Does the Bible Mesh with What We Know about History?

The Bible has God miraculously creating the world and everything in it in just 6 days about 6 ,000 years ago. But the theory of evolution has a much different timescale, taking millions of years to go from goo to me and you by way of the zoo.

Which view is correct? Stay with us a few minutes to find out. The very first chapter of the Bible states that God created the universe, earth, land, and sea and everything in them in just 6 solar days.

We know the 6 days of creation were ordinary days because the Bible frames each of the days using evening and morning and then assigns a number to each. God himself wrote that the days were real days when he scribed the 10 commandments with his own hand, stating that we should work and rest in a cycle that matches God's creation week of 6 days followed by a day of rest.

We can look back in scripture and ask, when did God make the heavens and the earth, the sea, and all that is in them? Well, the obvious answer is that God was referring to the creation account in Genesis, where the days are even defined in the text itself as normal solar days.

Also, we know that creation week happened just thousands, not millions of years ago because the Bible traces back human genealogy to Adam who was created on the 6th day as the last of God's creations.

Adam was charged to take dominion over all that God had just created and he started his rule by naming all of the animals. This is how the Bible explains that the earth and everything in it was created just about 6 ,000 years ago.

Deep Time, Evolution, and the Limits of Radiometric Dating

The evolutionary view, on the other hand, is built on the foundation of deep time with almost every pillar of the theory depending on millions of years. We see this idea promoted in books, even starting from children's books, museums around the world, state parks across the US, and in several movies and TV shows.

Even high school biology textbooks state that deep time is the foundation of evolution theory, stating geologists now use radioactivity to establish the age of certain rocks and fossils. This kind of data could have shown that the earth is young.

If that had happened, Darwin's ideas would have been refuted and abandoned. Instead, radioactive dating indicates that earth is about 4 .5 billion years old, plenty of time for evolution and natural selection to take place.

Why the Bible’s Credibility Matters for the Gospel

But does any of this even matter? Well, consider this. Many people will only consider the Bible's message if they believe the Bible to be credible, both historically and scientifically. Each person's eternity, either in heaven or hell, depends on what they believe about the risen Christ.

And how do we know about this? Well, it's in the Bible, and if people don't believe the Bible guided right on the first page, who's going to trust the rest? Millions of years can't be jammed into this timeline for the very important reason that Adam and Eve were responsible for bringing the curse of sin, death, disease, suffering, thorns, and thistles into the world.

And the evolutionary timescale has these things existing supposedly millions of years before humans were even around. And if these things existed before the consequences of our sin brought them, this makes them God's ideas rather than the results of our falling away from God.

This doesn't fit the Bible because God said His creation was very good and all life started out vegetarian before the fall. See the problem? Death, suffering, and carnivorism are the result of the fall of Adam and Eve and were not part of God's original creation.

God warned Adam, You shall not eat it, lest you die. This consequence wouldn't have been a big deal to Adam if he was already surrounded by death and suffering. This issue even connects with the gospel message, because why would Jesus have to die to break the curse of sin if it wasn't a literal curse brought on by the literal first parents of humanity?

It was in fact a real curse that was the result of the sin of our real original parents. Perhaps this is why Jesus was wearing a crown of thorns in His crucifixion, symbolizing His triumph over the curse that God described in Genesis 3.

Historical Memory, Ancient Civilizations, and the Flood Boundary

Now let's take a quick look back through history to see how certain we can be regarding the claim that the earth is billions of years old and life on earth is millions of years old. Let's start out with today.

We can be 100 certain about the events that are occurring today. We have video and audio transcripts and tons of records. What about going back 100 years to World War I? Well, we know with reasonable certainty that this war started on July 28, 1914 and we know about many of the events that led to the war, but we've lost some of the details with the passing of time.

What about 1 ,000 years ago? We can be fairly sure about many of the events that happened in some regions of the world at this time. For example, we know from historical records and evidence that the Vikings existed and plundered much of Europe.

We have records of this from many cultures, but again, we've lost a lot of the details. What happens if we go back another 1 ,000 years? Now we're at the time of Christ. We know from even secular historians that Christ lived and was crucified during this time.

