Ken Hamrick blogs at SBC Open Forum.
Instead of arguing for or against the scientific evidence, or arguing the merits of possible exegetical ways to reconcile Scripture with a billions-of-years chronology, I propose that—for the sake of argument-–we eliminate the evidence question all together. We can do this by accepting all the scientific claims at face value, and still insisting on a recent supernatural creation out of nothing. In other words, we would not posit a young earth, but an old earth that was recently created by divine fiat. When God creates out of nothing, He is not limited to creating things “new.” God created Adam and Eve as physically mature adults and not as infants. He created mature, fruit-bearing trees for immediate food. “He made the stars also”—and made a universe with mature light-trails already existing so that the stars were already visible. All of these imply a time-consuming natural process that was well under way at the first moment of creation. God chose to create not at the beginning of these natural processes, but somewhere in the middle—as if these processes had been going on long before the moment of creation.
Why would God create the world in such a way as to leave no scientific evidence whatsoever of His creating, but leave plenty of evidence that natural processes predated the recent creation found in the natural reading of the Biblical account? Quite simply, God created in such a way that He would not be found by scientific evidence, but only by faith. This is not to say that the created world does not point to God and reveal a Creator to those who are willing to believe, but only that God and His creating cannot be established by any materialistic evidence. There are no “miracle particles” that science can measure to determine that creation by fiat occurred. Any unbelievers who insist on scientific evidence for God’s existence or His creating will find only natural processes. God requires faith.
While many Old-Earth Creationists reject evolution, let’s accept for the sake of argument all the claims of secular science, including the evolutionary hypothesis (as far as it goes). It still remains consonant with the Biblical account of a recent creation that God would supernaturally create (without a trace of evidence) a world already in process—even if that process is evolution. Just as the immediate visibility of the stars at creation can be seen as evidence of a natural process already in progress, the existence of evolutionary processes that were apparently in progress at the moment of creation provides no threat to the recent-creation view. The idea that mankind evolved as the crowning achievement of a billions-of-years-long natural process, and that he was supernaturally created out of nothing around 6000 years ago, are perfectly compatible… if God “stepped into” that process right at the point where modern man would have evolved,* had God allowed everything to develop over billions of years, and created everything out of nothing at that point in the virtual chronology. In short, this proposes that God in creating the world also created a virtual past full of scientific processes that in themselves are capable of explaining all that physically exists—that indeed would have resulted in all that physically exists had God not chosen to miraculously create everything more recently.
Although the visibility of stars implies an ancient past, we trust God’s testimony that He recently created light by fiat. Just so, although the evidences for evolution imply an ancient past full of death, we trust God’s testimony that “through one man, sin entered into the world, and death through sin…” Therefore, while God supernaturally created Adam in what might have been the middle of a virtually ancient process of death and survival of the fittest, He suspended the principle of death in the reality of His created world on the sin of the man that He recently created. Again, God’s revealed truth must be accepted by faith and not proven by scientific evidence. “Cordially embracing all that God reveals” is a matter of conscience, and not a matter of evidence. Not one particle of scientific evidence can prove that God did not create, 6000 years ago, the entire world out of nothing, and with a virtual past already present. And since objections cannot be found among the evidence, then where can they be found?
With the Evidence Question Dismissed, the Supernatural Question Remains
This is not to say that I believe the outlandish claims of the evolutionists—I do not. But by accepting their claims for the sake of argument, the anti-supernatural skepticism hidden in the Old-Earth Creationist view is laid bare. The question begs to be answered: Now that the scientific evidence is accepted, what reason will you offer for not accepting the plain-as-day straightforward Biblical account of a miraculous creation approximately six thousand years ago? With the evidence question effectively dismissed by accepting it from the start, then this question of belief in the Scriptural testimony of the miraculous must be dealt with.
It will not do to object that God would be deceptive to create the world with an apparent age—with natural processes apparently in progress long before creation. If there were any weight to this objection, then God could not perform any miracles, since all miracles are inherently deceptive to those who do not believe. Was the water turned to wine, or did the host save the best wine for last? How many unbelievers would have guessed that Mary, when “great with child,” must still have been a virgin? Do you suppose that Lazarus walked out of the tomb looking like a “zombie,” so that all who met him in his latter days would immediately know by his appearance that he had once been dead for four days? Or, would you agree that he left death behind him and looked fully alive, just as if he had never died? But such a lively appearance would be deceptive, giving no indication to those who did not know that he had died that any miraculous raising from the dead had occurred. Supernatural miracles leave no trace of evidence—no “miracle particles” to be found. Every supernatural miracle is inherently deceptive to those who do not hold the truth about what happened. Thus, this objection fails.
How do we square the world’s scientific authority with the God of such supernatural actions? The unbelieving world stands on the ever-changing but tangible ground of “evidence,” and has only scorn and disgust for anyone who stands anywhere else. But the Christian stands solidly on faith, having the written word of God and the sure witness of the Spirit—and we will not budge! There can be no reconciliation between a faith-based perspective and an evidence-based perspective. Someone once said it well: “For those who believe, no evidence is needed; but for those who do not, no evidence would be enough.” It is the very fabric of the Christian faith to accept as incontrovertible the sole evidence of the written word of God and the witness of the Holy Spirit—even if no other supporting evidences are discovered and in spite of whatever supposed evidences to the contrary may be presented. Is this really the kind of faith you have? If not, then tell us why you’re willing to believe with certainty that Christ miraculously and physically rose from the dead after three days, in spite of the fact that there is no evidence strong enough to scientifically prove it, but yet, you falter when it comes to a miracle no greater but only larger in scale?
If the Lord is a God of supernatural actions, then believe Him; but if not, then in whom do you believe? For all of us who claim to believe in Christ, this issue should have been settled beyond all question at the empty tomb. If Christ did not physically rise from the dead, then you and I are still in our sins. But praise God! We know that He did physically rise from the dead, and that God is a God of supernatural actions. Those who would be saved by Jesus Christ, the only name by which a man may be saved, must believe that He physically rose from the dead (as well as believing that He was the eternal Son of God who became a man, lived a perfect life, and died to pay for our sins). We as believers are so familiar with all this as to lose our astonishment with it. A real man named Jesus walked around for three years healing people of all kinds of diseases and disabilities. He even literally raised some men from the dead—one of them was dead long enough to stink of decomposition. To top it off, He Himself literally and physically was resurrected to immortality and walked out of the tomb after being dead three days! Do you really believe this?
Scientists have observed millions upon millions of people and animals dying. Death is well known and understood. It is a scientific fact beyond dispute—a proven law of nature—that all living biological things die and then decompose. The claim that Jesus raised people from the dead and was even raised from the dead Himself is worthy of only scorn and perhaps pity from the scientific community. However, we grant them no credibility on this question because the Spirit of God has revealed to us, with utter certainty, that the Bible is the true and inspired word of God and that Christ was literally raised from the dead. And the Bible reveals that the unbelieving world hates God and hates the truth, seeking to hide from both in a fog of rationalistic demands for tangible evidence. So which are you? Are you a believer in the supernatural acts of God in spite of the world’s scorn, or does the world’s insistence on evidence have you in a fog?
The scientifically sophisticated Christian—one who is enlightened by an “open-minded“ acknowledgement of the authority and wisdom of science—can find an intelligent way out of this dilemma. He can find in his “hermeneutical toolbox” various ways to read the accounts of Christ’s resurrection in a less literal, less physical sense. After all, Christ did seem to walk right through walls, and we know scientifically that it is impossible for a real physical body to move through a wall in that way. As well, we are told in 1 Cor 15 that the kind of body we will have after the resurrection will be a “spiritual” body, so that whole resurrected Savior story can be creatively reinterpreted. Therefore, one could understand His resurrection to be spiritual and not really physical. But if you find the idea of reinterpreting Christ’s resurrection to remove the supernatural miraculous quality of it to be unthinkable, then why would you think it’s OK to use that same scientific hermeneutic to reinterpret the account of a miraculous, supernatural six-day creation? Why do you waver between a faith-based perspective that has no problems with any evidence, and an evidence-based perspective that insists that evidence must be weighed and Biblical accounts of immediate supernatural events cannot be taken at face-value?
Since all the scientific evidence and theories can now be accounted for from the start, without having any bearing on the question of the recent, supernatural, miraculous creation that is plainly the revealed chronology of Scripture, then evidence is no longer an excuse for skepticism. In the face of the revealed truth of the written word of the supernatural God, the most that science can determine about origins is the condition of the world as God recently created it. Does science insist on billion-year-old rocks and fossils? Then God created billion-year-old rocks and fossils, about 6000 years ago. Does Scripture demand that the principle of death did not enter into the world until Adam sinned? Then not one creature in God’s creation died until Adam sinned. It makes little difference whether or not you accept evolution. The real question is whether you are willing to accept revealed truth in spite of the evidence or prefer to reinterpret revelation to make it accord with the evidence.
* The spiritual nature of human beings could never evolve, but could only be supernaturally created. But neither does the spirit leave any trace of scientific evidence. Humanity in its current state is scientifically assumed to be in its most evolved state, and God needed only to step in and provide that spiritual part of man when he created everything supernaturally out of nothing, effectively bringing man into existence in his most evolved state in that point in the virtual chronology.
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Well, Ken, I’m underwhelmed but will read more carefully later and respond again. I think you lay out a scenario by importing a boatload of assumptions that leave nothing to be discussed. Even though it is never stated in Scripture, the earth is 6k years old. Period. We go from there…
William,
Considering the available space, I thought it best not to set out the Scriptural basis for the 6000-year chronology. Many YEC’s give it as 6 to 10, but I don’t find that large of a margin to be either necessary or a problem. Once the genealogies begin in Gen. 5, the Bible paints a pretty detailed picture of how many years were involved from Adam to Noah & the flood, and from Noah to Christ. Criticism of that chronology presupposes that physical evidence for an old earth weighs against such a chronology—but with the weight of that evidence removed from the question, such criticism quickly loses its justification.
I have to agree. Some of this is quite interesting but there are a bunch of assumptions about OECers that I’m certain we all aren’t willing to accept and frankly answer difficulties that we don’t acknowledge. I too will read it again, but the heart of the article is this: The only possible way to interpret Gen. 1 and 2 is the YEC interpretation. Of course that isn’t true. The author is essentially saying you must acknowledge that we YECers are right, but in turn you can claim to be a little bit right.
Bill,
Of course, OEC’ers vary somewhat. Some accept evolution and some don’t. Some hold to the gap theory, and some don’t, etc. But what all of them have in common is that they have adopted an alternative to the plain, straightforward reading of Scripture on this matter. What I have sought to do in this article (and I think successfully so) is to remove all justification for resorting to these alternative interpretations, since all of them are based on evidence for an old earth.
