How is it possible that the 'creationists' Earth is only a few thousand years old?

Check your assumptions sweetie.

Carbon dating rests on the assumption that the rate of carbon decay is constant and has remained constant for thousands of years. No way to determine the accuracy of that assumption.

Diamonds? Scientists can grow a diamond in a lab that is chemically indistinguishable from a natural diamond in about two days...God surely has a better chemistry lab than they have!

3,000 year old amber...how do you know it is that old?...back to some kind of dating method that relies on untestable assumptions?

Ice cores, never heard of them being used for dating...simply based on an assumption of how much time it would take to lay down that much ice given current and hypothesized historical patterns...again, completely untestable assumptions. The way I understand it, ice core samples are used to determine temperature and climate factors at the time they were assumed to have been formed...but again, we're back to that assumption problem.

Personally, I'm a "creationist" and I don't think the earth is 6,000 years old OR several million years old...irrelevant as far as I'm concerned and in any case, we have no way of establishing the age without making assumptions about the past...assumptions that are, by definition, colored by our observations of the present. We have no way of knowing how long Adam (and later Eve) spent in the garden after God created the earth nor do we have any way of knowing what changes God made to the earth when he sent Adam and Eve there...and what would a worldwide flood do to the earth? If God had thought we needed to know that, I have no doubt he would have told us more about it.

If someone could give me a good reason why it matters one way or another, I might see the point of arguing the age of the earth, but I can't think of a single rational reason why people would choose to believe it is 6,000 years old OR millions of years old. A rational man does things in his own interest...how does the age of the earth have any impact on someone living in 2007 (soon to be 2008), thousands or even millions of years after it was created (or formed if you prefer)???

First off, I don't think carbon dating is a myth. It exists.

What I don't believe is that it's accurate.

It's unreliable- the same specimen tested over and over does not yield the same results. To me, that kind of defeats the whole purpose- anything that is science must be accurate and consistent each time it is repeated.

You'll remember from the creationist (my) viewpoint, the earth was created with age. For example, humans were created not as babies, but as adults. So, just by observing their bodies you would say they were older than they actually were- created with age. Same with the ice core samples.

Hope this shed some light on it for you. If you have any more questions, feel free to email me.

=)

You saw the answer about the pig skull, and that pretty much explains it. Young earthers tend to take every mistake (real or urban legend), writings from years ago, and misunderstood science principle and then claim that science is stuck in the past.

C-14 has improved over the years and is reasonably accurate as are the forms of radiometric dating for fossils.

Edit:

My links aren't quite on topic, but as C-14 is mention and clearly not well understood, I though a little "light" reading was in order.

Here is one of many,

According to evolutionists, Stone Age Homo sapiens existed for 190,000 years before beginning to make written records about 4,000 to 5,000 years ago. Prehistoric man built megalithic monuments, made beautiful cave paintings, and kept records of lunar phases. Why would he wait two thousand centuries before using the same skills to record history? The Biblical time scale is much more likely.

Another,

Why are14C atoms found in samples allegedly millions of years old? If the millions of years were true, there should be none to count, but there they are—including in diamonds, which are far too hard to have been contaminated.

Edit

It seems to me that you are genuinly seeking an answer, that is quite rare on R&S. Check out the link below. I understand that you probably wont agree with 90% of it, but thats not the point is it? If you want to know the "why", they are the best scientists to answer for a "young earth". God Bless

Easy.

Here goes, strawman style;

1) Earth is 4000 years old.

2) science disagrees with that assumption.

3) Some science is wrong... or can be made to give false results.

4) Since science is wrong, the earth is 4000 years old.

QED.

Not so hard if you're willing to disregard logic, scientific method and desperately accept only "proof" that supports your preset beliefs if you "interpret" them enough ;)

(They're not too smart, is my guess)

They have misinterpreted the God Yahweh's time frame written down in His six or seven days of creation story. Yahweh actually means the past six or seven eras of modern evolution which could have millions of years to each era. Yahweh or The Bible are not counting the prehistoric eras on Earth before the creation story begins. Morning and Evening represent the start and end of that era of evolution and not the sun coming up and going down in a 24 hour day.

men's theories are flawed, as is their dating techniques. Just because you say you have seen things you and other people say are 25,000 years old, doesn't make it right. I believe the Word of God is the truth, and don't put much stake in what men say they think is the truth, or what they think they have "proven." Can men know more than God? I put my faith in God, not science, which, BTW, has been wrong before!!!

Yes, the "creationist" earth is only a few thousand years old, but the actual planet earth is about 4.6 billion years old.

The Bible does not reveal the age of the earth.

If you read the account in Genesis, it shows that the "first day" began AFTER the earth had been created. No one knows how much time passed between the creation of the earth and the beginning of the "days" of creation.

Also, the word "day" does not necessarily mean 24-hours. It can mean "a length of time". So the earth can be as old as anyone believes it to be.

6,000,000 years? Maybe.

6,000,000,000 years? Maybe.

6,000,000,000,000 years? Maybe.

Well, our reality COULD be just a big virtual video with "the big guy" at the controls. I can see how literlaists could believe that. But yeah, it's junk.