Why do some think the earth is only a few thousand years old?

I mean SRSLY...

 

While I agree that it's foolish, you already know the answer: the bible. Starting a thread like this is just inviting a fight, it's pointless.

 

I disagree actually.

Most people don't believe that but if there are any here that do I want to know why they believe it. That's all.

Perhaps we (meaning believers and non-believers) can help them understand that they shouldn't be taking things in the bible literally.

If threads like this were pointless this wouldn't be a politics and RELIGION forum since there is no use discussing religion if everyone is going to fight... according to you.

 

They think the earth is a few thousand years old because they take literally the account in Genesis that God made the earth in 7 days. Also in a chronological count, which is entirely possible, they can ascertain that it has only been 6000 odd years since Adam's creation. But the word 'day' can mean many things, and a 'period of time' is a perfectly legitimate translation. i.e 'in my mother's day' does not mean my mother had one literal day. Thus it is possible that science and the Bible are in agreement, in that the creation of the earth could have taken place over many millenium, and each 'day' could represent thousands of years.

 

It's cause people are brainwashed by religion. They read a book and take it literally.

 

My prediction:

1. You ask the question.

2. A few nuts appear out of nowhere, quoting scripture and Christian "science".

3. One of us will proceed to offer scientific study and simple reason to the nuts.

4. Repeat step 2, threaten eternal hell.

5. Thread suddenly degrades into us calling them crazy and them calling us heathens.

Hold your breath; Renie and grandpa will be here any second.

 

Except that only applies in Genesis.... A day means a day everywhere else in the bible.

Religious scholars came up with that ridiculous notion when it was brought to their attention that all the time periods including the ice age and age of dinosaurs couldn't have happened in just 7 days. They had to think of something quick.

The people who wrote the bible made up the 7 day wondrous creation of the earth and the heavens because it made God seem magnificent and all powerful. They meant what they said...... Religious scholars are just trying to put spin on it it so that it actually makes sense.

 

You made my prediction true before I had even made it official! And twisting the bible to suit the advancement of science is ridiculous. Forcing the backwards thinking presented in the bible to mesh with science makes you an in-betweeny The only thing worse then a Christian spouting their foolishness is a half-assed Christian spouting their foolishness.

 

Actually you're coming down on renie but his/her theory actually points to them NOT believing the earth is only 6500 years old. Instead it's trying to rationalize.

I'm actually looking for people who honestly and truly believe the earth is only 6500 years old (or even close to that)

 

That's almost worse as far as I'm concerned. What's the point in being only half crazy? You may as well go all out.

Once this wraps up post another thread with the question "how many think the world is flat?". You be arguing the same folks.

 

The problem with the literal interpretation of the Bible is that just they are making an incorrect literal interpretation. They take modern words in an English translation of the Bible and assume that the word means the same as the word used in the original writing. For instance, how did a "day" exist before there was the Sun and the rotating Earth? The value of the Earth day is man-made. It seems obvious to any serious scientist that the Earth is not 6,000 years old if we consider a year to be about 365 24-hour days.

 

The earth is actually only 300 years old. In every scientific measurement, the flying spaghetti monster is there slightly altering the results to test the heathens.

 

If I may add...
6. somebody, somehow will twist this thread for bashing Islam.

 

How old was Adam when he was created ?

 

To be honest - and I speak as a Christian - it's a pretty piss-poor Deity who takes six days to create one lousy planet. Even then he was knackered and had to have the next day off.

We used to think the Earth was the centre of the universe. We now know it's a tiny insignificant speck. We also through things like Relativity and Quantum Mechanics know that the universe is an UNBELIEVABLY more complex place then was first imagined - and it was all created in an instant. The God I believe in is far more powerful than the second-rate one you read about in Genesis.

 

What makes you think your God is the real one?

 

This is what I agree with as well,

I would have to say this also sums it up the best

Oh and BTW MATH20 - why the hell do you have Ninos Avatar ?

 

Nowhere in the bible does it say the earth is X amount of years old.
People have added up numbers from geneologies and given figures but they make huge amounts of assumptions when doing this.
If you do this you assume there are no undated verses in the bible. There are no missing people in the geneologies. The geneologies are all in chronological order. No historical period is omitted in the bible. The geneologies are given for chronological purposes.

Are these assumptions all fair ? I would say no. The purpose of Genesis and the geneologies are to show descent, not chronology.
Genesis 1:1 "In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth."
When did that happen then ? It's undated.

So saying ah look we think we can prove the earth is 4.6 billion years old and hence the bible is rubbish doesn't really cut it. Why do people want the earth to be billions of years old anyway ? Simple, without billions of years you can't have evolution and without evolution the atheism belief goes down the pan.
Go back a couple of hundred years and estimates for the age of the earth were vastly different. As you move forward a few decades the estimates gradually increase more and more. Go back to 1760 and it's 75 000 years old.
By 1831 it's gone up to a couple of hundred of million years. By 1897 it's up to 400 million years old. By 1905 they were touting figures as high as 500 million to a billion years and in 1907 Boltwood said it could be over 2.2 billion based on radioactive decay of rocks. So presently we are being told it's around 4.6 billion. How old is it going to be in 2050 ? 10 billion perhaps ?
Since people started estimating the age of the earth it's been increasing in age by something like 10 to 20 million years per year ! Could it actually be they don't really know ?

Oh no of course not. Scientists today are so much smarter. Scientists today don't make any of the mistakes of their predecessors. We live in the age of enlightenment. We know so much more about the universe than we used to.
Our calculations now are correct whereas obivously they were wrong for the past 250 years, but today they are of course 100% fool proof.
Scientist love to point out the mistakes of their predecessors and I have no doubt scientists in 50 years time will be pointing fingers at some of the stuff we today are claiming as indisputable facts.

It doesn't matter if it was 6000 years ago or 4.6 billion years ago, it's how you believe the earth and universe got here.
Does God exist ? Either he does or he doesn't. If he does exist, did he make the earth and the universe. Either he did or he didn't.
Atheists often have the idea that the entire universe appeared due to an infinitely dense particle holding all the matter and energy in the universe creating itself out of nothing, exploding and then forming all the elements, ordering itself and forming planets stars and galaxies, somehow creating life by some unknown process on a planet, this life evolving and gradually becoming more complex over billions of years and then we appear.
This to me requires a far greater leap of faith than to believe the universe was created and designed by an omnipotent creator.
Think about it, shortly after the big bang protons are supposed to make an appearance. Now a hydrogen atom consists of one proton and one electron.
Now from here all the other elements were supposed to have arisen from the fusing of these atoms. So basically take hydrogen gas, give it long enough and it will turn into human beings. Now tell me that's any less silly than saying God created us ?

 

As a Muslim, I don't know how old our world is. But, I know that Adam (PBUH) was the first man. Now, you can take this statement in many ways, for example yes there were dinosaurs before man or no, human came first. In Islam, we leave it up to God. If there were dinosaurs before us, good. If not, good. Same thing with "UFO", in Islam, we believe that there may or there may not be life outside this world. Only God knows. So it's absurd to say that the world is X years old. No1 can come up with the exact number. Only God knows.

 

Yeah, those scientists and their theory of "Radioisotope dating" which is backed up by "Physical and geological evidence." Who do they think they are?

The flying spaghetti monster created the earth 300 years ago because it says so in his gospel and that is final!