C-14 MADE SIMPLE
I am reading with amazement the comments about C-14 dating. Thankfully, Larc brought my older posts on this back to the top. I had lost rack of them. The JW beliefs are the most complex of my discussion below. Keep this important point in mind: The issue is not whether C-14 dating is perfectly accurate, but whether is reasonably demonstrates the WTS-JW beliefs to be in error - that is the core issue! Now, let’s take this from the top again:
WTS-JW Belief: God created ‘life’ about 49,000 years ago. The earth could be much older, but had no life prior to 49,000 years. Humans were created at the end of the 6th creative day, and God has been in his Sabbath since then, or during the 7th creative day. Each creative day is said to be 7,000 years long or contain seven 1,000 year days with the 7th 1,000 year being an anti-typical Sabbath. The end of 6,000 years (during the 7th creative Sabbath day) was due to end in 1975, thus ushering in the Great Jubilee of 1,000 years of Christ’s Kingdom. All this was typically symbolized by Israel’s literal 49th-50th year Jubilee System where all debt was forgiven, land returned to the original owner, etc.
More to the point, humans were created about the year 4,026 BCE or about 6,027 years ago. We are, according to earlier WTS beliefs 27 years into the Sabbath year of human existence, and the Great Jubilee of the 49,000th year since life began on earth.
THEREFORE, according to WTS theology, the human race cannot be older than about 6,027 years [give or take some few years to account for the time since Eve was created before the 6th day being declared finished, and maybe a few other minor odds and ends of WTS ideology.
NOW, enters modern science which discovers Carbon-14 dating, and demonstrates that there are humans who lived long before 4,026 BCE, and in fact live about 50,000 to 60,000 years ago. Also, other dating methods such as Potassium-Argon, etc. can date humans farther back, and many other life forms back millions of years.
Whoa! Says Creationists who say that cannot be – and of course the WTS leaders chime right in because they have a stake in creationism and their odd dating beliefs. Soooo ... they discover that C-14 dating may be erroneous due to changes in the atmosphere, above ground nuclear testing in the 1940s and 50s, and other forms of contaminates that could altar the date arrived at using C-14. This makes the creationists, radical fundys and the JWs feel real good. And all those other dating methods are now suspect too in their minds because of contamination!
THEN enters Amazing with a discussion of C-14 accuracy to about 60,000 years and then mentions Kennewick Man dated back to about 9,500 to 9,800 years, thus showing that humans lived long before the 4,026 BCE date assigned by the WTS system. I believe that six-of-nine and/or seven-of-nine brings in the issue that the Seattle times reported that varying ages of Kennewick Man between 7,500 and 9,500 years which raises questions about accuracy, and also cite Don Lindsay’s web page where he says that C-14 has inaccuracies due to polar bears eating seals, nuclear testing that changed atmospheric levels of C-14, and humans burning a lot of fossil fuel such as coal, petroleum, etc. that gets into the atmosphere.
LET’s NOW MAKE SENSE OF THIS: First, C-14 decays at a precise and known rate, such that its half life is 5,730 years. It is accurate in dating dead organisms such as human remains back about 60,000 years, after which the levels of C-14 is so reduced that measurement is no longer meaningful. While alive, humans ingest C-14 via food and air. We pass C-14 out of our system and the body maintains a fairly constant rate of C-14. When we die, our tissue, which may have higher levels of C-14, or food remains in the bowels may be rich in C-14, etc. all breaks down into rapid decay. The C-14 decays at the same rate, but the C-14 contained in soft tissue and food remains will wash away from the body.
The C-14 that is measured when dating humans is contained in the bones that remain. The bones, unlike soft tissue and food particles, remain intact and holds the C-14 in place as its decays.
BUT, some say, what of contamination?! And, how come Kennewick Man has varying dates assigned to different bones?! Does this not show that C-14 dating is highly questionable? And what about Don Lindsay’s comments about the polar bears, the atmosphere, nuclear testing, and fossil fuel burning?
Contamination in C-14 dating ALWAYS results in younger or more recent dates. In other words, when a dead organic material (a bone) is dated at 40,000 years using C-14, and then contamination is discovered, it means that the bone fragment must be older if the contamination is determined to be induced AFTER the death of the organism. What? Yes, Kennewick Man may have contamination at the fingers and feet that was deposited there by material flowing in the Columbia River from the older nuclear sites. WOW! So, if that contamination were accounted for then ... Kennewick Man could be much older than 9,500 years! BUT, he is at least 9,500 years old, and thus the WTS-JW belief along with other young earth creationists is shattered to pieces!
Polar Bears: Yes, polar bears eat seals. Seals eat marine and submarine life forms that may not have C-14 in the same levels as land life forms. But, Polar Bears also breath air, and thus ingest C-14 from the same atmosphere as do humans and all other air breathing life forms. I do not know if Polar bear C-14 levels are maintained at the same rates as humans while alive, BUT, when dead, the C-14 in the bears decays at the same exact rate as C-14 anywhere else on the planet does. Again, if a Polar Bear ingests a lot of extra C-14 while alive, then dating the bear at say, 55,000 years would only mean that if the extra C-14 were removed, he would be older. This again, would defeat the WTS theory that non-human life began on earth no longer than 49,000 years ago.
Atmospheric C-14: But what about above ground nuclear tests that released extra C-14 into the atmosphere in the 1940s and 50s? This issue raised the concern that caused re-calibration of measuring instruments. The C-14 in dead remains of organisms is calculated against the C-14 in the atmosphere. Taking this into consideration would cause specimen dating to again be older than first calculated if the C-14 levels in the atmosphere were lowered slightly accounting for nuclear fall-out. Also, above ground nuclear testing did not release nearly as much C-14 as is caused by routine solar cycles, so the calibration issue is only dealing with a relatively small % adjustment.
Fossil Fuel Burning: I found Don Lindsay’s comment rather suspect. He cites fossil fuel burning in his section on inaccuracies inherent in C-14 dating, but then he goes on to admit that fossil fuel has no C-14 remaining in it. He makes no other point, thus leaving the reader to assume that fossil fuel somehow impacts C-14 accuracy. What? If no C-14 is present in fossil fuel, then how can it add C-14 to the atmosphere when burned? It cannot! So, citing fossil fuel burning is a useless exercise in typing.
Other Methods: There are many methods to date a dead organisms. C-14 is a common and relatively accurate method that can be verified by using other methods such a Potassium-Argon, tree rings, historical records, Uranium isotopes, and others. When C-14 has proven to have errors in some cases, the adjusted dates yield results that show a life form was really older than first thought.
Final Analysis: BUT, even if adjustments are needed up or down they will not affect one VERY IMPORTANT FACT and that is: Human life and other life forms lived long before the Watch Tower theory of 49,000 for non-human life forms and 6,027 years for human life. It is a proven fact! Even if a C-14 dating test on specific remains of a yields a range between 40,000 and 50,000 years due to inaccuracies and contamination! The adjustments would lean toward to older date. And even if the date was much younger, say 20,000 to 30,000 years for some human specimens, that still far exceeds the 6,027 Watch Tower years needed to support their theory of when humans first walked the earth. Thus, the Watch Tower belief system is shattered at its foundations.
Simply Amazing
