Age of the Universe: Biblical Perspective

Many scientists claim the universe to be about 15 billion years old.
Still, many people believe the universe creation time line to be about 6,000 years old.
Would you be surprised if you learned that both figures could be true?

Don’t run away just yet! You’re about to discover a very interesting and significant story.

Hear the perspective of a man with both deep biblical knowledge and deep scientific knowledge. Dr. Gerald Schroeder has been a featured author at aish.com (The leading jewish content website). And, Dr. Schroeder has a double-Ph.D. in Nuclear Physics and Earth and Planetary Sciences from M.I.T.

Click to read Dr. Schroeder’s full article – Age of the Universe: How old is the world? Ancient commentators propose that the world may be simultaneously young and old.

“One of the most obvious perceived contradictions between Bible and science is the age of the universe. Is it billions of years old, like scientific data, or is it thousands of years, like Biblical data? When we add up the generations of the Bible, we come to 5700-plus years. Whereas, data from the Hubble telescope or from the land based telescopes in Hawaii, indicate the age at about 15 billion years.

Let me clarify right at the start. The world may be only some 6000 years old. God could have put the fossils in the ground and juggled the light arriving from distant galaxies to make the world appear to be billions of years old. There is absolutely no way to disprove this claim. God being infinite could have made the world that way. There is another possible approach that also agrees with the ancient commentators’ description of God and nature. The world may be young and old simultaneously. In the following I consider this latter option.

In trying to resolve this apparent conflict, it’s interesting to look historically at trends in knowledge, because absolute proofs are not forthcoming. But what is available is to look at how science has changed its picture of the world, relative to the unchanging picture of the Torah [Bible]. (I refuse to use modern Biblical commentary because it already knows modern science, and is always influenced by that knowledge. The trend becomes to bend the Bible to match the science.)”