Dinosaur Files

Is the Earth 6000 years old or billions?

Who's right? The Bible or the scientists? How do the dinosaurs fit into the picture?

Public Comments

1. ~6,000. Check out http://www.answersingenesis.org/ For some great scientific articles written by PHD level scientists.
2. thats silly, of course its billions
3. 6,000 years in 1997 A.D. The problem here is that they are using calculated science and not observed science. They were not around millions of years ago to observe any such thing. There are many assumptions in their calculations. For example with Carbon dating they assume the ratio of C12 to C14 is the same today as it was in the past. They have no proof of this as true. Christians believe that there has been three mighty world wide changes on the earth that would have effected our calculations. 1) Instant mature creation in 6 days 2) The Fall of Adam and the curse on the creation. and 3) Noah's flood. Their assumptions illustrate a presupposition that God does not exist. Christians are up front about their presuppositions regarding God while 'modern' science live in denial. In fact the way that they define science they automatically exclude any supernatural explanation, again illustrating a consistent bias against the Christian worldview. A scientist will look at layers of rock and see millions or years, I will look at the same exact layers of rock and see evidence of Noah's flood. The dinosaurs would have been created on the 5th, 6th day of creation. They would have been around and living on earth at the same time as man. They very well were place on Noah's ark (young adults) and made it to the other side of the flood. The change in the environment, caused by the flood very well reduced their number and in time many became extinct. However it is possible that legends of dragons, may have been exauated stories of dinosaurs (the name 'dinosaur' was only coined in 1841). Some Christians believe that Job 40:15-24 is describing a Dinosaour. That it could be a Brachiosaurus. Some have throught this was an Elephant or hippo, however Elephants and hippos tails are not simular to cedar trees
4. 6000 DAYS
5. The Earth is 6000 years old! Even NASA says so!! When the men landed on the Moon, NASA feared that they would go through 40 feet or so of "dust" because if the World was billions of years old, and the Moon is just as old, then there would be that many feet of dust! But, there was only inches of Dust, so, NASA concluded that the Earth is only 6000 years old! Oh, the dinosaurs? There were great winged beasts on the Earth, and all that in Genesis I beleive... And old Satan, he sure tries to make it seem that the World is older than it really is, just to confuse people and try to make the LORD out a liar!! We "know" who the reall liar is, and it isnt the LORD... Remember, when the flood covered the earth, everything died, and was burried in the mud, so thats why everything is at different depts in the soil and rock. I wish you well... Jesse
6. Billions of years because it takes that much of time for a ball of fire to cool and start to have life in it.
7. Dinosaur bones can be dated by counting the layers of sediment on top of them and if scientists tell us the bones are millions of years old then the bible is wrong....all quite simple really.
8. BILLIONS!!!!!!!!! Listen to the scientists'! Dinosaurs were here before man!
9. This planet is millions of years old, It is all in the bible if People knows how to read it, Gen. 9:1 God told Noah to Replinish the earth In Gen.1:28 God told Adam to replinish the earth which means to fill it up again. Also the bible says that God has taken many evil angels & chained them in darkness until the great white throne jusdgement, What time frame did these angels do so much evil that God himself will not let them even loose today. In the prehistoric time frame. You can give people scriptures all day & unless they are willing to study it, they will just give a thumbs down,
10. ok im christian and believe the world is billions of years old, just like there is different theries if evolution there is different theries of creation. I choose to believe that creation did not happen literally in 7 days but each day is a symbol for a long period of time. and what is the freaking fuss about dinosaurs!? God created all the creatures of the air and the sea, including dinosaurs!! so even if there is not a direct link to dinosaurs in the bible they are there. And we all know that animals die out, so why is it so hard to believe that God created the dinosaurs and they died out! and as for the big bang - whos to say there wasnt one! God created a magnificant explosion of light when he gave light to the earth - which could be the big bang, and if you dont take the literalist way of believing in creation, God did that in one period of time which is represented as a day!
