First, the oldest living bristlecone pine tree to date was announced in 2013 as being 5,062 years old (making it roughly 5,074 years old in 2025).² However, notably, its location is being kept secret (allegedly somewhere in California’s White Mountains³) and its age has not been able to be confirmed by other scientists.⁴ The second oldest tree is also a bristlecone pine, nicknamed “Methuselah,” and is thought to be roughly 4,850 years old.⁵ The tree nicknamed “Prometheus” or the “Currey Tree” (HPN-114) was chopped down in 1964 by Donald Currey and was found to be 4,844 years old at the time, based on assessment of its tree rings,⁶ presumably making its germination date over 4,900 years ago. Do these trees disprove the biblical timeline?⁷

Sub-annual Tree Rings?

To answer that question, one must first understand some basic information about dendrochronology. Dendrochronology is the science of studying tree rings, assessing their ages as well as climates in the past. Tree ring counting is considered to be a very reliable science for dating wood since, today, one ring is generally known to form in a tree for every year that the tree has lived. However, when sub-annual tree ring growth occurs (i.e., more than one ring forming each year—called “false rings”⁸ or “intra-annual” rings), the ages of trees will be inflated and, thus, erroneous.⁹ Sub-annual tree ring growth is now understood by dendrochronologists to be common, especially in dry climate trees (like bristlecone pines).¹⁰ In fact, “in some trees of certain regions and in some years…the intra-annuals actually outnumber the annuals.”¹¹ Based upon their study of some 67 trees from 25 species, they found that well over 63% of the trees revealed sub-annual tree ring growth.¹² In fact, they revealed that in their “work, something like 99 percent of extremely thin, entire growth layers and lenses are intra-annual. The effect upon chronology of counting these thin, entire growth layers and lenses as true annual increments is quite obvious.”¹³ Sub-annual tree ring growth is not merely a strange, sporadic exception to the rule—it is quite common.

Sub-annual rings may, in fact, be even more common than is currently realized due to the inability to distinguish between annual and sub-annual rings in many cases. Years ago, writing in the Smithsonian Miscellaneous Collections, Glock, Studhalter, and Agerter explained that “a ‘false’ (intra-annual) ring might so closely approach the sharpness of a tree annual as to give a high degree of uncertainty in identification,” requiring crossdating to attempt to decipher the “true” age of the tree.¹⁴ They highlight that after years of study, they “failed to reveal any criteria by which” one could distinguish annual from sub-annual tree layers.¹⁵ In apparent exasperation, they exclaim when trying to distinguish sub-annuals in many cases, “how can one be certain of his interpretations?”¹⁶ “In fact, the whole of our work emphasizes the impossibility of distinguishing a sharp intra-annual from an equally sharp annual.”¹⁷

Notably, the understood cause of intra-annual tree rings is often unusual weather.¹⁸ Glock, et al. explain, “the nature of the growth layer, whether annual or intra-annual, depends upon the variations in the impact of growth factors, variations which may or may not be annual, and which may or may not be sufficiently intense to make either annual or intra-annual growth layers indistinguishable, one from the other.”¹⁹ “Certain species and certain years show extreme numbers of intra-annuals whereas others show only a few. In some species, it is impossible to find a year lacking multiple growth layers. The reason for such multiplicity has commonly been held to be large and repeated fluctuations of soil moisture.”²⁰ In fact, Mirov acknowledged that in the pines of the White Mountains (where the bristlecones are found), “a semblance of annual rings is formed after every rather infrequent cloudburst.”²¹ Ricker, et al. explain that “intra-annual” rings are “caused by stressful climatic periods (for example, lack of soil moisture) that divide an annual tree-ring artificially into at least two.”²² They also highlight that, “Without crossdating or information on intra-annual climate variability, it may not be possible to distinguish annual and false boundaries.”²³

While the work of the late dendrochronologists Valmore LaMarche and Thomas Harlan of the University of Arizona’s Laboratory of Tree-ring Research²⁴ has prompted some to reject sub-annual tree ring growth as a possibility for bristlecone pines, not all scientists accept their conclusion. Gladwin believed that bristlecone pine tree growth patterns are too erratic for dating at all,²⁵ and based on finding extra rings when studying bristlecone tree saplings, Lammerts argued that the bristlecone chronology could be lowered by at least 1,500 years.²⁶ While it has been argued that statistical methods are available to help eliminate the human interpretation element from the equation, the statistical methods are still recommended more as port for human visual analysis, rather than replacement of human confirmation.²⁷ Notably, LaMarche and Harlan’s study attempted to substantiate the assertion that the rings of the bristlecone pines are annual (i.e., not sub-annual) rings, coupling the tree ring chronology with radiocarbon dating. However, (1) creationists have shown that radiocarbon dating is unreliable at best,²⁸ (2) evidence suggests that nuclear decay rates were significantly accelerated in the past (apparently due to the Flood and God’s activity during Creation week),²⁹ making ancient trees date as older than they really are, and (3) the acceleration is believed to have continued until roughly 1500-2000 B.C. Radiocarbon dates prior to those dates, therefore, should be “telescoped,” increasing the number of tree rings in a “radiocarbon year.”

Bottom line: sub-annual tree ring growth is not uncommon, and the typical cause of such growth would be conditions that would have been necessitated by the post-Flood Ice Age. The biblical Creation model argues that, due to the Flood,³⁰ the post-Flood ocean would have been much warmer, and the atmosphere would have had elevated volcanic aerosols, cloud cover, and precipitation for several decades (and possibly a few centuries), leading to an Ice “Age”³¹ with unusual cyclical weather patterns. The conditions were ideal for sub-annual tree ring growth. In the words of Creation scientist John Morris:

As it pertains to Flood model considerations, remember that the centuries immediately following the Flood witnessed the coming of the Ice Age. All trees growing on the continents were recently sprouted, actively growing trees. The still-warm oceans rapidly evaporated seawater, thus providing the raw material for major monsoonal-type storms. Earth was ravaged by frequent and wide-ranging atmospheric disturbances, dumping excessive snowfall in northern regions and rainfall to the south. If ever there was a time when multiple rings could develop in trees, this was it. Those centuries probably produced tree ring growth that was anything but annual. Thus, far from disproving biblical history, tree ring studies provide supportive and instructive information about true history.³²

Tree ring counting cannot be used as proof that the Earth is older than biblical claims. Many of the tree rings in the oldest living trees may have formed sub-annually. But even if every tree ring was, in fact, an annual ring, a tree that is over 5,000 years old would still fall below some Flood date estimates, which can be as high as 3,000-4,000 B.C., based upon the implications of Moses’ wording in the Genesis 11 genealogies.³³

Tree Rings and Crossdating

That said, while old-Earth advocates assert that there are living trees with over 5,000 tree rings, perhaps few people realize that the oldest trees—namely, the bristlecone pines discussed above—were actually not dated solely using tree ring counting but, instead, “crossdating.” Crossdating is the process of successively overlapping the tree ring patterns from living and dead trees (including fossilized trees and even beams from old houses) further back in history. Some scientists, however, have rightly argued that “[i]t is thus evident that the ‘art’ of cross-matching of tree-rings as thin as a thousandth of an inch or less is very subjective because of being dependent on the visual assessment of the investigator.”³⁴ After all, trees growing in the same forest will not always display the same tree ring patterns.³⁵ The renowned expert in dendrochronology, M.G.L. Baillie, warned:

As with conventional jig-saws, some people are better at pattern recognition than others and, if the analogy is not too brutal, there are those who recognise the problems, and those who might try to force the pieces together. It has to be remembered that there is only one correct pattern: each tree has grown only once and ultimately its ring pattern can only fit at one place in time. Simply because two pieces look alike does not necessarily mean that they fit together.³⁶

The Survival of Pre-flood Trees?

Crossdating is an imprecise and often subjective method to be sure, yet it is incorrectly argued that this process can create a chronology reaching back over 8,000 years.³⁷ In response, besides the above issue with crossdating, first we must understand that only living trees would potentially create a problem for the Creation/Flood model, and then, only if one assumes that all trees died in the Flood, which may not have been the case.³⁸ The biblical  text only says that “all flesh died that moved on the Earth” (Genesis 7:21), but plants are not flesh. In the case of trees, many would have been torn up by Flood processes and carried great distances (in some cases with their root systems still intact). After the Mount St. Helens eruption in 1980,³⁹ trees from the surrounding area were torn down or uprooted by debris flows and transported to Spirit Lake, to be deposited as a giant floating log mat. Some of the trees still had their root ball intact. Thus, over the coming days and weeks, their saturated root ball sank, pulling the trees below the water, only to be “replanted” at the base of Spirit Lake below water. If uprooted pre-Flood trees with their root systems intact had been “replanted” late in the Flood and soon thereafter been uncovered as the waters of the Earth receded (unlike the trees of Mount St. Helens, which are still on and below Spirit Lake), could those trees have survived?

First, keep in mind that all pre-Flood era living species would be expected to be more robust than modern species, since less genetic mutation would have accumulated in their genomes, being much closer in time to Creation. Also, Bert Cregg of the Department of Horticulture and Forestry at Michigan State University noted that even today (after thousands of years of further genetic entropy), “[m]any tree species can survive months under water” in floods.⁴⁰ Whitlow and Harris’ monumental work on the effect of flooding on trees revealed dozens of species that are tolerant (i.e., able to survive deep flooding for one growing season) and/or very tolerant to flooding (i.e., able to survive deep, prolonged flooding for more than one year).⁴¹ If some trees survived the Flood, then living trees with 6,000 or more rings would not be a problem for the Flood model.⁴² [NOTE: It is also possible that Noah brought trees on the Ark (especially those that would provide food for its passengers—Genesis 6:21).]

A “Mature” Creation

So, there are no living trees that can be known to be older than when the Flood occurred. The oldest bristlecone pine trees could very well be trees that began to grow immediately after the Flood. But even if cross dating reliably revealed a tree history with thousands upon thousands of tree rings—enough to cause one to question a recent Creation (i.e., six-to-eight thousand years ago)—we must recognize the fact that the biblical model calls for the supernatural creation of fully functional, mature trees from the first day of their existence (so that Adam and Eve, also fully grown, would be able to eat from them, Genesis 2:16-17). Those trees, no doubt, would have been equipped with tree rings since rings help provide strength for mature trees.⁴³ The likelihood of sub-annual tree ring growth in unusual weather like that of the post-Flood Ice Age and a supernaturally created mature Earth dispense with tree ring arguments against a young Earth.

Tree Ages and Carbon Dating

What about “Old Tjikko,” which is estimated by some to be at least 9,500 years old? Old Tjikko was dated using carbon dating, not dendrochronology, and therefore tends not even to be listed among the verified oldest trees.⁴⁴ In the words of Peter Brown, Director and President of Rocky Mountain Tree-Ring Research,

There has been a lot of focus on [sic] in the media recently about very old trees that are based on radiocarbon dating of a remnant piece of wood in association with a currently living tree that is assumed to have been an ancient stem that reproduced clonally. The most recent example is “Old Tjikko,” a Norway spruce (Picea abies) growing in Sweden. The living stem itself is only a few hundred years old, but there is a radiocarbon age of 9,500 years from dead wood present at its base. The living tree is argued to be only the most recent ramet of the much older individual tree genet. However, a 2016 study by G.L. Mackenthun instead argues that there is no evidence of genetic continuity between the dead and living wood portions of the tree, nor is there any evidence of clonal origination of Norway spruce in general. Thus, in the absence of any evidence of genetic continuity between dead and living portions of a stem, especially from a species otherwise not known to commonly reproduce clonally, I do not include such trees in Oldlist.⁴⁵

Even beyond the issues listed above concerning radiocarbon dating, the method is a notoriously imprecise and suspect method due to its frequent anomalies, largely caused by its long-believed, foundational assumption that the ratio of ¹⁴C to ¹²C in the atmosphere has remained constant throughout history, as well as the effect of the Earth’s magnetic field on the production rate of ¹⁴C.⁴⁶ Scientists now know that the ratio is not constant.⁴⁷ So, they attempt to calibrate the ¹⁴C “clock” using other techniques that are largely ineffective beyond recorded history. Archaeologists today, therefore, cannot use ¹⁴C dating as conclusive evidence in dating ancient objects because of such anomalies. So much so that evolutionists admit concerning carbon dating, “[I]t is not infallible. In general, single dates should not be trusted.”⁴⁸

Conclusion

As has been the case thousands of times throughout history, skeptics and scoffers will continue to try to chip away at the reliability of Scripture and its record of historical events. When a thorough investigation of their argument is completed, however, the Bible always stands unscathed. The latest charge against its accuracy inevitably collapses upon closer examination. And so it is in regard to tree rings allegedly casting doubt on the legitimacy of the Flood and the young age of the Earth implied by the biblical genealogies.

Endnotes

¹ Bill Nye and Ken Ham (2014), Uncensored Science: Bill Nye Debates Ken Ham (Petersburg, KY: Answers in Genesis).

² Joseph Castro (2013), “What is the Oldest Tree in the World?” Live Science, http://www.livescience.com/29152-oldest-tree-in-world.html.

³ “Pinus Longaeva” (2023), The Gymnosperm Database, ed. Christopher J. Earle, April 10, https://www.conifers.org/pi/Pinus_longaeva.php.

⁴ Peter Brown (no date), “OLDLIST, A Database Of Old Trees,” Rocky Mountain Tree-Ring Research, accessed 11/26/24, https://www.rmtrr.org/oldlist.htm.

⁵ Ibid.

⁶ Matthew Salzer and Christopher Baisan (2013), “Dendrochronology of the ‘Currey Tree,’” Second American Dendrochronology Conference, University of Arizona, Tucson, May 13-17, https://www.researchgate.net/publication/333058921_Dendrochronology_of_the_Currey_Tree.

⁷ Note that other trees are claimed to be extremely old as well, though unverified by dendrochronological examination (e.g., according to folklore, the Lebanese olive trees known as “The Sisters” are said to be the “source of that olive branch brought by the dove back to Noah heralding the end of the flood” [Tara Vassiliou (2012), “Epic Olive Trees,” Olive Oil Times On-line, June 10, https://www.oliveoiltimes.com/world/epic-olive-trees/26998].

⁸ Brown.

⁹ Ibid.

¹⁰ W.S. Glock, R.A. Studhalter, and S.R. Agerter (1960), “Classification and Multiplicity of Growth Patterns in the Branches of Trees,” Smithsonian Miscellaneous Collections, 140[1]:1-292.

¹¹ Ibid., pp. 56-57, emp. added.

¹² Ibid., pp. 121-122; see also Martin Ricker, et al. (2020), “Statistical Age Determination of Tree Rings,” PLOS One, 15[9], September 22, https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0239052, who found 313 false rings in 29 Pinus oocarpa trees out of 1861 rings.

¹³ Glock, et al., p. 274, emp. added.

¹⁴ Ibid., p. 39, emp. added.

¹⁵ Ibid.

¹⁶ Ibid., p. 53.

¹⁷ Ibid., p. 57, emp. added.

¹⁸ E.g., Gerald E. Aardsma (1993), “Tree-Rings Dating and Multiple Growth Ring Per Year,” Creation Research Society Quarterly, 29:184-189, March; Walter E. Lammerts (1983), “Are the Bristlecone Pine Trees Really So Old?” Creation Research Society Quarterly, 20:108-115, September; Defoliation by insects and periodic infestations have also been shown to affect tree ring patterns—Friedrich, et al. (2004), “The 12,460-year Hohenheim Oak and Pine Tree-Ring Chronology From Central Europe—A Unique Annual Record of Radiocarbon Calibration and Paleoenvironment Reconstructions,” Radiocarbon, 46[3]:1111-1122, November.

¹⁹ Glock, et al., p. 257, emp. added.

²⁰ Ibid., p. 273, emp. added.

²¹ N.T. Mirov (1967), The Genus Pinus (New York: Ronald Press Co.), p. 146, emp. added.

²² Ricker, et al, emp. added.

²³ Ibid.

²⁴ V.C. LaMarche, Jr. and T.P. Harlan (1973), “Accuracy of Tree Ring Dating of Bristlecone Pine For Calibration of the Radiocarbon Time Scale,” Journal of Geophysical Research, 78:8849-8858.

²⁵ Harold S. Gladwin (1978), “Dendrochronology, Radiocarbon, and Bristlecones,” Creation Research Society Quarterly, 15:24-26, June.

²⁶ Walter E. Lammerts (1983), “Are the Bristlecone Pine Trees Really So Old?” Creation Research Society Quarterly, 20:108-115, September.

²⁷ Jake Hebert, Andrew Snelling, and Timothy Clarey (2016), “Do Varves, Tree-Rings, and Radiocarbon Measurements Prove an Old Earth? Refuting a Popular Argument by Old-Earth Geologists Gregg Davidson and Ken Wolgemuth,” Answers Research Journal, 9:349, https://assets.answersresearchjournal.org/doc/v9/varves_tree-rings_old_earth.pdf.

²⁸ Michael G. Houts (2015), “Assumptions and the Age of the Earth,” Reason & Revelation, 35[3]:26-34, March, https://apologeticspress.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/1503w.pdf.

²⁹ Don DeYoung (2005), Thousands…Not Billions (Green Forest, AR: Master Books); Elizabeth Gardner (2010), “Purdue-Stanford Team Finds Radioactive Decay Rates Vary With the Sun’s Rotation,” Purdue University News Service, http://www.purdue.edu/newsroom/research/2010/100830FischbachJenkinsDec.html; Steve Reucroft and J. Swain (2009), “Ultrasonic Cavitation of Water Speeds Up Thorium Decay,” CERN Courier, June 8, http://cerncourier.com/cws/article/cern/39158.

³⁰ Jeff Miller (2019), “Was the Flood Global? Testimony from Scripture and Science,” Reason & Revelation, 39[4]:38-47, April, https://apologeticspress.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/1904w.pdf.

³¹ Michael Oard (2006), Frozen in Time (Green Forest, AR: Master Books).

³² J. Morris (2012), “Tree Ring Dating,” Acts & Facts, 41[10]:15.

³³ Eric Lyons (2002), “When Did Terah Beget Abraham?” Apologetics Press, https://apologeticspress.org/when-did-terah-beget-abraham-624/.

³⁴ Hebert, et al., p. 349, emp. added.

³⁵ David K. Yamaguchi (1986), “Interpretation of Cross-Correlation Between Tree-Ring Series,” Tree-Ring Bulletin, 46:47-54, https://repository.arizona.edu/bitstream/handle/10150/261724/trb-46-047-054.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y.

³⁶ M.G.L. Baillie (1982), Tree-Ring Dating and Archaeology (Chicago: University of Chicago Press), p. 23.

³⁷ C.W. Ferguson and D.A. Graybill (1985), “Dendrochronology of Bristlecone Pine,” Laboratory of Tree-Ring Research Final Technical Report, University of Arizona at Tucson, https://arizona.openrepository.com/arizona/bitstream/10150/246033/1/ltrr-0019.pdf.

³⁸ David Wright (2012), “How Did Plants Survive the Flood?” Answers in Genesis, http://www.answersingenesis.org/articles/aid/v7/n1/how-did-plants-survive-flood.

³⁹ John Morris and Steven A. Austin (2003), Footprints in the Ash (Green Forest, AR: Master Books), pp. 96-103.

⁴⁰ Bert Cregg (2011), “Flood-Tolerant Trees,” Michigan State University: Extension, http://msue.anr.msu.edu/news/flood_tolerant_trees.

⁴¹ Thomas H. Whitlow and Richard W. Harris (1979), Flood Tolerance in Plants: A State-of-the-Art Review, Environmental & Water Quality Operational Studies Technical Report, pp. 68-129; see also: “9 Trees that Can Survive Flooding” (2019), Arbor Day Foundation, July 17, https://www.arborday.org/perspectives/9-trees-can-survive-flooding.

⁴² Would saltwater have killed any floating trees? Note that (1) the pre-Flood ocean likely had less salinity than present levels, and (2) many tree species are salt-tolerant today, including various species of pine (and many more could have been more salt-tolerant at the time of the Flood which have since either digressed due to genetic entropy or become more adapted to the present salinity level of their ecosystem). See: “Salt Tolerant Evergreen Trees (By Zone)” (2022), Davey: Proven Solutions for a Growing World, February 14, https://blog.davey.com/salt-tolerant-evergreen-trees-by-zone/; Yasmin Zinni (2022), “Trees That Grow in Saltwater,” Sciencing, March 24, https://www.sciencing.com/trees-that-grow-in-saltwater-13429031/; Jon M. (2024), “Salt Tolerant Trees (10 Trees That Can Tolerate Salt),” GreenUpside, Galois Digital Assets,  https://greenupside.com/salt-tolerant-trees-10-trees-that-can-tolerate-salt/; Ahsen Soomro (n.d.), “7 Common Saltwater Trees that Thrive in the United States,” Environment Buddy, https://www.environmentbuddy.com/plants-and-trees/saltwater-trees/;

⁴³ Jeff Miller (2011), “Did the Trees of the Garden of Eden Have Rings?” Reason & Revelation, 31[11]:116, https://apologeticspress.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/1111web.pdf.

⁴⁴ Brown.

⁴⁵ Ibid.

⁴⁶ Houts.

⁴⁷ George H. Michaels and Brian Fagan (2003), “Chronological Methods 8—Radiocarbon Dating,” University of California Santa Barbara Instructional Development, https://stsmith.faculty.anth.ucsb.edu/classes/anth3/courseware/Chronology/08_Radiocarbon_Dating.html.

⁴⁸ Ibid.

The post Do Tree Rings Prove an Old Earth? appeared first on Apologetics Press.

For decades, Apologetics Press has documented the dangers of evolutionary thinking being widespread in a society² and in the Church.³ Indeed, it seems clear that belief in theistic evolution can have a tendency to erode one’s confidence in a straightforward reading of the biblical text, which could affect one’s eternal destiny.⁴ GALLUP polls have revealed that young Earth creationists tend to be more “religious.”⁵ 
“[T]he most religious Americans are most likely to be [young Earth—JM] creationists.”⁶ Young Earth creationists, for example, are 42% more likely than theistic evolutionists to attend worship services faithfully.⁷ Does belief in theistic evolution actually lead to forsaking the worship assemblies? Are the coupling of the two circumstances a result of a separate underlying factor? It is uncertain. However, since the free gift of salvation is contingent upon obedience to God’s instructions (Hebrews 5:9), if it is the case that a person is less likely to obey God’s commands if he accepts theistic evolution, then one’s belief with regard to evolution would become an important decision.

A poll by Pew Research Center, titled “Views about Human Evolution,”⁸ further highlighted that young Earth creationists are undeniably more likely to be zealous and faithful to the Word of God. The poll found that among theists in the U.S. (over 85% of whom would self-classify as Christian),⁹ creationists, compared to theistic evolutionists, are much more likely to:

• believe that their Scripture is the Word of God—and, as such, believe that it should be taken literally;
• look to their religion to determine right and wrong [62% of theistic evolutionists look to science, philosophy, and “common sense” over Scripture];
• consider religion to be very important in their lives;
• pray regularly;
• participate in prayer/Scripture study groups;
• regularly read Scripture;
• believe in absolute morality [65% of theistic evolutionists believe the situation determines right and wrong in many cases, rather than Scripture].

Such results are concerning, to say the least. Why does there appear to be a connection between less zeal for religion and theistic evolution? Is it the case that theistic evolution leads such individuals to become less religious in these ways? Or is it the case that such individuals were already less religious and, subsequently, more easily accepted theistic evolution? Neither option would bode well for theistic evolutionary implications.

Is the connection merely a coincidence that should be disregarded? That suggestion seems unlikely, considering that (1) the trend holds through every one of the categories studied by the pollsters and (2) such a result of theistic evolutionary thinking would be predicted to occur. After all, if a person feels he cannot trust what the Bible says about our origin, why would he study it? Why would he trust it when it tells us about right and wrong? Why would he take it seriously when it says to worship, pray, and study Scripture regularly? If he has accepted evolution, which has naturalistic (as opposed to supernaturalistic) implications, is he more or less likely to view God as being at work in the world today—answering prayers, for instance?

When seeing such statistics that speak to the spiritual state of many of those who have accepted theistic evolution, should it be surprising if they are much more likely than are creationists to ultimately leave their faith behind? After all, faith comes from hearing the Word of God (Romans 10:17) and the statistics reveal that theistic evolutionists are less interested in studying God’s Word—which will cause their faith to crumble over time. Such statistics highlight the importance of continuing to refute evolution, both biblically and scientifically, and emphasizing the many evidences for biblical Creation.

Endnotes

¹ Cf. Jeff Miller (2020), “Latest Stats on Creationists and Evolutionists in the U.S.,” Reason & Revelation, 40[7]:80-83.

² E.g., Kyle Butt (2008), “Implications of Atheism [Parts 1-2],” Apologetics Press, https://apologeticspress.org/implications-of-atheism-part-i-911/.

³ E.g., Eric Lyons (2008), “Why Address the Age of the Earth?” Apologetics Press, https://apologeticspress.org/why-address-the-age-of-the-earth-2507/; Kyle Butt (2010), “A Soul’s Salvation Could Hinge On the Earth’s Age,” Apologetics Press, https://apologeticspress.org/a-souls-salvation-could-hinge-on-the-earths-age-3792/; Dave Miller (2004), “The Implications of Rejecting the Literal Days of Genesis 1,” Apologetics Press, https://apologeticspress.org/the-implications-of-rejecting-the-literal-days-of-genesis-1-1200/; Jeff Miller (2022), “Should Christians Accept Evolution and an Old Earth to Win Converts?” Reason & Revelation, 42[4]:38-44.

⁴ Jeff Miller (2012), “Literal Creationists Holding Their Ground in the Polls,” Reason & Revelation, 32[9]:94.

⁵ While being “religious” does not necessarily mean that a person is right with God (Romans 10:2-3), living one’s life in complete submission to Christ and His will (i.e., living the Christian faith/religion) is a requirement by God (Romans 1:5; 16:26; Acts 6:7; Matthew 6:33; Matthew 16:24; etc.).

⁶ Frank Newport (2012), “In U.S., 46% Hold Creationist View of Human Origins,” GALLUP Politics, June 1, http://www.gallup.com/poll/155003/Hold-Creationist-View-Human-Origins.aspx, emp. added.

⁷ Megan Brenan (2019), “40% of Americans Believe in Creationism,” Gallup News On-line, July 26, https://news.gallup.com/poll/261680/americans-believe-creationism.aspx. 

⁸ “Views about Human Evolution” (2014), Pew Research Center, http://www.pewforum.org/religious-landscape-study/views-about-human-evolution/.

⁹ “Religious Landscape Study” (2014), Pew Research Center, http://www.pewforum.org/religious-landscape-study/.

The post More Concerning Stats on the Apparent Effect of Theistic Evolution appeared first on Apologetics Press.

[EDITOR’S NOTE: Part I of this two-part series appeared in the April issue. Part II follows below and continues, without introductory comments, where the first article ended.]

Reason #4: We Want to Be Rational.

Scientists pride themselves on being rational, basing their conclusions on the evidence. Christians wish to do so as well, in keeping with Scripture’s teaching on the subject (e.g., 1 Thessalonians 5:21; Acts 17:11; 1 John 4:1). “Blind” (i.e., evidence-less) faith is unbiblical.¹

So, if Creation as it has been taught for thousands of years is correct, we want to know that fact, because we want to be rational, drawing the right conclusions. If Creation as it has been taught is incorrect, we want to know that, too! We want the truth, because we want to be rational. We want to, “Prove/test all things, hold fast what is good” (1 Thessalonians 5:21). Is the pursuit of sound conclusions a worthy reason to oppose Evolution when Evolution has proven to be an irrational theory?

