Why an Atheist Thinks the Shroud of Turin is the Real Deal

As soon as a plant dies it stops taking on carbon

5730

As soon as a plant dies it stops taking on carbon dioxide. And animals stop taking in any form of carbon. That means that the slices of tomato in your sandwich are only half as radioactive after 5730 years. That means that if we could count the regular carbon atoms and the carbon 14 atoms and calculate the ratio, we could figure out how old something is. And that means that means we should be able to figure out how old the shroud is because the linen cloth would have been made from newly harvested flax plants. That is, we could do so if we knew how much carbon 14 was produced year-by-year throughout history.

The astonishing thing is that the production of new carbon 14 atoms in the upper atmosphere and the decay of carbon 14 takes place at about the same rate. It’s uncanny. It is one of those amazing balancing acts that takes place in nature. In a sense, for every C14 atom that dies another one is born. It isn’t exact but it close enough. Scientists are quite certain that it has been this way for tens of thousands of years, perhaps millions of years. It does vary a bit year by year and estimated adjustments have been calculated by dating the rings of very old trees.  Well, that is until we started exploding nuclear bombs when we significantly upset this one of many, many balances of nature.