THE AGE OF THE EARTH
Ruminations of a Reluctant OEC
Humbly recorded by Tom Couchman
1. WHY DOES THIS SUBJECT MATTER?
No statement in scripture, nor clear reasoning from
any statement, indicates that a person’s relationship to God is directly
affected by what the person believes concerning the age of the earth. Why, then, should anyone take such time as
even this relatively short paper will require to consider the matter?
a. A Question of Credibility
Much of the Christian message—that God cares what
people do, that He disapproves of many practices that are popular in our
society, that He requires certain “inconvenient” and “unpleasant” responses—is
difficult for most people to accept.
Nevertheless, those with “good and honest hearts” will accept it,
provided they perceive both the message and the messenger to be credible. We must therefore take care not to yoke a
very compelling scriptural call about sin and salvation to any other stance
which we cannot readily explain to the open-minded. If elders and class leaders are going to contend, publicly, that
the earth is no more than 10,000 years old, we had better be prepared to defend
that position from the facts. Our
chronology will inevitably color, in the minds of the intended audience, our
core message of salvation, and some open-minded people who reject our
chronology will reject our gospel with it.
Similarly, church members—especially young people who hear evidence for
an old earth in school—need to be shown clearly if that evidence is being
misinterpreted; otherwise, if their faith in young-earth geology goes to the
bottom of the sea of doubt their faith in Jesus Christ may go down to the same
fate.
b. A Question of Like Submission
How the church, especially elders and class leaders,
approaches these questions is testimony to our own receptiveness to truth. If we show that we can weigh all the facts
reasonably, then non-Christians who are trying to decide whether to listen to
what we say about salvation will be favorably impressed. If, on the other hand, “outsiders” see us
rejecting any teaching which is uncomfortable to us or contrary to what we have
always been told, how will they respond to our message, these people whom we
are trying to convince to accept something which is contrary to what they have always been told?
c. A Subject Which Demands Our Attention
Since this question has nothing directly to do with
salvation, we should discuss it only when we perceive that it affects the
attitude of a potential hearer of the word.
We might all wish it never mattered to any hearer; alas, the subject of
origins continually raises its head, owing to the prevalence of the worship of
materialism in our society. And we
have no choice about opposing materialism-as-god, which is simply idolatry. When idolatry, yoked to science, is used to
champion immoral behavior, we must make what effort we can to disconnect
idolatry from science so that in opposing idolatry we do not malign true
science. And that disconnection can
only be accomplished by finding and embracing true science.
d. A Subject Which Everyman Can Investigate
Who is the author of this
paper, why does this subject matter to him, and what makes him think it will
matter to anyone else?
I am an “ordinary” Christian. I am not a preacher and not a scientist, nor
do I pretend to be either. I find both
the world of nature and the world of persuasion fascinating and wish I had the
time to devote to either or both, but the demands of family, bread-winning and
personal service make it impossible for me to maintain more than a passing
familiarity with those disciplines.
Consequently, I am only marginally equipped to deal either with the
facts at hand or with an epistemological and metaphysical framework for
constructing and arguing a position on those facts.
In short, I suppose I am a sort of Everyman, who
wants to find the “Truth” but is acutely conscious of the limitations I bring
to the task of Truth-seeking.
Furthermore, I am a dispositionally conservative, Bible-believing Everyman
who cheerfully admits to having an “agenda”:
I do not wish to live without the comfort and hope I find in the
scriptures.
What chance does Everyman have to arrive at some
understanding of the subject of the age of the earth? I think, a very good chance. I am strongly convinced that most of the
facts which have to be read for one to think about the subject are simple. Indeed, I suspect that any scientist would
tell you that the evidence which most strongly speaks to him is evidence that
anyone of average intelligence can grasp.
We Everymen, our lives so full of the legitimate demands of Every Day,
cannot take the time to equip ourselves to deal with the technical details of
the scientific disciplines, nor with the finer points of argumentation and logic,
nor with every book or article which has been written on this subject. But there are some things we can understand,
and some approaches to understanding which we can practice with complete
facility, and the approach taken in this paper is well within that blessed
scope.
On the title page of this paper I have called myself
“a reluctant OEC” (old-earth creationist).
That self-appellation means two things.
First, and most importantly, it means I don’t believe that this
universe, or this world, or any feature of this world, or any living thing
which inhabits this world would be here without the direct action of God: first upon Nothingness, to speak into
existence Something; and then, repeatedly, upon that Something to compel it to
produce what blind chance and material force would never have produced, would
never even have been inclined to produce. Much less importantly, as an OEC, I reluctantly accept
the notion that the Power required to propel matter and energy which were bent
toward disorganization into the opposite direction of that bent was applied by
God over a very long period of time, and involved a combination of miracle and
ordinary causation. I therefore do not
dispute the assertions of science about chronology, though I strongly suspect that
science on the matter of chronology knows a lot less than it pretends.
I am a reluctant OEC for several
reasons. First, I am genuinely
uncomfortable with the facts that present themselves to me. I was raised among Bible-believers who were
overwhelmingly convinced of the youth of the earth, though I hasten to add that
there were exceptions, and no one ever suggested that a person’s position on
the age of the earth or the interpretation of Genesis 1-2 had any bearing on
salvation or fellowship. Second, I
was not there when God acted. It is
the glory of science to change its mind, so I am content to be a “provisional
OEC.” Third, the notion of a small,
young universe has an (admittedly irrational) appeal to me as being more
consistent with the Bible story than the vast, old universe which seems to be
the one we inhabit. Finally, I am
instinctively resentful of the way institutional science today commonly speaks
to the incognoscenti (such as myself):
as self-worshipful in its regalia and as intolerant of honest dissent in
its ex paleo pronouncements as any popery ever was.
I myself do not claim to know how old the
earth is. It is my humble opinion that the evidence
points toward antiquity, as I will shortly make clear with my presentation and
interpretation of it. But as a
“reluctant OEC” I would be genuinely happy to be proved wrong. From this uncomfortable stance, as Everyman,
I invite my readers to participate in this brief examination of the creation of
God.
2. BRIEFLY: SCIENCE
AND THE “SCIENTIFIC” USE OF SCRIPTURE
What is the proper domain of science? What are its uses and its limitations? How, if at all, can scripture be used to
elicit “scientific” facts? This section
of the paper contains a little common-sense reasoning on these and related
subjects.
a. What Is Science, And What Is Its
Business?
Science may be defined as a quest for knowledge which uses a methodology of hypothesis,
experimentation, evaluation and conclusion (“the scientific method”), in such a
way that the results of any investigation are repeatable and may be
described the same way by every observer (technically, every observer in the same relativistic frame of
reference; but if you don’t understand that qualification don’t worry). Because of the methods it employs, science
is well-equipped to read the natural
revelation of God. This fact does
not imply that we must embrace every conclusion of every scientist, any more
than the fact that reading the verbal revelation is the job of scriptural
exegesis implies that we must accept the conclusions of every professional
exegete! But we ought to be willing to
acknowledge that, since the scientific method is particularly fit to the
investigation of nature, every part of the natural revelation is a
proper subject of scientific interrogation.
We might wish that scientists were more humble in their conclusions, and
we should be skeptical of assertions about events which happened before any
scientific recorder was present. But
those reservations should not cause us to “withhold” from science the raw
materials of legitimate scientific inquiry, including all of nature and the
evidence as to how it arrived at its current state.
b. What Are the Limitations of Science?
In the first place, science can only deal with phenomena which are subject to the
principles of cause-and-effect (at a gross level, so that quantum
considerations may be set aside for most purposes; and if you don’t understand
that qualification don’t worry about it, either). This limitation follows the fact that scientific findings must be
repeatable: an experiment must give the same results every time; and, the
results must be described the same way by every observer. A corollary of these principles is that
science cannot directly investigate the miraculous, God not being subject to
the laws of cause-and-effect (“You shall not put Yahweh your God to the
test”). Science should also be able to
tell us when it has encountered a phenomenon which it cannot investigate,
because an investigation would be inherently unrepeatable, and/or because
different observers would describe different results. Such phenomena are called “singularities.” No scientist would try to tell you what you
would see inside a black hole, because the laws of physics do not work
there. Similarly, the first
(arbitrarily small) instant of the (supposed) Big Bang is sometimes referred to
by scientists as “The Singularity,” and it is a recognized principle (though
sometimes honored in the breach—see the recent writings of Stephen Hawking)
that science cannot explain it.
In the second place, the scientific method by
its nature demands a peculiar mode of expression which, in order to insure
consistency of observational result, attempts to exclude any potential
ambiguity. The data, conclusion and
intermediate results of any scientific endeavor are specified using a rather
sterile language, the paradigm of which is the mathematical formula. As a result, science limits itself to a
domain of truths and a protocol for describing those truths which exclude many
other very reliable ways of making accurate statements: not all truths are scientific
truths. One outcome of this
limitation is that if we mistake a “generically true statement” for a
“scientifically true statement,” and attempt to evaluate what is “generically
true” as though it were “scientifically true,” we may reach a false conclusion
about the meaning and the reliability of the generic (literal, historical,
allegorical or poetic) statement. This
fact can have a profound effect on how we interpret scripture, as the next
section indicates.
c. Are Statements in Scripture Meant to Be
Taken as “Scientifically True”?
Most of us will agree that the Bible is not a
“science book.” From the principle just
discussed, we don’t expect every literal statement in scripture to be
“scientifically true.” This negative
expectation is simple common sense.
“The sun rises in the east” is a “literally true” statement which is not
“scientifically true.” Such statements
are sometimes said to be “observer-true”; that is, they are true from the
perspective of the observer who makes them or the narrator who is telling the
story from one observer’s perspective, but they would not be uniformly true for
all observers (recall that scientific statements are true for all observers
in the same relativistic frame of reference).
Those of us who believe in inspired scripture ask only that the same
standards be used to evaluate statements in scripture which are used to
evaluate literal statements that we make all the time.
Thus, I am deeply troubled to see so many
apologists, in a commendable effort to validate the reliability of the Bible,
try to use all manner of statements—even those found in obvious poetical
contexts like the book of Job—as “scientific facts” which “prove the inspiration
of scripture.” I am not saying there
are no “scientific facts” in scripture; however, in general this practice is a
very bad idea! When we insist that
skeptics evaluate some statements as scientific, we allow them to insist that
all literal statements be so evaluated; we cannot “cherry-pick” the ones which
suit our case. And, while we might be
able to find literal statements in scripture which are also scientifically
true, I do not believe that there are any literal statements in the Bible which
were intended to be evaluated as scientific statements.
What has this misguided approach accomplished? Insisting that statements in scripture which
we select must be evaluated scientifically, we are forced toward the position
that essentially all literal statements, including the Genesis description of
creation, must be evaluated scientifically.
In the time of Galileo, this approach produced a monumental disaster
for the defenders of Biblical inspiration, a disaster from which, in the minds
even of most theistic scientists, the case for scriptural reliability has never
recovered. The Bible states in
multiple texts that it is the sun which moves around the earth, and not vice-versa. Critics of scriptural inspiration seize upon
statements such as this one and upon foolish arguments made by well-meaning
“religious authorities” in Galileo’s day (and ours) and gleefully conclude that
whoever wrote the Bible didn’t know anything about the nature of the physical
universe. They are going through a door
which we who believe in the inspiration of scripture opened for them, by our
insistence that all literal statements in the Bible must be read
“scientifically.”
Therefore, I don’t think we should regard even
literal statements in scripture as expressions of “scientific truth.” To
say that literal statements in scripture are not meant as scientific statements
is not at all to suggest that they are untrue.
It is merely to recognize that science does not have a monopoly on
truth. There are statements in the scripture
which are “literally” true but not “scientifically” true, the statement that
the sun stood still being one, and in my opinion many statements contained
within the Genesis account of the creation being others. The record of interpretations which put a
“scientific” cast on ordinary or even poetic statements in scripture is a very,
very dismal one (the “historical sciences,” which handle evidence differently,
are another matter).
d. Can Scripture Be Used to Determine the
Age of the Earth?
If
we insist upon what I would call a “literal-scientific” reading of Genesis,
that reading, when it is performed with the precision that “scientific”
interpretation requires, tells us that, God having created heavens and earth,
some period elapsed—that is, some physical processes operated—during which
light had not been made available.
