# Carbon Dating, etc.



## pianoman (Jun 6, 2011)

To all,

I am a chemistry major/biology minor in college, and I have never really studied carbon dating. So, I want some input on a young earth view and old earth view if their biblically is one. And what do christians do with carbon dating? Of course my secular professors have a lot of "data" to prove all of this. I see how evolution is incorrect but how does the timeline in scripture correlate to dating with dinosaurs, etc. are they really millions of years old, or is it possible that many people in bible times saw dinosaurs, etc.? sorry that is alot. Anything will help. thanks.

Zach


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## Weston Stoler (Jun 6, 2011)

I think God was explaining to the people in a way they could understand while letting them know he created the world exnihilo. I am scared though that it opens up a can of worms of picking and choosing what is literal if i believe that.


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## VictorBravo (Jun 6, 2011)

Ultimately, it is a world-view question.

If you are a committed empiricist there is one presupposition you must hold to, even though there is no way you can prove it: What happens now is what has always happened.

In this case, it means you must believe that Carbon 14 has always decayed at the currently observed rate. This kind of assumption is the underpinning of all empirical science. You can't make a scientific prediction unless you believe that past observations, at least repeated ones, will always be consistent with future observations under the same basic parameters.

All fair enough for the world of science, as long as the scientist understands this assumption.

But when you introduce the supernatural, you are, by the scientist's own definition, introducing a special case not included in the assumption. It's outside the realm of observation. So it is meaningless to say, for example, that C14 dating proves the Bible is wrong because such and such existed 12000 years ago (or whatever). This is because the very thing the argument is attempting to disprove is outside the sphere of observation.


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## pianoman (Jun 6, 2011)

ok. i see. I have never thought of that. Thanks alot


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## C. Matthew McMahon (Jun 6, 2011)

Carbon dating is actually a problem for the secularlists.

Carbon dating testing shows that carbon-14 (which comes from cosmic rays ONLY IN LIVING THINGS) can be tested until C-14 turns into n-14 (Nitrogen). So, bones DO NOT HAVE NITROGEN IN THEM or C-14. Carbon dating can't be used to test anything not organic.

So cosmic rays move around neutrons, and when the neutron collides, a nitrogen-14 (seven protons, seven neutrons) atom turns into a carbon-14 atom (six protons, eight neutrons) and a hydrogen atom (one proton, zero neutrons). Carbon-14 is radioactive, with a half-life of about 5,700 years. So every half life then strings out to "about" 50,000 "hypothetical years." When a "scientist" tests for C-14, and they find it, they can say that it is less than 50,000 hypothetical years. If there is no c-14 and its turned to nitrogen, then it can only be 50,000 hypothetical years. So even the idea that something could be "tested" to be 1,000,000 by Carbon 14 dating is a bunch garbage.


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## ericfromcowtown (Jun 6, 2011)

pianoman said:


> To all,
> 
> I am a chemistry major/biology minor in college, and I have never really studied carbon dating. So, I want some input on a young earth view and old earth view if their biblically is one. And what do christians do with carbon dating? Of course my secular professors have a lot of "data" to prove all of this. I see how evolution is incorrect but how does the timeline in scripture correlate to dating with dinosaurs, etc. are they really millions of years old, or is it possible that many people in bible times saw dinosaurs, etc.? sorry that is alot. Anything will help. thanks.
> 
> Zach


 
I think you're confusing different radiometric dating techniques. Carbon-14 only has a half life of 5,700 years and is not used to date anything with a presumed age of greater than 50 or 60,000 years. I have never heard of a scientist attempting to date a dinosaur bone, for instance, with carbon 14. His colleagues would laugh him out of the lab. 

On the broader topic of how reliable radiometric dating is, or isn't, there have been a lot of threads on this in the past.


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## T.A.G. (Jun 6, 2011)

In reference to how old the earth is, I do not think the Bible really says

see John Piper's view (which is sailhamer's)
Science, the Bible, and the Promised Land An Analysis of John Sailhamer's Genesis Unbound - Desiring God


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## timmopussycat (Jun 6, 2011)

pianoman said:


> To all,
> 
> I am a chemistry major/biology minor in college, and I have never really studied carbon dating. So, I want some input on a young earth view and old earth view if their biblically is one. And what do christians do with carbon dating? Of course my secular professors have a lot of "data" to prove all of this. I see how evolution is incorrect but how does the timeline in scripture correlate to dating with dinosaurs, etc. are they really millions of years old, or is it possible that many people in bible times saw dinosaurs, etc.? sorry that is alot. Anything will help. thanks.
> 
> Zach



An interesting resource is Evolution: Possible or Impossible James F. Coppedge, Zondervan available at evolution possible or impossible - AbeBooks.


