$cientism and Long-Ager Theology. Radio-Carbon dating and its inconvenient issues.

As with Evolution, Big Banging or other Long-Ager Gospel, C14 dating is riven with impossibilities and contradicts common sense and observational evidence.

Carbon 14 dating is used as ‘scientific and consensus proof’ that the Earth is 4.5 billion years old and various ‘fossils’ found in our geological strate are ‘millions of years’ in age.  ¹⁴C dating is probably the foundation stone for many belief systems around long ages.  But a question rarely asked is, ‘how scientific is carbon-14, or ¹⁴C dating?’  Given that so much of ‘settled science’ is junk and bunk, how valid are the techniques and assumptions behind this technique which allegedly ‘proves’ Long-Ager theology?

What is ¹⁴C?

Carbon is the essential and unique element for life on Earth. Carbon is also expressed in charred wood, diamonds, and graphite in ‘lead’ pencils.  Ordinary carbon (¹²C) is found in the carbon dioxide in the air, which is taken up by plants, which in turn are eaten by animals. So a bone, or a leaf of a tree, or even a piece of wooden furniture, contains carbon.

Carbon comes in several forms, or isotopes (another word for form). One rare form of carbon contains atoms that are 14 times as heavy as hydrogen atoms: carbon-14, or ¹⁴C, which is also called ‘radiocarbon’. When ¹⁴C has been formed, like ordinary carbon (¹²C), it combines with oxygen to give carbon dioxide, and so it also gets cycled through the cells of plants and animals. This known fact is the premise of the dating technique around carbon-14.

Carbon-14 is made when cosmic rays knock neutrons out of atomic nuclei in the upper atmosphere.  These quick moving displaced neutrons then collide with ordinary nitrogen (¹⁴N) at lower altitudes, converting it into ¹⁴C. The most prevalent gas in our atmosphere is nitrogen and the interplay between displaced atomic nuclei and nitrogen gives rise to the element ¹⁴C. Unlike common carbon (¹²C), ¹⁴C is unstable and slowly decays, changing back into nitrogen and releasing energy. This instability makes it radioactive.

¹⁴C dating

The main idea behind ¹⁴C dating is to count how many ¹²C atoms (normal carbon) exist for every ¹⁴C atom (radiocarbon), and calculate the ¹⁴C/¹²C ratio.  The underlying assumption is that because ¹⁴C is inter-mixed with ¹²C, the ratio is expected to be the same whether the sample is from flora or fauna.   

In living creatures, ¹⁴C atoms are constantly changing back to ¹⁴N.  However, they are still exchanging carbon with their surroundings, so the mixture remains about the same as in the atmosphere. When a plant or animal dies, the ¹⁴C atoms which decay are no longer replaced, so the amount of ¹⁴C in that once-living creature decreases as time goes on.  In other words, the ¹⁴C/¹²C ratio gets smaller. Science calls this a ‘clock’. Obviously, ¹⁴C dating works only for things which were once living. It cannot be used to date volcanic rocks, for example.

¹⁴C and decay rates

The rate of decay of ¹⁴C is such that half of the amount will convert back to ¹⁴N in 5,730 ± 40 years.  This is the ‘half-life’. So, in two half- lives, or 11,460 years, only one-quarter will be left.  Thus, if the amount of ¹⁴C relative to ¹²C in a sample is one-quarter of that in living organisms at present, then it has a theoretical age of 11,460 years. Anything over 50,000 years old should theoretically have no detectable ¹⁴C left. That is why radiocarbon dating cannot give millions of years.

In fact, if a sample contains ¹⁴C, it is good evidence that it is not millions of years old.

Measurement of ¹⁴C in historically dated objects might enable the level of ¹⁴C in the atmosphere at that time to be estimated, and so partial calibration of the ‘clock’ is possible.  Accordingly, carbon dating carefully applied to items from historical times can be useful. No one denies this.

However, even within historical calibration, archaeologists do not regard ¹⁴C dates as absolute because of frequent anomalies. They rely more on dating methods that link into historical records.  In general, outside the range of recorded history, calibration of the ¹⁴C ‘clock’ is not possible and much of dating becomes a game of tautology. An example is that the artefact is found within a strata that ‘must be’ 100 MA, therefore if we date it we should calibrate the result to conform to that date. Pick your method and manipulate the outcome.

Contamination and ¹⁴C dating

But as one would expect in a complex bio-and-eco-system, things are not simple.  There are various processes which impact age-dating that need to be considered. 

1-The number of cosmic rays penetrating Earth’s atmosphere affects the amount of ¹⁴C produced and therefore the dating system. The number of cosmic rays reaching Earth varies with the sun’s activity, and with the Earth’s passage through magnetic clouds as the solar system travels around the Milky Way Galaxy.  Thus, the foundational assumption behind ¹⁴C dating, the ‘base constant’ of ‘original’ ¹⁴C in the atmosphere is without merit.  No one knows what the base was ‘millions of years ago’ and no one knows how cosmic radiation impacts said baseline amount. 

2-The ratio of ¹⁴C/¹²C in the atmosphere has not been constant.  If natural or human emissions of carbon dioxide increase these levels will be depleted in ¹⁴C, meaning that dating will give older ages.  This renders the calculations inaccurate. 

3- The strength of Earth’s magnetic field affects the number of cosmic rays entering the atmosphere.  A stronger magnetic field deflects more cosmic rays away from Earth.  Overall, the energy of Earth’s magnetic has been decreasing significantly (1-1.5 % per 100-150 years).

4-Plants discriminate against carbon dioxide containing ¹⁴C. That is, they take up less than would be expected and so they test older than they really are. Furthermore, different types of plants discriminate differently.

5-Radiation from atomic testing or EMF activity from humans, as with cosmic rays, will result in the conversion of ¹⁴N to ¹⁴C, so an area of plant life subject to any form of radiation will give incorrect ¹⁴C dating (atomic bomb testing for example will make carbon dating from that time of the explosion appear younger than it truly is).

5-Tree ring dating (dendrochronology) prevalent in false Climate narratives and models, has been corrupted in an attempt to extend the calibration of carbon-14 dating earlier than historical records allow.  Dendrological dating depends on temporal placement of fragments of wood (dead trees) using carbon-14 dating, assume a more-or-less straight-line extrapolation backwards.  They then attempt to cross-match ring patterns to calibrate the carbon ‘clock’—a circular process which does not give an independent calibration of the carbon dating system.  There is nothing scientific or accurate about tree-ring dating.  Rings can expand or contract for a wide variety of reasons, impacted by moisture, soil, nutrients, drought, solar activity, and local weather and climatic conditions. 

Floods and formations

Anathema to modern ‘science’ is the idea of a global flood or floods.  Genesis, Gilgamesh, Mesopotamian, Greek, Hindu, Chinese and Ameri-Indian folk lore, all witness a great flood which cleansed the world of evil and life.  The strange geological and rock formations found all over the globe cannot be created from weak, minor flows of local water sources.  Tonnes of water must have moved through the area.  Fossils can only be created with the interaction of water, sand, soil and creatures, in which the animal or flora is encased in concrete.  Entire fields of fossilised animals and flora have been found heaped together, with the animals obviously fleeing a mortal threat.  Entire islands of exotic warm latitude animals are fossilised in Siberia, with predator and prey dumped together in theatres of death and annihilation.  Caves the planet over, abound with the same display – agglomerations of concretised creatures many from vast distances, jumbled and slaughtered en-masse in a catastrophe.  Slow, easy, uniformitarian theology does not account for what is observed.

If a great flood, or a series of floods did occur in the past, this would indicate that more ¹⁴C is now being manufactured, than in past and rather recent ages.   This will make ancient artefacts look older than they really are.  A flood, much like a volcanic eruption, greatly upsets the carbon balance.  Rushing water will bury huge amounts of carbon lowering the total ¹²C in the biosphere (including the atmosphere—plants regrowing after a flood event will absorb CO₂ which is not replaced by the decay of the buried vegetation).  If there was a flood or floods, the ¹⁴C level relative to ¹²C will increase after the Flood, which means that carbon dating of fossils formed in a flood would give ages much older than the true ages.

Carbon 14 and millions of years in age?

Fossils older than 100,000 years should have too little ¹⁴C to measure, but dating labs consistently find ¹⁴C well above such background levels in fossils.  Fossils in rocks dated at 1–500 Ma by long-age radioisotope dating methods gave an average radiocarbon ‘age’ of about 50,000 years, much less than the limits of modern carbon dating. Yet, there is no pattern of younger to older in the carbon dates that correlate with the evolutionary/uniformitarian ‘ages’, a known issue which predates the ‘evolution’ religion and was referenced by Nicholas Steno (1631–1687). An example is ‘Precambrian’ graphite rock which is purportedly older than 545 million years and is not of organic origin, but somehow contains ¹⁴C above background levels.  There should be no radiocarbon whatsoever in ‘Precambrian’ rock.

