Originally Posted by zackai48:
“Yet another pop at Christians Keyser. What surprises me is that the BBC can state the age of these fossils as fact. I doubt that Dan Walker disputes the existence of dinosaurs, but like me disputes the age attributed to them.”
Really?! Well, assuming you wish to remedy that (rather than cling to your disbelief), a quick Google search can provide you with answers like this from the
University of California, Berkeley:
Quote:
“DETERMINING AGE OF ROCKS AND FOSSILS
by Frank K. McKinney
The age of fossils intrigues almost everyone. Students not only want to know how old a fossil is, but they want to know how that age was determined. Some very straightforward principles are used to determine the age of fossils. Students should be able to understand the principles and have that as a background so that age determinations by paleontologists and geologists don't seem like black magic.
There are two types of age determinations. Geologists in the late 18th and early 19th century studied rock layers and the fossils in them to determine relative age. William Smith was one of the most important scientists from this time who helped to develop knowledge of the succession of different fossils by studying their distribution through the sequence of sedimentary rocks in southern England. It wasn't until well into the 20th century that enough information had accumulated about the rate of radioactive decay that the age of rocks and fossils in number of years could be determined through radiometric age dating...”
There's a whole article on Wikipedia about
radiometric dating if you'd like to learn more.
Remember, not all Christians are young Earth creationists. The latter leave themselves pretty wide open to people having a "pop" at them, to be fair.