Our human nature is to question and seek truth about everything in this world. For many centuries the origin of human kind was not a debated topic and all believed that the creation story of genesis where God’s hands over a six-day period created all that we know. This common knowledge was challenged in 1755 by a German Philosopher named Immanuel Kant (Macpherson, 1911) He was known as the central figure of modern philosophy and created the theory that the earth was much older then the bible stated.
For this Comparative essay, I will be discussing the Original Creation of the Earth and the Age of the Earth. In this essay I will compare the two key viewpoints of the Nebular Hypothesis (Old-Earth Secular view) and Six-Day Creation (Young-Earth View). In addition to Old-Earth view and Young-Earth view being discussed I will also compare the beliefs of how old the earth is between the two views. Old-Earth Secular View The Nebular Hypothesis theory is just one of the many view points believed in old-earth secular view.
According to Turbulence, Dynamos, Accretion disks, Pulsars and Collective Plasma Processes the universe was formed when” a cloud of gas and dust collapsed by gravity begins to spin faster because of angular momentum conservation” (Hasan, Gangadhara & Krishan, 2009). Due to all of chaotic instability the cloud of gas began to spin faster over the course of the next 100 million years and in the center created all the stars, planets, and moons. This theory is more accurate to what modern science believes.
Science’s reason for the “Big Bang” is simply by chance and no reason at all, this is where it differs for people who have a Old-Earth Secular view, because they believe it was still god who had formed this entire solar system. Young-Earth View Among the many viewpoints hypothesized about the creation of earth one of the most debated is the view of Young-Earth Creationists. This viewpoint gets its beliefs directly out of the first chapters Genesis of the bible.
The main belief, which makes Young-Earth creationists stand alone from many of the other theories, is that according to the bible the earth is no more than 10,000 years old (Scott, 2004. ) This concept of such a young earth has been scrutinized by the scientific community because there has been so much research, for example carbon dating, to date the earth to be roughly 4. 6 billion years old. The justification of the belief of the earth only dating 6000-1000 years old comes from the genealogies listed in Genesis where you can directly trace the lineage from Adam through Noah to Abraham.
Young-Earth creationists take a literal interpretation of the genealogies and they base the age of the earth from counting the ages of how old the men are that are stated in Genesis (Scott,2004). Another major standard belief of Young earth creationist is that the earth was created in a six-day period of time. This is directly and literally taken from the first chapter of Genesis in which it describes god forming light and darkness, the heavens and earth, and everything that inhabits it. On the seventh day God had chose this day to rest after the six days of creating he entire universe.
This belief of a six-day creation completely contradicts the scientific community and the theory of evolution, or more commonly known as the “Big Bang” theory. Comparison of the Viewpoints Of the many similarities between Young-earth views and Old-Earth views the most prominent one would be a firm belief in the opposition to naturalism. Although the differences in how the actual earth was formed the fact that god created all of mankind and all animals on the earth is a fact in both old-earth and young-earth views (Geisler, 2003). Evolution is a strong disbelief for either view in regards to creation.
Both views deny that all life descended by completely natural processes without supernatural intervention from the outside (Geisler, 2003). The belief God created all animals and mankind can be traced to the Great Flood in the book of Genesis. This is where the entire earth was flooded because the human race became too sinful so he commanded Noah and his family to build a Great arc and get two of every animal onto the arc. Contrast of the Viewpoints In contrast to the viewpoints on evolution and the Great flood, there are many differences between Old-earth and Young Earth views.
The most debated contrast between both views in the time in which it took god to create the earth. The Young-Earth view is that God created the everything, including earth and mankind, in one hundred and forty-four hours. In contrast Old-Earth believes that creation allows for millions, or even billions, of years before or on each of the “days”. Although the theory of humans and animal evolution is agreed upon between the two views the thing that separates Old-Earth and Young-Earth are the dinosaurs and fossil records.
Young-Earth Creationists deny all evidence of dinosaurs dating over 10,000 years ago and simply see it as they did live but also when mankind lived. In Fact, some Young-Earth creationists believe that dinosaurs may still exist in remote and unexplored parts of the world. This is in direct contrast of Old-World beliefs because they believe the evidence of fossils dating 65 to 210 million years ago, where they lived and died out, and long before human arrival.
No matter what theory or belief you decide there are ultimately two beliefs which matter the most: a belief in God or a disbelief in God. Although, both sides have compelling details in which way of thought is more accurate, there is always going to be a stance of the two beliefs. In conclusion the Nebular hypothesis has factual evidence that shows the universe is close to 13 billion years old, but because of the loop holes in science, six-day creation still stands firm in the argument to many people who believe in God’s word.
