An introduction to dating methods like carbon dating and others

Long years after beginning this blog there continue to be a few commenters who want to go back time and time again to dating methods. Before we discuss these, I am going to be quite clear: Worldview is king when it comes to your ideas about origins and that applies to dating methods, geology, biology and cosmology.

The nature of reality involves metaphysical questions such as cannot be answered easily by the evidence around us. Who are we (if indeed we really do exist) and why are we? When we consider metaphysical questions we are necessarily not able to bring physical evidence with us all the way to the end.


met·a·phys·ics (mt-fzks)
n.

1. (used with a sing. verb) Philosophy The branch of philosophy that examines the nature of reality, including the relationship between mind and matter, substance and attribute, fact and value.

2. (used with a pl. verb) The theoretical or first principles of a particular discipline: the metaphysics of law.

3. (used with a sing. verb) A priori speculation upon questions that are unanswerable to scientific observation, analysis, or experiment.

4. (used with a sing. verb) Excessively subtle or recondite reasoning.

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[From pl. of Middle English methaphisik, from Medieval Latin metaphysica, from Medieval Greek (ta) metaphusika, from Greek (Ta) meta (ta) phusika, (the works) after the Physics, the title of Aristotle's treatise on first principles (so called because it followed his work on physics) : meta, after; see meta- + phusika, physics; see physics.]

So it is that when we discuss Darwinism or creationism or subjects related to these disciplines such as dating methods we have to begin with the presuppositions of the one doing the dating.

It goes without saying that creationists generally recognize that the Bible is part of the evidence one needs to consider when trying to date both the Universe and the Earth and any fossils found in the rock records. Darwinists will usually either dismiss the Bible or to analogize it so that anything the Bible says about time is ignored or not taken seriously.

It must be said that Darwinists do not usually even understand that they are making a metaphysical decision when they begin their thought processes by limiting their mind to only the natural world and only material evidences. When someone does this they are not acting logically or reasonably they are instead expressing a preference that is often so strong it could be considered religious in nature.

For instance, did you know there is a site called "Positive Atheism?" I bet you will not be shocked to find that Richard Dawkins is featured prominently? Let's give you a couple of examples:

"An atheist before Darwin could have said, following Hume: "I have no explanation for complex biological design. All I know is that God isn't a good explanation, so we must wait and hope that somebody comes up with a better one." I can't help feeling that such a position, though logically sound, would have left one feeling pretty unsatisfied, and that although atheism might have been logically tenable before Darwin, Darwin made it possible to be an intellectually fulfilled atheist. -- Richard Dawkins, The Blind Watchmaker, page 6"

I hope you recognize that this is NOT a scientific statement, it is a religious statement. There is nothing evidentiary about Dawkin's delight with Darwin here, but he is simply expressing gladness at having a politically correct excuse for being an atheist.

Dawkins is not going to tell you how wonderfully moral his worldview is but rather he will try to dismiss any basis for morality at all.

"The universe we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil and no good, nothing but blind pitiless indifference.
-- Richard Dawkins, River Out of Eden: A Darwinian View of Life (1995)"

So if there is no purpose, no evil and no good, then by what right does he then say this? - "It is absolutely safe to say that, if you meet somebody who claims not to believe in evolution, that person is ignorant, stupid or insane (or wicked, but I'd rather not consider that).
-- Richard Dawkins, quoted from Josh Gilder, a creationist, in his critical review, "PBS's 'Evolution' series is propaganda, not science" (September, 2001)"

Well, Richard, in a world with no purpose and no right and no wrong how do you measure whether someone is sane or insane? If all of existence is from blind pitiless indifference then there is no right or wrong, no sane or insane and certainly no good and no wicked. There could be no concept of free will.

Make no mistake, when a Darwinist proclaims that he has a theory (not by the classic definition, nope, just a hypothesis) that has been proven to be factual they are promoting their religion and not making a scientific statement.