Scientifically, there can be no “evening”—end of day—until a half-day of
light has passed. Scientifically, the
first evening cannot begin until there is light and the light is separated
from the darkness. The period between
the creation of heavens and earth and the moment the separation of light from
darkness “starts the clock” on the first 24 hours of “evening and morning”
might have been a few of our moments, it might have been billions of our years,
or it might have taken place completely outside of our reckoning of
time. The passage of “literal 24-hour
days” depends on the presence of light and darkness. Any physical processes operating before the division of light from
darkness are not on “earth-time,” they are on “God-time,” and most of us would
agree that the passage of years, millions of years or billions of years are as
insignificant to God as the passage of nanoseconds are to us. No one can prove from the Bible that
the “formless and void” globe did not undergo eons of changes produced by the
same natural forces at work today. The
more “scientifically” one insists on interpreting the creation story, the more
strongly one is committed to chronological indeterminancy for the “formless and
void” earth.
By the same token, genealogies found in various
texts display discrepancies among them which reveal gaps in them, and we have
no way of knowing how many gaps there are or how long they were. Using the Bible to speculate about the age
of the earth may be an entertaining exercise, but it is pure speculation, and
it is both doctrinally perilous and divisive to use such speculations as dogma.
Through the years, many
very staunch proponents of the plenary inspiration of scripture have taken the
position that no finding of science regarding the age of the earth can
contradict the Bible record, because the Bible does not give us any means of
determining the age of the earth.
Think about that position
for a moment.
Now think about this
development: recently, I have read
statements by advocates of a young earth claiming that they agree with that
position in principle, but that they can use the scriptures, even allowing the
diurnal and genealogical gaps, to set an upper bound on the age of the
earth. Their upper bound is usually
about 10,000 years.
Now, any Everyman who is
willing to apply his reason to the issue can see that these two positions
cannot be harmonized. If no finding of
science about the age of the earth can contradict what scripture says, because
scripture does not state how old the earth might be, then it is clearly
impossible to put an upper limit of 10,000 years, ten million years or ten
trillion years on the age of the earth!
I have also seen claims by
some young-earth advocates that the earth is now “between 6,000 and 10,000
years old,” and that Jesus and His apostles took an analogous position on the
age of the earth in the first century.
These people assert that statements in scripture may be read with
sufficient precision so that we know that the age of the earth today is between
6,000 and 10,000 years, and with sufficient clarity that anyone who disagrees
with their conclusions can be concluded to have rejected the plain teaching of
scripture and to have forfeited the right to call himself a Bible-believer.
I cannot find any
statement by Jesus or any inspired writer on the age of the earth, but I do not
have any trouble finding a most curious aspect to this argument. The “precision” which they claim for scriptural
statements used to reveal Jesus’ position on the age of the earth, during the
New Testament era, would have made the earth either 4,000 or 8,000 years
old. That’s a one-hundred-percent
difference! Either the Holy Spirit
intended to tell us the age of the earth, or He did not. If the Holy Spirit did not intend to tell us
the age of the earth, then no conviction that anyone holds is in contradiction
to the silence left us by the Spirit, and any attempt to introduce such a
dogmatic position is both divisive and heretical. If the Holy Spirit did intend to tell us the age of the earth,
and in a manner which is clear enough to be cast as dogma, are we clearly
required to believe that Jesus taught that the earth was 4,000 years old, or
that it was 8,000 years old?
I hope that one result of
this paper will be to lower the rhetorical barriers among those who take
various positions on this matter. That
result may require that all of us be willing to suspend, temporarily, some of
our certainty about what we have always believed, and be a little more willing
to look at contrary evidence. And that
is both a scientific and a scriptural attitude!
3. “READING” THE NATURAL REVELATION
Paul tells us:
“Since (from, as a result of) the creation of the world His divine
attributes have been clearly seen, being understood by the things that are
made; so that they (Gentile sinners) are without excuse.” What can we know about “reading” the natural
revelation by the proper use of science?
a. What Can Be Learned About the Natural
Revelation?
There are significant lessons to be learned from the natural revelation. Paul states: “What may be known about God is evident to them (the Gentiles)
…” While the primary purpose of nature
may not be the revelation of God, the primary effect of nature should be the
glorification of God. Therefore,
Paul tells us that God holds people responsible for reading “His eternal power
and divinity” in nature. It is
axiomatic that in order to learn from
the natural revelation, we must be able to learn about the natural revelation.
For if we do not know what is true about
the natural revelation, how can the natural revelation glorify God?
Furthermore, Paul tells us that we must be able to
learn some things about the natural revelation independent of the verbal revelation. We know this fact because the Gentiles, who had no verbal
revelation from God, were held responsible by God for properly reading the
natural revelation, and because the Psalmist proclaims, “The heavens are telling
the glory of God.”
We must, of course, be wary. People who are determined to defy the
Greater Will are blind to the Greater Purpose even in the clearest evidence;
they will distort facts, will get erroneous results, and will insist that we
accept as truth conclusions which come only from their determination to exalt
their will over God’s will. Again we
have a burden: we must separate fact
from interpretation. It requires
effort, and we have to take up the burden knowing that examination of the facts
may force a change to some of our cherished conclusions. But, unless we are content to stand silent
while the wicked offspring of the modern “whore of Babylon” shred the moral
fabric of our society, we are going to have to prepare ourselves, and we are
going to have to make a stand. The only
safe place to stand is on the facts as they are, not as we wish them to be.
b. Interpreting the Evidence—Approaches
to Reading the Natural Revelation
When in this paper I refer to “reading” the natural
revelation, I am talking about interpreting
the evidence. The facts are the
evidence; our interpretation of them is how we read them. There is a difference between fact and
interpretation, a difference that we all wish scientists would be more careful
to observe. I think the evidence I
will present in section six of this paper leads naturally to an interpretation
of age, but of course other “readings” are possible, including readings which
reach the conclusion that the earth is young, not old. The question we all have to consider
is: which reading makes more
sense? This essay is an attempt to get
people who are, for reasons I can well understand, comfortable with thinking of
the earth as relatively young to re-examine the facts. Some readers may then arrive at a conclusion
different from mine.
Everyone reads the natural revelation with an
“interpretive approach,” a set of assumptions and pre-formulated conclusions
which helps make sense of the facts. I
can think of only three possible interpretive approaches for considering the
evidence which will be presented in section six. A brief discussion of these three possible approaches follows.
(1) The
innocent approach
One who takes the innocent approach holds that the
natural revelation can and should be read just exactly as it presents itself.
In cases where miracles have occurred, those who are willing to accept God’s
existence would be able to recognize the product of a miracle, albeit with some
careful investigation perhaps, because either something which nature produces
would be missing or something which nature does not produce would be
present. According to the innocent
approach, if we see a natural process which is taking place today produce an
object with certain features, we are entitled to assume that all of the same kinds
of objects which show us the same features, which we did not see produced, came
from that same natural process.
Incidentally, the innocent approach is one which
both Young-Earth Creationists (YECs) and Old-Earth Creationists (OECs) claim to
accept. Published YECs assert that if
we interpret the evidence innocently, without bias towards either an ancient or
a young earth, the evidence alone
will convince us that the earth is relatively young: on the order of 10,000 years or less.
The basis of the innocent approach is the assumption
that the natural revelation can be accurately read, even without help from the verbal revelation, as a plain
description from the Creator about the origin of natural items. The indispensable core premise of the
innocent approach is this: any appearance of natural production in a
miraculous artifact will be only that appearance which is absolutely required in instantaneous creation of such a fully
mature and functioning item, and no more.
Thus…
·
We
can observe sedimentation and lithification producing a layer of sandstone, so
if we see a rock face with sandstone layers, we can conclude that the layers of
sandstone in the rock face were produced by sedimentation and lithification.
·
We
can measure the time required for an amount of lava of a given mass and
composition to cool to rock, so if we see a single flow of hardened lava rock
of a known mass, we can calculate the amount of time after deposition that it
took the lava to harden.
·
We
can see that the growth of a tree (for most types of trees) produces one ring
per year, so we can conclude that a tree of a type known to display annual
rings which has two thousand rings is two thousand years old.
·
The
original trees in the garden of Eden would have looked from the outside like old
trees, because the creation of mature, functioning trees unavoidably produces trees which are large enough that they appear
to have lived many decades; however, the original trees would not have had
woody knots, because these knots, which are preserved at a site in the wood
when limbs break off at that site, are absolutely
unnecessary to instantaneous miraculous production of a mature tree.
·
Five
minutes after their creation, Adam and Eve would have looked several decades
old, because creation of mature people unavoidably
produces people who are large enough that they have lived at least two decades;
however, neither would have had a navel, because a navel is an artifact of
natural birth which is absolutely
unnecessary for instantaneous creation of a mature human.
·
The
wine (alcoholic or not) produced by Jesus in Cana would have tasted like it was
several years old, because “good wine” unavoidably
has a taste which comes naturally only after years of storage; however, the
wine jars would not have borne the seal of a local vintner, because such a seal
is absolutely unnecessary for
instantaneous transformation of grape juice into mature wine.
Please do not misunderstand one point here: I am not saying that one who takes the
innocent approach to the reading of the natural revelation is inevitably
committed to regarding all objects that we observe today, or the present state
of all objects that we observe today, as the results of natural processes. In other words, this approach is not
inherently uniformitarian. In
principle, it is possible that there are “creation-objects” lying around. In fact, Robert V. Gentry is a researcher
who has become known for contending that he has found “creation rocks.” But Gentry makes these assertions precisely
because he claims to find phenomena in the rocks which would be missing from
rocks produced by natural processes—in other words, he claims that these rocks
contain contrarian indications of rapid generation. The innocent approach simply says that objects which look like
they have been produced by (slow or fast) natural processes in fact have been
produced by natural processes, and objects which have not been produced by
natural processes will look different from those which have.
(2) The cynical approach
One who takes the cynical approach holds that nature
contains abundant data “planted” by God during the creation with the intention
of misleading those disinclined to believe in Him. Considering what is stated in scripture about creation, according
to this view, we must believe that scientific investigation of natural
phenomena will produce only misinformation. God has deceived scientists, and He
continues to deceive them, and no findings of science about nature are
reliable.
Thus…
·
The
trees in the Garden of Eden would have had growth rings, woody knots, and the
“remains” of insects trapped in tree sap inside the wood, falsely indicating
that these remains had been inside the wood for scores or hundreds of years.
·
Adam
and Eve would have had navels, their bodies would have borne scars from
apparent childhood accidents, and they would have had false memories of years
of growing up.
·
Not
only would the wine jars in Cana have had the seal of a local vintner, Jesus’
miracle would have produced a sales receipt to trick observers into believing
that the wine had been recently purchased.
I am not aware of any YECs active in publication of
their views today who openly take the cynical approach. Any YEC who did so must also insist that
there is no evidence worth considering for a young earth, since the purpose of
the appearance of age is to deceive, and the deception would fail if there were
significant evidence for recent creation.
Of course, the cynical approach holds nature not to
be a revelation at all, but rather a deception. I cannot see any way to reconcile it with Paul’s statements in
Romans, and with the Psalmist’s song that the heavens tell about the glory of
God. If the natural revelation cannot
be read accurately, because God made it for the express purpose of deception,
then God’s power and divinity are not evident in the natural revelation, and
the heavens do not declare God’s glory.
(3) The agnostic approach
The agnostic approach is “agnostic” about the
testimony of nature. This approach
rejects the proposition that God created nature with deceitful intent. However, this approach says, we cannot determine anything about the
provenance of any natural feature by observation, casual or scientific. A feature may have developed from eons of
wind-and-water erosion, it may have been created exactly as we see it, or it
may have been created with some appearance of shaping by natural forces and
then modified by further natural influence; we
cannot tell. Thus, any deception
which results from scientific study of the natural revelation results not from
the actions of God but from the belief of the investigator that he or she can
determine the origins of a natural item by scientific investigation. According to the agnostic approach, truly
scientific investigation of the natural world will not (as the cynical approach
holds) yield misinformation, but it will not yield information either.
Thus…
·
Though
we see layers of sandstone being formed today by sedimentation and
lithification, we cannot conclude that any multi-layered sandstone formation
was so produced; it may have been created just as we see it.
·
Though
we see lava flows produce volcanic rock after many years of hardening, we
cannot conclude that volcanic rock which we did not actually see produced was
formed by a lava flow which cooled over many years; it may have been created
just so.
·
Even
though tree rings are generated by annual growth, trees in the Garden of Eden
would have been created with tree rings indicating decades of growth, and
possibly with woody knots, so that the origin of the trees could not be
specified.
