Does Carbon 14 Dating go Beyond Biblical History?

The Limits of Carbon-14 Dating Assumptions

Can carbon -14 dating reliably show that certain fossils or artifacts date tens of thousands of years ago, far outside of biblical history that points to a miraculous creation just thousands of years ago?

Well, let's start out by saying that the actual process of carbon -14 dating includes sound science and uses high-tech lab equipment that costs millions, so the method itself is not the issue. It's the assumptions that are made when the raw isotope ratio gets converted to calendar years that carbon dating becomes unreliable and inaccurate, especially when dating really old items.

Just what are the assumptions that are being made when interpreting carbon -14 test results? Actually, there's quite a few. Let's look quickly at just eight of them. Forest fires, which pump a huge amount of carbon into the atmosphere.

Atomic activity and releases, which even double the amount of carbon -14 in the atmosphere. Volcanic eruptions that blow carbon even hundreds of miles around the eruption. Industrialization, where factories produce carbon.

Solar flares, carbon reservoirs, changes in atmospheric pressures, and variances in the Earth's magnetic field. Just like other types of radiometric dating, translating carbon -14 test results into calendar years requires assuming a uniform decay rate of the isotopes involved.

When scientists attempt to stretch the results of carbon dating back many thousands of years, are any of these assumptions being violated? Do we know about all the forest fires and volcanic eruptions that have occurred in the distant past?

Atomic activity, solar flares and cycles, the Earth's magnetic field? Certainly not. We run out of clearly documented historical events that validate these assumptions after just a couple thousand years, and scientists already try to account for the violations of these assumptions that we happen to know about.

So if we know that these assumptions have been violated in our known past of just a couple thousand years and have to account for them, how in the world can we say that there are no violations to these assumptions over the previous tens of thousands of years that aren't confirmed in written history?

Testing Carbon-14 Against Known-Age Artifacts

Fortunately, there is a way to put carbon -14 dating to the validation test where we can see how accurately it can date items of known ages. This is exactly what the British Science and Engineering Research Council did when they conducted an international blind study on carbon -14 dating by sending out artifacts of known ages to 38 of the world's leading carbon -14 testing laboratories.

The results? Only 7 of the 38 laboratories produced dates that were even close to the known dates of the artifacts. That's only 18 of the laboratories in this international study. The rest? 82 of the laboratories produced dates that were across the board, being off by even thousands.

Of years.

Carbon-14 in Coal, Diamonds, and Dinosaur Bones

Given the short half-life of carbon -14, only 5 ,730 years, organic materials that are supposedly older than 100 ,000 years, which is about 18 half-lives, should contain absolutely no detectable carbon -14.

However, coal, diamonds, and even dinosaur bones contain plenty of carbon -14. These coal samples' carbon date to be between 40 and 60 thousand years, but they are sandwiched between geological layers that are supposedly 34 to 318 million years old.

So, which age are we supposed to believe? Maybe they are all wrong. In fact, these coal carbon -14 results show that the plants that eventually became coal were uprooted at about the same time, demonstrating that the tectonic upheaval occurred during Noah's Flood when the fountains of the Great Deep ruptured according to Genesis 7 .11.

Carbon -14 is also found in diamonds, which supposedly take millions and millions of years to form. Diamond is the hardest naturally occurring substance known, so it should be very resistant to contamination.

Yet, they are repeatedly found with measurable levels of carbon -14 in them. Carbon -14 is even repeatedly found in dinosaur bones, indicating that these animals were created on the sixth day of creation, just thousands of years ago.

Between 1984 and 1998 alone, the scientific literature reported carbon -14 in 70 samples that came from fossils, coal, oil, natural gas, and marble representing the fossil-bearing portion of the geologic record, supposedly spanning more than 500 million years, all containing radiocarbon that shouldn't be there if the Earth is really billions of years.

Old.

Faith, Radiometric Dating, and Creation

Does carbon -14 dating really provide a dependable way to build a worldview about the history of the Earth? Trusting in carbon -14 dating, like any form of radiometric dating, requires faith. All forms of radiometric dating depend on assumptions, assumptions about the starting levels of the parent and daughter elements, the decay rate, and the consistency of the environment where the item was located.

These assumptions can never be proven because we can't go back in time to validate them. And wouldn't you rather trust the only one who was here when the Earth was formed, and the written account he gave us describing how he created it and when?

Are you a Christian student being bombarded with evolution teaching in public school? Looking for answers about what the Bible teaches about creation, the fossil record, dinosaurs? Download the Genesis Apologetics app from the iTunes or Google Play stores for answers to these questions and more.