Reason #5: We Want to Teach the Truth.

It is clear that “truth” is a theme in Scripture, on par with faith: coming to know the truth (1 Timothy 2:4); believing the truth (2 Thessalonians 2:12); obeying the truth (1 Peter 1:22); preaching the truth (Ephesians 4:15); telling the truth (Ephesians 4:25); walking in truth (2 John 1:4); doing the truth (John 3:21); working for truth (3 John 8); practicing the truth (1 John 1:6); following the way of truth (2 Peter 2:2); standing in the truth (John 8:44); girding our waist with truth (Ephesians 6:14); rightly dividing the truth (2 Timothy 2:15); worshipping in truth (John 4:24); and rejoicing in the truth (1 Corinthians 13:6). The truth is what sets us free (John 8:32). Jesus is described as “the Truth” (John 14:6).

According to 2 Thessalonians 2:10, loving the truth leads to salvation. Do we love the truth? If a person loves the truth taught in God’s Word—be it the truth about Creation or the Cross—will he not want to oppose those ideas he believes to be false and only teach true ideas to others (regardless of their popularity)?

Reason #6: Teaching Error is Sinful.

The Bible is explicit in its condemnation of teaching error regarding biblical matters. “My brethren, let not many of you become teachers, knowing that we shall receive a stricter judgment” (James 3:1). When we want to believe or do what we want to believe or do, it is tempting to try to force the Bible to say what we want it to say, injecting our own ideas into the text (eisegesis), instead of letting the text interpret itself without our own preconceived biases (exegesis). Peter, however, warns about the result of “untaught and unstable people” twisting the Scriptures to fit their agenda. It will bring on their own “destruction” (2 Peter 3:16). Genesis 1 is as much Scripture as the rest of the Bible. Teaching error about Creation is just as wrong as teaching error about anything the Bible teaches.

In Job 13:7, Job defends himself against the accusations being made by his friends, who had claimed that God was punishing him for sinning. He warns his friends about putting words in God’s mouth saying, “Will you speak falsely for God?” (ESV). Would we want to attribute something to God that He did not do, or say He did something that He did not say? Would we want to claim that He did something—like Creation—in a way that He did not do it? In so doing, we become false witnesses for God!

In 1 Corinthians 15, Paul gives a defense of the fact that, in the end, there will be a resurrection from the dead. Souls are not annihilated at death: there is an afterlife. Paul argues that, if there is no afterlife, then, contrary to the testimony of Paul and the apostles, Jesus was not resurrected. “Yes, and we are found false witnesses of God, because we have testified of God that He raised up Christ, whom He did not raise up—if in fact the dead do not raise” (vs. 15). Would we want to be false witnesses of God, claiming He used Evolution, the Big Bang, and deep time, if He did not do so? If God did not use Darwinian Evolution, and Christians say He did, then are they not giving false testimony for God?

Undoubtedly, some people simply have not thoroughly examined the evidence concerning Evolution, deep time, and the Bible. Perhaps they have no opinion on the subjects because they do not care or because they humbly recognize that they currently have insufficient evidence to draw a conclusion. Perhaps they lean for or against belief in Evolution due to the evidence they currently possess. We would not suggest that every person must necessarily passionately believe in a young Earth and a literal Creation to be saved. However, the moment a person begins definitively teaching and encouraging others to accept as true a particular position with biblical implications, he is bound by Scripture to “speak the oracles [i.e., utterances (NASB)/very words (NIV)] of God” (1 Peter 4:11). No matter the topic, a person should be careful to speak the truth in all things. If the truth can be known about something, the truth should be taught. If a person knows he is not, or cannot be, certain what the truth is on a subject, he should be careful not to speak definitively, instead using disclaimers (e.g., “might be,” “could be,” “seems,” etc.). On the other hand: if the evidence conclusively substantiates a truth, he should unashamedly teach it. We have yet to see a solid, reasonable case made for how Evolution and deep time should be drawn from the biblical text or injected into it. On the contrary, they have been shown to be lacking in essential scientific and biblical evidence. Should we not, therefore, if desiring to speak the oracles of God, teach against them?

Reason #7: Evolution Is a Dangerous Doctrine.

When a person thinks about Evolution academically and superficially, without considering its heinous implications and inevitable, deleterious effects on a society, he might fail to see the inherent danger in not speaking against it, much less promoting it. One might think that Evolution and morality can co-exist, especially if Theistic Evolution is accepted, instead of Naturalistic Evolution. However, as mentioned in Part I, belief in Theistic Evolution is a “gateway doctrine” which tends to lead towards faithlessness and belief in pure naturalism, as it did for Charles Darwin. While Darwin was a self-espoused orthodox Christian when he first wrote Origin of Species, upon dwelling on Evolutionary ideas, he “very gradually, with many fluctuations, became weaker” in his faith, ultimately becoming an agnostic. Later, he stated, “Then arises the doubt, can the mind of man, which has, as I fully believe, been developed from a mind as low as that possessed by the lowest animals, be trusted when it draws such grand conclusions [i.e., belief in God—JM]?”² Evolution devastates faith, as it did its “Father.”

We have documented extensively elsewhere³ that when Evolutionary thinking is carried to its logical implications, society becomes dark, indeed. If students are taught their whole life that Evolution is true and, therefore, only the most fit will tend to survive by tooth and claw, what would we expect those students to be like after roughly two decades of indoctrination? If they are taught that “might makes right” in the Evolutionary paradigm (as opposed to Scripture defining what is right) and that humans are merely hairless apes, why would we not expect the emergence of a society populated by violent animals? Why would we not expect an immoral populace that uses weapons instead of intellects and takes what they want if they have the power and opportunity to do so?

Is it coincidence that over the last several decades, as Evolution (including Theistic Evolution) began being taught in earnest in U.S. public schools and churches, that the percentage of Americans who believe the Bible is the actual Word of God and is to be taken literally has steadily declined, while the percentage of Americans who believe the Bible to be a book of fables, history, and moral precepts recorded by man has steadily increased?⁴ Simultaneously, starting in the 1960s and 1970s, the U.S. index crime rate, which includes the reported crimes of murder/manslaughter, rape, robbery, aggravated assault, burglary, larceny, and motor vehicle theft, began to skyrocket. The crime rate climbed from a steady yearly average of roughly 700 crimes per 100,000 people in the 30s-50s, to 6,000 crimes per 100,000 people—over 800% growth in 20 years.⁵ No doubt there were several contributing factors to the explosion of crime, but one would predict that the widespread teaching of Evolution would result in immorality and violence, since, as leading Evolutionists have acknowledged (including Darwin, himself), Evolution and morality are incompatible.

Famous evolutionary biologist, Richard Dawkins said, “Absolutist moral discrimination is devastatingly undermined by the fact of evolution.”⁶ Cornell University evolutionary biology professor William Provine, keynote speaker at the Darwin Day event at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville, said, “Naturalistic evolution has clear consequences that Charles Darwin understood perfectly. 1) No gods worth having exist; 2) no life after death exists; 3) no ultimate foundation for ethics exists; 4) no ultimate meaning in life exists; and 5) human free will is nonexistent…. The first 4 implications are so obvious to modern naturalistic evolutionists that I will spend little time defending them.”⁷ Charles Darwin said, “A man who has no assured and ever present belief in the existence of a personal God or of a future existence with retribution and reward, can have for his rule of life, as far as I can see, only to follow those impulses and instincts which are the strongest or which seem to him the best ones.”⁸ Is it any wonder that more and more people in society would live out the implications of Evolution if they are taught to believe that it is true?

What kind of things are implied by Evolution that would lead to a dark society? Consider Darwin’s own words in The Descent of Man:

With savages, the weak in body or mind are soon eliminated; and those that survive commonly exhibit a vigorous state of health. We civilised men, on the other hand, do our utmost to check the process of elimination; we build asylums for the imbecile, the maimed, and the sick; we institute poor-laws; and our medical men exert their utmost skill to save the life of every one to the last moment. There is reason to believe that vaccination has preserved thousands, who from a weak constitution would formerly have succumbed to small-pox. Thus the weak members of civilised societies propagate their kind. No one who has attended to the breeding of domestic animals will doubt that this must be highly injurious to the race of man. It is surprising how soon a want of care, or care wrongly directed, leads to the degeneration of a domestic race; but excepting in the case of man himself, hardly any one is so ignorant as to allow his worst animals to breed.

The aid which we feel impelled to give to the helpless is mainly an incidental result of the instinct of sympathy, which was originally acquired as part of the social instincts, but subsequently rendered, in the manner previously indicated, more tender and more widely diffused. Nor could we check our sympathy, even at the urging of hard reason, without deterioration in the noblest part of our nature…. We must therefore bear the undoubtedly bad effects of the weak surviving and propagating their kind; but there appears to be at least one check in steady action, namely that the weaker and inferior members of society do not marry so freely as the sound; and this check might be indefinitely increased by the weak in body or mind refraining from marriage, though this is more to be hoped for than expected.⁹

But why must we “bear the undoubtedly bad effects of the weak surviving and propagating their kind,” if there is no morality if Evolution is true? From serial murderer Jeffrey Dahmer¹⁰ (who murdered and dismembered 17 men and boys) to Pekka Auvinen (who massacred eight people in his school in Finland in 2007), calling himself a “natural selector” eliminating “all who I see unfit…, failures of natural selection,”¹¹ many have carried out the logical implications of their belief in Evolution. In 1999, Columbine High School shooter Eric Harris made his plans to put on his “natural selection” T-shirt and enter his high school to shoot dozens of students and teachers, stating in his personal writings that he would “kick natural selection up a few notches,” killing “whoever I deem unfit.”¹² Nazi Germany was, of course, the most notorious of those carrying out the implications of Darwinian Evolution, killing 6,000,000 Jews in Europe for being, in their view, “unfit.”¹³

As Richard Dawkins said concerning Evolution, “My own feeling is that a human society based simply on the gene’s law of universal ruthless selfishness would be a very nasty society in which to live.”¹⁴ If Evolution is false (along with its necessary foundation of an old Earth), would not a rational, moral person do everything in his power to oppose it?

Conclusion

Should a Christian accept Evolution and an old Earth to make the Bible more “palatable” and win more converts? Worded another way: if the Bible does not teach something, should we claim that it does if it will make more people happy with it? Should Christians adjust and compromise every Bible teaching that people have a problem with? Is that how God wants humans to treat Scripture?

One would think that the fallaciousness of such an approach would be self-evident. People have a problem with many more biblical doctrines than Creation and a young Earth. From miracles to the divinity of Christ to the Bible’s teaching about sexual immorality and divorce—the bulk of the world will not choose to accept God’s way. It has always been that way. Should Noah have adjusted his teachings to “save” more people on the Ark with him? We should not go beyond what is written (1 Corinthians 4:6). We should not twist the Scriptures, or we are inviting our destruction (2 Peter 3:16).

Jesus certainly did not adjust His teachings to make them more palatable to people (which, ultimately, is why He was killed). Should we? Certainly not. In fact, Jesus directly warned His disciples that the world would hate them and their message (John 15:18-20). It will be considered foolishness to the world (1 Corinthians 1:18-25). It will be laughed at. Peter warned that scoffers who wish to live immoral lives will “willingly forget” Genesis 1 (Creation) and Genesis 6-9 (the global Flood of Noah’s day). They will belittle and make fun of the teachings of Christians on those subjects (2 Peter 3:3-6), but Peter warned that God “is not slack concerning His promise”: Judgment Day is coming just as certainly as Creation happened and the judgment of the Flood came, whether or not they wish to “willingly forget” that truth (vss. 7-13).

Few passages more directly apply to the mindset of those who advocate for Evolution than 2 Timothy 4:3-4: “For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine, but according to their own desires, because they have itching ears, they will heap up for themselves teachers; and they will turn their ears away from the truth, and be turned aside to fables.” “Sound” doctrine refers to teachings that are healthy, logical, and rational—reasonable conclusions that follow from the evidence. Paul warns that some people would not just reject the evidence, they would not endure (“put up with”—NIV) it. By implication, they would actively try to fight it, because the implications of that evidence run counter to “their own desires.” They want to live the way they want to live without being accountable. They want to do that which is right in their own eyes. Their solution: surround themselves with “experts” who will tell them what they want to hear. With enough “smart people” bolstering their view, they can, with little bother from their conscience, believe in something that is not supported by either the Bible or legitimate scientific evidence.

If we are warned that many people will not accept the truth (regardless of how it is packaged), the Christian should realize that the packaging is not the real issue. Some people will not accept the truth. Period. So, why try to change the packaging to suit those who are not searching for the truth anyway and invite our own judgment? Why join the anti-Christian, ungodly forces of the world who wish to “suppress the truth [including Creation—JM] in unrighteousness” so that they can live as they want (Romans 1:18-32)? A Christian should never forget that Evolution is, first and foremost, a theory championed by “haters of God” (Romans 1:30). One should be very certain Evolution is true before endorsing such a dangerous doctrine (Romans 1:32) and supporting its promoters (2 Chronicles 19:2).

Christians should understand that most people are not going to like or accept what the Bible teaches on many subjects (Matthew 7:13-14), but boldly and lovingly teach them anyway. “Therefore, since we have such hope, we use great boldness of speech” (2 Corinthians 3:12). We should not be ashamed of the Bible’s teaching on any subject, nor should we be shaken by those who scoff at us. Evolution not only has no evidence to support its most basic tenets, it actually stands against mounds of scientific evidence which refutes it.¹⁵ Belief in Evolution is, therefore, not only dangerous, but irrational. “Buy the truth, and do not sell it” (Proverbs 23:23). Defend the truth (1 Peter 3:15), contending earnestly for it (Jude 3). “Preach the word” always (2 Timothy 4:2), regardless of its popularity.

Endnotes

_¹ Dave Miller (2003), “Blind Faith,” Apologetics Press, https://apologeticspress.org/blind-faith-444/.

² Charles Darwin (1887), The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin: Volume 1, The Project Gutenberg EBook of the Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume I (of II), by Charles Darwin, Chapter 1.VIII.—Religion, https://www.gutenberg.org/files/2087/2087-h/2087-h.htm.

³ Kyle Butt (2008), “The Bitter Fruits of Atheism (Part 1),” Reason & Revelation, 28[7]:49-55, https://apologeticspress.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/0807.pdf.

⁴ Lydia Saad (2017), “Record Few Americans Believe Bible Is Literal Word of God,” GALLUP On-line, May 15, https://news.gallup.com/poll/210704/record-few-americans-believe-bible-literal-word-god.aspx.

⁵ “Uniform Crime Reports, 1933-1998,” Federal Bureau of Investigation, https://www.jrsa.org/projects/Historical.pdf.

⁶ Richard Dawkins (2006), The God Delusion (New York: Houghton Mifflin), p. 301.

⁷ William Provine (1998), “Evolution: Free Will and Punishment and Meaning in Life,” emp. added, http://eeb.bio.utk.edu/darwin/DarwinDayProvineAddress.htm.

⁸ Charles Darwin (1958), The Autobiography of Charles Darwin, ed. Nora Barlow, (New York: W.W. Norton), p. 94.

⁹ Charles Darwin (1874), The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex, The Project Gutenberg EBook of the Descent of Man, by Charles Darwin, Natural Selection as Affecting Civilised Nations, https://www.gutenberg.org/files/2300/2300-h/2300-h.htm, emp. added.

¹⁰ Stone Phillips (1994), Interview with Jeffrey and Lionel Dahmer, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IjW7bezdddE.

¹¹ “Teen Dead Who Opened Fire on Finnish Classmates, Police Say” (2007), CNN, http://www.cnn.com/2007/WORLD/europe/11/07/school.shooting/ index.html.

¹² “Eric Harris’ Journal,” transcribed by Peter Langman, 2014, https://schoolshooters.info/sites/default/files/harris_journal_1.3.pdf. 

¹³ Kyle Butt (2001), “Hitler—The Ultimate Evolutionist,” Apologetics Press, https://apologeticspress.org/hitlerthe-ultimate-evolutionist-866/.

¹⁴ Richard Dawkins (1989), The Selfish Gene (Oxford: Oxford University Press), pp. 2-3, emp. added.

¹⁵ Jeff Miller (2017), Science vs. Evolution (Montgomery, AL: Apologetics Press).

The post Should Christians Accept Evolution and an Old Earth to Win Converts? (Part 2) appeared first on Apologetics Press.

[EDITOR’S NOTE: This article is the first installment in a two-part series. Part II will appear in the May issue of R&R.]

We regularly encounter secular individuals who scoff at our strong stand against Evolution¹ and its claim of a billions-of-years old Universe. From time to time, however, we encounter Bible-believing, self-identifying Christians who vehemently oppose our work on those subjects as well. They often argue that our teaching on a literal six-day Creation week 6-8,000 years ago causes many people immediately to reject Christianity and the Bible, since such positions seem far-fetched to some. They believe we should “back off” of such subjects so that more people will consider Christianity to be palatable and come to Christ. We should, they argue, accept, along with the Bible, mainstream scientific thinking on Evolution and the age of the Earth, allowing for compromises like “theistic evolution” and “progressive creationism.” Why do we oppose Evolution and an old Earth? Should we? Are we running off potential converts and keeping people from Christ?

In truth, we can show, through our correspondence with our audience over the years, that our positions on Evolution and the age of the Earth have actually caused many to develop more faith in Scripture and, subsequently, come to Christ. It is, however, no doubt true in some cases that there are people who “write off” Christianity because of “Young Earth Creationist” teachings. So, should we teach Creation/anti-Evolution more and help strengthen faith? Or should we teach the subjects less and “run fewer people off”? Ultimately, the answer is not up to us and our opinion. We must use reason and revelation from God to determine what God would have us to do. Here are seven reasons we believe it to be essential to oppose Evolution and an old Earth.

Reason #1: If Evolution Is Right, then the Bible Is Wrong

First, if evolutionary theory is true, then the Genesis account of Creation is, at best, misleading and, at worst, inaccurate—which would categorize the Bible as uninspired. Genesis 1-11 is straightforward in its declaration that the Universe was created in six literal days, and it gives no indication that it should be taken in any other way. It is not couched in figurative or poetic language, like that found in other places in Scripture. It is narrative, reporting history, and is treated as such throughout the rest of Scripture, by virtually every New Testament writer and by Christ, Himself.²

Some, attempting to inject a figurative meaning of “day” into Genesis 1, argue “The days of Genesis 1 could be millions of years each, because, with God, a day is the same thing as a thousand years (2 Peter 3:8—‘…with the Lord one day is as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day’). So, God could’ve meant that each day was long.” Is 2 Peter 3:8 truly justification for inflating the days of Genesis 1? A careful study of 2 Peter 3:8 (e.g., the dual use of the word “as”) and the surrounding context³ reveals that 2 Peter 3:8 is utilizing simile, a figure of speech not to be taken literally, comparable to that used in Psalm 90:4—“For a thousand years in Your sight are like yesterday when it is past, and like a watch in the night.” Second Peter 3:8 in no way teaches that every time the word “day” is used in conjunction with God’s activity in the Bible, we must convert the word “day” into 1,000 Earth years—as though God simply is not capable of communicating with humans using human language. Even if such were the case, 1,000 years is a far cry from 2,300,000,000 years, which is closer to the length each Creation day would have to be to attempt to make Genesis 1 fit with the current conventional age of the Universe.

In truth, Moses used practically every means at his disposal in the Hebrew language to convey the idea that the Creation of the entire Universe consisted of six normal days, not millions or billions of years in length, and without gaps before or in between them.⁴ The Hebrew word for “day” that is used in Genesis 1 is yom, and it almost always means either a full 24-hour day or the 12-hour period of daylight. Some argue, however, that in some cases, yom can mean a general, rather than specific, period of time like, for example, “In my day, we walked everywhere.”⁵ As in modern English, the context of a statement must be used to determine how a word that has multiple meanings is being used. We do so constantly, without a second thought. “In my day, we went to the store during the day, and we didn’t wait three days to get it done.” We have no problem understanding what that sentence means, even though “day” is used in three different ways in the same sentence. Contextual clues help the reader to interpret the uses of “day” correctly.

Similarly, Moses helped his audience to understand his use of the word “day” in reference to the six days of Creation by, for example, modifying it with numbers: “So the evening and the morning were the first day” (1:5); “…second day” (1:8); “…third day” (1:13); etc. Using numbers in conjunction with the word “day” limits its meaning to normal days. Moses further helped his audience by using the words “evening” and “morning” in conjunction with “day.” In the words of Hebrew scholar, Justin Rogers, “While it is true that the Hebrew term ‘day’ can be used in a nonliteral sense in other contexts, the terms ‘evening’ (‘erev) and ‘morning’ (bōqer) are always used in a literal sense…. There is to my knowledge no place in the Bible in which the terms ‘evening and morning’ refer to a broad scope of time. They are always literal….”⁶ Ironically, Moses could have used the Hebrew word, dor, which refers to a long period of time (an “age” or “generation”), but he did not. He used yom, modified it with numbers, and used “evening” and “morning” with the word, clearing up any confusion about its meaning. There is little more he could do to communicate to his audience on behalf of God that the days of Genesis 1 were normal days.

Later in his writings, in Exodus 20:11, Moses clarified his meaning in Genesis 1 once again. “For in six days the Lord made the heavens and the Earth, the sea, and all that is in them, and rested the seventh day….” One would have to be unwilling to accept Moses’ clear declaration to misunderstand his meaning. What aspect of the Universe is left outside of the heavens (i.e., space), the Earth, the sea, and all that is in them? According to Moses, the Universe was not created gradually, in steps over eons of time.⁷ Everything was created in six days, not six billion years, and God rested on the seventh day.

Notably, the seven-day week concept, which characterizes Jewish and Christian calendars, is based on that idea, with the Jews celebrating the Sabbath on the literal seventh day of every literal week, not the seventh billion “years.” Question: did the Jews get it wrong? Did they misunderstand Moses? No. The Jews kept the Sabbath day after every six literal days of every literal week, and if they did not keep the Sabbath Day correctly, they would have been executed (Exodus 31:14), as was the case in an incident recorded in Numbers 15:32-36. Proper observance of the Sabbath Day was crucial to the Jews. They recognized that they were to mirror their weeks after Creation week.

If Evolution and deep time⁸ are right, then Moses was wrong in his writings, implying that the first five books of the Bible are uninspired. But that would not be the extent of the damage. Was Paul wrong when, in referring to man, he highlighted in Romans 1:18-32 that God’s attributes have been clearly seen “since the creation of the world”? If man did not arrive until roughly two million years ago, then he was not around anywhere near the Creation of the world based on the deep-time Evolution timeline. If Paul is wrong, then how can Romans through Philemon—the bulk of the New Testament—be inspired?

But it gets even worse: in Luke 11:50-51, Jesus said that the shedding of Abel’s blood occurred at “the foundation of the world.” According to Evolution, the Big Bang Theory, and deep time, the Earth formed roughly 4.54 billion years ago. Humans, once again, did not arrive on the scene until roughly two million years ago. In other words, humans arrived on the scene at the very end of the world as we know it, not its “foundation.” According to the Big Bang model, 99.96% of the Earth’s existence was spent without humans. In Mark 10:6, Jesus said God made man “from the beginning of creation, male and female,” quoting from Genesis 1:27—the creation of humans. Again, according to modern “science,” the Universe is roughly 13.8 billion years old, meaning that humans were not around “from the beginning of creation.” Instead, 99.99% of the time that the Universe was in existence passed prior to the emergence of humans. Was Jesus wrong? If so, He is not deity, and our faith is in vain.

The Hebrew language does not allow for Evolution and an old Earth in the Bible. The Bible writers do not allow them. Jesus, Himself, does not allow them. And, ironically, Evolution itself will not allow a merger with the Bible, either.

• According to Genesis 1, the formless Earth was created initially (1:1), prior to the creation of the stars on Day 4 (1:14-18). The Big Bang model has our solar system beginning to form roughly nine billion years after the first stars began to form.
• According to the Bible, the Earth was initially covered with water (Genesis 1:2,6),⁹ while popular science today argues that the Earth was initially molten.
• The Big Bang model postulates that our Sun formed roughly 3.9 billion years before the first land plants evolved on Earth. The biblical model places the creation of plants on Day 3 and the Sun on Day 4. If there was a gap of time between Days 3 and 4 (i.e., Multiple Gap Theory) or if each day was millions of years in length (i.e., Day Age Theory), how did the plants survive without photosynthesis throughout the long period of darkness/night (1:5)?
• Many plants require pollination and symbiotic relationships with flying creatures, but flying creatures were created two days after the plants (1:11-13,21-23), according to Genesis 1. If these days were millions of years in length, or if gaps of time existed between the Creation days, how did the plants survive for millions of years without their pollinators?
• The Big Bang model claims that fish preceded the evolution of fruit trees by hundreds of millions of years, while the biblical model states that fruit trees (1:12) were created two days prior to the swimming creatures (1:21).
• The evolutionary model claims that birds evolved from the dinosaurs, while the biblical model states that the flying creatures were created on Day 5 (1:21) and land creatures (including the dinosaurs) were created on Day 6 (1:24).

Bottom line: the Bible does not allow for Evolution or the injection of billions of years into Genesis 1. Either Evolution/old Earth are right and the Bible and Christ are wrong, or Evolution/old Earth are wrong and should be rejected as false and taught as such. Question: should we cease opposing Evolution to attract more potential converts, if such a position implies that the Bible and Christ are wrong and the basis of our faith is null and void?

Reason #2: Belief in Creation Is A Matter of Faith

If a person without any preconceived ideas about the origin of the Universe picks up the Bible and simply reads Genesis 1, taking it at face value, he will not arrive at the conclusion that Evolution or the Big Bang Theory are responsible for the origin of the Universe and life. Let an eight-year-old child read Genesis 1 and wait to see if he decides on his own that the text teaches the Gap Theory, the Day-Age Theory, the Modified Gap Theory, the Multiple Gap Theory, or Progressive Creationism. Obviously, that would not happen without prompting from others. In fact, the unambiguous teaching of Genesis 1 about Creation is surely the reason why few have dreamed up such theories after reading Genesis 1 without prompting from some other (non-biblical) source. Now, the important question: what changed?

The answer is clear, is it not—especially to naturalists, skeptics, and atheists? In the 1800s, anti-Bible sentiment was gaining popularity in the world, and individuals like Charles Darwin and James Hutton arrived on the scene, developing and popularizing naturalistic (rather than supernaturalistic) science, Darwinian Evolution, and uniformitarian geology (all of which require an old Universe). Literal, biblical Creation and catastrophism (the global Flood) had been the mainstream beliefs in “Christian” nations, and naturalism, Evolution, and uniformitarianism began to replace them. Since such beliefs were becoming mainstream in scientific circles and anything involving supernatural activity was beginning to be viewed as “unenlightened,” preposterous, and outdated, many scientists felt compelled to believe them. As scientists within Christendom began considering the new theories and feeling pressure from their peers, their biblical positions were naturally affected. Their faith in what Scripture plainly teaches was shaken.

