How old is the earth?
Does the Bible allow a free exploration of the natural evidence?

AIG lead, Ken Ham says:

The ground is cursed the whole of creation groans in pain. It's a fallen world and I'm a fallen being so looking at a fallen creation and trying to interpret that through my eyes? I can't trust that.

I look through the written Revelation from God and I let it speak to me to the best of my ability and I'm not saying we can do this 100% obviously, but to the best of my ability I want God. This is His word. When we say "what was Moses was trying to say or what do I see". I don't look at it that way. I look at it as Paul said ... this is the word of God, I let god speak to me to the best of my ability, to not try to impose my ideas on Scripture. I let it speak to me...

Creation Ministries International began as a partnership with Ken Ham, before they split. It operates primarily in Australia, New Zealand, and Canada. They used to be the "Creation Science Association" but changed their name to "Creation Ministries International". They describe evidencialism vs. presuppositionalism. (Open minded evidence research vs. closed certainty about the meaning of Scripture)

... One’s faith should never be based on specific examples of design, but on God’s Word. Your problem is what my colleague Andrew Lamb called the ‘evidentialist roller coaster’—where one’s faith goes up and down depending on the status of the latest ‘evidence’.... joining CMI and learning about presuppositionalism. That is, the difference between creation and evolution is not about the evidence, but the presuppositions by which we interpret the evidence 

John Morris if the Institute for Creation Research (ICR) also relies on presuppositionalism.

Scripture doesn’t always provide all the details about a given subject, but it does give us “the big picture”—the worldview within which we frame our understanding and studies. Facts by themselves do not speak clearly but must be interpreted within a presupposition set—a worldview. The biblical worldview handles the data better than any other worldview, especially as they relate to unobserved origins questions. source

On the Catholic side, the Kolbe Institute concede that their position on a young earth is not based on science:

.... Father and Doctor of the Church, St. Maximus the Confessor, seems to have been given a profound insight into the spiritual harm that results when Christians allow themselves to be deceived into thinking that the age of the universe can be determined by extrapolation from the order of nature—the Cartesian-Darwinian deception that has become an article of faith for secular and for most of Catholic academia.  (source)

• Vatican I: These books [of the canon] the Church holds to be sacred and canonical, not because, having been composed by human industry, they were afterwards approved by her authority; nor only because they contain revelation without error; but because, having been written under the inspiration of the Holy Ghost, they have God for their author (De Fide Catholica 2:7).
• Pope Leo XIII: "it is absolutely wrong and forbidden either to narrow inspiration to certain parts only of Holy Scripture or to admit that the sacred writer has erred" and condemned "the system of those who, in order to rid themselves of these difficulties, do not hesitate to concede that divine inspiration regards the things of faith and morals, and nothing beyond" (Providentissimus Deus 20).
• Pius XII regarding Pope Leo XIII's quote: "[a] solemn definition of Catholic doctrine, by which such divine authority is claimed for the ‘entire books with all their parts’ as to secure freedom from any error whatsoever." He repudiated those who "ventured to restrict the truth of Sacred Scripture solely to matters of faith and morals" (Divino Afflante Spiritu 1).
• Vatican II: In composing the sacred books, God chose men and while employed by him they made use of their powers and abilities, so that with him acting in them and through them, they, as true authors, consigned to writing everything and only those things that he wanted. Therefore, since everything asserted by the inspired authors or sacred writers must be held to be asserted by the Holy Spirit, it follows that the books of Scripture must be acknowledged as teaching solidly, faithfully, and without error that truth that God wanted put into sacred writings for the sake of salvation (Dei Verbum 11).

"one should not try to defend the Christian faith with arguments that are so patently opposed to reason that the faith is made to look ridiculous... irrisio infidelium, the scorn of the unbelievers." St. Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274)

Usually, even a non-Christian knows something about the earth, the heavens, and the other elements of this world, about the motion and orbit of the stars and even their size and relative positions, about the predictable eclipses of the sun and moon, the cycles of the years and seasons, about the kinds of animals, shrubs, stones, and so forth, and this knowledge he holds to as being certain from reason and experience.

