[nthj]

I'd consider myself a creationist, but I never understood why so many creationists argue for a 10,000 year old earth. If you'll permit me quoting the Bible, here, to explain my point: there is every logical possibility of 60 billion years occurring between $WHEN_TIME_STARTED and $BIBLICAL_FIRST_DAY_WHICH_MUST_BE_NO_MORE_THAN_10_000_YEARS_AGO.

> In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. The earth was without form and void, and darkness was over the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters. <hypothesis: stars are created here. some 60 odd billion years go here, giving plenty of time for starlight to reach the earth> > 3 And God said, “Let there be light,” and there was light. And God saw that the light was good. And God separated the light from the darkness. God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And there was evening and there was morning, the first day.

[Also, not really interested in getting into discussions of which scenario is more likely or whether I'm a fracking idiot. I just wanted to point out that I find it an intellectual curiosity that many creationists get so hung up on the young earth thing, since I'm not convinced that a 60 billion year old earth & biblical literalism are mutually exclusive.]

[ww520]

I thought people were trolling when they claimed the Earth was 6000 years old and it was a good troll, then I found out they really believe in it.

Anyway, the problem with taking Genesis 1 as a historic record is the greatest misinterpretation of the Bible, and created so much trouble for creationists.

[jlgreco]

If you accept an old earth (and I assume a similarly accurate timescale for how long life has been around), how would you expect life not to evolve? Given that much time, it's really just inevitable. How could it possibly not happen?

If you're a catholic-style "theistic evolution" type, then I suppose that is another thing. I'm mostly just curious how you stretch a non-evolution creation/development of life out over more than a couple thousand years. Catholics do it by just calling evolution "divinely guided" or whatever. Of the origin thoughts that involve deities, "young earth/no evolution" and "old earth/theistic evolution" seem the most logical to me.

[MartinCron]

That touches on one of the biggest conceptual problems holding people back from understanding evolution. The timescale is big. Really big. Bigger than human brains are typically capable of handling. I sometimes think that teaching shared ancestry as a starting point is the wrong approach, and that we should focus instead of the science of how old the universe must be (based on things like astronomy and earth science) and how iterative adaptive systems reflect changes over billions of years.

From there, people can arrive at common ancestry all on their own.

[lotharbot]

Among Christians, the "first day of creation is 6000 years ago" theory didn't really gain prominence until the early 1900s, as a part of the Christian Fundamentalist movement (which pushed strong literalism), which itself was a reaction to the Liberal Christianity movement of the late 1800s (which pushed the idea that all of scripture was figurative). Wikipedia has fairly straightforward summaries of the history of both groups.

Consider this very modern-sounding quote:

>> "For who that has understanding will sup­pose that the first, and second, and third day, and the evening and the morning, ex­isted without a sun, and moon, and stars? and that the first day was, as it were, also without a sky? And who is so foolish as to suppose that God, after the manner of a husbandman, planted a paradise in Eden, towards the east, and placed in it a tree of life, visible and palpable, so that one tasting of the fruit by the bodily teeth obtained life? and again, that one was a partaker of good and evil by masticating what was taken from the tree? And if God is said to walk in the paradise in the evening, and Adam to hide himself under a tree, I do not suppose that anyone doubts that these things figuratively indi­cate certain mysteries, the history having taken place in appearance, and not literally."

That was written by Origen of Alexandria, probably around 250 AD (part of http://www.ccel.org/ccel/schaff/anf04.vi.v.v.ii.html ). I've found sentiments of that nature are common among very ancient Christians, as well as among Jews of the same era.

[jtheory]

It seems like you're arguing for a 60 billion year old Earth, but a SUN that was created no more than 10,000 years ago.

"Let there be light" pretty clearly suggests that light didn't exist before that.

[dakimov]

So you don't take the Bible literally, do you?