Notice that we're still able to rely upon written accounts and historical evidence to go back 2 ,000 years. We haven't yet relied upon carbon -14 dating. Now let's go another 1 ,000 years back in time to 1 ,000 BC.

This is the time of King David in the Bible. We still have surviving records from at least some civilizations back then, but something happens when we try to go back another 1 ,000 years to 2 ,000 BC.

Just how certain can we be about the events that occurred 4 ,000 years ago? Even 6th grade textbooks admit that human writing only goes back a maximum of 5 ,000 years. So this is the time zone where we start losing certainty about history.

Let us explain. Writings from the ancient Greek civilization will only take us back to about 800 BC. Ancient Hittite writings go back further to 1 ,700 BC. Egyptian history is quite traceable until about 2 ,000 BC.

Then it becomes a strong topic of debate among historians. However, we can probably trust that the Hittites and the Egyptians signed a peace treaty around 1269 BC, which is the oldest surviving treaty in existence.

Egypt also provides us with the oldest medical document still in existence, the Kahun Papyrus, dating to about 1 ,800 BC. Outside of the Bible, the oldest set of written laws that we have was recorded about 2 ,050 BC.

These laws, supposedly created by a Sumerian king, covered a variety of crimes like perjury, courtroom procedures, taxes, and ceremonial laws. Some historians date Sumerian clay tablets as far back as 3 ,000 BC.

However, most of the tablets that supposedly date around 2 ,000 BC or older depend on indirect dating methods, such as dating bones found near the tablets, or dating the tablets themselves using procedures that sometimes yield very wide age estimates, rather than precise ones.

While the Bible describes God's creative works at the beginning of time, Moses likely recorded these events around 1 ,500 BC. The earliest Chinese dynasty with written history is the Shang Dynasty, which began about 1 ,700 BC.

Some Chinese historians speak of an earlier Qiya Dynasty they believe started as early as 2 ,100 BC. But these ancient Chinese records can only take us back about 4 ,000 years with certainty. Do you notice a pattern with these ancient civilizations?

They all seem to have written records that go back to a certain point, but then they all fade out around the same era. There is a strong level of certainty for the last 2 ,000 years and reasonable certainty for about 2 ,000 years before that.

But going beyond 4 ,000 years, our certainty about historical events and human history seems to drop off a mysterious cliff, and the evidence we have of civilizations beyond that time turns very weak.

This is even confirmed by Dr. John Taylor, curator of the cuneiform collections at the British Museum. When asked, what is the oldest writing we can date without having to use carbon -14 dating, Dr. Taylor answered, for cuneiform, we can securely date using a solar eclipse observed in 763 BC.

Before that, we rely on less secure methods such as historical records of various sorts. That gets us back to about 1400 BC. Before that, we are less sure still. There are periods of time of known length that float in uncertain relationship to each other.

Isn't it interesting that the Bible places Noah's flood about the same time we happen to lose certainty about human history? Biblical chronologies place the worldwide flood about 4 ,400 years ago, and some scholars place it earlier, up to about 5 ,000 years ago.

Either way, we know what happened in this time frame. Then, about 100 years later, about 70 people groups were divinely given languages by God and told by him to scatter across the globe. This sure seems to match what we see in history.

Many different languages and alphabet systems springing onto the scene about the same time. We see virtually no writings with validatable dates before the time of Noah's worldwide flood. When we start trying to date the earth and humanity beyond dates from written history, carbon -14 dating comes into play as a tool for dating human remains and the artifacts found with them.

Carbon-14 Dating Assumptions and the Limits of Historical Confidence

But can carbon -14 dating reliably show that certain fossils or artifacts date tens of thousands of years ago, far outside a biblical history that points to a miraculous creation just thousands of years ago?

Well, let's start out by saying that the actual process of carbon -14 dating includes sound science and uses high-tech lab equipment that costs millions. So, the method itself is not the issue. It's the assumptions that are made when the raw isotope ratio gets converted to calendar years that carbon dating becomes unreliable and inaccurate, especially when dating really old items.

