The world is not 6000 years old. I don’t want to get into a religious debate here. Religion is important to many people, and just like anything else, even reason will not shake those who are truly devout anyway. That said, a series of recent comments have sparked a rant, and here I am.
Keep in mind as I write this, I do believe in God. Probably not like many, but I do. I take more of a “Thomas approach” (Paine, Jefferson, or Edison – you choose). This is to say that I am a Deist.
The Christian Bible (whichever of the nearly one hundred versions in English you subscribe to) provides a complete genealogy from Adam to Jesus. Not many people have sat down and read the Bible as though it were a book, but if one did, one could (if they were so inclined) go through the book, add up the years, and see how old the Bible suggests Earth is.
If you do your math right, you’ll get a total of just over 4,000 years. So you need to add in the 2,000 years since the time of Jesus, and you will get just over 6,000 years since God evidently created everything.
6000 years old. That’s it? Of course, the Bible also suggests that the cradle of life started in Mesopotamia, a name for the area of the Tigris–Euphrates river system, corresponding to modern-day Iraq, the northeastern section of Syria, and to a much lesser extent, southeastern Turkey, and smaller parts of southwestern Iran and Kuwait.
First of all, I’m surprised that so many Christians would subscribe to this story in the first place, given the location of suggested origination. Perhaps it has something to do with the “not knowing where Mesopotamia is,” but I digress. Regardless, right about here is where everything begins to break down if you subscribe to logic and reason.
The funniest retort I have ever seen to the idea that civilization might be older than 6000 years old was that the Earth was created by God with the appearance of age, just as Adam wasn’t created as a newborn. This undoubtedly included previous civilizations, fossils, etc. If that is true, God must have been bored.
This was a serious answer, by the way, for those who are laughing right now. The question should immediately be, “What drives someone to say such things“? Perhaps it’s fear. I honestly feel sorry for people far beyond the realm of reason because I fear it must sometimes hurt to be looked upon as simple-minded or gullible. I’m serious! Can you imagine how terrible that must feel?
There is not much to debate when you are presented with irrefutable evidence to the contrary, right? You could not argue that something was an automobile when it was a Blue Jay. That is how I sometimes feel when we have these discussions.
And before I get into depth, let me explain that Science is not a “guess.” Scientists try to avoid mistakes. They tend to want to be right and usually go to great lengths to prove it. It’s like dating material. They will avoid using a single sample of the material to determine its age. Where possible, they will take several samples from the same layer, date them all, and use different dating methods to get the most accurate result.
However, when it comes to dating material, let’s pretend scientists were off by even half (which would be a best guess based on visual evidence – AKA: NOT SCIENCE). In that case, the dates provided would still directly contradict the simple stories passed down and contorted for generations.
Let us examine some basic ideas to prove the point. The Last Glacial Maximum (LGM) ended around 19,000 years ago. Of course, pottery has been found in China, dated to 20,000 years ago, or even recent discoveries of the pottery that date back roughly 6000 years. How does that happen? Did God leave it behind for us to find because he hates us and wants us to be confused? And once again, if we are halfway wrong, that still outdates the Bible’s guess by at least 4000 years.
Nabta Playa was a civilization found thought to be from 7000 and 6500 BCE years old. Of course, the “remains” were little, so maybe this one doesn’t count.
But Catalhöyük was an agricultural civilization thriving between 9,000-7,000 years ago in what is today south-central Turkey. This civilization is denied by the religious community even though it is from the Mesopotamia area. Why? I think we know.
Construction started on Stonehenge in about 2600 BC. Well, Gobekli Tepe predates Stonehenge by at least 6,000 years and changed the conventional view of the rise of civilization, even in religious circles. Still, many deny it because of what?
The San culture was thought to have emerged around 20,000 years ago. A new analysis of artifacts from a cave in South Africa reveals that the residents were carving bone tools, using pigments, making beads, and even using poison 44,000 years ago. “Our research proves that the Later Stone Age emerged in South Africa far earlier than has been believed and occurred at about the same time as the arrival of modern humans in Europe,” study researcher Paola Villa, a curator at the University of Colorado Museum of Natural History, said in a statement.
The Later Stone Age in Africa occurred simultaneously with Europe’s Upper Paleolithic Period, when modern humans moved into Europe from Africa and met the Neanderthals about 45,000 years ago. Of course, we go back further and discuss dinosaurs and things of that nature.
Look, this rant is not meant to destroy anyone’s belief in God. If anything, it is meant to enrich such beliefs. Using logic and reason as a guide, would you rather believe the world is simple, or would you rather believe that God was so amazing that he decided to do something amazing?
Your body is so ridiculously complex. The plant life outside of your home is so ridiculously complex. The universe is beyond most people’s comprehension. So, the anomaly is that the planet is simple and only 6000 years old, and there is nothing before that? That would be the inconsistency if it were true.
The evidence continues to come in, though. Released November 25th, 2013, “a remarkable archaeological find in the Judean lowlands southwest of Jerusalem includes a six-millennia-old cultic temple and a 10,000-year-old house“. We find evidence all the time… when we look. People should embrace these numerous examples to learn REAL history and stop sticking to a history created by a guy who wanted to keep the power in Rome. Of course, that would mean knowing or embracing history, and we can’t even get people to read the Constitution, so I guess this rant is pretty much pointless. Of course, we’ll be Celebrating the birth of Christ on December 25th despite that contortion, so perhaps it makes sense.
“Question with boldness even the existence of a god; because, if there be one, he must more approve the homage of reason, than that of blindfolded fear.” Thomas Jefferson to Peter Carr 1787.
UPDATE: More information continues to come in that furthers the point. Check this recent find out!