Category Archives: Science

How Old is the Universe?

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From the Ligonier website:

During the second Question and Answers period at the Ligonier Ministries 2012 National Conference,000 years old and those who think it is much older. Dr. R.C. Sproul took about five minutes to answer the question, and what he said in that brief period of time should be heard by every Reformed Christian who is interested in this subject and by every Reformed Christian who is discussing and debating it.

The importance of what Dr. Sproul says in this response lies in the fact that he reminds us of certain issues that are necessary to a proper approach to this question, issues that are routinely mishandled, neglected, or simply ignored. Dr. Sproul, for example, reminds us of the source of both general and special revelation, the difference between God’s revelation (general or special) and our interpretation of that revelation, and the fallibility of our interpretations of both kinds of revelation. In doing so, he reminds us of several aspects of a distinctively Reformed approach to questions of science and Scripture that have been largely forgotten in the debates of the last several decades.

A Reformed approach to the age of the universe question that takes these issues into account is missing from much of the contemporary discussion.

Please take a few minutes to watch Dr. Sproul’s entire response.

Two Kinds of Science

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From the Answers in Genesis website:

We could simply tell you there are two main types of scientific research—operational and historical—but we’d rather show you. And to do that, we want you to take part in a short experiment. (Don’t worry. You won’t even have to move from your seat.)

Imagine that a friend points to a building and asks you to tell them about it. Being the inquisitive individual that you are, you immediately set out to describe the building in as much detail as you can.

The first part of your investigation is pretty straightfoward. You climb to the top and drop down your measuring tape to find that the building is exactly 1,453 feet and 8 9/16 inches from the ground to the tip of the broadcast tower—that includes over 100 floors and an observatory. You put the building on your scales and find it to be 365,000 tons.

“That’s great,” says your friend. “But when was it built?”

Measurements alone can’t tell you that part. You could make an educated guess, of course, but there’s really no need. After all, you have an eyewitness account.

After a quick Internet search, you hand your friend the complete history of this amazing historical monument — otherwise known as the Empire State Building in New York City.

Two Kinds of Science

While our experiment above was fictional, the two methods used for uncovering data aren’t. Some bits of information can be gleaned simply be examining things with your senses—such as the height and weight. Other people can then check your results by making measurements of their own. We often call this operational science (also called observational science—for obvious reasons).

But some research requires either making educated assumptions about the past by examining evidence in the present (historical or “origins” science)—or finding a primary source of information. While our assumptions could be accurate, it’s always better to start with an eyewitness account. Otherwise, our assumptions could lead us in the wrong direction.

For example, some geologists take present-day rates of radiometric decay and rock formation and imagine that the rates have always been the same. That’s why they think the earth is so old (it’s not). But we can’t zip back in time to test this for accuracy.

What we can do, however, is check our historical research against a trustworthy eyewitness account. But what about for the history of the earth? Does something like that exist? You bet—and this amazing compendium of history isn’t hard to find. Just pull out your trusty Bible.

A Trustworthy Source

The Bible often gets attacked as being antiquated and anti-science. But that’s not the case. In fact, using the Bible as a framework allows us to understand why science is even possible and to make sense of the past from a solid foundation.

Starting from the Bible, given to us by the Creator of all things, we know when we’re on the right track (Hebrews 4:13; Colossians 2:2–3).

Stay in your field of expertise

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Stephen Hawking (pictured) recently portrayed heaven as being a fairy tale. N. T. Wright reponded with a brief article in the Washington Post‘s On Faith blog:

“It’s depressing to see Stephen Hawking, one of the most brilliant minds in his field, trying to speak as an expert on things he sadly seems to know rather less about than many averagely intelligent Christians. Of course there are people who think of ‘heaven’ as a kind of pie-in-the-sky dream of an afterlife to make the thought of dying less awful. No doubt that’s a problem as old as the human race. But in the Bible ‘heaven’ isn’t ‘the place where people go when they die.’ In the Bible heaven is God’s space while earth (or, if you like, ‘the cosmos’ or ‘creation’) is our space. And the Bible makes it clear that the two overlap and interlock. For the ancient Jews, the place where this happened was the temple; for the Christians, the place where this happened was Jesus himself, and then, astonishingly, the persons of Christians because they, too, were ‘temples’ of God’s own spirit.

Hawking is working with a very low-grade and sub-biblical view of ‘going to heaven.’ Of course, if faced with the fully Christian two-stage view of what happens after death—first, a time ‘with Christ’ in ‘heaven’ or ‘paradise,’and then, when God renews the whole creation, bodily resurrection—he would no doubt dismiss that as incredible. But I wonder if he has ever even stopped to look properly, with his high-octane intellect, at the evidence for Jesus and the resurrection? I doubt it—most people in England haven’t. Until he has, his opinion about all this is worth about the same as mine on nuclear physics, i.e. not much…”

HT: The Resurgence