I do think that there is a knock down falsification argument against the most common young earth argument. Let me give it a shot on you and see what you think.
Young earthers often say that Adam was created to look a particular age, say 21 for the sake of argument. This makes sense. Further, their claim is that Adam would by appearances be that age.
If God created Adam with an appearance of age, then why not the earth?
Here is the knock down part - If God created the universe with an appearance of age, then no test could be found that would show it to be young. By each and every test it would have to be shown to be old. Otherwise, God missed something when He was "aging" the earth.
From a friend "Don S"
> There's a cleaner way to deal with the
> "appearance of age" theory. Just put
> the carefully deleted word back into
> the title and call it by its full name:
> the "false appearance of age" theory.
> That isn't God's style. Most Christians
> catch on right away - when you put it
> like that.
>
> -Don
Good point, Don.
4 comments:
Doug,
Have you visited Dr. Hovind's site? If you like to study this subject in detail, I have found Dr. Kent Hovind's information and studies very helpful on the subject.
http://www.drdino.com
Josh Buice
Practical Theology Discussions
http://joshbuice.blogspot.com
Doug:
I think there might be a counter argument. Supposed 50,000 years ago God created Adam and Eve (and the rest of the Earth) with the appearance of age. (Suppose He made the Earth to look 4.5 billion years old.) However, if we dug up the oldest known bones of humans (suppose we actually found Adam and Eve's bones), radiometric dating (e.g., C-14) would still show that they died some 49,000 years ago (albeit I think that is near the outer limits of C-14 dating). Hence, there *would* be evidence of a younger Earth. (I am not claikming this is the case, or that I necessarily believe it. I am just proposing one thought experiment against your idea.)
I suppose a definition of young would be in order for this. Young is often given under the Ussher chronology which produces 4004 BC as the date of creation. Thus, the radio carbon dates of 50,000 years would have to be false as well. Is there an older form of young? Or are the young earth creationists slowly being pushed back by science further in time? Isn't this a concession to science then?
There could be an old earth but with man as a special creation. That is not inconsistent.
Doug -- I am not sure that most Young Earth Creationists hold to a 6,000 y/o creation a la Usser. I think they mean something more along the lines of tens of thousands of years, or perhaps hundreds of thousands.
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