CREATIONIST BELIEF, the Many Flaws of the Young Earth Myth

CREATIONIST BELIEF, the Many Flaws of the Young Earth Myth

For many true believers, the general concept of the Earth and its physical presence is that an intelligent force brought all physical matter into existence, including the trillions of stars, billions of galaxies, our solar system, Earth and everything in it. Most believe it started with a single creation event.

“Young Earth” creationists believe in a literal interpretation of the Genesis creation account, and conclude that the universe was created 6,000 years ago. The primary method for arriving at this number is determined by counting the generations of biblical figures recorded throughout the Bible, starting with Adam in the Garden of Eden. These creationists believe that any evidence not supporting their theory is incorrectly applied, or that the data is misinterpreted. Their view is that the Bible is the only source that should be examined to prove creation, and the events recorded in it should be taken as they interpret them.

Young Earth proponent Henry Morris stated, “Either…believe God’s Word all the way, or not at all” (The Long War Against God), the presumption here of course being that whatever Mr. Morris and his fellow-believers hold as God’s Word is the ONLY correct version.

Shai Cherry of Vanderbilt University notes that Jewish theologians have generally rejected such literalist interpretations of the written text, and that even Jewish commentators who oppose some aspects of Darwinian thought generally accept scientific evidence that the Earth is much older.

The genealogy-counting method is most often credited to James Ussher (4 January 1581–21 March 1656) , who was a prolific scholar, most famous for publishing a chronology that purported to time and date creation to the night preceding 23 October 4004 BC, according to the proleptic Julian calendar.

His work calculated the date of the Creation to have been nightfall preceding 23 October 4004 BC. The time of the Ussher chronology is frequently misquoted as being 9 a.m., noon or 9 p.m. on 23 October.

Using different methods, Ussher was able to convince himself that he had indeed established an unadjusted Creation date of about 4000 BC.

But even then he had move it back to 4004 BC to take account of an error perpetrated by Dionysius Exiguus, the founder of the Anno Domini numbering system. Josephus indicated that the death of Herod the Great occurred in 4 BC; therefore, Jesus could not have been born after that date. Therefore, by his adjusted calendar, Jesus was born some time between 37 BC (when Herod came to power) and 4 BC. Ignoring the irony of employing BC (meaning of course, before Christ), Ussher calculated that Christ's birth year must have been 4 BC.

The season in which Creation occurred was the subject of considerable theological debate in Ussher's time. Many scholars proposed it had taken place in the spring, the start of the Babylonian, Chaldean and other cultures' chronologies. Others, including Ussher, thought it more likely that it had occurred in the autumn, largely because that season marked the beginning of the Jewish year.

Ussher further narrowed down the date by using the Jewish calendar to establish Creation as beginning on a Sunday near the autumnal equinox. The day of the week was a backward calculation from the six days of creation with God resting on the seventh, which in the Jewish tradition is Saturday — hence Creation began on a Sunday. The astronomical tables that Ussher probably used were Kepler's Tabulae Rudolphinae (Rudolphine Tables, 1627). Using them, he would have concluded that the equinox occurred on Tuesday October 25, only one day earlier than the traditional day of its creation, on the fourth day of Creation week, Wednesday, along with the Sun, Moon, and stars (Genesis 1:16). Modern equations place the autumnal equinox of 4004 BC on Sunday October 23.

The single largest stumbling block to this belief being anything more than a myth, however, is the bad methodology Ussher used in order to arrive at his figures.

Isaac AsimovIsaac Asimov (c. January 2, 1920 – April 6, 1992) was an American author and professor of biochemistry, best known for his works of science fiction and for his popular science books, as well as other non-fiction titles. Asimov was a strong proponent of scientific reasoning, and someone who adamantly opposed creationists, religious zealots, pseudoscience, and mysticism. Asimov did not oppose genuine religious feeling in others, must be said, but he did, however, have little patience for intolerance or superstition masquerading as religion.

He published Asimov's Guide to the Bible. Complete with maps and tables, the guide goes through the books of the Bible in order, explaining the history of each one and the political influences that affected it, as well as biographical information about the important characters.

As explained in his Guide, the Old Testament portion of what is seen by many as the complete Bible was assembled and codified by Jewish scholars in Byzantium around 300 AD. As was so often the case in the time before the term ‘federal grant’ came into existence, these scholars had to search for someone to fund them in their efforts (even religiously inspired scholars have to feed and clothe themselves, after all). The people most likely to support such an effort would of course be fellow Jews, and the best choices among that group would be the affluent ones; for that time and place, that meant the Jewish traders engaged in commerce along the fabled Silk Road that connected Europe, the Middle East, Southeast Asia, and China.

The way to convince such worldly, materialist capitalists is to assure them that their money will also guarantee their own family’s immortality. In other words, the trader-princes’ family genealogy would be included in the Good Book; the more money donated, the earlier one’s family tree would be listed (the idea being that, the sooner one’s family lineage appears in the book, the more valid is your clan’s claim to being ‘more’ Jewish than other families who get listed later).

It is generally agreed among archeologists who study the period that there were likely no more than six to eight thousand Jews residing in Byzantium by the end of the third, beginning of the fourth century AD, so any number of family genealogies coming from so small a group would include several overlapping names, replications, and just plain errors.

But Ussher failed to take this factor into account when made his first efforts at wringing a date for the beginning of the universe out of the Bible. He simply brought the genealogies together, allowed fifty years for the lifespan of each name (which in itself is an unforced error, in that it presupposes that each and every man will sire the next generation in their fiftieth year of life), added the numbers together, arrived at a number of roughly six thousand, and –Glory Hallelujah!—it was very nearly the same number that was in the Jewish calendar … THAT can’t possibly be a coincidence, now can it?

Another problem with a 6,000 yo world is the sheer size of the entire human population, which is currently estimated as being just below 7 billion people.

An astute reader of the Bible won't forget about the bottle neck of the 600 years after Adam and Eve, when Noah's flood occurred. That would give us a length of only 5,400 years for the population to go from 8 humans to just under seven billion (www.secretsituation.com/geo/graphic.htm) today.

Even with exponential growth there isn't enough time; lack of medical technology/methodology for most of our recorded history (technology and methodologies that don’t even exist before the era of recordkeeping began), rampant plagues, unrestrained infant mortality, all of these and other impediments have to be factored in.

Young Earthers often use fake growth curves to prove their point. They pick a number akin to modern population growth, assume that there were no population decreases (like the Black Death, that killed as estimated 25 million people in less than five years) in order to get the results they want. They ignore the periods in which growth was restricted by everything from limited food supply to extended land wars, all items that fall under Malthusian Law.

(Malthusian Law is the theory that population tends to increase at a faster rate than its means of subsistence and that unless it is checked by moral restraint or disaster --as disease, famine, or war-- widespread poverty and degradation inevitably result)

What Ussher had actually done was engage in magical thinking; like the magician who pulls a rabbit out of his hat, he had ‘gotten’ something out of the Bible, even though the number was never actually in there to begin with.

And, like a stubborn stain that you can’t scrub out of a favorite shirt, no matter how hard you try, the Young Earthers just won’t acknowledge the truth of the matter and go find something useful to do with their lives.