I must have missed the part in the bible that says the universe is only thousands of years old, so I don't have a good answer.. sorry =(

If you talk with someone who is a firm believer in the 6000 year old earth they will eventully explain all of these types of questions with God is tricking us to throw us off his trail or something like that.

hm i never saw only thousands in the bible. humanity as we know it maybe, but as far as the earth in its entire existence? that's gotta be a misinterpretation somewhere of course there are the people who don't accept the bible at all and then there are those who pick what truths they believe in... if you show me the verse i might be able to help, but until then i don't think the bible actually said the earth was only a few thousand years old.

Let's see here... The Bible claims God created everything using only his word. Don't you think a being that powerful could create light in transit, so that we would have the light from the stars?

Nowhere in the Bible does it make claim to a time which Creation may have taken place. There is claim, though, that MAN in but 6,000 years of existance based on a genealogical study on what is actually written in the Bible. The universe could have been here for 10,000,000 years before man was to come upon the earth. It's obvious that the earth and the universe were both here long before man. Nobody can 100% know what actually 6,000+ years ago, like nobody can accurately predict what the future brings (sorry, Al Gore). However, I can't think what bad comes out of going to a church for 1 hour a week, and living under basic rules like don't steal, don't kill, don't lie, treat others how you would like to be treated, etc. That was a great question, though. Great challenge and was fun answering. Thank you.

Semantics. The Bible says God created so and so on the first day, second day, third day blah blah. His "day" may mean trillions of light years for us.

You can make all the theories that you like about the universe, and make repeatable experiments and the like. All those theories can be very sensible and propose a quite sound explanation about nearly everything around here. However, it is impossible to *prove* with absolute certainty that all the universe with all its light rays has not started to exist 5 min ago. Or that it exists anywhere outside of your mind. This applies to any time where you are reading this answer. Further information: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solipsism

In Hnduism, a day of Brahma (creator god) equals 4,320,000,000 human years according to Puranas. http://www.search.com/reference/Day_of_Brahma A few other texts give that figure as 8.64 billions of years.

The books of the Bible were written over a period of many years and the first "hearers" of the word were simple folk who had no concept of the immensity of the universe or the speed of light. For all they knew, the heavens may have been a huge blanket with pinholes! Let's just stick to the basic truths the Bible is trying to convey: You were created in His image (not in the physical sense), He LOVES you, He sent his Son to live among us and show us how to love one another (died for our sins among other things), He has a wonderful plan for those who believe...let's keep things simple and just enjoy His creation. :)

The Bible does not mention anything about the universe, nor its creation. (Genesis is all about the Earth.)

Homo erectus appears to have evolved in Africa about 1.8 million years ago. Migrations first to Asia and then to Europe. the species became extinct sometimes less than .5 million years ago. This timing places Homo erectus between Homo habilis and the earliest appearance of Homo sapiens. The time of migration out of Africa is unknown. Most scholars agreed migration occur about 1 million years ago but there is continue debate over how much earlier than this had begun. Last night, light arrived at your house from the distant stars. It must have taken a long time for that light to reach your house, for the stars are very far away, and light travels at only 186,000 miles per second. Scientists tell us it would have taken billions of years for the light to have made that journey from the distant stars. If the light did indeed come from those stars, then the light left those stars billions of years ago. And if the light was traveling for billions of years, than the stars must be very old, and the universe is very old. evolve1.jpg - 12262 Bytes Some people will object to this conclusion, and will tell me the universe is only 6000 years old, based on a literal interpretation of the Bible. But if the universe and the stars are only 6000 years old, and light appears to have taken billions of years to make that journey, how did that light manage to reach the earth? Creationists have made several attempts to explain this problem. Some have questioned that the universe is really that big. If the stars are closer to us than scientists claim, then the light would have had time to reach earth in 6000 years. So how can scientists be so sure the stars are far away? Good question. Let's look at one measurement that was made. On February 23, 1987, a supernova, which is a vast star explosion, was observed. It was known as SN 1987A. About eight months after the explosion was observed, reflections from the explosion were seen in a distant gas cloud ring that circled the supernova. The ring can be seen as an orange circle in the photo above. The reason the reflected light was delayed eight months was that it took time for the light to travel from the supernova to the distant gas clouds and then to reflect from there back to earth. (See illustration below.) And so we can conclude that it took about eight months--or 0.66 years-- to journey from the supernova to the gas ring. Knowing the time it took to reach the ring, and knowing the speed of light, we can calculate the distance to the ring. Knowing this distance, and measuring the angle between the supernova and the reflection as seen from the earth, we can use simple trigonometry to calculate the distance of the supernova from the earth. Astronomers have calculated that the distance is so large that it took light 169,000 years to make that journey. So if you think the universe is 6000 years old, how is it that we can see this supernova and the reflected light? The light had to travel for 169,000 years to reach earth. It must have left the supernova long before the traditional date of Creation, 4000 BC. Can you see how most of us conclude the universe is more than 6000 years old? Some will suggest that God made the universe complete with a beam of light from the stars to the earth. The actual light that arrives here would have never left the stars, but would have been created midway. It would be like a truckload of Florida oranges that made it to Vermont in 1 hour because the truck and the oranges aboard had been created out of nothing 20 miles away from Vermont. But if this had happened, then the truck does not have oranges from Florida onboard. It would be carrying oranges that had been created enroute. Similarly, if the light was created enroute, the light would not have actually come from the stars.