It is interesting that you guys recognize right away that there are assumptions that exclude your view from the start. But yet, I’ve yet to encounter an Old-Earther who acknowledges that his own assumptions exclude from the start the possibility of a recent, supernatural, miraculous creation. What I mean is this: Such a miraculous creation would leave no trace of physical evidence; therefore, to admit physical evidence into the court of your mind in order to help you determine what the Genesis account really says is to rule out a priori anything except that which leaves evidence.
And what will you argue regarding Christ’s resurrection? How do any Old-Earthers reconcile an evidence-based perspective regarding origins and a faith-based perspective regarding Christ?
Ken,
The miraculous event of the resurrection is testified to by the empty tomb, and witnesses who saw and touched the resurrected Christ. Although it was a miraculous event that falls outside the understanding of science, it has plenty of evidence for its occurrence. Scripture itself indicates so in the constant reference to the testimony of witnesses.
Beat me to that one – William C.
On top of that Paul later affirmed again the demonstrable evidence for the resurrection in first Corinthians chapter 15.
So it seems that demonstrable evidence in no way defies the strength of miraculous biblical assertions.
Ken,
My response above and I think that of William C. applies to your statement;
“a supernatural, miraculous, divine act leaves no evidence”
A miracle leaves no physical evidence. It does often leave witnesses. However, witnesses are notorious for being mistaken or even led astray. As for this case, I’ve not talked to any of them—have you? Can you produce these witnesses? A book testifies to that Christ was raised; but another so-called “holy” book, the Koran, says that Christ was never even crucified. Books prove nothing scientifically, and neither do witnesses even if still living. All that such amounts to is probability and not scientific proof. Christ did rise from the dead, and we know this with absolute certainty—but only because the Holy Spirit witnesses to that truth and verifies the truth of Scripture with utter certainty to those who believe. An empty tomb proves nothing.
Ken,
I don’t understand your argument that a miracle may leave witnesses but not physical evidence. How could you have witnesses without physical evidence? There has to be something physical for them to witness.
I honestly can’t tell whether you’re being satirical now.
“a miracle leaves no physical evidence.”
Really?
Lazarus, was not demonstrably risen?
Tge beggar at the gate not demonstrably healed?
The lame man brought through the roof not demonstrably healed ?
The blind man not demonstrably healed?
The woman with the “issue of blood”?
I’m not sure I’m going where you appear to be, I think inadvertently, leading.
Witnesses but not physical evidence.
Certainly those who witness a miracle see something physical. Certainly the cloths they wrapped Jesus in is physical evidence. But in scientific ways these evidences are not evidences. We only have supposed written testimony to the miracles of the Bible.
I say “supposed” because the Bible is a book we believe by faith not because of any evidence. Yes there is ‘some’ evidence to support it, but such evidence could also be used to point to other theories.
The Bible speaks of a city. Archeologists dig into a ruin and discover said city. But this evidence only proves that the Bible isn’t completely made up, not that its truth claims are to be accepted whole sale.
Creation speaks to God the creator. But creation, by those who have rejected God, has become a place for them to find out how it came about by chance.
So we must separate the truth we know by faith, which we know is true, and what the world perceives as true. They believe the lie having exchanged the truth for a lie. Romans 1:
24 Therefore God gave them over in the lusts of their hearts to impurity, so that their bodies would be dishonored among them. 25 For they exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever. Amen.
So yes there is physical evidence for creation: the earth itself. But it is not conclusive to unbelievers who have been blinded by sin.
So yes there was evidence of the resurrection, the testimony of believers, but those who would not believe that testimony assumed some other explanation other than the miraculous.
And we see that Jesus did not appear but selectively, and only to those of the faith. Miracles are not meant to bring about faith. Jesus said, if you do not believe my words, then believe me for my miracles. And yet they did not believe and instead put Him to death.
Miracles are seen [at least usually] but there is no lasting scientific evidence to verify them. In the end, they must be taken as true by faith.
Thank you, ParsonsMike. You and I have some strong disagreements in some other areas, but some strong agreements in this.
When I say that a miracle leaves no trace of evidence, I’m pointing out that quality shared with the miracle of a recent creation out of nothing. Thus, I’m referring to the fact that God can and has, according to the Bible, created things and beings that are already mature the moment they were brought into existence. Because they were already mature, then any physical evidences examined regarding their age would require a scientist to extrapolate based on known natural processes that commonly result in such a level of maturity. If we could bring Adam to our day by time machine, we could put him in the MRI and we would find every medical reason to believe that he had been born quite some time prior to the day that God created him. The same goes for the fruit trees in the garden already bearing fruit. The same goes for the water turned to wine. The same principle will be found true in every miracle that God performs—but it must be looked for. Evidences that are not in this same category, such as witnesses, do not apply.
Tarheel,
You said:
Did not Abraham tell the rich man that if they do not believe Moses, then even if one rise from the dead they will not believe? Those who saw the risen Christ and believed had something more important to such faith than the mere experience of seeing Christ: they had the witness of the Holy Spirit, which they embraced. Such miracles may be accompanied by the personal experience and testimony of eyewitnesses; but they leave no trace evidence for scientists to examine to prove the miracle happened. A scientist who sees a man come out of a tomb wrapped in grave clothes is not going to proclaim, “A dead man is risen!,” but rather, “This man was mistakenly buried.” Science goes by natural laws, so miracles are ruled out from the start. Dead things do not recover—they decay—according to natural law.
William Carpenter, Tarheel, etc.,
Scientifically speaking, a man coming out of a tomb after three days weighs more toward proving that he never really died than it does toward proving he rose from the dead.
Ken,
“Scientifically speaking, a man coming out of a tomb after three days weighs more toward proving that he never really died than it does toward proving he rose from the dead.”
Do you not see the slippery slope you are on? I think I understand what you are trying to do, but I just cannot bring myself to get on that slope with you.
ONe of the reasons for the three days I thought was to demonstrate that there was actually a death.
Also, relating to Jesus…there were several instances of “evidence” that he was truly dead when he was buried…the blood and water gushing out of his side after the spearing for one. I am not sure there is a “scientific way” that one can live through that – especially after crucifixion and the prior beating he endured.
Dispelling witness testimony is folly I think in this case…because, for other reasons – it would have required a conspiracy of monumental proportions including martyrdom of any individuals to advance the conspiracy – – – not to mention (this could apply to Lazarus and Dorcas in Acts 9, too) there is no such thing, scientifically speaking as “identical group hallucinations”.
Hit submit too soon…(and then this showed up in the wrong place…trying again..LOL)
Since there no the hallucination factor is out…and all three of the deaths we are speaking of were evidenced by witnesses and the passing of long periods of time…then these miracles are works of God (as only he can raise the dead to life) and are also evidenced.
I just am not sure that I buy that demonstrable evidence defies the reality of biblically accounted miracles.
Tarheel,
You said:
I’m just trying to get you to see that while the empty tomb points to the resurrection of Jesus, only the Spirit of God in conjunction with the Bible can prove it as true. You stated:
Ever hear of the “Swoon Theory?” It’s very old and nothing new. There’s room for such skepticism because only the Holy Spirit’s confirms the truth with utter certainty. Human evidences never achieve utter certainty. Human reasoning from such evidences alone never arrives at utter certainty. You stated:
Apart from the witness of the Holy Spirit to the truthfulness of Scripture, we have no way of being certain that the Biblical account is accurate and true and not embellished. You said:
Which group is that? We have only the Book to tell us that there was a group. Without the Holy Spirit’s witness, we have no way of knowing if there was a group—or that they saw what the Book claims that they saw.
Bear in mind that I agree with you that the Bible is absolutely true. It’s how we know that it’s true that we seem to disagree on. You think I’m on a slippery slope. But what of the slippery slope of putting undue confidence in human evidence and human reasoning, and neglecting the vital role to faith that belongs to the Holy Spirit?
All of this parallels to the miracle of creation. If our belief in miracles comes mainly from the Spirit, then we will not be looking for what to believe by looking mainly for evidence. Instead, we will mainly be looking to the Bible. And if I can get any man on that slippery slope—to stand resolutely on God’s Word regardless of whatever evidence the world throws at him—then I will gladly be used of God in that way.
I’ll still read more carefully and respond later but re this comment, the YE position seeks to drive from orthodoxy any who disagree; hence, the immediate flight to the Ressurection.
The other William,
I had come to the same conclusion and was ready to make that observation.
Ken, the scripture is clear that the resurrection was scientifically obervable:
Matthew 28:6 He is not here; he has risen just as he said. Come and SEE the place where he lay.
Matt. 28:9 Suddenly Jesus met them. Greetings he said. They came to him, CLASPED his feet and worshipped him.
John 20:4-8 John and Peter go to the tomb and SEE the strips of linen and napkin lying there.
John 20:27 The he said to Thomas, “PUT your finger here; SEE my hands. Reach out your hand and PUT it into my side.
Acts 2:32 God has raised this Jesus to life and we are all WITNESS of the fact.
Acts 3:15, 10:39 & 41, 13:30-31 say the same thing.
1 Cor. 15:5-8 Verify that he was seen by Peter, then the 12, then over 500 many who were still alive at the time, then James, and finally to Paul himself.
Scripture records that the resurrection was a scientifically observable fact, although not scientifically explainable. The Holy Spirit confirms this in our hearts, but we are not asked to believe like the Mormons do, or like the Koran tells us based on the evidence of a mere book, but because the authors of the books in the NT had seen it for themselves.
William Thornton,
You said, “…the YE position seeks to drive from orthodoxy any who disagree; hence, the immediate flight to the Ressurection.”
The Recent Creation position is that the Old-Earth position is inconsistent and inferior, but not unorthodox. There are many such positions, such as losable salvation, that are problematic and inconsistent, but still within orthodoxy. The “immediate flight” to the resurrection is only to show your inconsistency, since the resurrection is the ultimate miracle of which all Christians agree.
However, I do believe that the Old-Earth position is the first step on the road to organizational abandonment of orthodoxy. Taking that first step does not necessitate any further steps; but the list of institutions and denominations in the rubbish pile at the end of that road is daunting.
William Carpenter,
You stated:
I’m sure it was unintentional, but your reasoning here is similar to a shell game. You say, “…we are not asked to believe… based on the evidence of a mere book…” but then you hide that same idea under the shell of eyewitness accounts, by saying, “…but because the authors of the books in the NT had seen it for themselves.” And how do you know that “the authors of the books in the NT had seen it for themselves,” except by “the evidence of a mere book”? Whether a man tells you that he saw something or writes in a book what he saw, they both are of equal value. But they only establish probabilities, and do not prove anything.
Ken,
NT 101: Who wrote the Gospel of Matthew (we can get into the dispute, but evidence indicates Matthew wrote it)? Did Matthew see Jesus alive?
Who wrote the Gospel of Mark (again disputes but evidence indicates Mark most likely on the testimony of Peter)? Did Peter see Jesus alive? Did Mark have available people who saw and possible saw for himself Jesus alive?
