Why do Atheists and some Christians insist that the Bible tells us the world is 6,000 years old?

Question

Nowhere in the Bible does it even suggest this. Some have examined the genealogies and counted the generations from Jesus back to Adam and Eve, but this is silly because Hebrew genealogies were not complete as only the most significant people were identified, so there were likely entire generations left out. Also, the Hebrew language words that said "So and so was THE descendent of so and so" could also have meant "so and so was A descendent of so and so...", thereby throwing the whole thing off. Also, and this is a BIG also, the Hebrew word used for "day" in the Old Testament (such as in the account of the creation of the Universe) is also used in the Bible to describe an indeterminate period of time.

Sooooo, why do we keep hearing from Atheists and Christians alike that the Bible tells us that the Universe is 6,000 years old?

Answer 1

I have seen a real cool chart showing all the different generations mentioned in the bible, including how long they lived and when they were born. It is hard to explain without seeing this for yourself. I used to have it in a book. I'll try to find a link for it if it happens to be on-line.



The bible says man was created on day six, I think. And Genesis makes a point that each day was a 24-hour period. So counting the years back to Adam is appropriate.



Those who do not believe in creation suggest the earth was about a billion years old, and man came much later. Presumably evolving from some other beast, etc. But there is no evidence of this.



Some people look at the earth, and reach wrong conclusions. Whatever we think we see (like signs of age) does not mean anything if God created it that way. For example, if we look at a mountain we may conclude that the mountain was formed by a volcano, and then shaped by millions of years of wind erosion, etc. Who says God did not create that mountain just the way it is? And yet, someone who did not know that God created the mountain just that way may think that mountain is millions of years old. But he would be wrong.

Answer 2

"... but this is silly because Hebrew genealogies were not complete as only the most significant people were identified..." Nowhere in the Bible is this suggested, nor is it consistent with Jewish cultural at the time. Clearly if you have ever attempted to read through the genealogies, you would realize that the majority of them are insignificant and unheard of individuals.



In any case, the Bible presents them as accurate genealogies and thus it implies an age for the earth.



But let's say that the genealogies are meaningless, you still have that the creation story is completely wrong, that the flood, the tower of Babel, and all events around the Exodus never happened. There there is the lack of confirming evidence for major events of the Gospels.



Oh, and the Bible is fairly specific in the creation story in relating a day as the period from sun set to sun set (it's why Jews start the Sabbath on Friday night and not Saturday morning).



Feel free to rationalize your religion, but don't be surprised when we disagree with you.

Answer 3

An Irish Bishop named James Ussher did the genealogy back calculations in the mid 1600's. Those dates became part of some editions of the Bible by the end of the same century. It is like an urban myth that has taken hold and many insist is "biblical".



The two main points you make are correct (genealogy gaps and the meaning of the Hebrew "day"), making the young earth nothing more than an interpretation that has stuck.



Atheists keep bringing it up because it makes Christians look foolish.



Where Science and Faith Converge

www.Reasons.org

Answer 4

The main answer I can offer to this is to say that people see it as causality, and the translation of the King James version of the Bible remains the primary methodology that most bibles are translated as.



However, if we consider everything before Moses' time to be purely a metaphor, then there is no reason that we can't equate "let there be light" to be the Big Bang, and each of the days to be an epoch in the creation of the world.



This silly quibble between religion and science is just a way to try to be "right" and make someone else "wrong". It's the height of egocentric behavior. Just accept that it's here. But if you want some great stuff to talk to people about the reality of this quibble, take a look in my sources below.

Answer 5

"But the Bible doesn't give us a date when this all occurred"

That is true but there are christers among your lot who believe in a literal bibel.

Bishop Ussher added all the years together and came up with end October 4004BC.



There are MANY cretinists who insist all this is about 6000 years old.

It's not our fualt you have nutters in your midst.



Oh, and here's Bishop Ussher:



"James Ussher (sometimes spelled Usher, 4 January 1581 – 21 March 1656) was Church of Ireland Archbishop of Armagh and Primate of All Ireland between 1625 and 1656. He was a prolific scholar, who most famously published a chronology that purported to establish the time and date of the creation as the night preceding Sunday, 23 October 4004 BC, according to the proleptic Julian calendar."



http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Ussher

~

Answer 6

There are people who claim that the passage of time described in the Bible from the alleged creation of the Cosmos to present day is only 6,000 years.



A FEW (but certainly not all Atheists) try to use that as a means to discredit the Bible.



Most Christians acknowledge that the Cosmos is more than 6,000 years old.

