How Old Is the Earth REALLY? Pastors Debate Old vs. New Earth | Make Heaven Crowded Ep. 31

In this episode of Make Heaven Crowded, we dive into one of the most debated questions in Christianity: How old is the earth—really?

Two pastors sit down to have an honest, respectful conversation on Old Earth vs. New Earth perspectives. What does the Bible actually say about creation? How should we interpret Genesis? And how do science and Scripture interact on this topic?

We explore questions like:

• What are the key differences between Old Earth and New Earth views?
• How should Genesis 1 be interpreted—literally, poetically, or something else?
• Does science conflict with the Bible, or can they work together?
• Is the age of the earth a core issue of the Christian faith?
• How should believers approach disagreements within the Church?

This episode isn’t about winning an argument—it’s about seeking truth with humility. Whether you’ve never thought about this topic or hold a strong view, this conversation will challenge you to think deeper and hold your convictions with both confidence and grace.

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📖 Topics: Creation, Genesis, Faith & Science, Theology
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Transcript

SPEAKER_02 0:00

Welcome to the Make Heaven Crowded Podcast. I am joined with Pastor Roger and Pastor Luke. I am Pastor Jordan. And today, I wonder what that sounded like on the microphone.

SPEAKER_03 0:09

Probably very loud. That's okay.

SPEAKER_02 0:11

We have a special treat because we're going to have a showdown. Yeah, let's go. Between Luke. Oh, he is putting the I called it out. Drew Bishop.

SPEAKER_01 0:19

Are we arm wrestling?

SPEAKER_02 0:20

Uh you probably wouldn't. Maybe in a sense, but not literally.

SPEAKER_03 0:24

Intellectual arm wrestling, is what we're doing.

SPEAKER_02 0:26

So, Roger, you we already kind of talked about your sermon uh in our last couple podcasts about assurance of salvation. But today, you and Luke are going to debate, and I have to somehow moderate this.

SPEAKER_03 0:37

So two weeks ago, something we talked about assurance of salvation. We talked about once saved, always saved as our hot button topic. At the time, I didn't realize I was going to preach on assurance. Well, then after we did the podcast, I looked at it. I'm like, no, I really think I need to cover assurance of salvation. So basically, everything we talked about in our in that podcast a couple weeks ago, can you lose your salvation? would be a good summary of kind of what I preached on yesterday. But yeah, beyond that, in my apologetics class, I made a promise to the class at the end of the year, the final lesson would be a debate between Luke Winfrey and myself. Because there's we agree on 99%, right? We're we both believe we're going to heaven. Um, but there's a few secondary theological issues that we actually don't agree on. Age of the earth. That's good. Uh cessationism versus continuationism, and you're like, I don't know what those terms are. We'll we'll do that episode later. And then eschatology, pre versus post uh Eschatology meaning in times. In times theology. We we would have a disagreement on that.

SPEAKER_01 1:38

So and we spend so much time arguing that I don't even know where Jordan stands on those three issues. And so I'm excited.

SPEAKER_03 1:44

I had to ask him.

SPEAKER_01 1:45

Nobody knows. I'm excited to hear what his thoughts are on those three as well. And so this is like a new part of the series within the podcast.

SPEAKER_03 1:53

Well, we talked at the very beginning. We wanted to have an apologetic kind of uh role, use this as an apologetic tool.

SPEAKER_01 1:59

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:59

Um Age of the Earth is one that you know you may be listening to this and thought, I didn't even know this was a debate. Um, I know that many people have asked me, of course, Answers in Genesis, which is very much a young earth creationist belief, Kinham and their ministry. If you've heard of the Ark Encounter Creation Museum, I actually took our middle schoolers to that uh a few years ago. Um I didn't tell them what I believed. I wanted them to see from a young earth view. I would say I'm in the minority of Southern Baptists. I believe the universe is 4.6 billion years old. Um I actually debated that uh a few years ago at the Missouri Baptist Convention's annual meeting. So I've I have debate experience literally on this topic, which I think gives me an advantage over that.

SPEAKER_01 2:38

Yeah, you also have debate experience in high school. Period.

SPEAKER_03 2:41

Yes, exactly.

SPEAKER_01 2:42

Uh but this is I didn't even know our high school had a debate. I know you don't. Yeah. But this is your opportunity to prove a group. I didn't know they had a debate team, which hey, support the debate team, love them.

SPEAKER_03 2:53

Great people. This is your opportunity to prove that debate experience doesn't make you a good debater, or does it make you the correct debater because you can now defeat the the actual debater?

SPEAKER_01 3:01

Yeah, the master.

SPEAKER_03 3:02

That's right. So we'll see how that goes. And uh, where do we want to start? Jordan's gonna be our kind of our moderator, if you will. Um now this isn't gonna be like a Lincoln Douglas opening statement, opening statement.

SPEAKER_01 3:16

I don't even know like Abraham Lincoln. We're just gonna let it read.

SPEAKER_03 3:18

Abraham Lincoln and Stephen Douglas, the very first presidential debate, that's where we get the idea of Lincoln Douglas debate.

SPEAKER_01 3:23

Okay, I had no idea.

SPEAKER_03 3:23

Yeah, there you go. That's the debate that I did was Lincoln Douglas. So uh do we do I don't know what's the best way?

SPEAKER_01 3:29

Do we want to I think it's starting off like with introducing this topic as we talk about the age of the earth? Why why does it matter? Why does it not matter that we can differ on this and yet still be pastors of the same church? And I I would say as we are going into this little series where we're talking about little differences, I think it's an aspect that I love about our church so much is that we are a church for for all people. You know, do you believe that Jesus Christ is your Lord and Savior? Uh okay, you are welcome here. Do you believe He's the only way to get to heaven? Okay, you are welcome here. You don't know about all that yet and you still have questions, you are welcome here. And I think it's cool that even us as lead pastors, we might disagree on these little things, but we don't get let it get in the way of what we're trying to do.

SPEAKER_03 4:09

And I think it's important there's primary and there's secondary. Primary, yes, you know, but even uh beyond that, so like the Trinity.

SPEAKER_04 4:15

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 4:16

If someone were to say, well, I believe Jesus died for me and rose again, but I don't believe in the triune God, okay, well that that's a primary issue. Like we need to actually sit down. Heresy, it the the view of heresy is saying that actually goes against the nature of God. And so if you have a heretical view, there's all kinds of different heresies we can talk about. A common one is was Jesus 100% man, 100% God. Yeah. If you believe God was more, or if you believe Jesus was more man than God or more God than man in his ministry, that would be violating the hypostatic union. That would be a heresy. And so we're not debating uh heretical views, we're debating secondary views. The age of the earth, I think, is a very good textbook uh secondary view that when we get to heaven, the question isn't going to be asked how old did we think the earth was? But I do think it's important how we view the Bible and how we interpret the Bible, it's still a very helpful discussion.

SPEAKER_01 5:06

Yeah, because what we both believe is the inherently of scripture. We believe that there is no fault to it. And so if that is true, how can both you believe what you believe and I believe what I believe if the Bible's inerrant. I think that's the heartbeat of the question is how can you have somebody that's an older, somebody that's a young earth, and yet we still believe in the inerrancy of scripture.

SPEAKER_03 5:24

Yeah, and I think that we are going to show today, even though we may disagree on parts of what scripture is telling us, we may have different interpretations on these secondary topics. It doesn't change one iota, how we view Christ, how we worship Christ, how we live our life with Christ in our life.

SPEAKER_02 5:39

So yeah, well, and you guys all danced around the the word is salvation, it does not have a salvation. Salvific, yeah. Salvific, it's not bearing on that. This is more just some interesting things in the Bible that people can't say for sure one way or the other. And we'll debate this for however long, and nobody's still gonna know for sure until we get to heaven.

SPEAKER_01 5:58

So, this is what we're gonna be giving them a snippet of is really what we've been debating the past six years. This started when we were in youth ministry.

SPEAKER_03 6:04

Yeah, this was actually you and I were in our old office. We were youth pastors, and which was also my old office. Your old office, yeah. And Gary Longnecker's old office. It's everyone's old office. But we were literally debating, and what was funny is we had like one office. It is a cool office. We had like one kid in there in the beginning. By the time we were done debating it, there was like there was like people in there, like, okay, we want to hear this.

SPEAKER_01 6:24

I'm not getting there's like 20 people in there.

SPEAKER_03 6:26

Yeah, it was like, let's listen to this. So people are interested in it. Um, and I think from my perspective, you know, I grew up going to public school. I never went to church. And so when I became a Christian and I found out that a lot of these Baptists believe the universe is 6,000 years old, like as an atheist, I believed that there were trees older. There are bristle-cone pine trees that are standing in California today that some scientists would say are actually older than 6,000 years old. So when I became a Christian, I'm like, 4.6 billion years. And you're telling me the universe is 6,000 years? Yeah. So I think starting out, this is a theological belief. Now, young earth creationists would use science, and you talk about is Genesis history, the documentary where they only talk to scientists, is predominantly who they are.

SPEAKER_02 7:10

Onologists and PhDs at the end of the year. Exactly.

