Expert: Griff Ruby - 2/19/2008

Question
Dear Griff,

            My questions are I believe the Earth was made in a Thousand year period I feel like the earth is only 7,000 or 10,000 years old not billions. Do you agree? I am a creationist.

Young Earth creationists believe that the Earth is "young", on the order of 6000 to 10,000 years old, [21] rather than the age of 4.5 billion years!The Bible says the earth is about 6000 years old. Who is telling the truth? God or scientists?

The Bible says the world is about six thousand years old. How do we arrive at that number? The Bible provides a complete genealogy from Adam to Jesus. You can go through the genealogies and add up the years. You'll get a total that is just over 4,000 years. Add the 2,000 years since the time of Jesus and you get just over 6,000 years since God created everything.

Is there anything wrong with figuring out the age of the earth this way? No. There is nothing to indicate the genealogies are incomplete. There is nothing to indicate God left anything out. There is nothing in the Bible that indicates in any way that the world is older than 6,000 years old.

The Bible does tell us, however, that the fossils we find could not have been buried before God created Adam. The animals whose bones became fossilized had to have died after God created Adam. That means those fossils must be less than 6,000 yers old.

Here's why:The animal has to first die. That's rather obvious. When did death enter the world? Not until Genesis chapter three when Adam and Eve disobey God. So up until that time neither people nor animals died. So, based on the Bible, there could not be any bones to create fossils until after the fall.

Here's another Biblical reason why the fossils we find could not have been buried before God created Adam:

When we examine fossils, in some of them we see evidence of sickness, disease and cancer. There is evidence of violence and of one animal eating another. So there were some problems. Not everything was good.

Yet, at the end of day six of creation: "God saw all that He made and behold a man. It was very good." (Genesis 1:31 NASB)

God didn't call His creation just good. He called it very good. A world with sickness, disease, cancer and violence is not good. So, the fossilized bones we now find had to have come from animals that died after God created Adam, and after the fall.

Dinosaurs and People:
We've already seen that, based on God creating both land animals and Adam on day six, that the Bible is saying that dinosaurs and people must have lived together.Based on the Bible, is it possible that people and dinosaurs lived together?

Wouldn't the dinosaurs just eat all the people?

The Bible tells us what animals, including dinosaurs, ate. During day six of creation God said: "Behold, I have given you every plant yielding seed that is on the surface of all the earth, and every tree which has fruit yielding seed; it shall be food for you; and to every beast of the earth and to every bird of the sky and to every thing that moves on the earth which has life, I have given every green plant for food; and it was so." - Genesis 1:29-30 NASB)

God created Adam and Eve, and all the animals as vegetarians! All of the animals, including dinosaurs, eat plants.

But, what about those BIG, sharp teeth? Take T-Rex for example, certainly he was a meat eater.

Big, sharp teeth do not mean an animal is a meat eater. Bears have teeth that are big and sharp, similar to a lion's. Yet many bears are mostly vegetation. Chinese Pandas have very sharp teeth. They need those sharp teeth because bamboo, their only food, is very hard to chew.

There are numerous examples of animals that only eat plants, and that have very sharp teeth. An animal with big, sharp teeth just means that it is an animal with big, sharp teeth--nothing more.

So, Adam and Eve did not have to worry about being eaten by dinosaurs.

By the way, it not until Genesis 9:3, just after Noah's flood and about 1500 years after Adam and Eve were created, that God gives the animals to man as food. From that point on people started eating meat.

Day 1: The heavens, the earth, light and darkness.

Day 2: Heaven

Day 3: Dry land, the seas, and vegetation.

Day 4: The sun, the moon and the stars.

Day 5: Living creatures in the water, birds in the air.

Day 6: Land animals and people.

Day 7: God "rested".

There is something interesting to note in this list. Let me ask a question:

What are most dinosaurs?

They are land animals.

When were all land animals created?

Day six. So on what day must dinosaurs have been created? On day six, the same day people were created.

