How old is the earth? Debate.

Do the math. Show all work: 7 god-days X 1000 years/god-days = 7000 years. It took 7000 years for God to create the universe. QED. :grin:

Well, the Bible says explicitly that the sun was created on the fourth day, but the plants were created on the third. Your question about whether we can have day and night without the sun is a good one. Science says we can\'t, that day and night are meaningless without a sun. But the Bible says that there were day and night for three \'days\' before the sun was created, and if we\'re allowing a day to be an arbitrary amount of time it\'s a lot longer than that. So I still see a contradiction without seeing any way to resolve it. Still, it often happens that I\'ll have some issue or other with which I\'m struggling, and it\'ll seem insurmountable to me but it just doesn\'t bother other people at all. The reverse is also true -- sometimes others get hung up on this or that point while I, though unable to resolve the conflict they point out, am completely unbothered by it. Perhaps this is just one of those cases. If so, I\'m perfectly happy to agree to disagree, and to close by reaffirming your central point about the fundamental compatibility between creation and evolution.

That\'s pretty cool -- I never heard that before! It makes a lot of sense though. I particularly like the part which I bolded.

For those who are interested in these religion/science debates, I would recommend reading a book called Beauty and Unity in Creation. It is written by Dr. Gayle Woloschak (sp?). She is a scientist and a professor at Northwestern University in Chicago. She is one of the Orthodox scientists that advises SCOBA on science issues. She does a good job of explaining that Genesis was not written as a scientific text. Any document, even scriptural ones, should be used for their intended purpose. In my opinion, to read scientific theories into Genesis is not like trying to learn calculus by reading the Psalms. It\'s just not there. I would caution Orthodox Christians from jumping onto Protestant anti-science bandwagons and political causes. Opposing science is not a part of our tradition. Science is self-corrective, theories are tested and if they are proved to be wrong they are discarded. If religious people really believe that a certain scientific theory wrong, all they have to do is wait, if it is wrong, the scientific community will disprove it. Science shouldn\'t try to disprove God, religion shouldn\'t try to discredit science. Pious people can offer their work in science to God, but that is as close as it should get. I don\'t understand why people think that their faith is somehow threatened by one scientific theory or another. But I do think that it is helpful to have this discussion, thank you everyone for your posts. (Sorry about the rant everyone, I hope it helps)

Hmm, an important question to ask is \"Why are you even asking this question?\" I.E. until recent times the whole concept of evolution was basically unknown and not accepted generally in Orthodox circles. It has only become an issue because so many people do not know the tremendous amount of science that supports a Creation and Flood analysis of the evidence. Even many non-Christian scientists do not believe in evolution because of the great holes in the theory of evolution, e.g the wildly varying answers given in dating supposed layers of millions of years of rocks. Those of us who studied science know how unscientific evolution is. And as various quotes have shown, the early fathers disagreed with the Greek notions of what passed for \"evolution\" back then. So the basic question is \"Why do modern Orthodox feel the need to believe in both an unscientific and un_orthodox belief?\" Belief in evolution implies a view of Adam and Eve and history that just does not marry with Genesis nor with what Jesus Christ, Sts. Peter and Paul clearly believed in- a literal Adam and Eve and a literal flood- were they wrong?!!! If they were right then all the supposed evolution evidence is easily explained by a flood. Fr. John D\'Alton

I tend to agree that the use of \"days\" is figurative, or even- you could say symbolic. Because 7 days was the numeric symbol for the completed time, and the 8th day symbolic of the resorection, the \"7th day when God rested\" was mostly profectic, and pointing towards the 7th day when Christ gave himself up on the cross and \"rested\" or \"died, like Fr. Hopko says, he did all he could do for our salvation, the book- or the word was spoken and there he hung on the cross explaining to us what Love is really like. The 7 days of creation and resting were written down for the whole perpose of pointing towards Christ our Savior, the Bible is not a history book although it has history in it- it is a book about Salvation, not about our past in the literal sense.

oops!!! sorry, a huge misspelling... I meant Resurrection

In what follows, please don\'t mistake my intentions for being antagonistic. I can see that we have an incredible amount of ground to cover, so I am merely trying to be as direct as I can. Who said anything about evolution? The topic here is the age of the Earth. Sure, an ancient Earth is a prerequisite for evolution to have occurred, but the Earth was accepted by scientists to be old for decades before evolution was discovered. And the reason it wasn\'t generally known or accepted in Orthodox circles until recently is that it simply wasn\'t around until recently -- that is, if I correctly interpret what you mean by \'recently\'. Well, count me among them! Debating the age of the Earth has for some years been a great hobby of mine, and I furthermore have an above-average training in science, with a MS in physics. Despite all that, I am not aware of a single piece of evidence which supports a \'young\' Earth. One of my hopes for this conversation is that you or others here will be able to show me some. Trying to stay on the topic (which is the age of the Earth), I can\'t name a single educated adult who believes the Earth is less than 10,000 years old, who does not have religious motivation for their belief. There\'s nothing wrong with a religious motivation, but your implication that there are people who believe in a young Earth for purely scientific reasons makes me extremely curious. Given what I know about the state of the evidence, I can\'t fathom that actually being the case. But I have a much harder time believing you would be lying about this (or anything else). So I hope you can name some of these people or introduce them to me, to satiate my curiosity. I have a lot to say on this subject, but it\'s really off-topic. Suffice to say that: 1) I have studied science, and there is nothing at all unscientific about evolution. 2) There was no scientific theory of evolution -- no testable, well-stated formulation of the idea -- until Darwin\'s 1859 masterpiece. I\'m fully prepared to back this all up and to go into greater detail, but if evolution really bugs you then it\'d be best to start a new thread on it. Actually, to the best of my knowledge, the geological record contains several features (e.g. sorting of fossils) which are inconsistent with a global flood. Again, I hope my manner doesn\'t come across as too brusque. I\'m just trying to participate without letting it get in the way of my work, family, or spiritual lives. We seem to have wildly different views of the evidence; if we hope to work towards some sort of common ground, it seems best to move along quickly. I hope there are no misunderstandings, and if they are then I further hope that subsequent posts will quickly clear them up. This should be a good starting point, though. In Christ, Chip

