My Thoughts on the Age of the Universe and Earth

This purpose of this blog post is to arrange my thoughts on the age of the Universe and Earth. It is not meant to be a professional essay.

"It is not so important how God created the universe as it is why He created it." Don Gibbs

#1 I don't buy the theory of Macro Evolution (whereas Micro Evolution is obvious). Macro Evolution ( self-admittedly) does not account for the origins of life - it has no reasonable answer as to how life first began. Other concerns I have about it include the holes in the fossil record and the existence of human consciousness. 

#2 When it comes to most of the varying views of Christians as to how the Earth was created I take a generally agnostic view ( I simply don't know). One view though that allows for an ancient Universe/Earth and that seems remarkably clear to me from the Biblical text is summed here by Dr. John Lennox, a Christian, devout Bible Believer, Mathematician and Philosopher of Science at Oxford: 

“…the initial creation act ( Gen 1:1-2) is separated from the 6 days of creation that follow it. You will find this structure followed, for instance, in the section of the ESV. The reason is that there is a clear pattern to the days: they each begin with the phrase “And God said” and end with the statement “and there was evening and there was morning, Nth day.” This means that, according to the text, day 1 begins in verse 3 and not in verse 1. This is made clear in the original text by the fact that the verb “created” in Genesis 1:1 is in the perfect tense, and “the normal use of the perfect at the very beginning of a periscope is to denote an event that took place before the storyline  gets under way.

This implies that “the beginning” of Genesis 1:1 did not necessarily take place on day 1 as is frequently assumed. The initial creation took place before day 1, but Genesis does not tell us how long before. This means that the question of the age of the earth ( and of the universe) is a separate question from the interpretation of the days, a point that is frequently overlooked. In other words, quite apart from any scientific considerations, the text of Genesis 1:1, in separating the beginning from day 1, leaves the age of the universe indeterminate. 


It would therefore be logically possible to believe that the days of Genesis are twenty-four hour days ( of one earth week) AND to believe that the universe is very ancient. I repeat: this has nothing to do with science. Rather, it has to do with what the text actually says. There is a danger of understanding the text saying less than it does, but also a danger of trying to make it say more.”  ( From his book '7 Days that Divide the World')

#3 In addition to this it seems clear that science ( so far) is showing us that the Universe/Earth is very old. This is not about Evolution  ( which I do not believe for Scriptural, Scientific and Philosophical reasons) but simply the age of things. This link sums up the many different ways scientists have come up with the age of the Universe: http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Evidence_against_a_recent_creation . I don't necessarily agree with all of them being accurate of course but many Christian scientists believe cosmology, in particular,  is clear that the Universe is ancient - 

"On Earth, the delay caused by the speed of light is incredibly minor — when you look at an object a mile away, the light has been travelling for five microseconds. When you look at the Sun, you are seeing light that has been in transit for 8.3 minutes. ...
On the cosmic scale of things, this delay is far from minor and really is noticeable. When astronomers look at the closest star to Earth (Alpha Centauri), which is roughly four light years away, they are seeing the star as it was four years ago from our perspective. When astronomers look at objects in the region of space known as the "Hubble ultra deep field", they are seeing the stars there as they were over ten billion years ago. Light we are receiving from these fields has been travelling for ten billion years, and the universe must have, therefore, existed long enough for that transit time to take place." 

#4 I'm okay with agreeing to disagree with my fellow Christians as to the age of the Universe/Earth. I believe it is an issue similar to the "end times" or gifts of the Spirit - there is some room to disagree ( Romans 14). 

The real issue for me , however, is that I fear when we focus so much on a belief that says the Earth is only about 7,000 years old ( Young Earth Creationism) we are entering into a battle that the Lord has not sanctioned, that the Bible does not demand from us. Worse yet, I fear that an obsession with this view could, in fact, hinder the Gospel of Jesus Christ. We cannot give the impression that in order to become a Christian one MUST believe that the earth is young.