We know from biblical chronology that Adam was created approximately 6,000 years ago. Therefore, the earth would have to be older than 6,000 years. In fact, we believe that the earth is very old. Scientists used to think the earth was about 100 million years old. They now theorize that it is about 4.5 billion years old. We quote from Wikipedia:
“The moon, as another extraterrestrial body that has not undergone plate tectonics and that has no atmosphere, provides quite precise age dates from the samples returned from the Apollo missions. Rocks returned from the moon have been dated at a maximum of around 4.4 and 4.5 billion years old. Martian meteorites that have landed upon Earth have also been dated to around 4.5 billion years old by lead-lead dating.
“Altogether, the concordance of age dates of both the earliest terrestrial lead reservoirs and all other reservoirs within the solar system found to date are used to support the hypothesis that Earth and the rest of the solar system formed at around 4.53 to 4.58 billion years ago.”
We also know that dinosaurs that roamed the earth for thousands and thousands of years were long gone when God created Adam. Scientists theorize that dinosaurs became extinct about 65 million years ago, millions of years before many of the mammals that we are familiar with today came into existence.
The above having been said, we do not know how old the earth actually is. Genesis, chapter 1 gives us God’s account of its creation in “six days.” These “days” were obviously very long periods of time and could have been of varying lengths as well (billions, millions or thousands of years).
Is the earth only a little older than 4,000 years? No it is much older, since Bible chronology tells us that human kind has been on the earth for 6,000 years and there is scientific evidence that animals have been here much, much longer.
