How do you explain that the scriptures say that the earth is 6000 years old when science has established that it is millions of years old?

Question

 

Dear Gramps,

How do you explain that the Mormon scripture, the Pearl of Great Price, agrees with the Old Testament that the earth is only a 6,000 years old, when science has clearly established that the age of the earth is really billions of years old and life on it is millions of years old and mankind is hundreds of thousands or even a million years old?

Stan

 

Answer

 

Dear Stan,

It’s amazing how frequently people get it all backwards!! The Pearl of Great Price does NOT declare that the earth is 6,000 years old. The Bible does NOT declare that the earth is 6,000 years old. Science has NOT established that the earth is billions of years old or that life on the earth is millions of years old, or that mankind is hundreds of thousands or even a million years old.

Your first error in considering your questions is that you choose to judge the prophets by the professors, rather than the other way around. One could write a book in an attempt to straighten this screwed up line of thinking! And I have the daunting task of setting the record straight in a few paragraphs.

Let’s start with the Bible, which gives in chapters 1 and 2 an account of the creation and of the advent of Adam and Eve, but no time reference is made at all. The Bible does, however, give relative dates for many events, particularly the ages of the fathers when their sons were born. By correlating the birth of biblical characters with known historical figures, the time line for the births of earlier biblical characters can be traced back to the birth of Seth in 3874 BC.

In Genesis 5:3-5 we read—

And Adam lived an hundred and thirty years, and begat a son in his own likeness, after his image; and called his name Seth:

 

And the days of Adam after he had begotten Seth were eight hundred years: and he begat sons and daughters:

 

And all the days that Adam lived were nine hundred and thirty years: and he died.

So that establishes the date when Adam appeared. The sectarian world thinks that Adam was made by God at that time–in some manner similar to a brick building. But the sectarian world has no more of a handle on the truth than does the scientific world (and you would be very surprised to know how far off the track the scientific world has wandered in trying to establish time lines to pre-historic events).

In the words of Brigham Young,

“Adam was made from the dust of an earth, but not from the dust of this earth. He was made as you and I are made, and no person was ever made upon any other principle”

Adam was born on a terrestrial world, helped in the generation and development of this earth, came here with his wife, Eve, and stayed here. Time, as measured by the earth’s rotation around the sun, had not been established when Adam and Eve were given the command to not partake of the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil.

But of the tree of knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it; for in the time that thou eatest thereof, thou shalt surely die. Now I, Abraham, saw that it was after the Lord’s time, which was after the time of Kolob; for as yet the Gods had not appointed unto Adam his reckoning. (Abraham 5:13)

Note: The biblical version of this scripture, (Genesis 2:17) uses the word day, where the Pearl of Great Price uses the word time. However, the Hebrew word yowm, from which the word day was translated may also be rendered as time.

So all that is known about the age of Adam, or of the time of his advent on the earth, or of the time that earth was changed from a terrestrial to telestial world is that which is revealed in the scriptures. And nothing in the scriptures suggests that it was 6000 years ago–either in the Bible or in the Pearl of Great Price.

Next you state that science has clearly established the earth is really billions of years old. Where did you ever get that idea??? There are various THEORIES about the age of the universe, the age of the earth and the advent of man. But they are only THEORIES. Not a one of them is a proven fact.

Because of the constraints of the Ask Gramps format, we must here be brief. I will cite only one fact that should put to rest all of this blind faith in the pronouncements of science with regard to any paleontological time line. There is one and only one method by which any paleontological date can be estimated, and that is the radioactive potassium/argon decay rate. Potassium is the most prevalent element in the earth’s crust, (2.4% by mass). One out of every 10,000 potassium atoms is the radioactive isotope potassium 40. When this radioactive isotope breaks down argon 40 is one of the byproducts. When rocks are heated to the melting point, any Argon 40 contained in them is released into the atmosphere. When the rock re-crystallizes it becomes impermeable to gasses again. As the potassium 40 in the solid rock decays into Argon 40, the gas is trapped in the rock. So the measurement of the ratio of potassium 40 to argon 40 can be used to calculate the time lapse since the rock was solidified from the molten state. Again, this is the ONLY established method for paleontological dating. A recent test of this method has established it as completely unreliable as a geological time clock. Two samples of volcanic rock taken from two lava flows in Hawaii were tested for their age by the potassium/argon method. One lava flow occurred in 1800 and the other 1801. One of the two samples measured the age of rock to be 160 million years old and the other 2.96 billion years old!!! Since the academicians believed so thoroughly in the efficacy of this method they concluded that the samples were taken from two intrusions into the lava flow, and disregarded the data!

Lest you think that Gramps is some old kook, spouting off about something he knows nothing about, let me quote you from the Research Communications Network Report on this subject—

“Dr. Robert V. Gentry is the world’s leading authority on radiohalo research. He has published a remarkable series of papers in such distinguished journals as Nature, Science, and Annual Review of Nuclear Science. His findings are of great significance to the question of radiometric dating. Among his carefully drawn conclusions are the following: Earth’s primordial crustal rocks, rather than cooling and solidifying over millions or billions of years, crystallized almost instantaneously. Some geological formations thought to be 100 million years old are in reality only several thousand years old.” ( Research Communications Network Report , 2/10/1977, p 3)

Since NO CHRONOLOGY can be traced back to any pre-historic time, all such time estimates can only be suppositions. However, since scientific theories are touted by the university academicians as established facts, they are generally accepted as such because of the great deference that is given to the scientific community. However, all truth comes from God. HE KNOWS! And if anything that God has revealed does not concur with any supposed scientific fact, who do you think needs to adjust his thinking?

 

Gramps