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HOW OLD DOES THE BIBLE TEACH THAT THE EARTH IS?

By Dr. Andrew Corbett originally written 27th January, 2014; updated 22nd August 2025

Around the turn of the Twentieth Century there was a popular push to respond to scientific naturalism (Darwinian Evolution) built on the 19th century rise of theological liberalism (which regards the Biblical accounts of miracles as myths). This led to a series of books being produced known as The Fundamentals. Thus, fundamentalism was birthed. Embedded into this fundamentalism was the idea of Young Earth Creationism (YEC). The ‘Fundamentals’ became prominent during the famous Scopes Trial, and soon became the adopted standard for orthodoxy within mainstream Evangelicalism. It proposed that the 6 days of creation, were literal 24-hour consecutive days which began, based on calculations drawn from the Biblical genealogies, around 4000 BC – meaning that the earth was 6,000 years old. Yet as the scientific cosmological evidence mounted for a universe and our planet being billions of years old – not thousands – two things seemed to have happened:

(i) Young people who were scientifically literate dismissed the Bible because of the incompatibility of  YEC with current cosmological evidence;

(ii) Young Earth Creationists developed a theory of conspiracy about mainstream scientists by claiming that the scientific community were misinterpreting the data and too spiritually blind to see that YEC was correct.

But how credible is Young Earth Creationism and how reliably can the Bible be used to calculate the age of the universe and Earth?

Usually, even a non-Christian knows something about the earth, the heavens, and the other elements of this world, about the motion and orbit of the stars and even their size and relative positions, about the predictable eclipses of the sun and moon, the cycles of the years and the seasons, about the kinds of animals, shrubs, stones, and so forth, and this knowledge he holds to as being certain from reason and experience. Now, it is a disgraceful and dangerous thing for an infidel to hear a Christian, presumably giving the meaning of Holy Scripture, talking nonsense on these topics; and we should take all means to prevent such an embarrassing situation, in which people show up vast ignorance in a Christian and laugh it to scorn.
AUGUSTINE

THE ROOTS OF YOUNG EARTH CREATIONISM

It was the seventeenth century Irish Bishop, James Ussher, who pioneered the calculations of the Biblical genealogies to arrive at a Creation date of 4004 BC. But Ussher made several glaring errors in his calculations. Apart from omitting thousands of years worth of genealogies by failing to recognise intentional gaps in the Biblical records, he made the fundamental error of assuming that the genealogies were for the purpose of chronological calculations. We now know that the Biblical genealogies primarily served the purpose of the redemptive narrative. That is, they intentionally list those characters who warranted a mention in God’s unfolding plan of redemption. Careful observation of these genealogies will cause the reader to discover a pattern within this record that includes a father of two sons repeated many times over at what appears to be a rhythmic frequency.

Young Earth Creationists accuse mainstream science of distorting the data. They dismiss the science which reveals that the speed of light travels at a fixed constant speed anywhere in the universe (this is the “c” in Einstein’s E=mc²). But in doing this they actually undermine the clear statements of Scripture which state that the physical laws which order the universe are ‘fixed’ (Jer. 31:25). And if the speed of light is fixed and constant, YEC collapses both Biblically and scientifically.

THE ANCIENT ROOTS OF CONCORDISM

Concordism is the theological view that the Bible and science concord together to present the same truth. The Belgic Confession (1561-67) presents Bible and Science as being like two books – the book of God’s Word, and the book of God’s Creation. In its  Article 2: By What Means God Is Made Known Unto Us –

We know Him by two means: first, by the creation, preservation and government of the universe; which is before our eyes as a most elegant book, wherein all creatures, great and small, are as so many characters leading us to contemplate the invisible things of God, namely, His eternal power and divinity, as the apostle Paul saith, Romans 1:20. All which things are sufficient to convince men, and leave them without excuse.
Secondly, He makes Himself more clearly and fully known to us by His holy and divine Word, that is to say, as far as is necessary for us to know in this life, to His glory and our salvation.

THE UNRELIABILITY OF BIBLICAL GENEALOGIES

The dating of Creation to around 6,000 – 10,000 years is based on what we now know was some seriously flawed analysis of the Biblical genealogies. This is because the biblical genealogies do not necessarily contain an exhaustive record of all the generations involved in a certain family history. This is evident when the same family history is cited in various biblical texts revealing additional generations not referred to in the other text. In addition to this, the term “father” carries a much broader sense than it does in our modern era. An example of this is found in Daniel 5:2 when Nebuchadnezzar, the grandfather of Belshazzar, is described as being his ‘father’. The variability and flexibility in the Biblical genealogies allow for Adam having been created up to 150,000 years ago — which comports with the best of our anthropological data.

