From what I’ve read, you can only carbon date something that lived above ground like land animals and trees. It is based on the fact that once something that processed oxygen dies, the carbon in it begins to decay at some set rate.

You cannot carbon date rocks, at least not without making some major assumptions that are not proven science. Rocks are dated using other techniques, based on other isotopes they contain. For example, scientists claim that it takes 5 billion years for a rubidium isotope in rock to degrade/change into strontium. I would love to hear a scientist explain to me how they can prove that how anything’s degradation can be measured over a 5 billion year period. All dating processes are suspect and have serious flaws in their assumptions.

Apologetics Press is a Christian group out of Montgomery that has confronted this issue head on. Lots of material online and in their bookstore at apologeticspress.com that you might enjoy reading.

Here is one of their articles on the age of the earth.

here

that there are those who seem to have no problem believing that an all powerful God could and did create our wonderful world and all therein, but then have trouble believing that he needed billions of years to do so instead of the 6 days he says.

From apologeticspress again here

Note that I’m trying to blockquote the text for the first time, so it may not work.

“There is no question that God is not bound by time. He is the infinite, eternal, all-powerful, all-knowing Creator. The point, however, is not whether God is outside of time (cf. Psalm 90:2), but what God has revealed to us?both in Genesis 1 and in the rest of the Bible. God could have created the Universe in any way He so desired; in whatever order He wanted, and in whatever time frame He so chose. He could have created the world and everything in it in six hours, six minutes, six seconds, or in one millisecond?He is, after all, God Almighty (Genesis 17:1). But the question is not what God could have done; it is what He said He did. And He said that He created everything in six literal days. When God gave the Israelites the Ten Commandments, He stated:

Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy. Six days you shall labor and do all your work, but the seventh day is the Sabbath of the Lord your God. In it you shall do no work: you, nor your son, nor your daughter, nor your male servant, nor your female servant, nor your cattle, nor your stranger who is within your gates. For in six days the Lord made the heavens and the earth, the sea, and all that is in them, and rested the seventh day. Therefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and hallowed it (Exodus 20:8-11, emp. added).

This Sabbath command can be understood properly only when the days of the week are considered regular 24-hour days.

Based upon God?s use of words throughout Scripture which represent time periods that are much longer than a regular day (cf. Genesis 1:14; 2 Peter 3:8), we can rightly conclude that God could have revealed to man that this world was created over a vast period of time. [He could have used the Hebrew word d?r, which means long periods of time.] The fact is, however, God said He created this world and everything in it in six days (Genesis 1; Exodus 20:11; 31:17; cf. Psalm 33:9; 148:5; Mark 10:6).

Question: What?s wrong with the way God said He did it?”

answered O’Reilly this way when asked if he was voting for Perry:

“Yeah. It comes down to this. Do you prefer a President that doesn’t believe in evolution or do you prefer a President that doesn’t believe in Israel?”

which has major implications on society, i.e., it’s led to acceptance of vertical evolution as well as a more humanistic belief system. Liberals and scientists have a vested interest in espousing the old earth theory because it supports the theory of evolution. As noted in the article, The Implications of Rejecting the Literal Days of Genesis 1, here

Once a Christian accepts the idea of an ancient Earth, he automatically is placed in a position where he must abandon a literal interpretation of the biblical Creation account. He must reject the ?days? of Genesis one as literal twenty-four-hour days (or accept some other compromising concept such as the Gap Theory, Modified Gap Theory, etc.). Historically, in their frantic need to maintain their own credibility as a valid academic discipline, liberal theologians reevaluated their views of Genesis 1, and altered their assessments in order to accommodate the evolutionary framework. Consequently, the Creation account was stylized as a ?myth? or a ?hymn.? It is incredibly na?ve to think that Christians can use the term ?myth? to refer to Genesis 1, and there be no connection with liberal theology, evolution, and a devaluated view of the inspiration of that sacred chapter.

and

Generation X arrived, and has been genuine and honest enough to see and embrace the logical implications of the ancient Earth viewpoint. Consequently, they have adjusted their perceptions of the integrity of the biblical text. They recognize that since Genesis 1 may be interpreted rather loosely, so may the rest of the Bible and, for that matter, the whole of their parents? religion. Generated by a secular, humanistic society, and perpetuated by careless parents, the children have come to adopt a relativistic view of Christianity (if they have not abandoned it altogether). Alarmed, even panic-stricken, parents look on with wonderment at how their children can so easily throw overboard such ironclad certainties as God?s laws governing marriage, New Testament worship, and the plan of salvation. They apparently are blind to the fact that they, themselves, in league with humanistic philosophy, have sown the wind that yielded the whirlwind! … Once the biblical text is compromised, once the obvious meaning of Scripture is whitewashed in order to make its teaching more palatable and in step with secular culture, once Scripture is adjusted to fit human ideas rather than human ideas being adjusted to fit Scripture?the battle has been lost and Satan has won.

There are over 450 well-researched, sourced articles on creation vs. evolution alone here dating from 1994 to present written by a group of Christian ministers, scientists, doctors, etc. that layout why old earth belief is inconsistent with the scriptures. If nothing else, think you would find the titles amusing. The argument for young earth is beautifully laid out here, and summarized as follows:

We would like to suggest two courses of action for those who so willingly wed themselves to such extravagant misinterpretations of the Scripture: either (1) admit that the Bible and contemporary uniformitarian geology are at odds, reject biblical creation, and defend geological and biological evolution over billions of years; or (2) admit that the Bible and contemporary uniformitarian geology are at odds, study all the geological indications of the recent creation of the earth, accept the implications of Noah?s flood, and believe the recent creationism of the Bible. One must choose either the chronological scheme of uniformitarianism or the chronological scheme of the Bible, but the inconsistencies of this sort of interpretation of the Hebrew text for the purpose of harmonizing mutually exclusive and hopelessly contradictory positions can no longer be tolerated (1976, pp. 178-179, all emp. in orig. except for last sentence).

I know this is long. Maybe a diary is in order.