Did God Create the World Looking Older Than It Actually Is?

Overview: The theory can only explain the complete forms of the world. It does not answer, though, the evidence from the Geological Column and the various dating methods that yield dates of millions of years old.

Many believers in Torah will suggest that God created the world with an older appearance, although it is only 6,000 years in reality. They will say, Adam for example, was created as a mature man and a scientist present there would have dated him to 20 years old, although he wasn’t even one years old yet. Same goes with the universe that was created “maturely,” giving off the impression of a 14-billion-year-old universe.

But this theory only goes so far. It cannot answer major discoveries supporting evolution. It will answer the complete formation of mountains, trees, and animals – but it won’t answer the geological column issue as well as the dating issue.

There are three parts to the evidence for evolution. There’s the question of how did this complete mountain form and how did this tree grow. So evolution gives its explanation. To this specific idea alone, the above theory can explain in a Creationist model. The above theory can say that the mountains were created in their complete form and therefore didn’t require millions of years to rise to their current height.

But then there are another two parts to the evidence supporting evolution. One is the geological column and the other is dating methods. We won’t get into the details here, but the geological column is basically fossilized bones found in the ground. Over the years, sediment covers the ground. If a bone is covered under the right conditions, it will fossilize and will be preserved instead of disintegrating. Over many years, another animal will die in the same spot as the original bone of an animal that lived earlier and has been buried there. This cycle happens again and again. Then comes a scientist in the 21^st century and digs that area. The scientist documents the layers and the bones found in each of the layers. It is logical to assume that the deeper the bone is buried, the older the animal is. Scientists have done this in many places around the world and a pattern was noticed. This pattern is known as the Geological Column.

The patter is like this. At the lowest levels dug, only fish bones were found. A little higher than that, cold-blooded reptiles were found along with the fish. Then, birds and mammals are found at even higher levels along with fish bones and reptile bones. At the highest of levels, closest to our ground-level, human bones begin to appear. We can assume that the deeper we dig, the more back in time we are going (because sediment slowly covers the earth and buries some bones with it). If so, a really long time ago, only fish existed – which is why only fish bones are found at the lowest level. Sometime after that, cold-blooded reptiles appear on earth. A while after that, birds and mammals appear and only at the end do humans show up in the geological record. This pattern is exactly the pattern we would expect with evolution. With Creation, on the other hand, all creatures were created within a two-day span. From a Creation perspective, there is no explanation for this geological record that seems to imply an evolution from fish to human throughout millions of years.

This evidence for evolution cannot be refuted via the theory that God created the world “mature” cited above. It is extremely strange that God would have created the world complete with a whole backstory dug deep in the ground – a backstory that never happened in reality. It would make sense that he created complete mountains and trees, since, after all, the world is incomplete without mountains and trees. But why would a “mature” world require an entire fake story dug deep in the ground?! Is God attempting to deceive us? If that is the case, then perhaps we cannot trust any of our observable facts, because maybe God or some aliens are deceiving us from the real facts!

Same goes with the last part of the evidence for evolution – dating methods. Dating methods are techniques used by scientists to see how old a specific artifact, stone, or bone is. There are many different methods used, some more accurate and reliable than others, but there are dozens of dating methods. Scientists have used these techniques on the fossilized bones found in the geological column and have placed dates on all these bones. They usually will use multiple dating methods in order to confirm the date results for accuracy. What these dating methods all show us, is a pattern of older bones the lower we go into the geological column. The fish bones all the way at the bottom are dated to millions of years old. The higher we go in the geological column, the younger the dates for those bones become. This pattern fits very well with evolution and entirely contradicts a Creation 6,000 years ago.

This as well cannot be explained by the theory that God made the world appear old. Unless of course God is attempting to deceive us in which case we have much bigger issues at hand, as explained earlier.

In conclusion, the theory only goes as far as to explain the first piece of evidence for evolution, yet fails to explain the other two elements that support evolution.