The evidence against a recent creation is overwhelming. With the possible exception of Flat Earthism, there is no greater affront to science than Young Earth creationism (YEC).
This article collects evidences that place a lower limit on the age of the Universe beyond the 6,000 to 10,000 years asserted by most Young Earth creationists (YECs) and the literalist Ussher chronology. All of this evidence supports deep time: the idea, considered credible by scientists since the early 1800s, that the Earth (and the Universe) is millions[note 1] or billions of years old. Modern science accepts that the Earth is about 4.54 billion years old and the entire universe is around 13.77 billion years old.[note 2]
These limits usually take the form: "Because we observe [X], which occurs at rate [Y], the universe must be at least [Z] years old". There are three standard creationist responses: First, creationists assert that current rates (Y) are different than past rates. It is possible that these rates changed — but under uniformitarianism, which is necessary for science to function, we must assume that rates did not change unless there is evidence for this change. Second, creationists appeal to the Omphalos hypothesis and argue that God deceptively created the world to appear old. This is an unfalsifiable hypothesis, and is unscientific. Third, creationists ignore the evidence and deny that [X] exists altogether or assert that belief in a Young Earth is based on faith, not science. All of these answers are critically flawed.
These ages weren't just made up — or, worse, accepted to "give evolution enough time". Each was concluded from a range of experiments and observations made across multiple disciplines of science, including astronomy, geology, biology, palaeontology, chemistry, geomorphology and physics. For YEC to be true, each of these fields would have to be incorrect about almost everything. Some of these reported ages have indeed been revised based on new evidence (sometimes larger, sometimes smaller), but never to the orders of magnitude required by YEC.
Moreover, these dating methods are not mutually exclusive: where their range, accuracy, and applicability overlap, the dates they produce agree with each other. (For example, all dating methods for the age of the Earth agree on a 4.4-4.6 billion year-old world.) This is important especially because YECs regularly claim that radiometric dating is unreliable — yet radiometric dating is unnecessary to prove an old universe, because we have many methods of dating at our disposal.
What follows is 33 independent reasons not to believe in a young Earth:

>10,000

Evidence for a minimum age of 10 thousand years.

Thermoluminescence dating: 10,000

See the Wikipedia article on Thermoluminescence dating.
Thermoluminescence dating is a method for determining the age of objects containing crystalline minerals, such as ceramics or lava. These materials contain electrons that have been released from their atoms by ambient radiation, but have become trapped by imperfections in the mineral's structure. When one of these minerals is heated, the trapped electrons are discharged and produce light, and that light can be measured and compared with the level of surrounding radiation to establish the amount of time that has passed since the material was last heated (and its trapped electrons were last released).

Although this technique can date objects up to approximately 230,000 years ago, is only accurate on objects 300 to 10,000 years in age. This is, however, still over 4,000 years older than the creationist figure for the age of the Earth.[2]

Dendrochronology: 11,700


Clearly defined tree rings.

Building backwards.[3]
See the main article on this topic: Dendrochronology
Dendrochronology is a method of dating based on annual tree growth patterns called tree rings. Tree rings are the result of changes in the tree's growth speed over the year, because trees (in normal conditions in temperate regions) grow faster in the summer and slower in the winter. Thus, a tree's age can be found by counting the rings. Dendrochronology is the only method on this list that can date events precisely to a single year.

The thickness of tree rings varies with the local seasonal weather, so a sequence of thick ring, thin ring, thin ring, thick ring, thick ring, thick ring, thin ring, thick ring shared by two trees is strong evidence that the corresponding rings formed at the same time. Each individual tree only covers the span of time it was alive and growing, but as these spans overlap it is possible to match up overlapping sections and work backwards. By observing and analyzing the rings of many different trees from the same area, a map of the past can be recreated.

Even dates derived from individual trees contradict the recent-creation doctrine, since the oldest trees pre-date the supposed global flood. There are two known living trees that are older than 4,350 years (the global flood would have occurred in 2348 BCE, according to Ussher) -- Methuselah

Wikipedia's W.svg
is 4851 years old (501 years too old) and a currently unnamed tree is 5069 years old (719 years too old). One dead tree also fits the bill -- Prometheus

Wikipedia's W.svg
was 4899 years old (549 years too old).

