Carbon Dating and Belfast Series

Went to "My" Topic, Ignored My Work · Carbon Dating and Belfast Series

I can basically only endorse what Gavin Cox says about treering dating here*:

That being said, the Belfast data is a well-known example of a lengthy, (claimed) continuous tree ring chronology, from AD 5 – 2006, but this particular example (methodological assumptions aside) is obviously not a problem for the biblical time-scale. I also mention supposed agreement for bristlecone pine (BCP) tree rings in my article, but that depends on matching rings from living and dead trees (“prone wood”) that has been ¹⁴C dated to multiple thousands of years.

His discussion of BCP series is here*:

Significantly for biblical creationists, a timeline for the growth of bristle-cone pines (BCPs) (Pinus longaeva), growing in the White Mountains of eastern California, has been calculated at 8,700 years. One tree dubbed ‘Methuselah’ has been tree-ring counted to 4,600 years, which, assuming the chronology of the Masoretic text for the Old Testament, places it well before the Flood, which is clearly incorrect. CMI has pointed out that BCPs can grow multiple rings per year, due to their dry environment. Extended chronology relies upon correlation of prone dead wood, with similar ring structures, which are then dated using ¹⁴C. Where overlaps with ‘identical’ ring structures are found, the chronology is considered to be extended. This is a highly subjective endeavour, which also implies prone wood lay around on the ground without rotting for thousands of years, which is demonstrably false. The entire method of ¹⁴C dendrochronology correlation is therefore an exercise in circular reasoning.

I'd disagree on Methusalem, since I think the Flood occurred 5000 or 5300 years ago (2957 or 3266 BC, to be somewhat more precise), depending on which version of the LXX chronology (Roman Martyrology of St. Jerome, as I have seen it attribued, or Byzantine of George Syncellus) is the correct one, Masoretic not being so, but being changed in order to accomodate an equation Shem = Melchisedec in polemics against Epistle to the Hebrews.

Now, it is also to be noted that similar ring structures may sound a good bet, if you narrow it down to identical. However, identical is not exactly what you get. OK, if you stay in one place, theoretically you can get that too. There is an early exercise in carbon 14 and ring tree dating with a very close match for a certain Pueblo in, I think Arizona. But this is concerning trees from a very restricted area and only concerns last pre-Columbian centuries - the dates could perhaps even be checked against indigenous narratives taken up by Spanish missionaries, if any. Or confirm narratives taken up centuries later by American folklorists.

But the further back in time you go, the wider you have to search to find wood, just to get a match for each year (if you have even one gap in dendro, you cannot determine if it is 1 year or 3000 years except by using other methods, the only reliable one that for back being narrative). This means, you need to accept imprecise matches. Similar, but not identic ones.

And even more, if you are dealing with small pieces of wood, maybe an identic one for ten or twenty rings is no real proof, since it might not be unique in time and space - you might need more material to get that. Hence, further back dendrochronology goes, the more it is taking a chance.

So, no, dendro is so far as I know not an independent way of calibrating ¹⁴C dates to 6,700 BC.

That said, CMI is being incomplete on the issue. ¹⁴C is used very regularly for very basic datings in the close to present. A statue from Benin, is it from Benin's Golden Age (including Golden Age of slavery, but that is another matter) from 1400 AD? Or is it from 1900 AD, that is a later imitation of the style, or even outright forgery? You ask someone to take a sample from a not too conspicuous part of the statue and you ¹⁴C-test that sample.

This means, there is a section of ¹⁴C-dating which is very parallel to the Belfast series. Now, Gavin Cox has explained very well why Belfast series is reliable (it is connected to trees known in the present and from so recent times that wood can be sampled from a fairly small region in fairly big chunks with fairly many rings), while other series are not (they are disconnected from Belfast series, their connection to time involves ¹⁴C-dates, they are from so far back that samples are smaller and from a wider area than would be really useful).

For ¹⁴C-dating, I'd appreciate a similar approach. Show why ¹⁴C-dating is reliable when dating sth from Gettysburg (if needed) but unreliable (as it definitely is in absolute dates) when it comes to dating Göbekli Tepe.

Hint : ¹⁴C-dates are different from tree ring dates. In a tree ring dating, each date depends on the one before that more recent in time and closer to when ring dates coincided with AD dated Gregorian calendar dated tree growth. So, one disconnect is enough to send a pan of 500 years (which possibly could be correctly dated internally in relative dates) floating on whenever its end is however long before the next series that is connected, whegther one connected to present or one not directly so connected.

