# How old is the Christian concept of a young earth? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [August 6, 2011, 7:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-old-is-the-christian-concept-of-a-young-earth/591766 "2011-08-06T19:57:32Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![I\_Know\_Nothing](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/f04885/32.png) [@I\_Know\_Nothing](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/I_Know_Nothing)\ **Post date:** [August 6, 2011, 7:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-old-is-the-christian-concept-of-a-young-earth/591766/1 "2011-08-06T19:57:32Z")
While listening to the Don Johnson Radio Show, I heard Don Johnson mention that the biblical idea of a young Earth is a modern protestant idea and that many early church fathers, including Augustine, believed in an “old” earth. I thought that after adding up the ages of early biblical characters, you get an age of creation of around 5000 years. So how far back does the young earth creation view of the bible go? ---
**Author:** ![Diogenes\_the\_Cynic](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/e99b99/32.png) [@Diogenes\_the\_Cynic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Diogenes_the_Cynic)\ **Post date:** [August 6, 2011, 8:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-old-is-the-christian-concept-of-a-young-earth/591766/2 "2011-08-06T20:13:23Z")
Ussher came up with his famous date of creation (Sunday, October 23, 4004 BC at 9:00 AM) in the mid 1600’s. Augustine did warn people against literalist interpretations of the Genesis Creation story and said it made Christians look like idiots, but I don’t think the age of the earth, in itself, was disputed that much. Nobody knew how old the earth really was until much later. ---
**Author:** ![Der\_Trihs](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/der_trihs/32/233_2.png) [@Der\_Trihs](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Der_Trihs)\ **Post date:** [August 6, 2011, 8:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-old-is-the-christian-concept-of-a-young-earth/591766/3 "2011-08-06T20:27:35Z")
Yes, it’s the idea that Earth is [so very ancient](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deep_time) that is the more recent development in Western civilization. 5000 years is a very long time on a human scale after all - I doubt many people at the time thought that it _was_ a “young Earth” concept. ---
**Author:** ![thelabdude](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/dc4da7/32.png) [@thelabdude](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/thelabdude)\ **Post date:** [August 6, 2011, 8:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-old-is-the-christian-concept-of-a-young-earth/591766/4 "2011-08-06T20:39:31Z")
I have to agree. I think for a long time Westerners just asumed the earth itself was created within 144 hours of Adam. Cultures had their creation stories and I am sure the Chinese have a story compatible with their recored history. I don’t think most of them have any history before man. I think Usher was the first one to put the information we had together. I don’t think it was until the nineteenth century, that there were serious discussions of earth before man. ---
**Author:** ![Simplicio](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/c37758/32.png) [@Simplicio](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Simplicio)\ **Post date:** [August 6, 2011, 8:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-old-is-the-christian-concept-of-a-young-earth/591766/5 "2011-08-06T20:50:35Z")
> [@I\_Know\_Nothing](#): > > While listening to the Don Johnson Radio Show, I heard Don Johnson mention that the biblical idea of a young Earth is a modern protestant idea and that many early church fathers, including Augustine, believed in an “old” earth. I thought that after adding up the ages of early biblical characters, you get an age of creation of around 5000 years. So how far back does the young earth creation view of the bible go? From wikipedia, quoting Augustine: > [@](#): > > Let us, then, omit the conjectures of men who know not what they say, when they speak of the nature and origin of the human race. For some hold the same opinion regarding men that they hold regarding the world itself, that they have always been… They are deceived, too, by those highly mendacious documents which profess to give the history of many thousand years, though, reckoning by the sacred writings, we find that not 6000 years have yet passed. > > — Augustine The same source says he thought human creation co-incided with the creation of the universe, so apparently he believed in a 6,000 year old earth. ---
