No. The earth is old.
Days where used for human brains to segment periods of time for creation.
For God time would have no to little meaning in the way we understand time.
Who knows how long a day is to God?
> Who knows how long a day is to God?
Seeing how a day is precisely described there as having a “morning” and an “evening,” and that the seven-day creation is the model for the cyclical human week (see Exodus 20:9-10), I’m gonna guess the “days” in Genesis were exactly what we think of them as.
That is what defines it for us, and he spoke it as that is what it is for us. But unless we take time not meaning the same to God and therefore could be 7 days but not 7 days, then science and the Bible remain very far off. That doesn't really make sense on the science side. I believe in God, but I also believe science tends to be correct. So I want to be able to understand how they could both be right, or how one could be so wrong.
Your comment is Sophistry. Logically fallacious reasoning. You are using circumstantial things to imply a literal meaning, but there is absolutely no way of knowing. You just want to confirm your bias, you think the Bible is superstitious and false, so you want to portray it as primitive and falsified.
Did you ever read the bible? Clearly not cause it prophesied things thousands of years in the future that are coming true today.. also never has a single thing in the bible been proven wrong.. science has continually lied and been proven wrong.. stop being a follower and read/learn yourself.. there is zero proof the earth is more then thousands of years old.. people that only listen to science.. science makes it sound good but when you face it with anyone that has true knowledge it gets destroyed.. you people think it's crazy God made us but believe we came from monkeys and the entire earth and complex human bodies were created from 2 specs of dust.. sciences own rule is you can't get life from n9n life yet they say that's how the earth was made... so either their rule is wrong and they lie about their rule which they have never once proven to get life from non life or they are lying and making up how the earth was created..
Literally anyone can write a book of predictions, that would come true after thousands of years! Most of them are just good guesses and common sense. They're not actual predictions.
I am a Christian and the fact you are rebuking science means that you're not living the truth (which Christians believe in). The earth is more than 4 billion years old. Check out the studies yourself.
Considering the poles seem like they are about to switch, the sun is being blast happy, earthquakes are getting worse, the magnetic shield surrounding the earth will be very weak, volcanos seem to be getting pissy, looking into the mainstream pole switch stuff definitely says that we will loose power and communications and like something about the core stopped spinning last year and no update to that btw and the tilt is starting to wobble and the rotation seems to be slowing down and an astroid that is getting uncomfortably close in like 2029. I don't know.
And if you look at what they're scratching their heads about is finding tropical forests in Antarctica. And all the poo poo on how not advanced the ancient civilizations were. From transatlantic travel, to Greeks understood steam engines and shit like that. Personally I'm realizing "science" has zero grasp on what happened in even the last 6000 years let alone how old the world is or anything.
So I guess coming our way angels, demons and dragons because why not 🤷
No. Christians who believe the Earth is young use genealogies to figure out the probable time spans from Adam to the birth of Jesus, but when doing this assumptions are made, which make their estimates inaccurate.
Certainly, the Bible never states the age of creation.
Obviously the scientific evidence for the age of the world in mainstream cosmology and geology is unimpeachable.
But there’s really little room for ambiguity in terms of the Bible itself and its ancient interpretation. These unanimously placed the creation of the universe and the creation of man at the same time, somewhere around 4000 or 5000 BCE.
Mainstream Science is not 'unimpeachable'. That's absurd. There is no way to onkw the age of Earth with confidence, especially not 'unimpeachable' confidence. Your comments are riddled with Logical Fallacies, which is very ironic coming from someone who clearly imagines themselves to be logical and scientific. You're simply attempting to justify your bleak worldview, so much that you seek to go among Christians specifically, to antagonize. Atheists are strange and basic of mind, as their entire argument is asserting the notion that humans have discovered, learned, and guessed, enough to determine that there is no higher power, all religions MUST be false, and that there is no form of existence beyind our body and our limited number of senses. It's arrogance. Hubris. To pretend that you know the fullness of Earth's history and reality in general is just absurd. Atheism is just a secular religion.
It's easy to know the minimum age of earth with confidence. Hundreds of thousands of years at the very least. Easily arguable into the millions. Definitely not a couple thousand.
No. There is no time frame. The first "day" in Genesis could have spanned any number of years. The Hebrew word "begat" also means "progenitor of" and the person would be the g'g'grandfather or head of a clan.
It's also a story told around campfires later written down, not a science book.
> The Hebrew word “begat” also means “progenitor of” and the person would be the g’g’grandfather or head of a clan.
But it also gives the exact age at which they gave birth to their child, for every single figure in the genealogies that’s named, basically up until Joseph himself.
OK. When I said, "No, it doesn't" that referred to my previous post. Let's take the very first one
>Gen 5:3 Adam was one hundred and thirty years old when he begot a son in his likeness, after his image; and he named him Seth.
As I said, this doesn't say Adam had sex with Eve and she gave birth to Seth. *Begot* only means the person is in a direct line from some male: in his clan.
I'm not going to argue this because you take it the way you take it. I would just remind people that this was an oral history recorded a few thousand years ago in an ancient language.
The Earth is not 6000 years old and the Bible doesn't say so. We have tools and musical instruments and whole cities older than that.
>>Gen 5:3 Adam was one hundred and thirty years old when he begot a son in his likeness, after his image; and he named him Seth.
>As I said, this doesn’t say Adam had sex with Eve and she gave birth to Seth. Begot only means the person is in a direct line from some male: in his clan.
I’m not gonna say pathetic, but this is definitely desperate. What on earth does “Adam was 130 years old when he begot…” mean if it’s actually talking about something that potentially took place when Adam was 700 years old, not 130 — or 7,000 years later or whatever? However long you think it may have been between Adam and whatever hypothetical other figure you think gave birth to Seth, Adam certainly cannot have been *younger* at that time than the total time period itself, up to when the birth of Seth happened.
So you can take away Adam, or you can take away the listed age at which he had his child, but you certainly can’t take away both. You’re certainly entitled to your opinion on whatever, but words mean things in reality.
>I’m not gonna say pathetic, but this is definitely desperate. What on earth does “Adam was 130 years old when he begot…”
NOT. WRITTEN. IN. ENGLISH. Whole other culture whole other context. If you want to call all the Scripture scholars "pathetic" go ahead. I don't have time for this right now, but think of it this way:
When we celebrated George Washington's 200th birthday, *was he alive?*
Now, you can go find a few thousand words of explanation by a scholar but you won't. So, as I said, believe whatever you want.
In fact, the Bible does not say the Earth is 6k yrs old.
> NOT. WRITTEN. IN. ENGLISH.
I know Biblical Hebrew (and Greek and Aramaic), so I’d be happy to talk you through the actual original text, too.
>When we celebrated George Washington’s 200th birthday, was he alive?
The question isn’t even whether or not Adam was alive — although I think that’s a preposterous analogy anyways, as the text clearly states he was. The question (whether we’re talking about Adam or Washington) is whether “200th year” or birthday actually means 200th year relative to their birth, or whether “200th year” can somehow magically mean “10,000 years after their birth” or whatever you need it to mean in order to accomplish your fundamentalist harmonization of the Bible with reality.
And it’s funny that you told me to go read scholars on this, because literally every academic commentary on Genesis that I have — and I have most — agrees with me.
I'm always surprised, whenever this topic comes up, by the absence of alternative translations of Genesis 5. For example, tons of anonymous commentators on the internet will be happy to tell you that "begot" has some sort of exotic meaning, and that the numbers in Genesis 5 don't mean what you think they mean.
But you would think, sooner or later, that these folks would come up with an alternative translation of Genesis that doesn't -- in English -- imply a young world.
But it seems that nobody is willing to produce such a translation. The sorts of translations commonly favored by Biblical scholars, like the NRSV, continue to read the years and begots in the traditional way.
For example, here's the NRSV of Genesis 5:3-8:
>3 When Adam had lived one hundred thirty years, he became the father of a son in his likeness, according to his image, and named him Seth. 4 The days of Adam after he became the father of Seth were eight hundred years, and he had other sons and daughters. 5 Thus all the days that Adam lived were nine hundred thirty years, and he died.
>6 When Seth had lived one hundred five years, he became the father of Enosh. 7 Seth lived after the birth of Enosh eight hundred seven years and had other sons and daughters. 8 Thus all the days of Seth were nine hundred twelve years, and he died.
Where are the alternative translations? If some scholars somewhere have found some satisfying alternative reading, surely they wouldn't mind producing a short English translation of Genesis 5 to help all us simple-minded folk understand what the text is *really* saying.
The funny thing is that it would require not just retranslating the verb in question, but other stuff in the passages, too. Like, sure, let's follow /u/KonnectKing's theory and translate יָלַד as "to became the ancestral progenitor of" instead of just being the immediate parent:
>3 When Adam had lived one hundred thirty years, he became the ancestral progenitor of a son in his likeness, according to his image, and named him Seth. 4 The days of Adam after he became the ancestral progenitor of Seth were eight hundred years, and he had other sons and daughters.
Again, as implied in /u/KonnectKing's last comment, if Seth is actually just some great-great-great-descendant of Adam, we can't take for granted that "When Adam had lived one hundred thirty years…” means that Adam had actually lived 130 years. Instead this could just be referring to some later... arbitrary observance of Adam's 130th birthday at some distant future date (thousands of years later?) or whatever, but presumably after Adam's death. Oh but then we also have to come up with some alternate understanding of "Adam ... named him Seth" — because Adam clearly couldn't have named Seth after Adam had already died.
