Assuming young-earth creationism, could Adam calculate the age of the earth using science?
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I'm going to say that he probably couldn't. Naturally, I admit the very real possibility of being wrong.
I use Occam's Razor when it comes to determining which scenario is more likely. There are similar questions to "Did the first trees have rings (correlating to actual years of existence)?" Did Adam and Even have navels? It's impossible to say for sure, but they certainly didn't need to have them. To look at Adam moments after he was created (not knowing how he came into being), you would be reasonable to assume that he was once a child and his body would probably show evidence of having lived to adulthood. Even though that would be reasonable, it seems simpler to me to think that God didn't create any sort of false history for Adam, the trees, fossilized creatures, etc. I would guess that Adam had perfectly clear skin without callouses, scars, or any remnants of a childhood he didn't have. Similarly, trees' rings would not correlate to actual years of existence, though God could have (and I'll guess did) created full grown trees with rings.
God is certainly able to provide evidence suggesting a past when there wasn't really one. Whether the appearance of a past is proof that there actually was one is another matter altogether.
Naturally, the right answer may not be simple, but until I see a compelling reason to go with something more complicated, I'm going to stick with simple (and elegant).
Short Answer: Adam could extrapolate how old the earth appeared, but it wouldn't have been the actual age of the earth (given your assumption of a literal seven-day creation).
Upvote:6
For the sake of not getting into an argument, let's assume a genesis / biblical creation, literal/YEC-style. The "trees/rings" thing is pretty much unanswerable, but fortunately we don't even need to know anything about the garden of Eden / Adam, because what we do have is the light from other stars, for which we have good confidence for the distance / trajectory / etc. Under the laws of physics, the light has been travelling for many millions of years (indeed, the Hubble experts claim to have light from one 13 billion years ago).
This leaves us two conclusions inside a YEC/literal genesis:
- the universe was made fully "with age", so no: you wouldn't have been able to use science to "age" it (see also, Last Thursdayism)
- the laws of physics have been significantly changed, so no: you wouldn't have been able to use science to "age" it
(or of course the option that Genesis is not a reliable source of creation information)
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