium 218 has a half life of three minutes. Polonium 214 has a half life of 164 millionths of a second. You can't blink that fast. Polonium 210 has half-life of 138 days. The rock had to be liquid to get the impurity into it. It had to be solid and cool to hold the pattern. And it can only make the pattern while the radioactivity is going on and the radioactivity goes away very, very fast.

What does that tell us about how this earth was formed?

The radioactivity and formation of the rocks must almost be instanteous. Evolutionsm says the earth formed slowly, was hot molten for a long time, and slowly cooled over a long period of time. That does not match the evidence. The evidence matches what the Bible says:

Psalms 33 verses 6 and 9 say:
"By the word of the LORD were the heavens made, their starry host by the breath of his mouth."

"For He spoke, and it came to be; He commanded, and it stood firm."
God spoke the world into existence. It did not exist. God spoke and it existed. And the evidence we see in radio halos perfectly supports this.
Does this prove creation? No. In science you can't prove anything. You can only disprove things. Does this disprove the idea that the earth was formed slowly over billions of years of time. Yes. Evolutionism contradicts the evidence in the rocks. It disagrees with reality.

But how can that be? Doesn't it take millions of years to create a fossil? No. Here is a picture of a felt hat left in a mine 50 years ago. We have a small lake near where I live. You can drop a towel in the lake, come back 24 hours later and the towel will be fossilized. Fossilization does not require millions of years.

Then there is the puzzle of missing meteorites.

What's the puzzle of missing meteorites? A meteorite is an object that comes down from space. Most of them burn up in the atmosphere. A few make it clear through and strike the earth. So what's the rate at which they make it clear through? This is a conservative estimate. About 600 every year make it through and strike the earth. Of course the earth is 3/4 water so 3/4 of them fall in the ocean. That's 450 per year. 150 fall on land. Let's do some simple arithmetic. If 600 come down every year and we're talking about 600 million years for life to lay down the fossils we see, that's 360 billion meteorites. So if evolutionism is true what would we expect? We should see these meteorites saturated all throughout the 600 million years of sediment. But if the Bible is true and those layers were laid down in about a year of the flooding, then I would expect the geological layers would show few or no meteorites.

What is reality?

In the lower levels of the geological column we find meteorites. We also find them at the top. But never do we find meteorites in the fossil layers. Why? One possibility is that those layers collected too rapidly--exactly what we'd expect if there was a world-wide flood.

In 1998 a group of scientists came together with the objective of finding the answer to that question, the question "Why?".

In 2005 they published what they found out. The technical papers are available. They are a little too expensive for me to buy, and since I'm not a physicist I probably couldn't understand them anyway. They also published a summary of their findings in a book that is easier to read. It's called "Thousands Not Billions". This book came out about eight months ago, and unfortunately it is not available in Russian that I know of. If anyone here can read English, I'd be happy to give you my copy.

What they found was that there are many discrepancies and problems with radioisotope dating.

For example, there are a variety of methods that can be used to radioisotope date rocks, such as rubidium-strontium, lead-lead, and potassium-argon. What's puzzling is that when a rock sample is dated using various radioisotope methods, the resulting ages are different. If radioisotope dating worked, shouldn't all the dating methods give approximately the same age?

For example, a rock sample from the Grand Canyon is dated as 656 million years old using potassium-argon. It is dated as 1075 million years old using rubidium-strontium dating. It is 1330 million years old when the age is determined by lead-lead dating. And it is nearly 1,400 years old using samarium-neodymium dating. 656 million years old to 1,400 years old is a wide variation.

The amount of radioactive decay can be measured very precisely. There really is 656 million years of potassium-argon decay in that rock--based on the decay rate we see today. There really is 1,400 years of samarium-neodymium decay in that same rock. But until now no one has asked… WHY?

When someone finally asked WHY?, they found something very interesting. Dates measured using Beta decay always result in ages that are much less than dates determined using alpha decay. This discrepancy is consistent over a large data set.

Combined with other research in areas such as radio halos and fission tracks, this new research team has come to the conclusion that it is possible that the rate of radioactive decay has not been constant in the past. They have identified two periods of accelerated decay. There appears to have been a major acceleration about 6,000 years ago… at the time of creation. A second minor acceleration happened about 4,500 years ago… at the time of the Biblical flood.

More research is now being done in this area.

Unfortunately we have run out of time. I hope this seminar has lead you to think about this question: which option best matches reality? Creationism or evolutionism? Don't just accept what you are being told. Look at the evidence and see where the evidence leads. That's what I did and the answers I found revealed that there is no support for evolutionism and a huge amount of scientific support for creationism that continues to rapidly grow.

What you decide is important because it may affect your eternal destiny. You do not need to believe in creationism to spent eternity with God (be saved), but for many people their belief in the false teachings of evolutionism is keeping them separated from God.

Are you the result of random chance, with your original ancestor being a rock… in which case you are nothing better than dirt. Or are you lovingly created in God's image, designed and intended to live on a perfect earth?
Yes, things are not perfect now. We must always remember that both us, and the entire world (and universe) have been ruined by sin.

But God came into this world in the form of Jesus Christ. He died to pay the penalty we owe for our sin (disobedience of God). And then He proved there is life after death by coming back from the dead Himself. His tomb was empty. No other leader of any religion has every done that.

And now God gives us His free gift. A gift we call saving grace. It is the free gift of Jesus dying to pay the penalty we owe for our disobedience of God (sin), so that we can freely join Him in heaven for ALL ETERETY.

Part I - Introduction, Creationism & Evolutionism
Part II - The Scientific Facts
Part II - Evidence Support Evolution & Dinosaurs Lived With Man?
Part IV - Dinosaurs In The Bible & Radioisotope Dating