Reconciling the Bible and Science on the Age of the Earth (John Lennox)

hey guys today we're going to be watching a video from Professor John Linux world-renowned mathematician and he's going to be talking about the age of the Earth and this common question that people ask and how to reconcile that idea with Biblical [Music] scriptures you ready I'm ready let's Dive In okay well you notice and this is why it's helpful to collect questions there are three questions out of the seven on the same topic did you notice that and they're all about the age of the Earth do you want to know how old the Earth is it's quite a bit older than me so let's have a look at this because it bothers many people and I want to say unnecessarily so I gave a speech at my old school two weeks ago and my old school I must confess this at the beginning you see you'll see why in a moment my old school was founded by an Archbishop and a mathematician the archbishop's name was Usher and he calculated the age of the Earth well he wrote to the vice Chancellor of Cambridge University a letter famous letter and he said dear sir I have worked out that Adam was born at 9:00 on the 5th of October 404 BC I am sorry that I cannot give any more precise information than that and that has gone down in history as Archbishop Usher's young Earth chronology now I was standing beside his successor who is the chairman of the governors of my school and I turned to him and I said sir Usher was a historian and so are you now Usher is interesting because many people laugh at his calculation what they don't know is that both Newton and Kepler made an almost similar calculation in that time we never hear of that and but I said to the Archbishop Your Grace he was sitting here I I said I suspect you probably reckon the Earth and the universe are about seven orders of magnitude older than that but I said whatever the answer to the question is we must not forget that he got one thing absolutely right and that is there was a creation Now the most important thing about this is not when it happened not even how it happened but that it happened and you know it took centuries before people came to it I was at Cambridge in the 1960s not the 1860s the 1960s when the first evidence really strong evidence from the microwave background came in that the Universe was a finite age do you know many people today don't know that the scientific establishment resisted that fiercely the chief editor of nature the world's most famous scientific magazine at the time a man called madx said we shouldn't go down this line that there was a creation at a finite time in the past quote it gives too much leverage to people that believe the Bible that is one of the most significant scientific discoveries of the 20th century was resisted because it paralleled what scripture said now come to the 21st century and I was in a very prestigious Gathering of physicists philosophers and so on and I was the token Christian and I was asked to say something about this and I got up and said something about creation and I was heckled a leading scientist stopped me dead and he said Professor LX stop you are joking I hope you're joking if you suggest the Bible has anything to say to us in the 21st Century wow I said I wasn't joking in fact I said it's interesting of course the Bible isn't a textbook of science I don't teach algebra from Leviticus and I never will but it does talk in certain places about exactly the same physical universe that scientists study in the beginning God created the very heavens and and Earth that you study and not only that it's got the idea which is very new in terms of science that creation is finite backwards in time there's huge mathematical work been done on this that is very convincing now I said I'm going to make a suggestion if you scientists had not been so wedded to Aristotle at his eternal Universe you might just have looked more carefully to see if there was evidence of a finite age the universe long before you did and of course that was a pretty devastating thing to say but it's hugely important it's the fact of creation that is a finite time backwards now does the Bible say anything about that now of course you can interpret the Bible as saying something about it so I want to say something about this you see if we were having this evening lecture 500 years ago that question would not have been asked not once let alone three times but I tell you what question would have been asked three times somebody would have stood up in each of the lines and said Dr Lennox Dr tur what are we to make about this crazy chap in Italy claiming that the Earth moves when the Bible says it doesn't the Earth is fixed on pillars says the Psalms so that it should not be moved and this crazy chap is saying it does move I help us to uh really get a grip of the fact that it it doesn't move just let me ask you how many of you in this audience believe the Earth doesn't move against the background of the fixed Stars how many of you goodness I I thought I was in a place for some people who believe the Bible now this is very interesting you see you do believe that the Earth moves and yet the Bible says it doesn't now how has that happened it's happened because there was first of all Galileo the first moving earther and everybody else was a fixed earther the philosophers the Aristo deludes Plus the Catholic church but then there were one or two more moving earthers as they began to be convinced and now the whole lot of you are moving earthers but you haven't necessarily given up your conviction that the Bible is true why because we can see that when the Bible speaks about the Earth being fixed it's not talking about being geometrically or spatially fixed it's talking about something much deeper and that is stability the and Bible refers to this he's made summer and harvest their fixed things and they depend the stability of the earth and its orbit for example depends on gas giants and inverse Square law of gravity and everything else and we're happy with that but for centuries it was difficult now come with me if you can it seems to me a very similar thing is happening with your question you can believe if you want that the Bible says the Earth doesn't move you can believe it but you don't have to now I want to argue briefly that you can believe