The Age of the Earth

Image taken with a GoPro from a weather balloon, 115,000 ft above the New Mexico. Distortion exaggerates the earths curvature as seen from this height.

     In 2010 I went back to college. At 21, I was fresh back in the states from a two year span as a missionary in South Africa and had plans to get a degree in aerospace engineering. This a story about changing my mind in a time I had no interest in doing so.

     I remember a time when I expressed my plans to study engineering to an older neighbor who had a role as a my religious organization. He, having not gone to college himself, encouraged my decision and gave me two pieces of advice. His first instruction was that I should not let near term gratification get in the way of long term benefits. The second was that, being in a technical field, I should be wary of things I might learn in school that could contradict with my religious beliefs.

     Though my mind has changed about the second piece of advice since then, at the time I really took it to heart. Being in a technical field, there were plenty of opportunities to apply it. However, one of the first examples centered around the age of the earth. Since the radiometric dating evidence is widely known, this topic had come up even before school. In my time in South Africa, most of my free time was spent discussing controversial topics within the church. As such I was pretty familiar with the scriptural treatment of the issue. Additionally, since this is not a new disagreement between church and science, being a part of a community that accepted continuing revelation from God I was also familiar with more recent information received through this channel. Given these bits of evidence, and the disagreement of others viewing this evidence, I was a bit undecided on this issue.

     For those who might not be familiar with the age of the earth topic, let me start from the beginning. Many christian faiths read the old testament as literal historical document covering the time from the creation of the earth up until 2000 years ago when Jesus Christ was born. This has become a less popular view over time as empirical evidence has mounted against some of the more testable claims, however one extension of a literal reading of the bible is that the history of the earth from creation till present spans a time period of roughly 6000 years. This also happens to coincide with the lifespan of the world as we know it, designating any day soon as the end of the world. This view is further reinforced in mormon culture by its founder Joseph Smith. It is right there in the name Latter-Day Saints. The idea is that the LDS church is the final reincarnation of a string of religious organizations throughout history, all revealed from God directly in their time. As part of the restoration of the knowledge handed down from on high, Joseph Smith was able to ask questions from an omnipotent God and receive clarifications to scripture. One of the things he is believed to receive further information about is this very topic. He was asking for clarification on some of the symbolism used by John in the book of Revelations, and from his own words,

"Q. What are we to understand by the book which John saw, which was sealed on the back with seven seals? 

A. We are to understand that it contains the revealed will, mysteries, and the works of God; the hidden things of his economy concerning this earth during the seven thousand years of its continuance, or its temporal existence.

 Q. What are we to understand by the seven seals with which it was sealed? 

A. We are to understand that the first seal contains the things of the first thousand years, and the second also of the second thousand years, and so on until the seventh."

     This answer seems pretty clear. To be fair, there are those that would say this answer should be taken figuratively. This figurative reading of revelations from a divine being are becoming more common in today's world as evidence mounts against them. For myself, wanting to take a rigorous view, and believing in a God who doesn't give answers to questions with a clear and incorrect answer, I took the answer to be literal. I believed the age of the earth to be less than 7000 years old. My evidence was the word of an another man who claimed to speak with God.

     I took this position without understanding the counter claim that the earth was ~4 billion years old. I had heard of evolution, this idea required an old earth, but this was not a very convincing piece of evidence since I also was a creationist. I was not really interested in changing my mind on the subject, however. I wasn't looking to find counter evidence to my beliefs. I just wanted to learn enough to get a job as an engineer. It so happens that part of that training is in math. I had to take a differential equations class. The differential equation that describes radioactive decay is one of the more simple differential equations to solve, and is therefore used to practice when teaching differential equations. Once learning the methods used in carbon dating, I had evidence that contradicted my current belief and it was really uncomfortable. The real problem was that it made sense. I understood the process of radiometric dating, it was something I could check for myself with a little bit of equipment. 

     This is a point of mental discomfort. Though there is no certain proof to determine the age of the earth, it is certainly incorrect for the earth to be both 7000 years old and 4 billion years old. The problem is that I had to infer which was true from convoluted and indirect means. There is no way to directly experience the age of the earth; and while it is not logically possible to prove a theory correct, if a claim requires two contradictory assertions to be simultaneously true it can be said to wrong with certainty. It can not be both ways, though one can never be certain which of the two it is.

     So how should I have proceeded from this point? I had a working theory of the earths history, given my study of scripture, and the evidence that supported this theory is as follows: Scripture (if taken literally) suggests the earth is young, God created the animals and earth rendering evolution and an old earth an unnecessary idea in explaining the earths as well as humanity's history, respectable people around me also seemed to hold this view, etc. On the other hand, empirical evidence seemed to suggest that the earth was much older than my working theory allowed. In weighing the relative worth of evidence and its effect on my worldview I see two directions to attack the problem. First, I could question the validity of each piece of evidence. I could question the motives of those who argued for an old earth, or pretend that I knew more about it than they did. However, in doing so it would be dishonest to not apply the same scrutiny to the evidence that supported the belief I already held. Second, I can assume that both sets of evidence are coming through honest attempts at seeking truth and question their ability to fit into the context of other sets of available evidence. 

     Prior to my new found understanding of the process of radiometric dating I had relied heavily on the first method to refrain from changing my mind on the subject. I did so selectively and with heavy confirmation bias, only attempting to refute those pieces of evidence which would imply a change of mind was in order. After I became less able to blindly dismiss the validity of radiometric dating techniques, I pretty much immediately stopped applying this technique in order to preserve my other beliefs that relied on unscrutinzed evidence.

     The second method of comparing competing evidence sets led to a sort of domino effect in my world view. Having difficulty maintaining my rigidity of belief using the first method I realized that the change that was taking place in my belief about the age of the earth would resonate throughout my worldview. I could not however, find a way to prevent it from happening. It was as if, having accidentally come to be faced with the strength of the evidence that showed me to be wrong, I was only able to accept or stop thinking entirely.

     There is a question here that yet remains. I now recognized that new evidence suggested a change in belief was in order, but how does one go about updating their map of the world when such events occur? Neither evidence can prove its case conclusively, yet one was clearly stronger than the other. I chose to update in the face of this, but what would you do? It was not something I wanted to do, but I was faced with an ideological form of fight or flight, I either had to accept that I was wrong and change, or I had to stop examining my worldview and attempt to ignore any further evidence beyond what I had collected to that point. This was one of my most formative moments and one that took a lot of courage, to decide to be honest with myself and not hide from my lack of understanding, and I have tried to let this principle guide my life ever since.