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I make no bones about my metaphysical statement. I believe in God. I am a Christian. Although I was brainwashed into believing Darwinism as a child, once I became a Christian I began to question Darwinism for the first time and found that not only was Darwinism not proven it was also not probable. As time went on and I investigated further I found that Darwinism moved from the category of improbable over to the impossible side. I have therefore been posting on the subject for several years.

To the great dismay of my Darwinist commenters, I have to make a factual statement they will not like but nevertheless rings true: Dating is all about the presuppositions.

I will tell you why this is so, but first a brief historical review. Thinkers and scientists in the days of Plato and Aristotle and Socrates and Archimedes began to think about the world as being something to investigate in not just metaphysical ways or "practical" epistemological ways, but in various aspects. What is man? Why is man? How is it we are here (Moody Blues!), what is knowledge, what is reality, what is history, what is morality and then back to who made all this stuff? Greeks highly valued philosophers and scientists (although political intrigues and paradigms were at work even back then) but those who only sat around thinking were frankly not as useful as those who discovered useful things, such as Copernicus and Newton.

The ancient Greeks decided the world was made of perhaps four elements whereas now we know of far more than 100 (118 at last count). Once mankind conceived of the cell we thought of it as a singular simple substance, whereas now we know a typical human cell is far more complex than the biggest auto factory in the world. Obviously the advancement of human knowledge and discovery has taken us to new abilities to fly above the land and under the sea, transmit information digitally including audio and video and, well, we do things the Greeks could barely conceive of happening.

When we discuss dating methods, we first have to consider evidence but not before we remember worldview. If you are captive to your worldview then you will be unable to reach some conclusions even if they are the right ones. So prepare to consider your presuppositions and change them if the evidence does not fit. Richard Dawkins is absolutely unable to do this and therefore he is hopelessly locked in ignorance. He cannot intelligently defend Darwinism against a worthy creationist opponent, which is why he will not debate them any longer. You can check the record, look up the Huxley Debate in which, at Oxford on his home court with an audience of youthful students Dawkins and his partner barely won the vote of the students versus two lesser-known creation scientists, a debate that Dawkins expected to win unanimously. Dawkins was made to look foolish by Ben Stein in the recent movie, "Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed" and will not debate a top creationist in any circumstances now.

Perhaps you are more able than Dawkins to consider evidence carefully. In any event we go forward. The first two points are going to turn Darwinist cranks but oh well...

Proposition number one: No dating method that does not take the Bible into account is reliable. Archaelogists who work in the Middle East know the Bible is their most important historical reference when investigating ancient digs. The Bible is the only reasonable piece of literature that begins with the very beginning of all things and has an historical account of the prediluvian ancestors of mankind. The Bible claims that the Universe is less than about seven thousand years old and that there was a world-wide flood about four thousand some-odd years ago that reshaped the planet and the ecosystem.

Proposition two: Creationist dating methods have proven to be reliable in part because they take a flood event into account.

Let's look at how Darwinists viewed the rock records in the late 1800's - The rock records had been layed down uniformly over many millions of years. Time and processes pretty much stayed the same. We could date fossils according to their layer level in the rocks. The problem was simply to deduce the age of each rock layer to do the trick.

Creationists said the rock records were almost entirely the result of the deluge of Noah and the immediate aftermath of that event.

Darwinists in the early 1900's - We were wrong about Uniformitarianism. There were a few catastrophes thrown in here and there as well. But we can still use the ages for the layers as previously determined.

Creationists said the rock records were almost entirely the result of the deluge of Noah and the immediate aftermath of that event.

Darwinists in the late 1900's - We were completely wrong about Uniformitarianism but we will not hurry to change the textbooks and the propaganda. We will slowly but surely begin talking about local floods and catastrophes while we figure out new ways to date fossils.

Creationists said the rock records were almost entirely the result of the deluge of Noah and the immediate aftermath of that event.

