[_ Old Earth _] Evidence for Early Civilization vs. the Bible

[Packrat]

Early civilization, I think, has been recorded at about 10,000 years ago. I'm, personally, one of the Christians that accepts the Genesis day-age interpretation of the account. However, I can't argue very well against something that out-right seems to contradict the Bible, showing that human civilization is more than 6000 years old by so much of a disparity of 4000-44000 years. I was wondering if anyone could, perhaps, throw their hat in and give me a bit of info concerning the dating of cave paintings and other archaeological finds supposedly 10000+ years old or the like. I have a feeling I'm hearing one side of the story here. If no one else has a second side to offer, blind faith in opposition to what is accepted can only hold out for so long until it's replaced by conformity to the accepted system of beliefs - whether or not it's right.

Anyone have any thoughts?

 

[Gabbylittleangel]

Early civilization, I think, has been recorded at about 10,000 years ago. I'm, personally, one of the Christians that accepts the Genesis day-age interpretation of the account. However, I can't argue very well against something that out-right seems to contradict the Bible, showing that human civilization is more than 6000 years old by so much of a disparity of 4000-44000 years. I was wondering if anyone could, perhaps, throw their hat in and give me a bit of info concerning the dating of cave paintings and other archaeological finds supposedly 10000+ years old or the like. I have a feeling I'm hearing one side of the story here. If no one else has a second side to offer, blind faith can only hold out for so long until it's replaced by conformity to what is accepted - whether or not it's right.

Anyone have any thoughts?

It makes one wonder how the paintings got on the walls of the cave long before God created the earth.

I believe Scripture. Therefore, those reports that contradict Scripture are wrong.

The way to get rid of blind faith is to seek first the Kingdom of God and His righteousness. He says to call on Him and He will answer you and show you great and mighty things that you know nothing of. Trying to get your questions answered in a science book, a news broadcast, or in a web forum is only going to confuse you.

 

[jwu]

I believe Scripture. Therefore, those reports that contradict Scripture are wrong.

The way to get rid of blind faith is to seek first the Kingdom of God and His righteousness.

Yet you display a first class example of blind faith yourself...

And besides...you imply that your interpretation of scripture is infallible. If something contradicts your interpretation of scripture, then you believe it to be wrong, but it isn't necessarily wrong. It could be your interpretation of scripture that needs correction.

 

[Gabbylittleangel]

"jwu"

Check your pm.

 

[LittleNipper]

Yet you display a first class example of blind faith yourself...

And besides...you imply that your interpretation of scripture is infallible. If something contradicts your interpretation of scripture, then you believe it to be wrong, but it isn't necessarily wrong. It could be your interpretation of scripture that needs correction.

One's interpretation of any portion of scripture. tends to be only as infallible as one's review and acceptance of all scripture. Scripture interprets Scripture, and that is the key the HOLY SPIRIT encourages the elect to study in full, and ponder in full. If a verse in scripture seems to contradict another verse of scripture, it is that the reasoning of both is flawed in some way. The HOLY SPIRIT will work on one's reasoning of scripture only as that one moves toward GOD. As one moves away form GOD, so does the instruction of the HOLY SPIRIT withdraw...

 

[Packrat]

Haven't seen any satisfactory answers yet. By the way, I have asked God about it. I have also done some research into it in my spare time (very little spare time atm). Also, I've asked others - not including this community, and it's currently being discussed on another website I frequent. I think there's an answer out there, even if it requires someone 60-70 years of their life to find it. BUT, I hope someone can offer some insight into the subject.

I seem to remember something about charcoal cave paintings as it relates to burning which can cause some deceptive results. Also, I have read that such artwork on the walls of caves can be contaminated with other 'geological debris' and thus cause a skew in the results. The only problems with these are 1. I can't remember if the former is right, and 2. I haven't done enough research into the latter to validate it or to even know how it skews the results.

 

[Gabbylittleangel]

.....the dating of cave paintings and other archaeological finds supposedly 10000+ years old or the like.....
Anyone have any thoughts?

10000 years old. How do they know?

 

[Gabbylittleangel]

*edit*
Forgive the double post.

 

[Gabbylittleangel]

One's interpretation of any portion of scripture. tends to be only as infallible as one's review and acceptance of all scripture. Scripture interprets Scripture, and that is the key the HOLY SPIRIT encourages the elect to study in full, and ponder in full. If a verse in scripture seems to contradict another verse of scripture, it is that the reasoning of both is flawed in some way. The HOLY SPIRIT will work on one's reasoning of scripture only as that one moves toward GOD. As one moves away form GOD, so does the instruction of the HOLY SPIRIT withdraw...

