How Old is the Earth?

[kevkeegsdad]

I can try.

"Now the Earth was formless and void, darkness was over the face of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters."

Genesis 1:2

As I said earlier God had already created the physical Universe.

Now in 2 we are asked to change our perspective. God was hovering over the waters. This would indicate to me that "we" are now on the surface of the world after the formation of the cosmos and planetary masses. Water by whatever means you want to use be it meteorites with Ice or divine design is present on the surface of the earth.

The Earth at this time is still dark because of the dense atmosphere and the remaining "dust" particles circling the sun.

Slowly the light from the sun begins to hit the surface of the planet...giving us evaporation and cumulous clouds to provide rain. As seen in

And God said, "Let there be an expanse between the waters to separate water from water."

So God made the expanse and separated the water under the expanse from the water above.

I consider this to be the formation of the rain, thunderstorms, etc.

Then on the 4th day the moon is captured in orbit knocking off an even larger chunk of the dense atmosphere thus exposing (or making it transparent) the planetary surface to a clear view of the heavens...giving us the sun and the moon and the stars in the heavens.

God Bless.

Kevin

[kevkeegsdad]

Sorry, let me see if I can answer a little more succinctly.

The all existed prior to light then Big Bang!

The planets form. We change our perspective to the face of the waters on earth.

we have the formation of rain etc through a thick atmosphere.

we then have land masses on the surface start to appear through evaporation and tectonic plate shifting. Land and sea is formed.

then we get the formation of plant life...probably nothing to tall as the planets surface is still under extreme stress gradually as things progress the plant life becomes more advanced as the surface conditions stabilize.

then we get a glancing blow that traps the moon in orbit further cleaning up the atmosphere making way for the water to teem with living creatures.

Most likely non-vertebrates at first then progressing into more complicated life forms.

Then God creates the land animals...by this time both the plant life and the surface have become more habitable.

Then after the animals are established and things progress...God creates man in his image.

I am of course using yom to mean something other than a 24 hour period.

I try to remember also that we have a man writing this who has no scientific knowledge and a vocabulary of roughly 3000 words...and at that he still seems to have got the progressive order right...

[kevkeegsdad]

Most of this information came from Purdue university physicist E. Carlson, and an unnamed astronomer.

God Bless.

Kevin

[VRSpock]

If you read much on the research being done with the string theory you can get a sense of just how much we don't know of the universe and how it was made and how old it really is.

There appears to be at least 10 deminsions is space - time and we can only work with it mathmatically for it is not within our senses to perceive how the other's look. We can only see how they work together.

Someday, I'll ask Him how he did all this and maybe with our new bodies and upgreded brains, I'll be able to understand. If not........ what does it really matter?

You are so right that we don't know much about the universe. How can we possibly fathom the creation of the universe? The phyical laws that we understand here in our backyard are very relative and there is no way to apply them to our understanding of Creation.

I hear about rate of decay this and rate of decay that, but time itself is relative to gravity. Smash up a nucleus and the quarks and leptons left can only exist under the physical laws we take for granted for only a few seconds.

Amen, it doesn't really matter how He did it. Quantum physics and 10 dimensions of reality and relativity that allows all the physical laws to be bent only goes to strengthen what I already know to be true.

[papa T]

How old is the Earth.....?....I believe its around 6 thousand years old....But thats only according to my limited Knowledge...God Created the earth in 6 days...and to God...a day is as a thousand years...and a thousand years is as a day....I dunno....Doesnt really matter to me?...all that I know is that I'm here..and God is with us....PTL....

[Guest mscoville]

Howdy Kevkeegsdad,

I was wondering about this.

When we get to the part about God having made light, because of the verb tenses we have no idea if he made them 5 minutes ago or 5 million years ago according to the word yom.

So the Hebrew words for Night and Day don't appear? Or they do appear but you're saying without the tenses to tell us how long ago those days occured? We know it must be past tense, since it was written by Moses who wasn't there. That seems irrelevent to whether or not the days consisted of a 24 hour period, or were huge spans of time. Wouldn't the fact that the words for day and night appear give us the context of whether the days were days as we know them or as we see them in the rest of Genesis? Also I'd have to say we certainly don't get the timeframe of how long ago it all occured from the first two chapters. We get that time frame from the geneologies contained in the Bible. Or are there specific verb tenses that also tell how long ago something occured other than just past present and future, but actually specific amounts of passed time? Please clarify this for me brother. God Bless.

In Love,

Martin

[kevkeegsdad]

Martin, I am a little shaky on the verb tenses myself...from my understanding the past tense is non-specific as to length of time, and is only used as in "I made a pie." which gives no real time frame. And "I will make a pie." again I could make it tomorrow or next year.

When it comes to "God made..." this implies he has already made them, but as you

say from Moses point of view it is all past tense. I take it to mean that between Genesis 1 and 3 we have an event that has taken place that has no real time frame other than it has happened. If God brought into existence natural events such as the Big Bang, or even Stephen Hawkings' funnel with a bubble we have no real "time" from that and the passage of "His face moving upon the waters."

As far as the use of yom is concerned it can be translated as Yod said as day or epoch...my guess is that the translator took it to mean day and supplied the 24 hour time reference. We aren't even given the celestial bodies from the Earth's perspective until "day" four.

To me I don't see a contradiction between the Bible and science...from the perspective of the earth it is old from the perspective of human life it is relatively new...granted a lot of this is subject to the perspective of who is conveying the message.

Am I making any sense?

God Bless,

Kevin

[Guest mscoville]

Howdy Brother,

I hear what you're saying, but my only point is not how long ago it happened, but rather that in the Bible we're told the initial creation took six days. That section of scripture has nothing to do with (in my mind) how long ago it occured, but rather how long it took. Now without any planets and no gravity anywhere in the Universe or whatever was there, you could make a case for time being vastly different. But what the Bible describes is a week consisting of six literal days unless we interpret it from outside knowledge. The geneologies give us a rough estimate of the age of the earth. Ha, boy I know this debate will go on until Jesus returns. Ha. God Bless you!

Your Brother,

Martin

[Cerran]

I guess the best answer for you mscoville then is: Older than your grandparents.

[kevkeegsdad]

The geneologies give us a rough estimate of the age of the earth.

These have also always given me a headache when I try to figure it out.

Does Adam's aging take place from the moment of his creation or the moment of his knowledge and his awareness of death and expulsion? How long did Adam and Eve live in the garden? Who did Cain and Abel marry?

Cain lay with his wife and she bore a son...Enoch. Cain was building a city he named after his son...a city? For at the most 8 or 9 people?

These are the kind of questions that used to get me yelled at in Sunday school and kept me agnostic until my 30's.

I have faith in God and Jesus, and understand that there are somethings I will never know in this life.

God Bless,

Kevin