There seem to be reasons to believe the earth is older than 6,000 years

Question:

I have been considering the question of the age of the Earth and universe for many years. For a long time, I believe the Earth was only a few thousand years old based on the Bible. However, I have come to consider many other factors that don't seem to make sense with that belief.

Just a couple of examples:

The carving of the Grand Canyon by the Colorado River. I saw an estimate of 0.402 mm of erosion per year is the average. It would take a lot longer than 6,000 years to carve that two-mile depth of the canyon.

Then there is the question of the formation of solid rock itself. How long does it take to make a rock? I'm not talking about volcanic lava, but actual solid rock.

But what really got me questioning is when I consider the entire universe. Most galaxies are spiral galaxies. That means they are spinning and they have arms that trail behind from the physics of spinning. When you consider the size of galaxies, how long does it take for an entire galaxy to make one revolution and how many revolutions had to have occurred in order for those spiraled arms to form? It is estimated that it takes between 225 and 250 million years for the Milky Way galaxy to make just one revolution.

Then there is the size of the universe and how it is expanding. It has taken a long time for it to get to the size that it is currently.

I tend to think that the biblical 6,000 or so years is referring to the existence and history of mankind. I think the Bible was written from the perspective of mankind on Earth and not from me universal perspective. The Bible was written for men. I don't believe in evolution and I don't believe that man used to be half-animal, the so-called Neanderthals among others, so I don't believe mankind has been here millions of years. But I do tend to think that the earth and the formation of the Earth and universe took a very long time before man came along.

I would be interested in your response to help answer the questions I have posed above.

Thanks,

Answer:

What you are saying is that you doubt God's power. If God is able to create an entire universe, why do you think it has to be done in a certain way or over a certain time period?

The Bible is God's book. In it, He says that it is the truth (John 17:17). One of the things He states is that the universe was created in six days. Those six days were at the beginning according to Jesus (Matthew 19:4). What you are contending is that the beginning occurred a very long time ago, leaving an extremely large period of time unaccounted for in the Bible.

The Grand Canyon

You make an assumption that you cannot prove. You assume that the Colorado River carved out the Grand Canyon using the same route and same flowrate that currently exists. First off, it isn't possible because the claim doesn't account for the side canyons, the missing material removed from the canyons, or the fact that the current river flow is unable to clear its own channel [Jon Albert, "Grand Canyon – The River Didn’t Do It," 27 August 2015]. There is a detailed article showing alternative explanations for how the Grand Canyon formed that actually match more of the evidence than the claim that the Colorado River carved the canyon. See When and How Did the Grand Canyon Form?

Rock Formation

Since God formed the world, it is natural to conclude that in that creation He formed rocks on the second and third days. Since you did not specify the types of rocks, let me point you to some articles that show solid rocks can be formed in short periods of time with the right conditions:

There is evidence that the rocks found in the Grand Canyon were formed and then solidified (More Ground-Breaking Research Evolutionists Won’t Do).

Spiral Galaxies

You did not rule out the possibility that God formed some of the galaxies as spirals. But there are greater problems.

  • "Furthermore, if spiral galaxies were billions of years old, their arms or bars would be severely twisted. Because they have maintained their shape, either the galaxies are young, or unknown physical phenomena are occurring within galaxies." [p. 34]
  • "Computer simulations of the motions of spiral galaxies show them to be highly unstable; they should completely change their shape in only a small fraction of the universe's assumed evolutionary age." [p. 41]
  • Spiral galaxies at vastly different distances (from 2 to 106 million light-years) have roughly the same amount of twist in their arms. Further galaxies would not have as much time to rotate and twist as closer galaxies since light would take longer to travel from the distant galaxies. Further galaxies should be seen as further back in time. This near equal twisting, regardless of time, should not be possible if the galaxies evolved. [p. 325]

[Walt Brown, In the Beginning: Compelling Evidence for Creation and the Flood, Center for Scientific Creation, 2008].

Expanding Universe

You are making an assumption that you know the starting condition for the universe. It does appear to be expanding currently, but from what starting point?

If the universe started from a single point, as the Big Bang Theory suggests, the expansion should be slowing down. However, the red-shift indicates an accelerating expansion.

Stars in the outer parts of spiral galaxies are moving much faster than physical laws say they should.

"It is widely recognized that gravity would not pull matter into long strings of hundreds or thousands of galaxies -- even if the universe were unbelievably old. Instead, gravity, if acting over enormous time and distances, would form more spherical globs of matter. Yet, long, massive filaments of galaxies have been discovered." [Walt Brown, In the Beginning: Compelling Evidence for Creation and the Flood, Center for Scientific Creation, 2008, p. 329].

Response:

Thank you for your response. You have given me much to consider.