Matt Walsh and a Young Earth

Recently the popular Catholic political blogger Matt Walsh made a fairly lengthy video explaining why he was not a young-earth creationist and why he thinks young-earth creationists are a stumbling block to the faith of many people. The video is filled with strawman fallacies, misunderstandings, and mischaracterizations of what creationists actually believe. After watching the video, I was left wondering if he had even read any of our literature discussing the age of the earth.

Walsh’s main points were that the days in Genesis could not be twenty-four hours and that science has proved the earth is billions of years old. We have repeatedly addressed these claims on our website, again making me wonder if he did any research before making his video. However, the fundamental point that Mr. Walsh is making is that he is more willing to rely on man’s fallible word than to trust God’s infallible word. He repeatedly cites “science” as the reason the earth cannot be young. Yet, when observational science is performed, there are mountains of evidence from geology, astronomy, physics, archaeology, and so on that the earth is indeed young.

By accepting the dogma of secular science, Walsh completely ignores the context of God’s infallible Word.

By accepting the dogma of secular science, Walsh completely ignores the context of God’s infallible Word. His claim that the days in Genesis cannot be twenty-four hours because a day is defined by the earth revolving around the sun and spinning on its axis reveals a fundamental misunderstanding of what a day is. Though he’s correct to say that the sun, according to Scripture, wasn’t there until the fourth day, the length of the day has nothing to do with the sun. It is entirely dependent on the rotation of the earth. And by accepting secular interpretations of the past, Walsh completely ignores what a “day” means in Scripture. He is right that the word “day” in the Bible has multiple meanings, but not when it is combined with evening, morning, and a number as it is in Genesis 1. Every single time it is used with those words, it means a literal 24-hour day, something he completely ignores.

It is very ironic that Walsh regularly defends biblical positions such as biblical marriage, human life made in God's image beginning at fertilization, two created genders and so on, but rejects the foundation for those beliefs. Without appealing to Genesis, there is no foundation for marriage. Abortion becomes perfectly acceptable if we aren’t made in the image of God. Get rid of spare cats or spare kids—what’s the difference? Why should we have two genders if God did not make them male and female in the beginning? Genesis provides the answers to those questions.

While Walsh did not mention it, I wonder what he makes of how Jesus affirmed that Genesis was the beginning in Mark 10:6? Or how he feels about Exodus 20:11 which tells us everything was made in six literal days? See, this is the problem with trying to fit billions of years into Genesis. It always ends up compromising the Bible in places outside of Genesis too. So either we accept the whole Bible naturally, as it is written, or we reject the whole thing. Trying to fit the Bible with the secular timeline just does not work.

Here at Answers in Genesis, we are committed to answering the questions posed by secularists and compromised Christians about what the Bible says. We have a lot of articles on these topics, some of which are listed below.

• Why do you take the Bible literally?
• How should we interpret Genesis?
• Is the Bible a Science textbook?
• 24 Hours-Plain as day
• How long is a day?
• How old is the earth?
• Jesus devastates an old earth
• Genesis: Does it matter?
• What is the Gospel?
• Dinosaurs on the Ark
• Distant Starlight
• Does Distant Starlight Prove the Universe is old?
• Chronology Wars
• How old does the Earth look?
• Is Science Secular?
• Does religion cripple science innovation?
• Science or the Bible?
• And many many more!

Thanks for stopping by and thanks for praying,
Ken

This item was written with the assistance of AiG’s research team.