Page 127 - Genesis: Book of Beginnings and Science Behind it

that the radiocarbon must be due to contamination, either from the field, the laboratory, or both.
However, when the technician meticulously cleans the rocks with hot, strong acids and other pre-
treatments to remove any possible contamination, these “ancient” organic (once-living) materials still
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contain measurable radiocarbon. If carbon-14 is present, then we know the once living fossil is only a
few thousand years old, not millions of years old.

According to evolutionary scientists, diamonds are formed from coal under great pressure (more than
100 miles beneath the earth’s surface), and diamonds do not consist of organic carbon from living things
that may have carbon-14 present. They believe that explosive volcanoes brought them to the Earth’s
surface. Diamonds are the hardest natural substance known and are extremely resistant to chemical
corrosion and contamination. Obviously, their tight bonding would not allow any carbon-14 from the
atmosphere to enter or replace carbon atoms within the diamond.

Yet diamonds have been tested and shown to contain radiocarbon (carbon -14) equivalent to 55,000
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years. While this is not a problem for the creationist who believes the earth is relatively young, it is a
serious problem for the evolutionist.

The Genesis Flood and Carbon Dating

The Flood described in Genesis 7-11 would have buried large amounts of carbon from living plants and
animals to form today’s fossil fuels (coal, oil, natural gas, etc.). The amount of fossil fuels on Earth
suggests that there must have been a vastly larger quantity of vegetation in existence before the Flood
than exists today. If a larger quantity of plants existed, then there would be less carbon-14 available to
be absorbed in the vast quantity of plants since the amount of carbon-14 in the atmosphere is
supposedly constant. That would significantly alter the carbon-14- carbon-12 ratio, perhaps as much as
1/500 of today’s level. Therefore, any materials tested that existed before the Flood would give
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significantly older date ratios than today, perhaps up to ten times their true age. That may explain how
diamonds dated at 50,000 years old by carbon-14 ratios may be only 5,000 years old.

The RATE Group Findings
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In 1997, an eight-year research project was started to investigate the age of the Earth. The group was
called the RATE group (Radioisotopes and the Age of the Earth). The team of scientists included:

• Larry Vardiman, PhD - Atmospheric Science
• Russell Humphreys, PhD- Physics
• Eugene Chaffin, PhD - Physics
• John Baumgardner, PhD - Geophysics
• Donald DeYoung, PhD - Physics
• Steven Austin, PhD - Geology
• Andrew Snelling, PhD - Geology
• Steven Boyd, PhD - Hebraic and Cognate Studies

The objective was to gather data commonly ignored or censored by evolutionary dating standards. The
scientists reviewed the assumptions and procedures used to estimate rocks and fossils' ages. The
results of the carbon-14 dating demonstrated serious problems for long geologic ages. For example, a
series of fossilized wood samples that conventionally have been dated according to their host strata to
be from Tertiary to Permian (40-250 million years old) all yielded significant, detectable levels of carbon-
14 that would conventionally equate to only 30,000-45,000 years “ages” for the original trees. Similarly,

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