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The format of this post is as follows: First I present the RTB article's words in red, then I respond in black directly beneath the quote.
When the Bible speaks to an
issue it is the supreme authority. Thus, what the Bible has to say about the
age of the Earth carries great significance.
I appreciate the opening statement in this article. The Bible is the absolute authority on every
issue. Unfortunately, Hugh Ross and his
ministry, Reasons to Believe (RTB), don’t always practice what they preach when
it comes to Biblical authority. For
evidence of this see my critique of Hugh Ross’s hermeneutics. Hints of compromise may be found in the
statement made above that “what the Bible has to say about the age of the Earth
carries great significance” (emphasis mine).
While this is true, it does not go far enough. What the Bible says about the age of the
Earth carries more than great
significance, it carries absolute authority.
If the Bible does make a statement about the Earth’s age, then that
statement is to be believed as absolutely true.
The Bible never specifies a date
for creation, but the creation accounts in Genesis provide some guidance. The
genealogies and the length of the creation days play key roles in any biblical
assessment of Earth’s age.
This
statement is true, though I would like to see words like “some guidance” replaced
with a stronger wording. I agree that
the genealogies and the length of the creation days are indispensable in
assessing the age of the Earth.
The genealogies place a hard
constraint that Adam and Eve appeared no more recently than 6,000 years ago.
Since they contain gaps those genealogies cannot serve as timekeeping devices.
However, it seems to stretch credulity to argue for anything much older than
100,000 years for Adam and Eve’s appearance on Earth.
Notice the
words “Adam and Eve appeared no more
recently than 6,000 years ago” (emphasis mine). While I agree that Adam was created around
6,000 years ago, I disagree with the idea that Adam could have been created
100,000 years ago. This article assumes
gaps in the genealogies. I don’t think
that there necessarily are gaps in Genesis’ genealogies, but even if gaps are there they would not add up to tens of thousands of years between descendants or
else the genealogies would be meaningless.
For a refutation of the theory that there are gaps in Genesis’
genealogies see Are there Gaps in the Genesis Genealogies? by Larry Pierce and Ken Ham.[2]
By using the phrase “no more recently than
6,000 years ago” the author of this article gives the impression that belief
that man was created 6,000 years ago would be an extreme belief, i.e. it would
be on the extreme young end of possible dates whereas a date of anything older
than 100,000 years would be on the extreme old end of the spectrum. Obviously, the article is trying to make the
point that man is much older than 6,000 years but not much older than 100,000
years. RTB is
committed to the idea that the earth is millions of years old and that man
first appeared on the Earth as late as 150,000 years ago. An article on their website gives reasons for believing that man is that old.[3]
All of the reasons mentioned are based on faulty premises that are assumed to be facts.
The author treats the genealogies in Genesis with a
double standard. He takes them seriously
when he wants to prove that man is no younger than 6,000 years, but then he
acts like they can’t be taken seriously when these same genealogies yield a
creation date of no more than 6,000 years ago.
Instead, he assumes that there are gaps in the genealogies when there is
no biblical basis to do so. The reason
he wants gaps there is to allow for the tens of thousands of years that he needs to account for
to make the Bible agree with evolutionary ideas that man appeared around 100-150,000 years ago.
Another less
serious concern I have is that the article uses the word “appearance” instead
of the phrase were created. RTB does believe in the direct creation of
Adam and Eve [4], but by using the word “appearance” the author seems to be trying
to use the terminology of evolution.
Evolutionary theory has modern man gradually evolving from lesser
hominids. Modern man appears from the
evolutionary process somewhere around 150,000 years ago when a knuckle-dragging
caveman somehow sheds his primitive self and becomes modernized. I prefer the more biblical term created to avoid any confusion with
evolution. The Bible says man was
created on Day 6 with no previous half-human hominids preceding modern man. RTB, however, does believe in the idea that there were human-like hominids before Adam and Eve.[5] The biblical view, in contrast to that of RTB, is that all so-called hominids (Neanderthals, Homo erectus, etc.) were the fully human descendants of Adam and Eve.
Any other information on the
Earth’s age must be inferred from the length of the creation
days. The biblical word for day, yom,
has four different literal meanings: 1) the daylight portion of a day, 2) part
of the daylight hours, 3) an ordinary day (now 24 hours), and 4) a longer but
finite period of time (no other word in biblical Hebrew carries this meaning).
Although many Christians argue that those days represent ordinary calendar
days, the biblical text indicates they lasted much longer. Days 1-3 cannot be
ordinary days as humanity defines them because the Sun does not become visible
until the fourth day. On the sixth day, Adam tends the garden, names all the
animals, undergoes divine surgery and marries Eve. These events seem too
significant and long to happen in one ordinary day. The seventh day, in
contrast to the first six, never closes with an evening and morning. In fact,
Psalm 95 and Hebrews 4 indicate that we still live in the seventh day.
