Discerning Truth: Dialog on the Age of the Earth - Part 3

Hi folks, welcome to Discerning Truth, the podcast of the Biblical Science Institute.

From Biblical History to Scientific Claims About Earth’s Age

We have been looking at the recent dialogue I did with Dr. Hugh Ross on the topic of the age of the earth. And in the previous couple of sessions we looked at some of the biblical issues and today we're going to start looking at some of the scientific issues regarding the age of the earth.

So let's have a look.

Dr. Lyle, how old is the universe and what is your scientific evidence for that? What evidence do you have to support your conclusion?

Yeah, I think it's about 6 ,000 years old. I can't put an exact date on it. I believe it's millions or billions of years old. With regard to science, actually when you ask about the age of something, you're not asking a science question.

You're asking a history question because you're asking when something came into existence. How long ago? You're asking about the past and science is about the present. It's about the current present operation of the universe.

And so now that's not to say that we can't use the tools of science to make some guesses about the past. I think that's appropriate. But my point is if you have a history book, that's what you turn to first.

I believe we have a history book that gives us not the date of creation, but it gives us sufficient information that we can at least approximate that in terms of God creating in six days and the genealogies and so on.

So that's where I get the 6 ,000 years. Is there science that lines up with that? Absolutely. How do we make scientific age estimates? Usually the way it's done is there's some process that's going on in the present that happens not necessarily at a constant rate, but at a predictable rate, like radioactive decay.

It's not constant. It's an exponential decay. And the assumption is that it's always been that way. And so that's what you do when you make an age estimate. You assume that the process has continued in the past as it is today.

That's a uniformitarian assumption. And if you do that for short periods of time, it tends to work pretty well. If you say the candle has burned about an inch in the last hour. So I believe that an hour ago it was an inch taller.

That's probably pretty good assumption. If you extrapolate back and say, yeah, and therefore centuries ago it was taller than Mount Everest. Not such a good assumption because at some point those conditions change.

At some point somebody lit the candle. And so what we usually do with in terms of presenting evidence for a young universe is we'll say, let's take the secular timescale, the billions of years, and make their assumptions, their uniformitarian standards, and show that it leads to an inconsistency.

So that's what we in logic call a reductio ad absurdum, is refuting a worldview by assuming it and showing that it leads to an inconsistency. Take carbon dating, for example. C14 has a half-life of 5 ,700 years.

And it turns out if you had the entire earth made up of nothing but C14, with that short a half-life, in one million years you'd not have a single atom left. It would all have disintegrated into nitrogen if there's no new source of C14.

Now it's produced in the upper atmosphere as cosmic rays bombard nitrogen atoms, converts them into C14. And plants absorb it because they take in the carbon dioxide. And then we eat the plants, or animals eat the plants, and we eat the animals.

Either way, we get new carbon in us. That's where we get our carbon from. And a small fraction of that is C14. So it's like one in a trillion. It's a very small fraction, which is good, because we don't want to be glowing or anything like that.

So you're all unstable. I like to tell people that a little bit. You're all a little bit unstable. And the rate at which that decays, if something were buried deep in the earth and it were millions of years old, it shouldn't have any C14 left in it.

Because C14 is produced in the upper atmosphere. You can't really get it into fossils, things like that, that are buried deep down, that are shielded from cosmic rays. You can get a little bit from radioactivity, but not very much.

And so the fact that when we dig up things, when we dig up fossils, and if we carbon date them, lo and behold, you're going to get ages that are consistent with the biblical timescale. Maybe not exactly the same, because again, the point is not to get the true age.

The point is to show an inconsistency in the secular, the deep time timescale. I'm reasonably happy with what I said there. There are some other later sections where I feel like I didn't do very well in terms of defending what I see as the biblical position.

But in terms of explaining how we estimate the age of things by scientific means, it's true that that is not the best method, but sometimes it's the only method available. The best method is if you have historical documentation.

