HI all hope you can help
my hubby is studying for a science degree and tonight my dad was talking to him about carbon dating and questioning the reliability of it. Hubby asked me why dad would be interested and I remembered seeing on here some discussions about JWs discrediting carbon dating as it underminded a lot of their teachings. Can anyone point me in the right direction so that next time the subject comes up we know where the chinks in the armour are.
thanks in advance.
Links please - carbon dating
by neverin 2 Replies latest jw friends
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neverin
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New Worldly Translation
I think if the debate is about the unreliability of Carbon 14 dating for rocks, dinosaur bones etc then that's an old straw man argument that a lot of creationists and bible literalists have used in the past. I'd suggest looking up all the various types of radiometric dating, like Uranium, Thorium, Potassium and others.
Carbon dating is reliable to about 40,000 years but for millions of years then the other radiometric options are used.
Another argument I've seen used in the orgs literature is that scientists often say that rediometric dating is imprecise. This is true but the quotes are often taken out of context. If you are dating a rock 80 million years old it's true you could be out millions of years from the true date, say 4 million or 5 percent. What it doesn't mean is that because radiometric dating is imprecise that the rock could be anywhere from 80 million years old to being made last week as the society often insinuates. Radiometric dating is imprecise within certain parameters but is still extremely useful and accurate enough to gauge geological timescales.