The debate over the age of the earth is significant because it profoundly intersects both physical and spiritual reality. A literal reading of Scripture places the beginning about 6000 years ago, while almost all scientists claim the planet is several billion years old. Where we land on this key scientific question has tremendous spiritual implications. (1Ti 6:20-21)
As in most debates, our ideology, world view or general narrative determines how we interpret reality (Mt 6:22-23), and this particular debate appears to be no different. Young Earth Creationists use a consistent, well-established biblical hermeneutic, respecting the Creation narrative in Genesis at face value. Old Earth proponents tend to align with Philosophical Naturalism, that Earth and all life forms have arisen from random, purely natural causes over long periods of time.
While there is plenty of scientific data available to help us estimate the age of the earth (Ro 1:20), each world view finds ways to interpret the data according to its own general narrative. The consequences of allowing the data here to actually fundamentally change the way one perceives reality are indeed profound. (2Th 2:10-12)
The stakes are perhaps highest for the atheist: accepting a young earth eliminates Darwinian Evolution as a plausible explanation for our existence, leading us to wrestle with Divinity defining a moral standard and holding us all accountable for our actions. This is so offensive and unpalatable to hardened atheists it blinds their minds, literally rendering them incapable of rationally evaluating the facts. (2Co 4:4) So, when we discover soft tissue in dinosaur bones, for example, any explanation at all, even if it’s a wild stretch, satisfies sufficiently to dismiss the evidence. (2Pe 3:5)
Yet decades of extensive Origin of Life research now demonstrate beyond any reasonable doubt that life could not possibly have evolved naturally, exposing Darwinian Evolution as an elaborate hoax and eliminating any rational basis for Philosophical Naturalism. (Ps 139:14) Consequently, an old-earth interpretation of the scientific data no longer supports any rational world view (Ps 102:25); we should all be free to consider faith-based, young-earth interpretations of the scientific data without being mocked and ridiculed.
Even so, many Christians depart from a biblical hermeneutic in Genesis to accommodate an old earth, hoping to be respected by the general scientific community. However, in doing so they unwittingly undermine the very foundations of the Christian faith: that God actually made Man in His own image from the dust of the earth; that He actually formed Woman from the rib of Man (1Ti 2:13); that God actually rested on seventh literal 24-hour day of Creation and sanctified it (Ex 20:11); that Adam actually brought sin into the world by eating of the forbidden fruit (14), and death by sin, actually passing spiritual death on to all of us, who are all his descendants (Ro 5:12); that God actually cursed the ground for Man’s sake, and prophesied that the Seed of Woman will bruise His heal while bruising the head of the serpent who deceived them. Allegorizing the Creation story leads one to presume all of these foundational historical events didn’t actually happen as they are recorded, but that they merely evolved over millennia as pre-historic humanoids passed on oral traditions trying to make sense of their chaotic world.
Yet Jesus Christ Himself evidently accepted the Genesis account as literally true (Mt 19:4-6), as did His apostles. (1Ti 2:13-14)
This debate is surely not without consequence. If we don’t take the writings of Moses at face value, how are we to believe the words of Christ? (Jn 5:46-47) Grounding ourselves in the facts and understanding how and why they are interpreted by each side, will help us be ready to give an answer to anyone who asks of us a reason for our hope with meekness and respect. (1Pe 3:15)
The Gap Theory of Creation attempts to allow for an old Earth while maintaining a strictly biblical hermeneutic in interpreting Genesis. The obvious problem with this theory is that the time gap proposed occurs before the existence of light itself, as well as the rest of the universe and all life forms, so it does not explain the fossil record or allow for an earlier civilization. All it might account for is the age of rocks, yet these can more easily be understood as having been created with the appearance of age, like everything else God created.
The Day-Age Theory of Creation attempts to allow for an old Earth while adopting a metaphorical or poetic interpretation of Genesis. Like the Gap Theory, this view also suffers from obvious incoherence: Earth before light; plants before the sun, moon and stars; birds springing forth from the oceans before any land animals or bugs, etc. The day sequence being so out-of-order from the accepted scientific understanding leads one to conclude a poetic narrative is merely the fruit of early man’s imagination, not the inspired Word of God. And once we allegorize Genesis, there’s nothing stopping us from allegorizing the rest of scripture, dismissing it all as insightful mythology.
Here’s an article about soft tissue persisting in specimens claimed to be 500 million years old.
Each of the various materialistic methods used to estimate the age of the earth depend upon several key assumptions:
[1] The sample began to exist in a relativelypure state, with no decomposition or degeneration,
[2] The rate of decay has been constant over time, that nothing in the environment has altered the rate of decay.
[3] The system is closed; it has not been compromised by matter or energy being introduced or removed from the sample.
Each of these assumptions may be challenged as inappropriate or unrealistic in order to account for a young Earth.
Here is a link to a ChatGPT discussion on this general topic of the age of the earth.
The amount of moon dust is, I think, very good evidence of a young earth. If we assume a uniform average rate of space dust accumulation (which is generous since it is likely lower now than its historical average) and no dust at the beginning (giving the benefit of the doubt), the moon is only 40-50 thousand years old. To be 4.5 billion years old, natural processes must have removed 99.9999% of the dust. The only proposal offered is that meteorites have knocked off all the dust, which is evidently absurd.
Here is a chat with Grok on the topic.
In the Genesis story, it is evident that the world was created with the appearance of age. Adam, when only a few minutes old, appeared to be a full-grown adult male; trees were fully formed with fruit, mammals were created without needing to suckle from their mothers light from stars millions of light years away was already streaming down in the night sky.
So, it’s no contradiction of the creation story that Earth appears in many ways to be older than 6000 years; we should expect this. There may be many details related to a healthy ecosystem that motivated God’s precise design of an apparently old Earth. The key is to look for evidence that Earth is younger; there may be aspects of the universe which God did not create with the same appearance of age. We should use the youngest of these evidences to place an upper bound on the age of the earth.
Another interesting fact supporting a young Earth involves erosion: approximately 20 billion tons of sediment erode into the oceans annually via streams and rivers, creating large deltas where these meet the oceans. This is about 120X greater than all counterbalancing forces increasing land mass above sea level combined, such as volcanic action and tectonic uplift. The only way to explain an old Earth is to presume erosion rates are significantly higher today with respect to tectonic uplift than they have ever been on average. However, on average, one would expect the reverse, that erosion should have been higher at the start and decrease over time. Here is a chat with Grok on the topic.
Here is a (59 page) Grok discussion on how ocean salinity is consistent with a biblical world view and inconsistent with a materialistic world view. My prompts are highlighted in yellow and the conclusion of each Grok response is where the substance lies.