Who wrote the book of Luke? Did Luke investigate the evidence available to him (Luke 1:3)?
Who wrote the Gospel of John? Did John see Jesus alive?
Who wrote 1 Corinthians? Did Paul see Jesus alive?
All of this is scientific evidence, and these guys were not primitive in their assumptions. They knew what dead people looked like, knew Jesus was dead, saw him alive and assumed (yes with the help of the Holy Spirit) not that he had resuscitated but had been raised from the dead.
Who wrote the Koran? Did Mohammad see Jesus not die.
Who wrote the Book of Mormon that gives a radically different testimony to events in America prior to European colonization? Did Joseph Smith see these events or do we take it on his word that he found some mysterious golden plates recording a totally history of the native Americans than the evidence indicates and accept it in spite of the evidence.
I repeat it, the church has claimed it, the Bible speaks to it, the resurrection of Christ happened and we are left with witnesses who testify to its validity. Many will reject that evidence, and for many that evidence in itself is not enough, nay for all that evidence is not enough, only with the conviction of the Holy Spirit can we accept it. However, that still does accord with your claim that we believe in spite of the scientific evidence.
William Carpenter,
What you’re talking about is not scientific evidence, per se, but historical evidence. I will even grant that the historical evidence for much of Scripture establishes the Bible as extremely reliable. Given such evidence, it is extremely improbable that what the Bible claims is untrue or the witnesses false. But that is not the same thing as scientific proof. Maybe it is in the “science of history,” but not in the physical sciences. The fact remains that the whole thing could have been made up—the possibility remains no matter how small it is.
But let’s keep our eyes on the ball here. When I stated that a miraculous act leaves no trace of evidence, comparing creation to New Testament miracles, I had in mind the kind of evidence that scientists might give weight to in determining origins. As I repeated, there are no miracle particles that scientists can find under a microscope, measure, and determine if and when a miraculous creative event occurred. THe same applies to any other miracle. When put under that same microscope, there will be no miracle particles in the loaves and fish that fed the 5000, the wine from water, or the body of Lazarus.
God Himself was an eyewitness to creation and His testimony is recorded in Genesis. But no scientist cares about such historical evidence. Wasn’t Adam and Eve eyewitnesses who saw and spoke with God, who experienced all that is written about them?
Hit submit too soon…
Since there no the hallucination factor is out…and all three of the deaths we are speaking of were evidenced by witnesses and the passing of long periods of time…then these miracles are works of God (as only he can raise the dead to life) and are also evidenced.
I just am not sure that I buy that demonstrable evidence defies the reality of biblically accounted miracles.
Ken,
Thanks for taking the time to post this. You’ve obviously put much time and thought in this.
You’re welcome, Tarheel. Thanks for reading it.
I dont know just what OEC brothers believe and their rational for those beliefs.
Could one of you explain these?
Thanks.
Ken, I rarely enter into these types of discussion, mostly because I never was very good in science, and when the scientific part of it gets too technical my head starts swimming. Your article draws me in, though.
I will lay my cards on the table and say that of the different views I have read, though I am still somewhat open-ended regarding this, the arguments of people like Hugh Ross make the most sense to me.
Given all that, okay, I’ll bite. Let’s suppose God created everything by fiat 6,000 years ago, with the appearance of age. He is perfectly capable. But why? It seems to me, from the biblical revelation that comes to mind, that God has designed creation with the intent of helping those who are seeking Him to find Him there, not with the intent of putting obstacles to belief in their way. (Psalm 8, Romans 1, etc.)
Also, I cannot avoid the idea that the information that the sun, moon, and stars were created on the fourth day, as signs to mark the days, seasons, and years, is, from the writer’s perspective, significant. In other words, it seems evident to me that, in the mind of the writer, there was something different about the “days” before the fourth day, and those afterward. It even appears possible (if not likely) to me the writer is giving his readers a clue here to not read certain elements of his narrative too literally. He was certainly intelligent enough to realize the problems the fourth-day info poses for a 6 24-hour day interpretation, if that were what he was meaning to communicate.
So, there you have it: my reasons for questioning (though not totally rejecting) a literal 6 24-hour day creation, based on the biblical text alone, and without going into all the scientific evidence.
I am interested to hear your response, as I am still (after all these years) gathering information and forming my opinion on all this.
Brother David,
It’s good to have you join in. Just as it is not necessary to hold to a young earth to be saved, it is not necessary for God to provide the revealed chronology in order for creation to bear sufficient witness of His existence. Those mentioned in Rom. 1 were without excuse not because they had right ideas about the age of the earth, but because they knew there is a Creator. The inherent deceptiveness of any miracle to those who do not hold the truth of the matter is unavoidable, but it certainly does not present any obstacles to belief. And what of the other miracles? Were they obstacles to belief as well? The fact that God created everything is revealed through the testimony of nature. The when and how is revealed only in Scripture.
I’ve already answered the “why?” It is the nature of a miracle to leave no evidence, so that those who assume no miracle happened will assume natural processes are responsible. Determining the age of the earth—or of Adam, for that matter—is simply extrapolating back to the point of supposed origin based on how much time the responsible natural processes would have taken to arrive at the current point. It is to assume from the start that natural processes are completely responsible. But in the face of a such a Creator, where is the justification for such an assumption. And without justification, then where is the supposed deception?
Nevertheless, it is written that those who are not lovers of the truth will be sent strong delusion that they should believe a lie.
Yes, God created the sun, moon and stars to mark the days, seasons and years, on Day 4. But God Himself had already been marking off the days for the three days prior—the same God who decided how long a day would be, and who created language, words, meaning, and communications—and who calls Himself and His word “True.” You say that your reasons for questioning are based on the text alone, but I find nothing in the text to indicate that a day without the sun would not be the same length as a day with the sun. It is WE and not God who need the sun to tell the length of day. And, in fact, we no longer need it: men who live in the arctic circle may have no sun for six months, but I’ll be they still know one day from the next. Is God less knowledgeable than we are? Your objection also begs the question, Why should the first three be any longer—did God NEED more time to accomplish it than the one day that He said He used ([caution: the following is intended as a humorous jab; no offense intended] as if God fudged on the length of day based on the lack of sun to hold Him accountable)? If we confine ourselves to the text alone, we find uniformity: “evening and morning were the first day,” “evening and morning were the second day,” “evening and morning were the third day,” “evening and morning were the fourth day”—not even the slightest hint of difference in chronological length. If we open it up to the context of the entire Old Testament, we find yom being used with an ordinal number over 350 times and every single time it means a literal day.
I’m not sure that the writer was “intelligent enough to realize the problems the fourth-day info poses for a 6 24-hour day interpretation,” since I’m not intelligent enough to see any problem in it. Objections to it, I see; but problems, no.
I appreciate your honesty and willingness to engage here.
It would appear to me to be expected that the other biblical mentions of “yom” would refer to literal 24-hour periods, and the first 3 days of creation the exception, since they all refer to post-4th-day events (i.e. events that happened after the position of the sun, moon, and stars marked off one day from another). Also, the text does not identify for us how we are to understand the “mornings” and “evenings” of the first three days. It does, however, appear to indicate (at least, as I read it) that something changed with regard to this on the fourth day. Also, I believe that Revelation gives us a hermeneutical clue from the broad context of the compendium of divine revelation when it tells us there is no need of the sun for light in the New Jerusalem.
Where does all this leave me? A convinced believer in the fact of supernatural creation itself, and a tentative agnostic with regard to the timing of all the events of creation.
David,
Just curious as to your position on Exodus 20:11, which says that since God created the earth in 6 days and rested on the 7th, therefore the nation of Israel should work 6 days and rest on the Sabbath. Now, if we believe Moses is the author of both Genesis and Exodus, then we have a connundrum if we want to say that Moses has now taken something from Genesis that was figurative (6 day creation) and is now using it as a concrete example. He then reiterates it again in chapter 31.
This seems to me the best evidence of a literal six day creation.
Nate, I think that is a good point and one worthy of consideration. It is points like that that keep me on the line, so to speak, between one position or another in this particular discussion.
That being said, I am not 100% convinced that sound rules of hermeneutics based on an approach that accepts the divine inspiration and inerrancy of Scripture demand your conclusion. It is plausible, from my reading, that Moses in both Genesis and Exodus is either referring to a trope or motif in God’s divine revelation to him, or possibly a literal six days made up of uneven time periods, as we count time, and then applying this figure (following divine guidance and inspiration) to a command for Israel to keep a literal six-day work week and seventh-day Sabbath.
Please understand I am not saying this must be the case, but rather, at my present stage of development in considering this question, is an option I don’t feel I can totally rule out.
I certainly understand what you are saying and that could be that Moses is implying a comparison figuratively. To me however, the probability of that seems highly unlikely given the fact that Genesis and Exodus were written (almost suredly) very closely together as Moses is using Creation here as the template for the work week (and Sabbath) of Israel (and a mechanism for teaching).
I was trying to think of other instances in Scripture where Moses, or others, would have employed a similar comparison. I really couldn’t think of one. Perhaps you know of one? Typically I’ve heard some use Peter’s “a day with the Lord is as a thousand years,” but that example doesn’t draw from anywhere else in Scripture to use a particular event (for the day) to compare it to a thousand years.
Nate,
I’m not sure if this would meet the criteria of what you’re talking about, but something that comes to mind is Psalm 19. The Psalmist says, if we interpret him literally, that the heavens, the firmament, the days, and the nights, speak; and that the sun is set in a tabernacle and rejoices.
Most everyone I know, regardless of how literal their hermeneutic, understands these are figures of speech. Yet the Psalmist uses these to illustrate and provide the backdrop for a more literal point he wants to make in vv. 7-14 about the authority and efficacy of Scripture.
I imagine there are a good many other examples similar to this one, but perhaps not so many (if any) that would exactly meet up to the criteria you are suggesting. I will have to mull over this some more. Or perhaps someone else can think of a better example.
You’re exactly right on Ps 19, it is figurative. I was just trying to find (and really haven’t been able to) an example that would then compare that (the figurative language of Ps 19, or elsewhere) against something that isn’t. This is what Moses is doing, if we say that the days mentioned in Gen 1 are not literal days. I can’t find another example in Scripture, which leads me to further cement myself into a literal 6 day creation and hold that Moses is comparing literal days in Genesis against a literal week in Exodus.
Here is one other option that comes to mind–Jude 1:9: “But even the archangel Michael, when he was disputing with the devil about the body of Moses, did not himself dare to condemn him for slander but said, ‘The Lord rebuke you!'”
Does the inerrancy of Scripture demand that this really happened as Jude describes it here? It is possible that God supernaturally revealed this to him, and he is recording for us the content of this divine revelation. But it seems likely to me that if Jude were the recipient of a special revelation like this, he would have added in a note to inform the readers how he arrived at this information. The more likely explanation, in my mind, is that Jude is relating information from stories known by his readers, reflected in apocryphal and other literature, and using this story as an illustration of the point he is making. He certainly didn’t get this story from the Old Testament.
