Not in a Million Years!

“There’s no way he’ll sink that putt, not in a million years! I didn’t think she’d quit her job in a million years! I couldn’t figure out how to speak Latin in a million years!”

Ironically, in contradiction to how the idea of millions of years of time taking place is usually associated with the impossibility of something being able to occur, the state-run school systems in the West promote a specific view of our supposed origins (the story of evolution) that absolutely requires unseen millions of years to have occurred to even be plausible.

Anyone who believes in the story of evolution must also believe in the concept of deep time.

Why? Well logically, it should be obvious that anyone who believes in the story of evolution must also believe in the concept of deep time. Remember what the evolutionist Futuyma, whom I quoted in Part 4, said?

Organisms either appeared on the earth fully developed or they did not. If they did not, they must have developed from preexisting species by some process of modification . . . no natural process could possibly form inanimate molecules into an elephant or a redwood tree in one step.1

As ubiquitous as belief in the story of evolution is now among the average person in the West, the concept that is baked into their understanding of the world is the idea and belief that the earth we live on is incredibly old.

This fundamental belief is actually the foundational structure that makes the entire story of evolution even plausible. Without this theoretical platform, evolution wouldn’t have had enough time to take all of those supposed “steps” to form molecules into mice, eels into elephants, trees into tadpoles, manatees into monkeys, apes to men, or whatever wild imaginative story you’d care to believe in.

Just like chemical and biological evolutionary ideas have been around throughout the ages, the idea of an old earth and ancient universe (geological and cosmological evolution) have been around as well.

The two concepts (deep time and evolution) are intrinsically and inescapably linked together. And it’s not as if the church has only had to defend against such anti-biblical ideas more recently in history.

As an example, here is a quote from the famous work The City of God, written by the fourth-century church father Augustine, where he is rebutting cyclical, old-earth concepts promoted by pagan Bible skeptics of his day who were arguing against the young earth view clearly outlined in Scripture:

Unbelievers are also deceived by false documents which ascribe to history many thousand years, although we can calculate from Sacred Scripture that not 6,000 years have passed since the creation of man.

According to Scripture, less than 6000 years have elapsed since he began to be. . . . If it offends them that the time that has elapsed since the creation of man is so short, and his years so few according to our authorities, let them take this into consideration, that nothing that has a limit is long, and that all the ages of time being finite, are very little, or indeed nothing at all, when compared to the interminable eternity.2

Now, a Britannica website article describes Augustine’s work as, “The City of God, philosophical treatise vindicating Christianity, written by the medieval philosopher St. Augustine as . . . (Concerning the City of God Against the Pagans) about 413–426 CE.”3

Note in the upcoming quote their acknowledgment of what we have already discussed in past articles in this series. Namely, the Bible, and works such as Augustine’s that were defending and promoting the Bible, were integral to the establishment of Western culture.

His defense of Christianity included not only symbolic, moral, or philosophical applications of Scripture but also included an apologetic defense of the historicity of the biblical creation account as well as belief and trust in a future eschatological event when Christ would return once again.

A masterpiece of Western culture, The City of God was written in response to pagan claims. . . . He further outlined his vision of two societies, that of the elect (“The City of God”) and that of the damned (“The City of Man”). These “cities” are symbolic embodiments of the two spiritual powers—faith and unbelief—that have contended with each other since the fall of the angels. They are inextricably intermingled on this earth and will remain so until time’s end. Augustine also developed his theological interpretation of human history, which he perceives as linear and predestined, beginning with the Creation and ending with the Second Coming of Christ. At this work’s heart is a powerful contrarian vision of human life, one which accepts the place of disaster, death, and disappointment while holding out hope of a better life to come, a hope that in turn eases and gives direction to life in this world.4

Do you remember when we spoke in Part 2 about how Western culture used to have a commonality of thought regarding the three big questions of life (where did everything come from, what is the meaning of life, and what happens when we die)?

Here you can clearly see the answers most people would have given throughout the majority of Western culture’s history reflected in Augustine’s work. Namely, God created everything roughly 6,000 years ago; serving God, your family, and the community is the meaning of life; and either heaven or hell is your ultimate destination.

Despite his misinterpretation that the days in Genesis were not literal 24-hour days—likely because of his access to an inferior translation of the Septuagint (the Old Latin Version [Vetus Latina] when doing his exegesis on the subject—Augustine was a young-earth creationist by definition of his specific beliefs.

1. He believed in an instantaneous creation and that God created the heavens and the earth ex nihilo (from nothing preexistent; with mature plants, creatures, and ecosystems fully formed).
2. He believed the earth to be less than 6,000 years old based on the chronologies laid out within Scripture.
3. Noah’s flood was a worldwide event that covered the entire globe.

Modern belief in millions of years is largely predicated on an interpretation of the rock layers found around the world as being evidence for slow and steady processes.

Of course, the reason I mention his belief in the global flood as a real event is that it’s also integral to the whole age of the earth debate. Modern belief in millions of years is largely predicated on an interpretation of the rock layers found around the world as being evidence for slow and steady processes.

In contrast, those who believe in the historicity of Noah’s flood as described in the Bible assign that event as the primary mechanism for the rapid formation of the majority of the geologic record some 4,400 years ago.

I could point to example after example of church fathers (the totality of whom, like Augustine, were young-earth creationists5) defending against evolutionary and/or old-earth ideas and in defense of young-earth creation throughout history.

However, for brevity instead, here is a question I want you to consider (very similar to the question we asked regarding where Erasmus Darwin came up with his evolutionary ideas), where did the pagans of old come up with the idea of an ancient earth?

