Carbon Dating is false!

[Elite Engineer]

This is what my born again Christian friend tries to explain to me everytime we talk about evolution. In the past I've held my ground quite firmly on this topic, but as of recently he has made some claims from some "scientific journals" that carbon dating may not be as accurate as thought, and that it is misleading. I have a hard time believing anything he really says about this, but my question comes down to this, how accurate is carbon dating and how sure are we it works?

[John Cuthber]

Carbon dating is pretty good and it can be checked.

When I was at primary school I learned that you could tell the age of a tree by counting the rings.

A slightly more refined version of that lets us verify carbon dating for something like 10,000 years.

That's far enough to prove the 6000 years Biblical account to be wrong.

[iNow]

Elite Engineer - Note that it's hard to use logic and reason to argue someone out of a position at which they arrived using neither. With that said, however...

 

http://ncse.com/cej/3/2/answers-to-creationist-attacks-carbon-14-dating

 

Answers to Creationist Attacks on Carbon-14 Dating

 

Radiocarbon dating can easily establish that humans have been on the earth for over twenty thousand years, at least twice as long as creationists are willing to allow. Therefore it should come as no surprise that creationists at the Institute for Creation Research (ICR) have been trying desperately to discredit this method for years. They have their work cut out for them, however, because radiocarbon (C-14) dating is one of the most reliable of all the radiometric dating methods.

 

This article will answer several of the most common creationist attacks on carbon-14 dating, using the question-answer format that has proved so useful to lecturers and debaters.

http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/dating.html

 

Radiometric Dating and the Geological Time Scale: Circular Reasoning or Reliable Tools?

 

This document discusses the way radiometric dating and stratigraphic principles are used to establish the conventional geological time scale. It is not about the theory behind radiometric dating methods, it is about their application, and it therefore assumes the reader has some familiarity with the technique already (refer to "Other Sources" for more information). As an example of how they are used, radiometric dates from geologically simple, fossiliferous Cretaceous rocks in western North America are compared to the geological time scale. To get to that point, there is also a historical discussion and description of non-radiometric dating methods.

 

The example used here contrasts sharply with the way conventional scientific dating methods are characterized by some critics (for example, refer to discussion in "Common Creationist Criticisms of Mainstream Dating Methods" in the Age of the Earth FAQ and Isochron Dating FAQ). A common form of criticism is to cite geologically complicated situations where the application of radiometric dating is very challenging. These are often characterised as the norm, rather than the exception. I thought it would be useful to present an example where the geology is simple, and unsurprisingly, the method does work well, to show the quality of data that would have to be invalidated before a major revision of the geologic time scale could be accepted by conventional scientists. Geochronologists do not claim that radiometric dating is foolproof (no scientific method is), but it does work reliably for most samples. It is these highly consistent and reliable samples, rather than the tricky ones, that have to be falsified for "young Earth" theories to have any scientific plausibility, not to mention the need to falsify huge amounts of evidence from other techniques.

Edited July 8, 2013 by iNow

[ewmon]

He engages in the same "cherry picking" that many so-called "expert" Christian scientists do — they almost never do their own research, but refer to scant, particular works by scientists to support their beliefs. And the Bible never actually makes a 6,000-year-old claim; it's really a guess.

[Enthalpy]

Accurate dating depends on the production rate on ¹⁴C in the atmosphere. Recent papers suggest this rate may have varied slightly in ancient times, but certainly not by many %. Anyway, dendrochronology, which is accurate to one year in many places on Earth, can recalibrate ¹⁴C dating.

 

Future archaeologists won't have this chance, because nuclear tests have injected man-made ¹⁴C and made the method unusable to date items past mid-20^th century.

[Essay]

This is what my born again Christian friend tries to explain to me everytime we talk about evolution. In the past I've held my ground quite firmly on this topic, but as of recently he has made some claims from some "scientific journals" that carbon dating may not be as accurate as thought, and that it is misleading. I have a hard time believing anything he really says about this, but my question comes down to this, how accurate is carbon dating and how sure are we it works?

For whatever reason...

God seems to have created this C-14 decay property, which allows us to look back into history; and He created all of the other properties of reality, which seem to confirm that picture of Deep Time, or add to it. Even if everything was created 6 millennia ago, it was created to look as if it is much older and that it evolved through a long process.

Don't you think God created it thusly, for a purpose? Don't you think there is a Grand Story out there, for which we have been granted the privilege of discovering and learning from; and from which we might more fully comprehend our domain and honor that purpose?

