If the Earth is 6000 years old, then why is it that the techniques used to date fossils, which are widely-?

Question

accepted ways of dating human bones, to bring killers to justice, are constantly being picked apart by those who believe in death penalty enforcement? I mean, if those dating techniques (to find the age of human bones) are so GREAT in helping to kill the killers, then how come they are quote- "made up" or "make believe" by all the so called "anti God evolutionists"????
Personally, I give God all the credit, and I think he created everything TO evolve.
Thanks.
Click on my name for the other questions pertaining to this. Thanks.

Answer 1

It is a common question. To give my two cents worth, the bible never said the earth was 6000 years old. Religions only assumed it because of generations to Adam. However the first chapter of Genesis is actually a children's song. It is not very descriptive. However what it does state in the original Hebrew is that the earth was restored in six days not created. The creation happened in the very first verse. The second verse says the earth was void and without form, covered with water. The bible later says the earth was not created void and without form, that happened to it later. There are events in the bible that describe the seas boiling, hills melting as wax, meteors and all perishing. Those events never happened between now and Adam. It also talks about people and animals dieing off because of other great creatures they cannot kill. This might be dinosaurs. It even said God himself had to kill some of them to give as meat to the starving people. However in passage it says that God came to earth and found all his creation were gone. No man nor even his animals. It said he became angry and destroyed what was here. This is what I believe happened to the dinosaurs in that age. After a long period, God restored the earth in six days. He pulled one land mass out of the ocean as described in Genesis and then divided it into continents as said in the bible after the days of Peleg. Peleg was the grandson of Noah. God also after Noah promised to not the flood the earth again, because he had done it twice. Genesis even clearly states that God told Adam and Eve and the animals he restored to replenish the earth. The original Hebrew meaning of that word only means, "to replace what was once there." So that is clear and undeniable biblical truth that people and animals were before Adam and Eve. Further evidence biblically is that Lucifer or Satan fell before he tempted Eve. Yet when he fell the bible said he was cast to earth were he took prisoners and caused the earth to become "void and without form". So if the earth was created in six days, what day of creation did Satan fall on?

No the bible does fit the evidence found of creatures long ago. Evolution is discovering that many dinosaurs did live during the time of man and animals. The discovery of the mammoth herd that was attacked by a dinosaur pack is a prime example. There is an entire museum being built on the site. This is significant since mammoths were around with modern man according to evolution. Yet here they are being eaten by dinosaurs.

Even better is that DNA experts tracing back how many generations were on the earth at different times stated about 10,000 years ago there were only a handful of people on the earth. They call it the big dip. The theory is for some reason the human race fell to below 1000 people about 10000 years ago and then repopulated. The geneticist admitted the number could have been only two people. So by DNA evidence alone, it proves that there was only a few people 10000 years ago. This strongly suggest that when the earth was restored, we did start out by two people Adam and Eve.

However there were ages of man and animals for who knows how long on the previous earth. Everything described how this previous age was destroyed corresponds with theories that dinosaurs were annihilated by meteors and catastrophic events. I believe the bible and science are congruent in facts, only misinterpreted by those that study them. Religions use some bible verses to fit their beliefs and evolutionists find some evidence that can support their theories. I think if you look at both objectively they all fit.

Answer 2

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Answer 3

I cannot understand your question.

The Earth is not 6000 years old, and anyone that beleives this should have his head examined. We have evidence that agriculture was starting in the Indus valley 9000 years ago. that should wipe out any doubt as to the age of the earth being only 6K years old.

A more appropriate question would be why death penalty advocates are also anti-abortion.... It is a sin to abort a fetus or zygote, but not a sin to kill a full grown human???

I am an evolutionist (at least, I beleive that evolution is a better theory than that of a creator), but I do not call carbon dating make beleive or fake. It can have issues, as the carbon samples can become contaminated, but I beleive that it can be very accurate as well. So, no anti-God person here calling it fake....

Answer 4

You've hit on a great contradiction here. People who have no problem with science in their daily lives (cell phones, computers, automobilies, cholesterol pills) suddenly get a glazed look in their eyes when it comes to the age of the earth, and other things which contradict what some religious leader told them.

You are straying a bit about the death penalty. That type of scientific testing is useful in finding killers. I assume you aren't suggesting that a murderer shouldn't at least be in jail for life - your other questions suggest that you feel that human life is important.

Your belief in theistic evolution (that God created evolution as his way of caring for the earth) is good theology. However, the scientific record is showing more and more that species were "created", and appeared during short specific times, rather than progressively over time.

You appear to be well studied, the link below may interest you. Warning in advance - there's some heavy science.

Answer 5

We actually can't use the same techniques used for catching criminals and dating recent human remains as we do for dating fossils. So anyone who claims those techniques can't be used on fossils is right...however, if it is used as reason to not accept a really old earth then they haven't done enough research. The sources explain how fossils are dated.