11. We do not know how much time spans between Genesis 1:1 and verse 2. The life creation factor did not take the literal 6000 years. But not billions either. I can't find my reference material right now, but each 1000 year period is 7000 years long. The earth is indeed millions and even billions of years old.
12. You do know how radioisotope dating works, I hope? You are aware that there was a natural nuclear reactor operating underground in Africa 2 billion years ago? You noticed that there are galaxies whose light has been travelling toward us for billions of years, and only now reaching us? Oh, never mind... CD
13. The debate over the age of the earth has been building since geologists first started dating rock strata and Darwin introduced us to the concept of evolution. Whether it's billions of years old or only a few thousand is a topic that seems to be impossible to come to an agreement on. Most people believe one or the other, completely ignoring all evidence contrary to their beliefs. A few attempts have been made to reconcile the two but rebuttals to the arguments seem to come faster than the theories themselves. I believe the answer to this question lies right there in the first chapter of Genesis and one need only look to the original Hebrew scriptures. "Old earthers" rely on science while ignoring the Bible and "young earthers" blindly stick to the King James Version of the bible while ignoring science. The keys to unlocking this mystery require first, an open mind, and second, a look at what was originally written about creation. I am vehemently opposed to allowing one's personal bias to get in the way of the truth. We must start from the scriptures and learn from them, not bring our own preconceived notions to the scriptures. Every English version of the Bible that I've found has shown signs of personal bias in the translation. No two translations completely agree with each other and even the KJV has been revised several times. If you have ever sat in church trying to follow along with what the pastor is reading and found all the words don't match up it's because you're reading from different "editions" of the KJV. For this answer, I will use the most common edition of the KJV as a reference only. It's the version that is most widely read in the English speaking world and it's also the version that Dr. James Strong used as a reference for his "Strong's Exhaustive Concordance of the Bible". Strong's Concordance is considered to be the most accurate resource for Biblical study and is certainly the most widely read. These are the only two references I use in my work unless otherwise noted. Now, let us start "In the beginning". Gen 1:1 In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth. "In the beginning" comes from the Hebrew word "reshiyth" meaning "first" and the word heaven comes from shamayim meaning "sky", so the first verse should read "First, God created the earth and sky." Gen 1:2 And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters. In the first sentence, the translations for the words "was", "without form" and "void" are not completely accurate. The Hebrew meanings of these words are: "was" hayah meaning become or come to pass "without form" tohu meaning to lie waste; a desolation (of surface) "void" bohu meaning to be empty; a vacuity, i.e. (superficially) an undistinguishable ruin In the second sentence, the "Spirit" of God comes from ruach meaning wind and "face" is from paniym meaning "surface. There are a couple of ways to interpret this verse so I will give both possible translations. 1. The earth became desolate and empty, darkness was over the face of the deep. The wind of God moved over the surface of the waters. 2. It came to pass that the earth was laid waste and ruined, darkness was over the face of the deep. The wind of God moved over the surface of the waters. As you can see, both versions say the same thing. We'll come back to this after looking at verse 3. Gen 1:3 And God said, Let there be light: and there was light. This verse is actually translated pretty accurately, at least close enough that nothing is really lost in the translation. The only reason I even mentioned this verse is because it's important to subject at hand. Let's put all three verses together and see what the scriptures tell us. I will take the liberty to paraphrase: First, God created the earth and sky. The earth became a wasteland, desolate, empty and ruined. Darkness covered the surface of the oceans. God caused a wind to blow over the waters. As we can see, the Hebrew Scriptures paint a different picture than the one we've been taught. If the scientists are right about their old earth theory, then millions (or billions) of years could have passed between the original creation and destruction of the earth. The scriptures do not tell us how much time passed nor the reason for the destruction. Since the details were not given to us, we can only speculate. Because of the fossil record and the study of rock strata, scientists believe that the earth is billions of years old and dinosaurs have been extinct for at least millions of years. They very well could be right without compromising the inerrancy of scripture. The leading scientific theory for the extinction of the dinosaurs is a meteor impact in the Yucatan Peninsula: "The shock wave from the impact would indeed have triggered massive earthquakes in the region and indirectly triggered other earthquakes around the globe. A tsunami would have formed from the impact, which occurred in a shallow sea. The giant waves would also have been generated by the earthquakes