Where in the Bible can I go to prove to someone that the earth is NOT billions of years old?
Question:
I’m sick of these programs saying the earth is millions & billions of years old when they speak of the Earth. Where in the Bible can I prove to someone that the earth in NOT millions & billions of years old?
Answer:
There are no scriptures which prove the earth is not millions or billions of years old. In fact, there is no passage in the scriptures which say how old the earth is. A lot of Christians have been misled into thinking the Bible is a science book when in fact it is a God book. It is a book about how to know God, not about science. The way Galileo put it, "The Bible was written to tell us how to go to heaven, not how the heavens go." I believe he was right. Apparently, God did not see the need to tell us how old the earth is. The age of the earth is not particularly relevant to our salvation or how we live our lives.
I believe that the scientific evidence is very strong that the earth is about 4.5 billion years old and that the universe is about 13 billion years old (see the power point at my web site "Science and Christian Apologetics", as well as my book "Is There a God." [www.ipibooks.com]). There is much evidence to support both of these conclusions and no evidence to the contrary that I know of. I am a PhD chemist and physicist and am in a fairly good position to judge the data. The Bible does not contradict the scientific evidence, despite the fact that many believers try to take issue with the scientific evidence.
So, I think you will not be able to prove biblically that the earth is not millions or billions of years old.
Of course, there is always Genesis chapter one. This is the ONLY passage in the scripture which can, conceivably, be used to claim the Bible describes a young earth. The problem with this is that most Bible scholars believe that the intent of Genesis one was not to give an age to the earth, but to give a theological description of God as Creator of the universe, the earth, of life and of mankind. Of course, God is all that! The "days" are almost certainly not to be taken literally as actual twenty-four hour periods. Much argument and bad science can be avoided if we accept the obvious here, which is that the time frame of Genesis is not intended to be taken as literal. That is my conclusion on the matter.
John Oakes
