[biblewonk]

My personal belief is that God created the universe billions of years ago. The story of Creation in the bible is a parable describing the process in a simplified way for people who didn't have an understanding of astrophysics, carbon-dating, biology etc. As we learn more about science, the general outline of the creation of the universe remains the same, we're just able to "fill in the blanks."

That's a commonly held belief. The thing is that God could easily have said it was billions of years old and came from a big bang. He could have said that he formed life forms over millions of years. Man was much much more sophisticated 3000 years ago than a lot of people realise. Therefore the theistic evolution model makes God out to be a fibber. IMHO.

So, two questions:

1) How do folks who believe that the world is 6000 years old explain carbon-dating?

Carbon dating is not reliable. It depends on as assumption about the original ration of radio isotopes and them makes a simple math equation about the current ratio.

On a similar note: If scientist were to examine Adam 1 minute after he was created, how old would they say he is? Science is blind and helpless to prove the supernatural because science is natural science. There are lots of C vs E threads on the FR. Ask any of them what science says about a big bang? There is no natural science that explains that.

2) What about fossils of things like dinosaurs etc. that are hundreds of millions of years old?

Fossils are formed under certain very special circumstances. If an animal dies it does not fossilize it decays. This is always the case... unless it is compressed under tons of silt. This is what happened 4000 years ago with the big flood. There are whales fossilized vertically through "hundreds of millions of years of stratta" as if they stood on their heads for hundreds of millions of years. Not likely.

[general_re]

Carbon dating is not reliable. It depends on as assumption about the original ration of radio isotopes and them makes a simple math equation about the current ratio.

Except that carbon dating can be and has been verified by comparing its results to the dates of known historical events. For example, if you know that a particular battle took place in the year 1000, and you find artifacts from that battle, you can compare the carbon-dating results to what you already know from the historical record. And in virtually every case where such comparisons have been done, the carbon dating results match up with the historical record very nicely - such comparisons give you a sanity check so that you're not totally reliant on unfounded assumptions.