Age Of The Earth Research Paper

Christians today have a biblical principle and opinion of the universe existence. Christians believe that God created earth and that he accomplished that in only six days. Genesis 1 explains the creation and the interpretation is so utterly clear and one writer states “Thus, any interpretation that goes beyond a clear plain meaning of the text is considered to compromise Biblical authority and capitulate to evolutionary theories”. One look at the Young Earth View is said to be formed from the Modern English

There are four main views on how our planet Earth was created. The first view is the Young Earth View, which states that planet Earth was created in literal days. God created everything within a seven 24 hour periods. The second view on how the Earth was created is The Day Age (Old Earth) theory. This theory suggests that God created the world in different ages, because one large chunk of time to us might merely mean a day to God. This explains why people believe that the Earth could be billions of years old. The third view of creation is the Restoration View (Gap Theory). This theory suggests that God created the Earth but there was a long gap between each stage that it allowed the Earth to form into what it is today. And last but not least is the Literary Framework which says that each of the other theories are wrong because they all miss the point of what the book of Genesis is trying to explain to us. Me, personally, I believe in the first theory, Young Earth View. That is how I have always looked at it and the other ways just do not seem to make any sense to me. Now that being said, I started considering The Day Age (Old Earth) theory because it seems like it could explain so much of what science has found and it could tie into the book of Genesis. But after reading “The Genesis Debate” a chapter in a book titled “Across the Spectrum Understanding Issues in Evangelical Theology” written by Boyd and Eddy, I noticed that they had some scripture

Herodotus counted layers of earth near the Nile River in 450 B.C.E. The Bible was used in the Middle Ages to compute the age of the Earth. The 18th and 19th centuries brought a more scientific look into determining the age of the Earth by studying the salinities of the oceans, the rates of sedimentation, and models of cooling of different materials in order to calculate the Earth’s age. In 1862, William Thompson calculated the Earth’s age to be 98 million years and recounted that age to determine that it was actually between 20 and 40 million years old. He used a very thorough method and ended up being wrong on

Young- Earth view point on the age of earth is based on not only science but the Bible as well. There try to combine the two areas in an effort to present the true age of the earth. One of the areas they use is how long it takes for material to harden. They present

Properly dating the book of Genesis would allow us to build a timeline of creation which we can be used to trace back to day one of creation. However, this is extremely difficult to determine for two fundamental reasons: (1) the Bible provides no controllable statis- tical data that apply to the problem of absolute chronology; (2) most of the events took place in the preliterate period for which we have no extrabiblical written documents. (Ch. 1 Pg. 28)

Everyone has their opinion and it depends on a person and what they choose to believe or accept. Per the research of Geologic Time (radiometric) the Earth is about 4.600 billions years old. The bible said it’s

To believe in the young Earth theory, is to believe in the Bible. Those that believe in the Bible believe in a literal six day creation for the Earth and all that are upon it. When God spoke the world was brought into existence. On the sixth day God created Adam and Eve. He gave them dominion over all the animals and plants that he created. It wasn’t until the fall of man that any of the animals would start to die and decay. Another belief of a young Earth is the flood of Noah. Many of the young Earth creationists believe in the flood geology. “Instead of the millions of years requires to create fossil fuels such as coal, flood geologists claim that they were formed within a year under the tremendous pressure of the Noachin floodwaters.” (Koperski, 2006) In the book of Genesis we are given the creation account as well as the account of the flood. “In the six hundredth year of Noah’s life, in the second month, the seventeenth day of the month, the same say were all the fountains of the great deep broken up and the windows of heaven were opened. And the rain was upon the Earth forty days and forty nights.” (KJV, Genesis 6:11-12)

Many people today have their thoughts on how the Earth was created. Christians take a biblical perspective of how the universe was created by a creator. One thought that Christians believe is that God created the earth and accomplished this in six days and rested on the seventh day. This is the model of how a week is set up and the model that we currently follow. Jon W. Green states “though differences of opinion exist for various doctrinal issues within Christianity, few are more divisive than controversies surrounding the days of creation and the age of the Earth.” As stated

As stated previously stated old earth creationism is a form of creationism that is based off of the contents of Genesis and does use scientific theories to support itself. The main idea of old earth creationism is that just about everything that happened in Genesis from the Bible is true, but while it is true it is not completely accurate or even in the correct order. What this means is that while Genesis does say everything happens over the course of a week or a seven day period, it does not specify how long a day is. This means that a day could be anywhere from one hundred and sixty eight hours to a few million years. If each day in Genesis is a few million years then that would mean that the bible does partially agree with the big bang theory.

