Earth's Age - Bible and Record of Nature

The Bible and the Record of Nature BOTH state that the Earth and the Universe are very old and ancient.

God gave us 66 Books in the Bible, each of which is the Word of God. If studying a topic, like the age of the Earth, one needs to check all 66 Books for info on the topic, not just look for one verse that supports your viewpoint. Not all the answers are in Genesis.

Bible on Age:

A day is not the same as 24 hours, not in the past and not today.

The earth is not about 6,000 years old, and the Bible does not teach this. Hebrews 4:9-10: "There remains, then, a Sabbath-rest for the people of God; for anyone who enters God’s rest also rests from their works, just as God did from his." This tells us that on the 7th day each believer are to enter into day 7. Also, there is no "evening and morning" for the 7th day. As day 7 has not ended. Biblical Hebrew has a limited vocabulary, with fewer words compared to other languages, such as English or Spanish. This means words often have multiple meanings determined by context. Day - yom is commonly rendered as day in English translations, but the word yom can be used in different ways to refer to different time spans, thus literally is:

Sunrise to sunset (or part of the day)

Sunset to next sunset (24 hours)

Time period of unspecified length. (long time span ).

We use the word day the same today: In my grandfather’s day, cars did not go very fast. I work the day shift. (Neither is 24 hours)

Deuteronomy 33:15 and Habakkuk 3:6 states "ancient mountains".

Genesis 2:4 “in the day that the Lord God made the earth and the heavens” (Day 1 to 6 are called one day). Singular Day refers to all 6 days of creation!

The events of day 6 cannot have happened in 24 hours.

Day 6, also His expression is translated in Genesis 30:20 as “now at last” and in Genesis 46:30 as “now finally.

Isaiah 11:10-11 and 2:21 day is used for a span of time.

Jesus has been preparing the New Creation for over 2,000 years (John 14:3) Also see John 1:1-4, Jesus is the creator.

Creationism does not equal a young Earth. There are many Old Earth creationists.

The Bible teaches a day-age viewpoint. Each day is a span of time, as we are currently in the 7 day

Record of Nature on Age:

The Earth is 4.5662 million years old, with a margin of error of about (±0.0001). This age is determined by radiometric dating of the oldest rocks on Earth, as well as by analyses of lunar rocks and meteorites that formed at the same time as the solar system. The error bar is very low as the tools to date this range are very good.

The best estimate of the universe's age is 13.813 ±0.038 billion years, based on measurements of the cosmic microwave background. There are other tools to age the universe, and they all agree on 13.813 billion years ago.

With Hubble Telescope deep-field images, we can see back in time to over 13 billion years ago. The farthest galaxies appeared roughly 400 to 800 million years after the creation event. This is because light travels at 186,000 miles per second in space, and outspace is so vast. The universe is expanding, space and time are both expanding since the creation event 13.813 billion years ago. Hubble Telescope deep field images shows galaxies very close together, as the universe was much smaller then. Looking at closer galaxies, they are now very far apart. Looking at galaxies between close and distant, we see galaxies across these two time extremes.

The Steady State theory of the universe (no beginning) was once popular. In 1929, Edwin Hubble's work began disproving this theory. The Cosmic microwave background measurements ended the Steady State theory for good. Even after, many tried to hang on to the Steady State theory.

The Anthropic Principle has shown us that the goal of Creation was to make a place for Mankind, made in the Image of God. See Anthropic Principle page.

Young Earth creationism

The Bible and the Record of Nature agree, so who would disagree?

The Claim is that days in Gen 1 is always 24 hours. But Gen 1:5 says: "And God called the light day, and the darkness He called night. And there was evening and there was morning, one day. Here is day is either 12 hours (sunrise to sunset) or a long but finite time. But it can not be 24 hours. The other point is that the word day does not appear until verse 5. So how can one say that age is 6,000 years, when no one knows that time before verse 5?

Young Earth creationism (YEC) is the religious belief that the Earth, its geological features, and all life were created by God in six 24-hour days, roughly 6,000 to 10,000 years ago, based on a wrong (Not literal as claimed) interpretation of the Book of Genesis.

