Carbon Dating

Imagine you were walking down the street, and there was a huge block of ice that was sitting and melting on my lawn. Suppose I offered you $500 to scientifically determine how old that block of ice is. Could you use the tools of science to determine the age of that block of ice?

Science can tell you this:
Volume; Mass, Weight, Chemical Composition, Density, Temperature.

Science cannot tell you:
Age. Age is not a physical property.

Looking at the block of ice example, you can measure many things (current volume, current weight, current chemistry etc) but none of those answers the question of how old the ice is. By observation you can see it is melting, but you have no way of scientifically determining for how long it has been melting.

What You Would Need To Know, But You Do Not Know:
a) Its original size. How big was the ice originally? You do not know. You would have to assume its original condition. Science cannot tell you its original condition.
b) Its history. What was this ice subjected to? Did it sit in a freezer for ten years? Was it sitting in the sun for an hour? Science cannot tell you its history.

If you knew the original size and the history of the ice you might be able to give a good guess to the age of the ice block. But since you do not know it, you have to make two huge assumptions: 1) its original state; and 2) its history.

REMEMBER: ASSUMPTION + ASSUMPTION NEVER = A FACT

DATING BONES AND ROCKS
People try to date the age of rocks and bones based on the fact that radioactive materials decay over time. The general term for this process is Radiometric Dating. The most commonly discussed type of Radiometric dating is Carbon Dating, it will be discussed first. Carbon 14 is radioactive.

How Carbon Dating Works: Willard Libby introduced the carbon dating technique in the early 1950’s. He calculated the amount of carbon-14 (C-14) in the atmosphere (about .0000765%). The ratio of C-14 to C-12 is then analyzed. Libby assumed the amount of C-14 is constant now, and he assumed it has been constant throughout history. He then assumed this % of C-14 would be in plants and animals at the time of their death (since living plants and animals breathe in CO2 and animals eat plants). When the plant or animal dies, it no longer takes in C-14, and the C-14 to C-12 ratio would decrease over time. Thus, plants or animals with less C-14 are assumed to be older than plants or animals with large quantities of C-14.

What is a half-life? Tests indicate that the present amount of C-14 in a sample will decay to half that amount in 5730 years. This is called a half-life. After another 5730 years, half of the remaining C-14 will decay leaving only ¼ of the original C-14. It goes from ½ to ¼ to 1/8, etc. After 5 half lives, the difference is too small to be measure. This is why carbon dating is only used for objects less than 30,000 years old. Other dating methods with longer half-lives (i.e. Uranium-Lead) are used to “determine” older dates.

Problems with Carbon Dating: Carbon dating, (and all radiometric dates) rely on two assumptions.

Assumption #1: What was the original state of the specimen being tested?
Assumption #2: Has the specimen been contaminated since its original state?

Quick summary: In order to radiometrically date a sample you need to know its composition when it died. How can you know that? Also, how do you know what you are measuring today has not been contaminated over time while the sample has been exposed to nature?

Assumption 1a: Think! If C-14 is constantly forming in the atmosphere, and decaying, how can anyone assume the composition of C-14 has been constant over time? Since C-14 decays slower than it is formed, there obviously was less C-14 in the atmosphere yesterday than there is today. Evolutionist Elizabeth Ralph and Henry Michael said: “We now know the assumption that the biospheric inventory of C14 has remained constant over the past 50,000 years is not true.” (page 555 of Sept/Oct 1974’s American Scientist, “Twenty-five Years of Radiocarbon dating”).

Assumption 1b: When you are studying a bone, how can you assume that that animal always ate plants and animals with precisely 0.0000765% C-14, and it breathed air with precisely 0.0000765% C-14? Present testing shows the amount of C-14 in the atmosphere has been increasing since it was first measured in the 1950’s, and C-14 amounts vary at different places on the earth.

Assumption 2: Another problem for carbon dating; extensive testing of atomic and nuclear of bombs occurred during the 1950’s and 1960’s. This greatly altered the amounts of C-14 present in the atmosphere and on the earth, thereby contaminating measurements of C-14.

“Fossil fuels have greatly increased C-12 in our environment, which has hopelessly disturbed any possibility of carbon dating accuracy.” (Quaternary Research, V. 5, 1975 Page 263.)

Exposure to water alters ratios of C-14 to C-12. Experts in carbon dating say you contaminate a sample if you touch it with your hands, dust it with an organic brush, expose it to air, or wrap it in cloth, plastic or paper. (Anthropological Journal of Canada V. 19, No. 3, 1981 page 16). Why? Because you contaminate it, making it impossible to date. But the sample has been contaminated by nature for years!


Radiometric Embarrassments:
Lava was known to have flowed from Hualalai, Hawaii about 200 years ago. This lava was sent to several laboratories and was requested to be studied so dates could be assigned to when the lava flowed. The laboratories had dates varying from 160 million years ago to 2.96 billion years ago. (Journal of Geophysical Review, V. 73, No. 14, July 15, 1968 pages 4601-4607).

The same moon rock was sent to different labs for study. Different labs provided an age for the rock that was 1.5 billion years apart…for the same rock! (Science News, V. 101, Jan 1, 1972 pages 12-13).

Shells from snails that were recently alive were dated to be 27,000 years old (they lived in water with very little C-14 in it). (Science, V. 224, April 6, 1984, pages 58-61).


Other Embarrassing Facts about Radiometric dating:
●Potassium-Argon is a radiometric dating technique that was mainly responsible for the dates that produced the geologic column and the dates associated it with it. Guess what? Potassium Argon dating is now rarely used due to its gross inaccuracy (argon is gaseous and thus results in obvious inaccuracies).

● An honest scientist will tell you that you cannot determine the age of sedimentary rock (rock deposited by water) by radiometric dating. Guess what 75% of the geological column’s rocks are? Sedimentary rock! Guess what types of rock 99% of the earth’s fossils are found in? Sedimentary rock!


Quotes by evolutionists:
“If a C14 date supports our theories, we put it in the main text. If it does not entirely contradict them, we put them in a footnote. And if it’s completely ‘out of date,” we just drop it.” (T. Save-Soderbergh, “C14 Dating and Egyptian Chronology,” Radiocarbon Variations and Absolute Chronology, 1970 page 35).

“No matter how “useful” it is, though, the radiocarbon method is still not capable of yielding accurate and reliable results.” (Robert E. Lee, “Radiocarbon Ages in Error,” Anthropological Journal of Canada 19, no. 3, (1981), pages 26-27).

“It may come as a shock to some, but fewer than 50% of the radiocarbon dates from geological and archeological samples in northeastern North America have been adopted as “acceptable” by investigators.” (J.G. Ogden, “The Use and Abuse of Radiocarbon Dating,” Annals of the New York Academy of Science 288 (1977) page 173).