**Author:** ![JoelUpchurch](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/f05b48/32.png) [@JoelUpchurch](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JoelUpchurch)\ **Post date:** [August 6, 2011, 9:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-old-is-the-christian-concept-of-a-young-earth/591766/6 "2011-08-06T21:30:04Z")
It is important to remember that the concept that the age of the Earth might be 100s of millions of years old originated with the geologists Hutton and Lyell in the late 18th - early 19th century and was adopted by Darwin. This was disputed by physicists like Lord Kelvin, since their calculations of the possible age of the earth were far less and would not have cooled enough to support life until relatively recently. This wasn’t resolved until the 20th century. ---
**Author:** ![kanicbird](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/5f8ce5/32.png) [@kanicbird](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kanicbird)\ **Post date:** [August 6, 2011, 9:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-old-is-the-christian-concept-of-a-young-earth/591766/7 "2011-08-06T21:50:43Z")
The time scale from the creation of Adam and Eve to the fall is sometimes taken as a unknown length of time, possibly timeless in such estimations. This could add quite a bit to the age of mother earth. ---
**Author:** ![thelabdude](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/dc4da7/32.png) [@thelabdude](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/thelabdude)\ **Post date:** [August 6, 2011, 10:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-old-is-the-christian-concept-of-a-young-earth/591766/8 "2011-08-06T22:32:57Z")
Ah, but Adam was 130 when Seth was born. You also have to allow for time for Cain and Abel. So the fall must have come less than 130 years after Adam and Eve were created. Now how old were they created as? Adults? Babies? Were they teenagers when they ate the forbidden fruit? I always assumed they were created as adults. ---
**Author:** ![Fake\_Tales\_of\_San\_Francisco](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/8491ac/32.png) [@Fake\_Tales\_of\_San\_Francisco](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fake_Tales_of_San_Francisco)\ **Post date:** [August 6, 2011, 11:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-old-is-the-christian-concept-of-a-young-earth/591766/9 "2011-08-06T23:05:07Z")
I thought that before the ‘fall’ Adam and Eve were essentially immortal. Disobeying god made them mortal. I’m not a theist, but it makes sense that their ages only count after they actually start aging. ---
**Author:** ![thelabdude](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/dc4da7/32.png) [@thelabdude](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/thelabdude)\ **Post date:** [August 6, 2011, 11:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-old-is-the-christian-concept-of-a-young-earth/591766/10 "2011-08-06T23:34:24Z")
No, God told the angels they must drive them out of the garden before they eat the fruit of the tree of life and become like us. So I don’t think it is clear exactly when the 130 years should start. By any count, the 130 years is a small part of the age of the earth. ---
**Author:** ![njtt](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/ecd19e/32.png) [@njtt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/njtt)\ **Post date:** [August 6, 2011, 11:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-old-is-the-christian-concept-of-a-young-earth/591766/11 "2011-08-06T23:44:19Z")
> [@thelabdude](#): > > I have to agree. I think for a long time Westerners just asumed the earth itself was created within 144 hours of Adam. Cultures had their creation stories and I am sure the Chinese have a story compatible with their recored history. I don’t think most of them have any history before man. > > I think Usher was the first one to put the information we had together. > > I don’t think it was until the nineteenth century, that there were serious discussions of earth before man. Yes, basically, although the idea that geological evidence shows that the Earth is enormously old actually took hold in the 18th century, although it did not become generally accepted until the first half of the 19th. Despite the relatively late arrival of the Very Old Earth, theory, however, Don Johnson’s point has a lot of validity. There was not really a huge amount of resistance by Christians to “Old Earth Geology” as such, until the rise of Biblical fundamentalism in early to mid 20th century America. There _was_ resistance to uniformitarian geology, but it was mostly motivated by quite legitimate, if ultimately misguided, scientific concerns. Ussher did not really have partisan followers who were prepared to deny the evidence of geology to just preserve a literal reading of the Old Testament. Indeed, I dare say that if Ussher himself had been born a century or two later, he might well have agreed that geological evidence should trump Biblical exegesis on this topic. It was just that, in his day, the Bible provided about the only relevant evidence that anyone was aware of. Present day, dogmatic Young Earth Creationism is indeed a 20th century invention (and actually, originally, a Seventh Day Adventist invention, I believe). ---
