you already know the answer to your question. so why ask?
i'll throw this one at you. so this can answer all your "gotcha" questions in one swoop. i dont believe without a doubt in any dating resulting in MILLIONS of years, or 100,000's of years. not from a scientific point of view.
and thats because i dont know how anyone could know if that were true or not without human's actually being here on earth with dated proof, then we come along 100,000's of years later or millions of years later and discovers these dated objects. then we can use this to test our theory of dating. "lets see if the rocks look like such, then these fossils must be x 100,000's of years old. because that rock layer looks just like the rock layer from our ancestors that was dated.
simple example:
Rock layer X located by humans 200,000 years ago. where these human's dated the rock layer , discovered by so and so on january first, year 55(55th year of human existence)
so we run into the same rock on 01/01/200,055
200k years later. so now we know what 200k old rock layer looks like. now when we use our theories for dating rock layers. we can compare them with what we know from the past that has been already dated.
without the above scenario. we are guessing. or let me put it this way. we are pushing forward assuming the patterns that we've seen for a few thousand years remains the same. therefore we can do the math the same throughout time.
that dating system like math in general. is based on Patterns.
1,2,3,4
1,2,3,4
1,2,3,4
1,1,1,1,1
1,2,3,4
1,2,3,4
1,2,3,4
so scientists assume the 1,1,1,1,1 will appear again.
they may be wrong. the pattern could be longer then they think. the LOOP point may be further along the pattern.
perhaps it goes like such, which would change the loop point. this will change the process in which we calculate the age of things.
1,2,3,4
1,2,3,4
1,2,3,4
1,1,1,1,1
1,2,3,4
1,2,3,4
1,2,3,4
1,2,3,4
1,1,1,1,1
4,3,2,1
4,3,2,1
1,2,3,4
1,1,1,1,1
1,2,3,4
1,1,1,1,1
1,2,3,4
1,2,3,4
1,2,3,4