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

And indeed shroud researchers, who for awhile

Snails

And indeed shroud researchers, who for awhile embraced Kouznetsov’s finding, were embarrassed. But the claim that scorching heat affected the carbon dating lives on in web site after web site. The Internet has an amazing propensity for replicating bad information, even expanding it.

But the Internet is also capable of spreading other information about. And many creationists, convinced that the world was but about 6,000 years old, were listing instances where carbon dating was producing wrong results, even extraordinarily wrong results. One example was the story of how living snails were carbon dated and the results were that they were 27,000 years old. People who make sport of challenging creationists were calling this utter nonsense. “No person in their right mind would try to date [that is radiocarbon date] a living snail,” was a typical response. “Where do you get such ridiculous garbage.”

It wasn’t garbage. Alan Riggs with the U. S. Geological Survey did so.  In 1984 he published a paper in The American Association for the Advancement of Science’s prestigious journal, Science, which reported that a live snail from an artesian spring in Nevada was found by carbon dating to be, yes, 27,000 years old. This and many other such reports have taken on almost mythical proportions. What such reports often ignore are the explanations. Riggs had attributed the obvious error to the . . .

fixation of dissolved HCO₃ [bicarbonate] with which the shells are in carbon isotope equilibrium. Recognition of the existence of such extreme deficiencies is necessary so that erroneous ages are not attributed to freshwater biogenic carbonates. (46)

Got that? What this means in simple terms is that the shells of the snails were formed from existing ancient material that was depleted of much of its carbon 14. It is an exception to the normal way carbon 14 is absorbed by living things. There is nothing wrong with carbon dating, per se. But we need to know, and this was Riggs’ whole point, what causes anomalies and account for them. To hold this example up as a reason to distrust carbon dating is bogus. But to suggest that there might be reasons, yet unknown, for being wary of tests on certain organic material was quite reasonable. Was linen such a material? What about Egyptian mummies? They are wrapped in linen.