Remember U Asked! Enjoy! John A clue Let us briefly give a hint as to how the new cosmology seems to solve the starlight problem before explaining some preliminary items in a little more detail. Consider that the time taken for something to travel a given distance is the distance divided by the speed it is traveling. That is: Time = Distance / Speed When this is applied to light from distant stars, the time calculates out to be millions of years. Some have sought to challenge the distances, but this is a very unlikely answer.7 Astronomers use many different methods to measure the distances, and no informed creationist astronomer would claim that any errors would be so vast that billions of light-years could be reduced to thousands, for example. There is good evidence that our own Milky Way galaxy is 100,000 light years across! If the speed of light (c) has not changed, the only thing left untouched in the equation is time itself. In fact, Einstein’s relativity theories have been telling the world for decades that time is not a constant. Two things are believed (with experimental support) to distort time in relativity theory—one is speed and the other is gravity. Einstein’s general theory of relativity, the best theory of gravity we have at present, indicates that gravity distorts time. This effect has been measured experimentally, many times. Clocks at the top of tall buildings, where gravity is slightly less, run faster than those at the bottom, just as predicted by the equations of general relativity (GR).8 When the concentration of matter is very large or dense enough, the gravitational distortion can be so immense that even light cannot escape.9 The equations of GR show that at the invisible boundary surrounding such a concentration of matter (called the event horizon, the point at which light rays trying to escape the enormous pull of gravity bend back on themselves), time literally stands still. Using different assumptions … Dr Humphreys’ new creationist cosmology literally ‘falls out’ of the equations of GR, so long as one assumes that the universe has a boundary. In other words, that it has a center and an edge—that if you were to travel off into space, you would eventually come to a place beyond which there was no more matter. In this cosmology, the earth is near the center, as it appears to be as we look out into space. This might sound like common sense, as indeed it is, but all modern secular (big bang) cosmologies deny this. That is, they make arbitrary assumption (without any scientific necessity) that the universe has no boundaries—no edge and no center. In this assumed universe, every galaxy would be surrounded by galaxies spread evenly in all directions (on a large enough scale), and so, therefore, all the net gravitational forces cancel out. However, if the universe has boundaries, then there is a net gravitational effect toward the center. Clocks at the edge would be running at different rates to clocks on the earth. In other words, it is no longer enough to say God made the universe in six days. He certainly did, but six days by which clock? (If we say ‘God’s time’ we miss the point that He is outside of time, seeing the end from the beginning.)10 There appears to be observational evidence that the universe has expanded in the past, supported by the many phrases God uses in the Bible to tell us that at creation he ‘stretched out’11 (other verses say ‘spread out’) the heavens. If the universe is not much bigger than we can observe, and if it was only 50 times smaller in the past than it is now, then scientific deduction based on GR means it has to have expanded out of a previous state in which it was surrounded by an event horizon (a condition known technically as a ‘white hole’—a black hole running in reverse, something permitted by the equations of GR). As matter passed out of this event horizon, the horizon itself had to shrink—eventually to nothing. Therefore, at one point this earth (relative to a point far away from it) would have been virtually frozen. An observer on earth would not in any way ‘feel different.’ ‘Billions of years’ would be available (in the frame of reference within which it is traveling in deep space) for light to reach the earth, for stars to age, etc.—while less than one ordinary day is passing on earth. This massive gravitational time dilation would seem to be a scientific inevitability if a bounded universe expanded significantly. In one sense, if observers on earth at that particular time could have looked out and ‘seen’ the speed with which light was moving toward them out in space, it would have appeared as if it were traveling many times faster than c. (Galaxies would also appear to be rotating faster.) However, if an observer in deep space was out there measuring the speed of light, to him it would still only be traveling at c. There is more detail of this new cosmology, at layman’s level, in the book by Dr Humphreys, Starlight and Time, which also includes reprints of his technical papers showing the equations.12 It is fortunate that creationists did not invent such concepts such as gravitational time dilation, black and white holes, event horizons and so on, or we would likely be accused of manipulating the data to solve the problem. The interesting thing about this cosmology is that it is based upon mathematics and physics totally accepted by all cosmologists (general relativity), and it accepts (along with virtually all physicists) that there has been expansion in the past (though not from some imaginary tiny point). It requires no ‘massaging’—the results ‘fall out’ so long as one abandons the arbitrary starting point which the big bangers use (the unbounded cosmos idea, which could be called ‘what the experts don’t tell you about the “big bang”’). taken from <answersingenesis.com>

