What if I also adhere to the inerrancy of Scriptures?  Heresy you say!

Can the Bible and Science Both be Correct?

Hey, I happen to be an “old earth” guy.  I think there is overwhelming scientific evidence that planet earth is approximately 4.6 billion years old and that the beginning of the entire universe took place about 14 billion years ago.  What if I also adhere to the inerrancy of Scriptures?  Heresy you say!  How can one embrace cosmological, geological and physical evidence for the creation of the earth over billions of years while the Book of Genesis clearly states creation over six 24 hour periods suggestive of an earth of only 6,000 years old?   Let me highly recommend a book by Dr. Gerald Schroeder entitled: The Science of God.  Don’t be freaked out by the title.  This book is an easy and fun read, and you don’t need the mind of God to understand it.

Discovery of the “Big Bang” is said to have converted more astrophysicists into theists than any other scientific breakthrough in history.  Why? It seems that this cataclysmic event marked the beginning of time and space.  For the first time in history, science confirmed a “beginning” to the universe.  Scientists have tracked the expansion of our universe back to within 10-43 seconds of its birth, and it is rather incredible to imagine that all of the universe’s mass and energy started out as a single point the size of a pencil tip.  Within micro seconds the newly created universe expanded exponentially and has continued its expansion for the last 14 billion years or so.  Schroeder reminds us that while expansion accelerated, so did the expansion and acceleration of time itself.  Astrophysicists have calculated that a second of elapsed time early in the universe’s life would equal a million million seconds today.  Go ahead and read that sentence again.  Because of the expansion of space and time from the big bang forward, the rate of time back then was 1012 times slower than what it is today.  If a pulse signal was sent out once every second back then, in reality it would be received today once every million million seconds.  Schroeder points out that no less than a dozen physics text books come up with the same conclusion: the relationship between time near the beginning of the universe and time today is a factor of a million million.  He further notes that this “cosmic rate of time” ceased when Adam was created 5.5 days into creation.  Now guess what:  expansion of 5.5 days by a factor of a million million equals an age of approximately 15 billion years.

Is it then possible that scientific calculations and the Biblical account time frame of creation support each other?  Scientific estimates accurately estimate the age of the universe in actual “cosmological time” as 14-15 billion years.  The book of Genesis suggests an age of 6,000 years based on a clock which began ticking at its present rate after the universe had expanded into its present size.  The initial 14-15 billion years of the universe’s birth and expansion would have equaled only 1/100,000 of a second today.   The key point here is that our present rate of time, with a week equaling seven 24 hour periods, is the proper rate of time following the early expansion of the universe when the rate of time was a million million times different.  At this “modern rate”, the biblical account of six 24 hour periods of creation seems correct and supported by modern cosmological evidence when, and only when, the two time scales are considered.

My recommendation: pick up a copy of Schroeder’s The Science of God and wrap your mind around time and space.  Go ahead, challenge yourself and have fun!