Amen LittleNipper.
Truth never contradicts truth.

 

[Packrat]

Well, I found a couple of leads:

http://science.howstuffworks.com/carbon-142.htm
http://www.answers.com/topic/list-of-nuclear-tests
http://www.ndt-ed.org/EducationResource ... dating.htm

It seems that nuclear radiation can affect the results of dating the age of organisms that died after the 1940's. I would think that it would also affect the dating of the age of organisms that have died beforehand, too, but I still don't know everything there is to know about their dating methods employed.

 

[Salazar]

Early civilization, I think, has been recorded at about 10,000 years ago. I'm, personally, one of the Christians that accepts the Genesis day-age interpretation of the account. However, I can't argue very well against something that out-right seems to contradict the Bible, showing that human civilization is more than 6000 years old by so much of a disparity of 4000-44000 years. I was wondering if anyone could, perhaps, throw their hat in and give me a bit of info concerning the dating of cave paintings and other archaeological finds supposedly 10000+ years old or the like. I have a feeling I'm hearing one side of the story here. If no one else has a second side to offer, blind faith in opposition to what is accepted can only hold out for so long until it's replaced by conformity to the accepted system of beliefs - whether or not it's right.

Anyone have any thoughts?

I believe the scientific community likes to make up dates based on what the fossils look like and/or what section of the earth they are in. Of course none of these have dates on them. I think your gut feeling is the correct one.

 

[jwu]

I would think that it would also affect the dating of the age of organisms that have died beforehand, too, but I still don't know everything there is to know about their dating methods employed.

Nuclear tests and so on affect the amount of C14 in the atmosphere, but they don't affect things which are already dead and covered by sediment. Moreover, the changes of C14 in the atmosphere are recorded and calibration methods are used to account for them.

And other methods than C14 are not affected by this at all.

I believe the scientific community likes to make up dates based on what the fossils look like and/or what section of the earth they are in. Of course none of these have dates on them. I think your gut feeling is the correct one.

Do you have any source for dating by "look" of the fossils?

In case of many fossils they are indeed dated by dating the rock stratum that they are found in, but precautions are taken that it is an "undisturbed" site, that the fossil couldn't have gotten there by other ways. There is a multitude of methods how rock can be dated, all of the methods being not foolproof but watertight if used correctly.

 

[Packrat]

Nuclear tests and so on affect the amount of C14 in the atmosphere, but they don't affect things which are already dead and covered by sediment.

Really? They wouldn't affect it at all? What about fossils in open caverns? Or what about the subterranean nuclear tests? What about the diet of the deceased creature? What if a carnivore primarily ate other carnivores and not other herbivores? Would that lessen the amount of C14 in the carnivorous organism?

Moreover, the changes of C14 in the atmosphere are recorded and calibration methods are used to account for them.

What about the amount of C14 in the atmosphere upon the death of the organism so many thousands to millions of years ago? How would we know how much it has varied since then? Do we know?

 

[jwu]

What about fossils in open caverns?

I was talking about dead things which are covered by sediments...
However, in what way would exposure to air affect the dating of an exposed corpse? Minor amounts of C14 could get into the body from the air, which would result in a C14 reading which is too young, the body would actually be older than the instruments indicate. This therefore does not save a young earth.

Or what about the subterranean nuclear tests?

Earth is pretty good at blocking radiation. If it's a few hundred metres away from the test site there won't be any radiation reaching the fossil. And again, such radiation - if it reaches fossils- would result in a too young reading by producing new C14 in the body, which makes it appear as if less time had passed during which the initial amount of C14 has been decaying away.

What about the diet of the deceased creature? What if a carnivore primarily ate other carnivores and not other herbivores? Would that lessen the amount of C14 in the carnivorous organism?

No, the amount of C14 in terrestrial organisms is nearly identical, regardless of the diet. The measurement error would be the half of the average age of the herbivores which were eaten - i.e. the average duration time which the C14 in these already has been part of the body and been decaying away.
That's not a significant problem at all...and since this effect is known (if it even occurs), it can be accounted for. And even if that doesn't happen...the effect would be a misreading of a few years at most.