Ken Ham (also Kent Hovind) is a major leader of Young Earth creationism. Ken Ham is NOT the offical spokes man for Christianity. Ham's rigid views are sometimes criticized not only by secular scientists but also by many other Christians who argue that he compromises the credibility of the faith by forcing a choice between science and his biblical view; that is not true. Ken Ham does not speak for the diverse spectrum of Christian belief worldwide. Thus, Young Earth Creationism rejects not only the Record of Nature, science, but also the Bible. Young Earth Creationism examines only Genesis 1 and the book of Exodus. YEC look at Genesis 1's days 1 to 6, (ignoring day 7) and look at the Book of Exodus, but only looking at the Jews' command to work 6 days. The command to the Jews is a pattern of 6 to 1, not a statement that a day is always 24 hours. This is shown as for crop land, it is 6 years to work the land and one year to rest the land. The fact that the 7th day is stated as long, ongoing to this day, it is clear that Gen 1 days, 1 to 7 are long time spans.

Other key leaders of the Young Earth creationism are: Henry Morris, Jason Lisle, Kent Hovind, John Whitcomb, Jonathan Sarfati, and Andrew Snellin.

The above leaders did not start Young Earth creationism! George McCready Price (1870–1963) , a Seventh-day Adventist, started the Young Earth creationism modern movement. At that time, the Seventh-day Adventist Church was a cult, classified by most Christian scholars. Seventh-day Adventism was listed among the major cults, largely due to its unique doctrines regarding Ellen G. White. By 1965, most Seventh-day Adventists had moved away from the cult teaching of Ellen G. White and were removed as a cult by many Christian scholars, like Walter Martin, widely regarded as a premier authority on cults.

George Price's teachings on Young Earth creationism are from the cult days of the Seventh-day Adventist Church. George Price not only came up with the 6,000-year-old earth, but also other Young Earth creationism teachings that are NOT in the Bible.

1) The flood covered the whole earth (globe) (see Flood page)

and

2) No animals died before the fall of mankind (See Sin-Death page)

So is Young Earth creationism a cult, since its foundation is from a cult?

No, most would agree that the core faith of Young Earth creationism is the same as Biblical Christianity. That is salvation by faith in the work of Jesus Christ and other core faith statements found in the Christian Creeds.

With that said, there are some very troubling statements made by almost all Young Earth creationist leaders and repeated by its floowers.

Anyone who disagrees with the YEC understanding (the earth is about 6,000 years old) are atheistic evolution, regardless of their stated views on the topic. According to the Young Earth creationist, there are only two views: Young Earth creationism and atheistic evolution. The Old Earth creationists do not even exist. Christians that believe that God created the earth 4.6 billion years ago, and believe in evolution (Theistic evolutionists) do not exist either. Chirstians that do not 100% agree with Young Earth creationism are called heretics!

This "us" against them teaching is very cult-like. This heretic label comes from a line of bad logic. If you think the Earth is old, then you MUST believe in evolution. If you think the earth is old, then you must reject the idea of no death before the fall of mankind. Thus, you must reject the shedding of blood as a sign of the foreignness of sin. Thus, you have rejected the atonement of Jesus Christ, and thus you are a heretic. This can only be called what it is: emotional hate with bad logic. The Young Earth Creationists' teaching is not Bible-based, but is based on emotional logic. Such as, a loving God would not make a world of millions of years of animal death. This teaching is nowhere in the Bible; it is only an appeal to emotional logic for those who love animals (like cats, dogs, and the like). The Bible does not teach that death of any kind is bad or evil. Romans 5:12 “Through one man sin entered into the world, and through sin death, and so death passed to all mankind in turn.”

This is clear: death came to “all mankind”, not animals. Why would God kill millions of animals due to one man’s one sin? YEC claim that mankind's sin killed millions of animals, which is just not in the Bible; it is an emotional appeal to their world and Bible view. Sin only affected mankind, as only humans sin. The death sighted is both spiritual death (why humans need saving), and physical death.

Young Earth creationists teach that old earth scientists (which is just about all scientists ) are workers of evil, out to deceive the world from their "(wrong) Biblical views".

Yet Young Earth creationists teach that God created the Earth with the "appearance" of age. This is why so much of Earth and the universe "look" old. This teaching is clearly against the clear teaching of the Bible:

1) God is not a liar, and God is not a deceiver: Hebrews 6:18, Titus 1:2, Numbers 23:19, and Psalm 12:6. Adam did not have the appearance of age: He would have had no sun tan, no sun spots, and perfect teeth

2) Young Earth creationists claim God changed the laws of physics to make the Earth appear to be of an older age.

