You have probably heard it claimed that science has shown that the Earth is 4 1/2 billion years old. You may have also heard that the Bible says the earth is 6000 years old. Now these two figures cannot be reconciled without doing great damage to the Bible. However, it needs to be noted that the problem is not actual science, but atheistic mythology being pushed under the guise of science. The simple fact is that you cannot date an unobserved event in the past without making assumptions about the past. Furthermore, any such date is only as accurate as the assumptions being made.
You will often hear it claimed, by those who compromise on the Biblical age of the earth, that there is no place where the Bible says that the earth is 6,000 years old. Now it is true that there is no place where this is specifically said. However, the Bible does provide sufficient chronological information to project the Creation of the Earth and the universe back to about 6000 years ago. this means that the approximately 6000-year-old age for the earth is an important part of history as described in Genesis being accurate.
One thing I have noticed over the years, is that nothing destroys a good evolutionary argument better than the original paper. More often than not reporting and educational material make research more supportive of evolutionary theory than the original papers do. This is true for the secular age commonly given for the Earth is 4 1/2 billion years. It is based on the 1959 paper "Age of meteorites and the earth" (https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/Age-of-meteorites-and-the-earth-Patterson/8cb2724dda3b4695c735641dbd2c2a9e98cfb9c6) by Claire Patterson. In this paper he uses a radiometric isotron between earth rocks and meteorites to try to calculate the age of the Earth. A radiometric isotron is a method of radiometric dating that tries to overcome some of the problems of radiometric dating by using multiple samples. It does not succeed however because false isotron can and do occur. However, there is a more in critical assumption behind this paper, and one that is rare readily admitted. It is that the earth formed by totally naturalistic processes by collapsing out of a cloud of dust and gas. In other words, this date is based on the presupposition that the Bible is wrong about how the earth was created.
This may come as a surprise but Biblical age of the Earth Is actually consistent Patterson’s paper. That fact is indicated by the following quote from the paper: “If the earth is a late agglomeration without differentiation of meteoritic material, then it, can have any age less than meteoritic material.” The key phrase in this sentence is “any age less than meteoritic material.” now of course he is assuming that the meteoritic material which still be 4 1/2 billion years old but it needs to be noted that 6,000 years is less than 4 1/2 billion years and so 6,000 years is it legitimate age of the earth within the context of this paper. Admittedly the same thing would be the case if the Earth had been created by aliens some time with in the last 4 1/2 billion years. Simply put the 4 1/2-billion-year figure is a maximum age for the earth and not necessarily an absolute one. it only qualifies as an absolute age if the earth formed by condensing naturally out of a cloud of dust and gas as is claimed by naturalistic ideas on the origin of the solar system.
Ultimately the question about the age of the earth and the various parts of it results from the fact that such old dates assume that only natural processes have been involved in the origin and history of the earth. However, Biblical History contains two major supernatural acts of God, that if they occurred would inevitably mess up any dating methods that assume only natural phenomenon were involved. In other words, if the Bible and the history of records is true, and you try dating the age of the earth or any part of it assuming only natural processes you would inevitably date the age as considerably older than it actually is.