Answer 7

the bible is a determination of information used to place across the classes of jesus. ought to each little thing be taken actually? no, of direction not ought to the meaning and message be taken? sure, why not? the writers of the bible weren't scientists, and that they did not have the technological potential nor the intelligence to actual comprehend the particular age of the earth (yet what can scientists actual observed for specific on the subject of the earth now? esimations based upon findings that could or won't be specifically precise) if the writers of the bible mentioned that the bible became somewhat previous, they meant it became somewhat previous the didnt comprehend how previous yet 6000 years sounds like a notably long term to me. so no, the bible isn't a historic text cloth, so it is not meant to be taken actually as a historic text cloth

Answer 8

You probably hear this from Atheists because most Christians tell us that the Bible says that The Earth is 6,000 years old.



Edit- I don't like to debate what the Bible says, It's not really my religion anyway. But the Bible says how many years went past in between generations. So wouldn't we still end up with the 6,000 year old model of the Earth?



Edit- I do not like using creationist sources because I am not one, but I think that they illustrate their point about what their own religious text says.

Answer 9

"The Bible establishes a minimum date for the creation of human beings on the sixth "day" of ~50,000 years ago. However, because the Bible clearly indicates the length of the previous five creation "days," are longer than ordinary solar days, we must look to God's creation to establish an accurate date for the length of the days and the age of the earth. The age of the earth is most accurately established by examining the age of its rocks, along with the age of rocks from the moon and meteorites, which were formed around the same time. All these measurements indicate that the earth is just over 4.5 billion years old. Measurement of the ages of some of earth's features establish a minimum age for those features that is in the hundred of thousands to millions of years. Since most of the measurement merely involve the counting of annual layers, they are unlikely to be grossly inaccurate. Therefore, the young earth paradigm that the earth is merely 6,000 years old is falsified by both the Bible and science." There is a great wealth of information at http://www.godandscience.org/youngearth/age_of_the_earth.html

Answer 10

[Edit. The words "and the evening and the morning," meaning night and day, denote a normal "24 hour" day.]



So you believe that god created the universe and everything in it exactly as the Bible tells us. So you believe this, then.



According to Ecclesiastes 1:5 the sun actually goes around the earth--as, of course, it must, since, according to Ps 93:1, Ps 96:10, and 1 Chr 16:30, the earth does not move. And the earth cannot move because, according to 1 Samuel 2:8 and Ps 75:3, it is placed on pillars. And because it is placed on pillars, it has an underside and an upper side, as confirmed by Isaiah 40:22 which indicates that the earth is a flat disk.



(The Hebrew word translated as "circle" in Isaiah 40:22 is chuwg, which means "circle" not "sphere." Strong's Concordance: "circle"..."describe a circle." Hebrew and Aramaic Lexicon of the Old Testament: "Circle...the earth conceived as a disc, Is 40:22." Hebrew-Aramaic and English Lexicon of the Old Testament: "draw round, make a circle." If a sphere were meant, duwr, the Hebrew word for "ball"--as in Isaiah 22:18-- would have been used. The ancient Hebrews would have gotten the idea of a circular earth by viewing the horizon from the top of a mountain.)



Since the biblical earth is flat, it has an underside and under the earth is the abyss, which is referred to several times in the Bible. That is also what is being referred to in Job 26:7 when it says that the earth hangs over nothing. (The original Hebrew word translated as "upon" in that passage in the KJV also means "over.") The actual sphere of the earth in space is not "suspended' or "hanging" "over" or "upon" nothing. It is orbiting the sun at 66,700 miles per hour. If the earth can be considered" hanging" over anything, it is the sun, which certainly is NOT nothing.



There are several other verses in the Bible indicating the earth is flat, such as Nebuchadnezzar's vision in Dan 4:10-11 (if it were not flat the tree could not be seen from all the earth), and Dan 2:28 states that the visions of Nebuchadnezzar are from God. If the biblical god says the biblical earth is flat, it must be flat.



The original Hebrew word translated as firmament is raqiya, which is a noun derived from the Hebrew word raqa. That word is a verb meaning "to beat out," and is used in the bible in reference to beating out metal into plates or expanses of the metal (as in Exodus 39:3). So raqiya, as a noun, would literally mean "that which is beaten out."



The idea is that the firmament, or sky, is a solid, beaten out expanse or vault set on the rim of the flat disk of the earth. This understanding is confirmed in Job 37:18, which states:



"Can you beat out the vault of the skies as he does,

hard as a mirror of cast metal?" (New English Bible. .)



There, the Hebrew word translated as "beat out" (or "spread out" in other versions) is, as noted above, raqa.



That idea is also implied in verses such as Deut 4:32:



"Ask now about the former days, long before your time, from the day God created man on the earth; ask from one end of the heavens to the other. Has anything so great as this ever happened, or has anything like it ever been heard of?" See also Ps 19:1-6, Isaiah 13:4-5, and Matt 24:31.



The "ends of heaven" would be the base of the vault of heaven where it rests on the rim of the disk of the earth.



