Apparently the world is just 6,000 years old

A friend on holiday in Iceland has just met up with a ‘creationist’

The wiki definition of this bizarre belief system follows

Creationism is the religious belief that life, the Earth, and the universe are the creation of a supernatural being.

As science developed during the 18th century and forward, various views aimed at reconciling the Abrahamic and Genesis creation narratives with science developed in Western societies. Those holding that species had been created separately (such as Philip Gosse in 1847) were generally called “advocates of creation” but were also called “creationists”, as in private correspondence between Charles Darwin and his friends. As the creation–evolution controversy developed over time, the term “anti-evolutionists” became common. In 1929 in the United States, the term “creationism” first became associated with Christian fundamentalists, specifically with their rejection of human evolution and belief in a young Earth—although this usage was contested by other groups, such as old Earth creationists and evolutionary creationists, who hold different concepts of creation

Young-Earth creationism fosters the belief that God created the Earth within the last ten thousand years, literally as described in the Genesis creation narrative, within the approximate time-frame of biblical genealogies (detailed for example in the Ussher chronology). Most Young-Earth creationists believe that the Universe has a similar age as the Earth. A few assign a much older age to the Universe than to Earth. Some creationist thinkers attempt with Creationist cosmologies to give the universe an age consistent with the Ussher chronology and other Young-Earth time frames. Other Young-Earth creationists believe that the Earth and the universe were created with the appearance of age, so that the world appears to be much older than it is, and that this appearance is what gives the geological findings and other methods of dating the earth and the universe their much longer timelines. However, this view has theological implications – an intentional appearance of age is form of false evidence and so a form of deception.

So to sum up it, as science grew it became apparent that the Adam & Eve story was arrant nonsense. So this idea grew up to try and keep the fantasy of a supreme being alive. Key to this is that he knocked-up the earth (and presumably the solar system) some 6,000 – 10,000 years back.

Obviously, since carbon dating can with a fair degree of accuracy take us a lot further back than that it is insupportable, yet there are still a huge number of people who in some way think this is The Truth. Echoes of the Burma Spitfire beliefs.

As the other religious discussion has proved even-tempered and interesting I thought I would chuck this one in for people’s opinion.

So. Complete fruitloops, or in some way I have missed, explicable?

Moggy