This is my first post, but I had to add to this thread!  Sorry it's so long winded, but this one just kills me...

The Speed of light.

Due to the finite nature of the speed of light, namely the known speed of 299,792,458 meters per second or 186,282 miles per hour (or slightly less if travelling through a medium instead of a vacuum), we can gauge the antiquity of the visible universe.

The Sol system in which the Earth resides is know located approximately 26,000 light years from the Galactic core.  We can see the galactic core on a dark night and the vision of the Galactic core is the reason that the Galaxy was called the Milky Way.  So if we can see the Galactic Core, then the universe has to be at least 26,000 years old.  

The Milky Way Galaxy in which we live is huge, approximately 80,000 to 100,000 light years in diameter.  This means that it takes light emitted on one side of the galaxy about 100,000 years to reach the other side.  This increases the KNOWN age of the universe to at least 100,000 years.

Now lets look at our closest neighbor in Galactic terms, the beautiful Andromeda Spiral Galaxy.  The massive Andromeda galaxy is about 20% larger than the Milky way and is on a long collision course with our galaxy. 

More importantly to the topic of discussion here, Andromeda is clearly visible to the naked eye and can be seen in more detail in a telescope from our tiny rock of a planet, meaning that the light emitted from it has already arrived at our eyes.  But here's the kicker:  Andromeda is approximately 2,500,000 light years away. 

To be able to see Andromeda on a dark night, the universe would have to be at least 2,500,000 Million years old.

But take the local Galactic Neighborhood in which we live, the Virgo Super cluster.  Now we're talking MASSIVE SCALE that again lies within our direct ability to observe in visible light should anyone care to look.

The Virgo Super cluster contains approximately 100 star clusters and galaxies of which the Andromeda and Milky Way Galaxies are the largest internal structures.  It's also about 200,000,000 light years in diameter.

Because we can measure, via VISIBLE LIGHT, the size and scope of our local galactic neighborhood, the age of the universe has to be at least 200,000,000 years.

But that's not the end of our story.  Over the course of several months in 2004, the Hubble Space Telescope collected the visible light of the most distance known objects into it's mirrors.  The resulting "Hubble Ultra Deep Field" (image) collected light from an area of the sky that has been traveling approximately 13 BILLION years.  Yes, objects over 13,000,000,000 light years from the earth have been imaged.  That puts the VISIBLE age of the Universe at about 13 Billion years...

Which brings me to the conclusion of the story.  Science has observed in ALL wavelengths.  From visible to X-rays...  The end result is an estimated age of the universe between 13.7 Billion years and 15.6 Billion years.

Does this mean there is no "first cause" or "Creator God?"  No.  Does this mean that the Bible is wrong?  You bet your ever-loving mind...

The emerging field of cyclostratigraphy: (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyclostratigraphy)

 It uses Milankovitch astronomical cycles as a dating reference; these cycles are the combined effect of the Earth's spin precession and various orbit oscillations, which produce variations in how much sunlight different parts of the Earth receive over a year.

So far, it has been used to correct the dating of the Brunhes-Matuyama magnetic reversal from its K-Ar value of 750 Mya to 780 Mya, which agrees with some Ar-Ar values, and the International Commission on Stratigraphy now uses it as a time reference for the last 23 million years and a partial time reference for earlier times all the way to the Cretaceous.

 For a more comprehensive source, and rebuttals of YEC arguments, check out the talkorigins.org Age of the Earth FAQ's

They are an awesome band, much better WITH Phil Collins.

Care to cite any credentials or journals? I suppose that now would be a good time to point out I have both.

Absurd. The error in the spectrum of radiometric dating is normal experimental error. Radioactivity, after all, is a completely random process. However, the use of multiple isotope tests is not designed to establish a precise age. It is meant to establish the magnitude. If you have three tests, one which says 50 million years, another says 70 million and another says 92 million, then that is your age range. Radiometric errata does not help creationists, because it is used only to establish the magnitude of age. Even with such error, we would notice if the Earth was 6000 years old because the spectrum would bluntly stop between 2000 years and 12000 years. Radiometric errata is not an argument for creationism. The magnitude of age always comes up on the order of millions and billions.
Your argument rings of Uniformitarianism. Firstly, this argument is self-defeating. To assume anti-uniformitarianism (a legitimate scientific debate) one must assume the Earth is millions or billions of years old. We can measure the conditions of the last 10 000 years so accurately now that we can be certain that the cataclysm of the conditions necessary to increase radioactivity that much could only have existed long before advanced life, as such bombardment would have inevitably shut down any evolutionary projects. Anti-uniformitarianism only calls into question the accuracy of ultra-slow isotopes like U238, which halves in over 4.5 billion. years. It does not affect fast isotopes like C-14, which we can measure only to the past 60,000 years. Going back this recently, radioactivity could not have increased at all in such a short time span unless our Neanderthal ancestors were performing atomic blast tests.

