I would say carbon dating is accurate up to like 400 years. beyond that it's all guestimation. The church argument would be "the margin of error is too great to form any scientifically acceptable conclusions," In other words who knows?
C14 has a half life of 5,730 give or take 40 years. Carbon dating is good from about 1/10th of a half life, to 9 half lives. After that, there is too little C14 left to get accurate ages of artifacts using carbon dating.
The sweet spot for carbon dating is about 1,500 to 15,000 years old. Claiming it is only good up to 400 years is just plain wrong.
What data do you have that tells you radiocarbon dating is only good for 400 years? My understanding from geology classes was that it's more like 50,000 years.
Anonagain Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > What data do you have that tells you radiocarbon > dating is only good for 400 years? My > understanding from geology classes was that it's > more like 50,000 years.
Yep. Although as "brother of jerry mentioned," beyond 15,000 - 20,000 years it gets more difficult, as samples get smaller and smaller. Dates from about 1,000 - 20,000 years old can be very accurately dated, verified by things like tree ring dating, to within 1-2% of actual ages. Past about 20,000 years, the uncertainty rises, from around 4-5% at 25,000 years to as much as 20% at 50,000 years.