Having cast
doubt upon the usefulness of the biblical genealogies in determining the date
of creation, now the author tries to cast doubt upon the word day in Genesis 1. He makes it a point to show that the word day
can mean something other than an ordinary day.
He then gives three reasons why the word day cannot mean an ordinary day
in Genesis 1.
First he says
that the first three days cannot be ordinary days “because the Sun does not
become visible until the fourth day”.
This is a trick that the author is trying to pull. He wants us to believe that the sun was
created on Day 1 but did not become visible from Earth until Day 4. The reason the author wants to have the sun
created on Day 1 is because the evolutionary big bang theory says that the sun
is much older than the Earth and the author chooses to believe the big bang
order of events as opposed to the Bible’s chronology. The Bible does not say that the sun did not merely
become visible until Day 4. It says specifically that the sun was not created until Day 4. You cannot harmonize the days of creation
with the big bang. God created light on
Day 1 and this light shining on the earth as it rotated gave the earth its
evening and morning until the sun was created 3 days later. RTB is not being honest with the text of
Genesis and is in fact contradicting what is clearly stated in the Bible’s
creation account.
The second
reason given by the author to support his theory that the days of creation were
not ordinary days is because he feels that the events that happened on Day 6
would take too long to accomplish in just 24 hours. But how long would it take Adam to “tend the
garden”? And how long would it take
Adam, a man with a healthy intellect untainted by sin’s consequences, to name
the animals that God brought before him?
Also, the Bible doesn’t say that Adam named all the animals as this
article implies. He named only the land
animals and birds. It is important to
note that these are kinds of animals;
in other words, Adam didn’t have to name Chihuahua, Poodle, Boxer, etc. He only needed to name the original dog kind,
not all the resultant species. And how
long would it take for God to fashion Eve from Adam’s rib? 24 hours is ample time to accomplish all of
this. Tim Chaffey has written a great article about this issue (click here).
The final
reason the author believes that the word day
is not referring to a normal day is because Day 7 does not say evening and
morning in Genesis like the previous days do.
But what does this prove? It
certainly doesn’t mean that Day 7 should be considered anything other than a
normal day. The author references Psalm
95 and Hebrews 4 to try to prove that Day 7 of creation is still going on
today. In the author’s thinking, if Day
7 has gone on for thousands of years, then why can’t the other days be
thousands of years also? My answer is
that Psalm 95 and Hebrews 4 are speaking of the Israelites not being able to
enter into Canaan and possess it because of their unbelief. The “rest” spoken of in these verses is the
victory that would have been theirs if they had believed God. They refused to believe Him so He did not
allow them to enter the Promised Land.
These verses have nothing at all to do with creation. On the other hand, Exodus 20:9-11 specifically
ties the seven days of creation with the seven days of the week, indicating
that Day 7 of creation in Genesis should be viewed as a literal day just like
all the other days.
You are to labor six days and do all your work, but the seventh day is a Sabbath to the Lord your God. You must not do any work—you, your son or daughter, your male or female slave, your livestock, or the foreigner who is within your gates. For the Lord made the heavens and the earth, the sea, and everything in them in six days; then He rested on the seventh day. Therefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and declared it holy. Exodus 20:9-11 (HCSB)
The Bible never declares an age
for the Earth, but evidence derived from the text fits most comfortably with a
date far older than a few thousand years. RTB holds the position that the six
days of creation represent long time periods and that the creation accounts
reconcile well with the scientific date for Earth’s formation 4.6 billion years
ago.
The author states that he can justify his belief in billions of years of earth history from "evidence derived from the text” which leads him to the belief in an old Earth. But the text never
indicates such a thing. In fact, if the
text is taken seriously, it proves that the days were literal days and the
genealogies can be trusted. The author
is so intent on making the Bible’s creation account reconcile with evolution
that he ignores the real meaning of the text and tries to make it say something
that it is not saying.
ENDNOTES:
[1] Author unknown, Biblical Evidence for an Old Earth, date unknown, http://www.reasons.org/rtb-101/biblicalevidenceforanoldearth, Accessed on December 3, 2014
[2] Larry Pierce and Ken Ham, Chapter 5: Are There Gaps in the Genesis Genealogies?, April 8, 2010, https://answersingenesis.org/answers/books/new-answers-book-2/gaps-in-the-genesis-genealogies/ Accessed on December 3, 2014
[3] Author unknown, Age of Adam, date unknown, http://www.reasons.org/rtb-101/ageofadam, Accessed on December 3, 2014
[4] Author unknown, Historical Adam, date unknown, http://www.reasons.org/rtb-101/historicaladam Accessed on December 3, 2014
[5] Author unknown, Hominids, date unknown, http://www.reasons.org/rtb-101/hominids Accessed on December 3, 2014