While dealing with a typical intertard commenting on my videos, I was asked, "What makes you think the Earth is more than 6000 years old?"

Okay, I admit it, that single question should have disqualified the person from receiving any kind of response at all. Young Earth creationists are the slime from which no sentient, quasi-intelligent thought can ever emerge. But I plead 'sneak attack' because this was in the middle of several comments about other things which, on the surface, were questions I was happy to answer, and the 6000-year question was sandwiched inbetween some other points in the same post.

So I replied, "Science and scientists makes me believe the Earth is more than 6000 years old, because they provide evidence and proof. Science provides the best explanations we have for the natural world. This is know the world is more than 6000 years old."

I then went on to explain that young Earth creationists (at this point I had not realised the questioner was one himself) not only believe that the Earth is 6000 years old but that all life, except that in one huge boat, was killed by a global flood, around 2350 BC. This timeline shows these ludicrous belief in detail, while this one shows that in 2350 BC Egypt was undergoing its Fifth Dynasty, preceded of course by Dynasties 1-4 (the Great Pyramid of Giza was bult in the 4th) and followed by dozens more, in a continuous, unbroken and distinctly unflooded line of rulers.

Yes, young Earth creationists have shit for brains. You can quote me on that.

But back to the main point I was making: that we rely on science and scientists to provide us with answers which prove that the Earth (and indeed the universe - did I mention the YEC people think the whole universe is young too?) is way way older than 6000 years.

The response was one which, as many times as I hear it, and I've heard this a lot, never ceases to both amaze and disappoint me:

"Science can be wrong. You can't rely on science for answers. The best position to take would be 'we don't really know'."

See what he did there? Alongside dismissing the combined intelligence of thousands of scientists over hundreds of years, he made a lame attempt at sounding 'reasonable' by assuming a position of scepticism, just shrugging our shoulders and accepting that we don't know and, by extension, will never know and should probably give up trying.

Bullshit. This is a stupid argument. Of course science can be wrong. This is how science advances - new discoveries are made, which either refine the knowledge to add more precision, or replace the old assumptions completely, whereby the old knowledge is no longer up to the task. Scientists used to think the Sun orbited the Earth. Now they don't. Observations - evidence - have given us a good understanding of planetary motion, and we can say with great certainty that the Earth orbits the Sun.

Can scientists be wrong about the age of the Earth? Yes, of course. The current figure of 4.5 billion years as the age of our planet could be wrong. Could it be wrong by a factor of almost a million? It could, yes. But, crucially, the likelihood of this being the case is extremely remote because the age of the Earth is calculated by many, many different methods in many and varied scientific fields, all of which coincide and come to the same conclusions: the Earth is a planet of extreme age. If it is only 6000 years old, those many different methods would all have to be wrong. As for the entire universe being only 6000 years old, that would involve so much basic science being wrong that it's not even worth describing why in any great detail. Suffice to say that it's a stupid idea.

This is only one example, but the person making the statement that 'science can be wrong' was also advocating taking up a 'we don't really know' position. The more I read about the history of scientific discovery, particularly science which disproves the teachings of religion, the more I realise that such statements have been common throughout the advancement of science.

Back again to the Heliocentric Model (the Sun at the centre, with the planets orbiting around it). Although Copernicus proposed this idea, Galileo was its most famous proponent. But guess who didn't like this idea? The Church of course. Why? Because it went against the teachings of the Church, which at the time were that the Earth was at the centre of the Universe. The Church didn't like this. In fact it was only in 1992 (and remember that Galileo died in 1642) that "Pope John Paul II expressed regret for how the Galileo affair was handled, and officially conceded that the Earth was not stationary, as the result of a study conducted by the Pontifical Council for Culture." That's right, in 1992 the Catholic Church finally conceded that the Earth moved around the Sun.

If we allowed religious people to dictate to us what is and is not 'true' and what we should consider as something 'we really don't know' you would probably not be seeing these words today - the Church would have never allowed electricity to develop, or any of the other varied and numerous technologies which have led to such a wonderful communications medium.

To simply assume 'we don't know' is to sit idly on our lazy backsides and be happy as we are, in ignorance. This is, unfortunately, what a vast number of religous people are prepared to do. They actively welcome it - 'ignorance is bliss' as the saying goes. Even Sir Isaac Newton, considered to be the greatest scientist who ever lived, was stopped in his tracks by his own religion:

"Gravity explains the motions of the planets, but it cannot explain who set the planets in motion. God governs all things and knows all that is or can be done."

Well, he was wrong about that because later scientists did explain what set the planets in motion, and added to his work, building a more detailed understanding of the Solar System and the universe beyond it.

We will never get to a point where science has all the answers, but in some cases - the age of the Earth, the age of the Universe, and that old favourite evolution - we have vast amounts of evidence, cross-referenced over a number of different scientific disciplines, and not as yet disproven, which give us great confidence in the current scientific position. Yes the details change, but often this is because more data makes scientific theories (aka explanations) even more water-tight and precise (see the Egyptian dynasties table, where later discoveries refined the dates accepted by historians.

Referring finally to the blockhead questioner, who lured me into a futile discussion about creationism, the one thing we cannot do is ever accept that not knowing is the best position to take. If we don't know something, we should do our very best to find out. This is what science and scientists have continued to do for thousands of years. They will not be stopped simply because some crackpot with a Bible says they might be wrong.