You wrote: Using observation (a key feature of the scientific method), the only definitive way one could determine the age of anything is by seeing its beginning.

Dear Dan,

There are many ways of telling the age of things without being there at the beginning. We are told not to look a gift horse in the mouth because we can tell the age of a horse by its teeth. We can tell the age of a tree by counting the rings in its trunk. We don't have to cut down the tree to do this as we can bore into it by taking out a core. We can tell the age of some rocks by looking for a radioactive element like uranium and comparing it with the amount of lead in the rock. Uranium decays into lead at a known rate, and some rocks will form with a crystalline structure which does not contain lead. DNA mutates at a fixed rate. We can look at two species and tell how long ago they had a common ancestry by examining the differences their DNA. The process is called cladistics. All these methods give an approximate age.

Being there at the beginning also gives an approximate age because time is a continuum, and we can never measure it exactly.

Interesting stuff!

Davidf
Re: “we can tell the age of a horse by its teeth”.

Horses (and actually, any graminivores) teeth are greatly affected by the nature of the soil they graze on. If the soil is sandy/gritty the animals teeth will deteriorate at a much quicker rate.

Now, of course, you could argue that --wider--observation of animals in mixed environments would make one aware/wise-up .

Dan,
Re: “Apart from stars and galaxies, just what precisely in the universe is there left?”

(Knowing how much Davidf loves Shakespeare –I can't resist!)

“There are more things in heaven and earth, [Dan],
Than are dreamt of in your [cosmology]”

Up to 90% of the universe is said to be invisible –largely dark matter.
http://www.lbl.gov/Science-Articles/Archive/sabl/2006/Jan/Rubin-Dark-Matter.pdf

Dan,

<<I’ve not heard of any tree that is clearly older than 6000 years.>>

That’s because you refuse to get your information from anywhere but Creationist sources, and they’re hardly going to mention ancient trees like Methuselah. A Google search of http://www.creationontheweb.com for Methuselah+tree produces no results...

http://www.google.com.au/webhp#hl=en&safe=off&q=site%3Acreationontheweb.com+Methuselah+tree&meta=&fp=e5bcc09bd4dacb79

What a surprise.

But thank you, Dan, for the fine demonstration of two fallacies in one sentence. The ‘Argument from Ignorance’ and the ‘Argument from Incredulity’...

<<The point I would like to highlight is how anyone could possible know that a tree is that old.>>

Davidf beat me to the punch on this one. Not much more I could add there.

<<...observation (a key feature of the scientific method)...>>

Yes, observation is a key feature of the Scientific Method, and as Davidf pointed out, we can observe the age of trees is many ways. Sitting there and watching it would be one method (albeit impossible) of observation, but to suggest that it is the ONLY method is not only simplistic, but shows a child-like understanding of science.

Very cheeky of you to mention the Scientific Method though. Particularly since Creation “Scientists” never follow it themselves. Why is is so important to you now?

<<How can anyone say with certainty that any tree is older than 6000 years unless they measured the time while it was elapsing, and was therefore that old as well?>>

Now that we’ve settle the ‘How’, I’d like to ask how any Creationist could say with any certainty that the Bible is an accurate historical and chronological record?

Continued...

...Continued

<<Other summations require some form of theoretical reasoning or entering the domain of history. It may seem reasonable, but could never be definitive.>>

When multiple methods of dating agree with the magnitude of the age of something, it’s definitive enough.

When one considers that the 6000-year-old-Earth claim is like claiming that the Moon’s distance from the Earth is the same as the height of the Empire State Building, or that the distance from Brisbane to Perth is only several feet, then one can start to comprehend just how definitive the dating methods are in relation to Creationist claims.

But how, Dan, do you explain my point earlier about what we observe with the static height and long deterioration of the Rocky Mountains in contrast to the continual rising of the Himalayas that contain fossils of ancient, primitive life from an ancient sea bed? We know a flood couldn’t have done that.

Is God just trying to trick everyone, or is he testing our faith?

Sorry, Dan, I need to make a correction.

It appears that http://creationontheweb.com now re-directs you to http://creation.com, so if I Google search creation.com for Methuselah+tree, then I get some results (Although you can still get results by Google searching the old address with other key words).

So I clicked on their article on this issue at http://creation.com/patriarchs-of-the-forest to play what’s become an old favourite game of mine on this website I like to call “Spot the omission/falsehood”.

There was a lot of deceit in this article linked above, so I’ll just briefly go over the paragraph that stood out most to me...

”Plant biologists agree, and even expect, that these vigorously-growing, magnificent ancient trees could continue to grow for many thousands of years into the future. And they would expect, therefore, that there is no reason why many among them could not have started their life many, many thousands of years ago.”

By cross-dating the living trees with dead specimens, we can go back to over 10,000 years. But there wouldn’t be much before that time because of the Ice Age.

”But there is no evidence that any of them predate the Flood. Even with the assumptive cross-matching method, the cut-off number seems to be around 4½ to 5 thousand rings.”

Wrong.

Radiocarbon dating of each section also agrees with the cross-dating of the rings, and radiocarbon dating has proven itself time and time again to be accurate in the dating of tree specimens.

We could dig up the journals from somewhere and verify this if we really wanted to, but we don’t need to. The reason being because only one party here has the need to deceive, and that’s the Creationists...

”This is strongly consistent with expectations based on the Bible.”

Real scientists don’t need to lie about the age of the trees and the specimens found around the area, because it doesn’t matter if there are no trees before the alleged (and debunked) flood. The evidence for an ancient Earth billions of years old is abundant and irrefutable.

Actually Dan, there’s one thing I’ve noticed about http://www.creation.com that had always seemed strange and I’d always wondered about. And that is: Why is it that they always use unconventional terminology for certain processes/things?

Did you notice that in the paragraph that I linked to, they referred to “cross-dating” as “cross-matching”? I had always wondered why Creationist websites use slightly different (and incorrect) terminology for the same thing, and then it dawned on me...

They don’t want their followers to Google searching certain terms in their claims because they’ll then realise that what they’re saying is false.

Now, I admit that this sounds a little conspiratorial of me, but I did a Google define search for both “cross-dating” and “cross-matching”, and here are the results I got....

Cross-dating (the correct term):
http://www.google.com.au/search?hl=en&q=define%3Across+dating&btnG=Search&meta=

- dating of a site by objects or features of known age, or artifact associations of known age.

Cross-matching (the Creationists version of the term):
http://www.google.com.au/search?hl=en&source=hp&q=define%3Across+matching&btnG=Google+Search&meta=&aq=f&oq=

Cross-matching, in transfusion medicine, refers to the testing that is performed to determine the compatibility of a donated unit of blood with ... (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cross-matching)

And...

This important blood test is performed to further determine compatibility between donor and recipient. ...

Nothing about dating objects in that search result.

So please do explain this to me as well, Dan.

Thanks!