Christianity and the Age of the Earth [Paperback]

Davis A. Young (Author)

Product Details

• Paperback: 188 pages
• Publisher: Artisan Pub (August 1988)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 093466627X
• ISBN-13: 978-0934666275
• Product Dimensions: 8.8 x 5.9 x 0.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 5.6 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #460,782 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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28 of 28 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars from the book..., December 5, 2005

By 

L. Hoffman - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Christianity and the Age of the Earth (Paperback)

Author: Davis A. Young

Dr. Davis A Young, a scientist with outstanding academic credentials and a throughly orthodox, evangelical Christian, has presented in this volume solid and convincing evidence for the thesis that the earth is an extremely old planet created by God. This book demonstrates how well-meaning creationist (Dr. Young is also a creationist in the term) have misrepresented the evidence of geology in their attempt to argue that the earth is only a few thousand years old.

It is important in our time to give serious consideration to both biblical and scientific evidence. In this book, Dr. Young carefully examines the evidence and finds that it does not support the young-earth view.

Because of the literature advancing biblical catastrophism, the interest of Christian layman, and attempts to introduce the catastrophist view of earth history into public school curricula, the Christian community should seriously consider this issue of the age of the earth. Does the biblical and scientific evidence support the idea that the earth is extremely young or does the evidence indicate otherwise? Has the earth experienced a brief sudden catastrophic history dominated by a single global flood or has it's history been vastly longer and somewhat less spectacular? In this book the author examines some of the evidence of nature that relates to the age of the earth.

Part I of the book surveys the history of Christian thought with regard to the age of the earth.

Part II deals with the stratigraphy, sedimentation, the Flood, radiometric dating, the earth's magnetic field, and geochemical arguments.

Part III is an appeal to the facts that make the young-earth view untenable.

Dr. Young firmly believes that the continued promotion of the young-earth view will in the long run damage the credibility of Christianity and thus hinder our evanglistic and apologetic efforts.

Paperback
188 pages

29 of 31 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Very good for statement that the Bible and evolution mix, August 3, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Christianity and the Age of the Earth (Paperback)

This book contains a history of how Christians viewed the age of the earth, the nature of methods of dating sediment, and reasons why the idea that the earth is young is false. It is a good book for any Christian wondering whether he must choose between believing in God or accepting evolution and the idea that the Earth is billons of years old. This book will also be good reading for scientists being drawn away from God by fundamentalism and young-earth talk.

5.0 out of 5 stars A MAGNIFICENT FOLLOW-UP TO YOUNG'S FIRST BOOK, September 29, 2011

By 

Steven H. Propp (Sacramento, CA USA) - See all my reviews
(TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Christianity and the Age of the Earth (Paperback)

Davis A. Young is Professor of Geology at Calvin College. He is also the author of Creation and the flood: An alternative to flood geology and theistic evolution, The Biblical Flood: A Case Study of the Church's Response to Extrabiblical Evidence, and The Bible, Rocks and Time: Geological Evidence for the Age of the Earth. He is also the son of Edward J. Young, Professor of Old Testament at Westminster Theological Seminary.

He wrote in the Preface to this 1982 book, "Although I am opposing an idea that is common and on the surface sounds biblical, the reader must not draw the conclusion that I am opposing Christianity or attacking the Bible or even opposing the idea that the Flood was global in nature. I write as one who is firmly committed to the infallibility and inerrancy of Scripture... I simply believe that the young-Earth view is unscientific and not necessarily biblical."

Here are some quotations from the book:

"One very important cause of mass mortality in the world today is the phenomenon of waterbloom ... (which is) Excessive plankton in the sea ... so poisonous so that virtually all sea life in the vicinity of the red water is killed... Mass mortality by waterbloom is commonplace, and even today the potential exists for forming great numbers of fossil graveyards, which would be explained without recourse to a global flood." (Pg. 76)
"Mass mortalities in modern times have also been caused by changes in salinity of seawater or lakewater... Severe storms are also responsible for catastrophic kills" (Pg. 77-78)
"It is not possible to conceive of large quiescent lakes slowly depositing their muds while the whole world is submerged under surging flood waters. It is not possible to conceive of great ice sheets scouring rocks and moving sediment if the whole world is submerged under surging flood waters. It is not possible to conceive of a large desert with great sand dunes while the whole world is submerged under surging flood waters." (Pg. 78)
"One cannot develop a large desert or dunal area in a short time. A global Flood that has submerged the entire world will not temporarily drain away to expose a large tract of land on which a desert will suddenly develop for a few days." (Pg. 91)
"These formations are thick sandstone layers with large-scale cross beds. There are vertebrate tracks and fossil dinosaurs in some of these units. Where did these animals come from if the Flood was busy destroying them?" (Pg. 91)
"Another way of checking ... is by sampling rocks from the moon, so that we need not worry about the problem of atmospheric contamination... It is therefore significant that K-Ar ages of lunar basalts from the mare regions are 3 to 4 billion years and in general agreement with dates yielded by other methods. In no way does this support the young Earth view..." (Pg. 102)
"There are not real conflicts between nature and the Bible, but only conflicts between natural science and theological exegesis... In God's mind there are no loose ends, no tensions, but in our theology there are. Theology cannot be an air-tight, closed system. We must learn to live with loose ends in our theology." (Pg. 155)