What about the amount of C14 in the atmosphere upon the death of the organism so many thousands to millions of years ago? How would we know how much it has varied since then? Do we know?

C14 decays rather quickly, after about 50.000 years there is too little left to get a reading which is good for dating. Hence the "millions" of years fall flat ;)
However, the amount in the atmosphere is known by measuring the C14 content of samples which were dated by other independent means, such as counting the number of annual river varves which they were found under (Lake suigetsu has about 60.000 such annual varves, green lake even has millions); by counting tree rings (there is a continuous tree ring record for about 13.000 years), counting ice core layers (cores from antarctica show 500.000+ annual layers) or by dating the sample with other independent radiometric methods which do not depend on knowing initial concentrations of isotopes.

This is a rather famous graph which shows the strong correlation between the C14 dates found in lake suigetsu, plotted against the number of annual varves which they were found against, as well as a correlation to thorium dated corals and tree rings.

I have yet to see a creationist explain this correlation if these dating methods are supposed to be flawed. If they were erroneous, there wouldn't be any reason why these independent dating methods give such nicely agreeing results.

 

[Packrat]

Minor amounts of C14 could get into the body from the air

Cool. I thought something like that might happen. What about the C14 already in the body? Would it decay at an increased rate even if new C14 is being introduced into the corpse? Afterall, what can get in can get out, right?

The measurement error would be the half of the average age of the herbivores which were eaten - i.e. the average duration time which the C14 in these already has been part of the body and been decaying away.

Could you present a scenario? I'm not quite visualizing what you're saying. Sorry. I'll have to think harder --> :x

C14 decays rather quickly, after about 50.000 years there is too little left to get a reading which is good for dating. Hence the "millions" of years fall flat

Of course. I forgot about that. :-? Anyway, I'll have to get back to you on the other stuff for now. Thanks for the answers.

 

[jwu]

What about the C14 already in the body? Would it decay at an increased rate even if new C14 is being introduced into the corpse?

It wouldn't decay at an increased rate. Decay rates are pretty much constant.

There have been experiments in order to increase the decay rate of beryllium (a rather unstable element), but no greater increases of the decay rate than about 1% could be achieved - and this happened at conditions which would utterly disintegrate the fossil. Things like millions of atmospheres of pressure and temperatures like in the core of the sun.

Leaking out is theoretically possible, but carbon isn't very volatile. Leaking out, just like leaking in, would be negligible. And since the concentration of C14 would be bigger in the surrounding air than in the fossil, more would leak in than out.

Could you present a scenario? I'm not quite visualizing what you're saying. Sorry. I'll have to think harder -->

Ok...let's imagine a scenario in which the whole C14 of a carnivore is attained by eating herbivores, which in return get their C14 from eating plants.

The plants' C14 content is at equilibrium with the surrounding air. The herbivores eat the plants and thus take their C14. Until the herbivore gets eaten by that carnivore a bit of its C14 decays away.
How much C14 decays away? If the herbivore got all its C14 at birth, then until it gets eaten it's lifetime worth of C14 decay occurs. But since it doesn't get all of its C14 at birth but is subject to a constant influx of C14 by eating plants during its life, the decay that actually takes place is less than that. I've simplified this to half of the lifetime worth of decay. Either way, it's not much compared to the overall age of the fossil - the average age of the eaten herbivores is the upper limit of this error.
Today we observe carnivores being pretty much in equilibrium with the C14 ratio of their environment...but that may be because the effect of this circumstance even is below the accuracy of the instruments. After all, if the average prey is e.g. 5 years old (in reality it's probably way less than that, due to all the insects and small animals that are being eaten), then no significant lack of C14 would be measured. C14 has a half life of 5740 years...in 5 years not much of it will have decayed away, 0.06% to be precise.
An error of 5 years or so is not significant for samples which are thousands of years old - which can only be dated with an accuracy of +-50 or so years anyway, due to limited accuracy of the instruments which determine the amount of C14.

And - of course - if this was a significant problem, then we shouldn't see that correlation to other independent dating methods.

 

[Salazar]

jwu....hi.

do you think the following test was flawed?

