On Prehistory

In my previous book, Science, Scripture and the Beauty of God, I sought to understand how the various popular theories of Natural History could be reconciled with the Bible.  Until I took on that project, I was an adamant Young Earth Creationist because the Young Earth view was self-consciously formed by the contents of Genesis 1.  I have shifted to now being what I call a “Who Knows” Earther because I think the language that God uses in the early chapters of Genesis is purposefully vague and could encompass Young and Old Earth Creationism as well as Theistic Evolution.

But though I’ve become more neutral on the amount of earth-time it took God to create the universe in the 6 God-days that are spelled out in Genesis 1; and I’ve become open to the possibility that God’s command “Let the Earth Bring Forth” could speak to Him using a material process to bring about plants, animals and perhaps the material aspects of people (though I am sure to spell out that what makes man unique is that God, after forming man from the dust, breathed spirit into him, giving him a soul which mirrored His very image – see Genesis 2:7 and Genesis 1:26); I still find myself unconvinced by both Darwinian Evolution and by the theories and methods that are used to give the Earth and Universe an “old” age.

In short, I’m neutral theologically to both how God formed man and how long it took Him to do it, while also being skeptical of all the popular theories that seek to explain things in material terms.

I go into all of my critiques of Evolution, Abiogenesis, the Big Bang Theory and so on in many posts*.  But only in the post I’m a Who Knows Earther do I critique a different Charles, Charles Lyell.

Uniformitarianism vs Catastrophism

Charles Lyell was a geologist in the 1800s who is known as the father of Uniformitarianism, a theory of rock formation which states that the various natural phenomenon that we see on the earth, for example the Grand Canyon, has gotten that way by a long gradual process.  The Colorado River, over supposed millions of years, carved out the peaks and crevices that hikers from all over travel to, for a chance to take in the Canyon’s transcendent beauty, that, in a way best described in Psalm 19:1-4, speaks of the glory of God without using words.

His argument of a slow, uniform, gradual process was pitted against the belief that the wonder of the Canyon was formed in a short period of time through a massive catastrophic event.  Something perhaps like a comet strike, flood or other large-scale, high-impact natural phenomena.

Lyell’s position became ascendent in the 19^th century, and it was upon this older age view of the earth that Darwin built his theory of evolution.

It should be noted that the Uniformitarian and Catastrophic views are both possible.  A massive flood or comet strike absolutely could have created the Canyon, just as much as it could have been carved out by water over a long period of time.  The notion that either side has “won” the argument is merely a statement of how one idea is more or less popular in museums and universities, and not an actual indication of one perspective being more proven than the other. I find myself deeply skeptical of our ability to know definitively how the Canyon was shaped and therefore believe that no side really can “win” this argument.

Critiquing Dating Methods

Nonetheless the Old Earth view is seemingly “confirmed” by dates given by Radiometric, Carbon and other dating methods.  I am likewise dubious of all these dating techniques because they don’t have a way of being externally verified.  The whole methodology feels similar to someone who is an excellent shot from 100 yards away claiming with unflappable certainty that he could hit an object on the moon.  It’s one thing to be accurate when the bullseye is a football field away and another thing to be accurate when shooting at trans-terrestrial targets.  The increased distance brings variables into play that aren’t present in the short range.

But the users of Radiometric, Carbon and other dating methods actually claim with certainty that they have found the date of something.   Which is the same thing as the sharpshooter shooting into the sky and saying that he knows for sure that he hit the doggone center of that bullseye on the moon man.

But until he can get the telescope, scan the lunar surface, and find the target, then should we really believe him?  Isn’t it just a guy saying things until his claim can be proven true?

He can say that he knows that he hit it because he knows the distance between his location and the moon, he knows the wind and understands the way the bullet would move through space, but all of those are mere claims until they are proven true by seeing the hole in the target. What if there is something that he isn’t accounting for?  Something that he couldn’t possibly know until he has actually put his hypothesis to the test?

All of the dating systems we have are people taking their best shot at a target on the moon.** How do we know how fast Carbon-14 decays really?  Is there a 40 thousand year-long experiment that started in 38,000 BC (if the world even existed at that time) and concluded 25 years ago, that shows us this?  The same principle can be applied to really any technique that examines an artifact to determine its age.

The way for us to best calculate the ages of things is to use the external verifications that we do have – i.e. written records.  The combination of archaeology and historical texts are the best way to riddle out how old artifacts are.  As far as I understand it, the earliest writings started around 3000 B.C. or so, meaning that the giving of dates to archaeological discoveries that precede this are more exercises in conjecture than veritable facts.

This doesn’t mean that a discovery of an ancient settlement in North America isn’t rich with useful information about the past, but rather that the dating methods applied to it should be held at a skeptical distance.  As such, I prefer to say that things that go back further than 4 or 5 thousand years ago are in the distant past, rather than speculating about their specific age.

