Faster Radioactive decay rates in the past is an unsound argument for young earth creationism

We cannot know the state at which the rocks formed. It may be that the daughter atoms were there at the beginning, thus making that dating methods invalid.Actually the Zircon crystals Uranium-Lead dating is performed on strongly rejects lead meaning that lead atoms will either not be in their when formed at all or there will be an incredibly small amount. The zircon mineral incorporates uranium and thorium atoms into its crystalline structure, but strongly rejects lead. Therefore we can assume that the entire lead content of the zircon is radiogenic--wikipediaThere may also have been contamination in the past that lead to a gain or loss of parent or daughter isotopes.Nope; that doesn't happen with Zircon Crystals because the uranium measured is part of the crystal structure and as stated above: it strongly rejects lead making your argument invalid.It is also possible that the decay rates were faster in the past. My opponent shows that he understands nothing about radioactive decay vs. radiation sickness. The issue at hand deals with radioactive decay in rock layers deep beneath the surface. To say that this could affect people with radiation sickness is beyond absurdity.Actually the underlined line is a better description of con. That is because contrary to what con says; Zircon crystals are found all types of rocks meaning that it is NOT simply those deep inside the earth. Therefore con's argument is invalid.Also, we can prove that uranium-lead dating is unreliable.Con needs to support this claim.Helium dating is much more reliable, as it cannot be contaminated, and it's reduction rate has been reliably tested.Before the use of mass spectrometry in isotopic geochronology, helium dating provided most of the dates used in the early geologic time scales. Helium ages, however, tend to be too low because the gas escapes from the rock. A thermal event that will leave most radioactive clocks relatively unaffected may have a drastic effect on the helium radioactive clock--encyclopedia brittanicaIt appears that it isn't as reliable as you say with helium leaking and thermal events that don't affect uranium-lead dating affecting it.Helium dating has been tested on zircon crystals that were dated to have been 1.5 billion years old, but the helium dates showed that the rocks could not have been more than 6000 years old. That's because helium gas escaped from the crystals.My opponent is now going to try to make an argument that the emprical evidence presented by the Creation scientists are untrustworthy because my opponent has a closed mind. He does not base his worldview on empirical evidence, as he denies the emprical evidence presented by Creationists because it disproves his beliefs. If my opponent wants to deny empirical evidence, fine, but don't present yourself as a person who adheres to science.That is not what I did. I provided modern empirical evidence. I urge you to use modern evidence too. While I will not claim that your information is incorrect simply because it came from a creationist site, I would ask you to use non-religiously biased sites in this debate. I AM NOT saying that your information is wrong because itcomes from a religious site; I'm simply saying that creationist sites sometimes do cherry picking and presenting outdated evidence due to bias and that non-religious sites would likely have more up to date evidence and less biased evidence.EXPECTED REBUTTALWikipedia and Encyclopedia Brittanica are unreliable.MY REBUTTALPlease prove that the information given is unreliable from a non-religiously biased website.CONCLUSIONMy opponents rebuttals have not withstood scientific scrutiny.SOURCES:http://www.britannica.com...http://en.wikipedia.org...