Thus, if it turns out that the story of Michael and the devil disputing over the body of Moses didn’t literally happen, my trust in the accuracy and authority of the Bible is not undermined, and my hermeneutical grid does not, as a result, come tumbling down. And, for the other part, it may well be that it did happen just like Jude narrates it, and that God miraculously oversaw Jude’s appropriation of religious legend and folklore so that the part he referenced was something that really did happen. I don’t know for sure.
If, for example, I say, “Just as the boy that cried wolf was finally ignored by the townspeople, we too should be careful about fear-mongering and making claims we cannot back up,” I am not lying or deceiving in any way. I am using a commonly known story that is true, but not literally true, to make a point that should be carried out quite literally.
Having said this, I am aware of the dangers of this line of thinking, and by no means am insinuating that the historical portions of Scripture were never meant to be taken as literal history and are just myths and symbols. I do believe, and strongly, in the literal historicity of Scripture. The devil is in the details, sometimes, though.
David Rogers,
You stated:
Isn’t that special pleading? The commonly accepted exegetical practice is to look how the same words are used in other places in the same passage, book, and testament, etc.—and 350 instances that all confirm a normal day would require a heavy burden of proof to overturn. According to the text, the only thing that changed on Day 4 was the number of celestial lights in the sky. NO indication whatsoever that the meaning of day, evening or morning had changed. It is from YOUR reasoning and not from the TEXT that these changes come; therefore, it is on you to establish that such changes are part of the intended meaning. Words convey meaning, and are chosen by God because of the meaning that each one conveys. Both the writer and the readers are as familiar with these words and their meaning as they are familiar with waking up in the morning and going to bed in the evening. The text does indeed “identify for us how we are to understand the ‘mornings’ and ‘evenings’ of the first three days:” by using the words themselves, “evening and morning were the [first, second, etc.] day,” it identifies that we are to understand these as normal, DAILY mornings and evenings—the same kind that stretch into every other day of the Creation Week (and even up to today). IF they were not of the daily kind of mornings and evenings, then language no longer has meaning and anybody can make any text say anything without being held to any proper standard of exegesis.
You said:
I agree that before the sun, God was the light, if that’s what you mean. But compare the first day to the fourth. “4 And God saw the light, that it was good; and God divided the light from the darkness. 5 God called the light Day, and the darkness He called Night. So the evening and the morning were the first day.” God can certainly have provided more light than the sun if He wanted to. As you mentioned in Revelation, He will be on earth in the New Jerusalem, and the light of His glory will serve as the sun, so there will be no night there because He will always be there. But when God in His manifested glory is ON earth, such light does not “divide the light from the darkness” in such a way as to divide day from night—there would be no evenings or mornings there. But imagine, if you will, God in His glory standing in space apart from the earth. Now, the light shines on the earth in such a way that normal evening and morning, night and day, can occur according to the rotation of the earth. In v. 4, by saying that God divided the light from the darkness, and called the light day and the darkness He called night, the text strongly implies that whatever light God had supplied, it was not one on earth, but one of which the earth rotated in the face of its light. And this is further reinforced by the fact that the days, evenings and mornings were marked off one after the other.
Ken,
Special pleading? I don’t think so, and here’s the reason why. You mention common exegetical practice, as if there is some predetermined set of rules that come along with the Bible and is our guide for understanding what it says. While I strongly believe in the value of grammatico-historical hermeneutics as a tool to help us better understand God’s Word to us, I don’t believe the rule list of grammatico-historical hermeneutics (wherever such a definitive list of rules may exist) is inspired in the same way as is Scripture itself. The “rules” of hermeneutics that we have (such as words generally conveying the same meaning, especially if in other places the meaning appears to be the same in the preponderance of the cases) are merely reflections of the logical reasoning of thoughtful people who have taken the time and effort to meditate on and identify them. But the hermeneutical rule per se does not trump the reasoning process that led to the identification of the rule.
In the particular case we are discussing, it seems to me there are factors involved which give good reason for thinking people to hold the rule of “a word generally means what it means in other places” in check. In other words, yes, we are talking about an exceptional use of the term “yom.” But exceptional circumstances sometimes call for exceptional uses. And if there ever were an exceptional circumstance behind the use of a word like “yom,” it would be, according to the reasoning ability that God the Creator pre-wired into my brain, the circumstances of Gen. 1, especially with regard to the “days” before the fourth one.
You say the only thing that changed was the presence of the sun, moon, and stars. But I say that the text itself also states that the manner in which days, seasons, and years were marked (or measured) also changed.
You also posit that the source of light may well have been God Himself. On this point, we are in agreement. But the text does not specifically tell us so, so we must not make too much of this point, or build our case entirely on it.
You also mention that the first three days all consisted of both morning and evening, light and darkness. In other words, the light of God (if that is the source of the light indicated) did not extend into the evening/darkness. That is a good point that I was not really taking into consideration before. Thanks. From now on, I will include that among the list of data that inform my opinion on this discussion.
You also say, though, if I understand you correctly, that this implies the earth was already rotating, and that this is likely the explanation for alternating periods of light and darkness. I say, maybe so, maybe not. The text does not give us this information. In any case, I don’t think we have warrant to build any conclusive argument on this supposition, except to keep it on the table along with other possible explanations of what happened.
To tell you the truth, I don’t really expect to come to any place of relative certainty this side of heaven with regard to my understanding of these things. I tend to think that if God had intended for us to have this degree of certainty about this (not necessarily about other things, which are more foundational to our faith), He would have inspired Scripture in such a way as to remove some of the obstacles to understanding. However, I realize it is always possible some of these obstacles are obstacles I may be placing there myself. So I must humbly admit that the possibility exists that someone may well come along one day that helps me to see these things in a different light.
In the meantime, one of my big concerns in this discussion (and I imagine of many others) is that lines of thinking such as my own not be branded as heretical or demonstrative of a lack of faith in the Word of God and its plenary authority. It is a matter of Christian fellowship and unity. Are OE-Creationists who sincerely accept the authority of the Bible and wrestle with what it really says regarding the age of the earth within the circle of fellowship or not?
Not saying that you are doing that here. I hope and trust not. But others who argue similar points as you do here have indeed done this and continue to do so.
David Rogers,
You stated:
There is a common understanding—among conservative students of Scripture (“Bereans,” if you will) of what accords with proper exegesis and what does not. For example, failing to address the immediate context and asserting the standard lexicon meaning does not accord with it; failing to address the wider context of the paragraph, and of the book, and of the other books by the same author, and of the whole testament and whole of Scripture, does not accord with it; and failing to give due weight to how a word or phrase in question is used elsewhere in these same contexts does not accord with it. For another example, see Rev. 13:8, “All who dwell on the earth will worship him, whose names have not been written in the Book of Life of the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world.” Do you know how many times I have been told that the cross satisfied justice “outside of time” because Christ was the “Lamb slain from the foundation of the world?” It is an idea cherished by many. But it exegetically substandard. If regard is given to the wider context, we find this in 17:8, “…And those who dwell on the earth will marvel, whose names are not written in the Book of Life from the foundation of the world, when they see the beast that was, and is not, and yet is.” In the former, it could go either way with equal validity—except that the latter confirms which way it should go.
Like everything else, how to understand Scripture is hotly debated. But if we start from agreement on inerrancy, and a respect for the fact that truth must come from Scripture and not be applied to it, then we will also agree that there is not equal validity among all exegesis. Exegesis is not a mere matter of opinion, and all men are entitled to their own without being held to any standard. If a man claims that Jesus was not co-equal with God, but the first created being, and he supplies various texts to support that idea, we would not tell him, “Well, that’s one way to look at it; but I have a different way of looking at it.” Instead, we would tell him, “You are wrong. And here’s why:…” And we would proceed to explain how his exegesis fails to meet the standard, how he has read his assumptions into the text, how he has failed to consider the immediate context, as well as the greater context, of the texts he cites; and how he has failed to adequately consider the whole of Scripture.
Now, if this man had adopted a meaning of an important word that contradicted every other usage of that word (say, 350 or so total times it was used), which you pointed out to him, would you be satisfied if he claimed a special exception but failed to offer a very good argument to establish that such an exception was warranted?
I don’t remember saying, “a word generally means what it means in other places.” However, if the word, day, when combined with an ordinal number (“first,” “second,” etc.) is found over 350 times outside of the first chapter of Genesis, and in each and every instance it means a normal day, then how could we responsibly ignore that? Such a preponderance of textual evidence would require at least an equally weighty argument for any supposed exception. You have not met your burden of proof in the matter. You assert an exception as if it were common sense, but you beg the question. Exceptional circumstances must be established by argument and not merely claimed. Otherwise, it is special pleading.
You’re reading your assumptions into the text. The manner by which the days were marked was not said to have changed, but only the thing that was doing the marking changed. After the sun was created, it was the sun that marked the day. Prior to that, it was God who marked the day. Let’s look at Day 4:
Remember from v. 5, “God called the light Day, and the darkness He called Night,” so the idea of dividing the light from the darkness is the same as “to divide the day from the night.” The sun was created to shine on the rotating earth, dividing the light [on the lighted side] from the dark [on the dark side], and thus dividing day from night—marking the days. Now that the sun was in the sky, it was the sun (with its reflected light from the moon at night) that divided the light from the darkness. But what divided the light from the darkness prior to the sun?
Where is the change in “manner” of marking the days mentioned?
What is curious for me is that God says evening and morning were the first day. But when I think of a day, I think of it as from morning to evening… as in… if saying something to my daughter…
From morning to evening, all day long, i have been waiting for you to call me young lady…
The Jewish day was from what sunrise to sunrise?
Or was it sunrise to sunset?
This is the knife’s edge that will cut through the confusion: a supernatural, miraculous, divine act leaves no evidence; therefore, to give weight to evidence is to close one’s eyes to the possibility of the miraculous event, while to believe the miracle is to close one’s eyes to the evidence—two mutually exclusive presuppositions built on faith (one one faith in the evidence, and the other on faith in the revelation).
Isn’t “accepting all the scientific claims at face value, and still insisting on a recent supernatural creation out of nothing” just a new wrinkle on the old argument that God put dinosaur fossils in rocks just to fool the gullible?
Why not instead concede that both “sides” have certain presuppositions, not necessarily “black letter”
from the Bible, and that however we-and-everything-else got here is how God intended it for us to get here?
John
No, John, it’s more than that. The question that got me thinking along these lines was this: “If evolution were eventually proven beyond all doubt to be true, how would it affect your faith as a Young-Earth Creationist.” This is a serious matter, as there have been some children raised in a good YEC-teaching church, who have gone off to secular college, only to be so overwhelmed by the evolutionary evidence that they supposedly have “left the faith.” There are Old-Earthers like BioLogos who blame this on the refusal of the Church to embrace science and incorporate it into their faith. But as I’ve set out in the article above, even if evolution were proven true, it would be no threat to a Biblical view of a recent creation by divine fiat. There’s no direct deception involved, but only the indirect deception that is unavoidable whenever God acts in ways that are above natural laws. Those who would never consider natural laws being suspended would naturally come to the wrong conclusion about what happened.