In 1990, samples of various dinosaur bones were submitted for Carbon-14 dating to the University of Arizona’s department of geosciences’ laboratory of isotope geochemistry. Bones from an Allosaurus and an Acrocanthosaurus were among those sent to the university’s testing facilities to undergo a “blind†dating procedure (which means that the technicians performing the tests did not know that the bones had come from dinosaurs). Not realizing that the samples were from dinosaurs prevented “evolutionary bias,†and helped ensure that the results were as accurate as possible (within the recognized assumptions and limits of the C-14 dating method). We have in our possessionâ€â€on the official stationery of the University of Arizonaâ€â€a copy of the test results for the Allosaurus bones (see reproduction at right, sample B). Amazingly, the oldest C-14 date assigned to those bones was a mere 16,120 years (and only 23,760 years for the Acrocanthosaurus fossils; see Dahmer, et al., 1990). Both dates are a far cry from the millions of years that evolutionists suggest should be assigned to dinosaur fossils.

http://www.apologeticspress.org/articles/15">http://www.apologeticspress.org/articles/15</a>

 

[blunthitta4life]

C14 decays rather quickly, after about 50.000 years there is too little left to get a reading which is good for dating. Hence the "millions" of years fall flat

What about uranium-lead radiometric dating?

"The uranium-lead radiometric dating scheme is one of the oldest available, as well as one of the most highly respected. It has been refined to the point that the error in dates of rocks about three billion years old is no more than two million years."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radiometric_dating

 

[Packrat]

It wouldn't decay at an increased rate. Decay rates are pretty much constant.

What I was asking is if C14 can be implanted into the body, then couldn't that C14 in the corpse also decay into N14 by the same or similar external forces implanting it there in the first place?

There have been experiments in order to increase the decay rate of beryllium (a rather unstable element), but no greater increases of the decay rate than about 1% could be achieved - and this happened at conditions which would utterly disintegrate the fossil. Things like millions of atmospheres of pressure and temperatures like in the core of the sun.

See above. I really wasn't looking for a different force or forces that would cause decay other than what normally causes decay. And what normally causes decay is not heat or atmospheric pressure as I understand it.

So... what I'm wondering first off is if C14 is decaying in a corpse/fossil which is underground, what is causing this decay?

Leaking out, just like leaking in, would be negligible.

Again, not concerned with leaking, but it's good to know that it can happen. I'm concerned with decay and how C14 in the corpse would be affected both underground and topside. I hope you can answer the last question of mine I posed above, and I look forward to further info you have to offer.

 

[jwu]

do you think the following test was flawed?

Yes.
C14 dating can only be applied to organic samples. Fossils however are mineralized "casts" of the original bones, things fossilize by having calcites and silicates leak into them, replacing much of the original structure. What they sent to the analysis wasn't an actual dinosaur bone, but matter which took the place of the long since decayed tissue in the bones.
Considering this a good result wasn't even expected. This demonstrates either utter incompetence or outright dishonesty on part of the people who had this test performed.

Moreover, occasional bad results do occur. Occasionally tractors get caught in radar traps with supposedly 200mph, that doesn't mean that radar traps don't work in general. It's a complicated procedure and there are many things which can go wrong: Insufficient cleaning of the sample, contamination of the sample by exposure to air and so on. Things like samples which were buried (very) close to uranium deposits also get results which are too young, as the radiation involved in the uranium-thorium series can create some C14 in situ.

Salazar, could you comment on the correlations of dating methods as seen in the graph in my last post?

What I was asking is if C14 can be implanted into the body, then couldn't that C14 in the corpse also decay into N14 by the same or similar external forces implanting it there in the first place?

No, the way how C14 is formed and the way how it gets into the body are unrelated. C14 is formed by exposure of N14 to radiation in the upper atmosphere, that radiation doesn't reach the ground. It gets into plants by photosynthesis of CO2 (those CO2 molecules which have a C14 carbon atom), those plants then get eaten and those who ate the plants eventually get eaten too.

Radiation cannot turn C14 into N14 because N14 is turned into C14 by beta radiation, which adds a neutron to the atom and results in a proton being ejected from the core, that proton forms a hydrogen atom once it captures an electron.
There however is no radiation which reverses this effect.

So... what I'm wondering first off is if C14 is decaying in a corpse/fossil which is underground, what is causing this decay?

Exactly the same thing that causes it in any other location (except cores of supernovas or other absolutely extreme conditions): The own instability of the isotope. This is not affected by different outside conditions as they appear on earth, and it's a statistically predictable process. While we cannot tell when one particular atom will decay, we can safely say that out of some million or billion half of them will have decayed away after a certain duration (5740 years in case of C14), with only a very small deviation.

Nuclear decay is not in any measurable way affected by conditions which occur on earth.