It is likely the case that evidence was presented to the Bible-believer that caused him to question and, ultimately, re-interpret Scripture’s clear meaning. Every evidence that has been brought forth to substantiate Evolution and an old Earth, however, has been shown to be erroneous, irrelevant, or inadequate.¹⁰ Logically, then, why would a person attempt to twist the Scriptures to force an unwarranted interpretation? Is peer pressure a legitimate reason to re-interpret Scripture? Certainly not (Exodus 23:2). Should a person put his faith in popular scientists over the straightforward teaching of God’s inspired Word?¹¹

Notice, then, that if a person capitulates to the irrational, self-contradictory worldview¹² of the admittedly naturalistic scientific community over Scripture, it becomes a faith issue.¹³ Such a person is failing to believe what God said and is putting his faith in naturalistic science instead. “But without faith it is impossible to please Him…” (Hebrews 11:6). That truth makes opposition to Evolution an essential aspect of apologetics and evangelism, does it not?

Reason #3: If Evolution Is Right, Then We Can’t Trust Anything in the Bible

Since Genesis 1 has all the indicators of being a description of literal history,¹⁴ if Evolution is true anyway, then Genesis 1 cannot be what it seems to be. It must be figurative, poetic, mythic, and non-literal, despite its narrative indicators. Hebrew scholar Steven Boyd conducted a statistical analysis of words in 97 poetic and narrative biblical texts and showed that Genesis 1:1-2:3 unquestionably belong in the narrative category.¹⁵

So, if Genesis 1 should be interpreted as being non-historical, despite the evidence against that interpretation, then how can the proper interpretation of anything in the Bible be conclusively known? Anything and everything in the Bible becomes questionable as to whether it should be taken literally. Did the miracles of Christ actually happen, or are they to be taken figuratively? Was He really born of a virgin, or are Matthew and Luke speaking hyperbolically? Are murder or adultery prohibitions to be taken literally? Accepting Evolution causes faith in Scripture to crumble, leading man to do what is “right in his own eyes” (Judges 17:6).

In many cases, Evolution is a doctrine that, in the long run, undermines faith in the Bible and, therefore, leads many into total faithlessness.¹⁶ Why? One reason is summarized well by famous skeptic Michael Shermer: “[I]t doesn’t take a rocket scientist—or an English naturalist—to understand why the theory of the origin of species by means of natural selection would be so controversial: If new species are created naturally, what place, then, for God?”¹⁷ Further, the Bible becomes less trustworthy when we reject its straightforward teachings. If a person cannot trust the Bible’s most basic, clear, obvious teachings, how can he trust any of the Bible? How can he know with certainty what the Bible actually teaches?

In John 5:47, Jesus, in discussing the writings of Moses, said, “if you do not believe his writings, how will you believe My words?” If a person is unwilling to believe Moses’ account of Creation, then, according to Jesus, it will ultimately impact his faith in Christ. Is that not an important reason to oppose Evolution?

(to be continued)

Endnotes

¹ In this article, by “Evolution” (uppercase “E”) we mean “molecules-to-man Evolution,” which generally includes the Big Bang Theory coupled with Darwinian Evolution (i.e., the Theory of Evolution or Macroevolution). We distinguish “Evolution” in that sense from “evolution” (or microevolution). Microevolution (which, unlike Evolution, has been demonstrated in the real world and which does not contradict the Bible) refers to small changes within clearly established groups of creatures, amounting to mere variety. Microevolution occurs within phylogenic boundaries that disallow evolution beyond divinely defined limits (Genesis 1:24; Galatians 6:7).

² Dave Miller (2020), “Genesis: Myth or History?” Reason & Revelation, 40[5]:50-57, https://apologeticspress.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/2005-web.pdf.

³ Eric Lyons (2007), “‘With God One Day is a Thousand Years’?” Apologetics Press, https://apologeticspress.org/with-god-one-day-is-a-thousand-years-2191/. 

⁴ Cf. Justin Rogers (2015), “Does the Hebrew Word Yom Endorse an Old Earth?” Reason & Revelation, 35[9]:98-100, September, https://apologeticspress.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/1509w.pdf; Justin Rogers (2015), “Is Gap Theory Linguistically Viable?” Reason & Revelation, 35[12]:134-141, December, https://apologeticspress.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/1512.pdf.

⁵ Cf. Genesis 26:18; Joshua 24:31; Genesis 2:4.

⁶ Rogers, “Does the Hebrew…,” pp. 99-100, emp. in orig.

⁷ Contrary to the Gap Theory and its varieties.

⁸ i.e., a billions-of-years-old Universe.

⁹ Or possibly composed of water (cf. 2 Peter 3:5, ESV).

1⁰ See www.apologeticspress.org.

¹¹ For evidence of the Bible’s inspiration, see Kyle Butt (2022), Is the Bible God’s Word? (Montgomery, AL: Apologetics Press); Dave Miller (2020), The Bible is from God (Montgomery, AL: Apologetics Press).

¹² Jeff Miller (2012), “The Atheistic Naturalist’s Self-Contradiction,” Reason & Revelation Resources, 31[5]:53, https://apologeticspress.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/1205.pdf.

¹³ This is not to say that all Evolutionists have accepted Evolution due to peer pressure.

¹⁴ Cf. Dave Miller, “Genesis: Myth of History?”

¹⁵ Don DeYoung (2008), Thousands…Not Billions (Green Forest, AR: Master Books), pp. 157ff.

¹⁶ Jeff Miller (2012), “Literal Creationists Holding Their Ground in the Polls,” Reason & Revelation, 32[9]:94-95, September, https://apologeticspress.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/1209w.pdf.

¹⁷ Michael Shermer (2007), Why Darwin Matters: The Case Against Intelligent Design (New York, NY: Henry Holt), Kindle edition, Loc. 115.

The post Should Christians Accept Evolution and an Old Earth to Win Converts? (Part 1) appeared first on Apologetics Press.

Periodically, however, we run across a twist in one of these two theories which requires attention. One such idea is that there must be a gap between Genesis 1:1 and the rest of the creation because, since God created time, He could not have been “in time” when He initially brought the world into existence. According to this idea, it must be true that “when God created the heavens and the Earth, God did so before time.”[2] And we are then told that it must be false that “when God created the heavens and the Earth, God did so during time.” In argument form the allegation looks like this:

Premise 1: If God is not within time at the initial point of time’s creation, then He cannot be within the first day’s 24-hour period.

Premise 2: God is not within time at the initial point of time’s creation (Psalm 90:2; Isaiah 57:15).

Conclusion: Therefore, He cannot be within the first day’s 24-hour period.

The concluding argument then states:

1. “If God cannot be within the first day’s twenty-four-hour period at the point of time’s initial creation, then Exodus 20:11 excludes Genesis 1:1 in its reference to six days.

2. God cannot be within the first day’s twenty-four-hour period at the point of time’s initial creation (Psalm 90:2; Isaiah 57:15; Genesis 1:1).

3. Then, Exodus 20:11 excludes Genesis 1:1 in its reference to six days.”

Admittedly, this all seems fairly complicated, but to summarize the argument, if God is outside of time when He begins creating, then Exodus 20:11, which is talking about time, cannot apply to what God created while outside of time.

While the argument seems complicated, the answer to it is straightforward. Time begins at the exact point at which physical matter and space come into existence. The initial creative event is a simultaneous occurrence of both matter and time.[3] All time starts with the first atom of matter that is created since time (as it relates to the physical Universe) is connected to the Universe. The simple response to the above argument is to recognize that, though the author of the argument focuses on the “location” of God in relation to time, Genesis 1:1 and Exodus 20:11 are not addressing how God relates to events before the creation of the physical Universe. These passages address the passing of time that is connected to the physical Universe. God existed before time, is currently outside of time, and is from everlasting to everlasting, as Psalm 90:2 states. Thus, all of God’s activities before the creation of the physical world were “before” time, but those activities would have no bearing on the time that has elapsed in the material Universe. They would not add billions of years to the age of the Universe. Time is an aspect of the physical creation and cannot be separated from it.

It is interesting that the proponent of the argument admitted this very idea, when he stated: “When did time begin? The correct answer is that it began at the point at which the first thing came into existence. Since God did not come into existence, the point at which the first thing came into existence was the creation of the heavens and the Earth…. Simultaneously, time arrived at the same point at which the heavens and the Earth arrived.” If that is true, then anything that God did before creating the heavens and the Earth would be irrelevant to how long the Earth and Universe have been in existence. In other words, God’s pre-creation activity does not add years to the age of the Earth, since time began at the moment of Creation and not before.

So, we must look at the premise: “If God is not within time at the initial point of time’s creation, then He cannot be within the first day’s twenty-four-hour period.” The premise is incorrectly worded because “where” God is “in time” is unimportant in relation to the age of the Earth. God was not within the first day before Creation because neither time nor the first day had started. When did it start? When the first atom was created. This would mean that whatever God was doing “before” the creation of matter had nothing to do with the time that passed in the physical world.

We then move to the premise that states: “If God cannot be within the first day’s twenty-four-hour period at the point of time’s initial creation, then Exodus 20:11 excludes Genesis 1:1 in its reference to six days.” The second half of this premise does not follow from the first half (the idea that God is not within time), since the point at which matter was created is the point at which time began. So, why would Exodus 20:11 exclude Genesis 1:1 if Genesis 1:1 includes the creation of matter and we know that all matter in the Universe must be within time? Since we know that “all matter must be within time’s initial creation,” then we know that “Exodus 20:11 must include Genesis 1:1 in its reference to six days.”

So, if time begins the instant matter is created, and Exodus 20:11 states that in six days the Lord made the heavens and the earth, the sea, and all that is in them; and if matter would be included in “all that is in them”; then we must conclude that Exodus 20:11 applies to Genesis 1:1 as it does to the rest of the Creation account. The attempt to force (or at least accommodate) a gap between Genesis 1:1 and the six days of Creation by claiming that God is outside of time when He begins His creation fails. The clock of the Universe began when the first atom came into existence, and it ran and continues to run continuously from that point. When did God start creating the heavens, the Earth, and the Seas? At “the beginning.” The beginning of what? Matter and time. How long does the Bible say it took Him to complete this creation? Six days, no more, no less.

Endnotes

¹ Justin Rogers (2015), “Is the Gap Theory Linguistically Viable?”, https://apologeticspress.org/is-the-gap-theory-linguistically-viable/; Eric Lyons (2014), “Creation and the Age of the Earth,” https://apologeticspress.org/creation-and-the-age-of-the-earth-500/; Dave Miller (2004), “The Implications of Rejecting the Literal Days of Genesis 1,” https://apologeticspress.org/the-implications-of-rejecting-the-literal-days-of-genesis-1-1200/; Wayne Jackson (1984), “That Loaded Questionnaire,” https://apologeticspress.org/that-loaded-questionnaire/.

² All quotations regarding this idea are taken from Mac Deaver (2020), “Could God Create (Ex Nihilo) on the First Day?” Sufficient Evidence, Fall, pp. 129-138, emp. added.

³ Jeff Miller (2012), “Simultaneous Causation,” Apologetics Press, https://apologeticspress.org/simultaneous-causation-687/.

The post “God Was Not ‘Within Time’ When He Began Creation?” appeared first on Apologetics Press.

What do we mean by “myth”? German theologian Rudolf Bultmann popularized the notion that, in order to properly interpret the text, the New Testament must be stripped of those elements that appear to be “mythical,” specifically, its supernatural features.¹ “Myth,” therefore, in theological circles refers to a traditional, non-literal story in a particular culture that manifests that culture’s worldview. The story serves as a vehicle to convey a truth, without necessarily being historically true. The Bible’s depictions of heaven, hell, demons, evil spirits, and Satan are viewed as symbols for deeper meanings rather than being literally existent. Many theologians, and now many Americans, insist that the Bible is a pre-scientific document that is riddled with the errors that accompanied early man’s quest for knowledge, making many of its claims “mythical.”

Along with the onset of modern scientific discovery and understanding has come a widespread tendency to compromise the biblical text of Genesis 1-11. Otherwise conservative thinking Christians have not been immune to this deadly cancer that ultimately undermines the entire Bible and one’s ability to arrive at the truth. In the 1980s, it was discovered that raw evolution was being taught by two Abilene Christian University professors. One of the biology professors provided his class with a handout that included a photocopy of the first page of Genesis. In the margin he scrawled the words, “Hymn, myth.”² Concerned about the backlash from its base, the university mobilized in an attempt to discredit the charge and sweep it under the proverbial carpet, but the evidence was decisive, as acknowledged even by objective outsiders as well as a Master’s thesis conducted 30 years later.³ The fact is that evolution has been taught on other Christian college campuses as well. The lack of outcry testifies to the fact that even Christians and their children have been adversely influenced by secular education.

It is amazing, even shocking, to see the extent to which the authority of the biblical text in general, and the book of Genesis in particular, has been undermined in the mind of the average American, especially in the last half century or so. In virtually every corner of our country, relaxed and compromised views of the Bible prevail—even among otherwise conservative Americans and those who profess to be Christian. Before leaving office, President Bush (“W”) was interviewed by Cynthia McFadden on ABC’s “Nightline.” When asked if he believed the Bible to be literally true, he responded: “You know. Probably not.… No, I’m not a literalist, but I think you can learn a lot from it, but I do think that the New Testament for example is…has got… You know, the important lesson is ‘God sent a son.’”⁴ When asked about creation and evolution, Bush said:

I think you can have both. I think evolution can—you’re getting me way out of my lane here. I’m just a simple president. But it’s, I think that God created the earth, created the world; I think the creation of the world is so mysterious it requires something as large as an Almighty and I don’t think it’s incompatible with the scientific proof that there is evolution.⁵

Myriad instances could be cited in which Americans manifest the degrading effects of skepticism, atheism, evolution, and liberal theology.

What a far cry from most of America’s history. It is hard to believe that—up until the 1960s—American education was thoroughly saturated with the biblical account of Creation.⁶ The book of Genesis was taken as a straight-forward account of the formation of the Universe and the beginning of human history. People took God at His Word. Though liberal theology swept through Europe in the late 19^th century, which included attacks on the verbal, inerrant inspiration of the Scriptures, and though the Creation account began to be openly challenged at the 1925 Scopes trial in Dayton, Tennessee, still, the majority of Americans continued to accept the biblical account right on up to World War II. Since then, however, sinister forces have been chipping away at belief in the inspiration and integrity of the Bible. They have succeeded in eroding confidence in its trustworthiness and authority.

But there are no excuses. The evidence is available, and it is overwhelming. No one can stand before God at the end of time and justify himself for his rejection of Genesis as a straightforward record of literal history. Failure to take Genesis at face value can easily result in acceptance of views and/or practices that will jeopardize one’s standing with God.

New Testament Proof that Genesis is Literal History

If we had no other means by which to determine whether Genesis is myth or history, the New Testament alone is ample proof. Depending on how one calculates the material, the New Testament has at least 60 allusions to Genesis 1-11, with over 100 allusions to the entire book.⁷ Jesus and the writers of the New Testament consistently treated Genesis as literal history. As a matter of fact, every New Testament author refers to Genesis, and nearly every New Testament book does as well. Their handling of the Genesis text demonstrates that they considered the events to have actually occurred, rather than being mythical or legendary folklore that merely contains useful lessons.

Jesus

Consider a sampling of allusions made by Jesus:

• He specified the foundation of the marriage institution, quoting Genesis 1:27 and 2:24 as historical precedent and proof that carte blanche divorce is unacceptable to God (Matthew 19:4-5; Mark 10:6-8). Did He mean to ground marriage on fairytales?
• Jesus mentioned Abel as a real person whose blood was shed on account of his righteous behavior, just like other historical personages in human history (Matthew 23:35). If Abel was not an actual person who lived on Earth, neither was Zechariah, son of Berechiah, whom Jesus said the Jews “murdered between the Temple and the altar”—an actual physical location.
• Jesus declared Satan to be a “murderer from the beginning” and the father of lies—referring to the Fall (John 8:44; Genesis 3:4,19; cf. Romans 5:12; 1 John 3:8).
• Jesus referenced Moses’ writings as genuine representations of history (John 5:46), even warning, “But if you do not believe his writings, how will you believe My words?” (vs. 47).
• Jesus spoke of the “days of Noah” and the Flood as an actual historical event that has many parallels to the future coming of the Son of Man in terms of what people will be doing with their time (Matthew 24:37-39).
• Jesus compared Capernaum to Sodom (Genesis 18-19), saying, “for if the mighty works which were done in you had been done in Sodom, it would have remained until this day. But I say to you that it shall be more tolerable for the land of Sodom in the day of judgment than for you” (Matthew 11:23-24). Sodom would have had to have been an actual city for it to “have remained until this day” and for it to fare more tolerably in the Day of Judgment (cf. 10:15).
• The genealogical lists of Jesus’ physical lineage identify actual historical persons in the first century all the way back to persons originally named in Genesis, including Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Judah, and Tamar (Matthew 1:1-2), as well as Adam, Seth, Enoch, and Noah (Luke 3:36-37).

Paul

Paul, likewise, treated persons, places, and incidents in Genesis as if historically real. Here is a sampling of some of his allusions:

• He quoted Genesis 1:3 to note how God caused light to shine out of darkness (2 Corinthians 4:6).
• Quoting Genesis 2:7, Paul said Adam was the first human being on Earth (1 Corinthians 15:45).
• He claimed that Adam was made from dust (1 Corinthians 15:47)—as Genesis records.
• He noted how the woman is “from” (ek—“out of”) man (1 Corinthians 11:8,12), referring to the fact that Eve was literally taken out of Adam’s body.
• Paul quoted Genesis 2:24 to verify how a man and woman “become one flesh” (1 Corinthians 6:16), comparing marriage to the church (Ephesians 5:31).
• Adam was as historically real as Christ and Moses, having introduced sin into the world, causing death to reign during the historical interval “from Adam to Moses” (Romans 5:14-15).
• Paul identified Adam and Eve by name, noting that Adam was created before the woman was created, and also noting the deception to which Eve succumbed (1 Timothy 2:13-14), which occurred via the “serpent” (2 Corinthians 11:3).
• Paul claimed that God’s deity and attributes have been evident “since the creation of the world” (Romans 1:20).
• Paul said that Jesus fulfilled the promises that had been made to “the fathers,” i.e., Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob (Romans 15:8).
• Paul quoted the promise God made to Abraham concerning Sarah giving birth to Isaac (Romans 9:9), and also mentions Jacob, Esau, and Rebecca by name (vss. 9-10).

Peter

Peter, too, endorsed the historicity of Genesis:

• He alluded to the watery mass at Creation from Genesis 1:12,6-7,9 (2 Peter 3:5).
• He regarded the Flood as an actual historical event, mentioning Noah by name and specifying the number of survivors as eight, and the Flood’s extent being global (1 Peter 3:20; 2 Peter 2:5; 3:6).
• Peter believed in the historical personage of Lot (Genesis 11-14,19) and that God actually turned “the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah into ashes” to make them “an example to those who afterward would live ungodly.” The incident also serves the purpose of demonstrating how God “knows how to deliver the godly out of temptations” (2 Peter 2:6-9). If the incident was not historical, it would serve no legitimate parallel purpose.
• Peter also noted the actual, historical relationship sustained by Sarah and Abraham (1 Peter 3:6).

Hebrews

The writer of the Hebrews letter bases his entire argument on the historicity of Genesis and the Old Testament system:

• His quotation of Psalm 102 includes the fact that even as God created the heavens and the Earth, so they will perish (1:10). Both circumstances require literal historicity.
• Alluding to the fact that God “finished” His creative activities—a direct allusion to Genesis 2:1—he then quotes Genesis 2:2 to call attention to the literal cessation of God’s actions on the seventh day of the week (4:3-4; cf. vs. 10—“as God did from His”).
• The comparison of Christ to Melchizedek (Genesis 14:18) in contrast with Aaron demands that both of these figures were actual historical personages (5:1-10; 6:20; 7:1-21).
• God’s promise to Abraham in Genesis 22:17 was a literal promise to a literal person (6:13-14).
• God’s creation of the Universe was by His “word” (11:3)—even as the Genesis record indicates that God spoke the created order into existence (“God said…”—1:3,6,9,11,14,20,24,26).
• Hebrews chapter 11 is a veritable “Who’s Who” of historical personalities from Genesis whose historicity is assumed: Cain and Abel (vs. 4), Enoch (vs. 5), Noah (vs. 7), Abraham (vss. 8-10), Sarah (vss. 11-12, who literally produced a multitude of descendants), Isaac (vss. 17-20), Jacob (vss. 20-21), and Joseph (vs. 22).
• Esau sold his birthright for food (12:16).
• Abel’s shed blood is as historically real as Christ’s (12:24).

Other New Testament Writers

The other writers show the same respect for bona fide history portrayed in Genesis. James refers to Abraham’s sacrifice of Isaac (2:21). Jude mentions Cain, Enoch, and Sodom and Gomorrah (vss. 7,11,14). He draws a comparison between the physical destruction of the cities with “the vengeance of eternal fire” that awaits the disobedient at the Judgment. John notes that Cain murdered his brother because of his own sinful actions (1 John 3:12). Even the book of Revelation, though highly figurative, nevertheless contains numerous allusions to Genesis that indicate an historical understanding of the book (e.g., 5:5; 10:6; 20:2; 22:2). To suggest that the book of Genesis is a compilation of interesting fables, myths, folklore, popular anecdotes, and stories, rather than actual history, is to suggest that the doctrines of Christianity are rooted in and dependent on fairytales and imaginary stories. Indeed, if the events of Genesis did not historically occur, the New Testament writers—and Jesus Himself—were either in error or flat out liars, since they unquestionably referred to the events of Genesis as being historically true.

Linguistic Proof that Genesis is Literal History

In addition to the New Testament’s inspired treatment of Genesis as an actual account of history, one could also simply examine the literary genre of Genesis. Many in our day insist that Genesis should not be read as literal history because it is written in poetic form and is not a literal description of actual events. But such a claim is, itself, linguistic gobbledygook. Written language, whether from man or God, can be deciphered in terms of its genre. One can identify the author’s use of linguistic elements and extract intended meaning from the words that are used. In other words, though the 50 chapters of Genesis contain figurative language—as does the entire Bible—nevertheless, one can easily distinguish between the literal and the figurative.

Entire volumes have been written on human communication, how human language functions, and how to derive meaning from written language. Many books have been produced that expound the discipline of hermeneutics—the process of interpreting language. These volumes provide self-evident, easily discernible rules and procedures for detecting figurative language. D.R. Dungan’s classic work, Hermeneutics, written in 1888, contains chapters on “Figurative Language,” “The Various Figures of the Bible,” and “Figures of Thought.”⁸ Clinton Lockhart’s 1901 volume Principles of Interpretation contains chapters on “Figurative Language,” “Poetry,” and “Types.”⁹ Christendom has produced many books that demonstrate the means by which biblical language may be understood, including Bernard Ramm’s Hermeneutics and Milton Terry’s 1883 volume Biblical Hermeneutics.¹⁰ Ascertaining whether Genesis and, specifically, the Creation account are “poetic,” “hymn,” or “myth” is not a matter of confusion or uncertainty—except for those who have an agenda and wish to concoct an elaborate smokescreen to avoid the obvious import of God’s Word.

Does Genesis 1 contain any figurative language? Certainly. But not anything that makes the chapter non-literal in its basic import. For example, the term “face” in Genesis 1:2, which is actually plural in the Hebrew (pah-neem—“faces”), is an idiomatic instance of pleonasm, a form of amplificatio, in which more words are used than the grammar requires: “And darkness was upon the faces of the deep.” The noun “deep” (which, itself, is a figurative term for the sea or ocean) is enhanced or emphasized by means of a second, redundant noun “faces.” Instead of simply saying, “darkness was upon the deep,” adding “faces” makes the statement “much more forcible and emphatic.”¹¹ The use of “saw” in Genesis 1:4,10,12,18,21,25 is the figure of speech known as anthropopatheia in which human attributes are ascribed to God—specifically in this text, human actions.¹² The expression in 1:9,10, “Let the dry appear,” is the figure of speech known as antimereia, the exchange of one part of speech for another, in this case, an adjective for a noun. “Dry” in the verses refers to the “land.”¹³ Genesis 1:11 uses polyptoton in which the same part of speech is repeated in a different inflection. Specifically, the verb “seeding” is repeated by means of its cognate noun “seed”: “Let the earth bring forth grass, the herb yielding seed,” literally, “seeding seed.”¹⁴ In other words, vegetation was created by God in a state of bearing seed, and not vice versa—which militates against the notion of evolution and underscores the instantaneous nature of the Creation. Indeed, this figurative language testifies to the literal nature of the Creation week.

So, yes, Genesis 1 (and perhaps every other chapter in the Bible) contains figurative language, as does our everyday language.¹⁵ But that language is detectable, discernible, and decipherable—and does not necessarily imply that the overall message being conveyed is not to be taken literally. None of the language of Genesis 1 even hints that the events described were imaginary as opposed to being actual historical occurrences. In fact, simply take your Bible and turn to Genesis chapter 1 and notice how many terms are used that have an obvious, undisputable literal import, including “earth,” “darkness,” “Spirit of God,” “waters,” “light,” “day,” “night,” “evening,” “morning,” “first,” “seas,” “grass,” “herb,” “seed,” “fruit,” “tree,” “seasons,” “years,” “stars,” “fowl,” “fish,” “cattle,” etc. Distinguishing between figurative and literal language is not that difficult. As a side note, Steven Boyd conducted a statistical analysis using logistic regression, in order to ascertain whether Genesis 1:1-2:3 is Hebrew poetry or historical narrative. He concluded: “The biblical creation account clearly is not poetry but instead is a literal description in real time of supernatural events.”¹⁶

Corroboration by Other Bible Passages

If the events described in the book of Genesis were not intended to be understood as literal history, one would expect the rest of the Bible to give some indication of that fact. Yet, on the contrary, several passages scattered from the Old Testament to the New Testament allude to the events in such a way that their historicity is assumed. Take, for example, specific verses regarding the creation of the Universe by God. The distinct impression is given in Genesis chapter 1 that God orally spoke everything into existence, rather than using some naturalistic, time-laden process. In what is obviously an actual historical setting, reported to us in a literal context of Scripture, Moses informs the Israelites situated at the base of Mt. Sinai—

Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy. Six days you shall labor and do all your work, but the seventh day is the Sabbath of the LORD your God. In it you shall do no work…. For in six days the LORD made the heavens and the earth, the sea, and all that is in them, and rested the seventh day. Therefore the LORD blessed the Sabbath day and hallowed it (Exodus 20:8-11).

No Israelite listening to this declaration in 1500 B.C. would have ever conceived the notion that God created everything in the Universe over a period of millions and billions of years. The correlation between the days of Genesis 1 and the six-day work week enjoined upon people under the Law of Moses would have been unmistakable and could have been understood in no other way but literally.

Another example is seen in Psalm 33—which is certainly written in standard Hebrew metrical verse—but poetry that conveys literal truth. Speaking of God’s creative powers, David declared:

By the word of the LORD the heavens were made, and all the host of them by the breath of His mouth. He gathers the waters of the sea together as a heap; He lays up the deep in storehouses. Let all the earth fear the LORD; Let all the inhabitants of the world stand in awe of Him. For He spoke, and it was done; He commanded, and it stood fast (Psalm 33:6-9).

