Ep 901 ｜ Does the Age of the Earth Matter？ ｜ Guest： Dr. Sean McDowell (Part Two)
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Summary
Dr. Sean McDowell is back with us for part two of our two-part conversation on the age of the earth and how to reconcile science and faith. How old is the earth? How old was there a Noah? How long ago did the earth exist? How did dinosaurs exist? What is the difference between a young earth and an old earth perspective? What are the differences between creationism and creationism? How do we reconcile science with faith? And how do we talk about all of these issues with our children in a way that they can understand and understand them?
Transcript
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How do we know that Jesus really existed and was raised from the dead?
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And then how do we talk about all of these issues and all kinds of faith issues with
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our children in a way that they can understand and will really make an impact on their worldview?
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Dr. Sean McDowell is back with us today for part two of our two-part conversation,
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This episode is brought to you by our friends at Good Ranchers.
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This is not something that I have really covered in depth on my podcast.
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And just to be honest, it's not really something that, I mean, yes, of course,
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as a lifelong Christian, I went to a Christian school and all of that.
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But, and so we've studied creation, the different theories about creation, young earth, old earth,
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But personally, in my adult life, I have not really dug that much into all of the different
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So I know that's a huge question, and I'm not asking you to land on a particular conclusion
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But how do we even start kind of navigating as Christians, okay, how old is the earth?
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Like, does it really matter when dinosaurs existed and all of that?
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They don't want to abandon science for Christianity.
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Like, we should be able to answer these questions.
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My father and I wrote a book together a few years ago called Evidence It Demands a Verdict,
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And basically, one of the things we said is there's certain essentials that Christians
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Issue number two is that the Bible is authoritative, and it's God's word.
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And we have to be committed to interpreting it properly.
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But how we reconcile scientific beliefs and faith, there always has been, and there still
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are, a range of views within the Christian fold.
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So I just want to make that distinction between things that are essential.
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If you give those up, I would argue you are outside of the Christian fold.
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But how we interpret the Bible, the means by which God created, these are important issues
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that play out a lot in our practical lives in the intersection of science and faith, but
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they're areas in which Christians can disagree.
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So when it comes to something like the age of the earth, there's a range of views.
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We actually walked in that chapter, 10 different options, and there's more than that.
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But one option would be a young earth perspective, which would say probably 10 to 12,000 years
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And they would tend to take Genesis, the days in Genesis 1, in a straightforward, literalistic
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And of course, that means that humans lived with dinosaurs, and dinosaurs either died out
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in the flood, or they died subsequently in some, say, natural disasters, or they just went
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That's a young earth position, has been held by some in the history of the church and many
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But there's also a lot of Christians who hold what's called an old earth perspective, where
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they would adopt kind of what you might say is just kind of a modern scientific understanding
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of the age of the universe, maybe 13.8, 13.9 billion years old, the earth maybe 3.7 billion
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And they would say one of two things with Genesis.
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Either the days are like 1,000 years to the Lord, their extended period of time, just like
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we might say today is the day of artificial intelligence, or they would look at things
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like Genesis and say, it's not even trying to give us a specific scientific account.
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And it's not trying to tell us the specific ways that God did create.
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Now, for me, I don't die, so to speak, on one of the twos.
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I have my own opinions, and I have my own leanings.
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And we've got to follow where the science leads, got to follow the best biblical exegesis.
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And what I believe is when we do the science well, unencumbered by a kind of naturalistic
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worldview, and we understand the theology correctly, the two will line up.
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So I would appeal to Christians to follow the facts, debate this.
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But we don't have time as a body of Christ to divide over this issue today.
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I think that leads us to a good place and just emphasizes why it is important for us to
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be thoughtful about this and to at least have an answer.
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And that doesn't necessarily mean, so if you had like an unbeliever ask you, okay, well,
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We don't have to have an exact answer in order to be prepared to engage in that kind of
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conversation with someone who is an unbeliever and is demanding those answers, right?
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If somebody said, hey, how old do you think the earth is?
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I'd say, I'm happy to give you my opinion, but I'm curious of all the questions you can
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I want to know where that question comes from, because oftentimes people have been told if they
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don't adopt a certain view of the age of the earth, then they cannot be a Christian.
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Now that tends to be typically coming from certain young earthers, but I've heard that
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So there I would want to just find out if somebody said, yeah, I, I, I've been told that if you
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don't think the earth is 10,000 years old, you can't be a Christian.
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All I would want to do is just unpack that and say, you know what?
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And there's a lot of really smart young earthers who have put forward arguments for this position.
