Answers to Questions - Creation vs. Evolution

Why do Christians say the Earth is only thousands of years old, when evidence shows millions of years?

FIRST recognize a common misconception: NOT ALL Christians believe the Earth is only thousands of years old. Some do and some don’t. Yet BOTH agree with the Bible. The dispute comes from studies of: Science, Hebrew and from historical debates. It grew when science used evidence proven invalid today. Two views are: NOT ALL Christians believe the Earth is only thousands of years old. Some do and some don’t. Yet BOTH agree with the Bible. The dispute comes from studies of: Science, Hebrew and from historical debates. It grew when science used evidence proven invalid today. Two views are:

Young Earth View - Probably a majority a Christians look at the Creation of Man as being about 10,000 years old. (They also believe earth/life was created in 6 literal 24 hour days.) The Young Earth view became very popular in the first King James Version of the Bible. Footnotes used calculations indicating the time of Creation was about 6,000 years ago. People started to think these were actual words OF the Bible, not just footnotes. Calculations (by Bishop Usher) incorrectly equated genealogy to chronology. They are not the same. A genealogy might skip generations and the Bible has evidence of skipped generations. A chronology is the precise dating of events. If descendants were used, EVERY generation would have to be included.

Secondly, the Young Earth view became a "tool" to contradict the "New" uniformed science in the early 1900’s. Two key "debates" were lost by Christians based on inaccurate scientific information. Now science knows differently. But at the time Christians felt it was necessary to "take a firm position" to support a Young Earth. If we knew then, what we know today, many might not have taken such a strong stand. In reality, a 10,000 year old year earth makes absolutely NO difference from a 10 billion year old earth. NEITHER could possibly account for Evolution. The Young Earth viewpoint is still common, and it could be absolutely right. God often made things in a state of existence (Adam-Genesis, Fish-Mt 14:17-21, Wine-John 2:1-11)

Old Earth View - This view was developed to reconcile the evidence of science with the words of the Bible. It DOES NOT support Evolution. And it DOES agree with the words of the Bible. The Old Earth view claims God created Earth in 6 distinct periods. Original Hebrew had very few words to describe things (about 3,000). If God wished to use a defined period in early Hebrew, the ONLY choice was the word "Yom" which was more commonly used to mean day, but also was used to mean a defined period of time. (Likewise the Hebrew words for morning and evening.) In today’s scientific understanding, Old Earth is totally compatible with the Bible. With Old Earth, there is no problem with our seeing stars billions of light years away. Nor is there a problem with dinosaurs, the many scientific dating methods showing age, etc. Young Earth requires disagreeing with much scientific thinking - however as shown before, science has been wrong many times. Science has also been right many times (thank science for penicillin).

It’s not important to take a stand on either Young or Old earth. Both agree with the Bible. Both deny Evolution. Your bias is really based on the degree of faith you have in today’s science. Some cutting edge physicists are even proposing they BOTH could be right depending on "where the clock" is (they study complex calculations and General Relativity).

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