SPEAKER_03 7:13

Kurt Y is probably my favorite. He is a paleontologist, has his PhD from Harvard. So we're not talking like people that are just anti-science. Their view of science, though, is 100% dictated by their theology. Right? There is no young earth creationist who is not religious. Like you'll never hear of an atheist that believes the universe is 6,000 years old. It is it is exclusively found in Christian circles. And so I think first off, let's ask the question how do we even come up with this belief of 6,000 years? It starts outer. Well, how do we come up with the belief of six years? You choose it. You choose it. Because I think what why why does that matter? Or why do how do we get that? And it starts out with the days of creation. That that's really what we're talking about here.

SPEAKER_01 7:56

So when we go back into the Genesis story, and you know, Jesus talks about or the scripture starts off with in the beginning, right? And then it goes into the six days, says there's evening, there was morning, and there was the first day. And so as we talk about those six days, the this question hits on was that a literal six days that the Bible is talking about, or was it a more longer period of time? Because we have science to show how old the earth is. So you explain just really quick your old earth, why that is a theory, and then I'll explain the young earth and why that is a theory.

SPEAKER_03 8:30

So the Hebrew language, which is one of the smallest vocabularies in any language, any especially uh foreign language, you know, when we look at all these different languages, Hebrew is a small language. And so what we find are we finding- What do you mean by small? Small is in there's not a lot of words in the Hebrew language. And so what you find are that, for example, the word yom has six distinct literal meanings. Not figurative, not hyperbolic, not allegorical, but literal meanings. When you look at the word yom in the Old Testament, um, epochs, we see epochs throughout the Old Testament that were basically periods of time, and the same word that is used for epoch is also the same word used for day or in a 24-hour day. So we have six distinct literal meanings. We see this word yom used in in multiple different contexts within the Old Testament.

SPEAKER_02 9:19

Um that in itself is kind of a characteristic trait of Hebrew in that it's consonants, and you can fill in, I guess, nouns and create multiple different contextual words for one root Hebrew word. Correct. Right. Yeah. It all comes from one root Hebrew word, but then it can kind of splinter off into multiple meanings.

SPEAKER_01 9:43

You're you're smarter than me. You use big words. I'm gonna put it in every man language. One Hebrew word, there's gonna be about six, five to six English words for that one that would fit that one Hebrew word.

SPEAKER_02 9:55

And hence the difficulty of translating correct original Hebrew into our language.

SPEAKER_01 9:59

That's why when you read your Bible, especially in the Old Testament, that you see all the different translations and well, why do they have that word? Why do they have that word? Yeah, that is why. So, yeah, everything you just said summarized in for one Hebrew word, there's probably about five or six.

SPEAKER_03 10:12

Yeah, so when you when you read Genesis one and you see um, you know, on the first day, God created, on the second day, God created, the third day, you know, we see the sun on day four, um, we see light and darkness separated on day one, we see humans created on day six, um, along with land mammals, and then we see rest on day seven. And so for many people, that how we come up with this idea of a young earth is that the only way to get to that conclusion is if we are reading 24-hour days in the creation story. That's the only way. Um, for me and for many historians dating all the way back to the early church fathers, back to St. Augustine even, those were not viewed as 24-hour days, but instead that epoch, a period of time. And so if I were to tell you my dad was a really good baseball player back in his day, that would be the word yom. But I'm not saying my dad was a good baseball player for 24 hours. I'm saying my dad was a good baseball player for a period of time. And there is a lot of scriptural evidence to support that that would be the case. Um, and we can certainly go into that. And then, of course, I think the scientific side of things, um, it would make more sense in how we view uh the nature of the world, the nature of humanity, that it would add up. So for me, I read on day one, this is what happened. I believe that there is a period of time that that occurred. On day four, the sun is created. Now, how do we as humans determine what a 24-hour day is? We base that off of the rotation, right, of the earth and the sun. Well, the sun's not created till day four, so what about the first three days where we don't even have the sun to be able to interpret what that 24-hour day is? So for me, it's very clear that we don't have to have those 24-hour days. And I think it's 2 Peter 3, where uh Peter writes that, you know, a day in our world is like a thousand years for God. And so how we view time is a very temporal, very universal view in our own world. God, who is outside of space and time, he is not confined to the same limitations that we are as humans when it comes to time.

SPEAKER_01 12:17

Yeah. And so that would be the old earth side. The young earth side, I would say, takes the Bible literally. And so in the beginning in the creation story, when it says there was six days, that it takes it as those six literal days. And so when it says there was morning or there was evening, there was morning, the first day. It takes that as a literal 24-hour day. And that's why in how we get, hey, it's only around six thousand years old compared to millions of years old, in what you are arguing. So that's the very summary of young earth creation versus old earth creation, um, talking about the differences of that.

SPEAKER_03 12:55

Yeah. And I would say evening and morning is used for the first six days. Obviously, we get to day seven where God rests, and in the the terminology then changes, or it's actually absent, that there is no evening and mourning. And so um, what an old earth creationist would argue is that even the consistency of evening and morning, it kind of falls off once we get to that day seven, which is still a portion of creation. I would also argue um when, because what a what what a young earth creationist may argue is how we view the creation account, it makes the most sense that those are 24-hour days. I would actually disagree when we get to day six, um, when Adam is created, and he's told to go and to name all of the animals. And, you know, Old Testament historians say the Garden of Eden, it wasn't a little garden like it's in the back of your grandma's house. This was a garden that could have been a thousand miles long, in which we have all of these kinds of animals. On day six, for Adam to go to name all of the animals. Does it make sense that he set his alarm for 1 a.m.? He ran up, he sprinted, he's just naming, you know, porcupine, donkey, hippopotamus, cow, you know, sprinting, sprinting throughout this entire garden, this vast land, naming these hundreds upon hundreds, if not thousands upon thousands of kinds of animals. Is it more plausible that this was a literal 24-hour period or that it was an epoch, a period of time in which Adam was given this responsibility to go, to have fellowship, and to name the animals? To me, it makes sense that that is a period of time. Moreover, once that, you know, after that happens, he is given a companion, he is given Eve. And in the English standard, it says at long last, Adam is united with Eve at last. That to me wouldn't make sense if Adam was created just a few hours before. That to me reads that Adam has been on this earth for an indefinite period of time, an epoch, and then after he has done all of these responsibilities, he's done some of these obligations, that is when Eve comes in as a companion because Adam's been on the earth now for you know more than just a few hours.

SPEAKER_01 15:00

Yeah, and so that's I think it taking kind of a step back, if you look at Genesis, the first two verses, it says, you know, in the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. Then the rest of the verses after that is him, he generally talks about, hey, he created the heavens and the earth. Well, then he gets specific in how he does that over the next six days. So if you're asking me why do I believe in young earth creation, the thing about old earth and about young earth, we both have to infer things because the Bible is very generic on it. It doesn't explicitly say what was going on. Um, and so we both have to make some sort of well, how do you say like we inference? There's some inferring, yeah. But either either side is it.

SPEAKER_03 15:39

Because Genesis was not written as a science book. It was it was written as yes, it's history, but it's not supposed to give us every single explanation, and that's why we have to be careful not to read everything into the text.

SPEAKER_01 15:50

That's right. Yeah, and so that's to me if if we're having to do that, and I respect your side, but for me, whenever I have to infer things like that, my fallback is always to go to what the Bible literally says. And I know there's areas where you know we can talk about the different things.

SPEAKER_03 16:08

But we're both we we're both literal. I'm I'm saying the day's literal, it's just a different definition of literal. And so I believe in the Genesis account, I believe in the flood, I believe that Adam and Eve are historical figures. I'm using the same word that you're using. I'm using a different interpretation of that word. So when you say you believe in a literal Genesis creation, I believe in a literal Genesis creation. I just believe that the word yom is different than how you view it. So that's the one I think straw man that sometimes young earthers say that I don't believe in a literal Genesis account. Yes, I do.

SPEAKER_01 16:37

Yeah, and so like my pushback to that is you say that, but you don't, because in that where it talks about day, and yeah, you know, the sun wasn't created until day four. So how is there a morning and evening on day one when the sun was not even created? Um, from my understanding and why I believe what I believe, is if God wanted it to be a period of time, that's what translation we would have had is hey, over a period of time, instead of using the term day, and then following up with morning and evening to help us infer, like, oh, that's what he's talking about, morning to evening, 24 hours in that time.

SPEAKER_03 17:10

But in the Hebrew, evening to morning didn't uh they use morning to morning and evening to evening historically in the Hebrew language. And he Ross talks about this in in reasons to believe his his he's an old earth creationist, but to say that evening to morning would not have been a way of understanding a 24-hour period of time. So you have to go back into the context of that, and I would say, why would he have used the word day? Well, if I told you my my dad was a good baseball player back in the day, would you argue, well, if he meant a period of time, why did he use the word day? Well, because the the word day in that context makes sense that it wouldn't be a 24-hour period of time.

SPEAKER_01 17:42

But again, I think that supports what I'm talking about because no time do you go back, oh, back in the first day? Like, why would he be so exact in talking about first day, second day, third day, fourth day, fifth day, sixth day, instead of saying the first period of time, the second period of time, third period, because you don't go back in my dad's first day, back in my dad's second period.