Now, it is a disgraceful and dangerous thing for an infidel to hear a Christian, presumably giving the meaning of Holy Scripture, talking nonsense on these topics; and we should take all means to prevent such an embarrassing situation, in which people show up vast ignorance in a Christian and laugh it to scorn.

The shame is not so much that an ignorant individual is derided, but that people outside the household of the faith think our sacred writers held such opinions, and, to the great loss of those for whose salvation we toil, the writers of our Scripture are criticized and rejected as unlearned men.... Reckless and incompetent expounders of Holy Scripture bring untold trouble and sorrow on their wiser brethren when they are caught in one of their mischievous false opinions and are taken to task by these who are not bound by the authority of our sacred books.

For then, to defend their utterly foolish and obviously untrue statements, they will try to call upon Holy Scripture for proof and even recite from memory many passages which they think support their position, although they understand neither what they say nor the things about which they make assertion.(pp. 42-43,) Commentary on Genesis: Two Books against the Manichees. Augustine (354-430AD) )

He says he ...

... worked out and presented the statements of the book of Genesis in a variety of ways according to my ability; and, in interpreting words that have been written obscurely for the purpose of stimulating our thought, We have not rashly taken my stand on one side against a rival interpretation which might possibly be better. I have thought that each one, in keeping with his powers of understanding, should choose the interpretation that he can grasp. Where he cannot understand Holy Scripture, let him glorify "and fear for himself." (pp. 43-44, ibid)

289 Among all the Scriptural texts about creation, the first three chapters of Genesis occupy a unique place. From a literary standpoint these texts may have had diverse sources. The inspired authors have placed them at the beginning of Scripture to express in their solemn language the truths of creation — its origin and its end in God, its order and goodness, the vocation of man, and finally the drama of sin and the hope of salvation. Read in the light of Christ, within the unity of Sacred Scripture and in the living Tradition of the Church, these texts remain the principal source for catechesis on the mysteries of the "beginning": creation, fall, and promise of salvation.

337 God himself created the visible world in all its richness, diversity and order. Scripture presents the work of the Creator symbolically as a succession of six days of divine "work", concluded by the "rest" of the seventh day. On the subject of creation, the sacred text teaches the truths revealed by God for our salvation, permitting us to "recognize the inner nature, the value and the ordering of the whole of creation to the praise of God." See also Chapters 282-289 of the Catechism. (our emphasis added)

On Adam and Eve

390 The account of the fall in Genesis 3 uses figurative language, but affirms a primeval event, a deed that took place at the beginning of the history of man.264Revelation gives us the certainty of faith that the whole of human history is marked by the original fault freely committed by our first parents. Catechism 265

"The faithful cannot embrace that opinion which maintains that either after Adam there existed on this earth true men who did not take their origin through natural generation from him as from the first parent of all, or that Adam represents a certain number of first parents." (Humani Generis, 37)

Issues of science affect the Church but are not the primary domain of the Church. Several Pope's have made statements that are neither infallible nor magisterial.

The International Theological Commission, headed by Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger who became Pope Benedict XVI, held plenary sessions held in Rome 2000-2002, and wrote a paper "Communion and Stewardship: Human Persons Created in the Image of God," published July 2004. It sided with an old earth. The full publication is here.

Cardinal Ratzinger wrote a book called "In the Beginning…: A Catholic Understanding of the Story of Creation and the Fall", which explores Genesis in depth.

Some of our favourite excerpts:

"... the progress of thought in the last two decades helps us to grasp anew the inner unity of creation and evolution and of faith and reason. It was a particular characteristic of the 19th century to appreciate the historicity of all things and the fact that they came into existence. It perceived that things that we used to consider as unchanging and immutable were the product of a long process of becoming. This was true not only in the realm of the human but also in that of nature. It became evident that the universe was not something like a huge box into which everything was put in a finished state, but that it was comparable instead to a living, growing tree that gradually lifts its branches higher and higher to the sky." Cardinal Ratzinger, In The Beginning: A Catholic Understanding of the Story of Creation and the Fall, 1986, 1995

