Carbon Dating & Evolution

[tmaromine]

I searched here, but didn't find any specific thread about carbon dating.

Is C14 the only way we try to discover ages of things in history for things before recorded history or 50,000 years ago ?

What validity does the below have ? (A friend messaged it to me, so I don't have a source...)

Fossils.The story we have all heard from movies, television, newspapers, and most magazines and textbooks is that dinosaurs lived millions of years ago. According to evolutionists, the dinosaurs ‘ruled the Earth’ for 140 million years, dying out about 65 million years ago. However, scientists do not dig up anything labeled with those ages. They only uncover dead dinosaurs (i.e., their bones), and their bones do not have labels attached telling how old they are. The idea of millions of years of evolution is just the evolutionists’ story about the past. No scientist was there to see the dinosaurs live through this supposed dinosaur age. In fact, there is no proof whatsoever that the world and its fossil layers are millions of years old. No scientist observed dinosaurs die. Scientists only find the bones in the here and now, and because many of them are evolutionists, they try to fit the story of the dinosaurs into their view.
Carbon has unique properties that are essential for life on earth. Familiar to us as the black substance in charred wood, as diamonds, and the graphite in ‘lead’ pencils, carbon comes in several forms, or isotopes. One rare form has atoms that are 14 times as heavy as hydrogen atoms: carbon-14, or 14C, or radiocarbon.

Carbon-14 is made when cosmic rays knock neutrons out of atomic nuclei in the upper atmosphere. These displaced neutrons, now moving fast, hit ordinary nitrogen (14N) at lower altitudes, converting it into 14C. Unlike common carbon (12C), 14C is unstable and slowly decays, changing it back to nitrogen and releasing energy. This instability makes it radioactive.

Ordinary carbon (12C) is found in the carbon dioxide (CO2) in the air, which is taken up by plants, which in turn are eaten by animals. So a bone, or a leaf or a tree, or even a piece of wooden furniture, contains carbon. When the 14C has been formed, like ordinary carbon (12C), it combines with oxygen to give carbon dioxide (14CO2), and so it also gets cycled through the cells of plants and animals.

We can take a sample of air, count how many 12C atoms there are for every 14C atom, and calculate the 14C/12C ratio. Because 14C is so well mixed up with 12C, we expect to find that this ratio is the same if we sample a leaf from a tree, or a part of your body.

In living things, although 14C atoms are constantly changing back to 14N, they are still exchanging carbon with their surroundings, so the mixture remains about the same as in the atmosphere. However, as soon as a plant or animal dies, the 14C atoms which decay are no longer replaced, so the amount of 14C in that once-living thing decreases as time goes on. In other words, the 14C/12C ratio gets smaller. So, we have a ‘clock’ which starts ticking the moment something dies.

Obviously, this works only for things which were once living. It cannot be used to date volcanic rocks, for example.

The rate of decay of 14C is such that half of an amount will convert back to 14N in 5,730 years (plus or minus 40 years). This is the ‘half-life.’ So, in two half-lives, or 11,460 years, only one-quarter will be left. Thus, if the amount of 14C relative to 12C in a sample is one-quarter of that in living organisms at present, then it has a theoretical age of 11,460 years. Anything over about 50,000 years old, should theoretically have no detectable 14C left. That is why radiocarbon dating cannot give millions of years. In fact, if a sample contains 14C, it is good evidence that it is not millions of years old.

However, things are not quite so simple. First, plants discriminate against carbon dioxide containing 14C. That is, they take up less than would be expected and so they test older than they really are. Furthermore, different types of plants discriminate differently. This also has to be corrected for.2

Second, the ratio of 14C/12C in the atmosphere has not been constant—for example, it was higher before the industrial era when the massive burning of fossil fuels released a lot of carbon dioxide that was depleted in 14C. This would make things which died at that time appear older in terms of carbon dating. Then there was a rise in 14CO2 with the advent of atmospheric testing of atomic bombs in the 1950s.3 This would make things carbon-dated from that time appear younger than their true age.

