Scientists Distrust Dating Methods

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Just how good are those radiocarbon dates? When reporting an exciting archaeological discovery, popular science magazines tell the reader, for example, that some man-made artifact is 40,000 years old. A few years ago it was common to find tolerance figures such as plus or minus 1,500 years attached to these ages. These tolerance figures effectively leave an impression of objective precision in the mind of the reader. Those tolerance figures are seldom used today.

The radiocarbon method was developed in 1948 and at that time was believed to be the ultimate answer to the archaeologists’ dating problems. The method has not lived up to its promise, and today it is distrusted by the scientific community unless backed up by a second dating method. To give one example, when scientists carbon-dated a mammoth bone hide-scraper discovered in the Yukon, it was evident that man and mammoth lived at the same time, but it carbon-dated at 25 to 32 thousand years old. However, this put man on the North American continent about 20,000 years before humans were supposed to have arrived here! Eventually, a second test method using a nuclear accelerator was used, and this dated the same piece of bone at only two thousand years!

This example is common, and Bible-believing Christians should not be concerned that carbon-dated ages will in any way disprove the Bible.