How old is the earth?

Watchman1 said:

If we take "there was evening and there was morning" literally then it tells of the hours of darkness between evening and morning, not of the daylight hours, which would have been "morning then evening". Alternatively, "evening" followed by "morning" could very well describe a starting and ending point with any amount of time in between.

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Why do you think the term “there was evening and there was morning” was even put into those verses? It really serves no purpose at all other than to indicate how long each day was by indicating that these events took place within one revolution of the earth. Other than that the term serves no purpose at all.

Watchman1 said:

I think you may have a blind spot where you think that God created the cosmos from within our space-time continuum in which the 6 days might have been 24 hour days in our three dimensional reality. But God's reality is in a dimension that does not include time. In fact, measurable time does not appear until Adam is created. This would make the 6th phase of creation much shorter than the previous five. So God can take all the time He likes to create and set up the world, because only He and the angels exist in those five phases of creation. He is not on a timetable, nor does he need to catch the next train, so He can take all the time He needs to ensure that His creation is perfectly constructed according to His design.

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Then if this is according to God’s perspective of time it would’ve happened instantaneously.

Watchman1 said:

Therefore if the meaning of "yom" used for the 6 phases of creation, then saying the 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 5th and sixth "epoch" is quite consistent with the scientific evidence seen in nature.

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It may be consistent with science but it’s not consistent with the scriptures.

FaithT said:

Sorry, I’ve been skipping around a bit here, but you’re a YEC, correct?

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Yes

oikonomia said:

I think I agree with you that God has so done many things so that IF we really do not want Him, He gives us a way out.

There is no coercion against the will. It is as if God has said "Here is evidence of Me. But if you really don't want Me, here's a little exit door
you can step out."

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Yes that’s what I believe to. Just like the same reason that Jesus spoke in parables.

“As soon as He was alone, His followers, along with the twelve, began asking Him about the parables. And He was saying to them, “To you has been given the mystery of the kingdom of God, but those who are outside get everything in parables, so that while seeing, they may see and not perceive, and while hearing, they may hear and not understand, otherwise they might return and be forgiven.””
‭‭Mark‬ ‭4‬:‭10‬-‭12‬ ‭NASB1995‬‬

Some say that this makes God deceptive but it doesn’t because He specifically told us exactly how and when He created the earth.

Another thing to consider is if God instantly created an orange and you immediately took that orange to a scientist and ask them how old it was he’s not going to conclude that the orange was made just a few seconds ago simple because of the fact that it is a full grown fully ripe orange and fully grown fully ripened oranges do not grow in a few seconds. The same could be said about a rock. A scientist would conclude that the rock would have to be at least old enough for it to become a rock naturally. The dating methods that scientists use are based on theory not fact. There’s a difference between theory and fact. Theory is based on what we know according to the data we have available which can be different from fact because with a theory it’s based on if what we believe is correct then this is the logical conclusion. Basically if x, y, and Z are correct then the earth would have to be X amount of years old. But we don’t have actual proof that x, y, and Z are correct because we have to base our information on what we can observe now, not what we could observe 6000 years ago. For example carbon dating hangs on the idea that the level of C14 in the atmosphere has been constant but we don’t know that. That’s just an assumption because we’ve only discovered C14 80 years ago. And it has been proven that carbon dating is not a reliable method because trees that were known and documented as being planted in the 80s were tested and came back being thousands of years old. Then there’s thermoluminescence dating that measures accumulated radiation in objects that have been exposed to heat or sunlight but even then you have to know how much heat or radiation they were initially exposed to in order to determine how much was accumulated to begin with. So these dating methods hang on theories of x, y, and Z being constant or comparable with what we observe today, not on what actually happened within the last 6000 years.

BNR32FAN said:

I said Adam named all the animals in one day because that’s what the scriptures say.

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Please show any such verse. Let's read and see what the words are really saying...

