Most christians are perfectly fine with the earth being very, very old. Biblical fundamentalism is rare and a fairly recent development. Christianity has in the past not been a very literal religion. Those dumb, uneducated and naive enough to ignore observation probably reconcile it on account of being dumb, uneducated and naive.

i read looking for an answer... seriously id like to hear a conclusion, not all this e-bashing...
the only thing i can come up with is that perhaps God sped up the first ~4 billion years into that first day or days; im not sure. however im not sure how thats still just a "day"

confused!

Grunching here, sorry if this has been addressed already. The subject line should probably read "How do Young Earth Creationists or Bible Literalists" reconcile the age of the Earth. Im completely ok with symbolic reading of the Book of Genesis, especially given that time is an irrelevant concept to a timeless being.

And of course, he doesn't say that in the book. Instead, he chooses to use words like "day" that is interpreted by his followers to mean 24 hours until science shows that to be false, in which case it gets reinterpreted to mean "some long period of time", which in reality is meaningless anyway to the timeless being who is doing the creation.

Sounds good to me.

Carbon-14 dating is one type of radiometric dating. Contrary to what creationists believe, it is not the only fom of radiometric dating.

Carbon-14 dating doesn't work well beyond 50,000 years but that is because Carbon-14 has a relatively short half-life of 5730 years.

Potassium-40 has a half-life of 1.3 billion years, and it decays into a noble gas that gets trapped inside a rock, making it ideal for dating old rocks.

Uraniam-Lead is another reliable method of dating old rocks. There's several other chains that are used.

Please know what you're talking about before spewing off ignorant creationist bull****.

First off, He didnt write the book. The point of the creation story is to show that God is the originator of everything. And day is a translation of a word. Im not sure what the original word was but it could easily be a word that doesnt mean precisely a day as we understand it but some period of time. I'll have to check that one though.

i am beginning to study the question of theism. i was pointed to this website by a theist. i haven't studied the material yet, but there are a ton of articles here, which try to show scientific support for a "young" earth. thoughts?

http://www.icr.org/index.php?module=home&action=submitsearch&f_contex t_any=any&f_search_type=homepage&f_keyword_any=age +of+earth

A lot of the life science articles are pretty accurate. There's actually been quite a lot of disproving of old earth theories recently. I'd say at the moment most scientists can't really claim whether they know if we live in an old earth or young earth, although Geologists are certainly predominantly young earth at the moment as the evidence points to all known rocks to be of a young (i.e. under 10,000 years) age.

the word is yom in hebrew and means a 24 hour period. it is pretty clear that the writer of genesis did not have a "day-age" idea in mind when writing.
http://www.bible.ca/tracks/dp-age-bible.htm

is there any other place in the bible where the word "yom" or "day" is used?

do people apply the "really long undefined amount of time" definition to those usages as well?

Sometimes it's a clear 24 hours and sometimes it's a really long undefined amount of time. So of course (to be consistent lol) people decide to apply both usages to various parts of the creation story.

Well this is just wrong. I mean, you can argue that it is supposed to be translated that way, but a 24 hr period is NOT the only meaning. That is just a fact.

And how many of these "pretty accurate" creationist articles have been peer reviewed by real scientists?

LOL amuse me. Please elaborate.

I would also like him to elaborate. Everyone knows that I maintain skepticism about darwinian evolution, but I also read quite a bit about the age of the earth stuff as well.

I read many articles and looked at many websites both for and against the young earth. I found the young earth stuff to be extremely unconvincing.

You are really hung up on this for some reason. Its pretty easy to see that yom in the context of the Genesis creation story is not referring to a 24 hour day. We evaluate the teaching of the Bible in the context of revelation. Scientific discovery is a form of revelation. The scientific evidence regarding the age of the Earth is a good way to evaluate the time periods referred to by the use of the word Yom. The fact of the matter is that literal interpretation of the Creation story is a minority position among most theologians and laymen.

Actually, no. What I'm REALLY hung up on is the fact that plants were created on "long undefined amount of time 3" and sunlight didn't arrive until "long undefined amount of time 4". At least with a 24 hour day, the plants may have been able to survive without sunlight.

And sorry, but I won't buy the idea that the symbolic "light" referred to on day 1 is a legitimate source for photosynthesis when every plant we've ever seen removed from SUNlight has died.

You are trying to ascribe some sort of literal or empirical rigidity to the creation story that most Christians dont even use. Its basically an elaborate strawman youve set up and knocked down. Congratulations.

Umm, no. It says very clearly in Genesis that plants were made on the 3rd day, and the Sun on the 4th.

No matter how long you interpret each "day" to be, this is still absurd.

Not only that, but the Sun was created AFTER the earth according to genesis. Given our knowledge of physics, this is also impossible.

Oh cool someone else wants to kick around the strawman too.

I don't know what your source is for this but it goes way past misrepresentation of evidence and is simply a lie.

sometimes theists try to reconcile the genesis account with modern scientific views that the world is millions/billions of years old. when taken literally, the genesis account puts creation within the past 10,000 years. so, to get around this dilemma, some theists have tried to re-interpret the genesis account to allow for millions/billions of years. the two main approaches are called the "GAP THEORY" and the "DAY-AGE THEORY". neither theory is compatible with a logical and consistent hermeneutical exegesis. this is very ably demonstrated in the following 1 hour video, if you care to watch:
http://www.bible.ca/tracks/dp-age-bible.htm

either the earth is 10,000 years old or less.. or else the genesis account is a fraud. there is no reconciling genesis with a million/billion year old earth.

vulture,

you keep having to qualify your statement to "most christians" don't believe genesis is literal...this means that some do take it literal and that is who these posts are directed towards...there are even some christians on this board who take it literally...

thirddan,

My original post in this thread was merely to point out that distinction. I then got into a side debate with a few about not interpreting Genesis literally. Also, the subject of the OP was how do Christians reconcile the age of the Earth. My answer is the one that most Christians would give you.

Read my post again. My issue isn't with "most Christians", my issue is with what it says in the Bible.

Are you honestly accusing me of strawmanning the interpretation of texts in a book that no two people have EVER completely agreed upon?

Im saying you are treating those passages as if they must be empirically correct, sort of like a Young Earth Creationist would. However I will say that the Genesis creation story is remarkably consistent with how cosmologists theorize the chronology of the Big Bang. You can do your own research on that as its more than I feel like typing out at the moment.