This should imply : ¹⁴C-dating depending on another assumption, it has another set of problems. Let's identify them as candidly as Gavin Cox did with dendro! And first, let's identify Gavin Cox' candidness on this matter.

Bill N. of Australia

There are over 100 C14 labs doing a total of 10s of thousands at least of tests annually. If C14 is so unreliable, why haven't researchers who send their specimens for testing noticed it? What does CMI do to disillusion them?

Gavin Cox

But, contrary to your comment, researchers have actually noticed anomalous results for their samples for decades, and CMI has simply reported on their results. There was a major study of ¹⁴C reported by the RATE team (Radioisotopes and the Age of the Earth) back in 2005. They listed 90 peer-reviewed papers, going back to 1984, that reported anomalous results for 14C in samples supposedly 100,000 to multi-million-years (in the evolutionary time-scale). Of course, this is an impossible situation, unless these ancient materials are young—which we believe they are.

Gavin Cox has at best misunderstood the actual argument. The vast majority of the thousands of tests annually are NOT concerned with very old dates for which such anomalies (which only are so on Uniformitarian view, not for ¹⁴C per se), but simply with things like this coroner deciding whether such and such a skeleton belongs to the battle of the Marne or the rampages of a later serial killer, whether it should go to war memorial or to coroner for investigation and for families that are kin to victims of the stabber. And the more like near totality do not show this kind of so called anomalies.

What is 90 peer reviewed papers compared to more than 34 000 tests with no such anomaly (we are 34 years after 1984, and there are thousands of tests per year)?

Now, seing that Gavin Cox is not quite helpful, what is?

The assumption which is most likely to be wrong in a dating conflicting with Biblical chronology is not uniform speed of decay, whatever Setterfield and his fan Habermehl may think of that, it is how much the initial carbon was at.

If Göbekli Tepe organic samples had c. 100 pmC when they stopped breathing, Göbekli Tepe is 11 600 to 10 600 years back in time. If on the other hand Göbekli Tepe is Babel, between death of Noah and birth of Peleg, between 350 and 401 after the Flood, perhaps not all of these years, then for one thing the earliest and lowest layers as well as the highest and most recent ones started out with less than 50 pmC when they stopped breathing, and for another, the at most 51 years (I'd go for 40, though) are only spreading out to 1000 years because during this time, ¹⁴C is on the rise.

And this is my option. The things that are a definite anomaly to uniformitarians, ¹⁴C from layers supposed to be over 100,000 years old, and which is noted as an anomaly for Uniformitarians by Baumgartner, well, we as knowing better should be giving an account making it no more anomalous, I do, the "every level in the Phanerozoic portion [life-bearing] of the geological record" is simply usually either buried during Flood or during early post-Flood mudslides, and that means we can start calculating what the ¹⁴C level was at the Flood, 350 years before Göbekli Tepe started and 401 years before Peleg was born (and if you think Peleg was born just 101 years after the Flood, as per Masoretic with Vulgate text, you run into a problem, a too steep rise in ¹⁴C levels).

Perhaps my work has been ignored simply for the fact that as a Catholic, I don't feel bound to promote Jewish tradition over Catholic or Orthodox tradition, and therefore also not bound to take Vulgate over Roman Martyrology or Historia Scholastica. Let alone King James. (Which on top of being Masoretic in OT is also mistranslating the Greek of the NT, as in "repetitions" for Matthew 6:7**). My work is ignored, because it challenges the Protestantism of these usually Protestant researchers, indirectly, but if you scratch the surface, after all rather firmly.

Hans Georg Lundahl
Nanterre UL
Immaculate Conception
of the Blessed Virgin Mary
8.XII.2018

PS, in case you argue I am just a blogger, how about checking out this piece of news:

One Man's Discovery Sinks Major Climate Study
Bill Whittle | 15.XI.2018
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wpLVRPJnL4M

* The two articles are:

¹⁴C dating—who is fooling who?
Published: 8 December 2018 (GMT+10)
https://creation.com/carbon-dating-fooling-who

How old? When archaeology conflicts with the Bible
by Gavin Cox, Published: 1 November 2018 (GMT+10)
https://creation.com/how-old-archaeology-conflicts-bible

** Matthew 6:7 in King James. And in Douay Rheims. Link to discussion of meaning of battologein.