I mean, if you were to try to estimate someone's age, you might make a guess, you might be right, you might be wrong, but if you had their driver's license or their birth certificate, you could really narrow down the age to the day, in fact, and perhaps even to the time of day if it's a birth certificate.

One thing I might add now is that uniformitarianism is a matter of degree, because the fact is over short periods of time, and I did mention this, over short periods of time, it tends to work, because over a very short period of time, there's usually not a drastic rate of change.

There can be, but often there isn't. And so, as long as you're extrapolating over short periods of time, you tend to get pretty good answers, but when you extrapolate into their absurd past, you get bad answers.

The other thing I'll add now is that sometimes we can make an argument that the rates and conditions were likely very consistent in the past. For example, the way in which the planets orbit the sun, we know the relevant forces, we know that their momentum carries them along, the force of gravity between the planet and the sun, there's no foreseeable way that that could have changed in the distant past.

And so, we're safer, I guess what I'm trying to say is sometimes we're safer making a uniformitarian assumption than in other cases. And so if we all, on occasion, assume uniformitarianism to a certain extent, what then distinguishes someone like myself from a person who believes in deep time and in millions of years?

And the answer again is one of degree. I suppose we could call a uniformitarianist someone who believes that the majority of Earth's geologic features were produced in a uniformitarian way by the slow gradual processes that we see today, whereas I believe that the majority of Earth's features were produced catastrophically either during the creation week or many of them during the worldwide flood.

So I don't think that the majority were produced by the kinds of slow processes that we see today, though perhaps some are. You might have certain, you know, the meandering of certain rivers and so on.

Some of those might be pretty consistent with today's rates, but many of them are not.

The Worldview Behind Competing Age Estimates

Dr. Lyle though, but what about, okay, so you're talking about carbon dating and I'm sure Dr. Ross can go into this in more detail and once you're finished summarizing and I finish asking this question, we'll let Dr. Ross lay out, but you can continue on if you have a couple more points you want to go through.

But with regards to carbon dating, suppose Dr. Ross agreed with you, like, yeah, okay, we can't get an accurate reading necessarily through carbon dating, but there are so many other indicators that point to an older universe.

How would you bring that together with the different, the other, excuse me, the other ways in which one can determine age, so to speak?

What we're debating here is a worldview issue. It's not about the evidence, it's about how the evidence should be interpreted. And the only way to refute a worldview is with a reductio absurdum. You assume the worldview and show that it leads to an inconsistency.

And so the best way to disprove, to show, see, I don't think there is any evidence for an old universe and we can talk about that. But I would say that what I do when I present evidence for young universe, I assume for the sake of argument, uniformitarianism, I'll give you naturalism that the universe came in, you know, it just, there's no God, everything happens at constant rates and so on.

And you still end up with, in many cases, ages that are much younger than the secular timescale would allow. Now, the secularist, if he's going to argue properly, he should assume catastrophism and supernatural creation and then argue that under those conditions, nonetheless, there are some instances where you still get millions of years.

But the problem is that I'm not aware of any case where that happens. In other words, all the arguments that are for the millions or billions of years assume to some extent uniformitarianism and to some extent naturalism, things that I would reject, you see.

And so it begs the question, because they're assuming their own worldview and then arguing that that demonstrates that my worldview is wrong, but they've already assumed that at the outset. Does that make sense?

Yes. Okay. At this point, the main thing I wanted to point out is the nature of the arguments that we make from science to confirm a young universe. And those are almost always via the reductio ad absurdum, where we assume for the sake of hypothesis, the uniformitarian standards, and then show that even when we assume those standards, there are many situations where you get an age estimate that is much, much younger than the billions of years.

In fact, you usually do. There are very few methods, even assuming uniformitarianism and naturalism, there are very few methods that give the answers of billions of years that the secularists need in order to accommodate evolution.

Not that that really would, but that's what they think they need anyway. So one of the things that I was trying to point out here is that somebody who were to argue against my position, the only way they could rationally do it is to assume supernatural creation, catastrophism, namely the worldwide flood, and then show that that leads to an inconsistency.

