Alright, my friends, I know this topic has nothing at all to do with writing or literature. However, it does have to do with the Christian life, specifically in the area of apologetics, but also in understanding this world God has created and defending our hearts against the tricks of the devil. There are those out there who believe that God set the gears in motion, so to speak, and then stepped back and let evolution begin. There are others who think that Creation did not take a literal seven days and that God somehow needed thousands of years to work. I would refute both. To do so is to try to conform Creation — and ultimately God — to the vague hypotheses and excuses of a non-Christian culture. Our God is omnipotent and unconfined by time, and is perfectly capable of speaking our brilliant, gorgeous, complicated world into existence. Furthermore, there are key flaws in this idea of theistic evolution — one of which is that evolution and the survival-of-the-fittest process requires death, something that didn’t exist before the Fall. This is a topic I feel very strongly about and one that interests me deeply. So, without further ado, let’s begin our discussion on the evolutionists’ favorite tool: carbon dating.
It is commonly known that scientists are in the practice of using radiometric dating, termed simply as carbon dating in some cases, to ‘establish’ the ages of rocks, bone, and archaeological finds. But just how accurate is it?
‘Radiometric’ is a term that encompasses several means of dating, including carbon dating, which is technically a subcategory. But it all stems from the same basic concepts. Every chemical element is made up of atoms, and every atom contains protons, neutrons, and electrons. The carbon atom contains six protons and six electrons, but its number of neutrons can range from six to eight. Therefore, it has three isotopes, carbon -12, -13, and -14. Carbon-14 is unstable, making it radioactive. Because its nucleus is too large, it ejects neutrons and protons to transform into a different, stable element, now called a daughter isotope. This entire process is known as ‘radioactive decay’ and was first observed by Ernest Rutherford. Carbon is present in every living being, and once that thing dies, the production of carbon ceases and it begins to decay. Carbon isn’t the only element that does this. Uranium, potassium, rubidium, and samarium also decay, and are also employed to date items, separating the methods of dating into varying groups based on the parent isotope. Radiocarbon dating specifically measures amounts of carbon, and uranium-lead dating measures the amount of uranium that has turned to lead. Carbon will decay into nitrogen, and scientists will measure the amount of both parent isotopes present in the sample (carbon) and the amount of daughter isotopes, in this case, nitrogen. Similarly, uranium, potassium, rubidium, and samarium isotopes will decay into lead, argon, strontium, and neodymium isotopes respectively, therefore placing these kinds of radioactive decay and their measurements into a different category than radiocarbon dating.
There is generally no dispute over the methods used to measure the amounts of parent isotopes and daughter isotopes in a sample, but rather, it is the analysis of those results that causes argument between Young-Earth Creationists and Evolutionists.
Evolutionists will determine the ‘age’ of a sample based on the number of parent isotopes and daughter isotopes, assigning dates to amounts using something known as ‘half-life.’ Half-life is, to be precise, the amount of time it will take for half of the carbon or other parent isotope present to decay into its daughter isotope. For example, the half-life amount assigned to carbon is roughly 5,700 years. It is worth mentioning here that this cannot be proven by observational science. The exact amount is disagreed upon even amongst evolutionists. They generally assume, however, that the time it takes the amount of parent isotopes to reduce by half is 5,700 years. The agreed-upon time of 5,700 years, however, ignores several factors and variables that impact the decay rate as well as makes several assumptions.
It is commonly accepted that the number of parent isotopes in a sample is unknown. Moreover, variables that impact decay rate are not taken into account. When half-life is measured, it is based on an average. However, radioactive decay is fickle. It can start at any period during the lifetime of an unstable atom, therefore causing some outliers that could seriously skew the average. It is also important to note that factors such as speed or strong gravitational forces can alter the half-life of an atom itself, a factor that is essential when dating things such as meteors.
Assumptions are also made about the daughter isotopes, including the exclusion of any contamination factors such as flowing groundwater that came into contact with the sample. Additionally, scientists assume that no daughter isotopes were present at all when the average half-life of the parent isotopes began, simply believing that the sample was made solely of parent isotopes. In fact, tests run on cooled lava from Mt. Saint Helens only ten years after its eruption showed this egregious flaw in the reasoning of scientists. According to the tests, the age of the lava was 350,000 years, due to high amounts of argon that had already existed when this new rock was formed. Similar tests in New Zealand yielded comparably faulty results. Tests were also conducted in the Grand Canyon, in the same layers of rock, and yet completely different results were taken from each sample. Usually, when evolutionists run tests with samples from a single layer of rock, those evolutionists will discard any analyses that do not fit within their preexisting theories on the age of that layer of rock. Therefore the assumptions run both ways. Any sample could either be older or younger than the assigned date. And these discrepancies aren’t only in rock. They have been found in organic material as well. In one case, a seal that had just been killed had was reported to have died 1300 years ago, and in another, living snail shells were estimated at 27,000 years old. A group of cowbows were killed in a cave-in in the 1950’s — and thirty years later, we excavated a boot with the fossilized leg of one of the cowboys still inside! Fossilization, in thirty years. Obvious flaws exist with both radiocarbon dating and other means used in the fields of geology and archaeology.