Seems to me like a lot of religious gobbledegook

Some believe that god created the stars far away and the light already on its way here. Seems a bit silly to me, why bother? Just to screw with our minds? Other would say that this is evidence that the universe wasn't created some 1000's of years ago but approximately 14.5 billion years ago. Evidence or belief in a prankster god? Hmmmmm......

Christain Fundamentalists have two answers to this.Neither is very good. Firstly, they may claim that the light from distant stars was created in transit and thatthe light was never near the distant stars. In effect, observers are seeing things that never happened and God is descieving us. Bertrand Russell called this arguement "Last Thursdayism". This is because we could say that the Universe was created last thursday and that all our memories and history are an illusion created by God. The second arguement used is the alleged decrease in the speed of light. It is claimed that in the past, light travelled millions of times faster than today and that it only reached its current speed a few hundred years ago. Apart from a total lack of evidence for this, there is a big problem with this arguement. Stars convert matter into energy using E=MC2. If the speed of light were significantly faster in the past, then all of the stars, including the Sun would have exploded long ago and we would not be here.

I must say that, looking at your comments to those who have replied, I am inclined to think that you are not looking for an answer so much as an excuse to antagonize the religious. But, since I am here, here are my two cents: One of the theories I've heard is the Old Earth Theory. The basic premise is that the earth and the universe around it were created in a matured form. (In this case, it would have been the chicken that came first.)That is, even in its first moments, the earth and its inhabitants looked and behaved as though they had been there all along. Another thought is that not all ID theorists calim the earth is only 6,000 years old. Even those who folow the teachings of the Bible can't be sure about what happened when. After all, we are reaching back to prehistory in our accounts.

Most Christians do not take the stories of creation in the Bible literally. Catholics believe the book of Genesis tells religious truth and not necessarily historical fact. One of the religious truths is that God created everything and declared all was good. Catholics can believe in the theories of the big bang or evolution or both or neither. On August 12, 1950 Pope Pius XII said in his encyclical Humani generis: The Teaching Authority of the Church does not forbid that, in conformity with the present state of human sciences and sacred theology, research and discussions, on the part of men experienced in both fields, take place with regard to the doctrine of evolution, in as far as it inquires into the origin of the human body as coming from pre-existent and living matter - for the Catholic faith obliges us to hold that souls are immediately created by God. Here is the complete encyclical: http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/pius_xii/encyclicals/documents/hf_p-xii_enc_12081950_humani-generis_en.html And here is the Address of Pope John Paul II to the Pontifical Academy of Sciences on October 22, 1996 speaking of the Theory of Evolution: http://www.newadvent.org/library/docs_jp02tc.htm The Church supports science in the discovery of God's creation. At this time, the theories of the big bang and evolution are the most logical scientific explanations. However tomorrow someone may come up with better ideas. As long as we believe that God started the whole thing, both the Bible and responsible modern science can live in harmony. The Clergy Letter Project an open letter endorsing the Theory of Evolution signed by over 10,000 clergy from many different Christian denominations: http://www.butler.edu/clergyproject/rel_evol_sun.htm By the way, Georges Lemaître (1894–1966), a Belgian Roman Catholic priest and professor of physics and astronomy, proposed what became known as the Big Bang theory of the origin of the Universe. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georges_Lema%C3%AEtre With love in Christ.

Consider not the time that the earth has existed, or anything else for that matter, koldkanuck, old buddy. Consider the Creator over the creation. God is all powerful, not being limited by ANYTHING, existing before, alongside and after all things. I would not be that surprised if there were 500 quadrillion galaxies out there, and yet, all that matters is the milky way, for none of them have humans, or a planet that supports life as does Earth.

the bible does not say that the universe was created only thousands of years ago. genesis 1:1 simply states: "in the beginning God created the heavens and the earth." scientists claim that earth alone could be as old as four billions years. what the bible goes on to describe is the preparation of earth to make it inhabitable for mankind. these would be the six creative days, which amounted to thousands of years each creative day.

