Posted on 04/25/2017 10:41:08 AM PDT by fishtank
Radiocarbon Dating Can't Prove an Old Earth
by Vernon R. Cupps, Ph.D. *
Evidence for Creation
Recently, I conversed with an educated man who maintained Earth must be millions of years old because radiocarbon dating proved it. Although this argument is common, it’s simply inaccurate. Even evolutionary scientists acknowledge that radiocarbon dating cannot prove ages of millions or billions of years. Why?
Radiocarbon (14C) is an unstable form of carbon that spontaneously decays into nitrogen over time.1 The best instrument for detecting radiocarbon is an accelerator mass spectrometer (AMS),2 which can typically detect one radiocarbon atom per quadrillion (1015) carbon atoms.3 Most AMS devices cannot detect radiocarbon in something older than 57,000 years because the amount of 14C will have decayed to unmeasurable levels. Therefore, no rock formations, minerals, or organic material older than 57,000 years should contain detectable 14C. Radioisotope dating with 14C decreases in reliability with increasing age and cannot be reliably used without historical or archaeological artifacts to corroborate the dates obtained.4
(Excerpt) Read more at icr.org ...
I had a Paleontology professor in college who was a devout Christian. He said the Bible said Who and Geology said how. Best explanation I have seen.
I am not a young-Earther, not even close, but starting with a pure C-14, after half a million years, there is less than 1 atom per mole remaining. That’s a drop of over 24 orders of magnitude, to essentially undetectable levels.
For there to be detectable amounts of C-14 in coal and diamonds and oil, for that matter, there has to be another mechanism replenishing it or it has to be younger than the age claimed by traditional geology.
However, there is plenty of radiation inside the Earth to provide this mechanism. The processes described above whereby the C-14 is replenished are probably sufficient to establish an equilibrium at some level for buried organics.
On the other hand, for a young Earth, the oldest stuff should still have around half its original C-14 in it (for a 6000 year old Earth). That is clearly not the case. And there is some evidence that C-14 generation from cosmic sources is not constant, with occasional periods of much higher levels being generated, which would give the impression that things are younger than they really are.
In any case, the point that C-14 dating is only valid for relatively recent time periods is the most pertinent, with a maximum range in the tens of thousands of years, not billions or millions or even hundreds of thousands.
“Strawman”
Or fake news for the gullible ...
The bible explicitly states that God takes measures to hide the truth from those who cannot see, or who are not chosen to see, depending on your opinion of predestination.
The Bible says God confounded people so they would not see the truth, in some cases.
But including things that point to an old earth in what is a young earth would not necessarily be lying.
For example, suppose we hypothesize that God did create the universe, and for whatever reason created it with vast dimensions, putting stars out millions of light-years away.
These stars would have no value, unless God also created the light waves from these stars, such that they were hitting the earth, the center of his creation. Those light waves could be used to “prove” millions of years have passed, as that’s how long the light would take to get here from those stars. But it’s not “lying” for God to have simply created those light waves.
Heck, God could create the light waves, and ignore the actual stars, since they would have little impact in the time period He was going to act.
Anyway, it is clearly a religious, not scientific, argument to suggest that God created something with apparent age.
On the other hand, we are told directly that God created Adam as a man, which means having apparent age. When Adam was a minute old, he looked like he was an adult, years into existence. So there is precedent for the hypothesis.
Yep. We weren’t there so we can only use science and make educated guesses. And that’s ok. It’s why consensus, in scientific opinion, is kinda dumb.
It took decades for plate tectonics (initially called continental drift) to gain first acceptance and then broad-based consensus. But there are still features that are difficult to describe with the tectonics model, such as the Rocky Mountains, which are far away from any plate boundaries. So good science keeps slogging away it it. I highly recommend the book Annals of the Former World by John McPhee, and especially the section Rising From the Plains, which initially was a stand-alone book.
Cupps did the basic flux irradiation calc to show the internal earth radiation theory is inadequate.
Hence the article.
I recommend a book called “The Biblical Flood and the Ice Epoch”. I’ll check out the one you recommended.
BTW, my translation of the big bang: “Let there be light.”
Though I am a Christian, I do not subscribe to the “young earth” concept, nor the “old earth” concept. The bible sez it took six days. Now all we need to do is figure out what the word for “days” really meant as God gave it to the author (since the dates significantly pre-date the author. i.e. nobody saw it. It is straight from God).
And I take the position I do because I don’t see Christianity and science overlapping. Science is about how God did it. Religion is about why God did it.
I dunno. I wasn’t there. ;-)
Though I do find interesting the discoveries, observations and hypotheses over the centuries from scientists - who also were not there. And all scientists live in the age of “most recent discoveries and hypotheses.” So I look at the scientific “consensus” of today with the same skepticism as I do the consensus of a century ago. We don’t “know” squat about this stuff other than what we can observe right now. All the rest is opinion. It may be educated opinion based on much research and discovery, but it is still opinion.
How old do you think you would have guessed Adam to be the day after he was created?
BTW, I believe gravity pushes.
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