So Old You Can See It

I read your article in regards to Dinosaurs. My comment is that scientists DO have the means of determining the exact age of dinosaur bones and fossils through carbon dating. Also, we have hundreds of of other clues in our environment and universe that tell us that the earth is millions of years old. Please do not deny facts....things we can see and touch.

—OB, U.S.

Thank you for contacting Answers in Genesis. Please see my comments below and note that they are written to help you and are said with kindness.

I read your article in regards to Dinosaurs. My comment is that scientists DO have the means of determining the exact age of dinosaur bones and fossils through carbon dating.

There are two major problems with this statement. The first is that the secular world is “scared” to carbon date dinosaur bones or, for that matter, any other bone they suspect is millions of years old. Creationists would love for the soft dinosaur tissue that was discovered by Dr. Mary Schweitzer to have been carbon dated. But as far as I know, such has never been done.

Granted, much carbon (including C-14) would be replaced with other materials for many fossils. This is why fossils that were formerly bone are primarily rock now; this also destroys the long age assumptions in radiometric dating that parent and daughter isotopes cannot be added or removed. Regardless, doing C-14 testing may not reveal much on many fossils, but if even a trace of C-14 is found in fossils supposedly millions of years old, it is a major problem for those holding to long ages. And this brings me to the second problem.

Carbon dating only gives younger age dates—not millions of years. So, claiming that dinosaurs have been age-dated by carbon dating means that you are agreeing that dinosaurs are not millions of years old—only thousands at most!

Also, we have hundreds of of other clues in our environment and universe that tell us that the earth is millions of years old.

Such as? But on the contrary, uniformitarian dating methods, by and large, give ages of the earth far less than billions of years.1 Why are these ignored?

Please do not deny facts....things we can see and touch.

Sadly, in today’s culture we have all been taught that things like carbon dating are “facts,” but they are merely interpretations of facts. If carbon dating is a fact, then coal layers cannot be millions of years old, and the secular “geological time scale” breaks down, as carbon-14 is readily found in coal layers that are supposed to be millions of years old!2

I want to encourage you to research C-14 in more detail, and a good place to start is with a chapter from The New Answers Book 1: Doesn’t Carbon-14 Dating Disprove the Bible?

If you want a more technical discussion, then please consult the RATE II book and this paper from the Answers Research Journal: Radiocarbon Ages for Fossil Ammonites and Wood in Cretaceous Strata near Redding, California

Many creationists (and evolutionists) may groan about an email like this because of the basic errors about C-14. But our goal here is to make people aware of the actual science (and lack thereof) behind many claims that are still continually used, despite the facts. When people realize that the science actually supports the Bible’s teaching, they are more inclined to consider the claims of Christ (it begins to lay a foundation). Because of this, please take some time to read the good news of Jesus Christ and how He came to save people from a sin-cursed and broken world.