Both the Bible and the Record of Nature state that the laws of physics have NOT changed. Jeremiah 33:25: This is what the Lord says: ‘If I have not made my covenant with day and night and established the laws of heaven and earth. As astronomers look into space, they see stars. The light from close stars takes less time than for faraway stars. Astronomers can only look at the past, as light takes time to travel. Thus, astronomers can directly observe the past, and they see that the laws of heaven and earth (i.e laws of physics) have not changed over the history of the universe. We can see very old stars, middle-aged stars, and very nearby stars. Yet, all the stars are burning the same. The Young Earth Creationists' claim that the speed of light has changed or is different depending on its direction is also foolish. E=MC2 is true, if C, the speed of light, changes at all from its 186,000 miles per second speed, stars would not burn the same. God did not make the stars to deceive us. God made everything to show us about Him, not to deceive us!

Rom 1:19-20 "Since what may be known about God is plain to them, because God has made it plain to them. For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that people are without excuse."

Psalm 19:1-4 "The heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of his hands. Day after day, they pour forth speech; night after night, they reveal knowledge. They have no speech, they use no words; no sound is heard from them. Yet their voice[b] goes out into all the earth, their words to the ends of the world. In the heavens, God has pitched a tent for the sun."

YEC likes to quote Exodus 20:11 as proof that Gen 1 days must be 24 hours. Here it is: Exodus 20:11: " For in six days the Lord made the heavens and the earth, the sea, and all that is in them, but he rested on the seventh day. Therefore, the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy."

The Bible states that day 7 is long, so these days cannot be 24 hours.

We must read the Entire Bible and arrive at a correct understanding.

Young Earth creationists are the Flat Earthers of today. They reject the Bible and the glory of God found in the sky each night!

Dr. Jason Lisle is also a Young Earth Creationist astrophysicist and founder of the Biblical Science Institute who defends a Genesis as 6,000 years ago, often called old-earth Christians as theological errors or "heretics". Contrary to what is often implied or claimed by young-earth creationists, the Bible nowhere directly teaches the age of the earth.

It would be far better for YECs to say, “We believe the Bible teaches a young Earth, but there are other Christians who also believe the Bible who believe it doesn’t require a young Earth.” We should let secondary issues remain as secondary issues.

Young Earth Creationism Thinking:

1. Concern that conceding a 4.5662-billion-year age for Earth will enable naturalistic evolutionary processes alone to explain the origin and history of all life. (it does not)

2. Certainty that the only possible literal interpretation of Genesis 1 is that in which the creation days are six consecutive 24-hour periods. (Reading the whole Bible, it does not. Hebrew word yôm, translated “day,” is used with three distinct definitions: all of the daylight hours in Genesis 1:3–5; a day of 24 hours in Genesis 1:14; and to the entire time span of God’s creative activity in Genesis 2:4. a long but finite time span. Day 7 has not ended (no morning or evening). Thus, the say 1-7 must be long, but finite time spans.

3. Belief that there was no animal death until after Humans sinned. (The Bible does not teach this anywhere, see Romans 5:12, “Sin entered the world through one man, and death through sin, and in this way death came to all people, because all sinned” )

4. Belief that an atheistic bias explains the scientific community’s united-front conclusion that Earth and the universe are billions of years old. (They are not all evil, many are Bible-believing Christians.)

Old Earth false claims:

Do old-earth creationists teach theistic evolution? No. Saying the Earth is old does not automatically imply belief in evolution. This is a false claim. see Life page

Does acceptance of the Big Bang deny God’s miraculous creation of the universe? No. The Big Bang is a pejorative term for the creation of the universe, so people would make this claim. Science, in the Space-time theorem, establishes that a Causal Agent (God of the Bible) beyond space and time created the space-time dimensions of the universe. See Space-Time page

Do old-earth creationists believe that God made Adam by breathing “spirit” into a preexisting hominid? No. Humans are created special. Hominids are bipedal animals. See the Origins of Humans page and the Hominids page.

Doesn’t a belief that Earth is billions of years old exalt science over the Bible? No. The Bible said the Earth is very old first! See the Age of Earth page.

Doesn’t acceptance of a billions-of-years-old universe contradict a literal interpretation of the Bible? No. Yom - day can literally be: daylight hours, 24 hours, or a long but finite time span. See the Age of Earth page.