·
Though
a navel is produced by birth, Adam and Even would have had navels, so that
their origins could not be known.
·
Scientific
analysis of the wine at Cana would have indicated that the grapes which produced
the juice came from a certain field, giving us no means of determining that it
had in fact been generated directly from water.
The agnostic approach appeals strongly to me, and I
think it is the approach that most Bible-believers want to use. It seems to provide a refuge from the
results of “arrogant” scientific investigation of nature—which in our
experience rarely yields findings with which we are comfortable—without our
having to resort to attributing fakery to God.
I know of no publishing YEC who admits to espousing
the agnostic approach, but all of them practice it in fact. If scientific investigation indicates that
some item is millions of years old, the YECs will of course reject that
conclusion on the grounds that “creation involves apparent age.” This “apparent age” assertion is just
another way of stating: “we cannot
determine anything about the provenance of any natural feature by observation,
casual or scientific.” To assert that
an item must at the instant of divine creation bear the marks of significant
age—not just the unavoidable marks of
significant age, but enough marks of significant age that one cannot determine
that the item is a created and not a natural object—is to say that any attempt
to determine the origin of any material object is vain. If the innocent
approach to study of the natural revelation is true, then the trees in the
Garden of Eden were created without
woody knots or growth rings, these being absolutely unnecessary to
creation of mature trees, and scientific investigation would indicate (though
not necessarily prove) that a miracle had probably occurred by coring a
tree in which we would expect to find knots and rings and not finding any. But if the agnostic approach is true, no scientific inquiry would find anything
except the apparent results of natural processes, even though no natural
processes were used in making the tree.
For all its attractiveness to me, however, the
agnostic approach troubles me for two reasons.
First, I cannot see how to square it with what Paul
states about holding those who possessed no verbal revelation responsible for
correct reading of the natural revelation.
All YECs whose works I know admit that the motivation for their
young-earth ideas is their reading of the verbal revelation; in fact the
well-known YEC author Kurt Wise has stated that no one has ever reached the
conclusion that the earth is young by studying nature! But Paul says that, apart from the verbal
revelation, the creation testifies to God’s power. The psalmist says that the
cosmos glorifies its Creator and tells us that it is His work. How can either of these statements be true
if every object in the creation looks, to investigation, exactly like an object
that was produced by natural processes?
If we cannot study a natural object to decide what natural process
produced it, we also cannot study God’s
creation for evidence that it was not produced by natural processes. The agnostic view says that no matter how
hard we look at nature, we will not see
signs of a Creator, for all created objects look just like natural
objects. I stated earlier that those
who are inclined to belief in God ought to be able to detect the results of a
miracle, because either something that natural processes produce will be
absent, or something that natural processes do not produce will be
present. In contradistinction, the
agnostic approach holds that the only way one would know that a miracle had
occurred was is to see it happen, because the result of a miracle is going to
look just like an object which was generated by a natural process. But if you thought you had seen a
miracle, yet the object at hand upon examination bore all the marks of natural
production—including unnecessary indications of a history which never
happened—how would you know that you had not been the victim of a
delusion? And how can the heavens,
which no mortal saw being produced, declare the glory of God?
This point also bears upon the oft-expressed view
that we must depend on the verbal revelation of God to tell us what we are
allowed to conclude about the natural revelation of God. In this view, we are not allowed to conclude
that nature is very old because, according to those who hold this view, the
only acceptable interpretation of the verbal revelation is that nature
is relatively young. But this view
seems to me to be in direct contradiction to Paul and to the Psalmist, who tell
us that, in the absence of the verbal revelation, we are responsible for seeing
the creative power of God in the nature He has produced.
Second, I am suspicious about the distinction I
myself have made between the cynical approach to the investigation of the
natural revelation and the agnostic approach; is there really a
difference? If God made created objects
look unnecessarily like natural
objects—if He created a tree not only ten feet around and a hundred feet tall,
but also with rings—does He not know that He will deceive even the most pious
investigator? Certainly, if the
investigator knows that he is not supposed to regard any feature of an
apparently natural object as natural, if he knows that, “we cannot determine
anything about the provenance of any natural feature by observation, casual or
scientific,” then he is protected from drawing a false conclusion. But that stipulation would require that the
honest investigator enter his inquiry upon the natural revelation knowing a priori that the only reliable approach
to science is the agnostic approach.
And how did he obtain that knowledge?
Not from the natural revelation itself!
Where in the verbal revelation is this guidance to be obtained? Paul seems to say exactly the opposite! Apparently there is some other revelation,
which I have missed, in which God has said:
“You cannot determine anything about the provenance of any natural
feature by observation, casual or scientific.”
The facts presented in section six of this paper
will make my misgivings clearer. If an
agnostic reading of nature is found to be incredible—i.e., if the facts strongly indicate that God’s creation is not
just “unreadable” but is actually “deceptive”—then the agnostic position
becomes untenable, and one must be a cynical YEC if one is to be a YEC at all.
c. But
What Would Be “Deceptive”?
Atheists and agnostics sometimes charge that the God
worshipped by Christians and Jews would be, if He existed, a “cosmic bully” who
compels obedience to moral commands only because He is powerful enough to do
so. To the contrary, the Christian
religion holds that God is deserving of obedience precisely because He is Himself
the paradigm of moral holiness; He demands of humans no more than He
practices. With respect to the specific
requirement that humans not deceive one another, God secures His right to
command truth because He is truthful; He will not deceive a moral agent unless
that moral agent has already committed his allegiance to falsehood.
If the Author of creation is God, if the purpose of
creation is to glorify God, and if people who have never read a word of
scripture are held to certain standards of moral behavior purely on the basis
of what they can see of God in creation, then the word of God as we read it in
creation must not deceive. If the earth
and the universe are very young, we must find that God has left in the natural
revelation no evidence which an honest and pious investigator would interpret
as conclusive proof of antiquity. For
if he had done so, an investigator who was intuitively or emotionally convinced
of the existence of God, who genuinely and humbly sought truth from God’s
creation, would be deceived into thinking that God had brought about the
present state of that creation through processes of long duration. God Himself would be responsible for
convincing the honest and pious investigator of something which was not true,
and the natural revelation would lead one to conclude that, morally, God is a
deceiver. Yet Paul states that the
creation testifies not only to God’s power but also to His deity. This latter testimony is encapsulated in the
statement from scripture, “Be holy, for I am holy.” If the creation does not testify to God’s holiness, then Paul is
incorrect in stating that a person who has never read the verbal revelation
will see God’s deity in the things which are made.
But what would be deceptive?
I have asserted that miraculous generation of a
functioning object of nature inescapably involves a “false appearance of age,”
because natural objects do not, in the ordinary course of events, attain mature
functionality without the passage of time.
So functional maturity in a created object cannot in itself be labeled
deceptive. We know that whatever
functioning objects God miraculously generated in the beginning were produced without
a history of development. But if a
miracle produces functional maturity without developmental history, a
miraculously produced object must not contain unnecessary indications of
developmental history. Indications
of history which are not absolutely necessary to the functionality of an
object which did not have a developmental history would be deceptive. In other words, if God’s miraculous action
produced a mature, functioning object more-or-less instantaneously, that object
did not have a developmental history.
The object should therefore not contain indications of a developmental
history which did not actually happen, because such indications would be
deceptive—that is, such indications of a developmental history which did not
happen would prevent a person who was inclined to believe in God from finding
that the product of a miracle lacked some characteristic which is always found
in a non-miraculous object: viz.,
evidence of a historical process of development.
When I discuss the innocent approach to the
evaluation of nature, I am discussing an approach which interprets signs of
developmental history as actually having been produced by developmental
history, and not by a more-or-less-instantaneous miracle. When I discuss the cynical approach
to the evaluation of nature, I am discussing an approach which interprets signs
of developmental history as actually having been produced by a
more-or-less-instantaneous miracle, and not by any development.
An honest and pious investigator of nature who is
not familiar with scripture is going to interpret signs of developmental
history in a natural object as the genuine products of such a history, not the
products of an instantaneous miracle (this statement is not an abstract
supposition; theistic scientists who study nature do interpret signs of
developmental history as the genuine products of development, which is why most
theistic scientists are old-earth creationists). It is axiomatic that God can produce a mature, functioning object
without avoidable indications of a history which never happened. God must know what signs of such history are
unavoidable and what signs are avoidable—that is, what signs would convince an
honest and pious investigator that the object had been produced by a historical
process which never happened; therefore, God must be capable of producing a
mature, functioning object miraculously without infusing that object with signs
of a history which never happened. If
God put false signs of developmental history into created objects, then God
knowingly deceived the honest and pious investigator, and God cannot hold that
investigator responsible for reading from creation his responsibility to be
truthful, for what the investigator has learned from creation is that God is a
knowing and willful deceiver.
Some Bible-believers, however, make a different
appeal. “When we look at a starry sky,
or a field of flowers, or watch a baby being born,” they will say, “it is
obvious that there must be a Creator behind those things. No other indication of divine production is
needed. So if God saw fit to include
some false signs of developmental history, those signs don’t look to me like
deception at all. God as Creator has a
perfect right to put any characteristics He wants into created objects.”
Of course, humans cannot limit God’s right to put
any characteristics He wants into created objects. And there is some validity to this instinctive and emotional
sense of awe—indeed, some atheists like the late Carl Sagan, who gained fame
for proclaiming that “the cosmos is all there is, all there ever was and all
there ever will be,” testified to the same feeling, though obviously with a
different outcome.
But when these Bible-believers claim to see the
results of an instantaneous miracle in natural objects which bear the marks of
developmental history, they are saying that nature reveals the glory of God only
in a wholly non-rational, “better felt than told” manner which they so often
scorn when similar appeals are made in other contexts. To the best of my knowledge, every object we
see in nature—every star, every flower, every newborn baby—whether it originated
naturally or miraculously, reached its present state by entirely natural means.
And every investigator is going to find that evidence of natural history;
indeed, if either the cynical or the agnostic approach to reading
the natural revelation is true, every honest investigator is going to report
that natural history is all he finds.
In fact, the ironic characteristic of these three
approaches is that the innocent approach, which seems to be so
vulnerable to exploitation by “atheistic science,” and which many young-earth
believers would condemn as un-Biblical, is the only one of the three approaches
which can rationally find evidence of God in creation; the cynical and agnostic
approaches will lead to the conclusion that everything we see developed by
entirely natural processes!
Furthermore, while humans—being God’s
creatures—cannot “limit” His prerogatives, God Himself can, and God Himself
has. He has based His requirements for
human conduct on limitations He puts on Himself: “Be holy, for I am holy.”
God’s moral holiness precludes His practicing deception about the
provision of any object in nature: if
it bears no marks of natural development, then it was created, but if it
contains the history of a developmental process, then it was produced by that
developmental process and not by instantaneous generation. Indeed, the experience of theistic and even
agnostic scientists in our time is producing more and more evidence of natural
phenomena which, to the best of our ability to determine, cannot have been
generated by a natural developmental process.
The heavens do tell Everyman the glory of God, but not by deceiving us
about the process which produced them.
4. HAVE THERE BEEN ANY REAL OECs?
Is it possible to be an honest old-earth
creationist, believing that the Bible is the fully inspired Word of God, that
the events described in the scriptures actually took place, and yet that the
earth is very old?
Many Jewish and Christian writers around the time of
Christ thought that creation took some period other than 144 literal
consecutive hours. Josephus said he had
a theory about the “days” of creation, but he never got round to explaining
it. Philo, another first-century Jewish
writer, believed that all the “days” of creation happened simultaneously. Both Justin Martyr and Irenaeus believed that
each creation day was 1,000 years long.
Origen held that we are still living in God’s seventh day. Augustine opined that the days were not
literal days at all, but “spiritual periods” of activity by God.
Closer to our era, there have been many scientists,
intellectuals and churchmen who were both devout creationists and believers in
an ancient earth. Indeed, OECs
dominated the scientific and intellectual community of the West for the first
three-quarters of the 19th century, and dominated the world
community of creationists during the first 65 years of the 20th
century. Among the best-known figures:
·
William
Buckland, head of the geology department at Oxford in the early 1800s, was a
believer in special creation and the literal inspiration of the Bible who did
much to convince contemporary scientists of the great age of the earth.
·
Adam
Sedgwick was Buckland’s counterpart at Cambridge, also a believer in plenary
inspiration of the scriptures, and also an old-earth evangelist.
