Could the universe have been created six thousand years ago?

That would contradict a crucial property of “God”. Namely the one that states that God does not lie.
Here is why: By creating the Universe in that manner, he would have to set up everything so that it seems to be older. Photons from other stars and galaxies would have to be set up midway. Chemical properties of matter would have to be faked so that they seem older than they are. Fossils of animals that never existed would have to be planted, geological layers would have to be arranged in a way that it purports a false age.
In short, the entire universe would be one great cosmic deception, a lie of cosmic proportions.

No…. there is no way that that happened! No way at all….

Nope.

Highly unlikely. The wheel was was probably invented before that.

Sure…why not? That would take a huge burden of proof off the shoulders of 99% of all religions. Boy that was easy!

No i don’t think so. Its likely to happen in the bible

If He created the universe six thousand years ago then He created it with all of its history up to that point. Ages of things wouldnt have to be faked because He created them old. Not created them and then tried to make them seem old.

If anyone created the universe 6000 years ago, that being was a practical joker, leaving behind extensive fossil record with carbon dating abilities to pull a fast one on scientists.

If I was God, I would do something like that. :)

If God is omnipotent, then He doesn’t need a manual. He could have easily created a universe even 100 years ago, full with history, dinosaur bones and faraway galaxies, and even imaginary family trees, lost continents and legends. For all you know the universe was created yesterday, and everyone in it is fake, and your memories have been implanted.

If the universe was created only 6 thousand years ago, how do we account for fossil evidence of dinosaurs being around much longer than that here on earth?

Life is but a blink of an eye to God.

Time is a restraint that we impose on ourselves.

If you want to imagine a mythical all-powerful all-knowing creature who could do anything without respect to what we think of as “physics”, “chemistry”, “time”, “gravity” and other constraints of the known universe… then it could have been created just yesterday. Including all of your memories and the people around you.

@KeithWilson
If he created the universe 6000 years ago “with all its history up to that point”, then this history is, by definition, fake, because factually, the universe would not have existed prior to that point and any “history” he baked into this universe would be factually not true. Ages of things would equally be fake by definition because things would not really be that old.

@Arisztid Hahahahaha…. you would as well!

No.

The idea that ‘god’ could have created the world 6000 years ago by making an exact copy of the world as it would be, had it been older (fossils, rocks, stars etc) is not possible. That would require that god instantly create a universe in a ‘current state’. That would take infinite energy. If such a ‘god’ were not subject to the laws of this universe and/or outside of this universe then well anything could be claimed at that point. If you limit such an explanation to a particular god or implementation or motive you must prove that all other possibilities are impossible. Otherwise you’re committing the logical fallacy of special pleading. Which is you ask for an except only for your particular theory, ignoring the door you open for everyone elses theory to have an exception. For example, using the idea that god is outside the universe I could claim the easter bunny is outside the universe with no more evidence for or against – both must be considered equally likely (and possibly simultaneous). These arguments go on and on and eventually degrade into “do you believe what you see”. If you do, then you have to go with science. If you don’t then you are mad – or at least living in a mad universe.

First off, I agree with @ru5150 , in that I live in a mad universe.
Time is not the same to God as it is to us. The Bible even says that.
He created it all. That we can doubt his power amazes me.

And robes are always in.

It is possible to the same degree that the universe could have materialised in the last ten seconds, with your memories and ideas in tact. In a metaphysical sense, it is perfectly possible. However it is a useless theory that would explain nothing at all. It would involve the faking of all that seems to point to the past as we know it, which would make the universe an elaborate hoax to deliberately deceive humanity. What would be the point of believing such a hypothesis?

I don’t really understand why people who think the universe could have been created 6k years ago as-is with its history can’t accept that that world was created 5 minutes ago, 10 seconds ago, or yesterday. These are are quite different from the folks who think that there’s a great conspiracy of scientists to convince folks that the world is older than 6k years, which is quite a different theory.

The universe is much older than six thousand years.

If we are in the “Matrix” then the universe could all be holograms and made to look like anything…but if that’s true then the universe is made to look 10–15 billion years old

Maybe.
Or maybe the universe hasn’t been created yet, and we’re all just elements of the imagination of a universe creator dreaming up a fake history.
Or maybe only everyone else is fake, and you are actually the universe creator, who was about to create the universe but then had a stroke and fell into a coma thinking he was a person in the imaginary history he was working on.
Who’s to say?

But I don’t think so.

This is why people invented skepticism. You can dream up what-ifs until the cows come home, but you can’t afford to take them all seriously. You have to focus your considerations on the scenarios that are actually likely to be true. It’s the only way to figure out the truth.

Fun fact: beer was invented at least 8000 years ago.

@Fyrius So 2000 years after that, everyone got so pissed they couldn’t remember the day before, and decided to start all over again?

To properly answer the question one must first under the universe…..

Where did it come from and what does it consist of?

In this day and age men use standards that are within the universe to measure the universe…
Thus they err greatly, for you cannot be only with something to know it’s true nature you must be without also.

This universe is the product of Nothing and Allthings and thus encapsulated in a window of time…

Without is Up and is Life all thing and within is down and is death and nothing.

Therefore six thousand years…..?
Which did you measure? the all or the none…
and what measure standard did you use….. from the all or the none ?

If you ask about the existence of men within this age….
Then I would ask what is the oldest record of men that we have…..

That is good enough for me…

Once again Occam’s Razor provides the answer. Could God have created the universe 6000 years ago and make it appear as if it were older? Absolutely. Is there any way of distinguishing such a universe from one that was actually created several billion years ago? Absolutely not. So we go with the simpler explanation, that the universe actually is as it appears to be.

