Carbon-14 Dating - Does it Work?

You have probably heard of Carbon-14 (or radiocarbon) dating, as it is one of the most widely used dating methods today. However, it has many serious flaws. I will try to summarize a few of them:

1. Radiocarbon dating cannot date old fossils. 

    Carbon-14 is a molecule that is found in every living thing on earth. In short, it is formed by the sun's rays striking Nitrogen in the atmosphere and turning it into Carbon-14. It is absorbed by plants from the atmosphere, and then absorbed by animals that eat those plants, and so on (as a side note, this means that Carbon-14 dating can only be used on things that were once living). It continues to build up in these living creatures as long as they are alive. As soon as they die, no more Carbon-14 is absorbed by the creature. What makes Carbon-14 useful is that it is radioactive, which means that it decays over time. This decay rate is measured in half-lives. A half-life is the amount of time it takes for a sample of radioactive material to lose half of its mass. Carbon-14 has a half-life of 5,730 years. This means that every 5,730 years, a given sample of Carbon-14 loses half of itself. How the dating method works, then, is that we can measure how much Carbon-14 is in a fossil now, and making an assumption of how much was in the specimen to start out with, we can easily calculate how old the fossil is. The problem is that after 8 to 10 half-lives, the amount of Carbon-14 in a object is practically nonexistent and cannot be measured with any accuracy whatsoever. Using 10 half-lives, to be generous, gives us a maximum measurable age of 57,300 years. Many fossils have been dated with this method and given dates of millions of years, because according to the evolutionary theory, many of these fossils need to be that old. But scientists cannot possibly come up with dates that old with this method. They are skewing the results. So never let anyone tell you that according to Carbon-14 dating, such-and-such fossil is any older than about 57,000 years old.

2. Assumptions. BIG assumptions.

    As I mentioned above, radiocarbon dating must make a few assumptions. When we have a fossil, the only thing we know about it is how much Carbon-14 it has in it now and how fast Carbon-14 decays now. We do NOT know how much it started out with, or whether Carbon-14 has always had the same decay rate. This is a major problem. Let me illustrate: Suppose I showed you a picture of a lit candle and only a lit candle. I ask you how long this candle has been burning. You can't give an answer, can you? Now suppose I tell you that this candle at this point in the picture is 5" tall. Now can you answer? Nope. Now suppose I tell you that is currently burning at the rate of 1" per hour. You still can't answer. You see, to know how long it has been burning, you have to know how tall it was to start out with, and how fast it has burned in the past. This is the same with Carbon-14 dating. We cannot know how much Carbon-14 the fossil started with. We can usually guess based on how much is in similar animals or plants today, but even that is a problem, as the amount of Carbon-14 in the atmosphere is constantly increasing. I will expound on this further in the next point.

3. Carbon-14 proves that the earth is young

   This is a very simple truth that is conveniently quieted by evolutionists. Carbon-14 in the atmosphere is constantly increasing. This means that there used to be... drum roll... LESS Carbon-14 in the atmosphere! Wow, right! Actually, knowing the current amount of Carbon-14 in the atmosphere and the rate at which it has been increasing (which IS known), we calculate that there would be NO (that's right, zero) Carbon-14 in the atmosphere about 30,000 years ago. Huh! That's interesting. Even if the earth started with no Carbon-14 in its atmosphere, it could not be older than 30,000 years. Also, this means that if we assume that something that has been dead for a long time started out with the same amount of Carbon-14 in it as a similar specimen now-a-days, we get a much older age for the fossil than it really is. 

I apologize if this was a little confusing (I tend to ramble a bit), but I hope you were able to get something out of it. If nothing else, just realize that Carbon-14 dating is flawed and its accuracy cannot be taken for granted.

By the way, I will try to make most of my posts shorter and less "scientific" than this one.