The oldest plant alive has been dated back as far as 11,700 years (7369 years too old) and is called King Clone. King Clone's age is not precise to a given year, as it wasn't dated by dendrochronology proper (counting rings). Instead, KC was dated by applying known patterns of plant growth to a single organism that self-reproduces by "cloning".[4]

Linguistics: 14,000

Linguists divide languages into groups, called, families, based on descent. These groups are given names, often from their locations, and these languages derive from one common ancestor(much like biological evolution), and this common ancestor is usually named by adding "proto" before the name of the group. For example, the group including nearly all European languages and many north Indian languages is named Indo-European, and the ancestor of this language is known as Proto-Indo-European. The locations and dates of these languages can be rather accurately guessed at from linguistic, anthropological, and archeological evidence. One example is the group of languages in the Middle East and north Africa known as Afro-Asiatic languages. They include ancient Egyptian and Akkadian, among many others. Ancient Egyptian and Akkadian were both written well over 4,000 years ago, and are rather different from each other, and therefore a common ancestor of the two must be older than 6,000 years. Through more rigorous research, linguists estimate the age of Proto-Afro-Asiatic to be anywhere from 12,000 to 18,000 years old. The fact that Egyptian, Sumerian, and several other languages were written centuries before the date of the great flood is also rather convenient.

Oxidizable carbon ratio dating: 20,000

Oxidizable carbon ratio dating is a method for determining the absolute age of charcoal samples with relative accuracy. This dating method works by measuring the ratio of oxidizable carbon to organic carbon. When the sample is freshly burned, there will be no oxidizable carbon because it has been removed by the combustion process. Over time this will change and the amount of organic carbon will decrease to be replaced by oxidizable carbon at a linear rate. By measuring the ratio of these two allotropes, one can determine ages of over 20,000 years ago with a standard error under 3%.[5]

Widmanstatten patterns: >57,300


A Widmanstatten pattern in a Gibeon meteorite
Wikipedia's W.svg
.
See the Wikipedia article on Widmanstätten pattern.
Widmanstätten patterns are crystals composed of nickel and iron that are found in some meteorites.

Widmanstatten patterns have never been produced in the laboratory. This is because nickel-iron crystals can only grow this large (several centimeters) when they cool at an extremely slow rate of about 100-10,000 degrees Celsius per million years, from a starting point of about 500-700 degrees Celsius[6] to a temperature of about -73 Celsius.[7] Even at its shortest (starting at 500 degrees and cooling to -73 Celsius at 10,000 degrees per million years), this process would still take 57,300 years. The longest cooling ages have been reported at 10 million years.[6]

To date, the only creationist response is that meteorites couldn't be that hot for that long because space is cold,[8] which is patently absurd.[note 3][note 4]

>100,000

Evidence for a minimum age of 100 thousand years.

Mitochondrial Eve: 99,000

See the main article on this topic: Mitochondrial Eve
Since the mitochondria in sperm are in the tail (which does not enter the egg), the DNA contained therein comes from the egg. Mitochondrial Eve is the most recent woman with an unbroken female line of descendants. She is estimated to have lived from 99,000 to 234,000 years ago.[9][10][11][12][13]

There is a male equivalent to Mitochondrial Eve: Y-chromosomal Adam.

Lack of DNA in fossils: 100,000

Deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA), the universal carrier of genetic information, is present in all organisms while they are alive. When they die, their DNA begins to decay under the influence of hydrolysis and oxidation. The speed of this decay varies on a number of factors. Sometimes, the DNA will be gone within one century, and in other conditions, it will persist for as many as one million years. The average amount of time detectable DNA will persist though is somewhere in the middle; given physiological salt concentrations, neutral pH, and a temperature of 15°C, it would take around 100,000 years for all the DNA in a sample to decay to undetectable levels.[14]

If fossils of the dinosaurs were less than 6,000 years old, detectable fragments of DNA should be present in a sizable percent of dinosaur fossils, especially in the Arctic and Antarctic regions where the decay of DNA can be slowed down 10-25 fold. A claim that soft tissues in a Tyrannosaurus fossil had been recovered in 2005[15] has since been shown to be mistaken,[16] supporting the idea that dinosaur fossils are extremely old.[17] More recent work appears to support Schweitzer’s claim with limited speculation on how the DNA survived.[18]Prior to this was a report on DNA extraction from a 3.8 million-year-old ostrich egg shells.

