Why do christians insist that the Earth is only 6000 years old. Its kinda weird that in this day and age people can think that?

Question

Why do christians insist that the Earth is only 6000 years old. Its kinda weird that in this day and age people can think that?

Answer 1

You're wrong; not all Christians believe this. Roman Catholics, Lutherans, Episcopals, Congregationalists, Presbyterians, Methodists, and many other denominations do not teach the Young Earth. Mainstream Christian churches take the Genesis story as a mysterious metaphor and generally subscribe to Grand Design which includes the secular scientific view of creation. Some Baptists do not, and other Bible-believing churches do not, but instead are believers in a literal Genesis creation. Those that believe in Creation also differ in their beliefs in the age of the earth; some think 12,000 or 10,000 years as well as the 6,000.

These numbers have been calculated based upon Scripture and the listing of the generations of humans from Adam until now. Representatives of their descendants and their ages of death help us to deduce a rough estimate of the age of the earth.

It's not weird for anyone to believe this in this day and age. To date, there is no proof of the actual age of the earth other than this. If you don't believe the Genesis account, then there's no proof at all. It's not as if belief in a literal Genesis is at odds with science; science may repudiate what religion says, however, it has no proof of it's own theories. There is actually more proof of Creation than anything else.

Answer 2

I'm a Christian, and when I read the Bible, I always assumed the first chapter was about evolution. It always made sense. When I found out Dinosaurs were Birds, it made even more sense. With our limited understanding of Gravity, it could very easily account for the days as Time Dilation, or it could be days in God's eternal present.



This argument was constructed by atheists as a straw man, and then the Christian leaders were shrewd and went along with it in order to debase their own religion, and attract less intelligent people. They like sheep because the Sheep are what gives them money. If you read Genesis, there are two Creation Accounts, and Adam and Eve are created, as the text says, on the first day, when God created Heaven and Earth.

Answer 3

Because 1) the bible says so, 2) the science adds up, and 3) God has proven himself.



No, i'm not just looking to start a fight. Yes, i actually believe it. If you want some starting points for research: A) at what rate does shoreline erosion take place? B) what is the speed of light now, and what was the speed of light when Galileo measured it? What was the margin of error on those measurements? C) did Matthew pen Matthew chapter 1 in Greek?

Answer 4

The Bible Testaments are a parable of history. Archeologists found human bones from about 1/4-million BC. The planet is about 95-million years old.

Answer 5

If they can believe in virgin birth and in Jesus walking on water, they can believe in just about anything.

Answer 6

Childhood indoctrination. And the christians I've been around, none of them believe in that. It's only those hardcore christians and probably Jehova's Witnesses.

Answer 7

I just don't understand how it could be millions and billions of years old, doesn't make sense to me. Wouldn't our sun have died by now? Wouldn't an asteroid have knocked us off course by now? Wouldn't SOMETHING have happened by now, instead of our planet just sitting pretty for millions of years, undisturbed... doesn't make sense to me.

I'm not a scientist or anything, but that's just what I've noticed...

Answer 8

I really don't think most of them really believe it. They SAY they believe it because they're looking for a fight, they're looking for an excuse to complain that their rights are being denied them.



The American fundamentalist Christian movement has been co-opted by politics. The fights over things like creationism, abortion, gay rights, even things like welfare and illegal immigration, are political issues disguised as religious tenets. If you're a politician and you want people to listen to you, send you money, vote for you, the best way to do it is to get the really angry about their rights being taken away, and tell them you're going to fight to get them back.



The face of creationism has changed enormously in the last couple hundred years as more and more evidence has come out. For instance, they used to say there was no such thing as extinction, because God made just so many species and if any disappeared the earth would no longer be complete. They don't say that these days.

Answer 9

If you could point to the date stamp on the Earth, that'd be great.

Until then its your presupposition vs my presupposition.

Answer 10

Ignorance and because it's what they've been brainwashed to believe

Answer 11

Perhaps in your search for truth it would be wise to ask the reverse question also. Why does the average person who believes the earth is billons of years old think it is billions of years old? Because someone told them it was. Indoctrination works both ways.

It seems most people have never critically examined the evidence for either view. Either way, once you have actually studied the evidence, you will have to come to a decision based on faith about our origins, and the age of the earth is very much tied to what you believe about origins.

How can an intelligent person with any kind of understanding of chance honestly believe that the earth s position, the moon s position, the Sun s position, the solar system s position, the appearance of water on earth, the appearance of life on earth, the complexity of DNA, and so forth....arrived as the result of an uncaused cosmic dice roll? Kinda weird in this day and age, don t you think?

