Humble Pie and an Old Earth

OK, so I've come to accept that the earth is very old ( probably 4.5 billion years). Most people would look at a statement like this and yawn. Scientists have been saying this for years, what's the big deal? Well, for a kid who grew up in a somewhat fundamentalist background, to say that the earth is old, is almost like asking to be burned at the stake:-) Ok, maybe not that bad. But much of my schooling and raising included the idea that - to be a Christian, includes accepting that the earth is about 6000 years old. Anyone who tells you otherwise, is either an atheist or a communist - or both;-) I spent much of my life defending this position, telling people that the fossils were all a result of Noah's global flood, and that dinosaurs and man must have co-existed. I even remember watching a documentary about how they had discovered Noah's ark on Mt Ararat, but the US government and CIA had suppressed the evidence in a big cover-up.

But, my Christian upbringing also taught me that you should be honest, and to search for understanding, wisdom and knowledge like you would mine for silver and gold, not being taken by fools gold, but testing the ore to be sure that it was true. Search for the truth, and the truth will set you free. So an inquisitive mind begins to wonder ( dangerous).

Light travels really fast, but they say that some of the stars are billions of light years away? That means it took billions of years for that light to get here. There are super novae ( exploding stars ) that we can see that are millions of light years away, and that means the star blew up millions of years ago ( and obviously existed before that).

Then there are trees in California that have 8 to 11 thousand annual growth rings in them. That means they are at least 8,000 to 11,000 yeas old ( survived the flood, and predated young earth creation...maybe they are gopher wood?)

Some lakes today have 35,000 plus layers of sediment in the bottom of them, so they must be older than 6,000 years.

The core samples of the ice layers on Antartica show 50,000 to 180,000 years worth of data, such as which years had more snow, which had volcano eruptions, what kind of living organisms happened to fall out of the sky and get trapped in the ice for us to discover years later.

Then there are the fossils, billions of fossils. Most dead animals and plants rot when they die. Fossils don't happen very easily, so there must have been a lot more life than what was fossilized. That much life takes time...lots of time. Otherwise we would have literally been buried deep in all the living animals who were waiting for Noah's flood to put them out of their misery...

In Yellowstone National Park there are layers of preserved forests. A volcano must have buried the first forest, then eventually, a new forest grew on top of the buried forest...the volcano blew again, and buried that one...27 or so layers of petrified forest...that must have taken more than 6000 years to happen.

There are many layers of rock on the earths crust. I was taught that these layers were all formed during the flood, but there's just too many different layers with different types of fossils organized in the different layers to be explained by a single recent global flood.

There is more coal and other organic material in the earth's sediments than could have possibly been living on the planet at the time of a global flood.

There are evidences of the magnetic north pole trading places with the south pole, based on the orientation of iron in the earths crust. These changes take a long time... probably more than 6,000 years.

So what? What's the big deal if the earth and life on earth is old? Well, it makes us read our Bibles a little differently. It makes us a little more humble, considering we used to talk about how those stupid evolutionists didn't know anything, and we were so smart. Humble pie don't taste so good, but they say it's packed full of vitamins. But humility aside, what about faith. I've heard young earth creationists say that if the Creation Story is not literally true ( as in - it happenned in six 24 hr days, 6000 years ago) then the rest of the Bible is hooey as well. But I have to tell you what got me thinking... Being a songwriter & musician, I couldn't help but notice that if you read the Creation Story, it's written more like a song, than a science text book. It has repeating phrases, each day's work is like a new verse, and the the refrain comes in with "evening and morning, the first ( second...) day". Some Bibles even indent the creation "song" just like the Psalms and other poetry in the Bible are formatted. Songs were used by the ancients, to teach things, and pass on oral traditions. Maybe there is some truth to the story, or even a lot of truth, it's just that you have to dig into it, like studying the lyrics of a song, or poem, to find the true underlying meaning.

The ancient Egyptians had some real neat creation myths of their own. They actually date older than the oldest estimated date of writing for the book of Genesis. In those stories, there were many gods. One god arose out of the sea, hovering over the water and created the land by the command of his word. Another fashioned man and the animals out of clay and then offered them the breath of life into their nostrils. The people were made to grow food and to work for the gods, ( the Pharaohs wanted the people to think they were gods, and so they perpetuated these myths to get their subjects to grow food for them, and build them pyramids) . I wonder if maybe Moses ( the supposed author of Genesis), didn't maybe write the creation story ( or song/hymn) as a protest song against the slavery imposed on the Hebrews. The song was a means to teach the people that the One True God was not a Pharaoh, or a monster out of the sea, or the sun...but He was transcendent, greater than any celestial being, or the Universe, for that matter. I studied the ancient Hebrew text, and found that the Creation song included some shoobie doowap background vocals that were left out of the standard english translation and the complete song roughly translates like this: "In the Beginning God created the heavens and the earth...Shoobie doowap - Pharoah is a wienie, you can take this slavery and shove it....ooh Lah Lah, Lah" and so on, so forth. It probably was what made Pharaoh's heart so hard, because he hated that song so much, and he couldn't get it out of his head. Moses was teaching the Hebrews, and us...that God was the Creator of man, plants and animals the earth, the sun, the sea, and everything else. To worship the sun, or the sea, or a jolly old pharoah would be to insult the creator of all these (remember how ticked off Moses was when he came down the mountain with the 10 commandments, and found the people worshipping a golden cow?). There are many "polemics" against the Egyptian creation myths in the Genesis account.

For God to be God, he would be without beginning, without equal, all mighty, all knowing, all in all. He had to be eternal. The first words of the Bible are "in the beginning, God..." There was nothing before God. God always is, was, will be. Everything exists at His command. Even to consider the theory of the Big Bang, one must ask "Who started the Big Bang? Who pulled the trigger? What caused 'nothing' to explode, and form the vast universe we inhabit?" Even leading atheists like Richard Dawkins default to deism, in that he cannot explain how life first started. What made the first cell actually come to life? In an interview with Ben Stein he suggested that perhaps aliens seeded life on this planet. I think it's more reasonable to believe in a creator God than in Johnny Apple Seed aliens, but even if aliens did actually deposit life on earth, who made the aliens? Eventually, you get to a point where the only reasonable answer is that a transcendent God must have started life and space and time. So an old earth does not sway my belief in God. It does shake my trust in well meaning ( I hope ) pastors, teachers, parents and such who so devoutly taught that the earth must be young, or the Bible not true. I trust that they too will consider the evidence, and be willing to eat some humble pie with me. I lose some faith in myself for taking so long to honestly examine the evidence and consider the facts. I say this with the disclaimer that if I am proved to be wrong, and in fact the earth is young, I will eat more humble pie and burn my copies of "Coming to Peace with Science" and "The Language of God" . Actually, it's not so bad, tastes kind of like "foot in mouth""loaf but less salty. Life is too complex and intricate, and amazing for there not to be a Designer. The Bible is too amazing to be a bunch of bunk, even if my interpretation needs a little tweaking now and then. My own stumbling, fumbling and bumbling faith in Jesus Christ who has called me to walk with Him is too real for me to ignore, and so is the evidence for an ancient earth. So maybe the earth is old, but I believe God is older. Now if I could just figure out what wine goes best with humble pie? Oh yeah, Christians are not supposed to drink...I better save that for another post. Cheers!