Measurement of 14C in historically dated objects (e.g., seeds in the graves of historically dated tombs) enables the level of 14C in the atmosphere at that time to be estimated, and so partial calibration of the ‘clock’ is possible. Accordingly, carbon dating carefully applied to items from historical times can be useful. However, even with such historical calibration, archaeologists do not regard 14C dates as absolute because of frequent anomalies. They rely more on dating methods that link into historical records.

Outside the range of recorded history, calibration of the 14C clock is not possible.

[freeztar]

The quoted text is correct in regards to the limits of C-14 dating. What the quoted text fails to address is the many other methods used by Paleontologists to determine age, dating back further than 60,000 years.

Have a look here:Dinosaur Fossil Dating - Enchanted Learning Software
and here:Paleontology (Dinosaurs): Dating Methods

[tmaromine]

I imagined there would have been more than only carbon... Thanks freeztar.

[Eclogite]

Originally Posted by tmaromine

What validity does the below have ?

Freezstar has dealt with your principal question. However, the quotation you provided contains a number of misunderstandings, or misleading interpretations. I'll point out a couple of them.

No scientist was there to see the dinosaurs live through this supposed dinosaur age.

This is a common (and arguably deceitful) device used by creationists to attack evolution. No scientist has ever been in the mantle of the Earth, yet we are reasonably, even very, confident we know its composition. No scientist has been closer than 93 million miles to the sun, yet we are confident we know its composition and how its nuclear furnace operates. A scientist does not have to be present when an event occurs to know that it occured. A scientist cannot actually see a protein, but that does not prevent her from establishing its composition and shape.
Now these examples are ones where the obscuring factor is distance or scale, but time is not qualitatively different from these in this context.

In fact, there is no proof whatsoever that the world and its fossil layers are millions of years old.

There is abundant proof. The problem for the creationists is that they fail to understand the nature of the scientific method. (For some this misunderstanding is deliberate, for others it is genuine ignorance.) In science all findings are provisional. We can never prove something in the sense that proof is used by the general public. A single contrary fact can cause a hypothesis or theory to be overturned in an instant. For a scientist, proof is the accumulation of a mass of observation and succesful prediction that confirms and substantiates a hypothesis. Such is the case for the age of the world and the dinosaurs.

Obviously, this works only for things which were once living. It cannot be used to date volcanic rocks, for example.

Which is absolutely true for carbon 14, but the writers completely fail to note that volcanic rocks provide excellent subjects for dating by other means. If we date two lava flows by this method we now have an upper and lower bound on the age of the layers of rock in between, some of which may well contain dinosaurs.

Outside the range of recorded history, calibration of the 14C clock is not possible.

That statement is false. For example,
Fully anchored chronologies which extend back more than 10,000 years exist for river oak trees from South Germany (from the Main and Rhine rivers). A fully anchored chronology which extends back 8500 years exists for the bristlecone pine in the Southwest US (White Mountains of California).
Source:Dendrochronology - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

[tmaromine]

I forgot to make the point, that no creationist was there at the "birth, death, and resurrection" of Jesus either, nor any of the other events ; because so far, nothing has happened today.

Thanks for the thorough examination, Eclogite.

[Eclogite]

Originally Posted by tmaromine

I forgot to make the point, that no creationist was there at the "birth, death, and resurrection" of Jesus either, nor any of the other events ; because so far, nothing has happened today.

Excellent point. Obvious once one sees it, yet not one I had thought of before. I shall certainly use it in future.

[tmaromine]

Oh, wow – sorry for never getting back. (It's not like I read your last post and just didn't return either ; I never returned !)

Glad to have been of some help.

Cheers

[hbah427]

Carbon-14 dating is the standard method used by scientists to determine the age of certain fossilized remains. ...

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[Biochemist]

Originally Posted by hbah427

The Biblical record gives us an indication of an earth that is relatively young.

This is only one view of the Biblical record. There are others, even within the community of conservative scholars.

[hbah427]

Originally Posted by Biochemist

This is only one view of the Biblical record. There are others, even within the community of conservative scholars.

I'm sorry, I meant the literal interpretation of the Bible.