I appreciate your response. However I still do not see much difference–in details perhaps and sophistication of wording, but it seems to me to amount to the much the same thing. The universe is not old, it just appears to be. And it if only appears to be, and/or if it were created “old,” then there must be some degree of deception involved. Kids leaving the faith because secondary issues (as I see them) have been elevated to keystones of trust in Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior are precisely my concern. On the other hand, to say, “however we got here and however long it took is how God intended us to get here,” avoids that problem altogether. Christians can still have honest differences of opinion (and debates) as the to “how” and “how long,” but it ceases to be a watershed between faith and its loss.
John
I like William Thornton am underwhelmed. I determined this article would be problematic when I read: “I propose that—for the sake of argument-–we eliminate the evidence question all together.” Finally, I concluded it was so when I read the last statement: “The real question is whether you are willing to accept revealed truth in spite of the evidence or prefer to reinterpret revelation to make it accord with the evidence.”
Scripture does not demand that we accept revealed truth “in spite of the evidence.” We hold that all truth is God’s truth, therefore the evidence is also God’s truth. The problem with Ken’s argument in this article is that he totally disassociates the miraculous from the observable striving to break faith away from science. In fact the miraculous is very observable. People believed in Christ because they saw him give sight to the blind. The evidence showed that a person was blind previously and now has sight. They saw him feed five thousand with five loaves and two fish, the scientific evidence shows that we could count the bread and fish beforehand, observe that 5000 people had been filled, and then count 12 baskets full afterwards. The scientific evidence shows that Lazarus was dead, in fact “he stinketh” and yet now he is alive.
A miracle is miracle not because there is no evidence of its occurrence, but because there is no natural explanation for its occurrence. Scripture seems to indicate opposite of Ken’s premise, that we are to note the evidence and observe that “this could be none other than the hand of God.” The same is true for creation. Whether OEC or YEC Genesis 1-2 would have us observe the world we live in and determine that none other than God could have done such.
So you can produce scientific evidence that Lazarus was raised from the dead? Or that Jesus fed 5000 with a little for?
Thus when evaluating claims of truth from history, as we do when deciding that Jesus indeed raised Lazarus and fed those many with the little or created the earth in 6 days, we do not have scientific evidence to prove the witness we have in the Word of God.
In some ‘Christian’ services people get cured of incurable diseases, and we hear the testimony of that occurrence. Do you believe very such claim?
In John 9, the man born blind was given sight by Jesus, but did all believe? Faith does not come simply by miracles. Faith in God, the faith that saves, comes by the power of the Holy Spirit through the Word [the Gospel].
So in either case, just hearing the testimony doesn’t necessary validate it as truth. Such testimonies only validate that someone else believes it as true. For some, that is good enough. For others it is not. But either way, such testimony is not really considered scientific evidence.
1) “So you can produce scientific evidence that Lazarus was raised from the dead? Or that Jesus fed 5000 with a little for?”
Yes, I have the eyewitness testimony as recorded in the Gospel of John and in all four Gospels. I still have to evaluate the credibility of that evidence, just any scientist has to evaluate the credibility of their evidence. But the fact remains that these events left evidence of their occurrence. I have the same evidence they occurred as I do that Julius Caesar ruled over Rome, the testimony of witnesses. In both cases I have to evaluate the credibility, but the evidence is still there.
2) “Faith does not come simply by miracles. Faith in God, the faith that saves, comes by the power of the Holy Spirit through the Word [the Gospel].”
No one in this forum has made such a claim. Instead, I am denying Ken’s claim “The real question is whether you are willing to accept revealed truth in spite of the evidence or prefer to reinterpret revelation to make it accord with the evidence.” and his proposition “I propose that—for the sake of argument-–we eliminate the evidence question all together.” Many will see and not believe. Just like many do not believe man ever visited the moon (in spite of the evidence to the contrary). Many saw the risen Christ and some still did doubted (Matt. 28:17). The Holy Spirit still must convict us of the truth concerning God, but that does not mean that there is no evidence of Him or His work in the world including the miraculous.
Ken,
Thanks for writing this. Your argument is well-written and thought-provoking. I take the creation account in Genesis literally, and as such it does indicate that God created Adam and Eve as fully developed adults surrounded by mature trees, etc. (bearing appearance of age).
It makes me wonder a few things, though (just thinking as I go along). It seems to me that your argument cannot be proven or disproven. If any material evidence apparently contrary to Scripture can be attributed to God’s having supernaturally caused it to appear that way, there could never be any evidentiary argument against God’s existence. Then again, there could never by any evidentiary argument FOR God’s existence either, because God could have supernaturally manufactured that evidence as well. I take it that’s at least part of your point, that God created things so we would have to accept him on faith. But without any material evidence that is reliable, what reason is there to ground our faith on the Bible’s creation account rather than any number of hypotheticals?
For example, how do we know God didn’t create us mere seconds ago, giving us false memories that make us think we’ve been living here for decades? I think Bertrand Russell proposed this kind of question. Could anyone prove God didn’t do that? There’s no empirical reason to think that he did, but if all empirical evidence has been improvised at God’s whim we can’t rely on empirical science anyway. I just wonder where we draw the line.
Jeff,
The Christian draws the line at the witness of the Holy Spirit that testifies of the existence of God, the reality of Christ’s resurrection and the truthfulness of Scripture. God’s revelation through the Holy Spirit and the Bible is self-verifying—the certainty is communicated with the knowledge.
As for empirical proof, that will be provided on Judgment Day. There will be no skeptics there, as all will know the truth.
A problem with your argument is that it rejects premises that the Bible itself relies on. The Bible clearly points to physical evidence of God’s activity in the world as a basis for faith. For example, Jesus himself implored people to believe on the basis of evidence provided by his miracles.
Jeff,
But instead of believing, they crucified Him.
Based on this testimony:
~~That Jesus implored them to believe because of His works and they subsequently crucified Him~~
Is not their testimony that His miracles did point to Jesus being of God?
Based on just that observation, we might conclude that they did not accept His miracle workings as a testimony of His divinity.
And if they did not, why should my unsaved neighbor, so far removed from the wonderful occurrences of that time, why should he believe that God, if there is one, can do miraculous things?
Especially when the science of his day tells him that God did not make or create man but that man evolved from monkeys who evolved from a primordial goo?
Ken – I believe you are correct in this sense – the very most, very most that scientific study can produce, is how old the earth “appears”, not necessarily how old it is.
http://changeworthmaking.wordpress.com/2012/12/11/young-earth-and-the-unnecessary-debate/#comments
sorry, – meant to post this link instead of comments link
http://changeworthmaking.wordpress.com/2012/12/11/young-earth-and-the-unnecessary-debate/
Jeff,
Excellent article—thanks for posting the link! It sounds very familiar 🙂
Ken, it was an interesting read. I’m not much fun when these discussions break out, at least among believers, as I take probably the most simplistic approach there is. The bible doesn’t say exactly when God created or give an age of the earth. I simply do not know, I just believe by faith He did as He said. The bible says “without faith it is impossible to please God,” and creation to me is one of those things that must be accepted by faith. God doesn’t give us the recipes for creation, thank goodness. He doesn’t say take 2 parts this and 3 parts that when making man, if He did we’d be making them today. Creation is of the mind of God. Sometimes, we must admit as He often tells us, we don’t know the mind of God. Our thoughts are not His thoughts(Is 55:8-9) and He still does have secret things only He knows(Deut 29:29). I always remember God’s words to Job; “were you there?” No, I was not, and it’s not my responsibility to prove God or creation. It’s always interesting to read of such things though so I thank you for the article.
Not mentioned here is a factor that I think all too often remains unmentioned in these discussions: Aesthetics.
Perhaps God created a world with a Grand Canyon and a Milky Way not to obfuscate the age of the Earth or to mislead scientific investigators but because He thinks they’re beautiful. Would God be prevented from, in addition to doing a bazillion things to indulge scientists among His creatures, doing a few things to inspire His artists?
I do not dispute that the stars mark the days and seasons, but one must admit that God makes astoundingly beautiful clocks!
Bart:
Several months ago, you posted a similar comment on this same topic that I really enjoyed—enjoyed so much so that I later quoted you in a discussion on this issue, so I just happened to have the quote handy in my notes:
“Sometimes scientists and engineers miss God’s hand in things because, I think, they presume that God must be a scientist or an engineer: Why on earth would it be functional or efficient for God to have created an already eroded somewhat, already tectonically shifted somewhat, already having the light of stars from trillions of miles away kind of universe.
It makes more sense if you conceive of God as not only scientist and engineer but also as poet and artist. A “new” earth would be ugly. A nighttime sky showing only the light from a few of the closest stars would be ugly. What we have is beautiful and grand (as well as amazingly functional and efficient).”
Your memory is better than mine, Zack. I had forgotten about the earlier comment!
Amen, Brother Bart! God didn’t have to make everything so beautiful—did He? He could have made all the fall leaves gray—and everything else for that matter. There need be no variety of species, no flowers, and he could have made it all ugly.
Indeed!
And making it beautiful required the appearance of age.
Ken:
I think you are conflating the idea of an “old earth” with the idea of an “old universe”.
Lets say you hold that “yom” could be a “period of time” not necessarily what today we would call a “24 hour day”. In that case, the universe could have been created — de novo — by God at some time past, say 13 billion years ago. The earth could have emerged — under God’s explicit direction, some time later. Everything was “without form and void” initially but God’s creative acts were not done all at one time. They took a number of “days”.
As a working hypothesis what about the idea that the Geologic column points to stuff, like the Grand Canyon, being only thousands or tens of thousands of years old, while the Genesis 1:1 creation event happened say 13 billion years ago during what scientists call the “big bang”.
There is nothing in the Bible that contradicts this particular interpretation.
However, there are of course a number of other “acceptable interpretations”. One of the other “acceptable interpretations” is the idea of God creating things with the appearance of age. I guess that interpretation is OK, but I personally don’t adhere to it because it is a contrived concept which has no warrant either Biblically or scientifically.
Holding that “yom” means a 24 hour day involves circular reasoning. A 24 day supposes that the earth is a solid body and that the sun exists. According to the Genesis account the earth AND sun — both of which must exist for our common concept of “day” to have any meaning — didn’t show up until “day” four.
So if we break the link between a “24 hour” day and some other reading of the Hebrew term “yom” then there is no dissonance between the old earth view and the Biblical view. There is no reason to come up with contrived stuff like the speed of light not being constant over time etc.
