Q: What should we make of carbon dating methods which seem to indicate an Earth millions or billions of years old?
A: First, let me reiterate that many well respected Christian scientists and theologians believe the Earth is old. Many who love Jesus adhere to what is called the Day-Age view. This view holds that the "days" described in Genesis are actually ages, which could be millions of years long. I don't personally subscribe to this view. I believe it causes problems exegetically and hermeneutically in the text. But, this is an issue over which well meaning and passionate followers of Jesus may disagree.
That being said, we have to objectively look at the carbon dating method. One cannot be so quick to consider it inerrant, when many are so quick to doubt that characteristic in God's Word. Scientists make mistakes and change their positions. I'm still getting over the loss of Brontosaurus! And Pluto not being a planet anymore is simply too hard to bear. These are silly examples, I know, but they do illustrate on some level the shifting nature of scientific discovery.
So, to further answer the question about carbon dating, I'll turn it over to Answers in Genesis. I don't think the organization is perfect, but they do a good job of answering the issue of carbon dating. For their full answer to the question above, click HERE.
Posts
1 comment:
Hi Chris,
I've actually been waiting for this post since you mentioned carbon dating in church two weeks ago- I'm an archaeology major, so I was very curious as to what you were going to say. I enjoyed the article that you posted, and I just wanted to add something from the archaeological viewpoint. We call carbon dating "absolute dating", but when you get a carbon date back from the lab your "date" comes with a +/- (insert however many years... 500, 1000, etc.), which is your margin of error. A good archaeologist will throw out a date with an unacceptable margin of error. Carbon dates are also never used by themselves- archaeologists are so meticulous that those dates are usually compared with seriation chronologies, dendrochronology, documents, etc, depending on the part of the world you are working in. I think that carbon dating gets so much hype that people don't always realize that. In any case, I just wanted to throw this info your way.
Post a Comment