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The Bible does not tell us the earth is 6,000 years old. In fact, if we go according to the Scriptures, the earth could be millions, even billions of years old.
For instance, if we go to Genesis 1 we have this:
Gen 1:1 Created by the Elohim were the heavens and the earth.
Gen 1:2 Yet the earth became (Heb. hawyaw) a chaos and vacant, and darkness was on the surface of the submerged chaos. Yet the spirit of the Elohim is vibrating over the surface of the water (Concordant Literal Old Testament).
Why did they translate verse two as "become"? It is a change from what was before. For instance there was darkness and then it became light. So there was a change:
Gen 1:3 And saying is the Elohim, "Become (Heb. hawyaw) light!" And it is becoming light.
There needed to be an atmosphere and a separation between the water below in the oceans and water in the atmosphere:
Gen 1:6 And saying is the Elohim, "Become (Heb. hawhaw) shall an atmosphere in the midst of the water, and coming is a separation between water and water.
So, to get to my point: Genesis 1:1 is when the earth was originally created and millions, possibly billions of years passed. Then the earth became chaos and vacant or sterile of all plant and animal life.
Roughly 6,000 or so years ago God made the earth habitable again and created Adam, the plants and animals and then Eve.
Is there a body of scholarship that subscribes to this theory, or is this simply your own opinion? I've never heard any Biblical scholar say that "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth" meant that millions of years passed before the events in the next verse took place. BTW, what I'm asking has nothing to do with how some obscure Greek or Hebrew word is translated or interpreted. Is there any religious organization that supports your unusual view?
No need to be deprecating if you do not agree with someone.
Of course the ante-deluvians lived to be over 900 years of age during those days. Could it be back then though that the earth was traveling around the sun at a faster speed thus making a year shorter than our year? Could it be after the world-wide flood the earth slowed drastically in its orbit around the sun? If not, if the earth has maintained its current orbit around the sun then those people still lived that long. They had no pollution such as we have today. Their plants were much more robust etc.
But is this thread about how long people lived? or is it about how long the earth has been around?
Did you forget to include the links to the astronomical sites that tell us the earth was orbiting faster than it does now, or that the orbit has drastically slowed down?
Such a concept seems to defy the laws of Physics. You know, things like gravity, centrifugal and centripetal force.
I was raised Catholic and Catholic schools teach evolution and try not to contradict science, however many evangelicals still think the world is only 6,000 years old which leads to distrust of Biology and many other areas of science like climate science. Why this conflict?
The main problem is most Evangelicals think of the Bible as the literal word of God and not metaphorical. The Bible doesn't really come up with a date for creation however. The 6,000 year age of the earth comes from James Ussher, the Archbishop of Armagh, who added up all of the Begats in the Bible and came up with the date of the creation of everything at nightfall preceding Sunday, October 23, 4004 BC
My question is, why do these people believe the ignorant guess of one person back around 1640, to the accumulated knowledge of most scientists since then?
How is such a thing even remotely possible? I don't recall anywhere in the Bible where it says how old a Father was when his Son was born.
There is nothing that said Noah was 22 when his son was born. If he lived to be 600 years old, he could just as easily have been 436 years old when he had a son. With all those patriarchs living hundreds and hundreds of years, a few errors here and there could present as an error of thousands of years in the age of mankind.
Is there a body of scholarship that subscribes to this theory, or is this simply your own opinion? I've never heard any Biblical scholar say that "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth" meant that millions of years passed before the events in the next verse took place. BTW, what I'm asking has nothing to do with how some obscure Greek or Hebrew word is translated or interpreted. Is there any religious organization that supports your unusual view?
Jehovah's Witnesses for one. They see God creating the heavens and the earth and it taking time. Then when the barren planet was ready for life, God commenced creating life on earth. In fact the angels were created before the physical universe and time as in a 24 hour day did not exist then.
How is such a thing even remotely possible? I don't recall anywhere in the Bible where it says how old a Father was when his Son was born.
There is nothing that said Noah was 22 when his son was born. If he lived to be 600 years old, he could just as easily have been 436 years old when he had a son. With all those patriarchs living hundreds and hundreds of years, a few errors here and there could present as an error of thousands of years in the age of mankind.
Please explain.
(Genesis 5:28-32) 28 And La′mech lived on for a hundred and eighty-two years. Then he became father to a son. 29 And he proceeded to call his name Noah, saying: “This one will bring us comfort from our work and from the pain of our hands resulting from the ground which Jehovah has cursed.” 30 And after his fathering Noah La′mech continued to live five hundred and ninety-five years. Meanwhile he became father to sons and daughters. 31 So all the days of La′mech amounted to seven hundred and seventy-seven years and he died. 32 And Noah got to be five hundred years old. After that Noah became father to Shem, Ham and Ja′pheth.
It is easy to use the genealogies to get a total of man's existence up to 537 BC, when Israel was released from Babylon. The it is easy to figure from 537BC to now.
But there are some of you that believe not. For Jesus knew from the beginning who they were that believed not, and who should betray him. John 6:64
How old is the universe? is its age more important that its Creator?
Since Big Bang holds that all matter already existed within the primordial atom then by their principle that matter can not be created nor destroyed, then how can science date a substance which it defines is eternal, or timeless having always existed and always will.
And since the all the matter already existed within the primordial atom prior to the Big Bang, how accurate can the data on the age actually be?
But there are some of you that believe not. For Jesus knew from the beginning who they were that believed not, and who should betray him. John 6:64
How old is the universe? is its age more important that its Creator?
Since Big Bang holds that all matter already existed within the primordial atom then by their principle that matter can not be created nor destroyed, then how can science date a substance which it defines is eternal, or timeless having always existed and always will.
And since the all the matter already existed within the primordial atom prior to the Big Bang, how accurate can the data on the age actually be?
Proponents of the Big Bang do not state that matter "is eternal, or timeless having always existed and always will." They say that at the moment of the Big Bang, all matter was condensed into a very small particle. What happened before the Big Bang is not postulated as part of the theory.
There are many theories about that, such as the oscillating universe, or spontaneous creation of matter through quantum fluctuation, for example. But these are not related to the question of the age of our Universe.
You ask how accurate can the estimation of the age of the Earth really be? Granted, they could be far off. They could be off by a factor of 2, or a factor of 10. But for the Earth to be 6000 years old rather than 6 Billion years old, the scientists would have to be off by a factor of 1 million. Which do you think is more likely - that scientists, with all of the technology at their disposal, are off by a factor of 1 million - or that the Bible, which was based on word-of-mouth stories that originated with unknown middle-eastern tribesmen, just may be misinterpreted today?
Did you even bother to read Isaiah 40:22? What is it about the "circle of the earth" that you can't understand?
In Hebrew, the word for "circle" means a flat disk. A circle is a 2 dimensional object. The Earth is not a circle, it's an oblate spheroid.
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