No 21

(Dating methods)

There are scientific ways of measuring the age of rocks, wood, fossils, bones and any other organic material and any other organic material; Carbon-14 or Radiocarbon (¹⁴C) is one of them. Ordinary carbon or ¹²C as well as ¹⁴C are found in the carbon dioxide in the air which is taken up by every living thing so, elephants or the leaves in a tree contain carbon. If we measure how many ¹²C atoms there are for every ¹⁴C atom there is in a living thing, this is called the ¹⁴C/¹²C Ratio. It remains fairly constant as long as there is life, but as soon as the plant or animal dies, the ¹⁴C begins to decay and is not replaced, so the amount of ¹⁴C starts decreasing. In other words, the ¹²C/¹⁴C Ratio gets smaller. Voila, we have a “carbon clock” to measure the age of things that were once living. This method cannot be used to measure rocks or fossils; other methods are used for that. The past is not open to normal experimental science, so a scientist cannot do experiments on events that happened in the past. God once said to Job “Where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth?” (Job 38:4). There are several methods to measure the age of rocks or fossils such as: Potassium Argon, Rubidium Strontium, Lead Isochron; we won’t look at them because it gets much too complicated. There is, however, something that can be said about these methods. A group of scientists measured the same rocks with these three methods and three different ages were derived. Potassium Argon revealed an age of 10,000 years; Rubidium Strontium gave an age of 1, 270,000 years and Lead Isochron gave 2,600,000 years. Not even close!! Millions or thousands?? The age of things can be measured by what information is available to mankind: evolutionists use man’s chronology, creationists use the Bible’s chronology. Which one do you think is more reliable?