It is quite simple to understand how radioactive dating works when you think about it.
- It is impossible to measure the age of anything by making observations and measurements in the present.
- Before any age can be calculated, unprovable assumptions about the past are needed.
- After an age is calculated, we cannot know if the number means anything.
- Thus, all ages must be checked against other information about what age is expected.
- This means that radioactive dating is never the primary way that ages are decided. Radioactive dating only provides a precise sounding number.
In other words, it’s a trick that makes you think the age has been precisely measured when it hasn’t.
The only way of knowing the age of anything is by the historical method. That is, from written records of observations in the past. We know the date for the Battle of Waterloo from this method. You know your age this way too. And that is how we know the age of the earth (see: How Ussher calculated the age of the earth).
For more detail see:
Tim Patterson
Concise and excellent reasoning!