Is the earth only a few thousand years old?

[firedragon]

The one in the OP.

You mean the earth I suppose. Anyway, thanks. Have a great day.

 

[Secret Chief]

You mean the earth I suppose. Anyway, thanks. Have a great day.

Was it not obvious? Or were you being deliberately obtuse for some reason?

 

[firedragon]

Was it not obvious?

Ciao.

 

[Secret Chief]

Ciao.

Obtuse then. Have a great day yourself.

 

[exchemist]

If the Earth was round then why don't we have to shorten the legs on one side of our tables?

Checkmate Atheists!

And another thing: If the Earth was round, everyone in New Zealand would be upside down - stands to reason. Well, I've been there, and I can you they are the right way up. Ha!

 

[firedragon]

Obtuse then. Have a great day yourself.

Great. Cheers.

 

[exchemist]

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.

Er well, strictly speaking, those will not be scientific assumptions. They will be pseudo-scientific arguments, backed by no observational evidence. But yes indeed, there are people who make up these contorted arguments to try to sustain a literal reading of Genesis. But they all fall apart for lack of evidence, or because at some point they are contradicted by the evidence that we do have.

 

[McBell]

And another thing: If the Earth was round, everyone in New Zealand would be upside down - stands to reason. Well, I've been there, and I can you they are the right way up. Ha!

Don't even get me started on why Australians have not fallen off completely...

 

[firedragon]

They will be pseudo-scientific arguments

Absolutely. I still wanna hear more.

 

[TagliatelliMonster]

Is the idea of a 6k year old earth absurd and absolutely unscientific?

Yes

 

[A Vestigial Mote]

a claim like "Carbon 14 didnt exist" during a particular time (In this case 3000 years ago to be specific)

I saw this in the thread I think you are referencing, and at the time it seemed to me that the particular poster who posted that idea didn't even know what "C14" was, and I imagined they thought it to be some sciencey "invention" of fairly modern times or something. I admit to not having read much more from the thread, so I don't know if you tried to clarify or if the person fleshed out this opinion or their knowledge of the subject any further.

 

[TagliatelliMonster]

But the bigger surprise was that he has extensive scientific assumptions to back the notion up.

No, he doesn't.
At best, he has a bunch of sciency sounding word-salad and an assumed conclusion that doesn't even follow from the absurd premises.

 

[Twilight Hue]

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?

I don't see how anybody could think the earth is 6000 years old with so much evidence to the contrary.

 

[halbhh]

There is no such timeline anywhere in the bible.

Not in there.

But I've seen plenty of manufactured ones, using added assumptions and added ideas not in the text.
It's like the 'flat earth' notion in that way: a misreading depending on extraneous ideas/theories.

It's pretty well supported since the 1950s the Earth is about ~ 4.54bn years old to within about 1%.

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?

 

[halbhh]

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.

Stars which aren't too distant can have their distances measured by trigonometry alone (parallax method) out to about 10,000 light-years, meaning with only trigonometry, we can see the light from some of those stars at distances near that limit are shining light towards us we get receive that is already about 10,000 years old....

And those are just a small fraction of stars. Further away stars which can't have their distances measured by pure trigonometry are...shining light that is older than 10,000 years which we are seeing....

So, it should not surprise to hear the reality is we can figure out the Earth is far older than 10,000 years (and by far).

There's no reason I can think of for God to create an impression of age for any particular reason that would fit what we do know. After all, time is not His master. We should expect God would be able to move through a billion years like you or I could walk from one room into another.

 

[Evangelicalhumanist]

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.

This obviously brings up the question of why an omniscient being would need to "test" faith -- omniscience means it already KNOWS. No testing required.

 

[firedragon]

I don't see how anybody could think the earth is 6000 years old with so much evidence to the contrary.

See, I can make a statement like "they posed 100 evidences to the contrary" and a second statement "they posed 100 valid evidences".

They honestly state many things as evidence, but in my opinion they are absolutely bogus. I was hoping there would be some more information in this thread but there seems to be none. At least not yet.

 

[firedragon]

There is no such timeline anywhere in the bible.

Not in there.

There is. You have to gather it, its not in one page.

 

[firedragon]

This obviously brings up the question of why an omniscient being would need to "test" faith -- omniscience means it already KNOWS. No testing required.

Thats not a fair statement. Let's say omniscience is in your understanding one of Gods attributes, there also is free will conceptually. Thus omniscience, the English word may not represent God very well. He knows the beginning and the end, but you are given the choice within those parameters. That is the correct representation of God.

This is why something like the existence of God, theodicy and the usually juicy subjects cannot be discussed so quickly in an irrelevant thread. You may have your own epistemology, and the ontology maybe far different or even misunderstood by you and others. Maybe others misunderstand you. So for all that, you have to discuss that in another thread.

 

[Psalm23]

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?

I don’t know how old the earth is. I am ok with either young or old earth or middle age earth.