SPEAKER_03 18:05

It's a little apples and oranges because again, the Hebrew vocabulary was was was not vast, like with the vocabulary we have. And so it would have been understood in Hebrew language that of all the limited words that they had to choose, a period of time, an epoch, yom actually would have been the best. And we can go through and see where epoch is mentioned throughout the Old Testament. It is a very common way of describing a period of time.

SPEAKER_01 18:25

Yes, and I okay, that's fine. I'm not talking about yom, I'm talking about right before that. So even referring to it as the first day.

SPEAKER_03 18:34

As the first yom.

SPEAKER_01 18:35

Yeah, the first yom. Because that's the word he's using. Period of time. Yeah. That does not flow in language, and maybe that's just today's in today's translation and how it ends. But that's what I'm saying. If God wanted us to understand it as a period of time, and maybe it is, and I'm wrong, I'm all right with that, then I think he would have put that in. And so when we both have to infer things going on, I'm saying why I chose Young Earth is because if we're both having to infer, to me, it just makes more sense reading it as hey, he's talking about 24-hour days. He's talking about their morning, the evening, and how we understand that is a very good thing.

SPEAKER_03 19:10

The 24-hour day of Jubilee, and the day of Jubilee was seven years, and it's the same. Again, we could go through many different ways.

SPEAKER_02 19:16

Let's do that. Um, so what you all are talking about, like we'll just I'll just read verse three, and God said, Let there be light, and there was light, and God saw the light, and it was good, blah, blah, blah. God called uh the light day and the darkness he called night, and there was an evening and there was a morning the first day, and that's what we're talking about. Yeah, so many times the Bible is the best commentary on itself. So if you go to Daniel chapter eight, there's verses thirteen and fourteen. Uh Daniel is receiving a prophecy from Gabriel, the angel, and it says, Then I heard a holy one speaking. How long will it take for the vision to be fulfilled? He said to me, It will take 2300 evenings and mornings when the sanctuary will be reconsecrated. So, in the Daniel context, which was also Hebrew, there's some of it that's Aramaic, but this one they believe is Hebrew. How would you then um translate the 2300 evenings and mornings in that context?

SPEAKER_03 20:08

So I don't know the context of the Daniel and what I'm putting.

SPEAKER_02 20:13

What would you how would you do that?

SPEAKER_03 20:14

So this is what I was quoting from Hugh Ross, um, matter of days, page 76. I had to go back to my old debate notes. Evening, uh the phrase and was evening and was morning phrase was not used to mark a 24-hour day. Um, ancient Hebrew most often marked 24-hour days with evening to evening and morning to morning. The and was evening and was morning phrase in Genesis 1 is unique, thereby alerting the reader that these days may have been periods other than 24 hour days. Without diving into the comment. Who was it that said that? That's Hugh Ross, who's a uh old earth creationist, uh uh astrophysicist, and what one of my favorite uh theologians. Um and so I've never read the the usage of David saying evening and morning, but Daniel. Daniel, I'm sorry. But with that, um again. It's chapter 8, verses 13 and 14. But even in that, let's say that we are describing 24 hour days in the way that he says that, and that's the exact same language in context, which we can't say that, that is used in the beginning of Genesis. How do we then But if it's Hebrew, it should be the same. Well, the context is not the same.

SPEAKER_02 21:18

The context of day of that of what it's still it's marking out a number of evenings and mornings, it's a number of it's an amount of time, and it's the same Hebrew using the same language.

SPEAKER_03 21:28

Why would they be different? Well, because again, that's based off of that's post-Sun, so that's post-day four, and so we're using evening and mourning.

SPEAKER_02 21:37

Well, but that but it's the same language as in verse three, okay. We're talking about before there was any sun or moon, it's using the same language delivered by Gabriel the angel to Daniel. Sure. To help him understand when things are going to be restored from um their same language they're in.

SPEAKER_03 21:54

Same language, same uh different context, different time frame.

SPEAKER_02 21:57

But same words you talking about. Doesn't matter.

SPEAKER_03 22:01

Different context. That is done post day four. What is written there? What I'm talking about in the days of creation is that we don't have the sun until day four.

SPEAKER_02 22:08

No, no, no, no. But I'm it's using the same language. It's saying it there were an evening and a morning on the first day. And this is saying this one just happens to say it was a number of hundred of days and evenings and mornings. So why would those be different in the same language?

SPEAKER_03 22:22

This is why I don't like looking up passages. Give Daniel, what's the what's the chapter and verse eight, verses thirteen and fourteen.

SPEAKER_02 22:31

And so the explanation while you're looking it up, the explanation of Daniel, they they take it either as literal days, so that equals like six years and four months, or they look at it from sacrificial days, which actually reduces the number even more. It's down to 1150 days, uh, which is three years and two months. And so I that's why I that that language popped in my brain when we were talking evenings and mornings, because there's a huge debate as to what is that talking about. It's the same language and it's the same verbiage, and it's talking about a period of time. So why would it be different in Genesis versus Daniel when it's the same language talking about a period of time and using the same language of even one evening and more evenings and mornings to calculate amount of time?

SPEAKER_03 23:17

Yeah, so I'm I'm I'm looking real quick on Daniel 8. Um, let's see. So the 2300 days, 2300 daily sacrifices, uh tied to temple sacrifices. Um Daniel is talking about ordinary historical time. The phrase evening and morning of Daniel 8 does not control, let's see, Daniel 8 is apocalyptic prophecy, it is not comparable to creation narrative. Um, marking boundaries does not necessarily mark duration. Um, let's see. And then, of course, the argument I made, the first three creation days occur before the sun governs days. In the first place, young earth creationists have answers for that, but old earth creationists point to it as a reason not to assume ordinary solar days from the start. So I again I haven't done a deep dive. And when I debated this um in 23, Daniel 8, of all the passages that were brought up, this is one that I didn't get a chance to, this was never cited in the debate.

SPEAKER_02 24:08

And so And the only reason why I bring it up is it's using the same terminology to mark out a period of time, evenings and mornings. It's the same thing in Genesis 1, verse 3, or on through until you get till the sun and the moon, and it gives you a uh 24-hour period of of what that should be, because we we know that that equals 24 hours. And that's why it popped in my brain is like there's another place that it talks about even and it I looked it up, and that's and that's why I was just curious. I'm not saying you're right or wrong. I'm just seeing same language, same uh speaking of a period of time and using the same verbiage within the same language. So why would one be different?

SPEAKER_03 24:45

Yeah, and I would go back to what I said is you same language can be utilized again. Same thing when we talk about uh the Sabbath. There are certain instances where there's a literal 24-hour Sabbath, and then we view um, for example, like the day of Jubilee, where it's seven years of war. There's different the language may be similar, but the context is different. The um the the literature itself is different. One is a creation account, it's a narrative, the other one we're dealing with um with uh the the language of that being um so in this case the Bible is not a commentary on itself then. It can be, but we I think that that's where we have to be able to contextualize it accordingly. I think that if we can take a writing over here, it doesn't always perfectly apply to something that is written over here. And that is why oftentimes people say, well, the Bible contradicts itself.

SPEAKER_02 25:40

That's hyperbole. Hyperbole, but you used it as an example. So what probably really couldn't be a good idea?

SPEAKER_03 25:45

But what's the hyperbole that that Peter is what's what's the point of that hyperbole?

SPEAKER_02 25:50

Uh just that God operates on a whole different thing. Exactly.

SPEAKER_03 25:53

So the hyperbole still logically follows.

SPEAKER_02 25:56

Yeah, in some respects, but you are using it there, but then this isn't the same, but that isn't really the same either.

SPEAKER_03 26:02

Aaron Powell No, I would say the hyperbole follows, and that the point that Peter is making is that the time frame that how God operates outside of space and time is not how we operate within space and time. So I would say it logically follows that it is applicable to when we talk about 24-hour days, which is based off of a naturalistic in our in the in the little bubble that we live in of the earth in the sun, um, that that is um how we view time, how we view day in our own little area, our own little bubble, that God is operating on something uh you know substantially different than how we would view it.

SPEAKER_01 26:36

And I will say, like, in like what I believe, I believe, yeah, God is outside of time and space. And you know, he's infinite and we are finite, and it's hard for us to comprehend and understand all that. Totally agree. Don't I can't disregard that. So is it possible for him to do all of this within a six-day time frame? I believe yes. It's possible for him to do it in a nanosecond. Right. And so that's why I'm saying, like, you know, we're just at his mouth, like just him speaking it into existence. It can, at a snap of a finger, it happens, it takes place. And so, how can I get an earth that we know through science is millions how old is it? 4.6 billion. Billions of years old, right? How do we get that if it happened in six days? The argument that we make or young earth would make, is that he created it mature, just as he created Adam and Eve, not as babies, newborns, he created them mature, the same way he created the earth as mature. So all the different things that we see um throughout in the trees and the ice and the volcanoes and all the different things. God just created them mature to create a habitat that it needed to take ecosystem to sustain.

SPEAKER_03 27:44

And I know you've used it, and if you go to Answers and Genesis's website, and I know that they're not the Pope when it comes to this, they actually have that in arguments to avoid as young earth creationists, because Ken Ham would argue that that actually makes God look somewhat deceptive, that he created the universe not to appear as it is. That's not my stance, that's answers and Genesis's stance. That they would say, do not you would have to ask, you go to their website, and it and literally they they used to have it arguments to avoid.

