NOT one verse in the Bible says the world is young. Over and over, the Bible uses eon words for the Old Testament era. Yet the genealogies and king lists add up to only about 4000 OT years.
God has perfectly designed the universe, without any deception. He never lies. We can see that the universe is very old with telescopes and on the surface of our planet. So why do philosophers struggle over the age of the universe?
Philosophers try to understand the universe using their notion of time. Moses never heard of time. It had not even been invented when he wrote the creation account. Ancient people focused on what changes. They recorded when aspectually, using the changes they observed. Their clocks and calendars did not measure time. They were dynamic, adjusted to fit nature’s changes. All ancient societies also looked back with longing on the first generations who lived for geological eons, back when the whole world was so different. For example, Job in chapter 14, lists six geological markers for a lifetime. One was that the Mediterranean sea (Hebrew word west) dried, which it did. He also compared a lifetime to water wearing down rocks and washing away the dust of the earth. Indeed, during the era when the Med dried (which scientists estimate lasted from 23,000,000 to 5,300,000 years ago, the Nile incised a canyon deeper than the Grand Canyon as it raced down into the desiccated Med basin. Later it filled the deep canyon with sediments and formed a great delta. Surely this did not happen in 200 linear years of Job’s lifetime, that biblically happened not much more than 5,000 years ago. He also wrote that their faces intensely continued to change until they died. If you lived to watch the ocean dry, you too would grow thick Neanderthal brows from vast age in few years. (The skull is the only part of our skeleton that keeps growing as we age. Neanderthal child skulls have faces like modern children. Sometimes we find their primary teeth worn down as though they were a 100 years old, yet still infants. )
Change and time are diametrically opposite worldviews. The changes the Bible mentions are visible, especially in the visible history of hundreds of billions of galaxies. The orbits and the clocks visible both accelerate as billions of galaxies become spreading things (raiqya) exactly as per the literal text. In fact, the Biblical God calls attention to what he continues to do, call the stars to continually come out; spread out the plural heavens (the independent galaxies) like a tent. Billions of galaxies spread out from tiny naked globs into huge, local growth spirals as the visible properties of all matter continually and visibly change.
Time does not exist. All we see are changes. Why did God make a universe where every atom changes itself as it ages (visibly)? So that no one can come to faith in him through philosophy. Unfortunately, as a child I was trained to think like a pagan philosopher in Western, Christian schools. I was trained to believe in time. All we see are changes. The changes we observe are the very ones the Bible lists as evidence for the Creator. Change and time are diametrically opposite worldviews.
Victor