THE AGE OF THE EARTH
Many of us hold that science cognizing the world doesn't find in it the place for God the Creator. It often repulses Orthodox Christians from science because they fear that their faith can be shaken by touching on the scientific knowledge. But in fact the true faith can only strengthen "through examining of the creatures" and it is quite not accidental that many scientists were deeply believing persons.
The problem of the age of the Earth, stars and of the Universe as a whole remains unsolved until nowadays. The point is that the scientific estimates for this age have an enormous scatter - from 7 -10 thousand years up to 10 -15 billion years, and some scientists even insist on the infiniteness of the time period of the existence of the Universe.
An adherer of such a position was the well-known Russian scientist - materialist V.I. Vernadski because, to his opinion, otherwise it is impossible to comprehend the origin of life, that in virtue of its extreme complexity could not originate from the dead matter and thus it is necessary that the Universe existed always and carried in itself some "seeds of life." These "germs" V.I. Vernadski had actively sought in meteorites, however, without any success. On the contrary, the evolutionists since the 18th century maintained the theory of life's self-conception, pointing out to the appearance of worms in the rotten mass etc. This view had been refuted by a deeply believing physiologist Louis Pasteur. Until now at the Institute of his name in Paris the vessel is being preserved with the "nourishing broth" prepared by him, in which nothing had "self-conceived" during more than 100 years. It remains absolutely transparent. But had this broth touched the specks of dust floating in the air and carrying bacteries, viruses and plant seeds, it would have been spoilt in a few days. However, how could such a broth appear in the non-living nature? Pasteur had produced and other physiologists keep producing it for their experiments from the boiled meat and other food.
The conjecture by Aleksandr Oparin popular in the beginning of the 20th century is now almost never mentioned because of total lack of experimental evidence.
The evolution theory is usually linked with the name of Charles Darwin, although in his famous book "The Origin of Species..." (1859) there is no single assertion about the real emergence of new species from those existed previously. The statements of such a kind appeared only a few years later in the public lectures of Thomas Huxley who advertised actively the new "great doctrine of the ingenious teacher." It was Huxley who started maintaining that man has originated from simian. Ch. Darwin himself always treated the concept of evolution due to the natural selection as a "conjecture" and he called for a search for intermediate links in the "chronicle of fossils." However, later excavations had eventually refuted the existence of such links. Enormous amount of plant and animal relics have been found but all these are distinctly separated into two groups: giant trilobites, dinosaurs, ferns and nearby (and sometimes together) bones are found of the modern mammals, fishes and reptiles. The fossillized relics confirm rather the truth of the Bible story concerning the universal Flood, when during several months the earth's surface was entirely covered with water, and after it went away the climate of the Earth and the composition of the beings living on it has become quite different (post-floody). Otherwise how can one explain the huge cemeteries found in Siberia of frozen mammoths whose stomachs have preserved fresh grass, and similar mass accumulations of giant reptiles named dinosaurs? The founder of paleontology, the French Baron Georges Cuvier who first discovered these fossils has considered his findings as a convincing and obvious proof of the Flood.
Another evolutionists' argument is the radioisotope technique of dating rocks and organism relics. But, first of all, what must be considered as the "age" of a stone? Did not the matter out of which it is made exist at all before its appearence? Secondly, in order to determine the duration of certain time period using the changes in isotope abundance ratios one should be aware of their initial abundances and to be sure that these isotopes did not come from the enviroment. However, neither of these conditions is fulfilled in reality. Therefore one can establish more or less reliable dates basing on isotopes only on samples of specific types (e.g. plant relics) when the standards are available whose age has become known using other methods. In practice it can be done for the periods of several hundred, or at most thousand, years. All age determinations yielding the intervals of tens of thousands or millions of years are obtained in an indirect way under a priori assumptions about the past, in particular it is supposed that no Flood occured. The scientific validity of such results equals zero.
On the other hand there are many facts that speak in favour of the concept that the life on Earth as well as Earth itself exist for a short while. Thus the magnetic field of the Earth since its first measurement due to K. Gauss has diminished significantly. In several hundred years it will be unable to produce the "radiation shield" which protects life on Earth against harmful beams of space particles. Moving backwards in time we would have 100000 years ago such a strong magnetic field as that created now artificially in certain physical installations and which is incompatible with life. Besides, the cause and the mechanism of the Earth's magnetic field generation as well as the structure of the inner parts of the Earth remain unknown. The splendid pictures of "the Earth sectioned like a water-melon" drawn in some books are in fact only schematic models constructed basing on the indirect data.
