Welcome to the MHB Podcast. This is Michael Baun. And welcome to my fifteenth episode. Tonight I’m going to discuss the creation account – Genesis 1. The first chapter of Genesis has been a stumbling block for many people who have considered the Christian worldview. This is because they believe there is only one way to read it and that the picture it presents is in conflict with what science tells us about the universe.
The creation account is one of my favorite passages in the Bible because it gives Christians an opportunity to have an open discussion and debate with one another. This free exchange of ideas is healthy for the church and helpful in determining truth. The danger, however, is when Christians lose sight of what’s important and let their emotions get the best of them during their arguments. If I were approaching the Bible for the first time, I would ask myself this question: What is the purpose of the Bible?
In my estimation the Bible is given to us by God as a revelation of Himself and as instruction for us to form a right relationship with Him. The Bible’s aim is to answer the questions of why we are here and what our purpose is. The Bible gives us pictures and representations of actual physical reality but it does not intend to tell us exactly how God made it all work. Knowing the purpose of the Bible, I’m comfortable in saying that it is not a science textbook. The Bible gives us necessary information to live in harmony with one another, build a relationship with God, and be saved into eternal life. It does not attempt to give us a working understanding of the universe beyond what we need to know for the specific purpose of knowing God.
But still, it is common for Christians to confuse inerrancy with exhaustiveness. The Bible is the inspired Word of God and so it is free of error. However, it is not exhaustive and leaves out many details (especially scientific details) about how reality works. This means that Scripture does not have to be in conflict with science. You can be a scientist who believes in the inerrancy of the Bible and who does not compromise on science or Scripture.
When considering the creation account, I think Christians feel as if they need to develop a position that is as detailed as what the secular world offers. Many Christians feel that if they can’t tell people exactly how and when the universe came to be and the scientists can, that means science wins and Scripture loses. It is this attempt at declaring specifics about the how behind the universe that leads to infighting among Christians.
My first question for you is this. As a Christian, are you intimidated by science or by other disciplines like psychology, history, anthropology, etc.?
For myself, I would say that I’m not afraid of the disciplines as long as the disciplines are being used appropriately. I think we can run into trouble when we claim to know something and then find out later that we were wrong. Mark Twain said “It ain’t what you don’t know that gets you into trouble, it’s what you know for sure that just ain’t so.” We’ve seen this happen many times throughout history, so I’m always on guard for these types of things when I’m using the disciplines to influence my Bible interpretation.
Restating the first question. As a Christian, are you intimidated by science or by other disciplines like psychology, history, anthropology, etc.?
There are many interpretations of the creation account but tonight we are going to distill them to three main positions. The first position we will discuss is the young universe. The second position is the old universe. Then, I will present the position that I personally subscribe to. I’m going to make the best case I can for each claim and leave it up to you to decide. Again, I will be putting forward the best evidence I’ve been able to find in favor of each position and I won’t be attempting to invalidate any of them.
Before we begin, let’s talk about rational intelligibility. Inside your body is DNA and DNA is made of up of letters called codons. The letters of your DNA are arranged in just the perfect order to form a word that is 3.5 billion letters long. The universe shares this element of syntax with you. Using mathematics, we can read and decode the universe so accurately that we can describe objects we have never observed and predict events that have not yet happened. In some sense, you are a database of information and so is the universe that you live in.
Now, in every instance where we discover information we automatically assume that a mind was behind it. If you were walking along the beach and you saw your name written in the sand you would automatically assume that someone wrote it there. We can go a step further. I would say to you that the information delivered into your mind by what is written on the sand is not made of material. The information is not material. Here’s how to think about this:
If you take something like a written word and put it under a microscope, it won’t matter how close you zoom in on it – the atoms that make up the ink will never tell you what the word says. It’s only when you accept that the word comes from a mind that you can understand it. That leads me to believe that there is something else going on in this universe that cannot be reduced to atoms and subatomic structures. Information exists, but according to the materialist worldview, it shouldn’t. To say that all of this information (DNA, physical laws, etc.) comes from mindless unguided processes is the equivalent of saying that a tornado can spin through a junk yard and produce a functional 737 aircraft. Intelligent design is far more reasonable. With that we will open Genesis 1:1-31
In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. The earth was formless and empty, and darkness covered the deep waters. And the Spirit of God was hovering over the surface of the waters.
Then God Said, “Let there be light,” and there was light. And God saw that the light was good. Then he separated the light from the darkness. God called the light “day” and the darkness “night.” And evening passed and morning came, marking the first day.
