Is radioactive dating accurate?

Background

Radioactive dating works by measuring the presence of a particular isotope in some material, and then extrapolating the material's age by estimating the abundance of that isotope when the material was first created and knowing the isotope's rate of decay. Such isotopes are said to have a half-life, meaning that exactly half of the isotope will decay over a certain period of time.

Implications to Other Questions

Is the earth approximately 6000 years old? (as opposed to 4.5 billion)

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Experts In Physics

Roger Wiens Physicist, Christian

Agree

It has become increasingly clear that these radiometric dating techniques agree with each other and as a whole, present a coherent picture in which the Earth was created a very long time ago. ... Many Christians have been led to distrust radiometric dating and are completely unaware of the great number of laboratory measurements that have shown these methods to be consistent. Many are also unaware that Bible-believing Christians are among those actively involved in radiometric dating.

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01 Jan 1994 Source

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Experts In Physics

Russell Humphreys Creationist Physicist

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...exciting new developments in RATE projects are confirming our basic hypothesis: that God drastically speeded up decay rates of long half-life nuclei during the Genesis Flood and other brief periods in the earth's short history. Such accelerated nuclear decay collapses the uniformitarian "ages" down to the Scriptural timescale of thousands of years.

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01 Dec 2003 Source

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