# 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:** 11\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![Askance](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/askance/32/8281_2.png) [@Askance](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Askance)\ **Post date:** [August 8, 2011, 6:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-old-is-the-christian-concept-of-a-young-earth/591766/41 "2011-08-08T06:28:37Z")
> [@thelabdude](#): > > They ate the fruit of the tree of knowledge\*\*, not the tree of life\*\*. > [@kanicbird](#): > > We don’t know that. > \ > It was a act of mercy IMHO that God prevented them from eating of the tree of life. Erm, what? You don’t know whether they ate from the tree of life or not, yet you’re sure god prevented them from doing so? ---
**Author:** ![Mangetout](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mangetout/32/19_2.png) [@Mangetout](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mangetout)\ **Post date:** [August 8, 2011, 7:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-old-is-the-christian-concept-of-a-young-earth/591766/42 "2011-08-08T07:22:13Z")
> [@Askance](#): > > Erm, what? You don’t know whether they ate from the tree of life or not, yet you’re sure god prevented them from doing so? If you read the whole of the post you quoted, **kanicbird** ’s meaning is quite clear and non-contradictory. We don’t know whether they ate from the tree of life BEFORE they ate from the treee of knowledge, and fell - all we know is that AFTER they ate from the tree of knowledge, and fell, they were prevented from eating from the tree of life. ---
**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 8, 2011, 1:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-old-is-the-christian-concept-of-a-young-earth/591766/43 "2011-08-08T13:17:34Z")
> [@Der\_Trihs](#): > > And it makes it harder for us to pretend the universe revolves around us if we admit that we haven’t been here for almost all of its history. Yeah, that’s an even bigger reason. It’s like the ‘if a tree falls in the forest and nobody’s there, did it make a sound’ riddle. It’s laughably ridiculous. Of course it did! Sound is the compression & rarefaction of air molecules. Its existence is not defined (or in any way effected) by it being ‘heard’ or not by a human. ---
**Author:** ![Wendell\_Wagner](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/8491ac/32.png) [@Wendell\_Wagner](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wendell_Wagner)\ **Post date:** [August 8, 2011, 1:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-old-is-the-christian-concept-of-a-young-earth/591766/44 "2011-08-08T13:38:06Z")
coremelt, in the Hindu cosmology, the universe is cyclic and eternal, but it is 158.7 trillion years old in the present cycle (assuming that this article correctly represents Hindu cosmology): > **[Hindu cosmology](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hindu_cosmology)** > > Hindu cosmology is the description of the universe and its states of matter, cycles within time, physical structure, and effects on living entities according to Hindu texts. Hindu cosmology is also intertwined with the idea of a creator who allows the world to exist and take shape. > All matter is based on three inert gunas (qualities or tendencies): > There are three states of the gunas that make up all matter in the universe: (That citation was previously given, but I might as well give it again.) The entire cycle will last for 311 trillion years according to them. And I still have no idea how any of this was calculated. Incidentally, if the universe has been around an infinite time in the past and will continue an infinite time in the future according to Hindu calculations and in Ussher’s calculations it is 6014 years old and will end at some definite time in the future, it’s possible to argue that Ussher is closer to the currently accepted age of 13.7 billion years with the end in some distant future at the time of the Big Rip than the Hindus were. After all, any two finite numbers are closer to each other than either of them is to an infinite number. No, this is not a good argument for anything, but doubtlessly someone has made it. ---
**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 8, 2011, 2:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-old-is-the-christian-concept-of-a-young-earth/591766/45 "2011-08-08T14:18:33Z")
**Coremelt** , do you know how the ancient Hindus calculated their dates? Here’s Ussher’s Annals of the Old Testament if anyone is curious (in PDF). Everybody knows he gave the 4004 BC date, but I don’t know how many people have actually read it. [http://ia700301.us.archive.org/30/items/AnnalsOfTheWorld/Annals.pdf](http://ia700301.us.archive.org/30/items/AnnalsOfTheWorld/Annals.pdf) ---
**Author:** ![Tyrrell\_McAllister](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tyrrell_mcallister/32/16772_2.png) [@Tyrrell\_McAllister](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tyrrell_McAllister)\ **Post date:** [August 8, 2011, 5:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-old-is-the-christian-concept-of-a-young-earth/591766/46 "2011-08-08T17:45:35Z")
> [@Captain\_Amazing](#): > > Herodotus estimated the age of the earth at about 20,000 years. Herodotus talked about some geological processes that he estimated took 20,000 years to finish. But that only says that the Earth is _at least_ 20,000 years old. Did he say anything to imply that the Earth wasn’t much older than that? ---