SPEAKER_02 28:09

No, but what does it mean that he is creating something that's not how did you say that? Sorry, I'll just pull it up. Deceptive. Deceptive. How is that? I'm just out of the way.

SPEAKER_01 28:16

Yeah, and because like and I'm I'm curious too, because to me it always made sense. It showed how intentional he was. Yeah. Right. And how he had to bring it up.

SPEAKER_02 28:23

Well, and you had mentioned uh his Genesis history, it's a documentary on a lot of it is proving the flood of Noah, but then they go in through the creation story, and in that, all those all a lot of allogists and a lot of PhDs that are in this, one of them is a marine biologist speaking about an ecosystem and speaking into how uh if you removed one thing from that ecosystem, it would crash because everything is dependent on each other. And so his point was that everything had to be ready to go all together at one time in order for the ecosystem to survive. What does the, you know, if if God did this over a long period of time, how did the ecosystem survive?

SPEAKER_03 29:02

Well, let me read this from Answers Genesis first, since you ask. God is not a this is from them, not me. God is not a deceiver, he cannot lie. So why would God try and deceive us by creating things with the appearance of age? Why would he make the universe look old when it is not? God has told us the truth in his word. He originally created many things mature and fully functional. He did not create with the appearance of age. This is an argument Christians should not use. So this is from Answers and Genesis. I'm just saying that I'm not saying it's I'm saying that, yeah, that that's a deb that's an argument that is irrefutable because once you start saying, is it possible, is it possible that God created the universe five minutes ago and he put us here with amnesia and and put in our head the the you know our past experiences, it's possible in that God is um God can do anything that is logically possible.

SPEAKER_01 29:47

But either one of the things that we're talking about, we have to say we have to use that.

SPEAKER_03 29:50

Well that's where there's some there's some level of inference, right?

SPEAKER_02 29:52

There must be a difference between age and mature. Just because it's old or mature doesn't mean it's old. It's mature because that means it's bearing fruit.

SPEAKER_03 30:01

But if you believe the universe was created, you know, six thousand years ago and God made everything look like it's billions of years for some reason, then we don't have much of a debate here. We we would agree on most of it. The thing is that we do have to we do have to include science into the conversation.

SPEAKER_01 30:16

So do you make the argument that human history started just over six thousand years ago?

SPEAKER_03 30:20

Um I believe human history is probably older and older than that, but I believe that human history is. How old would you say?

SPEAKER_01 30:25

If the earth is billions of years old, when would you have a few years?

SPEAKER_03 30:27

I would say that human history is is a lot more modern. Um So Adam and Eve, when did they get? Tens of thousands years. So based off of based off of the the from Adam to Abraham and then from Abraham to Jesus, um but I believe that it's very possible, if not probable, based off of other Hebrew um traditions, that there were l uh l names within the lineages that were skipped.

SPEAKER_01 30:55

And so But you can skip names, but you can't skip years. But that's why, like if you go to something that one of the reasons I believe in the six is because if you go to the genealogies in Genesis chapter five and chapter eleven, it's very specific in the formula that it lists out. And it talks about how this person begot this person at this age and then passed away at this amount of years old. Does it give us you can skip you can skip the names of them, but you can't skip the the age or the the timeline that it gives.

SPEAKER_03 31:26

Yeah, but again, and you can go to where it the same thing with the priesthood lineage in Ezra, where that same language is used, but then later on in 1 Chronicles, there are names that are added to the lineage. And so clearly we see that there have been names that were not included.

SPEAKER_01 31:43

Right, but the years still have to add up. Because if you if you look at the years that were it adds up and who begot who and those timelines, those still have to add up. And so you may be able to add names, but from this person to this person, we know that there's that amount of that amount of years.

SPEAKER_03 31:59

So then we probably what we would need to do then is just look at it, right? Pull it up and look in view and to say, because again, that view dating back to the early church has not been the consensus view of okay, we have to be able to take each of those and assume that that these are the only names within that genealogy, and therefore we're gonna do our own remedial math to come up with this number of 6,000, therefore the universe must be 6,000 years. That dating back to Augustine and Justin Martyr and all of the early church fathers, this was not a belief that came up within the church really until a few centuries ago. Um, even before the origin of species, Charles Darwin, everyone thinks that before Charles Darwin, everyone believed in a in a literal 24-hour day creation. That was actually not the case. Augustine did not believe in a 24-hour day creation. So we would have to go and look and look at that genealogy, and and you would have to argue why the only way to explain it is is is through the lens of a 6,000.

SPEAKER_01 32:57

And I again I swear I think both sides has questions, and that's one of my questions would be back to you is where do you get all of those years going back to if you look at the genealogies that are in Genesis 5 and Genesis 11? So in Genesis 5 it goes all the way from Well, let me look at it real quick. It goes from it goes from Adam to Noah to Genesis 5, and then in Genesis 11 it goes from Noah's son Sham after flood all the way to Abraham. But if you add up those years, but here's the thing, there's already been five days.

SPEAKER_03 33:25

There's already been, from my view, there's already the the dinosaurs have already been extinct, right? We've already had b I mean, day five was hundreds of millions of years, right? So even if the genealogy is exactly how you read it, and it must be the case, it still doesn't debunk that the universe couldn't be billions of years old. Because day again, day five we have the dinosaurs, day four we have the sun.

SPEAKER_02 33:46

Um He was asking when did humanity fall within that.

SPEAKER_01 33:49

Yeah, because like day six. Day six, but then that's like okay, but then where is that? Then how long did it take for Adam to name all the animals and for all of that to take place? If it took weeks or months? Weeks, months. If the epoch view is Well, I'm just saying, like if you're looking at those genealogies and you add up that time frame, that takes it to six to ten thousand years of the year.

SPEAKER_03 34:11

Okay, but what I'm what I'm arguing is that human history is recent. We agree on that. We may disagree on how recent it is, but I agree that human history is recent. World history is ancient. World history is where we get billions of years. So even if the young earth view of the genealogy is correct, it doesn't change the fact that day five was hundreds of millions of years. Day six may not have been a literal 24-hour day. Maybe it was six months, maybe it was a year. However long God felt it was necessary for Adam to go. I think it was long enough for the uniting of Adam and Eve for Moses to write at last they were united. That to me doesn't make sense if we're only dealing with a few short hours. But the fact of the matter is, is that yes, day six may have been relatively recent in that a six-month cre uh a six-month day, that doesn't change the fact that day five, we have the creation of the dinosaurs, we have the the destruction of the dinosaurs. They are long extinct by the time we get to day six, and you still have an old earth. So I don't I don't think that that would debunk the old earth view. In the first thing, but uh but this is one thing we haven't we haven't added.

SPEAKER_04 35:15

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 35:15

Is I do think science is admissible. And I think that that it is very warranted that we talk about science. And I think w one of the strongest arguments, and this is something that literally in young earth creation literature, Jason Lyle, who is a young earth creationist, he got his PhD in astrophysics from University of Colorado, he's written about this, but this is literally called a problem in young earth creationism, which is the distant starlight problem. There are very few constants that we see in science that are as constant as the speed of light. And so um when you look at certain galaxies, we know that because of starlight, the the the time it takes for light to travel from our universe to the next universe, we we can measure what that starlight is. There are uh galaxies that we can see that you step outside that you can see from the blind eye that we know must be way older than 6,000 years based off of the constant of how starlight travels from here or how the speed of light travels from here to those different galaxies. So, again, this is a problem in the uh the the young earth community of how do we explain starlight. The only explanation you can give is that starlight many years ago was at a different speed than it travels today.

SPEAKER_01 36:38

And to me, I don't know how that's a problem. I I get it looking from a scientific, but at some point you got to step out of the science and you have to believe that there was a creator of it all. Yeah. And so when you're looking at it as a creator of it all, if he created it all, couldn't he have put it that distance away to make it happen at when it happened.

SPEAKER_03 36:58

But again, then we're now we're now we've gone beyond inferring. Now we're just saying, well, God could have done this. And again, God can do what is all logically possible, but fine, take away.

SPEAKER_01 37:08

But he had to create it all at some point, is what I'm saying. He created everything out of nothing. Yes, right? He had a blank canvas, so he created that light on the first day when he separated light from darkness. Darkness is literally just the absence of everything. He created that first light, that star in the galaxy, however many millions, billions, whatever I don't even know, far away, distance. He could have created it at that distance at the same time he created Earth. Could have happened at the same time.

SPEAKER_03 37:36

And that's what I'm saying. If we get into the debate standpoint of he could have done this, again, he could have created the universe 15 minutes ago and put us all on the earth right now.

SPEAKER_01 37:44

You're saying he could have as well. You're just not using could have.

SPEAKER_03 37:47

Well, the difference is though, is that God gives us the he gives us the uh he gives us scripture, but then he also gives us nature. He also gives us science. So I think science is the language of God, and I think science should be.

SPEAKER_01 38:01

So how did that star, that light get there from the very beginning?

SPEAKER_03 38:04

It was it.

SPEAKER_01 38:06

Okay.

SPEAKER_03 38:06

How can we see it because of starlight? That's why we can see it. I'm not saying it was there, it's been there. But for us to even be able to see it with our eye means that starlight has had to have traveled from here to the Andronoma galaxy or whatever galaxy you want to look at, where scientists say, Yeah, the fact that we can even see that galaxy, we know the distance from from starlight that or from the light, the speed of light, that we are dealing with much more than 6,000 years. But here's an easy.

