Wasted Sapience

It is my opinion that American Christianity is a modern religion, modern meaning a recently created idea. There is a great deal of evidence which I could present to make this case, and I'll begin here in the Evolution/Creation forum by asking just who came up with the idea that the world was created circa 4,004 BC (about 6,000 years ago, which is the common age given by so-called Young Earth Creationists).

The answer is James Ussher, an Anglican Archbishop living in the early 17th century. For some unknown reason, Ussher believe that he could trace the genealogies in the Bible and get the exact date of "creation." Without using this heavily questionable technique, there is nothing in the Bible which indicates that the world was created 6,000 years ago. Thus, this belief which is so common in American Christianity was not formed during the early years of Christianity and is thus a modern idea. The short summary is that a guy with a fancy title said something was true, and the majority of Americans eventually took it to be true. Again, the Bible didn't tell us the world is 6,000 years old. Jesus didn't say it. Moses didn't say it. Paul didn't say it. No pope said it. James Ussher said it.

Is there any reason to think that Christians living in the ancient world or dark ages believe the world is "young," had they bothered to think about it in the first place?

G O R T

American Christianity is an outgrowth of the Protestant movement which eventually resulted in the Reformation. From the origin of the Papacy til the Reformation, any conjecture concerning the Roman Catholic religion would get you burned at the stake for heresy. It therefore stands to reason that there is no information concerning such matters from earlier times.

Mizled

It is said that Ussher followed the genealogy of people in the Bible and counted back chronologically to reach the date of Creation at 4004 BC I believe.
Think? During the time of the Dark Ages? Any word against the Church (Roman Catholicism at that time) would've been punishable by jail if not death. Not to mention that most people at this time were highly uneducated and illiterate.

Sven

This is more of a BC&H question. Given that it'll likely be moved soon, I think I can ask a BC&H related question here:

Why is this technique questionable (from the viewpoint of a literalist)?

Nialler

That is a good question; to a literalist inerrantist, the genealogy is just about the only way to derive the timescales.

Even if you don't plot the genalogies and derive a date from them, early xtians did, of course adhere to a young Earth. The genalogies go back to Adam, and Adam was the first man. Just because they nay not have given a year for his creation doesn't mean that they didn't think that it was more than a few thousand years previously.The OP is riddled with unsupported assumptions.

Worldtraveller

This seems more like BH& H material.

*punts*

Lane, E/C Moderator.

Malachi151

Augustine in the 4th? (or was it 5th?) century wrote a proof from the Bible showing that the earth was only about 4,000 years old at that time.

Several of the early Christians held that the earth was only a few thousand years old.

This was in part because the other religions and philosophies all held that the earth was very, very old, from tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands to perhaps infinitely old.

Christianity was largely an opposition movement, and when the early Christians set out to define their view of the world in detail, they did so largely in opposition to the exiting ideas of their day.

Most of what the Christians declared heretical or denied or opposed, was declared heretical because they were ideas held by materialist philosophies, etc.

For example, the following ideas were opposed by the early Christians:

> The existence of atoms
> The world begin round
> There being people in the other side of the earth
> There being planets other than earth
> The possibility of life on other planets
> The idea of biological evolution
> The Earth being very old
> Gravity

All of these ideas were declared heresies or denied because they were all related to Greek materialism and were all used in arguments by materialists to show that there was no Providence and that gods either did not exist or had no role in anything.

So, the idea of a young earth has been a part of Christianity since pretty much the beginning. The early Christians argued for a young earth in part because everyone else argued for an old earth, and the Christians held all pre-Christians ideas as inherently false or at least suspect.

GakuseiDon

Can you give the reference to that? Augustine believed that 6000 years had passed since Adam, but doesn't appear to believe that the world was created in 6 literal days. From here:
http://www.catholic.com/library/Crea...nd_Genesis.asp

[A]t least we know that it [the Genesis creation day] is different from the ordinary day with which we are familiar...

For in these days [of creation] the morning and evening are counted until, on the sixth day, all things which God then made were finished, and on the seventh the rest of God was mysteriously and sublimely signalized. What kind of days these were is extremely difficult or perhaps impossible for us to conceive, and how much more to say!

Really??? I've never heard that before, at least with respect to the natural world. Where did you hear this?

Again, I've never heard that before, and would be interested to hear how you arrived at that conclusion. Augustine again, from the link I gave above:

"It not infrequently happens that something about the earth, about the sky, about other elements of this world, about the motion and rotation or even the magnitude and distances of the stars, about definite eclipses of the sun and moon, about the passage of years and seasons, about the nature of animals, of fruits, of stones, and of other such things, may be known with the greatest certainty by reasoning or by experience, even by one who is not a Christian. It is too disgraceful and ruinous, though, and greatly to be avoided, that he [the non-Christian] should hear a Christian speaking so idiotically on these matters, and as if in accord with Christian writings, that he might say that he could scarcely keep from laughing when he saw how totally in error they are...

Malachi151

That's what I was talking about. From what I understand Augustine thought the earth was created in one day, not six.

Come from my own reading of early Christian writings.

Some info here:

http://www.rationalrevolution.net/ar...nst_Naturalism

http://www.rationalrevolution.net/ar...stic_Worldview

Yes, Augustine was more educated than most. He said that only "perhaps" the earth was round, whereas other Christians outright denied that it was round, etc.

From Irenaeus, just one example I was able to find with a quick search:

There are examples I have seen in the past, but I can't find them off hand, discussing the folly of non-Christians in thinking that the world was older than a few thousand years.

Wasted Sapience

Nice job of knocking down my theory. But hey, that's what I'm here for.

Very interesting. It sounds like the battle between science and fundamentalist Christianity has been going on from the very beginning. It even sounds like most ancient people had a relatively advanced understanding of reality and then Christians came in like barbarians and threw it all away.

I think the Mayans and Hindus realized the Earth is more than a few thousand years old, but did the Greeks?