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Debate on the Age of the Earth
c o n t i n u e d . . .
Dear Paul,
I don't know why God made the universe the way it is. From a pure objective scientific viewpoint, the evidence seems to support old earthand evolutionary development theory. I am not an expert in geology,archeology, etc., so I can't argue this case with you. What I do know isthat the universe was created and that God was the agency responsible for that creation.
You seem to be operating on the assumption that I believe in an Old Earth in opposition to the Biblical record. I am saying that I won't argue the point because I don't have the information and skills to back up a scientifically reasoned argument. It is irrelevant to my belief in God, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit whether or not Earth was Created in 3761 B.C. (Traditional Jewish date of Creation); 4004 B.C. (Bishop Ussher's calculation of the date of Creation); 10,000 B.C. (A date frequently used by those Young Earth Creationists who also admit that the Bible and science can not be reconciled completely); or 15 billion years ago (a good round Old Earth figure).
A fairly straight forward example of how a historian or archaeologist could pick holes in the Biblical Young Earth theory follows:
A commonly calculated figure based on the ages of the patriarchs at the time of the birth of their respective sons, is that Noah was born 1056 years after the creation and the flood happened 1656 years after creation. If we continue the exercise, we find that Abram (Abraham) was born 292 years after the Flood. We use the genealogy given in Matthew and the known historical timing of interactions with Egyptian culture and we can set the birth of Abraham somewhere in the neighborhood of 2100 B.C.
to 2000 B.C. Subtracting 292 years from that gives us a date for the Great Flood of no earlier than 2392 B.C.
Egypt was united under a single rule, the First Dynasty was founded around 3100 B.C. The same Egyptian histories and records which are used to "prove" the historical accuracy of the Abraham/Isaac/Jacob/Joseph/etc. Stories lead inevitably to a founding of Egyptian culture 700 years before the Great Flood. Egyptian culture continues unbroken by any record of a Great Flood right up to the time of Jesus (Mark Antony and Cleopatra were defeated by Octavian at Actium in 30 B.C.)
The records and histories of other civilizations overlaps and can give us approximate dates extending back to the founding of the Sumerian city-states sometime around 3600 B.C. and again, no history of a world destroying flood. Sumerians were habitual record keepers and wrote everything on clay tablets which have survived mostly intact into modern times. We have literally tons of Sumerian records from fictional stories to histories, for day to day bookkeeping records, to marriage contracts for kings.
As a result of the intensive record keeping and dating from Sumerian sources we can place the founding of the earliest cities in the Middle East at around 8500 B.C. or approximately 4500 years before the date of creation given to us by use of the Biblical record. If to overcome this difficulty, we were to assume that the Middle Eastern civilizations were founded after the Great Flood, we are taking the approach of those Young Earthers who place the date of creation around 10,000 B.C. Unfortunately, we must also set the birth of Abram back to coincide with the record of ages and births given in Genesis. If we set the birth of Abram back however, we pre-date Egyptian culture by over 5000 years and thus the stories of Isaac/Joseph/etc. must be in error.
Regards,
Tim
Dear Tim,
You do seem to have at least some expertise in archeology - at least enough to partially base your belief that the Bible is wrong when it talks about the age of the earth. You also say that you won't argue the point because you lack the information and skills; but yet you go ahead and argue the point anyway. Maybe you are not as neutral as you claim.
I don't know much about archeology, but I seem to remember that most modern archeologists base their chronologies of the ancient world upon the writings of a certain Egyptian priest named Manetho. Like the Bible, the actual writings of this priest do not exist anymore. But unlike the Bible, his writings are only referred to by one or two other sources - they have not been "religiously" copied by scribes that are intensely dedicated to remaining true to the author's original intent. Another difference between the biblical dating system and Manetho is that Manetho's testimony doesn't anyone to back him up; whereas more than one biblical writer give credence to each others' testimonies about who lived when and where.
