(Editor’s Note: The Cornwall Alliance does not take a position on the age of the earth but thinks this is a worthy discussion of the issue.—E. Calvin Beisner)

“And God said, ‘Let there be light’: And there was light” (Genesis 1:3 KJV)

As a professor teaching at a Christ-first university, it comes as no surprise that some of my students are from conservative, traditional, evangelical denominations. I even have several “PKs” and “MKs” who take their faith seriously, although not all wear their faith on their sleeve.

When I first applied to teach at Palm Beach Atlantic University, I was required to submit a statement that described how I would integrate a Christian Worldview in the classroom. In that statement, I shared that in “whatever discipline I have taught, my goal has always been to create a sense of awe for the creation (general revelation) and for its pinnacle—man—as expressed through the Scriptures (special revelation) through an understanding of a biblical world view, i.e., that each of us carries the image of God within, although marred and broken by sin and in need of redemption.”

I was also required to author a “Christian Theistic Worldview Statement”:

I believe that “God created the heavens and the Earth,” (Genesis 1:1) and that “In the beginning was the Word,” (John 1:1) and that the one, true, triune God existed before matter, energy or time. Truth by its very nature is of God and profitable for “doctrine, reproof, correction and instruction in righteousness.” (2Timothy 3:16) Teaching with the goal of imparting knowledge with eternal merit as well as helping to shape morals and ethics can only be accomplished by the integration of biblical truths with academic content. God has designed a world that, although marred by sin, is a precise machine revealing its Designer through many disciplines. It is the highest calling of a professor at a Christian university to guide his students along the path to embrace a biblical worldview as their own, for the betterment of their spiritual, academic and social well- being.

This spirit is perpetuated every year when all members of the faculty are required to sign a statement reaffirming the university’s Guiding Principles,¹  among them that we believe “in principle and practice, the divine inspiration of the Bible, both the Old and New Testaments; [and] that man and woman were directly created by God. …”

I am both a scientist and one of those members of the university’s diverse faith community that hails from a conservative, evangelical (Baptistic) belief system. And I am one of those who does wear his faith on his sleeve.

I have always believed in a literal account of creation as written in the Book of Genesis and re-iterated in some 57 other places² by one accounting in both Old and New Testaments, including perhaps the most evocative, found in Exodus 20:11 when in the middle of giving the Ten Commandments to Moses, God inserts this apparent non sequitur: “For in six days the LORD made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that in them is, and rested the seventh day.”  

Jesus Himself had no problem referring to the sixth day of creation or to Adam and Eve as literal people.

“In talking about divorce, Jesus asks: ‘Have you not read that He who created them from the beginning made them male and female, and said, ‘Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh’? (Matthew 19:4-5) Jesus obviously had read Genesis 1 and 2 because He’s quoting it.  We don’t often think about Jesus reading the Old Testament, but He did.  As a well-taught Jewish boy in the first century, He would have gone through the normal Torah instruction all boys His age did. He knew that Genesis says Adam and Eve were created on the sixth day of creation.  According to Jesus, that sixth day of creation was ‘from the beginning,’ a phrase we hear a number of times in the New Testament.  It refers to the beginning of creation as recorded in Genesis 1.”³

Jesus also spoke of Abel (Matt 23:35) and Noah (Matt 24:37-39) not as myths but as real people. “The fact that Jesus was well acquainted with the actual words of Genesis and knew them to be real history is why it is such a powerful statement.”⁴

I have never wavered in my embrace of a literal interpretation of Genesis. But several things have changed along the way since coming to Christ as a 19-year-old.

The first is the realization that there is far more about the universe that I don’t understand than what I do understand. Writing in “Amazing Truths, How Science and the Bible Agree,” Dr. Michael Guillen explains that “astronomers have concluded that dark energy comprises some 68 percent of the total universe and dark matter about 27 percent. That means only 5 percent of the entire universe is visible to us! That astonishing revelation bears emphasizing. Everything we call scientific knowledge is based on a pittance of what there is to know about our world. Ninety-five percent of it is hidden from us.”⁵

Second, my attitude has undergone a radical shift towards those who do not hold to a literal interpretation of Genesis, among them the folks at Reasons to Believe,⁶ Professor John Lennox, who address this issue in a YouTube video⁷ entitled “Seven Days that Divide the World,” and Visiting Scholar of Philosophy at Talbot School of Theology and Professor of Philosophy at Houston Baptist University,  William Lane Craig.⁸

These are learned and good people who, I believe, are contending for the faith (Jude 1:4), and I am not about to judge their motives. And while I disagree with them on the issue of a literal interpretation of the Genesis account of creation, the Bible is clear that believers are called to love one another and to have speech “always with grace” (Col 4:6). Ellicott’s Commentary for English Readers explains “…[S]peech is to be primarily ‘with grace,’ kindled by the true life of Christian grace in it ….”⁹ The field of science is sprinkled with arrogance. Paul the Apostle however reminds us that “nothing should be done from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility, counting others more significant than ourselves” (Phil 2:3). Nothing includes how we treat those with whom we disagree.

