[A Pearls Before Swine comic makes fun of people on the internet saying the Earth is only 5000 years old]

The fact is that no one actually knows.
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Various groups claim this or that, but there is invariably at least a large hole in the logic behind it.
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For example, in getting my geology degree, all sorts of things were claimed. Some of them directly contradicted other science, but we were supposed to believe them, in the same manner that one believes a religion.
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I don’t believe in magic, and thus I don’t believe in the 4.7 billion year idea. Too many contradictions of other established science.
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It was so pronounced that I analyzed the matter in one of my books.
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“Science “by insistence.”

It can be demonstrated that geologic dating (note that I didn’t say carbon dating, which has different assumptions and can be traced to approximately 9,500 years using non-fossilized plant and fungal materials still in existence) has several fatal flaws that render it completely inaccurate.
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Yet, one is not supposed to argue those chemical, nuclear, astrophysical, geologic and thermodynamic flaws inherent in the idea and just believe that geologic dating is accurate and true. One simply musssst accept those scientific impossibilities, and assume it somehow works despite them.
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As an example, take the illogical assumption that all “daughter product” isotopes in a mineral were incorporated into a rock after the rock formed— despite no mineral being able to magically “pick and choose” which isotopes it incorporates as each isotope of an element is chemically identical. That assumption introduces an error so great as to make the entire concept unworkable. However, one is supposed to just “assume” it works though, and not question it.
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But—but— geologic dates can’t be calculated if we don’t assume all of a daughter product isotope didn’t come from decay, the proponents will say.
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That is the problem exactly.
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The dates cannot be calculated without that assumption and since that assumption is irrational (trace it through and it postulates magic because of the idea of a mineral having sentience or otherwise being able to pick and choose each isotope and thus it’s the realm of magic, not science), dates cannot be logically ascertained for non-carbon 14 dating methods.
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But with that kind of illogical assumption, the error introduced makes the process completely unusable as one doesn’t know when the rock was formed— today or four point seven billion years ago. Several other assumptions render the process equally invalid.
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But, one is still supposed to “just accept it.” As such, it becomes religion, not science. A matter of “belief.” "