Dead Men Walking #130 Dr. Hugh Ross: Biblical and Scientific evidence for an Old Earth

Exploring theology, doctrine, and all of the fascinating subjects in between. Broadcasting from an undisclosed location, Dead Men Walking starts now. Hello everyone, welcome back to another episode of Dead Men Walking.

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Let's go make sure we support those guys. Cool. Now that we got the business out of the way, guys, I'm excited about this one. We have on the line with us, Dr. Hugh Ross. He's the founder and senior scholar at Reasons to Believe.

You can see that site at reasons .org. He has a whole list of credentials that I cannot pronounce nor memorize. So I'm going to leave that up to him. Dr. Hugh Ross, thank you for being on the program today.

How are you? Doing well, thank you. Yeah. So why don't you give us a little introduction to the listeners, a little bit about yourself, kind of your credentials, your background, and a little bit about Reasons to Believe.

Sure. Well, I was born, raised, and educated in Canada. I was not raised in a Christian home, but through my studies in astronomy, I became passionate about studying astronomy and physics since I was seven.

That eventually led me to become convinced that there had to be a beginning to the universe. So starting at age 17, I went on a quest to try to find a cosmic beginner. Didn't really know where to look.

So I started with Immanuel Kant and his critique of pure reason. I read a little bit about René Descartes and decided to check out the different holy books, religions of the world. And it was after studying a Gideon Bible for 18 months that I committed my life to Jesus Christ.

Wound up getting a doctorate in astronomy at the University of Toronto. Did five years of postdoctoral research at Caltech and Quasars and Galaxies. And it's there where a church called me onto their staff to train people how to use science as a tool to bring people to faith in Christ.

And it was that church sandwiched between Caltech and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory that helped me launch Reasons to Believe 37 years ago.

Science, Scripture, and the Two Books of Revelation

Oh, wow. And guys, we're not going to be able to even really scratch the surface of his history and what he's done. I would tell any listener, if you want to know more about Dr. Hugh Ross, go to Reasons to Believe, which is reasons .org, or just check him out on YouTube.

All kinds of more extended clips of what you just told us there, how you studied through the Bible, how you looked at the truths of other religions versus the truths of the Bible and came to what you say, a reasonable conclusion.

That was backed by scientific evidence. And I just think it's unbelievable. It's a good watch. Some of them are over an hour long, but worth every minute. So I would encourage the listeners to do that.

So I have a few questions for you, and maybe you can clear some stuff up for us. Because we love bringing much smarter people on the podcast than me or my co-host. You definitely qualify for that. And we like asking questions and seeing where it goes.

You say you have, obviously, a very strong scientific background, astronomy. I see a lot of Christians and believers that think that science and the Bible are kind of in opposition, that they're butting heads, that we can't, they can't coexist.

Can biblical truths and scientific truths coexist? And do they?

I think they do. It was science that brought me to faith in Christ. And when you read the Bible, it explicitly talks about how God reveals himself through two books, the book of nature and the book of scripture.

Psalm 19, Romans 1. So this is the core of the Christian faith, that God has given us two trustworthy books of revelation. And we should anticipate that the book of nature will corroborate the book of scripture, and the book of scripture will corroborate the book of nature.

And if we do see conflicts, it means that we have made some misinterpretations. So that should motivate us to do a deeper study to resolve those apparent anomalies.

Now, when you say misinterpretations, are you saying we were making them maybe on the biblical side, or making them on the scientific side, or sometimes on both sides? Or either side?

We can make them on both sides. After all, none of us has got a complete understanding of either the book of nature, the book of scripture, and therefore apparent conflicts are inevitable. But that's a wonderful opportunity to learn more.

So as a scientist and as a theologian, if I see something that's not fitting, I get excited. Wow, this is an opportunity to dig in here, because I know that God's two books are trustworthy. And so this is a way for me to learn more, dig into the anomaly, and see how it can be resolved.

And I've lived long enough to realize every time I resolve an anomaly, it reveals more anomalies I wasn't even aware of. By those anomalies that are a lower level of significance, that tells me I'm on the pathway to truth.