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## cih1355 (Jun 6, 2011)

Detectable amounts of carbon-14 have been found in things such as coal, but coal is supposed to be too old to contain any detectable amounts of carbon-14.

---------- Post added at 10:33 PM ---------- Previous post was at 10:23 PM ----------

Can anyone send some bones such as chicken bones to a lab somewhere to be tested for carbon-14? I'm interested in doing this just to see how old the bones are. Can you imagine sending some chicken bones to a lab somewhere to be tested for carbon-14 and receiving a report back saying that the bones are 20,000 years old?


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## ericfromcowtown (Jun 6, 2011)

cih1355 said:


> Detectable amounts of carbon-14 have been found in things such as coal, but coal is supposed to be too old to contain any detectable amounts of carbon-14.
> 
> ---------- Post added at 10:33 PM ---------- Previous post was at 10:23 PM ----------
> 
> Can anyone send some bones such as chicken bones to a lab somewhere to be tested for carbon-14? I'm interested in doing this just to see how old the bones are. Can you imagine sending some chicken bones to a lab somewhere to be tested for carbon-14 and receiving a report back saying that the bones are 20,000 years old?


 
Not true. One would expect to find carbon-14 in coal, just not amounts sufficient to provide an accurate dating.

Carbon-14 dating is used date things from the "recent" past with relative accuracy. So no, the chicken bone won't be dated at 20,000 years. The bone of contention (pun intended) is whether or not we can assume that since carbon-14 dating is relatively accurate when dating the Shroud of Turin or an item found in an egyptian pyramid, does that mean that it is also relatively accurate when dating a frozen mammoth carcass from the pleistocene? Carbon-14 dating assumes that the atmospheric carbon ratio (14C to 12C) has remained constant. If that ratio has changed in the more remote past, then the accuracy of carbon-14 dating becomes suspect.


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## ooguyx (Jun 6, 2011)

From the math perspective:
Carbon dating uses Differential Equations techniques to solve, and these are notoriously difficult to pin down to any specific solution. 1 differential equation has many different answers depending on any number of different starting assumptions. This poses a problem for carbon data, because the assumption must be made of at least 2 things: first that the rate of carbon to nitrogen has always been the same as we observe it now, and second they must also assume a starting point for their dating i.e. the earliest date in which carbon dating can accurately determine the age of the object in question. This second assumption has changed many times. Buried in these assumptions are your worldview: if you don't believe that the earth is more than 10k years old, then obviously you can't have a start date greater than 10k years in the past.

Further I think that the talking point with the non believer is this: why do you have any reason to believe that the ration of carbon to nitrogen behaved the same in the past as it does today? By believing that, he is borrowing from your worldview. On his own worldview, he cannot know that this is the case.


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## Bill The Baptist (Jun 7, 2011)

T.A.G. said:


> In reference to how old the earth is, I do not think the Bible really says
> 
> see John Piper's view (which is sailhamer's)
> Science, the Bible, and the Promised*Land An Analysis of John Sailhamer's Genesis Unbound - Desiring God



Interesting article, but I can't say that I agree. Also, is it just me, or does John Piper seem to be drifting further away from orthodoxy everyday?


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## py3ak (Jun 7, 2011)

Of course the whole issue would resolve itself if people would only recognise that carbon should not be dating at all, it should be courting. And it should only be courting other Calvinistic, Reformed carbon.


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## kvanlaan (Jun 7, 2011)

Amen. With its head covered, if it is female.


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## Bookworm (Jun 7, 2011)

pianoman said:


> I am a chemistry major/biology minor in college, and I have never really studied carbon dating. So, I want some input on a young earth view and old earth view if their biblically is one. And what do christians do with carbon dating? Of course my secular professors have a lot of "data" to prove all of this. I see how evolution is incorrect but how does the timeline in scripture correlate to dating with dinosaurs, etc. are they really millions of years old, or is it possible that many people in bible times saw dinosaurs, etc.? sorry that is alot. Anything will help. thanks.



Carbon-14 dating cannot be used to date objects considered to be millions of years old, because carbon-14 has such a short half-life that it decays to immeasurable amounts too quickly. Also, it is usually applied to organic samples such as shell, wood and bone, not inorganic rocks and minerals. Carbon-14 is, in fact, the young earth creationist's friend since the discovery of carbon-14 in fossil samples indicates that those samples are younger than their accepted "conventional" age.

On the other radiometric dating methods applied to rocks and minerals (K-Ar, Rb-Sr, U-Pb, Sm-Nd etc), this series of popular level articles - parts one, two and three - summarising results from more technical papers, is helpful.


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