Garrett Haley
Is the earth several thousand years old or several billion years old? Your answer to that question is telling.
If, on the one hand, you believe that the earth is 6,000 years old, then that means you take the Bible’s creation account literally and think most modern scientists are misguided. Or if, on the other hand, you believe the earth is 4.5 billion years old, then that means you aren’t willing to accept a literal interpretation of Genesis.
What I’d like to draw our attention to today is the huge mathematical difference between 6,000 and 4.5 billion. Sometimes we fail to appreciate just how enormously different these two numbers are.
Consider these illustrations:
Length
6,000 inches is about the length of one-and-a-half football fields.
4.5 billion inches is nearly three times the circumference of the earth.
Area
6,000 square feet is the size of a large house.
4.5 billion square feet is larger than Denver.
Weight
6,000 pounds is about as heavy as a Chevrolet Suburban.
4.5 billion pounds is six times as heavy as the Empire State Building.
Population
6,000 people is equivalent to the population of a small city.
4.5 billion people is greater than the current population of Asia.
Money
6,000 pennies is equivalent to $60.
4.5 billion pennies equals $45 million.
Time
6,000 seconds is less than two hours.
4.5 billion seconds is more than 140 years.
Aren’t those astonishing? Clearly, 4.5 billion isn’t just a little bit bigger than 6,000—it is much, much, much bigger (750,000 times bigger, to be precise).
And so when we consider whether the earth is 6,000 years old or 4.5 billion years old, remember how drastically different these two numbers are. It’s not just a slight difference; it’s a huge one.
“If, on the one hand, you believe that the earth is 6,000 years old, then that means you take the Bible’s creation account literally and think most modern scientists are misguided.”
I’m sorry Garrett, but where does the Bible state that the Earth is 6,000 years old? I believe in the literal sense of the Bible, so I may have missed the bit where God tells us the date of creation. I do think that scientists who subscribe to the General Theory are misguided, but the Earth is a little more than 6ky old, and I think it is misleading to say the the Bible ‘literally’ says the Earth is 6,000 years old.