Young earthers seem to dispute carbon dating (i ain't explaining it, if you dont know how it works google it) by saying we dont know how much carbon 14 there was thousands of years ago. They suggest there was enough carbon 14 to make us date things as 50000 years old if they are really only 5000 years old. Surely that much carbon 14 can't be too good for you. Wouldn't all our ancestors have died of cancer or something? This doesn't just apply to carbon dating, but also to almost any other dating based on the break down of radioactive materials. I'm not entirely sure about this idea, your thoughts?

Carbon-14 is almost always at a constant level in all living organisms, that's the simple explanation of how we know how much older organisms had in them. It doesn't change much.

there has been major upheavels in the past. with each major catastrophe that happens to the world, the carbon levels can change. dinosaurs extinct-carbon 14 changes. krakatoa erupts around the start of the 20th century-carbon 14 change...and if there was a flood aka noahs flood, the carbon 14 change would of altered so much that much of the dating of prehistoric fossils would be way out of date. but then thats not proven, so we cant really use it as evidence. but carbon 14 dating is only really effective for 5,000 years. anything past that can be wrong by millions of years.

Millions of years? I thought carbon dating only worked for things no more then 200 000 years old. Is there something i'm missing?

carbon dating is only accurate to 5,000 years. but it can still put a estimate on millions of years, but that estimate is not reliable at all.

quote:Originally posted by stealthdonkey:

Young earthers seem to dispute carbon dating...

No, they wouldn't have died of cancer. There was far more uranium ores around than there is now. So the carbon wouldn't have any affect on our health.

Our atomosphere was rich in oxygen and nitrogen. So the Carbon atoms that weren't in rocks and decayed thing would have missed with more electronegative atoms. Thus, having no cancerous affects on man. Unless of course, someone was handling it with their bare-hands on a frequent basis.

Uranium is not a rare element, it's abundant in our crust. So just imagine how much more uranium was around in the ancient days. It didn't effect anyone unless they were overexposed to it.

I've just recently learned something , uranium in its ore form isn't as dangerous as ppl think it to be. I heard that you'd have to eat a couple of pounds of it before it began to harm you.

Now the man-made plutonium is something to worry about, a tiny bit of that stuff'll kill ya. (in comparison)

quote:Originally posted by nevermind:

carbon dating is only accurate to 5,000 years. but it can still put a estimate on millions of years, but that estimate is not reliable at all.

The flood story would have no effect on carbon-14 levels even if it were based in reality, nor would any other 'catastrophe'. It has a constant rate of decay and a constant rate of infusion into our atmosphere due to cosmic rays.

Carbon Dating? I only date Carbon based life forms. It's just immoral to date a girl/boy/thing that is Silicon/Sulfur/Chlorin

based.

It's just wrong.

Anyways, real ancient things are dated in lots of other ways than C-14, which is just for *recent* stuff.

i know that there are other dating techniques, i was just curious what effect that much carbon 14 would have on us if the levels havent always been roughly the same.