I dunno. You may want to ask god, he seems to time time out of his busy schedule of causing tsunamis, earthquakes, mayhem and destruction to do things like send out a tow truck to a Christian who's stranded on a lonely highway, or cure Aunt Bertha's hemorrhoids and Uncle Herb's ingrown toenail. Therefore, I'd think he would have no problem answering your question in such a way that only a fool would understand it if you ask nicely and on your knees

the Bible makes no claims as to the actual age of creation, only those who 'interpret' the Bible make those claims

Well science has proven how light travels for millions of years. The bible is a collection of folk tales. It's not to be taken seriously. Just look at the kinds of people who wrote it and the kinds of people who choose God over science.

It couldn’t. However, while the Bible does seem to indicate that the first man (Adam) entered mortality about 6,000 years ago, it doesn’t say anything regarding the age of the universe (or even the Earth, for that matter).

Distant Starlight - A light-year is the maximum distance that light can travel in one year in the vacuum of space. Consequently, it takes billions of years for light to travel billions of light-years through space. From our vantage point here on Earth we can see light from stars that are billions of light-years away. It is reasonable therefore to assume that our universe is at least billions of years old—old enough to give the light from these stars enough time to reach our planet billions of light-years away. This reasonable assumption contradicts the Young-Earth (YE) perspective which claims that the universe is less than 10,000 years old. If there was not a strong scientific case for the YE perspective, this contradiction would not merit a second thought. The growing body of evidence supporting the YE view is substantial enough, however, to warrant a thoughtful investigation into whether or not this apparent contradiction can be resolved reasonably. And so we ask the question: How can the light of stars billions of light-years away reach the Earth in only a few thousand years? According to Albert Einstein, space is not the empty “nothingness” that most of us perceive it to be. It is filled with what Einstein called ether. Dictionary.com defines ether as “an all-pervading, infinitely elastic, massless medium.” Everything that exists within the bounds of our universe does so within this massless medium. Redshifts are a Doppler Effect phenomenon whereby radiational wavelengths (like those of starlight) lengthen as they move further away from an observer. The general consensus among astronomers is that observed stellar redshifts indicate that the universe is expanding (Hubble’s Law). By extrapolating this expansion backwards it becomes apparent that the primordial universe was somewhat denser, more compact than it is today. In a bounded universe wherein matter has a center and an edge, the material compression as described above would serve to deepen the gravity well caused by the combined mass of the universe. This would intensify the GTDE, causing time to pass much slower near the center of the universe (deeper in the well) than near its edge (nearer the surface of the well). The implication is paradoxical: Even if the entire universe was created all at once in the beginning (and should therefore be the same age), some parts can be substantially younger than others due to the relativistic nature of time. Light could travel billions of light-years over billions of years in some parts of the universe in what we on Earth would perceive to be a much shorter period of time. As the universe expands and matter spreads out across space, the universal gravity well would gradually even out, lessening the rate of time difference across the universe. Many astrophysicists and astronomers reject the idea of a bounded universe with our galaxy, the Milky Way, near or at its center. But this is a philosophical presupposition, not a scientific conclusion founded upon empirical data. The Gravitational Time Dilation Effect is a theoretical solution to the YE problem of distant starlight which, amazingly, reconciles evidence for a young Earth with evidence for an old universe. Many astrophysicists and astronomers reject one of the major foundational suppositions upon which the GTDE explanation rests (a bounded universe with the Milky Way at or near the center), not because of the observable data but because of their philosophical perspectives.

The bible is wrong, the rest is easy to figure out.

Millions is relative. Does the bible give you a specific date? Do you know that in the creation story a day is a day? Wasn't the bible passed down by word of mouth? For all we know each day could've been 1 trillion years, the people back then just didn't know what to call a number that big. You could say the Bible was wrong, but is that acurate? Who wrote the creation story? How do we know that along with the authors name, other tiny details were lost in time. Then the last question is, Since when did science and the Bible fit together? Since when did faith and reality get along? It's for you to decide, but i have faith, and therefore interperet it diferently.

