The Creation model does not require a young or old earth.  God may have created all things billions of years ago or just thousands of years ago.  However, if there are no major gaps in the genealogy given in Genesis, the Bible infers the date of Creation to be about 4,000 B.C. and the global flood about 2,350 B.C.
Click here to see that the Bible clearly says Creation took days rather than millions of years.

Following are several methods used to find out how old the earth and the universe really are.  Note that these methods all must make assumptions also and are based on currently observed rates.  However, the results are far more trustworthy than radioactive dating and the theory of Evolution must overcome major obstacles to explain these young ages.

Radioactive Dating Methods

Unstable "parent" isotopes "decay" until they become stable "daughter" isotopes.  This is often called the "Absolute Dating Method" supposedly because it give absolute dates without error.  Theoretically, if the decay rate of an isotope is known, we can take difference between the original amount in a fossil and the amount in the fossil today and calculate its age.

As an analogy, we can figure out how far a car has traveled if we know that it started out with 10 gallons of gas in its tank, it gets 20 miles per gallon, and there are now 5 gallons of gas remaining in the tank.  Five gallons of gas have "decayed" at the rate of 20 miles traveled per gallon, therefore the car has traveled 100 miles.  If all of these assumptions are true, then the results are accurate.  If any of the assumptions are false, the results are worthless.

• If we guessed the starting amount of gas in the tank wrong, our answer is wrong.
• If gas was added during the trip, our answer is wrong.
• If gas leaked out of the tank, our answer is wrong.
• If the car's gas mileage was estimated wrong, our answer is wrong.
• If the gas mileage varied over the trip, our answer is wrong.

Assumptions made in radioactive dating methods:

• That the atmosphere has had the same (all instead of Carbon 14) concentration in the past as now.  Who knows?  This is a false assumption.
• That the production of parent isotopes has been constant.  Again, who knows?  This is a false assumption.
• That the original ratio and amounts of the isotope in the fossil or rock is known.  This is based on current processes and assumes the rate of absorption was the same in the past.  This is a false assumption.
• That the decay rate is constant.  Many things are known to affect decay rates.  This is a false assumption.
• That no contamination has occurred.  This is a false assumption.
• That no daughter (stable) element was originally in the fossil.  This is a false assumption.
• That the decay rate was determined accurately.  Decay rates are constantly being modified and criticized.  This is a false assumption.
• That the only loss of the isotope is due to the decay process.  This is a false assumption.

The only "absolute" in this whole process is how much of the isotope remains in the fossil today (how much gas is in the tank).  All else is pure speculation.

Discordant dates are thrown out!  If the results don't match preconceived ages based on Evolution, they are assumed to be in error.  Then the dates they assume to be correct are used to support the Evolution model!

Multiple tests on the same sample often gets a range of ages from zero to billions of years old.  A living mollusk only a few years old was dated radioactively as being 2,300 years old.  Objects with known ages of only decades have been dated as thousands of years old.

Actually, the first false assumption made in radioactively dating a sample is made before any testing is even done.  Evolutionists won't even use Carbon dating on a dinosaur for example because they already assume it to be many millions of years old.  Supposedly Carbon dating is good only for a few thousand years old.

The canopy cloud cover before the global flood would have meant fewer absorbed isotopes were accumulated when the fossils were buried, but this would be interpreted as decay over a long period of time.  Therefore the canopy would cause this dating technique to show older ages than actual.

See for yourself some examples of what Evolutionists themselves say: Exhibit13B Dating Methods - What they don't tell you!

Click here for another illustration of false assumptions....

