Answer by John Mackay
Many of you will realise that this is a totally misplaced question, albeit probably a genuine one. So we will take the opportunity of reminding folks that Carbon 14 dating, even if it did work, wouldn’t give billions of years for anything. Carbon 14 is a short lived radioactive element with a half-life is only 5,730 years approximately. So using current technology, you could at the most, use it for objects that only went back 70,000 or so years. That having been said – surprisingly you do get dates for dinosaur bones supposedly millions of years old using Carbon 14. However, it is possible to get carbon 14 dates for dinosaur bones, but the dates will shock you. For some real examples download the PDF version of this answer here
To obtain C14 dates for dinosaur bones means either:
a) the bones couldn’t possibly be so old, and/or
b) Carbon 14 doesn’t work
One intriguing thing about radioactive carbon is because it has such a short half-life, then the closer you get to the present the more reliable it becomes. If you then compare it with historic data what you find that the further back you get in known history the more unreliable it becomes.
In fact it has all the major problems of a clock that doesn’t tick the way it should. What do we mean by that? When you invent a new clock you need to know what the time is now, and if you’re setting the clock to run backwards, you need to know how fast it ticks. To do that you have to have a way of knowing what the time was at measured known intervals back into the past. So when you set your newly invented C14 Clock, as Willard Libby did when he developed the method, it has to have a known rate of decay that can be measured against known historical time lapses, e.g.. the Birth of Christ, the reign of Julius Caesar, etc. Whilst it is so casually overlooked these days, the first inventor of the Carbon 14 method Willard Libby is definitely on record that the thing surprised him most, was that he didn’t have any written records to compare his Carbon 14 method against that was older than 5,000 years. But he didn’t let that bother him in any way, shape or form. He just went ahead and used it as if that little fact was ignorable. (Science, March 3, 1961, p.624)
A good reason that there were no written records prior to 5,000 years ago is that the whole world was in liquidation i.e. inundated by Noahs Flood, which would also mean that the entire planet had been changed, and the Carbon 14 method is one dramatic loser as a result.
In the beginning the God created the world very good. Adam and Eve would have been protected from every source of producing radioactive carbon. Remember they had no clothes on, the environment was one of created perfection, and the atmosphere had been deliberately designed by God to ensure man’s health and long life. In our modern world, high energy radiation from outer space bombards nitrogen, gives it extra energy, breaks it up and produces radioactive carbon 14 as a result. The radioactive carbon combines with oxygen to produce carbon dioxide (CO2), which is absorbed by plants and get into food that is eaten by man and animals. These and other radiation sources are one reason we don’t live to be “as old as Methuselah”. But while we are alive, what goes in also comes out because you breathe out CO2, which includes some of the radioactive stuff. But as is well known, when you die you stop breathing out CO2, as well as ceasing to take in any more food. So the amount of radioactive carbon in your body at death, from then on will simply disintegrate by radioactive decay. The simple principle is the longer you have been dead, the less radioactivity you will have in your body. Ultimately it will be so little that it will be immeasurable. At present that limit is around 70,000 years.
However, to use such a method you must assume the world that has always functioned the same as today. But it is highly unlikely that Adam and Eve and any created animals were ever exposed to high energy radiation, nor did they ever breathe in any radioactive gases in the beginning. Radioactivity causes disease and degeneration, which is not very good. However, the world ceased to be very good after Adam and Eve rebelled against God and God cursed the ground in judgement. The world degenerated even more rapidly after Noah’s Flood when the atmosphere changed drastically, and much more radiation could penetrate the atmosphere. This means absorption of radioactive carbon by living things has not been the same throughout history, which means Carbon 14 decay dating methods cannot be relied on for accurate dates.
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