Andrew Maxwell’s carbon dating blooper on his BBC Conspiracy Road Trip

As part of his BBC Conspiracy Road Trip (shown in October 2012), comedian Andrew Maxwell took his creationist team to visit professor of evolutionary biology Tim White in the US.

At around 44:40 Andrew goes on about “evidence” as if evolutionists must be right because they base their thinking on evidence, unaware of the beliefs and philosophy behind their e-stories (see Refuting Evolution chapter 1: Evolution & creation, science & religion, facts & bias).

Andrew says, “Tim however is just interested in the evidence. He has dug up hundreds of human-like skulls from the same valley in Ethiopia. Carbon dating has put them at different ages.”

Carbon dating? I thought Andrew’s was an interesting statement because carbon-14 has a relatively short half-life of 5,730 years and can only be used to ‘date’ samples around 40,000 years maximum. (Theoretically the instruments can discriminate c-14 levels that would represent around 100,000 years, but there is a problem with ‘background radiation’ that makes the practical limits around 40,000.)

I listened carefully and, sure enough, Tim White says to team member Sam, “Let’s go. Take that [skull]. That’s from a million years old …”

A million years. Obviously that was not ‘dated’ by carbon dating.

A little later Tim White said of another skull that it was 4½ million years old (according to their evolutionary scenario, of course).

Clearly they did not date that skull using carbon dating either.

I thought it funny that the whole purpose Andrew Maxwell’s show was to trick and flat-foot the creationists, but he fell for the blooper of the novice: “Doesn’t carbon dating prove the world is millions of years old?” (see The Creation Answers Book Chapter 4: What about carbon dating?)