is the standard method used by scientists to determine the
age of certain fossilized remains. As scientists will often
claim something to be millions or billions of years old
(ages that do not conform to the Biblical account of the age
of the earth), Christians are often left wondering about the
accuracy of the carbon-14 method. The truth is, carbon-14
dating (or radiocarbon dating, as it’s also called) is not a
precise dating method in many cases, due to faulty
assumptions and other limitations on this method.
has a weight of twelve atomic mass units (AMU’s), and is the
building block of all organic matter (plants and animals).
A small percentage of carbon atoms have an atomic weight of
14 AMU’s. This is carbon-14. Carbon-14 is an unstable,
radioactive isotope of carbon 12. As with any radioactive
isotope, carbon-14 decays over time. The half-life of
carbon 14 is approximate 5,730 years. That means if you
took one pound of 100 percent carbon-14, in 5,730 years, you
would only have half a pound left.
created in the upper atmosphere as nitrogen atoms are
bombarded by cosmic radiation. For every one trillion
carbon-12 atoms, you will find one carbon-14 atoms. The
carbon-14 that results from the reaction caused by cosmic
radiation quickly changes to carbon dioxide, just like
normal carbon-12 would. Plants utilize, or “breath in”
carbon dioxide, then ultimately release oxygen for animals
to inhale. The carbon-14 dioxide is utilized by plants in
the same way normal carbon dioxide is. This carbon-14
dioxide then ends up in humans and other animals as it moves
up the food chain.
There is then a
ratio of carbon-14 to carbon-12 in the bodies of plants,
humans, and other animals that can fluctuate, but will be
fixed at the time of death. After death, the carbon-14
would begin to decay at the rate stated above. In 1948, Dr.
W.F. Libby introduced the carbon-14 dating method at the
University of Chicago. The premise behind the method is to
determine the ratio of carbon-14 left in organic matter, and
by doing so, estimate how long ago death occurred by running
the ratio backwards. The accuracy of this method, however,
relies on several faulty assumptions.
carbon-14 dating to be accurate, one must assume the rate of
decay of carbon-14 has remained constant over the years.
However, evidence indicates that the opposite is true.
Experiments have been performed using the radioactive
isotopes of uranium-238 and iron-57, and have shown that
rates can and do vary. In fact, changing the environments
surrounding the samples can alter decay rates.
The second faulty
assumption is that the rate of carbon-14 formation has
remained constant over the years. There are a few reasons
to believe this assumption is erroneous. The industrial
revolution greatly increased the amount of carbon-12
released into the atmosphere through the burning of coal.
Also, the atomic bomb testing around 1950 caused a rise in
neutrons, which increased carbon-14 concentrations. The
great flood which Noah and family survived would have
uprooted and/or buried entire forests. This would decrease
the release of carbon-12 to the atmosphere through the decay
carbon-14 dating to be accurate, the concentrations of
carbon-14 and carbon-12 must have remained constant in the
atmosphere. In addition to the reasons mentioned in the
previous paragraph, the flood provides another evidence that
this is a faulty assumption. During the flood, subterranean
water chambers that were under great pressure would have
been breached. This would have resulted in an enormous
amount of carbon-12 being released into the oceans and
atmosphere. The effect would be not unlike opening a can of
soda and having the carbon dioxide fizzing out. The water
in these subterranean chambers would not have contained
carbon-14, as the water was shielded from cosmic radiation.
This would have upset the ratio of carbon-14 to carbon-12.