SPEAKER_01 38:31

And that's what I'm saying. I'm saying God created when he created and separated that light from the darkness, he just created it that far away. Okay.

SPEAKER_02 38:38

What about the well, but some people look at this and they kind of split it. They say it's both. And so this is kind of a spot where you could can you explain the idea or the theory that you think you call it gap theory that he created the heavens and the earth, and they were around for a very long time before he created anything, or he created the heavens and then he created something else a long time ago. So that star could have been created eons ago, and then he created Earth. But then is that called gap theory?

SPEAKER_03 39:04

The gap theory, that is a form of old earth creationism.

SPEAKER_02 39:07

But there's like a it could be a there were parts of creation that were created a long time ago. Yeah. And then there were parts of creation that were done literally in the day.

SPEAKER_03 39:17

Yeah, that day one, what I would believe to be the Big Bang, right? The the creation ex nihilo, creation out of nothing. Um, there are some old earth creationists that aren't progressive. They don't believe necessarily in the epoch, but they do believe that day one was the long period of time, so they can still argue billions of years while having day two, three, four, five, six, and seven being literal or 24-hour literal. But the other um absolutely but the other argument I would make and when it comes to science is the geological column. The geological column is a great thing. It was founded by Charles Lyell, um, who was a Christian, and and the the geological column tells us where we have all of these different fossil records that tell us a beautiful story of long periods of time of where at the very bottom we have what I would call day five fossils. These were um, you know, the reptiles, some of the creatures of the sea, what we would now know as dinosaurs. The word dinosaur wasn't made up until the 16th century, so they didn't have the word dinosaur. They do say the word beasts. They do say beasts, and so day five to me would be dinosaurs. We have um a long period of time where these dinosaurs die off, we now can see observational science that all of these dinosaurs, their bones are at the very, very bottom, right? And if you go through the fossil record and you go through the very bottom to the very top, if we are dealing with young earth creationism and the dinosaurs weren't extinct the way that science teaches us, but they all died in the flood, then why don't we see fossils mixed in from the very bottom all the way to the tippy top? We don't see that. We only see fossil uh dinosaur fossils at the very bottom and nowhere else. Why why would that be the case if we're not dealing with long periods of time?

SPEAKER_01 41:00

I think that's a great question. And honestly, that's one that I have trouble answering without going in support. And honestly, when people ask me that exact question, I actually have to say, well, this is where the one area where I'm like, old earth, you know, that they do have an explanation for that because I don't. Yeah. I and I there probably is a good one for young earth that I don't know about. I just don't have that explanation for it. Um, and so I think that's a great point. And other than just saying, hey, yeah, God made it mature. Yeah, God, God made those different levels at that different time, whenever he spoke it into existence. That's what he had to develop.

SPEAKER_03 41:34

But that's the thing, is that God didn't necessarily create the layers. The later layers were not created, the layers happened naturally. We know the geological column. It wasn't that God said, I'm gonna create this bottom layer. Now, some might argue I've actually heard this argued before, which nobody should ever make this argument, that God actually made the bottom layer. He actually put the fossils at the bottom layer to test our faith. That is, I think, a very warped argument.

SPEAKER_02 41:57

So you're talking about the different layers of rock and soil that you can see in the Grand Canyon, the fossil record lines. The fossil record I think they call it strata. Yeah. And that's what you're talking about.

SPEAKER_03 42:06

I'm talking about the fossil record, the geological column in which we have all of these different um and that's where we get the different periods, the Jurassic period. You know, all of these different ideas of periods in science and in archaeology are based off of these fossils, the fossil record.

SPEAKER_02 42:21

How much of that strata would you say is has was affected by the flood?

SPEAKER_03 42:26

Um I believe that it's possible that, yeah, that the in the flood there was rapid um decay or rapid movement on some of those, but that doesn't change the fact that all of the fossils are layered appropriately.

SPEAKER_02 42:39

Yeah, it's I think and again I'm going back to is Genesis history. That was that's kind of my what I've my research level. They had said because there was such a rapid increase of water and then a rapid decrease of water, the way things fell or settled was I guess based on the weight of the strata uh or weight of the material. And so it settled at such a rapid rate. That's how we have fully fossilized um animals or dinosaurs, and then also why they have found like a seagoing dinosaur in Montana, uh, because everything got washed out and scattered everywhere. Yeah. They also say you can see the same layers of the Grand Canyon over in the Middle East and in in India, it's all the same.

SPEAKER_01 43:24

The way I've seen like if you take a snow globe and you shake it up, yeah, the the ones that were once at the bottom are not going to be at the bottom.

SPEAKER_03 43:30

That would be sensible to something that's that would be sensible to me if ninety-eight percent of the dinosaur fossils were all at the bottom. But the fact is that if that is the case, if you're explaining the geological column merely by a rapid, you know, succession of okay, bottom and then the next and then the next, is that all it would take for me is to find one dinosaur bone, not a million, not fifty million, not ten thousand, to find one T Rex bone above that bottom layer. And so even that explanation. May explain why the vast majority of fossils are at the bottom. But we're talking 100% of dinosaur bones are at the very bottom.

SPEAKER_02 44:07

That's that's why I Are you sure it's 100%?

SPEAKER_03 44:10

I'm I I would I would love to be debunked on that, but I I am very, very confident that a dino because if so, that would change the trajectory of science. It would change the trajectory of archaeology of how we study this.

SPEAKER_02 44:21

Well, and that's what a lot of the Genesis history gets into is they're finding it at different levels, and they're even finding bones that still have tissue in them that is still live. And that if this was an old earth, that should have been decayed millions and billions of years ago.

SPEAKER_01 44:34

That tissue would no longer be a little bit more than a lot of people.

SPEAKER_03 44:36

I knew there was a bite that was studying, and he was out of college, and they found a little bit of the blood tissue amount. And I actually did a deep dive on that.

SPEAKER_02 44:45

I think this one was pretty significant. It was a chunk of bone that had full-blown tissue still on the bottom.

SPEAKER_03 44:49

Well, what I'm familiar with, I'm literally Facebook friends with the guy. His first name's Mark. Um I can't think of his name, but it was it was news where he they had found. Um and through studying it, they said, well, no, this is actually not extremely it may be uncommon, but it's not unprecedented. That yes, that blood actually could survive for that period of time if we're dealing with such a minute amount that it actually didn't really cause much of a problem for the view that the dinosaurs didn't die out.

SPEAKER_02 45:16

Um but again, I Well, they're like Genesis is Genesis history, they're claiming the flood killed the dinosaur. Yes, yeah. And and that's why we see the remains in different levels and they still find it with the floor. And I would because it got seeded.

SPEAKER_03 45:28

And I would say there's not an issue with that because that bottom layer had already been formed before a conversation of a flood even occurred. Because obviously the flood happened after day six. By day six, the dinosaurs had already been fossilized, they they were already on that bottom layer.

SPEAKER_02 45:42

That's the argument that I think Genesis history, I think, is making that all of that sediment got rewashed up and it resettled again in a rapid rate. Yeah, and everything it because the world hit reset. Sure. Yes.

SPEAKER_03 45:55

And because then after Noah, it there's a recreation story. But again, the the the presupposition or assumption is that all animals that ever existed were on the earth during Noah. And what I'm saying is that day five, day six, yes, we're dealing with the mammals, we're dealing with different types of animals. But if day five was a period of time, then obviously two dinosaurs weren't going on the arc because there were no dinosaurs to save at that point. They had already been died off, and that was a part of of God's creation of plan. Unicorns as well, absolutely.

SPEAKER_01 46:28

And so and that's where like I'm and maybe in my brain as well, because I'm just a good old boy, and then but I also like numbers and I like things to match up. And going back to the genealogies, Roger, is when you look at those, and we have those that he gave gave us, and again, I think, yeah, that might miss some things, but you can't miss the years. And you add up those years and it goes back to Adam. My my issue is yes, you can go back to Adam, but where did those millions and billions of years go? Like, where where do you fit those in? Do they go before Adam? Yes. And okay, or or do they go between the generations that are there that are laid out? Is it after the flood? The millions of the yeah.

SPEAKER_03 47:08

Really, all I would need is day one and day five. Day one, you have the creation of the universe. I believe it's very possible even before the sun. I think day one, day two, and day three, we can't even have a 24-hour discussion because we don't have a sun to determine what a 24-hour day is. So day one, two, and three could be a long period of time. We know day five had to have been a long period of time because we believe that that was the extinction of the dinosaurs. So let's say day one, day two, day three, and day five, right? Because day four is the creation of the sun, but let's skip day four. If all of those were long periods of time, day six shows up, Adam is created, Adam is now naming the mammals, he's naming the animals that were created along with Adam, that at that point Adam could have been running around a universe that was already billions of years old. Yeah. That that would be my argument.

SPEAKER_01 47:49

Yeah, because that's the part you have to infer. Because you you are but you got to infer that. Like that that to me is the hard part because I like everything matching up. And again, maybe that's just my mind.

SPEAKER_03 47:59

Trevor Burrus, Jr.: It's an educated inference. Trevor Burrus, Jr.

