Long March of the Koalas: And other creationist adventures

by Fred Clark

This is also trickier because we’re dealing with archaeology, which offers a variety of different means for dating such discoveries. Thus the magical invocation of evangelical skepticism about carbon dating won’t work here. “Skepticism” is a generous term for this reflexive dismissal of the science for which Walter Libby earned a Nobel Prize in Chemistry. It amounts to nothing more than a series of stock phrases that can be recited like a protective spell. “Scientists say radiocarbon dating is flawed.” (Really? Which scientists? Name two. And why haven’t they stepped forward to claim their own Nobel for disproving the chemistry and math, correcting this universal error?) Or “Radiocarbon dating is often mistaken.” This assertion is repeated as protective bullshit – in the technical, Frankfurtian sense. It is not stated as something the speaker knows to be true, nor as something the speaker knows to be false. It is stated by someone who is unconcerned with whether it is true or false in the hopes of muddying the waters and changing the subject.