What Is Carbon Dating and Is It ‎Reliable?‎

Dr. John D. Morris (who had a doctorate in geological engineering at the University of Oklahoma) wrote the following in an article:

“Perhaps no concept in science is as misunderstood as ‘carbon dating’. Almost everyone thinks carbon dating speaks of millions or billions of years. But carbon dating can’t be used to date either rocks or fossils. It is only useful for once-living things that still contain carbon, like flesh, bone, or wood. Rocks and fossils, consisting only of inorganic minerals, cannot be dated by this scheme.”¹

Firstly, what is carbon-14?

Earth has subatomic particles that are constantly raining upon it from outer space, which scientists have dubbed cosmic rays. When these particles of matter reach Earth’s upper atmosphere, they undergo chemical and physical interactions that form the radioactive element called carbon-14.

Secondly, how does radiocarbon dating work?

As the carbon-14 atoms fall to Earth’s surface, they are absorbed by all living organisms into their soft tissues. After the organism dies, the number of these carbon-14 atoms slowly decreases as they turn into other atoms at a predictable rate. Once a scientist begins to count the remaining carbon-14 atoms, they use a mathematical formula to subtract these from the predicted “starting amount,” apply the predicted rate of decrease, and thus determine the number of years the organism has been dead (or for how long it has been ‘losing’ the carbon-14 atoms).

Thirdly, according to scientists, what are the limitations of carbon-14 dating?

According to the University of Chicago, “radiocarbon samples are also easily contaminated, so to provide accurate dates, they must be clean and well-preserved. Dirt and other matter must be washed off with water, but chemical treatments and other cleaning procedures are also often needed. This is because there are so few atoms to count; even a little extra carbon from contamination will throw off the results significantly.” Also, any material that is subjected to radiocarbon testing is completely destroyed.²

According to National Geographic,

“Calibration presents another challenge. With the dawn of the Industrial Age, humans began emitting much more carbon dioxide, diluting the amount of radiocarbon in the atmosphere. Nuclear testing affects radiocarbon levels, too, and dramatically increased carbon-14 levels starting in the 1950s… Context is everything, and it can be hard to determine if there’s a temporal relationship between two objects at an archaeological site.”³

Finally, let us examine the overall problems with using the carbon-14 dating method.

The assumptions on which it is based and the conditions that must be satisfied are questionable, and in practice, no one trusts it beyond about 3,000 or 4,000 years, and then only if it can be checked by some historical means.¹
The method assumes, among other things, that the earth’s age exceeds the time it would take for C-14 production to be in equilibrium with C-14 decay.
Efforts to salvage carbon dating are many and varied, with calibration curves attempting to bring the C-14 “dates” in line with historical dates, but these produce predictably unreliable results.
Various attempts using the same method yield discordant ages more often than concordant ages.⁴
These methods assume that the system’s decay rate is always constant, but experiments show decay rates do fluctuate.
Many dating methods that don’t involve radioisotopes—such as helium diffusion, erosion, magnetic field decay, and original tissue fossils—conflict with radioisotope ages by showing much younger apparent ages.

References:

John D. Morris, ‘Doesn’t Carbon Dating Prove the Earth Is Old?’, ICR.org, 1 July 1998, Acts & Facts. 27 (6) https://www.icr.org/article/doesnt-carbon-dating-prove-earth-old.
Steve Koppes and Louise Lerner, ‘What Is Carbon Dating? | University of Chicago News’, accessed October 22, 2023, https://news.uchicago.edu/explainer/what-is-carbon-14-dating.
Erin Blakemore, ‘How Radiocarbon Dating Helps Archaeologists Date Objects and Sites with Carbon-14’, Culture, 7 December 2019, https://www.nationalgeographic.com/culture/article/radiocarbon-dating-explained.
Dr. Jake Hebert, ‘Radiometric Dating | The Institute for Creation Research’, accessed October 22, 2023, https://www.icr.org/creation-radiometric.

Below are several links to articles that show the holes in carbon dating: