How Old Does the Bible Say the Earth Is? Part 2

[Originally published as the second section of  TCQ Week 4: Scripture and the Age of the Earth]

There are many ways people understand the Bible: Should we take it literally? If so, does that mean all of it? If some of it is allegorical, how do we know which parts? If we can’t tell, can we trust the Bible at all?

Are Scientists Wrong?

From past lessons, we know that “the science” isn’t really a single thing. Scientists all have beliefs. Everyone brings those beliefs with them to their work. This helps us see that scientists can be wrong, even when they hold their beliefs sincerely and even seem to have good evidence for them.

As we continue through this series, we will see specific areas of science where there is disagreement between the biblical picture and the mainstream picture. When it comes to the areas of science that disagree with creation in six days, it can be boiled down to just a few ideas:

1. The dating of rocks and fossils on Earth
2. The dating of the stars and planets
3. The belief in “molecules-to-man” evolution

Rocks and fossils on earth

Earlier I discussed the idea of “uniformitarianism,” the idea that “the present is the key to the past.” It’s important to remember this is not a conclusion about the evidence, but an assumption about it. When that assumption is used to interpret the evidence, it affects the outcome.

When scientists perform “radiometric dating” tests on rocks and fossils, they determine the age of the specimen based on the “half-life” of radioactive elements within it. For example, the uranium-lead (U-Pb) dating method is used to estimate the age of the Earth, which is about 4.5 billion years old. The half-life is the period of time it takes for half of the radioactive material to decay.

But this explanation faces three problems. First, if uniformitarianism is not true, the method is not reliable. If the earth underwent dramatic periods of catastrophic activity (like a global flood), there are more factors to consider than the year-over-year decay.

Second, there is evidence in the methods themselves to suggest they are not reliable. These dating methods require three additional assumptions:

1. Zero contamination: The sample must not have been contaminated with any other materials since it was formed.
2. Original makeup: The sample must have started with only the original radioactive material and none of the end product.
3. A consistent rate of decay: The rate at which the radioactive material decays must have remained constant over time.

These are difficult (if not impossible) to prove. It is shaky ground to change how we see biblical history based on these methods.

Third, the physical evidence suggests a different explanation. For example, we have tested rocks that have formed during our lifetimes that show large radiometric ages. Also, many rocks have formed “polonium halos,” which are tiny spheres of radiation damage that suggest rapid formation. (It looks like a LOT of decay has happened in a SHORT amount of time.)

Stars and planets

Uniformitarianism also plays into the dating of the stars and planets. Sometimes astronomers say, “When we look into a telescope, we see the past.” They’re technically right about that, but it is a bit misleading. It doesn’t automatically tell you how far into the past they are looking.

Because distant stars and planets are a long way away, scientists believe their great distance from us is an indicator of how long ago they were formed. They can measure the “red shift” in stars, which shows how fast they are moving away from us. This shift is used to estimate their age and the age of the universe by “winding back the clock.”

So when we look at images from the James Webb telescope and see the distant reaches of the universe, astronomers tell us we are seeing the universe in its earliest stages, roughly 13.8 billion years ago.

But suppose creation happened as the Bible says—in six days, roughly 6-7,000 years ago. How could we see light from stars that far away? Many answers have been considered, but the simplest one is that their creation was rapid—like a growth spurt—just as it seems the creation of life on Earth was.

Sparing you the boring details (for now), that scenario would result in a young universe that, under uniformitarian assumptions, could seem old.

Evolution

The dating of rocks and fossils is not the only thing scientists pay attention to. They also consider the order of the fossils found and look for relationships between them, such as whether animals could interbreed, how similar they are in body structure, and any DNA relationships they share.

When it comes to evolution, there are two parts: the observations scientists make and the explanations they offer for them. Right now, scientists are questioning some of their explanations, especially some of the ideas that Charles Darwin suggested and those related to them. But most scientists don’t question the observations of evolution: that organisms change over time and that all life can be traced back to a single common ancestor.

That second part has three big problems. First, if the current processes scientists believe about evolution are not true, it casts doubt on whether their observations are correct. For example, the evidence shows that Darwin’s processes cannot move an organism beyond the classification level of “Family” in most cases. This casts doubt on the idea that all life can be connected past that point.

Second, current observations about evolution only consider how organisms are similar, not how they are different. But there are many differences between organisms, and current methods of science in biology don’t take these differences into account. Once we consider how organisms are different, we see a picture of life’s history on Earth that is more like the one described in the Bible. (More about that in a couple weeks.)

Finally, you should always have a way to prove something wrong. The saying, “If it’s too good to be true, it usually is” applies here. When evidence against evolution appears (such as common “design” features in very distantly-related groups of organisms), evolutionists often call this “convergence” and say it is evidence for evolution. Really, it’s just evidence against evolution that has been turned into a story.

Putting it altogether, we have clear evidence from Scripture that creation took place in six days, and little evidence from science that truly threatens that belief.