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This article is from
Creation 5(1):17, June 1982

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In Brief

For Laymen — A summary of the technical article ‘Radiometric dating and the age of the Earth’ (pages 41–44 this issue)*

4.5 Billion Years

Before 1955, it was popular to believe the age of the earth was only 3 billion years. During 1955 an evolutionary scientist by the name of Patterson2 claimed the age of the earth to be the same as that of meteorites. These he dated at 4.5 billion years. He believed that the meteorites were left-over remains of material dating from the time of formation of the earth and other planets. The value of 4.5 billion years for the age of the earth is now the popular belief used by most evolutionary scientists. This is accepted in spite of the 1972 research by a scientist named Gale21, showing that Patterson’s beliefs about where the lead in meteorites came from, was provably wrong. Gale showed that there was simply too much lead in meteorites to claim that it formed from uranium. Much of the lead had originally been in the meteorite. Therefore, despite the claims in school books, university lectures, and in the media, meteorites and the earth are not ‘proven’ to be 4.5 billion years old.

Edited Data

Such widespread beliefs as the 4.5 billion years of age, and the infallibility of the radiometric dating methods, are unfortunately kept in the public view by two rules agreed upon by many scientists, i.e. if a date disagrees with 4.5 billion years it must be wrong-and if dates do not fit the expected view of evolutionary history, they are simply edited out of any data published.
References to these practices are given in the Technical Article under the headings, Concordant Data and Selective Publication.21–34

* Please note — reference numbers in the above summary refer to the list of references in the Technical Article.