The figurative elements of this poetic passage are seen in the notions of “breath” and “mouth”—physical attributes that would not literally, physically characterize God Who is “spirit” (John 4:24; cf. Luke 24:39). But the oral aspect of God speaking the physical realm into existence is literal, even as God literally and audibly spoke to people throughout history (e.g., Genesis 12:1ff.; 22:12; Exodus 3:4ff.; Matthew 3:17; 17:5).

Still another example is seen in the psalmist’s call for praise by inanimate creation:

Praise the LORD! Praise the LORD from the heavens; Praise Him in the heights! Praise Him, all His angels; Praise Him, all His hosts! Praise Him, sun and moon; Praise Him, all you stars of light! Praise Him, you heavens of heavens, and you waters above the heavens! (Psalm 148:1-4).

Here is an excellent instance of figurative language. Obviously, the Sun, Moon, stars, and waters cannot literally, audibly praise God. Yet, having been created by God, they reflect their Maker. They manifest attributes that demonstrate their divine origin (cf. Psalm 19:1ff.). Hence, the next verse declares: “Let them praise the name of the LORD, for He commanded and they were created” (vs. 5). Here is yet another forthright indication that the impression projected by the Genesis account, that God literally spoke the Universe into existence, is an accurate impression, in spite of the fact that in Psalm 148 this truth is couched in figurative language.

We must ever remember that the Bible is unlike any other book on the planet. It reflects its own divine origin by the attributes that it possesses. It does not divulge its divine message in a sterile vacuum in which a writer expounds lofty ideals, or by means of a listing of ethical “do’s and don’ts.” Rather, by means of the Bible, God conveys His message to mankind in history.¹⁷ We are introduced to the beginning of the Universe, the beginning of the human race, and thereafter we are treated to a sequential, historical narrative that guides us through 4,000 years of human history, climaxing with God’s own personal visit to the Earth. This is all history! And it is clearly intended to be understood literally.

Conclusion

The book of Genesis explains the Creation of the Universe, the corruption of humanity by sin, the catastrophe of the global Flood, and the confusion at Babel. Amazingly, it provides the foundation for anthropology, biology, astronomy, geology, and a host of other disciplines. Critical doctrines that impact all of humanity are rooted in the events described in Genesis, including the necessity of clothing—human modesty—and why we organize our lives in terms of a seven-day week. More crucial doctrines that pertain to eternity are also approached early on, including why humans sin, why humans die, and why Jesus would have to die on the cross. The very meaning of human existence is clarified by examining the book of Genesis.

Read carefully to Charles Darwin’s autobiographical statement regarding the shift that occurred in his thinking that led to his belief in evolution: “I had gradually come, by this time, to see that the Old Testament from its manifestly false history of the world and from its attributing to God the feelings of a revengeful tyrant, was no more to be trusted than the sacred books of the Hindoos, or the beliefs of any barbarian.”¹⁸ The integrity of the entire Bible is seriously undermined when anyone compromises the literal, historical nature of the book of Genesis, with its critical teaching on origins. Obstinately clinging to evolution, theistic or otherwise, and stubbornly insisting on a relaxed, devalued interpretation of Genesis, can only end in a diluted religion.

May we love God. May we love His Word. May we defend it against all efforts to destroy its integrity and message. May we pore over its contents—as if our lives, the lives of our family, and the lives of those we influence depend upon it. For, indeed, they do.

Endnotes

The post Genesis: Myth or History? appeared first on Apologetics Press.

[Editor’s Note: The following article was written by A.P. auxiliary staff writer, Kevin Cain, who holds degrees from Freed-Hardeman University (B.S., M.Min.) and the Doctor of Jurisprudence from South Texas College of Law. A former Briefing Attorney of The First Court of Appeals, his current practice focuses on litigation at the trial and appellate levels in both State and Federal Courts.]

We took her to Bible class. We took her to worship services regularly. We took her to countless youth events, trips, and activities. She was baptized at camp when she was 14. I thought we did everything right before she left for college. We did what the preachers and elders said we should do when it comes to raising our sweet daughter. And yet, when she left home for higher education, she left the church about the same time. She does not attend worship services or Bible class. She is not involved with any other Christians or on-campus Christian organizations. She is not in contact with any of her old church friends. She’s gone, and it breaks my heart every day. Where did we go wrong?

Too many parents have lived a similar experience. If it only happened once, it would be a tragedy. But when we see it happen time and time again, it is an epidemic. The obvious question is “why?” Why are so many of our young people leaving for college and leaving the church at the same time? What are we missing? What did we fail to teach them? What went wrong?

There are countless theories as to why this epidemic continues. People speculate they are leaving because the church is too conservative; the music is boring; the preacher uses too much Scripture; the church is outdated on its views of marriage and women’s roles; the parents were too strict; the church building is outdated; or the youth minister didn’t connect with my child on a personal level. Theories and opinions abound, but what is missing are facts and objective answers. Parents and elders are looking for answers—why are they leaving and what can be done?

First, are the statistics as bad as we have heard? The short answer is “yes.” Campus Renewal out of Austin, Texas estimates that between 60% to 80% of Christian denominational students leaving for college also leave their faith behind as well.¹ Another study by respected pollster George Barna involved interviews with 22,000 adults and over 2,000 teenagers in 25 separate surveys (hereinafter the “Barna Study”). The purpose of this survey was not only to determine how many young people were leaving religion, but also to find out why. This survey among “conservative” evangelicals concluded that two-thirds of young people give up on religion when they head for college.² While these are general studies outside the churches of Christ, these numbers are nevertheless alarming. While the numbers at the congregation you attend may be better, any statistic above 0% is worrisome.

So, who do we blame? When things go this wrong on this scale, we like to blame the elders, the youth minister, the preacher, the church (as a whole), global warming, or pretty much anyone but ourselves. If we can point the finger at someone else before they point the finger at us, we don’t have to feel too bad about these alarming numbers. Right?

Interestingly, the Barna Study delves deep (and I mean deep) into analyzing why these young people are leaving religion behind. For example, the Barna Study determined that of all the 20-something evangelicals who attended church regularly but no longer do so now:

• 95% attended church regularly during elementary and middle school.
• 55% attended church regularly during high school
• 11% were still going to church during college³

From those stats, we see that only 11% of those who have left the church did so during college years. Almost 90% of them were lost already in middle school and high school—before going to college. About 40% are leaving the church during elementary and middle school. This shocked me when I first read it. We are not losing most of our young people when they leave for college and have to face the world alone for the first time. Most of them are checking out (mentally if not physically as well) in junior high and high school. We are losing them earlier than we might have thought.

The Barna Study goes on to make an interesting comparison between those who regularly attended Bible class and those who did not regularly attend Bible class. Compared to those who grew up not attending Bible class, students who regularly attend Bible class are:

• more likely NOT to believe all accounts/stories in the Bible are true or accurate;
• more likely to doubt the Bible because it is written by men and has errors in the translating;
• more likely to accept that gay marriage and abortion should be legal;
• much more likely to believe that God used evolution to change one kind of animal into another;
• more likely NOT to believe the earth is less than 10,000 years old;
• more likely to believe dinosaurs died before people were on the planet; and
• more likely to believe that good people don’t need to go to church.⁴

These statistics appear to be upside down. How could it be that a person who grew up attending Bible school is less likely to believe in basic Bible principles as compared to a person who did not regularly go to Bible class? That simply doesn’t make sense. I’ll admit; I had to read these results several times before I finally concluded that I was not misreading or misunderstanding all this. Are we doing something wrong or missing something in our traditional Bible class curricula?

What we begin to see from these important findings in the Barna Study is a significant correlation between believing in the creation account and whether they will remain faithful to God or whether they will come back to the church. There is a direct tie between what they believe about Genesis and their attitude toward Christianity.

The conclusion here is painfully obvious: If the authority of God’s Word is undermined in Genesis, this leads to a slippery slope of unbelief about the whole of the Bible. If we as teachers, parents, preachers, and elders have been chipping away at the accuracy and reliability of the events in the first eleven chapters in Genesis (or we ignore cultural attacks on Genesis 1-11), if we really cannot rely on these events as being historically accurate, why should we believe in the accuracy of the details of the life of Joseph in Genesis 37-50? Why should we believe the accuracy of Moses delivering Israel from slavery in the book of Exodus? Why believe the account of David and Goliath? How could we believe in the miracles of Elijah and Elisha? Why should we even believe the prophecies of Jesus? Ultimately, why believe the Gospel accounts of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John if we cannot rely on the accuracy of Genesis 1-11? Our kids are smart enough to know that when we compromise in one area of the Bible (like Genesis 1-11), we can hypocritically compromise wherever we want. The damage has been done, and for most of our young people, it depends on how they view the foundation and the very beginning of the Bible and the Creation account.

The Barna Study also looked into the beliefs of young adults who said they plan to return some day (like when they have kids of their own) versus those who never plan to return.⁵

Those who have left and never plan to return have serious doubts about the accuracy of the Bible, especially when it comes to Creation. In those early formative years, they were clearly left with questions and reservations about the reliability of God’s word and the Creation account in particular. And now, after years of doubting the first chapters of Genesis and years after a constant bombardment of evolution in school (and pretty much everywhere) and increasing compromises by religious institutions regarding Creation, they find themselves gone with no thought of ever returning.

In 1859, Darwin published On the Origin of Species and 12 years later The Descent of Man.⁶ In these two volumes, he made popular the idea that single-celled organisms changed through the process of evolution into ape-like creatures and eventually into humans.⁷ In response, many of the religious institutions in England, and eventually across the United Kingdom and Europe, began to adopt Darwin’s ideas.⁸ They reinterpreted the Genesis account of Creation and proposed views such as “theistic evolution.”⁹ They compromised what they had always taught (God created the world in one literal week) and tried to engender scientific credibility by claiming that God worked through evolution to create the world. To see the long-term effect of this compromise, just look at the superficial state of religion in Europe today. It can be summed up by looking at the beautiful cathedrals and places of worship throughout that continent—amazing museums filled with architectural works, but lacking in the work of the Lord.

The damage was done, and the slope was more than just a little slippery. This thinking and rationale of making compromises in the Creation account sent a very clear message to everyone, especially to the upcoming younger generations. It was now acceptable to use man’s ideas to re-interpret the Bible, rather than to use the Bible to judge man’s ideas. God set up a system where He laid out His divine perspective on how man should view the world (Psalm 32:8). God made man (Genesis 1:27). Therefore, man should listen to God, the Creator (Deuteronomy 28:1-2). When man started listening to sources outside of God, a spiritual perspective would encourage man to judge those worldly ideas by God’s standard to see if they are sound and righteous (Acts 17:11; 1 John 4:1). But now, young people see organized religion doing something altogether different. Now they see church leaders conforming and changing God’s Word to fit alleged scientific theories and notions, rather than an accurate view of the physical world that corresponds perfectly with the Bible—a divine source these young people once believed was the “truth.”

Here is the rational next step that signals the beginning of the end for so many young people. “If I can’t trust the Bible in the earthly things, why should I trust it in the spiritual things?” That is a fair question. If you answer that you cannot trust the Bible in either arena, then what good is God’s Word? And that is the conclusion that many young people are reaching. In contrast, if you are struggling and want to compromise and believe the Bible may not be scientifically accurate but it is still relevant for spiritual matters, then think about what message that sends. Under this perspective, if a young person has questions about how to feel about God or think about his fellow man, then you go to the church for answers. If you have questions about facts and reality, you go to school and ask your science teacher. This practice of trying to harmonize Creation with evolution (often called “theistic evolution”) has created an environment where the church has basically disconnected the Bible from the “real world.”

The first chip to fall—and where the slippery slope begins—is the belief that the Earth is billions of years old. The battleground is not necessarily evolution, as there are many evolutionists who still believe in God, and there are many who do not believe in God and also do not subscribe to the theory of evolution. The major attack on biblical authority today starts with the attack on the first verse in the Bible, “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth” (Genesis 1:1).

Notice the growing level of disbelief in the statistics below as they bottom out on the subject of the age of the Earth.

• 77% believe in Noah’s ark and the global flood
• 75% believe in Adam and Eve in the garden
• 62% believe Abraham fathered Isaac when he was 100 years old
• 60% believe in the Tower of Babel
• ONLY 20% believe the earth is less than 10,000 years old¹⁰

The number one area of disbelief among young people who are leaving religion and their faith behind is the age of the Earth. This is where we are losing them. This is where the line in the sand has been drawn.

For those surveyed who did not believe in the accuracy of the Bible, the Barna Study asked the reasons why they did not believe the Bible events are accurate:

• 24% said they were written by men.
• 18% said the Bible was not translated correctly.
• 15% said the Bible contradicts itself.
• 14% said science shows the world is old.
• 11% said the Bible contains errors.
• 7% said there’s so much suffering in the world.
• 4% said Christians do not live by the Bible
• 4% said evolution proves the Bible is wrong.¹¹

Interestingly, 82% of those who said they did not believe all the accounts in the Bible are true and accurate did so because of doubts about the authority of the Bible. This is the problem and a significant reason why they are leaving.

This should come as no surprise to the Bible student who knows through inspiration what people will be like in times like this.

Knowing this first of all, that scoffers will come in the last days with scoffing, following their own sinful desires. They will say, “Where is the promise of his coming? For ever since the fathers fell asleep, all things are continuing as they were from the beginning of creation.” For they deliberately overlook this fact, that the heavens existed long ago, and the earth was formed out of water and through water by the word of God (2 Peter 3:3-5).

In this period of time where scoffers and critics will ridicule faithful Christians for anticipating the return of Christ, notice that these same people will deny the Creation account. And from a sinful, strategic perspective, it makes sense. If you can get them to doubt the first historical act of God in the Bible (God made the world in six days), getting them to doubt the rest of the Bible will be easy work.

This is not to say that there are not other factors at work and relevant causes of this dilemma. However, it seems clear that basic beliefs about the first few chapters of Genesis are a significant part of the problem as to why so many young people leave the church.

The Solution

The problem is devastating, the numbers are heartbreaking, and the cause of all this is discouraging. So, what can be done? Is the point of all this just to scare us and make us feel bad, or is there something we can do? The good news is there are answers and solutions, but it will take hard work to right this ship.

Rewrite Our Curriculum

This is not to say that we have not been doing a good job of teaching our children about the Old Testament, Christ, the Church, and salvation. However, we may be under-emphasizing or overlooking a critical component in a balanced spiritual course of study—APOLOGETICS. We need more classes on apologetics, especially on fundamental questions on the existence of God and the first eleven chapters of Genesis, especially the historical reality of the Creation account. Please do not be prideful and say, “We’ve been doing this for years” or “I’ve spent years developing these lessons.” That work should not be overlooked and is genuinely appreciated. However, it is time to take a fresh perspective on what we are teaching in light of these alarming statistics. Greater emphasis on apologetics and the historical reality of the Creation account is needed in our classes.

Start Younger

We need to be teaching apologetics at younger ages. And yes, this obviously includes our high school and junior high students, but also our elementary and even pre-school children. “Train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old, he will not depart from it” (Proverbs 22:6).

Apologetics Press offers a variety of resources to help you instruct and instill within our young people a belief and love for God, His word, and His creation. There is the “Learn to Read” series that uses the theme of “God created everything” to help children begin to read. My personal favorite is Dogs, Frogs, and Hogs. These books contain simple phrases like “God made dogs.” Like the early readers we were introduced to in public school, these books take simple phrases and concepts, mingle them with God’s creative power, and engrain them into precious minds who need to know God.

There is also an “Early Reader” series that uses more words and somewhat more sophisticated topics to impress on slightly older children the complexity and beauty of God’s creation. The little boys I read to love God Made Insects. The girls tend to like God Made Puppies. There is something for everyone here. The level of information increases when you move to the “Advanced Reader” series. These include titles like Copies of God’s Design, Human Body, and Migrating Animals. As your children grow in their reading skills and in their ability to process information, these readers follow them all along the way emphasizing over and over again the reality that God made it all.

As your kids get even older, there are books that mature with them while tackling more difficult concepts. Dinosaurs Unleashed is one of the best sellers at Apologetics Press, and the kids love it. The art-work is amazing, but the message is invaluable—God made everything, and that includes dinosaurs. There are other books for this stage in life, like How Do You Know God is Real? and Wonders of God’s Creation. One of my personal, creative favorites is the Dinosaur Field Journal. This is a great resource for the adventurer inside our sweet children.

As they reach their teenage years, there are other excellent books that challenge our young people to question what they are hearing in the world and to be secure in their faith. These include The Dinosaur Delusion, Truth Be Told: Exposing the Myth of Evolution, Always Be Ready, Out With Doubt, A Matter of Fact, and Reasons to Believe.

Finally, every student leaving for college should be equipped with the Defending the Faith Study Bible from Apologetics Press. This Bible is filled with resources designed to arm our teens and college aged youth (and older people like me) with information to combat the atheistic assumptions and difficult questions that so many young people face in school and among their friends.  This Bible has helps and resources throughout that include:

• Scores of special sections that cover topics such as God’s existence, science and the Bible, God’s justice and hell, defending the Bible’s position on prayer, theistic evolution, and the Bible and slavery.
• Comments written and produced by faithful members of the Lord’s Church.
• Thorough and complete refutations of alleged Bible contradictions and discrepancies.
• A litany of positive evidences for the inspiration of the Bible, such as documented archaeological discoveries, comparisons of modern scientific findings with the biblical text, and historical evidence that validates the predictive prophecies of the Bible.
• Biblical answers to some of life’s most profound questions such as: Why did God create people? Why do good people suffer? How will it all end?

And the good news is that while there are many books and resources highlighted in this article, this is just the tip of the iceberg. Apologetics Press has countless volumes of books, readers, magazines, and other sources to help fortify your children’s faith and assist moms and dads in reaching one of the greatest goals in their lives—see their children remain faithful to God. Please take advantage of these resources.

More Teachers Willing To Step Up

If we are going to have more classes on apologetics, we will obviously need more teachers willing to tackle these classes. We not only need teachers to step up in Bible class, but also parents to get more involved in teaching and reinforcing apologetics at home. Unfortunately, we tend to think of apologetics as somewhat of a specialized discipline where only experts (like the staff at AP) can effectively teach this material. I’ll be the first to admit that the folks at Apologetics Press are outstanding teachers and preachers, especially in the area of apologetics. They have unique knowledge and talents that make them exceptionally qualified and true blessings in the church. I get it.

However, you probably don’t know much about how to treat Type 2 Diabetes or Reye’s Syndrome. Nevertheless, I am confident that if your child was diagnosed with one of these conditions, it would not take you long to become an expert in this arena. Your child’s physical condition would require you to learn a considerable amount of complicated medical information, but you would master it, because your child’s life is worth it.

We need to get just as serious and motivated when it comes to the spiritual welfare of our children. Yes, I know, apologetics can seem a little complex and will require some study and effort on our part, but it is worth it. Our children are leaving the church in alarming numbers, and a significant reason why is because of how they view the first few chapters of the Bible. The world is constantly attacking the Bible, and especially the Creation account. We need to get prepared, and we need to prepare our children. They are worth it.

History, Not Stories

I know this will sound like nitpicky semantics, but please stop calling historical events in the Bible “stories.” It is not that this is in any way inaccurate. But when our children hear the word “stories,” they think of everything from Winnie the Pooh to Harry Potter. The term “stories” can imply that the information to be revealed may not be entirely accurate. When we talk in class about the “story of Creation,” our children may be equating this in their minds with the fiction in story books we read to them about talking bears and flying superheroes. Let’s start talking about the Creation “account” rather than a story. Let’s refer to the Flood as an “event” or a “historical reality” rather than a story. We can do better to impress on our children that what happened in the Bible (especially in the first 11 chapters) is just as real as when men landed on the moon, when George Washington was our first president, and when Shakespeare wrote Hamlet. Let’s get real with our teaching.

What Is Not the Solution

To the surprise of many, one interesting thing gleaned from the Barna Study is that young people largely are not leaving religion because the worship and singing is not cool enough. To look at some churches who subscribe to the “Sister Act” theory of church retention, one could easily conclude that young people are leaving the church because worship services just aren’t exciting enough. Some have the mindset that if we just make our worship and singing culturally relevant, the young people will flood back into the pews and stay with us. The statistics simply do not support this assumption.

Becoming “culturally cool” may have an immediate short-term impact on enthusiasm and attendance, but it is just a Band-Aid for a much deeper disease. While contemporary music and a concert environment is popular these days in many worship services, it is not the problem. The Barna Study made clear that the primary problem driving young people away is not “cool” worship services, but their rejection of belief in basic Bible teachings. We don’t need gimmicks, entertaining concerts, and light shows in worship. We simply need the preaching of God’s Word.

Are there other things that can be done to help address this problem of young people leaving the Church? Absolutely. Pray for them every day that God would bless and protect them as they increase in wisdom and stature and in favor with man, and especially in favor with God. Remove hypocrisy from the lives of elders and parents who interact with these young people. Be consistent with your kids in terms of emphasizing the importance of spiritual matters over everything (including sports and academics). Keep your kids involved in church and spiritual activities, and surrounded by godly influences. These are all helpful and worth consideration. But at the core of this problem is whether our kids believe the first few chapters of Genesis. No more excuses. No more compromises. It is time to take a stand and proclaim: “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth,” and after six days, God saw that it was very good.

ENDNOTES

The post Why Are We Losing Them When They Leave For College? appeared first on Apologetics Press.

It is tempting to believe that caves form from rushing water that slowly wears away a rock—“eroding” it until a hole appears. But that is not the action that forms most caves. Most caves are thought to be formed by rock being dissolved by an acid—a process called dissolution (DIS-uh-LOO-shun). After a chamber is dissolved in a rock, when the water level below the ground drops or the ground itself rises (yes, that happens in some places!), an empty cave is left.

Many old-Earth geologists believe that solution caves are formed when rain water picks up carbon dioxide in the air as it falls to the ground and begins soaking into the Earth. As it seeps through the Earth, it picks up more carbon dioxide from the decaying plants in the dirt, and the water turns into carbonic (kar-BON-ik) acid—the stuff that makes your soda fizz. When that acid sinks in the ground to a kind of stone that dissolves easily (like limestone), the acid slowly dissolves the rock, forming a hole. Old Earth geologists believe that over thousands of years, the hole gets bigger, eventually forming a cave. As you can imagine, that process is very slow. How, then, can the Bible be true?

Feeders
Channels

Over the last several years, another kind of cave dissolution process has been studied and found to explain how many caves have formed. Instead of rocks being slowly dissolved by carbonic acid from above, they can be quickly dissolved by sulfuric acid that comes from below. This process is called hypogene (HIPE-oh-jean) speleogenesis (SPEEL-ee-oh-JEN-uh-sis). As water comes into contact with rocks that contain sulfur, dead plants and animals (which release sulfur as they decay), or hydrogen sulfide from volcanic gases, and then combine with oxygen, sulfuric acid forms. During the Flood, large amounts of hot water would have been trapped below the surface of the Earth while dirt was being piled up on continents. The water would have mixed with oxygen, as well as hydrogen sulfide from the volcanic activity in the Flood and sulfur from the dead plants and animals across the planet, making sulfuric acid. The sulfuric acid would have been trapped beneath the Earth’s surface where the pressure from the water and added dirt on the surface would have caused the sulfuric acid to move towards the surface, dissolving rock along the way. Bottom line: the Flood conditions would have been perfect for the rapid formation of solution caves.

Cupola

Mineral Gypsum

To show that sulfuric acid dissolution explains most solution caves, I have studied 25 caves in eight states, looking for characteristics in solution caves that would support sulfuric acid dissolution: entry holes at the base of the cave (feeders), pathways leading from the feeders to the top of the cave (channels), dome structures on the ceilings of caves (cupolas), and the presence of the mineral gypsum (which forms quickly when sulfuric acid meets lime), for example.Without exception, every solution cave I have studied has characteristics that support sulfuric acid dissolution—exactly what we would expected if the Flood happened and formed caves only a few thousand years ago.

The post How Do Caves Form? appeared first on Apologetics Press.

How do speleothems form? As rain drops to the ground and seeps down towards a cave, it picks up carbon dioxide from decaying plants and turns into carbonic acid. When it reaches the limestone above a cave, it dissolves some of it and picks up calcite from the limestone. When the liquid reaches the cave air, it releases its carbon dioxide gas (like fizz coming from a soda can when you open it). The calcite “sticks” to the cave as the carbon dioxide is released and as the water drips to the base of the cave. As this process happens, the calcite gradually builds up, forming speleothems.

	Stalagmites are speleothems that grow upward from the floor of a cave as calcite is deposited there from drops of the liquid.
	Stalactites are speleothems that hang (tight) from the ceiling of a cave as calcite is left behind before the droplet falls to the floor of the cave.
	Soda straws are a type of stalactite. As a droplet hovers on the ceiling before dropping, its calcite gathers along the edges of the droplet, making a ring. When the water then drops, a calcite ring is left. If it continues to grow, it becomes a hollow tube—like a straw—that hangs from the ceiling. If the hole in the bottom of the tube ever gets clogged, the straw will begin turning into a normal stalactite.
	Columns form when a stalagmite grows as a stalactite grows directly above it. Eventually, if they continue to grow, they will join, forming a column.
	Cave bacon is a formation that looks like a curtain of bacon when light shines through it. It forms as droplets run in a line along a hanging surface, instead of dropping straight to the ground. Calcite builds up on the line, forming what looks like drapery.
	Flow stone forms when droplets run down walls or large objects, making speleothems that look like calcite waterfalls.
	Cave pearls look like…pearls. Sometimes droplets land directly on a piece of something on the floor of a cave. Calcite begins to build up the substance, and the continued droplets “polish” it, making it smooth and, oftentimes, spherical—like a ball.

Old Earth geologists argue that some speleothems are so large that it would have taken tens of thousands of years or longer for them to form. As usual, old Earth geologists typically make such claims because they are assuming uniformitarianism is true: the belief that whatever processes and rates we see happening today in geology have always happened that same way throughout time. The problem is,  uniformitarianism does not fit the actual evidence when we study speleothem growth. Many factors play a role in how fast speleothems grow, including the amount of rain at the surface, the surface air temperature, the drip rate and concentration, and the level of carbon dioxide in the soil. In the years immediately following the Flood, during the Ice Age, there would have been much more rain (faster drip rate), much higher levels of carbon dioxide in the soil from dead plants and animals (leading to more calcite in droplets), and lower temperatures (leading to wider stalagmites).

Cave tour guides will typically give an estimate of how fast speleothems grow—very slowly. The average growth of flowstone per year today, for example, is said to be 0.01 inches. Nearly every tour guide in my travels, however, highlighted that they give low growth rates like that, but they have observed much higher speleothem growth rates in their own caves. Tour guides for Squire Boone Caverns in Mauckport, IN, for example, showed me a stairwell leading down to the cave that was built in 1973: 46 years ago. At 0.01 inches of growth per year, there should have been about one half of an inch of flowstone in the stairwell. Instead, flowstone covered much of the 73-step stairwell, and it was 2-3 inches thick in several places. The size of speleothems is not a problem for the young Earth position that the Bible teaches.

The post Speleo-what? appeared first on Apologetics Press.

The argument is that millions of years could have elapsed in the Garden prior to the first sin, during which evolution and deep time occurred. Ages, presumably, were not being counted until the first sin. Several problems immediately surface upon considering such an assumption.