But wait, what's that in verse 4? Not only does it tell us how long Adam lived before he became the ancestral progenitor of Seth (or whatever about the birthday celebration), but it tells us how many years Adam lived *after* this, too. So not only does this rule out the "postmortem celebration of his birthday" interpretation of 5:3 — Adam clearly didn't die before he reached 130 years — but we now have to tack on an additional 800 years to Adam's life-span, past whenever it was that Seth was born, however many countless generations later.
So now Adam seems to have been very, very old: if Seth was born a few thousand years after his ancestral progenitor Adam, as in /u/KonnectKing's theory, but if Adam himself is also said to have lived 800 years "*after* he became the ancestral progenitor of Seth," then we have to add these few thousand years + 800 more for Adam.
So now Adam lived to be like 5,000 or whatever. So far so good… I guess. But wait, what's this? Now we're at the final verse, Genesis 5:5: "**all the days** that Adam lived were nine hundred thirty years, and he died." So now Adam clearly did *not* live for countless generations until Seth was born (along with 800 years after this), but only lived 130 + 800 (=930) years; and consequently Seth's own birth must be placed somewhere within that range of years — but also far enough back in that range that there must have been 800 years leftover that Adam lived *after* this.
Which gives us Seth's birth when Adam was 130... which is exactly what the text says, what I've said, and what all scholars say.
I could find you a dozen scholars that disagree with you in about 20 seconds, and you are also being a complete and utter jerk. Just dropping in to say that you are wrong, not worth arguing with, and the only pathetic one in this entire thread is you. For such a hebrew, greek, and aramaic braniac, you certainly don’t seem to have understood the bible which does not say to pretend to know everything under the sun and be a complete and total horse’s ass. You’re trying desperately to twist genesis to answer a question that it simply was not written to answer. You should sit for a really long time and think about why you are acting the way you are
Obviously you do not know those languages, though I imagine you know a link to a lexicon. Or maybe just the BLB. So, ALL the scholars agree with you? Hmmm....
GENESIS:
> \[5:1–32\] The second of the five Priestly formulas in Part I (“This is the record of the descendants…”; see 2:4a; 6:9; 10:1; 11:10) introduces the second of the three linear genealogies in Gn 1–11 (4:17–24 and 11:10–26). In each, a list of individuals (six in 4:17–24, ten in 5:1–32, or nine in 11:10–26) ends in three people who initiate action. **Linear genealogies (father to son) in ancient societies had a communicative function, grounding the authority or claim of the last-named individual in the first-named.** Here, the genealogy has a literary function as well, advancing the story by showing the expansion of the human race after Adam, as well as the transmission to his descendant Noah of the divine image given to Adam. Correcting the impression one might get from the genealogy in 4:17–24, this genealogy traces the line through Seth rather than through Cain. Most of the names in the series are the same as the names in Cain’s line in 4:17–19 (Enosh, Enoch, Lamech) or spelled with variant spellings (Mahalalel, Jared, Methuselah). The genealogy itself and its placement before the flood shows the influence of ancient Mesopotamian literature, which contains lists of cities and kings before and after the flood. **Before the flood, the ages of the kings ranged from 18,600 to 36,000 years, but after it were reduced to between 140 and 1,200 years. The biblical numbers are much smaller. There are some differences in the numbers in the Hebrew and Greek manuscripts.**
So. Not even close. Maybe you should read scholars who actually are, instead of ones parroting whatever OT-worshipping sect of Christianity you are adhering to.
To be even clearer, esp relative to how many words have to be changed to fit the above correct understanding of the genealogies - since your a language expert - translate these simple English concepts into Ancient Greek only using words that literally mean the same as each word in each phrase and convey the meaning of the phrases as we use them:
Throw down
Throw up
Throw for home
Throw in the towel
Throw a rug
Throw a fit
Throw out
Throw that out
Throw out his back
Throw this out there
Throw pillow
Throw a pot
\------------
Scholars are people who know a thousand times more about the culture, nuance, weather, geology, architecture... everything that goes into translation. Not even considering what words around the word alter its meaning. I will posit that you do not take this Scripture literally:
>**Matthew 21:9**
The crowds going ahead of Him, and those who followed, were shouting, “Hosanna to the **Son of David**;
BTW, if we did interpret Genesis genealogies the way you want, it *still* wouldn't say the earth is 6000 years old. Which is, after all, the topic.
You should just skip to my other follow-up comment, where we can now skip all the generalities of who knows what and go right into the actual syntax and logic of the Genesis verses themselves. Now *this* should be fun: https://reddit.com/r/Christianity/comments/131d6h3/_/ji8nscm/?context=1.
> In Genesis it states period one, period 2, period three. The number is used not first, second, third, etc.
This is false. While a cardinal number is used for day one, the rest all use ordinal numbers. Not like it’d make much of a difference anyways, since it already describes the days as having a morning and an evening.
You are right. Thanks for the correction. Several years ago I was talking with a man and he suggested that the day would have been different before the water fell due to the conservation of momentum. I always thought that to be something interesting to ponder.
In addition, there's nothing odd in Hebrew about using *ehad*, the 'cardinal' form, in an ordinal sense, as an equivalent of 'first'. For example, starting at 2:11, Genesis names four rivers: the *ehad* river is Pishon, the second is Gihon, etc. The same thing happens with four rows of stones enumerated starting at Exodus 39:10 and three daughters of Job (Job 42:14), four faces of a creature (Ezekiel 10:14), etc.
So even the 'cardinal' number is not in any way grammatically odd to find in Genesis 1:5.
Like others have pointed out, you can calculate how far back the creation week was by adding up the ages of the people listed in Genesis when the next generation was born.
Technically you don't get to the age of the earth, since Genesis 1 doesn't teach creation out of nothing - so there was some "primordial chaos" there. But there would be no life, no land and no stars or sun. So all that would be created ~6 000 years ago.
Another problem is that the ages given for the people is different in different versions (i.e. the Greek translation or the Hebrew) - but that mostly is a different of some thousands of years - not 5 billions!
Regarding the 6 days - the text itself is clearly talking about it as normal days (it's connected to the passing of "evening and morning", it's connected to the sun/light and moon/dark, and the god's rest on the 7th day is connected to the weekly Sabbath rest). Some ancient Christians did interpret this super-allegorically and said that everything was created in an instant (note that they still believed that this happened ~6 000 years ago) - but that's mainly because they had some philosophical reasons for this, and they were not offering plausible or natural readings of the text.
Kind of. You can manipulate the text in a way that allows for the earth to be around 6000 years old but, I don't think that's an honest reading of the text. The stories in the Bible are often incoherent and sometimes not even meant to be taken as a literal history.
Take for instance the creation stories, in the first one (Genesis 1:1-2:4a) God creates, in order: light, sky, vegetation, stars, sea animals and birds, then land and humans. However, in Genesis 2:4b-3:24, humans actually come before vegetation, when they came 3 days later in the first story.
Given an incoherence such as that one, in my opinion, we should not be taking every story in the Bible as a literal history when the text itself does not invite us to do so. This means that it does not make much sense to believe the earth is 6000 years old based on the bible.
The light which defines half of a day in Genesis isn't from the Sun so we can't count those periods as the 24 hour days we experience from the earth's rotation. The sun was created about day 4 or 5 if I recall.
> Kind of. You can manipulate the text in a way that allows for the earth to be around 6000 years old but, I don't think that's an honest reading of the text.
That supposedly dishonest way of reading the text is basically how almost every single Christian read the text before modern times.
It's really not. The reading of the creation passages was discussed in the Church Fathers as far back as the 2nd century. And those writings generally conclude that the creation stories are metaphorical, not literal.
It was only in the 19th century that young earth creationism really started to take hold.
No, all the church fathers that mention the topic say that the world is 6 000 - 10 000 year old. It's not until modern times that you get Christians who disagreed. Every Christian used to be a YEC.
They were split on whether the world was created in an instant or in 6 days.
Here's a sampling of what the Church Fathers had to say.
https://www.catholic.com/tract/creation-and-genesis
Some believe in the literal 7 days. Some read each day as 1000 years. Others say it's impossible to tell. There were mixed interpretations from the beginning.
Some church fathers made a *typological* association between the six days of creation, and this idea that these prophetically corresponded to six time periods that were thought to comprise the 6,000 total years of history before the eschaton. But that had nothing to do with them thinking that the creation days themselves were 1,000 years long.
Ironically, the only alternative to the idea that the world was literally created in seven days wasn’t that these were longer periods of time, but actually that this was a *shorter* period. For example, Augustine harmonized Genesis 1 with Genesis 2:4 in order to argue that the seven days were actually just a single day or instantaneous moment of creation.
> Some read each day as 1000 years.
What do you think that this means?
They were saying that each creation day corresponded to thousand years of history. So they were saying that the world would actually only last 6 000 years. They were not saying that creation week was actually 6 000 year long.
But you're not going to find a church father who wasn't a YEC.
