Has The Watchtower given up trying to discredit the Carbon-14 dating method?
When was the last Watchtower article on Carbon-14 published?
by VM44 8 Replies latest watchtower beliefs
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blondie
*** g95 5/8 p. 6 Clues to the Mystery of the Iceman ***For information on the unreliability of the carbon-14 test, see Awake! of September 22, 1986, pages 21-6, and Life—How Did It Get Here?—By Evolution or by Creation?, page 96, published by the Watchtower Bible and Tract Society of New York, Inc.
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sir82
Don't know the answer to your question, I suspect sometime in the 80's. A quick search on the WT-CD should reveal the answer.
But ever since the 90's, the WT has given up on trying to discredit pretty much anything scientific that conflicts with their mythology. It's all generalized, vague, meaningless "isn't creation wonderful" crap or, at most, the false dilemmas such as "did this amazingly complex structure come about by chance, or was it created?"
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hamsterbait
The main criticism of C14 dating by the teenage writers of the Asleep! betrays a very real ignorance of how C14 dating actually works:
They highlight that over time, the amount of C14 in the atmosphere varies, and that this means animals and plants absorb differing amounts during their life. This is a fact.
It is NOT as they seem to think the actual amount of C14 absorbed in the life of a creature, but the RATIO of C14 to decay product found in the fossil at the time of sampling that gives the age.
If a mouse absorbs say 10g of C14 in its life then dies, after 10 000 years there will be 5g of Carbon14 to 5g of decay product.(is that the correct half life?) After 20 000 years there will be 2.5g of C14 to 7.5g of decay product.
Another mouse may have absorbed 100g of C14 in the same length of life. 10 000 years after it died there will be 50g of C14 and 50g of decay. 20 000 years later 25g of C14 and 75g of decay.
According to the WT the mouse that absorbed 100g of C14 will give a different age from the one absorbing 10g. Yet the ratio of isotopes is the same. This shows they are either too thick to understand it, or, more likely deliberately falsifying the facts.
In another article in the 80s they showed a bemused scientist, working out how to use correction factors in his age calculations. Implying that it is an unreliable method.
However - that this correction factor has to be used shows that the scientists are aware of factors that might distort the readings. These correction factors are based on calibrated studies, which means that innaccuracies can be factored into the aging process and corrected for by measurable quantities.
Their last argument against it is of the trite High School Debating Team Rhetoric so dear to the Bum Witless Heart:
If you took a sample of grass from next to a busy highway and burned it - the C14 dating method would give the grass an age of many millions of years.
This is so ignorant on so many levels!
1: We know cars did not exist, nor motorways before the mid 20C. No scientist would be so crass as to present such a sample - and would be shot down by peers.
2: Carbon dating cannot be relied on for fossils purporting to be more than a few hundred thousand years, and is not used for fossils millions of years old.
3 Dendrochronology backs up the ages of wood samples given by this method. As do archaeologists with artefacts such as spear shafts of known age.
HB
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drwtsn32
Sad to think I used to believe they knew what they were talking about.
Ditto. Awake University does not have much street cred.
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Awakened at Gilead
Y'all are dead wrong... so ignorant!
You didn't know that the Flying Spaghetti monster has been altering Carbon dating ever since he created everything a few thousand years ago? Sheesh,... it's all there in the Gospel of the Flying Spaghetti Monster....
And I thought you guys knew something....
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LoyalLeon
w08 11/15 The fragment was carbondated at that time... (the French Watchtower says "dating with carbon 14"
so it is accepted proof now
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hamilcarr
Even as a JW, I never thought there was anything wrong with C14 dating. How would accepting radiometric dating methods affect old earth creationists?
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drwtsn32
The WT had no problems accepting C14 dating when it was to their advantage. I recall them using C14 dating as proof that the Shroud of Turin was a hoax. Of course they say C14 dating is inaccurate when it comes to human remains dated at over 6,000 years old. Cherry picking is fun.