Adam & Eve.

I wanted to take a moment to discuss a semi-controversial topic, and that is the age of the Human race. According to Young Earth Creationists, the Earth itself is roughly 6,000 years old. Some Biblical scholars did some math and found that if you follow the geneology exactly as written, Humans apparently showed up at around 4004 B.C, in turn seemingly confirming a Young Earth Creationism theory.

Seemingly. Only this is wrong. There is something that is very important to note here, and that is the fact that many scholars agree that Biblical geneologies are often "telescoped." That is, we are given a Cliff's Notes version of the family tree, with the most "important" names included, thereby truncating the list. So, how old are Human beings? DNA evidence suggests somewhere around 200,000 years old, if you believe that Adam and Eve may have been Neanderthals.

If you don't believe this, the age is a bit younger. Roughly 30,000 years old.

This dovetails rather nicely with Biblical evidence stating exactly the same thing: the Earth is old. There is no issue if you interpret the data correctly. If you don't, the data can lead you to arrive at incorrect conclusions that are not based in reality. It's food for thought, and something that can be discussed further at length later. Point being, the Earth is not young, and Adam and Eve did not show up 6,000 years ago.

It's true. This leads me to a related subject, and it is the age of the Earth and the universe. According to radiometric measurements (using a mass spectrometer and the oldest rocks we could find), we can say with a high degree of certainty that the Earth is, give-or-take, 4 and a half billion years old. What about the universe itself? Using the Hubble Telescope, scientists have observed the speeds at which the galaxies are/were moving. They also compare the galaxies' positioning in relation to other galaxies, including our own. Utilizing /studying speeds and distances, contemporary science has claimed that the universe is roughly 14 or 15 billion years old. Here is my personal issue: If Genesis 1:1 is correct, and the Earth was created at the begining of the universe (making them the same age), which figure is more reliable? 4 and a half billion years using observable methods or 14-15 billion through inferences? From what can be seen from Hubble, scientists say that the rate of unversal expansion is increasing. All this considered, what can we properly infer about expansion in the past? How fast was the universe expanding ? I have friends who are crunching the numbers behind my screen as we speak, and they say it must have been expanding at a blistering speed in order to make up all that distance in just 4.5 billion years. Right now, the universe is expanding at 68 km/s per megaparsec. It must have been moving at a must faster clip than that in the past. Bottom line?

I firmly believe the universe to be 4.5 billion years old.