Do plant and animal deaths before the fall of Adam contradict Romans 5:12? No. This says death came to mankind. Romans 5:12 . Job 38–41 confirms that plant and animal death in no way attributes evil or cruelty to the Creator. See Life page also

Don’t old-earth creationists promote the use of unreliable, secular dating methods? No. It is always good to check the error bars for any quoted data. This helps in understanding the reliability of the data. Calling all science evil is not Christ-like or true. There are many Bible-believing Christians in science. If there is a difference between the Record of Nature (that which God created) and the Bible (God's Word), that just means more study of both the Bible and the Record of Nature is needed, as humans understand is never perfect. This is a paradox not a contradiction.

Gap Theory

Another Christian View of the Bible and the age of Earth is the Gap Theory, which posits six 24-hour days separated by a long gap between the days. The Bible and the Record of Nature do not support this.

Also see: Gen 1 page

Also see the Creation Model page

Ref:

Earth Age:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0FmO2XKMe6g link to John Lennox: "Seven Days That Divide the World"

https://www.planetary.org/articles/how-old-is-the-earth

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/16121173/ Age of Earth: Joel Baker et al., “Early Planetesimal Melting from an Age of 4.5662 Gyr for Differentiated Meteorites,” Nature 436 (2005): 1127-31.

https://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v436/n7054/abs/nature03882.html%20

• Norman E. Holden, “Total Half-Lives for Selected Nuclides,” Pure Applied Chemistry 62 (1990), 941-58. See also geochronology textbooks such as Alan P. Dickin, Radiogenic Isotope Geology (New York: Cambridge Press, 1995); Gunter Faure, Principles of Isotope Geology, 2d ed. (New York: Wiley, 1986).

• 2. Roger C. Wiens, Radiometric Dating: A Christian Perspective, available from ASA Web site (1995) https://www.asa3.org/ASA/resources/Wiens.html; Internet; accessed 8/01/01. See also geochronology textbooks such as those by Dickin; Faure.

• Wiens; G. Brent Dalrymple, The Age of the Earth (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1991).

• Some isotopes with half-lives shorter than several hundred million years exist, but only because they are constantly being replenished by either cosmic rays (a special case, e.g., the three lowest entries in Table 1) or because they themselves are daughters of some longer-lived parent such as uranium.

• Holden, 941-58; see also geochronology textbooks such as Dickin; Faure.

• Half lives taken from Holden, 941-58; see also geochronology textbooks such as Dickin; Faure.

Universe age:

• Prasenjit Saha et al., “The Hubble Time Inferred from 10 Time Delay Lenses,” Astrophysical Journal Letters 650 (2006): L17-L20.

• https://iopscience.iop.org/1538-4357/650/1/L17

• Edwin Hubble, “A Relation between Distance and Radial Velocity among Extra-Galactic Nebulae,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 15, no. 3 (March 15, 1929): 168–73, doi:10.1073/pnas.15.3.168.

• A. Sandage and G. A. Tammann, “Steps toward the Hubble Constant. VII. Distances to NGC 2403, M101, and the Virgo Cluster Using 21 Centimeter Line Widths Compared with Optical Methods: The Global Value of H0,” Astrophysical Journal 210 (November 15, 1976): 7–24, doi:10.1086/154798.

• G. de Vaucouleurs, “Five Crucial Tests of the Cosmic Distance Scale Using the Galaxy as Fundamental Standard,” Nature 299 (September 23, 1982): 303–7, doi:10.1038/299303a0.

• Wendy L. Freedman et al., “Final Results from the Hubble Space Telescope Key Project to Measure the Hubble Constant*,” Astrophysical Journal 553, no. 1 (May 20, 2001): 47–72, doi:10.1086/320638.

• Filippo Mannucci et al., “A Fundamental Relation Between Mass, Star Formation Rate and Metallicity in Local and High-Redshift Galaxies,” Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society 408, no. 4 (November 2010): 2115–2127, doi:10.1111/j.1365-2966.2010.17291.x; Mirko Curti et al., “The Mass-Metallicity and the Fundamental Metallicity Relation Revisited on a Fully Te-Based Abundance Scale for Galaxies,” Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society 491, no. 1 (January 2020): 944–964, doi:10.1093/mnras/stz2910; Ryan L. Sanders et al., “The MOSDEF Survey: The Evolution of the Mass-Metallicity Relation from z = 0 to z ~ 3.3,” Astrophysical Journal 914, no. 1 (June 10, 2021): id. 19, doi:10.3847/1538-4357/abf4c1.

