By Eric Hovind| Beginner, Creation News Articles

Whenever the worldview of evolution is questioned, the topic of carbon dating always comes up. Here is how carbon dating works and the assumptions it is based upon.

How Carbon Dating Works

Radiation from the sun strikes the atmosphere of the earth all day long. This energy converts about 21 pounds of nitrogen into radioactive carbon 14. This radioactive carbon 14 slowly decays back into normal, stable nitrogen. Extensive laboratory testing has shown that about half of the C-14 molecules will decay in 5,730 years. This is called the half-life. After another 5,730 years half of the remaining C-14 will decay leaving only 1⁄4 of the original C-14. It goes from 1⁄2 to 1⁄4 to 1⁄8, etc. In theory it would never totally disappear, but after about 5 half-lives the difference is not measurable with any degree of accuracy. This is why most people say carbon dating is only good for objects less than 40,000 years old. Nothing on earth carbon dates in the millions of years, because the scope of carbon dating only extends a few thousand years. Willard Libby invented the carbon dating technique in the early 1950s. The amount of carbon 14 in the atmosphere today is about .0000765%. It is assumed there would be the same amount found in living plants or animals since the plants breath CO₂ and animals eat the plants.

Since sunlight causes the formation of C-14 in the atmosphere, and normal radioactive decay takes it out, there must be a point where the formation rate and the decay rate equalizes. This is called the point of equilibrium. To illustrate: If you were trying to fill a barrel with water but there were holes drilled up the side of the barrel, as you filled the barrel it would begin leaking out the holes. At some point you would be putting it in and it would be leaking out at the same rate. You will not be able to fill the barrel past this point of equilibrium. In the same way the C-14 is being formed and decaying simultaneously. A freshly created earth would require about 30,000 years for the amount of C-14 in the atmosphere to reach this point of equilibrium because it would leak out as it is being filled. Tests indicate that the earth has still not reached equilibrium. There is more C-14 in the atmosphere now than there was 40 years ago. This would prove the earth is not yet 30,000 years old! This also means that plants and animals that lived in the past had less C-14 in them than do plants and animals today. Just this one fact totally upsets data obtained by C-14 dating.

The carbon in the atmosphere normally combines with oxygen to make carbon dioxide (CO₂). Plants breathe CO₂ and make it part of their tissue. Animals eat the plants and make it part of their tissues. A very small percentage of the carbon plants take in is radioactive C-14. When a plant or animal dies, it stops taking in air and food so it should not be able to get any new C-14. The C-14 in the plant or animal will begin to decay back to normal nitrogen. The older an object is, the less carbon 14 it contains. One gram of carbon from living plant material causes a Geiger counter to click 16 times per minute as the C-14 decays. A sample that causes 8 clicks per minute would be 5,730 years old (the sample has gone through one half-life) and so on.

The Assumptions of Carbon Dating

Although this technique looks good at first, carbon-14 dating rests on at least two simple assumptions. These are, obviously, the assumption that the amount of carbon 14 in the atmosphere has always been constant and that its rate of decay has always been constant. Neither of these assumptions is provable or reasonable. An illustration may help: Imagine you found a candle burning in a room, and you wanted to determine how long it was burning before you found it. You could measure the present height of the candle (say, 7 inches) and the rate of burn (say, an inch per hour). In order to find the length of time since the candle was lit, we would be forced to make some assumptions. We would, obviously, have to assume that the candle has always burned at the same rate, and assume an initial height of the candle. The answer changes based on the assumptions. Similarly, scientists do not know that the carbon-14 decay rate has been constant. They do not know that the amount of carbon 14 in the atmosphere is constant. Present testing shows the amount of C-14 in the atmosphere has been increasing since it was first measured in the 1950s. This may be tied in to the declining strength of the magnetic field.