Then God said, “Let there be a space between the waters, to separate the waters of the heavens from the waters of the earth.” And that is what happened. God made this space to separate the waters of the earth from the waters of the heavens. God called the space “sky.” And evening passed and morning came, marking the second day.
Then God said, “Let the waters beneath the sky flow together into one place, so dry ground may appear.” And that is what happened. God called the dry ground “land” and the waters “seas.” And God saw that it was good. Then God said, “Let the land sprout with vegetation – every sort of seed-bearing plant, and the trees that grow seed-bearing fruit. Their seeds produced plants and trees of the same kind. And God saw that it was good. And evening passed and morning came, marking the third day.
Then God said, “Let lights appear in the sky to separate the day from the night. Let them mark off the seasons, days, and years. Let these lights in the sky shine down on the earth.” And that is what happened. God made two great lights – the larger one to govern the day, and the smaller one to govern the night. He also made the stars. God set these lights in the sky to light the earth, to govern the day and night, and to separate the light from the darkness. And God saw that it was good. And evening passed and morning came, marking the fourth day.
Then God said, “Let the waters swarm with fish and other life. Let the skies be filled with birds of every kind.” So God created the great sea creatures and every living thing that scurries and swarms in the water, and every sort of bird – each producing offspring of the same kind. And God saw that it was good. Then God blessed them, saying, “Be fruitful and multiply. Let the fish fill the seas, and let the birds multiply on the earth.” And evening passed and morning came, marking the fifth day.
Then God said, “Let the earth produce every sort of animal, each producing offspring of the same kind – livestock, small animals that scurry along the ground, and wild animals.” And that is what happened. God made all sorts of wild animals, livestock, and small animals, each able to produce offspring of the same kind. And God saw that it was good. Then God said, “Let us make human beings in our image, to be like us. They will reign over the fish in the sea, the birds in the sky, the livestock, all the wild animals on the earth, and the small animals that scurry along the ground.”
So God created human beings in his own image. In the image of God he created them; male and female he created them.
Then God blessed them and said, “Be fruitful and multiply. Fill the earth and govern it. Reign over the fish in the sea, the birds in the sky, and all the animals that scurry along the ground.” Then God said, “Look! I have given you every seed-bearing plant throughout the earth and all the fruit trees for your food. And I have given every green plant as food for all the wild animals, the birds in the sky, and the small animals that scurry along the ground – everything that has life.” And that is what happened. Then God looked over all he had made, and he saw that it was very good! And evening passed and morning came, marking the sixth day.
Let’s finish the creation account with the first four verses of Genesis 2:
So the creation of the heavens and the earth and everything in them was completed. On the seventh day God had finished his work of creation, so he rested from all his work. And God blessed the seventh day and declared it holy, because it was the day when he rested from all his work of creation.
This is the account of the creation of the heavens and the earth.
When you read the creation account several things can happen. You can read through it and accept the level of interpretation that most easily jumps out at you. This is called Biblical perspicuity. Biblical perspicuity means that Scripture is not written in a way that someone needs to have uncommon intelligence to understand it. God’s Word is available to everyone. This is the central tenet of the young universe position. With the young universe position, a reading of the creation account shows God creating the heavens and the earth in seven consecutive 24 hour days. If you take that interpretation and then count the genealogies, you come up with a universe and an earth that are between 6,000 and 10,000 years old.
If a person of a scientific bent hears you say that you believe the universe is 10,000 years old, often times they will immediately dismiss your intelligence. One reason they do this because of a theory in physics called general relativity. You’ve probably heard of Einstein’s e=mc2. The universe is expanding. There is no need for the Christian to dispute that because the Bible mentions the expansion of the universe at least nine times. Scientists use general relativity to describe this expansion, and if they play it back in reverse the universe becomes a singular point about 13.8 billion years ago. It’s from this singular point that the scientists believe the universe exploded into existence. This is called the Big Bang theory.
Despite general relativity and Big Bang, I think it is a mistake to casually throw out the possibility of a young universe. One simple reason is that if you exclude modernity (basically the present day), and you look into the past, you will see that every time the experts of the day disagreed with the Bible the Bible has always been correct – without exception. But I think we can go even further than that. I would present to you that there is compelling evidence that suggests the universe cannot be very old.