The Bible says nothing like that at all... It is MAN's existence ON the earth that is only 8,000 years old...NOT the earth itself... Genesis ch.10...Matthew ch. 1 and Luke ch.3...all these scriptures give the years between Adam and Eve, the FIRST people, and Jesus... Then add 2,000 years...also, all the archaeologists have been unable to find any CIVILIZATION OLDER THEN 8,000 YEARS...EXAMPLE... MOHENJO DARO in western India. The claim of man's existence of hundreds of thousands of years is theory only...

i don't see how light years have anything to do with actual years since light travels at the speed of...well, itself. the sun is 93 million miles away from us & its light reaches us in 7 seconds. it probably only takes the stars that are trillions of light years away from us minutes, so there's not much of a correlation between light years & years.

its interesting that you say this because Evo Scientists say that In the big Bang that Everything went FASTER than Light by warping (space). Why is it that Scientists can use this viewpoint but when Creationists use it in that GOD could have used the warping of space in creation(just one theory)it becomes poppycock, how can you be completly ok with allowing Evo scientists to change their theory to fit new findings but If I see a problem In creationism and try to explain MY THEORY (for both are theories and beliefs{both tell where we came from}) its sluffed off with a simple joke. I listen to your talks and chew it often open your ears and chew on your own medicine.

well to God, he's more than the universe itself. he's untouchable, unless you want to give him a loving hug. God does what God so pleases, "God's will be done, on Earth, as it is in Heaven." what that means is, God MADE this really small universe, then he CREATED the world, then he CREATED us humans, and breathed into us eternal life. thousands of years old, who cares, that's numbers. how do you calculate when numbers are as useless as ham in a box?

Amazing...bible god made light first..then the stars must have been made. That's like me making light first and THEN turning on the flashlight (torch for you Brits out there) ;) Who know..maybe bible god wears spandex and a cape.. That could explain it all.

Your an idiot The NEW TESTIMENT story starts 2000 years ago. The OLD TESTIMENT starts millions of years later

the bible makes no such claims. where do you get your information? the bible gives a description of how God prepared this planet to be inhabited. earth itself, according to the bible was created in the beginning of creation. scientist estimate that earth is at least 4-5 billion years old.

This relates to quantum physics for a specific answer. I'm not trained in physics but I know how it relates to the scriptures; that speak of God " stretching " out the Heavens as a tent. It's a scientific fact that time isn't necessarily a constant. When observing the rotation of the Earth from the moon for example the planet appears to be rotating many times faster than a 24 hour day. Gravity, distance, and other factors come into play in measuring time. There is something called an event horizen in physics. In folding space the effect of a time event horizen that touches Earth would be a period where time would appear to stand still. The Bible records just such an event taking place. During this period of time standing still on the Earth litterally billions of years passing is possible elsewhere. Sorry I can't explain it clearer than that but as I said I'm not trained in physics. Why must man understand everything God does to believe His word? Eventually answers to the workings of our universe will be revieled. Just because there may not be a clear answer today doesn't mean there isn't an answer at all.

The Bible says "in the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. . ." THEN, the creative "days" (i.e. periods) started. "In the beginning" is undefined. This would allow the universe, including the earth, to be any age.

random are the changes of DNA to make short hair or long hair(etc.) ex. if a fish has babies and some are born with smaller fins and some with larger fins and the larger fins allow the fish to swim faster then it gets away from the predator, and passes that gene on to the next generation, and so on down the line. however if the fish that gets the larger fins makes it harder to use and the fish tires out too fast and the predator comes and kills it then the gene of bigger fins die off and the smaller or same fin size live on to pass the gene. That is the corner stone of evolution and truefully i dont disagree with that (called micro evolution) it is when you then say that the fish created a complete eye thought it never had it before,(rapid evolution) not adaptability. this is where creationists and evolutionists disagree.

So i have been remiss on this. their are a number of (THEORIES) this doesnt mean they are right it is just the thought. unless we find something that negates it, thats what a theory is. in the begining of creation. 1) that the universe was accordianed it out. so if the first part of light was close to all other matter created and then spread it out the light would have been streached out. (i didnt say i believe it I just said it was one thoery) 2 that light has been slowing down. exponentially. (this does not take away from relativity it just sets the bar higher) many physicists debated this in the early 80's to accord for the farther distance from other galaxies than the big bang allowed. 3 God does not have to act with cause and effect. he can affect the cause, (outside of time) meaning when a painter paints they can put the shadow of a tree before they make the tree or even the light (sun). these are the most noted but im sure there are more. these are just theories (until we get a time machine no one can prove or disprove them just as we can not prove or disprove cosmologic evolution.(evolution of planets and stars and galaxies(and big bang))

The Bible says no such thing. People say that, but not the Bible. It says the heavens (including the starts) and the earth were created "in the beginning."