===

I'd like to hear your friend's reply to this perspective.

~

[John Cuthber]

The evidence shows that C14 dating works quite well. Of course that might be because God is lying to us.

If He is a liar then He might want to consider the morality of that decision.

Perhaps the OP's friend might want to explain why he worships a liar.

[hunnyjb]

Perhaps the OP's friend might want to explain why he worships a liar.

typical.

 

if you have a real comment you can contribute to the discussion here: link removed

 

 

if you don't feel like reading all that here's the bottom line on why the OPs friend has a valid stance on current dating methods.

 

"The one undeniable FACT with ALL radiometric dates is that they are all based on unprovable assumptions about the past."

[EdEarl]

typical.

 

if you have a real comment you can contribute to the discussion here: link removed

 

 

if you don't feel like reading all that here's the bottom line on why the OPs friend has a valid stance on current dating methods.

 

"The one undeniable FACT with ALL radiometric dates is that they are all based on unprovable assumptions about the past."

Radiometric dating is not based on any assumption about the past. It is based on physics, specifically about radioactivity, and radio active elements are used in nuclear reactors. If you deny the science of radioactivity, then you also deny nuclear reactors can produce electricity.

[John Cuthber]

typical.

if you have a real comment you can contribute to the discussion here: link removed

 

"The one undeniable FACT with ALL radiometric dates is that they are all based on unprovable assumptions about the past."

Yes, it is typical of me to point out that, if there's a God who deliberately misleads people by faking the carbon dating evidence then He's a liar and it is questionable practice to worship Him.

The problem with that statement is that it applies to a lot of things (It's equally true or false, whatever you apply it to) for example.

""The one undeniable FACT with ALL observations about butterflies is that they are all based on unprovable assumptions about the past.""

Obviously, that's true in so far as I can't tell you what the insect will do tomorrow, nor do I have proof about what they did in the past. I may have evidence, but that evidence may have been faked. The assumption is that nothing has changed and that butterflies today do the same as they did before.

Someone somewhere might have a vested interest in convincing the world that butterflies, for example, were born to a virgin and were martyred, but rose from the dead three days later.

 

If they got enough people together and bribed them to tell that story and if they tied it in to some other more plausible beliefs then they could possibly get at least some people to accept it.

Those people might spread that story too and they might write it down in a big book.

It may, in the end become quite widely believed.

But none of that would make it true.

 

On the other hand, I might say that butterflies came from caterpillars.

If people didn't believe me I could invite them to get some caterpillars and watch them.

 

That's the difference between the claims of carbon dating- anyone who wants to can verify the rate of decay of carbon, and they can,also look at other solar radiation products to check that "clock"

But it's clearly impossible for anyone to verify, for example, the Bible.

[iNow]

The funny thing to me is that the bible IS, in fact, verifiable. It's just that it's verifiably an anthology of fictions written by humans in the desert somewhere during the iron age, yet it's not treated as such.

 

Instead, people treat it as an infallible, practically magical and divinely scribed word handed down from on-high from an invisible cloud surfing sky pixie... a deity that acts like a dictator convicting us of thought crimes and who cares whether or not we masturbate... a being that both created this massively vast universe filled with billions and billions of galaxies themselves filled with billions and billions of stars... and yet this "being" somehow still has the anthropomorphic form of a human.

 

What blows me away is that these folks are perfectly willing to accept and believe such plainly obvious hokum and yet in the next breath reject incredibly well supported and evidence-based positions like evolution and carbon dating. ...'cause, yeah. That makes sense.

Edited July 20, 2013 by iNow

[swansont]

Perhaps the OP's friend might want to explain why he worships a liar.

!

Moderator Note

Despite the undercurrent of the OP, this is posted in a science subforum, so let's keep the religion out of it, and stop with religion-bashing.

 

typical.

 

"The one undeniable FACT with ALL radiometric dates is that they are all based on unprovable assumptions about the past."

!

Moderator Note

Again: science. Stop with the straw men. Science is inductive, no deductive, so tossing around "proof" like it means anything is disingenuous. We are here to discuss the science of radiometric dating; the context of why it is important to the OP is unimportant. If you have a beef with it, start up a thread in Speculations, where I'm sure several people will be happy to dismantle your argument.

 

The question being offered is this: how accurate is carbon dating and how sure are we it works? Everyone, confine your science-based answers to that question.