The first line of evidence we are going to look at is the excess internal heat of planets. Jupiter emits twice as much energy as it receives from the sun. Jupiter is losing energy. One way of thinking about this is, if you take a potato out of the microwave it radiates heat. When enough time goes by, the potato becomes cold. Jupiter is too warm to be billions of years old. This problem is even worse for Neptune, which gives off 2.7 times as much heat as it receives from the sun, and yet Neptune is considered warm relative to absolute zero. If planets like these were billions of years old they would be much colder.
Another reason the universe can’t be very old is the decay of magnetic fields. The Earth’s magnetic field is decaying. It’s been measured for 200 years and this decay has been consistent. If you accept the decay rate, and rewind it just 1 million years, the field becomes so strong that it rips the iron out of your blood – making life impossible. But what if the decay rate isn’t what we think it is and we just haven’t measured it long enough?
Dr. Russ Humphreys, a research scientist at ICR, wanted to test this decay rate by applying it to other planets. His results were impressive. Dr. Humphreys was able to predict the exact strength of the magnetic fields of Uranus and Neptune when he applied the decay rate and assumed that the planets were just 6,000 years old. When the Voyager II got close enough to these planets, NASA’s observations confirmed that Humphreys was right. If those planets were older than thousands of years, they would no longer have magnetic fields.
The scientists responded to this by saying that the planets must have some sort of recharge mechanism that maintains the fields. They called these recharge mechanisms magnetic dynamos. The problem with dynamos is that neither Neptune nor Uranus are capable of producing them. In order to produce a magnetic dynamo the rotation axis of the planet has to be in alignment with the magnetic axis. In both Neptune and Uranus it is way out of alignment. They don’t spin on the correct angle.
Jupiter and Neptune are too warm ; the magnetic fields of Earth, Uranus and Neptune are too strong. Now, let’s look at the recession rate of the moon. The moon is receding or backing away from Earth. The moon does this because of tidal bulges on Earth. The moon pulls on Earth’s oceans causing tidal bulges. The tidal bulges get ahead of the moon because Earth rotates faster than the moon orbits. So the tidal bulges are always a little bit ahead of the moon. What happens is these tidal bulges pull forward on the moon. When you pull forward on something while it’s in orbit, you push it away. It backs off.
The moon is moving away from Earth at about an inch and a half per year. If you rewind that 6,000 years, the moon would have been about 730 feet closer to Earth. When you’re rewinding this you have to be careful about the mathematics. As the moon gets closer, the tidal bulges get bigger and so the moon moves closer even faster. If you rewind it a billion years, what happens is the moon dives right into Earth. The moon and Earth would have been in the same place at the same time 1.5 billion years ago, but the secular standard for the age of the Earth and the moon is 4.5 billion years. That’s a problem.
Another problem for an old universe is the existence of comets in our solar system. Comets are made of icy material and they orbit the sun in elliptical paths. They come very close and then they whip back out. When a comet gets close to the sun, the icy material is vaporized and blasted away from the nucleus of the comet (this is what forms the comets tail). Because they get so close to the Sun, every comet is always losing mass and so they cannot last longer than 100,000 years.
Scientists can observe this with the SOHO telescope. The SOHO telescope is designed to look at the Sun’s corona and so it is very good at spotting comets because comets get really bright when they approach the Sun. Many of the comets observed by SOHO are seen to go behind the Sun and never come out on the other side – they are completely obliterated and don’t even survive one pass of orbit. It’s like if you walk into a sauna and you see an ice cream cone that is not melted yet. It would be reasonable to think that the ice cream cone could not have been there for very long. Comets are like the ice cream cones of the solar system, in that respect.
If the solar system is billions of years old, then why are there still comets in orbit? The scientist’s answer to this problem is the Oort Cloud. The Oort Cloud is a comet generator (like a vast reservoir of potential comets). It is a cloud of material that exists beyond where we can detect it and every so often throws new comets into orbit. The Oort Cloud has never been observed and evidence for its existence has not yet been discovered.
Spiral galaxies present another problem for an old universe. The galaxy we live in, the Milky Way Galaxy, is a spiral galaxy. The arms of spiral galaxies rotate differentially. This means that the inner arms rotate faster than the outer arms. Spiral galaxies are winding themselves up tighter and tighter. We’ve measured the rotation velocity of spiral galaxies. We know how fast they spin. If you allow the galaxies to rotate that fast for billions of years, they become unrecognizable. They no longer look like spirals. What’s interesting is that every spiral galaxy we observe today still has its spiral shape – indicating a young age. Even if the galaxies were just 1 billion years old (let alone 14 billion) they would no longer have spiral arms. The scientist’s response to this is that there must be some sort of spiral density waves that produce new arms as the old ones get wrapped up.
