carbon dating and creationism?

Carbon dating really has nothing to do with creationism.

Carbon dating is only valid to about 50,000 years.

Some 'young-earth creationists' have misunderstood or misused carbon dating procedures and facts to make an argument for their YEC view.

Here is a link to an article from a Christian who is a geologist (Los Alamos National Laboratory) explaining radiometric dating:

http://www.reasons.org/files/articles/non-staff-pa...

Creationists use carbon dating in an attempt to "prove" that geological dating is not reliable. For that purpose, they use some VERY well known limitations in that dating method.

But what they don't know, or choose to forget, is that C-14 dating is not the only method and not the most precise one. Not by a long shot. There are other radiometric dating methods with far longer ranges than C-14 and far smaller margins of error (in the order of only 1 - 2%). For example, our planet was dated with the U-Pb (uranium - lead) dating method, which has a range of 4.5 BILLION years and an error of only 0.1 - 1%. For our planet's age, that is an error of only 50 million years (out of 4.5 billion).

It is simply impossible to prove that a dating technique that is shown to work for something known to be 1000 years old, works the same for something 100,000 or one million years old. Anything past the known calibrated date is based on unproven/unprovable assumptions, and gross extrapolation of the data.

In the real world, gross extrapolations of the data rarely if ever work, as shown in the examples below.

If I bend a coat hanger wire one way and it doesn’t break, and then the other way and it doesn’t break, does that mean that if I bend it back and forth one thousand times it won’t break?

If I put a hundred-pound weight on the end of a diving board and it deflects one inch, and then I put a two-hundred-pound weight on the end and it deflects two inches, does that mean if I put a 100,000-pound weight on the end, it will deflect 1000 inches, or will it just break?

If I energize some particles with one million volts and they accelerate to 1% of the speed of light, and then I energize those particles with two million volts and they accelerate to 2% of the speed of light, does that mean that if I energize those particles with 110 million volts they will accelerate to 110% of the speed of light (or travel 10% faster than the speed of light)?

But where ancient dating techniques, even with their flaws and limitations, do come in handy is comparing items. They are like a broken scale. The scale may show one baby weighing 217 pounds and another baby weighing 218 pounds. Obviously the scale does not show the actual weight of the baby, but we can rightfully conclude that the two babies weigh about the same.

And this is where C14 dating is useful. It may not show accurate dates of things tens of thousands of years old, but it can show that two things are about the same age. When it is used on dino bones, it shows the bones to be the same age as ancient human bones, thus showing that dinosaurs and humans at one time lived at the same time--and thus totally destroying evolutionism.

Most mainstream scientists will C14 any and all bones, except for dino bones because the findings contradict evolutionism. Those few that have tested the bones were fired from their jobs. Such testing is "forbidden science".

Creationism was imagined long before science was invented, so right there is the problem we have today we cannot make any new laws or any changes in our past observations with out any religions crying foul because that discourages peoples religious beliefs to throw out their imaginings and keep on praying!!! That is life it changes all the time!!!

One is a scientific tool and the other is a fairy tale. I see very little overlap or need to apply one to the other. We don't need horticulturists to tell us that pumpkins can't turn into carriages in order to know that Cinderella never actually happened.

One has evidence to back up their facts. The other has a story book filled with Magic.

Dating methods are not all that dependable and can be manipulated to agree with index fossils. The best documented example of this is found in the appendix to Marvin Lubenow’s book: Bones of Contention .3 The appendix, appropriately named “the dating game,” documents from evolutionary literature how manipulation of four radiometric dating methods and two fossil index systems (elephants and pigs) all agreed that Richard Leakey’s supposed fossil man, skull KNM-ER 1470, was about 2.6 million years old. However, paleoanthropologists could not believe such a modern looking skull could be that ancient. Again, the assumption of evolution motivated this concern. To keep the evolutionary story consistent, the volcanic tuff associated with the skull was redated. Lo and behold, “redating” by various methods again came up with another “consistent” date of about 1.6 million years. Finally, they arrived at a date they could all agree with. During this ten-year controversy, it was revealed that some dates came out as old as 230 million years. What does this say about the independence of these dating methods?

