According to Carbon-14 Dating techniques (see below) done on rocks, the planet Earth is several billion years old. Human beings are maybe 6 to 10,000 years old. Because the Earth is around 4 - 5 billion years old, it is perfectly logical and scientifically feasible, that coal can exist in the form of diamonds. I'm not a Creationist, and I hope you don't mind that I answered your question, anyway. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radiocarbon_dating http://www.howstuffworks.com/carbon-14.htm +5

The dinosaurs planted them there under orders of Satan, to bring doubt to the Holy Scriptures. And then the dinosaurs were actually wiped out by God for being heretics... Yeah, that's the ticket.

Honestly, someone who is still a Young Earth Creationist at this point won't be swayed by something like that. Simply asking a statement like "Were you there when the coal formed?" will allow them to go on believing.

They were brought to the surface from hell especially in order to confuse True Christians™ :)

The Bible does not state that this Earth is 6,000-10,000 yr old. The Bible does not give an age for the Earth. So anyone whom believes that is taking mans ignorance over the true world of God the Bible.

Jesus put coal in the earth after planting dinosaur bones to test their faith.

we though it took hundreds of thousands of years to petrify trees, then we found petrified trees in northern swamp lands where loggers just 30 years before were logging those same trees...just because someone said it doesn't make it true, find out what their calculations are (such as what was the pressure or temp that they were calculating from) what happens if it was just a little bit more or less.... example if the universe was millions of years old then from all the space debree and asteroid collisions the dust on the moon should be miles thick (NASA Predicted this thus the lunar module had such gigantic landing pads) their calculations were about 1 inch of dush should accumulate a year. when we got there it had about 10" of dust. does this prove my belief (NO)it gives evidence for mine to be correct. same as coal seems to give evidence for Millions of years (so we MUST do more research)

If you can handle the idea of God CREATING THE UNIVERSE, you can handle the idea of Him making coal a bit quicker than you'd have thought likely.

Im not going to pretend that I know much about carbon dating and coal formation. All I know is that God's God, and we're just people. God made a perfect world for us - And we fucked it up. Any confusion and misconception is our fault - not His. ;) I dont really care HOW He created our world - I just know enough of Him to be able to trust that His word is true. The same way I dont fuss and bother about who made the couch i'm sitting on - I just sit on it. Believe what you will, doubt what you will - It's all good. At least you're considering the possibility - Which is a step more than a lot of people. :) Peace x

Problems with Carbon 14 Dating...uh oh! http://contenderministries.org/evolution/carbon14.php

God created it 6,000 years ago with the appearance that it was much older - or did he do that last Thursday?. No matter, he can do anything because he's So, Like, Awesome. A lot like light from very distant stars (more that 6,000 light years away.) +5

The earth ISillions of years old...enough time to form coal... It is MAN ho has a comparative short history... It is MAN who has existed on the earth for only about 6-8,000 years. Genesis chapter 5....From Adam through to Noah... Matthew chapter 1...From Abraham to Jesus... Luke chapter 3...23-38... Jesus through to God himself...' Put them all together and do a time / line chart...= 6-8,000 years...

1) Coal does not exist? ;-) 2) obviously, a miracle! Hallelujah!

Its not that hard of a question for a creationist to answer this. Watch: Coal takes millions of year to form startinggggg now.. God is all powerful God makes coal and puts it in the earth. DONE

Seems like a valid question to me. According to Bible chronology, man has been around for a little more than 6000 years, which would explain why the oldest written records are about 5000 years or so, from what I understand. I don't believe the creative days were literal 24 hour days, as quite often "day" in the bible just refers to a period of time such as Gen 2:4. notice how some translations translate the word for "day" as "when" or "at the time" when Genesis groups the day the heavens were created and the day the earth was created together in the same day. http://bible.cc/genesis/2-4.htm. Each creative day could be a thousand or thousands of years as a day in God's eyes as if a thousand years. http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=%20Psa90:4;%202Pet3:8;&version=49;47;16;77;9; Besides, the earth was created before the "creative days" began. . I copied this out of "Insight on the Scriptures" under "Day". This is just a portion. {The term “day(s)” is also used with reference to a time period contemporaneous with a particular person, as for example, “the days of Noah” and “the days of Lot.”—Lu 17:26-30; Isa 1:1. Other cases where the word “day” is used in a flexible or figurative sense are: “the day of God’s creating Adam” (Ge 5:1), “the day of Jehovah” (Zep 1:7), the “day of fury” (Zep 1:15), “the day of salvation” (2Co 6:2), “the day of judgment” (2Pe 3:7), “the great day of God the Almighty” (Re 16:14), and others. This flexible use of the word “day” to express units of time of varying length is clearly evident in the Genesis account of creation. Therein is set forth a week of six creative days followed by a seventh day of rest. The week assigned for observance by the Jews under the Law covenant given them by God was a miniature copy of that creative week. (Ex 20:8-11) In the Scriptural record the account of each of the six creative days concludes with the statement: “And there came to be evening and there came to be morning” a first, second, third, fourth, fifth, and sixth day. (Ge 1:5, 8, 13, 19, 23, 31) The seventh day, however, does not have this ending, indicating that this period, during which God has been resting from his creative works toward the earth, continued on. At Hebrews 4:1-10 the apostle Paul indicated that God’s rest day was still continuing in his generation, and that was more than 4,000 years after that seventh-day rest period began. This makes it evident that each creative day, or work period, was at least thousands of years in length. As A Religious Encyclopaedia (Vol. I, p. 613) observes: “The days of creation were creative days, stages in the process, but not days of twenty-four hours each.”—Edited by P. Schaff, 1894. The entire period of the six time units or creative “days” dedicated to the preparation of planet Earth is summed up in one all-embracing “day” at Genesis 2:4: “This is a history of the heavens and the earth in the time of their being created, in the day that Jehovah God made earth and heaven.”} . This is a little off the direct subject, but I found it interesting. http://www.watchtower.org/e/20040622/article_02.htm

