My House Did not have a Builder (or did it?)

[Dan Brooks]

No, that is not why the Earth is said to be 4.5 billion years old.  It is said to be that old based on radiometric dating of earth, meteor, and lunar samples.  Fossils are originally dated from the age of the minerals in which they are embedded.  If similar fossils are found in other areas, then this is used as a quick way to date minerals in those areas.

If you think that's how scientists arrived at an age for the Earth, then I'd humbly suggest that your academic sources are probably mainly religious rather than scientific.  It sounds like the kind of thing a pastor would tell to churchgoers to make them think scientists are dumb, rather than something scientists have ever said.

I don't think scientists are dumb. But I did hear that somewhere. Not sure where. I haven't gone to church in over ten years. Maybe I heard it when I was a kid.  I've heard a few times that evolution has to take such a long time to occur, that the earth has to be that old in order for the evolution to take place.  If I'm wrong about that, then I apologize.
But if evolution doesn't take that long to occur, then why isn't there so much more evidence of it? Not only in observation, but in paleontological finds and archaeological finds, etc?

---

Yes, they are reproducing within their own kind.

Care to share your definition of "kind"?  Taxonomists now rely more heavily on DNA analysis than on morphology.

As in, "They're both dogs". He said that they're both dogs, so that's what I meant. Like wolves and dogs are same kind. Horses and donkeys are the same kind, because they can mate and make mules. I don't have a technical definition of it. I could find one, but I was just agreeing with the fact that he said that they were both dogs. There is an extreme amount of variety within dogs, but they're all still dogs. Dogs can't mate with cats, etc. So that's what I mean by kind.