and undersea landslides triggered by the shock wave." "The dust thrown up by the impact, the soot generated by the firestorms and the smog formed from the oxides of nitrogen and sulfur particles would have blocked sunlight for many months. The surface of the Earth would have plunged to freezing conditions -- typically 70 degrees Fahrenheit below normal -- and photosynthesis would not have been possible, even if plants had survived the fires and acid rain." This scenario certainly fits the description of the wasteland as depicted in the Hebrew Scriptures. The earth would certainly have become desolate, empty of life and ruined. Darkness would have covered most of the earth. In Genesis 1:2, God caused a wind to blow ridding the planet of the soot and dust particles that caused the darkness giving the earth light once again as seen in Gen 1:3. Once there was light again, the rest of the new creation process could begin. As you can see, this is an issue that can be laid to rest. Billions of years ago, God created the earth and sky (at the same time as the rest of the cosmos), it was populated with the plants and animals that we now see only as fossils. At some point the earth was destroyed in a great catastrophe, not only causing the extinction of plants and animals but also altering the topography of the earth. Somewhere around 6 to 10 thousand years ago (according to theologians) God "re-terraformed" the planet, created the new plants and animals and, of course, man.
14. It is not a critical issue. The Bible is about man, not the history of the earth. Personally I have seen good, but not conclusive evidence from both sides.
15. It is a great shame that some creationist use that nonsense number. The Bible itself permits the earth to be billions of years old. See for yourself here: (Two first paragraphs about God and Christ can be skipped) http://bythebible.page.tl/Creation.htm
16. It's billions. What the creationists tend to ignore is actual Bible history. The creation story was made up while the Jews were in captivity in Babylon around 500 BCE. It was based on the ancient Mesopotamian creation story.
17. Now I know that you already know the answer to this because you are not an IDiot. So lets just have a good old laugh at the fundies and their stupid answers.
18. LOL. Looking at the preceding answers, I am happy to see that statistics are still accurate, and that therre is still a direct correlation between idiocy and religious belief. It is amusing that religious people facilitate their bamboozlement by seeking scientific information from religious sources... sources whose mission it is to keep them in a state of delusion and ignorance, like the premier LFJ (Liars For Jesus) web site, answersingenesis.com. "The church hates a thinker precisely for the same reason a robber dislikes a sheriff, or a thief despises the prosecuting witness." ~ Robert G. Ingersoll Tip: Don't go to religious sources for information on science. Don't go to science resources for information on religion. P.S.: The funniest thing about all this is that while Jehovah was busy poofing his terrarium universe into existence, fashioning the Garden of Eden and all the plants and critters, and fabricating the 'first man' out of a dust bunny... the Mesopotamians were busily making beer.
19. Billons of years ago> Dinosaurs for proof, and Giants. God destroyed it with "Ice" Then 6000 years ago, God created the Heavens and The earth. There is Plenty of Research on this topic But most people Scoff it off. God Has Always been and Will Always Be.
20. Archaeologists have the equipment to make an educated guess at the age of the planet, and its history. It is probably billions of years - I often think of the words of that old hymn: "A thousand ages in thy sight, Are like an evening gone". Evolution is a leisurely business made up of violent eruptions and eons of wear and decay. A recent book proved positively - in Namibia - that there was once a time when the entire planet was covered in ice. It reflected the sun's rays so heat never penetrated from outside. It was the movement of the tectonic plates and resulting volcano's that gradually warmed us up again. That was one instance of the destruction of life on earth. Another was after the age of dinosaurs ended by the collision with an asteroid. What killed everything was the resulting dust and darkness so no light reached Earth, so nothing could live, nothing grew. It is suggested that Earth has had many opportunities to evolve again, which explains the extinction of life similar to our own - it all begins in the sea, following a similar route? The ice cores removed from glaciers, report on geological life back 300,000 years
21. i don't think it's necessary to put numbers on it. i don't believe that god's years are the same as our years. i think everything from dinosaurs and evolution are all part of God's plan. science is mainly just observations on the world around us, right?? everything man creates isn't truly created, it all comes from the earth. everything is planned. even dinosaurs. god created dinosaurs and they lived on earth while adam and eve were still in the garden of eden. then when they sinned and were cast down to earth, god killed the dinosaurs whether it was through a gigantic asteroid or whatever, because He knew that man and dinosaur could not inhabit the earth at the same time. i don't read anywhere in the bible where it specifies the length of time that adam and eve spent in the garden or exactly the types of creatures he created and the names adam gave them. this is how i see it. hopefully it helps.
