For me it would have huge consequences for my daily life. Mostly because I would have to come up with a different career… Both my fields, astronomy and neuroscience, in their entirety support the old age of the earth and the evolutionary paradigm. All the successes of these fields testify to the validity of this paradigm. If that would somehow turn out to be bollocks, there would be no fields of research left to work in. Also, I would have to stop using GPS and the internet because these are based on the same “laws of physics”, which (in that hypothetical scenario) would have to be extremely untrustworthy.
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I think a lot of people don’t realize that if the earth really was very young, a number of specific physical parameters and laws of the universe would be very different, and the universe would not look the way it does now. They think everything would look exactly as it does now. This isn’t the case.
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Yes, good point. To expand on that, there is no known set of physical parameters that can fit the young-earth perspective. That’s why YECs like Danny Faulkner nowadays construct their cosmologies based on “miraculous transportation of light”. His “new” solution:
“(…) this possible new solution suggests unusually fast propagation of light on Day Four, probably by rapid expansion of space. This is an appeal to a miraculous event rather than a physical process to get distant starlight to the earth. It is not yet clear whether this suggestion could have testable predictions.”
New Solution to the Light Travel Time Problem | Answers Research Journal
He appeals to a miracle because he knows that, otherwise, he would have to rewrite all of modern physics somehow…
To come back to the OP, the entire knowledge base of all of physics, geology, biology, et cetera would have to be reinvented somehow in the hypothetical scenario that the earth would actually be young. It would render most of known technology (which is based on physics one way or another) untrustworthy.
Also, it could mean that God just miraculously made it seem like these fields of science were getting things right, while they were dead wrong all along. That would lead us back to problems with deceitfulness and God’s character.
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Exactly. This is ironclad proof that all the physical evidence points to an old universe, and he knows it.
Indeed.
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Well in order for this to be true, the science would have to prove this because God doesn’t lie. So, if scientists somehow stumbled on to the “truth” that the earth is really young (and if was verified through all the normal scientific methods) I’m assuming I would just go on about my business like normal - only now, I would argue that the earth is young instead of old.
I trust that God wouldn’t mislead us to believe a lie about his creation so I’m assuming that scientists would have just found a piece of evidence in nature that confirms the (young) age of the earth.
This perplexes me.
If it turned out that God indeed created Adam as a fully-functioning adult - that is, without having him go through conception, gestation, birth, and maturation to adulthood - would we say that all the knowledge we have of human anatomy and procreation would thereby be rendered useless or untrustworthy?
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I know from personal experience what it means to “do the very hard thing of changing our most deeply held beliefs.” I did so not only when I began to follow Christ in earnest at age 28, but also years later when as a pastor with two seminary degrees at age 41 my study of the Bible convinced me that everyone is going to heaven. (If you want to know more go here for where you can get my book The Biblical Case for Everyone Going to Heaven.) I was a pastor and lost my church and friends and more.
I say this not to elicit sympathy or praise - I do not deserve, nor do I want, either. (Neither do I want to be railed at as a heretic; you can do that on my website, not here.) Rather, I say it as proof that when I come here telling you that I am willing to reject a long-held view that I thought was biblical for a more truly biblical one, there is reason to take me seriously on that point.
P.S. I take no money for my books; neither do I accept donations of any kind. The mention of the book therefore is in no way a commercial plug.
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This response to @Swamidass is a complete non-sequitor.
How do you even get to that proposed conclusion? Because God miraculously makes rain, we can’t trust the laws of nature regarding the water cycle? How exactly does that follow?
What you’re quoting from me was not a response to @Swamidass; rather, I was responding to @Casper_Hesp. Here is his original post, and my response to it.
My apologies. Referencing Swami instead of @Casper_Hesp was a mental error (or an unconscious finger-memory error).
My statement that your proposed conclusion is a non-sequitor still, however, stands.
Why would God’s creation of Adam have anything to do with having confidence in natural laws as used and understood by humanity?
That was my point.
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I think Casper is in a different position in that his career is dependent on the observations of science being true as observed. In the medical field, little I see is directly dependent on an old earth, though newer technologies such as genetic and immunologic therapy have some close ties, as well as diagnostic technologies such as MRI depends on our knowledge of physics being true and predictable.
I think a good example of the other side of the coin would be to ask a member of AIG, such a Dr. Purdom or Ken Ham how they would live life differently if they were to accept an old earth. It would mean a career change, loss of financial stability, etc. as well as a big loss of face in the community, which sad to say we are all self centered enough to make that sort of shaming very traumatic.
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@Mike_Gantt, as per comments from @jpm, perhaps a clearer way of rejecting his position would have been:
“Just because I reject the validity of applying Geological science and its related disciplines regarding age of the Earth, why can’t I fully accept the evidences of other sciences?”
I now assume that this is what you meant by what you wrote.
Correct me if I’m wrong. On the assumption that I’m in the right ballpark now, I would say that your expectation to be able to pick and choose which fields of science you want to rely upon fails on several points:
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It’s obviously cherry-picking.
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You have no system for being skeptical about Geology, but happily accepting of nuclear medicine?
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Your appoach is not internally coherent.
@Mike_Gantt the difference is that @Casper_Hesp is an astrophysicist and we are talking about the age of the earth. It is impossible at this time to conceive of mathematically coherent physical laws at the scale of the universe if the universe is just 6,000 years ago. The distant starlight problem is widely acknowledged as unsolved in YEC cosmology (even by most YECs), but that is the center of @Casper_Hesp’s field of study. And there is a massive amount of things have happening here, including most recently in the news the detection of gravity waves. None of the field makes sense of the universe is just 6,000 years old,. He would have to through away all the physical laws he has learned that explain so much of what he sees in the world. It would change everything for him.
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No. But if we say God created everyone that way, then yes. Your analogy is nothing like the situation facing us if the entire universe is only 6,000 years old.
In an earlier formulation of the question that lies at the heart of the OP, I asked "Other than the arguments we have about it, how would you live differently if your view of the age of the earth turned out to be wrong? I wish I had retained the italicized part in the OP because it would have clearly kept out of scope situations like that of people like you mention: Ken Ham, Hugh Ross, and so on. I certainly understand that those whose livelihood is dependent on public perceptions of the respective staked out position would face enormous changes. However, my interest was in how we live - entirely independent of factors such as the shame in having been wrong.
In other words, the age of the earth per se sounds like such an esoteric subject to me. That’s why I’m searching to find if there are people for whom the perceived age of the earth changing had practical implications.
You seem to be saying that @Casper_Hesp would face special challenges, but I can’t tell how many of them fall in the “out of scope” category as opposed to practical challenges. It looks like I’ll be told in posts farther down this string.
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Not at all. I’m just asking how ignoring projections in the past beyond 6,000 years invalidates or makes useless everything else?
Why would anyone trust observations about the present if observations about the past have no connection to reality?
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I still don’t understand. It sounds like a flat-earther saying, “If the earth is round, I can’t walk to work anymore.”
First of all, I think you’ve lumped two separate things into one category. It’s observations about the present and projections (or assumptions, or estimates) about the past. Second, we would only be saying that projections beyond a certain point would be unreliable.