But the problem is, it doesn't lead to an inconsistency. When you assume the straightforward reading of the Bible, literal days of Genesis, supernatural creation, global flood, and then you take a look at the science, it's very consistent with that.

And we'll see in Hugh Ross's response that he doesn't do the reductio ad absurdum. He's assuming his own presuppositions and then trying to argue that they're consistent in some cases. Well, I don't deny that, but that doesn't prove anything.

The fact is, you can assume those secular presuppositions and in many cases get an answer that is absurd, that is incompatible with those very presuppositions. And therefore, that is a refutation of the deep time argument in terms of the science behind it.

And again, it can be difficult to explain these concepts in the short time span that you have for a dialogue like this. I try to keep that as succinct as possible. But my point is that any allegedly scientific argument I've ever heard for deep time begs the question.

Everyone. Because they all assume, to some extent, naturalism and uniformitarianism, which the consistent biblical creationist rejects because they're contrary to scripture.

The Age of the Universe and the Constancy of Physics

Dr. Ross, how old is the universe? What's your evidence? And then we'll get into this issue of presuppositions. I think that's a very important point in this debate.

Yeah. The age of the universe, 13 .79 billion plus or minus 0 .05 billion.

Well, that is the current number, but that number changes and it changes. It seems like every decade or so it changes by a billion or so. And I think it's interesting, too, because Hugh Ross puts that precise decimal point on it, plus or minus.

Well, the problem is that is outside his previous statements on the age of the universe. So is he right then or is he right now? Because it can't be both. And that's the problem when you try to wed your theology to a particular allegedly scientific idea that's really based on secular assumptions anyway.

And, you know, listening to what Jason is saying is it's not a debate between catastrophism and uniformitarianism. I mean, people like myself believe in both.

Well, again, it's a matter of degree. The secularist embraces a great degree of uniformitarianism to the exclusion of things like the global flood, whereas I, as a creationist and a catastrophist, would say that the majority of Earth's features were produced by that flood or during the creation week.

And so it's a question of what is the majority, what are the majority of Earth's features produced by, slow, gradual processes or catastrophic ones? And so it really is a debate over those two issues, because if the majority of Earth's features are produced by slow, gradual processes, then it would take a very long time to make those features.

But if God supernaturally created the heavens and the Earth, and if there was a global flood, then you can get all those features in a very short time. So it really is a debate over uniformitarianism versus catastrophism in terms of which is the majority, which forms the majority of Earth's features.

People like myself believe in both. Is that according to the Bible, the laws of physics don't change?

Where does the Bible say the laws of physics don't change? Now, I agree that they don't arbitrarily change, and I can point to verses that would suggest that, but God can change a law of physics if He wants to.

It's not a problem. When Jesus turned the water into wine or when He multiplied the fish and the loaves of bread, I don't see how you could do that within the laws of nature. I mean, perhaps He did, but God is not bound by laws of nature, and I can't find anywhere in Scripture that would indicate that He is or that He's not able to temporarily suspend a law of nature for His divine purpose.

The laws of physics don't change? And in astronomy, we can look back in time and see if they haven't changed?

No, you can't. Even given the secular assumption that when you're looking out into space, you know, that the light takes a long time to get from there to here, which of course it doesn't depending on which synchrony convention you use.

But even given the secular explanation, astronomers do not look out into space and conclude from the observations that the laws of physics are the same out there or back in time as they are here and now.

They assume that, because if you don't, there's no reason to believe that the light that's entering your eye really came from that distant galaxy. How do you know the light didn't just pop into existence and spin around and form an image of a galaxy and come in because the laws of physics out there are different than they are here?

You don't know that. It's assumed that the laws of physics are the same out in deep space as they are here and in the past, in the secular view, as they are here. Otherwise, there'd be no reason to think that light travels in straight lines in space as it does here on Earth, or nearly straight lines.

So again, Hiras is begging the question. I don't think he realizes the presuppositions that he's brought to the table.

