CARBON DATING UNDERCUTS EVOLUTION'S LONG AGES

Evolutionists generally feel secure even in the face of compelling creationist arguments today because of their utter confidence in the geological time scale. Even if they cannot provide a naturalistic mechanism, they appeal to the "fact of evolution," by which they mean an interpretation of earth history with a succession of different types of plants and animals in a drama spanning hundreds of millions of years.

The Bible, by contrast, paints a radically different picture of our planet's history. In particular, it describes a time when God catastrophically destroyed the earth and essentially all its life. The only consistent way to interpret the geological record in light of this event is to understand that fossil-bearing rocks are the result of a massive global Flood that occurred only a few thousand years ago and lasted but a year. This Biblical interpretation of the rock record implies that the animals and plants preserved as fossils were all contemporaries. This means trilobites, dinosaurs, and mammals all dwelled on the planet simultaneously, and they perished together in this world-destroying cataclysm.

Although creationists have long pointed out the rock formations themselves testify unmistakably to water catastrophism on a global scale, evolutionists generally have ignored this testimony. This is partly due to the legacy of the doctrine of uniformitarianism passed down from one generation of geologists to the next since the time of Charles Lyell in the early nineteenth century. Uniformitarianism assumes that the vast amount of geological change recorded in the rocks is the product of slow and uniform processes operating over an immense span of time, as opposed to a global cataclysm of the type described in the Bible and other ancient texts.

With the discovery of radioactivity about a hundred years ago, evolutionists deeply committed to the uniformitarian outlook believed they finally had proof of the immense antiquity of the earth. In particular, they discovered the very slow nuclear decay rates of elements like Uranium while observing considerable amounts of the daughter products from such decay. They interpreted these discoveries as vindicating both uniformitarianism and evolution, which led to the domination of these beliefs in academic circles around the world throughout the twentieth century.

However, modern technology has produced a major fly in that uniformitarian ointment. A key technical advance, which occurred about 25 years ago, involved the ability to measure the ratio of ¹⁴C atoms to ¹²C atoms with extreme precision in very small samples of carbon, using an ion beam accelerator and a mass spectrometer. Prior to the advent of this accelerator mass spectrometer (AMS) method, the ¹⁴C/¹²C ratio was measured by counting the number of ¹⁴C decays. This earlier method was subject to considerable "noise" from cosmic rays.

The AMS method improved the sensitivity of the raw measurement of the ¹⁴C/¹²C ratio from approximately 1% of the modern value to about 0.001%, extending the theoretical range of sensitivity from about 40,000 years to about 90,000 years. The expectation was that this improvement in precision would make it possible to use this technique to date dramatically older fossil material.¹ The big surprise, however, was that no fossil material could be found anywhere that had as little as 0.001% of the modern value!² Since most of the scientists involved assumed the standard geological time scale was correct, the obvious explanation for the ¹⁴C they were detecting in their samples was contamination from some source of modern carbon with its high level of ¹⁴C. Therefore they mounted a major campaign to discover and eliminate the sources of such contamination. Although they identified and corrected a few relatively minor sources of ¹⁴C contamination, there still remained a significant level of ¹⁴C—typically about 100 times the ultimate sensitivity of the instrument—in samples that should have been utterly "¹⁴C-dead," including many from the deeper levels of the fossil-bearing part of the geological record.²

Let us consider what the AMS measurements imply from a quantitative standpoint. The ratio of ¹⁴C atoms to ¹²C atoms decreases by a factor of 2 every 5730 years. After 20 half-lives or 114,700 years (assuming hypothetically that earth history goes back that far), the ¹⁴C/¹²C ratio is decreased by a factor of 2²⁰, or about 1,000,000. After 1.5 million years, the ratio is diminished by a factor of 2^1500000/5730, or about 10⁷⁹. This means that if one started with an amount of pure ¹⁴C equal to the mass of the entire observable universe, after 1.5 million years there should not be a single atom of ¹⁴C remaining! Routinely finding ¹⁴C/¹²C ratios on the order of 0.1-0.5% of the modern value—a hundred times or more above the AMS detection threshold—in samples supposedly tens to hundreds of millions of years old is therefore a huge anomaly for the uniformitarian framework.

This earnest effort to understand this "contamination problem" therefore generated scores of peer-reviewed papers in the standard radiocarbon literature during the last 20 years.² Most of these papers acknowledge that most of the ¹⁴C in the samples studied appear to be intrinsic to the samples themselves, and they usually offer no explanation for its origin. The reality of significant levels of ¹⁴C in a wide variety of fossil sources from throughout the geological record has thus been established in the secular scientific literature by scientists who assume the standard geological time scale is valid and have no special desire for this result!

In view of the profound significance of these AMS ¹⁴C measurements, the ICR Radioisotopes and the Age of the Earth (RATE) team has undertaken its own AMS ¹⁴C analyses of such fossil material.² The first set of samples consisted of ten coals obtained from the U. S. Department of Energy Coal Sample Bank maintained at the Pennsylvania State University. The ten samples include three coals from the Eocene part of the geological record, three from the Cretaceous, and four from the Pennsylvanian. These samples were analyzed by one of the foremost AMS laboratories in the world. Figure 1 below shows in histogram form the results of these analyses.