If this is true, then the archeologists who don't want to believe the Bible are assuming a lot! By their own admission most Biblical historians and archeologists choose not to believe the Bible because of its alleged miracles. They would rather choose what would normally be a questionable source of information because it is uncluttered with the supernatural, over a source that is internally consistent, is supported by other writers, and has had a good track record for accuracy, but yet claims to be written by God! If you believe in God as Creator, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit, is there not a logical flaw in that you choose to believe these doctrines but not others which you feel go against popular scientific thinking? Most scientists would object to all of them.
People can see the inconsistency in believing in one part of the Bible but not another. They would just say that you are just refusing to deal with some of these other issues that I mentioned previously, such as the miracles of Christ.
May I say suggest that it is not naive to believe in the Bible from cover to cover. It is also a fact that there is much more evidence for a young earth than an old earth. When I show people this information, they are amazed and wonder why no one has ever told them before.
For years the Church has been intimidated by scientific thinking because preachers believed that their flocks were being taken from them. As a countermeasure they gave up "small" portions of biblical doctrine to appease the appetite of Naturalism. But by doing this, they soon found out that they were sacrificing one biblical doctrine after another, until finally, there was no difference between the church and the world. Today, most people believe these Bible stories to be quaint tales, told by ignorant people.
You say that Creationism is divisive. However, it is not any more divisive than is God's word. Wherever Creationists have given talks and seminars, there has been a large revival of interest in God's Word and a return to Christianity. Grassroots Creationist organizations have sprung up all over the world. The group that I belong to specializes in scientific research in directly dating unfossilized dinosaur bones (one piece of evidence that the earth is far younger than most think).
Your working hypothesis seems to be that "If it agrees with science, then I'll believe it." This puts the wisdom of scientists above what God says. With scientific knowledge changing so rapidly anyway, my question is why would any Christian want to put his faith in what may be disproved tomorrow? Why not say, "If it agrees with God's Word, which is unchanging, then I'll believe it."?
Regards,
Paul
Dear Paul,
You misunderstand. The example I gave in my post (See the archeology argument in the previous newsletter) was not my own but an argument of a scientific friend of mine that I quoted almost verbatim. I gave that to you as an example of the type of argument you have to counter if you argue a young earth.
I stand by my earlier statements. I won't argue young earth vs. old earth because I, personally, don't have the scientific background to do more than parrot what someone else says. Unless you have the scientific grounding to make educated judgement of the validity of the evidence, all you are doing is repeating gossip without real understanding. The Scripture cautions us not to be a noise without meaning.
Sincerely, Tim
Dear Tim,
Sorry for the misunderstanding. I assumed from your original posting on the web site that you didn't agree with young earth Creationism because of the contradictions it poses to current scientific belief.
I am familiar with and have encountered most of the arguments for an old earth and feel that they have been satisfactory answered in various Creationists writings at one time or another. I assume that even though you claim not to be an expert, you have heard or read some of the arguments for an old universe and have faith in what they say is correct.
You said that you are an engineer. You should be able to understand and use the arguments that Creationists use when they utilize the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics. Do you feel qualified in this area to defend evolution and old age?
Regards, Paul
Paul,
An excellent example of why I won't argue young earth vs. old earth. I do understand the 2nd Law quite well. Unfortunately, most Creationists do not. Properly stated and applied, the 2nd Law does not support either young or old earth. There is no surer way to lose a hard science type than to argue a scientific principle from an incorrect understanding. The hard scientist will immediately draw the conclusion that if you are wrong in your basic argument then you are probably incorrect in the rest of your assumptions.
Tim
Dear Tim,
I don't know everything about the 2nd Law, but in my reading and discussions, it seems to be the evolutionists who don't seem to understand it. The issue has been debated for at least 20 years now and the "Creationists' rebuttal to the evolutionists' rebuttal" has not yet been answered as far as I can tell. Instead they just seem to ignore it. I would be most anxious to hear it from you. Let me briefly summarize my position.