The ancient church and the church of the Middle Ages also knew ... that the Bible is a whole and that we only understand its truth when we understand it with Christ in mind—with the freedom that he bestowed on us and with the profundity whereby he reveals what is enduring through images. Only at the beginning of the modern era was this dynamic forgotten—this dynamic that is the living unity of Scripture, which we can only understand with Christ in the freedom that he gives us and in the certitude that comes from that freedom. The new historical thinking wanted to read every text in itself, in its bare literalness. Its interest lay only in the exact explanation of particulars, but meanwhile it forgot the Bible as a whole. In a word, it no longer read the texts forward but backward—that is, with a view not to Christ but to the probable origins of those texts. People were no longer concerned with understanding what a text said or what a thing was from the aspect of its fulfillment, but from that of its beginning, its source. As a result of this isolation from the whole and of this literal-mindedness with respect to particulars, which contradicts the entire inner nature of the Bible but which was now considered to be the truly scientific approach, there arose that conflict between the natural sciences and theology which has been, up to our own day, a burden for the faith. This did not have to be the case, because the faith was, from its very beginnings, greater, broader, and deeper. Even today faith in creation is not unreal; even today it is reasonable; even from the perspective of the data of the natural sciences it is the “better hypothesis,” offering a fuller and better explanation than any of the other theories. Faith is reasonable. The reasonableness of creation derives from God’s Reason, and there is no other really convincing explanation.

Benedict XVI, Pope. In the Beginning…': A Catholic Understanding of the Story of Creation and the Fall (Ressourcement: Retrieval and Renewal in Catholic Thought (RRRCT)) (pp. 24-25). (Function). Kindle Edition.

God created the world. The world is not, as people used to think then, a chaos of mutually opposed forces; nor is it the dwelling of demonic powers from which human beings must protect themselves. The sun and the moon are not deities that rule over them, and the sky that stretches over their heads is not full of mysterious and adversary divinities. Rather, all of this comes from one power, from God's eternal Reason, which became -- in the Word -- the power of creation.

The Book of Genesis dispels the Babylonian creation account of Enuma Elish. The world is a dragon’s body, and human beings have dragon’s blood in them. At the very origin of the world lurks something sinister, and in the deepest part of humankind there lies something rebellious, demonic, and evil. In this view of things only a dictator, the king of Babylon, who is the representative of Marduk, can repress the demonic and restore the world to order.

Out of that “Let there be” it was not some haphazard stew that was concocted. The more we know of the universe the more profoundly we are struck by a Reason whose ways we can only contemplate with astonishment. In pursuing them we can see anew that creating Intelligence to whom we owe our own reason. Albert Einstein once said that in the laws of nature “there is revealed such a superior Reason that everything significant which has arisen out of human thought and arrangement is, in comparison with it, the merest empty reflection.”1 In (pg 29)

ME.....John tells us who the Word was, read OT in Unity with NT.

In the Bible this thought goes still further. It lets us know that the rhythm of the heavenly bodies is, more profoundly, a way of expressing the rhythm of the heart and the rhythm of God’s love, which manifests itself there.3

Benedict XVI, Pope. In the Beginning…': A Catholic Understanding of the Story of Creation and the Fall (Ressourcement: Retrieval and Renewal in Catholic Thought (RRRCT)) (p. 32).

For the Christian the Old Testament represents, in its totality, an advance toward Christ; only when it attains to him does its real meaning, which was gradually hinted at, become clear. Thus every individual part derives its meaning from the whole, and the whole derives its meaning from its end—from Christ. Hence we only interpret an individual text theologically correctly (as the fathers of the church recognized and as the faith of the church in every age has recognized) when we see it as a way that is leading us ever forward, when we see in the text where this way is tending and what its inner direction is.2

ibid (p. 19).

And we are penetrating ever deeper into what is smallest, into the cell and into the primordial units of life; here, too, we discover a Reason that astounds us, such that we must say with Saint Bonaventure: “Whoever does not see here is blind. Whoever does not hear here is deaf. And whoever does not begin to adore here and to praise the creating Intelligence is dumb.”

ibid (p. 30).

