How much do you trust C14 dating and radiometeric with all the conflicting arguments?

Question

if you studied carbon dating then you must be aware of the disputes in regards to the information. Whats your view?

yes chippy the question relates to c14

Good morning Gorgeous

Geezah: insults are not generally considered a sound debate.....(twit)....smug and rude

Answer 1

Claim CD011:
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 2

If you use radiometric dating techniques properly they are very accurate. C14 dating is only used for recent objects anyway. The age of the earth is determined by using isotopes with much longer half lives. Each dating technique must be used properly with proper conditions.

Creationists like to intentionally misapply radiometric techniques and then claim they are inaccurate. Kind of like measuring the size of an amoeba with a yardstick and then claiming you can't use yardsticks to measure things. Of course you can but all measuring techniques have conditions under which they are properly applied. When you read creationist statements it is obvious to anyone educated in these techniques that they are being deliberately dishonest.

Answer 3

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.


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).

Answer 4

Let's look at it this way. When the world was created, many things were created with an apparent "age".

Adam was not created as an infant, but as an adult (or young adult).

The trees were not created as seeds or saplings, they were created in various stages of growth.

So these things were technically only second or hours old but they had a physical age. The trees could have had 30-40 rings, which we use to age trees, so they would have been, by our standards, 40 years old at creation.

So the question is, do we really know the true "age" of the components used to age other things??

Answer 5

If science says that C14 is useful, then the best thing to do is to ignore everything about it. Instead, rely completely on god, for which there is no evidence, since with god there is no need for evidence. Cool, huh! Let us pretend that this is logical. What do you say!

Answer 6

For C14 to be accurate the rates of absortion would have had to been uniformly consistent throughout history.

For those of us who accept the Biblical accounts of the Flood, we recognize the water canopy blocked the radiation from animals. Then when someone who comes along who does not believe that, they see much less radiactive carbon in their sample and erroneously conclude it has been decaying much longer than it has, perhaps 100s of 1000s or even millions of years.

Answer 7

My view is that things that have been dated by several different dating methods independent of each other, give quite reasonable and useful results.

My additional view is that armchair "creationists" who just regurgitate what they read from creationist websites, thinking they can they can debunk something in significant in science despite having no science training, are pretentious and deluded.

Answer 8

Any dating methods devised by man cannot be completely trusted. There is way too much room for error,because man makes mistakes. Besides,the dating methods only reflect the biased views of those using the method,thus promoting their own prejudiced agenda.

Answer 9

Well, the arguments are usually between scientists who perform the experiments and christians who don't. I usually stick with the scientists. They tend to know what they're talking about.

Answer 10

My view is that those who are doing all the disputing are bias and self-serving. The C14 dating system is reliable and verifiable.

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