There are of course ways to argue about the accuracy of these techniques. What's fun is that it doesn't matter which technique you use - the numbers turn up th

There are of course ways to argue about the accuracy of these techniques. What's fun is that it doesn't matter which technique you use - the numbers turn up the same no matter what. That's why this 'science' thing is so cool. Measure the error rate of polymerase in lab (the protein which makes your DNA). Calculate the percent difference ("error") between humans and chimpanzees and you can get a ballpark number for the length of time it took for the species to diverge. It's astounding that these numbers end up quite similar to the numbers you get when you find bones, compare the isotope of carbon in it with the known decay rate of Carbon-14, and the ratios of it in our ecosystem. And these numbers correspond quite well between any elemental analysis we know. Have you ever told a lie? (we'll pretend you have for argument's sake) You know how quickly and difficultly it is to create a story that accords with the lie? And yet somehow telling even the most outlandish of true stories causes not even a momentary fluster? Everything just fits together. Were evolution or such things based on a single finding - then sure, be skeptical. But when evidence from a geologist, a physicist, a geneticist, a radiologist, a biophysicist, and many more all arrive at the same conclusion using wildly different techniques - then be much much less skeptical. Each user of each technique knows its error and precision. Some techniques can get you +/- a million years out to 100 million years, some +/- a decade out 1,000 years - some +/- a second out 3 days. Or for polymerase - +/- an event every .0001 seconds. But while each idea may be tenuous on its own - they all work in tandem to draw something really powerful. The most robust of these concepts span from the picosecond to 13 billion years - from the picometer to 13 billion light-years. It's fantastic. 200 years ago it was more like the millimeter to the kilometer, from the millisecond to the century.