·
Baron
Cuvier was a French geologist, OEC, and vigorous opponent of Darwin’s teaching.
·
Hugh
Miller, a contemporary of Darwin, was a the foremost geologist of his time, a
religious writer who tirelessly proclaimed the full inspiration of scripture,
and an OEC who wrote such famous books as Testimony
of the Rocks and Footprints of the
Creator.
·
Edward
Hitchcock was president of Amherst College during the middle of the 19th
century, a popular religious writer, a believer in the literal accuracy of the
Bible and an OEC.
·
Douglas
Dewar, a believer in inspired scripture and OEC, was one of the foremost
biologists of the early 20th century.
·
L.
Merson Davies was a geologist of the middle 20th century, a leader
of the Evolution Protest Movement in Europe, a believer in the inspiration of
scripture and an OEC.
·
Arthur
C. Custance was a 20th century anthropologist, engineer, inventor,
Hebrew/Greek scholar and author of numerous books and papers on biblical topics
who remained both an OEC and a believer in inspired scripture all his adult
life.
·
Daniel
E. Wonderly is a contemporary practicing geologist, OEC and believer in the
inspiration of scripture, whose writings include God’s Time-Records in Ancient Sediments.
I am not saying that all these men would read the
first two chapters of Genesis the way we are accustomed to reading them today;
most of them would not. But had you
accused any of them of being an unbeliever or a “theistic evolutionist,” or had
you questioned the commitment of any of them to creation and to the Creator,
you would have received an indignant and vigorous denial. They were all creationists and “religious
conservatives” who believed the earth to be very old. In fact, in the years surrounding World War II most Europeans who
would have classified themselves as creationists, whom we would have called
“religious conservatives,” believed in an ancient earth. The same was true, to a lesser extent, in
the US. Old-earth creationism had, by
the second half of the 20th century, been the orthodoxy among most
religious conservatives in Europe and the US for most of 150 years. Young-earth creationism as a “scientific”
movement is almost exclusively a phenomenon of the post-war US which started
with the 1961 publication of Whitcomb and Morris’s book The Genesis Flood.
My point is not that anyone ought to believe the
earth is ancient just because some creationist scientists do. My point is that “old-earth creationism” is
not a self-contradictory phrase. Not
all beliefs in an ancient earth are consistent with creationism, but one can
believe in an inspired Bible, and accept all the truths of Christianity, and
still accept that the evidence points to an ancient earth.
5. PRELUDE TO CONSIDERATION OF THE TESTIMONY
a. Claims and Disclaimers
Some OECs assert that there are no evidences from
natural revelation which may reasonably be interpreted to point toward a young
earth. I would not make such an
assertion. While I do not know of any
fact in which YECs find support for a young earth for which OECs do not also
have an explanation, there are advanced from time to time arguments for a young
earth which seem to me, at least at the moment, plausible. What I have noticed, however, is that over
time most of these arguments weaken, as further investigation uncovers facts
which better fit an old-earth model.
Similarly, there have certainly been spectacularly errant findings using
radioisotopic chronology. But most or
all of those blunders have been explicable in terms of the techniques of
radioisotopic chronology, and are subsequently corrected to give very
consistent results.
b. Two Questions
There are two questions which I will ask with each
set of facts presented in this section.
(1) If we wish to interpret
the evidence as consistent with belief that the earth is less than about 10,000
years old, which approach to interpretation can we use: innocent, agnostic or cynical?
(2) Can the phenomenon
described be explained as a result of the great deluge described in Genesis, as
the most popular YEC interpretations will hold?
c. Either-Or
James Hutton was an Englishman whose life spanned
the last three-quarters of the 18th century. He grew up believing the earth to be about
6,000 years old. But in his travels as
a naturalist he encountered a feature of the English countryside called
Hadrian’s Wall, completed by the Roman emperor Hadrian in 126 AD. Hutton noticed that the wall, known to be
1700 years old, displayed signs of weathering but still looked, overall, pretty
much the way it must have looked when it was built. If this wall was more than one-fourth the age of the earth, but
the stones in the wall were so little changed by elements and the passage of
time, then how, Hutton asked himself, could one believe that the drastic
weathering and erosion which was obvious on the rocks of the earth’s surface
had required a mere 6,000 years? Though
he remained a creationist all his life, Hutton’s uniformitarian views became
the basis of modern geology, because it seemed clear to reasonable people that
much more than a few thousand years must be necessary to produce the geological
features they could observe.
My point is not to argue uniformitarianism. Certainly, there have been catastrophic
events in natural history, including the flood described in Genesis, which must
have done some of the wearing of the rocks.
But let’s apply Hutton’s insight.
If the topography we see today is less than 10,000 years old, natural
forces, including periodic catastrophes, cannot have done much more than
fine-tune what was already in place.
God must have shaped the mountains, seacoasts, riverbeds, canyons,
deltas, and all the rocks of the earth’s crust with His own hands, to look much
the way they look today. There simply
isn’t enough time for natural forces to have done a lot to the original
shapes. In other words, many if not
most of the rocks which we see must be “creation-rocks.” And if so, our
question is this: did God give the
creation-rocks characteristics that would deceive an honest and pious person
about their origin? Is there any
feature of those rocks which could reasonably be interpreted as an indication
that they are the direct products of the miraculous creation of God? Can we study nature with the innocent
approach, or even the agnostic approach, or will we be forced to concede that
only the cynical approach will give us an “accurate” view of God’s handiwork?
6. THE TESTIMONY OF THE NATURAL REVELATION
This section of the essay will constitute a
presentation of a few of the more straightforward evidences for an ancient
earth. I am not going to explain these
processes in detail, nor am I going to cite sources which describe them. There are numerous texts by scientists who are
devout creationists which discuss these evidences in more detail and cite authoritative
publications which can confirm the facts presented.
a. The Sedimentary Rocks
(1) Description
of the phenomenon
Sedimentary rocks are produced when materials
dissolved or suspended in a transport medium (usually water) settle out and
form a layer of precipitate. Any
moisture in the sediments escapes (desiccation). During or after desiccation chemical reactions among the
particles of sediment cement them into rock (lithification). The longer the period of sedimentation, the
thicker a layer of rock will be and the longer
the required period of lithification.
Sedimentary rock formation can be
observed today, and it produces rocks just like the ones we see layered in
places like the Grand Canyon.
(2) Why
this phenomenon indicates an ancient earth
The average thickness of sediments on the North
American continent is about a mile, though in the Appalachian Mountains it is
about five miles. Sedimentary rocks are
commonly layered, displaying anywhere from a few to thousands of discrete
layers. While discrete layers of homogenous
composition can sometimes form very quickly, for multiple layers of heterogeneous
origin, composition and color to form, a period of sedimentation must occur,
then the transport medium (wind or water) must be removed. If the layers being formed are of
significant thickness, lithification must take place. After all of this, another layer of sediment with a different
source and composition must be laid on top of the first. Lithification is a chemical process which
can rarely be fast, but usually proceeds at a relatively slow rate, with no
known method of making it go faster.
From observed rates of sedimentation and lithification it is calculated
that, even allowing for periodic catastrophes, it must have taken millions of years
to form the sedimentary rocks on the North American continent. For example, the Redwall Limestone found in
the Grand Staircase of the American Southwest is 700 feet thick; the known rate
of lithification of limestone would require 1.6 million years for that layer
alone, after deposition was finished.
Furthermore, the Redwall formation had several thousand feet of
sedimentary rock laid on top of it after
it hardened. There are canyons such as
the Grand Canyon cut through these sedimentary rocks. So the layers of rocks must have formed first, and then wind and
water cut the canyons. The Grand Canyon
is a mile deep. Even assuming numerous
catastrophes, it must have taken hundreds of thousands of years for the Grand
Canyon to be cut after the sedimentary rock had formed.
(3) Could
the great deluge explain this phenomenon?
How could a single flood event as described in the
Bible—first the accumulation of diluvial waters followed by the subsidence of
those waters—produce multiple discrete layers of sedimentary rocks of different
compositions and origins, such as are commonly observed in the crust of the
earth? Without lithification, either
the old layer is removed and re-deposited downstream/downwind, or the new layer
just mixes with the one already there (some sediments display signs of this
mixing, showing that the layer in place did not harden before the next layer
arrived). How can the great deluge, in
the span of about one year, have deposited a layer of sediment, retreated while
the sediment hardened, returned to deposit another layer of sediment atop the
first, retreated again while that layer hardened, and so through more than nine
layers of rock, and then poured retreating floodwaters through the resulting
rock to cut a canyon a mile deep? Furthermore,
in the Grand Staircase through which the Grand Canyon is cut, there is a layer
of wind-deposited sediment between two layers of water-deposited
sediment. How could the flood described
in Genesis have accomplished the deposition of several hundred feet of
wind-blown sediments between two thick layers of water-borne sediments? If the sedimentary layers were not lithified
before the Canyon was cut, how is it that the steep canyon walls, which in some
places are actually undercut, did not collapse? Finally, how could a river have cut through a mile of rock within
a few thousand years? Some of the
layers of rock are relatively soft and might be eroded quickly, but other
layers are nearly as hard as the schist through which the river is currently
cutting. More water might cut the
canyon broader in a hurry, but more water cannot make it quickly deeper
through these hard layers of rock—the Colorado River is deepening the Grand
Canyon today as fast as any amount of water might do. If the sedimentary rocks and the canyons cut through them did not
result from the natural forces that we see forming them today, then they are a
sheer miracle performed by God.
(4) Which way of reading the natural revelation can explain this
phenomenon in terms of a young earth?
Not the innocent approach, which forces us to
conclude that the sedimentary rocks were deposited and eroded over millions of
years. We can study today the forces
which produce these kinds of effects, and the kinds of rocks we see being
produced by sedimentation look—except for the effects of eons of
weathering—much like the rocks we see on and below the surface of the
earth. Since the creation of the
surface of the earth would not unavoidably
involve the creation of discrete layers of sedimentary rock, the innocent
approach would lead us to believe that these sedimentary rocks are not
creation-rocks.
Using the cynical
approach, we can hold that God did, indeed, create these rocks much as we see
them, and there is no way to tell that a miracle produced them. They bear all the marks of natural
formation, but that appearance is what the cynical approach would lead us to
expect. God has successfully deceived
unbelievers into taking the appearance of these rocks for the result of
millions of years of deposition and weathering.
Can we take the agnostic
approach? Would it be deceptive of God
to create many discrete, very thick layers of rock which appear to be products
of the process of sedimentation we see today, which appear to have been cut by
the process of erosion we can observe today?
Perhaps not, but sedimentation is not the only feature of these rocks
for which we have to account. The sedimentary rock is rich in fossils,
which appear to be the remains of once-living creatures. Drs. Morris and Parker, YEC authors,
estimate that the Karroo fossil beds in Africa contain the fossilized remains
of billions of vertebrates, evidently once alive. If these rocks are creation-rocks, are the fossils
“creation-fossils”? If so, they were
never living animals at all: God placed
into them a history of life and death which never actually happened. And the presence of such fossils makes the
agnostic approach difficult to take, to say the least!
b. River-Mouth Sedimentary Deposits
(1) Description
of the phenomenon
Sedimentary deposits at the mouths of major rivers
are much thicker than the average one mile.
Deposits at the mouth of the Mississippi River are about seven miles thick, and are being
measurably incremented by the river on a continual basis.
(2) Why
this phenomenon indicates an ancient earth.
A half-million years of deposition at the observed
rate (roughly an inch a year) are needed to account for these sediments. Floods cannot shorten that time much without
creating other problems (next section).
(3) Could
the great deluge explain this phenomenon?
The earth’s crust in places where these great depths
of sediment is laid is sinking, under the weight of all that debris, at the
same rate as the deposition. If the
deposition were faster or if all the sediments were deposited in a few years,
the course of the river would be blocked.
These sediments could not have been deposited as the flood waters
accumulated, because the sea level, which rose during the course of the flood,
would have moved the point of deposition upstream, so that no point along any
river would have received a significant portion of the total deposition. The sediments could not have been deposited
during the subsidence of the water, because the rivers would not have left
sediments at sea level, where they are now, until near the end of the flood,
long after the rain had stopped, and after the waters had gone from most of the
rest of the earth. Even if one assumes
that the earth’s crust miraculously collapsed to allow the deposition without
changing the course of the rivers, essentially all the sediment would have had
to be deposited in the last few days of drying of the flood waters. Where did all that sediment come from, most
of the effects of the flood having already abated?