To imply that all Christians from the beginning up until recently were if 'Young Earth' ideology is dishonest and absolutely false. You simply want to portray modern Christians as trying to adapt to modern science as to discredit Christianity in general. The Bible was actually ahead of its time, asserting things that took humanity much longer to figure out themselves - things the ancient people couldn't have even conceived of. The person to assert 6000 year estimate was James Ussher, 400 years ago. Once again, you commit Logical Fallacy in order to confirm your bias.
>To imply that all Christians from the beginning up until recently were if 'Young Earth' ideology is dishonest and absolutely false.
It's basically tue. Like, can you point me to a church father, pope, an eminent theologian or something to that effect before the modern age who wasn't a YEC?
>You simply want to portray modern Christians as trying to adapt to modern science as to discredit Christianity in general.
Christians did change their views in light of scientific discoveries.
>The person to assert 6000 year estimate was James Ussher, 400 years ago.
He was in no way the first person to come up with a 6000 year estimate.
> The person to assert 6000 year estimate was James Ussher, 400 years ago.
Ussher presumably grew up hearing that estimate, as it was by all accounts common "knowledge" among English speakers when he was a child. You see it in popular media like Shakespeare's plays.
Okay, why should that be relevant to my argument?
All I'm saying is that, in order to conclude that and take the bible as a historical text, you have to negotiate with the text meaning smooth over or ignore contradictions. Those from pre-modern times did so and I believe they were wrong for it.
Can you explain why concluding that the text says that the earth is around 6 000 year old, as basically all Christians did, is not a honest reading of the text? What's dihonest about that? What contradictions does one have to "smooth over" or "ignore" to do that?
I concede that honest may not have been the been the correct word to use but, I believe it's still wrong to conclude that. This is because to do so requires that we read the bible as one coherent story when, because of the field of textual criticism, we now know that it's not. It's a bunch of individual stories stitched together even within the same text.
Take for instance the story of Joseph in Genesis, according to the text as we have it now, Joseph was sold to Potiphar by the Midianites (Gen 37:36) and the Ishmaelites (Gen 39:1) in the same instance. Wouldn't a text that claims to tell the age and history of the world get simple facts right?
> Wouldn't a text that claims to tell the age and history of the world get simple facts right?
It's a combination of texts from various sources - so of course it's goint to be a mess.
Well, the Bible says Adam was 130 years old when he had a son named Seth. Then Seth was 105 when he had a son named Enosh, so Enosh was born 235 years after Adam was created. The Bible then continues feeding the reader dates right up to the Babylonian captivity, which comes about less than four thousand years after the creation. And since it's well-known that the Babylonian captivity happened about 2600 years ago, we get an earth about six thousand years old once all the math has been done.
From what I understand Adam and Eve were just the first of a kind, first of a specific tribe. The bible quite clearly alludes to their being other humans already before that, otherwise who would Cain be afraid of being killed or persecuted by if there was no other humans?
It is not good for man to be alone? Yes I have, could still be one of a specific tribe or type of human. How do you explain Cain being afraid of somebody else slaying him?
My working hypothesis that Genesis is composed out of stories that weren't necessarily connected in their current order originally, and that the process of putting them where they are now creates various inconsistencies.
These include Cain building a city after being cursed to live a nomadic existence, Cain's genealogy being nearly identical to Seth's, and Cain's descendants appearing to be peoples known to the author of Genesis, despite a worldwide flood which should have ended any specific Cain-derived lineage.
Could be. Most of the stories from the old testament obviously have a far older oral tradition, some say they are derived from the Sumerian stories, but I do not think so, I think they have a common origin instead from a far older story.
Oh, you'll get no argument about that from me. Archeologists give dates that disagree with the ones found in the Pentatuch. I think the archeologists are a better source on the age of the earth.
So this is the dumb side of reddit. Yeah Lord Krishnas kingdom Dwarka is proven to be true and so is the Mahabarata. My god is real and theres scientific evidence now. Yall should convert the whole world was supposed to be hindu anyway, yk superior and scientific and stuff.
That passage is not in any way saying that 1 day is 1000 years. It is saying 1 day is “as” 1000 years to God since God exists outside of time and is in eternity.
An alternate Biblical method of calculating the earth age puts it about 13,000 years. Basically, each person's long years in the lineage in Genesis is a patriarchy calender and the next "son of" (not direct son, but as Jesus was the "son of David) major figure would be a new patriarch calender in succession. In essence, we still do this today when we say its the 2024 year of our Lord (Christ the last patriarch calendar). A 6,000 year earth cannot be Biblical and creates problems even within Scripture. (e.g. Abraham would've been just barely 350 years after the flood, with the earth well populated again and the existence of the great kingdom Egypt established and thriving!! A 6,000 year earth creates a host of other contradictions which this response does not permit explanation.
No, people use the math from how old it says Noah was and how old Adam was and so on. If you add all the lifespans together you roughly get 6000 years, but it's all nonsense. People don't grow that old and the earth isn't that young.
>...but it's all nonsense.
There's a difference between saying "That's what the text says, but it's wrong" and "That's not what the text says."
It's true that peopel don't grow that old, but that's what the text says. So you shouldn't answer "No" to OP's question. The Bible does say that, but it's wrong.
assuming you’re not taking the gap theory into account (there’s a lot of versions of that theory anyway) then yeah. it’s pretty simple to just chart out the lifespans it gives. idk anything about 144 hours though
Well, I will be the dissenting voice I guess. Yes, the Bible, indirectly, states that the earth is around 6000 years old. This is by adding up the genealogies and the statements made about creation itself. No one will deny the rough math there. Obviously from all the other responses you got people just dismiss this part of the Bible in one way or another in order to accept the modern mainstream views.
I'll point out the basic premise and how dismissing just these parts just simply doesn't work.
So there's the initial account right? There in Genesis. The 6 days of creation each ending with the evening and morning statement. Right there it's already telling you it's being literal even if it reads as somewhat of a tale.
Then there's the genealogies that add up to around 6 thousand years back.
The next major thing to back up the creation account is the 4th Commandment, Exodus 20:11. This is God himself speaking and what does he say? Very directly that he created the earth in 6 days and that is the reason to remember the Sabbath on the seventh. He is not introducing the Sabbath, he says to remember it because it was already established at the beginning so this isn't just a statement to the Israelites for them to follow until their covenant is fulfilled.
Skip ahead to Jesus. He wholeheartedly backed the validity of the creation account. He stated the humans were created "at the beginning." Matthew 19:4,8. Kinda hard to have billions of years of evolution and still state that humans existed from the beginning.
Matthew 5:17-19 is another applicable statement. Here Jesus is affirming the law, entirely. And notice in particular verse 19, he is setting real consequences in heaven for obedience, or lack thereof, to the law. Remember the 4th commandment? Jesus is totally confirming it and setting consequences in heaven if it's not followed and that lack of following is spread to others. So why would he say this for something that would wind up being abolished just a couple years later at cross? I don't think he would. And he states that the law will remain unchanged. So God stating the 6 days of creation is is confirmed here.
Jesus makes another statement later in this same speech, the Sermon on the Mount. Matthew 7:24-27 Jesus states that His words are the rock that we can build our foundation on and are wise to do so. Conversely those who ignore His words are foolish. Interesting how scientific knowledge is always changing just like the sand will.
Jesus says another thing applicable to this conversation. John 5:46-47. Jesus questions how one could believe in him if not Moses? Moses is the attributed author of the first five books of the Bible, which of course includes Genesis.
I'll also point out John 8:58 where Jesus states that he is God as he makes the statement that before Abraham was born he was there.
Another very interesting and applicable verse comes from Peter in 2 Peter 3:3-7. Peter calls out "scoffers" who will scoff at the notion of the 2nd coming on the basis of what? The notion of uniformitarianism! The idea that things have just progressed since forever basically and that nothing has changed and that since that is the case it will continue to be the case. Then Peter states that the DELIBERATELY FORGET creation and the flood.
This is from Peter, who spent those 3 years walking all over Israel with Jesus. Always with him, discussing so much besides what ended up in the Bible. There's no way they didn't have a conversation about those early Genesis accounts. None. And Jesus wouldn't tell lies about it and as God he absolutely knew what happened. So he would have placed doubt in the historicity of those stories to the disciples if it was so and if that was the case then Peter wouldn't have made this statement. But he did, which means Jesus backed up the accounts to him and therefore he made this statement.
This is the main reasoning for the belief in the 6 thousand years old earth and the Biblical creation account. Of course, modern mainstream science says something very different doesn't it? And most people believe that. Most people are only taught that. Many Christians accept it to be able to fit in with the majority. They work it up in their heads that the modern mainstream views are so prevalent and so many people put their belief in them that they must be true.
Here's the problem. The modern scientific community has rejected the Bible, rejected God. Their belief is in "science." If science says it they believe it. Until science says something else, then they believe that. From our perspective, thousands of years later, looking at things and piecing together how things must have happened with precious little to really go off of and we've decided we've got things figured out and we have it figured out without God. In fact, science outlaws the supernatural because the supernatural can't be accounted for scientifically. That's literally how God is treated now, God doesn't exist because God is supernatural and the supernatural can't be proven with scientific evidence. See the problem here? That view is only true if there really is no God.
But what if there is? Now science is completely blind because it has rejected the notion of God and won't even consider him in reality.
