Age of the Universe

How old was Eve, the day after she was made? One day old, of course. But she may have looked like a twenty year old, if we were trying to guess her age based on all observable rates of human growth ever since then.

How old were the fruit trees, on the day Adam was made? Three days old. But they may have looked seven to fourteen years old, if we were trying to guess their age based on all observable rates of fruit tree growth ever since.

In the beginning, they were made with the appearance of maturity, the appearance of age. But in fact, they were nowhere near as old as they looked, based on observations of how things have aged or grown ever since then.

The same can be said about geology and astronomy. We can observe how long things take - but we can't use this to conclude the ultimate age - because in the beginning God made things with the appearance of maturity, immediacy, age.

Light appeared immediately upon the earth, in one day. Oceans and dry land all over the globe were separated immediately, in a day.

Observable science can't prove that God didn't, in the beginning, do some things instantly, which now take years to achieve. Therefore the scientific method has to stop short of giving an ultimate age for things created. To do so is to deny the possibility that in the beginning, things could have been made to suddenly appear a certain way, even though science cannot prove - because it's outside the scope of what science can do - that this could not have happened.

Using the scientific method, we can't make a conclusion like this: "Based on quantifiable geological activity, we can assert that the earth is so many billions of years old".

All we can say, is: "We are observing the following quantifiable geological activity rates, but it is outside the scope of the scientific method to conclude one way or the other whether or not something more sudden and different might or might not have happened in the beginning."

To do otherwise would be to look at Eve the day after she was made and assert, "She's twenty years old". A person making such an assertion may be right in what they've observed of human growth rates, but they would still be wrong in applying that to Eve in the beginning.

And it could be the same with astronomy, geology and biology. Scientists may be right or they may be wrong in observing the periods of time that it takes things to happen. But they might be wrong if they used those observations to date when all things began (since from the beginning, things were made with the immediate appearance and function of age).