Many people are under the false impression that carbon dating proves that dinosaurs and other extinct animals lived millions of years ago. What many do not realize is that carbon dating is not used to date dinosaurs.
The reason? Carbon dating is only accurate back a few thousand years. So if scientists believe that a creature lived millions of years ago, then they would need to date it another way.
But there is the problem. They assume dinosaurs lived millions of years ago (instead of thousands of years ago like the bible says). They ignore evidence that does not fit their preconceived notion.
What would happen if a dinosaur bone were carbon dated? - At Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Scientists dated dinosaur bones using the Carbon dating method. The age they came back with was only a few thousand years old.
This date did not fit the preconceived notion that dinosaurs lived millions of years ago. So what did they do? They threw the results out. And kept their theory that dinosaurs lived "millions of years ago" instead.
This is common practice.
They then use potassium argon, or other methods, and date the fossils again.
They do this many times, using a different dating method each time. The results can be as much as 150 million years different from each other! - how’s that for an "exact" science?
They then pick the date they like best, based upon their preconceived notion of how old their theory says the fossil should be (based upon the Geologic column).
So they start with the assumption that dinosaurs lived millions of years ago, then manipulate the results until they agree with their conclusion.
Their assumptions dictate their conclusions.
So why is it that if the date doesn't fit the theory, they change the facts?
Unbiased science changes the theory to support the facts. They should not change the facts to fit the theory.
I have documentation of an Allosaurus bone that was sent to The University of Arizona to be carbon dated. The results were 9,890 +/- 60 years and 16,120 +/- 220 years.
"We didn't tell them that the bones they were dating were dinosaur bones. The result was sample B at 16,120 years. The Allosaurus dinosaur was supposed to be around 140,000,000 years. The samples of bone were blind samples."
This test was done on August 10, 1990
Comment from a reader:
"Of course carbon dating isn't going to work on your Allosaurus bone. That method is only accurate to 40,000 years. So I would expect to get some weird number like 16,000 years if you carbon date a millions of years old fossil. 16.000 years by the way is still 10,000 years before your God supposedly created the Earth."
Amy M 12/11/01
My response:
I explain the limits of Carbon dating below. One thing you might want to ask yourself though, is how do you know it is millions of years old, giving an "incorrect" date (one that you think is too young) or if it actually is only a few thousand years old.
As far as your comments that 16,000 years is older than when God created the earth, we know that there is more carbon in the atmosphere than there was a thousand years ago. So a date of 9,000 or 16,000 years is more likely to be less. Perhaps only 6,000 years old.
Carbon dating is a good dating tool for some things that we know the relative date of. Something that is 300 years old for example. But it is far from an exact Science. It is somewhat accurate back to a few thousand years, but carbon dating is not accurate past this. Thirty thousand years is about the limit. However, this does not mean that the earth is 30 thousand years old. It is much younger than that. (1)
Because of the earth’s declining magnetic field, more radiation (which forms C14) is allowed into the earth’s atmosphere.
Willard Libby (December 17, 1908 – September 8, 1980) and his colleagues discovered the technique of radiocarbon dating in 1949. Libbey knew that atmospheric carbon would reach equilibrium in 30,000 years. Because he assumed that the earth was millions of years old, he believed it was already at equilibrium. However each time they test it, they find more c14 in the atmosphere, and have realized that we are only 1/3 the way to equilibrium.
(1)
- What does this mean? It means that based on c14 formation, the earth has to be less than 1/3 of 30,000 years old. This would make the earth less than 10,000 years old! (1)
Carbon dating is based on the assumption that the amount of C14 in the atmosphere has always been the same. But there is more carbon in the atmosphere now than there was 4 thousand years ago. (1)
Since carbon dating measures the amount of carbon still in a fossil, then the date given is not accurate. Carbon dating makes an animal living 4 thousand years ago (when there was less atmospheric carbon) appear to have lived thousands of years before it actually did.
A great book on the flaws of dating methods is
"Radioisotopes and the age of the earth" (edited by Larry Vardiman, Andrew Snelling, Eugene F. Chaffin. Published by Institute for Creation Research; December 2000)
Dating methods are based on 3 unprovable and questionable assumptions:
1) That the rate of decay has been constant throughout time.
2). That the isotope abundances in the specimen dated have not been altered during its history by addition or removal of either parent or daughter isotopes
3) That when the rock first formed it contained a known amount of daughter material
("Radioisotopes and the age of the earth" pg v)
We must recognize that past processes may not be occurring at all today, and that some may have occurred at rates and intensities far different from similar processes today.
( "Radioisotopes and the age of the earth" pg vii)
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To know if carbon dating is accurate, we would have to know how much carbon was in the atmosphere in the beginning, and also how long it has been increasing, or decreasing. Since no one was there, no one knows for sure. It's like trying to figure out how long a candle has been burning, without knowing the rate at which it burns, or its original size. |
See my commentary on Genesis 3 verse 17 "..cursed is the ground for your sake"
When this happened there was a burst of radioactity that made the rocks appear older than they were.
Wouldn't this make all the rocks appear the same age?