I'll even repost it again:

15 The Lord God took the man and put him in the Garden of Eden to work it and take care of it. 16 And the Lord God commanded the man, “You are free to eat from any tree in the garden; 17 but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat from it you will certainly die.”

18 The Lord God said, “It is not good for the man to be alone. I will make a helper suitable for him.”

19 Now the Lord God had formed out of the ground all the wild animals and all the birds in the sky. He brought them to the man to see what he would name them; and whatever the man called each living creature, that was its name. 20 So the man gave names to all the livestock, the birds in the sky and all the wild animals.

But for Adam no suitable helper was found. 21 So the Lord God caused the man to fall into a deep sleep....

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We can see there is no indication at all of how long -- it could be many days, many weeks, many months (that time length has no importance either)....while God continued to bring animals before Adam, and he named them.

It's not very important precisely how long such processes took, obviously -- God chose not to tell us....

We can just trust God. We aren't being saved because we have perfect theories/doctrines. But by sheer unearned Grace, through faith in Christ Jesus!!!!

It would not matter if the Garden of Eden lasted for 1 second, 1 day, 1 month, 1 year, of 100,000 years.

None of these random amounts of time are a problem for God.

Because He is God.

BNR32FAN said:

Not true, according to the scriptures in Genesis 2 Adam named the animals after being placed in the garden of Eden BEFORE Eve was created. According to Genesis 1:26-31 we know that both Adam and Eve were created on the 6th day.

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Ah!

Now I see how someone ended up in that odd idea...

Even Genesis chapter 2 has to be somehow interpreted to only be part of the previous chapter of the 6 days...

So, they end up with an idea that God has to fit Adam naming the animals into a short time.... Get 'er done! 'Get it done Adam, because I need this to be over in another 16 hours max!'

When a theory gets that convoluted and clearly not really working that well, you should not feel concerned -- it's good to remember it's only a theory. It's not you. We aren't saved by theories or the perfection of our understanding.

We aren't saved because we have perfect theories.

We are only saved by sheer unearned Grace that we certainly could not merit on our own!

After just a casual reading, I think it is fairly obvious that the events of Gen 2 do not line up with the events of Gen 1. Definitely two different events.

BobRyan said:
...fom wild speculation about "bacteria eventually giving rise to rabbits given enough time and chance".

expos4ever said:

This misrepresents what the theory of evolution actually says. It is not only chance and time, but also natural selection that are at play. Those who deny the theory of evolution frequently misrepresented in this way, perhaps hoping to oversell the chance element.

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Does the story of evolution begin with rabbits near the start or does it begin with "bacteria world" where there are not even amoeba's - just bacteria {prokaryotes)?

I think we all know that the "story" only has "bacteria world" at the start. So in my scenario "bacteria" is pretty much where they start.

I think we all know that after a gratuitous amount of "time and chance" - the story will get to "rabbits" appearing from some ancestor that goes all the way back to "bacteria world".

Now it may well be that this "summation" is "too obvious" for some - and one might hope for more convoluted just-so stories between the start and the end... I do not doubt that.

Halbhh said:

Ah!

Now I see how someone ended up in that odd idea...

Even Genesis chapter 2 has to be somehow interpreted to only be part of the previous chapter of the 6 days...

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If we engage in the ripture rip-and-wrench of chapter 2 out of the book of Genesis and chapter 1... (And there were NO chapters in the book initially - obviously) - Then in Chapter 2 we have
1. No atmosphere - but in chapter 1 atmosphere is created.
2. No seas, no fish,
3. No Sun or moon - but in chapter 1 the sun and moon are created

So then in a book with NO Chapter divisions because it has no chapters - it is easy to see how the reader would start at the beginning and then read for a few verses to get to the end of what we now call Chapter 2.

I guess some folks skim over the details to the point of ending up there.

SavedByGrace3 said:

After just a casual reading, I think it is fairly obvious that the events of Gen 2 do not line up with the events of Gen 1.

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Only if you skip enough details

BNR32FAN said:

What Bible version are you using that says that Adam actually began cultivating on the 6th day because I can’t find a single Bible translation that says that.

