Do Christan's believe in Carbon-14 dating?

Question

If the Bible dates the earth at only 6000 years old, and Carbon-14 dating has been used to date things back to 20 million years+ how can you believe both?

Answer 1

If it backs up what they are trying to say, they believe in it. If it contradicts what they are trying to say it is very, very wrong.

Answer 2

First of all, there is a wide variety of opinion among Christians as to the age of the earth. In reality, only a minority of Christians throughout history have believed the earth to be relatively young. A vocal plurality of Christians in America today are quite adamant about a "young earth", but this is not the historic Christian position.

Second, Carbon-14 dating is actually not very useful much beyond 5000-6000 years, as this is the half-life of the radioactive carbon isotope, so the statement that carbon dating has pegged objects as being 20 million years old is inaccurate. Other radioactive elements can generate such results, but carbon does not. Furthermore, carbon-14 is generally only useful in dating samples that were at one time biological. You can't pick up any random rock and carbon date it. You need other tools.

With those things said, yes, Christians do believe in the use of carbon dating. It is an extrordinarily accurate tool for determining the age of biological samples created during recorded civilization, which happens to go about that far back.

Answer 3

I'm a Christian and I'm dubious about it.

The reason is this - if the fossil in question has been sitting in mud all those many years, then how do we know it's not the mud that's so old and not the fossil? I know I'm not explaining it well, but when a geologist friend explained it to me about how Carbon-14 dating worked, that was the question that popped up and he really didn't have an answer for it.

I asked him, if I put a chicken bone in a bunch of mud from my front yard and kept it for 50 years in the sun, how much mud would seep into the bone? So if you carbon dated the bone 50 years from now, how much carbon would be from the mud, an obvious much older thing than the bone? His reply was that 50 years wasn't long enough to carbon date something, because it's not that exact.

I was left confused and still dubious.

Answer 4

c-14 dating is only so accurate. They've sent parts of the same thing to be dated and came back with drastically different results. Millions of yrs off. Using C-14 dating also requires us to assume that the concentration of c-14 is the same now as it was then. That's huge. Also, when dating dinosaur bones, if the date they give doesn't match the era that the really smart guys say the dino existed, it gets thrown out. There's gotta be a better way.

I personally don't care. God created it all. If I found a big old dinosaur fossil, i'd be like "cool dinosaur fossil". Who cares the exact age of that bone except those that spend tons of time learning about a 200 yr old theory that will never be proven.

Answer 5

Do they believe it exists are that it is accurate, what are you asking? Either way this is a dumb question, science doesn't even use carbon 14 much any more and has moved on to use other forms of dating because even the man who created carbon 14 said it was not very accurate.

Answer 6

You either believe the Bible or the Carbon- 14.I believe in the Bible,and it helps me get though everyday life.I know nothing about the Carbon 14.

Answer 7

Sure. Why wouldn't we?

PS: Carbon-14 does NOT have a half-life of 20+ million years. Carbon-14 is radioactive, with a half-life of about 5,700 years. So it is not accurate for dating back to millions of years as you say. It is only reliable for dating objects up to about 60,000 years old. And where did you get the 6k years figure for the Bible? Chapter and verse please?

Answer 8

I find it hard to trust Carbon-14 dating when it has actually dated LIVING crustaceans a few million years old. Since scientists know this has to be in error they resort to BEST GUESS work based on knowns to establish an "Aproximate" age. What knowns? Their time or generation of knowns.

i.e..., GUESSWORK.., and nothing more. It has very little - actually NO advantage over the Biblical account.

Answer 9

Don't you know anything??

Carbon dating is flawed because every time a scientist measures the age of something, the Flying Spaghetti Monster messes up the results with his noodly appendage. The world is full of evidence to suggest evolution and all that stuff, but the Flying Spaghetti Monster deliberately did that to confound the unfaithful.

Answer 10

Yes, if done correctly.
In summary, the carbon-14 method, when corrected for the effects of the flood, can give useful results, but needs to be applied carefully. It does not give dates of millions of years and when corrected properly fits well with the biblical flood.

Answer 11

I'm not Christian but it seems that it would contradict Christian's (and the Bible's) views of the time frame of the origin of life and the universe. They probably feel it is scientifically flawed in some way.