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Zhi -> RE: "Young Earth" doctrine????? (8/7/2008 10:54:03 AM)
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My husband and I discuss this a lot. He's a geological engineer, so you can imagine the implications. ;)
It's an interesting question, based on two facts.
Fact 1: The earth (and universe in general) looks old.
Fact 2: The creation account says 7 days.
One must therefore conclude that either we are in error in the measurements and assumptions that would indicate that the earth is old (Fact 1), or conclude that we are in error assuming that the days listed in the creation account are 7 literal 24 hour periods rather than metaphorical (Fact 2).
So, really, I think as a baseline it is important to determine what facts about our existence, and the existence of the universe, are crucial to doctrine. The following is what we have agreed on through our various discussions of the matter.
#1: God is the Cause.
Regardless of actual age, God is the reason it's here, because His status as Creator is a very important aspect of God.
#2: God COULD have done it in 7 literal days.
I have a metaphor that I use for this one.
Imagine that you go over to an all-powerful being's house. The all-powerful being has a plate of cookies, and offers you one. You do not know if the all-powerful being got out the eggs, flour, sugar, butter, etc, set the oven to 350, mixed the ingredients, spooned the cookies onto the sheet, and baked them for 12 minutes, OR if the all-powerful being said "Let there be cookies!" and lo, there were cookies. The net effect, a plate of cookies, is the same either way, and there's really no way to tell the difference.
The important thing is to accept the fact that if God wanted to make an entire universe in 7 literal days (or in .7 literal seconds), He certainly is capable.
#3: God is not a liar.
This is a very compelling thing to my husband. His comment is that there would be no reason for God to pretend that the earth is older than it really is, by leaving chemical records, fossil records, geological records, etc. And, there is very compelling evidence to support the idea of an old earth. The thing is, though, that scientists have drawn conclusions regarding processes that we cannot possibly reproduce and verify.
Take radiometric dating, for instance. For human artifacts, carbon 14 dating is generally used. Carbon dating has a maximum useful range of 60,000 years, due to half-life restrictions (eventually, all the unstable carbon 14 has released the extra neutrons and is now normal carbon.) The thing is, though, that in all radiometric dating, certain assumptions must be made... such as how much of the radioactive element was available in the sample in the first place. While you can measure parent element vs daughter element, you have to also take into account that there was a lot of daughter element there already (since C12 is the "normal" version of carbon anyway), so you can't assume that all the daughter element was formed during the aging of the artifact. Levels are affected by variations in cosmic ray intensity, which is affected by the strength of the earth's magnetosphere. Changes in climate can affect the transfer of carbon in carbon reservoirs, so the carbon may have been more or less affected by the cosmic rays depending on where they were. Even human activity has affected C14 ratings, atom bomb tests almost doubled the C14 levels over the 10 year period they were tested, but the use of fossil fuels releases more C14-deficient carbon, reducing levels. So, we basically started messing up our tests before they even got started. Oops. So, it's very difficult to say whether or not we are correct in our assumptions regarding how much C14 the samples originally had, even if we have the measurements of how much there is now completely perfect.
For older materials, such as dinosaur bones, it gets more difficult. They don't have measureable amounts of C14. So, other isotopes have to be used, such as U238, U235, and Kb40. The problem with that, though, on top of all the problems that plague C14, is that these elements do not occur in the dinosaur bones. Nor do they occur in the sedimentary rock that contains the dinosaur bones. So, you have to go to nearby igneous rock (usually volcanic ash) and assume that the igneous rock can indicate the age of the sedimentary rock, on top of assuming you know the initial levels of the radioactive isotope you're measuring, etc.
Far more compelling is the geological record. It would appear from current processes that the processes we see evidence of (erosion, uplift, sublimation, volcanic activity, metamorphic rock formation, glacial activity, etc) take a while. So, we have to ask... were the processes sped up for some reason? Are we missing data on processes that can LOOK like other processes but happen much, much faster? Was it created to "look like" those processes occurred when they in fact did not? If so, why would God do something like that, when some would state that to do so is deceptive, and God is not deceptive? I think this is perhaps the most compelling argument for taking the "7 days" to be somewhat metaphorical.
#4: It is essential that humans were created in a specific manner.
Regardless of how quickly or liesurely God acted in creating the earth itself, it is absolutely essential that human beings were created, not macro-evolved.
To explain that term... micro-evolution is minor changes in species necessary for the survival of the species. The changing colors of a moth, the adaptation of the beak of a bird for a specific food type, the difference between a toy poodle and a great dane, these are micro-evolution... the moth is still a moth, the bird is still a bird, the dogs are still dogs. Macro-evolution are major changes required for shifting between species, for which I have yet to see any compelling proof whatsoever... in fact, things like the Cambrian Explosion, where massive quantities of diverse complex organisms appear basically out of nowhere, seem to indicate quite the opposite.
So, humans, specifically, had to be directly created for two reasons. One, the Bible says they were created in the very image of God. This is important, because it would be impossible to inherit the image of God (which is a spiritual thing) from things that were not created in the image of God. Two, there had to be a Fall. Without the Fall, there is no sin nature. Without sin nature, the entire story of mankind's corruption and redemption is mere mythology.
So, while I don't particularly have an issue with someone believing in an old earth, I think it's important to frame that belief within the stated caveats, and to admit that God could have done a direct young earth creation if He so chose.
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