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You should take seriously, but it's not the only position.
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And there's very smart scientists and biblical scholars who make a case for the old earth.
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So really then I'm going to shift the question to either who is Jesus or is there evidence
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Bottom line, Allie, I want to make sure I die on the right hills and I don't always do this.
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I'm not going to pretend that I do, but I want to keep the main thing.
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The main thing and shift it back to, is there evidence for a designer in the universe?
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And then we can get to some of these important, but secondary issues in due time.
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You know, I didn't know that it was even a debate that Jesus existed, but I do see some
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atheists saying, um, and it's typically atheists.
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It's not typically people of other faiths saying Jesus didn't even exist.
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I didn't even know that that was a debated issue.
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Yes, of course, there's debate over whether he was God, not within Christianity, but outside
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of Christianity, people don't believe that he was God.
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Um, but I mean, is there, is there a debate about the historicity of the existence of Jesus?
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Well, of course, when we say, is there a debate, we have to clarify what form we're talking
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about because people, as you know, literally debate everything on the internet.
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Was there a Holocaust is the earth flat, et cetera.
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Even scholars like Bart Ehrman, who's kind of an agnostic, atheist, uh, textual critic,
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obviously an expert in his lane, even though we differ out a lot about a lot of stuff.
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About 10 or 12 years ago, he wrote a book on the existence of Jesus.
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But he says this idea that Jesus didn't exist is actually a modern myth.
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And I would agree with him that the reason is just, we have too much evidence from such
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So whether it's the new Testament, and I don't even start there assuming it's inspired.
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I'm just saying we have four biographies of Jesus.
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Then we have early church fathers in the first century, the end of the first century.
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We have extra biblical writers, such as Josephus, a Jew, Tacitus, a Roman.
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There is no good reason to debate that Jesus existed, even though a handful of scholars will
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To give a little context, some people would say the same thing about evolution.
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They'd say it's so obvious that Darwinian or neo-Darwinian evolution is true.
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Well, you could probably count on one, maybe two hands, as far as I'm aware, the number
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There are hundreds of scholars with PhDs in science who don't necessarily believe in
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intelligent design, but who doubt the mechanism of neo-Darwinism, or at least doubt that we
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can explain naturalistically the origin of life and the complexity and diversity of species.
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So there's far more debate about questions of evolution than there are about the existence
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of Jesus, even though the majority of scientists, as far as I'm aware, would embrace some kind
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And then how do we get in the conversation from the existence of Jesus to, yes, Jesus really
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said that he was God, and we know that he was God?
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One is to just look at the evidence for the Gospels themselves.
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Are these books reliable, and are they historical?
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Now, of course, we'd have to look at the manuscript evidence of how they were copied over time,
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how early these manuscripts are, how many claimed mistakes there are.
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And I think when you compare the manuscript authority of the New Testament with other ancient
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books, even many classicists would say this book was very, very carefully preserved.
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We could look at some of the internal evidence for the Gospels, things like the Gospel writers,
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including embarrassing details, which are not the kind of things that you would invent, which
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We can start to look at the archaeological records.
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Some of the people mentioned within the Gospels, even I think it's in Luke chapter 3, Lysanias
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is mentioned, this incidental name, and we found an inscription matching up, likely being
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So we just would have to historically look at the Gospels and ask, are these reliable historical
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And then within the New Testament, we have to say, okay, who did Jesus understand himself
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Who did the other followers of Jesus understand himself to be?
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And I think you can even go to the earliest Gospel of Mark.
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The vast majority of scholars will make the case that Mark was the first Gospel, and then
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Matthew and Luke, the other synoptics, used Mark as a source.
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Now, most would concede that John, written the latest, clearly lays out that Jesus claimed
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But if you look at the Gospel of Mark, just at the beginning, it's really interesting.
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There's some clues that Jesus claimed to have divine authority.
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For example, it starts with a prophecy, a reference from Isaiah about the coming of a one who will
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And then it references to John the Baptist proclaiming the coming of Jesus.
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Because Jesus is the Lord of the Old Testament.
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Jesus heals somebody who had sinned against God.
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Because Jesus has divine authority within himself.
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Jesus has the authority to override the Sabbath, which was instituted by God himself.
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And of course, in the Gospel of Mark, it really culminates where you have Jesus on the cross.
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And even the Roman centurion says, surely he's the son of God.
