6000 Year Old Earth?

This happened to me recently inside a restaurant. Before I tell that part of the story, I would first like to go back to the day prior to that. On the day prior, I was in my brother's room. He likes to listen to the radio a lot. I must say, some of the people and things he learns about are interesting. Well, anyway, he was listening to a radio show that comes on sort of late. It was one of his regular shows, but they don't always discuss regular topics.

Plenty of radio shows discuss politics and the environment, and Coast-to-Coast does that as well. However, it often strays into the paranormal, or supernatural side of things. The unexplained is always a welcomed subject on Coast-to-Coast. During my brief moment in my brother's room, a caller said something strange. She referred to the Earth being only 6000 years old.

Yeah. My reaction was exactly as yours is.

After she hung up, I asked my brother, "What sort of malarkey was that?"

He looked at me sort of strange, and answered that it was exactly what the woman said it was. "She believes Earth is only 6000 years old," he told me.

I flipped. Well, not quite, but I was a little excited. I couldn't believe that someone actually believed that. I have to tell the truth, I degraded the woman out loud for her beliefs. I feel ashamed for it now, but I was young back then.

Anyway, the next day I went out to eat with a few of my friends, and I was telling them all about it, basically running the poor woman into the ground again. But really, how could Earth be only 6000 years old? Well, apparently another customer heard me, and here I was face to face with an older man who really thought Earth was only 6000 years old. Here he was going to prove it to me!

At this point I must say that at least some of these people consider themselves to be Bible literates. So basically they believe that God created the Earth in 6 literal days. Now, I consider myself a bit of a literate too. That being the case I felt let down when all the man could do was tell me to read Genesis, tell me that it says God made Earth in 6 days, and give me a url to some website.

All my questions would miraculously be answered if I just followed those instructions. Well, I was pretty sure that I had read Genesis countless times, and also that I wasn't born yesterday. Even though I had no proof, I was positive that Earth wasn't born 6000 years before yesterday!

The man told me that sometime recently, a pterodactyl was discovered washed up on the shore somewhere. I discovered that he believes that dinosaurs still exist! I asked him, "How come we never see any of these terrible thunder lizards on the Discovery Channel? It seems to get almost every other type of animal on the surface of Earth. How come I've never seen one? Surely a satellite couldn't miss a flock of pterodactyls!

His only answer was, "Oh, you won't see them...."

After that bogus answer I decided the pterodactyl angle wasn't going anywhere. So I asked him why it wasn't common knowledge. Certainly most Christians don't believe the world is only 6000 years old. Why hasn't some scientist taken these claims to the media, and proven them to the world?

His only answer was that scientists were all lying to everyone.

I started to smell a really stinky rat by this time. His claims held very little water. So far, he'd claimed that I, pretty much meaning "no one," was never going to see a pterodactyl, even though they exist. No one? That's a pretty universal claim. Now, I've seen enough TV to know that no matter what it is, if something exists, someone with a video camera is going to get footage of it. Footage of ufo's are far more prevalent than pterodactyls. All those stories about aliens and Area 51 made major headlines in the media. Why would dinosaurs be any different if they really existed today?

He also stated that all scientists were lying to the world. There is another universal claim that he is trying to pass off as fact. All scientists? You mean to tell me there is no disagreement among them? There isn't even one truthful scientist?

Well, after that was all over, I checked out the website. I have to say that it put up a far better argument, but still offered no proof. I can honestly understand why the writer of this article could believe that water once covered over the Earth's atmosphere, based on Biblical references. I don't necessarily believe that to be the truth, but I don't discount it either. I wasn't around back in the days of Noah, I don't know how exactly the flood can be explained scientifically.

The article seems to have the answers.

But it also made the claim, that because water covered the atmosphere before the Biblical flood; people were able to live to 900 years of age. Apparently scientists have agreed that part of the human aging process can be attributed to exposure to the sun. Because water covered the atmosphere, people had less exposure to solar rays, and lived hundreds of years longer. After the flood, which was the first real rain, there was no more water over the atmosphere, thus more exposure to the sun. Thus people lived considerable shorter lives.

There was a flaw that I immediately found with that particular line of thought. Now the sun may have something to do with the aging process. I'm not disputing that, but according to the Bible, God did not create man to grow old and die, even at 900 years of age. According to the Bible, death is the wages of sin, not the wages of the sun. Am I supposed to believe that the sun is what God used to kill Adam and Eve, after their sin? But if they were created to live forever how much sun were they getting before their initial sin?

Furthermore, it is scientific fact, that without the sun, people would not be able to sustain life. Therefore God must have supplied sunlight for Adam and Eve before the initial sin so they could go on living. I see a paradox here, or is it just a group of people trying to justify something, that they really weren't around to witness?

Is it possible that the Earth is only 6000 years old? My answer is, that the Bible claims anything is possible with God. I have no proof that the Earth isn't 6000 years old. But according to all of Gods dealings with men, never once has he taken a short cut concerning matters of such monumental undertaking. Certainly creation of the Earth would have been monumental. It takes time for everything on Earth to grow. God could make everything spontaneously exist, and completely pass over the growth process.

However nothing works that way. Why should I believe that it ever has?

If God does in fact exist in the Biblical sense, then He has let the Devil influence people on Earth for very near to 6000 years. According to the Bible he is a patient God, who takes the greatest care in all matters. According to the Bible, 1000 years is as a day in God's eyes.

The Bible claims that all of God's creation began on one day, and ended 6 days later. That includes all the stars, and planets in the heavens/universe. And after the 6th day, he rested. The bible however makes not a single reference to God performing any acts of creation after that. Am I to believe that God created the Earth in 6 days, but rested for 6000 years after that?

If the Bible is God's word, could it be that He directed Moses to describe all the millennia of creation in simple terms because there was no way for people of that time to fathom billions of years? There was no precedent for them to grasp such a large passage of time. They could understand 6 days, and I believe That is what happened. Really, if the word of God was suppose to help the people of that time, how could holy writings justify implying that God spent a billion years forming the sea, and spreading out the light, and moving the lands, until it was all good?

If it took billions of years to form the earth, is it conceivable that God would describe His activities in terms that those people could grasp?

Even today it is often said that God's ways are above our ways. The Bible isn't easy for us to understand today. There are literally 1000's of interpretations of it. However, it is written in an ancient dialect, for ancient cultures. I believe that those who were allowed to study it back when it was written had a far easier time understanding it than we do.

Though there is no proof that the Earth is not 6000 years old, I must stand by my original assumption. God has dealt patiently with man, and even the Devil. It is inconceivable to me that He would hurry the process of creating a universe. If God really does exist from time indefinite to time indefinite, He would have no need to hurry the creative process, especially when it hasn't been His style to hurry anything in all of recorded history. In the Bible there are accounts of rebel angels coming to Earth and taking the form of men. Why did Jesus Christ go through all the trouble of being born? Why grow into a 33 year old man, just to end life in execution? Couldn't he have come from heaven, taken the form of man, and suffered an execution to redeem men from sin?

Certainly he could have. All things are possible with God, but that would have been a shortcut.