Oh, that's so good. I've always said I love it when science does catch up with the Bible. And we go, oh, that's what we're seeing there. For years and years, people ridiculed Job when God told him, did you put the fresh waters in the deeps of the ocean?

And we said, well, that's just ridiculous. That doesn't happen. And then in the mid -70s, they sent down a rover and they go, well, look at this. There's freshwater rivers at the bottom of these oceans.

And they're totally separated. One's fresh, one's saltwater. And we went, oh, yeah, God was talking about that years ago. You know, 6 ,000 or a million years ago, I don't know. That's what we're going to get into next.

Old Earth and Young Earth in Genesis 1

How old is the earth, right? Because in my past, when I was a younger Christian, I went, I don't really care about how it started. And I don't really care about how it ends. I just need to be focused on the great commission.

And then as I matured in the Lord, I said, oh, no, your eschatology, end times eschatology, and even what you believe about what the Bible states about the beginnings of the universe and creation can really affect the way you view the gospel and the way you live your life.

So I've been on a five or six year study in eschatology and now really getting back into old earth and young earth. And I thought you would be a perfect person to ask. Maybe you can give for the listeners a little definition, if you could, of old earth and young earth.

And then maybe we can dive into what you see there that's backed up scientifically. So what are those two definitions in your view of young earth and old earth theory?

Well, the big difference is the interpretation of the creation days in Genesis one. Are they six consecutive 24 hour periods? Or are they six consecutive long periods of time? And both those interpretations of Genesis one are literal interpretations.

The Hebrew word Yom is translated as day as four distinct literal definitions. Part of the daylight hours, all the daylight hours, a 24 hour period, or a long but finite period of time. And when you read Genesis one, one through to two, four, you notice that three of those definitions are used.

Creation day one, it refers to the daylight hours in terms of the day. The word day is used for 24 hours on creation day four, when it's contrasting seasons, days, and years. And in Genesis two, four, it uses that same word day to refer to the entirety of creation history.

So that's a long passage of time. And so, and I saw that the first time I picked up a Bible, I said this word day must have at least three distinct literal definitions, because three are used in the text.

And so, but it's like anything in science and theology. Before you draw a conclusion, you need to look at all the books of the Bible, not just one. Look at all the creation texts and interpret them literally and consistently.

Same thing with science. Look at all the scientific disciplines before you draw a conclusion.

So with that being said, you having looked at all of those, biblically and scientifically, where do you land? Or where do you see maybe science and the Bible coming together the closest?

Well, what happened to me in my late teenage years, I went through the two dozen plus biblical creation texts. And I noticed, for example, in Genesis one, that you have an evening and a morning bracketing the first six days.

And I wasn't certain what those words meant in the Hebrew, but I knew at a minimum was telling me each of these days as a start time and an end time. And I anticipated seeing an evening and a morning for the seventh day, but it's not there.

There is no evening and morning for the seventh day. I said, well, is it possible we're still in the seventh day? And that's what you see in both Psalm 95 and Hebrews four. It tells us it's basically an exhortation that we're to live our lives in such a way that we can enter into God's seventh day of rest.

And you know, part of my story was, I got really fascinated in astronomy and physics when I was seven. And I was reading four or five books on physics and astronomy a week. And when I was 11 years of age, my parents were worried that I was being obsessive.

And so they bought our family a big thick book on evolution of biology, trying to encourage me to study something besides physics and astronomy. I was the only one in the family that read the book. I remember telling my parents, mom, dad, the numbers don't add up.

We have all these new phyla and classes and orders appearing before humanity, and none of that happens after humanity. And they couldn't answer my question. My science teachers couldn't either. But the very first time that picked up a Bible, it answered the fossil record enigma.

For six days, God creates on the seventh day, he ceases from his work of creation. So it explains why we see all these new phyla, classes and orders suddenly appearing before human beings. And none of that happens after human beings.

For six days, God creates a seventh day, it rested. And the very first time picked up a Bible, it answered the fossil record enigma.