**Author:** ![Sampiro](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/2acd7d/32.png) [@Sampiro](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sampiro)\ **Post date:** [August 6, 2011, 11:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-old-is-the-christian-concept-of-a-young-earth/591766/12 "2011-08-06T23:49:53Z")
I live in a very religious area of the country with lots of conservative to fundamentalist Christians, and (anecdotal in 4…3…2…) from what I’ve observed Young Earth Creationists are a minority even of the conservative Christian movement. Most will concede that the Earth is many times older than 6,000 years and reconcile it with “It was created in 7 days but we don’t know what a day is to God”. The 4004 BC date also takes into account belief in the near millennium long lifespans of some of the figures from Genesis. By these accounts Abraham, who famously feared he would never have a son because of his age, finally begat his legitimate son Isaac when he was 100, could have had the following in his obituary: > [@](#): > > He is preceded in death by his beloved wife and half-sister Sarah and survived by their beloved son Isaac, devoted daughter-in-law/grandniece Rebekah, and his grandsons Esau and Jacob. Also around somewhere or other are his cipher of a widow Keturah, his bastard son Ishmael and Ishmael’s wives and 12 named sons and various daughters, children, his six sons by Keturah who are off wandering around the wilderness with some goats Dad gave them when he drove them out, and his great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great grandfather Shem (the son of Noah and survivor of the Ark). Shem would in fact outlive his g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-grandson by 25 years. I don’t know how literally most conservative Christians take these ages. ---
**Author:** ![blindboyard](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/blindboyard/32/2833_2.png) [@blindboyard](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/blindboyard)\ **Post date:** [August 7, 2011, 5:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-old-is-the-christian-concept-of-a-young-earth/591766/13 "2011-08-07T05:28:46Z")
> [@Diogenes\_the\_Cynic](#): > > Ussher came up with his famous date of creation (Sunday, October 23, 4004 BC at 9:00 AM) in the mid 1600’s. > > Augustine did warn people against literalist interpretations of the Genesis Creation story and said it made Christians look like idiots, but I don’t think the age of the earth, in itself, was disputed that much. Nobody knew how old the earth really was until much later. Herodotus knew Egypt was older than ten t housand years, from his geological observations. ---
**Author:** ![Hail\_Ants](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/dc4da7/32.png) [@Hail\_Ants](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hail_Ants)\ **Post date:** [August 7, 2011, 6:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-old-is-the-christian-concept-of-a-young-earth/591766/14 "2011-08-07T06:54:56Z")
> [@Sampiro](#): > > Most will concede that the Earth is many times older than 6,000 years and reconcile it with “It was created in 7 days but we don’t know what a day is to God”. Spencer Tracy pointed this out in **Inherit the Wind** , _“It could’ve been a week, it could’ve been a month, it could’ve been a year, **or ten million years!!!** ”_ I would say that the driving force in not believing in a very old Earth is the same driving force that makes it difficult for some to accept evolution. Namely that it’s simply impossible for us humans to wrap our minds around the notion of such an enormously long time span. You just have to accept that it exists, and move on. Not immediately start imagining ‘waiting’ for that much time to pass, which is what we tend to do. Which is impossible. Does not compute. And your head explodes. So sometimes, to prevent that, you believe it wasn’t really that long. But that means evolution couldn’t have happened, the continents couldn’t have ‘drifted’, galaxies can’t really be that numerous & distant etc. And until we had a ‘reason’ for the Earth being that old, um, why would anyone think that it was? By a reason I mean until scientists discovered things that \*\*\*had \*\*\*to have taken that long it would have been sort of crazy to think that the Earth was billions of years old. ---
**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:** [August 7, 2011, 6:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-old-is-the-christian-concept-of-a-young-earth/591766/15 "2011-08-07T06:57:14Z")
Herodotus estimated the age of the earth at about 20,000 years. ---
