You have a scientific mind, which I regard as a good thing.
I agree.
Even carbon dating methods have been proven to give highly inconsistent results on occasion, such as dating living things to be thousands of years old, which throws the whole system into doubt.
First, carbon dating is not accurate for specimens older than a few tens of thousands of years. For things that are millions of years old, other techniques are used. There are a number of different techniques that can be used in different age ranges, and since the ranges overlap, they can be used to cross check each other.
Secondly, in cases where carbon dating has given inconsistent results, it has been used incorrectly. You gave the example of living creatures dating to thousands of years old, but carbon dating could NEVER work on a living organism, since it is taking in new carbon 14 from the environment.
Do you know how the technique works? Let me tell you.
Living organisms take in carbon from the environment. There are two types of carbon taken in, carbon 12 which is fairly stable, and carbon 14 which decays after a time (the half life is about 5,000 years). While the organism is alive, the ratio of carbon 12 to carbon 14 is the same as it is in the environment, since the body doesn't care which version it gets. They both work the same as far as what the body uses them for.
But once the creature dies, it is no longer taking in carbon from the environment. It isn't breathing, nor is it eating.
The carbon 14 in the body begins to decay, but the carbon 12 remains in pretty much the same amount.
So when we find a dead creature, like a dead mammoth frozen in the tundra, we can compare the amount of Carbon 12 to Carbon 14. Since we know how much 14 there was in relation to 12 when the creature died, and since we also know the present ratio, and since we also know how quickly carbon 14 decays, we can figure out how long the mammoth has been dead.
So obviously, carbon dating can not possibly give accurate results on a LIVING organism!
And interpreting the geological column is by no means as simple as running repeated tests to see how fast water heats up either. Trust me, life would be simpler for us all if it were, but with my limited knowledge of the creationism/evolution debate (which I haven't even looked at again since my college years), it seems to me that we would forever be stuck in a situation where subjectivity is inevitable. None of us were actually there 6,000 years ago, let alone 6,000,000.
No, we weren't there, but we have evidence that was there.
And if you admit that your knowledge about the debate is limited, how can you have reached a conclusion you are willing to hold to without even looking at the opposing evidence?
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