“This represents the number of daughter atoms. And this…” He drew the mirror image of the first ellipse. “This is the number of parent atoms.” He placed the marker on the projector and considered the rows of students. “Can anyone tell me what the point of intersection represents?”

Darren Michaels in the front row raised his hand. “It’s the element’s half-life.”

“Exactly. Johnson, in what year was radiometric dating invented?”

“1906.”

“By whom?”

“Rutherford.”

“What method did he use?”

“Uranium lead—”

“No. Wallace, can you tell us?”

“He measured helium as an intermediate decay product of uranium.”

“Good, so then who used the uranium-lead method?”

“That was Boltwood, in 1907.”

“And how were these initial results viewed?”

“With skepticism.”

“By whom?”

“By the evolutionists.”

“Good.” Mr. Finley turned to Paul. “Carlson, can you tell us what year Darwin wrote On the Origin of Species?”

“1867, Paul said.”

“Yes, and in what year did Darwin’s theory finally lose the confidence of the larger scientific community?”

“That was 1932.” Anticipating his next question, Paul continued. “When Kohlhorster invented potassium-argon dating. The new dating method proved the earth wasn’t as old as the evolutionists thought.”

“And in what year was the theory of evolution finally debunked completely?”

“1954, when Willard F. Libby invented carbon-14 dating at the University of Chicago. He won the Nobel prize in 1960 when he used carbon dating to prove, once and for all, that the Earth was 5,800 years old.”

* * *

Paul wore a white lab coat when he entered the attic. It was one of his father’s old coats, so he had to cut the sleeves to fit his arms. Paul’s father was a doctor, the Ph.D kind. He was blond and big and successful. He’d met Paul’s mother after grad school while consulting for a Chinese research firm. They had worked on the same projects for a while, but there was never any doubt that Paul’s father was the bright light of the family. The genius, the famous man. He was also crazy.