Question for Christians only. How old do you think the earth is?

Question

Do you believe the theory-tale of evolution? The gap theory? The day/age theory? Which view do you think the most solid evidence supports, an old-earth cosmology, or a young age for the earth?

Answer 1

About 6000 years. There is very good evidence for a young earth and that the days of Genesis 1 were real, 24 hour days.

How long were the days of Genesis 1?
What did God intend us to understand from the words He used?

by Russell Grigg

Were the days of Creation Week of 24 hours duration or were they long periods of time? This article will discuss the Hebrew 'time' words which the author had available to him and what meaning he intended to convey by his choice of the specific words he used.1
Meaning of yôm

When Moses, under the inspiration of God, compiled the account of creation in Genesis 1, he used the Hebrew word yôm for 'day'. He combined yôm with numbers ('first day', 'second day', 'third day', etc.) and with the words 'evening and morning', and the first time he employed it he carefully defined the meaning of yôm (used in this way) as being one night/day cycle (Genesis 1:5). Thereafter, throughout the Bible, yôm used in this way always refers to a normal 24–hour day.2,3 There is thus a prima facie case that, when God used the word yôm in this way, He intended to convey that the days of creation were 24 hours long.

Let us now consider what other words God could have used, if He had wanted to convey a much longer period of time than 24 hours.
Some Hebrew ‘time’ words

There are several Hebrew words which refer to a long period of time.4 These include qedem which is the main one–word term for 'ancient' and is sometimes translated 'of old'; olam means 'everlasting' or 'eternity' and is translated 'perpetual', 'of old' or 'for ever'; dor means 'a revolution of time' or 'an age' and is sometimes translated 'generations'; tamid means 'continually' or 'for ever'; ad means 'unlimited time' or 'for ever'; orek when used with yôm is translated 'length of days'; shanah means 'a year' or 'a revolution of time' (from the change of seasons); netsach means 'for ever'. Words for a shorter time span include eth (a general term for time); and moed, meaning 'seasons' or 'festivals'. Let us consider how some of these could have been used.
1. Event of long ago

If God had wanted to tell us that the creation events took place a long time in the past, there were several ways He could have said it:

yamim (plural of yôm) alone or with 'evening and morning', would have meant 'and it was days of evening and morning'. This would have been the simplest way, and could have signified many days and so the possibility of a vast age.

qedem by itself or with 'days' would have meant 'and it was from days of old'.

olam with 'days' would also have meant 'and it was from days of old'.

So if God had intended to communicate an ancient creation to us, there were at least three constructions He could have used to tell us this. However, God chose not to use any of these.
2. A continuing event from long ago

If God had wanted to tell us that creation started in the past but continued into the future, meaning that creation took place by some sort of theistic evolution, there were several ways He could have said it:

dor used either alone or with 'days', 'days' and 'nights', or 'evening and morning', could have signified 'and it was generations of days and nights'. This would have been the best word to indicate evolution's alleged aeons, if this had been meant.

olam with the preposition le, plus 'days' or 'evening and morning' could have signified 'perpetual'; another construction le olam va-ed means 'to the age and onward' and is translated 'for ever and ever' in Exodus 15:18.

tamid with 'days', 'days' and 'nights', or 'evening' and 'morning', could have signified 'and it was the continuation of days'.

ad used either alone or with olam could have signified 'and it was for ever'.

shanah (year) could have been used figuratively for 'a long time', especially in the plural.

yôm rab literally means 'a long day' (cf. 'long season' in Joshua 24:7, or 'long time' in the New American Standard Bible). This construction could well have been used by God if He had meant us to understand that the 'days' were long periods of time.

Thus, if God had wanted us to believe that he used a long–drawn–out creative process, there were several words He could have used to tell us this. However, God chose not to use any of these.
3. Ambiguous time

If God had wanted to say that creation took place in the past, while giving no real indication of how long the process took, there were ways He could have done it:

yôm combined with 'light' and 'darkness', would have signified 'and it was a day of light and darkness'. This could be ambiguous because of the symbolic use of 'light' and 'darkness' elsewhere in the Old Testament. However, yôm with 'evening and morning', especially with a number preceding it, can never be ambiguous.

eth ('time') combined with 'day' and 'night' as in Jeremiah 33:20 and Zechariah 14:7 could have been ambiguous. Likewise eth combined with 'light' and 'darkness' (a theoretical construction). If any of these forms had been used, the length of the 'days' of creation would have been widely open for debate. However, God chose not to use any of these.
Author’s Intention

The following considerations show us what God intended us to understand:

1. The meaning of any part of the Bible must be decided in terms of the intention of the author. In the case of Genesis, the intention of its author clearly was to write a historical account. This is shown by the way in which the Lord Jesus Christ and the Apostle Paul regarded Genesis—that is, they quoted it as being truth, not symbolic myth or parable.5,6 It was plainly not the author's intention to convey allegorical poetry, fantasy, or myth. And so what God, through Moses, said about creation in Genesis should not be interpreted in these terms.

