How old is the Earth?

Mainstream scientific consensus, based on radiometric dating of rocks and meteorites confirmed by multiple independent methods, puts the earth's age at about 4.54 billion years. This is one of the most thoroughly cross-checked measurements in science.

Christians hold genuinely different views on how this fits with Genesis. Young-earth creationists read the biblical genealogies and six creation days as calculating a much younger earth, generally between six and ten thousand years old, and question the reliability of standard dating methods. Old-earth creationists accept the mainstream scientific age while interpreting Genesis differently—as describing long creative periods, or as making a theological rather than scientific claim about origins.

This disagreement runs deep within otherwise doctrinally similar churches and denominations, and it isn't new or purely science-driven—Christians have debated how literally to read Genesis's timeframe since long before modern geology existed.