that the Earth is Young and the universe is young but you don't have to because the Bible doesn't claim it now let me try and establish that briefly in the beginning God created the heavens of the earth and then you have a sequence of days remember that six days and a day of rest now here's the interesting thing in the Hebrew language the first statement in the beginning where the heavens and the Earth and the Earth was this and that is made in one Hebrew past tense the tense changes to another past tense for the description of the days you can establish that I asked to be fair the professor of Hebrew at Oxford and the professor at Cambridge and they agreed amazingly that this is what it says now what does that mean well Professor Jack Collins who uh was a scientist and is now the chief translator for the English Standard vers of the Bible which you may be aware of says I quote it means that the first statement occurs at an indefinite period before the second what does the Bible say about the age of the universe and the Earth absolutely abolutely nothing so why fight about it folks what do you think I was raised under some hardcore creationist young Earth young Earth creationist and dispensationalist I might add if you know if that means anything to anybody uh teaching and that is really hard for me to let go of and um but I will say the the greatest thing that it bred in me for sure was to take the Bible very seriously that in The Balancing Act that he talks about with um the Earth moving or you know the heavens moving in The Balancing Act of Science in the Bible you never swing all the way so that the Bible means nothing the Bible has to mean something by what it says it doesn't mean nothing um so when it says the Earth is fixed it means something something and to accept that it means that there's stability and that it's not going to be this Grand upheaval of nature all the time uh we can accept that but it at least it means that God is really saying something intelligible about the way that the Earth is and so so I appreciate that he he takes God created the heavens and the Earth that it does say something intelligible about science that the heavens and the Earth have a creation a finite in time backwards creation moment and the distance in time between that point and where we are now um I I guess I will concede yeah he's right I you know it's inconsequential to the truth of the Bible like this isn't a determining factor and I thought it was fascinating and I would love to hear what you think about it about how the atheistic scientists at the time of this disc discovery that there was a finite beginning to the universe it was such it was pushed back on so much because it seemed to agree with Believers in the Bible too much and so to me this discussion really isn't like he concludes here why are we fighting about it it doesn't necessarily like I don't know if I take one stance to the other I I am sympath uh sympathetic to both really because like like you said before uh we decided to have this discussion is I don't know if I have studied all those facts as much as something like the resurrection of G of Jesus because they just don't matter to me as much they're definitely not on the same plane of requirement like truth requirement do I have to believe the resurrection of Jesus absolutely that it was a real spice time history event do I have to believe you know in the age of the Earth as a real SpaceTime history fact and get it nailed down no they're not on the same plane and the point being that they seems to be a real definite beginning and the time period of that doesn't prove or disprove the Bible and just because you believe in the Bible doesn't mean you necessarily have to be a young Earth creationist MH you do have to be a creationist just not a young Earth one I think I think that's I think that's appropriate is the the truth of who God is um the Bible leans so heavily on the theological fact that he is a creator that there was a creation moment and that he preceded that creation moment and that he's the Lord over everything that was made and the flexibility of the means and what the video camera footage of that creation might have looked like um is flexible yeah and it's kind of like the question is the do you really believe the Bible is literal and it's like that is such it's the worst question to anybody who understands literature if you are trying to make this literary piece of a historical work called the Bible which is a a library of different documents all collected into one and you're trying to study it like an evidential repeated experiments scientific method in that sense you're you're going to be disappointed because it's it's lit it's liter literature which has lots of different literary tools and different types of writings and poems and and it wasn't intended to be a scientific textbook and we all often want to fix we want to fit these ancient documents that are so rich and so core to the fundamentals of our society and and the the ideas of right and wrong and just everything we know and we're benefiting from especially in the west and we want to fit it into our very narrow uh proud view of the world very proud like Hey we're we've come to a complete uh Enlightenment of Truth in being materialists and then look at what our worldview actually turns the world into it just turns it into dust because that's what materialism does it you know it takes meaning out of everything so it's just like it's so ironic and and it often kind of goes back to that whole idea of their uh in Romans Romans 8 I believe or Romans 1 I can't remember but uh they suppress the truth and unrighteousness it's like it's not necessarily that this truth isn't accessible to people it's just ignored or suppressed or I believe that that word for suppressed is like to hold under um kind of like taking a speaker I think we talked about this before taking a speaker and holding it under water so you don't have to hear it yeah I I'll just say I feel right now right now a huge tension in my life of listening to things like this clip and and other probably more modern apologists who I I don't want to be uncharitable you know but but it does feel like sometimes you push the Bible into you know it's just literature and you have to understand its meaning and things like