1. Genesis 1:14-15 indicates that the purpose of the stars as created during the Creation week was “to give light on the Earth,” “to divide the day from the night,” and to allow the only creatures who do so to reckon “signs and seasons…days and years.” Clearly, time, and specifically years, were being counted from the beginning. “So all the days that Adam lived were nine hundred and thirty years; and he died” (Genesis 5:5). However many years Adam and Eve were in the Garden, we know it was not more than 930.
2. How likely is it that humans would be able to resist temptation for one year, much less 930 years, much less 4,500,000,000 years? After all, Satan was already present “from the beginning” (John 8:44) trying to manipulate Adam and Eve to disobey God, and unlike today, even doing so in a direct, visible way—making verbal arguments to tempt Adam and Eve.
3. Genesis 3 recounts the first sin and the eviction of Adam and Eve from Paradise. God subsequently placed cherubim and a flaming sword in the path of any who would attempt to re-enter the Garden and eat from the Tree. The text proceeds to relate the events that followed their eviction. “Now Adam knew Eve his wife, and she conceived and bore Cain…. Then she bore again, this time his brother Abel” (4:1-2). Abel, of course, was ultimately murdered by Cain some time later. The implication by those seeking to squeeze in time after Creation, then, is that Adam and Eve were in the Garden for millions of years prior to even conceiving Cain and Abel. Jesus, however, stated that the blood of Abel was shed at the “foundation of the world”—not millions or billions of years later. Note that the evolutionary model argues that humans (the genus homo) arrived on the scene two to three million years ago—at least 13,798,000,000 years after the Universe began, and at the very end of recorded time, not at the foundation of the world.
4. Further, Genesis 5:3 indicates that Adam was 130 when Seth, who was born after Cain and Abel, was born. Adam and Eve could not have, therefore, been in the Garden for even 130 years.
5. Jesus called the devil “a murderer from the beginning,” the “father” of lies (John 8:44)—a clear allusion to his actions in the Garden which led to the death of Adam, Eve, and every human since. Adam and Eve’s “murder” was considered by Jesus to be at the “beginning,” not the end, of geologic time.
6. It is also the case that Adam and Eve had been commanded by God to “be fruitful and multiply, and fill the Earth” (Genesis 1:28). Upon marrying, Moses recounts God’s command for husband and wife: “a man shall…be joined to his wife, and they shall become one flesh” (2:24). If Adam and Eve had refused to do so, they would have been disobeying God and, therefore, sinning. Recall that humanity’s reluctance to “be fruitful and multiply, and fill the Earth” after the Flood (9:1) resulted in God’s actions at Babel (11:1ff.). We can, therefore, assume that Adam and Eve were obeying God, since their first sins were tied to eating from the forbidden Tree (3:6ff.), not from disobeying God’s command regarding procreation. Since Adam and Eve did not conceive a child until after their eviction from the Garden, it stands to reason that they were not even in the Garden long enough to do so.
7. Consider also that the desire to insert time into the biblical text is generally the result of an attempt to reconcile the Bible with contemporary geology (the geologic column) and paleontology (the fossil record). The fossil record, however, reveals that humans do not “evolve” until the late Cenozoic era—again, at the very top of the fossil record and geologic column. The 3.8 billion years of necessary time to reconcile the evolutionary timeframe of the fossil record with Scripture, therefore, must be injected before humans are even on the scene, not after Adam and Eve are in the Garden. In other words, even if Adam and Eve were in the Garden for millions of years, the biblical model would still not harmonize with the contemporary model.

Bottom line: the Bible does not allow for deep time to be injected into Adam and Eve’s tenure in the Garden of Eden. Immense time at that point in history would not help the Bible fit the evolutionary paradigm anyway, and there is no need for time to be injected. The biblical timeframe fits the physical evidence well, as long as erroneous assumptions are not used to interpret that evidence.

Endnotes

The post How Long Were Adam and Eve in the Garden Before Sinning? appeared first on Apologetics Press.

The age of the Earth, according to naturalists and old-Earth advocates, is 4.5 billion years.¹ Young-Earth creationists contend that the Earth is on the order of thousands, not billions, of years old. Is there evidence to support the young-Earth creationists’ premise?

First, as we have shown elsewhere, the biblical narrative implies that the Universe was created with an immediate appearance of age in many ways.² Adam and Eve were not mere zygotes, but walking, talking, working, and procreating individuals. The trees of the Garden were bearing fruit so that Adam and Eve could eat from them, light from distant stars was viewable on Earth, and daughter elements³ were possibly in the various rocks. That said, while certain attributes of the Earth would appear old, the biblical model suggests that other features of the Universe would highlight its youth. Here are 21 such examples:

Bible

#1: Bible Teaching

If the Bible is the inspired Word of God, then whatever it teaches can be known to be true—including what it teaches about the age of the Earth. The evidence indicates that the Bible is in fact God’s Word.⁴ Simple addition of the genealogies in Genesis 5 reveals that from Creation to the Flood was 1,656⁵ years, give or take a few years.⁶ The genealogies of Genesis 11, which do not use precisely the same terminology as that of Genesis 5,⁷ account for roughly 400 to 5,000 years, ending with the birth of Abram.⁸ From Abram to Christ is roughly 2,000 years, and from Christ to present day is roughly 2,000 years. Therefore, the age of the Earth is 6,000-10,000 years.

Paleontology/Archaeology

#2: Polystrate Fossils

Perhaps the most widely used argument for a millions-of-years-old Earth historically has been the rock layers of the geologic column. It would take millions of years for the thousands of meters of material beneath us to accumulate and lithify—or so the argument goes. Is that true? A polystrate fossil is a single fossil that spans more than one geologic stratum. Many polystrate tree trunk fossils have been discovered, as well as a baleen whale, swamp plants called calamites, and catfish.⁹ Polystrate fossils prove that both the rock layers of the geologic column and the surfaces between them do not require millions of years of slow and gradual accumulation and lithification. After all, how could a tree escape its inevitable decay while sticking out of the ground for millions of years with its roots dead and lithified, while it waited to be slowly covered with sediment? Polystrate fossils provide evidence that the rock strata have formed rapidly—fast enough to preserve organic materials before their decay.

#3: DNA in “Ancient” Bacteria Support a Young Earth

In 2000, a bacterium was discovered that is thought to be from the Permian Period of Earth’s history—250 million years ago. The problem is that, according to geomicrobiologist of the University of Bristol John Parkes, “[a]ll the laws of chemistry tell you that complex molecules in the spores should have degraded to very simple compounds such as carbon dioxide” in that amount of time,¹⁰ and yet the bacterium’s DNA was still intact. Further, the “Lazarus” bacterium actually revived in spite of its supposed great age. Not only was the bacterium revived, but analysis of its DNA indicated that the bacterium is similar to modern bacteria—it had not evolved in “250 million years.”¹¹ Critics verified that the DNA of the bacterium does in fact match that of modern bacteria, but respond that “unless it can be shown that [the bacterium] evolves 5 to 10 times more slowly than other bacteria,” the researchers’ claims should be rejected.¹² So according to critics, the evidence does not match the “theoretical expectations for ancient DNA” predicted by the evolutionary model. Therefore, the bacterium cannot be ancient regardless of the evidence.¹³ Another plausible option: the bacterium is not 250 million years old.

#4: Human Population Statistics

Evolutionists argue that humans (i.e., the genus homo) have been on the Earth for roughly two to three million years. Using statistics, one can arrive at an estimate for how many people would be predicted to be on the Earth at different points in history. For example, accounting for factors such as war, disease, and famine, and assuming humans have been on the planet for only one million, rather than two to three million, years, we find that there should be 10^2,000 people on the planet today.¹⁴ There are, however, not even 10¹⁰ people on the Earth. In fact, if three-feet-tall humans with narrow shoulders were squeezed into the Universe like sardines, only 10⁸² people could fit into the entire Universe. It would take 10^1,918 (minus one) other Universes like ours to house that many humans.

It might be tempting to argue that the Earth could only sustain roughly 50 billion people, resource-wise, and therefore, all humans above that number would die off. If that were the case, however, there should be evidence that the Earth’s resource capacity had been met many times in the past in the form of billions upon billions of hominid fossils. Hominid fossils, however, are acknowledged to be “hard to come by.”¹⁵ In fact, “meager evidence” exists to attempt to substantiate the origin of the entire genus homo.¹⁶ Even after over a century of searching for homo fossils, one evolutionary scientist admitted several years ago, “The fossils that decorate our family tree are so scarce that there are still more scientists than specimens. The remarkable fact is that all the physical evidence we have for human evolution can still be placed, with room to spare, inside a single coffin.”¹⁷ Is belief in an old Earth reasonable or irrational? Ironically, if our calculations are adjusted based on the predictions of the biblical model, roughly 4,350 years ago¹⁸ a Flood ensued that wiped out man from the face of the Earth. If the planet then began to be repopulated by six people (namely the sons of Noah and their wives), statistics show that there should be roughly 6.7 to 8.1 billion people on the planet today. As of today, the U.S. Census Bureau documents that the world’s population is 7.5 billion people.¹⁹

#5: Carbon-14 in “Ancient” Fossils and Materials

At current rates, it takes 5,730 years for half of the radioactive element carbon-14 (C-14), from an organic sample like a bone or piece of wood, to break down into its daughter element, nitrogen-14. With such a “short” half-life, after 57,300 years (10 half-lives), less than 0.1% of the original C-14 atoms are left in any specimen. Current technology does not allow scientists to detect C-14 in specimens thought to be older than 60-100 thousand years in age—all of the measurable carbon-14 is gone.²⁰ If C-14 is detected in any uncontaminated specimen, therefore, the specimen cannot be older than 100,000 years (assuming, as evolutionists do, a constant nuclear decay rate of C-14 into nitrogen-14—an assumption which would not hold in the biblical Flood scenario). The discovery of C-14 in fossils that are believed to be 10s to 100s of millions of years old is, predictably, shocking to those who accept the conventional dating scheme and its underlying techniques. No matter how much care is taken to ensure that the specimens have not been contaminated, the fossils still reveal the presence of C-14. Fossilized wood from the Cenozoic era (up to 65 million years old, conventionally), fossilized wood, dinosaur fossils, and ammonite shells from the Mesozoic era (66-252 million years old, conventionally), and fossilized wood, reptiles, and sponges from the Paleozoic era (252-541 million years old) have been discovered with C-14 present.²¹ Similarly, coal from the Paleozoic era (thought to be 40-320 million years old), and even diamonds thought to be billions of years old, have yielded C-14 upon examination.²² It is notable that regardless of where the specimens are found in the geologic column, the C-14 ages all fall within the range of 10-60 thousand years old (again, assuming a constant nuclear decay rate). While one might predict that deeper in the strata would correspond to an older age, the depth in the strata does not appear to correlate to the measured age of the specimen, supporting the creationist contention that the entire fossil record and geologic column from the Paleozoic up into the Cenozoic era likely formed during the single year of the biblical Flood. The geologic column and fossil record are not a record of life through time, but of death during the Flood a few millennia ago.²³

#6: Soft Tissue/Blood Vessels in Dinosaur Fossils

The last uncontested dinosaur fossil is found in the Cretaceous period of the geologic column, below the K-Pg boundary that marks a mysterious extinction event that wiped out some 70% of the planet’s species. The dinosaur era (i.e., the Mesozoic) extends from roughly 252 million years ago to the K-Pg boundary, roughly 65-66 million years ago according to the evolutionary timescale. Obviously, no flesh could conceivably survive 100,000 years without decay, much less one million years, much less 65 million years, much less 200 million years. As of 2005, however, many dinosaur fossils have been “cracked open” and studied, only to find collagen and blood vessels with red blood cells intact, original proteins, and soft, stretchy, flexible tissue. The list has grown to include T-rex, hadrosaur, mosasaur, triceratops, thescelosaurus, psittacosaurus, archaeopteryx, and seismosaur fossils.²⁴ While certain sterile conditions could conceivably preserve organic remains for hundreds or thousands of years, the fossils being studied were not discovered in sterile, laboratory environments, but rather harsh environments like the mid-western U.S., with large temperature differentials, erratic weather, and climate conditions that accelerate decay. No reasonable explanation has been offered, and yet the evidence has continued to mount.²⁵ The most plausible explanation is that the geologic strata that host the dinosaurs do not date to 66+ million years ago, but rather, to a few thousand years ago.

#7: Human/Dinosaur Co-existence

According to the evolutionary, old-Earth timeline, dinosaurs went extinct some 65 to 66 million years ago. Modern-day mammals and many other living organisms did not yet exist, since they are not found in the strata that house the dinosaurs. Humans (i.e., the genus homo) only arrived on the scene two to three million years ago according to that paradigm. No human, therefore, ever saw a dinosaur. If, however, evidence was discovered that proves humans and dinosaurs in fact co-existed in the recent past, then the evolutionary timeline telescopes down millions of years and the geologic strata in which the dinosaurs are found are shown to represent a time period in the not-too-distant past. Sure enough, physical, historical, and biblical evidences are available to substantiate the co-existence of humans and dinosaurs in the recent past.²⁶

Geology

#8: Tightly Folded Rock Strata

If the rock layers of the geologic column represent millions of years of slow accumulation, lithification, and erosion, one would expect the layers beneath the surface layer to be “brittle,” as rock layers are today. Plate movement would, therefore, result in the fracturing of those rock layers, rather than bending them—rocks do not bend, but rather, break. In several places on the Earth, however, rock layers have been discovered that are bent and folded at radical angles without fracturing (e.g., the Tapeats Sandstone and Muav Limestone of the Grand Canyon²⁷). These thick layers of sediment that eventually lithified—representing millions of years of time, conventionally—must have been laid down rapidly and had not yet had enough time to lithify before being bent by the rapid plate movement predicted to occur during the Flood.

#9: Rapid “Slow” Processes

Any old-Earth/evolutionary dating technique relies on the uniformitarian assumption: whatever processes we witness occurring today must be used to explain the past. If petrifying a tree, forming oil, carving a canyon, transforming the parent isotopes of a radioactive rock into their daughter elements, or moving a continent several miles would take millions of years at the lithification, transformation, erosion, decay, and “drift” rates we see today, then the Earth must be at least millions of years old. If, however, each of these processes are shown to occur rapidly under catastrophic conditions (as predicted by the young-Earth biblical model), then those processes cannot be used to prove an old Earth. Sure enough, as creationists have predicted would be the case, each of these processes has been empirically verified as occurring rapidly under catastrophic conditions like those of the biblical Flood model. Petrification has been found to be able to occur in mere months to a few years under catastrophic conditions.²⁸ Oil has been shown to form in hundreds to thousands of years.²⁹ The rapid carving of canyons has been verified to occur under catastrophic conditions as well.³⁰ Studies have verified that the nuclear decay rates of radioactive materials can be accelerated under catastrophic conditions,³¹ and evidence for the rapid movement in the past of the plates upon which the continents reside has been verified as well.³² If each of the chronometers that are said to prove “old” ages of the Earth is contradicted by the evidence, then where is the evidence of an old Earth?

#10: Amount of Salt in the Sea

Ocean water is salty. Each year, hundreds of millions of tons of sodium are added to the oceans and only about 27% of it is removed by other processes, leaving an annual accumulation of 336 million tons of sodium.³³ Starting with a zero sodium content in the sea and using the old-Earth assumption of uniformitarianism, the current concentration of sodium in the ocean would be reached in only 42 million years. According to the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, however, the ocean is 3.8 billion years old.³⁴ The response to this fact, as must be the case in other examples in this list, would obviously be that accumulation and/or dissemination rates must have been different in the past. The average salt accumulation, however, would have to be over 90 times slower than present rates in order to accommodate the alleged age of the ocean. This conjecture simply does not hold up under scrutiny and, even if it did, it would merely prove the creationist contention that uniformitarianism is not a reliable assumption. Present processes are not the key to understanding the past and, therefore, no old-age dating technique can be trusted, since they all rely on uniformitarianism. Since the Flood happened, catastrophism, not uniformitarianism, is a more reasonable assumption in interpreting physical evidence. Intimately tied to catastrophism are rapid processes and, therefore, young ages.

#11: Amount of Sediment on the Sea Floor

As water and wind scour the continents each year, 20 billion tons of material is estimated to be deposited in the oceans.³⁵ As the tectonic plates of the Earth move, subduction occurs, with one plate slowly diving under another towards the mantle. One billion tons of material is estimated to be removed from the sea floor each year from that process,³⁶ leaving 19 billion tons of sediment accumulating each year on the ocean floor. On average, the sediment thickness on the ocean floor is 1,500 feet.³⁷ Based on the current rate of sediment deposition, however (i.e., assuming uniformitarianism once again), the sediment on the ocean floor would accumulate in only a small fraction of the alleged 3.8 billion year age of the ocean (i.e., 0.5% or 19 million years).³⁸ The average annual sediment accumulation would have to be 197 times smaller to match an ocean age of 3.8 billion years. The amount of sediment on the sea floor simply does not support a billions-of-years-old ocean, but fits well with a young Earth when the accelerated erosion rates during and immediately after the Flood are accounted for.

#12: Lack of Erosion Evidence Between Strata

When making a multi-layer cake, the adjoining surface between layers is smooth. If you made your cake outside over several weeks, waiting several days between new layers and leaving the cake open to the elements in the meantime, the surface of each layer would exhibit the indicators of time—decay, loss of cake from scavengers, erosion from rain water, etc. Similarly, if geologic strata are formed over millions of years, the surface between adjoining layers would not be smooth, but would exhibit proof of time passing in the form of, for instance, erosional and depositional surfaces. However, the layers, by and large (e.g., at the Grand Canyon), display smooth contact surfaces—indicating rapid deposition without enough time for erosion.³⁹ Those surfaces which show evidence of erosion match the type of erosion that would be predicted if the lower surface had not yet lithified when a rapid erosion event occurred above the surface, prior to further rapid deposition. Bottom line: the Grand Canyon exhibits evidence of a young Earth.

#13: Helium in Zircon Crystals

Zircon crystals are considered to be some of the oldest minerals on Earth—thought to be billions of years old. They are very hard and resistant to deterioration, and are also able to preserve their contents well, making them safer from contamination. Within zircon crystals, a portion of the zirconium atoms are replaced by uranium while the crystals grow. As radioactive uranium-238 decays into its daughter element, lead-206, alpha particles are released that combine with nearby electrons. Helium is subsequently formed, which can then be detected in zircon crystals. While zircon crystals are able to preserve their contents well, helium is known to behave as a “slippery” material. Helium atoms are small and are in constant motion as gas particles. They are, therefore, hard to contain, and they diffuse quickly.⁴⁰ Upon examination of zircon crystals that are thought to be 1.5 billion years old, however, scientists have discovered the presence of unusually high concentrations of helium.⁴¹ If the crystals were billions of years old, the helium should have been diffused from the crystals and released into the atmosphere, since high concentrations of helium can only be sustained, theoretically, for a few thousand years without significant diffusion. The presence of high concentrations of helium illustrates the fact that at some point(s) in the relatively recent past, the nuclear decay rate of uranium-238 was accelerated, producing larger amounts of helium that have not yet had time to diffuse. If radioactive decay rates were accelerated at some point in the past (e.g., during the Flood), then radioactive materials will appear deceptively old, while actually being relatively young.

#14:  “Orphan” Radiohalos

As a radioactive atom of uranium decays into polonium within a solid crystalline material, alpha particles are released and “halos”⁴² form, marking the different stages of nuclear decay. Parentless radiohalos, however, are found in many granitic rocks, implying accelerated nuclear decay in the past and a young age for the Earth.⁴³

#15: Clastic Dikes

In sedimentary rock strata, open fractures often exist, and in some cases, other sedimentary material is injected into those cracks at a later time, filling them with a different type of sedimentary rock. These are called clastic dikes. The Ute Pass fault, west of Colorado Springs, for example, exhibits over 200 sandstone dikes, some of which are miles in length. The dikes are comprised of Cambrian Sawatch sandstone (allegedly 500 million years old) that injected rock from the Cretaceous period (allegedly 65-66 million years old).⁴⁴ Is it reasonable to presume that 500-million-year-old sediment remained unlithified for over 400 million years while Ordovician, Silurian, Devonian, Carboniferous, Permian, Triassic, Jurassic, and Cretaceous strata were laid down on top of it before intruding into the Cretaceous strata? Or is it more reasonable to infer that the layers of the geologic column from the Cambrian to the Cretaceous were laid down rapidly on top of one another during a global, aqueous catastrophe before they had lithified? Then, during the rapid uplift of the Rocky Mountains later in the Flood, the Cambrian Sawatch material was injected through the overlying layers forming the clastic dikes of the Ute Pass. Bottom line: the geologic column was formed rapidly—the Earth is young.

Astronomy/Astrophysics/Geophysics

#16: Faint Young Sun Paradox

As the hydrogen within the Sun fuses into helium, the Sun gradually increases in temperature. Calculations show that (at current rates) 3.5 billion years ago, the Sun would have been 25% dimmer and would have heated the Earth less, dropping Earth’s temperature some 31^oF. Earth would have been below freezing!⁴⁵ According to contemporary thinking, however, Earth, initially molten, was hotter, not colder, prior to 3.5 billion years ago, and was gradually cooling, not heating up.⁴⁶ Not only is there no evidence that Earth was ever frozen, but if it had been frozen 3.5 billion years ago and beyond, according to evolutionists, life could not emerge 3.5-4 billion years ago since it relies on liquid water.

#17: Rapid Decay Rate of Earth’s Magnetic Field

Scientists have been measuring the strength of the Earth’s magnetic field with precision since 1835. The magnetic field is decaying at an exponential rate with a half-life of roughly 1,100 years.⁴⁷ By implication, when we follow the exponential function back in history, doubling the Earth’s magnetic field intensity every 1,100 years, we reach a point 30,000 years ago when the Earth’s magnetic field strength would have been comparable to that of a neutron star,⁴⁸ creating immense heat that would have prohibited life from existing and possibly even compromised the internal structure of the Earth. The Earth cannot be millions of years old.

#18: Lunar Recession Rate

The Moon is presently moving away from the Earth at a rate of approximately 4 cm per year.⁴⁹ The recession rate is not linear. As the Moon moves further from the Earth, it recedes slower. Based on the equation that describes the Moon’s recession rate, scientists can calculate where the Moon would have been compared to the Earth at different times in history. For example, 6,000 years ago, the Moon would have been 750 feet closer to the Earth than it is today—resulting in little effect on the Earth. If, however, the Moon has the contemporary age of 4.5 billion years old, there is a significant problem, because 1.55 billion years ago the Moon would have been touching the Earth.⁵⁰ It would be physically impossible, therefore, for the Moon to be older than 1.55 billion years old based on the known recession rate of the Moon. In response, those who wish to maintain the contemporary belief in deep time must argue that present recession rates did not hold in the past.⁵¹ In so doing, however, they abandon uniformitarian thinking (i.e., “the present is the key to the past”) which undergirds every deep time dating technique. They are, therefore, once again admitting that every evolutionary dating technique is suspect and does not prove an old Earth.

#19: Atmospheric Helium Content

Helium is gradually accumulating in the Earth’s atmosphere as radioactive isotopes beneath the Earth’s surface decay, emitting alpha particles that attract electrons and form helium. The amount of helium in the atmosphere has been measured, the rate at which helium is introduced in the atmosphere has been measured, and the theoretical rate of helium release to space has been calculated as well. Using the typical old-Earth assumption of uniformity over time, it is easy to calculate an upper limit on the age of the atmosphere. The atmosphere can be no older than two million years—as opposed to the alleged age of 4.5 billion years.⁵²

#20: Spiral Galaxies

Earth is located in the Milky Way Galaxy—a spiral galaxy. According to the Big Bang model, galaxies began forming within a billion years after the Big Bang, making many of them over 12 billion years old. Of all of the galaxies that scientists have observed, some 77 percent of them are spiral galaxies.⁵³ The oldest spiral galaxy is thought to be roughly 11 billion years old.⁵⁴ If you have ever sprinkled cinnamon on a hot, foamy drink and then stirred the drink with a straw or stick, you will notice the formation of the characteristic spiral galaxy shape. You may also notice that the portion of the spiral that is closer to the center rotates faster than the portion of the spiral that is close to the edge of the cup. That “differential rotation” causes the arms of the spiral to begin blurring closer to the center of the spiral over time. After a few rotations, the center of the spiral is no longer recognizable. Similarly, spiral galaxies are spinning slowly. If spiral galaxies are as old as is claimed by secular cosmologists, after a few hundred million years the arms of the spirals should no longer be recognizable—and yet many of them are. Space.com admits: “The exact mechanism for the formation of the spiral arms continues to puzzle scientists. If they were permanent features of the galaxy, they would soon wind up tightly and disappear in less than a billion years.”⁵⁵ Apparently, the observational evidence does not harmonize with the deep time proposition of the Big Bang model.

#21: Comet Contradiction

The solar system is comprised of hundreds of thousands of objects that are orbiting the Sun. Over 3,000 of those objects are comets.⁵⁶ Comets are balls of ice and dirt moving through space in elliptical orbits around the Sun. They are believed to be “leftovers from the material that initially formed the solar system about 4.6 billion years ago.”⁵⁷ As comets in their orbit move close to the Sun, solar winds and radiation from the Sun “blow” material from the comet, creating the characteristic tail we observe. Since material is removed from a comet with each cycle around the Sun, obviously the comet will eventually disintegrate—completely sublimating. The typical lifespan of a comet is 10,000 years.⁵⁸ How, then, can the solar system be 4.6 billion years old if thousands of comets—thought to have formed when the solar system formed—are still orbiting the Sun? Scientists speculate the existence of a source for new comets that lies outside of the solar system, but no observational evidence has substantiated that claim. The biblical model, of course, provides a plausible explanation that harmonizes with the evidence: the solar system is less than 10,000 years old.

Conclusion

This list is but a small sample of the available evidences for a young Earth. Keep in mind that the assumption of uniformitarianism undergirds many of the arguments in this list. Uniformitarianism is a fundamental assumption of evolutionary dating techniques, not of the biblical Creation model. The creationist would argue that uniformitarianism is extremely unreliable due to the effects of catastrophic phenomena (especially that of the Flood; cf. 2 Peter 3:3-6). The biblical Creation perspective advocates, instead, catastrophism as the reliable way to interpret scientific evidence from the past. By illustrating that uniformitarianism simultaneously proves a young Earth (according to the examples above) and disproves a young Earth (according to standard evolutionary dating techniques), the unreliability of uniformitarianism is substantiated. The old-Earth advocate is forced to abandon uniformitarianism, or be guilty of holding to it blindly without evidence of its reliability. In abandoning uniformitarianism, however, the person who believes in an old Earth has now yielded his primary evidence for an old Earth and must embrace the contention that one simply cannot know the age of the Earth using science. We would concur with that conclusion, but remind the old-Earth advocate that while science cannot provide the age of the Earth, there is another source of information that can provide its age. Recall the first point in our list: since we can know that the Bible is from God, what it says is true. It gives us enough information to know the relative age of the Earth, on the order of thousands, not billions, of years.

There is never a reason to doubt the Bible. True science will always support it. If the Bible indicates that the Earth is young, then a fair, thorough assessment of the evidence will substantiate that truth, even if assessing the evidence requires time and effort. That evidence is readily available.

Endnotes

¹ For a response to old-Earth dating techniques, see Jeff Miller (2013), “Don’t Assume Too Much: Not All Assumptions in Science Are Bad,” Reason & Revelation, 33[6]:62-70.

