What method did creationists use to disprove the accuracy of carbon dating?

TheKitten: What method did creationists use to disprove the accuracy of carbon dating?
Bear with me…

From a quote I just read here today: Carbon dating has been proved to be wrong by several thousand years…

I see…

So what method did the creationists use that was more accurate than carbon dating in order to demonstrate this discrepancy? And wouldn’t that imply that we do, in fact, possess an accurate dating method?

P.S. I know carbon dating is no longer the main one, especially when it comes to much older specimens, but creationists seem to be generally stuck on these findings about the inaccuracy of carbon dating. That’s why I ask about that one.

Answers and Views:

Answer by sparton223
They say that their god tells them the age, and then quote a bible verse as evidence.

Answer by Leanne
Anyone who tries to prove carbon dating wrong didn’t get higher than a C- or C in Chemistry. Don’t listen to them, they probably don’t even understand the math behind it

Answer by Abomination of Desolation
What amuses me is when they “found the ark” they were using carbon dating to trace it back to Noah’s Ark “times”

It works for them, but not for us? Reliable for a few thousand years, but not millions or billions. Where’s the cutoff line, Christians?

Answer by Ben
Some say that the rate of decay of the carbon was not consistent.

But I believe it works, just that God created the Earth in a mature sate that makes it seem older than it is.

Like Adam & Eve on the day of creation. They were created as adults.

Answer by ungodly
The famous ‘WAG’.

Answer by Deomachus .
I believe they are recycling the filth spewed forth by Kent Hovind when he misquoted research papers that say carbon dating doesn’t work… deep beneath the ocean where carbon 14 doesn’t come from the air, and thus animals appear much older than they really are.

Answer by Got Proof?
You want logic and reason from people who believe in talking snakes? Good luck.

Answer by HUMANIST
They don’t have any way of disproving it, they are just desperate to stop science from proving that their God is nothing but self delusion.

Answer by Reggie
The wall

Answer by Alexis
They have a method that is useful for discrediting all sorts of scientific fact.

It’s called the Fingers In The Ears, LA LA LA LA LA LA I Can’t Hear You! Method.

Answer by LCAO
Well, prove that it is correct. Go back in time, somehow, to the exact year and location that Carbon dating tells us, and see if the organism is there.
That’s right, you can’t.
Besides, “proof” like that is given by Satan. It is a feeble attempt to draw people from God by showing nothing.

Answer by thecrocoduck (RAWR)
It is probably a little wishful thinking or possibly they are deliberately mis-understanding reservoir effects.

Answer by Esther
It wasn’t a creationist that disproved the reliability of carbon dating, genius.

Scientists do not agree on anything.

Answer by Eva Luten >3
LOL they tried to date a lump of coal and it showed 50,000 years ( the limit of carbon dating ) and said that science couldn’t use that method to date dinosaurs (we already knew that and use other methods) . Seeing their “debunking” of science is like watching a tragic reality based version of the 3 stooges 😉
Oh and the other methods are often used several at a time for confirmation of the real age . They are also far beyond the scope of the cretinism’s understanding as is carbon dating.

Answer by Paul
I think what they meant was they personally tried to repeat the experiments done and came up with wildly different results.

Anyone who has sat in a science class and tried to do the experiment the teacher demonstrates has observed that for a significant proportion of the class the experimental data doesn’t conform to the expected results, sometimes even the teacher’s experiment goes wrong and an apology has to be made “oh something went wrong, I’m not sure what I did wrong”.

Some people when they get “anomalous data” refuse to chalk it up to a mistake somewhere in the way the experiment was done and instead use that as evidence that the theory that the experiment is intended to demonstrate is itself flawed.

Personally I have a problem with radioactive dating (regardless of the isotope used). Radioactive dating methods rely on the random decay of unstable isotopes which though unpredictable in that we can’t predict which isotope will decay we can predict that half the number of isotopes will decay over a given amount of time (half life) and we can know what the by products of that decay is. So by measuring the proportion of the radioactive isotope to the by products of the decay we can estimate the age of the source material (all well and good). The problem is the decay rate follows a logarithmic curve. Logarithmic curves are extremely steep in two extrmes with a relatively small window of accuracy. Therefore when radioactive dating methods are used to age things that are very young or very old an incredibly small error in measurement can result in an incredibly large error in the estimation of the date.

Answer by Carl
Due to the relatively short half life of C-14 (5,730 +/- 40 years) the amount after 60,000 years would be immeasurable. – See last paragraph fo further information which throws doubt on whether this could be ascertained as accurate.

The amount of C-14 within a specimen is taken to be a constant, yet the Bible speaks of drastically different conditions after the flood, some scientists believe there could have been up to 5 times as much CO2 in the atmosphere which would drastically affect dating methods. Some believe that shielding from the upper atmosphere could also have reduced C-14 levels drastically.

The simple fact remains that anything dated over 5,000 years cannot be taken as fact.
Even recent ice-core samples show CO2 levels to be unsteady, varying markedly.

A raw BP date cannot be used directly as a calendar date, because the level of atmospheric 14C has not been strictly constant during the span of time that can be radiocarbon dated. The level is affected by variations in the cosmic ray intensity which is in turn affected by variations in the Earth’s magnetosphere [11]. In addition, there are substantial reservoirs of carbon in organic matter, the ocean, ocean sediments (see methane hydrate), and sedimentary rocks. Changes in the Earth’s climate can affect the carbon flows between these reservoirs and the atmosphere, leading to changes in the atmosphere’s 14C fraction.

Answer by Rose du fantôme
if they really want to prove we’re all idiots, then they should probably keep up with the main ones. 😀

and yet, they just can’t give a grounded reason to disprove our methods…