If you come to conclusion that everything in the physical universe formed without the aid of a Supernatural force then you will require the long ages (to give yourself more time for more dice rolls) proposed by those who adhere to the general theory of evolution and you will be forced to interrupt all evidence through the lens of an old earth. However, if you believe in a supernatural Creator, then long ages are no longer required and the evidence will be seen in a different light.

Furthermore, there is no %100 accurate way to measure time by observing naturally occurring phenomenon. Carbon dating, radioactive dating, counting ice layers, rock layers, tree rings, ect, all have flaws.

The most accurate way to know the date of something is through written records, not tests that require bias assumptions from the get go.

Take for instance a person. You can estimate the age of a person by examining them, but different variables can effect their appearance and throw off the estimate age significantly. You will always end with a date range, and not a specific date unless you have a written record or eye witness record of their date of birth. The margin for error increases drastically when we are observing very old things like a planet.

Therefore, a very old written record like Genesis is very useful for determining the history of the earth. People who suggest that using an ancient text to come to conclusions about history are being "unscientific" are simply wrong. Written records are how we know the majority of what we know about human history. We interrupt archeological evidence with the written evidence. How else could we be accurate in our conclusions?

I would suggest Creation.com if you are interested in actually seeing what Christian PHD Scientists say about the age of the earth and compare their arguments to their opponents.

Answer 12

because only ignorant satanists wouldn't see the OVIUS fact that its only 5682 years long.

Answer 13

We have trees older than 6000 years, makes you wonder how they survived the flood too

Answer 14

According to one survey 40% of people in the USA believe the world is less than 10,000 years old.



Basically some Christians have argued themselves into a corner by claiming that the bible is the inerrant word of God, so that now any admission that the science and history described in the bible are inaccurate undermines the spiritual and moral message of the bible.



They feel that if scientific ideas about evolution, the big bang etc. are accepted, by everyone, the message of Jesus will be abandoned, along with the Hebrew creation myth.



But by tying a basically good social idea : ("love your neighbour") to an absurd one: ("one of the world's many creation legends is right, but the reasoning of the vast majority of biologists, geologists, astronomers etc. is wrong, and they are all conspiring with satan"), they are making this a self fulfilling prophecy

Answer 15

To be clear, no one knows exactly how old the planet or universe is. Carbon dating is not an exact science and all should research why. I was raised with a somewhat Christian background, Catholicism. In my twenties I would argue with my mother that "It was just as easy for me to believe everything came from nothing just like a God came from nothing and then made everything". Now that I am older I am sickened that "science" and atheist s can be so rude and prop themselves high up as "intelligent" beings that "don t believe in a fairy tale God..."because they have come so far up as humans. " Evolution" is based on a GODZILLION TONS of matter just magically appearing. Science?? So the answer is "You don t know." Not "Science". Of course the planet evolves and for all any human knows one God day could have been a million years. Regardless, people of science and or atheist s should be amazed that the times were previously mapped out and we get closer every day to seeing prophecy fulfilled. It is not the other way around that people read the bible and then try to fulfill it. Steven Hawkings recently gave his best explanation of how the universe started, he said, "The universe simply willed itself." WTF? Science? The answer is HE DOES NOT KNOW. Some other nut said "Gravity", WTF? Science? No one knows for sure, but believing we were more than accident and more than likely live on the most amazing planet in the universe is a good for humans, don t you think?

Answer 16

Yes, it is hard to understand the thinking. We can see that "creation" is still progressing. New stars and planets are forming as we speak. We can suppose that life, given the right conditions, is probably also evolving on young planets elsewhere in the universe, and perhaps on older ones as well. Through radiometric dating methods, we can measure the age of billion-year-old rocks with an error of a few million years, and 50,000 year old bones with an error of less than a century.

Answer 17

Because Christians believe that the bible is literal and a 'day' actually means a day not millions of years as the atheist scientists believe. With God nothing is impossible so don't judge Him by what you could or could not do.



God honours those who honour Him and, one day, you will find that out first hand.

Answer 18

They're ******* dumb and should just be ignored.

Answer 19

Meantime, 6000 years ago was the beginning of recorded history. (That is also changing now.)

Answer 20

Stars are pretty good proof that the universe is much older than 6000 years. Those stars are millions of light years away, so it would take the stars light millions of years to travel to Earth.

Every time you look up into the night sky your looking millions of years back into the past.



I'm not sure how people manage to deny that, but I guess not everyone has been through 6th grade science yet. Also I'm pretty sure most Christians don't believe the world is only a few thousand years old, but rather a smaller subset seem to think that way.

Answer 21

This is a tricky one for believers and we all know it. However, being realistic about it, if knowledge had been provided to man a few thousand years ago that the earth was billions of years old, he wouldn't have known what to do with it.



