How old is the world?

eddie123 · Feb 19, 2007

I was reading the thread about Creationism/Evolution and, while not wishing to get involved in the wider debate, I just wondered - if you believe the world was created as per Genesis, how old do you believe the Earth to be?

Alcamo · Feb 19, 2007

Hi eddie,

Even among Christians there is no single theory. The basic point is; it doesn't matter how long ago it happened. The point is, God did it. Here are some (and only some) beliefs you will find:

1. The Earth is billions of years old and the "days" of Genesis are not literal.
2. The Earth is billions of years old, but the six days are still literal.
3. The Earth is millions of years old, but not billions (advanced by at least one popular Christian astrophysicist whose name I unfortunately can't remember right now). The days could be literal or not.
4. The Earth is thousands of years old and the days are literal.

Christians can honestly disagree on this issue. Nowhere is this issue considered vital to a relationship with God.

Hope this helps.

Alcamo · Feb 19, 2007

Oh, and speaking for myself, I've read good evidence for an old earth and good evidence for a young earth, so as far as I'm concerned, the jury is still out.

heron · Feb 19, 2007

Older than dirt.

PenelopePitstop2 · Feb 19, 2007

I agree that whether God created the earth in a literal 6 days and also whether the earth is about 6 thousand years old is not fundamental to salvation and the gospel.

However if I base my belief of the resurrection on what the word says and say I believe it because it is written in scripture despite not being believed/understood by the world then surely I should also believe in a literal creation as laid out in Genesis.

The more I study scientifically the bible version of creation the more as science advances it matches up.

One such problem for the old-age idea is erosion. The continents cannot be billions of years old because they would have eroded away long ago. There should be nothing left.

Sedimentologists have researched many of the worlds rivers and calculated how fast the land is disappearing. The measurements show that some rivers are excavating their basins by more than 1,000 mm (39 inches) of height in 1,000 years, while others move only 1 mm (0.04 inches) in 1,000 years. The average height reduction for all the continents of the world is about 60 mm (2.4 inches) per 1,000 years, which equates to some 24 billion tonnes of sediment per year. That is a lot of top dressing!

On the scale of one human life-span, these rates of erosion are low. But for those who say the continents are billions of years old, the rates are staggering. A height of 150 kilometres (93 miles) of continent would have eroded in 2.5 billion years. It defies common sense. If erosion had been going on for billions of years, no continents would remain on Earth.

This is just one argument from answersingenesis.org. There are hundreds of scientific facts that support a young earth. So for me I take Genesis as a literal explanation of creation.

Confess · Feb 19, 2007

If I disregard what it says in Genesis, then I put myself in authority over the Scriptures and can make decisions on disregarding anything that I do not readily understand.

My understanding is not where my faith is. My faith is in God and His revealed Word to me.

6 literal days of creation. The Earth is aprox. 6 thousand years old.

Calminian · Feb 19, 2007

No, this just means that science and all its presuppositions should not trump the Bible. Science and reality are not synonyms. Science has a set of necessary assumptions that are essential to doing science. One of them is methodological naturalism—the assumptions that miracles in the past have not happened. But if this presupposition is wrong, scientific conclusions and reality will not match.

Here's a good article on the Methods of the Creator and why they would cause problems from scientific investigation.

jrmronald · Feb 19, 2007

eddie123 said:
I was reading the thread about Creationism/Evolution and, while not wishing to get involved in the wider debate, I just wondered - if you believe the world was created as per Genesis, how old do you believe the Earth to be?

The earth is 5400 years old.
jrm

PenelopePitstop2 · Feb 19, 2007

So a christian who is also a scientist but spends time finding information to prove creation theory or intelligent design is different to the scientist who is atheist and seeks to prove a theory absent of God i.e. evolution.

Surely the evidence presented from either source should be weighed and tested in the same way using the same scientific scales.

The AIG staement of faith means that for them the bible is the standard that they weigh things up against. That does not mean they go around making up theories to suit the goal of proving God. None of us can prove that. What they do though is expose a lot of presupposition and flaws in scientific theories that have the primary aim of proving there is no God.

