# How come creationists believe the earth is 6 000 years old? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [February 26, 2011, 10:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-come-creationists-believe-the-earth-is-6-000-years-old/572748 "2011-02-26T22:07:52Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![septimus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/septimus/32/410_2.png) [@septimus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/septimus)\ **Post date:** [February 28, 2011, 5:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-come-creationists-believe-the-earth-is-6-000-years-old/572748/21 "2011-02-28T17:19:49Z")
> [@CurtC](#): > > Also, he had to plant evidence in the Earth, like fossils and unstable isotopes, which would trick us into thinking that everything was really old. > > Would you really want to worship a trickster God who would do those things? Some fundamentalists have told me it was the Devil who created fossils to sow Doubt. :rolleyes: > [@CurtC](#): > > And if he could do all that, he could have just as easily created everything last Thursday, including us with our bogus memories already in place. Who’s to say that didn’t happen? Independent of religion, thinkers like Julian Barbour (on the boundary between physics and philosophy) have proposed, at least as “thought experiment”, such “bogus memory” scenarios. I don’t know if anyone takes such seriously. ---
**Author:** ![drachillix](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/48db29/32.png) [@drachillix](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/drachillix)\ **Post date:** [February 28, 2011, 5:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-come-creationists-believe-the-earth-is-6-000-years-old/572748/22 "2011-02-28T17:31:27Z")
> [@coremelt](#): > > The jewish year 1 is creation Apparently they created an accurate calendar system and a method of documenting and tracking it too, that was one busy year. I feel a jewish accountant joke in there somewhere. ---
**Author:** ![Freddy\_the\_Pig](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/a587f6/32.png) [@Freddy\_the\_Pig](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Freddy_the_Pig)\ **Post date:** [February 28, 2011, 5:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-come-creationists-believe-the-earth-is-6-000-years-old/572748/23 "2011-02-28T17:39:56Z")
> [@GuanoLad](#): > > What annoys me most about this 4004BC nonsense is that it’s based on one person’s solitary dodgy mathematics, that flies in the face of even the most basic incontrovertible evidence, and yet entire swathes of people accept it is… well, gospel truth. I hesitate to speak for creationists, but I doubt that many of the modern ilk are wedded to the exact mathematics of Bishop Ussher. They’re wedded to Biblical literalism, which requires that the earth be _about_ six thousand years old (some allow up to 10,000 years if the genealogies are incomplete), but not to an Anglican archbishop’s “solitary dodgy mathematics”. ---
**Author:** ![Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/e8c25b/32.png) [@Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Really_Not_All_That_Bright)\ **Post date:** [February 28, 2011, 5:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-come-creationists-believe-the-earth-is-6-000-years-old/572748/24 "2011-02-28T17:40:49Z")
> [@Der\_Trihs](#): > > The [Ussher chronology](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ussher_chronology) and similar calculations are I think the usual religious justification for a 6000 year old earth. Interesting that so many people arrived at largely the same conclusion based on guesswork. ---
**Author:** ![Captain\_Amazing](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/6de8d8/32.png) [@Captain\_Amazing](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Captain_Amazing)\ **Post date:** [February 28, 2011, 6:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-come-creationists-believe-the-earth-is-6-000-years-old/572748/25 "2011-02-28T18:18:39Z")
> [@Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](#): > > Interesting that so many people arrived at largely the same conclusion based on guesswork. It’s not that surprising. The bible mentions ages of people and has chronologies of its own. So what you do is you take that chronology and keep going forward until you reach something we have a known date for (like the death of Nebuchadnezzar II, who we know died in 262 BC). They’re not going to be identical, because there are discrepencies in the dates (and different versions of the bible use different dates and ages for people), but they’re going to be close. ---