that right and and I and I appreciate that and I do think that it's true that and one of the reasons why we ask questions like this and we don't understand the Bible is because we're actually asking shallow questions how old is the earth is actually a is is a shallow question in relationship to the deeper questions of Genesis 1 like where do we come from who am I accountable to what was I made for what's my purpose in life what is humanity capable of where should I learn what my destiny is and how how can I guide myself through this complex Thing Called Life those are actually hard questions that take a lot longer than a five-minute explainer video to answer you know what I mean and so actually to ask the age of the Earth while it feels like this huge question and it might be a contradiction it shouldn't be a make or break contradiction but it feels like a contradiction in a lot of people's minds um it's more important to ask the real questions that cannot be answered in a f- minute explainer video that have to really be sat with and wrestled with and when you come to an answer to those questions they require real life change you know what I mean how old is the earth that doesn't affect where I live who I marry what I do what I think you know what I listen to what I watch um but these other questions about purpose about meaning about Destiny about Origins uh those really affect life and so those are the Deep questions that we should ask the Bible but I don't want to say that the Bible is just speaking to those question I think it does have answers um to all kinds of things because it's coming from God's heart and so when he says something intelligible about about the way that the universe is I I want to take that seriously too um but I do want to ask the right questions about the Bible and and put them all in the right order you ask the right questions about the Bible first before you get to the less consequential questions yeah later I think about when we approach these ideas in general and to answer these kind of curious questions that are on our mind because I do think curiosity is a good thing and finding explanations is a good thing you shouldn't just just ignore something a question that needs to be answered but all of these questions should become should be for the Christian should become we as a as Believers we should come to these questions with the base understanding that the Bible is true and if there seems to be a contradiction then there must be an explanation for why the Bible is still true in the midst of this and I think it even in the you know inner testamental period what these certain rabbis and people would come to when working with this with these documents with this these truth texts specifically the Old Testament is when they would come to a seeming contradiction they would get excited rather than we get discouraged because we're like man maybe our worldview is not true or maybe the Bible is not true but they would get encouraged because they knew new revelation was around the corner a new understanding of a Nuance of the character of God was around the corner yeah I think to take his example of saying the Bible has always said what it's always said forever well you know since it was written yeah um and so to understand what the Bible is saying is is Paramount and right like in the beginning God created the heavens and the earth that is a creation statement the the purpose of that is in the beginning that there was a beginning God created yeah and I but even what I'm saying is internally to the Bible itself is what is the Bible saying about what it's trying to talk about which is God Origins Destiny meaning purpose relationships things like that um and it does comment on science and when it has comments on science you know you've got these pillars these way stones that just says this is how it is and science is always going to do like this yeah you know for everything you can say well there's a new discovery around the corner there's a new this there's a new understanding and science is always going to do this and so I I do want those those Monumental pillars of the Bible to to stand firm yeah you know what I mean like creation science doesn't hold each other hold itself in tension like the Bible does the truth of the Bible like like you said this Mosaic of Truth and this tapestry of of strings that just hold all of it into tension if you pull one it's going to pull on the other not all science does that not all science is that solid yeah scence science feels like waves crashing on a Shore and constantly remaking it and refining and rediscovering and stuff like that and so there they really are almost two opposite shapes where the Bible is so complex but it's stable and you could spend all of your time digging into the complexity and trying to understand the complexity but it's going to be stable and so better to understand with with full open eyes the stability and the complexity of the Bible and let science do its thing you know uh whatever it's going to do and maybe one day the age of the Earth will turn back around and there'll be a new fashion you new discovery yeah and who like literally who knows who knows for every age in one single generation I'm sure people thought we've done it we've made it we've gotten to you know these certain limits of Science and this is how the world works but there's a new there's a new day around the corner and new discover and all of it yeah so better to look at the Bible in its complexity but also stability and try to understand what it's saying about itself and and what it's saying about what it's actually trying to talk about um and let science be what it's going to be and and where they touch we can have those intelligent conversations and we should allow them to touch and comment on one another uh but I think that the instability of science yeah that that should not be the the staff we lean on the Bible should be the staff we lean on easy to say science but there's so many different types of science exactly that isn't necessarily like I set up an experiment in the lab and I test it there's all different types of science just like you know I don't know if we should be necessarily making this science in general comparison to the Bible as much as we should be testing it with a historical