Can you give more detail about these methods, and the results they give? Is this the [url=http://www.creationontheweb.com/content/view/877/]moon sediment argument[/url]? The sample in question deliberately disregarded procedures for the lab it was tested at. All this demonstrates is that radiometric dating is not some magical procedure, where you put an arbitrary rock in and it spits out an age. Actually, relatively few rocks fulfil the rather stringent criteria to be able to give meaningful ages, and the situation in which a rock is found must be duly taken into account. Also, it\'s important to use the proper measuring method for a given sample. Example: suppose you wanted to measure the distance between two houses on opposite sides of the street. You set up a mirror on one house and flash a lantern, starting a stopwatch at the same time. When you see the reflection, you stop the stopwatch and record the elapsed time. The distance is simply 150,000 km for every second. Now, simply due to human reaction times, you\'re extremely likely to get an answer which is larger than the diameter of the Earth. Does this mean that \'long distances\' are a lie? No, it means you\'ve picked a bad measuring technique. Measuring a young sample by the decay of an isotope with a very long half-life is the same thing. The BBT is well-supported by a wide variety of evidence, but it\'s a bit off-topic here. Still, I admit I\'m having great difficulty understanding what you\'re trying to say about time here. Time always passes at a rate of 60 seconds per minute to any local observer. Anyway, the Earth, orbiting a third-generation star, was formed so long after the Big Bang that the BBT doesn\'t really have anything to add to the discussion at hand. The part I bolded is important: the Bible is a religious/philosophical document, not a scientific one. It was simply never meant to tell us about these things.

The interesting thing about the above point related to culture is that those who are secular minded bemoan what they see as the overwhelming influence of religion in society, and those involved in religion bemoan equally loudly the loss of such influence. Sorry, this is off topic, but I find the fact very intriguing. Back to the point...the point regarding science refining its own theories is that science and religion ought to be asking, and in turn answering, different questions. It is for science to speculate on the age of the earth and it is for faith to discuss the purpose of humanity\'s existence on that same earth. (think of the flat vs round earth debate, though I don\'t want to directly compare the two situations). Please don\'t confuse social and political movements with science. Science is often used as a tool for political reasons, as is religion. A good Orthodox Christian can be a good scientist today. It is relevant that the bible is not a science textbook because there are people out there who are using it as such. To do so, in support of either view, young or old earth, is to read one\'s own ideas into the text, which is exactly what St. John Chrysostom\'s quote in an earlier post warns against. I agree that True Science and Holy Scripture cannot be opposed. It is not my intent here to be defend science unequivocally, but science should be neither deified nor demonized. It is a tool, and like all tools can be used for good or ill. (Even gifts like the bible have been misused for ill at times, I hope we can all agree on that). I consider that fact that science is self-corrective to be a good thing, rather than \'relativistic\'. Science is not relativistic precisely because the old and disproved is recognized as wrong. Tradition is appropriate in the Church and not appropriate in science. For instance, it would be ludicrous to cling blindly to the \"plum pudding\" model of the cell. Neither Scripture nor God-given reason as expressed through science should be elevated one above the other, they are simply different and if one endeavors to compare them it should be done with a great deal of caution, recognizing that the purpose and methods of each are radically different though both essential. Whether or not you believe the scientific data is interpreted falsely or fragmented, neither Scripture nor the holy fathers can or should testify to that. Thank you to all of those who post, especially those who challenge statements with which I agree. I think challenges like this, when engaged in respectfully as these generally have, are very helpful in our development/maturation. I have learned a great deal from all of you. Thanks again.

I believe the universe and the earth is seven days younger than God, and seven (six) days older than Adam and Eve. Or approximately something like that. I have no reason to believe that the supposition of the Old Orthodox Prayer that the world is about 7,500 years old is simply wrong. I don\'t believe in science, because science doesn\'t know the scientific answer. Nobody knows the scientific answer. The Bible answer is not that old, only a few thousand years. Maybe 10,000 years at most, probably. If we take Genesis as literal history and not just a \"pious myth\". Genesis is not science, but it is living sacred history, and history is about chronology, not radio carbon dating, which is not infallinle, anyway.

As I see it, it matters not how old the earth is. God made the world. When? I don\'t know. How? I don\'t know. Whatever the answer is there are some upsides to either. If the earth is old, then there is more history. If the earth is young, then there will be more oil to keep this smoggy industrial society going (regardless of quality). The issue troubles me not. Still, debate is a grand thing. That said, carry on, lads!

I\'m with you Anxios! There have been some very well educated comments, both on the scientific side and the theological side. The earth\'s age is something I never give much thought to. Yianna

I\'m with you Anxios! There have been some very well educated comments, both on the scientific side and the theological side. The earth\'s age is something I never give much thought to. Yianna

And nowhere in the scriptures does it discard evolution either. The difference between macroevolution and microevolution by the way is a semantic notion as there is no difference between the two. Merely both are evolution and operate on exactly the same principles and laws.