S3. How Old is the Universe ... in years and days

How old is the universe?

This is a game-changer for many people and needs to be addressed. The issue is the six days of creation in Genesis 1 of the Bible compared to science’s discoveries and calculations of approximately 15 billion years.

Firstly, it is worth actually reading Genesis chapter 1 to see what it actually says rather than think you know what it says based on what people have told you. It was written approximately 3500 years ago in ancient Hebrew as poetic prose which we have translated into our modern languages. This poetic explanation of creation was written in the context of other religious views at the time explaining that it was God who created everything. It was not written as a scientific historical document, but an explanation of the God whom they worshipped: the Creator and the culmination of the humanity being made in ‘God’s image’. While this language was poetic and potentially written for a different purpose than explaining the age of the universe, that does not mean that what was written is incorrect!

Mathematician and Christian apologist John Lennox points out a few things that many people don’t seem to see when reading what Genesis 1 actually says:

1. That in about the first 100 words of the Bible, the word for ‘day’ is used with 4 different meanings: About 12 hours (the difference between day and night), 24 hours, the 7th day has not yet ended and a day that refers to a time in history (not a specific amount of hours) in the same way as if I would say “back in my day” I would not be referring to a specific day, but an unspecified period of time.

2. That the Bible doesn’t actually give a date or time for the beginning as the days only start in verse 3 which is after the creation of the heavens and the earth in verse 1.

3. We don’t know if there are long periods of time between the ‘and God said ...’ passages (and science speaks of sudden appearances of new levels of complexities) regarding potentially only the ‘days of creation.’

4. Only days 6 and 7 use the definitive ‘the’ as in ‘the sixth day’ and the first five days don’t which indicates that they are to be treated differently.

There can be much debate about these things, but his point is simply that the literary complexity indicates that there is much more going on here than many people think on a surface reading of it. He also points out that theologians were struggling with these issues long before modern science raised the issue of a much older earth and universe citing Matyr, Augustine and Clement of Alexandria.

He wrote the book: Seven Days That Divide The World and gave a speech about it which you can see here https://youtu.be/0FmO2XKMe6g

(This clip is 90mins, but his speech starts at 12mins 30secs into the clip and finishes at 58mins after which he takes questions).

So ... ARE YOU SURE ... that science disproves the Bible when it comes to the Age of the universe?

One other thought about this ... some say that the reference of ‘evening’ and ‘morning’ clearly indicate that it must have been 24 hour periods. However, the ancient Hebrew words that we have translated as evening and morning can also mean ‘chaos’ and ‘order’ so this passage could also be speaking of the way in which God brought about order from chaos in creation.

Having said all this, a Jewish scientist has also presented another possibility for the accuracy of both the Genesis 1 account as well as the scientific evidence. (Link)