 

God himself shines through the reasonableness of his creation. Physics and biology, and the natural sciences in general, have given us a new and unheard-of creation account with vast new images, which let us recognize the face of the Creator and which make us realize once again that at the very beginning and foundation of all being there is a creating Intelligence. The universe is not the product of darkness and unreason. It comes from intelligence, freedom, and from the beauty that is identical with love.

ibid (pp. 30-31).

numbers that reproduce not the mathematical structure of the universe but the inner design of its fabric, so to say, or rather the idea according to which it was constructed. There the numbers three, four, seven, and ten dominate. The words “God said” appear ten times in the creation account. In this way the creation narrative anticipates the Ten Commandments. This makes us realize that these Ten Commandments are, as it were, an echo of the creation; they are not arbitrary inventions for the purpose of erecting barriers to human freedom but signs pointing to the spirit, the language, and the meaning of creation; they are a translation of the language of the universe, a translation of God’s logic, which constructed the universe.

ibid (pp. 31-32)

The number that governs the whole is seven; in the scheme of seven days it permeates the whole in a way that cannot be overlooked. This is the number of a phase of the moon, and thus we are told throughout this account that the rhythm of our heavenly neighbor also sounds the rhythm of our human life. It becomes clear that we human beings are not bounded by the limits of our own little “I” but that we are part of the rhythm of the universe, that we too, so to speak, assimilate the heavenly rhythm and movement in our own bodies and thus, thanks to this interlinking, are fitted into the logic of the universe.

ibid (p. 32). (

Creation is oriented to the sabbath, which is the sign of the covenant between God and humankind. In a short while we shall have to reflect more closely on this, but for the time being, as a first step, we can draw this conclusion: Creation is designed in such a way that it is oriented to worship. It fulfills its purpose and assumes its significance when it is lived, ever new, with a view to worship. Creation exists for the sake of worship. As Saint Benedict said in his Rule: Operi Dei nihil praeponatur—“Nothing must be put before the service of God.”

ibid (pp. 32-33)

that by it was made all that was made, and that it was the light and the life of humankind. John only needed to take up these formulas and to apply them to him who is the living Word of God, saying that all things were made through him (cf. John 1:3). And even before him Paul had said: “All things were created through him and for him” (Colossians 1:16; cf. Colossians 1:15–23). God created the universe in order to be able to become a human being and pour out his love upon us and to invite us to love him in return.

ibid (pp. 34-35)

What we had previously celebrated—namely, that through faith in creation the world has been demythologized and made reasonable; that sun, moon, and stars are no longer strange and powerful divinities but merely lights; that animals and plants have lost their mystic qualities: all this has become an accusation against Christianity.

Benedict XVI, Pope. In the Beginning…': A Catholic Understanding of the Story of Creation and the Fall (Ressourcement: Retrieval and Renewal in Catholic Thought (RRRCT)) (p. 37). (Function). Kindle Edition.

In the face of all human division and human arrogance, whereby one person sets himself or herself over and against another, humanity is declared to be one creation of God from his one earth. What is said at the beginning is then repeated after the Flood: in the great genealogy of Genesis 10 the same thought reappears—namely, that there is only one humanity in the many human beings. The Bible says a decisive “no” to all racism and to every human division.

Benedict XVI, Pope. In the Beginning…': A Catholic Understanding of the Story of Creation and the Fall (Ressourcement: Retrieval and Renewal in Catholic Thought (RRRCT)) (p. 44). (Function). Kindle Edition.

I would like to say something very briefly here with reference to Jacques Monod, whose testimony should certainly have great value, since he is on the one hand a highly regarded scientist and on the other a determined opponent of faith in creation.3

(p. 49). ...