**Author:** ![md2000](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/73ab20/32.png) [@md2000](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/md2000)\ **Post date:** [August 8, 2011, 6:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-old-is-the-christian-concept-of-a-young-earth/591766/47 "2011-08-08T18:25:42Z")
I suppose part of the problem is that until the last few centuries, we did not have Wikipedia, Encyclopedia Britannica, or any other collection of common reference tools readily available, nor the scientific literature to fill them with meaningful data. A person with a reasonably good library might be able to referene what had been in the last centuries, or even a millenia (or several, in Egypt). But there was not a source to consult on “exactly when did this city get founded and what about the people before”? Rome as it expanded knocked out the Eutruscans, IIRC, but there’s not a lot preserved in Roman history about them or who they knocked out to take the land, etc. Similarly, the marauding Isrealites took out the Caananites, but who was there before them? (And what information about such would they preserve?) Hellenistic or earlier expansions simply replaced earlier occupants in many areas without collecting data. Similarly, what level of civilization was there? We see the developments of classical Greece for example, and many popularizations of the Trojan War tend to assign the same level of construction to the centuries older civilization - which likely built only minor walls and smaller structures. SImilarly, any other technical progress was likely obscured by lack of technical documentation. Lacking this ability to estimate real progress, I suspect most civilizations assumed they were a minor pinnacle of accomplishment in an perpetual ongoing cycle of “more of the same” and so did not consider the earth as having a “beginning”. Any suggestion to an age of the earth probably got the honest answer “who knows, there’s no way to tell” or the mystical answers provided by some belief system with no physical basis. Note that Herodotus has no difficulty wth an age of at least 20,000 years. Life was just full of mysteries before the age of science. Now the mysteries are just deeper and more esoteric. ---
**Author:** ![coremelt](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/4491bb/32.png) [@coremelt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/coremelt)\ **Post date:** [August 8, 2011, 6:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-old-is-the-christian-concept-of-a-young-earth/591766/48 "2011-08-08T18:49:27Z")
> [@Wendell\_Wagner](#): > > coremelt, in the Hindu cosmology, the universe is cyclic and eternal, but it is 158.7 trillion years old in the present cycle (assuming that this article correctly represents Hindu cosmology): It misses out an important detail, namely that each brahma day and night cycle (4.32 billion years x 2), is pretty much the equivalent of the big bang, all life and matter is reset and destroyed. So our observable universe is 8.64 billion years old in Hindu cosmology. AFAIK the other cycles past one Brahma day/night are claimed to have been divinely revealed, but are unknowable to humans. The difference between the Brahma Day reset and the brahma year reset that the same souls are apparently reborn again in a new Brahma day. Then at the end of a Brahma year (158 trillion years), that slate is wiped clean and its a whole new batch of souls, once a Brahma year ends all souls that exist are never reborn again. I’m hoping a Vedic eschatologist will come by and tell us where those dates come from, I know they are defined in the Vig Reda and Upanishads but specifically which verses I haven’t been able to track down. ---
**Author:** ![thelabdude](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/dc4da7/32.png) [@thelabdude](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/thelabdude)\ **Post date:** [August 8, 2011, 10:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-old-is-the-christian-concept-of-a-young-earth/591766/49 "2011-08-08T22:48:43Z")
> [@md2000](#): > > Life was just full of mysteries before the age of science. Now the mysteries are just deeper and more esoteric. Yes, I can remember when matter was made up of neutrons, protons, and electrons. Well there were those troubling photons too. Somebody once compared knowledge to an island. The more we learn the bigger the island, but the larger the shoreline of the unknown. ---
**Author:** ![mac\_bolan00](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/b3f665/32.png) [@mac\_bolan00](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mac_bolan00)\ **Post date:** [August 9, 2011, 1:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-old-is-the-christian-concept-of-a-young-earth/591766/50 "2011-08-09T01:47:10Z")
> [@thelabdude](#): > > Yes, I hate it when people are right for the wrong reason. I also hate having to make a decision without good information. Ussher made good use of what he had at the time. > > When did the concept of geological features being the result of ongoing processes first arise? late 18th century by geologist james hutton. the neptunists (rocks formed in a universal ocean) and plutonists (everything basically started molten) started jogging their minds rather late: 1700s. before that, it was mostly biblical and popular lore. but both neptuns and plutos at least began to take the naturalist view and purly through physical observation, conclude that rock and structures were formed through various natural processes (that are observable or easily inferred.) ---