Darwinists in the early 21st Century - There were huge catastrophic events that reset the fauna and flora of the planet. These were so huge they would be capable of providing an entire layer of sedimentary rocks. We still think the dating assigned to most fossil finds are accurate despite any good reason to keep thinking the same things.

Creationists said the rock records were almost entirely the result of the deluge of Noah and the immediate aftermath of that event.

Do you detect a pattern here? Darwinists have to keep moving the goalposts. Their evidence for macroevolution is based on Uniformitarianism and that is no longer supportable. So now they have co-opted the creation narrative but have substituted more than a dozen massive catastrophes in place of one big one. But the nice even layers we find in canyons and sedimentary mountain ranges testify to one big event in many ways. People who know what is actually found in the rocks know that the standard geological column is a fairy tale. It doesn't exist in the vast majority of the world. In most places there are layers missing or in the wrong order or are of the wrong thickness or they have interbedded or contain megabreccias or folds or polystrate fossils and...well, we have covered this ground before. The rocks testify to a flood just as the organism testifies to intelligent design. This is a huge problem for Darwinists and their dating methods because they have not taken the Noahic Flood into account.

Hurricane Katrina? Multiply that by seventy million perhaps and you could begin to understand the power of a flood that began with forty days and nights of rain while volcanoes exploded, the earthquakes intensified and the crust of the Earth began to rapidly subduct while underground water stores exploded into the sky. The entire face of the planet was covered with water for 150 days. The occupants of the Ark had to stay within for one year and ten days before the ground was dry enough and stable enough for them to come back out.

Biologists will tell you that the massive beasts of the prediluvian world got larger than they possibly could be now in today's atmosphere, which tells us that the atmosphere before the Flood was far more oxygen-rich. The rock layers testify to a massive world-wide flood. We cannot even begin to be sure what happened to the world during this event. Were there reversals of the magnetic pole? Did a comet hit the Earth or make a near miss? Did a huge asteroid strike the Earth? Creationists have studied various possibilities while Darwinists have refused to even consider them.

When Darwinists discuss ice cores and sea cores and tree rings and various other dating methods, they do not take a Flood into account and never do they consider the idea that the world might only be about seven thousand years old. So my evidence will often times be completely new to you because Darwinists do not want to "go there."

Allow me to preface what is coming by underlining how difficult it is to do any kind of dating with a process that features postulated long half-life. One reason is that we cannot trust long age systems is that we do not have a long record of recording these processes and therefore we cannot be sure of their uniformity over thousands of years.

We cannot go back very far into ice records or tree rings with confidence because we cannot know how many layers were produced when and what a worldwide flood and following ice age would do to tree growth and ice layers. I have discussed ice layers in great detail in past articles/posts and you are welcome to catch up by searching my site by "ice cores" and reading them. We will go forward from those posts rather than rehashing them in whole, although we may grab parts and bring them forward if necessary.

Dendrochronology is a horse of another color to some extent so we will have to address that and also the rather embarassing truth about carbon 14 dating that hurts rather than helps the Darwinist cause.

But before I do that, I want to remind one and all that the Darwinists had no good answer for this post about rock cores. They pointed people to the unreliable talkorigins site and backed slowly away.

If you are unsure about dating methods, I promise to go over tree rings and half-lives and carbon dating. In return, I urge you to at least read rock cores trump ice cores so that you will be pretty well caught up to the discussion as it stands.

When you cut down a big tree, you need to tie it or cable it to fall the way you want it to go and often must trim something off the top or take off a few branches before you begin cutting through the trunk. I am confident I can cut down a number of long age dating methods and to do so properly we need to tie the tree off and do some trimming. If you read that post (again, if you had read it once) and come back prepared to discuss the subject going forward then we can at least all agree that the tree has been tied, we just then need to trim a bit and then cut it down.

You are welcome (to those who never knew about helium zircon granite dating) and thank you (to those who actually read or re-read the post)!