Creationism: How Old Is the Earth?

WE’VE WRITTEN about this subject before: How Old Is the Earth and the Universe? We also wrote this: How Old Is The Creationists’ Universe? But those were written mostly from a scientific perspective.

To a limited extent we discussed the creationist viewpoint here: Creationism and the Problem of Time, and also here: Creationism and Tree Ring Chronology. But now your Curmudgeon has found the mother lode of creationist thought on this issue.

At the website of Answers in Genesis (AIG), one of the major sources of creationist wisdom. they have this article: How old is the earth? The author is described elsewhere at the AIG website: Bodie Hodge; and he appears to be a well-educated mechanical engineer. Here are some excerpts:

Where did a young-earth worldview come from? Simply put, it came from the Bible. Of course, the Bible doesn’t say explicitly anywhere, “the earth is 6,000 years old.” Good thing it doesn’t; otherwise it would be out of date the following year. But we wouldn’t expect an all-knowing God to make that kind of a mistake.

Of course not. Let’s read on:

God gave us something better. In essence, He gave us a “birth certificate.” For example, using my personal birth certificate, I can calculate how old I am at any point. It is similar with the earth. Genesis 1 says that the earth was created on the first day of creation (Genesis 1:1–5). From there, we can begin calculations of the age of the earth.

Let’s do a rough calculation to show how this works. The age of the earth can be estimated by taking the first 5 days of creation (from earth’s creation to Adam), then following the genealogies from Adam to Abraham in Genesis 5 and 11, then adding in the time from Abraham to today.

We understand the concept. The author then provides us with the conclusions of bible scholars, including Archbishop James Ussher, who agree that the world is about 6,000 years old. More or less. But they don’t all come to the identical conclusion. He explains why:

Some used the Septuagint or another early translation, instead of the Hebrew Masoretic text. The Septuagint is a Greek translation of the Hebrew Old Testament, done about 250 B.C. by about 70 Jewish scholars (hence it is often cited as the LXX). It is good in most places, but appears to have a number of inaccuracies. For example, one relates to the Genesis chronologies where the LXX indicates that Methuselah would have lived past the Flood, without being on the Ark!

How embarrassing! We’re glad they cleared that one up. Here’s more:

What about extra-biblical calculations for the age of the earth? Cultures throughout the world have kept track of history as well. From a biblical perspective, we would expect the dates given for creation of the earth to align much closer to the biblical date than billions of years.

This is expected since everyone was descended from Noah and scattered from the Tower of Babel. Another expectation is that there should be some discrepancies among the age of the earth as people scattered throughout the world, taking their uninspired records or oral history to different parts of the globe.

Actually, discrepancies are not expected. Englishmen, for example, have scattered from their home island and now live all over the world. But except for known embellishments by later writers, there is no variation in the legend of King Arthur. Nevertheless, the author gives numerous estimates of the age of the earth from several cultures, and they don’t agree at all — except that they don’t involve billions of years.

The author then discusses what happened when the science of geology began, starting with James Hutton. That’s when the idea of millions of years crept into the thinking of educated people. The author says:

From these men [early geologists] and others came the consensus view that the geologic layers were laid down slowly over long periods of time based on the rates we see them accumulating today. Hutton said:

The past history of our globe must be explained by what can be seen to be happening now. … No powers are to be employed that are not natural to the globe, no action to be admitted except those of which we know the principle.

This viewpoint is called naturalistic uniformitarianism, and would exclude any major catastrophes like Noah’s Flood.

Presumably he intended to say “unevidenced major catastrophes.” The writer than summarizes the age of the earth as estimated by several early scientists, and their estimates obviously vary according to what was known at the time of their work. The author stresses that variability, but never mentions the virtue of a system that accepts and encourages such improvements. Near the end he says:

The age of the earth debate ultimately comes down to this foundational question. Are we trusting man’s imperfect and changing ideas and assumptions about the past or trusting God’s perfectly accurate eyewitness account of the past, including the creation of the world, Noah’s global Flood and the age of the earth?

Well, one could look at it like that. Then he provides a lot more information — this really is an interesting article — and finally he winds it all up like this:

The age of the earth ultimately comes down to a matter of trust — it’s a worldview issue. Will you trust what an all-knowing God says on the subject or will you trust imperfect man’s assumptions and imaginations about the past that regularly are changing?

Actually, it’s not a matter of trust. If it were, then the prudent among us would follow Reagan’s dictum: “Trust, but verify!”

This “worldview issue” is really a question of epistemology — What is knowledge? How is knowledge acquired? How do we know what we know?

Copyright © 2009. The Sensuous Curmudgeon. All rights reserved.

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