As a believer myself, I have to be honest that I do not think the earth is only 6000 years old at all. I do think humans as we are now might be though.



There are clues in the Scriptures along the lines of one day for God is like a thousand years for man.



This comes a lot closer to the truth, I believe, but again you have to be reasonable in this situation. Man, a few thousand years ago, was incapable of assimilating that type of information - it was simply beyond his understanding or powers of reasoning. Hypothetical scenario - Had they been given a fully functioning computer they would either have sat on it as a chair or maybe even worshipped the monitor in the same way kids have done with TV screens for decades:)



So what we have, I feel, is a sort of compromise. God, being the Author of Life and the greatest of any or all who have understanding, would have been fully aware of the implications of telling BC man too much information. I don't need to elucidate, it should be obvious to anyone with a decent sort of understanding.



God allows people to believe whatsoever He chooses. It is His supreme right as it is also His divine right, as The Creator, to exercise His Will whensoever He chooses to, i.e. to intervene or not to in any and every situation.



So the most likely is that God told at least one contributor to the Scriptures that for Him, one day was more like a thousand years whilst actually knowing, of course, that the real figure was significantly higher say ~ 2-5 billion years. That figure would have meant absolutely nothing to any individual alive at that time. God would not waste His time revealing truth to people incapable of understanding it. Isn't that obvious?



I am hoping that people understand what I am saying here as it really is that plainly obvious.



As I have said, the most remarkable thing of all and the one point above all others that people miss, is that at some point, those who wrote the Scriptures were made aware that the universe and the earth were formed by processes and also, maybe more crucially, even man himself.



The clues are all there in the Scriptures, you just need to be like a child to understand..... why?



Because a young child is much more likely to listen to their parent.



When people get older they tend to get a bit ..... you know ..... sort of .... smart***.



https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/736x/b2/48/f3/b248f3504cab005c274094ea7629994c.jpg

Answer 22

I consider myself a fundamentalist (responding to someone's post); however, I am an OEC. In no way do I believe that the earth only is 6,000 years old. Please study this issue. It is the YEC's who believe this.

Answer 23

That Christians insist that the earth is only 6,000 years old, is a stereotype based upon a tiny minority called Fundamentalists. They believe that earth is only 6,000 years old, because cult leaders tell them that's what they think the Bible should have said.



Christians who read the Bible for themselves, for the purpose of comprehending what it says, see that the Bible doesn't tell us the age of the earth. God created heaven and earth, "In the beginning", in verse 1, and the first instance of "And God said", which indicates the beginning of each day of Genesis 1, occurs in verse 3.



The use of "And" at the beginning of each day, indicates that it is continuing the previous narrative, and the first day is no different, so "the beginning" is not part of the first day.



The Bible doesn't tell us how long "the beginning" took, so Astrophysics and Geophysics are welcome to tell us how old heaven and earth are.

Answer 24

Triggered!

:)

Answer 25

Life on earth is 6000 years, what else do you want to know?

Answer 26

They don't.

Answer 27

Irrespective of one’s religious beliefs, the overwhelming scientific evidence points to an age of the earth and even the universe closer to thousands of years rather than billions. The following videos and article provide some of that evidence as well as evidence against the deep time theory.



“Billions of years” came about in the late 19th and early 20th century because it helps the case for evolutionism and thus hurts the case for God. Its foundation is based on unprovable assumptions and gross extrapolations of existing data. If the situation were reversed and somehow “thousands of years” helped evolutionism and hurt the case for God, you’d see mainstream scientists do a complete backflip on the matter, extoling all the evidence for a young earth, and dismissing old earthers as fringe nut cases. Enjoy.



https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fc5GzeoA84I

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gr8Az3QQZdI

http://www.apologeticspress.org/APContent.aspx?category=9&article=111&topic=56



The main arguments you hear defending deep time, in this forum at least, are usually just the same old tired ad hominems (e.g. “Anyone who doesn’t believe the universe is billions of years old is a total retard” or simply “You’re an idiot!”)

Answer 28

Kinda wierd only because people are taught otherwise. I'm not so sure about 6,000 years old because we're not sure how long Adam and Eve were in the garden before they sinned but certainly not millions or billions of years old. Anyway, I hold to a young earth.

Answer 29

because it is only about 6000 years old. the dates scientist proclaim are false dates

Answer 30

because its a lie from the devil that its 4 million years old like atheists claim.

Answer 31

which Christians insist such?/ are you generalising?

Answer 32

They claim that humans have been on earth for 6,000 years, not the earth itself. Christians base their beliefs off the book of lies. Don't believe them.

Answer 33

People cling to their old fashioned ideas no matter how much proof there is to the contrary.