**Author:** ![Lok](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/e8c25b/32.png) [@Lok](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lok)\ **Post date:** [March 1, 2011, 2:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-come-creationists-believe-the-earth-is-6-000-years-old/572748/26 "2011-03-01T02:27:47Z")
> [@CurtC](#): > > Sure, an omnipotent God _could_ do that, but if you accept it that way, he also had to make light from distant galaxies, and light from most of the stars in our own galaxy, already en route to fool us into thinking that it had been traveling for a long time. Also, he had to plant evidence in the Earth, like fossils and unstable isotopes, which would trick us into thinking that everything was really old. > > Would you really want to worship a trickster God who would do those things? > > And if he could do all that, he could have just as easily created everything last Thursday, including us with our bogus memories already in place. Who’s to say that didn’t happen? When you start invoking a magical trickster God who has an intent to deceive us, there’s no limit, and no way to look at evidence to decide. I have used that argument with a friend who is a Biblical literalist & Young Earth Creationist, to explain why I am neither. For his beliefs to be true, God has to be deliberately lying to us, and why would I want to worship a God like that? ---
**Author:** ![Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/e8c25b/32.png) [@Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Really_Not_All_That_Bright)\ **Post date:** [March 1, 2011, 3:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-come-creationists-believe-the-earth-is-6-000-years-old/572748/27 "2011-03-01T03:20:39Z")
> [@Captain\_Amazing](#): > > It’s not that surprising. The bible mentions ages of people and has chronologies of its own. So what you do is you take that chronology and keep going forward until you reach something we have a known date for (like the death of Nebuchadnezzar II, who we know died in 262 BC). They’re not going to be identical, because there are discrepencies in the dates (and different versions of the bible use different dates and ages for people), but they’re going to be close. Yeah, but it doesn’t mention the ages of most people, and more importantly it very rarely (never?) mentions the ages at which they reproduced. ---
**Author:** ![Noel\_Prosequi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/b19c9b/32.png) [@Noel\_Prosequi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Noel_Prosequi)\ **Post date:** [March 1, 2011, 3:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-come-creationists-believe-the-earth-is-6-000-years-old/572748/28 "2011-03-01T03:26:43Z")
I would draw attention to a particular passage in the wiki linked above about the Ussher chronology. Bishop Ussher was wrong, of that there is no doubt, but even Stephen Jay Gould (who is about as anti-young earth creationist as you can get) was willing to cut him some slack. Gould was resolutely against judging figures from the past by modern standards, and rightly so. Ussher lived in a time when the present understanding of science was so rudimentary that the “just look around, it’s obvious there is a God, how else do you explain all this stuff?” style of “reasoning” had little credible competition. However, Ussher applied standards that might be thought proto-scientific to his inquiry. Rather than guess about the age of the earth, or rely on authority, he went back to the original evidence he had (such as it was) and actually tried to work it out using reason, making such estimates as were inevitably necessary but keeping them to a minimum. In Gould’s view, contrary to the slagging he usually gets, Ussher deserves a teensy bit more respect. He may have been wrong, but he was applying more or less modern methods to the best evidence he had. He was not content simply to rely on ancient authoritative assertions about the age of the earth. In a larger sense, he was wrong, but not unworthy. As the Wiki page quotes Gould: "\*I shall be defending Ussher’s chronology as an honourable effort for its time and arguing that our usual ridicule only records a lamentable small-mindedness based on mistaken use of present criteria to judge a distant and different past Ussher represented the best of scholarship in his time. He was part of a substantial research tradition, a large community of intellectuals working toward a common goal under an accepted methodology\*…" ---
