Credibility of Bible Dates Unimpeached
HOW do the results of scientific dating affect our understanding of the Bible? That depends on our viewpoint. If we have held to the fundamentalist interpretation that the earth, the sun, the moon, and the stars—not just mankind—were all created in just six 24-hour days, we have to admit that the scientific evidence is unsettling.
On the other hand, if we understand that the days of Genesis were long periods of thousands of years, with billions of years prior thereto for planet Earth’s formation, there is no problem.
A conflict does arise, however, when a few radiocarbon dates indicate that there were men burning campfires, making tools, or building houses more than 6,000 years ago. Such dates contradict Bible chronology. Which should we believe?
From the time Adam was created, the Bible gives a year-by-year count of time that links up with reliable secular history about 25 centuries ago. The years were marked by the annual march of the sun from the summer to the winter solstice and back again, a sign God put in the sky for that purpose. Intelligent men noted and logged the successive years from one historic event to another. The records were incorporated in the early books of the Bible and preserved thereafter as part of the sacred treasury of the Jewish people as long as their national existence continued. This history of unmatched accuracy and authority tells us that mankind has been on the earth only about 6,000 years.
In contrast with this definite and positive authority, look at the radiocarbon theory. It is based on assumptions that have all been questioned, revised, and qualified, and many of which are still clouded in serious doubts. How can it seriously challenge the historical chronology of the Bible?
What, then, may we conclude? We have seen that geologists find generally good support in radiometric dating for their theories on the history of the earth, although most of the dates are far from certain.
Paleontologists, most of whom are prejudiced by their training and by their associates in favor of the theory of evolution, keep looking for support from radiometric dating for their claims that supposed fossils of ape-men are millions of years old. But their pursuit is a frustrating one.
On the one hand, the geological clocks, uranium and potassium, run so slowly that they are not suitable. On the other hand, the radiocarbon clock, which works fairly well for just a few thousand years back, gets hopelessly entangled in difficulties beyond that. Even so, the overwhelming majority of radiocarbon measurements fall within the Biblical 6,000-year range. The few older dates, to which evolutionists cling desperately, are all suspect.
Other scientific dating methods, of which amino-acid racemization was foremost in the attack on the Bible’s history of man’s creation, have failed evolutionists miserably.
We can confidently stand on this fact: The chronology in the Bible stands unimpeached by any scientific dating.