In order to appear more confident in their long age interpretations, skeptics will often conflate things we can observe with things we conclude. Let me give you an example. In an appearance on Larry King Now, Bill Nye made the following comment:
My concern has always been, you can't use tax dollars intended for science education to teach something akin to the earth is 10,000 years old. To... 'cause that's just wrong. It's very much analogous to saying the earth is flat. I mean, you can show the earth is not flat; you can show the earth is not 10,000 years old.
Perhaps what Nye means to say is that he can show us things like the decay rate of radioisotopes and explain how scientists use this to estimate the age of the earth. But that's not what he is saying. What he's saying is that he can show us the age of the earth just like he can show us its shape and I'm saying no he can't. We can observe the shape of the earth from space. We can watch it rotate in real time. We can sail, fly, and for the most part even drive around the entire earth and see it has no edges anywhere. We can observe many features about the earth but we cannot observe its age. No way. No how. “Age” is simply not a substance you can hold against a ruler, put under a microscope, or weigh on a scale.
Ken Ham, of Answers in Genesis, holds that there are two types of science: observational science and historical science. His point is simply that there are things we can observe in the here and now and there are some things that happened in the past that can't be observed. It's not a hard concept to grasp, really, although I wouldn't necessarily use the terms myself. Yet even though I may disagree with Ham on his use of the terms “observational” and “historical” science, I disagree even more with critics like Nye who would have us believe we can observe the age of the earth in a similar way that we can observe the earth is round.
Science is only ever conducted in the present. Always! Something like a fossil may have been created in the past but we can only study it in the present. We can measure it, x-ray it, compare it to the bones of living animals, compare it to other fossils we've found, and subject it to a wide battery of tests. All the things that we can do to learn more about the fossil can only be done in the present. We cannot go back into the past and “observe” the suspect animal. I can repeat the tests done on the fossil in the present. I cannot repeat the animal and nor can I repeat the alleged “millions of years” the fossil has been buried. The idea that science is only conducted in the present seems to me to be self-evident.
In the famous Ham v. Nye debate, Nye adamantly rejected any distinction between things we can observe in the present and conclusions we draw about the past. He went so far as to say this during the debate:
So here tonight we are going to have two stories, and we can compare Mr. Ham's story to the story from the outside, what I call mainstream science. The question here tonight is, does Ken Ham's creation model hold up? Is it viable? So let me ask you, what would you be doing if you weren't here tonight? You'd be home watching CSI TV show, CSI-Petersburg. I think that's coming. And on CSI, there is no distinction made between historical science and observational science. These are constructs unique to Mr. Ham. We don't normally have these anywhere in the world except here.”
The distinction between seeing something happen and concluding something happened should be obvious. But because evolutionists go out of their way to ignore this simple concept, they claim that the earth is billions of years old with the same vigor as they say the earth is a globe.
“Age” simply cannot be seen. When we see an “old” person, we aren't really seeing his age but are seeing things like wrinkles, a stooped posture, and gray hair. We have seen these similar characteristics in people whose ages we know and so when we see these features on a stranger, we can estimate his age. Of course, we can be wrong about our estimates. Have you ever heard someone say things like, “Wow, You don’t look 60” or “I thought you were older than 20”? Maybe it’s the color of their hair. Because gray hair is usually associated with age, if a 60 year old person hasn’t begun to gray, he may be mistaken for being younger. If a 20 year old person begins to gray prematurely, he may be mistaken for being older.
Now don’t get me wrong, simply because we cannot repeat the past does not mean we cannot draw conclusions – even correct conclusions – about events we did not see. It’s easy to understand how we can be mistaken about certain characteristics we associate with certain ages. We see many older people with gray hair so it isn’t unreasonable to suppose a person who is gray is older. Here, we're talking about the age of the earth. I know what an 80 year old man typically looks like but we don't know what a 4 billion year old earth is supposed to look like. We've never seen a 4 billion year old earth.
This is why the debate around a young earth is substantially different from the debate around a flat earth. I'm really tired of arguing with evolutionists about this. I can understand reaching different conclusions about the same evidence but believing we can literally see the past is ridiculous. It also frustrates rational discussion since many evolutionists cannot see the circular nature of their view. When we look at a fossil, we are not looking at the past: if a person believes he sees “millions of years” when he looks at a fossil, he is assuming something about the fossil that he should be seeking to discover. How did the fossil come to be? When did the fossil come to be? We can use science to explore these questions but we can only explore them in the present. We see a fossil - we don’t see age. We never see age. You can’t observe age!!
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