So what I'm hearing, and correct me if I'm wrong, do you tend to lean towards then a span of time for that for that word yam instead of just a literal 24 hour day? And that span of time could be what 100 ,000 years, a million years could be very long span of time.

Yeah, the Bible doesn't actually state how long those creation days are. But because of what I see in Genesis two, Psalm 95, and Hebrews four, because of the fossil record enigma, I take the literal definition that they're long periods of time.

And when I compare it with a scientific record, it appears that the creation days begin longer and get shorter. And so the first creation day is longer than the sixth creation day.

Okay, yeah, so you would be saying that you believe the Bible is inherent, you're looking at these biblical verses, and then when in text, and then when you look at fossil records, and when you're studying astronomy, and all these things, you're going, that lines up the most with what we have for physical evidence, or past evidence, scientific evidence, meaning it's not a six to eight or 10 or 15 ,000 year old Earth, you're thinking much longer, much older than that, correct?

Yeah, yeah, I mean, just looking at the what you see in the text, these are six consecutive long periods of time. And therefore, I never saw a conflict between the time scale of the biblical creation text, and what I see in astrophysics.

Why a Young-Earth Model Depends on Altered Physics

So what would you say to a counterpart, or a peer, who is a believer like yourself, and might believe in maybe in the sciences, and might believe differently and say, I believe in a 15 ,000 year old Earth, what would you say to them for the both biblical argument, and the scientific argument, or for a listener out there that goes, well, I would like to know, I believe in a young Earth, I would like to know your point of view.

Well, I would encourage them to read all the biblical texts that speak about creation, not just those in Genesis. And in particular, note all the times it says in the Bible that the laws of physics don't change.

I mean, Jeremiah 33, God is critiquing the Jews saying, you change your mind all the time. But I'm a God that's immutable. I do not change. As proof, look to the laws that govern the heavens and the Earth.

As they do not change, I do not change. And the crucial point there is, every young Earth creationist model critically depends on radically altered laws of physics at the fall of Adam, at the flood of Noah.

And the Bible explicitly rules that out. So on biblical grounds alone, without looking at any of the science, we know that these days have to be longer than 24 hour periods.

Now, see, I tend to see in Christianity, if you have someone who says the Earth is millions or billions of years old, I grew up in a generation where you automatically equate that with evolution. You go, oh, this person believes in some type of quasi evolution.

God created something. But it can't be billions of years old, because that's what we've been trained to believe through secular evolution. That's not what you're saying here.

It's not what I'm saying. And, you know, I was studying astronomy during my childhood years. And at that time, there was a raging debate amongst astronomers. Is the universe only billions of years old?

Or is it quadrillions of years old? Because in the early part of the 20th century, mid 20th century, there were astronomers that thought that the stars were trillions of years old. And so when I first ran into people who said that the universe is young, I said, well, I'm in that camp.

I believe it's only billions of years old. It's not quadrillions of years old. And then I discovered they were thinking thousands. And what I explained to them is that a cornerstone of this debate about whether the universe is quadrillions or only billions of years old is that astronomers were aware, if we're only talking 10 to 20 billion years, that's a woefully inadequate time to explain the history of life by naturalistic means.

And that was a primary motivation for a number of the astronomers saying, we need more time. It's got to be quadrillions. So the idea, the difference between thousands and billions, it's immaterial with respect to evolution.

And I've never been an evolutionist. I mean, I always saw this problem, that we don't see evolution going on during the human era. And therefore, it has to be some supernatural act to explain the history of life on planet Earth.

And also what I find rather ironic within the young Earth camp is that they require rather extreme naturalistic evolution to make their young Earth model work. Because more than the age of the Earth is their belief that there was no death until Adam's sin.

Not just human death, no animal death. And so how they explain that is they say, well, when Adam fell, these animals rapidly evolved from being herbivores to being carnivores. And likewise, they believe that the flood of Noah didn't just wipe out the world of ungodly people.

They believe it devastated the entire planet. And therefore, they have to explain how the 1500 species maximum carrying capacity of Noah's Ark evolved into the several million we see on the planet today.