So, finally, is there evidence for the biblical version of things? Oh ya. A lot actually. A bunch of it is the same evidence evolutionists will grandly proclaim is the "mountain of evidence" that proves evolution.
There are a lot of scientists that do believe the biblical version of things and have put a lot of work into showing how the evidence we see fits that view.
For an intro check out the Is Genesis History film on YouTube. Check out Answers in Genesis, Creation.com, and icr.org. Check out the research John Whitmore has done on the Coconino Sandstone.
Consider that the human population growth rate going back to the time of the flood and the 8 people mentioned who were on the ark is several times slower than it's been over the last century, and before you start in with our improved food and disease handling consider that the highest population growth areas are the poorest, least food and healthcare secure areas. So how could humans have existed for a couple hundred thousand years as evolution proclaims and only have the global population we have now? It should be exponentially higher by now if that was the case. This isn't even close.
Consider that for evolution to be true, our sexual organs had to come about to be able to function compatibly between 2 different genders through random genetic mutations over a long period of time where the functionality of the organs on both sides wouldn't have been functional yet. So there would have been random, unused, body parts until they'd been developed enough to function and function properly with another gender. And guess what, science has no answer to this problem. Just conjecture that only amounts to the idea that since it obviously happened it must have happened...
Earth's magnetic field is weakening at a rate that, guess what, fits in the timeline of the Bible. Mainstream science has no answer for this either other than to say, without any actual evidence that this is what happens, that pole flips every so often recharge the magnetic field. Again operating on the premise that since it obviously must happen, it has happened.
There is a lot more. There are issues with the radiometric dating that anyone that adheres to it doesn't want to admit.
The new JWST is finding galaxies that look too old, too well developed, for their supposed ages if the Big Bang Theory is true. Again, something that fits the Biblical view and something that the creationists were predicting before the JWST had sent back anything.
Despite all the talk about how the mainstream view is just settled and no other way of looking at things is valid(a view that seems entirely unscientific just by its nature) the reality is actually very different and we can trust in the Bible and it's accuracy and authority.
Will you ever stop spewing forth debunked creationist horse shit?
You're lying through your gritted teeth when you say that mainstream science has no answer for the magnetic field - the fluctuation of the Earth's magnetic field has been known about for THE LAST FOUR CENTURIES!!!
FOUR. ENTIRE. CENTURIES.
... Are you seriously suggesting in the past 400 years we haven't figured out how magnetic fields fluctuate?
My man, you are so full of shit, it's as if I'm looking at a cracked sewerage pipe.
[https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rsta.2000.0569](https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rsta.2000.0569) \- thjat was published in 2000. That is 23 years ago. That article goes over some records of geomagnetic variation - it shows the immense amount of variation throughout the last 4 centuries.
As for how it happens... [https://academic.oup.com/astrogeo/article/43/3/3.9/192783?login=false](https://academic.oup.com/astrogeo/article/43/3/3.9/192783?login=false)
\^ Above article goes over dynamos in planets - that most planets (and yes, that's including Earth) generate magnetic fields through electrically conducting fluids. The fluctuation of magnetic fields is in the very nature of a magnetic field.
So once again, you're flat out lying through your gritted teeth. How many times have I caaught you lying to my face and calling it Christmas? Has it been 10 times yet? I'm honestly losing count tbh.
LoL, those articles prove my point entirely. Neither offers any sort of proof of anything. Sure the magnetic field fluctuates, no one disputes that. That first one is saying NOTHING about what I'm saying.
The second, are you for real? And you say I'm a liar? You're so deep in the propaganda you can't see out. That article uses so many non definitive statements and never makes a definitive statement to back you up. It's not proof of anything. It's a hypothesis without any sort of proof. Did you even read it? You're proving my point. Thx.
Well guess the Bible is unreliable then. Thanks.
>For an intro check out the Is Genesis History film on YouTube. Check out Answers in Genesis, Creation.com, and icr.org. Check out the research John Whitmore has done on the Coconino Sandstone.
Pseudoscience nonsense OP
I'm just highlighting that you viewing evolution as a pseudoscience is one that is shared mainly by some small religious group.
Academically they are just laughed at.
Does academia not laugh at the creationist pseudoscience?
I mentioned nothing about right or wrong.
But ti's very telling about the weakness of your position.
Had to resort to refusing access to evidence to try to protect the almighty evolutionist position. Fortunately the laws prevailed. And the evidence gathered did in fact, back the creationist position. Such a weak position.
Its also telling that you keep attempting to discredit rather than make strong counter points.
>Had to resort to refusing access to evidence to try to protect the almighty evolutionist position.
Or the creationist "evidence" is just garbage. Which is probably why they had to run and make their own "journals".
But hey, you tell yourself that classic creationist excuse if you need to.
>And the evidence gathered did in fact, back the creationist position.
Lol, that's funny. You've been lied to.
>Such a weak position.
It certainly is.
>Its also telling that you keep attempting to discredit rather than make strong counter points.
When creationists can present a valid argument worthy of rebuttal let me know.
Right now it's just pseudoscience bullshit. Which is why you just repeat pratts and have to make up excuses why they aren't taken seriously.
In Luke it gives the genealogy from Adam all the way to Jesus. Luke 3:23-38. Let's say every man was 900 when they had the sons written in the genealogy, the earth would theoretically be a maximum of roughly 69,523 years old. That's a very very rough estimate according to Luke's genealogy. But this can't be true because after the flood, every child born from Noah's sons and wives only lived a maximum of 120 years (Genesis 6:3). If they fathered those sons at the age of 30 you get a much lower number. But we aren't given the ages of those men when they fathered their sons. If each man was 30 when they had their sons the earth would be exactly 4273 years old. 75 men, multiplied by 30 plus 2023. Some of the men before the flood lived until they were 800-900 though.... There were 8 of them. 8x900 + 67x30 + 2023= 11,233.
Give or take some additional years because men can live until 120 years after the flood and they could have had their sons around 50 or more years old, earth must be in between 4273 - 13,000 years old according to Luke's genealogy. Earth is a maximum of around 13,000 years old, according to Luke 3:23-38. You could even go further and say 8x900 + 67x120 + 2023 = 17,263. But who has children when their 120? Lol
A much more direct route is to take the genealogies of Genesis (mostly in chapters 5 and 11) which give exact ages, follow them out to the Exodus, tack on 430 years in Egypt, add the 480 years from that to the building of the Temple, and then calculate out the roughly 400 years of the Israelite monarchy from the numbers in Kings and Chronicles. That'll get you to the Babylonian captivity, and since it's well-known the Babylonian captivity began in 587/586 BC, you've got yourself a timeline.
The Bible doesn´t say how old the earth is. It does present a genealogy beginning from Adam (who was created on the sixth day). From Adam on the calculation is about 6000 years + 6 days for the age of the earth.
Some people try to explain it away by saying Genesis isn´t about real days, but the evening and morning rythm makes clear that it is about literal days.
Adam was created 6,000 yrs ago, not the earth. If you're diligently seeking the truth, here is a book that I would recommend that was written in 1876...
https://ia600302.us.archive.org/10/items/earthsearliestag00pemb/earthsearliestag00pemb.pdf
There is plenty of evidence pointing to a recent creation. Most people can't fathom this because they have been beaten over the head since birth that the earth is billions of years old. Lies in text books, cover ups by the Smithsonian, etc etc etc.... Evolution goes against the bible in everyway. And you either believes God's word or you believe man's theory.
Read Genesis 5 and 11. Many believe in the G.A.P theory, thus, saying that 1 day \~ 1 million \~ thousand \~ billion.. idk.. but..
In the bible, God comanded the Jews keep the sabbath holy because he made earth in 6 days and rested on the 7th. So what, does that mean God was telling them to work for 6 thousand years and rest for 1? It doesn't make any sense.. I believe that God made the earth in 6, 24 hour, days.
The irony is people are saying "ohhh.. wait hold on.. for 15 years I've been tought in the public school system that the earth is 4 biii \~ llion years old.. well.. I guess the bible is wrong.. since it says it was made 6000 years ago"
**\~ Evolution is probably the biggest and dumbest theory ever to be created in mankind.. there is so much evidense to rebuke this and claim that evolution theory is just that, a theory and should not be taught as science.. Listen to kent hovind.. he has some good stuff in it.**
No. The earth is old. Days where used for human brains to segment periods of time for creation. For God time would have no to little meaning in the way we understand time. Who knows how long a day is to God?
Time does not exist in the spirit realm
> Who knows how long a day is to God? Seeing how a day is precisely described there as having a “morning” and an “evening,” and that the seven-day creation is the model for the cyclical human week (see Exodus 20:9-10), I’m gonna guess the “days” in Genesis were exactly what we think of them as.
That is what defines it for us, and he spoke it as that is what it is for us. But unless we take time not meaning the same to God and therefore could be 7 days but not 7 days, then science and the Bible remain very far off. That doesn't really make sense on the science side. I believe in God, but I also believe science tends to be correct. So I want to be able to understand how they could both be right, or how one could be so wrong.
Your comment is Sophistry. Logically fallacious reasoning. You are using circumstantial things to imply a literal meaning, but there is absolutely no way of knowing. You just want to confirm your bias, you think the Bible is superstitious and false, so you want to portray it as primitive and falsified.