SniperAssassin:
The evidence against a recent creation is overwhelming. With the possible exception of Flat Earthism, there is no greater affront to science than Young Earth creationism (YEC).
This article collects evidences that place a lower limit on the age of the Universe beyond the 6,000 to 10,000 years asserted by most Young Earth creationists (YECs) and the literalist Ussher chronology. All of this evidence supports deep time: the idea, considered credible by scientists since the early 1800s, that the Earth (and the Universe) is millions[note 1] or billions of years old. Modern science accepts that the Earth is about 4.54 billion years old and the entire universe is around 13.77 billion years old.[note 2]
These limits usually take the form: "Because we observe [X], which occurs at rate [Y], the universe must be at least [Z] years old". There are three standard creationist responses: First, creationists assert that current rates (Y) are different than past rates. It is possible that these rates changed — but under uniformitarianism, which is necessary for science to function, we must assume that rates did not change unless there is evidence for this change. Second, creationists appeal to the Omphalos hypothesis and argue that God deceptively created the world to appear old. This is an unfalsifiable hypothesis, and is unscientific. Third, creationists ignore the evidence and deny that [X] exists altogether or assert that belief in a Young Earth is based on faith, not science. All of these answers are critically flawed.
These ages weren't just made up — or, worse, accepted to "give evolution enough time". Each was concluded from a range of experiments and observations made across multiple disciplines of science, including astronomy, geology, biology, palaeontology, chemistry, geomorphology and physics. For YEC to be true, each of these fields would have to be incorrect about almost everything. Some of these reported ages have indeed been revised based on new evidence (sometimes larger, sometimes smaller), but never to the orders of magnitude required by YEC.
Moreover, these dating methods are not mutually exclusive: where their range, accuracy, and applicability overlap, the dates they produce agree with each other. (For example, all dating methods for the age of the Earth agree on a 4.4-4.6 billion year-old world.) This is important especially because YECs regularly claim that radiometric dating is unreliable — yet radiometric dating is unnecessary to prove an old universe, because we have many methods of dating at our disposal.
What follows is 33 independent reasons not to believe in a young Earth:

the earth os flat. There is no space men never went to the moon its all a lie.

SniperAssassin:
The evidence against a recent creation is overwhelming. With the possible exception of Flat Earthism, there is no greater affront to science than Young Earth creationism (YEC).
This article collects evidences that place a lower limit on the age of the Universe beyond the 6,000 to 10,000 years asserted by most Young Earth creationists (YECs) and the literalist Ussher chronology. All of this evidence supports deep time: the idea, considered credible by scientists since the early 1800s, that the Earth (and the Universe) is millions[note 1] or billions of years old. Modern science accepts that the Earth is about 4.54 billion years old and the entire universe is around 13.77 billion years old.[note 2]
These limits usually take the form: "Because we observe [X], which occurs at rate [Y], the universe must be at least [Z] years old". There are three standard creationist responses: First, creationists assert that current rates (Y) are different than past rates. It is possible that these rates changed — but under uniformitarianism, which is necessary for science to function, we must assume that rates did not change unless there is evidence for this change. Second, creationists appeal to the Omphalos hypothesis and argue that God deceptively created the world to appear old. This is an unfalsifiable hypothesis, and is unscientific. Third, creationists ignore the evidence and deny that [X] exists altogether or assert that belief in a Young Earth is based on faith, not science. All of these answers are critically flawed.
These ages weren't just made up — or, worse, accepted to "give evolution enough time". Each was concluded from a range of experiments and observations made across multiple disciplines of science, including astronomy, geology, biology, palaeontology, chemistry, geomorphology and physics. For YEC to be true, each of these fields would have to be incorrect about almost everything. Some of these reported ages have indeed been revised based on new evidence (sometimes larger, sometimes smaller), but never to the orders of magnitude required by YEC.
Moreover, these dating methods are not mutually exclusive: where their range, accuracy, and applicability overlap, the dates they produce agree with each other. (For example, all dating methods for the age of the Earth agree on a 4.4-4.6 billion year-old world.) This is important especially because YECs regularly claim that radiometric dating is unreliable — yet radiometric dating is unnecessary to prove an old universe, because we have many methods of dating at our disposal.
What follows is 33 independent reasons not to believe in a young Earth:

Are you Nigerian. Yes or no?