**Author:** ![Diogenes\_the\_Cynic](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/e99b99/32.png) [@Diogenes\_the\_Cynic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Diogenes_the_Cynic)\ **Post date:** [August 7, 2011, 7:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-old-is-the-christian-concept-of-a-young-earth/591766/16 "2011-08-07T07:02:58Z")
That’s still a “young earth.” ---
**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:** [August 7, 2011, 7:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-old-is-the-christian-concept-of-a-young-earth/591766/17 "2011-08-07T07:21:03Z")
> [@Diogenes\_the\_Cynic](#): > > That’s still a “young earth.” I was responding to **blindboyard’s** comment about Herodotus estimating Egyptian civilization at 10,000 years old. I didn’t quote it because I was lazy and there wasn’t a post after it when I started. I think a distinction has to be made, though, between people like Ussher, Herodotus, the makers of the Byzantine calender, etc., on the one hand, and modern young earth creationists on the other. Ussher, for instance (and the same is true for Herodotus, the Byzantines, etc), were wrong, we know, but they weren’t mendacious or foolish. Ussher didn’t have the scientific information we have now. He didn’t know about carbon dating, the fossil record, and so on. He had the bible and he had a bunch of historical records, and he used the data he had to come up with a 4004 BC date, which wasn’t remarkable at the time. The general consensus of people who had tried to estimate the age of the earth ranged from 6000-7500 years. The modern Young Earth people have all the advantages that Ussher didn’t. To believe in a 6000 year old earth in the 17th century was a reasonable belief . To believe in a 6000 year old earth in the 21st century requires being willfully ignorant. ---
**Author:** ![kanicbird](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/5f8ce5/32.png) [@kanicbird](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kanicbird)\ **Post date:** [August 7, 2011, 12:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-old-is-the-christian-concept-of-a-young-earth/591766/18 "2011-08-07T12:40:22Z")
> [@thelabdude](#): > > No, God told the angels they must drive them out of the garden before they eat the fruit of the tree of life and become like us. Adam and Eve ate the fruit before God returned to the garden, God asked Adam what he did, and Adam said he ate of the fruit. As a result God removed A&E, not the other way around. ---
**Author:** ![kanicbird](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/5f8ce5/32.png) [@kanicbird](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kanicbird)\ **Post date:** [August 7, 2011, 12:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-old-is-the-christian-concept-of-a-young-earth/591766/19 "2011-08-07T12:58:23Z")
> [@thelabdude](#): > > Now how old were they created as? Adults? Babies? Were they teenagers when they ate the forbidden fruit? I always assumed they were created as adults. There is a interesting line of scripture that may give some insight. [QUOTE=IS 7:] 14 Therefore the Lord himself will give you[c] a sign: The virgin[d] will conceive and give birth to a son, and[e] will call him Immanuel.[f] 15 He will be eating curds and honey when he knows enough to reject the wrong and choose the right, 16 for before the boy knows enough to reject the wrong and choose the right, the land of the two kings you dread will be laid waste. [/QUOTE] Here we have Jesus, as a boy He obtains the knowledge of good and evil. In that day a boy would be before age 12 though after being able to eat solid food. Adam was also made in the image of God, and both Adam and Jesus have direct lineage of God as their direct father. So from that the WAG I have is that A&E were young children (estimating a eternal age of 2-12) at the time of the eating of the fruit. Now what were they before the eating, maybe eternal children in a children’s garden with learning tasks given for them to do. So the question remains, and some wiggle room, for how long Adam and Eve were on the earth in their immortal state. ---
**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:** [August 7, 2011, 1:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-old-is-the-christian-concept-of-a-young-earth/591766/20 "2011-08-07T13:13:54Z")
According to the Midrash, Adam and Eve sinned and were driven out of the Garden of Eden within hours of their creation. And **Sampiro** , yes, Shem outlived Abraham. So did Eber. The Jewish thinking in that is that the human lifespan shortened considerably after the Flood, and then again after the Tower of Babel incident. [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-old-is-the-christian-concept-of-a-young-earth/591766.md?page=2)