I say when various theories are on the table then choose the one that is simplest and most elegant: namely God’s creative acts extended over some period of time.
He started out with nothing and incrementally used a building block approach. For example, he made the first man out of dirt.
Roger Simpson Oklahoma City
Thanks, Roger. You say here with a lot more scientific precision what I was trying to say in my last comment.
In my previous note I should have said, “. . . there is no dissonance between an OLD UNIVERSE view and the Biblical view. . . “. I fell into my own trap of equating an “old universe” view with an “old earth” view.
That’s what I get for poor proofreading.
Also change “. . . a 24 day supposes . . ” with a “. . . a 24 HOUR day supposes. . . ”
Roger
Just wondering if you’ve given consideration to John Walton’s approach. His scholarly work is “Genesis as Ancient Cosmology” and the popular version is “The Lost World of Genesis One.”
The (NAS) means (Not Adrian’s Son) to distinguish me from the better known and more prolific David Rogers who has commented above.
I haven’t, and am not familiar with him.
Ken,
I think I see what you are proposing for our discussion. Based on the Scripture alone, why should one believe the historical accuracy of the Resurrection and disbelieve in the six day creation account?
Good luck trying to keep the discussion on that track, brother!
Regarding “evidence” in the scientific sense, I think you are saying that all we have is the “testimony” of those who saw the “evidence” of the miracles. We were not the actual witnesses of the miracles we believe. Therefore the “evidence” of the Biblical miracles is not “evidence” to us because we did not “witness” the miracles and the “evidence” the miracles left behind.
If this is accurate, according to you puzzle, then there is no good reason to believe the “testimony” of the “miracles” about the resurrection and to disbelieve the “testimony” about the “miracles” of creation.
Am I on track with the purpose of your post, Ken?
Yes, Jerry. On track! And thanks for your input.
Ken, I’ve made a similar argument in the past and I appreciate your take. Either God created everything or he didn’t. If he created everything, then it would necessarily be a supernatural creation which would defy naturalistic presuppositions in testing. Put another way, it’s like testing the wine Jesus turned from water to see how long it had been fermenting. You can’t determine the age that way because it wasn’t fermented over time: it was made already fermented.
Thank you, Jim. Now if we could just get some of the OEC’s to apprehend that.
Ken, I always love reading through your posts. I too, like some have already stated, am not sure this is different from previous appearance based models, but the twist is kind of interesting. If we are to believe the scriptures as divine, then the conclusions given to us in Genesis about creation are consistent with those in Revelation. If we are to believe that Jesus had John witness the New Heavens and New Earth as an event coming down from God, then there seems to be little left to imagine with respect to understanding the real action of the Creator to make things not just appear, but are mature in Genesis. It appears that since one event has a time continuum, obviously an increased focus in our contemporary culture, Genesis; the New Heavens and New Earth appear to have no need of such explanation. I’ve observed as well, during the last 30 years, that scientist are no closer to recognizing the age of the earth or universe than they ever have been. In fact, scientists at the University of Arizona published that the accuracy was off by trillions of years…and they are still groping for a real number. Math tends to be more of language than a science really, conveniently calculated as spear against the supernatural.
Maybe that is what your aiming at here?
I guess the bottom line for me at this point on the OE vs. YE theorizing… is that it becomes a mute point when the aim of the evangelist is to define the Gospel that is on display at creation. When I teach, I’ve had no problem with a literal, mature, creation story; which is consistent with what Jesus revealed to John in the Revelation.
Chris,
You said:
I don’t think it’s a moot point, Chris. Evangelism becomes more and more difficult as the world’s scorn for the Church increases, justified by a Bible that is no longer seen as plausibly or possibly inspired, true and reliable. The ideas of God and creation become more anachronistic as secular scientists become more bold in their rejection of the “fairy tales” that religious people believe in.
Ken,…yes, moot is probably the wrong word to use. My point is that the tension of science and truth has its cycles. And I agree that we are living in an exciting time, where scientist are really excited about their math, and the ability of machines to see deeper into time and space. Yet, it appears to only bring more questions and not many solutions. The reliability of the copies that support the scriptures seem to be more intact than ever before. But, I do agree that there is a concerted effort in our culture, colleges and universities, to make the historical value of the bible appear as fiction.
I personally don’t have a problem with an old earth view, I think that it does fall into orthodoxy. Many great men of God held an old earth/universe view including J. Vernon McGee and W.A. Criswell.
John,
As a full blown YEC person I accept you as a Bible-believing, Gospel-loving, Spirit-filled, Washed-in-the-blood brother in Christ.
And those things are all more important to us as the Body of the Lord than our differing perspectives on creation.
Let us not divide over this less-than-primary point of doctrine.
peace.
Amen Mike
Ken,
I used to think the Earth was 6,000 years old, but after looking into the scriptures and science a little deeper, I discovered God cannot be wrong, and science is not wrong all the time. So, what do I do with the dilemma I found myself in? I discovered “The Gap” is not a theory. In fact, The Gap and science works quite well together for me. This explains why the Universe and the Earth can be trillions upon trillions years old. I do believe there is a difference between create and make or made. Since I’m talking to mostly preachers, I will use a sentence that appeals to you. Mary made a cake out of that which was created. I don’t expect a response because most of you just ran to the kitchen to get cake. Evolution doesn’t cut it for me.
Jess,
“Evolution doesn’t cut it for me.” Perhaps the first comment that I can even remotely agree with that you have made ever.
John Wylie,
That proves even a blind squirrel finds a nut every now and again. 🙂
Jess,
As I explained in the article above, there is no real dilemma. So there is no real need to resort to such fixes as the Gap Theory (especially since there is no textual evidence for any gap—it is shoehorned into the text only because some folks think it ought to be there).
In the context of Ken’s “for the sake of argument” I want to ask a couple of questions.
Without the evidence-based evolutionary theory, where in the Bible does anyone get a possibility of millions or billions of years?
If we are theoretically negating the physical evidence, is there cause to ever conclude such vast ages?
Good question… Its, the millions+, are not there anyway. Inference is the best case for those concerned with evolutionary theory.
Jerry, I am going to talk off the top of my head which does not house as many brain cells as it once did.
Some have mistaken the idea for a relatively “new” theory of cosmology–from perhaps a little less than a century before Darwin and hitting it’s stride with Darwin.
Evolution and an ancient age of the earth is predates Darwinian ideas by millennia. The Gilgamesh Epic or Enuma Elish (can’t remember which without my Googles) and other ancient cosmologies implied or necessitated an ancient earth. Creation often began from some “sea creature” or sea story of some kind.
The idea of an “eternal earth” (or eternal “stuff”) began to be articulated more specifically, apart from mythological cosmology, as early as Thales (6th B.C.). From there the quest for the “arche” or basic stuff of life began in earnest.
So, my point is: the idea of an ancient earth seems to be ingrained in the fallen nature of man. So, it would feel very comfortable to propose such whether the evidence was there or not.
Now, this impacts upon this post by suggesting that the issue is NOT how old is the earth, but whether it came about by Divine Fiat or some acausal substance (in which water, fire, earth, air, spermata, and atoms were early contenders). This issue of cosmology is a theological one much more so than a scientific or evidentiary one, though science would like to have us believe otherwise.
Jack,
I agree with you completely!
And I think that what Ken is trying to do is to get us to look at the Scripture alone, not science, not mythology, not archaeology, not the B.C. Comic strip, no evidence at all. Then, from the Scripture alone, can we decide how old Creation is?
Jerry,
You have it right, evolution is only a theory. Billions perhaps Trillions of years could have elapsed in the Gap between the first two verses in Genesis Chapter one. Someone said earlier that God created man, I have to disagree, God made man.
Hi Jess,
I used to believe in the Gap Theory. I dropped it for Scriptural and scientific reasons. Would be willing to talk about it some time, but really don’t want to send Ken’s comment stream off on a tangent.
Currently, the evolutionary establishment is pretty settled in on 14.5 billion years for the universe and 4.5 billion years for the earth. Yet there are some rumblings from the cutting edge evolutionary astronomers that a trillion years might be needed to accomplish their time and chance model. So, Jess, are you reading this recent stuff or are you a lucky guesser?
Jerry,
My friend, I haven’t read anything recent. To me the Gap is no theory, it answers all my questions, and uses the scripture to explain scripture.
Jess,
I used to think the gap theory did not violate the Scriptures until I read this from Exodus 20:
8 “Remember the sabbath day, to keep it holy. 9 Six days you shall labor and do all your work, 10 but the seventh day is a sabbath of the Lord your God; in it you shall not do any work, you or your son or your daughter, your male or your female servant or your cattle or your sojourner who stays with you. 11 For in six days the Lord made the heavens and the earth, the sea and all that is in them, and rested on the seventh day; therefore the Lord blessed the sabbath day and made it holy.
This passage is in the middle of giving the Ten Commandments. Verse 11:
” For in six days the Lord made the heavens and the earth, the sea and all that is in them, and rested on the seventh day; therefore the Lord blessed the sabbath day and made it holy.”
To me, I see no room for the gap theory.
Verse 1 says this:
“Then God spoke all these words, saying,”
The word “day” here must seem to be a consistent time period, understood by man as such, so that they might grasp what God is telling them about the 7th day.
Thus the word “day” here represents an idea of time, a consistent idea of time.
Thus this seems to rule out two things:
One: that the first days could be longer then 24 hours.
and
Two: That God created outside these six days [the gap theory] since the heavens AND all that was in them as created in this six day time span.
To add to what I said above…
Some take genesis to be a synopsis of a man trying to explain God creating the world from his limited understanding.
But Exodus 20 has Moses telling us straight out that God said He created the heavens and all that is within them in 6 days.
When we add this testimony, the case for the 6 day creation idea seems worth understanding as the truth of God’s Word.
That what Ken is doing is seeking to explain the glaring discrepancy between the physical evidence science seems to have and the sure words of Jehovah we take by faith.
“Does it answer all the questions?” is not the test of a proper understanding of a passage of Scripture, but, “Does it come from the text or is it read into it?”
You know, I’ve read the first two verses of Genesis more times than I can count. But I just can’t seem to find any “gap” whatsoever. The whole thing flows smoothly, contiguously and uniformly, from beginning to the end of the week.
I still don’t get it. Old earthers believe the scientific evidence for an old earth, and don’t think it conflicts with scripture, only that it conflicts with a particular interpretation of scripture that we see no compelling reason to hold anyway. We seem to be being told that if we simply ignore the scientific evidence, then we can adopt the YEC interpretation of scripture. Well sure, but why would we want to? Old-earthers aren’t looking for reasons to become young earthers.
I still can’t quite get my head around the idea that God created a world that shows evidence of millions of years of death, but that there wasn’t really any death until 6000 years ago, but somehow that isn’t a deception.
Bill,
In reply to you, I would say that science is still short on the facts.
One is that they discount the flood which by its great water pressure could produce results that look like answers that time could only give.
