If you believe Bishop Ussher (and, of course, in these enlightened days only a handful of idiots do) then the Earth was created on 23rd October 4004BC, six thousand and ten years ago today. I’m just sorry that I missed marking the 6000th anniversary ten years ago, but I think I was busy on my honeymoon.
On his current book tour, Richard Dawkins has an analogy that nicely sums up the size of the error in Ussher’s cronology. He says that believing that the Earth is 6000 years old is like believing that the distance between New York and San Francisco is 700 centimetres.
Update: Changed metres to centimetres – see discussion in the comments.
It looks like everybody has got their calculations wrong here. Wikipedia says the age of the earth is 4.567 billion years (4.567×109 years). This being the case, Bish was out by a factor of 761166. However, if what he was saing was like believing the distance between NY and San Fran was 700 metres, this would mean the true value is 532817 km. Now I know it is a long way between those two cities, but I’m pretty sure it’s not that far!Maybe he meant 700cm?
I should check this stuff before posting it I suppose :)Let’s assume Dawkins actually said 700cm and I transcribed it incorrectly. That would make the distance 5328km. Which is, at least, the right order of magnitude.