Radiometric Dating is Accurate

Hello and good luck to my opponent. It cannot be stated beyond a shadow of a doubt that Radiometric Dating (RD) is accurate. Young Earth Creationism (YEC) is equally as likely to be accurate, also your disclaimer that "This debate is intended only for issues related to science, not for arguments from non-scientific reasons" is invalid because both systems are faith-based enterprises. My argument requires the use of some obscure figures, so please bear with me. The global average life expectancy of humans is 66.12 years as of 2008. In the US, that expectancy is around 78 years. The average American comes into a vague understanding of RD during the latter years of their compulsory education (~15-17 years old). Meaningful employment in a field requiring an advanced understanding of RD begins around age 24. Automatic trust of people who are employed in fields requiring an advanced understanding of anything begins around age 5, which I regard as a bad thing. Retirement age for the average American is 65. That leaves 41 years of active study on average into the science surrounding RD. The scientific method calls for postulation, theory-forming, testing, observing and adjusting hypotheses based on the results of these tests. The human life expectancy much less the active employment span is insufficient to complete the scientific method regarding the accuracy of RD. For the same reason, the THEORY of evolution is now and will never be more than a theory. And you cannot use one theory to prove another, it's circular logic. But I digress. Just because carbon behaves in a certain manner for 41 years or even for 300 years (or however long we've been observing it) doesn't mean that it has behaved that way for it's alleged billions of years of existence. The reason is Potentiality. Is it not just as likely that carbon 14 is subject to potentiality (it does come from cosmic rays) and therefore is quantified only when observed? According to the concept of potentiality, scientists are finding Carbon 14 behaving in a certain way or in a certain place because they are looking for it in a certain place or for it to behave in a certain way. RD places the creation of the earth in the neighborhood of 4.6 billion years ago based on the radiological decay of a single carbon isotope over literally millions of years (remember the part where we live for 78 years). It's difficult to be more specific. YEC puts the creation of the earth at 0900, Friday, 12 September 6000 BC. based on geneologies passed on by oral tradition since the dawn of man. Measured by the births and deaths of prominent men from Judeo-Christian religious/historical documents, which was a culture-based method of measuring time before the creation of more conventional metrics. The average person must assume when learning about RD or any other facet of science that deals with events that occurred before recorded human history that the person who is teaching them is neither misinformed nor deceiving the student. They must have trust in that person. They must have faith in that person. Given the complexities of the subject and the lack of practical use to the average person, such problems are plausible. The purposes for such a deception are vast in number and varied in nature but all with the purpose of supplanting religion as a valid explanation of our origins. It "proves" itself through the spouting of impressive figures and complex math and scientific principles that cannot be verified any more accurately than Moses receiving orders from God via the burning bush. Truth told, there is only a very small slice of science that can be called verifiable fact. You trust your science to tell you what we are and I trust my religion. Both require faith that defies proof. To summarize, because humans have neither the lifespan nor the patience if they HAD the longevity to properly and scientifically prove the accuracy of RD, it cannot be asserted with confidence that it is in fact an accurate estimate of the true age of the earth.