LOL, Blondie. When I first saw the thread title, that exactly where I thought he was going---until I thought about it a sec.
How does the WT feel about dating methods?
by Christ Alone 20 Replies latest watchtower beliefs
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Mr. Falcon
no.
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Tater-T
I think they still going with 1914, as there can only be one true dating method ... tie everything to 1914!!
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BluesBrother
Dating by radiometric and other methods? as others have said, only when it supports the arguement they are making, otherwise it is said to be unreliable.
"to deny C14 dating, you must make the claim that the ratio of C14 to C12 was somehow different in the past (within the last 6000 years) and is not constant"
This comment comes from local family although I am sure that it came from WTS originally . They say "Of course it has changed, in Noah's day the massive water canopy fell to Earth and flooded it. Before that everything was different."
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AnnOMaly
Looking quickly through the WT CD-ROM, it appears that the WTS is happy enough with carbon dating for artifacts up to the Flood (or Adam and Eve), but think it's unreliable for dates before then.
g86 9/22 p. 27 Credibility of Bible Dates Unimpeached
On the one hand, the geological clocks, uranium and potassium, run so slowly that they are not suitable. On the other hand, the radiocarbon clock, which works fairly well for just a few thousand years back, gets hopelessly entangled in difficulties beyond that. Even so, the overwhelming majority of radiocarbon measurements fall within the Biblical 6,000-year range. The few older dates, to which evolutionists cling desperately, are all suspect.
Other scientific dating methods, of which amino-acid racemization was foremost in the attack on the Bible's history of man's creation, have failed evolutionists miserably.
We can confidently stand on this fact: The chronology in the Bible stands unimpeached by any scientific dating.
LOL!
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Christ Alone
This comment comes from local family although I am sure that it came from WTS originally
Actually because of researching how accurate C14 dating really IS, I went to see why it was denied. It was Answers in Genesis that put forth the assumption that the rate of decay is NOT constant. They give several theories as to why this rate of decay would have changed over time and would now give an inaccurate reading as to the age of fossils and the earth in general.
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Christ Alone
overwhelming majority of radiocarbon measurements fall within the Biblical 6,000-year range.
Where could they possibly get that?
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jgnat
From my gut, I'd say the WTS is happy to borrow from the young earth crowd whenever it suits them. They also hedge their bets. For instance, they are wishy-washy about how long those first six "creation days" were.
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kepler
CA,
RE:
Actually because of researching how accurate C14 dating really IS, I went to see why it was denied. It was Answers in Genesis that put forth the assumption that the rate of decay is NOT constant. They give several theories as to why this rate of decay would have changed over time and would now give an inaccurate reading as to the age of fossils and the earth in general.
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In the scientific community, the isotope decay rates themselves are not called into question. The remarkable thing about the process is that the beta decay rate will not tell you when an individual nucleus will decay, but statistically how many are decaying... With Carbon 14 it is a question of the source of the isotopes, engendered by radiative flux in the atmosphere, nitrogen breakdown by cosmic ray bombardment.
But since sequence of events in Genesis 1 and Genesis 2 are not consistent, I would not waste much time worrying about instrumentation issues for measuring occurrence of an event that is described by two differing accounts.
In the first account ( Gen:1) man and woman were created simultaneously after the animals, free to roam the world and were told to be fruitful and multiply. In the second account they are confined to a garden, FORMED from the earth and woman was derived as an after thought when the first man could not find appropriate company among the animals. Even the JW authorities post 1975 admit that they are not sure when Eve was "formed" and hence the uncertainty about the end of 6000 years. Carbon 14 dating will not resolve any of those problems. Uranium half-life dating for the age of the earth might be of some assist though.
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brinjen
Yeah... they use the 'well only God knows so no method can be proven 100% accurate' excuse quite a bit which allows them to discredit anything that dosen't fit in with their picture much more easily. That line as well as any conflicts within the scientific community... find those that works best with them and presto! there's your "proof".