Carbon 14 Dating

You should know that carbon 14 dating is not an absolutely reliable test. The public has been greatly misled concerning the consistency of radiometric dating. It infers assumptions into the formula.

The following can affect C₁₄ levels:

✔ Fires

✔ Volcanic Eruptions

✔ Solar Flares

✔ Changes in the atmosphere

✔ Changes in the Earth’s magnetic field

The Flood which would have had major effects on the carbon ratio. This becomes increasingly significant the closer the sample’s true age is to the time of the Flood. This is because the Flood buried huge amounts of C¹² in vegetation, but the amount of C¹⁴ being produced would be unaffected. As a result, this would artificially increase the post-Flood C¹⁴/C¹² ratio compared to the pre-Flood times, thus giving an inflated age to any sample from the pre-Flood world. Current research is showing that before 3500 BC calibrated C₁₄ dating is not accurate. Therefore, age determination of an archaeological site may contain random and systematic errors which most often are difficult or impossible to estimate even in the case of C₁₄ dates.

It’s not the science that’s in question here, it’s the method. C₁₄ dating cannot provide absolute dates for chronology. Think about it. An immense number of plants and animals died at the time of the Flood, as recorded in Genesis 6-9. It has been estimated that water pressure alone was equal to "2 tons per square inch", sufficient to fossilize fauna and flora quickly. Due to the drastic changes at the time of the immense catastrophe of the Flood, there is reason to believe that dramatic changes were occurring in the carbon-14 content of the atmosphere. In addition, massive amounts of carbon were buried then. Immense worldwide forests became fossils or coal, and millions of animals became fossils or petroleum. In the book, The Genesis Flood, (Morris, 1961) quotes Dr. Gilbert Plass of Johns Hopkins University who is considered the authority on the subject:

“There is some interesting evidence which suggests that the carbon dioxide content of the atmosphere was once much larger than the present…” He goes on to say, “Higher temperatures than today during most of the earth’s history would have resulted from this higher carbon dioxide content. In fact, the geological evidence shows that warmer climates than today have existed for at least nine-tenths of the time since the Cambrian period.”

A world carbon inventory by W.A. Reiners reveals that the total amount of carbon in the world today is less than 1/500th of the total amount that is locked into fossil plants and animals within sedimentary rock strata. If that same world inventory of carbon 14 that Reiners speaks of were distributed in that pre-Flood biosphere as living plants and animals, the level of C-14 activity back then would have been as high as 500 times as much as exists now. This alone would account for nine C-14 half-lives, or 51,000 years of the radiocarbon timescale. Conversely, another figure calculates the partial pressure of CO₂ when the Ordovician strata were being laid down was at least 16 times greater than today (Humphreys, 1994).

In his book, Evolution or Degeneration (Siegler, 1972), H.R. Siegler mentions that Willard F. Libby, the developer of radio-dating, found a serious discrepancy in history that indicated his assumed build-up of terrestrial radiocarbon was inaccurate. But, since he was convinced that the earth was millions of years old, he went ahead with his date assumptions. Siegler suggests that a relatively recent Creation (plus, I might add, the catastrophic effects of the Flood) would account for the discrepancy. Keep in mind that, before the Flood, a crystalline canopy was in our atmosphere, which would tend to shield the earth from radiocarbon buildup. Physical evidence indicates that our Earth’s Magnetic Field (EMF) was ten times as powerful in the past. This is the problem: Prior to 1600 B.C., radio-dating tends to go wild. Something happened back then that threw the clock off. Scientists recognize that the problem was a global flood and the abnormal conditions that existed for centuries after it ended. Having lost the recharging mechanism at the time of the Flood, our EMF is now left to natural decay.

In 1970, R. Whitelaw, of Virginia Polytechnic Institute, went through the research literature on radiocarbon dating and carefully compiled 25,000 C-14 dates up to that year. The specimens were of people, animals, and vegetation obtained from above and below sea level. Whitelaw then applied certain principles to help avoid disparity problems between radiocarbon production and disintegration. The result shows a gradual increase in deaths from 5000 B.C. onward. The deaths peaked at 4000 years ago (2000 B.C.). Although the Flood took place in a much smaller period of time, errors in radiocarbon dating would be responsible for the 2000-year spread in the largest number of deaths. But the basic facts are there- a massive loss of life occurred at that time. Robert Whitelaw found that 15,000 C-14 dates placed it at 2500 B.C.

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FINAL THOUGHTS

Prior to the time of the Flood; there was a much greater amount of water in the air. Cosmic rays neutrons, electrons, protons etc., enter our atmosphere continually. These are atomic particles traveling at speeds close to the speed of light. Some of these rays go several hundred feet underground and up to 1,530 yards into the ocean depths. The blanket of air covering our world is equivalent to 34 feet of water. If at some earlier time this blanket of air was more heavily water-saturated, it would produce a major change from the present rate in the atomic clocks within radioactive minerals. That means higher CO2 content forms within the atmosphere. Therefore, the pre-flood effects of much higher biomass on life in the pre-flood world would suggest that there would be an increase in CO₂ in the Earth’s atmosphere due to a stronger magnetic field. This would at least double the atmospheric pressure to 28 psi (today its 14.5 psi) assimilating more CO₂ into organic life (Baugh, 2019). Consequently, C-14 dates would incorrectly assume that more carbon had decayed out of a specimen or organic material than the true rate of decay. This would result in much older dates; not an absolute, true age.

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Endnotes

Baugh, Carl. (2019). Crystalline Canopy, Creation Evidence Museum.

Brown, Walt. (1980). In the Beginning. Phoenix: Center for Scientific Creation.

Humphreys, D. R. (1994). Starlight and Time. Green Forest: Master Books. pg.63.

Morris, Henry. (1961). The Genesis Flood. Phillipsburg: P&R. pp. 310-311

Peterson, Dennis. (2002). Unlocking the Mysteries of Creation. Alachua: Bridge-Logos Publishers.

Siegler, H. R. (1972). Evolution or Degeneration. pp. 80-81.