Many other phenomena on Earth also indicate its youth. Basing on the data of the speed of piling of sediments carried out to the seas and the oceans by large rivers, on small percentage of helium in athmosphere which must be produced in significant amounts by the uranium radioactive decay, the safe keeping of gas deposits of very high pressure which would decrease because of percolation through porous rocks , the age of the Earth cannot exceed one hundred thousand years. There are even more obvious (and one can say crying) facts. Thus, nobody was able to find a single trunk of a Wellingtonia (mammoth) tree died by its "natural death," the age of the now existing giant Wellingtonia trees reaches up to 6 thousand years.
Further, it is known that many birds find islands in the ocean using the star location and this fact itself is amazing. But the orientation of the Earth's rotation axis changes with respect to the celestial sphere and 20 thousand years ago it was directed not towards the Polar star but towards Vegas. It is impossible to believe that instict scribed in the genetic apparatus of a fledgeling could follow this axis motion; however otherwise birds could not fly regularly for hibernation through the ocean spaciousness.
Modern astrophysics affirms that our Sun shines during billions of years at the expence of the continuous thermo-nuclear synthesis in its depth. There even exist the "standard model" of the Sun, according to which per each light particle (photon) there must be several specific elementary particles (neutrinos) emitted not from the Solar surface but directly from the zone of nuclear reactions. In 1960-ies a big scientific program has been launched aimed at detection of Solar neutrinos. The diffuculty was that neutrinos are able to penetrate easily the enormous layers of substance (the whole Earth's globe does not hamper them). Therefore the specific cumbersome detectors are necessary for their registration which must be located in deep mines. After 30 years of observations it became clear that the actual neutrino flux is about three times less than theoretical estimates. This gap shows the drawbacks of this "model." Some experts hope however that solving the problem of the Solar neutrinos would give the impetus for the future "new breakthrough".
In cosmology (the science about the Universe) the "Big Bang" theory dominates at present, which has originated in 1920-ies and for which some indirect confirmations have been obtained. Its authors are, of course, honored by Nobel prizes in physics. According to the model (again "standard") accepted today the Universe began its existence "from nihil" approximately 15 billion years ago from the state of infinite density and temperature. At present it is dilating and cooling. But the quantitative characteristics of these processes are not investigated well enough since for certain conclusions to be made the observations during at least one billion years would be necessary! There are many scientific schools which treat differently the "evolution" of stars and that of the whole Universe and, corespondingly, estimate their age. One should notice that only the nearest stars can be observed in sufficient detail. The majority of stars are concentrated in nebulae (Galaxies) whose sizes and distances are determined only through indirect techniques. At the same time the majority of modern cosmologists are convinced that certain "beginning" must have occured though they don't have clear notions about the character of this "beginning" and about the "scenario of the subsequent development."
The new-fashioned theory of inflation that appeared recently supposes that the rate of the Universe expansion in the past could be quite different, and respectively the duration of the expansion could be essentially less than the nowadays hypothetical estimates.
To summarize, one can certify that modern science confirms to some extent the Bible doctrine but in many features it is not agreeable with Christianity. It should not and cannot confuse the believers (among whom in all the times there were many scientists exploring the nature) because the "scientific picture of the world" is itself very incomplete and changeable. Long ago (in the 4th century!) one of the Church's teachers Vasilius the Great wrote about this. He advised the Orthodox Christians neither to rely upon the scientific data in order to provide foundation for their faith in Christ, nor to try to disprove them, because "the scientists permanently disprove themselves."
Gennadiy A. Kalyabin,
Samara, Russia
First published in Samara Eparchy magazine
"Spiritual Vis-a-Vis," No 2, 1995
(Translated from Russian by the author)
Gennadiy A. Kalyabin was born in 1947 in Samara (form. Kujbyshev). Gratuated from Moscow Physics Technical Institute, specializing in mathematics (analysis, differential equations). PhD in Physics and Mathematics. Author of more than 50 scientific works and papers. Professor of the Aerocosmic University of Samara, where he works since 1973. Gives lectures on Natural Apologetics at Samara Theological Seminary.
