How Far Back Can We Measure Dates? Part II

Continuing with the previous post regarding the two dating processes of Carbon-14 dating vs. Geologic Column dates. As stated at the end of the previous post, “Unfortunately for those who believe in both concepts, they do not agree with one another! 

As an example, if two dates, that of Carbon-14 dating and that of known index fossils, disagree, the radiocarbon dating is thrown out and the index fossil dates are used. This is because, as earlier stated, fossils are not dated by radiocarbon dating, but by their geologic position (in the column in which they are found).

This idea presents some grave difficulties and problems for adherents of the geologic column and of Carbon-14 dating.
    Take the experience from the Hornton Quarries in England, where fossil wood was found alongside ammonite and belemnite index fossils considered to be 189 million years old. Three specimens of sample wood were sent to the commercial Geochron Laboratories in Cambridge, Boston, for testing. As a matter of cross-checking, a piece of the first sample was also sent to the Antares Mass Spectrometry Research Laboratory at the Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisstion near Sydney, Australia. Both labs and all three samples tests showed a range between 20,700 years and 28,820 years before the present, far short of the index fossil date of 189 million years. Normally, neither lab would have tested the wood samples had they known they were found among fossilized specimens indexed at 189 million years, since they would know there would be no measurable carbon in the wood. And had they known of the index fossil location, they would have simply regarded the wood as being 189 million years old.
    How important is this? Why have we spent so much time on it?

The answer is simple: As we have written here several times, scientists use a technique called radiometric dating to estimate the ages of rocks, fossils, and the earth. Many people have been led to believe that radiometric dating methods have proved the earth to be billions of years old—in fact, this so-called “fact’ has been taught in schools for more than the past 60 years, making our society a three-generation believer in the process and the results. Ask any group of students in almost any high school or college today and they will tell you the Earth is billions of years old—4.55 billion at last published evolutionary dates. This attitude has caused many normally religious people to reevaluate the biblical creation account, specifically the meaning of the word “day” in Genesis. This, in turn, has created at least two generations in our society (and the world) to doubt their religious heritage and turn away from that which has made our nation strong—a belief in and conviction of, a supreme power, a Diety more powerful than ourselves, an omnipotent God.
    Is that important?
    One need only look around to the difference they see now regarding human behavior, moral conduct, ethics, standards, social manners, charity and overall common decency, and compare it with that which existed in the first half of the twentieth century. Of course there has always been anti-religious sentiment, moral bankruptcy, and social deterioration among groups of people in any society, but the numbers today are so obviously overbalanced toward this bankruptcy as to make it quite clear that society has been on a downward slope since the earliest inroads made by evolutionists and anti-God dogmas of the early 20^th-century.

Left: High School classroom 1900; High School classroom 2000
    While it is not politically correct today to talk about God, morality, and social behavior as it once existed, and that is not the major emphasis of this blog-site, the corrupting of human nature goes hand-in-hand with the elimination of God in any society, and there are certain so-called “scientific advances” that have led to this breakdown and all that such a societal problem entails.
    Among other things, pseudo-science of evolution, the Geologic Column and Carbon-14 dating have taken us far from the truth in terms of our understanding the past. While archaeology and anthropology are meant to help man understand his past, when it is promoted at every educational level based on untruths, lies, and downright misrepresentations, it does far more harm than just providing generations with falsifications about their past and heritage.
    While the harm of such teaching and false understandings can have numerous consequences, in simple form, it keeps us from understanding what we read, what we see, and what we learn about past generations and their encounters with life that can teach us a lot about our own circumstances and difficulties. Wherever you want to place the Jaredite and Nephite nations, the point is that without our understanding their surroundings, their challenges, and their successes in the light in which they occurred, we miss a lot that can be learned from such historical events.
    Take the difference of dates, as an example. When science talks about people living in caves in the earliest centuries of man, or that early man knew nothing of the finer points of life, such as not discovering agriculture for hundreds or thousands of generations, or that metallurgy, textile, and carpentry came along much later than it did, we lose touch with and an understanding of the peoples who built societies, nations, and industries. Moses tells us that seven generations from Adam man was living in tents and herding livestock; inventing musical instruments, including the lyre, flute, harp and organ; forging implements of bronze and iron.
    We “learn” from archaeology and anthropology that man occupied certain lands, cities and regions in 30,000 B.C., or 10,000 B.C., etc., yet the Flood occurred in 2344 B.C., suggesting to the uninformed about so-called ratiocarbon dates that these lands, cities and regions were populated after that time.
    Consequently, to more accurately understand the dating of past events, the building of ancient cities, the development of early societies, we need to recognize that the dates archaeologists and anthropologists throw around based on Carbon-14 or radiometric dating is far from accurate.

While archaeologists and their dating sequencing claims that when they find a fossil in the dirt, they can test it for age; however, they cannot know in advance when it lived or died—that is a guess they have to make. The lab to which the Carbon-14 dating is tested, does not know how much Carbon-14 the specimen had at the time of death, how much existed and was common for the time it lived, cannot know if other factors were involved, such as contaminants in the ground, water, or air when it lived, or afterward over the hundreds or thousands of years before being found. The lab cannot know at what rate the existing Carbon-14 in the specimen decayed, or any number of other factors the dating program is not equipped to consider.
    All the lab can do is measure how much Carbon-14 remains in the specimen and compare it to a table that is based upon a number of assumptions, such as those just stated, to provide an “age.” As an example, animals that lived before the Flood would have less Carbon-14 than after the Flood, since the conditions before the Flood, such as ice, moisture canopy, etc., blocking radiation from the Sun (X-ray and UV radiation—visible light which turns nitrogen into Carbon-14 in the atmosphere) existed, and how much was blocked from even forming.
    So how does science and the Carbon-14 clock dating sequencing and testing account for this variation? After all, they do have tables to use for other factors, such as the decrease or increase of Carbon-14 in the atmosphere during certain pre-determined periods, such as atomic bomb testing, ice-ages, etc. But what about the Flood?
(See the next post, “How Far Back Can We Measure Dates? Part III,” to see about the way science compensates for pre- and post-Flood dating in Carbon-14 testing)