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Hello,
I wish to inform you that the so-called "biblical calculations" of the age of the Earth at 6009 years old is grossly inaccurate and compiled by dubious scholars. The bible's literal time frame allows perfectly for a very old world.
Very few people realize that the creation of the cosmos and the reordering of the world in seven days are two different events. Genesis 1:2 should actually be translated "the earth became formless and void," not "the earth was formless and void." The author of Genesis did not have all the different states of being in the past tense that we do today. English has evolved such that we have "was," "had been," "were being," "became," "had become," "were becoming." Moses (assuming his was the author) used the same word, sometimes rendered "was", sometimes rendered "became."
The creation of the world is Genesis 1:1. It was written very tersely and briefly; Moses, insprired by God, felt no need to get into detail about it. There was a fall in this created world, and it descended into chaos in 1:2 (we don't know exactly what caused the fall, but it may indeed have been Lucifer's (Satan's) rebellion against God). The seven days, which many people inproperly refer to as "the Creation," was God's restoration of the world into what we know it as, with plants and animals, periods of the Sun and Moon, humankind etc.
Thus there is an indefinite time specified between the Creation and the restoration of six days. The harmonists that try to argue that God may have created the world to appear old in every way against science to test our faith should stop wasting their time. The need look no further than Genesis 1:1-2 to see that God created the world an unspecified time before the six days of restoration. If today's science says the Earth is 4.6 billion years old, which they have to in order for Darwinian evolution to have had enough time, then that massive amount of time in human terms would be mostly before the 6 days of restoration.
Lastly, this doesn't mean that from restoration onward there have been 6009 years. (By the way, the 6009 years was counted many years ago, so it should be several decades higher now.) This time frame was mostly derived from adding the years of Adam to Abraham, Abraham to Jacob, Jacob to Jesus to attain the years of the ancient world. As recorded by Matthew, often unimportant generations are skipped. He wrote in three sets of 14 generations. However, comparing it to Luke's astonishingly historically accurate gospel, we realize that Matthew indeed skipped generations unimportant to achieve his literary form of 3 times 14 (Luke skipped one or two from Matthew's as well). This is fine, because "son of" actually is considered to be "descendant of," as in Jesus the Son of Adam or Jesus the Son of David. In sum, don't use archeaology's established views of 10000 years of human civilization to disprove the 6000 years in the bible that some oddball scholars decided to enumerate.
Thanks.
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I can only imagine that the person, whose e-mail address suggested that the author is based in western Canada (a gorgeous part of the world that I look forward to returning to some day), has read some of my weblog postings in which I include minor geological references.
I studied geology for three years at university, and recently read the history of the drawing of the first geological map of Great Britain. I live on the site of a Victorian coal mine. I take an interest in geology wherever I go, including examining the stone facias of buildings, and (much to the resigned boredom of my wife and daughter) watch every geology programme that is broadcast on UK television (including the repeats). I am fascinated with the European, Russian, Japanese and American space programmes, closely following each mission on the internet (and for recreation, using Google Earth, I sometimes locate the International Space Station), because I have an interest in lunar and planetary geology.
The Big Bang occurred 13,700 million years ago, creating the universe and all matter within it. Red shift in the spectra of the most distant objects, and residual microwave cosmic radiation shows us the age of the universe (since the Big Bang). Many galaxies and stars are much younger than the age of the universe. Our solar system, the Sun, its planets and dwarf planets, their moons, the asteroids and comets, were all formed out of stellar dust only 4,600 million years ago. Radioactive decay paths and rates show us (for example the half-life of uranium-238 decaying to thorium-234 is 4,500 million years) that many of the rocks in orbit around the Sun date from the time of formation of the solar system: some of them have landed on Earth and on the Moon as meteorites and can be seen on display in museums.