Why the flying fuck would it be 6000 years old? What possible evidence could there be for it being 6000 years old? Why not 6001? or 7000? or 1 243 774? or 2 minutes? Because some book said so without qualifying it’s conclusions, providing logical evidence or explaining it’s reasoning in any way?

If you are truly interested in how old the world is why don’t you do an honest attempt to read up on the merits of different theories on how old it is, instead of accepting some random claim from a book written 2000 years ago?

Yes sure it could be 6000 years old, but that age is about as likely as any other random number. With current knowledge the most probable age seems to be about 13.75 ±0.17 billion years old.

God actually created the world approximately 13 minutes ago. All of your memories before that are illusions placed in your brain by God, so that you’d be tempted to believe the universe is older than that, as a test of your faith.

Also, it’s impossible to prove that this isn’t possible, because God can do anything by definition.

@Qingu damn… well, I was only off by about 23 hours and 47 minutes, then (maximum).

The idea IS to be able to imagine, hypothetically, that God, being omnipotent, COULD have created the universe at any possble time in the life of said universe. This is like taking a piece of paper and, starting in the middle of the page (six thousand years ago) and drawing a line from that point to the left side of the page (the past), then going back to the starting point and drawing a line to the right side of the page (the future). To somone who didnt see how the line was drawn it would be simpler (Ochams Razor) to believe that the drawer had started from the left and made a continuous line, through the middle and all the way to the right side of the page. Yet we would have no reason to believe that he did it the other way around, or as that it was done as I described it above. One of the criticisms of Ochams Razor is that it squashes creativity or even the possiblity of creativity for the resolution of any given hypothesis. The purpose of the Razor is to reduce the chance for error by choosing the simpler hypothesis believing that it is more likely to be the correct one. But where there are many possible explainations for an event, which all could lead to the same conclusion, it is not fair to say that the simpler explaination is more right than a more complex one. To note, the drawers starting point in no way makes either of its sides more real or less real than they are.

When you hear hoofbeats behind you, you can imagine that there are all kinds of causes for that: a zebra, an invisible pink unicorn (or a regular old visible one), a sound man for a movie set… or a horse.

Occam’s Razor merely suggests that you should “assume it’s a horse” (maybe unless you’re in Africa or on a movie set), and start your investigation there. You’re not required to do that. You can still feel free to believe in—and attempt to prove the existence of—the invisible pink unicorn.

Good luck with that.

@CyanoticWasp sorry, I didn’t see your quip. you beat me to it :)

Nope, the oldest human skeleton was found in South Africa dating back something like forty thousand years, not sure about the age but it’s older than six thousand years any way.
The first four books in the Bible was written by Moses in my view point the story of the creation was only written as a hear say story. So we can’t say that the world was created by God, because Moses said so.

Moses himself was probably a legendary figure perhaps loosely based on a real Egyptian exile at best.

@KeithWilson
“The purpose of the Razor is to reduce the chance for error by choosing the simpler hypothesis believing that it is more likely to be the correct one. But where there are many possible explainations for an event, which all could lead to the same conclusion, it is not fair to say that the simpler explaination is more right than a more complex one.”

Spoken like someone who entirely missed the point of Ockham’s Razor.

This principle only applies in situations where there are several possible explanations for an event. When only one explanation is possible, you already have your answer.

And yes, it is quite fair. It is a rather simple fact of probability calculation that one fact being true is more likely than the same fact being true, plus another fact also being true. The probability of rolling six on a dice is 1/6, but the probability of rolling six on a dice and flipping a coin and getting tails is 1/6×½ = 1/12.
This is why complexity makes an explanation unlikely; the more details, the more things that can be wrong. The probabilities are multiplied and the added total becomes smaller with each added detail.

Days used to be longer , but it depends on what your definition of day is

@kess When did you make observations from outside the universe? Since your claims are opposed to modern science, whose drawback is that “use standards that are within the universe to measure the universe”, you must have been on some special space trip outside the universe to be able to make contrary claims.

6000 years ago, our mama was fondeling a big black obelisk…to the score of 2001!

obelisk fondeling

I seriously cant believe what i just read…..

also, doesnt the bible mention nothing of a universe at all, ya know since humans were ignorant to the fact that there even was a universe back then. Didnt god just “create” earth

@uberbatman True. In fact, Galileo was shafted because he dared to refute the convoluted geocentric view of astronomy and simplify it by stating that Earth was not the physical center of Creation. It wasn’t until very recently that The Church apologized for that. Not that an apology means much to someone who has been dead for centuries…

Besides, if God created this world only a few thousand years ago, what in the world was he doing for amusement for the infinities of time before that? Did it take him until only 60 centuries ago to get bored or lonely? Why then?

@FireMadeFlesh when you understand that you are within the universe and the universe is also with in you, you would know.

Before that you can only be a man within the universe, and like the many others solely dependant on the created things for their survival….

@kess The universe is in me? I think you need to explain this a little more clearly. It seems that you have made a miscalculation – the universe is far bigger than me.

@FireMadeFlesh even I explain it you won’t believe unless you know it yourself.
My only encouragement and hope is that you seek to know yourself.

The good thing is that this knowledge is already within you so you won’t have to look far.

@kess I know myself very well. I am never surprised by what I do, and I regularly remodel my mind to fit what I learn. Surely you could set me on the right path, without speaking cryptically like you’re a kung fu master.

The mind or the body which is greater

@kess The mind is part of the body, and therefore cannot be either greater or less than it. There can be no separation of mind from body, unless of course by ‘body’ you mean ‘thorax’.

Yes, it could. All you need is a big freezer, put in the universe and let the nuclei of atoms catch their electrons. Otherwise this takes 300,000 years. Good things take time.

@FireMadeFlesh
Then if that is what you know then what can I say…..... except….. live it.

I know different