If we live in an old universe, it’s puzzling as to why we still have comets in our solar system and why every spiral galaxy we look at has not wrapped itself up. Another issue we have to contend with is the widespread existence of blue stars. Blue stars are the most massive, most luminous (brightest) stars out there. Blue stars are all over the universe. The problem is, blue stars expend their fuel very rapidly – they cannot last billions of years. The hottest, brightest blue stars cannot last even 1 million years. And yet we find blue stars everywhere in the universe – they are very common.
The scientists say these blue stars must have formed recently, but to date we have never observed a star form. Anywhere. Scientists sometimes talk about star-forming regions and when they say that they are referring to a region that is populated with blue stars which they know cannot be very old. There are very serious physics problems when it comes to star formation. The idea is that a nebula collapses in on itself. But a nebula is made up of gas and gas does not collapse in on itself – gas expands. When you walked into this room you didn’t hold your breath just in case all the oxygen should rush to the corner – you expect gas to diffuse and spread out. Gas pressure tends to be more substantial in space than gravity. Once you have a star, its own gravity will keep the gas in place, but getting it to that point is difficult if not impossible.
One last piece of evidence for the young universe is the inability to measure the one-way speed of light. You see, distant starlight has been one of the biggest problems for a young universe. The idea is, if you have a galaxy that is billions of light-years away, then the light you see from the galaxy is billions of years old. The young universe answer to this problem is called the anisotropic synchrony convention. The anisotropic synchrony convention is an idea that you cannot measure the one-way speed of light without having two perfectly synchronized clocks. You have to have two clocks that match each other perfectly. The problem is, you cannot match up clocks perfectly without first knowing the one-way speed of light. So there is no way to measure it. Because we can’t measure it, we can’t know how old the light is from distant galaxies without making assumptions. It’s possible that light could travel infinitely fast in one direction and bounce back at half speed.
These are just a few of many lines of evidence that suggest the universe cannot be very old. My sources of information for the young universe model are Dr. Jason Lisle, a research astrophysicist from the Institute for Creation Research. For more from Dr. Lisle, visit icr.org. Also Ken Ham, founder of Answers in Genesis. You can find Ken Ham’s material at answersingenesis.org. If the young universe is of interest to you I would suggest that you read further from those sources.
My second question for you is this. How do you feel about the young universe model?
For myself, I enjoy the simplicity of the young universe model. It feels like the most readily accessible way to understand the creation account. I also like it because I respect guys like Ken Ham and Jason Lisle. These are men who stand tall to defend what they believe about the Bible even when so many others are telling them they are wrong. Whether they have the right of it or not, I enjoy seeing their passion and conviction.
Restating the second question. How do you feel about the young universe model?
Next we’re going to examine the position for an old universe. Science dates the universe at 13.8 billion years and Earth at 4.5 billion years. The fundamental principle at play here is general relativity, or Einstein’s e=mc2. General relativity is considered the best-tested theory in all of physics. Scientists use this theory to rewind the expansion of the universe and get a precise idea of its age. Christians who support an old universe point to the very first verse of Genesis 1 as further evidence.
In Hebrew, there is no word for universe. Instead, they use the phrase “the heavens and the earth.” This phrase shows up 9 times in the Old Testament and every time it means the totality of physical reality. Not only all matter and energy, but even space and time itself. Couple this phrase with the first verse of the Bible and you have an idea that lines up very well with the Big Bang theory. If Big Bang really happened, there is no scientist who knows what (or who) caused it. This is because the laws of physics break down when you get close enough to the actual event. Supporters of an old universe see this as further proof of God’s creation – since the Bible claims God exists outside of space and time.
There are more Scriptural elements that allow for an old universe and one of the most popularly mentioned is the Hebrew word for day, which is yom. The Hebrew word yom is used frequently throughout the Bible and has many different meanings. One of the ways you can interpret the word yom is to mean a long but finite epoch of time. Many Christians have pointed to this interpretative element and claimed that God’s days of creation were not 24 hour days, but were long periods of time.
This claim is further supported by the seventh day, which is not capped off by the phrase and evening passed and morning came, marking the seventh day. The fact that this particular day does not have the same structure as the previous six days has brought many to believe that we are still in the seventh day. Some people also point to the word that Adam uses when he sees Eve for the first time. The Hebrew word is happa’am which means at long last. This term leads to the argument that not only is the seventh day a long time but the sixth day was also a long time.
