Thursday, January 28, 2010

Determining Our Origins: Young Earth verses Old Earth

I received a question/comment today that stated that "Genesis is wrong scientifically."

Is it?

The poster listed his evidence, which basically amounted to the fact that Genesis does not agree with the "Old Earth" theory of evolution.

I've been thinking about doing a study on this question for some time... but not right now... but here are a few thoughts.

What is your view on this?

Hi Mike,

Biblical creationism verses evolutionary theory is not an area I specialize in personally.

Understand however that comments such as "The earth was formed 9.2 billions years after the big bang, not even remotely close to each other in time periods..." are based on the assumption that the ever changing scientific theories are known facts. If that were the case, the scientific theories would not be constantly updating and changing as their researches advance.

At this point neither side of this argument can conclusively prove its views objectively.

Understand also that no serious scientist would state that 9.2 billions years after the big bang such and such happened. For scientists all such dates are approximations at best. Also, many serious scientists, including Eisenstein, reject the validity of the whole idea and today most scientists reject the Big Bang theory as envisioned originally. For instance see:

http://www.olduniverse.com/
http://www.hbci.com/~wenonah/new/bigbang.htm

If you seriously wish to understand what the proponents of the "Young Earth" theories say and see the evidence they offer, I would suggest going to the Institute for Creation Research: http://www.icr.org . This is the area they focus on. You can contact them about their views and I suspect you will be surprised at how solid the case for Creation is.

There is also another view that holds that Genesis offers two different creation accounts:

Gen 1:1 In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.

This is given as a stated fact with no detail on how or when the initial creation occurred.

Gen 1:2 And the earth was without form, and void...

The Hebrew word haw-yaw, translated in the King James version as "was" ("the earth was without form") is more correctly translated as "And the earth [became] without form...."

"Form" is translated from the Hebrew word to'-hoo which literally means not that it had no shape, but that it became (haw-yaw) a desert wasteland, void --without usable form.

It is held by some therefore that the time and exact methodology of the original creation of the universe is not given in the Bible, that some great catastrophe occurred about 6000 years ago according to biblical calculations. This would be easily within the margin of error of what is accepted for the start of the present warm phase (the Holocene) that some believe followed the sudden ending of the Younger Dryas period, about 11,500 years ago; in geological terms as conceived by the Secular sciences 3000 - 4000 years difference is nothing. Such a climactic event could easily alter our readings of the fossil records that much. This view answers most of the arguments of the "Old Earth" scientific opposition without refuting the "Young Earth" view.

This is not the "black or white" issue both sides wish to make it appear. We are still trying to understand many things.

Again, this is not an area I am that interested in personally. The icr.org website does have a lot of solid evidence you might wish to examine if you are sincere. Look at all the evidence before writing off either side.

Many "Bible Believers" reject scientific evidence out of hand when it seems to contradict their religious views, and many Secularists reject all biblical evidence as well as scientific evidence that supports the biblical model, when such evidence challenges their views. In both cases it does not speak well of human nature.

Good luck with your research,
~ John of AllFaith

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