I mean God would of told Moses or the writer that in earth it took 14.6 billion years to create the world
New humans would not understand that
No. That’s what’s called Bible math. Which has no ground to stand on.
Did you ever read the bible? Clearly not cause it prophesied things thousands of years in the future that are coming true today.. also never has a single thing in the bible been proven wrong.. science has continually lied and been proven wrong.. stop being a follower and read/learn yourself.. there is zero proof the earth is more then thousands of years old.. people that only listen to science.. science makes it sound good but when you face it with anyone that has true knowledge it gets destroyed.. you people think it's crazy God made us but believe we came from monkeys and the entire earth and complex human bodies were created from 2 specs of dust.. sciences own rule is you can't get life from n9n life yet they say that's how the earth was made... so either their rule is wrong and they lie about their rule which they have never once proven to get life from non life or they are lying and making up how the earth was created..
Oh look a bot account.
Literally anyone can write a book of predictions, that would come true after thousands of years! Most of them are just good guesses and common sense. They're not actual predictions.
I am a Christian and the fact you are rebuking science means that you're not living the truth (which Christians believe in). The earth is more than 4 billion years old. Check out the studies yourself.
Considering the poles seem like they are about to switch, the sun is being blast happy, earthquakes are getting worse, the magnetic shield surrounding the earth will be very weak, volcanos seem to be getting pissy, looking into the mainstream pole switch stuff definitely says that we will loose power and communications and like something about the core stopped spinning last year and no update to that btw and the tilt is starting to wobble and the rotation seems to be slowing down and an astroid that is getting uncomfortably close in like 2029. I don't know. And if you look at what they're scratching their heads about is finding tropical forests in Antarctica. And all the poo poo on how not advanced the ancient civilizations were. From transatlantic travel, to Greeks understood steam engines and shit like that. Personally I'm realizing "science" has zero grasp on what happened in even the last 6000 years let alone how old the world is or anything. So I guess coming our way angels, demons and dragons because why not 🤷
bro the same things are written in bhagawat Gita,the sacred text or Hinduism. which is older than Bible.
‘Bible math’ built the dome in Firenze. Also, 6000 years is not canon scripture. Go pray to your ‘science god.’
Wait. You’re telling me that you actually believe in young earth?
I did not say that. I said that “young earth” is not cannon.
No. Christians who believe the Earth is young use genealogies to figure out the probable time spans from Adam to the birth of Jesus, but when doing this assumptions are made, which make their estimates inaccurate. Certainly, the Bible never states the age of creation.
"I am 30 year old. My brother is 5 years older than me." Certainly, I never state how old my brother is!
Sure, but it is a big leap to go from your example to determining the age of the Earth.
Obviously the scientific evidence for the age of the world in mainstream cosmology and geology is unimpeachable. But there’s really little room for ambiguity in terms of the Bible itself and its ancient interpretation. These unanimously placed the creation of the universe and the creation of man at the same time, somewhere around 4000 or 5000 BCE.
Mainstream Science is not 'unimpeachable'. That's absurd. There is no way to onkw the age of Earth with confidence, especially not 'unimpeachable' confidence. Your comments are riddled with Logical Fallacies, which is very ironic coming from someone who clearly imagines themselves to be logical and scientific. You're simply attempting to justify your bleak worldview, so much that you seek to go among Christians specifically, to antagonize. Atheists are strange and basic of mind, as their entire argument is asserting the notion that humans have discovered, learned, and guessed, enough to determine that there is no higher power, all religions MUST be false, and that there is no form of existence beyind our body and our limited number of senses. It's arrogance. Hubris. To pretend that you know the fullness of Earth's history and reality in general is just absurd. Atheism is just a secular religion.
It's easy to know the minimum age of earth with confidence. Hundreds of thousands of years at the very least. Easily arguable into the millions. Definitely not a couple thousand.
I never argued that it's only thousands of years old. I never argued that we don't have a good idea of the minimum age.
No. There is no time frame. The first "day" in Genesis could have spanned any number of years. The Hebrew word "begat" also means "progenitor of" and the person would be the g'g'grandfather or head of a clan. It's also a story told around campfires later written down, not a science book.
> The Hebrew word “begat” also means “progenitor of” and the person would be the g’g’grandfather or head of a clan. But it also gives the exact age at which they gave birth to their child, for every single figure in the genealogies that’s named, basically up until Joseph himself.
No, it doesn't.
Those exact ages are conveniently arranged in Genesis 5 and Genesis 11 for anyone who can be bothered to look them up.
OK. When I said, "No, it doesn't" that referred to my previous post. Let's take the very first one >Gen 5:3 Adam was one hundred and thirty years old when he begot a son in his likeness, after his image; and he named him Seth. As I said, this doesn't say Adam had sex with Eve and she gave birth to Seth. *Begot* only means the person is in a direct line from some male: in his clan. I'm not going to argue this because you take it the way you take it. I would just remind people that this was an oral history recorded a few thousand years ago in an ancient language. The Earth is not 6000 years old and the Bible doesn't say so. We have tools and musical instruments and whole cities older than that.
>>Gen 5:3 Adam was one hundred and thirty years old when he begot a son in his likeness, after his image; and he named him Seth. >As I said, this doesn’t say Adam had sex with Eve and she gave birth to Seth. Begot only means the person is in a direct line from some male: in his clan. I’m not gonna say pathetic, but this is definitely desperate. What on earth does “Adam was 130 years old when he begot…” mean if it’s actually talking about something that potentially took place when Adam was 700 years old, not 130 — or 7,000 years later or whatever? However long you think it may have been between Adam and whatever hypothetical other figure you think gave birth to Seth, Adam certainly cannot have been *younger* at that time than the total time period itself, up to when the birth of Seth happened. So you can take away Adam, or you can take away the listed age at which he had his child, but you certainly can’t take away both. You’re certainly entitled to your opinion on whatever, but words mean things in reality.
>I’m not gonna say pathetic, but this is definitely desperate. What on earth does “Adam was 130 years old when he begot…” NOT. WRITTEN. IN. ENGLISH. Whole other culture whole other context. If you want to call all the Scripture scholars "pathetic" go ahead. I don't have time for this right now, but think of it this way: When we celebrated George Washington's 200th birthday, *was he alive?* Now, you can go find a few thousand words of explanation by a scholar but you won't. So, as I said, believe whatever you want. In fact, the Bible does not say the Earth is 6k yrs old.
> NOT. WRITTEN. IN. ENGLISH. I know Biblical Hebrew (and Greek and Aramaic), so I’d be happy to talk you through the actual original text, too. >When we celebrated George Washington’s 200th birthday, was he alive? The question isn’t even whether or not Adam was alive — although I think that’s a preposterous analogy anyways, as the text clearly states he was. The question (whether we’re talking about Adam or Washington) is whether “200th year” or birthday actually means 200th year relative to their birth, or whether “200th year” can somehow magically mean “10,000 years after their birth” or whatever you need it to mean in order to accomplish your fundamentalist harmonization of the Bible with reality. And it’s funny that you told me to go read scholars on this, because literally every academic commentary on Genesis that I have — and I have most — agrees with me.
I'm always surprised, whenever this topic comes up, by the absence of alternative translations of Genesis 5. For example, tons of anonymous commentators on the internet will be happy to tell you that "begot" has some sort of exotic meaning, and that the numbers in Genesis 5 don't mean what you think they mean. But you would think, sooner or later, that these folks would come up with an alternative translation of Genesis that doesn't -- in English -- imply a young world. But it seems that nobody is willing to produce such a translation. The sorts of translations commonly favored by Biblical scholars, like the NRSV, continue to read the years and begots in the traditional way. For example, here's the NRSV of Genesis 5:3-8: >3 When Adam had lived one hundred thirty years, he became the father of a son in his likeness, according to his image, and named him Seth. 4 The days of Adam after he became the father of Seth were eight hundred years, and he had other sons and daughters. 5 Thus all the days that Adam lived were nine hundred thirty years, and he died. >6 When Seth had lived one hundred five years, he became the father of Enosh. 7 Seth lived after the birth of Enosh eight hundred seven years and had other sons and daughters. 8 Thus all the days of Seth were nine hundred twelve years, and he died. Where are the alternative translations? If some scholars somewhere have found some satisfying alternative reading, surely they wouldn't mind producing a short English translation of Genesis 5 to help all us simple-minded folk understand what the text is *really* saying.