lens right yeah there are two totally different kinds of understanding yeah philosophical social science even a spiritual understanding that you you cannot put a spirit a human spirit in a test tube a human spirit is not subject to repeatable experiments I feel like I'm getting really excited and heated about this but but I feel like it's you know what I mean um things like things like Divine Healing yeah uh because Divine Healing if we believe that Divine Healing is um a gracious act by a person you cannot put a personality through a repeatable experiment do you know what I mean I cried at uh at Sam and Frodo you know on the sides of Mount Doom you know blackened with froto and his finger you know what I mean like but you can't say like okay let's repeat that experiment and show you the same clip again you're not going to get the same reaction out of me you can't put a personality in a test tube and do a repeatable experiment on it so the Bible and and the god of the universe who is the heart behind the Bible you can't put that in a test tube with a repeatable experiment there are totally different realms that you can't try to put them in the same categories yeah I think well Linux even earlier in this um the video if I'm not mistaken talks about the idea of why does tea boil you know and he's like you could take the scientific route where you go well when you get it up to this certain temperature what happens is the pressure in the atmosphere you know and give it that explanation but he's like actually the more right explanation is my wife wanted tea that is why water boils that is why this water is boiling yes is because my wife wanted tea yes I remember having a conversation with somebody dude this is my wheelhouse right now I'm so excited about this I remember having a conversation with somebody and he was really honestly repeating to me what I learned in English classes and science classes and history classes in high school about mythology mythology is um a reason when the for something not explained when we look at stories of Mythology people were making up scientific reasons for let's say why a lightning bolt was striking because because Zeus threw it and that it was this Gap in scientific knowledge that um that we can close now with science and so we can take Zeus out of the picture the god of the gaps kind of thing yeah and so the more Maps we close uh the easier it will be and so science will eventually overtake all of our explanations that right now we leave to God and God will be out of the picture so why not thr out now the whole reason of the Bible is just because people didn't have explanations of things at the time and didn't understand things yes and and I had just read which isn't true a I had just read a book by GK Chesterton called the Everlasting man and it is absolutely in one of my top five favorite books of all time and what he makes so clear in that book is that um the question that people are asking in mythology is actually not why did the lightning bolt strike because there's a voltage differential in the clouds versus the ground and you know there's an arc that yeah releases that voltage differential no the question they're actually asking is why did the lightning strike there and the only way to answer that question is through through a personality like purpose design reason you can only answer those questions through a personality and so he's saying that really the gods of Mythology are not a gods of the gaps in science but is trying desperately to assign personality to an otherwise impersonal Universe yeah and and it was really amazing to watch him just fall silent yeah because um what's so shallow about the question that materialists won't ask is that question why does the tea boil and you immediately go to the materialist answer and and it's almost as though people have forgotten to ask the personal answer why is the universe here well it's always been here or because of the Big Bang or because of evolution like no no no no no but why yeah and I think right now today is one of the times that people are craving that question the most out of anybody is is actually the personal why and what's so brilliant and I think that Christians need to catch up to this is that that is the answer that the Bible that's the question that the Bible is trying to answer the Bible is not trying to ask the materialist repeatable experiment scientist why you can leave that job to science but the Bible is answering the personal why and it's the one thing people are craving the most today and so if we can use the Bible to to wield it to answer the question that it was made to answer and to answer the question that people are actually asking now more than ever um it's like we have the gold we have it in our hands and instead of tracing the rabbit on science type questions use the Bible the tool that it was for the job it was made for well I just think of like you'll know the tree by its fruit and you just walk out the explanation of a worldview and where it leads you and often times you see these people that are answering the te question in that way have no deep personal relationships or and it deeply depress them by themselves and the people that answer it the other way and really believe that their the the universe is personal they have the deepest relationships like we all have close close friendships and that's one of the things that we adore the most is like the genu uh genuine personal Brotherhood friendships relationships yes and that's actually what gives us meeting is relationship even in you know science relationship gives you meaning at least in physics it does it gives you position you know it gives you value and and I really think sometimes those people are missing the the real thing that gives them meaning in life in general I don't I don't want to slam you know lost people are lost and so I don't want to slam them too hard but but I have noticed in evangelism John Cena I have noticed in evangelism when I talk to to somebody and I'll just you know you reach your hand out for a stranger and you try to start a conversation I have noticed that when people um will look me in the eyes when they'll engage in a conversation when they'll um respond questions in kind how are you doing today oh how are you doing today uh what do you do