I am currently in a debate with a creationist friend of mine.
I am a graduated electronic engineer, he studied geology.
The debate has mostly settled on 3 issues. He claims:
Evolution is unproven.
Radio dating is unreliable. The earth is 10s of thousands not thousands of years old.
The bible is literal truth.
I struggle with radio dating because it's not my field but basically my arguments (from the research I have managed to do) so far are:
Radio dating provides strong correlated results that do not appear random (therefore its unlikely that parent atoms also had a random amount of daughter atoms to begin with) That any uniform pairings that were introduced during the creation of the atoms would show up in plots and could be accounted for.
He argues to this that the different forms don't agree, I am I right in thinking that these differences are small and not enough to support a young earth?
Also I read that zircon crystals using uranium-lead dating can be assumed to be uncontaminated at their start, is this correct?
I am much more comfortable in the field of astronomy and I have pointed out that other forms of dating such as the age of our sun, based on entirely different methods agree and can act as a benchmark.
------------------------
For evolution he says he accepts micro-evolution but not macro evolution.
I have not had the chance to go after this much yet and any input on this would be appreciated.
------------------------
Also I have said on the topic of the flood that there is no evidence for such a wide scale flood capable of covering mount Everest (this would have to be supernatural as the earth does not contain that much water) and that animals like the dodo, who could not swim or fly on islands should have gone extinct since it could not make it to an ark.
-------------------------
This is my first extended debate so any help would be appreciated.