Third, the consensus about origins is changing. There is a growing list of scientists and academics, who are openly dissenting from the theory of evolution and have signed this simple statement: “We are skeptical of claims for the ability of random mutation and natural selection to account for the complexity of life.… Careful examination of the evidence for Darwinian theory should be encouraged. There is scientific dissent from Darwinism. It deserves to be heard.”¹⁰

“Among the prestigious scientists who have signed the statement are evolutionary biologist and textbook author Dr. Stanley Salthe; quantum chemist Henry Schaefer at the University of Georgia; U.S. National Academy of Sciences member Philip Skell; American Association for the Advancement of Science Fellow Lyle Jensen; Russian Academy of Natural Sciences embryologist Lev Beloussov; and geneticist Giuseppe Sermonti, editor emeritus of Rivista di Biologia / Biology Forum and discoverer of genetic recombination in antibiotic-producing Penicillium and Streptomyces.”¹¹

Dissent from a belief in Neo-Darwinism with a concomitant embrace of intelligent design is not quite bridging the gap between science and the Genesis account of creation in the manner Answers in Genesis, an organization dedicated to “enabling Christians to defend their faith and to proclaim the gospel of Jesus Christ effectively,” has done for decades. Their apologetic focus is “particularly on providing answers to questions surrounding the book of Genesis, [and evidences for a young Earth]¹², as it is the most-attacked book of the Bible.”¹³

What to make of all this? How can a science professor at a Christian university be a scientist in the truest sense of the word while believing in a literal interpretation of Genesis? Aren’t these two belief systems antithetical?

I hinted at this earlier in that quotation from Dr. Michael Guillen’s book. There is more that we don’t know about the universe than what we do know. And this vacuum of knowledge extends from things on the astronomical scale all the way down to the atomic level where reality becomes very strange.

One of the laboratory procedures we teach to first-year general chemistry students involves measuring the wavelengths of the visible emission spectra of several elements including hydrogen, helium, neon, and mercury. I begin the lab in a non-conventional way—by showing them the trailer from the first Matrix movie.¹⁴ It is fitting to introduce the basic principles of quantum mechanics with this bit of wisdom from Morpheus (Laurence Fishburne), as he explains to Neo (Keanu Reeves) what the Matrix is: “The Matrix is the world that has been pulled over your eyes to blind you from the truth.” As Neo awakens to this horror, Morpheus adds, “Welcome to the real world.”

We end this lab with a discussion about electrons, photons, and the uncertainty surrounding their behavior. Are they particles or waves? Yes! How do electrons jump from one energy level to another? Werner Heisenberg would remind us of the futility of being certain of anything at this level of granularity. The eminent physicist Richard Feynman has famously said, “I think I can safely say that nobody really understands quantum mechanics.”¹⁵ And Erwin Schrödinger, whose elegant wave equation describes the wave-like nature of the electron, when asked to explain the particle-like nature of matter, replied, “I am as little prepared to answer that as to tell you where Sancho Panza’s second donkey came from.”¹⁶

This semester, as my students were leaving the lab after a wrap-up discussion of quantum phenomena and the nature of reality, one stopped by my desk, and we continued the conversation. She finally said matter-of-factly, “I believe that we are living in a simulation.”

This was brilliant. It reminded me of a verse, quoted here from the New Living Translation: “We now have this light shining in our hearts, but we ourselves are like fragile clay jars containing this great treasure. This makes it clear that our great power is from God, not from ourselves” (2 Cor 4:7).

Our identity here on Earth, depending on which version of the Bible you read, emphasizes this fragility: We are wayfarers, strangers, aliens, foreigners, temporary residents, sojourners, exiles and pilgrims—spirit beings inhabiting complex, biochemical machines for a brief moment in time.     

I cannot explain scientifically the incarnation—how God bridged two dimensions and “was made flesh and dwelt among us” (John 1:14)—or Jesus’ transfiguration, resurrection, and subsequent ascension. But I certainly cannot call myself a Christian if I deny these “eyewitness” truths upon which Christianity is based. Please do not misunderstand me—I am not suggesting there is an equal weight of belief in a literal Genesis to belief in these events in the life of Jesus as a requirement to call oneself a Christian.   

