RATE is the Institute of Creation Research's acronym for Radioisotopes and the Age of The Earth. It is a group put together for the purposes of studying the geologic record in terms of radioisotope dating.
There have been a number of misconceptions about this group: that it is throwing out data which does not conform to Bible; that it is intent on proving radio decay dating wrong, etc. A number of those who support the Setterfield research seem to feel that it is therefore necessary to be against the purpose and work of the RATE group. Nothing could be further from the truth.
Dr. Andrew Snelling is a wonderful personal friend of ours, and in a recent email, when we asked him for a statement we could put here to advance the truth about what is going on, he took the time to write the following, and we hope it helps clear up the above misconceptions and more:
It needs to be stressed that the RATE group recognises that there is physical evidence in the rocks that massive amounts of radioactive decay have occurred through the earth's history, and that there is a systematic trend in the radioisotopic 'ages' of the rocks in the geologic record from oldest at the bottom to youngest at the top. However, there are many anomalies and there is much evidence of radioisotopic inheritance and mixing because of global tectonic processes having stirred the mantle and added magmas to the crust, which has likewise been stirred by the crustal rock cycle. The objective of the RATE research is to develop a model which is consistent with the radioisotopic data and with the Biblical record of a recent creation and catastrophic global flood. The need to spend money on analyses of rock samples by reputable laboratories is to ensure that we have data to model that are free of any bias that may have occurred in laboratories where the 'target ages' are known before the analyses. Also, many rock units have been radioisotopically dated by only one or two radioisotopic systems, whereas we need to see if there are patterns in the results when rock units are 'dated' by all the major radioisotopic systems. This is where money has needed to be spent, but this procedure is obtaining original results that are proving invaluable in developing a model and an understanding of the radioisotopic data within our Biblical framework for earth history.
We would like to stress, additionally, that the Setterfield research is presenting reasons why there are old age results in the field of radioisotope dating. The RATE group is looking, as Dr. Snelling indicated above, for the patterns and anomalies that exist in line with completely new data sets.
We sincerely hope that this is enough to clear up misconceptions which are going around regarding the two different approaches.
Barry and Helen Setterfield
August 22, 2002