- Series:Creation, Transcript English
Genesis 8:2
“The fountains of the deep and the windows of heaven were also stopped, and the rain from heaven was restrained.”
Did you know that radiocarbon dating may offer supporting evidence for Noah’s Flood? Many think that carbon dating provides evidence that the Earth is millions of years old, but this is not true. Radiocarbon dating can only reliably date things that are less than 3,000 years old.
Let’s say that you are a frog in a pond. High above your head, cosmic rays are striking nitrogen-14 atoms and changing them into radioactive carbon-14 atoms. That carbon eventually finds its way into your food and becomes part of you. Throughout your life it continues to accumulate in you. When you die, it stops accumulating. Being unstable, carbon-14 decays over time. Researchers measure the carbon-14 that remains in something that was once alive to determine how old it is. To do so, however, they must assume that the Earth is over 50,000 years old. That’s how long it would take for the amount of carbon-14 being produced to equal the rate of carbon-14 decay. But we now know that there is more carbon-14 being produced than is decaying, meaning that the Earth must be less than 30,000 years old! In addition, the processes at work during Noah’s Flood would have lowered the availability of carbon-14 to living things, which would also help account for the shortage of carbon-14.
In short, carbon dating cannot possibly tell us anything contrary to the Bible, and it seems to support the Bible’s account of Earth’s history.
Prayer:
Lord, You are my Rock of Ages now and into eternity. Thank You. Amen.
Notes:
Back to Genesis [ICR], 7/98, p. d, “Doesn’t Carbon Dating Prove the Earth Is Old?” Photo: Venetian mosaic depiction of Noah sending out the dove. (PD)
