Creationists, how do you explain this?

One of the biggest arguments creationists make against radiometric dating is that it’s unreliable and produces wildly inaccurate dates. And you know what? You’re 100% correct, if the method is applied incorrectly. However, when geologists follow the proper procedures and use the right samples, radiometric dating has been proven to match historical records exactly.

A great example is the 1959 Kīlauea Iki eruption in Hawaii. This was a well-documented volcanic event, scientists recorded the eruption as it happened, so we know the exact year the lava solidified. Later, when geologists conducted radiometric dating on the lava, they got 1959 as the result. That’s not a random guess; that’s science correctly predicting a known historical fact.

Now, I know the typical creationist response is that "radiometric dating is flawed because it gives wrong dates for young lava flows." And that’s true, if you date a fresh lava flow without letting the radioactive material settle properly, the method can give older, inaccurate results. But this experiment was done correctly, they allowed the necessary time for the system to stabilize, and it still matched the eruption date exactly.

Here’s where it gets interesting. The entire argument against evolution is that we "can't trust radiometric dating" because it supposedly produces incorrect results. But here we have a real-world example where the method worked perfectly, confirming a known event.

So if radiometric dating is "fake" or "flawed," how do you explain this? Why does it work when applied properly? And if it works for events, we can confirm, what logical reason is there to assume it doesn’t work for older rocks that record Earth’s deep history?

The reality is that the same principles used to date the 1959 lava flow are also used to date much older geological formations. The only difference is that for ancient rocks, we don’t have historical records to double-check, so creationists dismiss those dates entirely. But you can’t have it both ways: if radiometric dating can correctly date recent volcanic eruptions, then it stands to reason that it can also correctly date ancient rocks.

So, creationists, what’s your explanation for the 1959 lava flow dating correctly? If radiometric dating were truly useless, this should not have worked.