Also, the stars in the biblical cosmos are just lights set in the firmament. As mere lights in the sky, they will fall to the earth in the Last Days (Matt 24:29), something that is ridiculous considering the actual stars are other suns and many times larger than the earth.



So, according to the Bible the earth is a flat, immovable disk, supported by pillars and covered with a solid vault of heaven, the rim of which is is resting on the perimeter of the disk of the earth, and the stars are just lights set in the vault of heaven.



That this is the correct view of the biblical cosmos is shown by the fact that it describes a structure with parts that are fully consistent with each other. That structural consistency indicates that it accurately represents the cosmos as conceived by the ancient Hebrews and as its writers incorporated that view in the Bible.



Moreover, according to the Bible, earth is the centerpiece of creation, and in the Last Days the biblical god will destroy the earth and the heavens as part of his plan for mankind.



It is the height of geocentric idiocy to think that the whole universe was created merely for the sake of the earth and its inhabitants. All of which goes to show that the Bible cannot be considered the word of God, and therefore the god of the Bible does not exist.

Answer 11

some idiot theologists claim that through studying the bible and all the births etc. they can calculate the age of the earth from the Adam and Eve story to now.



not all christians believe this estimate, but some apparently do. We call them "creatards" here, but Creationism and the related pseudo science nonsense is still active in some circles and they still are trying to get that crap into schools.

Answer 12

Because in a much simpler time someone thought they could add up all the ages of the patriarchs listed in the Biblical genealogies and that number would be the age of the earth.

Answer 13

Because they go by the mistranslation of the word 'day' used in the Bible. It is said that the Christ's coming will be 7000 yrs ( using God's time frame of 1 of His days equals 1000 of our years). But, the word yom is more accurately translated as a 'time period' that could be 1 of God's days or several thousands of years.

Answer 14

Where do you hear that? Why would an atheist say the bible said that and believe it?



I honestly don't know but I'm atheist and ik the earth is millions of billion years old

Answer 15

Adam & Eve never existed. If you follow the stories in the buy-bull, add up the years, it tells us that it's only 6,000 years old. It's obvious that the writers of the buy-bull knew nothing about geology.

Answer 16

If you click here: http://wol.jw.org/en/wol/d/r1/lp-e/1200000970 and then scroll down to the subheading: "From Human Creation to the Present," you will find the answer. It involves counting back from pivotal dates in history.

Answer 17

However, the genealogies don't say "... was the (or 'a') descendant of ..."



What it says is that such a person begat this or that person when he was x number of years old, and lived to be yyy and begat sons and daughters, etc. (replacing the x and yyy with the actual numbers, and the name of the person and the name of the son or daughter).



That's as goofy as trying to make the days in Genesis 1,000 years each, when the text CLEARLY states that one day consisted of a period of darkness (there was evening) followed by a period of daylight (and there was morning). To make a dark/light cycle into 1,000 years would require 500 years of night followed by a 500-year day.



When you actually READ the text, you are forced to draw a different conclusion, based on what it SAYS, not what you WANT it to say.



But 6,000 years in Genesis chapter 1 isn't enough time for evolutionists, so you have to make that more like 6 BILLION years, each day (light/dark cycle) would last 1 billion years, making the daylight 1/2 billion years, and the night equal to 1/2 billion years. That's neither logical NOR scientific!



Again, try actually READING the text before you try to change it's obvious meaning. Or, as one person once said, "It's amazing how much light the Bible throws on all them commentaries!"



Go back to the drawing board, this one don't fly!

N

Answer 18

Atheists are merely sarcastically pointing out the idiocy of the Christians who believe this.



Christians who do this are being willfully ignorant on a grand scale.

Answer 19

in the beginning God created the heaven and the earth period. it does not say when the earth was made. it was billion of years ago. then the earth became without form and void. is how it should read. If take the word. (was) back to the manuscripts.

Answer 20

No atheist says this ever, christians claim this, but atheists know the bible doesn't say nor do we care. WE think the bible is a pack of fairy tales of no use.



Don't blame us christians think the bible says something it doesn't

Answer 21

What atheist ever said that Earth is 6,000 years old?

Answer 22

Lookup James Ussher for the answer to your question.

Answer 23

The bible doesn't explicitly say this no, but it can be gleaned from the stories.

Answer 24

I'm an atheist, so don't ask me. I'm just responding to people making the claim; I have no idea where they get it from.

Answer 25

If you calculate how long everyone in the bible lived and in comparison to their sons/daughters it will add up to around 6000, but that is just how long people were on earth.

Answer 26

Alright, I'll give you a few thousand years latitude, heck, I'll give you a million years latitude,. Your gay book is still out a few billion.

Answer 27

because they have their own opinion. you against people and their opinions?