In addition to the above assumptions, dating methods are all subject to the geologic column date to verify their accuracy. If a date obtained by radiometric dating does not match the assumed age from the geologic column, the radiometric date will be rejected. The so-called geologic column was developed in the early 1800s over a century before there were any radio- metric dating methods. “Apart from very ‘modern’ examples, which are really archaeology, I can think of no cases of radioactive decay being used to date fossils.”¹ Laboratories will not carbon date dinosaur bones (even frozen ones which could easily be carbon dated) because dinosaurs are supposed to have lived 70 million years ago according to the fictitious geologic column. An object’s supposed place on the geologic column determines the method used to date it. There are about 7 or 8 radioactive elements that are used today to try to date objects. Each one has a different half-life and a different range of ages it is supposed to be used for. No dating method cited by evolutionists is unbiased.²

The Wild Dates of Carbon Dating

A few examples of wild dates by radiometric dating:

• Shells from living snails were carbon dated as being 27,000 years old. ³
• Living mollusk shells were dated up to 2,300 years old. ⁴
• A freshly killed seal was carbon dated as having died 1,300 years ago. ⁵
• “One part of the Vollosovitch mammoth carbon dated at 29,500 years and another part at 44,000.” ⁶
• “Structure, metamorphism, sedimentary reworking, and other complications have to be considered. Radiometric dating would not have been feasible if the geologic column had not been erected first.”⁷
• Material from layers where dinosaurs are found carbon dated at 34,000 years old.⁸

2 Peter 3:15 Yourself with these Resources

Thousands…Not Billions eBook by Dr. Don DeYoung

Evolution Handbook by Vance Ferrell

1. Ager, Derek V., “Fossil Frustrations,” New Scientist, vol. 100 (November 10, 1983), p. 425)
2. (Bones of Contention by Marvin Lubenow; Scientific Creationism by Henry Morris)
3. Science vol. 224, 1984, pp. ,code>58-61
4. Science vol. 141, 1963, pp. 634-637
5. Antarctic Journal vol. 6, Sept-Oct. 1971, p. 211
6. Troy L. Pewe, “Quaternary Stratigraphic Nomenclature in Uniglaciated Central Alaska,” Geologic Survey Professional Paper 862 (U.S. Gov. Printing Office, 1975) p. 30
7. E. O’Rourke, “Pragmatism vs. Materialism in Stratigraphy,” American Journal of Science, vol. 276 (January,1976), p. 54
8. Reginald Daly, Earth’s Most Challenging Mysteries, 1972, p. 280

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About the Author: Eric Hovind

Eric Hovind grew up immersed in the world of apologetics and following college graduation in 1999, he began full-time ministry. President and Founder of Pensacola-based organization, Creation Today, Eric’s passion to reach people with the life-changing message of the Gospel has driven him to speak in five foreign countries and all fifty states. He lives in Pensacola, Florida with his wife Tanya and three children and remains excited about the tremendous opportunity to lead an apologetics ministry in the war against evolution and humanism.

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Just how old is the Earth?

Here are fourteen natural phenomena which conflict with the evolutionary idea that the universe is billions of years old. There is not enough space here to give the full evidence for each… if truly interested just go to:                                                             where each is explained in detail.

________________________________________

Spiral galaxy NGC 1232 in constellation Eridanus (photo courtesy of European Southern Observatory).

Here are fourteen natural phenomena which conflict with the evolutionary idea that the universe is billions of years old. The numbers listed below in bold print (usually in the millions of years) are often maximum possible ages set by each process, not the actual ages. The numbers in italics are the ages required by evolutionary theory for each item. The point is that the maximum possible ages are always much less than the required evolutionary ages, while the Biblical age (6,000 years) always fits comfortably within the maximum possible ages. Thus, the following items are evidence against the evolutionary time scale and for the Biblical time scale. Much more young-world evidence exists, but I have chosen these items for brevity and simplicity. Some of the items on this list can be reconciled with the old-age view only by making a series of improbable and unproven assumptions; others can fit in only with a recent creation.

1. Galaxies wind themselves up

   too fast.

The stars of our own galaxy, the Milky Way, rotate about the galactic center with different speeds, the inner ones rotating faster than the outer ones. The observed rotation speeds are so fast that if our galaxy were more than a few hundred million years old, it would be a featureless disc of stars instead of its present spiral shape.

2. Too few supernova remnants.

Crab Nebula (photo courtesy of NASA)

According to astronomical observations, galaxies like our own experience about one supernova (a violently-exploding star) every 25 years. The gas and dust remnants from such explosions (like the Crab Nebula) expand outward rapidly and should remain visible for over a million years. Yet the nearby parts of our galaxy in which we could observe such gas and dust shells contain only about 200 supernova remnants. That number is consistent with only about 7,000 years worth of supernovas.4

3. Comets disintegrate too quickly.

According to evolutionary theory, comets are supposed to be the same age as the solar system, about five billion years. Yet each time a comet orbits close to the sun, it loses so much of its material that it could not survive much longer than about 100,000 years

4. Not enough mud on the sea floor.

Rivers and dust storms dump mud into the sea much faster than plate tectonic subduction can remove it.