These values fall squarely within the range already established in the peer-reviewed radiocarbon literature. When we average our results over each geological interval, we obtain remarkably similar values of 0.26 percent modern carbon (pmc) for Eocene, 0.21 pmc for Cretaceous, and 0.27 pmc for Pennsylvanian. Although the number of samples is small, we observe little difference in ¹⁴C level as a function of position in the geological record. This is consistent with the young-earth view that the entire macrofossil record up to the upper Cenozoic is the product of the Genesis Flood and therefore such fossils should share a common ¹⁴C age.

Applying the uniformitarian approach of extrapolating ¹⁴C decay into the indefinite past translates the measured ¹⁴C/¹²C ratios into ages that are on the order of 50,000 years (2^-50000/5730 = 0.0024 = 0.24 pmc). However, uniformitarian assumptions are inappropriate when one considers that the Genesis Flood removed vast amounts of living biomass from exchange with the atmosphere—organic material that now forms the earth's vast coal, oil, and oil shale deposits. A conservative estimate for the pre-Flood biomass is 100 times that of today. If one takes as a rough estimate for the total ¹⁴C in the biosphere before the cataclysm as 40% of what exists today and assumes a relatively uniform ¹⁴C level throughout the pre-Flood atmosphere and biomass, then we might expect a ¹⁴C/¹²C ratio of about 0.4% of today's value in the plants and animals at the onset of the Flood. With this more realistic pre-Flood ¹⁴C/¹²C ratio, we find that a value of 0.24 pmc corresponds to an age of only 4200 years (0.004 x 2^-4200/5730 = 0.0024 = 0.24 pmc). Even though these estimates are rough, they illustrate the crucial importance of accounting for effects of the Flood cataclysm when translating a ¹⁴C/¹²C ratio into an actual age.

Percent Modern Carbon

Some readers at this point may be asking, how does one then account for the tens of millions and hundreds of millions of years that other radioisotope methods yield for the fossil record? Most of the other RATE projects address this important issue. Equally as persuasive as the ¹⁴C data is evidence from RATE measurements of the diffusion rate of Helium in zircon crystals that demonstrates the rate of nuclear decay of Uranium into Lead and Helium has been dramatically higher in the past and the uniformitarian assumption of a constant rate of decay is wrong.³ Another RATE project documents the existence of abundant Polonium radiohalos in granitic rocks that crystallized during the Flood and further demonstrates that the uniformitarian assumption of constant decay rates is incorrect.⁴ Another RATE project provides clues for why the ¹⁴C decay rate apparently was minimally affected during episodes of rapid decay of isotopes with long half-lives.⁵

The bottom line of this research is that the case is now extremely compelling that the fossil record was produced just a few thousand years ago by the global Flood cataclysm. The evidence that reveals that macroevolution as an explanation for the origin of life on earth can therefore no longer be rationally defended.

Because I know you love this stuff.

Meteor That Killed the Dinosaurs – Didn’t 09/25/2003
According to Gerta Keller (Princeton), the meteor that formed the Chicxulub Crater in the Yucatan was not responsible for wiping out the dinosaurs. It was smaller than previously believed, and came 300,000 years too early. According to her research, that impact does not coincide with the K-T boundary, and it was too small to kill even small organisms like foraminifera. She thinks worldwide volcanism and a series of impacts did the job.
“These views have not made Keller a popular figure at meteorite impact meetings,” says EurekAlert. But the idea that a single impact caused a worldwide mass extinction 65 million years ago has been taking a beating by more and more very renowned scientists, the article claims. More detail can be found at the Princeton Weekly Bulletin.

This makes the final episode of Walking With Dinosaurs obsolete. Wonder what the BBC animators think? It was a fun story, while it lasted.
The article claims that foraminifera evolve rapidly through geologic times and “constitute a timeline by which surrounding geologic features can be dated.” They would know better if they had read our Sept 22 headline.

Radiocarbon Found in Ancient Coal 09/25/2003
Dr. John Baumbardner reported finding carbon-14 still ticking in coal samples that should be radiocarbon-dead. Because carbon-14 has a short half life of 5730 years, it rapidly decays to carbon-12, such that after 20 half-lives (114,700 years) carbon-12 would outnumber carbon-14 atoms a million to one. After 1.5 million years, if one had started with a pile of carbon-14 equal to the mass of the entire universe, not a single carbon-14 atom would be left. Therefore, carbon-14 should be totally absent in samples far younger than a million years old.
Baumgardner and a team from the Institute for Creation Research involved in studying radioactive dating methods submitted 10 samples of coal from three different geological periods (Eocene, Cretaceous and Pennsylvanian) to a leading radiocarbon dating laboratory, which uses the highly accurate acccelerator mass spectrometer (AMS) method. The samples measured 0.21 to 0.27 percent modern carbon (pmc), indicating they cannot be older than 50,000 years, and possibly much younger, even though according to the geologic column, the periods test are assumed to range around 50 million, 100 million and 300 million years old, respectively. The measured values “fall squarely within the range already established in the peer-reviewed radiocarbon literature,” says Baumgardner, and show “little difference in ¹⁴C level as a function of position in the geological record.”
Source: ICR Impact #364, October 2003.