I think what impresses me about astronomy is that we human beings are living at the one time in the history of the universe where we can directly observe the entirety of the history of the universe.

Can we observe the history of the universe today? No. I mean, we observe the present, and again, Ross is going to argue that, you know, we're looking back in time. That's not really true. That depends on what synchrony convention you're using.

But in any case, can we observe God creating the original animals that he created during the creation week? No, we can't observe that. They're gone. We observe their descendants today, but we don't observe that aspect of the history of the universe.

Can we observe the time when the Earth was a ball of water with no land? We can't observe that today. There's evidence of it, but we can't observe it today. Or God separating the waters from the waters, or God separating the land from the waters and causing the continents to rise, and so on, as he did in the creation week.

We can't observe those today because they're gone. They're in the past. God gave us the Bible to tell us the history of the universe, not astronomy. Astronomy reveals God's glory. It's a wonderful field.

It's interesting. It really does demonstrate the glory of God, and it demonstrates to everyone who has a chance to look up in the night sky. It's not giving us the history of the universe. That's what the Bible's for.

I mean, if we were placed in the universe five billion years earlier than what we are, we'd only be seeing the last two-thirds of the history of the universe. There wouldn't be adequate time for life in the cosmic creation event to travel on the space surface of the universe and reach our telescope.

I think Hugh is referring to the cosmic microwave background, and if so, that's just not accurate. Even in the secular view, that's not accurate. Because the cosmic microwave background in the secular view occurs everywhere.

It's supposedly a result of the Big Bang that occurs everywhere. It's always been in range of any hypothetical observer.

So I think God loved us to such a degree, he wanted to make sure we could read 100 percent of the history book of nature.

In my view, the Bible is the history book of nature. It tells us how the universe began and how it got to be the way it is today.

And, you know, we're both astronomers. As astronomers, we have no access to the present.

Then how are we able to have this conversation? It doesn't work. I know what Hugh's saying. He's saying we're looking back in time. But again, he's assuming a synchronic convention and he's assuming a reference frame as well.

And I don't think he's aware of that. We'll come to that later in the debate.

A hundred percent of our data comes from the past. It's because we're looking at distant objects and it takes quite a finite amount of time to reach our telescopes. So God has revealed himself through the words of scripture about what he's done in the past.

But he's also revealed himself to us directly. It's not indirect. It's a direct tool. We can go back in time and verify the Bible got it right.

Can we go back in time and verify that the Bible got it right? Well, no, we can't go back in time. And even the idea that we're looking at the past, that is an interpretive framework. It's not something that's evidence.

I understand the idea behind it. But just the idea of verifying that the Bible got it right by some allegedly greater standard, you see, this again is one of the differences between us because I'm a presuppositionalist.

And that doesn't mean I just arbitrarily presuppose that the Bible's the Word of God. What it means is that I recognize that unless the Bible's the Word of God, unless its view of history is right, we couldn't have things like science.

They wouldn't make sense. And so it's a very conclusive argument for the Christian worldview. But my friend Hugh, he's an evidentialist. And as a result, he either tacitly or either wittingly or unwittingly, he takes man's understanding of scientific evidence as the standard by which the Bible should be judged.

Now, he finds that the Bible passes that standard. But my point is that standard is wrong. The Bible is superior to man's understanding of scientific evidence.

When it said no change in the laws of physics, I mean, every distant galaxy and star I look at, I measure the laws of physics and measure to be identical to what we measure here in.

The lab.

Again, that is an assumption. It's not something that you look into the universe and you verify that the laws of physics haven't changed, or they're the same there as they are here. That's assumed. Otherwise, you couldn't rely upon your observations as actually representing that galaxy.

If the photons, for example, were created by some kind of process that we don't have on Earth, because the laws of physics are different maybe a hundred miles up into space. You see my point. Hugh is assuming the very thing he's attempting to prove.

