Carbon-14 Hoax
About half of carbon-14 will break down every 5,730 years. This is called the half-life. If I gave you a pile of carbon-14 and you waited 5,730 years, half of it would turn back into nitrogen, and you would end up with half a pile. If you waited another 5,730 years, half of that would turn into nitrogen, leaving one-fourth of the original pile. In theory, it never reaches zero. It goes from one-half to one-fourth, one-eighth, one-sixteenth, and so on.
Plants are always taking in carbon-14 during photosynthesis. Most of their carbon is normal carbon-12, but some of it is carbon-14. Animals eat plants and make that carbon part of their bodies. During your lifetime, you have either eaten plants or eaten animals that ate plants. That is about all there is to eat. Therefore, you are absorbing radioactive carbon through the food chain. The plants get it from the air, and the air gets it through the effects of the sun. Carbon-14 gets into the plants, then into animals, and finally into us. Either way, we all contain some radioactive carbon.
When a plant or animal dies, it obviously will not take in any more carbon-14. Several assumptions are involved in carbon dating. First, it is assumed that the amount of carbon-14 in the atmosphere – a very small ratio – is the same as the amount found in plants and animals. For instance, the atmosphere is said to contain 0.0000765 percent radioactive carbon-14. It is assumed that I have the same ratio. I have never been tested for carbon-14, and I have never met anybody who has, but I would say that is a reasonable assumption. Nevertheless, it is still an assumption.
When a plant or animal dies, it does not get any more carbon-14, so whatever it contains begins to decay without being replenished. It was decaying while the organism was alive, but the loss was balanced by the carbon being taken in. As soon as it dies, the balance begins to change.
Basically, carbon dating measures the amount of carbon-14 in an object and compares it with the amount in the atmosphere. If the atmosphere contains 0.0000765 percent and the object being dated contains only half as much, it is assumed that the object has been dead for one half-life. If it contains one-fourth as much, it is assumed to have been dead for two half-lives, or two times 5,730 years. The amount then goes from one-fourth to one-eighth, one-sixteenth, and so on. This is how carbon dating is supposed to work. It sounds good and certainly sounds scientific, but it is based on serious assumptions that can affect everything.
Suppose I told you to fill a barrel with water, but I had drilled holes in the barrel. While you are putting water in, it begins to leak out. You have a process of filling and a process of leaking at the same time. Addition and subtraction are taking place simultaneously. At some point, the barrel reaches a stage called equilibrium. You will never fill it beyond that point unless you speed up the input or decrease the outflow.
The atmosphere is likewise constantly taking in carbon-14 and constantly losing it through decay. The question is how long the earth’s atmosphere would take to reach equilibrium. When carbon dating was developed in the late 1940s and early 1950s, Willard Libby of the University of Chicago considered this equilibrium problem. After doing studies, the estimate was that the atmosphere would reach equilibrium in about 30,000 years.
In other words, if you made a brand-new planet, covered it with air, and started it spinning around itself and around the sun, radiation from the sun would strike the atmosphere and produce carbon-14. That carbon-14 would also begin to decay. According to the estimate, within 30,000 years the atmosphere would reach equilibrium. After that, you would not get more or less carbon-14 unless something changed in the system.
The problem, according to this argument, is that the atmosphere still has not reached equilibrium. The claim is that there is more carbon-14 now than there was twenty years ago and that radiocarbon is forming 28 to 37 percent faster than it is decaying. If equilibrium has not yet been reached, then the earth would be less than 30,000 years old. That is what Christians have been saying all along. A friend of mine has a website, archy.org, where information about the atmosphere and equilibrium is discussed.
A chart can be used to show how carbon-14 dating is supposed to work in theory. An object that is still alive should be in balance with the atmosphere and might produce sixteen counts per minute per gram on a Geiger counter. If a sample produces eight counts per minute, it is assumed to be 5,730 years old because it has passed through one half-life. If it produces four counts per minute, it is assumed to have passed through two half-lives. If it produces two counts per minute, it is assumed to have passed through three half-lives. A sample that produces two and one-half or 2.9 counts per minute would be compared with a calibration curve to estimate its age. It sounds good, but the argument is that it does not work reliably.
Suppose you walked into a room and found a candle burning on a table. I ask you a simple question: When was it lit? You answer that it was already burning when you arrived. We then use empirical science – things we can test, demonstrate, and measure. We measure the candle and find that it is seven inches tall. I ask again, when was it lit? You still do not know. Then we measure how fast it burns and determine very carefully that it is burning at one inch per hour. Now we have two hard, empirical facts: the candle is seven inches tall, and it is burning at one inch per hour. Even so, you still cannot tell me when it was lit unless you make assumptions. How tall was it at the beginning, and has it always burned at the same rate? Neither assumption can be proved from the present observation.