All real processes are subject to the 2nd Law. Many of these processes avail themselves to age determination. One example says that the universe can't be infinitely old because we still have stars (I'm ignoring the theoretical arguments generated by the mathematical constructs of certain cosmologists).
Similarly, the solar system shouldn't be more than a few tens of thousands of years old because we still have short period comets (There is no known source for their replenishment). Likewise, the earth has to be about the same age because the amount of helium in the atmosphere is much too small for it to be billions of years old.
All of these processes, and many, many more, are based on 2nd Law principles, and they greatly outweigh other indications (such as dating based on some radioisotopes) that things are old.
However, Creationists more commonly use the 2nd Law argument to show that naturalistic evolution is impossible. Because of the 2nd Law, highly organized and complicated structures (like a "simple" bacterium) can not spontaneously form out of a soup of organic molecules.
Even the organic molecules necessary for life are much too complicated to form out of simpler molecules. And the argument goes backward until you reach molecular hydrogen and elementary particles. Evolutionists basically are saying that given enough time, hydrogen will turn into people. According to Creationists, this is an entropical fairy tale. Nowhere in nature does one ever see this happening.
Evolutionists have noted this argument and have responded with this rebuttal: They say that the universe is a closed system and that an increase in order in one part of the universe or earth, results in a decrease in order elsewhere. Thus, the decrease in energy in one part of the universe can result in a localized increase in energy and order somewhere else. This could drive evolution with the spontaneous formation of structures necessary for life with no violation to the 2nd Law.
Creationists have noted this argument as well and have responded by pointing out that the mere input of energy is insufficient to produce the needed complexity we see in life. Energy is a needed component, but in most instances pure energy only produces more disorder.
What is needed is some "information mechanism" that can control and funnel that energy in an orderly way to produce the needed organization. No known natural process has ever been observed to produce but the most simple of these mechanisms, thereby making evolution from hydrogen to man an impossibility according to known science.
Regards, Paul
Paul,
The essential Truth of Christianity is that Jesus was both God and man, fully divine and fully human, and that through belief in Jesus, we are admitted into the presence of God. From my point of view, it is meaningless to argue over the age of the universe. Either God created the universe a very long time ago and arranged it such that evolutionary events (possibly guided by God's hands) brought the world as we know it into existence, OR God created the universe fairly recently but created it in such a way that it appears to be old. Various data can be argued or interpreted in various ways to point to different ages for the universe. I stand by my original statement that all such argument is vain and irrelevant to faith and belief in God.
I'm not sure which part of which rebuttal you are referring to when you say that the issue of the 2nd Law has been debated for at least 20 years. You say also that many processes subject to the 2nd Law avail themselves to age determination. This is a fundamental misunderstanding of what the 2nd Law is all about The 2nd Law is not really a Law in the sense that the Law of gravity is a law. I can express the Law of Gravity as a simple equation and state with confidence that all matter in the universe obeys that equation. Nothing in the Second Law prohibits a person from growing younger, spontaneously reviving from the dead, the air in a room suddenly rushing out and leaving a vacuum, or heat flowing out of a cooler body and into a hotter one. The 2nd Law is based on a set of observations of the probability of certain things happening or not happening. To express the 2nd Law as an equation, I would have to write a very involved probability waveform equation. We tend to refer to it as a Law just because exceptions to it are so rare as to be unobserved in our experience.
You say that some cosmologists advocate an infinitely old universe. I am not aware of any reputable scientists that advocates an infinitely old universe. Also you say that there shouldn't be any short period comets left. I assume then you dismiss any hypothesis involving an Oort cloud? Likewise your argument about there not being enough helium in the atmosphere is not valid. I have seen the helium argument refuted. Young Earthers underestimate the rate of helium loss from the atmosphere and overstate the rate of helium replenishment. This is not really a 2nd Law problem.
Your arguments stating that complex molecules can't form out of simpler ones is not correct. Actually, nothing in the 2nd Law prohibits a random mass of particles from spontaneously combining to form a human being, horse, tree, or anything else. It is an extremely unlikely event but not impossible.