And I don't think he realizes that. At best, he could say, we assume that the laws of physics are the same out there as they are here. And when we observe these galaxies, we don't see any discrepancy.

That's the best you can argue. But you can't say we know that the laws of physics are the same out there as here, because you're assuming that in how you interpret your observations.

Scripture, Miracles, and the Changeable Universe

And I think this is crucial because every Young Earth Creationist model I've looked at critically depends on dramatically altered laws of physics.

That is simply wrong. I'm trying to think if there are any creationist models that assume a drastic change in the laws of physics. I'm not sure I can think of any. But certainly that's not the mainstream position.

Most creationists, myself included, believe that the laws of physics have been more or less constant since God finished creating, with certain exceptions where God can come in and do something that's miraculous and extraordinary.

There may have been a very small change when Adam sinned. We think that there was some kind of change when Adam sinned. But it doesn't have to be drastic. If it was drastic, then the world would have been so different before Adam.

We don't think it was that different. We know that it was somewhat different because there was no death of any of the nefesh living organisms before Adam sinned. But I don't know where Hugh Ross is getting that idea, but it's simply.

Not the case. Yet the Bible is explicit, and the Book of Nature explicit, that that did not happen. We got the measurements and the text in the Bible to show that. I would.

Love to know where the Bible supposedly says that the laws of nature have never changed. I don't see that. I do see promises to a certain degree of consistency since the Flood, in passages like Genesis 8 .22, for example, where God promises the basic cycles of nature will not change.

But that's after the Flood. And even that would allow for temporary suspensions of laws of nature like when Jesus does a miracle, for example. So I don't know where Hugh's getting that. And it's certainly not something you can observe in nature because our observations of nature assume that the laws of physics, the laws of nature, are the same in deep space as they are here on Earth and that they don't arbitrarily change over time.

I'm sorry. Isn't your interpretation of the data of science based upon your presupposition of your particular interpretation of the biblical passages? What role do your presuppositions play in all this?

In other words, if you're misinterpreting the scriptures, how is that going to affect then how you come to the data since you want to be a biblically informed Christian, especially when you're engaging in science?

What role do your presuppositions play in this, you think?

That's a very insightful question because, in fact, the assumptions, the presuppositions that Hugh Ross has made in order to come to the conclusions that he's come to are not biblical. They are secular.

Naturalism, uniformitarianism. Now, I know that Hugh Ross would verbally deny naturalism. That's not the issue. He has tacitly assumed it in the estimations of age when he goes along with the secular view on these things.

Well, again, I mentioned that I'm multifaceted in my apologetics. I'm not just an evidentialist. I'm also a presuppositionalist. I also look at the historical method. I like that. I like the logic. I mean, there's different approaches, and I think we already use all of them.

A lot of Christians like to say that. I'm evidential and presuppositional, which indicates they don't understand either one, because those two methods are fundamentally incompatible with each other. Because the presuppositionalist, the thing that distinguishes it is that the Bible is the ultimate standard for all truth claims, including its own defense.

And the evidentialist will adamantly deny that, that the Bible is the ultimate standard, at least in its own defense. They would say you have to appeal to something outside of Scripture in order to support Scripture when you're doing apologetics.

The two are incompatible. Now, I'm a presuppositionalist, but I do use a lot of evidence. That doesn't make me an evidentialist, because the way in which I use evidence never departs from the biblical presupposition that the Bible is the ultimate standard for all truth claims.

But as an evidentialist, I say, okay, what does the Scripture say, and do we have any external proof that that is exactly the case? I think that's true with the laws of physics. One reason why we can trust the record of nature is that God has told us in the book of Scripture, we can trust it.

I haven't changed the laws of physics. He says, I'm an unchangeable God, Jeremiah 33.

The fact that God himself does not change does not imply that he can't institute changes in nature, and we know that he's done so. We know that he introduced death as the right punishment for Adam's sin.

We know that God brought thorns and thistles into the world. He instituted the change when Adam sinned. So the fact that God is unchanging doesn't mean that he can't work within time. In fact, he brought an additional nature to himself when the Son of God, the second person of the Trinity, at the incarnation, Jesus became the God-man.