To make carbon-14
dating work, Dr. Libby also assumed that the amount of
carbon-14 being presently produced had equaled the amount of
carbon-12 – he assumed that they had reached a balance. The
formation of carbon-14 increases with time, and at the time
of creation was probably at or near zero. Since carbon-14
is radioactive, it begins to decay immediately as it’s
formed. If you start with no carbon-14 in the atmosphere,
it would take over 50,000 years for the amount being
produced to reach equilibrium with the amount decaying. One
of the reasons we know that the earth is less than 50,000
years old is because of the biblical record. Another reason
we can know this is because the amount of carbon-14 in the
atmosphere is only 78% what it would be if the earth were
Libby and the evolutionist crowd have assumed that all plant
and animal life utilize carbon-14 equally as they do
carbon-12. To be grammatically crass, this ain’t
necessarily so. Live mollusks off the Hawaiian coast have
had their shells dated with the carbon-14 method. These
test showed that the shells died 2000 years ago! This news
came as quite a shock to the mollusks that had been using
those shells until just recently.
We’ve listed five
faulty assumptions here that have caused overestimates of
age using the carbon-14 method. The list of non-compliant
dates from this method is endless. Most evolutionists today
would conclude that carbon-14 dating is – at best – reliable
for only the last 3000 to 3500 years. There is another
reason that carbon-14 dating has yielded questionable
results – human bias.
If you’ve ever
been part of a medical study, you’re probably familiar with
the terms “blind study” and “double-blind study”. In a
blind study, using carbon-14 dating for example, a person
would send in a few quality control samples along with the
actual sample to the laboratory. The laboratory analyst
should not know which sample is the one of interest. In
this way, the analyst could not introduce bias into the
dating of the actual sample. In a double-blind study (using
an experimental drug study as an example), some patients
will be given the experimental drug, while others will be
given a placebo (a harmless sugar pill). Neither the
patients nor the doctors while know who gets what. This
provides an added layer of protection against bias.
that do not fit a desired theory are often excluded by
alleging cross-contamination of the sample. In this manner,
an evolutionist can present a sample for analysis, and tell
the laboratory that he assumes the sample to be somewhere
between 50,000 years old and 100,000 years old. Dates that
do not conform to this estimate are thrown out. Repeated
testing of the sample may show nine tests that indicate an
age of 5000 to 10,000 years old, and one test that shows an
age of 65,000 years old. The nine results showing ages that
do not conform to the pre-supposed theory are excluded.
This is bad science, and it is practiced all the time to fit
with the evolutionary model.
The Shroud of
Turin, claimed to be the burial cloth of Christ, was
supposedly dated by a blind test. Actually, the control
specimens were so dissimilar that the technicians at the
three laboratories making the measurements could easily tell
which specimen was from the Shroud. This would be like
taking a piece of wood and two marbles and submitting them
to the lab with the instructions that “one of these is from
an ancient ponderosa pine, guess which.” The test would
have been blind if the specimens had been reduced to carbon
powder before they were given to the testing laboratories.
Humans are naturally biased. We tend to see what we want to
see, and explain away unwanted data.
Perhaps the best
description of the problem in attempting to use the
Carbon-14 dating method is to be found in the words of Dr.
Robert Lee. In 1981, he wrote an article for the
Anthropological Journal of Canada, in which stated:
troubles of the radiocarbon dating method are undeniably
deep and serious. Despite 35 years of technological
refinement and better understanding, the underlying
assumptions have been strongly challenged, and warnings
are out that radiocarbon may soon find itself in a crisis
situation. Continuing use of the method depends on a
fix-it-as-we-go approach, allowing for contamination here,
fractionation there, and calibration whenever possible. It
should be no surprise then, that fully half of the dates
are rejected. The wonder is, surely, that the remaining
half has come to be accepted…. No matter how useful it
is, though, the radiocarbon method is still not capable of
yielding accurate and reliable results. There are gross
discrepancies, the chronology is uneven and relative, and
the accepted dates are actually the selected dates.”
accuracy of carbon-14 dating relies on faulty assumptions,
and is subject to human bias. At best, radiocarbon dating
is only accurate for the past few thousand years. As we’ve
seen though, even relatively youthful samples are often
dated incorrectly. The Biblical record gives us an
indication of an earth that is relatively young. The most
reliable use of radiocarbon dating supports that position.
This method of dating, overall, tends to be as faulty and
ill conceived as the evolutionary model that is was designed
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