And another thing is that most scientists [at least the ones speaking out] go beyond science and delve into the meta-physical, answering questions that their science has not given them answers to, but instead projecting their anti-god beliefs into their thinking and speaking.
When discovering something ‘new’ there can be various paths to follow down to seek the origins and causes. If some paths are ignored because, well, it just can’t be that, then the evidence is skewered and the conclusions reached falsely.
If in a murder investigation, certain clues are ignored because they seemingly have no bearing on the case, the detectives will not be using those clues to come to a decision in who the killer is.
Scientists, their objections notwithstanding, are under pressure from both their own beliefs and from the scientific community, to ignore possible clues that might sabotage the ‘message’ of evolution and of a godless creation.
Mike, you bring up some great points! Allow me to add to them.
I majored in physics at UNCC and also studied Christian philosophy at CIU. Most scientists don’t understand the philosophical moorings of the scientific method; nor do they often understand the ideological presuppositions that guide the formation of their hypotheses.
Logically speaking, scientific proof is never absolute. Never. An example that we know about is the formulations of general relativity. Before Einstein, we were locked into Newtonian physics. Newton’s methods were a foregone conclusion. But there was a problem. Engineers started delving into projects involving particles approaching the speed of light and the formulae weren’t working. Special relativity solved the problem by adjusting the clocks and distances for things travelling very fast. This opened the door for all kinds of new applications, like the conversion of matter to energy. Reality in temporal quanta is in extreme flux. What we experience is the apparently stable homogenization of countless different temporal relationships. In other words, scientists really have no idea how long everything took because it all happened at different rates. Calculating the Big Bang, for example, requires assuming a single temporal frame of reference. There’s no way to calculate multiple frames of a rapidly expanding universe. That’s why they can only speculate how matter became chunky enough to form different bodies of matter. They don’t have a clue and have no way of knowing for sure.
So how did they come up with the age of the universe? It’s an obvious question to ask, but they can’t know some things so they have to assume those things. One thing is that they speculate that time passes relatively evenly after a certain point. They don’t know that it does. They can observe that it seems that way. But they can’t test to know for sure. But without making that assumption, they can’t come up with an age at all. There are many, many more assumptions just like that one that they make. All those assumptions have to be true or the conclusion is wrong. So in order to do the kind of science that allows them to keep doing science, they have to publish their conclusions as though the assumptions are all reasonable, and it helps if the conclusion fits the metanarrative of materialistic presuppositions.
The problem is that we aren’t materialists. It behooves us to ask what the evidence shows if something other than materialism is true, but materialism is the only philosophy allowed in the scientific academy and there is no scientific way to prove that it’s true. This is why I maintain that science has epistemological problems.
I love this comment…Thanks Jim!
Jim, nice post. I particularly like your conclusion: “””The problem is that we aren’t materialists. It behooves us to ask what the evidence shows if something other than materialism is true, but materialism is the only philosophy allowed in the scientific academy and there is no scientific way to prove that it’s true.”””
This is precisely what I set out to demonstrate in my Master’s Thesis: “God As The T.O.E–The Existence of God in Light of New Developments in Quantum Physics.”
Assumptions are everything.
Thanks, Jack. I hope your thesis was well-accepted. It’s an important consideration and much could be said about it.
Jim,
I really appreciate your contributions to this discussion!
You seem to assume that evidence for an old age is settled simply because the prevailing theory states such.
You also assume that there is no scientific evidence for a young earth.
These are big assumptions. Scientific methods cannot examine the origin of the cosmos. It can only examine the results.
I reject the idea that scientific evidence necessitates the dogma of an old earth.
Mike,
We can debate the age of the universe, but my last comment is really about this post. While I find the post quite imaginative and interesting, it seems to suppose that old-earthers really just want to be young-earthers and this theory gives us a chance to jump back in to the fold. I understand I can’t really speak for all old earthers, but my point is that we don’t want to jump back into the fold. We’re quite happy where we are. We aren’t looking for a reason to become YECers, in fact I dare say many of us, if not most, have spent some time in that camp already and have rejected it.
Yes, we understand that scientists are fallible. Yes, we understand that sometimes they have ulterior motives. But so are theologians fallible and so do theologians sometimes have ulterior motives. We’ve looked at the evidence for an old earth, and find it credible. We know the arguments of AIG and their adherents and don’t find them credible. So here we are.
AIG tries to argue for a young earth and they do so from the evidence. I find that to be short-sighted at times, although I’m a fan of Ken Ham and AIG. Anyway, your rejection of their arguments does not answer my arguments.
You said you find the Old-Earth evidences “credible.” But what you ought to realize is that you ruled out a recent creation as soon as you decided that weighing the evidence was a credible thing to do. God is capable of recently creating an old earth, with all those evidences already intact.
This kind of statement is a little frightening. So even considering the evidence for an old-earth immediately destroys the arguments for a young earth? So are you saying that once you’ve decided on an interpretation, we should not ever consider the arguments of an alternative interpretation?
I don’t think I’ve ever heard an old earther claim that God could not have created a young earth, or a young earth that looks old. We just don’t think He did.
Not exactly, Bill. Old-Earthers make a strong case (I think) for an old earth from the physical evidence. But no matter how strong the house one builds, if it sits on sand instead of a solid foundation, it’s strength above the sand line will not be enough. One needs a solid foundation first, and then one can build the strong house.
What I’m getting at is that before the evidence is weighed, one must first determine whether or not an evidence-based argument is suited to answer the question at hand. I contend (for reasons set out in the article above) that the question of origins cannot be answered by any evidence-based argument. If the world was created billions of years ago, then the prospect of a recent creation cannot be disproven by physical evidence—since a recent creation could very well result in all the evidence that could be presented. And if the world was recently created, then the prospect of a very old creation cannot be disproven by the physical evidence either, since there are no “miracle particles” to prove the miraculous recent creation happened. Therefore, the question is not one to which evidence applies. So then, it does not matter one iota how strong the support for OEC is in the evidence.
I find most Old-Earthers on this to be somewhat circular when I point out that the evidence does not answer the real question. It’s as if they demand that it does apply merely because of the strength of the evidence. But this misses the point entirely: If God could create an earth that, by all scientific measurements, predated its own supernatural creation by billions of years, then what good is your evidence for determining how long ago the earth was created?
That is why I say that as soon as you decided that weighing the evidence was the credible thing to do in deciding the origins question, you had already ruled out a recent, miraculous creation. If you still believed in the possibility of a recent creation by fiat, then you would not be looking for evidence to tell you what it cannot tell you.
AIG does deal in evidence, but ultimately they are presuppositionalists. Especially the John Frame variety of presuppositionalism recognizes the value of different approaches. I’m in the middle of his book, Apologetics to the Glory of God. Bahnsen’s Always Ready is a good apologetic for presuppositionalism, but Frame’s work is a good start on how to make it practical. That seems to be the direction AIG goes with it.
You can find an article I wrote in defense of presuppositional apologetics applied to creation here: http://sbcopenforum.com/2013/10/10/young-earth-creationism-and-presuppositionalism-a-response-to-j-w-wartick/
Bill,
I do not wish to offend.
Maybe if you could lay out for me the tenets of the Old Age theory as you understand them, I might grasp your position better, brother.
thanks
Mike,
No offense taken. I’m not sure what you are asking for, so this is all I will say: The overwhelming scientific consensus is that the earth is really old. I see no reason to disbelieve it. I believe scientists are as fallible as anyone, including theologians, but I don’t think that the vast majority of geologists, paleontologists, astronomers and astrophysicists are wrong, or that they are colluding to deceive us. I just don’t. I believe God supernaturally created the universe, I just don’t think he did it 6000 years ago.
Bill,
Thanks for the reply.
Science has told us a lot based on theories with evidence interpretted.
Some of the things science is telling us is that the earth is millions of years old, that life all came from a primordial goo, and that man evolved from apes.
Of course they tell us other things as well, al based on their understanding of the evidence.
Do you believe all of what science tells us?
If you do not, on what basis do you pick and choose what to believe and what not to believe?
I think one way we can approach the op that Ken has written, is to use the idea in it to rethink how we view the evidence that science relies upon for their conclusions.
So IF and to empathize IF God created the world in a mature state, and thus making science found ‘facts’ unreliable for age guessing, what would be your basis for believing in an old earth creation?
I gather from your answer that your OEC position is not biblically based.
Here is what I see: the scientific community has evolved from one that assumed the world could be figured out because it was made by an intelligent and orderly God to one which, for the most part, has not only rejected the idea of a God-based creation, but also is seeking to promote a godless world view of science and all of life.
Thus on two fronts I see the OEC theorists being challenged. The science they depend upon, which forms the basis for their theory, will continue to interpret the evidence they find in an anti-god manner so as to seek to discredit the Genesis account as well as any supernatural event [miracles and the resurrection of the Lord] as bogus. And the second front will be those who do hold to 6 day creation event, reacting to the opposition from the scientific community, and thus making creation theory a line in the sand.
And as this conflict grows, your basis of support, the scientific communities ‘facts’, will be in direct confrontation with your understanding of the veracity of the Word of God, which is a goal they seek to achieve.
What I would urge you to do, a well as all OEC people, is to highly reconsider your position based on the ideas that Ken has brought up. He can be overbearing at times due to his zeal, but that does not negate the POSSIBILITIES [not established truth] that he wants us all to consider.
peace
Mike,
I don’t deny that what Ken has posited is possible. I just don’t think it’s compelling.
Some science is too compelling to ignore: The world is spherical, the earth revolves around the sun not vice versa, hail is produced by natural means, not kept in a storehouse, etc.
Just because someone explains a possible scenario by which YEC can be true, doesn’t mean it is true (the same for OEC). That’s my objection to the article. We won’t resolve the age debate, but we can discuss the merits of the article, which I appreciate.
I’m not the only one to notice this, or mention it. Most YECers are too polite to suggest that OEs are outside of orthodoxy, but it’s more of a wink-wink type of situation, as if YECers are the keepers of orthodoxy.
In the past it would not have surprised me to see a movement to make YEC and Premil Dispensationalism as official doctrines of the SBC, codified in the BFM. I now think people are wiser than that, but I’ll bet people would if they could.
Bill Mac,
Sir, I agree 100%. There was an old earth billions possible trillions of years before scientist came along. An awful lot of science supports the OEC. To me the OEC doesn’t intentionally support science.
