Torah vs. Science: How Old Is the World According to Judaism?

Dan asks: "Shalom! According to the Torah, the world has existed for almost 5,800 years, but scientists claim the world is billions of years old. If that is true, did God want to mislead the scientists?"

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First of all, we must distinguish between science and a scientific theory. It is important to understand that no one has invented an advanced machine into which you place an object and it spits out its age. From a scientific perspective, an old rock does not look externally different from a young rock and all age estimates are human calculations done on paper. Nowhere in nature do we find a rock labeled, “56 million years old.”

Scientists arrive at these ages through calculations, and such calculations, by nature, are open to error. A small change in carbon levels, for example, can cause a recently deceased animal to be dated at tens of thousands of years. Unknown variables can easily disrupt dating methods. For many years, scientists believed stalactites required millions of years to form. Yet in recent generations, brand-new stalactites have been discovered that formed within mere decades (for instance, in Lincoln’s Memorial and in the Sequoia Caverns).

We must therefore distinguish between human hypotheses and scientific facts. Gravity, for example, is a scientific fact because it can be directly observed, tested, and confirmed by experiment. This is why the exact sciences are also called empirical science. However, claims about the distant past cannot be tested in this way; by definition they are theories, human reconstructions that can always be replaced by new ones.

It is enough to ask a scientist who claims rocks or trees are millions of years old: “Were you there? Did you see it happen? If not, how can you be absolutely certain?”

True science cannot be argued with because it is testable, repeatable, and observable. No scientist today claims the world is flat, because this has been empirically disproven. Regarding the question of the world’s age, we do find believing scientists who argue that the world is young and bring their own evidence. This shows clearly that the matter of the world’s age is open to interpretation and is not a proven fact as often portrayed in the media.

How do scientists reach calculations of millions or billions of years? Their results always begin with a fundamental assumption that there was no divine intervention in creation.

For example, one scientist looks at a massive canyon, studies how much rock eroded in the past few decades, and calculates: “At this rate, it would take 200 million years for this canyon to form naturally.” He doesn't consider that a Creator may have intentionally formed the land, raising mountains and valleys in a moment.

Another scientist studies the stars and concludes: “Based on galactic expansion, the light from this star must have taken two billion years to reach Earth.” Again, he does not consider that God may have created the universe with starlight already reaching Earth as part of His design.

A third calculates radioactive decay or the rate at which stalactites form and concludes it must have taken millions of years. He never entertains the possibility that God created a world already with stalactites, or that He accelerated natural processes that would normally take immense spans of time.

Everything depends on one’s perspective. Those who assume the world emerged on its own through purely natural processes will naturally calculate immense timescales. While one who understands that the universe was deliberately created by God sees that these processes were not random but shaped by divine intention to bring creation to its present form.

God never misled us for a moment. Rather, it is we who sometimes mislead ourselves with theoretical models that ignore His providence. It is even ironic to hear scientists say: “Surely God would not deceive us, since the calculations prove the world must be billions of years old…” In fact, such a statement contradicts itself.

That said, it is also possible that God chose to act through vast spans of time. In fact, there is an idea in Kabbalah known as “the doctrine of the Shemitot” which describes cycles of creation. For God, who is eternal and beyond time, millions of years pose no problem. The Sages taught that the Torah existed “974 generations before the world was created” (Shabbat 88b). In another Midrash they said: “God built worlds and destroyed them, created worlds and destroyed them, until He created this one” (Bereishit Rabbah 3:9). These mystical teachings suggest the possibility of earlier worlds, whether spiritual or physical.

These Midrashim do not prove that our current world is billions of years old, but they illustrate that Jewish tradition already contained concepts of multiple worlds and pre-creation time. If science were ever to fully prove an ancient universe beyond doubt, such interpretations would not contradict our faith.

We must remember that today’s scientific estimates of the earth’s age are based on assumptions and changeable theories, not on direct empirical observation. There is therefore no need for us to reinterpret the Torah according to them.