Creationism Part Four (Final)

Uncovering the Earth’s True Age

How science and the Bible view it

Creationism Part Four (Final)

Khen Lim




Image source: imgstocks.com

And now we come to the hugely complex part that continues to be a fiery debate today. It is even more divisive than Darwinism – which has already been successfully debunked, much to the displeasure of the liberals and evolutionists – and the Young Earth Theory has incurred the wrath of many leading universities throughout America to the point where lecturers have been known to threaten Christian students with expulsion or failure grades should then persist in their beliefs.

Why is this subject so controversial? Why can’t the progressives just ignore it and move on? Why the locking of horns that eventually hurt so many people? And why the denials and the threats as well? To gain some understanding in finding answers to such questions, some insight into the issue beforehand is useful:

Deciphering biblical words

Creationism revolves around the account given by the Book of Genesis. In chapter One, we see the first use of the word ‘day’ in which each such day ends as such:

“And evening passed and morning came, marking the first day.” (Gen 1:5b, NLT)

And in that chapter, the same narrative repeats for the second (1:8b), third (13), fourth (19), fifth (23) and then the sixth day (31b). Literalists believe these are the same literal days we go through today, meaning they are twenty-four hours long but this cannot be. 

The strict Hebrew doesn’t even agree with us as to when the new day starts – we say the new day begins at midnight but they believe it is six in the morning. Yet of course, ancient history through evidence we know, does suggest that the 24-hour concept had come to us a long way back, as far back as the Egyptians, Greeks and then further back to the Babylonians.

In fact the Hebrews go as far as to have different definitions to how the word ‘day’ actually mean when it is used in the Book of Genesis. They refer to three literal translations, namely, the daylight part of a 24-hourly day, the full 24-hourly day itself and then the reference to a indiscriminately longer period of time (as one would say in ‘the days of yonder’).

According to Strong’s Concordance (#3117):

Word: yôm יום

Word order/gender: Noun masculine

Definition #1: Day, as opposed to night (Gen 7:14, 12, 8:22, 31:39, 40 et al)

Definition #2a: Day, as division of time such as a working day (Ex 20:9, 10, 16:26, 30 et al)

Definition #2b: Day, as division of time such as a day’s journey (Gen 30:36, 31:23 et al)

Definition #2c: Day, as division of time to denote duration of various other acts or states such as ‘seven days’ (Gen 7:4, 10, 8:10, 12), ‘forty days’ (Gen 7:17, 8:6), 150 days (Gen 7:24, 8:3) etc.

Definition #3: Particular days as defined by proper name or of a location such as ‘day of judgement’ (Isa 9:3)

Definition #4: Plural days of any one as in ‘days of his life,’ his age (Gen 6:3, 5:4, 8, 11 et al)

In fact, the above are only four of many other definitions. Strong’s list is too exhaustive and beyond our means of coverage here but you ought to get the idea that the word ‘day’ as interpreted in the original language of Genesis (being Hebrew) can mean different things when we take them in their intended context.

Similarly, so is the Hebrew word for ‘evening,’ which can mean sunset or nightfall or the end of the day. And then, there is the Hebrew word for ‘morning,’ which carries three distinct meanings with possible metaphoric applications but in the main, they mean sunrise or coming of light or the beginning of the day (as in dawning). This is apt since the Hebrew understanding is that the new day begins at a different time than what we’re accustomed to.

The upshot of these linguistic differences and their nuances is that it pays to be circumspect with what we read, how we read it and what meanings we apply with an exegetical emphasis towards the original purpose behind the use of the word. 

Not all the days are the same

And by saying so, the 24-hour day idea cannot be blindly applied to the Days of Creation no more than we can foolishly adapt modern birth rates to try solve the Adamaic offspring question. 

In other words, we cannot read Genesis 1 without taking a step back and re-examine our way of understanding. A literal eye doesn’t work in this respect especially with two particular of the Days concerned.

On the Third Day, God created the plants:

“Then God said, ‘Let the waters beneath the sky flow together into one place, so dry ground may appear.’ And that is what happened. God called the dry ground ‘land’ and the waters ‘seas.’ And God saw that it was good. Then God said, ‘Let the land sprout with vegetation – every sort of seed-bearing plant and trees that grow seed-bearing fruit. These seeds will then produce the kinds of plants and trees from which they came.’ And that is what happened. The land produced vegetation – all sorts of seed-bearing plants and trees with seed-bearing fruit. Their seeds produced plants and trees of the same kind. And God saw that it was good.

“And evening passed and morning came, marking the third day.” (Gen 1:9-13, NLT)

The Third Day of Creation (Image source: kevintindi.wordpress.com)

Reading the account of the Third Day of Creation bears some interesting points. Unlike what we’d come to expect (from casual reading), God did not simply blanket the world with instant grown plants. The key verse that says, “Let the land sprout with vegetation” and “The land produced vegetation” lend strong evidence that instead, God actually created the very seeds from which the plants and vegetation would grow from. 

Why would He do that? Why didn’t He just create matured plants right from the outset? I don’t know the answers but I’d inclined to believe that He simply kickstarted the world’s seedling program and beyond that, the world would take care of itself perpetually.

The word ‘sprout’ is the key here. According to Strong’s Concordance (#1876):

Word: dasha דּשׁא

Word order/gender: Noun masculine

Definition #1: To bring forth, to spring

Definition #2: A primitive root; to sprout – to bring forth, to spring

In other words, God planted the seeds Himself. His hand was in sowing them. It was He who then left it to the soil in the ground to produce the plants through its germination cycle, which is what the word ‘sprout’ refers to.  The use of the original Hebrew word here indicates that what we see happening all around the Earth is precisely what God had set out in the beginning during the Third Day of Creation.

A wider look at the first chapter of Genesis also tells us that the Lord did this with four specific types of plants, namely, the following:

	Desh	Eseb	Ets	Peri
Original Hebrew Word	דֶּ֫שֶׁא	עֵ֫שֶׂב	עֵץ	דֶּ֫שֶׁא
Strong’s Concordance	1877	6212	6086	6529
Broad definitions	Fresh grass, new grass, new growth, tender grass, vegetation, green	Grass, tender shoot, herb	Wooden framework, gallows, handle, logs, shaft, stalks, sticks, timber, tree(s), wild, wood, wooden	Foliage, fruit, fruitful, offspring, produce (noun), product, results
Context-specific meaning	All kinds of grass	All kinds of herbs	All kinds of trees	All fruit-bearing trees
Links in Genesis * Apart from others	1:11-12	1:11-12, 29-30, 2:5, 3:18, 9:3	1:11-12, 29, 2:9, 16-17, 3:1-3, 6, 8, 11-12, 17, 22, 24, 6:14, 18:4, 8, 22:3, 6	1:11-12, 29, 3:2-3, 3:6, 4:3, 30:2

Many Christians continue to believe that the Third Day of Creation is interpreted as within the same 24-hour time frame. To do that, they not only do not take words like ‘sprout’ into account but they might twist its meaning to suggest that God might have deliberated exaggerated its growth, meaning we’re not dealing with natural sprouting but possibly more like sprouting in abnormal spurts and starts. 

