hughbiquitous

Two items to add to my ongoing thinking-out-loud (#1, #2, #3):

Justin Taylor’s View

Justin Taylor lays his cards on the table as to his perspective on creation:

The “days” of Genesis 1 are analogical and anthropomorphic. God is portrayed as a workman going through his workweek, working during the day and resting for the night. Then on his Sabbath, he enjoys a full and refreshing rest. Our days are like God’s workdays, but not identical to them. How long were God’s workdays? The Bible doesn’t say. But I see no reason to insist that they were only 24 hours long.

I’m not sure about all the original-language work Taylor invokes — it’s not my specialty and I’m wholly dependent on the weight of authority here — but I appreciate the way he grapples with the text to see what it requires of the reader.

Old-Universe Consistency

I also came across this page by a UCLA professor which shows three independent observation-based methods for calculating the age of the universe. All three methods agree that the universe is something like 12-14 billion years old. And on top of all that, the theoretical model predicts an age of 13.7 billion years old.

This doesn’t settle everything once and for all. It just means that any young-earth position is going to have to account for three corroborating old-universe observations and refute the theoretical model that predicts the outcome that the observations do, in fact, deliver. The only alternative is to say that faith and reason don’t speak to each other.