And so once again, they say, well, they naturalistically evolved. Although to be accurate, they never use the word evolution. They say diversification. That the few species on board Noah's Ark diversified into the millions we see today.

But it's a level of naturalistic evolution that's more than 10 ,000 times greater than what any atheist evolutionist would ever suggest.

Right. You're saying there's just not enough time there. They would have to really speed through that. That evolution process that evolving in a very short time.

Well, my main point is it's only from a day age, older perspective that you can avoid and appeal to evolution. The atheists need it. The young earth creation is needed. But from an older perspective, we can give all the credit to God.

Dinosaurs, Psalm 104, and the Creation Days

I love it. So I have a 12 year old, a 10 year old and an eight year old. And they would be they would be really upset with me if I at least didn't ask this question. Where did the dinosaurs fit into all of this in an old earth or a younger theory?

Well, the Bible is silent on dinosaurs. I mean, we need to understand the Bible's inspired to communicate to all generations of humanity, not just those of us living in the 21st century. And therefore, the Bible never mentions protons or electrons or Neanderthals or dinosaurs, because only people living in the 20th and 21st century would have any idea what those items are.

Now, where they do fit, however, is in the middle part of creation day five. So even though Genesis never addresses it, that's where they would fit in. And also you get an implication in Psalm 104, because the theme of Psalm 104, the longest of the creation Psalms, is that God has created life in such a way that our planet has the greatest possible abundance of life and the greatest diversity of life for as long as the earth can possibly carry life.

And dinosaurs, at least the large bodied dinosaurs, require water to give them sufficient buoyancy to sustain their huge body weight. And so you don't have dinosaurs on the earth today, because the environment wouldn't permit them to exist.

You've got a dinosaur as big as T-Rex or the Brontosaurus, it's going to kill itself very quickly because of its huge body size. It's going to injure itself. But if you've got these extensive shallow seas, which existed on the North American continent long ago, that would enable these large bodied animals that to be able to thrive on planet earth.

And that's the theme we see in Psalm 104. God is always packing the planet with as great a diversity and an abundance of life as the natural conditions would permit. So we don't see him today, but they were there in abundance when the continents were covered by huge shallow seas.

Awesome. So I want to switch gears as we wrap this up. We've been talking about creation quite a bit. In your field of astronomy, have you ever found anything scientifically or something you've discovered that you go, yeah, that kind of proves, you know, a misrepresentation of something that maybe believers believe are in the Bible, but isn't exactly explained the right way.

Meaning, is there something that's ever been proven to you through the laws of science that God's created for us that you go, yeah, that's being misrepresented in the Bible outside of maybe an old earth or young earth debate.

Well, a good example would be the flood. A lot of Christians believe the flood was global and explains virtually all the geological features on the earth. The geophysics tells us that couldn't have possibly happened, which would cause us to re-examine the biblical texts on the flood.

And what you see in 2 Peter 2, 5, it says the world of ungodly people was flooded. And what you see in 2 Peter 3, 5, and 6, the world at that time was flooded. And so Peter is making a distinction between the world of Noah and the world of Rome.

And both worlds did not encompass the entire planet. And what you see in the book of Genesis is you don't see global geographical place names until after the flood. You do see that in Genesis 10 and 11, but not in the previous nine chapters.

And so humanity was disobeying God's command to multiply and fill the earth. They'd only filled part of the earth. And the purpose of the flood was to eradicate human reprobate behavior. And so the flood wiped out the entire world of ungodly people and all the animals that were associated with them, that were part of their domesticated animals, that was all wiped out except for those on board the ark.

And then you can go to passages like Psalm 104 and Job 38, which parallel Genesis 1. And telling us the events of creation. And so for example, in Psalm 104, talks about how God transformed our planet from a water world into a world with oceans and continents.

An obvious reference to the first part of creation day three. That's verses six, seven, and eight in Psalm 104. Verse nine says, never again will water cover the whole face of the earth. And so Psalm 104, as well as Proverbs eight, and Job 38, biblically rule out the possibility of a globally extensive flood.

Nevertheless, the flood of Noah wiped out the entire world of ungodly people and enabled humanity to survive. Humanity, I believe was in danger of self-extermination because of the wickedness of Noah's generation.

