There cannot be a young earth

A young earth is impossible Christian Liberals say.

Browsing the ASA site, I saw a brief book recommendation.... where we read something like ''fossil corral reefs, etc. mean that a young age for the earth cannot be true...'' (note 1.)

- Cannot be true? Really? The only way this statement can be true is that if human beings are capable of knowing absolute truth. We than have to ask this person ''do you believe men are capable of knowing things about the perceived universe in an absolute sense.'' If they say yes, as they must, we ask, ''can you prove that?" Of course they cannot.

- My conclusion is that it is always wrong to say x cannot be true. (X being some orthodox biblical doctrine.) I call this scientism; though perhaps there's a better term for it. It's human pride (and ambition, etc.) that provokes people to make absolute statements. Isn't it obvious that finite, fallible and fallen creatures can't formulate absolute statements? (i.e that are accurate) It's the great heresy of Humanism to think man can make absolute statements. (We ever see through a glass darkly.) It's sad to see Christians fall into this humanist heresy. They seem to have been taken in by the secular delusion that science must proceed by absolute claims. A study of history shows this to be fallacious. Apart from special revelation all man has ever had has been ideas, theories, speculations. (The nearer a person is to looking at physical' reality in the present the closer he can come to making an objective statement; the further away he is from this the further he will be from even the possibility of making an absolute claim of any objective validity.) There is nothing wrong with all this; this is the situation God has placed us in... for very good reasons of His own. Our problem is not our finiteness, but our sin.

- It may look to some people (or to most people, or to all people) that corrals reefs make a young earth look impossible. But a Christian should not ever say this 'cannot' be the case. The universe may not be what we imagine it to be. (e.g. it might not be a 'physical' universe at all. It might be a spiritual universe... a mental construct of some kind... or who knows what.) The inability to say 'cannot' is no hardship, either on any of us personally, or on the 'scientific enterprise' as a whole. We all need greater humility, and restraining ourselves from saying cannot' (from making absolute claims) is simply one way to express that humility. We can say, 'I see no way the world can be as young as the Bible says,'' be we cannot say the world cannot be young. (And what is young anyway? The 'young earth' was an invention of people like Lyell and others. Something is 'young' only relative to something else.)

- To know (in an absolute sense) the earth was not 'young' a person would literally have to know everything, and to know all things perfectly. (Such of course is impossible.) I realize that most 'old earthers' will find this an unconvincing argument... but I don't see any way around it. That it wounds human pride doesn't negate its force. If a Christian respects and honors the word of God as he should I don't see how he can in good conscience say a pretty clear implication of the text cannot be true. (Do I need to remind people that many of these 'cannot' statements have been proven wrong?)

- To prevent being misunderstood; let me say that I in no way insist that Christians believe the earth is young... only that they not say it 'cannot' be young. (You cannot force people to believe things in any event.) A plain reading of the bible appears to speak of an earth 6-10,000 years old. We must at least leave a possibility (no matter how slim) that this could be correct. We must at least leave some possibility that we could be wrong. (Or shall we say human beings are incapable of error?)

Notes;
1. The book I refer to is 'God and Evolution' by David Wilcox. This book is on the ASA recommended list; and it's blurb reads; "While discussing the earth’s age, Wilcox does a creditable job of showing that, logically, a young earth is not possible given evidence from geology and fossil coral reefs."
2. A great problem with so called 'theistic evolution' (which isn't evolution at all in my opinion) is simply this; 'how can its advocates make it seem real?" The materialist (atheist) doesn't admit to seeing any evidence of God in the world; and most Christians don't see any evidence of god in evolution. It looks for all the world like a fat, cushy pillow to sit on while one's straddling the fence. The whole point of evolutionary theory is that it does away with the need for god. (Atheism or materialism predates evolutionary theory; it's no secret what came first. T.e. seems a political strategy to me, and not scientific at all. (Not all old earthers accept evolution of course; Arthur Custance being a notable case.)
3. The theistic evolutionist tells the young earth creationist; 'you must accept the 'decrees' of science. If the 'best' scientists of the day say x is true, we must all accept this... whether we want to or not.' But yet the theistic evolutionists doesn't accept the claim that God has nothing to do with evolution... that evolution is a purely naturalistic process. So he doesn't follow his own rule. (i.e. he tells the YE Christian to just accept what 'science' says, but he doesn't do this himself.)
4. I'm not entirely dissatisfied with the model that states the earth (or a 'recreated' earth) might be young, while the universe itself is old. This might be easiest to picture if we see it in terms of science fiction imagery. In an 'old' universe god might have taken an 'uninhabitable' planet, and then made it fit for earthly creatures to live in. (Sf writers call this terraforming.) I neither accept it or reject it outright. (Having said that I don't hold out much hope for it.)
- Kim Stanley Robinson wrote a trilogy of novels a few years ago on 'terraforming' Mars.
5. Terraforming definition from Wikipedia;
- the application of technology for the purpose of influencing the global properties of a planet. The goal of this theoretical task is usually to make other worlds habitable for life.
- Perhaps the best-known type of planetary engineering is terraforming, by which a planet's surface conditions are altered to be more like those of Earth. Other terms used for particular types of planetary engineering include caeliforming, for the creation of an Earth-like atmosphere, and ecopoiesis for the introduction of an ecology to a lifeless environment.