What is the YEC answer to the lack of shorter lived isotopes?

My apologies for resurrecting a dead post - but as a YEC'er, I'd never heard this question/objection before, and it fascinated me.I have two answers - I'll try to be brief, and will respond in greater detail in there is any interest.1) God created man, not an embryo. Builds on an earlier post.By logic, all things must have been created with apparent age. Obviously, Adam could not have survived had he been created as an embryo. Walking back up the food chain: Adam (a vegetarian) would have needed fruit and vegetables to eat, thus the plants created days earlier would also have had to have been created mature. The plants would have needed nutrients from the soil (soil!?), so the ground it grew in would have had "apparent age" as well. The sun would be providing light, at an intensity level compatible with life - so it would have an apparent age. The plants would have needed water, which implies lakes, rivers, seas, oceans, underground rivers, etc - all of which would have given an apparent age to the earth.To think of it differently, what would an embryonic earth have looked like? We can take our cue from the evolutionary model - a new earth would have been a mass of collected space debris, completely inhospitable to life, certainly not an "Eden". Would God have put life directly on such a mass? I think not.To paraphrase an old joke - We agree in principle that a newly created earth would have had "apparent age" - now we're just haggling over price (the exact age).So - how does this apply to the "radiometric age" of the earth? Much like the distant starlight question, it depends on your view of how God "aged" the earth and universe.Possible solutions:
a) God created the earth (and its radioactive elements) with age
b) God created an embryonic earth, and "aged" it in the days before adding lifeThere are a number of creationist models that deal with the distant starlight issue, that imply one or the other of these two. For example, the Humphrey's model would imply b), as the event horizon crossed the earth during the first day.So, I guess my response is "#1) God is a prankster and deliberately set up the universe to trick us", rephrased as "#1) God is a pragmatist, and deliberately aged the universe, solar system, and earth to provide the perfect habitat for supporting life."My second answer with this objection, is as follows:
2) This argument needs one more piece of information to be valid: All the long half-life elements should "date" to the same age (+/- a few Myr).The inherent premise of this objection is that long half-life elements, which presumably were deposited on earth's crust during the formation of the planet, still exist, while the shorter half-life elements have all "decayed away".So, if we accept this premise, the only logical conclusion is: All of the long half-life elements on this list (not naturally renewed), should have the exact same "age" - they should all date to the formation of the sun/earth.Do they? Do they all always show up in the exact same parent/daughter ratios? That information is not supplied - anyone have a reference? If they do all date to the same age, it doesn't invalidate YEC (see 1 above), but if they don't, then it completely removes this phenomena as an evidence for an old earth.In conclusion:
1) An earth with an apparent age is consistent with YEC theory, and a corollary to explanations for distant starlight.
2) Missing some important information regarding the "not naturally renewed" elements.

Thanks for the welcome, Percy! (and everyone who responded). I think people are reading slightly more into what I said, than what I meant, so let me take a few responses.First, Dr. Adequate accuses me of "admit[tin] that all the evidence agrees with an old Earth". No, I am admitting that the earth shows age, and that radioactive measurements using certain assumptions agrees with an old Earth. I am far from agreeing that a) all measures of age agree with an old earth, let alone b) all measures of age agree with each other. If you take the uniformitarian axiom used when calculating radioactive ages (i.e. rate of decay is and always has been constant), and apply it to other measures of the age of the earth (rate at which moon is receding, rate at which salt is entering the ocean, rate of change of C14 in the atmosphere, etc.) you get completely different ages for the earth. You can only square the circle by discarding the concept of uniform processes. In fact, I'd love the see a chart of various "age of earth calculations" that aren't based on radioactive isotopes, and see if any of them would lead an unbiased scientist to a 4.5Byr figure. So, no Dr. Adequate, the "rocks" don't provide an indication of age - just radioactive isotopes.Next, Taq accuses me of claiming an apparent HISTORY as opposed to age. Again - a ratio of radioactive parent/daughter product hardly provides a "history". The analogy of an "appendix scar" would be, for example, 4.5Byr layered sediment, or 4.5Byr of salt in the ocean, or dead moons around Saturn and Jupiter, not active moons or comets w/ decaying orbits, etc. - stuff that again requires you to discard your uniformitarianism to explain (and introduce all kinds of evidence-free hypotheses - like Oort clouds! and Dark Matter! and Multiverses! Woot!)To get back to the (limited) point I was making regarding "apparent age" - let me see if I can make myself clearer via brevity:Answer the following:1) If God created the world, He created it
a) with flowering plants, breathable atmosphere, temperate climate, drinkable water, and available shelter.
b) a radioactive boiling mass of molten lava.2) Assuming you answered a), it follows that the earth would appear to have "age". Is this because:
a) God is a prankster.
b) God wanted Adam to survive.3) If you answered 1b, or 2a, I'm not certain further conversation would be productive. If you answered 1b and "Suck it up, Adam! Don't be such a whiner baby!" you must be a Marine.So - my point regarding age:
Did God create a uniform, consistent picture in the universe and solar system where every measure indicates an age of 4.5Byr, complete with false history, to fool us? No.
Did God create an earth perfectly tuned for the support of life, which due to the need to support life, would have a variety of "apparent ages" based on the measurement used? Yes.Anyway, to answer the original post question: What is the YEC answer to the lack of shorter lived isotopes?
My personal answer: At, during, or shortly after creation, before life was introduced to the world, the rate of radioactive decay was significantly higher than it currently is. This was not done to "fool" anyone, but to provide the perfect environment for life and Man.

