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Is the earth only a few thousand years old?

firedragon

Veteran Member
This came as a surprise for me, though I knew there are many people, especially Christians who believe the earth was somewhere like 6,000 years old due to the timelines provided in the Bible. The Bible does provide a time line and some have ventured to calculate the age of the earth. Well, it does seem like it is a 6000 plus year timeline. Though I know that this belief is there, unexpectedly in a conversation regarding Noah and the flood, a YEC doctrine came up again with carbon dating and the non-existence of carbon beyond a certain point. I am not a science major for sure, but as kids we all learn about carbon dating. So its pretty easy for anyone to understand it. Also, since carbon dating is extensively used in dating documents of old, it is a pretty well known subject. To make a claim like "Carbon 14 didnt exist" during a particular time (In this case 3000 years ago to be specific) one has to make the case that no living thing existed prior to that time. Wow. That was a surprise.

The method of carbon dating itself runs up to 60000 years in age. But the claim is the earth is 6000 years old. Also this is neglecting the other methodologies of radiometric dating.

Is the idea of a 6k year old earth absurd and absolutely unscientific? Or, do Christians who still have this idea have some solid foundation scientifically?
 

sayak83

Veteran Member
Staff member
Premium Member
This came as a surprise for me, though I knew there are many people, especially Christians who believe the earth was somewhere like 6,000 years old due to the timelines provided in the Bible. The Bible does provide a time line and some have ventured to calculate the age of the earth. Well, it does seem like it is a 6000 plus year timeline. Though I know that this belief is there, unexpectedly in a conversation regarding Noah and the flood, a YEC doctrine came up again with carbon dating and the non-existence of carbon beyond a certain point. I am not a science major for sure, but as kids we all learn about carbon dating. So its pretty easy for anyone to understand it. Also, since carbon dating is extensively used in dating documents of old, it is a pretty well known subject. To make a claim like "Carbon 14 didnt exist" during a particular time (In this case 3000 years ago to be specific) one has to make the case that no living thing existed prior to that time. Wow. That was a surprise.

The method of carbon dating itself runs up to 60000 years in age. But the claim is the earth is 6000 years old. Also this is neglecting the other methodologies of radiometric dating.

Is the idea of a 6k year old earth absurd and absolutely unscientific? Or, do Christians who still have this idea have some solid foundation scientifically?
It's absurd and unscientific.
 

exchemist

Veteran Member
This came as a surprise for me, though I knew there are many people, especially Christians who believe the earth was somewhere like 6,000 years old due to the timelines provided in the Bible. The Bible does provide a time line and some have ventured to calculate the age of the earth. Well, it does seem like it is a 6000 plus year timeline. Though I know that this belief is there, unexpectedly in a conversation regarding Noah and the flood, a YEC doctrine came up again with carbon dating and the non-existence of carbon beyond a certain point. I am not a science major for sure, but as kids we all learn about carbon dating. So its pretty easy for anyone to understand it. Also, since carbon dating is extensively used in dating documents of old, it is a pretty well known subject. To make a claim like "Carbon 14 didnt exist" during a particular time (In this case 3000 years ago to be specific) one has to make the case that no living thing existed prior to that time. Wow. That was a surprise.

The method of carbon dating itself runs up to 60000 years in age. But the claim is the earth is 6000 years old. Also this is neglecting the other methodologies of radiometric dating.

Is the idea of a 6k year old earth absurd and absolutely unscientific? Or, do Christians who still have this idea have some solid foundation scientifically?
There is no foundation for it and almost no educated Christians any longer think the Earth is only 6000yrs old. Only some highly unrepresentative fundies.

Bishop Ussher's chronology , which is what you are referring to, was already considered untenable about 200 yrs ago.Ussher chronology - Wikipedia
 

Heyo

Veteran Member
Is the idea of a 6k year old earth absurd and absolutely unscientific? Or, do Christians who still have this idea have some solid foundation scientifically?
I'm not aware of any scientific study YEC rely on to establish their dates. The only source for it is the bible and bishop Usher's chronology. YEC have to deny not only radiometric dating methods but all methods from many fields of science to keep believing in their view of history but they try anyway.
 

sun rise

The world is on fire
Premium Member
The book Good Omens had a short passage that almost echoes a conversation I had many years ago. The Christian basically said that the Bible is correct but that God created the Earth in a way that made it seem it was very old. And that he did that as a test of faith. The only real difference between that conversation and the novel is that in the conversation it was a test of faith and in the book it was God's sense of humor.

The Good Omens passage:

Current theories on the Creation of the Universe state that, if it were created at all and didn't just start, as it were, unofficially, it came into being between ten and twenty billion years ago.

By the same token the earth itself is generally supposed to be about four and a half billion years old.

These dates are incorrect.
...

Archbishop James Usher (1581-1656) published Annales Veteris et Novi Testamenti in 1654, which suggested that the Heaven and the Earth were created in 4004 BC. One of his aides took the calculation further, and was able to announce triumphantly that the Earth was created on Sunday 21st of October, 4004 BC, at exactly 9.00 a.m., because God liked to get work done early in the morning while he was feeling fresh.

This too was incorrect. By almost a quarter of an hour.

The whole business with the fossilised dinosaur skeletons was a joke the palaeontologists haven't seen yet.