Gap Theory.

If someone is bent in the head enough to believe creationism, then they're easily bent enough to believe that coal was put here by there invisible sky daddy.

Scientist believe that the earth is between 4.5-4.6 billion years old. Where did you get 6-10,000 years?

...hmm...Well If I remember right, There was an earth...but it was only void of life.

In order for coal to be formed, several factors must be present. Pressure, temperature, water, time, and some sort of vegetation are the key elements for the formation of coal. According to evolutionary theory, the slow accumulation and decomposition of vegetation living in past ages accounts for the coal seams. However, this theory can not answer why such large amounts of original vegetation without soil can be found in the areas that are now coal seams, or how these coal seams became so thick - some being over two hundred feet in depth. Scientist Robert Gentry analyzed coalified wood found on the Colorado Plateau in order to determine how long it took for coal to form.1 By treating coal with epoxy and slicing it into thin sheets, Dr. Gentry was able to examine tiny, compressed radiohalos found in the coal. Radiohalos are discolorations in the coal, ejected by radioactive elements in the centers (such as uranium). According to evolutionary theory, in order for these halos to form, several processes must have occurred. First, water-saturated logs must have been laid down in several different geologic formations, including the Triassic, Jurassic and Eocene layers. Later, uranium solutions infiltrated the water-saturated logs, and uranium decay products were collected at tiny sites within the logs. The radioactive decay from the tiny particles ejected spherical radiation damage regions around those sites, thus producing halos. Finally, a pressure event on the site of the formations compressed the logs as well as the radioactive halos within them. However, because coal is not a malleable substance, scientists know that these logs had not turned to coal at the time the compression event occurred. This points to a quick burial and coalification of the logs – rather than a long time period. Simply put, Creationists and Evolutionists have the exact same data but interpret this data from a different perspective, a different starting point. So who is correct? Obviously the evolutionists will say that they are correct and the Creationists will say that they are correct. What it boils down to is that "you" need to make the choice as to what side is correct.

Maybe they're dating coal wrong? Maybe God didn't use "new" material when he created the earth?

Coal was already in the earth when God created the planet. That's the way God created the Earth. It may take millions of years for coal to form, but God can make coal in a second. He wouldn't be God if he can't do that. +4

Really i think if the guy was capable of creating a world he could spend up the whole coal thing! Im way more interested in why he decided to invent murder!

I'm not speaking as an atheist or a creationist, but there are already scientific theories that support a view that relativity has a vast role in creation...

scientific dating 'theories' could be wrong and it was created in the beginning with the properties of a 'million yr.s formation'...

You do realize the earth is acctually 4.5 billion years old?

coal is made from vegies, that's been layed down under tons & tons & tons etc. of pressure, and that can happen in a very short time. read some scientists books other than the BS you've read. Nelson's :after it's kind" and Rehwinkel's "the flood in the light of Bible, geology, and archaeology". perhaps then, you'll wake up. you want more, email me at ww5776@gmail.com and i'll send ya very short historical proof.

COAL IS MADE FROM PLANTS. UNDER HEAVY PRESSURE, IT DOESN'T TAKE LONG TO FORM. OIL IS MADE FROM FISH. BECAUSE OF THE FLOOD OF NOAH.

I heard a while back that the "days" and "years" in the bible is different than the length we know it. It probably isn't the same meaning as we know it today

well what do you expect ..these same people will tell you man is only 6000 to 10000 years old .... bloody funny as I think they had better have a little chat to Australia's Aborigines who have lived in Australia for 30,000 to 40,000 years!

Wait...which scripture said.."And one million years is only one second in this book.".. I just know it has to be there somewhere... darn..

And next you will tell me that it takes more than 6-10,000 years to make oil and diamond?