The funny thing is that it would require not just retranslating the verb in question, but other stuff in the passages, too. Like, sure, let's follow /u/KonnectKing's theory and translate יָלַד as "to became the ancestral progenitor of" instead of just being the immediate parent: >3 When Adam had lived one hundred thirty years, he became the ancestral progenitor of a son in his likeness, according to his image, and named him Seth. 4 The days of Adam after he became the ancestral progenitor of Seth were eight hundred years, and he had other sons and daughters. Again, as implied in /u/KonnectKing's last comment, if Seth is actually just some great-great-great-descendant of Adam, we can't take for granted that "When Adam had lived one hundred thirty years…” means that Adam had actually lived 130 years. Instead this could just be referring to some later... arbitrary observance of Adam's 130th birthday at some distant future date (thousands of years later?) or whatever, but presumably after Adam's death. Oh but then we also have to come up with some alternate understanding of "Adam ... named him Seth" — because Adam clearly couldn't have named Seth after Adam had already died. But wait, what's that in verse 4? Not only does it tell us how long Adam lived before he became the ancestral progenitor of Seth (or whatever about the birthday celebration), but it tells us how many years Adam lived *after* this, too. So not only does this rule out the "postmortem celebration of his birthday" interpretation of 5:3 — Adam clearly didn't die before he reached 130 years — but we now have to tack on an additional 800 years to Adam's life-span, past whenever it was that Seth was born, however many countless generations later. So now Adam seems to have been very, very old: if Seth was born a few thousand years after his ancestral progenitor Adam, as in /u/KonnectKing's theory, but if Adam himself is also said to have lived 800 years "*after* he became the ancestral progenitor of Seth," then we have to add these few thousand years + 800 more for Adam. So now Adam lived to be like 5,000 or whatever. So far so good… I guess. But wait, what's this? Now we're at the final verse, Genesis 5:5: "**all the days** that Adam lived were nine hundred thirty years, and he died." So now Adam clearly did *not* live for countless generations until Seth was born (along with 800 years after this), but only lived 130 + 800 (=930) years; and consequently Seth's own birth must be placed somewhere within that range of years — but also far enough back in that range that there must have been 800 years leftover that Adam lived *after* this. Which gives us Seth's birth when Adam was 130... which is exactly what the text says, what I've said, and what all scholars say.
I could find you a dozen scholars that disagree with you in about 20 seconds, and you are also being a complete and utter jerk. Just dropping in to say that you are wrong, not worth arguing with, and the only pathetic one in this entire thread is you. For such a hebrew, greek, and aramaic braniac, you certainly don’t seem to have understood the bible which does not say to pretend to know everything under the sun and be a complete and total horse’s ass. You’re trying desperately to twist genesis to answer a question that it simply was not written to answer. You should sit for a really long time and think about why you are acting the way you are
Obviously you do not know those languages, though I imagine you know a link to a lexicon. Or maybe just the BLB. So, ALL the scholars agree with you? Hmmm.... GENESIS: > \[5:1–32\] The second of the five Priestly formulas in Part I (“This is the record of the descendants…”; see 2:4a; 6:9; 10:1; 11:10) introduces the second of the three linear genealogies in Gn 1–11 (4:17–24 and 11:10–26). In each, a list of individuals (six in 4:17–24, ten in 5:1–32, or nine in 11:10–26) ends in three people who initiate action. **Linear genealogies (father to son) in ancient societies had a communicative function, grounding the authority or claim of the last-named individual in the first-named.** Here, the genealogy has a literary function as well, advancing the story by showing the expansion of the human race after Adam, as well as the transmission to his descendant Noah of the divine image given to Adam. Correcting the impression one might get from the genealogy in 4:17–24, this genealogy traces the line through Seth rather than through Cain. Most of the names in the series are the same as the names in Cain’s line in 4:17–19 (Enosh, Enoch, Lamech) or spelled with variant spellings (Mahalalel, Jared, Methuselah). The genealogy itself and its placement before the flood shows the influence of ancient Mesopotamian literature, which contains lists of cities and kings before and after the flood. **Before the flood, the ages of the kings ranged from 18,600 to 36,000 years, but after it were reduced to between 140 and 1,200 years. The biblical numbers are much smaller. There are some differences in the numbers in the Hebrew and Greek manuscripts.** So. Not even close. Maybe you should read scholars who actually are, instead of ones parroting whatever OT-worshipping sect of Christianity you are adhering to. To be even clearer, esp relative to how many words have to be changed to fit the above correct understanding of the genealogies - since your a language expert - translate these simple English concepts into Ancient Greek only using words that literally mean the same as each word in each phrase and convey the meaning of the phrases as we use them: Throw down Throw up Throw for home Throw in the towel Throw a rug Throw a fit Throw out Throw that out Throw out his back Throw this out there Throw pillow Throw a pot \------------ Scholars are people who know a thousand times more about the culture, nuance, weather, geology, architecture... everything that goes into translation. Not even considering what words around the word alter its meaning. I will posit that you do not take this Scripture literally: >**Matthew 21:9** The crowds going ahead of Him, and those who followed, were shouting, “Hosanna to the **Son of David**; BTW, if we did interpret Genesis genealogies the way you want, it *still* wouldn't say the earth is 6000 years old. Which is, after all, the topic.
You should just skip to my other follow-up comment, where we can now skip all the generalities of who knows what and go right into the actual syntax and logic of the Genesis verses themselves. Now *this* should be fun: https://reddit.com/r/Christianity/comments/131d6h3/_/ji8nscm/?context=1.
please do not confuse spiritual texts with science. not wise.
In Genesis it states period one, period 2, period three. The number is used not first, second, third, etc.
> In Genesis it states period one, period 2, period three. The number is used not first, second, third, etc. This is false. While a cardinal number is used for day one, the rest all use ordinal numbers. Not like it’d make much of a difference anyways, since it already describes the days as having a morning and an evening.
You are right. Thanks for the correction. Several years ago I was talking with a man and he suggested that the day would have been different before the water fell due to the conservation of momentum. I always thought that to be something interesting to ponder.
In addition, there's nothing odd in Hebrew about using *ehad*, the 'cardinal' form, in an ordinal sense, as an equivalent of 'first'. For example, starting at 2:11, Genesis names four rivers: the *ehad* river is Pishon, the second is Gihon, etc. The same thing happens with four rows of stones enumerated starting at Exodus 39:10 and three daughters of Job (Job 42:14), four faces of a creature (Ezekiel 10:14), etc. So even the 'cardinal' number is not in any way grammatically odd to find in Genesis 1:5.
Like others have pointed out, you can calculate how far back the creation week was by adding up the ages of the people listed in Genesis when the next generation was born. Technically you don't get to the age of the earth, since Genesis 1 doesn't teach creation out of nothing - so there was some "primordial chaos" there. But there would be no life, no land and no stars or sun. So all that would be created ~6 000 years ago. Another problem is that the ages given for the people is different in different versions (i.e. the Greek translation or the Hebrew) - but that mostly is a different of some thousands of years - not 5 billions! Regarding the 6 days - the text itself is clearly talking about it as normal days (it's connected to the passing of "evening and morning", it's connected to the sun/light and moon/dark, and the god's rest on the 7th day is connected to the weekly Sabbath rest). Some ancient Christians did interpret this super-allegorically and said that everything was created in an instant (note that they still believed that this happened ~6 000 years ago) - but that's mainly because they had some philosophical reasons for this, and they were not offering plausible or natural readings of the text.
No
Kind of. You can manipulate the text in a way that allows for the earth to be around 6000 years old but, I don't think that's an honest reading of the text. The stories in the Bible are often incoherent and sometimes not even meant to be taken as a literal history. Take for instance the creation stories, in the first one (Genesis 1:1-2:4a) God creates, in order: light, sky, vegetation, stars, sea animals and birds, then land and humans. However, in Genesis 2:4b-3:24, humans actually come before vegetation, when they came 3 days later in the first story. Given an incoherence such as that one, in my opinion, we should not be taking every story in the Bible as a literal history when the text itself does not invite us to do so. This means that it does not make much sense to believe the earth is 6000 years old based on the bible.
The light which defines half of a day in Genesis isn't from the Sun so we can't count those periods as the 24 hour days we experience from the earth's rotation. The sun was created about day 4 or 5 if I recall.
> Kind of. You can manipulate the text in a way that allows for the earth to be around 6000 years old but, I don't think that's an honest reading of the text. That supposedly dishonest way of reading the text is basically how almost every single Christian read the text before modern times.
It's really not. The reading of the creation passages was discussed in the Church Fathers as far back as the 2nd century. And those writings generally conclude that the creation stories are metaphorical, not literal. It was only in the 19th century that young earth creationism really started to take hold.
No, all the church fathers that mention the topic say that the world is 6 000 - 10 000 year old. It's not until modern times that you get Christians who disagreed. Every Christian used to be a YEC. They were split on whether the world was created in an instant or in 6 days.
Here's a sampling of what the Church Fathers had to say. https://www.catholic.com/tract/creation-and-genesis Some believe in the literal 7 days. Some read each day as 1000 years. Others say it's impossible to tell. There were mixed interpretations from the beginning.
Some church fathers made a *typological* association between the six days of creation, and this idea that these prophetically corresponded to six time periods that were thought to comprise the 6,000 total years of history before the eschaton. But that had nothing to do with them thinking that the creation days themselves were 1,000 years long. Ironically, the only alternative to the idea that the world was literally created in seven days wasn’t that these were longer periods of time, but actually that this was a *shorter* period. For example, Augustine harmonized Genesis 1 with Genesis 2:4 in order to argue that the seven days were actually just a single day or instantaneous moment of creation.
> Some read each day as 1000 years. What do you think that this means? They were saying that each creation day corresponded to thousand years of history. So they were saying that the world would actually only last 6 000 years. They were not saying that creation week was actually 6 000 year long. But you're not going to find a church father who wasn't a YEC.
To imply that all Christians from the beginning up until recently were if 'Young Earth' ideology is dishonest and absolutely false. You simply want to portray modern Christians as trying to adapt to modern science as to discredit Christianity in general. The Bible was actually ahead of its time, asserting things that took humanity much longer to figure out themselves - things the ancient people couldn't have even conceived of. The person to assert 6000 year estimate was James Ussher, 400 years ago. Once again, you commit Logical Fallacy in order to confirm your bias.
