Time, time, time, see what’s become of me………

Did Paul Simon know just how profound this lyric was when he penned it into his Hazy Shade of Winter song several decades ago? 

So what exactly has become of time? Which is right “young earth” or “old earth” – the Genesis account or science? If the Bible is God’s Word, and therefore inerrant, then it must be true that the universe was created over six consecutive 24-hour periods. This would further suggest a relatively young earth of only 10,000 years or so.  

But God has also blessed us with science to measure the observable world around us, and science suggests that the universe came into being some 14 billion years ago, while the earth has been around for roughly 4 billion years.

So, which is correct? The age thing is one of the more perplexing issues at the crossroads of faith and science. I personally have struggled with it for quite some time. How can God’s Word say one thing while science says something else? The answer may very well be time, time, time, see what’s become of me.  

A physicist by the name of Gerald Schroeder has made some calculations based on the changing rate of time. In Schroeder’s book, The Science of God – The Convergence of Scientific and Biblical Wisdom, he points out that at the instant of creation, the speed of light (and therefore the speed of time itself) was very different from the tick of today’s clock. Think of an explosion of light, such as you have with a firework bursting against a black sky. The firecracker’s light explodes with amazing speed and then slows as its energy dissipates. The same is true of our continually expanding universe. At the moment of the “Big Bang” and creation light travelled millions of times faster than it does today. As this energy wanes, light now travels much slower – like a dissipating firecracker. Therefore, the cosmic clock “ticked” much more rapidly at the point of creation than it does today. As the universe expanded, its clock was becoming much more aligned with today’s time as dictated by our current speed of light (~186,000 miles per second). 

So, what has become of time? Since time is driven by the speed of light, it too has slowed coincident with the dissipation of light energy. 

Schroeder has calculated this drop-off in light speed and found that a 24 “hour” tick of the cosmic clock at the point of creation would indeed have equaled hundreds of millions of years of cosmic time. The six days of Genesis would actually have included billions of years, even while the “days” remained 24 hour days. And guess what? Schroeder’s calculations indicate an actual period of creation as approximately 5.8 literal days as measured at the beginning of time and some 14 billion years when viewed from today’s perspective. In other words, it is very possible that the Genesis account and our scientific observations are both correct.

So time, time, time, see what’s become of me? My how you’ve changed! Think about it, while humming Hazy Shade of Winter.

While many organizations espouse and promote specific Biblical interpretations over others, the Center for Faith and Science International (www.cfsint.org) is dedicated to the pursuit of truth, and in so doing welcomes multiple interpretations and thoughts relative to our single, loving and omnipotent God. Make no mistake, God and God alone has all the answers and represents pure unadulterated and absolute truth, not us!

We welcome your contribution to the discussion.