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And that's why in Mark chapter 14, Jesus is asked, you know, are you the Messiah, the coming
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And Jesus cites Daniel chapter 7, which is a reference of this divine figure coming on the
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So to answer your question, I'm happy to look at the evidence that the New Testament and
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And then we just look at the claims that Jesus made.
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And I think it's very clear that he understood himself to be God in human flesh.
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And his followers like Paul and Peter and the book of Hebrews understood that as well.
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And then, of course, a central distinction is his resurrection from the dead, because there
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were other men around Jesus's time claiming to be some kind of Messiah, which some people
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He was just one of the many who claimed to be a Messiah.
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And then he was killed for the trouble that he caused in Rome.
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But we believe that Jesus was raised from the dead.
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In John chapter 2, the religious leaders asked Jesus for a sign.
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He says, I'm going to destroy this temple and three days raise it again.
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And they didn't understand that he meant the temple of his body.
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Later, his apostles looked back and realized, oh, my goodness, he was talking about his
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resurrection, which, of course, he also prophesied three times in Mark 8, 9, and 10.
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Second, we actually have very good evidence that Jesus was crucified.
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We have the extra biblical account, early church fathers, Josephus and Tacitus.
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And also, if they were inventing a Messiah, they would not invent one that was shamefully
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Gary Habermas right now, probably the leading resurrection scholar in the world, is working
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on a four-volume, I think 5,000-word defense of the resurrection.
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And as far as I'm aware, he's advanced 21 arguments for the empty tomb.
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Just one of them that's interesting is that the tomb is discovered by women.
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In that society at that time, a woman's testimony was not considered as significant as a man's.
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So if they're inventing a story about an empty tomb, trying to appeal to their audience,
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why would all four Gospels report that the tomb was discovered empty by women?
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Do we have reason to believe that Jesus appeared to people?
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We have multiple accounts, again, in the Gospels, in the letters of Paul.
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And what's amazing is the vast majority of scholars agree that the disciples had appearances,
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had experiences that they believed were of the risen Jesus.
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And all these claims that Jesus appeared to them, that's a pretty solid case.
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But then people will come up with what are called naturalistic hypotheses.
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Things like maybe the apostles had hallucinations.
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Well, one problem is, is that hallucinations, there's minimal evidence that they could ever
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be group hallucinations, like dreams, their individual experiences.
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So there is no other alternative that can account for all the facts like the resurrection.
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I think what it boils back to, and Gary Habermas has said this too, is really just a resistance
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to miracles, a commitment to naturalism that says, even if the evidence is pointing this
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direction, we know there has to be some other explanation because people don't rise from
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But I think for those who are open to following the evidence where it leads, a compelling case
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can be made that Jesus, in fact, rose on the third day.
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Yes, and there has to be, I mean, even just looking from a practical perspective, there
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has to be some explanation for why Jesus stuck.
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If there were all these men who claimed to be a Messiah, and they all ended up dying, they
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all kind of taught things and said that they were the fulfillment of prophecies, why is it
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Jesus that we base our entire timeline, all of history off of?
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Why has it been Jesus who has started this movement that has spread like wildfire and
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has forged civilizations and has changed nations?
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Like, why is it Jesus who's stuck if not for the resurrection, if not for the evidence that
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I think that's just, I don't know, that's a question that I go back to because we all
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have times where we're wrestling with, well, what is this?
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I just think about the centrality of Jesus and the inescapableness or inescapability,
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He is literally what you are basing time off of, what you are basing your calendar off
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Now, some skeptics might push back and say, well, the reason Jesus took is because we had
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the Pax Romana at this time, and now we had roads.
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Now we had the ability to travel and spread a message.
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So it's this coincidence of all these factors that come together.
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And I would say those factors are necessary, but not sufficient to explain, like you said,
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One reason is there's a lot of other people claiming to be messiahs.
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There were a lot of other religions at that time.
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And then the other piece is you also have the apostles willing to suffer and willing to
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die for their beliefs that they had seen the risen Jesus.
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Why put yourself in harm's way if you don't minimally have the belief that Jesus has risen
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And, you know, Ali, to kind of bring this full circle to a point that's made early, it's
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We hear today that people say the Christian message is bigoted and it's harmful to women.
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In the early church, it was largely led by masses of women who embraced the Christian faith.
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I was just preaching on Acts 17 recently, how Paul goes to Berea, Thessalonica, and Athens.
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And in all three places, it tells us that some women believed.
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It said that women are not just objects, they are made in the image of God and should
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That there is no distinction before Christ between slave and free, Greek and Jew, male
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So I think it's not only the evidence for Christianity, I think it's the power of the
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message of Christianity that led to, through the Holy Spirit, of course, that led to turning
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the world upside down against all odds that now J.P.