(4) Which way of reading the natural revelation can explain this
phenomenon in terms of a young earth?
Taking the innocent
approach, we conclude that the sediments around and below the mouth of major
rivers cannot be the result of rapid deposition. We can observe the process of sedimentary deposition and the
subsidence of the crust today, and it would follow that the same processes,
augmented by a reasonable number of catastrophic events, have been underway for
eons.
The cynical
approach would tell us that the appearance of great age is what we should
expect of a creation which was fashioned by God for the express purpose of
deception.
Can we take the agnostic
approach? The problem we encounter is
the same as for the other sedimentary rock depositions: there are fossils. The fossil problem here includes “fossil fuels”—oil and gas which
tell a story of life, death and decomposition, a story which could not have
happened in a few thousand years.
Again, the agnostic approach fails:
if the earth is only a few thousand years old, these are
creation-sediments, seeded by their Maker with the elements of deception in the
form of fossil fuels.
c. Coral Reefs
(1) Description
of the phenomenon
Coral polyps are small shellfish which extract
calcium carbonate from seawater and use it to build shells. The shells of a colony of these creatures
are attached to one another to form a brittle underwater barrier called a coral
reef. Corals will not begin to build
reefs on silt—there must be solid stone underneath them. Growth stops when the reef reaches the sea
surface.
(2) Why
this phenomenon indicates an ancient earth.
Many studies have shown that coral reefs will
thicken, under optimum conditions, at a maximum of about one inch per year, a
rate which cannot be speeded up because the polyp must extract its construction
materials from sea water and the rate at which it can carry out this task is
strictly limited, and because each generation of polyps builds its shells on
top of the generation just deceased. As
the reef becomes larger, the lower and inner levels can only support the upper
and outer levels if the older levels turn into limestone, a process which
requires the slow precipitation of more calcium out of the seawater. The Eniwetok reef in the Pacific Ocean is
4,600 feet thick. It has been
calculated that this reef, under ideal conditions, at observed growth rates,
would have taken over 150,000 years to grow.
But growth must have stopped a number of times; there are layers which
contain massive quantities of fossilized pollen grains which indicate that the
sea must have receded now and again, allowing land plants to thrive. The Capitan Reef in Texas is over 1,000 feet
thick; its growth time, which has been calculated from various materials
captured in the limestone, is about 300,000 years. But this reef has thousands of feet of sedimentary rock below it,
rock which appears to have been deposited and then hardened before the reef
even began to be built. And that is not
all. The Capitan Reef is buried under
thousands of feet of sedimentary rock, which had to be deposited and hardened
after the reef was completed, the coral polyps had all died, and the sea which
covered that area had receded!
(3) Could
the great deluge explain this phenomenon?
How could the Genesis flood produce reefs such as
the massive ones which we observe? No
matter how much water is on the surface of the earth, the coral polyp can only
work with the water immediately at hand, and the process of extracting calcium
carbonate and building a shell can only go so fast, even if water covers the
whole surface of the earth.
Furthermore, the reef cannot get bigger until the older shells have
turned into limestone—a chemical process constrained in its rapidity—because the
shells are fragile and cannot support the weight of many layers of
later-generation shells. Some have
suggested that massive undersea volcanic activity at the time of the Genesis
flood produced warmer water which may have accelerated the rate of reproduction
of the polyps. Even if this suggestion,
which has no scriptural basis whatsoever, were supposed to be true, it can only
explain a year’s enhanced growth. If
the rate of growth of the reef during the flood year were a thousand times
normal, that growth rate only subtracts a thousand years from the calculated
growth time of these reefs.
(4) Which way of reading the natural revelation can explain this
phenomenon in terms of a young earth?
If we take the innocent
approach, watching coral reefs being built today, we will be forced to admit that
hundreds of thousands of years were required for the construction of these
reefs.
The cynical
approach leads us to conclude that God has again done a great job of fooling
us; we would never suspect these reefs were created, only a few thousand years
ago, pretty much as we see them.
What about the agnostic
approach? We have two
problems. First, we would have to
conclude that some of the layers within the reefs are not the products of coral
polyps, but were created in a way that makes them appear to have been
constructed by these polyps. Second,
again, we have fossils. The limestone
portions of reefs themselves contain fossils, which—if the reefs are only a few
thousand years old—must not be the remains of ancient plants and animals but
must have been planted there by God.
The Capitan Reef is sandwiched between two layers of fossil-containing
rock, each thousands of feet thick. God
must have created thousands of feet of rock which looks like sedimentary rock
but is not, containing fossils, then what looks like but is not a limestone
reef, complete with fossils, then thousands more feet of rock which looks like
sedimentary rock but is not, again complete with fossils. How is it supposed that these facts would not
deceive an honest and pious investigator?
d. Shale Varves
(1) Description
of the phenomenon
Shale varves result from clay—the tiniest form of
sedimentary particles—settling to the bottom of inland lakes when the water
near the bottom is very still. Varve
formation has been studied in progress for well over 100 years. Shale varves begin as very thin layers of
clay which, if not disturbed, are covered with more layers until the water is
wrung out and lithification can proceed.
Each year one varve “couplet” will form, composed of a lighter-colored
layer and a layer darkened by summer pollen.
(2) Why
this phenomenon indicates an ancient earth.
The Green River shale deposits contain between two
million and ten million varve couplets, indicating that it took at least two
million years to produce these sediments.
(3) Could
the great deluge explain this phenomenon?
Shale varves only form in still water, not in ocean
or sea water where there are currents, because it takes still water for the
tiny clay particles to precipitate out of the solution. These shale varves demonstrate no “whorls”
or “ripples” which would indicate deposition by moving water. How could a single flood event produce
millions of these shale layers, a layer of clay which is pollen-free consistently
alternating with a layer of clay which contains fossilized pollen?
(4) Which way of reading the natural revelation can explain this
phenomenon in terms of a young earth?
Shale varve formation is observable today, and
seeing rocks which contain these distinctive layers of very thin alternating
light and dark bands would convince us that the rocks were formed over millions
of years, if we used the innocent
approach.
Taking the cynical
approach, we would conclude that the deception involved in what appears to be
millions of years’ of annual sediment couplets has been very effective.
Will the agnostic
approach explain varves? The problem,
yet again, is fossils. Varves are
identifiable because of the color variation produced by fossilized pollen. Furthermore, there are animal fossils found
in places among the varve layers. If
the varves are creation-rocks they contain embedded creation-fossil-pollen,
which would be naturally read as evidence for a history of life; yet, a
“literal-scientific” reading of Genesis would cause one to conclude that
actually this fossil-pollen was created and embedded in the rocks before God
created pollen-producing plants.
e. Evaporite Varves
(1) Description
of the phenomenon
If salt water is trapped among land masses so that
circulation is limited, evaporation produces a much-observed and very
predictable pattern of sedimentation.
As the amount of water relative to the materials dissolved in the water
drops, first calcium carbonate, then calcium sulfate and finally calcium
chloride will precipitate out of the water.
This distinctive layering, called “evaporite varving,” can be studied
today in shallow salt seas with limited circulation, like the Persian Gulf.
(2) Why
this phenomenon indicates an ancient earth.
The Capitan Reef, already mentioned, enclosed a large
salt water lagoon now called the Delaware Basin which underwent evaporite
varving many times, producing about 200,000 varves. Evaporite varves do not form annual layers—it usually takes
several years to get one or two layers.
The Delaware Basin formation is 1,300 feet thick. Using precipitation ratios easily determined
in a laboratory, the amount of water which would have had to evaporate to
produce this much sedimentation can be calculated: it is about 65,000 feet.
The Mediterranean Sea floor is underlain by about 7,000 feet of
evaporite varves, generation of which would require evaporation of over 60
miles of sea water!
(3) Could
the great deluge explain this phenomenon?
Evaporite varving requires shallow, still
water. How could a single flood supply
65,000 feet of water which was held still enough to allow evaporite varve
formation, much less sixty miles of water to be evaporated? Did volcanic action during the flood year
generate the evaporites? Volcanic
action will produce chemical reactions in sea water which cause some of these
same chemicals to precipitate out of the solution, but they form
irregular-shaped depositions of mixed chemicals, not neat layers divided into
chemical compounds in the distinctive way we see them forming today. And the Delaware Basin is underlain not by
igneous rock but by fossiliferous sedimentary rock.
(4) Which way of reading the natural revelation can explain this
phenomenon in terms of a young earth?
Using the innocent
approach, we would conclude that the Delaware Basin formation is hundreds of
thousands of years old, and is sandwiched between sedimentary rocks which are
themselves hundreds of thousands of years old.
The cynical
approach would prompt us to say that, again, God had left created products
which are very effective in deceiving people about the age of the earth.
Can we take the agnostic
approach? If, for whatever reason,
God decided to create rocks which looked exactly like the sediments we can
today observe forming in shallow salt waters, then He certainly could have done
so, and we might conclude that we ought to hold open the possibility that those
rocks are creation rocks, not rocks which were naturally formed by the
evaporite process we observe today. But
the Delaware Basin varves are interspersed with layers of organic materials
(oil and natural gas, which are the reason this formation is so well-studied)
which tell a story of life, death and fossilization, a story which is not true
if God created them just as they are.
Here again, the evidence forces us to the cynical approach if we wish to
salvage a young-earth interpretation.
f. Metamorphic Rocks
(1) Description
of the phenomenon
Metamorphic rocks were originally sedimentary rocks
which had their structure changed under enormous pressures. This process can be performed experimentally
in the laboratory (as in production of artificial diamonds), and the resulting
artifacts look much like the rocks seen occurring naturally on the earth. Calculations show, for example, that the
transformation of limestone to marble requires sustained pressure of 30 tons
per square inch and temperatures of 600 degrees C.
(2) Why
this phenomenon indicates an ancient earth.
Science knows of no way conditions necessary for metamorphic
rock production can occur naturally on earth except by burial under several
miles of rock. Metamorphic rocks are
found on the surface of the earth, a condition which requires deposition of the
original sediments, lithification, burial, transformation into metamorphic rock
by heat and pressure, and finally erosion or tectonic movement to remove the
overlaying rock and bring the metamorphosed rock to the surface. Obviously, this process would require a lot
of time; it is difficult to specify how much with any confidence.
(3) Could
the great deluge explain this phenomenon?
I am not aware of any attempt to explain metamorphic
rock formation by the great flood. I
cannot think of any way that the flood waters, which covered the earth for only
a year, might have produced metamorphic rocks.
(4) Which way of reading the natural revelation can explain this
phenomenon in terms of a young earth?
An innocent
approach will tell us that these rocks cannot be young, although we might not
be able to specify their age.
A cynical approach
will lead to the conclusion that these are creation-rocks which were formed by
God and given characteristics intended to convince us that they are more than
10,000 years old.
We can attempt to take the agnostic approach, but we are again tripped by the fossils. Fossils in metamorphic rock are unusual,
because of the changes in the material produced by the enormous pressure and
heat, but enough of them occur to give indication that living creatures were
around at the time the original sediments were laid. These “creation-rocks,” too, must have been created by God with
“creation-fossils” of animals which did not really exist at the time the rocks
were made.
g. Coal
(1) Description
of the phenomenon
Coal looks just like the remains of ancient
plants. It is a hydrocarbon (like
living plants today), and most coal deposits contain abundant vegetative
fossils. YEC authors, to the best of my
knowledge, universally concede that coal originated with living plants.
(2) Why
this phenomenon indicates an ancient earth.
In the first place, there is a lot of coal. Estimates range from 5 trillion metric tons
to 15 trillion metric tons. The process
of coal production can be approximated in the laboratory, and it takes on
average a lot of plant to produce a little coal. Why? Because, while there
are some coal beds containing woody plant remains (the Pennsylvanian beds of
the eastern U.S., for example), most of the fossils found in coal are not from
woody plants but from plants which are by volume mostly water, and coal
production involves desiccation which removes most of the plant volume. Furthermore, coal seams occur in layers
between other sedimentary rocks, some buried miles underground. The deeper the coal is, the harder and drier
it always is, indicating that pressure and time have driven more moisture out
of the deeper layers. Finally, coal
never contains radioactive carbon, an element which is present in all living
things but decays to undetectable levels in about 50,000 years.
(3) Could
the great deluge explain this phenomenon?