If you find a fossil in the dirt, all you know is that it died. You do not even know where it died; you only know where it ended up buried. The amount of carbon-14 can be measured very precisely, and the decay rate can be measured. But when did the organism die? Nobody knows merely from those measurements. You would have to know how much carbon-14 was in it while it was alive, which depends on the assumption that the atmosphere had reached equilibrium. You would also have to know that it has always decayed under the same conditions.
If the Bible is right and the earth once had a canopy of water overhead, as I believe Genesis 1:6-7 and 2 Peter 3 teach, that canopy could have filtered out a considerable amount of radiation. The original creation may therefore have contained much less carbon-14 than the atmosphere contains today. If you found a fossil from an animal that drowned in the flood and carbon-dated it, the method would assume that the animal lived in an atmosphere just like the one we have today. In this view, that would be a faulty assumption.
Here are some examples that are offered to show that carbon dating does not work consistently. In 1949, an article in Natural History magazine reported that the lower leg of a mammoth dated at 15,000 years old while the skin dated at 21,000 years old.
In 1963, the shell of a living mollusk was carbon-dated at 2,300 years old. Fourteen years later, carbon dating was still producing questionable results.
In 1970, an article stated that if a carbon date supports a theory, it is placed in the main text; if it does not entirely contradict the theory, it is placed in a footnote; and if it is completely out of date, it is dropped.
In 1971, a freshly killed seal was carbon-dated at 1,300 years old.
In 1975, a frozen baby mammoth was tested. One part reportedly dated at 40,000 years old, another part at 26,000 years old, and material associated with it at 9,000 years old.
In 1981, a source stated that, no matter how useful it may be, the radiocarbon method was still not capable of yielding accurate and reliable results in every case. It referred to gross discrepancies, uneven chronology, and the selection of accepted dates.
In 1984, shells from living snails were carbon-dated at 27,000 years old.
In 1985, eleven human skeletons described as the earliest known human remains in the Western Hemisphere were dated by accelerator mass spectrometry. The new results reportedly removed about 5,000 radiocarbon years from their previously assigned ages.
In 1992, two frozen mammoths found side by side at a Colorado Creek site were dated differently. One was dated at 22,000 years old and the other at 16,000 years old.
In 1996, an article discussed Carl Swisher of the Berkeley Geochronology Center, who used advanced techniques to date human fossils. He reevaluated Homo erectus skulls found in Java by testing the sediment associated with them. Homo erectus had been assumed to have disappeared about 250,000 years ago. Even though he used two different dating methods, the results reportedly indicated that the remains were no more than 53,000 years old and possibly no more than 27,000 years old. I would call that a very large error in the earlier estimate.
Carbon-14 dating was developed in 1947. How, then, were ages of sixty million years, a billion years, or other vast periods assigned before that? The argument is that an expected age was already in mind. When a result matched the expectation, it was accepted; when it was far out of line, it was discarded.
That is basically how this works in summary. Carbon dating assumes how much carbon was in a body while it was alive and measures how much remains after it dies. It is like taking a burning candle, measuring it, and using a stopwatch to see how fast it burns. You may estimate how long it will take to burn down, but determining how long it has already been burning requires knowing how large it was at the beginning. Without that information, you cannot obtain the answer from the present measurements alone.
This discussion fits with a recent-creation interpretation of the Bible. Some Christians believe in creation but also believe that it took God billions of years to accomplish it. I do not believe that position agrees with the biblical account or with the argument presented here concerning radiocarbon dating and a worldwide flood.
Earlier, before I came across this video, I searched for the phrase ‘understanding worldwide flood.’ The search results included arguments both for and against a worldwide flood. An article I had posted on April 5 appeared in the results, at one point on the first page. When I checked through additional pages later, it was difficult to find. To me, that illustrates how search rankings are controlled. Google searches are not simply neutral or ‘smart’; they can be politically or editorially influenced according to what the company wants people to see. That raises another question about how reliable the information presented to the public really is.

The Architecture of Absurdity
5 Ways Your Worldview Might Be Collapsing on Itself
Engaging in the rigorous defense of the faith often begins with a “headache”—the intellectual strain of realizing that what we believe about the world must actually work in the world. As a philosophical apologist, my goal is not merely to offer a different opinion, but to employ a presuppositional methodology. This involves an “internal critique” of the unbeliever’s own system, performing a reductio ad absurdum to show that their position provides no place to stand.
Everyone operates on presuppositions. Like the air we breathe, we use them long before we can define them. Yet, the Bible teaches that the unbeliever is “suppressing the truth in unrighteousness.” Their worldview is not a coherent shield but a “roof” built to hide from the obvious reality of God. When we push on these hidden assumptions, the “vanity of their thinking” is exposed, leaving them intellectually helpless.
1. The “Gusto” Trap: Why Pure Hedonism Can’t Stand Indignation
Consider the neighbor who adopts the philosophy of the old beer commercial: “You only go around once in life, so grab for all the gusto you can get.” This is a worldview of pure hedonism: pleasure is the highest value, and there is no accountability after this life. If there is no God to answer to, then maximizing personal satisfaction is the only logical “good.”