Hmm, I was just looking over some of the answer you received and it appears that the majority have poor reading comprehension skills. I thought you made it fairly obvious that you were asking young earth creationists why they think the world is 6000 years old, not that you believe it is.

Answer 6

As far as I know carbon dating is not used for short term dating of bones. and we do not seem to be presecuting 500 year old killers with the death penalty..
There are many known factors that are factored in and the flesh is usually in some state of decay that can be determined by the weather and past weather in that area of the world.. Current history is we know if there was a flood or tsunami in the area..
Radio carbon dating just is not used for this, how are they going to come up with a person radio carboned at having died june 3 at 2pm 1996? It just isn't done.. They have a multitude of other info to use in the analysis..
Tell me what was the weather like 2 million years ago and did we go through ice ages that affected radio carbon dating??/ were there floods?? There is no such info available to anyone.. Your theory just is a theory..

Answer 7

Krista,
I am one of those Christians tht believe the world was here before it "became a waste and a desolation." That's an alternative to the traditional " was null and void " translation.

This is something called the Gap Theory. There are more than one Gap Theories, but the Genesis 1:2 Gap Theory is definitive to that verse.

So the Earth could have been here 3 trillion years for all I know. I find it not important. And yes, God could have created things by evolution, I just think that there isn't any proof.

Answer 8

First of all, it has been scientifically proven that carbon dating is not an accurate way to date things. In numberous tests, when somethings date was known it was tested older than it was by carbon dating. So this form of testing is no longer valid.
Secondly, God did not create everything to evolve. He created everything in it's mature state otherwise he would not have told all of creation to be fruitful and multiply. Baby things can't multiply.
If God could create things in mature form then he could also create aged mountains etc.
The carbon dating technique and forensic techniques are quite different.

Answer 9

6000 years old? What is the evidence for this claim? How can there possibly be enough room in 6000 years for the dinosaurs to have lived and died, the ice age come and gone, and all the evolution of the species (including humans). I'm no expert, but isn't the earth supposed to be several hundred million years old or something?

Answer 10

Carbon-14 dating gives unreliable results.
Source:
Lee, Robert E., 1981. Radiocarbon: Ages in error. Anthropological Journal of Canada 19(3): 9-29. Reprinted in Creation Research Society Quarterly 19(2): 117-127 (1982).
Response:

1. Any tool will give bad results when misused. Radiocarbon dating has some known limitations. Any measurement that exceeds these limitations will probably be invalid. In particular, radiocarbon dating works to find ages as old as 50,000 years but not much older. Using it to date older items will give bad results. Samples can be contaminated with younger or older carbon, again invalidating the results. Because of excess 12C released into the atmosphere from the Industrial Revolution and excess 14C produced by atmospheric nuclear testing during the 1950s, materials less than 150 years old cannot be dated with radiocarbon (Faure 1998, 294).

In their claims of errors, creationists do not consider misuse of the technique. It is not uncommon for them to misuse radiocarbon dating by attempting to date samples that are millions of years old (for example, Triassic "wood") or that have been treated with organic substances. In such cases, the errors belong to the creationists, not the carbon-14 dating method.

2. Radiocarbon dating has been repeatedly tested, demonstrating its accuracy. It is calibrated by tree-ring data, which gives a nearly exact calendar for more than 11,000 years back. It has also been tested on items for which the age is known through historical records, such as parts of the Dead Sea scrolls and some wood from an Egyptian tomb (MNSU n.d.; Watson 2001). Multiple samples from a single object have been dated independently, yielding consistent results. Radiocarbon dating is also concordant with other dating techniques (e.g., Bard et al. 1990).

References:

1. Bard, Edouard, Bruno Hamelin, Richard G. Fairbanks and Alan Zindler, 1990. Calibration of the 14C timescale over the past 30,000 years using mass spectrometric U-Th ages from Barbados corals. Nature 345: 405-410.
2. Faure, Gunter, 1998. Principles and Applications of Geochemistry, 2nd ed. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall.
3. MNSU, n.d. Radio-carbon dating. http://emuseum.mnsu.edu/archaeology/dating/radio_carbon.html
4. Watson, Kathie, 2001. Radiometric time scale. http://pubs.usgs.gov/gip/geotime/radiometric.html

Further Reading:
Higham, Tom, 1999. Radiocarbon WEB-Info. http://www.c14dating.com/

Thompson, Tim, 2003. A radiometric dating resource list. http://www.tim-thompson.com/radiometric.html#reliability

Answer 11

Dear Krista,

God may work through Evolution, as through other processes. However, when you say that he "created everything to evolve" sounds like you mean not only physical properties, but morality, spirituality, laws, etc., in which case, you have stepped beyond the physical and into the moral and spritual realm. Did you intend this?

-j.