a carbon-14 isotope. 99.999% of all carbon is stable carbon-12. but carbon-14 isotopes are not stable and make up 1ppt (part per trillion) of all carbon. They release beta radiation to correct the nucleon instability by firing off an electron. This causes it to decay into Nitrogen-14. The great thing about radioactive decay is that it is a random process that obeys probability laws. The other good thing about it is that you can dip a radioactive material in molten lead, in acid, shoot it, burn it, fire particles at it, try to irradiate it again, pass a current through it...and none of these things will change the isotope clocks. They are fixed.

Absolutely not. Totally impossible. You are contradicting every single known piece of cosmological data. I am a scientist, albeit not a cosmologist. But I was present to see the printouts on that historic day when George Smoot revealed the CBR fluctations from the COBE instruments in the WMAP probe.

To educate yourself in basic cosmology (I'm a biologist, but I did physics in university, so I am versed in quantum law) you should read this:

http://www.rationalresponders.com/forum/yellow_number_five/science/6990

Your theory is clearly absurd. Even creationists know it is absurd.

Observed in reverse order, the universe history looks like this.

1. Consciousness
2. Eukaryotic life
3. Prokaryotic life
4. Terrestrial planets
5. Galactic clusters
6. Stellar formation
7. Plasma gas cooling
8. Hydrogenous ionization
9. Atomic organization
10. Universal expansion
11. Singularity collapse
12. Singularity state (literally ex nihilo)

So, no, the universe could not have been born mature. That is utterly ridiculous. The universe was born of a singularity collapse from extremely simple origins. The fact that we can photograph the primordial universe should be evidence enough. I present to you the most historic photo ever taken, one which Stephen Hawking called the discovery of the century, nay, the whole of human history. This is the Cosmic Background Radiation of the primordial universe. We have photographed the univese 380,000 years after its birth. And this is what it looks like. YOu are wrong. Also, your statement about light being created in transit is absurd and contradicts the iron laws of photonic physics dictated by Maxwell's equations (because light is a rotating, oscillating, alternating switch-field between a magnetic and an electric field, which means it can only be generated by a radiative body, such as a stellar cluster.

I beleive Carl Sagan summed up this absurdity best here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zOJPprykkrI

Again, geology is not my field, but plate tectonics has been proven for years now. It is set in stone, I assure you.

Wow. I just learned more in that post than I did in a whole semester of physics and natural science.

And even if the absurd idea that the light was created much of the way to Earth was true, again, that would show God was malevolent, as he was trying to trick people into not believing in him, and therefore going to hell.

The reason that we "assume" that Carbon-14 (and every other atom in existence) deteriorates at a fixed rate, is because every time we measure it, it maintains the same half-life.  To say that is was different in the past would be an assumption, not saying it is same as every time we measure it.  Also, most of the claims of error that you can google are complete bunk.  I've seen many of them, and they have always been either based on a poor understanding of radioactive dating (like claims of C-14 in diamonds, which creationists like to claim is evidence of a young universe, because they think C-14 doesn't last more then 25,000yrs, which is completely wrong), a poor understanding of what they are measuring (like some species of mollusks, which seem to show a date thousands of years old, however this is because they get CO2 directly from the limestone they live upon, so they show an age much older then they really are), or are outright lies.  I guess it is a good thing I don't use Google to do real research.

And while Carbon-14 dates can vary based on things like the level of Carbon-14 currently in the atmosphere, it is never enough to give an error of more then a few decades (which is nothing compared to what creationists would need to support their claims).  Besides, for dates older then about 100,000yrs, we don't even use Carbon-14, we use other elements/isotopes that aren't subject to the criticisms of creationists.  Also, the dates given by Carbon-14 are supported by things like Dendrochronology (the counting of tree rings), Archeological support, etc, which are usually given with Carbon-14.