Understanding Ancient Customs Regarding Genealogies

But though I’m an ardent skeptic about our ability to know the age of things from the distant past by some kind of scientific method, I have also come to recognize that Scripture doesn’t necessarily give a date either.  At first glance the reading of Genesis 5 and 11 seems to be airtight, where, in the genealogies from Adam to Noah, and then from Noah to Abraham, both give how old the father was when he begat his son, and then how long the father lived after his son was born.  This seemed to me for a while to be a complete record of the age of mankind, which would put Adam’s birth at around 6000 years ago.

But it wasn’t until I read some commentaries about this that I began to realize that there was a custom amongst the Jewish people that, when writing genealogies, they would leave out insignificant people and skip over them.  This is probably the most evident in Matthew’s genealogy of Jesus, which is through his adopted father Joseph (Luke’s genealogy is thought to be for Mary).  But in Matthew’s genealogy, the list skips over different people.  For example, Matthew 1:8 says Joram begat Uzziah, but we see that Uzziah was actually Joram’s great-grandson (In 2 Kings 8 through 14 we see that it goes Joram – Ahaziah – Joash – Uzziah).  It seems that Matthew did this because it made things easy to remember because of the 14 from Abraham to David, 14 from David to the deportation to Babylon and 14 from Babylon to the Messiah (Matthew 1:17).  We should remember that the printing press wasn’t invented until the 15^th century and that most people memorized things that were important.  Thus, having the 3 even sets of 14 probably seemed like a good idea by Matthew when he wrote it.  If we combine this with the ancient custom of skipping generations in genealogies (see this commentary for an explanation of this), we can understand that Biblical genealogies might, at times, point to distant relations rather than a direct father/son connection.

With that in mind I think we can say that it’s possible that the genealogies of Genesis 5 and 11 may sometimes be for those of distant relatives, where it would be more accurately understood when it read in Genesis 5:12 for example, that “Now Kenan lived seventy years, and fathered Mahalalel” that perhaps it is a direct father/son relationship, but it may also be that Kenan lived seventy years and then became the forebearer of Mahalalel.

Because that’s the case I think that it’s possible that mankind could be significantly older than 6000 years.  I say possible, though because it’s also possible that there were no generations skipped in Genesis 5 and 11 and that mankind actually is 6000 years old.  As I mentioned before, I am a skeptic of scientific methods for dating artifacts from the distant past so the young earth camp may in fact be right about all of this.

But who knows.

Hugh Ross and Ken Hamm

Hugh Ross, a man who I deeply respect, is an old earth creationist who takes a lot of stock in the dating methods from modern science.   While I personally don’t believe these dating methods are reliable, he does, and he puts Adam’s creation at anywhere from 250 to 55 thousand years ago, the Flood at 50 to 40 thousand years ago and Babel at no earlier than 11000 BC.

I like Hugh because he believes in the inerrancy of Scripture but he’s also an astrophysicist who has labored to reconcile the book of Genesis with the findings of modern science wherever possible.

I also like Ken Hamm, a young earth creationist, who also believes in the inerrancy of Scripture and who has also labored to reconcile science with Scripture.  Dr. Hamm puts the creation of Adam at 6000 years ago and the Flood at 4500 years ago and Babel at 4000 years ago.

Dr. Ross, for example, explains how Ice Ages corresponded with human migration and allowed God to re-populate the earth after the flood, in his model, no earlier than 11,000 years ago.  Dr. Hamm, though, would say that the carbon-14 dating that places the time when the Bering land bridge turned into the Bering Strait at 11,000 years ago is unreliable and shouldn’t be used as a reference point for time and would put the repopulation of the earth (which he also believes corresponded with an Ice Age) at around 4000 years ago.

Most of the museums out there embrace the old earth perspective.  As such whenever I go to one, I use Hugh Ross’s framework and match up what the exhibits are presenting with his dates so I can place what I see in the timeline of Scripture.  For example, when I look at something that supposedly took place in Australia in 7000 BC, in keeping with Hugh Ross’ framework, I place it after Babel but before Abraham.

But somewhere in the back of my mind, I recognize that the 7000 BC date is arbitrary, one that is not confirmed by written records, and that has been placed into the dating scheme of old-earthers that I find capricious.

Either way I think there is much benefit that comes from reading the work of both old and young earthers and that through careful study and healthy skepticism, we can place the things we learn through secular books and museums into the chronology of Holy Scripture.

~

One of the main premises of my previous book was that you can’t get rid of God.  The Materialist attempt to remove Him only produced an even stronger testament to His Existence.  But God is not just our Creator, He is also the Lord of History.

How God has led the world, however, is the subject of my new book.

 

 

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* I critique Darwinian Evolution in The Lost Glory of the Earth.  I explain my issues with Abiogenesis in Abiogenesis - or more appropriately - Its Time to Stop Pretending.  I discuss my issue with the Big Bang, as well as the entire materialistic account of Natural History in The Boomerang Effect.

** Some more nuanced explanations of these dating systems can be found below:

Carbon Dating: Questions Answered | Answers in Genesis

Radiometric Dating | Answers in Genesis

How Reliable Are Dates for Human Fossils? | Answers in Genesis