How do religious people explain carbon dating?

Question

Do you even know what it is? or what it does?

Answer 1

People like my Mom think that either 1) scientists are mistaken or 2) there's a giant conspiracy that all of the scientists are in on to try to disprove God. It's ridiculous if you ask me, and I'm a Christian who totally supports the notion of evolution. One doesn't exclude the other, but watch, all of the Christians who have never studied evolution and merely taken their pastor's word will give me a thumbs down.

Answer 2

Well... As soon as a living organism dies, it stops taking in new carbon. The ratio of carbon-12 to carbon-14 at the moment of death is the same as every other living thing, but the carbon-14 decays and is not replaced. The carbon-14 decays with its half-life of 5,700 years, while the amount of carbon-12 remains constant in the sample. By looking at the ratio of carbon-12 to carbon-14 in the sample and comparing it to the ratio in a living organism, it is possible to determine the age of a formerly living thing fairly precisely. There is a maximum radiocarbon age limit, which lies between 58,000 and 62,000 years. This limit is encountered when the radioactivity of the residual carbon-14 in a sample is too low to be distinguished from the background radiation.

Not all religious people are ignorant, you know. Nor do they all reject science.

Answer 3

after about 5 half lives the difference is not measurable with any degree of accuracy. This is why most people say carbon dating is only good for objects less than 40,000 years old. Nothing on earth carbon dates in the millions of years, because the scope of carbon dating only extends a few thousand years.

So, how do "scientists" supposedly date fossils at millions of years? Simple. By the age of the rocks in which the fossils are found. BUT, how do they determine the age of the rocks in which the fossils are found? Again, simple. The age of the rocks are determined by the age of the fossils found in them.

Answer 4

I know what it is. However, I've heard that it may be completely off because there's just so many factors to consider. The Earth wasn't always the same Earth. A lot of the factors used to determine carbon dating may be completely different than it was today. I don't know a whole lot about it but I know that many scientists today reject carbon dating because of its many gaps. I'm not saying that the Bible must be true because of this. I'm saying that carbon dating shouldn't be considered as absolute truth like many people do today. It's not like you were there when all these things happened.
Take Darwinism, Darwin made way too many assumptions. Not all finches in his experiment were residents of that area in the first place. I don't know about you, but that's poor science in my opinion.
I'm only a high school student so I don't know much, but I do know that a lot of scientific evidence does support the Bible. Be mindful of both sides.

Answer 5

Remember the scriptures were written at a time when carbon dating was not invented.
In those days the people were not sophisticated and needed to be told in a language anyone could understand.
Because of the advances in technology the gap between science
and religion is becoming wider and wider.
I believe the rules regarding human conduct and morality however will never become outdated.

Answer 6

This dating system measures the rate of decay of radioactive carbon from the point of death of the organism. “Once an organism dies, it no longer absorbs new carbon dioxide from its environment, and the proportion of the isotope falls off over time as it undergoes radioactive decay,” states Science and Technology Illustrated.

However, there are severe problems with the system. First, when the fossil is considered to be about 50,000 years old, its level of radioactivity has fallen so low that it can be detected only with great difficulty. Second, even in more recent specimens, this level has fallen so low that it is still extremely difficult to measure accurately. Third, scientists can measure the present-day rate of radioactive carbon formation but have no way of measuring carbon concentrations in the distant past.

So whether they use the radiocarbon method for dating fossils or other methods, such as employing radioactive potassium, uranium, or thorium, for dating rocks, scientists are unable to establish the original levels of those elements through ages of time. Thus, professor of metallurgy Melvin A. Cook observes: “One may only guess these concentrations [of radioactive materials], and the age results thus obtained can be no better than this guess.” That would especially be so when we consider that the Flood of Noah’s day over 4,300 years ago brought enormous changes in the atmosphere and on earth.

Dartmouth College geologists Charles Officer and Charles Drake further add doubt to the accuracy of radioactive dating. They state: “We conclude that iridium and other associated elements were not deposited instantaneously . . . but rather that there was an intense and variable influx of these constituents during a relatively short geologic time interval on the order of 10,000 to 100,000 years.” They argue that the breakup and movement of the continents disrupted the entire globe, causing volcanic eruptions, blocking sunlight and fouling the atmosphere. Certainly, such disruptive events could change radioactivity levels, thus distorting results from modern-day radioactive clocks.

While the radioactive dating method is innovative, it is still based on speculation and assumption. In contrast, the Bible account in the first chapter of Genesis simply states the general order of creation. It allows for possibly thousands of millions of years for the formation of the earth and many millenniums in six creative eras, or “days,” to prepare the earth for human habitation.

For more information, please go to www.watchtower.org

Answer 7

I don't get your point. If the universe was non-existent for all eternity, and suddenly one Tuesday afternoon 18 billion years ago it exploded into existence, HOW DO YOU EXPLAIN THAT? Did nothingness spontaneously produce somethingness? All matter and energy in the universe are in a state of constant change, and there HAS to be an eternally existent force that is (using Aristotle's words) the "uncaused first cause." So what the heck is the issue with carbon dating? God exists and science and scientists are becoming increasingly convinced of it. The head of the U.S. Genome project converted to Evangelical Christianity -- he now calls DNA the "language of God." Stick that in your smugness and date it!

Answer 8

i wondered about this question for the longest time, but...
1. the bible does not say that such an old date is impossible, yes it does say that the earth was created in seven days and if two humans were alive then the earth would only be about 5000 yrs old, but it never says how long those days might have been.
2. carbon dating is incredibly inaccurate to begin with, in fact if several labs were asked to carbon date something you'd get answers that vary by several million

Answer 9

http://www.vuletic.com/hume/cefec/2-1.html

I just stumbled on this website a week or so ago; it's marvelous. So-called "creation scientists" seek to pray on laypeople's ignorance of science and geology as they try to cobble together an acceptable (to laypersons) explanation of why carbon dating doesn't work.

The legitimacy of carbon dating is not an issue among credible scientists. But the media likes to make it sound like it is, just like it tries to discredit evidence of global warming, etc. etc...

For example, the person who commented directly above me. Kent whatever. Obviously slept through most if not all of his science classes, if indeed he even showed up. That's probably why he hasn't heard about the other methods of radioactive dating that are reliable to much older ages than carbon-14. But I'm probably wasting my breath...

Answer 10

proof sometimes can do more harm than good, a tiny piece of truth is often enough to form a web of lies that only faith from the start would not have fallen for the gimmick of carbon dating as much as providing interest in good things, all are in the best interest of religion even if you speak them, because it is supporting something good in you to be interested at all so in your way you are seeing the same way with accusations