Where does the 6000 year old earth idea come from?

I'm curious as to how this whole anti-evolution belief arises. Some people see evolution as conflicting with the bible, and therefore evolution must be wrong. But where does the idea of this conflict arise? Particularly Young Earth Creationism. I'm no biblical scholar, but I don't recall there being a date for "let there be light."

So what verse or verses gives people the idea that the Earth can't possibly be much, much older? How did that interpretation come about?

Pretty much the same way the Rapture thing came about, or the Bible Code thing. Someone, or a group of someone's with a lot of time on their hands and the motivation to make a point for whatever reason, used the Bible as chronological history. They found some reference points they could absolutely date (to their satisfaction) and worked forward and back from there.

The wiki does a pretty good job of explaining it.

As far as I recall some priest estimated by adding the ages of all the characters in the bible together. Or maybe that was a Bill Hicks joke from a stand-up show...

It came from the historical lineage descriptions in the bible. If the bible does one thing well, it details families and offspring very well. These have been compared with historical records and been properly dated.

Working backwards, the earth should allegedly be approximately 6,000 years old.

Here's a start: Young Earth creationism - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

I believe it is based in part on the global flood event in that time frame as was recounted in the Bible. There are some other justifications based upon a criticism of science--like at the rate the moon is moving away from the earth, it would have had to have been part of the earth if the planet were more than about that age. The Bible, itself, however does not set forth in real basis to say the earth's age and only very fundamental fundamentalist get into that whole the dinosaurs never existed stuff.

It came from a deluded individuals fallacious misinterpretations of the Bible, and was then passed on to equally deluded individuals willing to believe it.

RabidAlpaca said:

It came from the historical lineage descriptions in the bible. If the bible does one thing well, it details families and offspring very well. These have been compared with historical records and been properly dated.

Working backwards, the earth should allegedly be approximately 6,000 years old.

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unfortnatly the geology of earth contradicts the bible. science and study of the planets geology pinpoints the age of the earth at around 4.54 billion years.

The Earth is 5774 years old plus the seven "days" of construction that I needed to build it.

You people have not taken very good care of it and your warranty ran out at 5000 years.

Unitedwestand13 said:

unfortnatly the geology of earth contradicts the bible. science and study of the planets geology pinpoints the age of the earth at around 4.54 billion years.

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I'm an atheist, you don't have to tell me, buddy. I'm just pointing out the reasoning the YEC fanatics use as to why they think the earth is 6,000 years old.

RabidAlpaca said:

I'm an atheist, you don't have to tell me, buddy. I'm just pointing out the reasoning the YEC fanatics use as to why they think the earth is 6,000 years old.

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whoops sorry about that.

i am a atheist too.

I have come to learn that when there is a choice between fact and faith, the religious types choose faith everytime.

That makes me wonder. Does it really matter what is fact and what is not? At the end of the day, we all turn to dust, so to speak. No matter what we believe and that's a fact.

maybe it is related to the principle of relativity

al hacc
And they ask you to and Allah shall never fail in His promise, and undoubtedly, there is with your Lord such aday like a thousand years in your reckoning.


l am doing brainstorming

Ussher chronology - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The Ussher chronology is a 17th-century chronology of the history of the world formulated from a literal reading of the Bible by James Ussher, the Archbishop of Armagh (Church of Ireland)...
... Ussher deduced that the first day of creation began at nightfall preceding Sunday, October 23, 4004 BC

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Deuce said:

I'm curious as to how this whole anti-evolution belief arises. Some people see evolution as conflicting with the bible, and therefore evolution must be wrong. But where does the idea of this conflict arise? Particularly Young Earth Creationism. I'm no biblical scholar, but I don't recall there being a date for "let there be light."

So what verse or verses gives people the idea that the Earth can't possibly be much, much older? How did that interpretation come about?

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It's 6000 BC, not 6000 years ago... and who knows.. anyway, its not valid at all.

Deuce said:

I'm curious as to how this whole anti-evolution belief arises. Some people see evolution as conflicting with the bible, and therefore evolution must be wrong. But where does the idea of this conflict arise? Particularly Young Earth Creationism. I'm no biblical scholar, but I don't recall there being a date for "let there be light."

So what verse or verses gives people the idea that the Earth can't possibly be much, much older? How did that interpretation come about?

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It's seen in more than just Christianity. Take the Hari Krishna and some more fundamentalist hindu sects, who see our early ancestors as proof for hannuman's (sp) army.

Where it stems from I would say it often contradicts their creation myths in ways that undermines any claim to literalism (which are often the religious groups who adopt these positions)

Rainman05 said:

It's 6000 BC, not 6000 years ago... and who knows.. anyway, its not valid at all.

