Carbon Dating - The Age of The Earth

Carbon dating and other isotope dating is used by almost every Evolutionist to prove that the earth is Billions of Years old. The most recent textbooks in 2007 say 52 billion years old. Just 10 years ago it was only millions of years, however, evolutionists say that more current information shows us that they were previously wrong and it is now billions of years old. The interesting thing about this subject is that science is based on the idea of observation. For example, we can observe that their is gravity, so we draw certain conclusions based on scientific facts about gravity and how it works. Carbon and other isotope dating is actually a very simple observation. Things like rocks and fossils have a certain amount of carbon-14 in them when they are formed. Based on how long it takes for half of the carbon-14 atoms to gain a proton and become nitrogen-14, we come up with the half life of carbon-14. Scientists then take a fossil and based on assumption of how much carbon-14 was in it when it was formed, and how much is in it now, they do a simple calculation and woolaa -- the age of the fossil. The assumption of how much carbon-14 was in the fossil in the first place is easy to make, because we can observe today how much carbon-14 is in a bone. The problem with this calculation is that it also assumes that the average time it takes for the carbon-14 to gain a proton and turn into nitrogen-14 is and always has been the same. Scientific data shows that it has not always been the same. Depending on the surrounding conditions the decay can happen much much faster. Since we can't observe the rate of decay of carbon-14 to nitrogen-14 even 1,000 years ago, we can't use this simple calculation to come up with the age of the earth. There are too many assumptions. Carbon dating is only proven to be accurate to calculate the age of things that are around 2,000 years old. Not millions and billions.

Interestingly, a study was recently done with rock formations. With carbon dating, the rocks were supposedly formed millions and billions of years ago. However, scientists found that other types of dating gave a date of only 6,000 years ago. The other dating was based on a more accurate calculation of the amount of nitrogen in crystals that were formed when the rock was formed. Personally, I don't believe either of these datings can be used to accurately date the age of the earth, because too many assumptions are made. We need to look to history and archaeology to really help us understand our origins. If studied in depth, these all point to the origin of man about 6,000 to 10,000 years ago. This is what man has believed since the beginning of time until just recently. If I wanted to know when the earth began, I would look to see what people wrote 1,000's of years ago. Wouldn't you trust them more than some inaccurate calculations.