Moses did, in fact, use some of the above 'long–time' words (italicized in the examples below, with root Hebrew words in square brackets), although not with reference to the days of creation. For example, in Genesis 1:14, he wrote, 'Let there be lights ... for seasons [moed]'; in Genesis 6:3, 'My spirit shall not always [olam] strive with man'; in Genesis 9:12 'for perpetual generations [olam dor]'; in Leviticus 24:2, 'to burn continually [tamid]'; in Numbers 24:20 'that he perish for ever [ad]'; in Deuteronomy 30:20, 'He is thy light and the length of thy days [yôm orek]'; in Deuteronomy 32:7, 'Remember the days of old [yôm olam]'; and so on.

Why did God not use any of these words with reference to the creation days, seeing that He used them to describe other things? Clearly it was His intention that the creation days should be regarded as being normal earth-rotation days, and it was not His intention that any longer time–frames should be inferred.

Professor James Barr, professor of Hebrew at Oxford University agrees that the words used in Genesis 1 refer to 'a series of six days which were the same as the days of 24 hours we now experience', and he says that he knows of no professor of Hebrew at any leading university who would say otherwise.7

2. Children have no problem in understanding the meaning of Genesis. The only reason why other ideas are entertained is because people apply concepts from outside the Bible, principally from evolutionary/atheistic sources, to interpret the Bible.

3. The Bible is God's message to mankind and as such it makes authoritative statements about reality. If one removes any portion of the Bible from the realm of reality, God may still be communicating truth to us, but the reader can never be sure that he understands it as the author intended. Furthermore, if God's communication to us is outside our realm of reality, then we cannot know whether any account in the Bible means what the words actually say or whether it means something entirely different, beyond our understanding. For example, if we apply this criterion to the accounts of the resurrection of Jesus, perhaps the words could mean that Jesus did not rise from the dead physically, but in a way beyond our comprehension. When these sorts of word–games are played with the Bible, the Bible loses its authority, we lose the divine perspective on reality, and Christianity loses its life–changing power.8

4. If the 'days' really weren't ordinary days, then God could be open to the charge of having seriously misled His people for thousands of years. Commentators universally understood Genesis in a straightforward way, until attempts were made to harmonize the account with longs ages and then evolution.
Conclusion

In Genesis 1, God, through the 'pen' of Moses, is going out of His way to tell us that the 'days' of creation were literal earth–rotation days. To do this, He used the Hebrew word yôm, combined with a number and the words 'evening and morning'. If God had wanted to tell us it was an ancient creation, then there were several good ways He could have done this. If theistic evolution had been intended, then there were several constructions He could have used. If the time factor had been meant to be ambiguous, then the Hebrew language had ways of saying this. However, God chose not to use any construction which would have communicated a meaning other than a literal solar day.

The only meaning which is possible from the Hebrew words used is that the 'days' of creation were 24–hour days. God could not have communicated this meaning more clearly than He did in Genesis 1. The divine confirmation of this, if any is needed, is Exodus 20:9-11, where the same word 'days' is used throughout:

'Six days shalt thou labour, and do all thy work: But the seventh day is the sabbath of the LORD thy God: in it thou shalt not do any work, thou, nor thy son, not thy daughter, thy manservant, nor thy maidservant, nor thy cattle, nor thy stranger that is within thy gates: For in six days the LORD made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that in them is, and rested the seventh day: wherefore the LORD blessed the sabbath day, and hallowed it.'

Answer 2

Anywhere from 6 to 10 thousand years old.

Think about a human. The fastest rate of growth is at the beginning of that child's life, and as the child grows older, it's rate of growth slowly decreases.

If you were to take the average change in high school student's height or weight divided by the number of years in high school, you would get a steady rate of growth per year. Based on this kind of calculation, you could conclude that a high school student is in his 70's, but we know that's not accurate.

Using that same kind of math, you could calculate an earth that is millions of years old. But if you take into account this concept that rate of change is greatest when young, you can easily see that the earth is not really that old.

Oh, one last comment.

If you take a day to be a thousand or a million years in Genesis, then we have a dilemma, because Genesis describes a day as "Evening and morning were one day". This means that for 500 years or 500,000 years there was nothing but darkness in any one geographical spot on the earth (ie a 500 or 500,000 -year night), followed by 500 or 500,000 years of sunlight, and I don't think ANY scientist or even evolutionist would consider that life could form under those conditions.

Furthermore, if Genesis is a "parable", and symbolic of real (other) events, then Adam and Eve are also symbolic. If Adam and Eve are symbolic, then so are the serpent, the forbiden fruit, and the fall of man. If the fall of man was only a parable or symbolic, then the death of Christ on the cross was superfluous and unnecessary, since sin isn't really sin, after all, and Adam and Eve's sin were not really disobedience at all, but symbolic of some other activity.