**Author:** ![Captain\_Amazing](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/6de8d8/32.png) [@Captain\_Amazing](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Captain_Amazing)\ **Post date:** [March 1, 2011, 3:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-come-creationists-believe-the-earth-is-6-000-years-old/572748/29 "2011-03-01T03:27:43Z")
> [@Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](#): > > Yeah, but it doesn’t mention the ages of most people, and more importantly it very rarely (never?) mentions the ages at which they reproduced. Genesis 5 and 11 do, though, so you can figure out the length of time between Adam and Abraham. If you’re interested, here’s a copy of Ussher’s Annals of the World, so you can see how he got his numbers: > **[Annals of the World : Ussher, James, 1581-1656 : Free Download, Borrow, and...](http://archive.org/details/AnnalsOfTheWorld/Annals?view=theater)** > > In the years 1650-1654, James Ussher set out to write a history of the world from creation to A.D. 70. The result was published in 1650 as the literary classic... ---
**Author:** ![Cayuga](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/3e96dc/32.png) [@Cayuga](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cayuga)\ **Post date:** [March 1, 2011, 3:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-come-creationists-believe-the-earth-is-6-000-years-old/572748/30 "2011-03-01T03:41:49Z")
> [@Wallenstein](#): > > “His” first language, no? > > Clair = light (as in [Chiaroscuro](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chiaroscuro)), rather than a girl’s name. OK, so the screen name doesn’t necessarily indicate that **Clairobscur** is female. But why do you assume s/he is male? ---
**Author:** ![Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/e8c25b/32.png) [@Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Really_Not_All_That_Bright)\ **Post date:** [March 1, 2011, 3:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-come-creationists-believe-the-earth-is-6-000-years-old/572748/31 "2011-03-01T03:42:52Z")
> [@Captain\_Amazing](#): > > Genesis 5 and 11 do, though, so you can figure out the length of time between Adam and Abraham. > > If you’re interested, here’s a copy of Ussher’s Annals of the World, so you can see how he got his numbers: > > [Annals of the World : Ussher, James, 1581-1656 : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive](http://www.archive.org/stream/AnnalsOfTheWorld/Annals#page/n3/mode/2up) Neat. Thanks! ---
**Author:** ![Noel\_Prosequi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/b19c9b/32.png) [@Noel\_Prosequi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Noel_Prosequi)\ **Post date:** [March 1, 2011, 3:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-come-creationists-believe-the-earth-is-6-000-years-old/572748/32 "2011-03-01T03:54:07Z")
Too late to edit - here is [Gould’s article](http://www.stephenjaygould.org/library/gould_house-ussher.html). Note that of the 2000 odd pages of Ussher’s work, only a sixth or less references biblical material. I gather that some young earth creationists have misrepresented Gould’s generaous concessions to Ussher as somehow support for their position - a proposition so unlikely and so offensive as to beggar belief. Nevertheless, I must say I am disappointed that I did not recognise October 23, 1997 for what it was - the 6000th birthday of the world! I would have thrown a party. 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![GuanoLad](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/guanolad/32/42_2.png) [@GuanoLad](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GuanoLad)\ **Post date:** [March 1, 2011, 4:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-come-creationists-believe-the-earth-is-6-000-years-old/572748/33 "2011-03-01T04:01:12Z")
> [@Freddy\_the\_Pig](#): > > They’re wedded to Biblical literalism, which requires that the earth be _about_ six thousand years old (some allow up to 10,000 years if the genealogies are incomplete), but not to an Anglican archbishop’s “solitary dodgy mathematics”. Isn’t this thread all about how that there’s only one source for this “about six thousand years” number? ---
**Author:** ![sisu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/df705f/32.png) [@sisu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/sisu)\ **Post date:** [March 1, 2011, 4:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-come-creationists-believe-the-earth-is-6-000-years-old/572748/34 "2011-03-01T04:42:26Z")
It must be true, the Bible telled me. ---
**Author:** ![Wallenstein](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/b5a626/32.png) [@Wallenstein](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wallenstein)\ **Post date:** [March 1, 2011, 9:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-come-creationists-believe-the-earth-is-6-000-years-old/572748/35 "2011-03-01T09:39:37Z")
> [@Cayuga](#): > > OK, so the screen name doesn’t necessarily indicate that **Clairobscur** is female. But why do you assume s/he is male? Because I’ve been here a while and I [read](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=6880311&postcount=14)what people write 😉 ---