This proves two things:

Firstly, that God moves in extremely mysterious, not to say, circuitous ways. God does not play dice with the Universe; He plays an ineffable game of His own devising, which might be compared, from the perspective of any of the other players (i.e., everybody), to being involved in an obscure and complex version of poker in a pitch-dark room, with blank cards, for infinite stakes, with a Dealer who won't tell you the rules, and who smiles all the time.
 

firedragon

Veteran Member
There is no foundation for it and almost no educated Christians any longer think the Earth is only 6000yrs old.

Which is why I was surprised. But the bigger surprise was that he has extensive scientific assumptions to back the notion up. So I want to hear more.
 

exchemist

Veteran Member
The book Good Omens had a short passage that almost echoes a conversation I had many years ago. The Christian basically said that the Bible is correct but that God created the Earth in a way that made it seem it was very old. And that he did that as a test of faith. The only real difference between that conversation and the novel is that in the conversation it was a test of faith and in the book it was God's sense of humor.

The Good Omens passage:

Current theories on the Creation of the Universe state that, if it were created at all and didn't just start, as it were, unofficially, it came into being between ten and twenty billion years ago.

By the same token the earth itself is generally supposed to be about four and a half billion years old.

These dates are incorrect.
...
Archbishop James Usher (1581-1656) published Annales Veteris et Novi Testamenti in 1654, which suggested that the Heaven and the Earth were created in 4004 BC. One of his aides took the calculation further, and was able to announce triumphantly that the Earth was created on Sunday 21st of October, 4004 BC, at exactly 9.00 a.m., because God liked to get work done early in the morning while he was feeling fresh.

This too was incorrect. By almost a quarter of an hour.

The whole business with the fossilised dinosaur skeletons was a joke the palaeontologists haven't seen yet.

This proves two things:

Firstly, that God moves in extremely mysterious, not to say, circuitous ways. God does not play dice with the Universe; He plays an ineffable game of His own devising, which might be compared, from the perspective of any of the other players (i.e., everybody), to being involved in an obscure and complex version of poker in a pitch-dark room, with blank cards, for infinite stakes, with a Dealer who won't tell you the rules, and who smiles all the time.
Yes! This is the "God put the fossils in the rocks to fool the scientists" thesis. This was expounded by Philip Henry Gosse, back in 1857:
"
Gosse argued that if one assumed creation ex nihilo, there would necessarily be traces of previous existence that had never actually occurred. "Omphalos" is Greek for "navel," and Gosse argued that the first man, Adam, did not require a navel because he was never born; nevertheless he must have had one, as do all complete human beings, just as God must have created trees with rings that they never grew.[37] Thus, Gosse argued that the fossil record—even coprolites—might also be evidence of life that had never actually existed but which may have been instantly formed by God at the moment of creation.[38]

The general response was "as the Westminster Review put it, that Gosse's theory was 'too monstrous for belief.'" Even his friend, the novelist Charles Kingsley, wrote that he had read "no other book which so staggered and puzzled" him, that he could not believe that God had "written on the rocks one enormous and superfluous lie for all mankind."[39] Journalists later s******ed that God had apparently hidden fossils in the rocks to tempt geologists to infidelity.[40]

Omphalos sold poorly and was eventually rebound with a new title, Creation, "in case the obscure one had had an effect on sales." The problem was not with the title. In 1869 most of the edition was sold as waste paper.[41]"

From: Philip Henry Gosse - Wikipedia

It was roundly laughed out of court back then, so if it is taken seriously by anyone now they must be idiots.

I'm especially amused by the coprolites - the notion that Almighty God was so perverse as to take the trouble of exquisitely fashioning lumps of dinosaur s***, just to "test the faith" of the palaeontologists.:D
 

firedragon

Veteran Member
The book Good Omens had a short passage that almost echoes a conversation I had many years ago. The Christian basically said that the Bible is correct but that God created the Earth in a way that made it seem it was very old. And that he did that as a test of faith. The only real difference between that conversation and the novel is that in the conversation it was a test of faith and in the book it was God's sense of humor.

The Good Omens passage:

Current theories on the Creation of the Universe state that, if it were created at all and didn't just start, as it were, unofficially, it came into being between ten and twenty billion years ago.

By the same token the earth itself is generally supposed to be about four and a half billion years old.

These dates are incorrect.
...
Archbishop James Usher (1581-1656) published Annales Veteris et Novi Testamenti in 1654, which suggested that the Heaven and the Earth were created in 4004 BC. One of his aides took the calculation further, and was able to announce triumphantly that the Earth was created on Sunday 21st of October, 4004 BC, at exactly 9.00 a.m., because God liked to get work done early in the morning while he was feeling fresh.

This too was incorrect. By almost a quarter of an hour.

The whole business with the fossilised dinosaur skeletons was a joke the palaeontologists haven't seen yet.

This proves two things:

Firstly, that God moves in extremely mysterious, not to say, circuitous ways. God does not play dice with the Universe; He plays an ineffable game of His own devising, which might be compared, from the perspective of any of the other players (i.e., everybody), to being involved in an obscure and complex version of poker in a pitch-dark room, with blank cards, for infinite stakes, with a Dealer who won't tell you the rules, and who smiles all the time.

So how about you? Are you claiming that the earth is 6k years old and God made it look as if its older?
 

Secret Chief

nirvana is samsara
The universe is 13.7 billion years old, except for one tiny speck which for some strange reason is only 6 thousand years old. Yeah, right.

 
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