Carbon dating and the Watchtower

Gill

Sorry!

I meant to ask, is the Watchtower the only organization that vociferously argues against Carbon dating results when it chooses or is this a trait of all 'creationist fundamentalist groups?'

My understanding of it is that, when all outside possible events are taken into account, carbon dating is pretty accurate.

juni

Excellent question Gill. I always wondered about that also.

Juni

Every Young Earth and "literalist" creation group argues against the reliability of carbon dating. Many have come up with well-formed and demonstrable theories () such as, "Don't you see? It is so obvious! Satan planted evidence! To confuse and blind the minds of the unbelievers!"

Respectfully,
AuldSoul

badboy

I believe WCG splinter groups make same argument(I MAY BE CONFUSING THAT WITH ANTI-EVOLUTION HOWEVER)

fullofdoubtnow

The wts, and other fundamentalist religious groups, seem to me to be against anything that poses a danger to their beliefs. If carbon dating, which seems to be fairly reliable, threatens to throw doubt on some belief or other, they will argue against it, calling it a "device of satan", as AS said.

Hondo

My brother (a devoute evangelical) and I (a bit more liberal thinker than he) discuss carbon dating on occasion. He raises good points, some of which are very pertinent, and expounded on more in the article in below web site. Other articles I've read seem to cast some similar doubt on the accuracy of the carbon dating process.

http://www.allaboutarchaeology.org/carbon-dating.htm

ithinkisee

That is a good article mentioned. The problem I see is that they consistently use examples that are 20-30-40 years old and disregard the modern progress in carbon dating. I don't have time for specifics right now but I'll try to post more over the weekend. -ithinkisee

lovelylil

Most Christian churches that are "young earth" proponants believe the same as the WT. I am not one of them. Lilly

AlanF

Hondo, the link you posted was to an article obviously written by Young-Earth Creationists. Their arguments have all been put to rest by proper scientists. See, for example, the various articles on radiocarbon dating at the website www.talkorigins.org.

One thing that completely clobbers YEC claims is that radiocarbon dating has been calibrated at several places around the world by dendrochronology (tree ring dating) and dating of sediment layers in lakes and peat bogs. It shows variation in C14 dates over time, but it also provides a correction factor such that "radiocarbon dates" can be corrected to actual dates. Of course, dating an individual specimen is subject to a number of possible sources of inaccuracy.

The simple fact is that the only reason biblical inerrantists don't like C14 dating is that it conflicts with their claims about biblical dates.

AlanF

Carbon dating and the Watchtower

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