² Eric Lyons (2011), “Common Sense, Miracles, and the Apparent Age of the Earth,” Reason & Revelation, 31[8]77-80.

³ In radioactive decay, a radioactive element (the parent) decays into another element (the daughter) over time. When dating a rock, geologists assume that there was initially no daughter elements present in the rock—only parent elements when the decay began. That assumption is then used to determine, at today’s decay rates, how long it would take for the rock to have the quantity of daughter element that it currently contains.

⁴ Kyle Butt (2007), Behold! The Word of God (Montgomery, AL: Apologetics Press).

⁵ Assuming the Masoretic text is correct (as opposed to the Septuagint or Samaritan Pentateuch).

⁶ Unless Adam had Seth on Adam’s birthday, Seth had Enosh on Seth’s birthday, Enosh had Cainan on Enosh’s birthday, etc., each patriarch’s age is being rounded by, potentially, a few months.

⁷ Eric Lyons (2002), “When Did Terah Beget Abraham?” Apologetics Press, http://apologeticspress.org/apcontent.aspx?category=13&article=624.

⁸ The genealogy terminology of Genesis 11 is not precisely the same as that of Genesis 5. As highlighted in Lyons, 2002, the patriarch years before the birth of the next patriarch could refer to the number of years up to the firstborn son (similar to Moses’ terminology in the same context concerning Shem and Abram). If so, then the number of years between the firstborn’s birth and the ancestor of Christ listed is unknown. If each patriarch listed is a firstborn son, then simple math yields roughly 390 years from Shem to the birth of Abram, Nahor, and Haran. If, however, there is a span of time between the date of the firstborn son and the actual ancestor of Christ (who may not have been the firstborn), the time between Shem and Terah’s sons grows. As an upper limit, if every patriarch in Genesis 11 continued to live to 900 years (like the patriarchs of the pre-Flood world, Genesis 5), then the “missing” years add up to a potential addition of 4,410 years (an extreme, unlikely scenario). Upper and lower limits, therefore, are placed on the potential length of time between the Flood and the birth of Terah’s children: between 390 and 4,800 years.

⁹ Michael J. Oard and Hank Giesecke (2007), “Polystrate Fossils Require Rapid Deposition,” CRS Quarterly, 43[3]:232-240, March; John Morris (2011), The Young Earth (Green Forest, AR: Master Books), pp. 102-105; Andrew Snelling (1995), “The Whale Fossil in Diatomite, Lompoc, California,” Creation Ex Nihilo Technical Journal, 9[2]:244-258.

¹⁰ As quoted in Andy Coghlan (2000), “Eternal Life,” New Scientist, Online, October 18, https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn82-eternal-life/.

¹¹ Russell Vreeland, William Rosenzweig, and Dennis Powers (2000), “Isolation of a 250 Million-Year-Old Halotolerant Bacterium from a Primary Salt Crystal,” Nature, 407:897-900, October 19.

¹² D.C. Nickle, G.H. Learn, M.W. Rain, J.I. Mullins, and J.E. Mittler (2002), “Curiously Modern DNA for a ‘250 Million-Year-Old’ Bacterium,” Journal of Molecular Evolution, 54[1]:134-137.

¹³ Ibid.

¹⁴ Jeff Miller (2011), “Population Statistics and a Young Earth,” Reason & Revelation, 31[5]:41-47, http://apologeticspress.org/pub_rar/31_5/1105w.pdf.

¹⁵ Mariette DiChristina (2012), “The Story Begins,” Scientific American, 306[4]:4, April.

¹⁶ Kate Wong (2012), “First of Our Kind,” Scientific American, 306[4]:31, April.

¹⁷ Lyall Watson (1982), “The Water People,” Science Digest, 90[5]:44, May.

¹⁸ Keep in mind that the Flood could have been a few hundred years further back in history than 4,300 years ago.

¹⁹ “U.S. and World Population Clock” (2018), United States Census Bureau, November 2, https://www.census.gov/popclock/.

²⁰ Sarah Zielinski (2008), “Showing Their Age,” Smithsonian Magazine.com, July, https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/showing-their-age-62874/.

²¹ Andrew Snelling (2011), “Carbon-14 in Fossils and Diamonds,” Answers Magazine, Online, January 1, https://answersingenesis.org/geology/carbon-14/carbon-14-in-fossils-and-diamonds/; Brian Thomas and Vance Nelson (2015), “Radiocarbon in Dinosaur and Other Fossils,” Creation Research Society Quarterly, 51[4]:299-311.

²² Don DeYoung (2008), Thousands…Not Billions (Green Forest, AR: Master Books), pp. 45-62.

²³ Note that radiocarbon dating does, in fact, sometimes result in ages of materials that exceed 10,000 years. Radiocarbon dating, however, is understood to be suspect for objects thought to be older than a few thousand years [cf. George H. Michaels and Brian Fagan (2013), “Chronological Methods 8—Radiocarbon Dating,” University of California Santa Barbara Instructional Development, http://archserve.id.ucsb.edu/courses/anth/fagan/anth3/Courseware/Chronolo-gy/08_Radiocarbon_Dating.html]. Further, biblical creationists argue that radioactive decay rates were  apparently accelerated during the Flood and afterward, possibly up to 1,500-1,000 B.C., making all dating techniques unreliable for ages beyond that time. See DeYoung for evidence of accelerated radioactive decay in the past.

²⁴ Kevin Anderson (2017), Echoes of the Jurassic (Chino Valley, AZ: CRS Books); Brian Thomas (2015), “Solid Answers on Soft Tissue,” Answers Magazine Online, January 1, https://answersingenesis.org/dinosaurs/when-did-dinosaurs-live/solid-answers-soft-tissue/.

²⁵ Cf. Creation Research Society Quarterly (2015), 51[4] and Anderson for in-depth discussion and responses to proposed explanations.

²⁶ Eric Lyons and Kyle Butt (2008), The Dinosaur Delusion (Montgomery, AL: Apologetics Press).

²⁷ Andrew A. Snelling, “Rock Layers Folded, Not Fractured,” Answers 4, No. 2 (April-June 2009):80-83; Morris, pp. 108-113.

²⁸ H. Akahane, et al. (2004), “Rapid Wood Silicification in Hot Spring Water: An Explanation of Silicification of Wood During the Earth’s History,” Sedimentary Geology 169(3-4):219-228, July 15; Alan Channing, Alan and Dianne Edwards (2004), “Experimental Taphonomy: Silicification of Plants in Yellowstone Hot-Spring Environments,” Transactions of the Royal Society of Edinburgh: Earth Sciences, 94:503-521, http://www.rcn.montana.edu/Publications/Pdf/2004/ChanningEdwards%202004%20Experimental%20taphonomy.pdf.

²⁹ Borys M. Didyk and Bernd R.T. Simoneit (1989), “Hydrothermal Oil of Guaymas Basin and Implications for Petroleum Formation Mechanisms,” Nature, 342:65-69, November 2.

³⁰ John Morris and Steven Austin (2003), Footprints in the Ash (Green Forest, AR: Master Books), pp. 74-76; “A Geologic Catastrophy” (2005), Glacial Lake Missoula and the Ice Age Floods, http://www.glaciallakemissoula.org/story.html; James O’Connor and Richard Waitt (1995), “Beyond the Channeled Scabland,” Oregon Geology, 57[5]:100-103, https://www.oregongeology.org/pubs/og/ogv57n05.pdf; Michelle Roberts (2007), “Texas Set to Open New Canyon to Public,” Canyon Lake Gorge, The Associated Press, October 5, https://www.canyonlakeguide.com/helpful_info/gorge.htm; Sigrid Sanders, et al. (2017), “Providence Canyon,” New Georgia Encyclopedia Online, July 26, http://www.georgiaencyclopedia.org/articles/geography-environment/providence-canyon.

³¹ Steve Reucroft and J. Swain (2009), “Ultrasonic Cavitation of Water Speeds Up Thorium Decay,” CERN Courier, June 8, http://cerncourier.com/cws/article/cern/39158; Cf. DeYoung.

³² Ross Mitchell, David Evans, and Taylor Kilian (2010), “Rapid Early Cambrian Rotation of Gondwana,” Geology, 38[8]:755-758; Paul Garner (2011), The New Creationism (Carlisle, PA: EP Books), pp. 187-189.

³³ Steven Austin and D. Russell Humphreys (1990), “The Sea’s Missing Salt: A Dilemma for Evolutionists,” Proceedings of the Second International Conference on Creationism, ed. R.E. Walsh and C.L. Brooks (Pittsburgh, PA: Creation Science Fellowship), 2:17-33.

³⁴ “Why Do We Have Oceans?” (no date), National Ocean Service, https://oceanservice.noaa.gov/facts/why_oceans.html.

³⁵ John Milliman and James Syvitski, “Geomorphic/Tectonic Control of Sediment Discharge to the Ocean: The Importance of Small Mountainous Rivers,” The Journal of Geology, 100 (1992): 525-544.

³⁶ William Hay, James Sloan II, and Christopher Wold (1998), “Mass/Age Distribution and Composition of Sediments on the Ocean Floor and the Global Rate of Sediment Subduction,” Journal of Geophysical Research, 93[B12]: 14,933-14,940.

³⁷ “Deep-Sea Sediments” (2018), Encyclopaedia Britannica Online, https://www.britannica.com/science/ocean-basin/Deep-sea-sediments.

³⁸ NOTE: One ft³ wet gravel is approximately 126.1 pounds, and the surface area of the ocean is roughly 139 million square miles. The total weight of the sediment on the ocean floor is, therefore, 3.665(10¹⁷) tons.

³⁹ Steven Austin (1994), Grand Canyon: Monument to Catastrophe (Santee, CA: Institute for Creation Research), pp 42-43.

⁴⁰ Consider a child’s helium balloon. The helium, being “slippery,” gradually escapes the balloon, but it does so through the rubber itself, not through the knot at the base of the balloon.

⁴¹ DeYoung, pp. 65-78.

⁴² Rings of color that surround a radioactive mineral.

⁴³ DeYoung, pp. 93-95.

⁴⁴ Steven Austin and John Morris (1986), “Tight Fold and Clastic Dikes as Evidence for Rapid Deposition and Deformation of Two Very Thick Stratigraphic Sequences,” First International Conference on Creationism, ed. R.E. Walsh, C.L. Brooks, and R.S. Crowell (Pittsburgh, PA: Creation Science Fellowship), pp. 3-13, http://static.icr.org/i/pdf/technical/Tight-Fold-and-Clastic-Dikes-Rapid-Deposition-Deformation.pdf.

⁴⁵ Danny Faulkner (2012), “#4 Faint Sun Paradox,” Answers Magazine Online, October 1, https://answersingenesis.org/astronomy/sun/4-faint-sun-paradox/.

⁴⁶ Eric McLamb (2011), “Earth’s Beginnings: The Origins of Life,” Ecology Online, September 11, http://www.ecology.com/2011/09/10/earths-beginnings-origins-life/; Karina Shah (2021), “Signs That Earth Was Once Almost Entirely Molton Found in Ancient Rock,” New Scientists, March 12, www.newscientist.com/article/2271279-signs-that-earth-was-once-almost-entirely-molton-found-in-ancient-rock/.

⁴⁷ D.R. Humphreys (2016), Earth’s Mysterious Magnetism and that of Other Celestial Orbs (Chino Valley, AZ: Creation Research Society), p. 57.

⁴⁸ Earth’s magnetic field strength is roughly 0.5 G at the surface, while a neutron star’s magnetic field strength is at least 10⁸ G [“Earth’s Magnetic Field” (2018), Harvard Natural Sciences Lecture Demonstrations, Harvard University, https://sciencedemonstrations.fas.harvard.edu/presentations/earths-magnetic-field; A. Reisenegger (2003), “Origin and Evolution of Neutron Star Magnetic Fields,” International Workshop on Strong Magnetic Fields and Neutron Stars, http://www.if.ufrgs.br/hadrons/reisenegger1.pdf.].

⁴⁹ David Powell (2007), “Earth’s Moon Destined to Disintegrate,” Space.com, January 22, https://www.space.com/3373-earth-moon-destined-disintegrate.html.

⁵⁰ Don DeYoung (2008), “Tides and the Creation Worldview,” Creation Research Society Quarterly, 45[2]:100-108.

⁵¹ E.g., F.R. Stephenson, “Tidal Recession of the Moon from Ancient and Modern Data,” Journal of the British Astronomical Association, 91:141, http://adsbit.harvard.edu/full/seri/JBAA./0091//0000136.000.html.

⁵² Larry Vardiman (1990), The Age of the Earth’s Atmosphere (El Cajon, CA: Institute for Creation Research).

⁵³ Nola Taylor Redd (2013), “Spiral Galaxy Facts & Definition,” Space.com, August 15, https://www.space.com/22382-spiral-galaxy.html.

⁵⁴ Calla Cofield (2017), “Oldest Spiral Galaxy Ever Seen May Reveal Secrets About the Milky Way,” Space.com, November 7, https://www.space.com/38690-oldest-spiral-galaxy-ever-seen-detected.html.

⁵⁵ Redd, emp. added.

⁵⁶ “Solar System Profile” (2018), ThePlanets.org, https://theplanets.org/solar-system/.

⁵⁷ Charles Choi (2017), “Comets: Facts About the ‘Dirty Snowballs’ of Space,” Space.com, October 23, https://www.space.com/53-comets-formation-discovery-and-exploration.html.

⁵⁸ “How Long Does it Take for Comets to ‘Melt’?” (2013), TheNakedScientists.com, April 4, https://www.thenakedscientists.com/articles/questions/how-long-does-it-take-comets-melt.

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Evolutionist Richard Dawkins admitted the weakness of radiocarbon dating when he said, “It is useful for dating organic material where we are dealing in hundreds or a few thousands of years, but it is no good for the evolutionary timescale where we are dealing in millions of years.” Even the inventor of carbon-14 dating, W.F. Libby, acknowledged that it is not an accurate way of dating things past a few thousand years old. Simply put, radiocarbon dating can never be used to get accurate ages measured in millions or billions of years.

In addition, carbon-14 dating has been shown to be far from perfect in measuring organic material. Seals that were freshly killed have been dated at 1,300 years old. Also, when scientists tested two parts of a frozen musk ox found in Fairbanks, Alaska, two vastly different dates were given. Radiocarbon testing falsely showed that one part of the musk ox was 24,000 years old, while another part was only 7,200 years old. Obviously, carbon-14 dating cannot accurately render dates for the age of the Earth in billions of years. The truth is, it has trouble even with items measured in hundreds or thousands of years.

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But, before we start this study on dating methods, you have the right to ask a very valid question: “Why does the age of the Earth matter?” The answer is simple. The Bible presents evidence to establish that the Earth is only a few thousand years old. Most scientists suggest that it is billions of years old. If the dating methods these scientists use are right, then the Bible is wrong. However, if the dating methods that give billions of years are wrong, then the Bible remains the inspired Word of God that can be trusted. 

According to evolutionists, in order for evolution to occur, the Earth must be very old. (Of course, evolution could not occur regardless of how old the Earth is.) In Darwin’s day, many scientists thought that 20 million years would be enough time. But as scientists began to discover the design of the Universe, it soon became evident that the time would have to be increased by billions of years. How many more billions will scientists have to add in the future? In order to “prove” that these billions of years actually occurred, certain dating methods have been invented to calculate the Earth’s age. If you have taken Earth Science in school, then you have studied the different ways that scientists “date” the rocks and other materials of the Earth. The goal of this issue of Discovery is to show (without going into technical details) that the dating methods yielding billions of years have serious flaws in them.

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Modern ways of dating rocks are supposed to be able to give ages in the billions of years. These are the radiometric dating methods. Each of these methods is based upon the decay rate of certain elements. In one method, for instance, the element uranium-238 will break down into the element lead over a period of many years. The element that breaks down (in this case, uranium-238) is called the parent element. The element that is formed (in this case, lead) is called the daughter element. How long is this supposed to take? In the case of uranium and lead, the half-life is supposed to be 4.5 billion years. A half-life is simply the time that it takes for half of a sample of the parent element to turn into the daughter element. For instance, if you have 50 ounces of uranium, then in 4.5 billion years you supposedly should have 25 ounces of uranium and about that many ounces of lead. Therefore, if you know the rate of decay for an element, once you measure the amount of the two elements in the rock sample, simple math should give you an age for the rock. However, there are certain things that scientists must assume in order for radiometric dating to work. Let’s look at those assumptions.

Assumption 1: The Rate of Decay Has Always Been the Same

The first major assumption built into radiometric dating is the idea that the parent elements have decayed in the past at the exact same rate as they are decaying today. This idea has problems, because no one alive today knows what kind of environment existed in the distant past. We cannot claim to know how fast elements decayed in the past, because we have very little evidence to prove this idea (which is why it is an assumption). Let’s consider how badly this idea could alter the age of the Earth. Suppose you come upon a man who is cutting down trees in a forest. You watch him for an entire hour, and he cuts down only one tree. Then you count the number of trees he has cut—31 in all. If you assume that he has been cutting trees down at the same rate, then you calculate that he has chopped for 31 hours. However, when you talk to the man, he tells you that, earlier in the day when his ax was sharp and his stomach was full, he was cutting down five trees an hour; only in the last hour had he slacked off. With this information, you now understand that he worked for only seven hours, not 31. Claiming that the decay rates in the past were the same as they are now is an assumption that cannot be proven and should not be granted to those who want an age for the Earth measured in billions of years.

Assumption 2: Elements Have Not Been Affected by Outside Forces

Another assumption built into the radiometric dating methods is the idea that the elements have not been affected by outside forces. That means that no water has soaked through the sample and “carried away” some of the lead, or that none of the uranium had a chance to escape through holes in the rock. However, this is a huge assumption. How can a person claim that natural forces have not affected the elements in a rock for a period of billions of years? In 4.5 billion years, could it be slightly possible that water seeped through the sample and added or subtracted some lead or uranium? Furthermore, could there be an “outside chance” that some of the uranium seeped out of pores in the rock? If any rock were really 4.5 billion years old, no one in this world would have a clue what had or had not gone in or out of the rock over that vast amount of time. Once again, the assumption that certain rock samples are “closed systems” simply cannot be granted.

Assumption 3: No Daughter Element Existed at the Beginning

To date rocks using any radiometric dating system, a person must assume that the daughter element in the sample was not there in the beginning. However, that claim cannot be proven. Who is to say that the rock did not start out with 23 ounces of lead already in it? The lead could have been in the rock from the beginning (and so could the uranium). To illustrate this point, suppose you go to a swimming pool and find a hose that is pumping water into the pool at a rate of 100 gallons an hour. You discover that the pool has 3,000 gallons of water in it. You calculate that the hose must have been running for 30 hours. However, when you ask the owner of the pool how long she has been running the hose, she tells you that she has been running it for only one hour. Most of the water was already in the pool due to a heavy rain the night before. If you assumed that all the water came from the hose, your calculations would be way off—29 hours off to be exact. Assumption three, that no daughter element existed at the beginning, simply cannot be granted.

Another Problem with Radiometric Dating

Aerial view of one of the Hawaiian Islands

In addition to the assumptions that are built into radiometric dating, another problem is that the different radiometric methods drastically disagree with one another at times. On occasion, the same sample of rock can be dated by different methods, and the dates can differ by several hundred million years. Some rocks from Hawaii that were known to have formed about two hundred years ago rendered a date of 160 million to three billion years when dated by the potassium-argon method. Another time, the same basalt rock in Nigeria was given a date of 95 million years when dated by the potassium-argon method, and 750 million years when dated by the uranium-helium method. But what can you expect from dating methods that are based on unrealistic assumptions? Anything is possible!

It is likely that other dating methods soon will be “discovered” that will give even older ages for the Earth. But each dating method that renders colossal numbers of years will be based on similar, unprovable assumptions. Many books that you read or shows that you watch may tell you that the Earth is billions of years old. Realizing that these vast ages of billions of years come from dating methods that are based upon incorrect assumptions will give you more confidence in the Bible. There never have been billions of years available for evolution.

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Some people say that the Earth is really old because in Greenland we find ice sheets with hundreds of thousands of annual (yearly) ice layers. They also claim that in the oldest living Bristlecone pine trees we find more than 5,000 annual tree rings. Is the Bible wrong about the date of the Flood and Creation?

As with all old Earth dating methods, the techniques used to find the ages of ancient trees and glaciers rely on uniformitarianism (YOU-nuh-form-i-TARE-ee-an-ism)—the idea that all processes we see today have always gone on in the same way throughout time. Whether it is the decay of radioactive elements, the growth of tree rings, or the buildup of ice in a glacier, uniformitarianism is assumed. If uniformitarianism is false, however, and if instead the biblical Flood happened, the evidence agrees with the Bible.

If the Flood happened, an Ice Age would have probably followed due to the oceans being warmer and the summers being cooler for a few hundred years. In the Ice Age, the weather would have been perfect to create more than one “annual” tree ring in a single year, making the Bristlecone pines appear older than they are. Also, due to the conditions of the Ice Age, it is predicted that hundreds of “annual” layers of ice would form each year after the Flood for many years, making the glaciers appear to be older than they are as well. Even today, we see examples of more than one tree ring forming and more than one layer of ice forming in a single year when the conditions are right. The post-Flood Ice Age would have created just the right conditions.

Bristlecone Pine Tree	Wood Rings

Bottom line: if the Flood happened (and we know that it did), then the dating techniques used by evolutionists are wrong. Uniformitarianism is an incorrect assumption, and as we continue to observe the effects of catastrophic natural events like volcanoes, tsunamis, meteorites, and floods, even many of those who believe in an old Earth are beginning to agree. There is never a good reason to disbelieve what the Bible says. It has proven itself to be correct every time it has been tested over thousands of years.

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[EDITOR’S NOTE: A.P. auxiliary writer Dr. Rogers serves as an Associate Professor of Bible at Freed-Hardeman University. He holds an M.A. in New Testament from Freed-Hardeman University as well as an M.Phil. and Ph.D. in Hebraic, Judaic, and Cognate Studies from Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion.]

At the center of scientific inquiry is a desire to express free thought. “Go wherever your mind leads you” is the academic cry that hearkens back at least to the Enlightenment. For Bible believers, however, this mantra has its limits. If one’s pursuit of so-called “knowledge” leads him to deny the divinity of Christ or the existence of God, then he has become a victim of intellectual deceit. The philosophical constructs causing him to reach these conclusions must be reexamined if not rejected. Such is the case with many modern theories of universal origins. By eliminating God as the primal Cause, these theories operate under false pretenses, and thus can never reach the truth.

Many Christians working in the field of scientific cosmology seek to poach godless theories from modern science and work them into a model of biblical faith. We should applaud their efforts so long as they do not “go beyond what is written” (1 Corinthians 4:6). Unfortunately, some do go too far. In their desire to harmonize the biblical account with the scientific “necessity” of old-Earth creationism, they seek to read into the Bible concepts not clearly present. Rather than using divine inspiration to inform science, they prefer to impose modern scientific insight onto the Bible—an insight, it should be observed, the original readers of the Bible would not have understood.

WHAT IS GAP THEORY?

One example of the harmonistic approach between modern “science” and biblical faith is the so-called “Gap Theory.” Although there are numerous iterations of this idea, each of them suggests Genesis 1 contains a gap or multiple gaps in which can be squeezed the amount of time necessary to accommodate an Earth billions of years old. Although the biblical text does not require or even intimate such gaps, proponents of Gap Theory insist that the science requires it. In other words, they allow the tail to wag the dog, allowing “science” to trump plain biblical teaching.

Of course, for theists who claim to accept the biblical account of Creation, much is at stake. If Gap Theory is correct, then the Bible must be made to accommodate it. Since anyone with common sense and an English Bible would find it difficult to accept Gap Theory from the Genesis account alone, Gap theorists often transfer the debate to the mysterious world of Hebrew linguistics. Playing on the ignorance of the general Bible reader (and often revealing their own), Gap theorists insist the Hebrew terminology makes Gap Theory possible.

I must admit: when I first encountered the arguments from biblical Hebrew to defend Gap Theory, I was confused. Even liberal Bible scholars do not use linguistic arguments to deny the literal understanding of Genesis 1. James Barr, a world-renowned Old Testament scholar, writes,

So far as I know there is no professor of Hebrew or Old Testament at any world-class university who does not believe that the writer(s) [sic] of Genesis 1–11 intended to convey to their readers the ideas that (a) creation took place in a series of six days which were the same as the days of 24 hours we now experience; (b) the figures contained in the Genesis genealogies provide by simple addition a chronology from the beginning of the world up to the later stages of the Biblical story, and (c) Noah’s flood was understood to be worldwide, and to have extinguished all human and land animal life except for those in the ark (as quoted in Platinga, 2001, p. 217).

These reasons explain why critical biblical scholarship tends to discuss the genre of Genesis 1-11, that is, whether it is intended to be history or mythology, whether it is literal or symbolic, whether it contains any truth or some truth. The meaning of the words themselves, however, is under no major dispute. But Gap theorists maintain the Creation account is both historical and (apparently) incomprehensible (at least, without the “expert” guidance of the Gap theorist). They insist the key to unlocking Genesis 1 is not what it does say, but what it doesn’t say. What a strange method of interpretation.

WHAT GAP THEORISTS ALLEGE

There are two major linguistic arguments cited in favor of Gap Theory. First, Gap theorists begin by understanding the term bārā’ in Genesis 1 to mean “create” (from nothing), and ‘āsāh to mean “restore” (at a later time). The bārā’ creation marks the initial stage of Creation in which God set the world into motion by fiat. One of the earliest Gap theorists, George H. Pember, wrote over 100 years ago: “For we are told that in the beginning God created the heaven and the earth; but the Scriptures never affirm that He did this in the six days. The work of those days was…quite a different thing from the original creation: they were times of restoration, and the word asah [sic] is used in connection with them” (1907, pp. 22-23).

Within churches of Christ, John Clayton has been an active proponent of the insights of Gap Theory, although his actual position defies precise categorization. Thompson refers to it as the “modified Gap Theory,” although Clayton himself is rather coy about labeling his position (2000, pp. 281-296). Like others, Clayton also appeals to the Hebrew language to defend his version of the theory. Unfortunately, like the Gap theorists, he too states bārā’ is a miraculous creation from nothing, even going so far as to suggest Genesis 1:1 implies the “Big Bang” (Clayton, 2015, p. 90). Like the Gap theorists, Clayton also parrots the view that ‘āsāh means “reworking existing material” (2011, p. 207). If Clayton were to read the rest of the Hebrew Bible, or even the rest of Genesis, he would learn that his definitions are impossible to maintain (as we shall demonstrate).

By interpreting the Hebrew in this fashion, Gap theorists believe they can accommodate an Earth billions of years old without compromising the essential integrity of the Genesis account. The bārā’ stage of Creation occurs first (Genesis 1:1), and, after centuries or even billions of years, the ‘āsāh stage of Creation occurs (the “six days,” Genesis 1:2ff.). Unfortunately, Gap theorists focus their attention, so far as the Hebrew is concerned, principally on Genesis 1 and Exodus 20:11 (taken as proof of the ‘āsāh stage of Creation). Again, if they were to read the entire Hebrew Bible, however, they would learn their position to be linguistically untenable, as we shall demonstrate.