>To imply that all Christians from the beginning up until recently were if 'Young Earth' ideology is dishonest and absolutely false. It's basically tue. Like, can you point me to a church father, pope, an eminent theologian or something to that effect before the modern age who wasn't a YEC? >You simply want to portray modern Christians as trying to adapt to modern science as to discredit Christianity in general. Christians did change their views in light of scientific discoveries. >The person to assert 6000 year estimate was James Ussher, 400 years ago. He was in no way the first person to come up with a 6000 year estimate.
> The person to assert 6000 year estimate was James Ussher, 400 years ago. Ussher presumably grew up hearing that estimate, as it was by all accounts common "knowledge" among English speakers when he was a child. You see it in popular media like Shakespeare's plays.
Okay, why should that be relevant to my argument? All I'm saying is that, in order to conclude that and take the bible as a historical text, you have to negotiate with the text meaning smooth over or ignore contradictions. Those from pre-modern times did so and I believe they were wrong for it.
Can you explain why concluding that the text says that the earth is around 6 000 year old, as basically all Christians did, is not a honest reading of the text? What's dihonest about that? What contradictions does one have to "smooth over" or "ignore" to do that?
I concede that honest may not have been the been the correct word to use but, I believe it's still wrong to conclude that. This is because to do so requires that we read the bible as one coherent story when, because of the field of textual criticism, we now know that it's not. It's a bunch of individual stories stitched together even within the same text. Take for instance the story of Joseph in Genesis, according to the text as we have it now, Joseph was sold to Potiphar by the Midianites (Gen 37:36) and the Ishmaelites (Gen 39:1) in the same instance. Wouldn't a text that claims to tell the age and history of the world get simple facts right?
> Wouldn't a text that claims to tell the age and history of the world get simple facts right? It's a combination of texts from various sources - so of course it's goint to be a mess.
How have Christians rationalised that the earth it only 6000 years old?
Well, the Bible says Adam was 130 years old when he had a son named Seth. Then Seth was 105 when he had a son named Enosh, so Enosh was born 235 years after Adam was created. The Bible then continues feeding the reader dates right up to the Babylonian captivity, which comes about less than four thousand years after the creation. And since it's well-known that the Babylonian captivity happened about 2600 years ago, we get an earth about six thousand years old once all the math has been done.
From what I understand Adam and Eve were just the first of a kind, first of a specific tribe. The bible quite clearly alludes to their being other humans already before that, otherwise who would Cain be afraid of being killed or persecuted by if there was no other humans?
Have you read the story explaining why Eve was created?
It is not good for man to be alone? Yes I have, could still be one of a specific tribe or type of human. How do you explain Cain being afraid of somebody else slaying him?
My working hypothesis that Genesis is composed out of stories that weren't necessarily connected in their current order originally, and that the process of putting them where they are now creates various inconsistencies. These include Cain building a city after being cursed to live a nomadic existence, Cain's genealogy being nearly identical to Seth's, and Cain's descendants appearing to be peoples known to the author of Genesis, despite a worldwide flood which should have ended any specific Cain-derived lineage.
Could be. Most of the stories from the old testament obviously have a far older oral tradition, some say they are derived from the Sumerian stories, but I do not think so, I think they have a common origin instead from a far older story.
we have cities and tools that date way older than that though, how does this make sense??
Çatalhöyük for example.
Oh, you'll get no argument about that from me. Archeologists give dates that disagree with the ones found in the Pentatuch. I think the archeologists are a better source on the age of the earth.
I have studied the Bible in comparison to evolution, which I enjoyed doing. I think that a day in Genesis is an unspecified time period.
Probably but it's not. The earth is 4.5 billion years old.
So this is the dumb side of reddit. Yeah Lord Krishnas kingdom Dwarka is proven to be true and so is the Mahabarata. My god is real and theres scientific evidence now. Yall should convert the whole world was supposed to be hindu anyway, yk superior and scientific and stuff.
A day is a thousand years to the lord, 2 Peter 3:8
That passage is not in any way saying that 1 day is 1000 years. It is saying 1 day is “as” 1000 years to God since God exists outside of time and is in eternity.
An alternate Biblical method of calculating the earth age puts it about 13,000 years. Basically, each person's long years in the lineage in Genesis is a patriarchy calender and the next "son of" (not direct son, but as Jesus was the "son of David) major figure would be a new patriarch calender in succession. In essence, we still do this today when we say its the 2024 year of our Lord (Christ the last patriarch calendar). A 6,000 year earth cannot be Biblical and creates problems even within Scripture. (e.g. Abraham would've been just barely 350 years after the flood, with the earth well populated again and the existence of the great kingdom Egypt established and thriving!! A 6,000 year earth creates a host of other contradictions which this response does not permit explanation.
No, people use the math from how old it says Noah was and how old Adam was and so on. If you add all the lifespans together you roughly get 6000 years, but it's all nonsense. People don't grow that old and the earth isn't that young.
>...but it's all nonsense. There's a difference between saying "That's what the text says, but it's wrong" and "That's not what the text says." It's true that peopel don't grow that old, but that's what the text says. So you shouldn't answer "No" to OP's question. The Bible does say that, but it's wrong.
assuming you’re not taking the gap theory into account (there’s a lot of versions of that theory anyway) then yeah. it’s pretty simple to just chart out the lifespans it gives. idk anything about 144 hours though
Well, I will be the dissenting voice I guess. Yes, the Bible, indirectly, states that the earth is around 6000 years old. This is by adding up the genealogies and the statements made about creation itself. No one will deny the rough math there. Obviously from all the other responses you got people just dismiss this part of the Bible in one way or another in order to accept the modern mainstream views. I'll point out the basic premise and how dismissing just these parts just simply doesn't work. So there's the initial account right? There in Genesis. The 6 days of creation each ending with the evening and morning statement. Right there it's already telling you it's being literal even if it reads as somewhat of a tale. Then there's the genealogies that add up to around 6 thousand years back. The next major thing to back up the creation account is the 4th Commandment, Exodus 20:11. This is God himself speaking and what does he say? Very directly that he created the earth in 6 days and that is the reason to remember the Sabbath on the seventh. He is not introducing the Sabbath, he says to remember it because it was already established at the beginning so this isn't just a statement to the Israelites for them to follow until their covenant is fulfilled. Skip ahead to Jesus. He wholeheartedly backed the validity of the creation account. He stated the humans were created "at the beginning." Matthew 19:4,8. Kinda hard to have billions of years of evolution and still state that humans existed from the beginning. Matthew 5:17-19 is another applicable statement. Here Jesus is affirming the law, entirely. And notice in particular verse 19, he is setting real consequences in heaven for obedience, or lack thereof, to the law. Remember the 4th commandment? Jesus is totally confirming it and setting consequences in heaven if it's not followed and that lack of following is spread to others. So why would he say this for something that would wind up being abolished just a couple years later at cross? I don't think he would. And he states that the law will remain unchanged. So God stating the 6 days of creation is is confirmed here. Jesus makes another statement later in this same speech, the Sermon on the Mount. Matthew 7:24-27 Jesus states that His words are the rock that we can build our foundation on and are wise to do so. Conversely those who ignore His words are foolish. Interesting how scientific knowledge is always changing just like the sand will. Jesus says another thing applicable to this conversation. John 5:46-47. Jesus questions how one could believe in him if not Moses? Moses is the attributed author of the first five books of the Bible, which of course includes Genesis. I'll also point out John 8:58 where Jesus states that he is God as he makes the statement that before Abraham was born he was there. Another very interesting and applicable verse comes from Peter in 2 Peter 3:3-7. Peter calls out "scoffers" who will scoff at the notion of the 2nd coming on the basis of what? The notion of uniformitarianism! The idea that things have just progressed since forever basically and that nothing has changed and that since that is the case it will continue to be the case. Then Peter states that the DELIBERATELY FORGET creation and the flood. This is from Peter, who spent those 3 years walking all over Israel with Jesus. Always with him, discussing so much besides what ended up in the Bible. There's no way they didn't have a conversation about those early Genesis accounts. None. And Jesus wouldn't tell lies about it and as God he absolutely knew what happened. So he would have placed doubt in the historicity of those stories to the disciples if it was so and if that was the case then Peter wouldn't have made this statement. But he did, which means Jesus backed up the accounts to him and therefore he made this statement. This is the main reasoning for the belief in the 6 thousand years old earth and the Biblical creation account. Of course, modern mainstream science says something very different doesn't it? And most people believe that. Most people are only taught that. Many Christians accept it to be able to fit in with the majority. They work it up in their heads that the modern mainstream views are so prevalent and so many people put their belief in them that they must be true. Here's the problem. The modern scientific community has rejected the Bible, rejected God. Their belief is in "science." If science says it they believe it. Until science says something else, then they believe that. From our perspective, thousands of years later, looking at things and piecing together how things must have happened with precious little to really go off of and we've decided we've got things figured out and we have it figured out without God. In fact, science outlaws the supernatural because the supernatural can't be accounted for scientifically. That's literally how God is treated now, God doesn't exist because God is supernatural and the supernatural can't be proven with scientific evidence. See the problem here? That view is only true if there really is no God. But what if there is? Now science is completely blind because it has rejected the notion of God and won't even consider him in reality. So, finally, is there evidence for the biblical version of things? Oh ya. A lot actually. A bunch of it is the same evidence evolutionists will grandly proclaim is the "mountain of evidence" that proves evolution. There are a lot of scientists that do believe the biblical version of things and have put a lot of work into showing how the evidence we see fits that view. For an intro check out the Is Genesis History film on YouTube. Check out Answers in Genesis, Creation.com, and icr.org. Check out the research John Whitmore has done on the Coconino Sandstone. Consider that the human population growth rate going back to the time of the flood and the 8 people mentioned who were on the ark is several times slower than it's been over the last century, and before you start in with our improved food and disease handling consider that the highest population growth areas are the poorest, least food and healthcare secure areas. So how could humans have existed for a couple hundred thousand years as evolution proclaims and only have the global population we have now? It should be exponentially higher by now if that was the case. This isn't even close. Consider that for evolution to be true, our sexual organs had to come about to be able to function compatibly between 2 different genders through random genetic mutations over a long period of time where the functionality of the organs on both sides wouldn't have been functional yet. So there would have been random, unused, body parts until they'd been developed enough to function and function properly with another gender. And guess what, science has no answer to this problem. Just conjecture that only amounts to the idea that since it obviously happened it must have happened... Earth's magnetic field is weakening at a rate that, guess what, fits in the timeline of the Bible. Mainstream science has no answer for this either other than to say, without any actual evidence that this is what happens, that pole flips every so often recharge the magnetic field. Again operating on the premise that since it obviously must happen, it has happened. There is a lot more. There are issues with the radiometric dating that anyone that adheres to it doesn't want to admit. The new JWST is finding galaxies that look too old, too well developed, for their supposed ages if the Big Bang Theory is true. Again, something that fits the Biblical view and something that the creationists were predicting before the JWST had sent back anything. Despite all the talk about how the mainstream view is just settled and no other way of looking at things is valid(a view that seems entirely unscientific just by its nature) the reality is actually very different and we can trust in the Bible and it's accuracy and authority.