Coal as a biotically-created energy source supposedly ranges up to hundreds of millions of years old yet contains radio carbon samples suggesting a very young formation.  Long ages of coal is simply impossible if radiocarbon is found in a deposit.  As with the geological evidence around us, there is no possibility that vast coal seams, some more than 1 mile below the surface, are formed by slow and easy, gradual processes of ‘pressure’ and decomposition. Only a catastrophe forms a coal seam and such an event has an enormous impact on carbon and radio carbon deposits.

Other issues with radiocarbon ‘dating’

Of the methods and expostulations which have been used to estimate the age of Earth, probably some 90% point to an age far less than the billions of years asserted by the Long-Ager theology. A few of them are listed below:

1.    Evidence for rapid formation of geological strata including: lack of erosion between rock layers supposedly separated in age by many millions of years; lack of disturbance of rock strata by biological activity (worms, roots, etc.); lack of soil layers; polystrate fossils (which traverse several rock layers vertically—these could not have stood vertically for eons of time while they slowly got buried); thick layers of ‘rock’ bent without fracturing, indicating that the rock was all soft when bent etc

2.      Red blood cells, proteins, DNA, and carbon-14 have been found in dinosaur bone.  None of these should be present if the bones are over 65 million years old (according to evolutionary dating).

3.      Earth’s magnetic field has been decaying at the rate of roughly 1 to1.5 % every century.  This reduction is so quick that long ages are impossible (no shield, no life, the Earth would look like the moon).  Long-Ager paradigm beliefs such as rapid pole reversals would have caused the field energy to drop even faster. (eg McDonald, K.L. and Gunst, R.H., An analysis of the earth’s magnetic field from 1835 to 1965, ESSA Technical Report IER 46-IES, US Government Printing Office, p. 14, 1965).

4.      Supernova explosions are the annihilation of a massive star after it has consumed its heavy elements (hydrogen, helium, iron etc) and this explosion should expand for hundreds of thousands of years. However, there are no old Supernova remnants in our galaxy or in the satellite galaxies the Magellanic Clouds.  Why?

5.    Continents erode so rapidly that they should have worn away completely many times over in billions of years. The problem is more acute in mountainous regions, and there are also huge plains that are supposedly very old with hardly any erosion. The average height reduction for all the continents of the world is about 6.0 mm (0.24 inches) per 100 years.  At this rate all Continents would be eroded after 2.5 billion years.  No Continents should remain.  North America should have been levelled after just 10 million years. 

6.    Salt is entering the sea much faster than it is escaping. The sea is not nearly salty enough for this to have been happening for billions of years. Even granting generous assumptions to evolutionists, such as the sea having no salt to start with, the sea could not be more than 62 Ma old—far younger than the billions of years believed by evolutionists. Again, this indicates a maximum age, not the actual age.

What about isotopes and isochrony-dating?  These will be dealt with in the next article, but they also suffer from serious issues which makes claiming them to be ‘the science’ both absurd and risible.  At the very least they should be presented only as theories and ideas in need of more work, addressing their great inaccuracies in both methods and output.  But that is never the case with ‘the $cience’.

Bottom Line

Long Agers have a deep religious faith in radiocarbon dating which allegedly provides ‘consensus’ views on illimitable time.  When analysed this philosophical viewpoint is unsupported by real science or evidence.  ¹⁴C dating can be useful as an indicator within a range of up to a few thousand years.  But it cannot possibly confirm the age of rocks which are not carbon life forms, and it cannot possibly last nor survive in objects much more than 10.000 years in age.  The anomalies, discontinuities and issues with radiocarbon dating makes a mockery of its claim to be ‘the science’ of dating. 

The metaphysical and religious theology of endless time does need however, a calibration mechanism to justify itself.  As with $cientism at large, there is so much money, power, career-advancement and reputational-risk at play, that few people will dare to challenge radiocarbon dating and its utility beyond recent time, and those who do are of course calumnied, slandered, attacked, deplatformed and labelled anti-science, or young-earth science-deniers.  Such is the state of ‘science’ today where reality and observational evidence is optional.