**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 9, 2011, 1:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-old-is-the-christian-concept-of-a-young-earth/591766/51 "2011-08-09T01:59:30Z")
> [@Tyrrell\_McAllister](#): > > Herodotus talked about some geological processes that he estimated took 20,000 years to finish. But that only says that the Earth is _at least_ 20,000 years old. Did he say anything to imply that the Earth wasn’t much older than that? I don’t think so. And, he actually says that the process took 20,000 years at most to finish. Here’s the actual passage, talking about Egypt: > [@](#): > > In Arabia, not far from Egypt, there is a long and narrow gulf running inland from the sea called the Erythraean, of which I will here set down the dimensions. Starting from its innermost recess, and using a row-boat, you take forty days to reach the open main, while you may cross the gulf at its widest part in the space of half a day. In this sea there is an ebb and flow of the tide every day. My opinion is that Egypt was formerly very much such a gulf as this- one gulf penetrated from the sea that washes Egypt on the north, and extended itself towards Ethiopia; another entered from the southern ocean, and stretched towards Syria; the two gulfs ran into the land so as almost to meet each other, and left between them only a very narrow tract of country. Now if the Nile should choose to divert his waters from their present bed into this Arabian gulf, what is there to hinder it from being filled up by the stream within, at the utmost, twenty thousand years? For my part, I think it would be filled in half the time. How then should not a gulf, even of much greater size, have been filled up in the ages that passed before I was born, by a river that is at once so large and so given to working changes? > > Thus I give credit to those from whom I received this account of Egypt, and am myself, moreover, strongly of the same opinion, since I remarked that the country projects into the sea further than the neighbouring shores, and I observed that there were shells upon the hills, and that salt exuded from the soil to such an extent as even to injure the pyramids; and I noticed also that there is but a single hill in all Egypt where sand is found, namely, the hill above Memphis; and further, I found the country to bear no resemblance either to its borderland Arabia, or to Libya- nay, nor even to Syria, which forms the seaboard of Arabia; but whereas the soil of Libya is, we know, sandy and of a reddish hue, and that of Arabia and Syria inclines to stone and clay, Egypt has a soil that is black and crumbly, as being alluvial and formed of the deposits brought down by the river from Ethiopia. > > One fact which I learnt of the priests is to me a strong evidence of the origin of the country. They said that when Moeris was king, the Nile overflowed all Egypt below Memphis, as soon as it rose so little as eight cubits. Now Moeris had not been dead 900 years at the time when I heard this of the priests; yet at the present day, unless the river rise sixteen, or, at the very least, fifteen cubits, it does not overflow the lands. It seems to me, therefore, that if the land goes on rising and growing at this rate, the Egyptians who dwell below Lake Moeris, in the Delta (as it is called) and elsewhere, will one day, by the stoppage of the inundations, suffer permanently the fate which they told me they expected would some time or other befall the Greeks. On hearing that the whole land of Greece is watered by rain from heaven, and not, like their own, inundated by rivers, they observed- “Some day the Greeks will be disappointed of their grand hope, and then they will be wretchedly hungry”; which was as much as to say, “If God shall some day see fit not to grant the Greeks rain, but shall afflict them with a long drought, the Greeks will be swept away by a famine, since they have nothing to rely on but rain from Jove, and have no other resource for water.” > > And certes, in thus speaking of the Greeks the Egyptians say nothing but what is true. But now let me tell the Egyptians how the case stands with themselves. If, as I said before, the country below Memphis, which is the land that is always rising, continues to increase in height at the rate at which it has risen in times gone by, how will it be possible for the inhabitants of that region to avoid hunger, when they will certainly have no rain, and the river will not be able to overflow their cornlands? At present, it must be confessed, they obtain the fruits of the field with less trouble than any other people in the world, the rest of the Egyptians included, since they have no need to break up the ground with the plough, nor to use the hoe, nor to do any of the work which the rest of mankind find necessary if they are to get a crop; but the husbandman waits till the river has of its own accord spread itself over the fields and withdrawn again to its bed, and then sows his plot of ground, and after sowing turns his swine into it- the swine tread in the corn- after which he has only to await the harvest. The swine serve him also to thrash the grain, which is then carried to the garner. > > If then we choose to adopt the views of the Ionians concerning Egypt, we must come to the conclusion that the Egyptians had formerly no country at all. For the Ionians say that nothing is really Egypt but the Delta, which extends along shore from the Watch-tower of Perseus, as it is called, to the Pelusiac Salt-Pans, a distance of forty schoenes, and stretches inland as far as the city of Cercasorus, where the Nile divides into the two streams which reach the sea at Pelusium and Canobus respectively. The rest of what is accounted Egypt belongs, they say, either to Arabia or Libya. But the Delta, as the Egyptians affirm, and as I myself am persuaded, is formed of the deposits of the river, and has only recently, if I may use the expression, come to light. If, then, they had formerly no territory at all, how came they to be so extravagant as to fancy themselves the most ancient race in the world? Surely there was no need of their making the experiment with the children to see what language they would first speak. But in truth I do not believe that the Egyptians came into being at the same time with the Delta, as the Ionians call it; I think they have always existed ever since the human race began; as the land went on increasing, part of the population came down into the new country, part remained in their old settlements. In ancient times the Thebais bore the name of Egypt, a district of which the entire circumference is but 6120 furlongs. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-old-is-the-christian-concept-of-a-young-earth/591766.md?page=2)