Oh sure it could have been, but just as it is possible that the sun is really a giant massive fire-breathing bunny rabbit.  There is absolutely no evidence for a maturely created universe, and it flies in the face of everything we know about how the universe really works.  Besides, there is a fundamental problem with this.  When we see something that is 500,000 light-years away, we are not seeing it is as we are now, we are seeing it looked 500,000 years ago.  In other words, that object (as we see it) HAS to be 500,000 years old, otherwise it would not have that light to show us.  Besides, how do you explain the existence of supernova and supernova remnants?  If the universe was only 6,000 years old, there shouldn't be a single one.  Also, the size of many objects in the universe prove that the universe is over 6,000 years old.  A good example (of which there are thousands) is the shock waves around the black-hole inside the galaxy M87 (http://chandra.harvard.edu/press/06_releases/press_100506.html), and also a filament that comes out of the black-hole that is at least 100,000 light-years long.  So even if matter was shot out at the speed of light, and kept going that fast (which is impossible, it would have to slow down) it would mean that the black-hole in M87 is at least 100,000 years old.  Of course, the matter isn't going that fast (it's actually pretty easy to measure its speed, we use spectroscopy to do it, and then just take into account for the angle that it is to us, and that will give you a very accurate measurement of speed).  Based on how fast the matter appears to be going (and taking into account for deceleration from the black-hole) it gives a date of about 70 million years ago (and again this is a minimum age, the stream that is coming out is probably much, much longer, but the stream spreads out and becomes too dim for even our greatest telescopes).  Also, you have to add in the fact that black-holes like this are most likely created from the death of a massive star, so now you also have to add on the millions or billions of years that star existed as well.

What you are suggesting, would be like suggesting that not only did God create Adam and Eve mature, but he also included their dead parents in the ground as well.  In other words, what you are suggesting is nonsense, and there isn't even scriptural support for this (in case you are implying a literal interpretation of the bible) let alone scientific support.

Wow, you apparently have a few hundred years of scientific catching-up to do.  Continental drift is VERY widely excepted among scientists and for a very good reason; We can see it happening in real time.  We've been able to measure the exact position of places on the Earth for a very long time.  Originally it was by measuring the position of stars in the sky (which could give an accuracy a few feet), and now we can do it with satellites that can give it down to just a fraction of a centimeter.  Because of this (especially with satellites) we can clearly see the position of the continents change over time.  For example we were able to measure the fact that the India Plate slid a whopping 15 meters (50ft) along the India-Burmese fault line during the 2004 Boxing Day Earthquake that set off the tsunami that killed more then 200,000 people.

Saying that continental drift hasn't been proven, is like saying that we can't measure the temperature of a cup of water even if we have a thermometer in it that says 15°C.

There is definitely evidence for evolution, continental drift, and a universe billions of years old, but believe me, there isn't and real evidence for a universe that's only 6,000 years (and yes, I have looked at the "evidence" that creationists have tried to put forward, and it is all garbage).

We also have the Sumerians, the Indians, and other civilizations
 that are older than 6000. Hell, Hinduism itself is older than 6000.

Oh, and my grandmother. She's pretty fucking old. 

The first written records are in Sumeria and Egypt and are about 5000 years old. And though Hinduism, like most old-time, "pagan" religions, is older than recorded history, that history does not go as far back in India.

That being pointed out, C14 dating is confounded by the fact that the amount of C14 in the Earth's atmosphere varies, due to variations in solar activity that produce varying amounts of blockage of interstellar cosmic rays. But one can calibrate C14 dating by comparing to dendrochronology: tree-ring dates. So far, it has been possible to look back 11,000 years, and it may soon be possible to look back 1000 years more by that method, or 12,000 years. Like consider this paper (big PDF).

 Of course, no tree gets even close to 12,000 years old, so one does have to use data from several trees. Their growth rate varies as climate varies, allowing correlation of different trees' rings, a correlation that can be checked by C14-dating the wood. And the oldest trees used so far are oak and pine trees from European bogs.