This is part 9 of a series of commentaries on material presented by Andy McIntosh. This material was presented at a church that I attend. It has been presented other places as well.
For reference, related arguments were presented by McIntosh in the following video:
If he showed that the dating of all the fast-buried fossils were within 190 days of each other, that would be compelling. We didn't see that. If he showed that we found extinct animal fossils next to current-day animal fossils, that would be compelling. We didn't see that. In fact, we saw the opposite of those things. We were presented evidence that these fossils were dated across 400 million years, and mass graves only had fossils from a single geologic time period.
400 million years is a long flood, and a careful one to only fossilize such an extremely small slice of animals that, biblically, should have been there.
One of these problems can be handled if the way we date the rocks is wrong - if they aren't actually 400 million years old.
McIntosh discusses some assumptions that radiometric dating must make. He's saying that you have to assume how much "Parent" stuff and how much "Daughter" stuff the rock started with. He also points out that if the amount of "Parent" or "Daughter" stuff changes, the estimate will be off.
You can read all about it here:
Well, maybe there is a problem with isochron correction. McIntosh should have presented that argument. That would surely have been a good thing to hear. But we did not hear it. We did not even get a reference to a paper, even one only produced by Answers in Genesis.
Just trust me isn't anywhere near what we should demand to accuse the entire field of Geology of being completely wrong about the age of everything.
For reference, related arguments were presented by McIntosh in the following video:
Catastrophe
At 12:37, McIntosh is talking about a moth fossil with impressions of it swings and states:
In order to get that impression, its telling you it must have been buried quickly [...]
He returns this several times throughout the talk, showing examples of "fast" fossil formation of moths, damselflies, dragonflies, ferns, octopus, mass dinosaur / crocodile / turtle graves, and maybe more.
He is saying that these fossils seem to require a fast burial. McIntosh uses the term catastrophe.
Evolution and Catastrophe
It seems that one point he may be making is that this type of fast burial is a problem for evolution. If so, he needs to reference that. I know of no reason fast burial would be a problem for evolution. Fast burial is expected in catastrophic events, and catastrophic events are expected to have happened.
The Flood
At 38:38, McIntosh says:
But actually everything is consistent with what The Bible says, that there was a world-wide flood, and that all the creatures outside The Ark were buried.
He is saying that all these fossils were buried fast, and they were buried by the flood described in Genesis 6. Genesis 6 describes a 40 day period of rain followed by a 150 day period of a flood. That gives us about 190 days for all of these fast burial events. McIntosh is claiming that all of these fossils were buried within 190 days of each other.
He is also claiming a global event that generated fossils and killed every living animal that was not on the Ark. It seems this should create, in one region of rock, an extremely massive number of fossils, where you find dinosaurs and birds, trilobites and people. You should find a lot of people. Even a single human fossil with any extinct dinosaur would be a big problem with evolutionary theory.
He is also claiming a global event that generated fossils and killed every living animal that was not on the Ark. It seems this should create, in one region of rock, an extremely massive number of fossils, where you find dinosaurs and birds, trilobites and people. You should find a lot of people. Even a single human fossil with any extinct dinosaur would be a big problem with evolutionary theory.
400 million years is a long flood, and a careful one to only fossilize such an extremely small slice of animals that, biblically, should have been there.
One of these problems can be handled if the way we date the rocks is wrong - if they aren't actually 400 million years old.
Dating
This brings us to radiometric dating. McIntosh begins this talk at around 42:00.
Radiometric dating 101: We want to determine how old a rock is. A rock is made up of a bunch of different elements. Let's imagine a rock that has Uranium in it, but no lead. Occasionally a Uranium atom will become a Lead atom. This appears to happen at a very constant rate. If we are confident that there was no Lead when the rock was made, then we can compare the amount of Lead to the amount of Uranium. Based on that ratio, we can estimate the age of the rock.
McIntosh discusses some assumptions that radiometric dating must make. He's saying that you have to assume how much "Parent" stuff and how much "Daughter" stuff the rock started with. He also points out that if the amount of "Parent" or "Daughter" stuff changes, the estimate will be off.
This is true.
Isochron Correction
However, there is a way to test these assumptions. It is called the "Isochron" method. It involves measuring another element in the rock and doing some maths. Hopefully your measurements make a nice line.
If they don't you know the sample is bad. One of your assumptions was wrong, like McIntosh said. You can't get an accurate date using this dating method on this rock. You either have to use a different dating method, or just accept that sometimes life is hard.
If they don't you know the sample is bad. One of your assumptions was wrong, like McIntosh said. You can't get an accurate date using this dating method on this rock. You either have to use a different dating method, or just accept that sometimes life is hard.
You can read all about it here:
Dismissing Isochron Correction
McIntosh knows about Isochron correction. At 43:24 he states:
Now to be fair to the evolutionist, he will try to get around this by developing other schemes called the isochron scheme which I won't go into detail of here. But he has ways in which he is trying to work out what was there in the beginning. But he actually doesn't know, and that is the basic issue. There is still calibration issues even with these other methods that he attempts.McIntosh seems to be saying - I know that scientists will say they corrected for this, but really they haven't. Just trust me.
Well, maybe there is a problem with isochron correction. McIntosh should have presented that argument. That would surely have been a good thing to hear. But we did not hear it. We did not even get a reference to a paper, even one only produced by Answers in Genesis.
Just trust me isn't anywhere near what we should demand to accuse the entire field of Geology of being completely wrong about the age of everything.
Logical Issues
Claiming evolution is false because it doesn't account for fast burial is a strawman since evolution does account for fast burial. Claiming the evidence supports the flood narrative is special pleading because you've got to make many special case appeals to invalidate radiometric dataing which is only being done to support the flood narrative; and it is a non sequitur because the argument showing isochron correction invalid was not presented; and it is a false premise because dating of fast-buried fossils do not all date to within 190 days; and it is another false premise because we do not find a random distribution of all "kinds" in the fast-burial fossil record.
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