In addition to the Scriptural elements that suggest an old universe, there are also strong evidences we can see in the universe itself. The first piece of evidence for an old universe has to do with the expansion rate. Physicists have measured the rate at which the universe is expanding. Given that expansion rate, if the universe were any less than 1 million years old, gravity would not have had enough time to form stars and planets. The entire universe would be diffuse gas.
In addition to the problem of gravity forming stars and planets so quickly, we see another issue that involves entropy. Entropy is the second law of thermodynamics and it basically says that the universe is going from order to disorder with every passing second. This means that the entire universe is getting colder. Scientists can measure this heat loss with what is called the cooling curve. According to the cooling curve, the universe is ~14 billion years old.
If the universe were truly old, we would expect to see signs of stellar aging – and that’s exactly what we do see. The universe is filled with burnt out stars: white dwarfs, black holes, and neutron stars. White dwarf burn-out times are in the billions of years. White dwarf cooling sequences establish that many white dwarfs have been cooling for billions of years. If the universe is young, why do we see so many burnt out stars?
We don’t even have to go as far as looking at the cosmos to see signs of an old world. We can find them here on Earth. The first is radiometric decay. If the universe is only 6,000 years old then neptunium, plutonium, and technetium would still be present in the Sun and Earth. These elements decay in less than a million years. If we lived in a young universe, these elements would be here on our planet – but they aren’t.
What if radiometric decay and carbon-dating are unreliable? One other way of determining age is by examining ice cores and counting their layers. An ice core is a column of ice drilled from a glacier. There are four ice cores in Greenland and three in central Antarctica. The Dome C ice core in Antarctica shows 800,000 layers of ice that were laid down across 800,000 years. But what if the layers don’t really represent years? This is called the anti-uniformitarian argument. Simply put, the rate at which ice is laid down today may be different than it was in the past. If that’s true, then ice cores are unreliable.
But there are two ways we can check this. First, if you look at the ice core, you can see Earth’s orbital eccentricity variation. It’s like this: we know Earth’s orbit cycles through variations every 100,000 years. When you look at the ice core, you can see this cycle take place eight times, indicating 800,000 years. The second way we can check this is by looking at volcanic eruptions. We know that Mount Vesuvius erupted in 79 A.D. We also know that Krakatoa erupted in the year 1883. Both of these eruptions are recorded in the ice core, and if you count the layers in between the two eruptions they match the number of years exactly. All 7 ice cores suggest that Earth is older than 100,000 years.
This is just some of the evidence that indicates an old universe. If you’ve found the old universe model compelling, the best source I can give you is Dr. Hugh Ross from Reasons to Believe. Dr. Ross is an astrophysicist and founder of Reasons to Believe. You can find him at reasons.org.
My third question for you is this. How do you feel about the old universe model?
What I like about the old universe model is that it doesn’t build a massive barrier between people who believe in the Bible and people who are of a scientific mind. I’m very pro-science. Technological advancement and medical discoveries have made it an absolute privilege to be alive in this country today. Whether it’s right or wrong, the old universe model of the creation account helps me to have conversations with scientific-minded people.
Restating the third question. How do you feel about the old universe model?
So as you can see, we have come up against a problem. There seems to be evidence indicating the universe cannot be old and evidence suggesting it cannot be young. If at this point the discussion has become confusing, that’s how we know we are in the right place. My position on the Biblical creation account is built on the value of realizing how much I don’t know. I avoid taking an a priori position. An a priori position means that you take assumptions and turn them into certainties. If you think like that, it becomes super easy to close yourself off to new information. This can quickly become a problem.
Let me tell you why. There is a field of study called quantum mechanics. Quantum mechanics involves looking at structures that are smaller than atoms. At this level of analysis, particles seem to pop in and out of existence. If that’s not bad enough, some scientists claim that you can buzz one of these particles here on Earth and some other particle 100,000 light-years away registers that buzz – in real time. That’s called quantum entanglement. And it gets worse – I’m not even sure we understand gravity. NASA has been picking up gravitational readings in places where nothing is there to cause the gravity. They call it dark matter. They say more than 1/4 of the universe is made of it and we have no idea what it is.
So, when I open the creation account, I start off by realizing that I don’t know very much about this world. Then I build out from there.
Let me take you through it by turning to verse 1:
In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.