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Moreland, someone I teach with at Biola, he said, we call our dogs Caesar, but we call our
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I don't know if you've read the book by Owen Backey.
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I think it's called When Children Became People.
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If that's not the title of it, that's the concept of it.
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And basically, he talks about, I just think this is so fascinating, exactly what you're
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saying, how when Christianity burst onto the scene, it revolutionized over time how society
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I mean, the adult free male was really the nucleus of society, really not only seen as
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the person kind of with rights, but really the person with the only capability, the full
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capability to be a real person that had the logos, the ability to reason and to debate
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and to really do anything that was productive or contributed to society.
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And of course, slaves and the elderly and the disabled and women and children were seen
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as truly kind of on the marginalized, and particularly children, because there was such a high mortality
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They were very often disregarded or they were used as sexual objects.
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When Christianity came along and said, actually, these vulnerable people are made in the image
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of God, they have equal worth and equal dignity.
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And actually, the most vulnerable need to be cared for even more.
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They deserve even more of our honor, more of our time, more of our resources rather than
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That that completely changed how the world saw these different classes of people.
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Of course, that's not to say that it's perfect today, that everything has been changed and
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everyone sees people as made in the image of God.
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But wow, the impact that Christianity, that the gospel had, that Jesus had on how we see
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vulnerable people, people other than the adult free male, it's totally incalculable.
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And I think that that's one thing that we take for granted today.
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All of these things that we attribute to secular movements or just attribute to, I don't know,
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nebulous progress that I guess some believe is just inevitable.
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It goes back to the person of Jesus and who he is and what he taught, right?
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You know, Wednesday night, I was speaking at a local church and then we did a live Q&A and
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it was mostly Christians, but there were some atheists and skeptics there.
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She just said, I've been coming to church and I want to believe that every time I get
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closer to believe, I just see Christians who are hypocrites and they fail to live out what
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they say, and I know you feel this way too, but I just sat there and like, my heart just
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aches because as much as we want to say, well, they're just not leaving the message of Jesus.
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If you know a Christian, that person represents Jesus to you.
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And so the idea that Christians have fallen short is well known in the world today, where
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there's different sexual scandals, where there's church failures.
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We as a church need to plead guilty that we have to do better, but that's
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I think we also should be proud as Christians of the legacy of human rights, distinctly brought
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on by people motivated with a Christian worldview.
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There has never been a greater force for good in the history of the world than the Christian
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message when practiced by believers loving their neighbors.
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Why does James say this is good and true religion?
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You care for widows and orphans in the culture at that time, widows and orphans could be discarded
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because they had no instrumental value for society.
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They didn't want them and go put them on a hill to just die.
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Christians came along and said, wait a minute, widows and orphans are made in the image of God.
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So it's Christians who started hospitals, Christians who started orphanages, Christians who led the
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anti-slavery movement, even though certainly there were some Christians who tried to use
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Unfortunately, William Wilberforce motivated by his Christian commitments.
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Dietrich Bonhoeffer resisting the Nazis, laying his life down because of his Christian commitments.
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Martin Luther King Jr., unashamedly cited the prophets and Amos of letting justice roll down.
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So Christians have fallen short, but it is the Christian message that has positively turned
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the world upside down when we just love our neighbors.
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And sometimes I get tired of our society pushing back so much and trying to shame Christians to
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I think we should recognize the fault, but be proud of the good that Christianity has brought
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to the world as well and try to practice it better in our lives today.
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I think there's a lot of questions today about raising kids and what seems like such a post-truth
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It's a scary world to be in when you were even rejecting such basic biological definitions
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And it seems like it's encroaching more and more.
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It's more and more difficult to kind of protect our kids from some of these lies and to prepare
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But something that I take comfort in is, look, like Christians have been battling against the
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culture, have been battling against wickedness, have been battling against the powers that be
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And what Christians did at the very beginning, we are still called to today.
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We are still called to abide by Jesus's teachings.
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We are still called to be a refuge for the vulnerable of clarity and of courage in an age
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Yes, it might look different than it did 10 years ago or a thousand years ago, but the role
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And Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever.
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And he equips every generation exactly how he sees fit.
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Since you mentioned parents, maybe I could give a little bit of encouragement to parents
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I've been studying the data on faith transmission going back to the early 70s.
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This is work by like Christian Smith, for example, at the University of Notre Dame.