Perhaps you should weigh up their theories scientifically rather than worry about where their belief system lies. For me it is the evidence presented that is important. I have researched many other sources that agree with much of the material in sites like AIG that are written by scientist who do not believe. So I don't think it matters.

prophecystudent · Feb 19, 2007

My estimate of earth's age is 6,123 years, 4 months, 11 days, 3 hours, 27 minutes, 14 seconds (and counting).

Seriously, the earth is around 6,000 years old. One other post indicated scientific reasons for it not being the billions of years old that some believe.

In the course I am studying this topic is addressed. Just one example involves the amount of cosmic dust that falls to earth each day.

Some scientist has calculated that if earth is all those billions of years old, we would be tunneling around under something more than 30 feet of cosmic dust. There are other examples as well.

One thing that we must remember when addressing creation/intelligent design. That being that God in omnipotent. He is not subject to the laws of time, physics, etc. I have read a brief summary put out by one scientist that addressed the option of "compressing" time. In his theory, time would be compressed (by God) into an extremely short period, at least as we understand it. Would it be hard for God (omnipotent) to actually suspend time, or slow it down a whole bunch, to accomplish in 6 actual days, that which is written in Genesis?

I submit that God can do anything He wants, when He wants. If He decided to do 6 billion years of work in 6 of our days, He could easily do it.

Fred

Seekermeister · Feb 19, 2007

Genesis is quite literal, and the reader's understanding of it should be just as literal. However, the face value of what is said in Genesis is distorted by it's translation. The answer is in the first couple of verses of the Bible..."1. In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth. 2. And the earth was without form and empty. And darkness was on the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved on the face of the waters."

The creation of the heaven and the Earth was given in the first verse, without details. In the second verse, the word "was" is a mistranslation of the Hebrew, and should be read "And the Earth became with form and empty".

In other words, the Earth is much older than accounted for in the geneology provided by the Bible, but the age of this Earth age is very accurate.

This gap in the Earth's history explains fossils of animals that have not existed within the memory of mankind, because they come from a previous Earth age. I cannot document it, but I also believe that age was the origin of the angels.

Alcamo · Feb 19, 2007

As I said in my previous postings, I've found good evidence for both old and youg Earth theories, but I personally wouldn’t say it’s as young as only 6,000 years. Even well respected Christian archeologists have dated cities such as Jericho to something around 8,000 to 10,000 B.C. Likewise, mitochondrial DNA studies have shown people who share a common ancestor tens of thousands of years ago and, as a side note, supports common descent from one family (Noah) quite nicely. The astrophysicits I mentioned earlier I think is Hugh Ross. He has seemingly good reasons to go in the millions and as many of you know has written several books. There are also theories showing how the universe can be billions of years old, though because of relativity, an observer on Earth would only experience a tiny fraction of that time.

Likewise there is good evidence from the sea floor that tidal actions have been gradually slowing the Earth’s rotation down and that days were slightly longer in the distant past (assuming there was such a distant past). They can calculate the millions (or billions, I don’t remember now) of years it would take to slow the Earth down to the current rotation speed. Is this true? Don’t know for sure.

One note: to those who hold the Genesis "days" as to be unspecified periods of time (as used other places in Scripture), the age of the Earth is not necessarily the same amount of time that mankind has been around. While the Earth may be far more ancient, mankind may only have been around tens of thousands of years or so. Incidentally, I have also heard from a respectable source (though haven’t verified it) that the ancient Jews themselves did not even interpret the Genesis “days” literally. I want to see if I can substantiate this.

We should remember that the Bible was not written to be a science textbook, though of course it has science in it. I think it was Luther who said "The Bible tells us how to go to heaven, not how the heavens go." There is a danger in reading too much into it. The Creation account was written for people of all cultures over all time to primarily understand one basic fact: God made us. It was not written for 20th/21st century scientists to form a comprehensive theory of our origins. There are many things that help form such a theory, but that was not the purpose of the writing.

calidog · Feb 19, 2007

eddie123 said:
I was reading the thread about Creationism/Evolution and, while not wishing to get involved in the wider debate, I just wondered - if you believe the world was created as per Genesis, how old do you believe the Earth to be?

younger than it looks

Calminian · Feb 20, 2007

Electron said:
Geologists have found rocks on earth which are 4.5 billion years old, so at least that.