"The rock question is fairly simple and has to do with the basic elements which made up these rocks in the beginning. When each of these elements, uranium, potassium, radium etc. were switched on, it would only be natural for them to behave according to their individual properties, eventually acquiring stable half-lives of decay, at different rates. Let's say initially every radioactive element was "exploded" into existence from pre-existent elements. None of these early faster half-lives would be the same as they are today.
As time progressed each would begin to acquire its slower modern-day stable half-life, but would they all acquire these stable rates in a uniformity which would keep them all in synchrony? I doubt it. If they did, all would give the same ages, you are right. Each would probably arrive at equilibrium at different times.
Look at biological breakdown everywhere, it proceeds at different rates. Look at the world from a devolutionary viewpoint and see how perfection has been lost and breakdown has proceeded in spurts and stasis periods. Some of us have lost more information than others, that's why some are at Harvard, but others, more unfortunate, [the same] age struggle with debilitating genetic degenerative diseases like Lupus, MS, ALS, Crohn's and many other autoimmune diseases. The keys of which are locked in the "vault of degeneration knowledge" that evolutionists are unwilling to open for fear that we creationists might be correct."
Jack Cuozzo 3/02
Carbon dating is frequently an embarrassment to Scientists.
Here are some Carbon 14 dates that were rejected because they did not agree with evolution
(If you do not see a chart below, then your web browser does not support tables - please email me for these dates)
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Living penguins have been carbon dated and the results said that they had died 8,000 years ago! This is just one of many inaccurate dates given by Carbon dating. |
| The shells of living mollusks have been dated using the carbon 14 method, only to find that the method gave it a date as having been dead for 23,000 years!(Science vol. 141 1963 pg. 634-637) | 
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| The body of a seal that had been dead for 30 years was carbon dated, and the results stated that the seal had died 4,600 years ago! ("The Illustrated Origins Answer Book" by Paul Taylor) | -- |
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What about a freshly killed seal? Well, they dated one of those too, the results stated that the seal had died 1,300 years ago. (Antarctic Journal vol. 6 Sept-Oct 1971 pg. 211)
Antarctic seawater has a low level of C14. Consequently organisms living there dated by C14 give ages much older than their true age. A lake Bonney seal known to have died only a few weeks before was carbon dated. The results stated that the seal had died between 515 and 715 years ago. (Antarctic Journal, Washington) |
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| Shells from living snails were dated using the Carbon 14 method. The results stated that the snails had died 27,000 years ago. (Science vol. 224 1984 pg. 58-61) |  |
There are many more examples that I will add later. But the ones above give you a general idea.
There are other methods of dating. They too, give varied results.
The potassium-argon method was used to date volcanic material in this next example.
| "Scientists got dates of 164 million and 3 billion years for two Hawaiian lava flows. But these lava flows happened only about 200 years ago in 1800 and 1801. ("Dry bones and other fossils" by Dr. Gary Parker) |
Image coming soon |
Volcanic ash has also been known to give dates much older than they actually were .
Lava flows at Mt Ngauruhoe, New Zealand gave erroneous dates (from K-Ar analyses) ranging from <0.27 to 3.5 (± 0.2) million years old. These rocks were "observed to have cooled from lavas 25-50 years ago".("Radioactive ‘dating’ failure: Recent New Zealand lava flows yield ‘ages’ of millions of years" by Andrew Snelling published in: Creation Ex Nihilo 22(1):18-21 December 1999 - February 2000)
The equipment was checked and the samples were run again to exclude the possibility of lab error but similar results were obtained.("Radioactive ‘dating’ failure: Recent New Zealand lava flows yield ‘ages’ of millions of years" by Andrew Snelling published in: Creation Ex Nihilo 22(1):18-21 December 1999 - February 2000)
Because the actual age of these rocks is known to be less than 50 years old, it is clear that these K-Ar ‘ages’ are due to ‘excess’ argon which was inherited from the magma source area deep in the earth.("Radioactive ‘dating’ failure: Recent New Zealand lava flows yield ‘ages’ of millions of years" by Andrew Snelling published in: Creation Ex Nihilo 22(1):18-21 December 1999 - February 2000)
See also the video: Mount St. Helens: Explosive Evidence for Catastrophe Dr. Steve Austin
The biggest problem with dating methods is the assumption that the rate of decay has remained constant. There is no way to prove it. In fact there is much evidence to show this rate has not remained constant, and that it is decaying quicker and quicker. Just what the bible, and a Devolution and degenerating model of the earth would predict.
Dinosaur Bones
Some tourists in The American Museum of Natural History were marveling at the dinosaur bones on display. One of them asked the guard, "Can you tell me how old the dinosaur bones are?"
The guard replied, "They are 65 million, four years, and six months old."
"That's an awfully exact number," says the tourist. "How do you know their age so precisely?"
The guard answered, "Well, the dinosaur bones were sixty five million years old when I started working here, and that was four and a half years ago."
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| Main Index | 
1) From a video Lecture by Dr. Kent Hovind
6)Antarctic Journal, Washington
10)"Dry bones and other fossils" by Dr. Gary Parker