Admittedly, I don’t know how the Earth can be young while appearing old by some measurements other than conceding that God made it that way—not to deceive us with the “appearance of age,” as some have suggested,¹⁷ but to test us whether we are willing to take Him at His word even when something seems scientifically impossible. This wouldn’t be the first time God tested a human’s faith or used extraordinary means to accomplish His will. Joshua’s long day was a violation of celestial mechanics. An ax head floating in a river isn’t scientifically possible as the density of iron and bronze are both approximately eight times greater than that of water. An entire sea lifting up from its seabed violates Newton’s Law of Gravity. And I don’t know where to start to explain a talking jackass or dry bones coming together in a valley.    

So, we dig deeper. Perhaps we have to think in more scientific-philosophical terms. With recent discoveries and the latest theories surrounding the Big Bang¹⁸ and the speed of light having been faster¹⁹ when the universe began, the way we measure time is itself suspect.

Let us imagine God, who is described as light (1 John 1:5) on Day One recorded in Genesis 1:3. He speaks: “Let there be light” and BANG! (a very Big Bang) ensues with matter and light spreading through the universe instantaneously in all directions. Light decelerates as it interacts with all of the newly formed matter and the resulting gravity field until coming to a final speed of 299,792,458 meters per second, its measured speed today. That is just a theory—my theory—but it offers an explanation for the distant starlight paradox, i.e., how celestial objects can be located so far away from the Earth yet still have been recently created.

I’m all for keeping “the main thing, the main thing”—it is after all more important to know The Rock of Ages than the ages of the rocks. And while I can agree to both of these adages, I graciously maintain that we can be scientists, remaining true to the scientific method, while believing the Bible’s account of creation literally.

Photo courtesy of NASA.

References

1. Palm Beach Atlantic University, Guiding Principles

2. https://bible.knowing-jesus.com/topics/Creation is a website offering daily, encouraging Scripture, prayer, devotionals, and articles.

3. Thomas Purifoy Jr., “What Did Jesus and Luke Say About Genesis?” https://isgenesishistory.com/jesus-luke-genesis/

4. Purifoy, Is Genesis History? https://isgenesishistory.com/jesus-luke-genesis/

5. Michael Guillen, Amazing Truths, How Science and the Bible Agree (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2015), 60.

6. Reasons to Believe is a website, https://reasons.org/, where one can “discover how scientific research and clear thinking consistently affirm the truth of the Bible and of the Good News it reveals.”

7. “Seven Days that Divide the World,” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0FmO2XKMe6g&t=4078s, is a YouTube video from Eric Metaxas and Socrates in the City featuring an evening with John Lennox, Professor of Mathematics at Oxford University, at the Union Club in New York City on January 31, 2013.

8. “Reasonable Faith,” https://www.reasonablefaith.org/william-lane-craig, is the website of Dr. William Lane Craig.

9. Ellicott’s Commentary on Colossians, Chapter 4, online at  https://biblehub.com/commentaries/ellicott/colossians/4.htm.

10. Alex Newman “Over 1,000 Scientists Openly Dissent from Evolutionary Theory,” The New American, March 11, 2019, https://thenewamerican.com/over-1-000-scientists-openly-dissent-from-evolution-theory/.

11. Newman, “Over 1,000 Scientists ….”

12. Answers in Genesis, “Our Message”

13. “The 10 Best Evidences from Science that Confirm a Young Earth,” Answers in Genesis, October 1, 2012, https://answersingenesis.org/evidence-for-creation/10-best-evidences-young-earth/.

14. The Matrix, March, 1999.

15. Sean Carroll, “Even Physicists Don’t Understand Quantum Mechanics,” The New York Times, September 7, 2019, https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/07/opinion/sunday/quantum-physics.html.

16. Erwin Schrӧdinger, “What Is Matter?” The Scientific American, Nobel Prize Winning Authors Volume II, https://www.jstor.org/stable/24944334?refreqid=excelsior%3A1e2fb3f38f4955a1263810ad1441b014. This article was condensed from a lecture entitled “Our Conception of Matter,” given by Professor Schrödinger in 1952 at a conference in Geneva organized by the Recontres Internacionales de Geneve.

17. Scott Pfahler, “Creationism and the Appearance of Age,” The Age of the Earth and the Formation of the Universe Honors Seminar (UHON 390), Fall 2005, http://apps.usd.edu/esci/creation/age/content/creationism_and_young_earth/appearance_of_age.html.

18. Marcus Chown, “How did the early Universe expand faster than light?” BBC Sky at Night Magazine, February 2, 2022, https://www.skyatnightmagazine.com/space-science/universe-expand-faster-light/.

19. Daniel Oberhaus, “Scientists Think the Speed of Light Has Slowed, and They’re Trying to Prove It,” Motherboard, Tech by Vice, December 6, 2016, https://www.vice.com/en/article/8q87gk/light-speed-slowed.