Carbon dating vs Bible Dating?

Question

How old does the Bible say earth is, and how far back can we use carbon dating to predict age of someting? Are they the same?

Answer 1

I thought the Bible didn't allow dating.

Answer 2

The Bible itself doesn't speak of the age of the Earth. The fans of the KJV of the bible and take it literally date the Earth at about 6000 years (usually by counting backwards through the begetting). Carbon dating and other forms of radiometric dating are incredibly accurate because an unstable molecule degrades at a specific half-life regardless of other factors. Carbon is good for a few thousand years but there are a lot of other elements that can be used too. Using these dates and some extrapolation (using mathematical formulas of how things are to estimate how they were and how they will be) we estimate the universe to have begun expanding some 2+ billion years ago. What caused the expansion and what existed before it is still unknown. Scientists are still searching and studying. Science mkes no claim that there is not a creator and that that creator did not start/cause the expansion. Try to think of it this way, its no different than the scientists trying to determine when Rome was at its peak. We are closer than ever to understanding our universe as it is now and how it got that way but we have no way of saying that that is the beginning. There could have been several incarnations of this universe with this matter and energy in it before our present one. Science is not in opposition of what any religion has said about the origin of everything, science really only gives evidence against the most literal intepretations of the Bible. I have never understood why there is so much fighting.

Answer 3

They are not in the least the same. The biblical tales indicate that the earth is around six thousand years old (although one contributor to this forum has proposed a calendar showing it is about ten thousand years old). Carbon dating, if properly done, is highly accurate: it is calibrated by comparing the radiation date with the date obtained from tree ring data, which goes back over 5,000 years. (The level of C14 in the atmosphere has varied slightly over time, so a correction, on the order of about five percent, is necessary.) Carbon dating is good to around 15-20 thousand years. But carbon is not the only radioisotope used for dating: potassium, thorium, uranium, and other elements are also used, and these peg the earth's age at about 4.6 billion years -- not suprisingly, the same age as rocks on the moon and on Mars. There are numerous other techniques used for dating things: differentiation of non-radioactive isotopes, ice layers in the Arctic and Antarctic, and genetic drift are important methods. Ice layers in the Antarctic go back over a hundred thousand years.

Answer 4

The bible does not say 6 to 7 thousand years....get your facts right. The bible has no exact date that the earth was created but by evidence in the bible I'm guessing millions maybe? This counting ONLY the Earth not the whole Universe. Carbon Dating changes ALL THE TIME!! They always find these "new discoveries" so they have no really solid date and neither does the bible.

Answer 5

The bible itself does not say exactly how old the earth is. People just assume 6 to 7 thousand years because of the verse that says "For a thousand years in thy sight are but as yesterday when it is past, and as a watch in the night. (Psalms 90:4). But the bible also says "1In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth. 2And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters. 3And God said, Let there be light: and there was light." (Genesis 1:1-3). Later the bible explains that God created the earth in 6 days and rested on the 7th. So again, one day = one thousand days = one day in God's sight. 6 times 1000 equals 6000. But lets not forget that in Genesis the bible just says "In the beginning..." It does not tell a year or a day. Who knows when the beginning began? Only God does and carbon dating might be fascinating but it isn't concrete evidence of the age of the earth.

Answer 6

The bible doesn't date anything. The age of the earth according to the bible was calculated using the known age of every important person mentioned in it and tracing the genealogy backward to the year 4004BC at the creation of Adam.

Carbon dating is accurate to about 5 halflives, after that it gets sketchy. So after ~62,000 years

Now lead isotope dating has EXTREMELY little error.

lead isotope dating:

if a rock has some uranium in it, it will also have lead isotope(s) in it. Uranium decays into lead-206 or lead-207 at a fixed rate. That is, its decay rate never EVER changes, no matter how big or small the rock is, no mater how old it is; it NEVER changes. So, the ratio of lead isotope to uranium changes at a fixed rate starting at when the rock was formed; that is, when raw material crystallized into solid form. This is a reliable method of deturmining a rock's age, accurate to within 0.0004%. Currently the oldest object known that was measured in this way is a meteorite, believed to be left over from the formation of the solar system, that fell in Mexico in February 1969. It was found to be 4.566 billion +/- 2 million years old. It is the oldest object that can be held by human hands.

Answer 7

It is not mentioned in the Bible. Remeber that many of the amount of time in the Bible must be divided by ten to equal their idea of a year.
A lunar month is called a year in the Bible. That is how they can have people 900 years old. They are really 90 yrs old.

Carbon dating cannot be 100% guaranteed acurate as a recent fire confuses the carbon dating.

Answer 8

First of all, radio carbon dating is OLD, it was used a long time ago and isn't all that accurate compared to modern methods. There are dozens of new methods that are devastatingly accurate (margin of error being only 0.01%). Creationists still like to attack radio carbon dating because it's an old, easy target (even though they've never invalidated it)... if you mention something like potassium argon dating to a creationist they have a look of utter perplexity that is frankly hilarious.

Anyway, the bible says the Earth is somewhere between 6,000-10,000 years old. So according to the bible the world was created sometime after the Sumerians invented glue and the Babylonians invented beer or after humans domesticated the dog.

Recorded history alone proves the biblical timeline wrong. The chinese were already writing history before many bible thumpers believe the world was created... go figure. But scientifically, every method of dating has consistently shown the Earth to be 4.54 billion years old.

Answer 9

Carbon dating only works on organic matter, so it can only date as far back as the beginning of life (about 4 billion years).

I'm not exact on what the Bible says but I'm Pretty sure it says the earth can't be much more than 10,000 years old.

Answer 10

The Bible does not say specically how old the earth is. Bishop James Usher dated creation to about 6,000 years ago; however many Christians no longer hold to this date. Carbon dating seems to be a credible way of dating "old" things almost indefinitely.

Answer 11

Radiometric dating, you mean.

All objects emit radiation. And all radioactive material has a half-life. Carbon has only a short half-life (about a few thousand years). But other elements have half-lives of up to billions of years. It's how we worked out how old the Earth is.

Compare it to the Bible and you have a completely different story! The bible says the Earth is much younger - but that's impossible when we measure the radioactivity of the earth, and find out we've been around for an incredibly long time. People have been around for a blink of the earth's life.

And here's the stake through the heart of the Creationist myth: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uranium-lead_dating