Hypothetically, how would the flood of Noah's day affect Carbon 14 dating of dead plants and animals?

Answer 1

No effect because Noah's flood is a myth..the laws of physics (which God wrote) do not change

Answer 2

How does C14 dating work anyway? Live matter has a C12/C14 ratio. When the item dies, the C14 decays away, increasing this ratio. We can measure the ratio of a dead item, and measuring the ratio, backtrack to the C12/C14 ratio of live matter.

Living things at the time of Noah's flood (say 5000 years ago) that perished would have a C12/C14 ratio corresponding to that time. Since the half-life of C14 is about 5000 years, the ratio of matter that died in that flood would be about twice that of living matter today.

Two problems pop up. One, how long has matter lived BEFORE Noah's flood, and two, for any reason should we believe that the C12/C14 ratio for live matter has itself changed from then to now?

If one holds that the earth was created only 2000 years or so before Noah's flood, the fact that we obtain C12/C14 ratios considerably higher than 2 would pose a problem. One can try to explain this away by proposing that the ratio in live matter was different in antedivulian times, but this is conjecture made up to "fit" the data, and I haven't seen a convincing arguement for it.

So, even if there were a Noah's flood, it may not affect C14 dating at all.

Answer 3

Uhh...It wouldn't affect anything...although if you were to come up with any "proof", i'm sure that C14 dating would refute your evidence. Seriously though, C14 dating just measures the ratio of C14 to C12, which slowly changes over time. So, assuming god didn't tinker with things any more severely than a worldwide flood, it should work just fine.

Answer 4

Carbon is carbon, wet or dry, but getting things wet is a dandy way to make them decay. There are no fossils in a jungle.

Answer 5

It would interfere with the carbon anyway so it would interfere with the people etc near it

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