SPEAKER_01 48:01

Right. But like that's what I'm saying is not it's not an assumption. You you are saying certain days are going to be millions of years old and other ones, periods of times are not. Trevor Burrus, Jr.

SPEAKER_03 48:10

But I I want to distinguish an assumption and an inference because we all infer to an extent, right? Now, sometimes like in the resurrection, right? We don't have to infer a lot, right, in in the resurrection story, because we know that it is it is a historical account that is attested. We know, as Paul says in 1 Corinthians 15, we're not dealing with the same type of inference that we may do in that context versus what we do in the old. And so I want to distinguish assuming versus inferring. Respectfully, when you say, well, God could have created it mature, that's not an inference, that's an assumption. Because we're not basing that off of anything in the text. We're basing that off of what he could have done. An inference is when we read the text and we're actually using the text as our pillar or foundation to then say, well, maybe based off of this text, this is what is happening. That's the difference between assuming you're not using the text.

SPEAKER_02 49:01

Just saying he made it mature doesn't isn't an inference that has no basis behind it. So I I asked the question earlier, how then would an ecosystem survive if it was not created mature with all components of the ecosystem intact at one time?

SPEAKER_03 49:14

Because we don't fall under, we don't, we're not practicing uniformitarianism, which is that the pastor is not a very strong. No, no, no, no.

SPEAKER_02 49:20

The ecosystem has to have all the parts functioning in order for it to survive or it crashes, according to the oceanologist that is in that is talking about that portion of creation story in his Genesis Hipster. He is looking at an ocean, all the creatures in the ocean. He says, if you remove one thing from that ecosystem, it will crash. So then, how if it wasn't created mature and fully operational immediately, how did it survive? What ecosystem got crashing?

SPEAKER_03 49:47

What ecosystem is he studying to make that decision?

SPEAKER_02 49:49

He's that specific when he's talking about the ocean. But he's the ocean is one example of every ecosystem on our planet. If you remove something from an ecosystem, it's just like ecosystem in our plan. What's it the largest system? It's one of the largest, yeah. But like even from a whole hunting perspective, the wolves were removed or bears were removed, and then the deer went crazy. There's a balance. There has to be a balance within the ecosystem that creates a potential.

SPEAKER_03 50:16

It could Eden have been different.

SPEAKER_02 50:17

Uh why did it change from how Eden was to when we only thing that entered into the system was sin and it got corrupted? Did it change how the how animals survived? Potentially. Because the decay did it change how we survived?

SPEAKER_03 50:33

What what created the decay? I would say that sin changed everything.

SPEAKER_02 50:37

It changed um it changed our relationship with God, but did it change how the ecosystem survived? We don't we we don't know one way or the other.

SPEAKER_03 50:46

But this is my butt that but even still Because sin shows up day six, right?

SPEAKER_01 50:52

Uh But yes, yes, you bring up a good It comes after the rest. So well sin shows up. That's true. I'm sorry, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 50:58

The the potential of sin comes in on day six, not the sin itself.

SPEAKER_01 51:01

So when I guess when sin showed so this brings up a good point. When sin showed up, that's when death entered in. Human death, yeah. Romans 5.12. But it's But it never distinguishes between human and other death before that. I mean, what you don't have any death that takes place in Scripture, specifically in Scripture, before sin entered into the world.

SPEAKER_03 51:21

Romans 5.12. Therefore, just as sin entered the world through one man and death through sin, and in this way death came to all people. It doesn't say all things or all creatures, it says all people, because all sin. So Paul is specifically.

SPEAKER_01 51:36

But we have no evidence in Scripture of anything dying before sin entered into the world. Well, because So what did that be?

SPEAKER_03 51:44

Because it's because it's not because it's not a line-by-line historical. It day five, even if it was 24 hours, God doesn't give us an itinerary of what day five looked like. So, no, that's called an argument from silence to say, well, because the Bible doesn't say this, the of course people use this argument for G, well, Jesus never spoke on homosexuality, therefore he didn't care about it. No, it's just we don't have the record of Jesus speaking on certain things. The same is true for the creation account. Because it wasn't meant to be written as an exhaustive science lesson or an exhaustive historical hour by hour, minute by minute, but it was simply to say, hey, here is the gist. Okay, day one, light and dark. We're not going through all the atoms, all the matter. We're just giving you kind of the gist of what day one looked like. Now we're going to move on to day two, so on and so forth.

SPEAKER_01 52:31

Well, that's where I would say your whole argument is an argument from silence of where you are saying, hey, yeah, he didn't say millions of years, but that's what that's what that meant is a millions of years. No, that is not that's not laid out.

SPEAKER_03 52:46

I'm I'm everything I'm saying is what this is first and foremost the foundation of what scripture says. And that's why I'm first making a theological argument, and the science I think harmon harmoniously supports it, but I'm not saying the universe is billions of years old because science says it is, therefore I have to fit the scripture into the science. No, I'm saying that the way I read Genesis is that I do read those as periods of time, and I gave some examples, Adam being united with Eve, Adam naming the meant naming the things in the gardens. Then from there we go into the fossil record, then we go into tree ring data, then we go into starlight, then we go into radiometric dating, then all of the vast sciences that all of them tell us the same story. They all point to the same age, give or take, which is that we have a universe that has billions of years.

SPEAKER_01 53:34

No, what I was saying is so you were uh going after how I said could have. So there's a you were talking about the difference between inferring and assuming and assuming, right? I what I am trying to level is like you are also inferring you're just not using the words could have. Because you are I agree I'm inferring. Okay.

SPEAKER_03 53:51

And so I agree, there is there has to be inference. I agree.

SPEAKER_01 53:54

Yeah, right. And so I can remove could have and still make the same argument. Just that that's what you're doing, because you are not using the term could have.

SPEAKER_03 54:02

But what I what I'm arguing, the difference between inference in scripture and assuming in scripture is that when I infer in scripture, I'm taking the scripture and I'm saying, okay, based off of this, these are the different directions we can go with the scripture as my foundation. That's my pivot point. I'm going off of that scripture. Yeah. An assumption would be to say, well, you know, God is all powerful, he could have done this, but the foundation of that isn't, okay, chapter and verse, here's here's where we read it. This is one interpretation of that. That's not what you're doing when you s when you're saying, well, God just could have created it mature. Because we're not basing that off of a chapter and verse of saying, based off of this.

SPEAKER_01 54:38

Well, no, I'm assuming that he created it. Yes, that's what I'm saying.

SPEAKER_03 54:41

So there's an inf an inference and there's an assumption. And we're doing both, right? Yeah. We are, but what I'm saying is that the the response of, well, he could have just created it old, that is that is that that leaves inferring and enters assuming, in my opinion.

SPEAKER_02 54:57

Well, I'd say you're doing the same thing when you're trying to define what a yom is, a thing or a no, because you're actually going to the Hebrew and you're saying this is. But I was also using Hebrew with the same exact language and they used it in the days or uh in sacrificial days, which could even shorten it.

SPEAKER_03 55:11

Agreed.

SPEAKER_02 55:12

So how is one any different?

SPEAKER_03 55:15

Those are both inferences because we're basing it off of the Hebrew word. God could have created it mature, is not basing it off of, well, this is what the Hebrew text says. That's the same thing.

SPEAKER_01 55:22

And that's what I was going, like, my mind works in numbers. And so when I see beginning, there's morning, there's evening the first day, second day, third day, fourth day, fifth day. My mind automatically operates as those were the same amount of times for uh time periods for each day.

SPEAKER_03 55:37

And so that's which we know is not the case because we know that the six distinct literal meanings are used throughout the Old Testament of Yom. Yom is used in many different uh contexts.

SPEAKER_01 55:44

Yes, but this is used all within the same within one chapter, it is it is he's talking about one thing. And so interpreting it one way for this sentence and another way for this sentence as it is talking and describing these things.

SPEAKER_03 56:00

Well, later on in Genesis, Moses uses yom in another context, not at 2010.

SPEAKER_01 56:03

Well, yes, yeah, but it it it is not talking about the same object. And so in the beginning of Genesis, when he's using yom to describe the same thing as like day beginning in day one, day two, day three, day four, day five. I've always read that as that is the same amount of time that he's using to describe one day one is gonna be the same amount of time he's describing day two. I agree yom can be used for a period of time, but I don't think it is taking place in the beginning in the creation account, talking about a period of time, one at one moment in 24 hours.

SPEAKER_03 56:34

I have two last questions for you, and then we can close it there. Number one, how do you um wrestle with evening and morning being used uh for the majority of the creation account, but then not ending it with evening and morning?

SPEAKER_01 56:47

Yeah, I I would say we have to say we're still on day seven, right? And that I think that is symbolic to how the Lord works of yeah, we are he's he's still on his rest, day rest, and the next time creation he is taking part in creation is going to be whenever he comes back and creates the new heavens and the new earth. And so, yeah, I I believe we're still living in that time frame. I don't when we're talking about the six days of creation, I don't think that day seven where it ends with in the morning and the evening. Um taking it as a literal guy's hanging out on the couch watching TV resting.

SPEAKER_02 57:23

No, he is enjoying his creation.