We cannot say: creation or evolution, inasmuch as these two things respond to two different realities. The story of the dust of the earth and the breath of God, which we just heard, does not in fact explain how human persons come to be but rather what they are. It explains their inmost origin and casts light on the project that they are. And, vice versa, the theory of evolution seeks to understand and describe biological developments. But in so doing it cannot explain where the “project” of human persons comes from, nor their inner origin, nor their particular nature. To that extent we are faced here with two complementary—rather than mutually exclusive—realities. But let us look a little closer, because here, too, the progress of thought in the last two decades helps us to grasp anew the inner unity of creation and evolution and of faith and reason. It was a particular characteristic of the nineteenth century to appreciate the historicity of all things and the fact that they came into existence. It perceived that things that we used to consider as unchanging and immutable were the product of a long process of becoming. This was true not only in the realm of the human but also in that of nature. It became evident that the universe was not something like a huge box into which everything was put in a finished state, but that it was comparable instead to a living, growing tree that gradually lifts its branches higher and higher to the sky. This common view was and is frequently interpreted in bizarre fashion, but as research advances it is becoming clearer how it is to be correctly understood. I would like to say something very briefly here with reference to Jacques Monod, whose testimony should certainly have great value, since he is on the one hand a highly regarded scientist and on the other a determined opponent of faith in creation.3 Two important and fundamental precisions, which he mentions, seem significant to me to begin with. The first is to the effect that not only what is necessary actually exists. Contrary to the thinking of both Laplace and Hegel, all things in the universe cannot be derived from one another with ineluctable necessity. There is no single all-embracing formula from which everything necessarily derives. According to Monod, there is in the universe not only necessity but also chance. As Christians we would go further and say that there is freedom. In any event, Monod indicates that two realities in particular did not have to exist but could have existed. One of these is life. According to the laws of physics, it could have evolved but did not have to. Indeed, he adds that it was highly unlikely that it would have come about; the mathematical probability was close to zero. Thus one may well assume that this development—the occurrence of life—happened only once, and that this one time was on our earth.4 The second thing that could have existed but that did not have to is the human being. This, too, is so unlikely that Monod, as a natural scientist, claims that on the scale of probability there must have been only one possibility for the coming into existence of this being. We are, he says, the result of chance. It is as if we had drawn a lucky number in the lottery and had suddenly and unexpectedly won a billion dollars.5 In his atheistic parlance Monod has expressed anew what the faith over the centuries has referred to as the “contingence” of the human person, which, then, from faith became prayer: I did not have to exist but I do exist, and you, O God, wanted me to exist. The difference is that in place of God’s will Monod postulates chance—the lottery—as having produced us. If this were so, then it would be very questionable indeed whether one could declare that this was a fortunate outcome.

Benedict XVI, Pope. In the Beginning…': A Catholic Understanding of the Story of Creation and the Fall (Ressourcement: Retrieval and Renewal in Catholic Thought (RRRCT)) (pp. 48-50). (Function). Kindle Edition.

The question about what the human being is finds its response in the following of Jesus Christ. Following in his steps from day to day in patient love and suffering we can learn with him what it means to be a human being and to become a human being.

Benedict XVI, Pope. In the Beginning…': A Catholic Understanding of the Story of Creation and the Fall (Ressourcement: Retrieval and Renewal in Catholic Thought (RRRCT)) (p. 53). (Function). Kindle Edition.

One of the bishops reflected on these words and said that he had the impression that we had long ago actually halved Jesus’ message as it is thus summarized. We speak a great deal—and like to speak—about evangelization and the good news in such a way as to make Christianity attractive to people. But hardly anyone, according to this bishop, dares nowadays to proclaim the prophetic message: Repent!

Hardly anyone dares to make to our age this elementary evangelical appeal, with which the Lord wants to induce us to acknowledge our sinfulness, to do penance, and to become other than what we are.

Benedict XVI, Pope. In the Beginning…': A Catholic Understanding of the Story of Creation and the Fall (Ressourcement: Retrieval and Renewal in Catholic Thought (RRRCT)) (p. 57). (Function). Kindle Edition.

In 2008, Professor Michael Heller (Kracow, Poland) is a cosmologist and Catholic priest won the Templeton Prize for Science and religion. He was a friend and confident of Pope John Paul II and held belief in an old earth. Heller would say to non-Christian scientists:

"You and I agree that we live in a rational universe. The difference between you and me, is that I spell rational with a capital "R".