Here are some other methods for determining ages:

Carbon 14/carbon 12 ratio	It is not at equilibrium yet.  This indicates the earth is less than 10,000 years old.
Earth's Magnetic Field	Accurate data has been collected for over 100 years.  The decay rate of the magnetic field indicates less than 10,000 years.
Atmospheric Helium	It is still increasing which limits the earth to about 10,000 years old.
Coal and Oil	Evolutionary time scale states they are 300,000,000 years old.  Now can be formed rapidly artificially.  High fluid pressures require rapid, deep burial.  The rate of pressure loss limits to 100,000 years old.  Coal and oil are called nonrenewable fossil fuels.  That's because they were created by a one-time event (the Global Flood) and are not forming  new deposits anywhere in the world now.
Population	The world is underpopulated.  If life started billions of years ago, the earth would be overpopulated.  Population indicates a limit of 10,000 years old.  See Exhibit 17 Population for more details.
Stalactites and Stalagmites	They are said to require thousands or even millions of years to accumulate.  There are stalactites on the Lincoln Memorial.  There are stalactites in man-made tunnels.  Damaged ones in natural caves have been observed to grow back rapidly.  In the man-made entrance to Kartchner Caverns in Arizona, a stalactite was growing in December of 2000.  The cave had been open for about 2 years and this stalactite was 1/4 inch thick and 3 inches long.  At that rate in just 1,000 years it could be 125 feet tall and over 10 feet thick.
Sedimentary Rocks	Fossils require rapid burial for preservation. Layers (strata) blend into each other without erosion in between. Layers are parallel which means one event (the flood) or several times the continents dropped and rose back up perfectly level each time over millions of years! Polystrate fossils prove layers are contemporary. Folded layers all had to still be soft when bent or they would have fractured.  This means all were formed by one event (the flood), or over millions of years there was no seismic activity! There are faults through all layers, but not within them. Space dust and meteorites are missing or negligible if layers accumulated over millions of years. All layers were deposited and then mountains were uplifted. Lack of polished river rock in the Grand Canyon and others that supposedly required millions of years to carve. Lack of plant life rooted and growing within the layers.
Tree Rings	In Yellowstone Park there is a 2,000 foot cliff with 27 layers containing fossilized logs that had been transported by water.  Tree ring studies showed all layers are the same age. The Genesis Flood demands that all land plants and animals were wiped out and started over.  Bible chronology puts the flood at about 2400 B.C.  In California in 1958 the oldest living trees were discovered.  They are the first generation and dated at about 4600 years old by tree rings.  This means they started growing about 2600 B.C.!
Meteorites and Space Dust	The earth and moon are bombarded by dust and meteorites.  Missing or small amounts in sedimentary rocks indicates rapid deposition of layers. This is a footprint left by an astronaut on the moon.  When Apollo 11 was to land on the moon, evolutionists predicted accumulated dust would be about 200 feet deep.  It is 2 to 3 inches indicating an age of a few thousand years.  Asteroid and meteor studies indicate that all life would be destroyed by meteorite impact on average every million years.  This is a puzzle to the evolutionists who did the study!
Ocean Sediments	Sediments and chemical solutions in the oceans give dates from 2,000 to 200,000 years old.
River Delta Sediments	Sediments at the Mississippi River Delta estimated to be only about 4,000 years old.
Spiral Galaxies	Like a spinning wheel or whirlpool, they are slowing down.  Maximum age 10 to 200 million years.
Saturn's Rings	These rings are still settling down.  Limit is one million years old.
Comets	Comets lose material each pass of the sun.  Upper limit is 10,000 to 12,000 years old.
Light from Distant Stars	This is said to prove billions of years.  Geometrically, the maximum that can be measured is 330 light-years (330 years old) distant. A new theory is being given serious consideration claims light can reach us in just 15 years.  No hard evidence either way.
Time Required for Evolution	Probability of smallest protein is 1 out of 10E123. For the smallest life form to occur by chance at 1 billion tries per second, it would take 10E119,831 years.  Even the Evolutionists believe the Earth is only 5 X 10E9 years old! See Exhibit 14 Probability.
Earthquake Faults	This is just one stream along the San Andreas Fault in California that has been shifted due to sudden earthquakes and the gradual slipping of the plates.  Offsets for these streams vary from 50 to 400 feet.  At 1 to 3 inches average movement just for slippage would mean they started shifting from 200 to 5000 years ago.  Since they move as much as a few feet with each earthquake, they are even younger than that.