[Coyoteman]

I have read that article before. It is largely based on wishful thinking and what passes for science among creation "scientists."

Under "Other Possible C14 Dating Problems" we have the following:

Coal from Russia (the "Pennsylvanian)" supposedly 300 million years old, was dated at 1,680 years.

This is the result of poor reading comprehension and a mistake. The original translation from the Russian intermixed "coal" and "charcoal" and that fooled Ken Ham, Andrew Snelling, and Carl Weiland. They got it wrong in The Answers Book, published by Master Books, El Cajon, CA, in 1992 (page 73), and creationists have been copying their mistake ever since. The mistake is in somehow getting "Pennsylvanian" and "supposedly 300 million years old" into the mix. That is found nowhere in the original date citation. I can give you the complete original text if you doubt me.

Bones of a saber-toothed tiger from the LaBrea tar pits (near Los Angeles), supposedly 100,000 to one million years old, gave dates as recent as 28,000 years.

Another creationist boo-boo. The accepted age for the LaBrea Tar Pits is from about 9,000 years to about 50,000 years. The "supposedly 100,000 to one million years" is just faulty creationist research.

Eleven human skeletons, the earliest known human remains in the western hemisphere, have been dated by the "accelerator mass spectrometer" technique. All eleven were dated at about 5,000 radiocarbon years or less.

These skeletons were all originally dated by the amino acid racemization method, which has been shown to be extremely inaccurate. The radiocarbon dates straightened out the dating error in the amino acid racemization method. This is just the opposite of what the article implies.

Oh, and the author also uses the global flood to account for his method of calibrating the radiocarbon method.

Sorry, I can't buy Dr. Pitman as an expert on the radiocarbon method. You better read the links I posted earlier today and learn a little more about how radiocarbon dating really works.

And leave those creationist websites alone. They are not doing science.

[GodGunsGuts]

Is that your tactic now, ignore the body and focus on the least important part of the article (”Other Possible Carbon 14 Dating Problems”)? Do you want to focus on the “possibilities” section or the section dealing with the known science? I’m waiting...

PS Talk about quote mining!

[GodGunsGuts]

Hey Coyoteman, I emailed your post re: “Other Possible C14 Dating Problems” to Dr. Pitman. Dr. Pitman replied that you are right with regard to these common creationist references and stated that he has revised his site to make the fact that these are misquotes obvious.

Having said that, he went on to say that “These are not, however, the most fundamental problem with C14 dating. Although C14 is among the most useful and reliable of all the dating techniques, it still relies on several key assumptions. The same is true for tree ring dating. Why not ask Coyotemen to review some of the other mainstream arguments and references, such as those I’ve listed by Douglas J. Keenan?”

—GGG