Aging people are
often distressed to acknowledge their own symptoms of advanced age. Young
people prefer that their parents would remain young and vibrant. In a different
sphere of experience, many Christians are troubled by the revelation that our
universe is very old. They believe the earth is young. Physical evidence tells
us, however, that our universe is not
young but rather, exceedingly old. It was birthed in the Big Bang 13.7 billion
years ago. The Earth and our Solar System developed 4.6 bya. Earth’s history
reveals a wonder-filled progression of events and changing conditions since its
formation billions of years in the distant past. Our home in the cosmos is a
tiny speck of cosmic matter which yields its mature resources to seven billion
people who now harness earth’s potential, not only for basic sustenance, but physical
enjoyment and delight as well. Earth’s old age seen in this context is a
miracle of divine provenance.
In the past several
weeks we have experienced several startling astronomical events and discoveries
to inspire deep wonder. First, the house-sized Chelyabinsk meteor exploded over
Russia on February 15, the largest meteor fall in over a century. Astronomers had
not observed it during approach. The same day, a smaller asteroid swept between
the moon and earth from a different direction in space. It posed no danger to
earth dwellers. In 2012 it had been predicted to pass near earth. That both
objects arrived on the same day proved to be a remarkable coincidence. In their
conjecture, doom-sayers might conclude God was giving us a warning that we are
at the mercy of frequent impacts from solar system space debris. Worried people
remind us that each volcano, tsunami, earthquake, or violent storm may indicate
the Creator is “warning us,” or perhaps “telling us something.” Humans should
not speculate on whether such events have any divine meaning. They have occurred
intermittently for the entire history of the earth--hundreds of millions of
years. On balance, these events have produced significant long-term benefit.
Humanity has learned to cope.
Our allusions to
recent astronomical events have included scientific findings dating the events
at various locations along the timeline of Earth’s enormous age. For example, the
discovery of the impact crater in Iowa was calculated to have struck our planet
450 mya during the Ordovician geologic period. The revelation also has great impact on readers confident that the
earth and universe were created a mere six thousand years ago. The Ankerberg
ministry has been careful to disavow belief in molecules to man evolution
sweeping through many evangelical churches, but we believe our support of an
ancient earth and universe warrants a clarification of our beliefs for the millions
of sincere believers embracing young earth creation. This ministry would not
propose theological views contrary to Holy Scripture. Neither would the
ministry propose errant scientific views. We believe the science community has promoted
errant scientific views with respect to the theory of evolution, but their
countless discoveries concerning the age of the universe are a triumph of
knowledge worthy of praise. We have endeavored to explain what those errant
views are and we will continue to do so. Our faith/science blog has dealt with
such important issues since 2007.
The previous
discussion enables us to focus on the distress of approximately 40% of the US
population when numbers such as millions or billions of years are assigned to events
of earth history by scientists. The young earth creationist congregation
prefers to retain their vision of an earth, a solar system, a galaxy, and a
universe in its youth. Their belief has been molded by a singularly strict
interpretation of the brief Genesis creation accounts handed down to us from
the authors of ancient scripture. Notwithstanding the brevity of the account of
creation events and valid alternatives for interpreting words and phrases
dealing with the creation of our cosmos and its greatest creative miracle--life--40%
of our population believes a singular interpretation of the events described in
the Genesis creation account: the earth was created 6000-10000 years ago. As a
science enthusiast, I would prefer hundreds of pages of descriptive creation
narrative. In divine wisdom, our God has chosen to limit the length and scope
of creation passages. Modern science enables us to discover the sequence and
timeline of creation events.
Do our blog
references to tens of thousands, millions, or billions of years distress many
Christians? The answer if an unequivocal, “Yes.” Refusal to acknowledge the age
and sequence of events in our universe in terms of a timeline of millions and
billions of years is a denial of reality in a far different category than
refusal to recognize the age of beloved family members. Their refusal to
acknowledge the scientific reality of an earth of enormous age and allowable
linguistic rules of Hebrew is rooted in (1) fear of being unfaithful to
scripture, (2) a general distrust of science which provides origins answers
contrary to their interpretation of the meaning of scripture, and (3) fear that
the theory of evolution is inextricably bound to an old universe
interpretation. This list is far from a complete catalog of reasons for the
complex cause of young earth believers’ refusal to accept the reality of an old
earth.
In future posts we
will give voice to some listener comments sent to the John Ankerberg ministry
resulting from the airing of programs with old earth scientists and theologians
as well as comments on our science/faith blog posts. We will respond in an
effort to achieve more clarity on a difficult issue within the church.
