The Age of the Earth

The question of how old the earth is bothers many Christians. This is because the present-day theories of age seem to contradict the Biblical account which allows only a few millennia for life. In this article the author explains that scientists have no valid reason for maintaining that life is millions of years old.

Christian students often wonder about how old the earth and the life upon it is ! This is to be expected because a literal rendering of the Biblical history gives a maximum of six to eight thousand years for life while many science books tell them that the earth is billions of year old and that  human life is several millions of years old.

The question of the age of the earth is a tricky one because there are numerous methods to determine the age, some giving an age of only a few hundreds of years, others giving an age of a few thousand years, and still others giving an age in millions or even billions of years. All of them are scientific methods, but they give as widely differing ages as they ever can.

This means that ultimately the choice of dates is a philosophical matter. Since the prevailing philosophy of the times is that of evolution, long ages are preferred in contrast to smaller ages.  It should be understood clearly that this is a choice based upon reasons outside of real science.

Since the theory of evolution demands long ages for earth and life, these ages are granted to them by philosophical choice.  And since this is the dominant philosophy these days, only those methods of determining ages (dating) are mentioned in most  books which conform to this theory.  However an intelligent and open minded inquirer should know at least something about the other side, and so we will have a look at some of those methods which indicate smaller ages for earth and life.  These are only a selected few, but the actual list is long enough to form a voluminous book.

A good amount of earth's surface is made up of layers called the geological layers.  It was argued at one time that such layers need millions of years to accumulate to the thicknesses observed today.  However, there were other geologists who used to point out that the same layers could have been laid down quickly in unusually large catastrophes in which water played an important part.  This viewpoint was eclipsed after the 
rise of the theory of evolution, but with advancement in the geological studies scientists have once again  recognized the necessity of catastrophic events to explain much of geology.  Once the role of catastrophic events is recognized, the millions of years assigned to the geological column becomes meaningless.  It could have been laid in the one year flood during the time of Noah.

Radiocarbon dating, one of the best methods of dating recent samples, assumes that the production and decay of radiocarbon in earth's atmosphere is in equilibrium.  Such an equilibrium is attained in a mere 30,000 years.  But recent studies have made it clear that these two are NOT in equilibrium, implying that earth's atmosphere is less than 30,000 years old ! Moreover, radiocarbon dating of million of objects from all around the world seems to indicate very clearly that life is only about 6 to 8 thousand years old.  Also, several researchers have concluded that results of this method of age-determination give very clear indications of Noah flood.

Cosmic dust from space is falling continually on the earth and moon.  Since there are no winds or water flow on the moon to disturb the dust settling on it, the total depth of cosmic dust on its surface should give an idea of its age, and by implication the age of the earth.  About 50 to 180 feet of loose dust should be found on the surface of moon if it is 4.5 billion years old. Men on the first spacecraft were really apprehensive about whether they will sink and die in this dust.  But the actual amount of dust discovered there was only a few centimeters deep, implying that moon is extremely young.

The accumulation of different elements in the seas is another clock that can be used to determine age.  Interestingly, most of them indicates ages of only a few hundreds or thousands of years.

Long ages are obtained usually by radioactive dating techniques.  But these dates are not faultless because these ages disagree among themselves.  Sometimes the age of a single rock differs by millions and even billions of years.  For example, when rocks from a volcano, formed about 200 years ago, were tested by these methods, they indicated their age in millions of years ! Also, different methods of testing gave dates differing by millions of years ! Thus if a rock which is only two hundred years old is assigned an age of millions of years by these methods, it is natural that they will assign an age in billions of years for the earth which might not be more than 10,000 years old.

A good proportion of fossil ages are merely speculations.  For example, the infamous Piltdown Man was claimed to be 500,000 years old.  Forty years after its discovery people were told that parts of it were only a thousand years while some parts were only a few dozen years old.

The validity of Bible does not depend upon a young earth, because it only says that the earth was created "in the beginning".  However, for the creation of mankind it does place definite limits.  Man, according to a literal reckoning of the 
Genesis history, is not more than 6000 years old.  Even if one tries to stretch this age, it cannot be converted into the millions of years demanded by the evolutionists.

Christians must understand very clearly that the question of the age of the earth and living creatures is only in its infancy in science.  Scientists themselves are not in a position to say why long ages are more valid than short ages.  If their preference for long ages is examined in the light of established methods of the scientific method, it will become clear immediately that many of them  prefer long ages over short ones because it fits better with their philosophy of origins.  This is more of a philosophical cause and less of science.

Christians should note that the claimed long ages for the earth are not established scientific facts.  There are numerous methods which are equally valid, but which give very short ages.  Let science work its course without interference from philosophies, and one day it might come back to short ages.  Whenever people have allowed science to grow without interference, it has only stood with the Bible, not against it.