Televangelist Pat Robertson says that radiocarbon dating proves that the Earth is older than 6,000 years — and he’s telling Christians not to “cover it up.”

On Tuesday’s 700 Club, a viewer wrote Robertson that her “biggest fear is to not have my children and husband next to me in God’s Kingdom” because they question why the Bible could not explain the existence of dinosaurs.

ADVERTISEMENT

“Look, I know that people will probably try to lynch me when I say this, but Bishop [James] Ussher wasn’t inspired by the Lord when he said that it all took 6,000 years,” the TV preacher explained. “It just didn’t. You go back in time, you’ve got radiocarbon dating. You got all these things and you’ve got the caucuses of dinosaurs frozen in time out in the Dakotas.”

“They’re out there,” he continued. “So, there was a time when these giant reptiles were on the Earth and it was before the time of the Bible. So, don’t try and cover it up and make like everything was 6,000 years. That’s not the Bible.”

“If you fight science, you’re going to lose your children, and I believe in telling it the way it was.”

In his 1650 publication The Annals of the World, Archbishop of Ireland James Ussher estimated that the Earth had been created on October 23, 4004 BC. Ussher’s work continues to be cited by many creationists as proof that the Earth is 6,000 years old.

In fact, Answer in Genesis — the group behind the Creation Museum in Petersburg, Kentucky — has claimed that “dinosaurs (land vertebrates) were represented on the Ark.”

ADVERTISEMENT

Robertson’s Christian Broadcasting Network promoted the Creation Museum in a 2007 report and seemed to buy in to the notion that the Earth was thousands — not billions — of years old.

“[M]aterial has been found in dinosaur remains that could last at the most thousands of years,” according to the report. “Now, with all the resources available in such places as the Creation Museum in Kentucky and the 7 Wonders Creation Museum in Washington state, Christian kids can head back into the public schools with their heads held high, knowing that what’s in their Bible and what science says don’t have to contradict each other. ”

Watch this video from CBN’s The 700 Club, broadcast Nov. 27, 2012.

ADVERTISEMENT

(h/t: Right Wing Watch)