Be that as it may, what you are referring to here is abiogenesis (life from non-life), not evolution. I have seen things like the calculations of Fred Hoyle on the improbability of life spontaneously forming. Pardon me for saying so, but while Professor Hoyle may be a brilliant astronomer, I wouldn't count on him to figure the odds correctly in a lottery. The actual odds of a chemical soup forming basic self-replicating molecules is fairly high. We haven't observed it in a laboratory but then no one has had the 7 million years or so that the probability equations say would most likely be required.
Your argument that some form of "information mechanism" is needed to funnel energy to produce organization is indeed an argument based on the 2nd Law. Unfortunately, the abiogenesists (not evolutionists) are right. If I put a hot object and a cold object in contact with each other, energy (in the form of heat) will tend to flow from the hotter object to the colder object. The entropy of the hotter object decreases (crystallization and other forms of order will spontaneously appear) and the energy of the colder object increases. The total entropy of the system remains the same. Even in a random event like water pouring down a hill side or a jet of gas molecules, we can observe localized increases in entropy and order. (A whirlpool or eddy is just such and increase in order in an otherwise chaotic flow.)
Sincerely, Tim
Dear Tim,
Many comments were made in your last letter. Here is my reply. 1) You say that the Bible singles out an "...essential Truth of Christianity." That notion is a human construct. Why not simply accept all of what God says, and not just what we happen to like, is politically correct, logical, in agreement with prevailing scientific thought, or what we think is essential? Why would choosing what we want to believe be better than choosing the "whole counsel of God" (Acts 20:27)? If Jesus is God as we say He is, then we should choose God's words over man's word (Acts 5:29).
2) You say that either God created the universe a very long time ago and arranged it such that evolutionary events brought the world as we know it into existence, OR God created the universe fairly recently but created it so that it appears to be old.
The only options that you give embrace an old universe. What about the biblical view that the earth was created recently and that it appears young? As I said before, only a few of the natural chronometers indicate an old universe. Most of them give young ages. The evidence is against old age.
3) You say, "Various data can be argued or interpreted in various ways to point to different ages..."
In this case it is not just a matter of interpretation, it is a matter of ignoring vast quantities of data and their significance. I posit that it is being ignored because it has radical implications for those scientists who are not Christians (John 3:19-21).
4) You say, "I stand by my original statement that all such argument is vain and irrelevant to faith and belief in God."
God argued for a six day creation in Exodus 20:11 and it was not vain or irrelevant. The Bible says that all scripture is "...profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness. That the man of God may be perfect, throughly furnished unto all good works" (2 Timothy 3:16). Our experience is that when people see that science and the Bible really do agree, they are elated that the Bible can be trusted. And as a result their faith is greatly strengthened.
Even the humanists recognize the hypocrisy of Christians who compromise Genesis: "Cheer Number One goes to the Creationists for serving rational religion by demonstrating beautifully that we must take the creation stories of Genesis at face value...Creationists list twenty or more contradictions that arise between science and Scripture if the days are taken as geological eras instead of ordinary days."
"Many Christians have taken the dishonest way of lengthening the days into millions of years, but the Creationists make it clear that such an approach is nothing but a makeshift that is unacceptable biblically and scientifically. And the Creationists have also shown irrefutably that those liberal and nonorthodox Christians who regard the creation stories as myths or allegories are undermining the rest of Scripture, for if there was no Adam, there was no fall, and if there was no fall there was no hell, and if there was no hell, there was no need for Jesus as Second Adam and Incarnate Savior, crucified and risen. As a result the whole biblical system of salvation collapses." (Mattill, A. J., Jr., "Three Cheers for the Creationists," Free Inquiry, Vol. 2 (Spring 1982), p. 17; as quoted in That Their Words May Be Used Against Them, Henry M. Morris, Master Books, Inc., 1997, pp. 381-2).
