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Well first I want to say, before
we discuss carbon dating, that there are hundreds of ways to get an approximate
date for the age of the earth.
So why do we only hear about carbon dating and radiometric dating?
Over 90% of them give
an age less then billions of years! If you believe in evolution this is a
problem. If ninety percent of the data points to a "young" earth then why
not just follow the majority of the data and find explanations for the ten
percent that doesn't match?
Well, that ten percent is
the only part that agrees with their preconceived idea of evolution that's why!
It is certainly apparent that evolution requires millions, really billions of years.
One example I could give would be the sodium
content of the ocean. 457 million tons of salt is dumped into the
ocean each year. Scientist spend a great deal of time measuring the input and
output of salt in the ocean. It has become obvious that significantly more
salt is being dumped in then coming out (only 27% coming out to be specific).
If you do some quick calculations you find out
that this water cycle could not have been going on for more then 62
million years; but the ocean is suppose to be 3 billion
years old! Not nearly enough time for evolution, and that is only if the
ocean started out as fresh water. This is not a problem for creation because the
flood would have put a lot in the oceans quickly. More examples of this on the "How
Old" page.
So back to Carbon Dating.
Here we will talk about how carbon 14 is used
for dating, then we can see the problems. If you want information on what is C14
click here.
In the atmosphere there is a mixture of carbon
14 and carbon 12. Carbon 12 is by far the most abundant but it is really the C14
that we are interested in because it is radioactive. All that means is it
is unstable and will slowly fall apart changing into a different element. In this case
nitrogen. The rate at which it changes is measured in half life's. A half life
is the time it takes for half of the C14 to change to Nitrogen. Plants and animals
(including you) take in C14 while they are alive. And the amount of C14/C12 in
theory should remain the same as the amount in the atmosphere as long as you are
alive. But when you die (stop breathing and eating) you stop taking in C14/C12
and figuratively speaking the clock "starts". Again we are leaving out details
but it works somewhat like a burning candle. C14 burns away as time goes by.
Scientist use this "clock" by comparing the amount of C14 compared to C12. The
amount can be counted with great accuracy. The problem here is not with the method
but the assumptions.
For example if you walk into a room and see
the candle
 burning to the left... and I asked you "how long has this
candle been
burning? You must assume the initial conditions. Assumption being how tall was the
candle when it was lit? There is no way to tell. You can measure how tall the
candle is now (lets say 10 inches) and how fast it is burning (1 inch per hour)
that will never tell you how long the candle has been burning. We can't go back
into the past as see how tall it was when lit.
So really you have to know when the candle was
lit to know how long it has been burning. Basically you have to know how old it
is to figure out how old it is? #2. You have to know if it has always burned at
the same rate. If the candle was thinner at the top (in the past) it would have
burned more rapidly. The same is true with C14. This decay process may have been
more rapid in the past. Also the build up of C14 may have been slower in
the past which is what evidence suggest
( examples give here) in
either case you would get in age far to old starting with the uniformitarian
assumptions. And if you believe there was a global flood it would have buried
most of the carbon creating coal seems, and oil reserves "resetting the clock"
in a since.
Also C14 and other radioactive dating methods
often give wild dates. For example the leg of a mammoth was carbon dated at
15,380 but it skin was dated at 21,300 years. So which date is right? Are either
of the dates right?
Carbon 14 turns the tables on
Evolution
The half life for C14
is about 5700 years. For example you started with 12 C14 atoms after 5700 years
you would have 6. then after another 5700 years (11400) you would have 3 and so
on. As you can imagine this doesn't go on forever. Experts have calculated that
it would take no longer then 50,000 years and there would be no more C14 left.
This creates a problem for the evolutionary dating methods (geologic column etc)
because every dinosaur bone that has been tested has measurable amounts of C14.
That means none of the dinosaurs tested can be more then 50,000 years old. Even
diamonds which are suppose to be millions of years old have C14. And there is no
way a diamond can be contaminated later in history. It is the hardest substance
we know. So diamonds also must be less then 50,000 years old based on empirical
(testable) science.
In searching for
answers to the C14 problem (for evolution) it has created more problems then
solutions. . .
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