Is The Earth Only 7,000 Years Old?

[Rivers]

If God can create man out of clay, then certainly he can create soil or petroleum through some other alchemical process. So why go through the charade of making a young earth appear old?

Another question one can ask is why God would make an old earth and then tell Joseph Smith that the the earth's age is 7,000 years.

[thesometimesaint]

dtorge:

Where ever we on this planet look we find life. From the simple bacteria that live in the cauldrons of Yellowstone to the depths of the oceans where organisms live without light or oxygen but feed off of the heat of the volcanic vents, and the Hydrogen Sulfide they produce. From the fridged Artic waters to the sands of the hot plate Saharan desert. They are not just incompatible with each other, to just drop life of in those conditions would be certain death.

Before about 40,000 years ago C-14 is an useless measure for time. There isn't enough of it left to measure with our currant instruments. 7000 years it is darn accurate. So acccurate that we can tell when the first atomic bomb was dropped just from instruments readings. We can tell when the Industrial Revolution took hold from the rise in ancient Carbon levels as opposed to modern forms.

[LeSellers]

Another question one can ask is why God would make an old earth and then tell Joseph Smith that the the earth's age is 7,000 years.

CFR.

I ask because nowhere did God tell Joseph this. What He said was that the earth's temporal existence was 7,000 years. That's a very different thing.

Joseph himself said that the earth was (if I recall the number correctly) 3.4 billion years old.

Lehi

[thesometimesaint]

Lehi:

JS seemed to have believed it was 2.55 billion years old.

http://www.jefflindsay.com/LDSFAQ/science.shtml#age

[LeSellers]

JS seemed to have believed it was 2.55 billion years old.

As I said, or at least implied, I was not sure about the number. But it remains true that Joseph did not believe the Earth to have been 7,000 years old.

If, in fact, we did believe in a 1,000 years = one day, the Earth would be at least 13,000 years old in any case, because it was formed during the first period ("day") of a creation that, itself, lasted 7,000 years (including the Sabbath) before Adam left Eden. (And who knows how long that was? Oh, wait! we do, but I'd have to look it up again.)

Lehi

Edited January 6, 2012 by LeSellers

[thesometimesaint]

Lehi:

Agreed.

[Rob Osborn]

CFR.

I ask because nowhere did God tell Joseph this. What He said was that the earth's temporal existence was 7,000 years. That's a very different thing.

Joseph himself said that the earth was (if I recall the number correctly) 3.4 billion years old.

Lehi

It gets real tricky though because it is one thing to say how old the earth is since perhaps it was formed into a sphere and how old the matter itself was that make up the earth. Realizing that the elements can change into other elements makes it tricky also. If we take the LDS view thatall matter (that which takes up space) cannot be created nor destroyed, then how would one ever really measure how old the earth is?

Of most importance to this thread and the querstion at hand is not how old the earth itself is but rather how long things on it (such as plants, animal, etc) have been around. Taking the literal definition of "temporal" into account- it beeing approximately 6,000 years until now, we can be assured, at least as far as LDS doctrine is concerned, that things have been dying on this earth for only 6,000 years approximately.

[Freedom]

Taking the literal definition of "temporal" into account- it beeing approximately 6,000 years until now, we can be assured, at least as far as LDS doctrine is concerned, that things have been dying on this earth for only 6,000 years approximately.

Can you provide your reference for your definition of temporal? I think you are assuming a definition that is not justified. One dictionary definition of the word 'temporal' defines it as 'pertaining to or concerned with the present life of this world.'