5) The rebuttal that I am referring to is that I have not heard any evolutionists respond to the Creationists' argument that more than just energy is needed to bring about a decrease in entropy for all but the most simple of physical units (e.g., the sun causing water molecules to rise in the atmosphere). In all but these simple cases, to bring about lower entropy, it takes some sort of "machine" to direct that energy to do useful work. And, to make a machine requires intelligence. And the more complicated the product that is being manufactured, the more complicated the machine has to be in order to make it (a machine can't make something more complex than itself).
The analogy of a car is often used: One can't merely pour gasoline on it and light a match and expect it to go anywhere. First, a complex engine has to be designed and built to direct the gasoline to do useful work. Likewise, for a "simple" living organism (which is much more complex than an automobile) to come together, there has to be some ordering "machine" ("factory" would be closer to the truth) to pick out the correct types of molecules out of the atmosphere to come together to form 20 different compounds called amino acids. At the same time they have to be kept away from other molecules and energy that would destroy them. At this most fundamental step in abiogenesis, scientists have spent many years and have not been able to even imagine how it could have happened naturally.
Next, somehow many other "factories" have to somehow just come about naturally to do the job of putting these amino acids together into strings called proteins. These "factories" would have to have "machinery" that could string a few hundred to several thousand of these 20 different amino acids together in a precise sequence that would make them active to do a specific job in a cell, such as form a membrane, digest sugars, break down hydrogen peroxide, initiate cell division, or produce one of the many enzymes that participate in one of the many steps in blood coagulation. One amino acid out of position in that string can cause disease or death.
And of course I haven't even mentioned the thermodynamic barriers involved in bringing about DNA, macromolecules, multi-celled organisms, body structures, or the whole body as a single functioning unit. For an evolutionist to say that all you need is some energy, the right chemicals, and a few hundred million years for a cell to come together is foolish when it requires a chemist to have at least a test tube and Bunsen burner (and a brain) to make a small quantity of some simple compound. Stanley Miller's apparatus to simulate a primitive atmosphere never came a tiny bit close to producing the amino acids necessary form the origin of life.
To get an idea of some of the probabilities involved in evolution: The probability of accidently getting a small protein segment containing only 340 amino acids together in the right order is about 1 in 10300. If there were one each of these proteins on the earth, the total weight would be about 10280 grams. The earth only weighs 1027 grams. And if the whole universe were packed solid with electrons, it would contain about 10130 electrons.
If each electron were a mutating system, going through a million mutations a billion times every second for 30 billion years, the total number of attempts that could be made is only 10157. And these numbers are minuscule when they are compared to the really complex molecules that are necessary for life. The problem is the same for abiogenesis. (Adapted from, Speculations And Experiments Related To Theories On The Origin Of Life: A Critique, Duane T. Gish, CLP Publishers, 1972; Scientific Creationism, Henry Morris, Master Books, 1974).
6) In chemistry, entropy (S) is determined in the simple formula G=H-TS (Other formulas exist). It is used to determine if a chemical reaction will spontaneously happen or not. In the chemical reactions involved in the formation of amino acids and protein polymers, the equilibrium is far toward dissolution rather than synthesis.
So, even though there is a theoretical possibility of the spontaneous formation of an amino acid or protein, the possibility of these chemicals degrading is so much larger that they never hang around in the environment very long before they are degraded back into their constituents. And since there is no natural selection for one chemical over another one, the evolution of chemicals just doesn't happen, no matter how long you wait.
7) Sir Fred Hoyle used to believe in an infinitely old universe (Steady State Universe). Today, Guth, Hawking, and many others find it philosophically attractive that there be an infinite number of expansions and contractions so that matter becomes eternal. That is one of the reasons for the big push to find "dark matter" in the universe. They want the universe to eventually collapse so another "big-bang" can take place.
8) The Oort Cloud is just as you say - a hypothesis; nothing more. It was invented to try to explain a contradiction to a young solar system.