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And the studies show consistently, and it's true today, that the number one influence in
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the life of a young person in their worldview is not Netflix, it's not the educational system,
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it's not some political figure, it's not TikTok.
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Now, there is no formula for passing on your faith, so to speak, because people have free
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But if there were to be a formula, here's the three things, as simply as I can put it,
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Number one, you have to live a life that's authentic, not perfect.
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You have to model what it means to really follow Jesus.
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If we don't live it out, then it doesn't matter what we say.
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Number two, build relationships with your kids.
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Build intimate, close relationships with your kids.
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The largest secular study I'm aware of, a faith transmission, says the number one factor
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that prevents a kid from abandoning their faith is a, quote, warm relationship with the
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And I could back that up if we wanted to get into detail on it.
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Number three, have meaningful spiritual conversations with our kids.
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Love Lord God, the heart, soul, mind, strength, and talk about these things you do to kids
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when they wake up, when they lie down, when you go along the way.
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So model it, build relationships with your kids, and seek intentional spiritual conversations.
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My son, who's now 19, when he was 14, wanted to see that movie, Bohemian Rhapsody,
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I said, I'll take you and a buddy and spend $100 on tickets and popcorn.
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If, when we're done, I said this to my son, if you'll just talk with me about it.
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I just said, hey, what'd you think about the movie?
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I said, as Christians, is there anything in this movie that we can agree with and we can
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And I said, is there anything in this movie that gives you pause as a Christian?
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Were there any times you felt this movie was preaching at you and it was just a meaningful
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Those opportunities are there if we as parents will intentionally try to seek them out with
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That's good encouragement because our kids are just, they're so curious from the youngest
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And I've just, I've been so, I mean, blessed by, but just pleasantly surprised by also how
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much young kids can understand, not fully, of course, but how much they memorize, how much
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they soak up, how much they repeat what you say, whether you like it or not.
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And I would say also just for parents, like challenge yourself and challenge your kids
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You will be surprised by how much I think they want to and are also able to do that.
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I think sometimes we underestimate how much our kids want to know and need to know.
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And I think that's a, that's a comfort too, that God has written on eternity on their hearts
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Just yesterday at breakfast alley, I was having breakfast with my 10 year old son and I said,
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Hey buddy, I've been reading the book of Colossians.
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And I got in a chapter one where it talks about how Jesus made everything visible and invisible.
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So I said to my son, I said, do you think, what things can you think of that are real,
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Keep in mind, my son is 10 and he didn't fully get it, but I'm engaging him in kind of a question
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of metaphysics because in our culture today, we tend to think that only physical things you can
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So then last night I was like, Hey, did you think of anything else that exists?
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Now it's not like my son sits there and goes, dad, let's talk metaphysics.
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Most of our conversations are about the basketball playoffs or superheroes.
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But I just look for these opportunities to engage him in conversation young.
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In fact, two years ago, when we were driving in the car, my son, because when you're the
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your youngest kid, whoever this is, will experience and hear things way earlier than your oldest
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My eight-year-old son goes, dad, what's abortion?
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Now, a lot of parents would change the subject quickly.
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Just like I said at the beginning of this conversation, these, the way we engage Gen Z
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So I thought, here's an opportunity to talk with my son.
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And then second, I said, sometimes women will get pregnant and decide they don't want to
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He goes, well, how does somebody do an abortion?
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Now I'm thinking, okay, how do I explain this to an eight-year-old?
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But the bottom line is these conversations start a lot earlier than we think.
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And they're not going to you and me primarily with their questions.
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I want to build a relationship with my kids so they feel safe and eager and willing to
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And one thing that we can do is equip ourselves, make sure that we know God's word and we don't
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have to be perfect in knowing the answers to all the questions, but it is good for us
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So is the best place for people to find you, your website, because you have authored or co-authored
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over 20 books, you've got a podcast, Thinking Biblically, where else can people find resources
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So my website, seanmcdowell.org, is kind of the hub that links to the podcast, which is
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a weekly podcast in which my co-host and I at Biola look at some worldview cultural issue
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Links to my YouTube channel, which is really focused on worldview and apologetics.
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My son, two years ago, he goes, Dad, if you want to reach my generation, you got to get
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So I post on TikTok, have a blog, but probably seanmcdowell.org is the hub that would link
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to the different avenues that I'm trying to influence through.
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Well, thank you so much for taking the time to come on.
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I encourage people to go to your website and find all the stuff that you provided over
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Hey, Relatables and Relatables, if you could please leave us a five-star review wherever
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you listen to Relatable, that would mean so much to us and it really does help the show.
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