And so one sense of flood was a rescue of humanity.

The Flood, the Rainbow, and Evidence of Rain Before Noah

Yeah, amen. So to touch on that very quickly on the flood too, do you believe there was an actual environmental change that happened after the floods? I've heard some theories where some people go, look, we were more of a greenhouse kind of thicker ozone to where we didn't have the rain and the evaporation and the cumulus clouds.

And when God stepped in and changed that, that's why the rainbow is a sign of that. Because now we, instead of just having humidity or greenhouse, we actually had water coming down, forming a rainbow.

That was the promise saying, look, I'll never step in and kind of change the system of how the physics works. Are you kind of in that camp? Or do you just think, look, it was a lot of rain. It flooded stuff out and that's how God took care of it.

Yeah, it's more of the latter. I mean, I think there was a rush of water coming in from the Indian Ocean. 40 days and 40 nights of torrential rain tells us there was water coming up from the underground aquifers.

We know there's an enormous aquifer under the Persian Gulf. And I think there was a lot of melting snow and ice off of the surrounding mountains. So I can understand how all of humanity was wiped out, except for those on board the Ark.

And if you look at the early chapters of Genesis, you'll see two Hebrew words for rain and mist. The words are Ed and Matar. In both cases, you get rainbows. And notice whenever God signs a covenant with the human species, he always uses something that's familiar to the humans.

And so God is basically saying to Noah, see that rainbow and remember all the rainbows you've seen in the past. From now on, that's going to be a sign that I'll keep my promise never to wipe out humanity with a flood ever again.

So we have floods that wipe out a few people, but nothing that ever wipes out all of humanity. And look at all the covenants in the Bible. Every one of them is signed by something natural that humans are familiar with.

And from a scientific perspective, we actually have what are called fossilized raindrops. In other words, sandstone formations where we can see the splash patterns of falling raindrops. And those date back all the way to the very earliest histories of the earth.

So we know from a scientific perspective, there was falling rain both before the flood and after the flood. Yeah, that's good.

Reasons to Believe and Defending the Faith with Gentleness

Okay, so as we wrap this up, can you give us a little more information on reasons .org if someone wants to check out that site, what they can expect to see, what kind of subjects you cover and kind of what you guys go over?

Right, well, reasons to believe is based on what you see in Psalms and Job. The more we learn about nature, the more evidence we uncover for the supernatural handiwork of God. And so we demonstrate that on a daily basis at our website, reasons .org.

For example, I write a weekly article called Today's New Reason to Believe, where I take something from the scientific literature and say, this gives us an even stronger case for the inerrancy of the Bible and the truth of the Christian faith.

I answer questions on my Facebook and Twitter page. You can see us, we have our YouTube channel. And so there's literally tens of thousands of articles and video clips you can watch. I encourage people to share them with their friends.

Also, if people want free chapters of my books, reasons .org slash Ross, they can download a free chapter.

Awesome. Dr. Hugh Ross, thank you so much for being on today. Listeners, I definitely, we're going to link everything up here too. So when it goes out to YouTube and all the places you get your podcasts, we'll have all your links on there.

And we'll make sure that people can access that because it's been a very good resource for me over the years to where I will hear something, someone say something, or maybe a scientist on television or a physics major or an atheist.

And I'll go, let me go check that out at reasons .org and just see what the guys there say about that because that's not my field. I'm not an expert in that. And I rely on some of your expertise at that website to give not only a sound scientific reason, but a sound biblical reason and interpretation.

So I appreciate the work that you're doing on that website. Do you have anything else for us before we head out, doctor?

Well, always be ready with good reasons for the faith and hope that you have in Jesus Christ. If you're prepared to do that with gentleness and respect, you will see the Holy Spirit supernaturally bringing people to you to hear and respond to those good reasons.

It's a lot of fun. Go for it.

Amen. Amen. And I think we'll head out on that guys. Thanks so much for listening to another episode. We appreciate your support, leaving reviews, all that good stuff. As always, guys, God bless.