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good point

Watchman1 said:

It is possible to be so religiously minded that basic common sense is ignored. After over 50 years of believing that creation took 6 24 hour days, and then examining the actual scientific evidence, I am quickly coming to see that the six "days" were Moses describing six stages of creation. Because the Hebrew language has a much more limited vocabulary than English, Moses used the word "yom" to describe the six stages, because that was the only word he could use to describe it.

Because God works outside of our space time dimension, it could be quite possible for Him to spend as much time as He liked to design and construct the universe and our world. So, I reckon that Moses' description of creation being six stages involving millions of years using "six days" is viable given the actual scientific evidence.

It is significant that all of the scientists who don't have a Biblical basis for their conclusions, say that according to the evidence they have, the universe and the world were created over six multimillion periods of time.

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Words avilable to Moses when he wrote Gensis.

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שָׁלָב
stage, phase, step, joint, grade, rung

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תְקוּפָה
period, time, era, term, season, stage
verb

---

Halbhh said:

I'm not sure what you meant here, as of course no one would wish to ever name 100 animals in 60 seconds (and even in a whole day that would be a lot) (viz -- even if he ate a lot of coffee or cocoa beans, and was getting hyper and jumping around restlessly)

Unless I was under some duress and intense time pressure, I'd probably name like a dozen or 20 animals in an hour or 2 and then be ready to do something else for a while.

Ok, getting more serious, there's no basis for anyone to think Adam was aging even, so that he'd grow old and get gray hairs eventually. He was in the Garden with the Eternal One coming to walk with him, and we know that Adam was not yet subject to death! (it's in the scripture...)

So..........

Why? Why wouldn't Adam age and die? (or what is time, what is death?...)

Nearby was the eternal Tree of Life, which will be in heaven (Revelation 22) -- The Tree of Life is in the 2nd chapter of the Bible, and also in the last chapter of the Bible.

Eden Restored​

22 Then the angel showed me the river of the water of life, as clear as crystal, flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb 2 down the middle of the great street of the city. On each side of the river stood the tree of life, bearing twelve crops of fruit, yielding its fruit every month. And the leaves of the tree are for the healing of the nations. 3 No longer will there be any curse. The throne of God and of the Lamb will be in the city, and his servants will serve him.

Bible Gateway passage: Revelation 22 - New International Version

Eden Restored - Then the angel showed me the river of the water of life, as clear as crystal, flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb down the middle of the great street of the city. On each side of the river stood the tree of life, bearing twelve crops of fruit, yielding its fruit every...

www.biblegateway.com

(heading of passage is from the NIV translation quoted here)
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The Garden of Eden seems likely before the fall to have been of a different quality from mortal ordinary Earth where people age and die.

If someone felt they needed to guess for any reason about mere mortal world time duration in the outside world (outside of the Garden)....well, we can better perhaps realize that truly the time duration is trivial in a way, 10,000 years or 10 million -- that would not even matter. Perhaps it was 244,000 years, for instance. Not important in the way that scripture is important (time is a mere mortal fallen human concern really).

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With the tree of life, one can age and not die.

BNR32FAN said:

I play a game called Ark Survival where you tame dinosaurs and try to survive and I don’t waste a bunch of time naming them I just put the first name that pops into my head. See the thing is, the Bible specifically states that he named all of them in one day. So while some people may want to spend more time on something like that, apparently Adam didn’t worry about it so much. My point was simply to show that it is absolutely mathematically possible for him to name 25000 animals in a day. If he named one animal every 2 seconds he could name 25000 animals in less than 14 hours. So you can’t sit there and say that “Adam wouldn’t want to do that” when the scriptures specifically tell us that he did in fact name all of them in one day because that would be putting your assumption over what the scriptures specifically state.

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What makes you think there was that many animals back then?

hopped on one leg to here.