Each year, water and winds erode about 20 billion tons of dirt and rock from the continents and deposit it in the ocean. deposited the present amount of sediment within a short time about 5,000 years ago.

5. Not enough sodium in the sea.

Every year, rivers and other sources dump over 450 million tons of sodium into the ocean. calculations that are as generous as possible to evolutionary scenarios still give a maximum age of only 62 million years. Calculations for many other seawater elements give much younger ages for the ocean.

6. The earth’s magnetic field is decaying too fast.

Electrical resistance in the earth’s core wears down the electrical current which produces the earth’s magnetic field. That causes the field to lose energy rapidly.

At that rate the field could not be more than 20,000 years old.20

7. Many strata are too tightly bent.

In many mountainous areas, strata thousands of feet thick are bent and folded into hairpin shapes. This implies that the folding occurred less than thousands of years after deposition.

8. Biological
   

   material decays too fast.

Natural radioactivity, mutations, and decay degrade DNA and other biological material rapidly. Measurements of the mutation rate of mitochondrial DNA recently forced researchers to revise the age of “mitochondrial Eve” from a theorized 200,000 years down to possibly as low as 6,000 years.

9. Fossil radioactivity shortens geologic “ages” to a few years.

Radio Halo

Radiohalos are rings of color formed around microscopic bits of radioactive minerals in rock crystals. They are fossil evidence of radioactive decay.26 “Squashed” Polonium-210 radiohalos indicate that Jurassic, Triassic, and Eocene formations in the Colorado plateau were deposited within months of one another, not hundreds of millions of years apart as required by the conventional time scale.27 “Orphan” Polonium-218 radiohalos, having no evidence of their mother elements, imply accelerated nuclear decay and very rapid formation of associated minerals.28,29

10. Too much helium in minerals.

Uranium and thorium generate helium atoms as they decay to lead. A study published in the Journal of Geophysical Research showed that such helium produced in zircon crystals in deep, hot Precambrian granitic rock has not had time to escape. Though the rocks contain 1.5 billion years worth of nuclear decay products, newly-measured rates of helium loss from zircon show that the helium has been leaking for only 6,000 (± 2000) years. This is not only evidence for the youth of the earth, but also for episodes of greatly accelerated decay rates of long half-life nuclei within thousands of years ago, compressing radioisotope timescales enormously.

11. Too much carbon 14 in deep geologic strata.

With their short 5,700-year half-life, no carbon 14 atoms should exist in any carbon older than 250,000 years. Yet it has proven impossible to find any natural source of carbon below Pleistocene (Ice Age) strata that does not contain significant amounts of carbon 14,

12. Not enough Stone Age skeletons.

Evolutionary anthropologists now say that Homo sapiens existed for at least 185,000 years before agriculture began,  many of the supposed eight billion stone age skeletons should still be around (and certainly the buried artifacts). Yet only a few thousand have been found. This implies that the Stone Age was much shorter than evolutionists think, perhaps only a few hundred years in many areas.

13. Agriculture is too recent.

The usual evolutionary picture has men existing as hunters and gatherers for 185,000 years during the Stone Age before discovering agriculture less than 10,000 years ago.35 Yet the archaeological evidence shows that Stone Age men were as intelligent as we are. It is very improbable that none of the eight billion people mentioned in item 12 should discover that plants grow from seeds. It is more likely that men were without agriculture for a very short time after the Flood, if at all.36

14. History is too short.

According to evolutionists, Stone Age Homo sapiens existed for 190,000 years before beginning to make written records about 4,000 to 5,000 years ago. Prehistoric man built megalithic monuments, made beautiful cave paintings, and kept records of lunar phases. Why would he wait two thousand centuries before using the same skills to record history? The Biblical time scale is much more likely.

Part 1

by Larry Vardiman, Ph.D., & D. Russell Humphreys, Ph.D.

Introduction

One of the issues that concern many people who wish to adopt young-earth creationism as a valid view of earth history is the question of how stars can be seen many millions of light years away if only a few thousand years have passed since they were created. Dr. Russell Humphreys, a previous researcher at ICR, spent years working on this problem and has developed a creationist cosmology that seems to resolve this question.

for the complete article click here