Planet Earth initially coalesced from the solar cloud of stellar dust and debris 4,540 million years ago. Early in its life, when only 10 million years old, proto-Earth, the planet that became Earth, was struck by another small planet (often called Theia). The result was the Earth we know today, made of the two previous planets, and the separation of Earth and the Moon. The Moon, being significantly smaller, cooled rapidly and lost its geological processes, so the Moon we know today has remained utterly unchanged in most respects for billions of years. Earth, on the other hand, being so larger, cooled more slowly, and thermal processes in the core and mantle keep the surface of the Earth geologically active - witness the Boxing Day tsunami. When I studied geology at university in the 1970s, plate tectonics was still new, and still being discovered and proved. I could have applied to work a stint on one of the ships that was still mapping the mid-Atlantic Ridge (the constructive boundary between the European and North American sides of the Atlantic Ocean).
Also back in the 1970s, it was generally held that life really got going on Earth about 500 million years ago, everything before that being termed Pre-Cambrian. I recall being taken to see the Durness Limestone, a rock formation in northern Scotland where there is evidence of Pre-Cambrian unicelluar organisms. At the time this was interesting, and slightly worrying. However, it is now recognised that unicellular life actually got going about 3,500 million years ago, that is, only a billion years or so after the formation of the solar system, and possibly only half a billion years after the planetary collision that formed the Earth and Moon. It was in fact multi-cellular life that got going 500 million years ago, including, for example, the fascinating trilobites. The animals that are everyone's favourite, the dinosaurs, appeared about 135 million years ago, flourished for 60 million years, and then progressively disappeared until finally vanishing altogether (other than those that evolved into birds) with the Yucatan asteroid 65 million years ago. Whilst mammals existed before the dinosaurs, they did not flourish until the dinosaurs had left the stage.
The primate pre-cursor to humankind diverged from ancestral gorillas about 8 million years ago, and from ancestral chimpanzees, about 5 million years ago. Several different human species evolved, including Neanderthal humans who existed from 350,000 years ago to 30,000 years ago. Over the past 100 thousand years modern humans (like ourselves) and Neanderthal humans coexisted for a while, of which there is recently-discovered evidence in southern Spain / Gibraltar. However, the most recent ice age finished off the Neanderthal humans, leaving us to piece together the story, and sadly to vandalise the Earth.
The astronomical and geological story of the universe, our galaxy, our solar system, our home planet, and life, is one of surprising twists and turns, full of wonder and seeming miracle. I find it fascinating and deeply inspiring. What is more, I am not required to suspend my disbelief, nor to believe any person or text, neither am I required to hold articles of faith. The evidence is in the rock, and I can search it out for myself. The proof of the geological history of Earth, and of the development of life, is not in words, in a book, but beneath my feet.
I recognise the poetry of Genesis 1, and resonate with the reverence for Earth and life that it evokes. I wish that many more people shared that reverence. However, there is little value to be gained in attempting to wring scientific precision from the passage, for that would be to mistake Genesis 1 for scientific reality. It would be like wondering whether the toilets on the starship Enterprise are water flush or vacuum and disinfectant: Star Trek is a fine drama but it is not a documentary.
I do not know why the author of the unsolicited e-mail chooses to fret about misunderstandings, mistranslations and misreadings of Genesis 1; and to be insistent that creation happened in more than a single period of six days; and was concerned to let me know. I imagine that they wish to promote a marginally more credible Creation story. As far as I am concerned, the astronomical, geological, palaeontological and archaeological stories that I have come to know are far more awe-inspiring that any text. In this context, what the books of the Pentateuch teaches us is how Iron Age people in the Middle East conceptualised the natural world in which they lived. The value of scriptural texts is not in the realms of science, but as a dialogue about human values and spirituality. Asteroids and granite are unable to speak to me about meaning, mercy or compassion, whereas with the Bible, Koran and the Tao Teh Ching, I am able to have a conversation about how I might live my life, the choices I make, and how I might interact with other people. Ecclesiastes 3 says little of geological value (the reference to gathering and scattering stones relates to home-making and moving on), but says much about accepting the just-is-ness of existence. Job 28 does address geology, and whilst the purpose of the passage is to emphasise the unfathomableness of the wisdom of God, the value of the passage lies in the awe that it inspires for our planet, not because the passage is of scientific value. Genesis 1 belongs in this latter category.
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