Sunday, July 15, 2007

How Old?

I am not completely ignorant as to the arguments that my friends use to support the “young earth” vs the “old earth” beliefs. Old earth theory states that the degradation rate of various atomic particles found in samples of rocks and sediment point to the fact that our earth has been around for billions of years. I have read several seemingly unrelated sources who agree in principle to the facts of this theory, though there may be some discussion to how many billions of years the age of the earth may be. My young earth friends smugly point out that these particle degradation theories cannot be shown to be true since we have no observed data older than a few decades. In the words of one young earth advocate- “Were you there?” . The fact is that both science and theology depend on the idea that present patterns should be expected to predict past and future patterns unless clear reasons are given to state otherwise.

For example, we can look at the degradation rate of certain atomic particles in certain elements to determine the exact age of something from ancient times for which we know the exact age- a dated building from ancient times, for example. The pattern of degradation for the elements in that building should be the same as any other similar element found in the earth’s crust. One simply needs to count to see the number of the particles in one compare to the number of particles in the other to determine the age. The problem is that when the number generated from element found in the earth’s crust the young earth creationists insist that the number must be in error because their understanding of Genesis says that is not true. In other words, their dogma dictates their observations. This is like seeing a creature that looks and behaves like a cat in a cage labeled “dog” and refusing to admit that the creature in the cage is a cat because the label you have accepted contradicts your observations.

Are Christians truly required to refuse to accept their observations if they don’t agree with the Bible? I find a great deal of concern here. Is it possible that our observations which seem to disagree with the Bible are actually pointing out the fact that we have misunderstood the Bible? One need not look far to find an example of this failure. The church of the Dark Ages insisted that the universe rotated around the earth due to a poor interpretation of a scriptural statement. When astronomers could not explain their observations using this poor interpretation of Scripture it was as if they had to reject Scripture in order properly understand the movement of heavenly bodies. The Church finally accepted its theology as flawed and used the scientific observations to explain Scripture better. Is this something that we can do with the creation story in Genesis? Is it possible that we have misread it?

1 comment:

  1. The following comment was left on my deactivated blog so I will leave it here for Kris-
    "Hey Josh, sounds like your professors are pretty convinced. I just want you to know that in my studies of earth science at the university level, I had very few doctorate professors who thought that the dating methods you describe were as accurate as you are making them sound. I just think you should be careful in listening to arguments made by people who are also trying to fit a theory to what they see as lining up with their world view. Bias can creep in on both sides of any argument. So, here's another biased website you might want to look at, I thought it was interesting: http://www.cs.unc.edu/~plaisted/ce/dating.html Happy thinking! Love you brother, Kris"

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