• P. Troncoso et al., “Metallicity Evolution, Metallicity Gradients, and Gas Fractions at z ~ 3.4,” Astronomy & Astrophysics 563 (March 6, 2014): id. A58, doi:10.1051/0004-6361/201322099; M. Onodera et al., “ISM Excitation and Metallicity of Star-Forming Galaxies at z ~ 3.3 from Near-IR Spectroscopy,” Astrophysical Journal 822, no. 1 (May 1, 2016): id. 42, doi:10.3847/0004-637X/822/1/42.

• Kasper E. Heintz et al., “Dilution of Chemical Enrichment in Galaxies 600 Myr after the Big Bang,” Nature Astronomy2023 (September 21, 2023), doi:10.1038/s41550-023-02078-7.

• Heintz et al., “Dilution of Chemical Enrichment,” p. 1.

• Arno A. Penzias and Robert W. Wilson, “A Measurement of Excess Antenna Temper­ature at 4080 Mc/s,” Astrophysical Journal 142 (July 1965): 419–421, doi:10.1086/148307.

• Robert H. Dicke et al., “Cosmic Black-Body Radiation,” Astrophysical Journal 142 (July 1965): 414–419, doi:10.1086/148306.

• D. J. Fixsen, “The Temperature of the Cosmic Microwave Background,” Astrophysical Journal 707, no. 2 (December 20, 2009): 916–920, doi:10.1088/0004-636X/707/2/916.

• S. Muller et al., “A Precise and Accurate Determination of the Cosmic Microwave Background Temperature at z = 0.89,” Astronomy & Astrophysics 551 (March 4, 2013): id. A109, doi:10.1051/0004-6361/201220613.

• I. de Martino et al., “Measuring the Redshift Dependence of the Cosmic Microwave Background Monopole Temperature with Planck Data,” Astrophysical Journal 757, no. 2 (September 12, 2012): id. 144, p. 1, doi:10.1088/0004-637X/757/2/144.

• V. V. Klimenko et al., “Estimation of the Cosmic Microwave Background Temperature from Atomic CI and Molecular CO Lines in the Interstellar Medium of Early Galaxies,” Astronomy Letters 46 (November 2020): 715–725, doi:10.1134/s1063773720110031.

• Dominik A. Riechers et al., “Microwave Background Temperature at a Redshift of 6.34 from H2O Absorption,” Nature 602 (February 3, 2022): 58–62, doi:10.1038/s41586-021-04294-5.

YEC ref:

Ken Ham "the god of an old earth destroys the gospel" AIG

Ken Ham: "Believing in an old earth undermines the authority of the Bible" AIG

Ken Ham, founder of Answers in Genesis, is noted for labeling Christians who accept evolution or long-age creationism as "heretics".

See Creeds Page, the age of the Earh is not part of any Christian Creeds. Ken Ham is attacking the Church and fellow Christain from his "us against you thinking.

https://wordandway.org/2021/11/19/a-response-to-ken-ham/ A Response to Ken Ham

C. John Collins, Genesis 1–4: A Linguistic, Literary, and Theological Commentary (Phillipsburg, NJ: P&R Publishing, 2006), 51; Rodney Whitefield, Reading Genesis One: Comparing Biblical Hebrew with English Translation (San Jose, CA: R. Whitefield Publisher, 2011), 10–11.

Larry Vardiman, Andrew A. Snelling, and Eugene F. Chaffin, eds., Radioisotopes and the Age of the Earth: A Young-Earth Creationist Research Initiative, vol. 1 (El Cajon, CA: Institute for Creation Research; St. Joseph, MO: Creation Research Society, 2000): 42–44, 306–307, 312–313, 316–318, 334–337, 374, vol. 2 (El Cajon, CA: Institute for Creation Research; St. Joseph, MO: Creation Research Society, 2005): 736–738.

R. Laird Harris, Gleason L. Archer, and Bruce K. Waltke, Theological Wordbook of the Old Testament, vol. 2 (Chicago: Moody, 1980), 730.

Francis Brown, S. R. Driver, and Charles A. Briggs, The Brown-Driver-Briggs Hebrew and English Lexicon, 1906 repr. (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 1997), 822.