Peter 3:15 "...be ready always to give an answer to every man that asketh you a reason of the hope that is in you..." and I agree with him, we should be ready to give an answer to any man who asks us. In the creation/evolution topic on a social occasion, I sometimes meet those people who will try to defend evolution, and one of the common phrases I hear after I ask them for their evidence is: "Carbon Dating proves evolution." This is a common illusion people have with carbon dating, and I will try to cover each point in this as best I can.

Carbon Dating was invented in the 1950's by a man named Willard F Libby. In 1960, he ended up winning the Nobel Prize for Chemistry, largely due to his Radio-Carbon dating method.

--Here's a basic rundown of how carbon dating is supposed to work:

Our Earth's atmosphere is made up of 78% Nitrogen, 21% Oxygen, (approx.) .06% Carbon Dioxide, and the remainder is mixed random gases. There are some very small traces of Carbon 14 (C14) which is a radioactive isatope (if you don't understand what that means, don't worry about it, it won't matter for this blog topic).

C14 is produced from the radioactive energy from the sun's rays striking nitrogen in our atmosphere. Carbon and Nitrogen are right next to each other on the periodic table of elements. Carbon has an atomic number of 12, and Nitrogen has 14. That's why it's labeled C14. When Nitrogen is radiated by the sun, it becomes Carbon 14, and then slowly breaks apart and decays back into normal nitrogen again.
http://www.elementsdatabase.com/Images/periodic_table.gif

The decay of Carbon 14 and other radioactive material is described in half-life. Carbon 14, for example, has a half-life of about 5,730 years on average. That means that half of the radioactivity in the C14 will decay in that amount of time. Then half of the remaining radioactivity will decay in another 5,730 years and so on. So, in theory, it never goes to zero.
http://www.creation-science-prophecy.com/C14life.gif

Plants breathe in CO2, and they also will take in very small traces of C14. Animals eat the plants, and make it part of their body. So if you eat plants, or you eat animals that eat plants, you will have very tiny traces of C14 in your body as well. These small traces can be detected with a Geiger Counter. These devices have been in movies dealing with radioactive material where you can hear the clicks (or for those hardcore old school gamers, Fallout :) The theory goes that if you test a rock or fossil for C14, and it only has about half the amount in the atmosphere (.00003825%), then that rock or fossil has been dead for about 5,730 years, and so on.
http://www.metacafe.com/watch/799002/drsb_88_geiger_counter_on_betafite_...

**Assumption #1: Carbon 14 in plants, animals, and people is the same as Carbon 14 in the atmosphere.

This has never been proven, and it wouldn't be possible to test and prove that for all life on earth. The atmosphere, on average, contains about .0000765% C14. This is an EXTREMELY small amount. But how do we know that amount exist in all places at all times, throughout history? There is absolutely no way we have at our disposal to test the history of C14 in our atmosphere.
Suppose you walked into a room and a candle is burning on a table. I ask you to tell me when the candle was lit. What empirical science can we do to test it? We could measure the length of the candle. We get a ruler and measure it to exactly 6 inches. When was it lit?
Let's measure the rate of burn. We get a stop watch and find out that it's burning exactly 1 inch per hour. When was it lit?
You cannot figure out when that candle was lit UNLESS you make some major assumptions. You have to assume how tall the candle was before it was lit, and you have to assume that it's always burned at the same rate.

**Assumption #2: The C14 in the atmosphere today is the same as it's always been.

We simply don't know that. Just as the candle example explained, there's no way to find out if it's always burned at the same rate without first making assumptions. That's basic common sense, and there's no way we know of at this time to be able to test or determine such a thing. You would have to assume it, and that's not science.

Science: Knowledge derived from observation and experimentation.

Even if you gave carbon dating all the huge benefits of the doubt, from a Creationist's perspective, you would get totally inaccurate numbers. If there was a canopy of water or ice (firmament-Gen,1:6-Gen,1:20) above our atmosphere up until the flood, that would have blocked the UV radiation from entering our atmosphere and creating C14. If a creature died after the flood, they would not have had very much C14 in their body since there wasn't any in the atmosphere to begin with. So where the evolutionist is assuming that their body would start at 16 clicks per min on a geiger counter, when the creature died, it only had enough C14 in its body for 2 clicks per min. That would make their tests show the creature to be MUCH older than it actually is, because they're assuming that the atmosphere has always been the same.

I can't prove that, but it is a thought passed up by the evolutionist because they're trying to make evidence fit their theory.

**Assumption #3: The Earth's atmosphere has reached equalibrium.

Let's say you turn on the faucet to your bathtub. You set a steady rate of flow of water filling up the bathtub. I come in and drill some holes in the side of the bathtub, vertically, from top to bottom. As the water begins to fill up, a small amount will leak out the side of the first hole on the bathtub. As it fills higher, more water will leak out each hole. Eventually, you'll have the water leaking out equal to the water coming in, and the water will stop rising in the bathtub. This is called equalibrium. The water level will not change unless you speed up the intake or decrease the outgo. C14 in the atmosphere works the same way. It is continually being made by the sun's rays striking nitrogen, and continually decaying from half-life. Eventually the C14 in the atmosphere would reach equalibrium.

Willard Libby did some research on this, and came to some conclusions. He calculated that if you were to instantaneously create a new earth and get it spinning around the sun, it would take approximately 30,000 years for the earth to reach equalibrium in the atmosphere.

