What about the age of the earth?
Question 60003
How old is the earth? This question sits at the intersection of science and Scripture, and it generates strong opinions on all sides. Mainstream science tells us the earth is approximately 4.5 billion years old. Many Christians accept this figure without difficulty. But others, reading the genealogies of Genesis and the creation account, conclude that the earth is only thousands of years old. So what should we believe? And does it really matter?
Why This Question Matters
Some Christians dismiss the age of the earth as a secondary issue, not worth dividing over. And in one sense, they are right. A person’s view on the age of the earth is not a test of salvation. You can be wrong about geology and still be saved by grace through faith in Jesus. But this does not mean the question is unimportant.
The age of the earth touches on the authority and reliability of Scripture. If the Bible teaches a young earth, and we reject that teaching because of scientific claims, we have established a principle that could be applied to other doctrines. If science can overrule Genesis 1, why not Genesis 3? Why not the resurrection? The way we handle this question reveals our underlying approach to Scripture.
The age of the earth also has theological implications. If the earth is billions of years old, then death, suffering, and extinction existed for aeons before Adam. But Scripture presents death as the consequence of sin (Romans 5:12). How can we reconcile a loving God with billions of years of predation, disease, and death before humanity even existed? The young-earth position preserves the biblical narrative: creation was very good, sin brought death, and redemption restores what was lost.
What Scripture Teaches
The creation account in Genesis 1 describes God creating the heavens and the earth in six days, with God resting on the seventh. The Hebrew word for day, יוֹם (yom), can have a range of meanings, including a 24-hour day, the daylight portion of a day, or an indefinite period of time. Old-earth creationists often argue that the days of Genesis could represent long ages.
However, when yom is used with a number (first day, second day, etc.) or with the phrase “evening and morning,” it consistently refers to a normal day elsewhere in the Old Testament. Genesis 1 uses both qualifiers repeatedly: “And there was evening and there was morning, the first day” (Genesis 1:5). This strongly suggests literal days are in view.
Exodus 20:11 confirms this understanding. In the context of the Sabbath commandment, God says, “For in six days the LORD made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that is in them, and rested on the seventh day.” The Israelites were to work six days and rest one day because God worked six days and rested one day. This parallel makes no sense if the creation days were millions of years long.
The genealogies of Genesis 5 and 11 provide a chronological framework from Adam to Abraham. While there may be some flexibility in how ancient Near Eastern genealogies worked, they cannot be stretched to accommodate billions or even millions of years. Archbishop James Ussher, using these genealogies, calculated that creation occurred in 4004 BC. His specific date may be debated, but his methodology is sound: the Bible presents a young creation.
Scientific Claims for an Old Earth
The mainstream scientific consensus holds that the earth is approximately 4.5 billion years old, based primarily on radiometric dating of rocks and meteorites. Other evidence cited includes the thickness of sedimentary layers, the distance of light from distant stars, and various geological processes that appear to require long ages.
These claims deserve serious consideration. Christians should not be anti-science. We believe in a God of order who made a rational universe that can be investigated. Many of the founders of modern science were devout Christians who saw their work as thinking God’s thoughts after Him.
However, we must recognise that all scientific investigation involves interpretation. Data does not speak for itself; it must be interpreted within a framework of assumptions. Radiometric dating, for example, assumes that decay rates have been constant, that no contamination has occurred, and that the initial conditions are known. If any of these assumptions is wrong, the dates will be wrong.
Young-earth creationists point out that radiometric dating has produced wildly inconsistent results in some cases. Rocks of known age, such as those formed in recent volcanic eruptions, have been dated at millions of years old. Different dating methods applied to the same rock have yielded vastly different ages. This does not inspire confidence in the method’s reliability.
Evidence for a Young Earth
While the mainstream scientific community dismisses young-earth creationism, there is evidence that is consistent with a young creation.
The presence of soft tissue in dinosaur bones is one striking example. In 2005, palaeontologist Mary Schweitzer discovered blood vessels, red blood cells, and collagen in a Tyrannosaurus rex fossil supposedly 68 million years old. Soft tissue should not survive for millions of years. The most straightforward explanation is that these fossils are not millions of years old.
The decay of the earth’s magnetic field is another indicator. Measurements over the past 150 years show that the magnetic field is weakening. Extrapolating backward, the field would have been impossibly strong just tens of thousands of years ago. This is consistent with a young earth, not an ancient one.
The amount of salt in the oceans poses a problem for an old earth. Rivers continually deposit salt into the seas. If the oceans were billions of years old, they should be far saltier than they are. The current salt levels are consistent with an earth that is thousands, not billions, of years old.
The existence of short-period comets is also puzzling for long-age advocates. Comets lose material each time they pass near the sun. Short-period comets should have disintegrated long ago if the solar system were billions of years old. The Oort Cloud, a hypothetical reservoir of comets beyond the orbit of Neptune, was proposed to solve this problem, but it has never been observed.
The Global Flood
Young-earth creationists argue that the global Flood of Noah’s day (Genesis 6-9) explains much of the geological evidence that is normally attributed to millions of years of gradual processes. A catastrophic, worldwide flood would have deposited massive layers of sediment rapidly, buried organisms that became fossils, and reshaped the earth’s surface in ways that uniformitarian geology cannot explain.
The Flood also provides a framework for understanding the distribution of fossils. Rather than representing a sequence of evolutionary ages, the fossil record may reflect ecological zones and the order in which different creatures were buried by the rising floodwaters. Marine creatures at the bottom, lowland creatures next, upland creatures higher, and so on.
Jesus affirmed the historicity of Noah and the Flood. In Matthew 24:37-39, He compared His future coming to the days of Noah, when people were eating and drinking, unaware of the coming judgement until the Flood came and swept them all away. If the Flood were merely a local event or a myth, Jesus’ comparison loses its force.
Conclusion
The age of the earth is not a salvation issue, but it is not a trivial issue either. It touches on how we read Scripture, how we understand the entrance of death into the world, and how we evaluate scientific claims. I believe the straightforward reading of Genesis, supported by the genealogies and confirmed by Jesus and the apostles, points to a young earth. The scientific evidence, while often presented as conclusive, is more ambiguous than popular accounts suggest. We should hold our convictions with humility, recognising that godly Christians disagree, but we should not be ashamed to take Scripture at its word.
“For in six days the LORD made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that is in them, and rested on the seventh day.” Exodus 20:11
Bibliography
- Austin, Steven A. Grand Canyon: Monument to Catastrophe. Institute for Creation Research, 1994.
- Ham, Ken, ed. The New Answers Book 2. Master Books, 2008.
- Humphreys, D. Russell. Starlight and Time: Solving the Puzzle of Distant Starlight in a Young Universe. Master Books, 1994.
- Morris, Henry M. Scientific Creationism. Master Books, 1985.
- Mortenson, Terry. The Great Turning Point: The Church’s Catastrophic Mistake on Geology—Before Darwin. Master Books, 2004.
- Sarfati, Jonathan. Refuting Compromise. Master Books, 2004.
- Snelling, Andrew A. Earth’s Catastrophic Past: Geology, Creation and the Flood. 2 vols. Institute for Creation Research, 2009.
- Whitcomb, John C., and Henry M. Morris. The Genesis Flood: The Biblical Record and Its Scientific Implications. Presbyterian and Reformed, 1961.