Were they doing geological analysis, studying the comparative anatomy of fossils between rock layers, or measuring the half-lives of radiometric isotopes? Of course not!

They were simply beginning with a familiar presupposition we’ve discussed previously, that either the God of the Bible didn’t exist or that if he did, you couldn’t take his revelation of history at face value.

Now some might think that unfair, stating many cultures wouldn’t have even known about God and/or the Old Testament scriptures (and certainly not the New Testament prior to it being written), but that doesn’t change my point.

Whether you are aware of the God of the Bible or not, for those proposing ideas in contradiction to the Scriptures, you are trying to imagine a reality coming into existence either without regard to or in rejection of what the Bible reveals as the true history of the creation.

As we’ve pointed out previously, for the more atheistic-minded out there, the idea of evolution as an explanation for our existence and its required millions of years timeline is simply a philosophical outworking of those beliefs applied to the interpretation of facts we see around us.

If you begin with the idea that there is no creator, then everything somehow created itself so to speak, and that must have taken eons of time to do so, as we sure don’t see it happening in real time today.

So having said that and to further prove the point, let’s explore where today’s more modern ideas about an ancient earth germinated in Western society, specifically.

Well, similar to the many people who promoted and helped to popularize the story of evolution before Charles Darwin (despite the fascination in modern literature showcasing him as its “discoverer”), there were also several key people involved in popularizing the idea of millions of years prior to its greatest proponent—Sir Charles Lyell (essentially Charles Darwin’s equivalent in the field of geology who we’ll discuss in more detail in our next article).

Here is a short list of influential geologists from the 1700s–1800s, collated by Dr. Terry Mortenson (PhD) whose degree is in the history of geology. Note his research into the theological and philosophical dispositions and corresponding motivations of each one of them.

Behind the scenes, many early geologists were strategizing about how to undermine faith in the Scriptures, especially the history of Genesis 1–11 and to convince the Church that the Bible has nothing relevant to say to the question of the age and history of the earth . . . none of this is surprising when we consider the theological orientation of the men who were most influential in the development of the old-earth theory. Buffon was a deist or atheist, disguising the fact with occasional references to God. Laplace was an open atheist. Lamarck straddled the fence between deism and atheism. Werner was a deist or possibly an atheist, and hence “felt no need to harmonize his theory with the Bible.” Historians have concluded the same about Hutton. William Smith was a vague sort of theist, but according to his nephew (a fellow geologist) he was most definitely not a Christian. Cuvier was a nominal Lutheran, but recent research has shown that in practice he was an irreverent deist. Lyell was probably a deist (or a Unitarian, which is essentially the same). Many of the other leading geologists of the 1820s and 1830s were likewise anti-Christian.6

A singularly prominent figure one could point to regarding promoting old earth ideas prior to Lyell would be James Hutton, who is also often referred to as the father of modern geology. And he’s also who writer Jack Repcheck refers to (and titled his book about Hutton as) The Man Who Found Time. The promotion for which states,

The story of the gentleman farmer from Edinburgh who discovered that the earth was millions of years old, not six thousand, paving the way for Darwin’s theory of evolution. Hutton proved that the earth was millions of years old rather than the biblically determined six thousand, and that it was continuously being shaped and re-shaped by everyday forces, rather than one cataclysmic event. He went on to provide the scientific proof that allowed Darwin’s theory of evolution to be viable.7

Note some key points here. Repcheck is no friend of creationists, and yet he makes the point that the concept of an approximately 6,000-year-old earth is clearly biblically derived, and he references that Hutton’s work supposedly overturned the idea that “one cataclysmic event” (i.e., Noah’s flood) shaped the rock layers on the earth.

He further emphasizes how this paved the way for Darwinian evolution. Also note that Hutton basically promoted the same cyclical, old-earth beliefs that the fourth-century pagans whom Augustine argued against did.

Again, if the various stories of evolution (including Erasmus’ version of Darwinian evolution) and its required millions of years had been around for centuries before and decades after Hutton and his contemporaries we mentioned, how exactly did his ideas pave the way for Darwin’s modern-day story of evolution?

Well, similar to how promoters of Charles Darwin like to focus on natural selection as a central concept to rally around, Hutton was a key player in establishing the specific concept of uniformitarianism in geology—the idea that the present is the key to the past. What was meant by that can be seen in this quotation: “The past history of our globe must be explained by what can be seen to be happening now. . . . No powers are to be employed that are not natural to the globe, no action to be admitted except those of which we know the principle.”8

What he was doing here is simply what we’ve mentioned before, he was ignoring the revelation of God (particularly Genesis 6–9), which clearly teaches the reality that there was a giant cataclysm that engulfed the world in the great deluge known as Noah’s flood in the recent past.

Instead, he demanded (based on ideology, not on the absolute principle of science) that the study of geology should only adhere to whatever slow and steady principles one could observe in the present and automatically exclude any ideas concerning cataclysmic events, even if there was positive evidence for them having occurred both past and present.

This idea of uniformitarianism was something Hutton carried a long way down the naturalistic playing field so to speak and which Charles Lyell then later took across the goal line in terms of convincing people away from belief in Noah’s flood as a real event.

The ultimate straw that broke the back of biblical authority in the West was the concept that the Bible could not be trusted as plainly written because “science” had supposedly disproved its historical accounts.

Join us for Part 7 where we’ll unveil how (like those in control of education have misrepresented the facts and illegitimately promoted the story of evolution for generations) a deeper dive behind the scenes will demonstrate that the bedrock of naturalism itself (uniformitarianism) has always been on shaky ground scientifically. An idea that even modern-day evolution-believing geologists are now agreeing with.