for a living what do you do for a living I have noticed the more personable people are um almost invariably they are either Christians or they have a Christian background they were raised Christian and the people who are cold who are impersonal I have I have just noticed and I you know they're lost and the reason why they're that way is because they're lost and I and so I don't want to come down on them too hard for being lost but it's just true that something about the Christian worldview about the value of other people about the value of relationships about the value of the personal uh the idea that persons will go on forever that they're Eternal beings there's something about that world viw that that changes you on a very deep level and and I can just tell I can tell when I talk to people how much of that worldview they believe or don't believe yeah and lastly on the the topic of Miracles right like if creation itself is a miracle and and and God is the god of Miracles he and all of creation has a personal origin yeah and to this idea of the god of the gaps right is that well because we couldn't explain it with science we created the the Zeus and and some of that might be true for mythology but at least for the Bible that's not the case for miracles and you see that in the story of Mary and Joseph with the the uh birth of Jesus because you know people at that time did know where babies came from oh it's no mystery no mystery they know that you know and and Joseph was very aware of this so much so that he wanted to divorce Mary quietly because he was a good man and a and a and a being a spiritual being had to an angel had to come and visit him to convince him otherwise to not do that and he went along with it and and praise God he did yeah right and uh you know there's no God of the gaps there yeah well I think that's the perfect example is that it is not a lack of scientific understanding that made Joseph have to juggle this idea um it came down to there's a personal reason there was a personal intervention by a personal God who came down and did this activity and now there's a whole other issue of him trusting that person and saying I'm going to participate in whatever plan you have for this child that and and that makes him a righteous man but the the understanding that this activity that is miraculous the source is a person a person who is acting in history and can do things beyond my conception but but it's his activity that is at work here and it has nothing to do with the lack of science understanding but everything to do with a personal worldview about what's out there and who's in charge and how things work that at the back of all of it is is a person yeah so to bring this all together so we watched the clip from John Linux that basically led us to the idea of like what is the purpose of the Bible what what is the Bible actually trying to get at and the purpose seems so much more personal so much more uh really different than these questions of how old the Earth is and these more what You' say you know not to answer and even more so maybe not the most important thing that you should focus on right now you know and and and maybe focusing on those things might be leading you to a place where uh you're you're disregarding some personal relationships in your life and and even specifically having a personal relationship with the Creator himself yeah which is accessible which is very accessible yeah um um I think it is an often forgotten fact that the forefathers of scientific exploration like Newton and Kepler and I forget the guy's name I think his name is Maxwell who was studying electricity uh man those guys were devout Christians and their study of the impersonal Universe came from a deep understanding that there is a personality behind that universe that I'm sorry they understood that the Universe was not impersonal but that it is personal it came from a personal mind and their love for the world and their love for science actually went from Bible personal love of God to science yeah and um so we it's not always helpful to ask hard you know contradictory questions the other way that the greatest science has always been done outwards from the love of the Bible scien it faith and assumption to even ask these scienic questions like you have to assume that there's laws of the universe for mathematical equations to work out and and that was rooted in this biblical worldview that there seems there's a lawgiver and there seems to be laws of the way things operate and so it's it was out of a worship of the Creator to go discover more of what he made yeah yeah and so man they science in the Bible are not are not enemies they're not in Conflict um and the best lovers of the Bible and the best lovers of God have always excelled in science um so praise God I'll pray yeah thank you Lord thank you Father for for how personal you are and for giving us the Bible and giv us Great Men of God like John Linux we just pray over him we pray over James tour we pray over all of the people listening Lord Jesus that and and watching on YouTube Lord Jesus that you will just touch them today through this episode that you will uh Reveal Your Holy Spirit to a greater extent to them Lord Jesus to show that they're you're accessible you're personal Lord Jesus and your and your scriptures have very clear explanations of how we ought to live and who we are and and why we're here Lord Jesus so God will you fill us with purpose today as we move through our day in Jesus name amen amen hey guys thank you for making it to the end of this episode if you enjoyed it please leave a like a comment and subscribe to our Channel and if you want to give to the podcast you can give at Divine creative. org and that link will be in the bio and on our Channel

Channel: Get To The Heart

Views: 140,753

Keywords: age of earth, how old is the earth, age of the earth according to the Bible, Bible, Science, Age of the Earth, Reconciling, Scripture, John Lennox, Origins, Creation, Genesis, Young Earth, Old Earth, Biblical Interpretation, Biblical Worldview, Christian Apologetics, Science and Religion, Evolution, Creationism, Christianity, Christian Podcast, Jesus, Jesus Podcast, Bible Podcast, lennox, John lennox

Id: rlj201AfbCo

Length: 37min 55sec (2275 seconds)

Published: Tue Jan 16 2024