The calculation was done a few hundred years ago
   [1]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ussher_chronology in 1650.
   It was good scholarship - good science for the day.

   But by 150-200 years later, it was no longer taken seriously
   except by a few Protestant groups, but taken VERY seriously by
   the new atheist movement that was growing in force.

   Nowadays, only splinter groups (usually groups with no
   denominational affiliation (although there may be an exception
   or two)) consider it true.

   The majority of Christendom does not follow it. If I'm not
   mistaken, neither the Roman Catholic nor the Eastern Orthodox
   family of Churches _ever_ believed it.

   Protestant families of churches often were Literalists, but the
   ancient churches, even in the earliest writings, saw the dates
   and times of creation as symbolic, representative of
   psychological states, or eras, much as mainstream Christendom
   does today. === I was lucky. I was raised Methodist, which
   didn't have a literal view of the Bible and in my mid 20s, I
   spent a few years as Eastern Orthodox Christian, learning a lot
   about the Greek/Russian/Coptic Christian view of history...
   after ALMOST going into seminary to become a Roman Catholic
   priest (but I hadn't converted yet - I found "Eastern Orthodox
   in the yellow pages, called up the priest, his wife answered, I
   was instantly impressed).

   Anyway - while I'm not involved with any of that now [I don't
   have a particular religion at present] - while I was obsessing
   for a few years, I read EVERYTHING by the Desert Monks of the
   5th-12th centuries that I could find. These ppl spent their
   lives n the desert, or in caves - and just, well, thought about
   stuff a lot.

   A lot of the best of theology came from those dirty hermits in
   the Eastern Church, and one of the best things is some pretty
   intense symbolic interpretations of ... well... just about
   everything in the Bible.

   I don't know as much about the Roman Catholic way, but from what
   I understand, taking the Bible as "Gospel Truth" is a _really_
   modern thing... starting in America at some point after the
   Reformation.

   But for 1500 years before that, nope, wasn't generally literal.
   Maybe to a few but the people back then didn't have TV,
   internet, newspapers and such, so they were REALLY BIG into
   other types of symbolism to fill up their minds - to help them
   deal with the sometimes great, sometimes cruddy world we're
   plopped into and giving it meaning.

   "Dashing your children against the rocks" was symbolic of
   stopping bad thoughts before they grow too powerful in the mind.
   Psychology isn't new; religions have been practicing it for
   thousands of years. People were never *stupid*; we have the same
   brain capacities we had 1000 years ago, 5000 years ago, 10,000
   years ago and we had to fill it up with _something_ to keep it
   going. === Ah I forgot about the Orthodox Jews. Their history is
   even shorter. Around the 1820s-1840s there seemed to be a BURST
   of new thought from all different areas that came on the world
   scene; many Christian denominations, belief systems, people
   splitting off into different groups or breaking away entirely...
   spiritualism.. science magic shows with some of the new
   properties that we had discovered...

   and... by 1860, you've got the Conflict Thesis, the 19th century
   idea that "science and religion are in eternal conflict" that
   some still believe today. === Forensic geneticists and
   evolutionary scientists are searching for Eve though - and
   others looking for Adam... a prototypical "first human pairing",
   so they may, in fact, have existed: first humans... just perhaps
   not quite as illustriously protrayed as they are in Genesis,
   which is a not a bad explanation of "Why people are mean to each
   other and often just plain old suck". Maybe not the best, but
   there's some truth to the idea that you can know *so much* about
   good and evil that you no longer care anymore about your fellow
   man, or anything really.

   In the end, I think it was an old "Don't talk to strangers"
   story for children, much like the Troll under the bridge or
   Slenderman a few years back in Creepypasta land. ==== The Bible
   has only been taken literally in very modern times.

   Up until the Protestant Reformation, Christian theology would
   have had absolutely no problem with the concept of a
   metaphorical Adam and Eve separated in Time. It was already well
   known that the 7 days was metaphorical. The Reformation was a
   step backwards in theology in a very big way.

   I was raised Methodist. I was led to believe that Big Bang,
   evolution, the timeline, everything - anything that the sciences
   have said about such things, is likely true. The Garden of Eden
   was taught to me as a metaphorical or symbolic device.

   Perhaps there are those who take it literally. I was never
   taught to and the idea of taking the Bible literally seems
   entirely ridiculous for ANYBODY to do, whether they are "for or
   against". It's not a book that's meant to be taken literally.
   It's meaningless without interpretation.

   "Biblical version" to me is meaningless. People who take it
   literally, to me, have always been ridiculous. My first exposure
   to a Fundamentalist on TV as a teenager who took it literally
   was ridiculous to me - and I considered myself a Christian at
   the time, and the guy on TV, a snake-oil salesman.

   My first exposure to a self-declared Atheist who took the bible
   literally (just enough to say, "and this is why it's wrong") was
   in the early 90s online in some religious debate chat room.

   That was also my first exposure to a debating evangelical.

   They were trading bible verses back and forth like legal
   statutes at someone's Trial.

   I was like, "wtf guys, Bible's not a literal document, are you
   stupid?"

   They both hated me for the rest of the talk. The evangelical had
   the "inscribed by God Himself" attitute, the Atheist had the
   "Well, it says it so it must be what they mean and it's wrong"

   Neither one could understand historical context one bit. Neither
   one understood an inch of Theology, Symbolism. Just two very
   literal people, being literal at each other.

   Perhaps I had a weird background that didn't take the Bible
   stories as literal. But I don't think so.

References

   Visible links
   1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ussher_chronology