The discussion over whether the earth is young or old is an argument that has sparked many discussions for more than 150 years. It’s likely that this discussion will continue long after I’m gone. But while I can, I will continue to encourage Christians to uphold the Bible as the magisterial authority, and the hope is that when you’ve read this post, you too will accept a young earth model.

The plain reading of the Bible would indicate that a young earth model is the correct understanding, but I’ve been told by Dr. Hugh Ross and his old earth disciples that Psalm 104 is a passage that teaches old earthism. If you search their website, reason.org, you will find 126 articles. This is how their argument for old earthism progresses:

• The “days” in Genesis 1 are really just long periods of indefinite time
• God used natural processes to form stars, galaxies, chemicals, and planets billions of years before creating humans
• When God created life billions years ago, death, suffering and predation were part of creation
• The geologic layers are accumulations of eons of dirt over billions of years. The geologic record is a record of death and suffering across history
• Humans were specially created by God 13.7 billion years after the beginning of creation
• Since they believe that the geologic layers were formed over billions of years, they choose to argue that the flood of Genesis 6-9 is a regional flood

Below is the Timeline of history from Reasons.org. Due to their presupposition that the biblical account must be subject to the modern academic paradigm (which some conflate as science), their understanding of the history of the Bible must also change as secular timelines are constantly evolving. NOTE: Because of this, it will be difficult for you to find this timeline on their website since the secular timelines have changed so much.

So, how does Psalm 104 teach that the earth is old as Bill Nye, Neal DeGrass Tyson and Richard Dawkins think? Dr. Ross says:

Psalm 104 is the longest of the creation psalms. It complements Genesis 1 in providing the scientific details of God’s creation works. Psalm 104:6–8 refers to creation day 3 in Genesis 1 when God transformed Earth from possessing only water on its surface to possessing both oceans and landmasses. Psalm 104:9 states that once landmasses appear on Earth’s surface, the newly formed landmasses will “set a boundary they [Earth’s surface waters] cannot cross; they will never cover the earth again.” This statement in Psalm 104 explicitly rules out the possibility that Noah’s Flood could be global in extent.

So Dr. Ross assumes that Psalm 104 is a poetic text about the creation week. Since he thinks that when Ps 104 says the waters could no longer cover the earth as stated in verse 9 he thinks that is Genesis 1 rather than Genesis 7, and he concludes that the flood must have been a regional flood. He further assumes that animals have been engaging in predation from the beginning due to verse 21 that says “The young lions roar for their prey, seeking their food from God.”

As faithful Christians, we should test Dr. Ross’s assertion that Psalm 104 is solely about the creation week. Let’s look at his assumption in Psalm 104 and see if we can find confirming evidence of the phrasing in Genesis 1-3 or if there’s possibly a better explanation. Below, there are 2 charts. Figure 1 shows how Psalm 104 compares to Genesis 1. If it is tied directly to the creation account as Dr. Ross asserts, there should be green checkmarks ✅ on each row of the table.

Dr. Ross’s argument hinges entirely on the hope that Psalm 104 teaches a local flood and perfectly reflects the creation account of Genesis 1. As you can see from the comparison above, the connection between Psalm 104 as a creation account in Genesis 1 is spurious at best. What if we consider a second chart that compares the Psalm 104 passage to the flood account of Genesis 6-10? Figure 2 does just that.

As you can see from the 2 charts, Dr. Ross’s assertions are not nearly as affirming to his view as he would like us to believe. From Figure 2, we see that Psalm 104 confirms the young earth view (just as everything else in scripture does).

We can trust the Bible since it was revealed by God, the One who knows everything. There’s no need to inject the modern paradigm into one’s interpretive framework