The Earth is 6000 years old...?

Question

..ummm. OK. Saying that the earth is 6000 years old, when it really is proven by Radioactive dating of rocks, using a wide variety of radioisotopes with very different decay methods that show the very oldest rocks on Earth are about 3.9 billion years old, is not exactly what I would call a 'near miss'.

Can anyone explain why some Fundies claim earth is 6000 years old, or is it just another mystery of the christian faith?

So when all logic defies god, god is claimed simply to be free of logic's confines. Just when I thought I heard it all...I guess proving god does not exist is truly impossible. But in sense this god is free of the logic we use to determine how valid everything else in the Universe is, God really might be a giant Monkey with AIDS.

pfff...Lost cause

I'm gonna go eat some Spaghetti...

Answer 1

You can't explain science to Christians. You can't explain that the light from some stars we can see, has been traveling through space at 186,000 MPS for over millions of years. They just won't believe it if it isn't in the book.

Answer 2

In the early 1600s, geologists around the world were starting to publish their findings on beginning to understand the strata of rock, silt, and other layers they could see. They had been tying them to epochs, and at that time it was just starting to all come together to show the true age of the earth.
To prove these upstart scientists wrong, one Bishop James Ussher, a conservative Anglican priest in England, took on the task of analyzing all of the "begats" -- the generations listed in the bible, who begat who, how long they lived, etc. all the way back to Adam. Now, he had to make some real leaps and huge assumptions, because the bible does *not* contain the full records of every generation from jesus back to Adam (it would be so huge it it did that nobody would ever be able to read it in a lifetime). Nevertheless, he came out one day in 1658 and confidently declared that the first day of biblical creation was Sunday, Oct. 23 4004 BC -- and that Adam and Eve were driven out of the garden of Eden on Monday, Nov. 10 4004 BC.

One of the first criticisms leveled at Darwin when he first published "On the Origin of Species" was that there wasn't possibly enough time for evolution to have done what he said it did, since Bishop Ussher proved the world was only about 6000 years old. Scientists laughed at such comments then, and still do.

Look folks, anyone who believes the world is 6000 years old is FLAT WRONG. There are numerous human writings -- from Egypt and many other places -- that are considerably older than that, and can be dated explicitly without carbon dating because the documents themselves are dated in the local calendar. Every single branch of science -- geology, biology, astronomy, paleontology, archaeology, meteorology, cosmology, and many others -- all have thousands and thousands of observations, fossils, finds, pottery, tools, arrowheads, bones, writings, timelines of star and planet formations, etc. that all prove beyond any shadow of a doubt that the age of the earth is 4.5 billion years.
The bible is wrong. There is NO scientific evidence of the bible timeline (none of any kind, absolutely positively), and TONS of evidence for the scientific timeline.
These ignorant non-thinkers would rather believe a fairy-tale told by a guy who lived almost 400 years ago and knew nothing about science (Bishop Ussher), and who has no proof other than the bible, than hundreds of years of scientific progress with literally hundreds of thousands of hard facts that can be independently verified, tested, and checked. Their minds are useless -- not only is nobody home, the lights aren't even on.

Answer 3

Actually 6010 years! Look, it's very simple. When the coyote paints the tunnel on the big flat rock, hoping the road runner will smash into it? That's forced perspective. God used a kind of cosmic forced perspective. God put fossils in the ground, oldish-looking light in space and set the Carbon 14 clock to LOOK like billions of years had passed. That way, the truth would require faith, not demonstration.

It's really a very cool trick, don't you think? All we really have to figure out is what the big, flat rock is for...

Answer 4

because those human beings (i trust it really is youthful earth creationists you're touching on) take the bible actually and are very obdurate on the 'day' suggested in Genesis being our recent 24 hours. different christians, who're the former earth creationists, have reported that there probable are mistakes in translation and the 'day' may have meant a lot more beneficial than only 24 hours. They use the verse lower than as a accessible assisting evidence announcing that a 'day' to God is different than that of a 'day' to us, that God may have waited tens of millions of years earlier coming up human beings. 2 Peter 3:8 8But do no longer ignore this one situation, expensive acquaintances: With the Lord an afternoon is style of 1000 years, and 1000 years are like an afternoon. in my view i imagine it really is particularly flimsy evidence for a gentle earth. yet ultimately does it even matter what number years you imagine the earth is? I mean it really isn't any longer THAT severe of an situation that human beings may take up fingers and strive against adverse to one yet another because they disagree on the placement of the earth's age, or so i imagine.

Answer 5

Here is my problem with your "theory".

I don't disagree with the idea of radiometric dating methods, and that certain elements have half-lives much longer than others. Carbon 14 is one of the most common elements used in dating because of its relatively short half-live (a little over 5,000 years). Scientist agree that carbon-14 is only reliable to about 50,000 years (originally that number was 10,000) because after the amount of carbon 14 halves that many times it is undetectible.

However, rocks and fossils dated in the millions of years often times have a significant level of carbon 14 in them. This is a scientific impossibility. This fact is often left out, because it is not supportive of the old earth theory.

So, when scientists can explain how carbon 14 is found in a rock millions of years old, the theory will have a more solid base of argument.

Answer 6

The earth could be millions of years old. The Bible doesn't say. The six creative days in Genesis had nothing to do with the creation of the planet. If you will notice in Gen. 1 :2 that the earth was already in existence BEFORE the first creative day started. Those "days" were large time periods that Jehovah used to prepare the earth for human habitation.

Answer 7

Because of the math - let me explain. If you look at the Bible, you'll see a lot of listings for when people (mostly men) were born, when they had their kids, etc. The fundamentalists use this info to work backwards and get a date for the begining. There's nothing wrong with their figure, IF you accept the info provided in the Bible as gospel - which of course they do! If the earth is older than (about) 6000 yrs. old, then the info would HAVE to be wrong - which for them is unacceptable...

Answer 8

Richard Dawkins has an example for this. The real age of the world is 4.6 billion years, but the Biblical estimate is 6,000 years. That's the equivalent of saying that the distance between San Francisco and New York is 28 feet (that was actually calculated out). You're right, that's not exactly a near-miss.

Edit: Oops, I meant the real age of the world, not the universe. The age of the universe is 13.7 billion years.

Answer 9

There is certainly no mystery to it. There are 3 earth ages according to the Bible. How long the first was, no one but God alone knows. God is eternal. It is said a day in God's world is a thousand years in ours. The first earth age could have been a billion years. If you were eternal, time has no meaning.

Answer 10

I have been in correspondence with one of these, and it is hopeless to try to convince him of anything. He even believes in the biblical flood, notwithstanding the writings of three civilizations which were creating documents before, during, and after the purported time of this and somehow managed not to notice that they had all been wiped out. And, of course, there is scientific evidence from at least six different independent sources which prove that it could not have occurred. For a fascinating tour of REALLY junk science, see creationist web sites.such as www.creationscience.com.

Answer 11

i prefer to say it's 8000 years old, but some people disagree. also, the oldest "date" we've got from a rock is 4.6 billion years old.

radioisotope dating has been shown to be fallacious numerous times in the past, and in fact can work as strong proof of a young earth. check out the RATE project and how they managed to date a diamond despite the impossibility if it were as old as some people claim.

the Bible gives us a chronological record that dates the creation at a few thousand years before Christ. different people have come up with different numbers because the record is not, nor does it claim to be, complete.