SPEAKER_01 57:26

Yeah, yeah. Okay, so and like it's as a and as a pastor, like it actually is a really preachable thing. You know, he talks about that. Well, it talks about how do how are we able to sustain, how are we able to live? Well, we have to rest in God's presence. Yeah, we have to rest in his presence. That's the only way we're able to make it.

SPEAKER_03 57:41

But that would actually, you know, okay. That's a good answer, I'll take it. So this is my last question for both of you, and then I'll I I'm done with questions.

SPEAKER_02 57:48

So I'm the moderator.

SPEAKER_03 57:50

I know. I asked. I know. Well, this is but I can still ask you. Tell me your question. Here's my question. Um science, all of science, biology, chemistry, archaeology, astronomy, physics, uh every um discipline of science which is should be neutral, right? They're not trying to prove this or that, but in science, the beauty of it is the way it should operate is that you want to be disproven, right? For many years, the steady state theory was the gospel of astronomy, that the universe has always been here, we're in a steady state. 1929, Edwin Hubble from Marshville, Missouri, pulls out his telescope and we see the expansion of the universe. He just pulls it out. And astronomy, which is admits like almost gleefully, we were wrong. The universe did have a beginning, the universe is not in a steady state. So when we look at all of these scientific disciplines, again, from chemistry to biology, so on and so forth, all of them come up with the same answer of we are looking at potentially billions of years. If the universe is six thousand years old, not only is science useless, because uh every single area of science is now dead wrong, and not even wrong by a few thousand years, six thousand to four point six billion is a huge gap of being wrong. So not only is science useless in that sense, but it's actually deceptive. That science is actually, as Christians, we can't then say science is a good thing because science actually the the data that we see would be so wildly inaccurate to what the universe actually is. So how do you wrestle with the fact that if your worldview is correct, if the universe is six thousand years old, that science in every discipline of its existence is so laughably wrong everywhere.

SPEAKER_01 59:37

Yeah, the I would say the age is 4.6 billion years old, it was created 6,000 years ago, 6,000 years ago. Okay.

SPEAKER_02 59:44

But I'd also say I don't know, I I don't think it's like saying always, no, you or never. You'd never say never because it's it's a high you're speak it's almost like you're speaking in hyperbole because they're that you go watch gen, I go back to that. All of those scientists and all those allogists and all those PhDs are saying or seeing something different. So you can't say every. And you can't say that.

SPEAKER_03 1:00:05

I didn't say every scientist, every field of science.

SPEAKER_02 1:00:07

Well, these were all different fields of science. These are paleontology to OSCE.

SPEAKER_03 1:00:11

These are individuals.

SPEAKER_02 1:00:12

I mean they even have a Hebrewologist on there that's saying no, when they mean a day, they mean a day. When they say a day, they they are literally speaking. So, how would that Hebrewologist that has studied Hebrew, that's his study, he is a doctorate in it. How I mean, so I to say every all uh laughably, I just I can't get on board that because that's not the truth.

SPEAKER_03 1:00:32

Well, because I didn't say every scientist, I said every every um discipline of science.

SPEAKER_02 1:00:36

But they're all from different disciplines of science.

SPEAKER_03 1:00:38

So let me give you an example. Um, all of history says the Holocaust happened. David Irving was a historian who wrote Hitler's War, who at one point was a very prominent historian in Great Britain. He has since come out as a Holocaust denier. If I were to say all of history says the Holocaust happened, for you to say, well, wait a second, David Irving was a historian and he said it didn't happen. That's what I'm saying. David Irving is not a he he is not a mainstream historian. And just because one person goes against the grain, which is what these these individuals are doing, that what I'm not saying is taking things out of the narrow.

SPEAKER_02 1:01:11

Plus the Holocaust is something within our near future that there are people still alive that experienced it. We don't have that for creation. Agreed. Nobody was present when God created the world. So those aren't really equal comparisons.

SPEAKER_03 1:01:25

The point the well, no, the comparison I'm making is that you can find someone. Well, then let's go 2,000 years. There's there's historians that believe Jesus didn't exist. They're 0.5%, but there there are PhD historians. Um Richard Carrier being one of the most prominent, I think he got his PhD from Yale, he's he's got an MD from Princeton. He doesn't believe that Jesus existed. You can't that if I say, well, all of history says Jesus absolutely existed, and you say, well, hold on a second, there's this one historian, and what I'm saying is that the idea that the universe is 6,000 years old in science, in all of these different studies of science, in which we are coming to these conclusions, because scientists say things and and they come to their own conclusions, but that all of these different disciplines are coming to the same answer. Yes, we can find a few Christian scientists, because all of them are Christian, all of their presupposition is that the universe has to be 6,000 years, not because the science tells us that, but because our reading of scripture must conclude with a 6,000-year earth. Kurt Wise, who is in Genesis history, he tells a story that after he became a Christian, he wrote, he sat down with his Bible and he underlined every verse in the Bible that he thought went against a 6,000-year earth, or that went against um the universe being billions of years. And after he was done, he says he picked up his Bible and it fell apart because it was that flimsy. And he said in that, in that, and he you could he quotes this in his book he says, even though I would admit that the vast majority of science shows that the universe is old, I will always be a young earth creationist because that's what the Bible tells me. I am defenseless to that.

SPEAKER_02 1:03:02

Well, I think you uh said it earlier that science wants to be proven wrong. And again, Genesis history is showing examples of where science may not be correct, like carbon dating. Uh, they're showing that carbon dating isn't as accurate as they thought it might be. Um, so they're it's about 98% accurate. But the point being is that so let's take archaeology as an example. We're finding more and more artifacts like the Shroud of Turan, Turan Turin. That is showing undisputable evidence along with newer and newer technology that's helping to prove that hey, Jesus was real. But rewind 50 years ago, we did not have that. So, in time, I think there's things that help science get better at what it does and get a better answer. So, my point being is who really knows? Nobody can say definitively for sure exactly because it constantly changes. It's just like there was I saw people talking about there is no proof of an Exodus from what the Bible tells. But now we're seeing new, more and more archaeological finding. I just saw something today that there was proof that connected Moses to Pharaoh. We didn't have that yesterday, but we do now, and that changes things. Now there is evidence that extract the city.

SPEAKER_03 1:04:19

And that's the beauty of science is that 99, 98 to 99 percent of carbon dating we we can see is accurate. There are, of course, exceptions to that, but the exception doesn't defeat the rule. But this would be my question to Kurt Wise.

SPEAKER_02 1:04:30

I would but it brings questions into the rule that it's not as accurate as we think it is. Well, because And we can't be so definitive that this is how it is. And I'll also add the God factory. Those are exceptions. Well, but I'll add in the God factor. I don't know how we can then say how God does something. It can only be this way or that way. God is so stinking dynamic, he can do it any way he wants to do it.

SPEAKER_03 1:04:54

But then that would turn back around on the ecosystem. He could have the ecosystem could have been drastically different.

SPEAKER_02 1:04:58

He could have held up the ecosystem and could tell it was completely developed. Or he created the whole ecosystem at one time. We don't know.

SPEAKER_03 1:05:05

Scientifically, what I would say is yes, there are there are exceptions to the rule. Some people are born with only one hand. That does not mean that people, by their nature, are born with two hands. And so, yeah, people can look and say, well, you know, they found this exception or they found this exception. I don't think that's a very good idea.

SPEAKER_02 1:05:21

But I think personally Because I think an ecosystem scientifically will say, yeah, it needs all the parts to survive or it will crash.

SPEAKER_03 1:05:26

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:05:26

So then how did God do that?

SPEAKER_03 1:05:27

But what I'm saying is by by still know. But this is this is where the Kurt Weiss quote, I had to chad GBT. He said, if all the evidence in the world turns against young earth creationism, I would be the first to admit it, but I would still be a young earth creationist because that is what the word of God indicates. Here I must stand. And if that's the case, then why do science in the first place? Because you flat out just admitted there is nothing that is ever going to change your view of the age of the earth, that your only interpretation of Genesis must be true. Therefore, all of science that they study. So all those scientists, hey, I think it's great that they made a documentary, but if I went around and said, hey guys, what would disprove? Your young earth view, every single one of them would say nothing. And you know what would disprove my old earth view? Just one piece of evidence that shows a dinosaur bone at the top level. If you show me that, I'll be a young earth creationist today.

SPEAKER_02 1:06:12

Yeah, I just I pause when, like, say at Stephen Hawkings was trying to say, you know, God isn't real. He was a very predominant uh astrophysicist or a physicist in general. He founded dark holes, yeah. Yeah. But yet I also talked to an astrophysicist that works for NASA and says, no, Stephen Hawkings was on an island. He wasn't most astrophysicists believe there has to be a God because we can't explain all this stuff. When he sends sensors into outer space to try and learn what's going on in outer space, he says, it is so beyond our understanding and our comprehension. There's just so much, it's so vast. Well, we're just trying to get make it to people don't die when we send them up there.

SPEAKER_01 1:06:55

And that's why I'm not saying I don't disagree with science.

SPEAKER_02 1:06:57

That's why I'm saying what I'm saying is that if it's here, let me finish my point. I've I have grown up in my many years of life. Science, most of the time, from my perspective, was trying to disprove God. I mean, it's the it's the there's a joke. I have a joke that that God, the scientist is uh standing before God and he goes, I can create a human just like he did. And God says, okay, go for it. And the scientist starts to dig up the dirt, and God says, Time out, go make your own dirt. Yeah. And so science, I have always seen it from a perspective. Science has been trying to disprove that God is the reality.