Another fact to keep in mind is that to become a scientific law, something must be proven by observation and testing. Yet, the half-life of a given element is seemingly agreed upon by scientists — without any actual observation or testing. As mentioned earlier, the results one gets when searching online or in books for the half-life of carbon are around 5,700 years. Since radiocarbon is one of the most prevalent methods for dating organic material, it is the method to be focused on the most. But how exactly do scientists know 5,700 years is the established half-life? The theories of radiometric dating have only been around for about a hundred years. It is impossible for scientists to have tested and observed the half-life of carbon. What scientists have done is measure the small amount of radioactive decay that happens in a creature that has just died. They measured the amount of decay that occurred in a specific amount of time in several different samples and averaged the results. These results were then extrapolated, which means to suppose that they continue on in this fashion in a constant manner, without changing or without outside forces acting upon it.
It may also be noted that it is exceedingly difficult to locate any source on radiometric dating among the material to be found on the web that actually explains the equations used to determine half-life. Most sources simply agree that 5,700 years, give or take a couple hundred, is the half-life of carbon. Likewise, in their equations, scientists always assume that the amount of carbon present in the sample was equal to that of the atmosphere — an assumption they admit is fallacious but necessary for the equation. Possibilities such as a different sort of atmosphere before the Flood are not considered in the least. Furthermore, it is automatically presupposed that 30,000 years have passed since the ‘beginning of the existence’ of Earth, enough time, according to these same erroneous equations, for the carbon-14 in the atmosphere to become stable, with equal amounts of it decaying and being created. William F. Libby, however, the man who came up with these equations, noticed that the amount of carbon-14 entering the atmosphere, before the Industrial Revolution disrupted carbon amounts, was 12% more than the amount decaying. This means that the atmosphere has in fact yet to reach stability, which in turn signifies that the ‘reaction,’ as it has been so dubbed, in reality the creation of Earth and the carbon in its atmosphere, could in fact be more recent than is believed.
This has impactful ramifications for the fields of biology, archeology, and geology. Methods that are commonly being referred to, with their results listed as fact, are indeed not as reliable as the public is led to believe. Some experiments have already been conducted, such as those on cooled lava from Mt. Saint Helens, while others have been performed on newly-killed animals. But further research and testing should be done, and the results published and made available, as well as an explanation of the equation used in the process. Scientists should also make further effort to think objectively when considering the age of the earth or other matter, for it is biases like these that have led many evolutionary scientists to overlook the assumptions and issues of the radiometric dating systems, especially carbon dating. Scientific law relies on repeatable, consistent, observable results, which the carbon dating system has simply failed to produce.
In conclusion, the radiometric dating systems, while varied, are all based off of the same assumptions and thus, identical problems exist with all of them. The assorted methods of radiometric dating are rarely disputed. However, a deeper examination reveals that these ‘hard and fast’ dating methods are not as accurate as they seem.
References
Baird. (2015, April 27). Can the decay half-life of a radioactive material be changed? Science Questions with Surprising Answers. https://www.wtamu.edu/~cbaird/sq/2015/04/27/can-the-decay-half-life-of-a-radioactive-material-be-changed/
Carbon-14 dating. (n.d.). https://www.chem.uwec.edu/chem115_f00/nelsolar/chem.htm
Curtis and Manov. (1951, April). The Half-Life of Carbon 14. NIST Technical Series Publications. https://nvlpubs.nist.gov/nistpubs/jres/46/jresv46n4p328_A1b.pdf
Drayer. (2017) How was the Half-Life of carbon 14 Determined? Socratic Q&A. https://socratic.org/questions/how-was-the-half-life-of-carbon-14-determined#:~:text=This%20is%20a%20very%20small,levels%20and%20the%20results%20averaged.&text=The%20samples%20were%20then%20measured,to%20find%20the%20half%20life
Hart. (2021, April 14) What is Radiometric Dating? CosmosMagazine.com https://cosmosmagazine.com/earth/earth-sciences/what-is-radiometric-dating/#:~:text=The%20basic%20logic%20behind%20radiometric,the%20age%20of%20the%20sample.
Snelling. (2009, June 17). Radiometric dating: Back to basics. Answers in Genesis. https://answersingenesis.org/geology/radiometric-dating/radiometric-dating-back-to-basics/
Street, F. (2021, February 12). Half life: The decay of knowledge and what to do about it. Farnam Street. https://fs.blog/half-life/
Swenson. (2001, June 1). Radio-dating in rubble. Answers in Genesis. https://answersingenesis.org/geology/radiometric-dating/radio-dating-in-rubble/
The Technical Details: Radioactive Decay. Global Monitoring Library. https://gml.noaa.gov/ccgg/isotopes/decay.html#:~:text=C%20has%20a%20half%2Dlife,a%20sample%20of%20organic%20material.
Wright. (2017, October 23). Accuracy vs. Precision: Understanding Potential Errors from Radiocarbon Dating on African Landscapes. https://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.1007/s10437-017-9257-z.pdf?pdf=button%20sticky
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