Second, Gap theorists allege the grammar of Genesis 1:2 implies a gap. Basically, three arguments are made from the Hebrew: (1) The Hebrew waw is disjunctive, and thus implies an interruption in the narration from what is reported in Genesis 1:1. This interruption signals a chronological “gap”; (2) The verb form “was” (hāy^etāh) should be translated “became,” signaling a new beginning beyond the bārā’ creation of Genesis 1:1; and (3) The nouns traditionally translated “without form and void” (tōhū vā-vōhū) imply a degeneration of the original Creation, and thus what follows is a re-creation.

We shall proceed to discuss and evaluate these Hebrew linguistic arguments, beginning first with the question of bārā’ and ‘āsāh, and then turning to the grammar of Genesis 1:2 specifically. In the course of our analysis, the linguistic evidence for the Gap Theory will be shown to be lacking.

THE VOCABULARY OF CREATION

The Genesis account uses no less than four terms to describe Creation. The terms best known are bārā’ (“create”) and ‘āsāh (“make”), although yātsar (“form”) and bānāh (“build”) are also found. Man is “formed” (yātsar) from the dirt (Genesis 2:7-8), and woman is “built” (bānāh) from man (Genesis 2:22). The bulk of attention, however, has centered around bārā’ and ‘āsāh, the most frequent of these four words in the Creation account. Gap theorists allege these terms refer to very different stages of Creation, billions of years apart. We shall see that, while this theory is attractive at the macro-level, the Hebrew terminology simply will not bear the burden of proof Gap theorists load upon it.

bārā’ and ‘āsāh

We should begin by noting that the Bible uses multiple terms to describe God’s creative activity. Across the Old Testament, in Hebrew and Aramaic, one can locate no less than 13 different terms for Creation! So Israelite Creation theology is not as simple as making a facile distinction between bārā’ and ‘āsāh. In fact, these terms are used interchangeably of God’s creative activity.

Even in the Genesis account itself, bārā’ and ‘āsāh are used together to summarize God’s creative work: “These are the generations of the heavens and the earth when they were created” (bārā’), that is, at the time when (literally, “in the day that”) Yahweh God made (‘āsāh)earth and heaven” (Genesis 2:4; translation mine). The careful reader will notice that the second half of this verse explains and completes the first. We have here what literary scholars call a chiasm, in which the sentence can be broken into two or more parts, and the various components of the sentence parallel one another in introverted fashion (for more on chiasm, see Dorsey, 1999). Allow me to illustrate:

These are the generations of…

a—the heavens and the earth
b—when they were created
b’—at the time when Yahweh God made
a’—the earth and the heavens

Notice that the first and final components (a and a’) are flipped, signaling the inverted nature of the verse, and they also highlight the verse’s synonymous parallelism (both halves convey exactly the same idea). Also note the parallelism of b and b’. The whole of the Creation narrative could be described by both Hebrew terms. So the forced distinction made by Gap theorists between bārā’ and ‘āsāh is already shown to be artificial in the Genesis account itself. But we can go further.

The terms bārā’ and ‘āsāh are routinely used in parallel with one another, both in Genesis and elsewhere in the Hebrew Bible.

• God both “created” (bārā’) and “made” (‘āsāh) Adam (Genesis 5:1).
• God will destroy man whom He has “created” (bārā’), along with every living thing, for He was sorry that He had “made” (‘āsāh) them (Genesis 6:7).
• The hand of God “has done” (‘āsāh) it, and God Himself “created” (bārā’) it (Isaiah 41:20).
• God has “created” (bārā’) and “made” (‘āsāh) for His glory (Isaiah 43:7).
• God has “made” (‘āsāh) Earth and “created” (bārā’) man on it (Isaiah 45:12).
• God “made” (‘āsāh) and “created” (bārā’) the Earth (Isaiah 45:18).
• God “creates” (bārā’) wind and “makes” (‘āsāh) darkness (Amos 4:13). 

As any careful reader of the Bible will observe, the Hebrew language does not make a sharp distinction between bārā’ and ‘āsāh in accounts depicting the Creation. On the contrary, the terms are used interchangeably for Creation throughout the Old Testament, and can often be found in parallel expressions.

Now, this does not mean that bārā’ and ‘āsāh are always synonymous terms. The word bārā’ occurs 53 times in the Bible, and generally has to do with an initial act, or a new beginning. For example, God “creates something new” at the punishment of Korah and his company (Numbers 16:30). He “makes a new beginning” of Israel after the Babylonian Exile (Isaiah 41:20). The term represents a change—a new beginning—in the natural order as well (Isaiah 65:15; Jeremiah 31:22).

So, in addition to creation, which is always an “initial act” on God’s part, subsequent divine intervention after creation can also be depicted by the word bārā’. This explains why the term can be used of the creation of man. He was a new creature, a new beginning, in the process. If Gap theorists were correct, any usage of bārā’ after the initialGenesis Creation would be inappropriate. This clearly is not the case.

The term ‘āsāh, by comparison,has a much broader semantic range. This term occurs 2,627 times, making it one of the most common verbs in the Bible. In addition to meaning “make,” ‘āsāh is the standard verb for “do, act, or perform” in Hebrew. It often means to “keep” the Law (Deuteronomy 5:32), to manufacture a product (1 Samuel 8:12), to “carve” (Ezekiel 41:18), to “work” miracles (Deuteronomy 34:11), to “make” money in the colloquial English sense (Deuteronomy 8:17), to “make” a name for oneself (Genesis 11:4), to “make” dinner or a meal (Judges 6:19), to “make” peace (Isaiah 27:5), to “work” a job (Ruth 2:19), and many other possible nuances. In short, many of the same meanings we can assign to the English verbs “make,” “do,” “work,” “perform,” “act,” and the like can also be ascribed to the Hebrew ‘āsāh.

The word ‘āsāh basically has to do with producing something through work, and it may or may not imply pre-existing material. Passages echoing Genesis 1:1 routinely use ‘āsāh instead of bārā’ (e.g., 1 Chronicles 16:26; Nehemiah 9:6; Psalm 33:6; Isaiah 45:12). This fact implies that, while these two terms can be used interchangeably of Creation, one emphasizes the production of a new thing (whether at Creation or afterward), and the other refers to the work involved in producing a thing (whether at Creation or afterward).

The Vocabulary of Creation in the Hebrew Bible

The Creation is one of the most commonly discussed biblical accounts in later biblical literature. The poetry of the Old Testament, particularly in the Psalms and Isaiah 40-55, is rich in Creation terminology. God has a claim on the lives of his people (and on the world!) becauseHe is the Creator of everything. It thus makes sense that the Hebrew language would feature many terms to express one of its most basic theological principles.

The biblical terms for Creation are represented in the chart above. As one can observe, the terminology of Creation in the Bible is rich and varied. Many of these terms are used in parallel to one another, indicating their synonymous nature insofar as Creation is concerned. These terms also illustrate that the Israelites viewed God’s Creation holistically. God “brought creation into initial existence.” God “formed creation.” God “begat” Creation (in a figurative sense). God “established,” “founded,” “acquired,” “spread out,” and “made” every created thing. The full lexicon of Hebrew manufacturing is applied to Creation to illustrate that, in a single period of time, God set the world into existence, just as in a single moment He will destroy it (2 Peter 3:10).

THE GRAMMAR OF GENESIS 1:2

We previously mentioned that Gap theorists cite three grammatical Hebrew features in favor of their position. They claim: (1) the Hebrew waw implies a gap in the narrative; (2) the verb form “was” (hāy^etāh)signals a new beginning; and (3) the nouns tōhū vā-vōhū imply a re-creation from a degraded, earlier Creation. We shall treat each of these arguments in order.

The Hebrew Particle waw

First, the Hebrew letter waw, represented by the incessant “and” in the King James Version and often left untranslated in more recent versions, is always prefixed to Hebrew words. When it is attached to a shortened “imperfect” verb form in biblical narrative, it normally functions as a preterite (from Latin praeter, “before”). The purpose is to relate action, typically in the past, and the waw functions to connect those past actions to one another.

When the waw is attached to a noun, as it is in Genesis 1:2, it is disjunctive, and thus signals a shift in the narrative. This shift does not necessarily imply a different series of events, much less events separated by billions of years in time. An abrupt shift is found in Genesis 3:1—“Now, as for the serpent, he was more crafty.” Although no serpent has been discussed, and the context determines a complete break in the narrative, there is nothing stated about the amount of time that elapsed from the creation of woman and the appearance of the serpent.

Sometimes, however, the disjunctive waw can simply provide background information for the story being related (e.g., Genesis 13:13), or explain what is happening simultaneous with the narrative, but elsewhere in location (e.g., Genesis 37:36, translated well as “meanwhile” in the ESV). In these cases, the waw sets up a parenthetical remark which functions to explain the preceding information. This is, I believe, what we have in Genesis 1:2.

Remember that Genesis 1:1 is a declarative statement: “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.” Since the narrative will not focus on the creation of the heavens, but on the Earth, the next verse opens with the final word from the previous one (v^ehā’ārets). By utilizing the disjunctive waw along with the noun “Earth,” the Hebrew serves to focus attention on the creation of the Earth: “Now, as for the earth, it was formless and void.” This statement is clearly based on the final word of the previous verse as the narrative unpacks exactly how the creation of the Earth took place.

The Hebrew Word “was” (hāy^etāh)

The second linguistic argument from Genesis 1:2 deals with the term hāy^etāh, traditionally translated “was.” Gap theorists insist the term means “became” or “had become.” They assert the bārā’ stage of Creation “became” or “had become” a desolate waste, and thus a re-creation (the ‘āsāh stage) was necessary. In the assessment of Fields, “It is the mistranslation of this word which has, perhaps, added more to the ranks of gap theorists than any one factor” (1976, p. 88).

First of all, let us acknowledge that Gap theorists are correct about the Hebrew verb hāyāh. It can mean “became” or “had become.” But the meaning of any word must be determined by its context, and not by the translator’s arbitrary choosing of a meaning from a lexical list. In Genesis 1:2, the copular usage of the verb hāyāh in biblical Hebrew must be understood. The community of Hebrew grammarians is uniform in recognizing that the term hāy^etāh (a feminine form of hāyāh) in Genesis 1:2 functions as a copula (see, e.g., Joüon and Muraoka, 2006, §154m), and thus simply links the subject with the object without implying any true verbal quality. Let us explain.

Hebrew has no proper equivalent to the English verb “to be.” Therefore, several syntactical approximations, called copulas, communicate the essence of the English “to be.” For example, the pronouns hū’ (literally “he” or “it” for masculine objects) andhî’ (literally “she” or “it” for feminine objects) can serve this purpose (often translated “is”). The same is true of the verb “he became” (hāyāh). The copula hāy^etāh is not, therefore, functioning in Genesis 1:2 in its true verbal sense as “became,” but in the copular sense as “was.”

It is recognized universally that “the Hebrew verb translated was refers to the time when God began his work of creation. Was does not mean that the earth remained in this shapeless state for a long time; nor does it mean that it became such after being something else earlier” (Reyburn and Fry, 1997, p. 30). This point is recognized in virtually every decent translation of the Hebrew text since the Septuagint (cf. the Latin Vulgate and the mountain of English translations). Gap theorists must find a different justification for their theory.

The Words tōhū vā-vōhū

The two Hebrew nouns tōhū and bōhū are so closely linked that Hebraists universally regard them as a hendiadys (even the Masoretic accentuation suggests this). Some English translations follow this understanding, using an adjective-noun construction (e.g., the NAB: “formless wasteland”). Traditionally, however, two adjectives are used to translate tōhū vā-vōhū. The Septuagint has “invisible and unconstructed” (aoratos kai akataskeuastos). The Vulgate understands the terms by the synonyms, “empty and void” (inanis et vacua). English translations have generally opted for “formless and void.” All of these are legitimate potential translations of a difficult Hebrew expression.

By contrast, Gap theorists assert these terms imply a depreciation of the original Creation (e.g., Isaiah 34:11; Jeremiah 4:23). Since prophetic passages convey a change from order to disorder when the terms are used, Gap theorists believe the same meaning must hold in Genesis 1:2. [NOTE: Their interpretation here is contingent upon this erroneous understanding of hāy^etāh.] However, the prophetic pronouncement is intended to be shocking. God plans to punish his people by dramatically reducing the land to a state of non-existence. It is not merely that He wishes to degrade their existence; He wishes to nullify it!

The term bōhū occurs only three times in the Bible, all in conjunction with tōhū (Genesis 1:2; Isaiah 34:11; Jeremiah 4:23). There can be no doubt, then, that tōhū is the clearer term, occurring about 20 times. It can be used in a physical sense in reference to a desert (Deuteronomy 32:10) or an abandoned city (Isaiah 24:10), or it can be used in a moral sense to refer to vanities (1 Samuel 12:21; Isaiah 40:17). It can refer to a “wasteland,” but does not refer to a “wasted land.”

One verse helps us to establish the appropriate meaning of tōhū in a Creation context: “For thus says Yahweh, who created [bārā’] the heavens—he is God—who formed [yātsar] the earth, and he made it [‘āsāh], he established [kūn] it not to be empty [tōhū]. He created it [bārā’] to be inhabited. I am Yahweh, and there is no other” (Isaiah 45:18). This verse not only utilizes the term tōhū in reference to what the Earth was not intended to be, but also associates the bārā’ Creation with the inhabiting of the Earth.

While the Gap theorists are correct to understand tōhū vā-vōhū to mean a state of creation God did not regard as ideal, nothing in the Hebrew words themselves implies a depreciation of Creation. Rather, the expression conveys the amorphous nature of the Earth before God provided His creative structure to it. Such is the way the terms have been understood throughout the history of Bible translation.

CONCLUSION

There is nothing in the Hebrew text of Genesis 1 to demand a gap of time. The Hebrews in fact had a variety of ways to express chronological gaps, whether general or specific. For general amounts of time they could and often did say, “after this” (ach^arēy-kēn) or “after these things” (ach^arēy-hadd^evarîm hā-’ēleh). To express a greater extent of time, they could have said “many days” (yāmîm rābbîm) or something similar. Although common in the Bible, none of these phrases occurs in Genesis 1. So we are left to trust the Gap theorists that they are qualified to speak where the Bible is silent, and to understand in the Hebrew what no Hebrew scholars actually affirm, and what no qualified translators have ever put forth. So is Gap Theory linguistically viable? No.

REFERENCES

Clayton, John N. (2011), The Source: Eternal Design or Infinite Accident? (Niles, MI: Clayton).

Clayton, John N. (2015), The Rational God: Does God Make Sense? (Niles, MI: Clayton).

Dorsey, David A. (1999), The Literary Structure of the Old Testament: A Commentary on Genesis–Malachi (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker).

Fields, Weston W. (1976 reprint), Unformed and Unfilled: A Critique of the Gap Theory (Green Forrest, AR: Master Books).

Joüon, Paul and Takamitsu Muraoka (2006), A Grammar of Biblical Hebrew (Roma: Pontifical Biblical Institute).

Pember, Georg H. (1907), Earth’s Earliest Ages (London: Hodder and Stoughton), reprint.

Platinga, Alvin (2001), “Evolution, Neutrality, and Antecedent Probability: A Reply to McMullin and Van Till,” in Intelligent Design Creationism and Its Critics: Philosophical, Theological and Scientific Perspectives, ed. Robert T. Pennock (Cambridge: MIT Press).

Reyburn, William D. and Euan McG. Fry (1997), A Handbook on Genesis (New York: United Bible Society).

Thompson, Bert (2000), Creation Compromises (Montgomery, AL: Apologetics Press, second edition).

The post Is the Gap Theory Linguistically Viable? appeared first on Apologetics Press.

[EDITOR’S NOTE: A.P. auxiliary writer Dr. Rogers serves as an Associate Professor of Bible at Freed-Hardeman University. He holds an M.A. in New Testament from Freed-Hardeman University as well as an M.Phil. and Ph.D. in Hebraic, Judaic, and Cognate Studies from Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion.]

How old is the Earth? It has become standard for many scientists to believe the Universe is over 10 billion years old, and the Earth over six billion years old. Public school textbooks implicitly teach our children the biblical account of Creation is at best incomplete, and at worst erroneous. It is no wonder that many Bible-believers have sought to harmonize the “facile” narrative of biblical Creation with the complex and engaging portrait of universal origins in modern “science.”

The Bible never dates the creation of the world explicitly. But the Bible does provide a straightforward account of the first week of universal history. There is no obvious implication that the days are really billions of years, or that the first week is a quasi-mythological construct. Yet old-Earth creationists who wish to utilize the Bible need something in Genesis 1 to divinely approve their position. In this quest for evidence, many have fixated on the Hebrew term for “day” (yōm).

Understanding each day to be an “epoch” of time, the word yōm has been required to carry the weight of old-Earth creationism and evolution—a weight it is incapable of bearing. With little attention to context, to other markers of time in Genesis 1, and to common linguistic sense, many have blindly accepted that the Bible endorses old-Earth creationism. It is not the place here to discuss the larger question of the age of the Earth. However, I hope to establish in this article that the Hebrew word yōm cannot be used as ammunition for old-Earth creationism.

The Non-Literal Use of Yōm

Many researchers have noted that the term yōm is not always literal in the Hebrew Bible. This is true. The term can be used both in the singular and in the plural simply to mean “time” in a generic sense. In the King James and New King James versions of Genesis 39:11, the Hebrew is translated, “It came to pass about this time.” The other major versions, however, more literally render the Hebrew word yōm, “Now it happened one day” (e.g., NASB). Is the KJV wrong? No. It simply rendered the term “day” as “time,” which, although not the most literal translation, is certainly acceptable in the context.

The same can be observed for the plural form “days” (yāmîm) in the Bible. Scripture informs us, “And Isaac dug again the wells of water which they had dug in the days [yāmîm] of Abraham his father” (Genesis 26:18). The passage is obviously not referring to the specific number of 24-hour periods of time that Abraham lived. We might differently translate “in the time of Abraham” to capture the essential meaning. The book of Joshua is summarized similarly: “Israel served the Lord all the days of Joshua, and all the days of the elders who outlived Joshua” (Joshua 24:31). No literal number of days is intended, although a limited “period” of time is implied.

We should note here that the non-literal use of the word “day” has a perfect parallel in English. We often speak of “days gone by,” meaning not, of course, the consecutive 24-hour periods of time that have elapsed, but “times gone by.” Likewise, one might look forward to “better days,” again referring to a nonliteral period of time in the future. The generic use of the word “day” in English and Hebrew has led some to believe that the same term in Genesis 1 is also generic, and thus need not be taken as a literal, 24-hour period of time. The generic meaning of the word “day,” however, is entirely irrelevant for Genesis 1 for reasons we will consider below. But at this juncture let us emphasize that the Creation account does use the term yōm in a non-literal fashion.

The work of the first week is summarized as follows: “This isthe history of the heavens and the earth when they were created, in the day [yōm] that the Lord God made the earth and the heaven” (Genesis 2:4, NKJV). If one forces this passage into literalism, then God did not create the world in six days, but in one day! Some ancient readers of Genesis did, in fact, derive from this verse that the Creation took place in one day, and Genesis 1 therefore must be a non-literal account (e.g., Philo of Alexandria). Knowing little to no Hebrew, and not recognizing the non-literal use of the word “day,” these thinkers drew the wrong conclusions.

The term yōm in Genesis 2:4 is not to be taken in the sense of a literal, 24-hour period of time. The same can be said of God’s warning about the tree in Genesis 2:17: “for in the day [yōm] that you eat of it you shall surely die.” The term is again referring generically to a “time” of indeterminable length and not to a specific 24-hour “day.” Now the big question: Is this non-literal usage relevant for Genesis 1?

The Term Yōm in Genesis 1

Words mean nothing outside of contexts. In other words, reading a sentence is similar to piecing together a puzzle. The picture of the whole emerges only after the individual pieces are put in their place. Such is the case with the term yōm. It can be literal or non-literal, depending on the context. But a distinctive syntactical feature of Genesis 1 ought to be observed. An adjective accompanies every occurrence of yōm in Genesis 1, a fact that fundamentally limits its meaning.

Virtually every language uses adjectives to modify a noun’s scope of reference. I may declare, “Women are wise!” Is this a general truth or an absolute truth? The hearer doesn’t know. It is a generic and ambiguous statement. But if I add the adjective, “All women are wise!” it is an absolute truth applicable to all women. If I say, “Some women are wise!” then the truth of the first statement is limited. In the Hebrew language, as in English, numbers are adjectives. Since every time the word “day” occurs in Genesis 1, a numerical adjective accompanies it, the generic application of the term “day” that we have observed does not apply at all. The scope of reference is limited.

Allow me to illustrate. If I say, “These days have gone so quickly,” you do not know how much time has elapsed. All you know is that more than one day has gone by. But if I declare, “These five days have gone so quickly,” you know exactly how many days have passed. The latter example is a much better illustration of the term “day” in Genesis 1. When the Bible declares “one day,” “a second day,” “a third day,” and so on (Genesis 1:5,8,13), the numerical adjective naturally limits the scope of reference so that the Hebrew word “day” cannot be taken in the generic sense of “one block of time,” “a second block of time,” and so on. The term must be used in accord with the numerical adjective that accompanies it. Its scope of reference is limited.

Moses expected the original audience of the Pentateuch to understand his intention of a literal, 24-hour day in the Creation account. In commanding the observance of the Sabbath day he wrote, “For in six days the Lord made the heavens and the earth, the sea, and all that is in them, and rested the seventh day. Therefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and hallowed it” (Exodus 20:11). Israel was to imitate God’s example of working for six literal days, and resting on the seventh. If Moses’ audience had understood the days of Genesis 1 as hundreds, thousands, or billions of years, as many modern interpreters wish to do, they could have lived their entire lives without ever observing a single Sabbath! This would not be the intention of biblical law. Violating just one Sabbath required execution (Numbers 15:32-36). Clearly the readers of Genesis were to understand a literal Creation week.

Other References to Time in Genesis 1

It is conveniently selective for those who wish to age the Earth from Genesis 1 to focus exclusively on the Hebrew word for “day.” There are, in fact, other references to time in the same paragraphs in which the term “day” occurs. These terms help further to limit and define the specific meaning of the word yōm in the context.

After each day’s creative activities, the Bible utilizes the same formula: “And there was evening and there was morning” (Genesis 1:5,8,13,19,23,31). While it is true that the Hebrew term “day” can be used in a nonliteral sense in other contexts, the terms “evening” (‘erev) and “morning” (bōqer) are always used in a literal sense. The former occurs 134 times in the Old Testament and the latter around 200 times. So our representative sampling is high enough to draw absolute conclusions about what these words mean.

The words ‘erev and bōqer are used to specify holidays on the Israelite calendar (Exodus 12:18), to mark the exact span of one’s ceremonial uncleanness (Leviticus 11:31), to regulate the timing of the required sacrifices (Numbers 28:23), and to mark the exact time of historical events (Nehemiah 8:3). Therefore, the Bible counts on the literal understanding of the terms “evening” and “morning,” for the Israelites’ very religious and secular calendar depends on it. There is to my knowledge no place in the Bible in which the terms “evening and morning” refer to a broad scope of time. They are always literal, both when they occur separate from one another, and when they occur together; both when they are singular and when they are plural. When these terms occur with the word yōm, the obvious conclusion is that a regular, 24-hour day is in view (Leviticus 6:13; Numbers 19:19; Deuteronomy 16:14).

Even if one insists on explaining the term yōm in a non-literal fashion, this explanation does not permit him to force non-literal applications of other time references in the same context. How long was the morning of day 1 anyway? The linguistic acrobatics applied to Genesis 1 are never applied consistently to other contexts of the Old Testament. Why force words to fit a preconceived theory of truth? Why not allow them to speak clearly from their contexts?

Conclusion

In language, words are bound to their contexts. The meaning of biblical words is determined by their use in the sentence, paragraph, chapter, and book in which they occur. The term yōm occurs in many contexts, both in the singular and in the plural, in a non-literal fashion. In the context of Genesis 1, however, there can be little doubt that the Hebrew noun yōm, accompanied by numerical adjectives and limited by further references to time, should be understood literally. So those who wish to defend old-Earth creationism must look elsewhere to support their doctrine.

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Geologists today explain that the floor of the Pacific Ocean (the ocean plate) is slowly diving (subducting) under the west coast of the United States (a continental plate), moving into the mantle. Creation scientists believe that at the beginning of the Flood, this movement occurred at much faster rates than today. That process would have caused large amounts of wet material (sediment) to pile up on the west coast, and areas of the west coast would have been pushed up (uplifted) as the ocean floor dove, including a huge, saucer-shaped area of land called the Colorado Plateau that is surrounded by mountains. Wet sediment sliding from these two places was probably responsible for some of the layers of the Grand Canyon, although some of the layers are made of material that had to have been transported from sources hundreds of miles away—proof that a major flood was needed to move the sediment that forms those layers.

After the layers were formed, something had to carve through them. Many geologists believe that the Colorado River was the culprit, carving it very slowly over 70 million years. But years ago, before the Glen Canyon Dam was built that slows the movement of the Colorado River through the Canyon, engineers found that the River was carrying 168 million tons of sediment out of the Canyon every year. Over 70 million years, 1.3 million cubic miles of sediment should have been carried to the delta at the end of the River—a volume 1,500 times that of the Grand Canyon. That sediment is not there, which proves that idea to be wrong.

Dry Falls: a result from the Ice Age dam breach of glacial Lake Missoula www.wikipedia.org (Steven Pavlov) 2015 CC-by-sa-3.0

Creation scientists today believe that an Ice Age would have occurred after the Flood for several hundred years, due to warmer oceans, increased evaporation, and volcanic aerosols in the atmosphere that partially shielded the Earth from sunrays, which led to cooler summers and increased snowfall over the Earth. As the Earth gradually calmed down after the Flood, the ice that had formed over an estimated 30% of the Earth would have slowly melted, retreating towards the poles and leaving huge, icy lakes along the way. Many creationists believe at least three such lakes were left on the Colorado Plateau, and evidence supports that belief. As would be predicted from the nature of these lakes, the natural “dams” that held the water probably broke one-by-one as the ice melted, like dominoes, rapidly carving the Canyon.

Touchet Trench: This trench is located close to the Burlingame Canyon and looks very similar.

Is there evidence that water could rapidly carve through rock? In 1926, the Burlingame Canyon near Walla Walla, Washington was carved in less than six days when engineers tried to steer abnormally high amounts of water from a canal into Pine Creek. The Lake Missoula Flood is a well-documented flood from the Ice Age. Water breached an ice dam, and 500 cubic miles of water were released within two days, cutting hundreds of feet through solid rock, creating canyons, and carving 50 cubic miles of Earth. In June 1983, heavy snow fall caused engineers to divert water from Glen Canyon into dam spillways that caused chunks of three-foot-thick, steel-reinforced concrete to be torn out of the tunnel. Tens of thousands of cubic feet of concrete were needed to fill the holes. Water has no problem cutting through rock, if there’s enough of it and it’s moving fast enough.

Top Left: Glen Canyon spillway damage. Bottom Left: Glen Canyon Dam. Right: Glen Canyon. Image credit top left: Glen Canyon Dam Failure. U.S. Bureau of Reclamation.

Contrary to what many geologists believe, the Grand Canyon can be explained well by young Earth creationists—even better than evolutionary theories. There is no reason to ever doubt what the Bible teaches about the history of the Earth. True science and Scripture will always agree.