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It's 4000 BC, 6,000 years ago. The Archbishop calculated the lineages from Adam to Christ.

" ...The early times were likely the easiest to deal with, as the Bible provides an unbroken male lineage from Adam to Solomon, complete with the age of each father at the birth of his son, the next patriarch. Genesis alone provides genealogies from Adam to Jacob. However, the same ages are not presented by all versions of the Bible. For instance, the Septuagint (the pre-Christian Greek translation of the Old Testament) provides considerably longer ages, adding another 1500 years to the Creation date. Ussher avoided this problem by relying on the Hebrew Bible (the Masoretic).

The early age of kings is a bit more complicated to deal with, as the lineage breaks down; instead, the Bible records the lengths of kings' reigns. Additionally, overlaps and ambiguities in the text complicate the picture. Thus, Ussher relied on cross-referencing the Bible with other known dates of events and people to create this part of the timeline.

The late age of kings complicated matters even more, as no information (pertaining to lengths of time) is provided whatsoever in the Bible. Thus, it was necessary to use other writings (from other cultures) to link the later events to those of the time of Christ. In doing so, Ussher arrived at a date of 4004 B.C. After an error by Dionysius Exiguus, the creator of the Anno Domini numbering system, was discovered, Ussher readjusted accordingly, putting Creation firmly at 4004 B.C. (Wikipedia). Thus, an age for the creation of humanity is given...."

The Age of the Earth - Creationism and Biblical Geneologies: Mike Janssen

The date and method was outlined in many editions of the King James Bible, hence it's wide acceptance for a time.

Fisher said:

I believe it is based in part on the global flood event in that time frame as was recounted in the Bible. There are some other justifications based upon a criticism of science--like at the rate the moon is moving away from the earth, it would have had to have been part of the earth if the planet were more than about that age. The Bible, itself, however does not set forth in real basis to say the earth's age and only very fundamental fundamentalist get into that whole the dinosaurs never existed stuff.

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In reference to the moon moving away from the earth part of your post, watch from appx. the 5 minute mark of the video to the end.

Interesting stuff. I'm surprised the calculation was so.. crude, but I guess I'm not sure what could be expected. It's unfortunate that so many people never consider the fact that this concept came from human interpretation of scripture and is therefore prone to error.

Deuce said:

Interesting stuff. I'm surprised the calculation was so.. crude, but I guess I'm not sure what could be expected. It's unfortunate that so many people never consider the fact that this concept came from human interpretation of scripture and is therefore prone to error.

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Simple addition is all very well but several of those begetting and begatting were supposedly living 300 to 400 years before doing so!

Manc Skipper said:

Simple addition is all very well but several of those begetting and begatting were supposedly living 300 to 400 years before doing so!

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Right, but "fixing" that "error" would yield an even younger Earth, one so young as to probably be disprovable through mere written history alone. I suspect someone realized that and went "oh wait! They... must have lived longer, because the bible can't be wrong!"

Unless there's biblical support for 400 year old people that I'm not aware of.

Do you have to be an atheist to conclude that YEC is probably not accurate? I consider myself to be a pretty fervent believer in the God of Abraham, and I don't subscribe to YEC. I consider it to be false doctrine that was based on inaccurate translations, and a lack of understanding of good science at the time it was formed. The limited study I've done on the matter suggests that reasonable translations can be taken that actually align fairly well with modern science's current understanding of how the earth developed.

6000 years old? Archaeologists are finding ruins of human cities even older than that, like this one off the coast of India which is so old that it's now beneath the ocean.

Either the Bible is just a metaphor or we are not understanding its time intervals correctly, since it would seem our modern understanding of "6000 years" does not seem to apply. The other discrepancy is that the life expectancy of major Biblical characters is more than ours; though, there are spiritualists in the world today who live to older than 110, so that has more of a logical explanation.

Deuce said:

Right, but "fixing" that "error" would yield an even younger Earth, one so young as to probably be disprovable through mere written history alone. I suspect someone realized that and went "oh wait! They... must have lived longer, because the bible can't be wrong!"

Unless there's biblical support for 400 year old people that I'm not aware of.

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"Darwin and the tree of life" gives a nice rundown of the political and social fallout faced by Darwin, while researching and promoting his theory. It's clearly nothing exhaustive, but it will give you an idea on the "what, whys and when" of it

And plus, it have some really old footage of David Attenborough before we was ancient

Deuce said:

Interesting stuff. I'm surprised the calculation was so.. crude, but I guess I'm not sure what could be expected. It's unfortunate that so many people never consider the fact that this concept came from human interpretation of scripture and is therefore prone to error.

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Remember these are the same folks who think man and dinosaur frolicked together in early history. Not exactly known for their math or logic skills.