On another thread, Minority Report posts a link to
101 evidences for a young age of the earth and the universe by Creation Ministries International. Discussion of that is off-topic on that thread, so I propose a new thread.
The "101 evidences" includes the usual nonsense, refuted over and over but which keeps coming back.
For example:
#51. Carbon-14 in coal suggests ages of thousands of years and clearly contradict ages of millions of years.
This is a standard creationist claim supposedly supporting a young earth. It is found in many of the creationist essays purporting to refute radiocarbon dating. The full claim is generally seen as follows:
Coal from Russia from the Pennsylvanian, supposedly 300 million years old, was dated at 1,680 years. (Radiocarbon, vol. 8, 1966) Source
This claim has been completely demolished
here. It seems that Ken Ham, Andrew Snelling and Carl Weiland, in
The Answers Book, got fooled by a radiocarbon date and a poor translation from the Russian where "coal" was used in place of "charcoal." The entire context of the date clearly describes a recent archaeological sample:
Mo-334. River Naryn, Kirgizia 1680 170. A.D. 270
Coal from the cultural layer on the left side of the r. Naryn (Kirgizian SSR), 3 km E of the mouth of the r. Alabuga (41 25′ N Lat, 74 40′ E Long). The sample was found at a depth of 7.6 m in the form of scattered coals in a loamy rock in deposits of a 26-m terrace. According to the archaeological estimations the sample dates from the 5 to 7th centuries A.D. The sample was found by K. V. Kurdyumov (Moscow State Univ.) in 1962. Comment: the find serves as a verification of archaeological data on the peopling of the Tien Shan (Radiocarbon, Vol. 8(1), p. 319).
What this shows is just shorthand or sloppy translation from the Russian! The "coal" is actually charcoal from an archaeological deposit. In the journal
Radiocarbon, this sample is included in the section of the report dealing with archaeological samples, and the paragraph discusses archaeological data.
This odd use "coal" is also found in another archaeological date in the same article, Mo-353. It reads Charcoal from cultural deposits of a fisher site. The coal was coll. from subturfic humified loam (p. 315).
But the term coal in place of charcoal was enough to fool Ham, Snelling and Wieland and other creationists who apparently are so eager to find 300 million year old coal radiocarbon dated to recent times and demolish radiocarbon dating that they just continually repeat this incorrect claim without bothering to check its accuracy. And the "300 million years" and "Pennsylvanian?" Those terms seem to have been made up from nothing, as they are used nowhere in the
Radiocarbon article.
So much for one of the "101 evidences."
Anyone want to have fun with some of the others?
Edited by Coyote, : Revised
Religious belief does not constitute scientific evidence, nor does it convey scientific knowledge.