Page 126 - Genesis: Book of Beginnings and Science Behind it

Radiocarbon Dating Methods

Normally, scientists do not use the radiocarbon dating method to date fossils. Why? Because
evolutionary scientists assume that the fossils they find are several million years old, and radiocarbon
dating can only date back a few thousand years. Let’s see why.

Cosmic rays enter the Earth’s atmosphere in large numbers every day. For example, every person is
hit by about half a million cosmic rays every hour. It is not uncommon for a cosmic ray to collide with an
atom in the atmosphere, creating a secondary cosmic ray in the form of an energetic neutron. These
energetic neutrons collide with nitrogen atoms. When the neutron collides, a nitrogen-14 (seven
protons, seven neutrons) atom turns into a carbon-14 atom (six protons, eight neutrons) and a hydrogen
atom (one proton, zero neutrons). Carbon-14 is radioactive, with a half-life of about 5,700 years.

The carbon-14 atoms that cosmic rays create combine with oxygen to form carbon dioxide, which plants
absorb naturally and incorporate into plant fibers by photosynthesis. Animals and people eat plants and
take in carbon-14 as well. The ratio of normal carbon (carbon-12) to carbon-14 in the air and in all living
things at any given time is nearly constant. Maybe one in a trillion carbon atoms is carbon-14. The
carbon-14 atoms are always decaying, but new carbon-14 atoms are replacing them at a constant rate.
At this moment, your body has a certain percentage of carbon-14 atoms in it, and all living plants and
animals have the same percentage. cxlvii But when plants or animals die, they no longer absorb additional
carbon, and the clock begins.

At the moment of death, the ratio of carbon-12 to carbon-14 is the same as that of every other living
thing, but the carbon-14 decays and is not replaced. The carbon-14 decays with its half-life of 5,700
years, while the amount of carbon-12 remains constant in the sample. By looking at the ratio of carbon-
12 to carbon-14 in the sample and comparing it to the ratio in a living organism, it is possible to precisely
determine the age of a formerly living thing.

Of course, scientists must assume that the decay rates of carbon-14 to carbon-12 have remained
constant over the history of the Earth. If the rates were different in the past, obviously, the dates would
be skewed. Evolutionists believe it to be constant because they, by faith, believe that the processes
occurring in the present have occurred over the past millions of years. If the starting assumption is
false, all the calculations based on that assumption might be correct, but still give a wrong conclusion.

The problem is that half the original quantity of carbon-14 will decay back to the stable element
nitrogen-14 after only 5,730 years. At this decay rate, hardly any carbon-14 atoms will remain after only
57,300 years (or ten half-lives). But evolutionists believe the fossils are many millions of years old, so no
carbon-14 atoms would be left in them, which is true if they were that old.

But imagine the surprise when every piece of “ancient” carbon tested has contained measurable
quantities of carbon-14! cxlviii Fossils, coal, oil, natural gas, limestone, marble, and graphite from every
Flood-related rock layer—and even some pre-Flood deposits—have all contained measurable quantities
of radiocarbon. All these results have been reported in the conventional scientific literature. cxlix

This finding is consistent with the belief that rocks are only thousands of years old, but the specialists
who obtained these results have definitely not accepted this conclusion. It does not fit their
presuppositions. To keep from concluding that the rocks are only thousands of years old, they claim

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