9) The information that I have on the rate of the helium flux comes from The Age Of The Earth's Atmosphere: A Study of the Helium Flux through the Atmosphere (Vardiman, Larry, ICR, 1990). He says that... "The rate of the flow of 4He from the crust to the atmosphere is 2x106 atoms/cm2/sec. The flux from the atmosphere to space is estimated to be 5x104 atoms/cm2/sec. Other escape mechanisms such as the polar wind, solar wind sweeping, and hot-ion exchange have not been found to be important contributors to the loss of helium.
If the earth's atmosphere had no helium when it was formed, the current measured column density of helium (1.1x1020 atoms/cm2) would have been produced in about 2 million years. This is over 2500 times shorter than the presumed age of the earth. Long-age atmospheric physicists such as Walker state that "...there appears to be a problem with the helium budget of the atmosphere." Chamberlain states that this helium escape problem "...will not go away, and it is unsolved."
10) Statisticians say that it is impossible for events of extremely small probability to happen. In 1967 a group of internationally known biologists and mathematicians gathered at the Wistar Institute to determine if mutations and natural selection serve as a basis as a mechanism for evolutionary change.
After input from the biologists the mathematicians concluded that evolution can not happen (Mathematical Challenges to the Neo-Darwinian Interpretation of Evolution, Moorhead and Kaplan, 1967, Wistar Symposium No. 5, Wistar Institute Press, Philadelphia 1967). The evolutionists who introduced the old "Monkeys at typewriters + Time = Shakespeare" scenario, never did their math.
11) A common mistake is to say that after time passes, the chance of some event happening increases. In actuality, the chance still remains the same regardless of time. Evolutionists also say that "natural selection" improves the odds of something happening. Creationists point out that there is no "chemical selection." for life. In fact, the required chemicals for life are hard to make and do not come naturally. They would rather react with sugars, water, oxygen, and other common chemicals that would destroy them if they came together. Even the required chemical reactions between most of the amino acids are not the ones that come about most naturally.
14) Ice crystals are at a lower energy state than water. Although crystals have high order, they have no information or complexity. This illustration is used quite often by evolutionists, but it has nothing to do with evolution. The evolutionist Prigogine says, concerning such ordered structures as crystallization and whirlpools, "Unfortunately this principle cannot explain the formation of biological structures." (Ilya Prigogine, et. al., Physics Today 25 (11):23, 1972). Entropy involves more than just "order." If you believe in God as Creator, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit, is there not a logical flaw in that you choose to believe these doctrines but not others which you feel go against popular scientific thinking? Most scientists would object to all of them. People can see the inconsistency in believing in one part of the Bible but not another. They would just say that you are just refusing to deal with some of these other issues that I mentioned previously, such as the miracles of Christ.
May I say suggest that it is not naive to believe in the Bible from cover to cover. It is also a fact that there is much more evidence for a young earth than an old earth. When I show people this information, they are amazed and wonder why no one has ever told them before.
For years the Church has been intimidated by scientific thinking because preachers believed that their flocks were being taken from them. As a countermeasure they gave up "small" portions of biblical doctrine to appease the appetite of Naturalism. But by doing this, they soon found out that they were sacrificing one biblical doctrine after another, until finally, there was no difference between the church and the world. Today, most people believe these Bible stories to be quaint tales, told by ignorant people. You say that Creationism is divisive. However, it is not any more divisive than is God's word. Wherever Creationists have given talks and
seminars, there has been a large revival of interest in God's Word and a return to Christianity. Grassroots Creationist organizations have sprung up all over the world. The group that I belong to specializes in scientific research in directly dating unfossilized dinosaur bones (one piece of evidence that the earth is far younger than most think).
Your working hypothesis seems to be that "If it agrees with science, then I'll believe it." This puts the wisdom of scientists above what God says. With scientific knowledge changing so rapidly anyway, my question is why would any Christian want to put his faith in what may be disproved tomorrow? Why not say, "If it agrees with God's Word, which is unchanging, then I'll believe it."?
Regards,
Paul
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