1.2.2 Religious beliefs
The Jews and the Christians share the same belief about the earth creation (first book of the Old Testament, Genesis):
- In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.
- God said: "Let there be light" to separate the day from the night.
- God said: "Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it divide the waters from the waters". God called the firmament Heaven.
- And God said: "Let the waters under the heaven be gathered together unto one place, and let the dry land appear." And God called the dry land Earth; and the gathering together of the waters called he Seas.
- And God said: "Let the earth bring forth grass, the herb yielding seed, and the fruit tree yielding fruit, whose seed was in itself, after his kind."
- And God said: "Let there be lights in the firmament of the heaven to divide the day from the night." He made the stars ALSO. And God set them in the firmament of the heaven.
- And God said: "Let the waters bring forth abundantly the moving creatures that hath life, and fowl that may flight above the earth in the open firmament of heaven." And God blessed them, saying, "Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the waters in the seas, and let fowl multiply in the earth."
- And God said: "Let the earth bring forth the living creatures after his kind, cattle, and creeping thing, and beast of the earth after his kind."
- And God said: "Let us make man in our image, after our likeness; and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the fowl of the air; and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over all creeping things that creepeth upon the earth." And God blessed them, and God said unto them, "Be fruitful and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth."
- On the seven day God ended his work which h had made; and he rested on the seventh day from all his work which he had made. And God blessed the seventh day, and sanctified it: because that in it he had rested from all his work which God created and made.

On the base of the Bible, Archbishop James Ussher of Armagh, among other religious men, calculated in the 17th century that the earth was "born" on Saturday October 22, 4004 BC at precisely 6pm. It is well known now that this is not true and that the earth is much older (about 4.6 billion years old according to the latest scientific theories).