Personal Entry: How Old is the Earth?

One late night while I attempted to rid the pressure of Extended Essays and college essays, I decided to look up "How old is the earth?" on Google out of boredom. 

I came across this interesting article: How does the Bible teach 6000 years?

The article, by creation.com, stated that through factual dates and lifespans of people recorded in the bible, chronogenealogists are able to calculate the years back to when Adam and Eve were first created, and back to when the rest of the world was created on the "first day." (Chronogenealogy is the study of life span between generations. I'm not sure of chronogealogists is a real word, but it makes this blog post sound smart.) The article then explained the simplicity of the calculations: Adam had his son when he was 130, Jacob was 130 years old when Israel moved into Egypt, the israelites were enslaved in Egypt for 430 years, and so forth. Tracing these biblical accounts of events and people, summing them up, and considering room for error, apparently adds up to 6150 years, plus or minus 50 years. 

Pretty cool. Adding up chronogeneologies of people in the bible would make a great hobby - but does it give the truth? According to the article, however, "It’s clear that from the very first verse of Genesis, the Bible is concerned with giving a factual account of how God has interacted with the earth. This means that it must give historically accurate details, as well as being theologically accurate. In fact, what we believe about God is based on historical claims, so if the history is inaccurate, then the theology must be as well." I wasn't so sure if I agreed with this statement. There are many Christians who believe that the words of the bible is true, but think the earth is much, much older than 6000 years. Some Christians also take the words of the bible "figuratively," and, like many of Jesus' figurative parables and stories, don't think that God invented the world in literally seven days. 

I still wasn't sure of my opinion, but I wasn't going to totally reject this article. I then started to google for information that went against the 6000 year theory. When one thinks of calculating time in objects, many of us think of carbon dating, in which an organism can be dated by its C-14 decay. So, I decided to google "Does carbon dating disprove the bible?" and came across an article by trueauthority.com. The article surprised me a little with its addressing of the many misconceptions and factors that could affect the data of carbon dating. While carbon dating measures the decay of carbon in a once-living object, the article addressed that decay of C-14 in an object can be inconsistent, therefore yielding data that may not match with when the organism was actually living. Accurate carbon dating also requires that the organism remain in an enclosed closed system for several thousand years, not affected by loss or gain of isotopes. Its difficult for scientists to find out whether or not a object was enclosed. 

So, I realized that there can be errors both in the bible and in carbon-dating. Yet, many people are more reluctant to believe in the written bible than science. In a way, it seems like science is a religion in itself. Can we really question a person's faith, based on when they think that the earth was created, as suggested in the first article? I don't think so. Personally, I believe in God not because of when he created the world, but because he loves each of us. It's inevitable but also creative that people become caught up with facts and dates and truths, but seeing our technological advancements today, and seeing that we still question the same things as ancient primitive societies once did, I think the world can handle going on with life without knowing when earth was created.