That's interesting. Could it be the Bible is saying people lived with dinosaurs? Is there any evidence that people lived with dinosaurs? The answer to both of these questions is, "yes". But let's start at the beginning to understand what the Bible is saying.

How Long Is A Day?

There is a theory that says each of God's days in Genesis were actually millions of years for us. Is this true? Maybe we need to ask what does the word "day" mean in Genesis?

The Hebrew word "yom" is translated as day in Genesis. Just as our word "day" can have different meanings based on its context, so can the word "yom". For example, in the Old Testament "yom" is translated to mean a 24 hour day 1109 times. It means a long, long period of time--such as an age--about nine times.

However, every time the word "yom" is used with the term evening or morning in the Bible, it means a regular 24 hour day.

Every time the word "yom" is used with a number, such as "40 yom" (40 days), it means a regular 24 hour day.

What we now see is that in Genesis chapter one God is going out of His way to emphasize that each day is a normal 24 hour day. For example in verse five He says:

"And there was evening and there was morning, one day."

Verse 8: "And there was evening and there was morning, a second day."

Verse 13: "There was evening and there was morning, a third day."

For each day of creation the pattern is the same: evening, morning, number, day.

Just part of that pattern, for example using the words "evening" and "day" together, tell us it was a 24 hour day. But God tells us in three ways -- evening, morning, number -- that the word day means... an ordinary 24 hour day.

God is making it very clear: He created everything in six ordinary days.

Discover the crucial key needed to unlock the unbeliever's heart.

If you are experiencing evangelical frustration over lost souls, unrepentant sinners, and backslidden "believers," then look no further. This radical approach could be the missing dimension needed to win our generation to Christ. Read the bible its good for the soul. :-)Nearly all creationist groups believe our planet is somewhere around 6000 years old. Most scientists see the earth's age as ranging from hundreds of billion years old. I think that is false I believe God made the year to be about 6000yrs. I debunk the 4.6 billion theory.

The Earth is accepted by scientists to be around 4.5 billion years old. ...

Nobody in the debate would agree on a 100-year-old Earth. Except Bible & christians. So what do you think?  

Answer
"Young Earth" Creationism is a hoax.  It is based sloppy and lazy Bible exegesis (possibly innocent) and seriously fudged and misrepresented scientific findings (no possibility of mistake here; the people who came up with the supposed "scientific" reasons for a young earth all know they are lying).
In fact, it is only certain ones of the Protestants who insist upon such a literalist interpretation of the days of Genesis (and where is their literalism when it comes to the Bread being literally Christ's own Body as He Himself said?).  The Church has never insisted upon such a reading (though the text is ambiguous enough to allow it as one of several possible readings), and many Church Fathers and Doctors, such as St. Augustine, have opined upon a very ancient earth, and that without the benefit of any modern scientific findings.  Other such Fathers and Doctors, such as St. Athanasius, have opined that the Creation was absolutely instantaneous, not even allowing for the putative "seven days" of whatever length mentioned in Sacred Scripture.
The point of this account in Scripture was not about specifying any exact where or when or how of Creation, but of Who (God) it is that created and what (everything of every possible sort) it is that He created.  The one thing that the Church does insist upon is that there was a historical Adam who (with his wife) sinned against God and had to be cast out of Paradise, and who is the forefather of us all, and that God intervened in his creation in that he was given the first truly human soul (animals also have souls, albeit of a different sort).  The papal Encyclical Humani Generis by Pope Pius XII (1950) lays all of this out.  To go beyond that is to set oneself up for error and heresy.
For that matter, there are those who have used passages of Scripture to "prove" that the earth is the one non-moving object in the universe (everything else just whips around every day), or even that the earth is flat, and not spherical.  If some ancient poet wrote of his beloved that her eyes are a deeper shade of blue than the sky are we to construe that to mean that the sky had a different color in his day than it does now?
What I see here is that you are still reading Protestant materials and then turning to them for spiritual guidance and belief, instead of being guided by the official Magisterium of the Church.  Is this really something a person "filled with the Holy Ghost" would do?  You tell me.