Unscientific American Magazine [Pic]

And I've already pointed out; science is about how you create your explanations, not what the explanations are. The explanations may keep changing, but they're all based on the best we can figure at the time.

The scientific explanation is the best explanation our rational thinking can come up with, as accurate as it can be at our current level of intelligence and knowledge.

The religious explanation may let you feel smug about having a "complete" explanation on a silver platter, but with no way to validate the truth of that explanation, it's worthless. With the scientific explanation, they're ALWAYS trying to validate that truth, and honing and refining the explanation to bring it ever nearer to the truth.

People say "Oh, gravity's JUST theory, so we can't believe in that?"

I'm 24, killing time when it's quiet at work.

Our understanding of gravity is also "just a theory".

You're understanding the word "theory" wrong. In common usage, what you call a "theory" is actually a "hypothesis".

"There's no way you can prove millions of years. At best its theory based on assumption that radiation, carbon, etc levels were always the same as they are now."

Why do you think that the physics of the universe would be drastically different in the past?

"There's no tree with 1 million rings in it."

No, but a tree will have distinct rings (affected by the seasons) that can be matched up with rings representing the same year in older preserved trees, and again and again, all the way back as far as we have the preserved trees. This can also be confirmed by historical records; when the tree rings show a bad winter, and the written records mention the same.

"There isn't a single, compelling piece of evidence that can prove old age."

Those have long since been proven to be fakes: the family of the "discoverer" of the Peluxy River tracks later admitted it was a hoax, and the Taylor Trail tracks could be anything; there is nothing in their shape that says "dinosaur" more than anything else.

Come now, you really didn't see my poor attempt of humour in that? The comment was made against athiests saying that we force our views on others. My point was that we're merely catching up with thousands of years of religion doing the same.

""Presumption of something not existing until it's shown to exist is fundamental to rational thinking."
No. That is an irrational over-simplification."

"the love between a man and a woman is one of the ultimate promises within the Bible"

The love I mentioned was for another man.

We also know the age of our star, Sol, by the ratio of Hydrogen and Helium. So we know it's about halfway through its lifecycle.
We know how gravity works and hence how our planet was formed, which would be a close approximate to when the star formed.

Assuming they always did, and will, decay at the same rate - a pretty big assumption for a long-life element that we've only been observing for a very short time geologically speaking (aaargh, just shot myself in the foot, never mind, carry on...)

As for the age of the Earth, I'm in no doubt at all... when I was a kid it was known as fact it was 500,000 years old.

In 1984 when I was in Grade 10, it was absolutely unequivocally proven-scientifically no chance of being wrong because we now have all the technologies-ly 150 million years.

By 1995 it had grown to 500 million, last estimate needed, 99.99% reliable.

Now its in the billions and we know for sure.