Ok: if this were the case, then there would be a lot of evidence that this was so: what is that evidence?
You do realize, of course, that it isn't always strictly just decay rates that then simply determine dates, right? If what you claim is true: that substances didn't, for some inexplicable extra-Biblical reason, decay, then this rather bizarre occurance would show up in isochron analysis. But no such discrepancy appears.
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/isochron-dating.html
Take the seafloor. In the Atlantic, it currently spreads at a fairly slow rate, new material welling up from below to fill in the space left by plates that are heading away from each other. The speed at which this sort of process happens produces a very characteristic sort of rock: if it goes faster, we can tell, if it goes slower, we can tell: all without any "decay."
Now, we also know that the continents of Africa and South America were once joined: the evidence is, again, overwhleming. These two contients were once joined, and have been traveling away from each other. The nature of the seafloor spreading and the characteristic evidence of this process left behind show that they traveled at a fairly constant rate.
Now, your explanation is no doubt that this process took only a few thousand years. The date we get from extrapolating the seafloor spreading process is well over a hundred thousand years. And this date isn't just confirmable from what we know of rock formation. We can, as an independent check, radioactively date the rocks. You may not believe these dates, of course, but the dates fom these rocks line up perfectly with the dates we can get from the seafloor calculation. And on top of that, we can also use the magnetic reversal data in these rocks: which matches up with strata from everywhere else in the world, to for a third time, in a third line of evidence, date the events of rock formation, not unlike a barcode. You may well think all of these methods are in error. Unfortunately, because there are so many different methods of dating, your claim that they are all in error also must come up against the problem of why they would all give the SAME wrong answers, in such great cross-confirming detail.
More importantly, for your explanation of this discrepancy to make sense, the plates would have had to travel at an enormously fast rate: (something that right off the bat is implausible because the amount of energy necessary to move entire continents at that speed would shatter them and leave all sorts of tell-tale signs).
There is no evidence that they did so: had they, we'd be able to tell from the way that the rock had formed in the seafloor.
So, where is the evidence for your alternate theory? Let's not forget, now, that your explanations are undoubtedly not themselves Biblical. Simply to try and reconcile your particular sects' very particular interpretation of the Bible, you will be making up out of whole cloth an alternate theory (including any number of new physical laws, themselves with no evidence) that has no grounding in the Bible. For the moment, we'll ignore that. All we'll ask is that your claims be consistent. If you claim that radioactive decay simply didn't happen for a time, then you should be prepared to present evidence. If you claim that the plates just really did, against all other evidence to the contrary, DID move at a ridiculously fast rate over the past 4000 years or whatever, then you must explain why the radioactive dates of the rock are different in the particular pattern we find them (i.e., as we move from the coast of Africa towards South America, the dates get younger and younger, and by the time we reach the trench where the plates split, the date is in the modern era, and as we cross the trench continuing to South America, the dates get older again until they reach roughly the same date right at the coast of South America). If the plates really did move that fast, then radioactive decay must not have simply "started up" at smoe point as you claim: it must have been a radically higher rate of decay than we've ever seen any evidence for anywhere in the universe: a rate so high that it would have torn through the earth and any life on it like a shotgun blast, irradiating and killing most life in the seas. Where is the evidence that that happened? Or, alternatively, what other explanation do you have for us?
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