No YEC that I have read has produced the
calculations to explain how an antediluvian earth could have grown enough
vegetation to produce anything close to five trillion metric tons of coal. And how could a single flood have buried
layers of decomposing plants which would form coal neatly between other layers
of sedimentary rock which bear the fossils of animals and other plants which
did not form coal?
(4) Which way of reading the natural revelation can explain this
phenomenon in terms of a young earth?
From the innocent
approach we would conclude that the coal seams cannot be a mere 10,000 years
old, that they were at least hundreds of thousands of years in the making.
The cynical
approach would allow us to conclude that God has given very convincing evidence
of something that did not happen—the natural production of coal.
Can we take the agnostic
approach? In this case, perhaps
so. Coal formation in nature is not
well understood, because unlike sedimentary rock formation we cannot watch it
happening in situ, and a few coal
seams contain fossils which cross rock layer boundaries (“polystrate
fossils”). There are reasonable
“conventional” explanations for such fossils, and it remains difficult to
explain the abundance of fossils in the coal and in the miles of rock lying on
top of the coal; however, the agnostic approach, while a stretch, is more
nearly tenable for coal than for any of the other phenomena reviewed so far.
h. Yellowstone Fossil Forests
(1) Description
of the phenomenon
Near Yellowstone National Park there are between
forty and fifty layers of fossilized trees, some of them stumps which are still
upright with roots which extended into the ancient soil below them, encased in
a kind of sedimentary rock which is produced by volcanic ash.
(2) Why
this phenomenon indicates an ancient earth.
The fossil tree layers sit on top of thousands of
feet of fossil-bearing sedimentary rock.
The rock had to be there, and to be covered by a layer of soil, before
trees could grow. The process of
volcanic eruption, death of the forest, piling more sediments on top of the ash
layer, growth of a new forest, another eruption, etc., was carried out at least
forty times! Once buried, the tree
material underwent the inherently slow process of petrifaction. These layers thus appear to have taken
hundreds of thousands or millions of years to be formed.
(3) Could
the great deluge explain this phenomenon?
Attempts to do so rely on the assertion that the
layers of trees were “floated” into position, roots-down, and deposited on
their present site so that the roots which are left clinging to the trunks
appear to have grown into the soil below.
Such an occurrence might happen once or twice during a single flood
event; but more than forty times? And
how did the volcanic sediments get there?
Supposing that deposition by water cannot completely explain this
observation, how can a single flood have produced the “initial” underlying
sedimentary rock, then a volcanic eruption and the emplacement of volcanic
sediments which somehow left trees upright, then washed over those sediments
another layer of non-volcanic sediment, then repeated the process more than
forty times?
(4) Which way of reading the natural revelation can explain this
phenomenon in terms of a young earth?
Using the innocent
approach we obtain an easy answer: the
fossil forests are what they appear to be, the results not of rapid positioning
but of lots of time and catastrophic natural events.
The cynical
approach gives an equally easy answer:
the fossil forests are a clever deception by God.
What about the agnostic
approach? Are these fossils the result
of trees which were once alive? Are the
fossils found in the layers of rock under the lowest layer of trees the
remnants of once-living creatures? If not,
these are “creation-fossil-trees” encased in “creation-lithified-ash,” telling
the story of events which never happened.
How can we then claim that God has not wrought another deception?
i. Igneous Rock Intrusions
(1) Description
of the phenomenon
Igneous rock formation can be observed in progress
today in the cooling of volcanic lava.
In some places igneous rock is observed to “intrude” into formations of
sedimentary rock. The igneous rock
pushes up over one sedimentary formation, and displaces the sedimentary rock
above it in an obvious way. The time it
takes a given volume of magma to cool into a solid form is easily measured, and
from the size and composition of an igneous intrusion the cooling time can be
accurately calculated.
(2) Why
this phenomenon indicates an ancient earth.
Cooling time for one granite formation in Southern
California can, from its mass and from the nature of the rock which resulted
from the intrusion, be determined to have been about one million years. This formation lies on top of sedimentary
rocks which must have been lithified at the time of the intrusion or they would
have been destroyed or at least significantly deformed by the heat. More sedimentary rocks lie on top of the granite. So the sedimentary rocks must have been in
place before the intrusion, and we see a result that took at least a million
years to produce after the intrusion.
(3) Could
the great deluge explain this phenomenon?
YECs have developed an unfortunate addiction to
theorizing that at the time of the great deluge all kinds of catastrophic
shaping of the earth’s crust was underway, from rapid continental
reconfiguration to the laying down of these igneous intrusions. In the first place, scripture says nothing
about “fire and brimstone” in connection with the flood. But even if we assume that the Holy Spirit
somehow omitted a detail which is now thought to be so crucial to our
understanding of the flood, how could the flood described in Genesis have
created layers of sedimentary rocks, hardened them, forced a massive intrusion
which would ordinarily take more than a million years to cool, and cooled that
intrusion into solid rock, then laid more sedimentary rock on top of the
intrusion, all within the space of a little over a year? It has been calculated that if all of the
observed igneous intrusions—that is, all of the igneous rock except “basement”
crustal rock—took place at the time of the flood, these igneous intrusions
would have raised the temperature of the global ocean to 2700 degrees C. Even if the flood involved several times
more water than we observe in the earth’s oceans today, how could so much heat
have been dissipated without destroying all life, including that of the
inhabitants of the ark?
(4) Which way of reading the natural revelation can explain this
phenomenon in terms of a young earth?
The innocent
approach cannot. Using this approach we
would conclude that the granite formation in Southern California took a million
years to harden after it intruded into sedimentary formations which were
already in place and lithified.
The cynical
approach can. According to this
approach, the igneous intrusions were directly created by God as solid rock to
trick investigators into assigning great ages for them.
The agnostic
approach once again fails because of fossils found in the underlying and
overlying strata. At least the
underlying rock had to be lithified before the igneous rock was laid, unless of
course both the igneous intrusions and the rocks in which these are found are
creation-rocks, the sedimentary rocks containing “creation-fossils.”
j. Sea Floor Spreading
(1) Description
of the phenomenon
The theory that all the continents were once part of
a single land mass (“pangea”) which, over tens of millions of years, spread
into today’s configuration was first proposed in 1912, well after the
scientific establishment had embraced Darwinism, and was hooted down by
that establishment. Since World War II,
findings have convinced almost everyone—including many YECs—that plate
tectonics and continental drift are valid explanations for today’s land
masses. The Americas, Europe and Africa
are spreading away from a formation in the Atlantic Ocean called the
“mid-Atlantic ridge,” where production of new crust can be observed: yes, one
can actually see the lava coming up from a crack in the ocean floor and
spreading away from that crack as new crust.
Plate tectonics also explains many other observable phenomena, such as
earthquakes and volcanoes.
(2) Why
this phenomenon indicates an ancient earth.
The rate of continental movement can be determined
with extreme precision by space-based lasers, so that a calculation of about
150 million years since pangea began to break apart fits a lot of data. But the most convincing evidence concerns
periodic reversals in the earth’s magnetic field. Some varves contain particles of iron which, being magnetic,
currently align themselves toward the earth’s “north” magnetic pole. When these varves are analyzed it is found
that every few thousand years the earth’s magnetic field reverses itself. Similar analyses of the seafloor spreading
from the mid-Atlantic ridge can be done, and magnetic readings show “stripes”
of magnetic alignment on both sides of the mid-Atlantic ridge that exactly
match the magnetic readings of the varves and support the interpretation that
the earth is over 100 million years old.
(3) Could
the great deluge explain this phenomenon?
Some YECs have postulated that, like the igneous
intrusions, the formation of the earth’s crust was a part of the general global
upheaval which accompanied the great flood.
YECs who want to try this theory need to do some explaining. The Atlantic basin floor which has been
produced by this sea-floor spreading covers, in very rough dimension, about 32
million square miles. All of this sea
floor is basalt, produced by the cooling of the lava which oozes up from the
mid-Atlantic ridge, and its average thickness is about four miles. According to Genesis, the flood took a
little more than a year from start to finish.
If we very generously allow 400 days for catastrophic sea-floor
spreading and effects like “runaway subduction” which have been suggested to
explain how the entire Atlantic basin could have been laid during the deluge,
we have to account for the deposition and cooling of 320,000 cubic miles of ocean floor per day! How could that much lava have been laid
down and cooled without boiling all the water in the global ocean, even if the
amount of water was twice what we see on earth today?
(4) Which way of reading the natural revelation can explain this
phenomenon in terms of a young earth?
Taking the innocent
approach, we would have to say that a lot of independent indications point to a
very old earth.
Using the cynical
approach, we can find that God’s creation continues to deceive very
effectively.
I cannot claim to know enough about what was
happening during the flood to say that all the sea floor spreading the results
of which we observe today did not happen at that time. Thus, the agnostic method may produce a satisfactory result, but only if
someone can explain why the ocean did not boil away, and how the ark and its
inhabitants survived the heat and turbulence involved in the deposition of the
entire Atlantic Ocean floor in a single year!
k. Radiometric Dating
(1) Description
of the phenomenon
Most of the hundred-some natural and artificial
elements have isotopes—versions of a single element all having the same number
of protons and electrons but different numbers of neutrons. Some of these isotopes are radioactive: over time they “decay” into other versions
of the same element or into versions of other elements. The time required for this decay to reach a
“stable” isotope—one which does not decay further—is easily determined. There are methods of radiometric dating
of rocks which do not require assumptions about the amount of radioactive
material originally present in a sample, and the use of several of these
methods independently on one sample can provide a very consistent calculation
for the age of that sample.
(2) Why
this phenomenon indicates an ancient earth.
The findings of radiometric dating of individual
rock samples are hotly disputed by the YECs, and I think they do have plausible
objections to some findings. There are,
however, two points that I cannot think of any way to interpret except in terms
of a very old earth. First, of all the
radioactive isotopes found in the earth’s crust, there aren’t any original
samples which have half-lives less than 100 million years; there aren’t any! We find these elements only in the immediate
physical presence of parent radioactive isotopes in the process of decay,
showing that their presence is a result of the radioactive decay of the parent
isotopes and not of their origination in the crust rocks. It takes about ten half-lives for the amount
of an average radioactive element to decline to the point where it is no longer
detectable. Therefore, at least ten
100-million-year half-lives, a billion years, must have lapsed since the earth
was formed. Second, within the decay
families of uranium and thorium there are four decay series. Three of them have half-lives in the
billions of years, and samples of these series can be found in the earth’s
crust. But the neptunium series has a
half-life of only two million years, and no samples of this series can be found
in the crust; such a decay to undetectable levels would require at least 20
million years.
(3) Could
the great deluge explain this phenomenon?
I an not aware of any attempt to explain radioactive
decay as a result of the flood. Some
YECs, however, postulate a related theory:
that before and during the flood God changed many “physical constants”
from antediluvian values to those we see today. Two very popular candidates for such dramatic slowing are the
speed of light and the rate of radioactive decay. In section 7 of this paper I will have a more detailed discussion
of this possibility.
(4) Which way of reading the natural revelation can explain this
phenomenon in terms of a young earth?
The innocent
approach tells us that the earth is at least a billion years old.
The cynical
approach says that, yep, God has tricked those infidel scientists again!
What about the agnostic
approach? If there were only one or
two techniques of radioisotopic chronology, the notion that there is no
evidence for the age of the earth’s crust might have a chance. But it is hard to see how the results of
radiometric dating can be set aside when multiple independent techniques
give similar results. And it is hard to
see how the absence of isotopes with shorter half-lives, such as those
mentioned above, can be explained except as deliberate divine trickery.
l. Cosmic Distances
(1) Description
of the phenomenon
Most of the stars are a long way away from
earth. Even some objects which, under
the right conditions, are visible to the unaided eye are a very distant: the Andromeda galaxy is about two million
light-years away. Instruments such as
the Hubble Space Telescope can observe objects which have been calculated to be
over 10 billion light-years away.
(2) Why
this phenomenon indicates an ancient universe
Though techniques of interstellar metrics are
inferential—there is no direct way of measuring a distance of more than a few
thousand light-years—they do produce consistent results. Currently publishing YECs generally do not
question the distances calculated by astronomers to celestial objects, even
those which are billions of light-years distant. If these objects are, indeed, billions of light-years away, and
if the light we see left them billions of years ago, then they must have been
there billions of years ago, and the universe must be billions of years old.
(3) Could
the great deluge explain this phenomenon?