**Author:** ![Freddy\_the\_Pig](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/a587f6/32.png) [@Freddy\_the\_Pig](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Freddy_the_Pig)\ **Post date:** [March 1, 2011, 2:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-come-creationists-believe-the-earth-is-6-000-years-old/572748/36 "2011-03-01T14:24:59Z")
> [@GuanoLad](#): > > Isn’t this thread all about how that there’s only one source for this “about six thousand years” number? If the thread is about that, it’s wrong. From the wiki link in post #2: > [@](#): > > Ussher’s proposed date of 4004 BC differed somewhat from other Biblically based estimates, such as those of Jose ben Halafta (3896 BC), Bede (3952 BC), Ussher’s near-contemporary Scaliger (3949 BC), Johannes Kepler (3992 BC) or Sir Isaac Newton (c. 4000 BC). Ussher’s specific choice of starting year may have been influenced by the then-widely-held belief that the Earth’s potential duration was 6,000 years (4,000 before the birth of Christ and 2,000 after), corresponding to the six days of Creation, on the grounds that “one day is with the Lord as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day” (2 Peter 3:8). ---
**Author:** ![Enola\_Straight](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/dec6dc/32.png) [@Enola\_Straight](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Enola_Straight)\ **Post date:** [March 1, 2011, 4:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-come-creationists-believe-the-earth-is-6-000-years-old/572748/37 "2011-03-01T16:22:11Z")
Harold Camping professes The Great Flood was _7000_ years ago. [http://jeffandcindy.wordpress.com/2011/01/08/attention-harold-camping-family-radio-listeners/](http://jeffandcindy.wordpress.com/2011/01/08/attention-harold-camping-family-radio-listeners/) ---
**Author:** ![cmkeller](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cmkeller/32/118_2.png) [@cmkeller](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/cmkeller)\ **Post date:** [March 1, 2011, 5:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-come-creationists-believe-the-earth-is-6-000-years-old/572748/38 "2011-03-01T17:24:00Z")
Lok: > [@](#): > > For his beliefs to be true, God has to be deliberately lying to us, and why would I want to worship a God like that? How is it lying when he actually tells us in the Bible just how long ago the world was created? He created a world, which, going forward, would be subject to scientific principles, and to enable man to use said principles, made a fabricated past which would be consistent with such. But in writing the Bible, he clearly stated that it was fabricated rather than actual. ---
**Author:** ![Gymnopithys](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/fbc32d/32.png) [@Gymnopithys](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gymnopithys)\ **Post date:** [March 1, 2011, 5:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-come-creationists-believe-the-earth-is-6-000-years-old/572748/39 "2011-03-01T17:45:30Z")
> [@John\_Mace](#): > > Well, the OP is French, so English is not her first language. I assume it should be “come” as in “how come”, which is really an odd idiom when you think about it. **Clairobscur** means _some_ creationists Well, maybe not. ---
**Author:** ![clairobscur](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/839c29/32.png) [@clairobscur](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/clairobscur)\ **Post date:** [March 1, 2011, 6:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-come-creationists-believe-the-earth-is-6-000-years-old/572748/40 "2011-03-01T18:23:43Z")
> [@Cayuga](#): > > OK, so the screen name doesn’t necessarily indicate that **Clairobscur** is female. But why do you assume s/he is male? I’m male. Since I’m often mistaken for a female, I pointed it out a number of times (also, it’s mentioned in my profile). I guess he has read one of these corrections. Thanks for these answers. I guess that in the future I’ll double guess the statements of the Jewish guy I mentioned above. Even though he’s an atheist, he’s always been very assertive in his statements about Jewish-related stuff. The point of view expressed by **Noel prosequi** (what’s the meaning of this handle, by the way?) about Ussher was pretty interesting, too. And regarding the title of the thread, I meant “how come” (and thought it was spelled “how come **S** ”). [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-come-creationists-believe-the-earth-is-6-000-years-old/572748.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-come-creationists-believe-the-earth-is-6-000-years-old/572748.md?page=3)