Yet in Genesis 1:11 (NLT), it was specifically God who said in His Own words, “Let the land sprout with vegetation – every sort of seed-bearing plant, and trees that grow seed-bearing fruit. These seeds will then produce the kinds of plants and trees from which they came.”

The Lord’s words are plainly readable. He did not say anything out of the ordinary. By His words, He meant to give way to the land to naturally – and not supernaturally – create the plants. Anything else anyone reads into this is pure conjecture unsupported by Scripture constituting unapproved contradiction because that is not what the text says. 

Given that the Lord cedes the growth of the vegetation to the state of natural order of things, it also means one other thing – it cannot be within 24 hours. In fact, it would have to be a fair few number of years.

The famous fruiterers Stark Brothers’ online website provides a very useful and insightful look at how long some of the leading fruit trees take to grow to fruit-yielding maturity:

Apple Trees	2 to 5 years
Apricot Trees	2 to 5 years
Banana Trees	2 to 3 years
Cherry Trees (sour variety)	3 to 5 years
Cherry Trees (sweet variety)	4 to 7 years
Citrus Trees	1 to 2 years
Fig Trees	1 to 2 years
Mulberry Trees	2 to 3 years
Nectarine Trees	2 to 4 years
Olive Trees	2 to 3 years
Pawpaw (Papaya) Trees	5 to 7 years
Peach Trees	2 to 4 years
Pear Trees (soft variety)	4 to 6 years
Persimmon Trees	3 to 4 years
Plum Trees	3 to 6 years

Information from the table alone shows that natural growth takes far longer than a literal day to achieve especially in the case where God did not intercede supernaturally. Two things need to be thought of with all this information at hand:

Firstly, God was preparing the ground for man to inhabit, principally, Adam and then followed very shortly by Eve but He probably understood the amount of time He had on His hands to make everything fall into place perfectly. He would certainly have known how long it would take for the trees to be bearing fruit. Therefore even as some choice fruit trees would have taken six to seven years to mature, He would surely have been aware.

Secondly, in the Garden of Eden where Adam and Eve roamed before they were driven out, they were not meant to eat meat. Though under Adam’s domain, animals were never the source of their sustenance. On the other hand, fruit consumption was (Gen 1:29-30).

All of this safely points to the Third Day of Creation being more like a few years long and not a mere 24-hour day.



The Sixth Day of Creation (Image source: pinterest.com)

Then there is the Sixth Day of Creation in which God’s day got even busier:

“Then God said, ‘Let the Earth produce every sort of animal, each producing offspring of the same kind – livestock, small animals that scurry along the ground and wild animals.’ And that is what happened. God made all sorts of wild animals, livestock and small animals, each able to produce offspring of the same kind. And God saw that it was good.

“Then God said, ‘Let us make human beings in Our image, to be like Us. They will reign over the fish in the sea, the birds in the sky, the livestock, all the wild animals on the Earth, and the small animals that scurry along the ground.’

“So God created human beings in His Own image. In the image of God, He created them; male and female, He created them.

“Then God blessed them and said, ‘Be fruitful and multiple. Fill the Earth and govern it. Reign over the fish in the sea, the birds in the sky and all the animals that scurry along the ground.’

“Then God said, ‘Look! I have given you every seed-bearing plant throughout the Earth and all the fruit trees for your food. And I have given every green plant as food for all the wild animals, the birds in the sky, and the small animals that scurry along the ground – everything that has life.’ And that is what happened.

“Then God looked over all He had made and He saw that it was very good! And evening passed and morning came, marking the sixth day.” (Gen 1:24-31, NLT)

The first key signature ‘event’ on the Sixth Day of Creation were the creation of the Nephesh (נֶפֶש‎ nep̄eš)* beings covering both living animals and human beings. The Hebrew word’s basic translation is ‘living being,’ a commonly referenced allusion to beings of a soulish nature. In this case, we are looking at a wide coverage. 

In Genesis 1:24 alone, God included ‘livestock’ (cattle and all farm animals), ‘small animals that scurry along the ground’ (perhaps Lev 11:41-43 might offer hints more than just rodents) and ‘wild animals’ (predators).

* More About Nephesh – The Hebrew word ‘nephesh’ has etymological relationships that are interesting. In Arab, a Semitic language nonetheless, is the word Nafs (نفس) and both bear similar meanings as in ‘spirit,’ which in English means ‘breath’ or something with ‘soul’ or ‘courage’ or ‘vigour.’ In the local Malay language, the word ‘nafas’ is a direct contrivance from its Arab progeny to mean ‘to breathe.’ In Genesis 2:7 (NLT), “Then the Lord God formed the man from the dust of the ground. He breathed the breath of life into the man’s nostrils and the man became a living person.” The parallel between Nephesh (Heb), Nafs (Ar) and Nafas (Arab) reveals the remarkable Semitic influence.

The second signature ‘event’ is probably God’s greatest of all His creations – man. Created in His very own likeness, none of His other creations, no matter how majestic (like the mountains) or breathtaking (such as the beautiful landscapes) or stunning (like the stars in the skies), were. 

Man was to be His pride and joy, painstakingly created unto perfection, a culmination of all the love God could muster into a single masterpiece that was to last a lifetime of eternity, communing with Him and only Him alone. Man was to be the creation to keep Him loved forever.

Through Genesis 1:27 doesn’t mention by name, they were “male and female” as He created them – Adam and Eve. For some reason not fully explored by many (but seriously, a topic for another day), God did not choose to allow Adam and Eve to roam the whole Earth and inhabit it. Instead, He created a perfect paradise-on-Earth, a lush garden of unimaginable beauty called Eden (Gen 2:8):

“Then the Lord God planted a garden in Eden in the east and there, He placed the man He had made.” (NLT)

God the Creationist became a farmer and a gardener. As keen Bible readers will know, numerous references throughout the Bible including parables in the New Testament are made using plants, lands, farms and gardens. They are not coincidental but instead they point to God’s great earthly creations. Here, God planted the Garden and allowed it to grow – again – from scratch:

“The Lord God made all sorts of trees grow up from the ground – trees that were beautiful and that produced delicious fruit.” (Gen 2:9a, NLT)

The creation of the Garden was the third signature ‘event’ and one of a labour of love masterfully designed and planned by God purely for the pleasure of His Creation in His likeness, Adam and Eve. They were to inhabit here without a want of anything else that the outside world may have to offer:

“The Lord God placed the man in the Garden of Eden to tend and watch over it.” (Gen 2:15, NLT)

Aside from naming every living creature that roams the Earth, Adam’s other occupation for God was also “to tend and watch over (the Garden).” Though this was a command given on the Sixth Day of Creation, it wasn’t one that was meant only for that day alone. God had meant it to last Adam’s lifetime; otherwise it would have had made no sense at all. 

After all, why would God get Adam “to tend and watch over it” for much less than 24 hours by the time the whole Garden was readied for him well into the Sixth Day of Creation?

As the fourth signature ‘event,’ the naming of all living creatures was Adam’s second task:

“So the Lord God formed from the ground all the wild animals and all the birds of the sky. He brought them to the man to see what he would call them and the man chose a name for each one.” (Gen 2:19, NLT)

By now the sixth day from the beginning of life on Earth, God had created an unfathomable number of animals that crawl, slither, scamper, roam, swim and fly. They were not in their hundreds but instead, in their tens of thousands (if not more) as far as species were concerned.

In fact according to a 2011 BBC study, our world is populated by as many as 8.7 million different species of non-human life although “the vast majority have not been identified – and cataloguing them all could take more than 1,000 years.”

According to the Convention on Biological Diversity’s article on Taxonomy, the past 250 years of research work had resulted in the naming of no more than 1.78 million species of animals, plants and micro-organisms and yet, between 5 and 30 million other species remain unnamed, uncategorised and unknown.

All of this would simply suggest that naming the animals alone would take far more than twenty-four hours to accomplish. As the CBD article suggests, “From finding the specimens to the name appearing in print can take several years.” 

Besides taxonomists today work in teams while Adam could not count on having anyone else to shoulder his work. Eve was his helper but at that exact point in time, she was not created yet, which brings us to the fifth signature ‘event.’

Close in significance to the creation of man, here, God placed Adam into a deep sleep so that He could reach into his side and create Eve:

“So the Lord God caused the man to fall into a deep sleep. While the man slept, the Lord God took out one of the man’s ribs and closed up the opening. Then the Lord God made a woman from the rib, and He brought her to the man. ‘At last!’ the man exclaimed. ‘This one is bone from my bone, and flesh from my flesh! She will be called ‘woman,’ because she was taken from ‘man.’” (Gen 2:21-23, NLT)

Adam’s elation can clearly be noted by the way he responded on seeing Eve for the first time. The use of the words ‘at last!’ cannot be anything other than a euphoric sense of triumph, perhaps relief, but definitely joy. It could also be taken to indicate that Adam had been lonely for long enough to bring out such an expression. 

If he had to wait for only 24 hours, then there would have been some pretentiousness in articulating an ‘at last!’ response. Put another way, my guess is that Adam waited for quite a while for something to happen, that would make him feel he’s not on his own.

The point to make here is a delicate one. Adam was certainly not alone yet he felt lonely. Since the day he was created, the man-child Adam was communing with God, which means he had company and someone to speak to. 

But Adam also knew that though he was created in His likeness, he was not identically the same. Even God understood this when He said, “It is not good for the man to be alone” (Gen 2:18a, NLT), which was why He decided to “make a helper who is just right for him” (18b).

Even if we assume that God sensed Adam’s loneliness ‘immediately,’ it was more of his response (‘at last!’) that gave it away that all of this could not have happened within our idea of a 24-hour time frame. 

All of this is compelling enough to lead me to believe that the Sixth Day of Creation, much like the Third before it, covered at least several years on its own. Adam’s response made it all too clear.

The mystery of the seventh day

The Seventh Day of Rest (Image source: textsincontext.wordpress.com)

Now that we’ve dealt with the Third and Sixth Days of Creation, that leaves us with the Seventh Day. Even as we delve into this day, take a look at Genesis 2:4, which says something very unusual:

“These are the generations of the heavens and of the earth when they were created, in the day of the Lord God made the earth and the heavens…” (Gen 2:4, KJV)

“This is the account of the heavens and the earth when they were created, in the day of the Lord God made earth and heaven.” (Gen 2:4, NASB)

“These be the generations of heaven and of earth, in the day wherein the Lord God made heaven and earth. (These be the generations, or the creation, of the heavens and the earth, in the days when the Lord God made the heavens and the earth)…” (Gen 2:4, WYC)

Many but not all translations of the Bible such as the ones shown above refer to the collective six Days of Creation as one obviously very long day. Not only that, the Seventh Day of Creation has been left unclosed in the usual way we have come to expect. 

For all the six days, the ending was signed off by the remark, “And evening passed and morning came, marking the x day.” We can find this in Genesis 1:5b, 8, 13, 19, 23 and 31 but it is conspicuously missing for the seventh day. In what we expect to be divine and inerrant, nothing is ever missing by accident.

So, could this not be a typo error? Could it not be a flippant whim by chance? Has the Lord purposely left this Seventh Day – the day in which Scripture marked, saying, “God had finished His work of Creation” – unclosed for a reason? And what reason could that possibly be especially when He then went on and blessed and sanctified the day:

“And God blessed the seventh day and declared it holy, because it was the day when He rested from all His work of creation.” (Gen 2:3, NLT)

Maybe Hebrews 4:4-11 might tell us something:

“We know it is ready because of the place in the Scriptures where it mentions the seventh day: ‘On the seventh day, God rested from all His work.’ But in the other passage, God said, ‘They will never enter My place of rest.’ So God’s rest is there for people to enter but those who first heard this good news failed to enter because they disobeyed God. So God set another time for entering His rest and that time is today. God announced this through David much later in the words already quoted: ‘Today when you hear his voice, don’t harden your hearts.’

“Now if Joshua had succeeded in giving them this rest, God would not have spoken about another day of rest still to come. So there is a special rest still waiting for the people of God. For all who have entered into God’s rest have rested from their labours, just as God did after creating the world. So let us do our best to enter that rest. But if we disobey God, as the people of Israel did, we will fall.” (Heb 4:4-11, NLT)

As we all know, each day for the first six days, God ended with the same signature remark but not on the seventh. The Apostle Paul, who (arguably) wrote the Epistle to the Hebrews then tells us to labour to enter into God’s seventh day of rest. 

Because that day of rest has continued till today for at least 6,000 years, it will come to an end only when God creates the New Heavens and New Earth. As it is, we have entered and are in God’s Seventh Day of Rest, a day in which we are encouraged to enter as part of His plan for large numbers of spiritual beings to enjoy eternity with Him:

“After this, I saw a vast crowd, too great to count, from every nation and tribe and people and language, standing in front of the throne and before the Lamb. They were clothed in white robes and held palm branches in their hands. And they were shouting with a great roar, ‘Salvation comes from our God who sits on the throne and from the Lamb!’ And all the angels were standing around the throne and around the elders and the four living beings. And they fell before the throne with their faces to the ground and worshipped God.” (Rev 7:9-11, NLT)

We are also reminded of Jesus’ Parable of the Banquet in which the master of the house invited a large number of guests but most of them, unwilling to come, feigned excuses, to which a decision was made by the master as told in the Gospel of Luke:

“So his master said, ‘Go out into the country lanes and behind the hedges and urge anyone you find to come so that the house will be full.” (Lk 14:23, NLT)

In the parable, God takes on the form of the ‘master of the house’ while the ‘banquet’ is God’s invitation to get people to join Him in heaven. Just as Paul said in Hebrews 4:4-11 and John’s witness in Revelation 7:9-11, the Parable calls forth to us to accept the Lord’s encouragement and welcome to join Him for eternity. That opportunity has been opened for 6,000 years but will one day close for good and that day will come when God deems that the house is full (Lk 14:23).

At that appointed time, He will call it a day and fold up our present Universe. In his Second Epistle, which the Apostle Peter wrote to the different churches in Asia Minor, he took the opportunity to explain that in delaying the Parousia, God was offering the chance for more people to deny Satan and accept the salvation offered by His Son. 

In the meantime, we are to wait patiently for Christ to come while we continue to study God’s Word. To the end, Peter wrote about the end of God’s seventh day of rest:

“And by the same word, the present heavens and earth have been stored up for fire. They are being kept for the Day of Judgement when ungodly people will be destroyed.” (2 Pt 3:7, NLT)

“But the Day of the Lord will come as unexpectedly as a thief. Then the heavens will pass away with a terrible noise and the very elements themselves will disappear in fire, and the earth and everything on it will be found to deserve judgement.” (2 Pt 3:10, NLT)

“On that day, He will set the heavens on fire and the elements will melt away in the flames.” (2 Pt 3:12, NLT)

In Hebrews 12:26-27, the Apostle Paul writes:

“When God spoke from Mount Sinai, His voice shook the earth but now, He makes another promise: ‘Once again, I will shake not only the earth but the heavens also.’ This means that all of creation will be shaken and removed, so that only unshakable things will remain.” (Heb 12:26-27, NLT)

Paul uses the term, ‘unshakable things’ to refer to those who accept God’s invitation to join Him in eternity, drawing a parallel with Peter’s allusion to the Parousia in which everything but the unshakable “will be shaken and removed” so that what remains are those who will be saved. 

Virtually everything we have taken for granted in this world will suffer in ways unimagined. What we assumed were the unchanging parts of our lives will be devastated.

The prophet Isaiah wrote:

“The heavens above will melt away and disappear like a rolled-up scroll. The stars will fall from the sky like withered leaves from a grapevine, or shrivelled figs from a fig tree.” (Isa 34:4, NLT)

With the present Universe having come to an end, the Day of Judgement will have arrived and God will put paid to those who rejected His invitation:

“And I saw a great white throne and the One sitting on it. The earth and sky fled from His presence but they found no place to hide. I saw the dead, both great and small, standing before God’s throne. And the books were opened, including the Book of Life.

“And the dead were judged according to what they had done, as recorded in the books. The sea gave up its dead and death and the grave gave up their dead. And all were judged according to their deeds. Then death and the grave were thrown in the lake of fire. This lake of fire is the second death. And anyone whose name was not found recorded in the Book of Life was thrown into the lake of fire.” (Rev 20:11-15, NLT)

Once God’s Seventh Day of Rest is finally over, the eighth day will commence in which the Lord will return to His creating ways once more. This time, He will establish a brand new universe with unfathomable dynamics, outrageously unheard of physical laws and incomprehensible beauty starting with a new Earth that has neither seas nor oceans (Rev 21:1) for there is no longer a need for one; neither the Sun nor the Moon (Rev 21:23) but instead the Lord’s glory will be our filament within the lamp of the Lamb.

Gravitational force in the New Jerusalem, as it will be called, will either be a greatly reduced extent of or completely absent:

“And I saw the Holy City the New Jerusalem, coming down from God out of heaven like a bride beautifully dressed for her husband.” (Rev 21:2, NLT)

“When He measured it, He found it was a square, as wide as it was long. In fact, its length and width and height were each 1,400 miles.” (Rev 21:16, NLT)

Note: In its original Koine Greek translation, the ancient measure was 12,000 stadia, which is equivalent to 2,220 kilometres or in metric terms, 1,379.4 miles.

The Book of Revelation’s vision of the New Jerusalem is, interestingly, no longer a geoid, which is what the Earth actually is. The geoid nature of the Earth is the result of gravitational compression as well as its rotational forces over its whole age. However with gravitational forces lessened dramatically or even completely gone, whatever the original geometry would be retained. 

In other words, had the Earth set out to be a cube at its beginning, these natural forces would have immediately turned it into the shape that it is today but without them, the same can no longer be said.

The great news for everyone who accepts God’s invitation is there is now eternity and with it, death is forever banished together with all emotional sadness as well as mortal pain and suffering that plague all of us today:

“For the Lamb on the throne will be their Shepherd. He will lead them to springs for life-giving water. And God will wipe every tear from their eyes.” (Rev 7:17, NLT)

“…and there will be no more death or sorrow or crying or pain. All these things are gone forever.” (Rev 21:4, NLT)

This will be a life unheard of for the sceptic at heart, impossible to believe for the atheists but definitely most desperately in demand for the believers. This is what we Christians have been keeping our faith for! 

Above all, when we get there, we will all be clothed in new, though lookalike bodies as Paul puts it best in his first letter to the church in Corinth:

“It is the same way with the resurrection of the dead. Our earthly bodies are planted in the ground when we die but they will be raised to live forever. Our bodies are buried in brokenness but they will be raised in glory. They are buried in weakness but they will be raised in strength. They are buried as natural human bodies but they will be raised as spiritual bodies. For just as there are natural bodies, there are also spiritual bodies.” (1 Cor 15:42-44, NLT)

So, what do all this have to do with the Earth’s true age? A proper biblical view of the beginning of time is just as vital as understanding God’s bigger plans in terms of what happens when this Earth of ourselves has spent its last days of usefulness to all of us. 

In between the two extremes, many events have taken place and all of them are important because they lead us to perceive how God’s Word unfolds and how it will affect the world we live in and the humanity that has served it for better or for worse.

The biblical generation

Speaking of humanity, we know of the fact that the biblical genealogies are incomplete, which presents hurdles in trying to put a meaningful measure on age but then again, in Scripture, God made a covenant and commanded His law to one-thousand generations. At least five places in the Bible attest to this:

“Remember His covenant forever – the commitment He made to a thousand generations.” (1 Chr 16:15, NLT)

“He always stands by His covenant – the commitment He made to a thousand generations.” (Ps 105:8, NLT)

“But I lavish unfailing love for a thousand generations on those who love Me and obey My commands.” (Ex 20:6, Dt 5:10 and 7:9, NLT)

The key word in all of these verses is ‘generation.’ The question then is how long in terms of time is one generation worth? Scientists and genetic genealogists such as Donn Devine is quoted in a 2005 Ancestry Magazine article, to put it in short that, the generation gap is different for males (fathers) and females (mothers). 

Accordingly then, his opinion is that the male and female generations run a gap of 31 to 38 years for the former and an average of 25.5 years for the latter.

On the other hand, the Bible sees it differently. In Genesis 15:16, God said to Abraham (then Abram):

“After four generations, your descendants will return here to this land, for the sins of the Amorites do not yet warrant their destruction.” (NLT)

‘Four generations,’ the Lord said thereafter that He would deliver Israel. Under most normal circumstances, a generation in the Bible is usually forty years long but in this case, a generation is 100 years. This is backed up in the previous few verses.

Let’s look at them within context:

“Then the Lord said to Abram, ‘You can be sure that your descendants will be strangers in a foreign land, where they will be oppressed as slaves for 400 years. But I will punish the nation that enslaves them, and in the end, they will come away with great wealth. (As for you, you will die in peace and be buried at a ripe old age.) After four generations, your descendants will return here to this land, for the sins of the Amorites do not yet warrant their destruction.” (Gen 15:13-16, NLT)

It is now much clearer, within this context at least, that four generations is equivalent to 400 years, which means one generation spans a century. We can also understand that when Abraham was exactly 100 years old, his promised child, Isaac, was born (Gen 21:5), very roughly marking the generation gap between father and son.

Nonetheless though, 400 years as a number is also four times the usual biblical generation, which is 40 years, which then tells us that both 100 years and 40 years could be considered generations in their own right. Yet perhaps, some might be right to suggest that somewhere in between – say, 70 years – might also be acceptable as a mean such as the case here:

“Seventy years are given to us! Some even live to eighty. But even the best years are filled with pain and trouble; soon they disappear and we fly away.” (Ps 90:10, NLT)

For some us, maybe 70 years seem to feel more ‘right’ because it errs close to the average age of a man at the tail end of his mortality more so than when his first child, as in Abraham, was born. Perhaps too, we might consider the curiosity behind King David who reigned for 40 years and died at the age of 70.

What we can summarise from our understanding of ‘generation’ is that it is marked by the age of the man as his first child is born and secondarily, marked by his age at death. As for the Bible, the ‘generation’ maintains the primary use of 40 and 100 years but on occasion, 70 years. 

In perhaps some divine numeric fluency, it is not just that 70 is the average between 40 and 100 but remarkably, these three timeframes do work in strange harmony to produce symmetry throughout Scripture. 

For example, 100 years defined the generation of the pre-Mosaic era but post-Mosaic, it was 40 years such as the case with these evidence:

“The Lord was angry with Israel and made them wander in the wilderness for 40 years until the entire generation that sinned in the Lord’s sight had died.” (Num 32:13, NLT)

“Again the Israelites did evil in the Lord’s sight, so the Lord handed them over to the Philistines who oppressed them for 40 years.” (Jdg 13:1, NLT)

Peleg and the Continental Shift

Image source:iflscience.com

So, given that we can more or less agree that the biblical generation is about 40 years, that would then suggest that humanity is roughly 40,000 years old (1,000 generations x 40 years). However, before we become too keen on this idea, consider other possibilities too:

One other, though empirical, approach is to consider how an early biblical event – the days of Peleg – might reconcile with Earth’s natural history. Genesis 10:25 records this event with this bit of history:

“Eber had two sons. The first was named Peleg (which means ‘division’) for during his lifetime, the people of the world were divided into different language groups.” (Gen 10:25, NLT)

While the division that the Bible refers to is what “different language groups” is about, delving deeper into natural world history at that time may allow us to wonder if conventional wisdom was correct in assuming that, that has to do with the Tower of Babel dispersion theory and not something else like a possible breaking-up of the vast continents then. 

To determine this, we can begin with understanding Peleg’s name, which means ‘for during his lifetime, the people of the world were divided into different language groups.’ The common assertion was that man was scattered from Babel but apparently, that phenomenon took place after and not before he was born.

The biblical tradition in giving people names was always based on events that were ahead and not behind their birth. In Genesis 5, for example, Methuselah was born to Enoch (5:21) and although the Bible does not offer a meaning to his name, we know three things about him.

Firstly, as recorded in Scripture, he was the last of the antediluvian patriarchs, secondly he was the world’s oldest recorded person (at 969 years old) and thirdly, ancient Hebrew defines his name as saying, ‘his death shall bring judgement.’ And we learn from extra-biblical traditions that Methuselah died seven days prior to the Great Flood.

So for Peleg’s name to have any links to Babel, then the dispersion must take place early enough for his father Eber to name him accordingly. However that is not the case, which leaves us to then ask if Hebrew grammar forces us to be a little more cautious with the interpretation of his name. 

Accordingly, the Hebrew language utilises the perfect root form ‘palag’ (Gen 10:25) to refer to the dividing event itself and not the dividing condition. As author of ‘Of Peleg and Pangaea’ Rick Lanser (2006) wrote, “This does not appear to conflict with the division event being an ongoing one, initiated sometime before Peleg was born but continuing throughout his lifetime.”

What this means is that Peleg was born at a time after the division event had already happened but even so, that specific event had continued to persist through his life. What historical event we are then left with, in that case, could be the Continental Shift but not quite in the way secularists believe. 

The separation of huge pieces of land as likely described in Genesis 1:9 was, as Lanser described, not a one-off occurrence but a conditioning process that persisted long enough to bring about permanent change to the landforms that the people were accustomed to before the shifts began. Once the shifting began, the resulting huge gaps and meandering creases became the new low places, which then were duly filled with water to become seas and rivers.

As for Peleg’s name inferring people were grouped according to different languages (Gen 10:25), we then overlook the fact that the Babel phenomenon afflicted not his generation but those of the second generation belonging to the Japhethites. Genesis 10:5 says this of the descendants of Javan, son of Japheth, son of Noah:

“Their descendants became the seafaring peoples that spread out to various lands, each identified by its own language, clan and national identity.” (NLT)

From the words ‘each identified by its own language’, we learn that we can now link the Babel event to the days of the Japhethites since the impact resulting from these linguistic differences affected them instead. 

However Lanser urges us to skip three generations and come to the fifth generation of Shem’s descendants before we can talk about Peleg’s division. This is what he has to say:

“Accounting for long human life spans at the time plus a general equivalence in the timing of the generations following Noah’s three sons (all childless while abroad the Ark), this means approximately 200 years separate the Babel and Peleg divisions.”

And with that we come to a well-argued distinction between the division of languages (Babel event) and the division of land masses (Pangaea event) to which they cannot ever possibly be the one and the same and to which we are certain that Peleg’s definition of ‘division’ pertains to the latter and not the former. 

Even so, we must also be aware that the Pangaea phenomenon is itself a secular idea meant to out-explain the Christian view by asserting the very notion that this – Continental Shift (or Drift) by any other name – was a seismic movement of tectonic plates that lasted for a contiguously long enough time to have created even pre-Pangaea supercontinents such as Pannotia and before that, Rodinia.

With such a compelling (though not irrefutable) argument, secularists argue that the Earth cannot be any less than multi-billion years old. So what gives then?

The Christian view, as far as I understand, does not refute the fundamental basis of a continental shift and neither does it reject the ancient understanding that once upon a time, the world was a single vast land mass:

“Then God said, ‘Let the waters beneath the sky flow together into one place, so dry ground may appear.’ And that is what happened. God called the dry ground ‘land’ and the waters ‘seas.’ And God saw that it was good.” (Gen 1:9-10, NLT)

That ‘dry ground,’ which God called ‘land’ was likely a single vast land mass, a solitary supercontinent and not anything resembling what we have today. In fact, the whole premise about continental shift was an 1858 idea of a French Christian geo-scientist by the name of Antonio Snider-Pellegrini (1802-1885) but for him, it all took place during the Great Flood and not before. 

In doing so, he preceded Alfred Lothar Wegener’s (1880-1930) 1915 Pangaea theories (in his publication entitled ‘The Origin of Continents and Oceans’) by several decades.

In his 1858 publication called ‘La Création et ses mystères dévoilés’ (tr. The Creation and its Mysteries Unveiled), Snider-Pellegrini theorised that all the continents that we know today were part of a single land mass during a time called the Pennsylvania Period – some 314-280 million years ago – after he had discovered common plant fossils found identically in the coal beds of Europe and United States. He believed the cause of the supercontinental break-up to the Great Flood of the Bible.

Snider-Pellegrini wasn’t the only one to have spoken about the common plant discovery. In 1885, Austrian geo-scientist Eduard Seuss (1831-1914) said pretty much the same thing concerning similarities in Late Paleozoic coal beds found in India, Australia, South Africa and Latin America but were different to those from the northern continents. It was Seuss who, in 1861, coined the name Gondwana to describe a conceptual supercontinent of the south where plants were literally carried across by trans-migratory animals across massive land masses.



Tectonic plate movement (Image source: reference.com)

Another one was a Wegener adherent by the name of Alexander du Toit (1878-1948), a South African geologist who discovered further proof of his mentor’s Pangaea by comparing coal bed fossils. There, he became aware of how northern continents were, once upon a time, a single land mass, which he called Laurasia. 

He also found compelling biological evidences in the forms of  large fresh water reptiles, land reptiles and plants and by them, he understood that it would’ve been implausible otherwise for any of these lifeforms to be once so close to one another and yet now in vastly different geographies.

Going back to Scripture, Genesis 10:25 must now be referring to the breaking up of the huge land masses that then brought on the forced division of the postdiluvian family population on the basis of the different languages. The Continental Shift resulted in them forcibly displaced to various dissimilar geographical locations.

 As a matter of fact, the whole of Genesis 10 specifically deals with how Noah’s three sons and their families distinctively forming three major divisions that later produced a rich vein of many sub-family groups. Because of all this, the division described in Genesis 10:25 would have affected the entire postdiluvian population. 

Other parts of Genesis 10 that lend support to this population being divided by language and then summarily geographically displaced can be found here:

“Their descendants became the seafaring peoples that spread out to various lands, each identified by its own language, clan and national identity.” (Gen 10:5, NLT; my emphasis)

“The Canaanite clans eventually spread out and the territory of Canaan extended from Sidon in the north to Gerar and Gaza in the south…” (Gen 10:18, NLT; my emphasis)

“These were the descendants of Ham, identified by clan, language, territory and national identity.” (Gen 10:20, NLT; my emphasis)

“These are the clans that descended from Noah’s sons, arranged by nation according to their lines of descent. All the nations of the earth descended from these clans after the Great Flood.” (Gen 10:32, NLT; my emphasis)

God says it wasn’t a Shift

And yet, despite all of this, something isn’t quite right with the Continental Shift argument. Why? Had the shift taken place during then, it would have been a great human catastrophe, the likes of which Scripture would have recorded for us to read. As it stands, Genesis 10 and 11 do not provide any account of it. 

This is because when huge land masses begin to break apart and form separate continents, the geological stresses would have caused land movements to shift by as many as thousands of miles and not just a mere few yards.

Such huge movements would have been deadly because it not only would’ve devastated the face of the Earth but also everything living on it, including Peleg and all his descendants. The seas and oceans would have erupted from very deep under, forcing waters to rush at breakneck speeds and wash over the continents, flooding everything in sight in the form of gigantic tsunamis that would be far more destructive than the ones that hit the Aceh province in Sumatra, Indonesia on December 26 2004. In short, this would have been a second worldwide flood event and an unforgettable one at that.

Yet the secular scientific community points to three forms of physical scientific evidence as proof that a Continental Shift did occur during the Great Flood, the first of which are the fossilised sedimentary traces in the form of layers in which copious amount of plants lay buried in coal beds not just on the eastern flanks of the United States but also in parts of Europe as far to the east as Russia.



Deccan Flood Basalts, India (Image source: geology.sdsu.edu)

Thick volcanic rock strata located in the Siberian Traps and the Deccan Traps of India are also another area of evidence, bearing enough proof that even secular geologists called them ‘Flood Basalts,’ contending they are ‘catastrophic outpourings of huge volumes of lavas.’

The third scientific proof is in the form of fossilised large primates found in the postdiluvian sedimentary – and some volcanic layers in the African subcontinent. Quite laughably, in fact, evolutionists use these as triumphant evidence that apes and humans had together ‘evolved’ progressively from a common ancestral thread.

However such proofs may seem ‘scientific,’ they are as much what secularists, progressivists, evolutionists and atheists might want to believe is true. As many often say, one can pathologically believe in an obsessive lie to such an extent that the lie itself might as well become the new truth. 

What we ultimately do know is that following the Great Flood in Noah’s time, God did make a specific pledge that He would never consent to anything like this ever again (Gen 8:21-22, 9:11).

In other words, there would be no other such worldwide event that would destroy the Earth’s surface and its population so comprehensively. In fact, the Lord stated that He’d established boundaries to surround the land so that similarly ravaging waters would never inflict such damage again:

“Mountains rose and valleys sank to the levels You decreed. Then You set a firm boundary for the seas, so they would never again cover the earth.” (Ps 104:8-9, NLT)

When all’s said and done, Scripture bears absolutely no hint of such a globally catastrophic event, neither directly nor indirectly. No matter how debatable this issue of a possible Continental Shift during the days of Peleg, one must be reminded that Scripture must be used to prove Scripture and secondly, that we must always be careful to err on the conservative side and leave the outlandishness to others.

While some might say that Genesis 10:25 has thrown out hints, one must not read it in isolation, free from mitigating evidences from other parts of Scripture but instead need to comb it through analytically as well. What would make better sense is to read the verse alongside four others in the same chapter – 10:5, 18, 20 and 32 – so that a clearer picture of what this division is about may emerge. 

Once done, the reader will understand that the division that Peleg’s name speaks about was one of linguistic and family pertaining to the entire postdiluvian population into different geographic lands.

Remember that had it really occurred, the disaster would make a liar of God who promised Noah that there would be no more such floods anymore. The rainbow, till today, remains proof of God’s pledge. Besides in the case of a Continental Shift, Peleg’s ancestor, Noah and his family might not have had a sloping incline to land on because the mountains of Ararat mightn’t have existed yet. 

After all, like most mountains, they would have needed an intercontinental collision to emerge. Last but not least, the compelling fossil evidences actually tell of the continental breakup that occurred not during Peleg’s days but during Noah’s Great Flood. The difference cannot be underestimated.

Peleg and the interglacial theory

The Pleistocene period (Image source: cnhm.msnucleus.org)

The controversy behind Peleg’s name isn’t just confined to Continental Drifts it seems. There is also the suggestion that his name is linked to a different period in time, notably, the last of the Interglacial Periods where the land bridges were removed, thus breaking apart the Earth’s great land masses.

An interglacial period is a geological phenomenon in which there is a time gap of warmer global average temperatures that would last thousands of years. Many such periods punctuate an ice age in a consecutive fashion. The most recent such period is called the Holocene, which commenced after 2.5 million years of the Pleistocene interglacial, some 11,700 years ago. This, some say, was the dividing period that makes up Peleg’s name.

During the Holocene interglacial, continental ice sheets melted, sending vast amounts of water pouring into the oceans, causing sea levels to go up several hundred feet. If we assume the biblical genealogies to be complete – that’s a big if – then a simple calculation would place Peleg’s birth at around 4,000 years ago.

On the other hand, with the interglacial period having happened 11,700 years ago, it looks more like the genealogies are only one-third complete, meaning we’re only seeing 3,000 years (12,000 divided by 4,000) and if that’s the case, we could possibly place the beginning of humanity at about 23,400 years ago, that is, assuming that the gaps in the genealogies appear at the same rate throughout human history. 

Since it looks more like the gaps are in the earlier parts of the genealogies, the estimate would appear low, likelier then to be more along the lines of 40,000 years.

According to R.G. Klein (1992) in his book, ‘Evolutionary Anthropology 1,’ the Adam whom we know in the Bible was the first modern upright-walking human. In that sense, we are referring to the Homo sapiens sapiens specie, a sub-specie of Homo sapiens itself and widely known to be the crucible from which all modern races were founded. 

This would place Adam right where we witness the historical emergence of sophisticated toolmaking, art and religious worship in Europe. That would be somewhere around 50,000 years earlier.

Contrary to the persistence of modern scientists, Klein and a few other remain convinced that he and Eve were the progenitor of the wholly modern, spiritual human being that we are today. They are no evidence whatsoever pointing to them being Neanderthal or Homo erectus or any other hominid types no matter what the scientific community at large may have to say about fossil records. 

Peleg according to biblical evidence

The general consensus among at least some scholars is that since there are evidently several gaps in the biblical genealogies, they must then be telescoped. What this means is that we’re possibly looking at man having existed for not mere thousands but likely tens of thousands of years instead. 

However, humanity was certainly not just the grandest but also the last of God’s creations and it happened on the sixth day. If you’ve come this far in our article, you will have understood that the Days of Creationism are not the 24-hour calendar days we know. These are all but ordinary days and at least two of those (days) were quite a bit longer than the others as well. As for the seventh day, well, some of us may be convinced that it actually hasn’t ended yet.

No matter how little or much information we can deduce from biblical evidence about the true age of the world, the days of Creation are often as open to interpretation as one can imagine. The Bible testifies to God’s incredible power and flawless creativity; none more than what we learn from the six days of Creation. It also tells us in no uncertain terms that God’s creations are a reliable witness to the truth that expresses God’s power and righteousness.

And God has made the truth too impossible to ignore that no unbeliever has the excuse of denying His deity, sovereignty and omnipotence. It doesn’t matter how atheism appears increasingly dominant or that the LBGTQ seems to be turning common family values upside-down or how the liberals have denied God His place in society because in the end, no one will be able to ignore Him no matter what. His eternal power and divine nature is such that despite all that man is intent on doing, He cannot be denied.

And if God decides that we can only handle so much information, then that’s all He will reveal to us. If He determines that some things are better for us to find out when we join Him in heaven, then that’s how it’s going to be. What we don’t know – and may never know – God withholds for a reason. The truth about God isn’t always just the things we know about Him. 

Over the years of learning about spiritual immaturity, it has come to pass that God’s truth also comprises things we do not know about the life around us or what we’re up against or how we’re going to make it through the day or the next. God is everything we know about and everything we don’t.

As the Bible teaches us, what Creationism underscores is the truth and righteousness of God in different ways. Through His unparalleled mastery, we now see His wonderful creations every morning, day and night. Their visual majesty is brilliantly on display and none of us need words to describe and yet, there they are, a constant reminder of who God is in our lives:

“The heavens proclaim the glory of God. The skies display His craftsmanship. Day after day, they continue to speak; night after night, they make Him known. They speak without a sound or word; their voice is never heard. Yet their message has gone throughout the Earth, and their words to all the world.” (Ps 19:1-4, NLT)

Just like a breathtaking landscapes or the brilliance of the millions of stars in the skies, God’s hand is at work in just as amazing a way as ever in the animals that are around us. Each of them unique and remarkable in its own way and each of them having a powerful presence in its own right in the natural order of things. Whether we’re at the zoo, in a safari or out in the deepest oceans, God’s power is never too far away for us to witness:

“Just ask the animals and they will teach you. Ask the birds of the sky and they will tell you. Speak to the Earth and it will instruct you. Let the fish in the sea speak to you. For they all know that my disaster has come from the hand of the Lord. For the life of every living thing is in His hand, and the breath of every human being. The ear tests the words it hears just as the mouth distinguishes between foods.” (Job 12:7-11, NLT)

That is why for all the things that God has done to advance humanity, there’s been a tremendous pushback as long as man has lived. Even after the Great Flood, man’s debauchery has not subsided nor has man turned from his evil ways and there’s nothing more evil than to deny the truth of God because in doing so, we become disobedient, wretched and defiantly sinful:

“But God shows His anger from heaven against all sinful, wicked people who suppress the truth by their wickedness. They know the truth about God because He has made it obvious to them. For ever since the world was created, people have seen the Earth and sky. Through everything God made, they can clearly see His invisible qualities – His eternal power and divine nature. So they have no excuse for not knowing God.” (Rom 1:18-20, NLT)

How science explains it

Moon rock sample (Image source: nytimes.com)

Advanced science today is used to measure how old ancient artefacts are. One such branch of science called radioactive dating (or radioisotope dating or radiometric dating) is a method of using the decay of the radioactive elements to estimate the age of rocks and metals.

In nature, some form of atoms are known to be unstable, which we refer to as radioactive isotopes. Unlike those that are stable enough not to change over time even in a chemical reaction, these ones will spontaneously decay and mutate into other kinds of atoms. 

A simple example is uranium, which, as a parent element, is unstable enough to decay radioactively through a series of steps until it stabilises in the form of daughter element, Lead (Plumbum). Potassium, on the other hand, will do the same and eventually turn into daughter element, Argon.

Any scientific approach using radioactive dating will find itself in fundamental and direct conflict with the Bible when it comes to Creationism. While Christians are not supposed to question God in terms of His Word, creeping science and its dominant influence has compelled many to believe that rather than accept the biblical account (Jn 17:17), we are to come to terms with the radioisotope dates of billions of years and then shoehorn this truth into the Bible. Over decades of brainwashing, many Christians no longer question how science can disprove the Bible when it comes to the age of the Earth.

We do of course understand that the Earth is constantly changing in the sense that its crust is continually being formed, being modified and also being destroyed. What all this means is that the very rocky foundation that would have recorded its earliest history might not be so easily found and by all practical accounts, most of them might no longer exist to tell us the age of its origins.

However, science tells us that there are ample evidence in and around the Earth including other celestial bodies within the Solar System and from there, the estimate is that the Earth is around 4.5 to 4.6 billion years in age. And if the Earth is that old, the Milky Way and the Universe would be far more so again. To substantiate all of this, science provides the following evidences:

Firstly, various old rocks found in western Greenland as well as southern Africa and the Great Lakes region of North America were revealed to be between 3.4 and 3.8 billion years old. In the sedimentary rocks of western Australia, scientists uncovered the oldest minerals – tiny zircon crystals – dated at between 4.0 and 4.2 billion years in age. 

Secondly, from Apollo moon-landing missions came rocks from the lunar highlands that were partly or wholly molten. Dating revealed them to be between 4.4 and 4.5 billion years old. 

Thirdly, from studies of numerous meteorite fragments conducted using independent radiometric dating techniques, their asteroid origins reveal ages from 4.4 to 4.6 billion years.

There have also been so-called scientific evidence indicating that the Universe is as old as 7 to 20 billion years in age, depending on certain other factors whereas the Milky Way galaxy is said to be anywhere around 14 to 18 billion years old. By combining all these data, NASA studies suggest that ‘at best,’ the age of the Universe could likely be approximately 14 billion years old. 

All of this brings us to what scientists consider 4.54 billion years to be the ‘best’ estimate for the age of the Earth based on the time needed for the Lead isotopes in four very old Galena ores to have evolved from the time that the Solar System was created as recorded in the iron meteorite found in the Canyon Diablo.

Science has always been impressive but there are limitations, much of which the reading public and the modern Christian at large may be on the wrong side of ignorance. And that’s often because there are different shades to science.

For example, scientists rely on observational science in situations where instead of controlled observation, science requires only nature to be empirically observed. Harmless as it might sound, observational science doesn’t have the same perceived authority.

Data methods that are based on observational science are used to measure the amount of a daughter element (eg Uranium) within a rock sample in order to determine the current observable decay rate of the parent element (eg Lead). Because it offers the most fundamental method of collecting data concerning an environment, observational science is the bedrock of scientific enquiry.

However the investigating scientist has no control over the situation he wishes to observe particularly if or when too numerous extraneous factors become critically influential. This then makes it very difficult to determine exactly the real causative behavioural determinants that would be within his scope of interest. 

In other words, establishing a genuine cause-and-effect relationship in attempting to understand the radioactive decay of any rock or metal becomes doubtful.

Scientists also depend on dating methods that rely on historical science. Unlike observational science, historical science can neither be observed nor monitored. The conditions of the environment can only be studied from data collected historically. 

Such is often the case with ancient rock structures and formations and especially when scientific investigations need to be conducted to determine how an environment may or may not have affected a very old piece of rock.



Image source: kneales.wordpress.com

The real problem here is that radioactive dating is completely dependent on both types of sciences and because of this, there is no sure way of directly or literally measuring the real age of, say, a piece of rock. An estimate is fine, only if and when people are fully aware that an estimate is not the same as an accurate depiction. 

Scientific techniques are available currently that take into account conditions and assumptions concerning historical events that may have influenced the sample. In that sense, an estimate can be arrived at but unlike how it is liberally abused, it cannot and should not be taken as truth.

Because of all this, we must be aware of what these assumptions are that scientists often make but more often than not, they are made too obscure for people to realise. Here are just three of deep concern for us:

-        Scientists like to assume that they know, with accuracy, the initial condition of any ancient rock sample

-        The physical elements – whether parent or daughter – in the rock are presumed not to be influenced by anything other than radioactive decay

-        Scientists often make sweeping assumptions that since the formation of the said rock, the parent isotope has been decaying at a constant rate

Modern science has often been inflated to an imperious degree when in reality, there is still much of life it cannot explain. Much of history, for example, remains out of reach of science and what we often see today are at beast intelligent speculation based on conditions perceived through probability. And when all is said and done, still the very best way to learn about history and the age of the Earth is to fall back on the Word of God.

Whatever that modern science construes or screws up, many scientists end up agreeing with biblical authenticity that points to the Earth being no older than around 6,000 years of age. 

Rather than twisting the Word of God to fit into what is politically correct today, real scientists are more likely to accept that true science – knowing that science is created by none other than God – will invariably and infallibly support His Word all the way.



Note: For now, this brings the Creationism Series to a temporary end. In the future, we may append more to this series.

References

Andrews, Kylie (Nov 2011) Why Are There 24 Hours In A Day (ABC Science). Available at http://www.abc.net.au/science/articles/2011/11/15/3364432.htm

Austin, Steven A., Baumgardner, John R., Snelling, Andrew A., Vardiman, Larry, Wise, Kurt P. (Jul 1994) Catastrophic Plate Tectonics: A Global Flood Model of Earth History presented at the Third International Conference on Creationism, R.E. Walsh (ed.) (Pittsburgh, PA: Creation Science Fellowship). Available at http://static.icr.org/i/pdf/technical/Catastrophic-Plate-Tectonics-A-Global-Flood-Model.pdf

Balter, M. (1999) Restorers Reveal 28,000-Year-Old Artworks in ‘Science,’ 283:1835

Black, Richard (Aug 2011) Species Count Put At 8.7 Million (London: BBC Science and Environment). Available at http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-14616161

Branch of Isotope Geology (Dec 2016), How Do We Know the Age of the Earth? Radiometric Dating in The Age of the Earth, United States Geological Survey (Menlo Park, California). Available at https://geomaps.wr.usgs.gov/parks/gtime/ageofearth.html

Convention on Biological Diversity (undated) What Is Taxonomy? (Montreal, Canada). Available at https://www.cbd.int/gti/taxonomy.shtml

Cornwall, Dr Judson and Smith, Dr Stelman (Mar 2009) The Exhaustive Dictionary of Bible Names (Alachua, FL: Bridge-Logos Publishers). Available at https://www.amazon.com/Exhaustive-Bible-Names-Dictionary-Stelman/dp/0882707515

Devine, Donn CG, FNGS (Sept-Oct 2005) How Long Is A Generation? Science Provides An Answer in Ancestry Magazine (Vol 23, Nr 4, pp51-53). Available at https://books.google.com.my/books?id=JzgEAAAAMBAJ&printsec=frontcover&dq=ancestry+magazine+sep-oct+2005&hl=en&sa=X&ei=5I_mU7TzFIr_yQSV-IKwCw&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q=ancestry%20magazine%20sep-oct%202005&f=false

Dewey, John F. and Bird, John M. (May 1970) Mountain Belts and the New Global Tectonics in Journal of Geophysical Research 75 Nr 14 (1970): 2625-2647; Dietz, R.S. (1976) Geosynclines, Mountains and Continent-Building in Scientific American 226 Nr 3 as reproduced in Continents Adrift and Continents Aground (San Francisco, CA: W.H. Freeman and Company). Available at http://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/hub/issue/10.1002/jgr.v75.14

Harris, R. Laird, Archer, Gleason L. and Waltke, Bruce K. (Oct 2003) Theological Wordbook of the Old Testament Revised Edition (Chicago, IL: Moody Publishers). Available at https://www.amazon.com/Theological-Wordbook-Testament-Laird-Harris/dp/0802486495

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