Critics will undoubtedly complain that these creationists have an ulterior motive for questioning the old age of the earth, but doesn’t that criticism cut both ways? Are the motives of Darwinians pure as the wind-driven snow? Can we brush aside the motive-bashing and look at the facts? It’s the quality of the research that matters.
These scientists, each with PhDs from recognized institutions, took samples from the U.S. Department of Energy Coal Sample Bank maintained at Pennsylvania State University. They had the samples radiocarbon dated at “one of the foremost AMS laboratories in the world.” It was the laboratory, not ICR, that returned the measurements that carbon-14 was still ticking in the samples. Further, the ICR scientists are not the only ones who have found this to be the case. Baumgardner states that this is a well-known anomaly among geophysicists:
Routinely finding ¹⁴C/¹²C ratios on the order of 0.1-0.5% of the modern value—a hundred times or more above the AMS detection threshold—in samples supposedly tens to hundreds of millions of years old is therefore a huge anomaly for the uniformitarian framework.
This earnest effort to understand this “contamination problem” therefore generated scores of peer-reviewed papers in the standard radiocarbon literature during the last 20 years. Most of these papers acknowledge that most of the ¹⁴ in the samples studied appear to be intrinsic to the samples themselves, and they usually offer no explanation for its origin. The reality of significant levels of ¹⁴C in a wide variety of fossil sources from throughout the geological record has thus been established in the secular scientific literature by scientists who assume the standard geological time scale is valid and have no special desire for this result!
Unless evolutionists can come up with an explanation for how carbon-14 got into so many samples from so many locations, that all show similar amounts despite their position in the geologic column, the clear implications are: (1) the samples are not as old as claimed, and (2) the geologic periods, assumed to be successive, were more or less contemporaneous.
Dr. Baumgardner’s report is one of eight presented at the Fifth International Conference on Creationism in August by the ICR team named RATE (Radioisotopes and the Age of the Earth). The other seven papers presented additional evidences that call evolutionary long ages into question. For a summary of these, see: ICR Acts and Facts #364, October 2003.
For an example of anomalous radiocarbon dates in the secular literature, see: Annual Review of Earth and Planetary Sciences Vol 29 (May 2001), pp. 256-294, posted online 04/22/2003. It shows that dating of modern deltas by radiocarbon yields mostly unexpected results. How much more coal beds that are assumed to be millions of years old? A glimpse of articles discussing anomalous radiocarbon dates in a cursory Internet search shows that evolutionists have a few just-so stories available for explaining them: shellfish that exclude or ingest carbon-14 from their shells, etc. (see, for example, Quaternary Chronology and Dating by James S. Aber). But none of these appear valid for coal beds, which should have no radiocarbon at all if they were many millions of years old, as evolutionary geology assumes them to be. Again, we see that evolutionists can be very creative in their storytelling. It’s not that they are unable to concoct a story to fit the data, but that the data require a story to fit a belief. The dates were not expected nor predicted. Sometimes they can be made to fit in the hands of a skilled masseur. Other times, they chalk them up as a mystery and leave it for future workers to figure out, never questioning their assumptions.
When various dating methods yield old and young ages, which results should be preferred? Results in the millions and billions of years require extrapolating rates that have only been measured for a hundred years by many orders of magnitude, and assuming no processes have intervened for vast periods of time not open to human observation. Young-age results, therefore have a much better observation to assumption ratio. Regardless of the implications, reason and scientific caution advise that we take a conservative approach, and place more credence in the methods that yield young ages. The Darwin Party will scream “but we need more time!” Sorry.

Evidence? Where??? I would be glad to show him any real evidence if there were evidence. All I see in evolution is worldview interpretation. That same "evidence" can be interpreted another way

There are litteral mountains of evidence. Go hike the Grand Canyon, and then have him do the math on how much sediment must be put down in how much time to account for what he sees.

Then realise that there are miles of the same stuff BELOW the bottom of the canyon, reachable via rock cores.

Such things can't be accounted for by "a flood". I just don't limit God to what He put in the Bible. There must have been many other "floods" that he just didn't put in there.

I grew up before these people started selling books with fake science to faithful people and getting them all stired up about creationism.

I was taught, at a church retreat, by a decon of the church, and who was also a science professor at the local college, that there is no contradiction between Genesis and evolution. Once you can read Genesis, and see the incredible correlation between the sequences of events in Genesis, and the sequence of events as described by science, then how can you believe that Genesis wasn't inpired by God?

There is no contradiction between Genesis and science, and the fact that this is so is actually something that faithful people should proudly proclaim.

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.