Is the Earth Really Billions of Years Old? Or Could It Be Younger?
Introduction
Everywhere we go, we hear that the earth is millions (even billions) of years old. We see it in Natural History museums and National Park visitor centers. We hear it in documentaries. And we read about it in magazines and news articles. For generations, we’ve been taught in our classrooms that this concept of millions of years is simply a fact.
On the other hand, when we read the Bible in a plain, straightforward way, we get the impression that the earth is young. Very young. The creation days in Genesis certainly read like six literal days (Genesis 1:1-2:3).[1] And the Bible provides a chronology that tells us the earth is really only about 6,000 years old.[2] This sounds astonishing, and almost crazy in our culture today.
Needless to say, the age of the earth has been a source of debate within the Christian community for a long time. It’s tempting for well-meaning Christians to try to harmonize the two views by finding a way to fit millions of years into the Genesis account. But after studying the subject for a long time, I am convinced that we don’t have to. Considering the evidence, there is nothing wrong with believing in six literal days of creation, about 6,000 years ago.
Where Did the Millions of Years Come From?
Today, the age of the earth is mostly derived from the rock layers that we see all over the world. They are presumed to be millions and billions of years old, laid down by slow and gradual deposition. That’s because geologists are making the assumption that the earth has been shaped throughout the past by the same forces that we see today.
This idea is known as uniformitarianism, that “the present is the key to the past.” But there is actually little reason to believe that the rock layers are that old. So why is the idea so widely accepted?
During the Enlightenment period, starting in the 1700s and going into the 1800s, the mood in academic Europe changed. There was a growing desire to dispense with the Bible as a source of knowledge and discover truth independently, from nature and reason alone.
In 1833, a geologist named Charles Lyell published a book called Principles of Geology.[3] In this book, and building on the work of others, he argued that we don’t need the Biblical timeline anymore. Present forces can explain the past, given enough time. Examples would be frost and ice weathering rocks, rivers transporting sediment across the landscape, and oceans moving sediment along shorelines.
But Lyell’s book was not so much about reporting observations, rather, a way of explaining them through a new interpretive framework. In other words, he was arguing for a different (non-biblical) worldview, and then explaining how the evidence can fit that view.
Charles Lyell also happened to be a trained attorney and the book was considered a masterpiece of persuasion. Hence, the idea of uniformitarianism became widely accepted and is foundational in the study of geology to this day.
But again, that the rock layers are millions of years old is not a result of observation. It is a consequence of a prior commitment to uniformitarianism. Other than this assumption, there is no reason to believe they are that old.
The Biblical View: A Game Changer
The Biblical view is that most of the rock layers are a result of Noah’s flood. A flood like what we read about in Genesis would have washed out huge amounts of sediment in some places and redeposited them in other areas.
At the beginning of the flood, “all the fountains of the great deep burst forth and the windows of heaven were opened” (Genesis 7:11-12). Water rushed up through deep fissures in the earth and torrents of rain fell for forty straight days. The flood covered the entire earth and lasted a full year (Genesis 6:1 – 8:22). It was a major catastrophe, the likes of which we could hardly imagine. But that was, after all, God’s intention.
We know that catastrophism, in contrast with uniformitarianism, can represent massive geological change in a very short period of time. And during the flood, many living things (plants and animals) would have been quickly buried, creating the fossil record that we see today.
So the Biblical view is that the rock layers are not millions of years old. They were put down rather quickly during the year-long flood, about 4,500 years ago.
It’s tempting to ask which view has the best evidence: the secular view with millions of years, or the Biblical view. But this is the wrong question.
We All Have the Same Evidence
We all have the same evidence on the table right in front of us. The rock layers are the evidence. The fossils are the evidence. There is evidence available all over the world.
The question is: how well does the evidence fit into one view or the other?
Let’s consider an example: The Grand Canyon.
According to the U.S. National Park Service, the rock layers in the Grand Canyon range in age from 270 million to 1.8 billion years old. And the Colorado river has been slowly carving the canyon for the last 5 to 6 million years.[4]
The biblical view, on the other hand, is that the canyon was cut rather quickly during the latter stages of the flood when all of the rock layers were still somewhat soft. One scenario is that:
“The Grand Canyon was formed while the waters of Noah’s Flood receded from the American continent. As this receding water flowed from east to west, the canyon was mainly carved out in the opposite direction, from west to east. This scenario explains many characteristic and unusual features of the canyon, such as its location through the top of a ridge, its branching structure, and its numerous major and minor side canyons…”[5]
What does this mean? It means that the Grand Canyon can probably fit either view. There’s always more research to be done on both sides. But it appears that careful study on the part of serious, professional geologists is telling us that the Grand Canyon fits very easily into the Biblical worldview.
Conclusion
Our opinions on the age of the earth usually depend on the worldview that we have already chosen to believe. And our worldview usually depends on whom we decide to trust.
Charles Lyell, and many other voices of the Enlightenment, influenced our culture in permanent ways. They openly rejected the Bible, and worked very hard to explain the world without God. That can be their choice. It doesn’t have to ours.
As Christians, we believe the Bible is from God and true. The good news is we know that we can take God for his word. We don’t have to try to fit millions of years into the Biblical accounts. Concerning science and the evidence, there is nothing wrong with creation in 6 real days, about 6,000 years ago.
That said, those who believe in the secular view will often point to rock dating methods as evidence for millions of years. We’ll take a look at that in our next post. Then, we’ll look at how more evidence fits the Biblical timeline so well.
[1] Hebrew scholars agree that the text does not support anything other than six literal days. See Creation Ministries International, “Six Days? Really?” accessed 9/11/21.
[2] Creation Ministries International, “How Does the Bible Teach 6,000 Years?” accessed 9/11/21.
[3] Principles of Geology was actually a 3-volume work published from 1830 to 1833.
[4] The Grand Canyon National Park website, accessed 9/10/21.
[5] Peter Scheele, “A Receding Flood Scenario for the Origin of the Grand Canyon” accessed 9/10/21.
I may have told you this earlier…when I was in the east side of Arizona, at the Petrified Forest, I went into a wonderful store/museum there. I spoke to the owner…he showed me a fossil of a lizard that he found buried in the ground near his museum. He had show it to the proper scientists and was told that the only place on earth where that lizard ever lived was at the east end of the Dead Sea, which is east of Europe.
How did it get to Arizona?
THE FLOOD!
That’s amazing! … But I’m not surprised. As I mentioned, I feel that seeing the rock layers and the fossil record in light of the Flood is a total game changer. All of the beautiful geological formations of the American West, with their deep cut canyons, rock layers, with huge rounded river rocks in them, the fossils (appearing in the order that they were buried) etc… it becomes so obvious how it all could have been the result of a huge flood. Evidence right in front of our eyes! I will be sharing more of that evidence (or how the evidence fits the Biblical view) in coming weeks. Thanks for the comment!