Thank you, 6days,
Now that Michael Cadry has assented to sit silently on the sidelines as regards science issues, I have a bit more time to look at the substance of your above post. I thank you for offering some reasonable considerations as to the C-14 dating issue. I am still digesting some of the relevant data, but decided to share some of my thoughts now, rather than waiting so long the issue is no longer relevant to the thread.
For now I am going to jump directly to the end of your post, where you refer to R. H. Brown’s article at the CRS in which an explanation for old C-14 ages can be shown to be actually much younger. In later posts I may come back to deal with other suggestions you offer.
Patton Subscribed to Rommel’s Quarterly
I went to the CRS website, but I think full access to their published materials is via subscription. Perhaps I should subscribe, for reasons eloquently expressed by the late actor George C. Scott in the movie “
Patton”, when he was watching his fleet of tanks in battle against German General Rommel’s tanks in North Africa. Patton (Scott), pleased with the way the battle was unfolding before him, exuberantly declared as though he were addressing Rommel: “Rommel, you magnificent b*******, I read your book!!!”.
But alas, I have not read CRS’s “book”, and a subscription to the CRS will have to wait till a later encounter. I was able to use Google to come up with several relevant articles by R.H. Brown at a site maintained by an organization I hadn’t heard of before - the “
Geoscience Research Institute” (abbreviated as “GRI”). It appears to be a Seventh-Day Adventist institute focused on defending the science of Seventh-Day Adventist beliefs. Kinda a Seventh-Day version of ICR or AIG, pretty much YEC stuff.
In this post I will focus primarily on one of those articles from 1990:
CORRELATION OF C-14 AGE WITH THE BIBLICAL TIME SCALE. I suspect this article presents the basic material you are alluding to dealing with C-14 ages of 40,000 years being much younger. If this differs from the actual article you had in mind, and you can link to said article, I would be happy to look at it.
Cross-pollination of YEC data
Since, as per the info you provided, your source for Brown’s article seems to at the CRS, I assume this is an example of cross-pollination of YEC-friendly arguments between the GRI (where Brown seems to be affiliated) and the CRS (where your article from Brown apparently is). Such trading of arguments between YEC camps is fine, since either the science is valid or not.
YEC Attacks on a Different Brown
(As a side note, when I first started poking around in the CRS I stumbled across a couple of articles that, from their titles, seemed to be taking Walt Brown (a totally different Brown from the one you are referencing) to task for some of his unique YEC ideas. Walt is real favorite of some TOL regulars (such as Stripe, Enyart). But for the subject at hand, I didn’t see that the CRS disagreed with Walt Brown on C-14 dating, so I will turn my attention back to your Brown for now.)
Customizing the Vocabulary
As I read R. H. Brown’s article I have to continually be cognizant that he hijacks the meaning of some terms and reassigns them YEC meanings. Specifically, he uses the term “real time”, by which he means the time that is compatible with YEC views. For example, in the case you mention, the “real-time” age (meaning YEC age) of the sample is about 5000 years, but the “C-14 age” is 40,000 years (in the world of real science this C-14 age is close to the real honest-to-gosh valid truthful on-the-spot correct age). Times and ages predating Genesis Brown usually speaks of as C-14 ages.
Dissension in the YEC’s Ivory Towers
Here at TOL, and most particularly several times in this thread, ultra-zealous Christians have confidently asserted that the Bible is “the inerrant word of God”. I put the idea of “inerrant” next to almost a full page that Brown devotes to discussing disagreements between Christian scholars over details of Bible timelines as derived from Biblical texts (See the section he titles “Biblical Constraints”). He has to face that issue of what is the "correct" timeline, because for him to come up with a consistent mathematical way of adjusting C-14 dates to YEC dates, he has to decide just what set of YEC dates are the “right” ones.
Dissing the Trees
In the next section of the article, titled “Carbon-14 Constraints” R.H. primarily looks at the weaknesses in dendrochronology – dating by counting tree rings. He needs this, because the recent creation timeline cannot be sustained if reputed tree-ring dates of much over 7000 years old are valid. I do appreciate his mention that a more reliable set of tree-rings dates might be measured that (hopefully, for him) would support his YEC timeline. On my part I would be interested to know if, in the 25 years since this paper came out, new and more reliable dendochronological measurements have been made.
R. H. Brown’s wording is a bit unclear to me in part of this section, where he refers to “retrograde increase”. It may well be (and probably is) my own deficiency in being conversant with the terminology he uses, but it sounds like something that could be said in plain vanilla English instead. Anyway, I am tracking down his references to clarify in my mind what he is saying, since it is crucial to the historical levels of C-14 in the environment.
Adjusting the Assumptions to get the Answer You Want
Immediately following that, still in the same section of the paper, is where he addresses what you brought up – the 40,000 year C-14 age being actually from coal that is only a fraction of that age. But, and this seems to be a pretty major issue here, is something you have alluded to, the age of coal. He (and I think you) maintain that coal is a product formed in the time of (and aided by) the flood. Based on that assumption, which itself flies in the face of what mainstream science believes, he concludes the reason that coal formed as recently as the flood can only have the low C-14 levels it does is because the C-14 concentrations at that time were so low. Specifically, here is the crucial part of how he assumes the very conditions he needs:
| There is increasing evidence that organic specimens which can be established confidently as fossils of material that was involved in the Flood (e.g., coal) have C-14 ages in the 40,000 year range (Brown 1988b). This constraint, together with placement of the Flood at about 5000 years BP, specifies that at the beginning of the Flood the biosphere had no more than about 1/100 of the C-14/C-12 ratio that has characterized it over the past 3500 years. |
From there on in his paper, using that claim, he proceeds to develop the mathematical model that maps C-14 ages onto YEC compatible dates. So all he has done is casually declare the initial condition that he needs (low C-14 at flood times), and proceeds to use that as an established fact. In reality all he really did is kick the ball into two other areas of dispute – whether coal is really a product of the flood or whether it is truly ancient, and whether the flood of the proportions YECs believe in actually occurred.
At this point I invite you to see if you think I have understood R. H. Brown’s presentation correctly, and feel free to offer your adjustments to my analysis.
Addendum - Brown Parts Ways With Cadry
My illustrious friend and buddy, Michael Cadry, in recent posts to me assiduously maintained the position that he (Cadry) feels that C-14 decay rates are unreliable. Nowhere does Brown concur in that belief, and he even states that “Agreement of C-14 age with real-time historical age can readily be established as far back as the middle of the second millennium BC …”, and then he goes on to explain that (in YEC views), it is due to dramatically lower levels of C-14 in the earlier environment that accounts for lesser amounts seen in samples. In fact Brown’s mathematics depends on the reliability of a constant C-14 half-life. Your unqualified statement as well, 6days:
sounds very much like you concur that the decay rate of C-14 is not at question. Brown (and I presume you) feel the issue lies in the available concentration of C-14 to explain why old C-14 ages must be dramatically shortened.
The ball is again in your end of the court.
lain:
