the earth

[Dark Virtue]

Regarding the seal thing, let's look at a little thing called the FACTS:

And please, READ them...

C-14 testing of a Lake Bonney seal estimated its age as 615 years ± 100. Yet, it had been killed only a few weeks previous to the measurement. A recently killed seal at McMurdo Sound gave an age of 1,300 years. C-14 results are totally unreliable.

This is caused by the well known "reservoir effect." These particular seals fed "...off of animals that live in a nutrient-rich upwelling zone. The water that is upwelling has been traveling along the bottom [of the ocean] for a few thousand years before surfacing. The carbon dioxide in it came from the atmosphere before the water sank...Thus the carbon in the sea water is a couple of thousand years "old" from when it was in the atmosphere." Its C-14 would have decayed significantly. The plants picked up this "old" carbon; animals eat the plants and pick up "old" carbon; the seals eat the animals and incorporate this "old" carbon in themselves. The seal is killed. The sample taken for C-14 measurement contains partly "old" carbon and partly recent carbon. The instrument reads an apparent year that the seal died, which is older than the actual year.

Let's not stop there though, let's look at a few more:

A sample of oil, which evolutionists believe was derived from plants that were living millions of years ago, was C-14 tested and found to be only 50,000 old. C-14 results are totally unreliable.

Fifty millennia is at the absolute limit of the capacity of the C-14 test. The difference in C-14 content between two carbon-containing samples -- one of which is 50 millennia old and the other is many millions of years old -- is minimal. The sample of oil did indeed come from plants that were alive millions of years ago. By now, essentially all of the C-14 atoms would have decayed so that none could be detected. However, very small amount of contamination could generate an apparent age of 50,000 years for the sample. Oil is typically "found within a matrix of sand or shale." The rocks will have some radioactivity which could have created new C-14, contaminated the sample, and produced the results indicated.

Shells of just-killed snails from Nevada were C-14 tested and found to be 27,000 years old. Again, C-14 results cannot be trusted.

This is another example of the reservoir effect. These particular snails lived in artesian springs which were "fed by carbonate aquifers. As this water percolated through the enclosing carbonates, it dissolved limestone and dolomite hundreds of millions of years old." 9 Essentially all of its C-14 had decayed; there would be little left. Again, the "old" carbon dissolved into the water, and was picked up by the snails when they made their shells. The shells were thus deficient in C-14 and appeared to be millennia old. "The problem caused by the reservoir effect is well known by archaeologists, geologists, and anybody else, who use radiocarbon dates; they test for it and take it into account when interpreting radiocarbon data."

Fossilized wood from the Hawkesbury Sandstone in Australia, believed to have been hundreds of millions of years old, was dated by C-14 as 33,720 ± 430 years BP.

One wonders why a sample which most geologists would date to the middle Triassic (225 to 230 millions of years ago) would be tested using C-14. At that age, any C-14 that the wood originally had would have decayed to unmeasurable levels millions of years ago. This particular sample was porous. It would probably have absorbed groundwater containing modern carbon. This slight degree of contamination could have provided sufficient C-14 to give a 33 millennia age. Alternatively, there could have been radioactivity in the surrounding rocks which created some C-14 in the sample.

How about a few more?

ChristianAnswers.net states: "Outside the range of recorded history, calibration of the 14C clock is not possible."

This was true back in the 1950s. A team of researchers, headed by Willard F. Libby calibrated the C-14 measuring technique by comparing the measured age of samples from ancient Egypt with their known date. For example, they tested a piece of wood from Pharaoh Zoser's tomb with the known tomb date, which was known to be circa 2700 to 2600 BCE. The agreement was excellent. Since then, extended calibration checks have been made using U.S. bristlecone pine, German and Irish oak, and other species of trees. That work pushed the calibration back well beyond recorded history to 10,000 BP (years before the present.) Other correlations have extended that to 26,000 years BP. It may eventually go back as far as 45,000 years. 6

The Earth's magnetic field has been decreasing. This will increase the level of cosmic rays in the upper atmosphere, generate more C-14, and upset the C-14 dating process.

The earths magnetic field is cyclical in nature. Any affect on the C-14 dating method is corrected by the calibration procedure.

The flood of Noah, as described in Genesis, Chapter 6 to 8, would have upset the carbon balance on earth by burying large amounts of carbon containing plants which became coal, and gas. This would lower the total C-12 in the atmosphere at that time and upset the C-14 dating process.

The Genesis flood is described in Genesis as occurring circa 2349 BCE. Samples from before, during and after the flood whose dates are known through archaeology have been C-14 tested without any difficulty. Either the worldwide flood of Noah did not happen, or it did not create any significant disturbance in the C-12/C-14 balance at the time.

Volcanoes emit a great deal of carbon dioxide which contains very little C-14. Since a massive degree of volcanism occurred during the the flood of Noah, objects which died shortly after the flood would give inaccurate C-14 dating results.

Again, C-14 dating results on objects before, during and after the flood were found to be accurate when the data was compared with dates derived from archaeological evidence. If there was a great deal of volcanism in the 23rd century BCE, it does not show up in the C-14 data.

Radiocarbon dating laboratories often ask what is the expected age of the samples submitted to them. If C-14 dating is really precise, such information would not be needed. ChristianAnswers.net comments: "Presumably, the laboratories know that anomalous dates are common, so they need some check on whether they have obtained a "good" date."

Lab personnel often ask for the approximate age of a specimen in advance of testing, so they can tune their instruments in order to increase the accuracy of the results. They do not ask in order to "cook" the results.

You can find this list, along with the references, at: http://www.religioustolerance.org/c14datc.htm

 

[DarthDapor]

This all goes back to the concept you fail to grasp. Its called faith.

 

[ChickenSoup]

Science can never explain Leprechauns either. Care to guess why?

Because, obviously, they are mind-bendingly hard to CATCH! I thought everyone knew that?

Please cite your source: name of the book, etc. If you want to play hardball, let's do it the right way.

The Truth for Youth Bible, pages 42-49.

Again, I need you to define and explain what you consider bias to be.

And please, stop using the term "evolutionists". It makes you sound like a conspiracy theorist.

A: Ok, since I am a Christian, I tend to read Christian texts more. Clear enough?
B: Then what am I supposed to say? Spontaneous Generationist?

 

[Deamiter]

Gosh, it always drives me nuts when people date sea creatures using C14 techniques! Every C14 dating lab in the world states that C14 dating is accurate only on plants that get their C14 from the air or on animals that get their C14 from plants that get the C14 from air.

Quite simply, the oceans mix VERY slowly and unpredictably. There are extreme differences between C14 to C12 ratios in different areas due to different currents, upwellings etc...

So the real question should be... why would ANYBODY use the dating of sea creatures to "disprove" a method that can only be used for plants and animals that get C14 from the atmosphere?