Ancient Earth, Ancient Skies: The Age Of Earth And Its Cosmic Surroundings, by G. Brent Dalrample

There is in this book a profound point about struggle to understand our origins, but the author, unfortunately, spends so much time at the beginning of the book trying to prove his bona fides as a scientist by lumping all people who believe in the Creator with Young Earth Creationists that he fails to understand the real depth of what he says, and his kindred nature with the reflective writers of the Bible as well as with meditative people throughout history who have stared into the expanse of outer space and pondered why we are alone on such a small and insignificant planet. There is a certain problem with a science of the kind practiced by the author, in that he feels it necessary to ridicule the Bible in order to justify what is a recent and somewhat circular understanding of the age of the galaxy that suggests that the foundation of the knowledge that the author is so proud of is not nearly so robust and so deep as he would like to believe. The fact that the author co-wrote the book, so to speak, on Potassium-Argon dating, and is unaware of the weaknesses and problems of that method when it does not account properly for conditions underwater, would indicate that the author is trying to make as strong a case as possible for the validity of radiocarbon dating because of the larger cultural role of the age of the earth and the solar system and not strictly because the science is as solid as he would like to believe.

This book is a bit more than 200 pages long, and it is divided into 11 relatively short chapters. The author begins with a preface and information about the author, and then discusses early efforts at sleuthing the past and discovering long-ago ages of prehuman history (1). This is followed by a discussion of the birth of the universe, the galaxy, the solar system, and earth (2). This is followed by an investigation of early attempts to date the earth (3), before the author gets to his specialty of radiometric dating (4). This is followed by a discussion of the world’s most ancient rocks (5), as well as a discussion of moon rocks (6) and meteorites (7) that are also used in seeking to date the solar system as a whole and various incidents in the creation of it. After that the author discusses lead isotopes as being the stars of dating ancient events (8), while then sorting out the details of the formation history of the earth and meteorites (9). The author then discusses the ages of the universe, the Milky Way galaxy (where he errs in not taking into account the possibility or even likelihood that the galaxy swallowed up older systems and older stars, and thus might have stars older than the galaxy as a whole) (10), and then sums up the data and looks ahead, before giving some recommended reading and references.

Despite the poor beginning that this book had, though, the rest of the book is far better. There is a genuine interest to be found in the way that scientists sought, with the limited information available to them, to make assumptions about conditions in the world to estimate a longer period of time than was previously figured. The author considers these efforts, even if unsuccessful, to be praiseworthy precisely because of their antibiblical conclusions, aligning himself with a view of science that is ultimately hostile to faith, even if there is no need for these things to conflict. Later chapters, where the author waxes rhapsodically about the deposits of lead and collision breccias and seeks to harmonize the dates of the creation of the earth, moon, sun, and meteors, there is a sense in the author’s genuine passion for radioactive dating and in the ways that it can be done as accurately as possible (although, lamentably, there is something circular about using “well-dated” lead ores to then date the age of the rocks in the earth and then the earth itself). It is a great shame that the enjoyment one gets out of this book, if one is a religious reader as I am, is greatly diminished by the author’s relish in talking about his malign role in arguing for scientism before the court system, which colors his writing and thinking in a negative light. This book, if it were shorter and more focused on positive science than on negative culture war material, would better relate to the author’s points.