SPEAKER_03 1:07:32

I so firmly, strongly disagree with that. All of going back to Galileo, Copernicus, Newton, um, all of the when you go back to the history of science, it was literally the re the basis of science was to study the nature of God.

SPEAKER_02 1:07:43

Yeah, sure. But I would say within our last 50 years, there has been an agenda and there's been a change in what are we really doing this for. Because I mean, you can throw in the whole globe of warming, you can throw in all different kinds, it has such an agenda base to it that there was an agenda base in science to prove that God is.

SPEAKER_03 1:08:00

And I think that's my I think my biggest fear, and you're tapping into it, and we can close with this, is I don't want Christians, and maybe we disagree on that, that's okay. I don't want Christians to distrust science because that is the. Well, COVID is another prime example. Sure, but but again, different areas of science. But I don't want Christians to inherently distrust science because that is why, you know, they've kind of done that to themselves. Before Martin Luther, when people said, well, you know, the four corners of the earth in Isaiah, that the earth must be us must be flat. And there was a distrust of the scientific community then who were Christian that said, no, we do believe that the universe is a globe. And those people were put to death. Literally, the church put people to death because they said that we're not a flat earth, but that we're a we're we're a globe. That is what I don't want. And why, as an apologist, when I see young people that are interested in science, and they may have this preconceived notion that if I go to church, I've got to check my brain at the door. I want them to understand, hey, as Christians, we actually have the best way to look at science because it has a purpose behind it. It's not just a bunch of molecules in motion, but it's actually how God created this universe, and that gives us an incentive to study science to the best of our ability to understand why God operates the way he does.

SPEAKER_01 1:09:12

Yeah, and that's where I would agree. And as actually, I don't know if you saw the interview between Logan Paul and Joe Joel Osteen. I did not. And Logan Paul asked him the question about science and faith, and if science supports faith or whatever. And Joel's his answer like so disappointed me. I know Christians, a whole thing with Joel, whatever, but he had such an opportunity to share the gospel with him. And right then and there, he he's like, Well, I haven't really looked into that topic of science or what and totally dismissed it. And that's where I also disagree with that approach, is you can't dismiss the science. That's why I would say that, hey, yeah, I think the age of the earth is 4.6 million years old. But I think it was billion years old, but I think it was only nobody believed 4.6 million years old. Well, I think it was yeah, I think it's that old, but I think it was only created six thousand years.

SPEAKER_03 1:09:58

I know it's at least thirty-two years old. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:10:00

So that's but I yeah, I it'll be fun to find out in heaven one day, won't it?

SPEAKER_02 1:10:05

In creation, God gave man curiosity to want to go find out. And that's one thing man will continue to do until Jesus comes back, and until then, I would venture to say nobody's gonna know for sure.

unknown 1:10:16

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:10:17

Yeah. The more you look at creation, I think you do have to understand that there was a creator. And so that's where I agree with the studying of the science.

SPEAKER_03 1:10:24

And again, I believe in a literal Adam, I believe in a historical Eve, I believe in a garden, I believe in a flood, I believe in all that is where we are dealing with Genesis 1 to 11. We're dealing with 11 chapters. Beyond that, we're we're essentially on the exact same page. We're not going to have any disagreement whatsoever. But again, it goes back to that Hebrew.

SPEAKER_01 1:10:43

Um, and and I think that that's where God could have done it in a period of time and that it could have taken millions, billions of years to do so. Do you believe God could have done it in six days?

SPEAKER_03 1:10:53

Again, I believe he could have done it in a nanosecond. I believe he could do it in 0.5 seconds. I believe God could, because God can do anything that is logically possible.

unknown 1:11:00

Okay. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:11:01

Well, I don't know about logically. I think he goes beyond anything logical.

SPEAKER_03 1:11:04

He can't do what is logically impossible. From our perspective, he can go way beyond our logic. Well, he's the creator of logic. He can't create a married bachelor, he can't, um, because that would be a critical.

SPEAKER_01 1:11:13

He can't create a rock too heavy, he can't lift it.

SPEAKER_03 1:11:16

That's that's the question. And the answer is that that that's it's actually a not a good question. But I mean, and even Jesus, there's there are certain things Jesus couldn't do. He couldn't sin by his nature, because that would have been logically impossible. So in philosophy, going back to Galileo and and Plato, the belief that God can do all which is logically possible.

SPEAKER_01 1:11:33

So the question is do we make people more confused with this possibility?

SPEAKER_03 1:11:36

That's like when I debated. When I debated the guy, when I debated the guy in Springfield, that my wife told me, she said that was the most fascinating two and a half hours I've ever sat through, and I have no idea what you just said. And Katie Hopkins was like, Yeah, I agree. And so that's the fun of it, I guess.

SPEAKER_02 1:11:50

I don't know if this is one of those I don't think you're going to change people's minds. Well, like Kurt Wise. There's still so much on either side that just nobody knows.

SPEAKER_03 1:11:58

And I and I will tell you, I I I truly believe in this topic, I I I would change my mind. I 100% would change my mind. Um, but I think when I read that quote from Kurt Wise, who's devoted his life to practicing science, and yet he says there is nothing that could ever change my specific reading of Genesis.

SPEAKER_02 1:12:16

And I'm like, man, that that that to me is Well, I appreciate what he's saying because I think what he's saying there is I trust in what the Bible says that it this is God's word. It's I can trust in it, and I am simple man, that I don't have all the answers. I may be a super smart dude, I've got the allogist on the end of my name with the PhD, but I have to humbly admit that I do not understand everything, all of God's sake. And the issue is the buttons. And I'm gonna trust in what the Bible tells me over my science.

SPEAKER_03 1:12:48

But they made the but that was the argument when Copernicus said, no, guys, we have evidence. And they said, Nope. We read Isaiah, we read Proverbs, we know the ends of the earth, the four corners of the earth. There is nothing that can change our reading and our view of scripture. And they literally killed him because of it. They killed not just him, but they killed scientists because of it. So sometimes you take a step back and think, okay, maybe the way we read four corners, maybe it's not describing a check results.

SPEAKER_02 1:13:12

Well, I'm sure he has had those questions, and that's what has brought about his curious problem. But still landing back on his foundation of the Bible is truth, God is real, and God is very capable of doing so many things beyond our logic, and that until he gets more proof, yeah, he's just gonna rest on the world of the world.

SPEAKER_03 1:13:31

Well, that's a problem with the pro no, but that's actually false because he flat out says if the proof goes against, I he just throws the proof. But that's what I would say this is. He says I I nothing changes. Even if all of the evidence were to go against a young earth, I would still be a young earth creationist. So, and that's what I'm saying. If that's the case, how in the world do you do science? Like for me, that is presuppositional science, where basically you come to your only conclusion of scripture, and now everything has to filter through that. I don't think that's good science.

SPEAKER_01 1:13:57

But I understand what you're saying there, yeah. But that's what I appreciate about you. You also are standing on God's word. It's just a different interpretation of that term, yum, and what that means. That's what it comes down to. It really comes down to it.

SPEAKER_03 1:14:08

Yeah, yeah. And uh, and I will say that even though Southern Baptists tend tends to lean young earth creationists, um, going back in history again, um that that has not necessarily been the case. There are both young earth and old earth creationists throughout the history of the church, and and and so we both you can be either. We both go to heaven.

SPEAKER_02 1:14:25

So well, as we stated at the very beginning of the podcast, it's fun to debate, but it has no bearing on salvation. So at the end of the day, it doesn't matter. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:14:34

I'm glad you are so I think you're both. I think you are smart. I'm glad you are smart. I'm glad you know all that.

SPEAKER_03 1:14:38

I don't know if I am smart. I I'm just right.

SPEAKER_01 1:14:40

Oh, you are? Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:14:43

No, actually the quote that I always use, whether I'm right or I'm wrong, I'm never in doubt. And I think that that is uh is pretty determines a lot of hardheadedness of I may be wrong, but I'm not in doubt. And so Yeah. So all right. Well, hey, listen, uh, that was a fun debate. The next one I don't think will be as as uh well. This is the one I was least knowledgeable about. If we're doing fixationism continuationism, we are all three going to have our Bible. This is gonna be fun. Because it is it we're not gonna bring up science.

SPEAKER_01 1:15:10

It is I had my Bible open because I had to look up the genealogies and everything, and so but it was just computer Bible.

SPEAKER_03 1:15:15

Yeah, okay. Well, hey, make heaven crowded. That was a beautiful way to to uh to do our first debate. We won't do the next the next one next week per se, we may, but we don't know yet. We don't make any points. We will we will we will do the next debate um when it comes to spiritual gifts, the apostolic gifts are they for today?

SPEAKER_01 1:15:31

I'll make one promise. We'll talk about Beatitudes on Sunday, so you need to be in church on Sunday.

SPEAKER_03 1:15:35

Okay, so we'll talk about blessed, blessed, blessed. Yep. Alrighty. Well, until next week, same time, same location, signing off. Thank you. Why'd you wave at the far case? I don't know who I'm looking at, but that's okay.