Answer 3

digital genius, carbon dating can't go back more than 14,000 years, let alone billions. They use radioisotope dating to date millions of years, but if the decay rate changes or there was already daughter element there, then that would give an older age than it really has.

As for the question, by adding up the chronologies given in the Bible and using the time from Christ and whatnot, you get an age of about 6,000 years. Archbishop James Ussher compiled a history of the world, Annals of the World, from creation, which he dates at 4004 B.C., to 74 A.D. It's about $70 and 960 pages on Answers in Genesis' website.

To respond to God's comments. The problem with taking science over the Bible is that we're fallen ppl. Our minds have been deteriorating since sin. Additionally, most ppl are against God and won't want to admit His truth or authority in anything, so why would they do it regarding our origins.

Also, I think a God who needed billions of years to create must be pretty weak, God didn't need all that time, He didn't even need six days, He took his time. The biblical account amplifies God's power, He's so powerful, He created an entire universe and Earth with all kinds of life in six days. That's powerful, not taking billions of years, that's slow. The world is far from simple, otherwise science would be done researching. Again, it shows how powerful God is, He took just six days, and was able to create a world so complex we're still learning about it. That's powerful.

Answer 4

I've watched this Christian Scientist who has a series of videotapes out and he talks all about how old the earth is and everything.

He says (and i agree with his answer) that the earth is about 6000 years old. Somewhere in the Bible (not sure where) it says that "my time is not your time", meaning when God created the Earth in 6 days, it was not 6 periods of 24 hours like most people would think today, instead, maybe think of the 24 hours being replaced by say...24xxxx years or so.

I don't know about all the other questions you asked, but that's just my view on how old the earth is. Maybe someone could do a better job at explaining.

Answer 5

Why are you asking Christians, when none of these questions are dealt with in the New Testament? Everything in the Bible that even suggests answers to these questions is in the Old Testament. You should ask the Jews. It's their book!

Better yet, ask a scientist. Better still, ask a Jewish scientist!

Some Christians believe that you should trust the Bible rather than science because the word of the Bible comes from God. Well, here's a news flash: science and scientists are also God's creation, so listen to them! God gave us our minds, and our ability to think, reason, and learn. We have a responsibility to use the gifts God gave us.

Which God seems more powerful to you? A God who created an almost infinitely vast universe which has existed for billions of years, with earth one small planet that developed over billions of years around one star among billions and billions of others, in a universe so enormous and complex that it woulld take an eternity of lifetimes to fully comprehend, or: a God who created a little world in seven days that has only existed for a few thousand years, a world so simple and mundane that everything you need to know about it can be found in just a few pages of a single book?

Answer 6

I believe the evidence for the evolution theory is just as valid as that of the creation theory. So I am left with the choice as to which one I would believe. And to me, as a God-fearing missionary, the choice is pretty clear.
The gap theory seems like ahandy compromise, but is nether supported by evidence, not the bible. Also, why would you say you believe in God, but also say you don't believe what he has told us in the bible? Thta's a contracticion worthy of the highest level of mockery.

Answer 7

I believe the Bible supports the young earth idea. All was created in 6 24 hr. days. God created things (like rocks and Adam) with the appearance of age.

Answer 8

the most that anybody can do is make an recommended wager of the age of the earth. declaring that it is 4.6 billion.. no longer 4 billion, or 5 billion, yet 4.6 billion is information of averaging on that knowledgeable wager. The Bible does no longer supply specifics, It purely covers 6000 years decrease back.. i imagine that it is incorrect to assume meaning the age of the earth. i don't think of that it is a demonstration of coaching to wager even as it is glaring that the previous changed into chaotic.. how all and sundry can assume that that they'd discover potential indication of the age of the earth is astronomically unnecessary.

Answer 9

The earth is very old, but just because the bible says God created the earth in seven days, does not lithely mean, it was just seven days. For all we know does seven days could have been a lot longer period of time, going over million of years, given enough time for the dinosaurs, to come and go.

We only started keeping track of time, when Christ was born, that is where we get B.C. (Before Christ) A.C. (After Christ) from.

Answer 10

I believe in the Swedenborg theory that the literal sense of the Bible is there to contain, support and protect the internal sense of the Word.

This means the story of Adam and Eve and Noah is parable about the Lord and the church.

Carbon dating is fine with us Swedenborgians.

http://www.mechanicsburgnewchurch.org

Answer 11

It is difficult, because while science does make sense and explains much, there are parts that are gaps that logic cannot close. I subscribe to a more liberal view, that the big bang actually did happen, but God did provide the spark that helped from the universe, and slowly cultivated life and helped his evolve into what we are today.