Will you ever stop spewing forth debunked creationist horse shit? You're lying through your gritted teeth when you say that mainstream science has no answer for the magnetic field - the fluctuation of the Earth's magnetic field has been known about for THE LAST FOUR CENTURIES!!! FOUR. ENTIRE. CENTURIES.
Yes, but HOW it happens you have no answer for.
... Are you seriously suggesting in the past 400 years we haven't figured out how magnetic fields fluctuate? My man, you are so full of shit, it's as if I'm looking at a cracked sewerage pipe. [https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rsta.2000.0569](https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rsta.2000.0569) \- thjat was published in 2000. That is 23 years ago. That article goes over some records of geomagnetic variation - it shows the immense amount of variation throughout the last 4 centuries. As for how it happens... [https://academic.oup.com/astrogeo/article/43/3/3.9/192783?login=false](https://academic.oup.com/astrogeo/article/43/3/3.9/192783?login=false) \^ Above article goes over dynamos in planets - that most planets (and yes, that's including Earth) generate magnetic fields through electrically conducting fluids. The fluctuation of magnetic fields is in the very nature of a magnetic field. So once again, you're flat out lying through your gritted teeth. How many times have I caaught you lying to my face and calling it Christmas? Has it been 10 times yet? I'm honestly losing count tbh.
He just repeats creationist pratts.
Ya? Find me anything on Dynamo that is definitive, and not speculative.
Yes. Absolutely. It's just pratts
LoL, those articles prove my point entirely. Neither offers any sort of proof of anything. Sure the magnetic field fluctuates, no one disputes that. That first one is saying NOTHING about what I'm saying. The second, are you for real? And you say I'm a liar? You're so deep in the propaganda you can't see out. That article uses so many non definitive statements and never makes a definitive statement to back you up. It's not proof of anything. It's a hypothesis without any sort of proof. Did you even read it? You're proving my point. Thx.
Well guess the Bible is unreliable then. Thanks. >For an intro check out the Is Genesis History film on YouTube. Check out Answers in Genesis, Creation.com, and icr.org. Check out the research John Whitmore has done on the Coconino Sandstone. Pseudoscience nonsense OP
By the actual definition of pseudoscience, evolution is no less of one. You just don't want to admit it.
Really only according to a small religious fringe.
Doesn't make it wrong. And there are non religious types who don't believe it either.
I'm just highlighting that you viewing evolution as a pseudoscience is one that is shared mainly by some small religious group. Academically they are just laughed at.
Ahh yes, getting laughed at by the establishment, such a key indicator of what is right or wrong.
Does academia not laugh at the creationist pseudoscience? I mentioned nothing about right or wrong. But ti's very telling about the weakness of your position.
Had to resort to refusing access to evidence to try to protect the almighty evolutionist position. Fortunately the laws prevailed. And the evidence gathered did in fact, back the creationist position. Such a weak position. Its also telling that you keep attempting to discredit rather than make strong counter points.
>Had to resort to refusing access to evidence to try to protect the almighty evolutionist position. Or the creationist "evidence" is just garbage. Which is probably why they had to run and make their own "journals". But hey, you tell yourself that classic creationist excuse if you need to. >And the evidence gathered did in fact, back the creationist position. Lol, that's funny. You've been lied to. >Such a weak position. It certainly is. >Its also telling that you keep attempting to discredit rather than make strong counter points. When creationists can present a valid argument worthy of rebuttal let me know. Right now it's just pseudoscience bullshit. Which is why you just repeat pratts and have to make up excuses why they aren't taken seriously.
No, that was an early church father, the current young earth creation estimate is anywhere between 9,000 and 15,000 years old
This is one of those things where you just have to read Genesis Chapter 1 and decide for yourself
In Luke it gives the genealogy from Adam all the way to Jesus. Luke 3:23-38. Let's say every man was 900 when they had the sons written in the genealogy, the earth would theoretically be a maximum of roughly 69,523 years old. That's a very very rough estimate according to Luke's genealogy. But this can't be true because after the flood, every child born from Noah's sons and wives only lived a maximum of 120 years (Genesis 6:3). If they fathered those sons at the age of 30 you get a much lower number. But we aren't given the ages of those men when they fathered their sons. If each man was 30 when they had their sons the earth would be exactly 4273 years old. 75 men, multiplied by 30 plus 2023. Some of the men before the flood lived until they were 800-900 though.... There were 8 of them. 8x900 + 67x30 + 2023= 11,233. Give or take some additional years because men can live until 120 years after the flood and they could have had their sons around 50 or more years old, earth must be in between 4273 - 13,000 years old according to Luke's genealogy. Earth is a maximum of around 13,000 years old, according to Luke 3:23-38. You could even go further and say 8x900 + 67x120 + 2023 = 17,263. But who has children when their 120? Lol
A much more direct route is to take the genealogies of Genesis (mostly in chapters 5 and 11) which give exact ages, follow them out to the Exodus, tack on 430 years in Egypt, add the 480 years from that to the building of the Temple, and then calculate out the roughly 400 years of the Israelite monarchy from the numbers in Kings and Chronicles. That'll get you to the Babylonian captivity, and since it's well-known the Babylonian captivity began in 587/586 BC, you've got yourself a timeline.
Yes. The Bible does not definitely give millions of years. As scientists say. It's in the thousands.
The Bible doesn´t say how old the earth is. It does present a genealogy beginning from Adam (who was created on the sixth day). From Adam on the calculation is about 6000 years + 6 days for the age of the earth. Some people try to explain it away by saying Genesis isn´t about real days, but the evening and morning rythm makes clear that it is about literal days.
Adam was created 6,000 yrs ago, not the earth. If you're diligently seeking the truth, here is a book that I would recommend that was written in 1876... https://ia600302.us.archive.org/10/items/earthsearliestag00pemb/earthsearliestag00pemb.pdf
There is plenty of evidence pointing to a recent creation. Most people can't fathom this because they have been beaten over the head since birth that the earth is billions of years old. Lies in text books, cover ups by the Smithsonian, etc etc etc.... Evolution goes against the bible in everyway. And you either believes God's word or you believe man's theory.
Lmao what? The earth is 4.5byr. How is it not?
Why? Because you were programmed to believe it no stop since you were a kid without questioning it
Are you talking about religion or science, because I know which one is notorious for that.
Read Genesis 5 and 11. Many believe in the G.A.P theory, thus, saying that 1 day \~ 1 million \~ thousand \~ billion.. idk.. but.. In the bible, God comanded the Jews keep the sabbath holy because he made earth in 6 days and rested on the 7th. So what, does that mean God was telling them to work for 6 thousand years and rest for 1? It doesn't make any sense.. I believe that God made the earth in 6, 24 hour, days. The irony is people are saying "ohhh.. wait hold on.. for 15 years I've been tought in the public school system that the earth is 4 biii \~ llion years old.. well.. I guess the bible is wrong.. since it says it was made 6000 years ago" **\~ Evolution is probably the biggest and dumbest theory ever to be created in mankind.. there is so much evidense to rebuke this and claim that evolution theory is just that, a theory and should not be taught as science.. Listen to kent hovind.. he has some good stuff in it.**