Erasmus would have delighted in the Internet, and most especially in YouTube, where human folly is everywhere evident. Although I have watched many an instructive, delightful, awe-inspiring, or heartwarming video on YouTube, there are an equal number depicting disgusting, distressing, or foolish human behavior. I have also learned from my watching that there is no topic so elevated, no subject that so tugs at the heartstrings, that someone can’t come along and post hateful filth in the comments section. If there were any doubt about the fallen nature of human beings, YouTube would lay it to rest.
I got started watching YouTube because I have small animals, and I love to watch videos of rats, hamsters, gerbils, and chinchillas doing cute and adorable things. But I got seriously involved in watching YouTube because I am both a devout Christian and a lover of the physical sciences, and there are lectures available about physics, astronomy, cosmology, and about Christian theology—as well as about Christian theology and physics, astronomy, etc.
I am particularly interested in the debate between atheist scientists and the Christians who agree with them that science and religion cannot both be right. I suppose that there must be a gene, the possession of which allows one to see this conflict. It is a gene that I appear to lack—for try as I might, I have never been able to see how Christianity and science are supposed to conflict. But that is the topic of another essay.
I recently came across a putatively Christian video about the so-called “young-earth hypothesis,” which claims that despite all physical evidence to the contrary, the earth is actually only six or ten thousand years old, and was created with all the geological evidence and all the fossils necessary to give the appearance of great age and of the evolution of biological species over time.
If anyone should try to sell you the young-earth hypothesis as a Christian doctrine, send him or her packing, because it is no such thing. The Church has never taken a doctrinal stand on the age of the earth. Of course, individual Christians have had their opinions and have done their best to determine the age of the earth in the light of the evidence available to them in their day. What is Christian doctrine is that the universe had a beginning, and it was created by the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob—in other words, the God of the Bible. When God is supposed to have done so has never been the subject of a settled Christian doctrine.
But it is worth remembering that the consensus among physicists in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries used to be that the universe was eternal and had neither beginning nor end. The Big Bang hypothesis of the formation of the universe was originally resisted by mainstream scientists, on the grounds that it was too similar to the notion that the universe was created by God. Nevertheless, the Big Bang hypothesis was conclusively confirmed by Robert Wilson’s and Arno Penzias’ discovery of the cosmic background radiation, and it is ironic that atheist scientists are now citing the Big Bang as proof that Christianity cannot be true!
It is now pretty well proved that the universe is around 13.7 billion years old. Likewise, the available evidence indicates that the earth itself is somewhere around 4.5 billion years old. The young-earth hypothesis directly contradicts this evidence-based opinion by asserting that the evidence is all fake. In other words, when creating the earth, God deliberately tried to mislead us by planting fossils and arranging the radioactivity of the rocks in such a way as to give the false appearance of great age.
There are four problems with the young-earth hypothesis. First, it is unverifiable: in other words, if all the physical evidence of the age of the earth is fake, then there is no way to prove whether the earth is young or old. Moreover, if God is willing to fake fossils, why would he stop there? Surely an omnipotent God is equally capable of having created the universe five seconds ago, and of giving us all the memories (and the aches and pains) to think that we were actually born years ago, instead of just a moment ago. Once you deny the validity of the physical evidence, then the five-seconds-ago hypothesis becomes just as reasonable as the young-earth hypothesis.
The second problem is that once you are willing to admit that God is a liar, then nothing can be trusted. For if God is willing to lie in stone, why would he not be willing to lie in words? This means that the very Bible on which the young-earth hypothesis is based is rendered completely untrustworthy by that very hypothesis.
The third problem is that by undermining the truth of the Bible, the young-earth hypothesis destroys the very foundations of the Christian faith that supposedly supports it. The Bible is the history of God’s dealings with the human race in general and the people of Israel in particular. It is supposed to contain all things necessary to salvation. But if it cannot be trusted, then (as Saint Paul tells the Christians at Corinth) our faith is futile, and we are still in our sins.
The fourth and last problem is that, in the context of Christian doctrine, the young-earth hypothesis is a prima facie heresy. For Scripture tells us that God is the God of truth, and this hypothesis makes him out to be a liar.
The upshot is that not only is the young-earth hypothesis useless as a strategy for fighting atheist scientists because it is logically meaningless, it is also incompatible with the religion in which the people advancing this hypothesis claim to believe. All in all, I believe that the true victor here is our ancient Adversary, who is using the young-earth hypothesis to bring the Christian religion into disrepute and to lead the people who believe in the hypothesis away from true faith in Christ.
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