Presumed Ignorant, Because YEC!

Presumed Ignorant, Because YEC! · Less moved by his talking down to me ...

Ken Wolgemuth

12 September 2024, 18:05

Those of you who accepted being a FB friend for years can now follow my FB Page with my name and and photo. I will soon be going through RADIOCARBON DATING, because almost no young-earth creationists are geochemists and understand C-14 dating.

[plus reposting older material that is less relevant for carbon dates.]

Hans-Georg Lundahl

I'm not a geochemist, but my stepfather was a chemist.

I think I do understand carbon dating very well.

No, I'm not falling for the canard of "an oil painting in South Africa was carbon dated to 10 000 years old, so it doesn't work", the painting is not the point, the carbon in it is, it does not consist of just recent linen, but given modern oil painting classes, to some degree also of acrylic, i e on my view Flood deposits. On yours even older.

David C. Campbell

Hans-Georg Lundahl Yes, that is a key issue in any carbon dating. For example, besides having a modern snail with ancient carbon in the shell because it got carbon from older limestone, you can also get a shell with fairly modern carbon on a snail with ancient carbon in the body because it eats bacteria that eat hydrocarbons.

Hans-Georg Lundahl

Such things are pretty marginal.

David C. Campbell

They illustrate how the carbon-14 system works. Although tiny amounts of 14C result from radiation in the ground from radioactive decay of other elements, most is produced in the atmosphere by high-energy radiation hitting 14N and turning it into 14C. Like any other carbon, it can be incorporated into living things through photosynthesis or dissolved in water, maybe making carbonate minerals. If you are getting carbon fairly directly from air, your 14C levels will be appropriate for the process you get your carbon by. If you take up old carbon from somewhere, your carbon date will be older. If someone wishes to slander carbon dating by trying to make it look unreliable when it's well-known why it might be complicated, this gives many opportunities for such dishonesty.

Ken Wolgemuth

Hans-Georg Lundahl, Would you please explain the main concepts of radiocarbon dating. No one, not even the PhDs who have the capacity to understand, have described it correctly. I am certain you did not hear it, if you only follow the YEC organizations. I certainly will not berate you for not knowing, because no one has ever shared it within the YEC community except me. They only talk about the limited example where it is applied incorrectly.

Hans-Georg Lundahl

"They only talk about the limited example where it is applied incorrectly."

Including, like I have refuted, the "recent" oil painting in South Africa, where I have pointed out that it involves acrylic colours.

However, that's the case for people like Kent Hovind. A bit amateurish on some issues, but I owe him a reference to the general principle.

"Would you please explain the main concepts of radiocarbon dating."

N14 is in the high atmosphere bombarded with cosmic radiation and turns into C14. The rate of production is not strictly constant, but comparing with historic material, it has been close to constant since the Trojan War.

The rate of decay is constant, and if it were accelerated by radioactivity, the result would not be an decrease of carbon 14, since the radioactivity would also increase carbon 14 via contamination of carbon 12 (a process which means I am not using the "diamonds can't be contaminated with younger carbon" since younger carbon isn't the issue in such a case).

Green plants living on land get their carbon dioxide mainly or exclusively from the atmosphere, meaning their level of C14 gets (since Trojan War) close to the classic 100 pmC.

The closer you are to green plants (from same year) and the less close you are to fossil carbon (including in the calcium intake!) the less likely you are to show any reservoir effect.

In cases without reservoir effect, the decay means that if you know the initial carbon 14 level, you can calculate the age from the remainder. For instance, 50 % of the initial level is 5730 years old, 71 % of the initial is 2865 years old, 84 % of the initial is 1432~1433 years old ... in general, if you have a specific age, T, the expected remaining carbon 14 level is to initial as 0.5^(T/5730) = decimal fraction, usually converted to a percentage.

This means that if I have a historic age for an object which has an older carbon 14 age, and is not suspect of reservoir effect, I can take that age surplus as the "instant age" and from that calculate the carbon 14 level in the atmosphere back then. E g, Genesis 14 took place in 1935 BC or close enough, but reed mats from En Geddi (Asason Tamar is En Geddi) are carbon dated to 3500 BC. Surplus = 1565 years. 82.753 pmC would have been the atmospheric carbon level.

Ken Wolgemuth

Hans-Georg Lundahl, Thank you so very much for explaining this. It's late this evening, so I will respond tomorrow. You do have these beginning steps correct. Ken

Hans-Georg Lundahl

So moved, so moved ...