He can enter into time. It's not a problem. And so it does not follow logically that because God doesn't change that laws of nature can't change.

You humans change, but I don't change. I'm immutable. As evidence, look at the laws that govern the heavens and the earth. As they don't change, I don't change.

The ironic thing is that Jeremiah 33 actually implies the opposite of what Hugh Ross has just stated. Hugh seems to be suggesting that since God doesn't change, he can't change things in nature, like laws of nature, for example.

But Jeremiah 33 is all about the changes that God is going to bring. In the battle with the Chaldeans and the health that he's going to bring to Judah. That's a change in conditions. Now, it could be the case that Hugh is thinking of verse 20, where God speaks of his covenant with day and night.

But when was that covenant made? When was the promise made that God would continue the day and night cycle as long as the earth remains? After the flood, Genesis 8, 22. And so you can't argue that that means laws of nature have always been, in the past, consistent.

Because at some point, God was creating the universe. He was doing things that he's not doing today. And the current laws of nature, which describe the way that God upholds the universe today, those would not apply, at least not in their entirety.

The law of conservation of energy, law of conservation of mass, which says you can't create or destroy mass or energy. But God was creating mass and energy during the creation week. And so obviously that law was not in effect at that time.

And so it just, Ross's argument here just doesn't make any sense.

As evidence, look at the laws that govern the heavens and the earth. As they don't change, I don't change. That's one of several biblical texts that tell us about the constancy of physics.

Is that what the Bible says? Does the Bible say that in the same way God doesn't change, the heavens do not change? No, it does not. In fact, it says the opposite. The Bible actually contrasts God's eternal nature with the changeable nature of the universe.

Take a look at Hebrews chapter one. Let's start in verse 10. And you Lord, in the beginning laid the foundation of the earth and the heavens are the works of your hands. They will perish, but you remain.

They will all become old like a garment. And like a mantle, you will roll them up like a garment. They will also be changed, but you are the same and your years will not come to an end. And again, in Matthew 24, verse 35, heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will not pass away.

That's what Jesus says. The Bible does not compare God's eternality with the eternality of the universe. God contrasts his eternality with the changeable nature of the universe. So the theology that Hugh Ross is advocating here really does not have any foundation in scripture.

It really doesn't. And it's beside the point. It's a bit of a straw man argument because again, Hugh is arguing for the constancy of laws of nature, thinking that creationists believe that laws of nature have changed multiple times.

But the fact is, since the fall of Adam, I don't think the laws of nature have changed in any drastic way, except perhaps temporarily when God does something extraordinary, but then they would go back to the way they were before that.

So again,.

Nature, Scripture, and the Limits of Astronomy

This is a bit of a rabbit trail. This is something unique to Christianity. Christianity compared to the other major religions of the world actually tells us that we can trust the record of nature.

To reveal truth. It's not going to deceive us. Well, nature doesn't deceive, but it also doesn't teach, at least not in a literal sense, because it's not made of words. God gave us the Bible to give us the propositional clarity that we needed to understand the history of the universe.

The Bible is supposed to be the interpretive framework that we use to interpret the evidence.

Around us, not the other way around. It's impossible for God to lie or deceive in either revelation. So I anticipate the fine consistency. And so I read the text, I look at nature and say, okay, is the nature saying the same thing?

It is. Of course, students of logic will recognize.

Hugh's statement as a reification fallacy. Nature doesn't say anything, not literally. Of course, we might, you know, poetically we might say that, but when you use that as part of an argument, it is a fallacy because the fact is nature is not comprised of words.

It's not literally speaking, and therefore it doesn't have that propositional clarity that the Bible does have. Okay, well, I think that's a decent stopping point for today. So I hope that's been encouraging to you.

I hope it's been a blessing. And we'll pick it up next time with more of the science behind the age of the earth. And we'll see you next time. God bless.