Does the belief in an old Earth go against the Bible?

According to the time period where the events in the Bible take place, I believe that Earth is more recently created(young Earth) as opposed to billions of years ago. Does the Bible support an old Earth or is it completely derived from scientific evidence? Either way, as a student I am curious to learn different views on the Bible and the views on when creation took place.

Hi, abbesterna - welcome to the forum!

That’s a good question, and I hope you get some good and helpful responses to consider! I may stop back in and make more comments too - but you should get a good variety of opinion in any case. This forum has believers and non-believers of many different stripes. It’s a great place to learn!

Starting with Abraham the Bible and archeology are pretty much in line with each other.

To get the time from Abraham to Adam you have to make the assumption that the genealogies in the Bible function the same way they do to modern people. Problem being they obviously don’t for a variety of reasons. First and foremost is the various genealogies don’t agree with each other.

The actual age of the Earth is based on thousands of measurements which have been carefully checked and rechecked.

The Bible doesn’t measure the earth’s age, geologists and astrophysicists do.

I think the Bible is true, but it isn’t the only source of knowledge. We can learn true things about the world from studying science and using math.

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Welcome to the forum. There are quite a few different ways to interpret early Genesis that allows for an old earth. It gets a little confusing, but many faithful Christians feel that such interpretations as the gap theory, the day age theory, progressive creation, as well as other non-concordist positions may be more accurate ways to interpret Genesis. Worldwide, I suspect a young earth position is by far in the minority among Christians.

However, I do not feel that there is any specific Bible verse that says the earth is old, while it allows for that possibllity. However, multiple verses speak to God being revealed in nature, such as Psalm 19 and Romans 1, so we have some basis for accepting that what we see and measure in creation is true and accurate. And multiple lines of evidence unrelated to each other confirms an old creation.
Perhaps that raises more questions than it answers, but that is the nature of learning. I am sure there will be a lot of other comments, and there are multiple articles on this site that will be of interest.

As I see a flurry of similar posts, I suspect this is a class assignment. Tell us a bit about your class and the assignment and it might help us answer your questions in a more appropriate manner. We welcome your comments, observations, and interaction!

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