THE COMPATIBILITY OF THE BIBLE AND SCIENCE

In 1985, a movement of Bible-believing scientists – including cosmologists, astrophysicists, biochemists – was established to show the compatibility of science with the biblical record. This organisation has grown to include hundreds of visiting scholars from a wide range of scientific disciplines. Reasons To Believe founded by Dr. Hugh and Kathy Ross, is headed by Dr. Fazale Rana. This organisation’s website and social contains a wealth of resources for those interested in science-faith issues.

God has ‘fixed’ the physical laws which He has decreed for the universe (Jer. 31:35; 33:25) and His instructed us to look to His creation to learn about Himself, His character, His glory, and His power (eg. Psalm 19:1; 50:6; Romans 1:19-20). This means that God would not create something to deliberately deceive. Therefore, He would not create the Universe with the appearance of a long age (which, when tested according to the physical laws which He has ordained to order the Universe, confirm this long age) when in fact the Universe was extremely young. This would be highly deceptive and completely contrary to the character of the Creator.

A CONSIDERATION OF THE SIX DAYS OF CREATION

The Hebrew word for day is yom. It is a Hebrew word that is ‘equivocal’ to its context. It might mean 24-hours, but it might also mean the 12 hours of daytime – John 11:9, ‘Jesus answered, “Are there not twelve hours in the day? If anyone walks in the day, he does not stumble, because he sees the light of this world.” It might also mean ‘era’ – such as John 8:56, “…Abraham rejoiced that he would see my day”, in same sense as the expression, “Back in my Grandfather’s day…”, and it might also mean an entire period such as in Genesis 2:4 to describe the entire period of creation – Gen. 2:4 “These are the generations of the heavens and the earth when they were created, in the day that the LORD God made the earth and the heavens.”

Each of the six creation days in Genesis 1 are described together as being one colective ‘day’ in Genesis 2:4. In Genesis 1, yom is described as “evening and morning” – an expression nowhere else used in Scripture to describe a period of time. This is a further clue that we are dealing with a unique usage of the word day ‘yom.’ Added to this, consider what happened on creation-day 6 –

+ Adam was created,

+ he was introduced to Eden,

+ he inspected the Garden of Eden (maybe a hundred square miles),

+ he experienced loneliness,

+ God then brought each of the soulish animals (Hebrew word: *nefesh*) to Adam for him to inspect, observe and name accordingly (this would have been at least several thousand species of animals),

+ God saw that he was still lonely,

+ God put him to sleep and took a ‘rib’ from him to form woman,

+ God then recovered Adam and prepared Eve,

+ God then officiated at the first wedding (which was between Adam and Eve).

Is it reasonable to think that all this happened in under 12 hours?

It was not the sin of Adam that introduced death to the world – but according to Romans 5:12, Adam’s sin brought death to all ‘mankind.’ Adam must have had a concept of death in order to understand God’s warning, ‘The day you eat of this fruit you shall surely die.’ (Otherwise he might have said to God, “Excuse me Lord, what’s death?”) In order for soil to be fertile, it requires active bacteria to promote nutrients. As Adam walked over to the forbidden tree he would have probably crushed to death many bacteria in the soil under foot to get there. In Psalm 104 (a Creation Psalm) it says that when created, the “young lion praises You that You provide it with its prey.” This means that lions were created to eat prey (meat). There must have been death before the Fall. And from the time of Creation the redemptive principle, which the New Testament fully reveals: Good can come from death (a fruit dies when it is eaten, but it gives life to its eater; when Christ died He gave life to those He redeems).

The best physical science comports with Scripture that earth began with an extremely hot gaseous atmosphere (gas reactions are governed by the physical laws ordained by God) which then experienced an early and a late heavy bombardment to settle our atmosphere and tilt, then microscopic life was initially created, followed by vegetation, followed by sea life, followed by land life, and culminated in human life – with no evidence for transitionary species – thus pointing to the direct creation of the Creator.

I think the Young Earth Creationist hermeneutic of a wooden literal sequential six 24-hour days of creation as Biblically unsupportable, contradictory to Scripture, scientifically incoherent, and unnecessary. 

© Dr. Andrew Corbett, 27th January, 2014, written from Legana, Tasmania. Updated 22nd August 2025, Melbourne, Victoria.