In the beginning. This is an indeterminate measure of time ago. The Bible does not explicitly tell us when this happened.
Next, I want you to notice how each creation day begins with the phrase Then God said. I see this as one of the more important elements in the creation account. God is speaking and feeding new levels of complexity into the world. He’s creating order from chaos. I think this process is important because it’s recapped in the Gospel of John:
In the beginning the Word already existed. The Word was with God, and the Word was God. He existed in the beginning with God. God created everything through him, and nothing was created except through him. The Word gave life to everything that was created, and his life brought light to everyone. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness can never extinguish it.
Now, if these creation events were adding new levels of complexity we should expect to see evidence of this in our world. That’s exactly what we do see. Deep in the ground there is a rock layer that records 90% of the animal phyla (or body plans) appearing all at once as if from nothing. Scientists call this the Cambrian Explosion of life. The Cambrian Explosion is completely inconsistent with molecules to man evolution – but it is perfectly consistent with God speaking a new level of complexity into the world.
I want you to notice that the first six creation days end with the phrase and evening passed and morning came. I think this bracketing lends itself to a 24 hour creation day. But what you don’t see is any information indicating how much time elapsed between the creation days. It is an indeterminate amount of time.
There are two other points of interest to consider. First, some scholars say the Hebrew genealogies are not complete. Usage of the term yalad (which means begat), has brought some people to believe the genealogies skip generations. If the genealogies skip generations, their timeline is unreliable. The second point is that Adam is created with age-dating factors already in place. He has a full set of teeth and an adult body – even on his first day of life. So how can we say that God didn’t also create the universe with age-dating factors?
Now notice the creation of humanity. Again, we see Then God said. I think it’s possible that this particular creation event did happen 6,000 – 10,000 years ago. And think about this: if God is feeding in new information just 6,000 years ago, that would explain why certain natural “clocks” like the magnetic fields of planets appear to be recently reset. One of evolution’s greatest challenges is explaining such a giant leap from hominids to humans in the space of mere thousands of years. Could it be that 6,000 years ago God fed new complexity into the system?
Notice how the seventh day does not get capped off with and evening passed and morning came. God has not created since He rested, and we see evidence for this outside of the Bible. It’s called the law of conservation of energy and mass. Energy and mass can neither be created nor destroyed by chemical reactions or physical transformations. We have never observed new information appear from nothing. God rests on the seventh day.
The Bible doesn’t tell us how old the universe is, and so we should be careful about entrenching ourselves on this topic. I think the text suggests 24 hour days, but it is silent on the amount of time elapsed between days. Our purpose as Christians is better served by focusing on what is clear in the creation account. There is a Creator. There is a beginning to space-time. The Creator is personal. Human beings are made in His image. His creative act is an expression of His love – He didn’t have to create all of this, He chose to.
What I hope you take away from this lecture is that things are not always what they seem. Be cautious of people who claim certainty about the nature of reality. The truth is that we just don’t know much about the universe. If you’re interested in the position of an indeterminate time-scale for the creation event, my sources are Dr. John Lennox of Oxford University and Pastor Chuck Smith. You can read more from Dr. Lennox in his book Seven Days that Divide the World, and Pastor Chuck Smith has a fantastic video series that teaches through the Bible verse-by-verse. His video series is called the C2000 Bible Series and can be found on YouTube.
My final question for you is this. Is the age of the universe important to you?
For myself, I would say that it is only as important as my desire to explore the unknown. Here is an interesting thought experiment. Go outside and look around. Then ask yourself: does the world look old to you? When I read the Bible I see a text that is sophisticated beyond my imagination. There is no bottom to these stories. The more I learn about God the more I realize I have yet to learn about Him.
The universe is sort of the same way. I think the latest estimate is that the observable universe is 93 billion light-years across. The size of that is just incomprehensible. Knowing how small I am in relation to this world is enough to put me into child-like faith. Apart from child-like faith I have no hope of figuring it all out. I can’t stand bravely up against the night sky and say with confidence that I know how it all got there. But I can say with confidence Who I believe did it.
Restating my final question. Is the age of the universe important to you?
This brings us to the end of our study of the creation account, thank you for your attention.
If you find this content valuable, feel free to share it and to use it in your own studies. If you’d like to support this podcast, you can do so at http://www.patreon.com/michaelhbaun. There is a link in the description. Your generosity goes a long way to promoting the growth of this enterprise and the cause of free speech. Thank you all for joining me this evening, and I will see you in the next episode.
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