http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/hovind/howgood-c14.html[/url] :
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A sample, of course, can be contaminated if organic material rich in fresh atmospheric C-14 soaks or diffuses into it. Such contamination may occur in the ground or during the processing of the sample in the laboratory. However, such contamination will make the sample appear younger than its true age. Consequently, with regards to carbon-14 dating, creationists are barking up the wrong tree on the contamination issue!â€Â
This only addresses the effects of extra C-14 being leached into the sample. How many samples have been exposed to extra amounts of C-12 or other radiation, making them appear older? If all rock and organic substances have undergone a world wide soaking in ‘old’ carbon and this has been diffused into the entire geological record, of course everything is going to agree. The closer to the surface, the more carbon-14 contamination and the newer the dates.
When countering objections on C-14 dating,
http://www.religioustolerance.org/c14datc.htm gave the following explanation to this anomalous sample:
Fossilized wood from the Hawkesbury Sandstone in Australia, believed to have been hundreds of millions of years old, was dated by C-14 as 33,720 ± 430 years BP.
“One wonders why a sample which most geologists would date to the middle Triassic (225 to 230 millions of years ago) would be tested using C-14. At that age, any C-14 that the wood originally had would have decayed to unmeasurable levels millions of years ago. This particular sample was porous. It would probably have absorbed groundwater containing modern carbon. This slight degree of contamination could have provided sufficient C-14 to give a 33 millennia age. Alternately, there could have been radioactivity in the surrounding rocks which created some C-14 in the sample.â€Â
Notice how there is immediate prejudice as to even considering a sample considered to be ‘too old’ to be tested by this method. Also note that because the date was expected to be older, the explanation is that the sample has been contaminated. This is the usual occurrence when any evidence that there is a real problem with the method. The dating game is so essential to the support of the ToE, the preservation of the mythical geologic column, and belief in the fallacious ages necessary to put the Bible into the realm of legendary fiction, that it is vehemently and irrationally defended against all skepticism from disbelievers.
The more I read of these sites defending dating methods, the more I doubt they are in any way reliable.[/quote:b806a]
OK, carbon dating could have been affected by the flood. There are dozens of other dating methods which use dozens of other elements, none of which are a product of life like carbon. So, how did the flood miraculously change the amounts of every single one of these elements so that the miraculously all give a false indication that our Earth is several billion years old? You do understand that it is miraculous if dozens of
independent dating methods, based on different elements with different sources, were to all give the same incorrect age? You simply cannot have that level of false correspondance---either the methods are all correct and the earth is billions of years old, or the methods are all false yet consistent, meaning God miraculously choose to deceive all of us and change the amount of elements to make the Earth look old, even though it is 6,000 years old.