**Assumption #4: The earth is millions of years old, therefore we can ignore the equalibrium.

The problem is that there is more C14 in our atmosphere today than there was 20 years ago, and it's increasing by an average rate of 27-38%. Since it has not reached equalibrium, that's a good indication that the earth is LESS than 30,000 years old.

When testing for C14 using a Geiger Counter, if the fossil has a fresh amount of C14 (.0000765%) then you should get about 16 clicks per minute. If you get 8 clicks per minute, then the fossil would be about 5,730 years old (.00003825%). With 4 clicks, you would get about 11,460 years old (.000019125), and so on. After 1 click per minute, it's fairly difficult to measure anything, let alone adding in all the other assumptions to the mix. Even giving it the benefit of the doubt, I would doubt you could measure anything beyond 30,000-40,000 years max.

That is a more simplistic overview of how it works. Some newer methods of testing carbon can be fairly accurate down to the atom (as far as I've heard), and I wouldn't question scientists ability to do so. However, they're still assuming how much was in the atmosphere at the time of death, and assuming how much was in the creature at the time of death. There simply isn't a known way to test those things.

**Assumption #5: Therefore, Carbon Dating proves the earth is millions of years old.

At this point, it's almost laughable. How are the fossils really dated? The geologic column. It is the bible for the evolutionist.
"Radiometric dating would not have been feasible if the geologic column had not been erected first."
-- J. E. O'Rouke, American Journal of Science, Vol 276, p 54

If you were to ask a geological evolutionist how they can tell the age of a fossil, they'll say that they date the fossil by what rock layer they find it in. If you ask them how they know how old the rock layer is... they'll tell you that it's based on what kind of fossils they find in them. This is called circular reasoning. They date the fossils by the rocks and the rocks by the fossils.

"Apart from very 'modern' examples, which are really archeology, I can think of no cases of radioactive decay being used to date fossils."
-- Derek V. Ager, New Science, Vol 100, p 425

http://webzoom.freewebs.com/aedgeworth/geologic%20column.jpg
The geologic column, if it were true, would be about 100 miles thick. So far as we know, the only places on planet earth it exists: In museums and public school text books. Evolutionists won't like me saying that because they'll claim they DO exist on earth. However, all they have found is a few places on earth where the fossils line up like they wanted them to, but that's EXTREMELY rare, and they don't find it to the proper depth the geologic column would suggest. If evolution were true, we should be able to find this geologic column in all places on the planet, but we don't. The geologic column was actually made up from imagination in the early 1800s by Charles Lyell, but that would be a story for another article.

"If a C-14 date supports our theories, we put it in the main text. If it does not entirely contradict them, we put it in a foot note. And if it's completely 'out of date', we just drop it."
--T Save-Soderbergh and I. U. Olsson, C-14 Dating and Egyptian chonology in Radiocarbon Variations and Absolute Chronology, Proceedings of the Twelfth Nobel Symposium, New York, 1970

"A geologist at Berkeley Geochronology Center, [Carl] Swisher uses the most advanced techniques to date human fossils. Last spring, he was re-evalutating homo erectus skulls found in Java in the 1930s by testing them with the sediment found with them... erectus was thought to have vanished almost 250,000 years ago. But even though he used two different dating methods, Swisher kept making the same startling find: the bones were 53,000 years old at most and possibly no more than 27,000 years..."
-- Leslie Kaufman, Did a Third Human Species Live Among Us?, Newsweek, Dec 23, 1996, p 52

27,000 to 53,000 years? That's a 96% error. And they call this science? If a calculator gave you a 96% error margin, would you use it? If it gave you a 1% error margin... would you use it? What about a ruler? If a ruler had a 96% error margin, would you still use it? What you just measured may be 12 inches... give or take 11.8 inches.

As a final thought, there was only one article I read long ago (unfortunately, I don't have it anymore), where an evolutionist attempted to debunk this "30,000 year problem". He claimed that the earth's atmosphere was fluctuating based on the earth's magnetic fluctuation from the sun. He said that it will rise and fall, but the average comes out the same.

If you've been following along, you probably already deducted that he's ASSUMING that it comes out to an average. How would he or anyone else know that? Folks, if that's the case, it would mean the C14 in the atmosphere is never stable. You've lost your constant for a measuring tool, and now carbon dating is broken. All he did was prove that their methods do NOT work. Imagine using a ruler, but every inch on the ruler was a different length. How could you measure anything accurately? An inch has to be a constant value, or you can't accurately measure with it. This goes for all types of measuring. The assumptions of an average is what's throwing out wild numbers in their testing.

All he did was prove that this method is not realiable. So this means one of two things: Either A) If the C14 is not fluctuating, that proves the earth is less than 30,000 years old, or B) the C14 is fluctuating and carbon dating is completely inaccurate.

Either way, carbon dating is useless and does not prove evolution in any way, shape, or form. I'll leave you with one last quote you can put in an office humor calander:

"In the last two years, an absolute date has been obtained for (the Ngandong Beds, above the Trinil Beds), and it has the very interesting value of 300,000 years, plus or minus 300,000 years."
-- J. B. Birdsell, Human Evolution (Chicago: Rand McNally 1975), p 295

They're trying to make their findings fit the theory. That's not how science is supposed to work. That's why the evolution theory been around for 150 years and it's still as dead as the day it was born. They believe it only because the only alternative is Creation, and that can't possibly be considered an option.

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