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yes, very!
these bones are dated using what is called carbondating, carbondating reads the amount of a certain radioactive carbon isotope, this radioactive isotope has a very specific half life and all living things are made up of a certain percentage of this isotope (.0283341%). by measuring the percentage of this isotope in the carbon remains we can see how much less corbon there is than what there should be. when we know that we can then calculate (to whithin 150 years) how old the fossil is.
so in answer to your question the age we give dinosaur bones is accurate to within 150 years, just a drop in the ocean compared to the 360,000 years since the supposed end of the dinosaurs.

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1) Dinosaur bones probably predate the Deluge, and so I take their alleged “ages” with a grain of salt.

2) I disagree about there being no historical or scientific evidence for the Deluge: there is tons of literature on this.

3) Whether or not secular science happens to believe something, Catholics should never be dissuaded from doing science according to what they know to be true.

4) I am mostly concerned with Catholics who accept theistic evolution (and the corollary of old earth theory) rather than naturalists.

5) If I found out the earth was old, it would be based on much more evidence than has been offered to date. But it would not shatter my religion. I’ve been wrong before, I may be wrong again.

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2. “I agree that the “possibilities of spiritual truths” should not dictate the terms of the debate. Rather, evolution can and should be defeated by all the material and historical truths that are available to us.” But earlier you say,”The Creation, the period of incorrupt nature before the Fall, and the Deluge. These are the three historical times when it is certain that “nature” did not behave in the way we would expect…” I’ll grant you the Creation, though many scientists would not like the word. But the Fall and the Deluge are articles of faith. There is no historical evidence that they happened, though you and I believe they did. Arguing before a group of sceptics that these events make the reading of nature’s signals unreliable will get you exactly nowhere.

3. “I don’t understand how this levels the sense of the miraculous.” I’ll try again. You said that a young earth had to have emerged in a state of maturity. God made man, and all other things, at once, together. That’s how I read it. Maybe I’m wrong. If you don’t see how this dims the brightness of our appearance, I give up. That God would step outside the order of nature to make us is indeed worth noting. That he would do it for all lesser creatures is not. My objection to “a God who perpetually and arbitrarily tinkers with nature so that nothing is predictable” was not aimed at young earth proponents, but at Intelligent Design theorists (among whose numbers I do not count myself), especially if Michael Behe’s Irreducible Complexity is part of that theory, for he would have God dropping in now and then to put a flagellum on a bacterium. (The ID crowd must exclude reference to Christian revelation. They’re trying to argue an alternative theory of science.)

4. You still haven’t told me why it’s so important to you to cleave to the young earth, or, if you found out it wasn’t young, how it would in any way diminish the credibility of religion.

5. “Catholics have to keep this in mind when dating anything that may have been affected by them…” (i.e., the Creation, etc.) I may have mistakenly assumed that your audience consisted of naturalists (agnostics and materialistic atheists) in whom you’d wish to instill doubt about their evolutionary religion. But if you’re preaching to Catholics, among whom your arguments may find some success because they share your assumptions, it is well to remember that a fair portion of that audience is called the choir.

6. Why aren’t more people participating in this exchange? I know they’re reading. You don’t have to answer that.

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