I was just curious where all Creationists agreed on 6,000 years or whether there were different sects who disagreed about dates.
parsy, who wonders
Yes, there are several camps amongst Creationists. What is probably the more traditional view, is that the Earth isn’t much older than 6,000 years old. That is the date that seems to correspond to the most straightforward reading of the Bible, and the calculation of it preceded the whole Evolution vs. Creation debate.
Of the other theories, one is that the 7 day “creation week” of Genesis may not have been literal 24 hour days, but “prophetic days”, following the rule that a day to the Lord is like unto a thousand years. So this camp can make the case that the creation may have taken place up to 13,000 years ago (or even longer in some theories which think each “day” of creation was an entire epoch of uncertain duration).
Another theory is the “Gap Theory”, which says that there is an unknown period of time that transpired between Genesis 1:1 and Genesis 1:2. Under this theory, the creation which is described after those verses was subsequent to a previous creation event which was followed, after some unknown duration of time, by a cataclysmic destruction, which made the earth “formless and void”.
Generally the first group is referred to as YEC (Young-Earth Creationists), and the last group is referred to as OEC (Old-Earth Creationists). I guess the middle group is probably closer to YEC but I’m not sure if that’s how they are usually designated.
Oh yeah, and then you also have the “Guided Evolution” folks, who believe that the creation narrative in Genesis is symbolic and that the history proposed by modern science is accurate, except that God was guiding the natural forces in order to create life instead of them progressing blindly. This group is usually not lumped in with the rest of Creationists though.