Question:
Dear Greg,
I
recently asked a church pastor about the differing views about the age of the
earth, if he really believed that the earth could possibly be only about 7,000
years old because of scientific evidence to the contrary (of which I must admit
that I am not very knowledgeable). He
replied that there are arguments for both sides of this question.
I started thinking that maybe science makes assumptions in its dating of
the earth, assuming that radioactive materials break down at the same rate for
millions of years. God could
certainly cause these things to proceed at accelerated and decelerated rates.
Are there arguments for both sides of this issue that stand up to
scrutiny?
Dave
Answer: Dear Dave,
I
have never seen any logical or scientifically accurate claim that the earth is
less than either 6,000 or 7,000 years old.
The weight of all the evidence is on an earth that is perhaps several
billions of years old. The idea that God could accelerate or decelerate time of
course is true—but to use it to try to claim the earth is much younger than
all the facts prove is disingenuous.
The
argument stems from what some see as an absolute line in the sand—that each
day of creation was a literal 24-hour period, and that God’s plan for man was
that each day would represent 1000 years of history.
2 Peter 3:8 is often quoted, out of context, in this regard.
Some believe that if they compromise on the age of the earth, accepting
it to be less than 6000 or 7000 years old, that the next step is to deny God as
creator.
By
so doing they are drawing the line in the wrong place, and effectively
alienating themselves (and anyone who would follow such teachings) from
scientific fact. Those who really
suffer are students of science, who are torn between how God and the Bible are
misrepresented to them, and scientific and historical fact.
The
dinosaurs prove that the age of the earth and the time of man’s existence on
the earth are not one and the same thing.
But
even man’s existence on earth cannot be fit into 6000 years (the seventh one
thousand time period being seen by most advocates of this idea as the millennial
rule, after Christ’s return).
1.
Human civilization can easily be traced back ten to twelve thousand
years—and those are conservative estimates.
2.
The 6000-year theory is also debunked by the time in which we live.
In
Christ,
Greg
Albrecht