How old is the Earth?

[Existentialist]

I think a literal view of Scripture should be taken for many reasons but here are four. . .

1. If you don't take the book of Genesis literally then why take any of the rest of the Bible literally? Maybe Jesus didn't actually rise from the dead. Maybe he was not actually born of a Virgin? If you start compromising on all of these cornerstones of the Faith then you start believing in something that is not Christianity at all.

2. Why compromise on it to begin with? It will not help anyone come to the Faith. "Well I just can't except a Young Earth because Science does not back it, but I will accept Virgins giving birth." You see my point?

3. Jesus seemed to take the Genesis account literally, so if the Son of God did, then so too must His followers.

4. People will believe when God wants them to believe. So it is my job to present and support what scripture says, not water it down to make it more appealing. One Creationist said it very well, "It's God's job to open their hearts, it's our job to shut their mouths." :-)

Science requires interpretation, it can all be interpreted to support the Biblical view of creation. So I really do not see any reason to abandon that view.

Thanks for being civil in your response!

I haven't quite followed what the explanations are for fossils appearing in the right rock layers according to multi-million year timescales, how plate tectonics is explainable in a 6,000 year timeframe, how ice cores seem to show a record of nearly a million years rather than 6,000 years, why there was a 2-second delay in radio communications with the moon explorers if electromagnetic radiation is supposed to be instantaneous, and how evolution itself was supposed to happen in 6,000 years (maybe it isn't, maybe that's the point).

I fully accept that no evidence speaks for itself. At some point, atheists like me need to make a leap of faith as part of the interpretation process. But there are a couple of questions I still need answering. Forgive me if you have already done so, this is a hot thread and I may have missed a lot.

First, I don't see why god would bother, when he made all the stars appear an Day 4, to make it look to us as if they had all been created as part of a multi-billion year timeframe. The timelines for stellar development over billions of years seem consistent with observation, they don't need to be the same star. If you were presented with examples of 80 human males each in a different year of life, you could easily model the typical development of one human male. Same with stars, surely.

But why would god bother with fooling us into believing there is a 10 billion year plus process going on. There appears to be no reason for it. It would be like taking something that we know is instantaneous, like turning a tap to obtain water, and suddenly introducing a 2-hour delay. Other than wasting a lot of time, it would be absolutely pointless.

But more importantly if, as we both agree, interpreting any evidence involves an act of faith, because however many spreadsheets we create, we still have to interpret what is there and make our own minds up and trust our judgement; if that is the case then why does the Bible need to be read literally at all - you could conclude that everything in it is intended to be metaphorical, still beautiful stories but not literally true, even the virgin birth, because you can still interpret the metaphor and everything else you see in front of you as being evidence of God's existence. Why the need to have much concrete evidence to support the young earth theory? A tiny amount of evidence could be interpreted correctly, a large amount of evidence could be interpreted incorrectly - so why the need to keep pointing to a mass of evidence and attacking the evidence of rationalistic atheists?