Is there any substance to the idea that Earth is 6000 years old?
Creationists have published many documents that claim to show evidence that Earth is this much younger than the scientific facts allow. It all started with Bishop Usher (1581-1686) who performed a literal reading of the Bible and a numeration of the ages of the earliest inhabitants. This led to a creation of the universe in the year 4004 B.C., so Earth must be (4004 + 2003) or 6,007 years old. To make this work, modern biblical fundamentalists have to assert that radioactive dating (See Glossary) is a scientific fraud, and that it leads to results in direct conflict with the Word of God. They have collected a variety of discordant age estimates, or references to conflicting results in the literature, but when you look closely you will find that their references are often 100 to 200 years out of date, or they have completely misrepresented the scientific evidence. The good news is that Creationists are a vast minority within the family of religious people on this planet. In many instances, their fervent beliefs on this matter are in conflict with the leaders in the Protestant and Catholic churches from which they claim to derive their authority. Still, I suspect we will be hearing about Creationism for at least another thousand years, because there is no social, political or religious penalty to be paid for harboring these kinds of opinions.