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Have you ever seen pictures of the Grand Canyon? Did you notice that it has several layers in it, kind of like a cake? Geologists who believe the Earth is millions of years old often use the Grand Canyon as “proof” that the Bible is wrong about the Earth being young. They look, for instance, at how long it takes sand particles to build up on desert sand dunes today, and they compare that to the sandstone (rock that used to be sand) in the Canyon. From that, they determine, based on sand collection (deposition) rates today and the thickness of the sandstone layers, it must have taken millions of years for those layers to form. They add to that the assumption that in between each of those “cake” (sediment) layers, there were long periods of time where there was not much build-up of sediment—just erosion by rivers, wind, lakes, etc.

FOSSILIZED ANIMAL TRACKS (ENHANCED  FOR EASIER VISIBILITY)

There are several problems with these ideas. For example, the layers above the Great Unconformity (the line towards the base of the Canyon that most likely represents the beginning of the Flood) are all made of sedimentary rock, which are known to be made in water most of the time. Marine-shell fossils from ocean creatures are also found throughout the Canyon layers. Also, scientists have studied the fossilized animal footprints that are on the Canyon sandstone layers and have compared them to footprints that are made by creatures on dry sand and under water sand. They have found that there is no doubt that the footprints had to have been made by creatures that were under water when they made the tracks—not in a desert. Scientists also studied the difference between sand dunes that form slowly from wind in the desert and the similar sand dunes (called sand waves) that are made rapidly in the ocean by water transporting sand. The angle of the sand layers within the sandstone in the Canyon did not match the angles of desert dunes. They matched ocean sand waves, giving more evidence that the Canyon layers were formed under water.

THE GREAT UNCONFORMITY	SAND DUNES

Other scientists have determined that if a sand wave is made under deeper water, that sand wave is taller than one made under shallower water. The Canyon has sand waves that are 30-60 feet high, meaning that the water depth that formed them must have been 150-300 feet (a football field going straight up into the sky)! And what’s more, scientists are able to determine from those numbers that the water that formed the sand waves of the Canyon must have been traveling at three to five feet per second—extremely high velocities. Only tsunamis have been known to be able to create such a situation—and that’s precisely what would have occurred in the Flood.

The evidence shows that the layers of the Canyon were formed rapidly in the Flood. But was there a lot of time that passed between each “cake” layer, as evolutionary geologists argue? Imagine watching your mom make a cake. If she made one layer, put icing on it, and then immediately made another layer to go on top of the first, the two layers would connect to each other smoothly. But if she opened the kitchen window and put the cake on the window sill to cool before it hardened, and accidentally left it there open to the air for a few weeks while she went out of town, what would happen? When she came back to finish the cake and add other layers, what would the second layer look like? Some of it may have molded and disappeared from breaking down. Some of it may have been eaten by insects (or kids who walked by the window), and if it rained a lot and got the cake wet, there may even be little “river beds” in the cake where the water ran off of it. If your mom then made another layer and put it on top of the second, and you looked at the side of the cake, you would notice that the line between the second layer and the third was not smooth.

CROSS-SECTION OF A NAUTILOID (image courtesy of Shaun Greenwood)

Similarly, at the Grand Canyon, we can look at the lines between layers and figure out if any time passed between them. What we find is that there is no good evidence that long periods of time passed between the layers. There is evidence that there was not time between many of the layers, because the connection between the layers is very smooth. In some places, there is evidence that there was some time between layers, although not long periods. The erosion that shows that there was time in between the layers can be explained as having happened quickly, possibly before the eroded layer was lithified (turned to stone)—kind of like what you would expect if it rained on the cake while it was still a little mushy. Bottom line: there’s a lot of evidence that the Grand Canyon formed quickly in the Flood.

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[EDITOR’S NOTE: The following article was written by A.P. staff scientist Dr. Houts who holds a Ph.D. in Nuclear Engineering from MIT and serves as the Nuclear Research Manager for NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center.]

Scientific advances continue to confirm the Bible in all areas where science can be applied. Advances in life science have shown that even the simplest life is vastly more complicated than anything humans have ever made, and believing life could somehow “make itself” is more absurd than believing a space shuttle could do the same (Miller, 2013). Research related to the human genome has uncovered the incredible complexity of DNA, and the idea that random mutations followed by natural selection could somehow turn a single cell into all of the different forms of life we see around us is being further discredited each day (Sanford, 2008). In these areas (and others) it is obvious that true science is the Christian’s friend, and the enemy of religions that use evolution as their foundation.

Because true science continues to discredit the Theory of Evolution, atheists have been forced to focus discussion on topics where conclusions are drawn primarily based on the assumptions that are made, and not on actual science. If an unsuspecting individual can be convinced to accept atheistic assumptions, they can then often be convinced that atheism may be true or, at least, that portions of the Bible may be false.

One example is the subject of “age.” When one examines the subject, it becomes clear that all dating methods rely on assumptions that may or may not be correct. Because all dating methods ultimately rely on assumptions that cannot be empirically proven, the battle is no longer a scientific one (where the atheist or agnostic would lose), but a battle to convince individuals (and society) to accept atheistic assumptions without question. Within groups already dedicated to finding an atheistic explanation for the Universe and everything in it, the atheist has the upper hand.

Assumptions Related to Carbon Dating

An excellent example of the importance of assumptions is Carbon-14 dating. In a nutshell, if a person assumes the Bible is false, Carbon-14 dating can be used to “show” the Bible is false. If a person assumes the Bible is true, then Carbon-14 dating is shown to be consistent with the biblical account.

More specifically, an atheist will usually assume that the Earth is billions of years old, and that uniformitarianism has generally prevailed. Although minor adjustments are allowed, an atheist would also typically assume that there have been no large scale changes in the atmospheric ratio of Carbon-14 to carbon (¹⁴C/C; currently about one part per trillion) for at least the past several hundred thousand years.

From a Christian perspective, the Bible makes it clear that the Earth was created a few thousand years ago. In addition, a global flood occurred within the past 5,000 years. Uncertainties in the distribution and concentration of Carbon-14 at the end of Creation week, coupled with the potential for significant (two orders of magnitude) changes in Carbon-14 concentration caused by removal of carbon from the biosphere during the Flood, make it impossible to estimate Carbon-14 concentrations in the atmosphere much before a few centuries after the Flood. Additional uncertainties are added due to changes in the Earth’s magnetic field, the Sun’s magnetic field, the cosmic ray flux reaching the Earth’s atmosphere, and other factors which can dramatically affect Carbon-14 production rates.

To estimate the age of a carbon containing sample, the standard equation C = C_o (e^–λt) is used, where C is the currently measured Carbon-14 (¹⁴C) concentration; C_o is the ¹⁴C concentration at the time of an organism’s death (assumed); e is the base of natural logarithms (2.71828); λ is 0.6931 divided by the half-life of ¹⁴C; and t is time. Solving the equation for time (given the current ¹⁴C half-life of 5,730 years), one obtains t = ln(C/C_o)/-0.000121, where “t” is the time in years since the source of the carbon in the sample died.

The importance of the assumptions that are used to date a specimen can be demonstrated as follows. Suppose a carbon containing sample is found with a Carbon-14 concentration 2% that of today. Using the typical atheistic assumptions stated above, the age would be calculated as t = ln(0.02)/-.000121 = 32,330 years. However, if biblically consistent assumptions are made, a significantly different age would be estimated. For example, if a reasonable assumption was made concerning potential effects of the Flood (for instance, that near the time of the Flood C_o was 1/30^th that of today), then the same measured data would yield an age of t = ln(0.02/0.0333)/-.000121 = 4,210 years.

From the same measured ¹⁴C/C ratio, one could either make atheistic assumptions and obtain a biblically inconsistent date, or make biblically consistent assumptions and obtain a biblically consistent date. The same measured data yields a non-biblical date (32,330 years) if the Bible is presupposed to be wrong (i.e., no Flood and no recent Creation) and a biblically consistent date (4,210 years) if potential effects from even a single biblical event are taken into account.

In addition to the Flood, there are numerous other factors that could affect C_o in artifacts created near the time of the Flood. For example, the total energy in the Earth’s magnetic field has been measured to be decreasing with time (Humphreys, 1984). The Earth’s magnetic field shields the Earth from cosmic rays that form Carbon-14 in the Earth’s atmosphere. The stronger the magnetic field, the fewer cosmic rays enter the Earth’s atmosphere, and the lower the amount of Carbon-14 produced. The stronger magnetic field of the past could thus cause carbon-dated objects (using atheistic assumptions) to have a calculated age older than reality. It is also impossible to determine how much (if any) Carbon-14 was present in the original Creation, and if Carbon-14 was present, how it was initially distributed.

From a biblical perspective, the Flood was the most recent physical event that would have had a significant effect on the ratio of ¹⁴C/C. Consequently, the effect of assumptions on samples created more than a few centuries after the Flood are greatly reduced. Once the ¹⁴C/C ratio had time to stabilize following the Flood, both biblical models and atheistic models would use the same assumption for the initial condition, i.e., that the ¹⁴C/C ratio was about the same when the sample was formed as it is today.

Biblical and secular written records generally agree, and when there are disagreements, an assumption is made as to which source to believe. For very old objects, some archeological dating methods (including pottery styles, burial layer, etc.) give biblically inconsistent dates. However, most of these methods are ultimately calibrated to Carbon-14 dating. If the Carbon-14 dates are wrong (due to incorrect assumptions applied to the initial ¹⁴C/C ratio), then the dating methods calibrated to those dates will also be wrong. Attempts have also been made to use tree ring patterns for calibration, but those are also influenced by assumptions, especially if the potential for sub-annual tree ring growth following the Flood is taken into account (Miller, 2014).

Assumptions Related to other Radiometric Dating Methods

Assumptions dominate other radiometric dating methods as well. For example, secular radiometric dating methods assume that radioactive decay rates have always been constant. In addition, assumptions are made about the initial concentration of all of the isotopes that are involved in the dating method, and assumptions are made about the addition or removal of isotopes throughout the life of the sample. If any of these assumptions is incorrect, significant errors can be introduced into the estimated age.

Major anomalies associated with radiometric dating methods can be resolved by biblically consistent models. For example, Carbon-14 is found in diamonds and coal purported to be hundreds of millions of years old. However, Carbon-14 has a half-life of 5,730 years, meaning ½ of the atoms decay (in this case beta-decay to Nitrogen-14) every 5,730 years. It was noted by the RATE group that the detectable presence of Carbon-14 in any sample indicates that its age is less (possibly much less) than approximately 100,000 years; otherwise, the Carbon-14 would have decayed below detectable levels (DeYoung, 2005, p. 175; NOTE: RATE [Radioisotopes and the Age of the Earth] refers to an eight year research project conducted by the Institute for Creation Research). The presence of Carbon-14 in coal and diamonds strongly contradicts evolutionary theory, which claims  that both coal and diamonds formed millions of years ago. The “problem” (from an evolutionist’s standpoint) of Carbon-14 in coal has also been reported by Lowe (1989, 31:117-120), Giem (2001, 51:6-30), and others. Additional information related to Carbon-14 dating and anomalies is given in Batten, 2002.

Attempts to resolve the contradiction between measured Carbon-14 concentration and assumed age include postulating potential contamination of samples, errors with the equipment used to detect Carbon-14, and in-situ production of Carbon-14 from the decay of uranium or thorium mixed with the sample. Contamination and equipment error have been ruled out, and current decay rates are orders of magnitude lower than those required to make in-situ production a viable explanation (Jull, 1985, 20:676). However, if radioactive decay rates were greatly accelerated (by a factor of a billion or more) during Creation week or the Flood, then additional investigation could be warranted to determine if in-situ production of Carbon-14 could be a potential explanation for at least some of the Carbon-14 in coal and diamonds.

Other observations made by the RATE group are also consistent with periods of greatly accelerated radioactive decay during Creation week or the Flood. One of the findings of the RATE group was excess helium retention in zircons. This finding indicates that based on measured helium diffusion rates, the observed radioactive decay in zircons must have occurred within the past several thousand years. If it had taken longer, the helium generated via alpha decay would have diffused out of the zircons. The group’s observation is that significant radioactive decay has occurred, and it has occurred recently (DeYoung, p. 176).

An additional finding of the RATE group is that ages estimated using parent isotopes that undergo beta decay tend to be significantly different (younger) than ages estimated using parent isotopes that undergo alpha decay. This could suggest that whatever mechanism God used to change decay rates during Creation week and around the time of the Flood had a different effect on alpha emitters than it did on beta emitters (DeYoung, p. 121). The RATE group has also performed research related to radiohalos, fission tracks in zircons, and potential mechanisms for alleviating issues (such as high heating rates) introduced by accelerated radioactive decay (pp. 174-183). Among other implications, the observations of the RATE group indicate that assumptions used in radiometric dating may be false, and that ages estimated through use of radiometric dating may be incorrect by several orders of magnitude.

In addition to recent research performed by both Christian and secular scientists alike, other lines of evidence have been known for years that are consistent with a relatively recent Creation (Humphreys, 2000). These include the rate at which galaxies “wind up” (too fast for long ages), the amount of mud on the seafloor (too little), the amount of sodium in the sea (too little), the rate at which the Earth’s magnetic field is decaying (too fast), the number of stone age skeletons (too few), the development of agriculture (too recent), and numerous others. Biblically based theories also exist for interpreting what we observe in the Universe, given a relatively recent Creation (e.g., Humphreys, 1994; Thompson, 2004; Faulkner, 2013). Other biblically consistent interpretations have also been proposed (Williams and Hartnett, 2005, p. 180).

Assumptions Related to the Origin of the Universe

Assumptions related to “age” are not limited to radiometric dating methods. Perhaps some of the most egregious assumptions are associated with the “Big Bang” theory, the current attempt to develop an atheistic explanation for the origin of the Universe.

Serious contradictions between the predictions of the Big Bang theory and actual astronomical observations have been known for decades. By the mid-1970s, the evidence against the theory had become so overwhelming that “explanations” were required. “Dark matter” and “dark energy” were contrived, and initially said to make up 50% of the Universe. That number has since grown and, at present, a total of 96% of the Universe needs to be made of dark matter and dark energy in order to preserve the Big Bang theory.

Christians and non-Christians alike readily acknowledge that dark matter and dark energy are merely hypothetical entities that, by definition, cannot be directly observed. For example, former NASA administrator Mike Griffin once asked the value of “discovering that literally 95% of the Universe consists of dark energy or dark matter, terms for things that we as yet know nothing about? But they make up 95% of our Universe” (Griffin, 2007). He went on to write that someday we may learn to harness these “new things.” When asked about dark energy, physicist Michael Turner of the University of Chicago quipped: “The only thing we know about dark energy is its name” (Griffin, 2007).

While dark matter and dark energy have been given specific properties, those properties were specifically chosen to help resolve serious problems with the Big Bang. Additionally, dark matter and dark energy can be distributed throughout the Universe in any fashion desired.  When observations are still contradicted, concepts such as “dark flow” and “dark light” can be invoked. Other contradictions are resolved by concepts such as “inflation,” which in themselves are merely conjectures aimed at resolving other serious problems with the Big Bang.

With this approach, any set of data can be claimed to support any theory desired. All that is required is the judicious use of “fudge factors.” Consider this mathematical analogy: one could predecide that 100 must  be the answer to the question, “what does X + Y equal?” Values for “X” could then be sought, and no matter what values for “X” were found, a value for “Y” could be chosen to obtain the desired answer. In the analogy, “X” is actual astronomical observations, “100” would be the desired answer (support for the Big Bang theory), and “Y” is the fudge factors (dark matter, dark energy, inflation, etc.) needed to make the equation true. The actual astronomical observations (“X”) become somewhat irrelevant, because no matter what data is taken, “Y” (the fudge factors) can be chosen to claim the observations support the Big Bang theory.

Circular reasoning is then invoked to pretend the approach is valid. For example, in the case of the Big Bang theory, maps showing the location of dark matter have been developed. In reality, all these maps show is the specific ways dark matter must be invoked to avoid contradictions between actual observations and the Big Bang theory.

Christians are not the only ones who have noticed the non-scientific nature of the Big Bang theory. For example, in the May 22, 2004 issue of New Scientist, an open letter to the scientific community appeared written primarily by secular scientists (cosmologystatement.org). The letter was subsequently signed by hundreds of other scientists and professors at various institutions. Two representative paragraphs from the letter are as follows.

The big bang today relies on a growing number of hypothetical entities, things that we have never observed—inflation, dark matter and dark energy are the most prominent examples. Without them, there would be a fatal contradiction between the observations made by astronomers and the predictions of the big bang theory. In no other field of physics would this continual recourse to new hypothetical objects be accepted as a way of bridging the gap between theory and observation. It would, at the least, raise serious questions about the validity of the underlying theory.

What is more, the big bang theory can boast of no quantitative predictions that have subsequently been validated by observation. The successes claimed by the theory’s supporters consist of its ability to retrospectively fit observations with a steadily increasing array of adjustable parameters, just as the old Earth-centered cosmology of Ptolemy needed layer upon layer of epicycles (Lisle, 2008, p. 103, emp. added).

Although the signers of the letter were not necessarily endorsing biblically based theories, unlike atheistic theories, biblically based theories are very consistent with astronomical observations (Faulkner, 2013; Humphreys, 1994).

Adherence to Faulty Assumptions Hinders True Science

Tremendous spiritual damage is done by the promotion of atheism through the pretense of atheistic theories being scientific. Ironically, though, the strict adherence to atheistic theories (regardless of countering evidence) also does tremendous damage to the advancement of science.

For example, for a secular theory of cosmology to be considered, it must adhere to atheistic (and non-scientific) tenets such as the “Copernican Principle,” which essentially states that Earth cannot be at a special location within the Universe. That principle drives not only fundamental assumptions behind the Big Bang theory, but the means by which alternative theories can be seriously pursued.

Consider the August 2009 paper published in the Proceedings of the National Academies of Science and quoted in the popular press, including USA Today (Vergano, 2009):

Mathematicians have come up with an answer Monday for the mystery of “dark energy” tearing the universe apart at an accelerating rate. It ain’t there. Blake Temple and Joel Smoller suggest that “expanding waves” from the Big Bang “are propelling the trillions of galaxies filling the universe apart…. Dark energy is an illusion if their equations are right.” However, “the only problem is that for the equations to work, we must be ‘literally at the center of the universe’…” says physicist Lawrence Krauss of Arizona State University in Tempe. I think this is plausible mathematics, but it doesn’t seem physically relevant.

Science News publicized an analogous article from Physical Review Letters in 2008, stating:

If Earth and its environs are centered in a vast, billion-light-year-long bubble, relatively free of matter, in turn surrounded by a massive, dense shell of material, then gravity’s tug would cause galaxies inside the void to hurtle toward the spherical concentration of mass, say theorists Robert Caldwell of Dartmouth College and Albert Stebbins of the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory in Batavia, Ill. That process would mimic the action of dark energy—a local observer would be tricked into thinking that the universe’s expansion is accelerating (Cowen, 2008).

The article further notes: “But that scenario violates the Copernican principle, a notion near and dear to the hearts of physicists and cosmologists, including Caldwell and Stebbins” (Cowen, 2008).

Both models eliminate the need for “Dark Energy,” the fudge factor that accounts for 73% of the Universe according to the traditional Big Bang theory. However, neither model has been seriously pursued because both violate the arbitrary assumption that the Earth cannot be in a special location (i.e., the “Copernican principle”). Many cosmologists feel a special location would imply the existence of God.

But what if the Earth is in a special location? The secular models described in the Proceedings of the National Academies of Science and Physical Review Letters actually correspond quite well with the biblically consistent models proposed by Russ Humphreys and others, especially when the potential effects of gravitational time dilation are taken into account (Humphreys, 1994; Thompson, 2004). These models explain how stars that are billions of light years distant can be seen from an Earth that is less than 10,000 years old, all based on a straightforward reading of the Bible.

The assumption that radioactive decay rates have always been constant may also be hindering scientific progress. For example, scientists have discovered that changes in radioactive decay rates can be induced. The June 8, 2009 CERN Courier noted:

It is a common belief that radioactive decay rates are unchanged by external conditions, despite many examples of small shifts (particularly involving external pressure and K-capture decays) being well documented and understood. However, Fabio Cardone of the Institute per lo Studio dei Materiali Nanostrutturati in Rome and colleagues have shown a dramatic increase—by a factor of 10,000—in the decay rate of thorium-228 in water as a result of ultrasonic cavitation. Exactly what the physics is and whether or not this sort of effect can be scaled up into a technology for nuclear waste treatment remain open issues (Reucroft and Swain, 2009).

Recent observations also suggest that radioactive decay rates (typically assumed to be constant) can change due to causes that are not yet fully understood. For example, in August 2010, a team of scientists from Purdue and Stanford universities announced that the decay of radioactive isotopes fluctuates in sync with the rotation of the Sun’s core. The team has published a series of articles in Astroparticle Physics, Nuclear Instruments and Methods in Physics Research, and Space Science Reviews. Although the measured change in decay rate is small (~0.1%), the fact that change occurs at all is extremely significant. Team member Jere Jenkins noted: “[W]hat we’re suggesting is that something that can’t interact with anything is changing something that can’t be changed” (Gardner, 2010).

When considering the effects of assumptions on the estimated age of the Earth and Universe, it can also be instructive to look at the effects of assumptions in other areas related to the debate between atheism and the Bible. For example, in 2009 Richard Dawkins wrote: “What pseudogenes are useful for is embarrassing creationists. It stretches even their creative ingenuity to make up a reason why an intelligent designer should have created a pseudogene…unless he was deliberately setting out to fool us” (Dawkins, 2009, p. 332). What if scientists had believed Dawkins, and had given up researching “pseudogenes” because those scientists decided to assume pseudogenes were simply useless evolutionary leftovers? Fortunately most scientists did not, and by 2012 extensive evidence had been uncovered that pseudogenes have functions related to encoding proteins and gene expression. There is also sequence conservation in pseudogenes. In 2012, the ongoing ENCODE project (which includes 32 laboratories from around the world) simultaneously published 30 scientific papers detailing new discoveries. Among their conclusions were that “vast parts of the human genome thought to be ‘junk DNA’ are really filled with millions of cellular ‘switches’ helping choreograph the roles genes play in human life and disease,” and that nearly all DNA “has some function in cellular creation and growth” (Roop, 2012). With advancements in true science, the evolutionist’s argument for assuming “junk DNA” is rapidly fading away, much as their assumption of “vestigial organs” did in the late 20^th century.

Biblically consistent assumptions have been shown superior in other areas as well. Models based on those assumptions have successfully predicted the strength and behavior of planetary magnetic fields, where secular models have failed (Humphreys, 1984). Models that take into account effects from the global Flood are not only consistent with the geologic record, but do an excellent job predicting the observed extent and effects of the ice age including the ice sheets that remain today (Oard, 2005). The biblical claim that all humans are descendants of one man and one woman, and that “He made from one man every nation of mankind to live on all the face of the earth” (Acts 17:26, NASB) is fully supported by modern genetics (Purdom, 2014). The argument that “science” somehow supports racism (directly or indirectly made by Darwin, Haeckl, Hitler, et al.) has been thoroughly rebuffed (Houts, 2007).

Conclusion

It is difficult to imagine how the Bible could make it any clearer that God created the Universe in six literal days a few thousand years ago. While apparently well meaning attempts have been made to devise compromise positions, the technical and theological problems with these attempts are well documented in the literature (e.g., Lyons, 2014; Thompson, 2000; Sarfati, 2004; Miller, 2012; Mortenson, 2005).

First Peter 3:14-15 states: “But even if you should suffer for the sake of righteousness, you are blessed. And do not fear their intimidation, and do not be troubled, but sanctify Christ as Lord in your hearts, always being ready to make a defense to everyone who asks you to give an account for the hope that is in you, yet with gentleness andreverence” (NASB, emp. added). Christians must not allow themselves to be intimidated by contemporary human wisdom. While on the surface that “wisdom” can appear convincing, closer examination has always supported the Bible.

The Bible also warns us not to distort Scripture in order to accommodate contemporary human wisdom. Second Peter 3:16 states: “as also in all his letters, speaking in them of these things, in which are some things hard to understand, which the untaught and unstable distort, as they do also the rest of the Scriptures, to their own destruction” (NASB).

For some it can be hard to understand how the Earth can be a few thousand years old when they have been told “science” says it is a few billion years old. Individuals in that situation must resist the temptation to distort Scripture in order to pretend the Bible is consistent with that prevailing worldview. Although the distortion may be done with the best of intentions, its end can be disastrous. Proverbs 14:12 tells us: “There is a way which seems right to a man, but its end is the way of death.”

Throughout history, Christianity has been attacked in a variety of ways. While the attack based on “age” is currently en vogue, it is becoming easier to rebut given advances in true science. Romans 3:4 remains as true today as it was in the first century: “[L]et God be found true, though every man be found a liar, as it is written, ‘that you may be justified in your words, and prevail when you are judged’” (NASB).

References

Batten, Don (2002), “Does Carbon Dating Disprove the Bible?” Answers in Genesis, http://www.answersingenesis.org/assets/pdf/media/radio/Carbondating.pdf.

Cowen, Ron (2008), “A Special Place,” Science News, 7[173]:18, June.

Dawkins, Richard (2009) The Greatest Show on Earth (New York: Free Press).

DeYoung, Don (2005), Thousands…Not Billions (Green Forest, AZ: Master Books).

Faulkner, D.R. (2013), “A Proposal for a New Solution to the Light Travel Time Problem,” Answers Research Journal, 6:279–284.

Gardner, Elizabeth (2010), “Purdue-Stanford Team Finds Radioactive Decay Rates Vary With the Sun’s Rotation,” Purdue University News Service, http://www.purdue.edu/newsroom/research/2010/100830FischbachJenkinsDec.html.

Giem, P. (2001), “Carbon-14 Content of Fossil Carbon,” Origins, 51:6-30.

Griffin, Michael (2007), “Space Exploration: Real Reasons and Acceptable Reasons,” Quasar Award Dinner, Bay Area Houston Economic Partnership, January 19, http://www.nasa.gov/pdf/168084main_griffin_quasar_award.pdf.

Houts, Michael (2007), “Evolution is Religion, Not Science: Part 1,” Reason & Revelation, 27[11]:81-87, http://apologeticspress.org/apcontent.aspx?category=9&article=2299.

Humphreys, D. Russell (1984) “The Creation of Planetary Magnetic Fields,” CRSQ , 21[3], December.

Humphreys, D. Russell (1994), Starlight and Time (Green Forest, AR: Master Books).

Humphreys, D. Russell (2000), “Evidence for a Young World,” Answers in Genesis, www.answersingenesis.org.

Jull, A.J.T. (1985), “Carbon-14 Abundances in Uranium Ores and Possible Spontaneous Exotic Emission from U-Series Nuclides,” Meteoritics, 20:676.

Lisle, Jason (2008), “Does the Big Bang Fit With the Bible?” in The New Answers Book 2, (Green Forest, AR: Master Books).

Lowe, D.C. (1989), “Problems Associated with the Use of Coal as a Source of ¹⁴C Free Background Material,” Radiocarbon, 31:117-120.

Lyons, Eric (2014), “Creation and the Age of the Earth,” Reason & Revelation, 34[7]:86-89,92-95, July, http://apologeticspress.org/apPubPage.aspx?pub=1&issue=1169.

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Mortenson, Terry (2005), “‘Millions of Years’ and the Downfall of the Christian West,” Answers in Genesis, http://www.answersingenesis.org.

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