In regard to radiometric dating, John Woodmorappe has documented in his book, The Mythology of Modern Dating Methods,4 the countless manipulations invoked to produce “consistent” radiometric dates. Once in a while, I come across statements of how radiometric dates are simply geared to the fossil dates. In my study of the geology of the northwest states, I happened upon the following admission in Cascadia: The Geological Evolution of the Pacific Northwest:

“One might imagine that direct methods [radiometric dating] of measuring time would make obsolete all of the previous means of estimating age, but these new ‘absolute’ measurements are used more as a supplement to traditional methods [index fossils] than as a substitute. Geologists put more faith in the principles of superposition [strata are younger upwards] and faunal succession [evolution] than they do in numbers that come out of a machine. If the laboratory results contradict the field evidence, the geologist assumes that there is something wrong with the machine date. To put it another way, ‘good’ dates are those that agree with the field data [fossils in the strata]”.

The process of fossilization replaces organic material with minerals so a fossil has no carbon to date. The age of fossil layers was estimated in the 19th century long before the discovery of radiation or radiometric dating. The dates were estimated based on the assumed time it would take for evolution to produce the fossils observed. (that is called circular reasoning, because the age of the fossils was based on the assumption of evolution it cannot also be used to argue evidence of evolution). In most cases nobody went back to conduct radiometric dating on existing finds because of the expense so we really don't have an objective date.

Just like evolution itself, radiometric dating has fallen prey to circular reasoning. What is dated using radiometric methods are rocks in the layer or immediately above or below the layer most times. The problem is, nobody knows what the proportion of parent to daughter element was when the rock was formed. So you could have a rock from today with 50% parent element and 50% daughter element and if you were to estimate the date by that assuming the rock were formed with 100% parent element your test would indicate the rock is millions or billions of years old depending on which dating method were used.

Geologists agree there is no way of knowing the proportion of parent or daughter elements when the rock was formed so they use an isochron to estimate that based on other information.. Guess what that other information is? Did you say Index fossils! Thats right, they will measure the proportion of Parent and Daughter element, then based on the index fossils establish the estimated age the rock should be and then they will calibrate the isochron (adjust the ASSUMED proportion of daughter element) to match.

So you see the radiometric dates are in fact 'calibrated' to match the assumed age based on index fossils which were established by the assumption of evolution and what you actually have is just another layer of circular reasoning. Now they have come up with another approach that can be applied on about 15 to 20% of specimens that have multiple products of decay, but this approach has additional assumptions that are not very likely to be valid and still uses index fossils for calibration so even though it sounds more objective at the end of the day it really is more assumptive than the existing method.

Here is a post on Radiometric Dating by a Certified Radiographer

http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index;...

Radiometric dating isn't reliable?

I'm not creationist but I was reading an article about radiometric dating.?

http://plottingeoe.com/blog/radiometric-...

Creationists, do you understand that the assertion that evolution (or macro-evolution) is "unscientific" is fundamentally disingenuous?

http://plottingeoe.com/blog/creationists...

Radiometric Dating with a thermal ionization mass spectrometer

http://plottingeoe.com/blog/how-do-they-know-for-s...

Can we believe what the Bible says?

http://plottingeoe.com/blog/can-we-really-believe-...

Seven Evidences for a Young Earth

http://plottingeoe.com/blog/seven-evidences-for-a-...

Is Noah's Ark a Fairytale?

Why don't Christian fundamentalist just give and admit that Noah the Ark is just a made up fairytale?

http://plottingeoe.com/blog/is-noah-s-ark-a-fairyt...

Dating the Bible w Egypt pyramids and Gilgamesh (also ice cores)

Did The Biblical Flood Happen?

http://plottingeoe.com/blog/did-the-biblical-flood...

Geology of Grand Canyon & Noah's Flood

In what ways do you justify that the Earth is some 6000 years old?

http://plottingeoe.com/blog/geology-of-grand-canyo...

creationists are delusional liars....the end