Theodoric,

But as is typical with your ilk, you have no evidence. The reason you feel this is the answer is because you need this answer in order for your mythology to work out. Your belief in the supernatural can not exist with any other answer.

Short answer: Well, yeah, I'm a creationist, dude. God = supernatural.Long answer: Belief in the supernatural - like, say, invisible undetectable matter? Semi-infinite parallel universes? Abiogenesis? The creation of matter/energy from nothing? When you have a model, and you come across a discordant note that was not predicted by your model, you refine the model by proposing a viable scientific explanation for the discrepancy. That's what I've done. I have the same "evidence" you do - I fit it to a different theoretical model. Saying "you have no evidence, you believe in the supernatural" is not a logical scientific argument. Percy at least proposed a logical argument against my hypothesis - see below.Percy,You missed (or ignored) the key element of my hypothesis:

At, during, or shortly after creation, before life was introduced to the world

If the accelerated decay was part of the creation of the earth and universe, before the introduction of life, the radiation, along with any heat, would have necessarily been dissipated as part of making the earth habitable (ie. God would have cooled and dispersed the radiation before putting plant life on the earth - see 1a above). Where did God put it? Dark Energy. (that was a joke).Anyhoo, I think we've gotten to the point where I'm gonna pull out RATE and Humphreys, and you guys are gonna pull out Henke, and we're just repeating talking points ad nauseum. I just thought I'd provide the current consensus YEC opinion on "Short-life isotopes", in response to the original poster - Yes, we recognize that a lot of nuclear decay occurred, No, we don't think that Radioactive decay rates have been eternally constant, Yes we recognize that that may have required a "miracle" - what, after all, is the act of creation anyway? I'm not a materialist, so arguing that creationism doesn't fit a materialist model is kinda pointless, dontcha think? If you want to argue with a creationist using a mandatory materialist ruleset, you gotta wait til a) after Creation Week, and b) outside of places where the Bible says "Miracle happens..."DRC

PaulK,So you don't think I ignored you:1) C14 is assumed to be in equilibrium, otherwise C14 dating is invalid. Measurements contradict this assumption, yet it is used anyway.
2) Moon's motion is controlled by precise mathematical equation involving mass and gravity - you have to assume catastrophism, not uniformitarianism, to explain how the moon's path was once different. My point being that you assume catastrophism or uniformitarianism when your model requires it, you don't adapt your model to match either assumption.
3) Accelerated nuclear decay would affect all isotopes uniformly, "to the same degree" as you put it. I was not proposing an ad hoc acceleration of various isotopes.
4) Iron banded formations only indicate oxygen levels prior to deposition were way too low to be breathable if you accept a uniformitarian (i.e. long-time-period) process for their formation (I don't). If the levels are the result of catastrophic occurrences (e.g. the entire layer was laid down during a short period under anoxic(sp?) conditions), it doesn't say anything about global atmospheric conditions.
5) As I said, if you start with the premise that God would not have created the world as a habitable environment, then to play your game with your rules would have the instruction set of:
"Rule #1: PaulK wins"
"Rule #2: See Rule #1"DRC