Does the Bible state that the earth is only 6000 years old?

Answer 1

No. The Bible chronology/genealogy indicates that Adam was created about 6,000 years ago, but that does not mean that the earth is only 6000 years old.

The first verse in the Bible offers some clues:

Genesis 1:1 In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. Genesis 1:2 Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters. So in Verse 1 the earth had been around for a while and at some point (Verse 2) God turned his attention to it and began the "creative days" which culminated with the creation of man on the 6th day.

Answer 2

The Bible indirectly gives the age of the earth, or at least life on earth, as 6,000 years, because it reports a continuous genealogy from Adam and Eve right down to historic times. James Ussher, Archbishop of Armagh used Old Testament genealogies to calculate that the world was created in 4004 BCE on the evening of 22nd October.
Some have sought to resolve this problem by claiming that each of the days of creation was actually symbolic for a period of thousands of years. However, this simplistic solution solves nothing. In the second creation story, Adam was the first living thing created, and he lived 930 years, already an implausibly long life, and this is where we have to start counting. Even if he lived millions of years, the genealogies still give us less than 6,000 years from the time of his death.

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Answer 3

Tradition states that the Earth was created in 3760 BCE, as can also be seen through Biblical calculations.

A young Earth?
"Radiometric techniques may not be the absolute dating methods that they are claimed to be. Age-estimates on a given geological stratum by different radiometric methods are often very different. There is no absolutely reliable long-term radiological clock. The uncertainties inherent in radiometric dating are disturbing to geologists and evolutionists." William D. Stansfield, Ph.D., Instructor of Biology, California Polytechnic State University.

"Even total rock systems may be open during metamorphism and may have their isotopic systems changed, making it impossible to determine their geologic age." Prof. Gunter Faure (Department of Geology, The Ohio State University, Columbus.)

a) At current rates of erosion the amount of sea-floor sediments actually found do not support a "billions of years" age for the Earth.
b) The amount of Sodium Chloride in the sea, also, is a small fraction of what the "old Earth" theory would postulate.
c) The Earth's magnetic field is decaying too fast to extrapolate a long age for the Earth.
d) The rate of accumulation of Moon-dust has been measured; and the amount of dust on the Moon was found to be vastly less than what scientists had predicted before the Moon-landings.

See: Problems in Evolutionary astronomy

And: Evidence of a young Earth

e) Helium is generated by radioactive elements as they decay. The escape of this helium into the atmosphere can be measured. According to the Evolutionary age of the Earth there should be much more helium in the atmosphere, instead of the 0.05% that is actually there. The only way around this is to assume that helium is escaping into space. But for this to happen, the helium atoms must be moving at above the escape velocity, of 24,200 miles per hour. The usual speed of helium atoms is only 5,630 mph. A few atoms travel much faster than the average, but still the amount of helium escaping into space is only about 1/40th the amount entering the atmosphere.

This is an unsolved problem, concerning which the atmospheric physicist C.G. Walker stated: "There appears to be a problem with the helium budget of the atmosphere." Another scientist, J.W. Chamberlain, said that this helium accumulation problem "… will not go away, and it is unsolved."

See also:

Is there evidence for Creation?

Can you show that God exists?