Obviously, this item has nothing directly to do with
the flood, but speculations about potential reductions in the speed of light
associated with catastrophes before and during the flood-time have been
attempted as a way to show that light could have made the journey of billions
of light-years much quicker than it does today. I will deal with this possibility in section 7.
(4) Which way of reading the natural revelation can explain this
phenomenon in terms of a young earth?
The innocent
approach will cause us to make the natural deduction that objects billions of
light-years away whose light we can see through telescopes are billions of
years old.
We don’t need the cynical approach unless the agnostic approach fails.
Can the agnostic
approach be used? Some YECs think so,
reasoning as follows. For stars to have
the use the Genesis account implies, they must have been visible. Assuming that the creation of every stellar
object took place within six 24-hour days, and that they are indeed as far away
as scientists tell us, God must have created the light from distant stars and
galaxies already falling upon the earth:
a part of the “unavoidable appearance of age” of the new creation. When we look at distant celestial objects we
cannot tell how old they are because the light we see did not come from them at
all; it could not have come from them if they are more than 10,000 light-years
away. We see the light created
“en-route.”
Let us concede, for the sake of argument, that
creating “starlight in transit” is unavoidable. There is still no reason to
suppose that the characteristics of that starlight must contain indications of
a historical process which never happened if that starlight has only been
traveling for 10,000 years.
Unfortunately for this theory, that starlight does
have some very “historical” characteristics.
Light from the stars is Doppler-shifted toward the red end of the
spectrum, an effect for which there are two causes. First, as most YEC scientists concede, the universe is
expanding: for the most distant objects
visible by telescope the red shift indicates a velocity of about half the speed
of light; and second, the light is filtered through interstellar dust. Furthermore, as light travels for greater
and greater amounts of time, the lines in the stellar spectra blur or “spread,”
and the amount of this blurring corresponds to the computed distance and
therefore the historical time over which the travel has occurred. Thus, three questions: (1)
what makes the appearance that the stars are rushing away from us—an
appearance which, according to the YECs, does not come from the stars at all
but is built into the light—an unavoidable appearance of a historical
process which never happened? We have
never, according to this theory, seen the actual light from celestial objects
which are more than 10,000 light-years away, so why would God have needed to
create it in-route red-shifted, and why did He create it with red-shifts
exactly corresponding to the distance from each object? And:
(2) what feature of unavoidable appearance of a historical
process which never happened compelled God to create a red-shift which results
from interstellar dust when this light never passed through the dust? And finally: (3) if most of
interstellar light did not travel for millions or billions of light years, if the
greatest amount of time that any light from any star has been traveling is
about 10,000 years, what characteristics of unavoidable appearance of a
historical process which never happened caused God to create the light with the
spectral lines blurred in exact proportion to the distance of the objects from
which the light did not come but appears to have come?
Here’s another problem. What feature of unavoidable
appearance of a historical process which never happened prompted God to create
the light from objects billions of light-years distant, which in some cases
could not be detected until the last five years? What purpose was there to creating long shafts of light much too
faint to contribute to season-marking?
And what about electromagnetic radiation in the invisible part of the
spectrum? Did God also create long
shafts of invisible radiation?
Here’s the final problem. There are events which happen to celestial objects more than
10,000 light years distant which work profound changes in those objects. For example, in 1987 a supernova called
SN1987a appeared in the Great Magellanic Cloud. The object which exploded was not
even visible to the naked eye, so it would have had no value to any person
before this century. SN1987a is about
170,000 light-years away. The supernova
was visible in the southern hemisphere, but the object which produced it no
longer exists as a star—in a few hundred years when the gas cloud from the
explosion has spread enough to show the spot from which that gas originated,
there may not be anything visible to the naked eye in that spot. Therefore, two questions: (1)
did God create the “light-in-transit” with the supernova explosion and
the follow-on light from the planetary nebula which will be visible in a few
hundred years already “built-in”?
And: (2) what did God create at that spot in the
first place—the star that “originally” shone there, the blob of expanding gas
that we see today, or the burned-out husk that may not even be detectable from
earth? Indeed, did God create any
actual stars, or only trillions of burned-out husks like SN1987a, and shafts of
starlight which bear no relationship at all to the stars from which they
(falsely) appear to have come?
7. PROPOSED CHANGES IN “PHYSICAL CONSTANTS”
A few YEC scientists have suggested that variations
in physical constants, such as the speed of light and the rate of radioactive
decay, may explain some of the facts I have cited. The most prominent recent such effort of which I am aware is by
astronomer Barry Setterfield and statistician Trevor Norman. Since their hypothesis touches several items
of the evidence presented in this paper, I am going to spend some time
discussing it. I am not technically
qualified to critique in detail either the science or the statistics of this
hypothesis, so my comments will mostly concern whether it accomplishes its
intended objectives. The following
online site— http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Delphi/4881/
— is the source of my representations
of Setterfield’s positions and of the implications of this theory.
a. The
Setterfield-Norman Hypothesis—“cDK”
The Setterfield-Norman hypothesis proposes that the
speed of light has, during the history of the universe, slowed dramatically. A shorthand for this notion has
emerged: “cDK”—meaning “speed of light
decay” (technically, letting “the speed of light” equal “c” is a bit sloppy,
since “c” actually refers to the propagation of light in a vacuum, but
technically referring to the alleged beginning of the universe as the “big
bang” is also sloppy, so I will gratefully adopt the “cDK” shorthand!).
Setterfield and Norman examined measurements of
light speed over 300 years and claimed that it tended to measure faster the
earlier in time it was taken. For
example, they reported the 1740 value (by Bradley) as 300,650 kps, the value
dropping to 299,901 kps (Perrotin) by 1902 and stabilizing near today’s
value—299,792 kps—about 1925.
Measurement error, they assert, cannot readily explain all this
variability, because random errors should fall on “both sides” of a correct
value, not mostly on the higher side.
Having determined the shape of a best-fit curve for historical
light-speed measurements, the authors then calculated an extended curve which
would show that, beginning about 4000 BC, light could traverse billions of
light-years in a few thousand years.
According to the resulting curve, the speed of light immediately after
creation was about 11,000,000 times what it is today, then cDK followed an
exponential curve that has been essentially flat over the last 75 years.
If cDK happened, other “physical constants” must
also have changed. For example, if
Einstein’s famous equation e=mc2 is correct (Setterfield says it
is), then the value of “m” for any object in the universe must have increased
with the decline of c2; otherwise the constant energy release from
the sun when the speed of light was a million times what it is today would be a
trillion times greater, and the earth would be vaporized. But if “m” was trillions of times less than
it is today, then the value of “G,” the gravitational constant, must have been
trillions of times greater than today, otherwise all objects on the earth would
fly off into space! The authors published
a few examples of measurements of other universal constants which did not
contradict the contention that these constants may have changed, but because
these measurements tend all to have been in the last 100 years there is no
trend, as there apparently is in the case of the speed of light.
In response to a critique by Professor Frederick
Skiff, who claimed that “an infinite number of curves” could have fit the data,
Setterfield acknowledged that the curve he and Norman extrapolated was
arbitrary—they picked it to “prove” that light from distant objects could have
arrived at the earth in a few thousand years.
But Setterfield claims that a paper now in preparation will show that
the speed of light at the time of its emission can be specified, and that by
measuring the varying “c” from objects at different distances from earth it
will be possible to construct a definitive curve for cDK.
b. Implications
of cDK Relevant to this Paper
Those implications of cDK which are relevant to this
paper are as follows.
·
Obviously,
one need not allow that the universe is billions of years old for light from
distant stars to reach earth.
·
Radioactive
decay rates might have been millions of times greater than they are today, and
if so it would not be necessary to suppose that a billion years had to pass to
allow radioisotopes to decay to
undetectable levels.
·
Since
both “c” and radioactive decay might have been millions of times faster
immediately after creation than today, it is possible that igneous rocks might
have cooled much faster than the same types of depositions of magma do today.
·
The
redshift of light from distant celestial objects would not result from
expansion of the universe but rather from the fact that the declining velocity
of light causes each emitted photon to lose energy over time.
c. Difficulties
with cDK
I admire the imagination and theoretical work which
have gone into cDK and various commentaries upon it, but even as a
non-scientist I can see some difficulties with the hypothesis. I am not qualified to call these “fatal,”
but until there is more observational support I cannot regard cDK as a
satisfactory young-earth reading of the evidences I have presented. The most obvious difficulties are the
following.
·
Setterfield
and Norman report Roemer having obtained a value of 307,600 ± 5,400 kps, but the Encyclopedia
Britannica gives a value for Roemer’s measurement as 298,000 kps, once
Roemer’s observations are corrected for errors in his figures for the radius of
the earth.
·
Setterfield
claims that cDK is consistent with general relativity; however, cDK requires
that “c” changes from one velocity to another everywhere in the universe at
the same time, a stipulation which by definition requires an absolute
temporal frame of reference, something which relativity theory does not allow.
·
If
light speed had been much higher in the past, relativistic effects such as
“gravitational lensing” of starlight would be less than we calculate them to be
today, but in fact the most distant objects show the most pronounced relativistic
effects.
·
Slowing
light speed would create the illusion that events billions of light-years away
were happening “in slow motion,” but in fact we observe a rotational rate on
some of the most distant pulsars which could not be any faster without the
pulsars flying apart.
·
The
crucial part of the Setterfield-Norman curve—the “old” part which shows the
speed of light at more than a million times what it is today—is not a product
of observation but of hopeful extrapolation.
Until Setterfield is able to support cDK with observations which can be
repeated by objective peers, even those who are sympathetic to cDK must
acknowledge that it remains an ad-hoc theory. It was not born of anomalous data (though it may be supported by
those data); it was born of a particular interpretation of the Bible. Ad-hoc theories are not untrue
because they are ad-hoc. But
because they are ad-hoc they must be regarded with respectful and
charitable skepticism.
d. If
true, would cDK explain any of the evidences presented in this paper?
It would keep us from having to admit that
starlight from billions of light-years away took billions of years to get here.
Setterfield says it resolves the radioactive decay
evidence, but I cannot see how. A key
proposition of cDK is that while mass “m” as gravitational mass varies with “c2,”
mass “m” as “atomic mass” (I don’t understand his distinction between
gravitational and atomic masses) is constant over the life of the
universe. What he seems to be saying is
that “within” an atom everything always looks the same: when an atom decays, releasing energy, the
amount of energy released always “looks” from the perspective of that atom to
be the same—the atom simply emits, instead of (say) one photon, a number of
photons equal to the multiple of present-day “c” which prevailed at that time
(if the speed of light was ten times faster than today, ten photons would be
emitted, each of them carrying one-tenth the energy that a single photon
carries today). “Energy flux,” he says,
is constant over time. I conclude that
the total amount of heat which a parent atom must emit to become a daughter
atom was the same in antediluvian times as it is today; it just happened a
million times faster then than now.
Therefore, radioactive materials, which are ubiquitously found near the
surface of the earth, were producing a million times as much heat in 3900 BC as
today! A million times the amount of
heat we measure today continuously being produced in the crust would make the
earth a very unpleasant place for the sons and daughters of Eve!
The same problem applies to the cooling of igneous
rocks. They might have cooled a million
times faster, but they all had to be deposited over 2,000 years instead of two
billion, the same amount of heat had to be removed for them to solidify, the
heat was leaving a million times faster, so the amount of heat generated per
unit of time must have been a trillion times greater.
e. If
true, what are the real benefits of cDK to creationists?
We may be able to dispose of some of the evidence
which puts the origin of the universe farthest back in time and thereby “skip”
the first 12 billion years in conventional prehistory. But this span is in any case the easiest to
reconcile with a “literal-scientific” reading of the Bible. All we have to do is make, to the most
hard-core YEC interpretation of Genesis, two very reasonable changes which are
well-supported by the most obvious reading of the text. First, we must allow that the “144 hours of
creation” did not start until the introduction of light. As we have already noted, we are not told
how long after creation of “heavens and earth” God waited to introduce
light. Second, we must admit the
possibility that extraterrestrial objects (“the heavens”) were created in the initial
event, and that the day-four making of sun-moon-stars was not ex nihilo
creation but rather a modification of the relationship of earth to these
celestial objects which made them available for God’s purposes. This reading is required by the creation
account in Job which states that the stars were already in existence when the
earth was created (Job 38:7), and supported (though not perhaps required) by
the different Hebrew words used for “make” and “create.” The Hebrew word bara answers to our
word “create.” The word which is used for the day-four “making” of heavenly
lights is asah, the generic Hebrew word for “make.” Its meaning may sometimes cover ex nihilo
creation, but it most often signifies that something which already exists has
been given a different purpose: e.g.,
Adam and Eve sewed fig leaves and asah themselves clothing; God took
animal skins and asah more-substantial clothing. This interpretation of Genesis shrinks the
benefit of cDK for harmonizing science and scripture almost to zero. Nobody needs cDK to read six
“literal-scientific” days of creation from Genesis.