22. The Earth is not 6000 years old. But the story of events in the Old Testament may be closer to 6000. Oral tradition handed down and then written down can only record the period which is dealt with. They could only speak of their experience of the world as it was. If they had been alive during the age of Dinosaurs, they could hardly have missed them, seeing they were so large, unless there weren't any in the Biblical lands. The opening of Genesis is a story, an attempt to make sense of how the world came into being. Certainly there were no human around, to pass on the oral tradition. Do those who calculate the age of the Earth based on the Bible treat the creation as happening in 6 days, with one day for God to rest, and then add all the years afterwards to the first 'week'? Please remember the following from 2 Peter 3:8: 'But do not forget this one thing, dear friends: With the Lord a day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years are like a day.' Peter is effectively saying in one sentence that the Creation took 7000 years. So that contradicts the 6000 year claim. then you need to add the 2007 years since the birth of Jesus, not to mention the many thousand years of the Old Testament. By my loose reckoning that must make at least 13000 years. No, the Biblical calculation is flawed, even if you accept the Bible as literally true, it cannot be 6000, unless you discount Peter. I go with the Billions.
23. The Earth is approximately 4.5 billion years old, not a hard 6,000 years. (6000 years old? To the day?). The Earth's estimated age is derived by the radiometric dating of the oldest known minerals on the planet as well as radiometric dating of moon rocks and meteorites. Radiometric dating, not to be confused with simply "carbon dating," is a process of measuring the decay of naturally occurring radioactive isotopes in objects. By contrast, creationists argue the Earth's age is 6,000 years old because "the Bible said so." That's not to say the Bible is incorrect, but its only a version of recorded history-- not scientific data. More to the point, if the Christian Gospel includes 4 different versions of Jesus' story (Mark, Luke, Matthew, John), then reason tells us that the bible might itself be a variation of the true events surrounding creation. Think of a courtroom trail... if the jury had to weigh evidence in a murder case, would they take the murder's claims over hard scientific data? Dinosaurs first appeared over 230 million years ago and lived for approximately 150 million years (modern man or homo sapiens have only been present for 200,000 years). Fossilized dinosaur remains can be found all over the world.
24. ADAM and EVEe were the first and only two parents correct? So how is it that when CAIN was cast out to the land of Nod there was a wife for him? how is it that there was ANYONE that CAIN wasn't related to. It is because these stories were intended to teach lessons of morality not natural history. In GENESIS we read about The Garden of Eden and the "tree of the knowledge OF GOOD AND EVIL" but that last little bit of the description always seems to get dropped to suit the puritanical preachers who just want to say DON'T QUESTION THE BIBLE EVER! Eat not of the tree of KNOWLEDGE. PERIOD. I dont think God gave us the massive intelligence that we have to let us sit around all day in the garden and get a tan. He put the secrets of our existence into the very fibre of our being and challenged us to find them. You have only to look at Darwin's work with genaeology to appreciate Gods handywork. Knowledge is not the enemy. It is the temptation to do bad things with it. There are all the rocks and carbon dated materials to easily date the earth. Even the Universe they have down to about the last fraction of a second. But what happened to bring the big bang into reality is where God's power is most obvious Being good in the garden of eden, in the absence of any negative influence should have been quite easy. The real test is : Can we be good people when we know all that we now know.
25. The Bible.As for as the dinosaurs',God made them too. HE is GOD ,HE can do anything and so can you "only" through HIM.Philippians4:13.
26. Billions, which fits in with the Bible just fine.