BobRyan said:

If we engage in the ripture rip-and-wrench of chapter 2 out of the book of Genesis and chapter 1... (And there were NO chapters in the book initially - obviously) - Then in Chapter 2 we have
1. No atmosphere - but in chapter 1 atmosphere is created.
2. No seas, no fish,
3. No Sun or moon - but in chapter 1 the sun and moon are created

So then in a book with NO Chapter divisions because it has no chapters - it is easy to see how the reader would start at the beginning and then read for a few verses to get to the end of what we now call Chapter 2.

I guess some folks skim over the details to the point of ending up there.




Only if you skip enough details

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Well actually it is in the details where the differences occur. If you skip over the details you may come away thinking that chapter two is either a retelling of the sixth day or a continuation of the 6th day.

SavedByGrace3 said:

Well actually it is in the details where the differences occur. If you skip over the details you may come away thinking that chapter two is either a retelling of the sixth day or a continuation of the 6th day.

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Chapter two has plants and animals created and there are no 7 days of anything after the chapter-1 ending found in Gen 2:1-3.

In Chapter 1 there is no marriage , no tree of knowledge and no tree of life.

In chapter 3 the fall of mankind relies on facts given in 1 and 2.
There is air in chapter 3, there is the sky, the sun, the tree of knowledge , Adam and Eve from chapter 2 and of course there are NO chapters.

Then the legal code of Ex 20:11 points directly at the seven day summation for chapter one found in Gen 2:1-3

Watchman1 said:

It is possible to be so religiously minded that basic common sense is ignored. After over 50 years of believing that creation took 6 24 hour days, and then examining the actual scientific evidence, I am quickly coming to see that the six "days" were Moses describing six stages of creation.

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A "stage" where plants exist on Earth before the sun exists?

How long did that "Stage" last in your proposal??

The Legal code of Ex 20:8-11 says it was 7 literal days like the days at Sinai.

Halbhh said:

We can see there is no indication at all of how long -- it could be many days, many weeks, many months (that time length has no importance either)....while God continued to bring animals before Adam, and he named them.

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Ok I have two questions for you.

1. Was Adam and Eve created on the same day?

2.Was Eve created when Adam named all the animals?

BobRyan said:

good point

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Do you see what I’m saying about Adam naming all the animals in 1 day? No one else seems to be able to see it. Genesis 1:26-31 says Adam & Eve were created on day 6. Genesis 2:15-22 says that Adam named all the animals before Eve was created. I don’t see how people aren’t able to put this together.

Daniel Marsh said:

What makes you think there was that many animals back then?

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That’s just a number one of the other posters threw out there but even if it was 25000 it’s still doable in one day.

Halbhh said:

Please show any such verse. Let's read and see what the words are really saying...

I'll even repost it again:

15 The Lord God took the man and put him in the Garden of Eden to work it and take care of it. 16 And the Lord God commanded the man, “You are free to eat from any tree in the garden; 17 but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat from it you will certainly die.”

18 The Lord God said, “It is not good for the man to be alone. I will make a helper suitable for him.”

19 Now the Lord God had formed out of the ground all the wild animals and all the birds in the sky. He brought them to the man to see what he would name them; and whatever the man called each living creature, that was its name. 20 So the man gave names to all the livestock, the birds in the sky and all the wild animals.

But for Adam no suitable helper was found. 21 So the Lord God caused the man to fall into a deep sleep....

------------
We can see there is no indication at all of how long -- it could be many days, many weeks, many months (that time length has no importance either)....while God continued to bring animals before Adam, and he named them.

It's not very important precisely how long such processes took, obviously -- God chose not to tell us....

We can just trust God. We aren't being saved because we have perfect theories/doctrines. But by sheer unearned Grace, through faith in Christ Jesus!!!!

It would not matter if the Garden of Eden lasted for 1 second, 1 day, 1 month, 1 year, of 100,000 years.

None of these random amounts of time are a problem for God.

Because He is God.

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Why do you think the term “there was evening and there was morning” were included into the passages concerning the creation days? What purpose does that term serve?