Indeed, the most difficult problems which have to be
solved to reconcile a “literal-scientific” reading of Genesis with an
“innocent” reading of the natural revelation concern the other lines of
evidence which I have presented, which address dating back to about 100 million
years. It is that most recent 100
million years, not the 12 billion which preceded it, which produce the really
difficult problems for creationists. I cannot
see how cDK contributes much to our being able to place what happened after the
“literal-scientific” 144 hours of creation into the context of the natural
revelation which we read today.
What about the value of cDK as evidence of a young
universe? Many atheistic cosmologists
speculate (Setterfield agrees with them) that its initial expansion pushed the universe out to a diameter of
billions of light-years in a few seconds!
If cDK could prove that cosmic redshifts are not the result of
expansion, and that the universe is not billions of years old, would that proof
make belief in a Creator more compelling than the evidence that the universe
began at a single point in space-time already makes it? Would cDK make atheism or scientific
agnosticism impossible? Don’t count on
it!
If cDK could be demonstrated, would Darwinism
die? I think not. If all the other proposed changes in
physical constants can have accompanied cDK, why could not mutation rates have
been millions of times today’s observed values? Why could not pre-biotic chemical reactions have been
qualitatively different? On the whole,
the notion that “the present is the key to the past” is dearer to creationists than
to Darwinists. If cDK is clearly shown
to have occurred, then S.J. Gould will be the loudest celebrant, for this
finding would do much to explain and validate his punctuated equilibria!
Finally, cDK does not explain fossiliferous
sedimentary rocks, shale varves, evaporite varves, coral reefs, metamorphic
rocks, river mouth sedimentary deposits, coal, Yellowstone fossil forests and
sea floor spreading. Even if it is
confirmed—which is certainly possible—cDK by itself leaves us with an earth
between 100 million and a billion years old.
8. CONCLUDING THOUGHTS
a. About The Evidence Presented Herein
There are twelve separate pieces of evidence
presented in this paper. While they are
very easy to interpret as indicative of an ancient universe and earth, in only
two cases does it appear that there is any support at all for using the agnostic approach which would allow us
to call the evidence unreadable. For
the rest, to the best of my honest ability to determine, we must either
acknowledge that the facts most obviously point to a great age for the earth or
accept “on faith” that God’s creation contains deceptive elements, even though
God’s verbal revelation seems to exclude that interpretation.
b. Will Science Change Its Mind?
One possible response to these facts is to say,
“Yes, the evidence seems to point to a very old earth, but science has changed
its mind in the past and will probably do so in the future, so I’m just going
to say I don’t know.” I think that response is completely valid,
and it may be wiser than a position that the earth is very old. Undoubtedly science will change; it has
always done so and there is no reason to think the future will be any
different! But sincere people who are
listening to our message can see the difference between: “Yes, the evidence
points to an old earth, but I’m going to withhold judgment”; and, “I don’t care
what the evidence says, you have to believe the earth is 10,000 years old if
you’re going to claim you believe the Bible.”
c. Making A Case for Catastrophism
Can periodic catastrophic events, one of the last of
which would have been the great deluge, explain these phenomena without
recourse to great age? Let us say that
about five million years have passed since the end of the sixth day of
creation. That age would be far too
short to allow for any significant evolutionary changes within the framework of
classical Darwinism, which would make all creationists happy. And the scriptures do not require the time
since Adam and Eve to be less than five million years. It is not inconceivable that a combination
of fairly frequent catastrophes on antediluvian earth and more stable
conditions post-flood might have produced the kind of terra-form we see. We have to abandon the interpretation of an
earth only 10,000 years old, but we might get to keep a “scientific” 144 hours
of creation, plus the notion that at the end of the flood the earth looked a
lot like it does today. We can suppose
that tremendous upheavals shook the earth from creation until the flood, but
these were not a part of the redemption story and were not much remarked because
there were very few people around to observe them. We could allow that creatures like trilobites and dinosaurs lived
in the earliest part of earth-history but perished long ago.
There is nothing inherently implausible about these
suppositions, but if YECs are going to make a case for catastrophism there is
work, not just wishful thinking, to be done.
I have shown that it is incredible to attempt to account for the facts
presented here as the result of a single global deluge. Perhaps multiple catastrophes can do the job
that one flood cannot. But if so, those
events must have left behind some traces.
After all, YECs contend that these catastrophes deposited signs which
conventional science falsely reads as indication of great age. Well, what are those signs? That’s the question the YECs have to answer
to get even “biblical conservatives,” like me, to agree. My message here is that the case for
catastrophism is not an impossible case to make, and it is a case for which I
personally have a lot of sympathy. But
one cannot plead that antediluvian catastrophes were so unlike the catastrophes
we observe today that they left false indications of a hundred million years of
time. “Unlike the catastrophes we
observe today” is the same as “a miracle with no residue.”
d. The Harmony of Genesis and Science
Those, particularly, who read the natural revelation
as indicative of an ancient earth need to be prepared to deal with what Genesis
says about creation, simply because the most obvious reading of that and other
scriptural references is that God accomplished the work of creation, from the
division of light from darkness, in 144 consecutive hours. By the same token, those who hold that the
earth is between 6,000 and 10,000 years old need to deal with the obvious
evidence of age in the natural revelation.
Finding harmony between science and scripture must be a cooperative work
of all creationists, OECs and YECs.
Harmony may not be easy to find. I am confident we can find it, though it may
sound more like Stravinsky than Beethoven when it is heard, if we are willing
to use a lot more imagination and engage in a lot more study than we have given
the problem to this point. That’s the
main reason I have done the work to publish these ruminations. Conservative Bible students haven’t troubled
themselves to examine Genesis and try to understand it in the light of what
true science tells us about the natural revelation, because it’s been so easy
to “blow off” science as “atheist propaganda.”
If creationists can accept that there is evidence—even inconclusive
evidence—for a very old earth and universe, maybe we can use our Bible study
skills to look again at the Genesis record and help each other to understand it
better, and maybe we can use our scientific skills to look at nature and help
each other to understand better how the heavens declare God’s glory.
Therefore, having spent this much “paper and ink” on
such matters, I would be remiss not to comment, however briefly, on the Genesis
account. I confess that I am still
unable to satisfy even myself, much less someone else, that I have an adequate
grasp of what the Holy Spirit was trying to express in the creation
account. I would not consider the
speculation in the next few paragraphs an “explanation,” or even “the road to
an explanation,” but I believe it may be a “paving-stone” on the road to an
explanation.
Near the beginning of this essay I used the term
“singularity” to refer to an event which science cannot describe. I now ask the reader to consider this
question: if one were to find an in-progress description of a singularity
in the Bible, how would it read? Every
miracle is a singularity, but most miracles are described as “completed”
events; that is, the record simply tells us that it happened; it doesn’t tell
us how. Even Joshua’s long day, which was certainly a singularity, is
not described in terms which allow us to understand how God made the sun appear
to stand still in the sky.
Of course, the exception to my generalization is the
Genesis account of creation. What it
describes is not multiple singularities, but one singularity which spanned six
days, a part of which, before the division of light from darkness, may itself
have lasted for billions of years! That
this was a unity of miraculous divine activity is attested by the various
Hebrew words used for “create” and “make”:
God creates some things, uses created things to make other things, and
makes available both created and made things.
This is the period of activity in which God miraculously created and formed the earth, including the biosphere
and all its denizens. It is divine-time,
which is expressed to us in scripture as “six days.”
“What is the scientific description of what one
would see inside a black hole?” That,
remember, is a question I said no scientist would attempt to answer. Why?
Because there is no scientific
description for what happens inside a black hole. There is no science there! If it were possible for a person to enter a
black hole, survive, and return to our space-time, there would be no scientific
account that person could give for what he had seen, because the next person to
do the same thing might have a completely different experience. And even if a scientist took instruments
with him into a black hole to record what happened, no one would pay the
slightest attention to the recorded data as “scientific results,” because the
next set of instruments might provide completely contradictory data. Such is the nature of a singularity!
“What is the scientific description of what one
would have seen during the event of creation?”
That is a question no “scientific creationist” should attempt to
answer. Why? Because the creation was a singularity, and there is no
scientific description for a singularity.
The easiest “literal” understanding of the duration of the creation
singularity, from the division of light and darkness, is six “ordinary”
days. But we do not have to understand
this time span as a “scientific” measurement, nor do we have to accept the
descriptions of what was done on each of those days as a scientific explanation
for God’s management of this ongoing singularity, nor are we compelled to allow
that “scientific time” even existed during the creation singularity. I am not saying the Genesis account tells us
nothing; there is a reason for it, which I admit I do not adequately
understand. I am saying it is a mistake
to attempt to interpret it as the record of a scientific process, and we
should be very careful about interpreting it even as the record of a historical
process. The Genesis account is unique,
within the Bible and within all literature.
We must be as careful when we apply the ordinary rules of understanding
to this record as when we apply ordinary language to God.
And that, as of this moment, is the extent of my
“paving” ability. Perhaps others can
begin to supply some more paving-stones, and we can build a road to that
meeting-place of science and scripture we would all like to visit.
e. In
Closing, Pleadings
I certainly do not expect that all YECs, or even
most YECs, will be “converted” to an old-earth position by the evidence I have
offered. I will not regard this essay
as a waste of time even if none of them is.
There are, however, objectives for the effort I have expended which are
dear enough to cause me to close with the following pleadings.
Deal with the evidence! Gird yourself, and defend your position! This is a challenge, but a challenge of
encouragement. I do not think the
interpretation of antiquity which I have presented is conclusive, and I would
not ask for a conclusive young-earth refutation of my old-earth reading. I only ask that a publicly argued
young-earth position be sufficiently credible to leave an open-minded person
with a reasonable doubt that there is definitive evidence for an ancient
earth. Alas! This request is one which very few young-earth readings of any
part of the evidence, and no young-earth readings of the evidence as a whole,
have been able to answer.
If you do not wish or do not choose to deal with the
evidence, hold your conviction that the earth is young between yourself and
God. No one has a right to demand
that another person take a public stand on this or any other issue that does
not directly bear upon salvation or the imitation of Christ.
Do not slam the door on science, for in so doing you
shut-out both the natural revelation of God and honest believers who are doing
their best to handle that revelation accurately. Accept the “right” of science to read God’s natural revelation. Challenge the right of pseudo-science to
elevate any interpretation, no matter how well-supported, to the status of
fact.
Leave the “loaded arguments” to the Darwinists, who are afraid of
reasonable discussion of their faith.
Such tactics are unworthy of creationists, either young-earth or
old-earth. When a Darwinist prefaces
his interpretation of the evidence by telling you, as does Richard Dawkins,
that you are an ignoramus unless you accept Darwinism, you may consider
yourself warned that his case isn’t very strong. For if it were, he would let the facts speak for themselves,
wouldn’t he? When a YEC author does as
too many YEC authors do, and prefaces his arguments for a young earth by
telling you that those who disagree with his interpretation also disagree with
Jesus and the apostles, you may consider yourself warned that this author is
not very confident of his case. For if
he were, he would let the facts speak for themselves, wouldn’t he?
Finally, if the reader as a YEC wishes to regard
OECs like me as weaker brethren, I will not make the slightest objection. I will ask only what Paul asked, “Accept
those who are weak in the faith, but not for the purpose of passing judgment on
their opinions.” Working together, I am
convinced that OECs and YECs can make progress toward resolving the tension
between science and scripture. But we
cannot work together if one side makes pariahs of the other. “Working together” does not mean either
party must endorse every assertion of another:
“As iron sharpens iron, so one man sharpens another.” It does require that our disagreements
should be charitable and respectful, that we should discover and acknowledge
the reasons that those who disagree with us hold their positions, that we
should be willing to accept one another as fellow-laborers, that we should
strive to learn from each other, that we should help each other toward the
goal.
One day faith will be sight. Let us conduct ourselves so that when that
day comes even the follies of our thinking in this life will be seen not to
have tarnished the love which overflows our hearts. May God help us to serve one another.