However, this worldview collapses the moment the neighbor encounters someone else “grabbing the gusto” at their expense. If a corrupt policeman beats a citizen or a tyrant invades a weaker nation to satisfy his own impulses, the hedonist reacts with moral outrage. But these two views do not “comport.” To be consistent, the hedonist must abandon their indignation.
“If you really believe you should grab for all the gusto you can get, then you have to commend policemen that beat up people because they’re grabbing for all the gusto.”
By demanding an ethical standard from others while maintaining a personal philosophy of self-interest, the unbeliever proves their system is a farce. They are borrowing a moral capital they haven’t earned to condemn behavior their own worldview should commend.
2. The Blind Spot of “Seeing is Believing”
Many skeptics lean on an epistemological claim: “Seeing is believing.” They assert that knowledge is limited exclusively to what can be verified through the senses or observed scientifically. They mock the believer for following the “authority” of the Bible while they claim to follow only the facts.
This position is inherently self-refuting and ironically deistic. We must ask: “How did you come to believe the truth that knowledge is limited to what you can observe? Did you see that rule?” The statement “all knowledge is limited to observation” is not something that can be observed; it is an abstract, philosophical claim.
Furthermore, the skeptic is usually following an authority just as much as the Christian—their “bible” is simply a different book from the library. They are relying on the authority of a philosopher or a textbook to tell them that only the senses matter. If their rule is true, they have no foundation for knowing it to be true. To believe it, they must violate it.
3. The Determinism Dilemma: Why Professors Can’t Really Flunk You
In the halls of academia, “Behaviorism” is a popular fashion. It posits that humans are merely stimulus-response mechanisms, determined by environmental factors and conditioning. In this view, free will is an illusion; we are simply “playing out” our programming.
The absurdity of this view is exposed by a performative contradiction. Imagine a professor who spends a semester teaching that humans have no free will, only to catch a student cheating on the final exam. If that professor imposes a penalty or flunks the student, he has just denied his own lecture.
By punishing the student, the professor assumes the student was free to prepare and free to choose honesty. If the student was truly “determined” by conditioning to cheat, the punishment is irrational. The professor’s actions prove he doesn’t believe his own theory; he holds the student responsible because, in his heart of hearts, he knows the student is a moral agent, not a machine.
4. The Logic Paradox: Materialism vs. The Laws of Reason
The materialist claims that reality is exclusively physical—that matter is all there is. Yet, this same individual will frequently appeal to the “laws of logic” to find contradictions in the Christian faith. This is a massive metaphysical blunder.
Matter is localized and constantly changing. It exists in a specific place at a specific time. In contrast, the laws of logic are invariant, abstract, and universal. If the world is only made of physical components, where do these non-physical, universal laws come from?
“If you’re going to say the world is only made up of physical components… you can’t turn around and appeal to something not made up of matter… you can’t appeal to any kind of laws—laws of ethics or laws of logic.”
The materialist is like a man using a microphone to argue that electricity doesn’t exist. By using logic to attack faith, they are utilizing a tool that their own worldview says should not exist.
5. The “Problem of Evil” Backfire: When Outrage Proves God
The most common “tough” argument against God is the problem of evil. I recall a caller to a radio show in Los Angeles who was “livid” after serving on a jury for a horrific child molestation case. He used the sheer evil of the event to argue that a good God could not exist.
But this outrage is a presuppositional backfire. For his indignation to be more than just “sound and fury,” he must believe in an absolute, universal standard of right and wrong. In an atheist worldview, the molester was simply “grabbing the gusto” according to his own preference. Without God, the caller’s outrage is just a personal “dislike,” like a preference for one flavor of ice cream over another.
This reveals the self-deception at the heart of unbelief. Like “Mrs. Jones,” who makes endless excuses for her delinquent son “Johnny” while secretly refusing to be in a room alone with him, the atheist practices a form of “intellectual ostriching.” They know the truth—which is why they are so angry—but they suppress it to avoid judgment.
“In order for you to be just that indignant… you must first believe that there’s a god whose holy character defines right and wrong for all mankind.”
The very existence of the “Problem of Evil” proves that the atheist knows God exists; otherwise, they would have no basis to call anything “evil” in the first place.
Conclusion: The Marshmallow Core of Unbelief
We must realize that the “atheist project” is always unsuccessful. While the exterior of the skeptic appears intellectually formidable, pushing on their underlying assumptions reveals a marshmallow core of inconsistency. They are people “running from God,” attempting to build a roof over their heads to keep the light of revelation out.
They use logic to deny the source of logic; they use morality to deny the Lawgiver; they use their minds to argue they have no minds. If your own worldview were put to the test of consistency today, would it hold up? Or would it be revealed as a collection of convenient contradictions, borrowed from the very God you are trying to ignore?