Just what are the assumptions that are being made when interpreting carbon -14 test results? Actually, there's quite a few. Let's look quickly at just 8 of them. Forest fires, which pump a huge amount of carbon into the atmosphere.

Atomic activity and releases, which even double the amount of carbon -14 in the atmosphere. Volcanic eruptions that blow carbon even hundreds of miles around the eruption. Industrialization, where factories produce carbon.

Solar flares, carbon reservoirs, changes in atmospheric pressures, and variances in the Earth's magnetic field. Just like other types of radiometric dating, translating carbon -14 test results into calendar years requires assuming a uniform decay rate of the isotopes involved.

When scientists attempt to stretch the results of carbon dating back many thousands of years, are any of these assumptions being violated? Do we know about all the forest fires and volcanic eruptions that have occurred in the distant past?

Atomic activity, solar flares and cycles, the Earth's magnetic field? Certainly not. We run out of clearly documented historical events that validate these assumptions after just a couple thousand years, and scientists already try to account for the violations of these assumptions that we happen to know about.

So, if we know that these assumptions have been violated in our known past of just a couple thousand years and have to account for them, how in the world can we say that there are no violations to these assumptions over the previous tens of thousands of years that aren't confirmed in written history?

Fortunately, there is a way to put carbon -14 dating to the validation test where we can see how accurately it can date items of known ages. This is exactly what the British Science and Engineering Research Council did when they conducted an international blind study on carbon -14 dating by sending out artifacts of known ages to 38 of the world's leading carbon -14 testing laboratories.

The results? Only 7 of the 38 laboratories produced dates that were even close to the known dates of the artifacts. That's only 18 of the laboratories in this international study. The rest? 82 of the laboratories produced dates that were across the board, being off by even thousands of years.

This goes to show that accepting dates from human remains, artifacts, and writings requires having faith in assumptions that we can never prove or verify correct. When it comes to human history, to bridge the gap between 4 to 5 thousand years ago and the distant past beyond this time, we each have two choices.

Rely on God who was there and told us what happened, or trust in carbon -14 dating and other types of radiometric dating beyond 100 ,000 years. God's word tells us that a catastrophic worldwide flood wiped the slate of human history about the same time that written history has a clear beginning from several cultures.

Is it just by chance that the oldest medical documents, written laws, and records of kings and dynasties all end between 4 ,000 and 5 ,000 years ago or quickly lose verifiability about that time? We've had the capability to write and keep records for long ages, but there is a reason why all records disappear between 4 ,000 and 5 ,000 years ago, and we must all choose between God's record of the past, what he wrote down and told us to believe and trust, or man's ideas about history using methods that require assumptions and faith.

Which are you going to trust? No one was there to observe the past and see how things were made or how long it took, so we need to either rely upon assumptions about the past without being there or rely on what an eternal God said happened in the past because he was there.

Trees that have roots that drill deep into the soil draw life-giving nutrients and establish a firm grounding for when the storms come. Trees that start growing roots but hit a blockage that stunts their growth will not be able to access all the intended nutrients the tree will need to be healthy and fruitful.

It will also not be strongly rooted to stand against the storms and testings that come. The leaves and fruit that are visible on the outside of a tree are a reflection of the invisible roots that are beneath the tree.

Christians who place their trust deeply in God's word, trusting it back to the beginning in Genesis, will draw life-giving strength for their lives and will not sway and uproot when false teaching and challenges come.

The fruitfulness of our lives and our daily choices and behaviors all stem from what we believe about God and his word. The very first psalm in the Bible promises that if we delight in the law of the Lord and meditate on his law day and night, that we will be like a tree planted by the rivers of water, bringing forth our fruit in season, and that our leaves shall not wither, and whatever we do will prosper.

All of these come from meditating and revering God's law, which is the set of the first five books in the Old Testament beginning with Genesis. How deep do your roots go? Are you a Christian student looking for answers about what the Bible teaches about creation, the fossil record, dinosaurs?

Download the Genesis Apologetics app from the iTunes or Google Play stores for answers to these questions and more.