How does current science support each of the Biblical views of Young Earth Scientists(YEC), and Old Earth Scientists(OEC)? This is a question that is disputed among many scientists. Although both groups believe that the Bible is the word of God, they both interpret it differently. For example Young Earth Creationists believe that the earth was literally created in one week. Old Earth Creationists believe, however, that days did not refer to 24 hours, but referred to longer periods of time. It is important for people to understand the differences and similarities between the beliefs of Young Earth Creationists and Old Earth Creationists, so that they can determine which view is supported by science.

The evolution theory talks of up to billions of years to portray the stages that living organisms have gone through up to the present reasoning and intelligent man. It depicts that man has been changing over the years and certainly in evolution, the world is billions of years old. However, the time in Christianity is moderate. God created everything in seven days and there has been no change in human make up. Any person who wishes to support these beliefs should either

I believe with all of the information that Dr. Terry Mortenson gives, he could have given more biblical quotes backing his beliefs. He speaks of the flood, but gives no information from the Bible itself. “Catastrophists believed that the creation was ‘untold ages’ old and that from time to time over those ages before man there had been several major catastrophic floods that destroyed a large percentage of living creatures, which God replaced with new, supernaturally created species” ( Mortenson, 2003). Had he backed up his beliefs with more information from the bible, I think I would have believed more myself. He speaks a lot on old theology studies, more towards the 1600s. I think he could have given examples from closer to the time frame the article is actually about.

For decades the age of the Earth has been a major conflict between science and religion, but why is it such a big conflict? If, in the year AD 1600, an individual had asked an educated European how old the planet Earth was and to recount its history, the response would have been that it was about 6000 years old and that its ancient history was given by the biblical account in Genesis (Changing Views of the History of the Earth). If one asked the same question of an educated European in AD 1900, one would have received a totally different answer (Changing Views of the History of the Earth). The answer would have been the Earth was ancient, there had not been a Noachian flood, and that the species of life had not been fixed over the history of Earth (Changing Views of the History of the Earth). In short, Genesis was an allegory and not literal history (Changing Views of the History of the Earth). This brings up the different views between “young earth creationists” and “old earth creationists” and those that support an infinite universe. The problem today is each side contains major valid points of evidence of both biblical and scientific, on the age of the planet Earth.

The first words in Bible are, “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth” (Genesis 1:1, English Standard Version). This statement leaves a question for modern day society. Does this verse mean God created the universe in six literal days and rest on the seventh? Or could it possibly mean this was a non-literal text that leaves room for the possibility of evolution. Evolution and Creationism have been battling over this issue for many years. What must be realized before examining these two theories is the fact that both require faith. Requiring faith means neither can be proven right completely. These two theories bring to light the literal and non-literal reading of Genesis 1 and 2. Creationism believes in the literal interpretation of the text, and evolution, specifically theistic evolution, believes in non-literal interpretation. The literal interpretation states God created everything in six days just as it states which leaves little wiggle room for the non-literal interpretation. However, there is some scientific reasoning and fact that can reinforce their system of thinking. While a non-literal theistic evolutionist approach is a plausible option of the account in Genesis one, the Creationist’s literal interpretation outweighs the non-literal because the analysis of the text agrees with the literal approach and the current scientific evidence, history, and authority of scripture point to a young earth.

In the early 1800’s James Hutton and Charles Lyell proposed the Old-Earth theory. Due to this theory, many theologians believed the old-Earth theory had been proven by scientists and incorporated the theory into Scripture. The hope of the adaptation was to continue to have credibility with secular scientists. With this hope many will see that historically the Bible has been seen as a conflicting with our academic knowledge such as science.