THE AGE OF THE UNIVERSE
Cosmologists now agree that the universe is twelve billion years old plus or minus a billion years. Several independent measurements converge on the same result. Study of this subject is not new of course; Christian scholars have devoted themselves to its analysis ever since there were Christians. Christian fathers of the first three centuries C.E.—Origen, Eusebius, Lactantius, Clement of Alexandria—calculated by analysis of Genesis that the universe was created six millennia before the birth of Jesus, although Jerome inclined toward a shorter span—about four thousand years. Jerome’s methodical analysis of the Biblical texts and his vast prestige dominated discussion of the topic for the next fifteen hundred years. “Dominated” had a more forceful meaning in those days; those who voiced a different view were condemned as heretics and burned. Except for occasional fiery exceptions, this effectively encouraged consensus within the circumscribed range. For example, the seventh century theologian Isidore of Seville attacked the issue with a fresh mind and spirit -- and came to the 6,000 year age. But the Venerable Bede, inclined toward the four millennium period. And there was high minded and reasonable compromise too. Sixteenth and seventeenth century publications of the Roman Catholic Church, under authority of Popes Gregory XIII and Urban VII split the difference and proved compellingly that the six-day creation of the universe took place 5199 years before the birth of Jesus.
There the matter lay, give or take a 20% statistical uncertainty hidden beneath the blanket of sacred consensus, until Archbishop James Usher, through study of the “begats”, proved in his tract “Annales Veteris et Novi Testamenti (1650-54), that the creation occurred in 4004 B.C.E.
Even this has been improved upon. We have known the precise age of the universe for 180 years now. In his “Prolegomena,” written in the early 1800s, Dr. John Lightfoot, Vice-Chancellor of Cambridge University, demonstrated from Holy Scripture that “heaven and earth, centre and circumference, were created together, in the same instant, and clouds full of water,” and that “this work took place and man was created by the Trinity on the twenty-third of October, 4004 B.C., at nine o’clock in the morning.”
Can physicists, with their Sunyaev-Zeldovich Effect, improve on this? Do we need to know the time of creation to the very second, and fraction of a second? The physicists and theologians differ by only 11,999,993,994 years. Between persons of good will the two figures can surely be squeezed within a consensus. For example, we could recognize that in reckoning the ages of things, one Biblical day is 3 million years, but in reckoning the ages and life spans of people the Bible used a sliding scale (Methuselah – 969 years, David – 60 to 80 years), much as do women today. There are compelling reasons to come to terms with the theologians, namely the story of Job.
“There was a man in the land of Uz whose name was Job; and he was perfect and upright, and he feared God and shunned wickedness….And one day the Lord said to Satan, ‘Have you noticed my servant Job?” And so the Lord and Satan played a game. Satan destroyed Job’s oxen and asses and field workers. He burned Job’s crops, took his camels, killed his sons and daughters. “Yet Job did not sin, nor did he resent God’s actions.” So Satan smote Job with leprosy. “Then Job did at last lament that he was ever born, saying ‘My sighing comes in place of my food, and my groans are poured forth like water. If I entertain a fear, then it comes upon me, and what I was afraid of befalls me, I am not at ease, nor am I quiet, nor am I at rest, for troubles keep coming.’ This mightily displeased the Lord, who answered Job from the whirlwind, saying, ‘Who is this that obscures council by words without knowledge? Gird up, now, your loins like a man, that I may question you, and do you instruct me. Where were you when I laid the foundations of the earth? Declare if you have insight! Who fixed its measurements, for you should know?…Do you know the laws of the heavens? Or do you appoint the arrangements of the earth?’…Then Job replied to the Lord, saying, ‘I know that you can do all things. Therefore I have declared without understanding, things too wonderful for me without knowing…I retract and repent in dust and ashes.”
Could not God, faking a Big Bang, have pasted in His firmament some seeming galaxies appearing to be nearby, others distant and faint, flying off at enormous speed, like so many fragments of an exploded bomb, the ones flying fastest going farthest? And all their light appropriately red shifted to “confirm” Hubble’s law? Couldn’t He have painted the firmament with three-degree background radiation, seemingly stretched to its present long wavelength and low temperature to mimic the expansion of the universe? With His infinite power and knowledge couldn’t He have arranged the appearance of tiny shifts in the temperature of the microwave background radiation streaming through intervening hot gasses, and thus “prove” the Sunyaev-Zeldovich prediction? Here on earth, He could have planted fossils and stones that seem to be hundreds of thousands, and millions of years old, and arranged radioactive decay to “confirm” their ages. Perhaps, after all, all species were created in six, twenty-four hour days and man was created on October twenty-third, 4004 B.C., at 9 o’clock in the morning.
I think we scientists may be in big trouble.