Sooo, did these rocks have signs on them saying, "Hi I'm 4.5 billions years old?" Obviously not. Instead scientists make extrapolations based on rates of decay observed today. What they find are rocks with billions of years of decay AT TODAY'S RATES. If the rate of decay has not changed, then they are indeed 4.5 billions years old. But that's an assumption. One of the reason's I'm skeptical of this assumption is the testimony in Genesis of the many supernatural interventions by God in the past. Perhaps something in the creative process increased the decay rates giving the rocks an appearance of age. Imagine the miracles necessary just in the six day creation alone. It's not hard for me to believe this process may have affected decay rates at that time.

And apparently there are other processes that seem to be at odds with billions of years. Here's some information from the Thousands ... Not Billions conference. RATE research reveals remarkable resultsa fatal blow to billions of years

Now if one completely rejects the Bible, this is going to be hard to believe. But to those with biblical presuppositions, this all fits together nicely.

Confess · Feb 20, 2007

Electron said:
Geologists have found rocks on earth which are 4.5 billion years old, so at least that.

Junk science gives dates without being able to prove it.

Real science can prove what they find.

Dates that go back that far cannot be proven.

desert_island_1 · Feb 20, 2007

I personally am leaning more towards the idea of 'evolution with divine intervention'

Kristy

Upisoft · Feb 20, 2007

Calminian said:
Sooo, did these rocks have signs on them saying, "Hi I'm 4.5 billions years old?" Obviously not. Instead scientists make extrapolations based on rates of decay observed today. What they find are rocks with billions of years of decay AT TODAY'S RATES. If the rate of decay has not changed, then they are indeed 4.5 billions years old. But that's an assumption. One of the reason's I'm skeptical of this assumption is the testimony in Genesis of the many supernatural interventions by God in the past. Perhaps something in the creative process increased the decay rates giving the rocks an appearance of age. Imagine the miracles necessary just in the six day creation alone. It's not hard for me to believe this process may have affected decay rates at that time.

Fitting a few billions years of decay into few thousand years would increase the radiation output by factor of 1 million. With that factor the background radiation will be strong enough to kill a human being in few minutes.

Calminian · Feb 20, 2007

Upisoft said:
Fitting a few billions years of decay into few thousand years would increase the radiation output by factor of 1 million. With that factor the background radiation will be strong enough to kill a human being in few minutes.

We'll when God was forming the foundations of the world, there were no humans or animals to kill. Not only this, the laws of nature as we observe them today were being created as well, and therefore all theories of natural affects are probably out the window. This is why presuppositions and worldviews are so important. If theism is true (which is infinitely more rational than atheism), then supernatural interventions are reasonable speculations. This unfortunately limits the usefulness of science in the origins question.

Seekermeister · Feb 20, 2007

Upisoft said:
Fitting a few billions years of decay into few thousand years would increase the radiation output by factor of 1 million. With that factor the background radiation will be strong enough to kill a human being in few minutes.

The entire concept of this decay timeline is an assumption that the current state of the Earth is the result. If that were true, then the original state of the Earth would have to be known...it is not. I have never even heard a theory that would accurately describe this original state...have you?

As one example, lead is apparently the product of the decay of uranium. I can accept that this may be true, but by what means is it known that some lead didn't already exist in the beginning of the Earth's history? Since the decay of this element is effected by outside factors, how can this process be considered constant over eons of time...assuming that there were eons of time?

Upisoft · Feb 20, 2007

Calminian said:
We'll when God was forming the foundations of the world, there were no humans or animals to kill. Not only this, the laws of nature as we observe them today were being created as well, and therefore all theories of natural affects are probably out the window. This is why presuppositions and worldviews are so important. If theism is true (which is infinitely more rational than atheism), then supernatural interventions are reasonable speculations. This unfortunately limits the usefulness of science in the origins question.

What makes theism "infinitely more rational"? And unbiased observer will say that chances are 50/50. There are no undeniable proof that God exists, neither there is for the opposite assertion.

Also an omnipotent God should be able to create the universe in an instant. Why should He create first light(or perhaps first time), then earth, water, stars, animals etc.?

You perhaps know that stars and galaxies are very far away from us. Even our own galaxy is big enough that the light of its center have to travel more than 30000 years to come to us. There are galaxies more than 4.5 billion of light years away from us. It's not only in the rocks. Everything point to very old universe. Did God tampered with it to look that way? Why?

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