Genesis 5 Series

Genesis 5

Sunday Morning Bible Study

December 3, 2006

The “Young” Earth

If you take the ages listed in Genesis 5 literally, it’s not to come to the conclusion that the Bible might be saying that the earth is quite young. While science tells us that the earth is over 4 billion years old, the account of the Genesis 5 might lead us to think that the earth might only be six thousand years old.

I know that some of us have this idea that the theory of evolution is a foregone conclusion. We have been raised to think that scientists are unbiased and have come to their conclusions regarding evolution on purely objective, clinical reasoning. That same kind of reasoning concludes that to believe in God’s design and creation of the earth, and to even stretch that idea further by claiming that the earth isn’t billions of years old but rather only thousands of years old – is purely a non-rational, unscientific, irrational, emotional conclusion. Usually when we who espouse a young earth talk of such things, those who are smarter than us will nod their heads and think to themselves, “poor, deluded fool”.

A Russian scientist and a Czechoslovakian scientist had spent their lives studying the grizzly bear. Each year they petitioned their respective governments to allow them to go to Yellowstone to study the bears. Finally their request was granted, and they immediately flew to NY and on west to Yellowstone. They reported to the ranger station and were told that it was the grizzly mating season and it was too dangerous to go out and study the animals. They pleaded that this was their only chance, and finally the ranger relented. The Russian and the Czech were given portable phones and told to report in every day. For several days they called in, and then nothing was heard from the two scientists. The rangers mounted a search party and found the camp completely ravaged, with no sign of the missing men. They followed the trail of a male and a female bear. They found the female first and decided they must kill the animal to find out if she had eaten the scientists because they feared an international incident. They killed the bear and opened her stomach to find the remains of the Russian. One ranger turned to the other and said, “You know what this means, don’t you?” The other ranger responded, “Of course, “The Czech is in the male.”

All that to simply say that scientists aren’t perfect. They make mistakes too.

Would you allow me a minute or two to challenge your world view?

When Dr. Henry Morris published his book “The Genesis Flood”, in 1961, he began to shake things up in the world of science. He not only posed difficulties towards the evolutionary theory, but he showed the possibilities that the biblical record might actually be accurate, and not just a collection of fanciful stories.

Since that time, there have been a growing number of scientists who have begun to question evolutionary theory from their own respective fields of study. If you want to do more study, start by checking out the website at the Institute for Creation Research, www.icr.org.

Helium versus Uranium {slide one, “Zircon”}

In one article, D. Russell Humphreys, Ph.D., talks about a series of experiments, the “RATE project”, that involved the study of zircon crystals. Zircon is formed when molten rock cools. As the crystals are formed, they absorb Uranium 238. After forming, the crystal ages and the Uranium 238 decays to form lead and helium. There are two different ways to gauge the age of the crystal. The typical way is to measure the amount of Uranium 238 and lead found in the crystal. But Dr. Humphreys theorized measuring the age by measuring the amount of helium found. To get an unbiased result, they hired a non-creationist laboratory through a third party and asked them to do the studies. When measuring the decay of the Uranium, the laboratory determined the crystals were 1.5 billion years old. But when measuring the helium, the data came back saying the material was only 6,000 years old. Dr. Humphreys goes on to suggest a way of accounting for the discrepancies, validating a young earth.

Moon problems {slide 2 “Receding Moon”}

In another article, Thomas G. Barnes, D.Sc. raises some difficulties about the age of the earth in regard to the moon.

First, you need to understand that if the moon was any closer than 11,000 miles from the earth, the gravitational forces from the earth would break the moon into tiny pieces and cause it to form rings around the earth, like Saturn. This is called the “Roche Limit”. Second, we know that the moon is receding from the earth at a constant rate – we can measure it. If the moon started at the “Roche Limit” and you multiply the rate of recession over 4 billion years, the moon would be much, much farther away than it is. Dr. Louis B. Slichter, Professor of Geophysics at Massachusetts Institute of Technology treats this problem in great detail and concludes that “the time scale of the earth-moon system still presents a major problem.”