Science or history?

[theophilus]

A physician who has made a complete examination of a person without having been told his age could probably make an accurate estimate of it because of his knowledge of how the aging process works. But what would happen if he were to travel back in time and examine Adam and Eve immediately after they were created and was then asked to estimate their age? If he didn’t know they had been created directly he would assume they had been born as babies and base his estimate on how long it would take for them to reach their present state if they had undergone the normal aging process. The result would be that his estimate would be much higher than their actual age.

Scientists who try to discover the age of the earth begin by assuming that the natural processes which are occurring now have always been going. They have come to the conclusion that the earth is billions of years old because that is how long it would take for these processes to bring about the conditions we see existing today. But what if the Biblical account of creation is true? Then scientists who try to measure the earth’s age are in the same position as the doctor who tried to estimate the age of Adam and Eve. Their age estimates are off because they have a false idea of how the earth came into existence.

Science can tell us a lot about the world we live in but when we try to find out about its past scientific methods alone can’t give us all the information we need. We need historical information as well. Did the earth come into existence as a result of natural processes or was it created by God? Was there ever a worldwide flood? We must know the answers to both of these questions in order to correctly interpret the data that we observe.

There is scientific evidence that the earth can’t be as old as most people believe. One example is finding soft tissue in the bones of dinosaurs that supposedly lived millions of years ago. This is from an article titled “Soft Tissue in Fossils” in the October 2012 issue of Answers magazine.

Ask the average layperson how he or she knows that the earth is millions or billions of years old, and that person will probably mention the dinosaurs, which nearly everybody “knows” died off 65 million years ago. A recent discovery by Dr. Mary Schweitzer, however, has given reason for all but committed evolutionists to question this assumption.

Bone slices from the fossilized thigh bone (femur) of a Tyrannosaurus rex found in the Hell Creek formation of Montana were studied under the microscope by Schweitzer. To her amazement, the bone showed what appeared to be blood vessels of the type seen in bone and marrow, and these contained what appeared to be red blood cells with nuclei, typical of reptiles and birds (but not mammals). The vessels even appeared to be lined with specialized endothelial cells found in all blood vessels.

Amazingly, the bone marrow contained what appeared to be flexible tissue. Initially, some skeptical scientists suggested that bacterial biofilms (dead bacteria aggregated in a slime) formed what only appear to be blood vessels and bone cells. Recently Schweitzer and coworkers found biochemical evidence for intact fragments of the protein collagen, which is the building block of connective tissue. This is important because collagen is a highly distinctive protein not made by bacteria. (See Schweitzer’s review article in Scientific American [December 2010, pp. 62–69] titled “Blood from Stone.”)

Soft tissue couldn’t have survived for such a long time so this is evidence that previous estimates of the age of the world must be wrong. Unfortunately belief that the world is old is so strong that most scientists ignore or try to explain away the evidence rather than changing their theories to conform to the evidence.

Some evolutionists have strongly criticized Schweitzer’s conclusions because they are understandably reluctant to concede the existence of blood vessels, cells with nuclei, tissue elasticity, and intact protein fragments in a dinosaur bone dated at 68 million years old. Other evolutionists, who find Schweitzer’s evidence too compelling to ignore, simply conclude that there is some previously unrecognized form of fossilization that preserves cells and protein fragments over tens of millions of years. Needless to say, no evolutionist has publically considered the possibility that dinosaur fossils are not millions of years old.

The existence of soft dinosaur tissue isn’t the only evidence that the earth is young. You can read about some of the other evidence here.

http://www.answersingenesis.org/articles/am/v7/n4/ten-best-evidences

Everywhere in the world we find fossils of life forms that no longer exist. The Bible tells us that God sent a flood that covered the entire world; this would explain the existence of these fossils. Those who reject the idea of divine intervention claimed that the fossils were formed gradually over millions of years.

The fact that fossils contain soft tissue is evidence in favor of a flood. There is also historical evidence. Here is what Wikipedia says.

The Flood myths or deluge myths are, taken collectively, stories surviving from human prehistory, of a great flood which has generally been taken as mythical. These legends depict global flooding, usually sent by a deity or deities to destroy civilization as an act of divine retribution. Flood stories are common across a wide range of cultures, extending back into prehistory.

The fact that flood stories are found in all cultures is evidence that the flood really happened.

Those who believe the earth is young are often accused of rejecting science. In fact those who claim the earth is old are using scientific methods to answer what is really a historical question.

The belief that earth is billions of years old has become such an integral part of our culture that even Christians who believe the Bible is true accept the prevailing beliefs and try to interpret the creation account in Genesis to make it conform to those beliefs.

The Bible says that the world was created in six days. The only way to reconcile the Bible with a belief that the earth is billions of years old is to claim that there aren’t literal days. The word day can mean something else besides a literal day; it is necessary to examine the context to see what it does mean. It sometimes means an indefinite period of time and it is used in that way in referring to the entire creation period.

These are the generations
of the heavens and the earth when they were created,
in the day that the LORD God made the earth and the heavens.
Genesis 2:4

ESV

But what about the individual days? Here is the description of the first one.

And God said, “Let there be light,” and there was light. And God saw that the light was good. And God separated the light from the darkness. God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And there was evening and there was morning, the first day.
Genesis 1:3-5 ESV

Each day consisted of an evening and a morning and included a period of light and one of darkness. This could only be a literal day, the time during which the earth turns once on its axis.

(Some people insist these were 24 hour days. I think it is possible that the days were 21 minutes longs than our present days. You can see here why I think this :

http://clydeherrin.wordpress.com/2012/01/07/how-long-were-the-days/

Regardless of their length, they were literal days.)

When telling what would happen in the future Jesus said,

False christs and false prophets will arise and perform great signs and wonders, so as to lead astray, if possible, even the elect.
Matthew 24:24

ESV

Those who believe the earth is old have accomplished something that Jesus said false christs and false prophets won’t be able to do. They have deceived the elect.

Here are sites where you can find more evidence that the generally accepted beliefs regarding the earth’s origins are wrong.

http://www.allaboutcreation.org/

http://www.piltdownsuperman.com/

http://scienceagainstevolution.info/