Can you rationalize the difference between the scientific and religious definitions of the age of the earth?

Dear Gramps,
“If we go to the turf of the scientists we will find that there are many scientific reasons that clearly demonstrate that the theory of relativity is passe. It stems from the theory of uniformitarianism.”
You write in the question about the Theory of Evolution. Could you please explain this into more detail? Also, a comment on the question and answer itself: I find your explanation to the question answered there a bit too “this is how it is”. All I have heard on the issue of geology and age of earth is that on one side Earth is 4.5 Billion years old and on the other side it’s 7000 years. Observations leading to the first statement are true as well as the scriptural statements leading to the second. Both are true, puzzle pieces are missing (most likely in interpretation as well as additional observation) but at some point we’ll know how it fits together, and there won’t be contradiction. Until then – we’ll keep looking, not saying that one or the other is wrong. (this was heavily paraphrased by me, but it makes more sense to me than to just  shrug off the findings of scientists (which I’m sure you didn’t really do, but that’s how it came across). Anyways, as an astrophysicist, I’m very interested in your reasoning behind the first question, since I’ve never heard anything like that in church before.
Theresa

Dear Theresa,
There is only one method by which archaeological or anthropological dating is accomplished– that is the potassium-argon decay rate method. Although radioactive decay rates are very accurately known, the conditions applied to the K/A decay are very nebulous and are highly inaccurate. So all archaeological and anthropological dating should be taken with a very large grain of salt. A full explanation of the problems with this process would take much more space than we have available in this column. However, I am in the process of writing a book on this very subject, to be entitled “The Demise of Darwinism, or the Rise and Fall of the Theory of Evolution.” In that book all this stuff will be explained.
On the other side of the equation, time, as we know it, has been measured on earth for only 7000 years. Time did not start until after Adam and Eve were expelled from the Garden of Eden—

But of the tree of knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it; for in the time that thou eatest thereof, thou shalt surely die. Now I, Abraham, saw that it was after the Lord’s time, which was after the time of Kolob; for as yet the Gods had not appointed unto Adam his reckoning  (Abr  5:13).

So the temporal existence of the earth is destined to endure for a period of only 7000 years—

Q What are we to understand by the book which John saw, which was sealed on the back with seven seals?

A. We are to understand that it contains the revealed will, mysteries, and the works of God; the hidden things of his economy concerning this earth during the seven thousand years of its continuance, or its temporal existence (D&C  77:6).

Therefore, we have no idea what sort of a time frame existed before the beginning of the 7000 years. And an appeal to telestial science to solve the mysteries of eternity is both a naive and a foolish notion. As in the words of Paul, men are—

Ever learning, and never able to come to the knowledge of the truth (2 Tim  3:7).

Gramps