THE AGE OF THE EARTH
Scientists have not been able to agree on the date of man’s emergence on earth. However, they have discovered some human skeleton, which they believe to date back to ten thousand years before Christ. The scientists do not, therefore, accept the assertions on this subject made by the Bible. According to the dates for the appearance of the human race given in the book of Genesis, Adam came to the world thirty-seven hundred years before Christ. The Jewish calendar, which follows the data contained in the Old Testament, places the dates very precisely. The second half of the Christian year 1975 corresponds to the beginning of the 5,736th year of the creation of the world. According to modern science, this is wholly unacceptable.
The Christians, as it would appear from biblical narratives, had condensed the lifespan of the earth to within a few thousand years. The error of this calculation, from the scientific point of view, came to light in the eighteenth century when James Hutton, a great geologist, carried out his investigations. He devoted his whole life to studying the construction of the earth and its rocks, which showed that the earth in its present form has evolved over millions of years.
Charles Lyell’s observations subsequently confirmed Hutton’s theory. The first volume of his renowned book, Principles of Geology, was first published in 1830. This book was to a great extent responsible for the disappearance of the biblical timescale from all serious discussion. “Indeed, Lyell’s books were largely responsible for convincing the world at large that the Bible could be wrong, at any rate in some respects—a hitherto unthinkable thought.”
Concepts of the kind enshrined in the Bible acted as barriers to the scientific progress of Europe. Anyone who dared to present any theory other than those approved of by the Church risked being severely chastised on the grounds that his theory was sacrilegious. But, in Islam, such unreal concepts had never gained currency. That is why no religious opposition presented itself when scientific research began in Islamic Spain.