Bill,
You said:
Well, I did give you the benefit of the doubt and assume that Old-Earthers (at least the ones who frequent SBC Voices) held firmly to the inerrancy and authority of Scripture, and based on that, also agreed with the importance of maintaining proper practices and standards of exegesis (not affirming every man’s right to read what he wants into any text and teach it that way). Stepping off from this point, I assumed that you guys understood the importance of reading every passage of Scripture according to the plain, straight-forward, common-sense understanding unless there is a justifiable reason to look for an alternative understanding. In case you missed it, everywhere support for a recent creation is found in Scripture, it is by the plain, straightforward, most readily and easily understood meaning. Therefore, to opt for any other understanding requires a reason weighty enough to warrant dispensing with the plain sense of the passage. It’s a fact, Bill, that the weight by which the Old-Earth understanding is warranted comes mainly from the weight of the physical evidence. And since that evidence, for the sake of argument, has effectively been dismissed, it is now weightless and has no bearing whatsoever on the possibility that those creation passages ought to be taken in their plain, straightforward meaning. THAT, sir, is why I expect the Old-Earthers to “jump back in”—because the ground under their feet has caved in.
Ken: Sorry, but no it hasn’t. That’s my point. The ground hasn’t caved in, and we’re not going to jump. I appreciate the effort, that’s what these kinds of discussions are for, but you can’t claim victory quite yet.
Mike,
The verses in Exodus you referred to are so true, they support the Gap. God made, actually rearranged the Earth and all that is in it in six days and rested the seventh. Exodus doesn’t say he created the Earth and all that in it in six days, the scriptures say he made the Earth and all that is in it in six days. There is a difference between the words create and make. Remember I said Mary made a cake out of that which was created.
Jess,
Mary made a cake and all that was in it?
She made the flour? The eggs? The sugar?
So Mary is not a good example for you.
But your point is that the words create and make mean different things. So as you said earlier, God did not create man, He made him.
Now Jess, I do not know who you are or what kind of training you received in the Bible. But I am just a good reader with a few tools to help me like Strong’s. So maybe, you can explain why I am wrong when I look at the Scriptures and see your position as invalid.
First what I think you are basing your conclusion on.
~In the beginning God created [H1254 bara’] the heaven and the earth.~ [Gen. 1:1]
Bara’ means to create
~And God made [H6213 ‘asah] the firmament, and divided the waters which were under the firmament from the waters which were above the firmament: and it was so.~
‘Asah means to make or made.
‘Asah is the word used in Exodus 20.
So your argument, if I have you right, is that God created the earth and all [Gen. 1:1] and later in the six days, formed it.
So that in between these times there is a great *gap*.
I hope I have you right and please forgive me and correct me if that is not your position.
Well before I get to the Scriptures that debunk that idea, let me ask you a few questions.
How does that explain anything?
It doesn’t explain dinosaurs or any ancient type creatures.
It doesn’t explain rock formations like the grand canyon.
It doesn’t explain fossils since no life is yet formed [made].
It doesn’t explain tree rings, since there were no trees yet.
I am sure it could explain some things, since I am no expert and do not know all that it could explain.
So please enlighten me on what the gapp theory explains?
But let us look at the Scriptures to see if God indeed did CREATE [bara’] the man and the things in the world despite your claims that He just made or formed them. Oh, He formed them alright, for how can you create something that you do also form or make.
So my jo is NOT to prove that He did not form or make [‘asah] anything in those 6 days, but to show that He did indeed create them in that time period.
Let me start with man since you blatantly said God did not create [H1254 bara’] man but just made him.
The word used in Genesis 1:1 to create is Strong’s word H1254 bara’, and so my quotes are tom the KJV with the Strong’s word for bara’ numbered.
So God created [H1254] man in his own image, in the image of God created [H1254] he him; male and female created [H1254] he them. [Gen. 1:27]
This is the book of the generations of Adam. In the day that God created [H1254] man, in the likeness of God made [H6213] he him; [Gen. 5:1]
Notice that God both created [H1254 bara’] man and made [H6213 ‘asah] him. Notice as well that this creating and making took place in the same day.
Now let us move on to the other things God made in the 6 days and see if the Word tells us He created them or not. Genesis 1…
Verse 7 tells us that God MADE the firmament [the ground].
Verse 16 tells us that God MADE the sun and moon and stars.
Verse 25 tells us that God MADE the beasts and the cattle, and all the things that creep on the ground.
Verse 26 tells us God MADE man,but we covered that.
Genesis 2…
Verse 4:
~These are the generations of the heavens and of the earth when they were created, H1254 bara’, in the day that the LORD God made, H6213 ‘asah, the earth and the heavens…~
We notice straight off that the heavens and earth were created in the VERY day that God made them.
Bye bye gap theory.
Now if you insist, I could go through all the other things God made in the six days and show you where the Scriptures say they were created, using the very same word, Strong’s H1254 bara’, that God used in Genesis 1:1
So Scripturally, you have no leg t stand on.
peace
Mike,
What are you trying to do, give me a headache? God created the divine essence of man, but made him out of the dust of the earth.
God created the Heavens and the Earth, Gen 1:1. He did create them just like the Bible says. God made the sun and moon, which means He forced or moved them into place. He took them from that which was already created. He moved them around so they would benefit the Earth. The other verses you pointed out are just as easily explained.
Mike, God created every thing else out of existing material. As I said before The Gap answers all my questions. I teach the Gap, and the Gap only.
Mike,
One more thing, You remind me of my cousin, who had to have his right leg amputated. The day of the surgery his doctor had a heart attack. They had to bring in another doctor to do the surgery. The new doctor took off his left leg. His regular doctor got better after a couple of weeks, and came back and amputated his right leg, the one that was suppose to be taken off the first time. My cousin sued for 12 million dollars and dropped the case. He figured he might as well drop it, because he is like you, no leg to stand on.
On third-tier issues I teach all the common views with arguments for and against each one (with a disclosure as to my view so that they know my bias). I even teach traditional heresies just so that people will know what to avoid. The reason is to educate people so that they buy into a theology intelligently and that they have a solid foundation for building practical theology that bridges theological differences on third-tier issues. I refuse to simply tell them what to believe and leave them ill equipped to use it.
Jess,
You didn’t explain anything.
Man is more than just a body.
That God used dirt to form man does not mean that God did not also create man, for the spirit of man did not come from the created earth.
Now remember Mary? You said that she did not create the cake, she just made it. Your point was that there was a difference between the ideas represented by the words ~create~ and ~made~.
But now, after being showed Scripturally your error, you are quite content to conflate the ideas represented by these two words.
So now you would say that Mary did indeed create a cake.
Honest and straight forward people are the kind of people I like to debate with, for they can teach and be taught. Those who like to ignore the plain words of Scripture and twist and turn, who retract and add without explanation, have neither the intention to learn, nor the capacity to teach.
Thus I have no desire to interact with you.
Have a good day brother, and may His peace fill you.
Mike,
My very first paragraph said God created the essence of man, but God made his body. You are not a very good listener. I do not wish to interact with you either, but I still love you.
I’m sorry, Folks, my ISP was down for from 8 am est yesterday until I left for work. Now, I’m back and it works again. (Smart phones aren’t for me, either. I tried one for a while, then went back to a dumb phone). I’m glad to see a good discussion went on regardless. Let me get some coffee and try to catch up 🙂 .
Here is a question: for what purpose was the Book of Genesis given? Was it given 3500 years ago (+/-) in order that beginning in the mid-19th Century Christians would have something with which to refute Darwin’s theory of evolution, then beginning in the 20th Century, to refute theories on the age of the universe and the earth, the arguments (refuting these matters) based on concepts developed in 16th Century western European philosophy? Or was it given 3500 years ago (+/-) to refute the pagan theology of 3500 years ago (+/-) which held that every winter the earth died, and was in danger of falling back into primordial chaos unless the gods were bribed every spring with fertility rituals to re-create everything? In other words, does the purpose for which God gave Genesis (and some other passages in various Old Testament books too) make a difference in how and for what purpose the Book is used? What presuppositions are required to use it otherwise? Have “we” as Christian really examined those? Are they all valid?
John
John, I’ve never heard this argument before in regard to the discussion of origins. I’ve studied the ancient myths but never studied the idea that Genesis was a refutation of those ancient myths.
I’ve always believed that Genesis was written like the rest of the Bible to declare God’s heilsgeschicte, or sacred history. If Genesis were written merely as a refutation of other myths, I would expect a lot more detail than we have in just a few verses.
It seems to me that we twist ourselves into a theological pretzel when we give “science” more credit than it deserves.
I spent three years researching cosmology for my Master’s thesis. One statement that I found repeated many times goes something like this: “beware hitching your wagon to the latest theory in science because scientific theory is always changing.”
Take the simple model of the atom that any of us over fifty learned in school. We did experiments based upon the Bohr model. We got the results that the model indicated we should get. It was a settled truth in science that electrons revolve around the nucleus in predictable, measurable patterns.
That is not the model you will find in textbooks today as one having taught science in the last five years.
I personally do not think Genesis was written as an apologetic against false beliefs swirling in the ancient world. I believe it is a straightforward summary of real events.
Just because the “majority” believes something as Bill points out is most certainly the case, that does not mean it is correct.
Evolution and the “Big Bang” theory it spawned is by no means “settled” in the scientific community. The Big Bang Theory could justly be called the “Big Hole Theory” because very important issues are unaccounted for by the theory–as is true of evolution.
That’s my perspective on the issue. I respect those that disagree. I will only add that if we look for “science” to answer the question of origins, we have hitched our horse to a godless approach to life. I find that troublesome.
Jack, no offense meant but if you have never read that the creation accounts, especially in Genesis, are a refutation of Babylonian (and possibly pre-Babylonian) mythology, then you must not have not read much outside 20th Century SBC and conservative evangelical sources. This is what would have confronted Abraham “in Ur of the Chaldees” and would have been very important to he and his family. There are plenty of such sources. I am off today and at home, and all my resources are at the church, but I expect a Google search for Babylonian creation myths would turn something up.
John
John,
I appreciate the info you are supplying.
One thought it generated is this:
Assuming that some of what you are saying is true, that the Babylonians and others had a version of creation Moses wanted to counteract when he wrote Genesis, that does mean that what he wrote is not the truth of the matter. In fact, I would say that he wrote inspired by God to present the truth and to stand against the lies of pagan cultures.
blessings to you brother,
mike
Good point, Mike. Actually, I was not trying to say that the meaning of the creation account was exhausted when the Babylonian myths were refuted and and answered. What I do ask, however (and it is really a question, not a disguised statement), is this: how does the intent of the human writer impact a later interpretation of the text which was not even on the horizon when written? I would think this requires us to then get into various theories of inspiration, and the presuppositions in each of those. This is something I find lacking in most every discussion of creation and young verses old earth.
John
John, perhaps we are using the idea of refutation in different ways. I took your post to say that Genesis was a point by point refutation of the ancient myths. If that is what you are saying, I would not consider it a very good apologetic.
It has been quite a few years since I went down that road in seminary. As I said, I don’t recall any professor, or anyone that I read as assignments, indicating that such was the case of Genesis.
The fact that there were many ancient myths in regard to cosmology is well known. Now that you mention it, I do recall professors pointing to liberal scholars who took the Genesis as Apologetic Approach, or at least Genesis as an Alternative approach.
These opinions arose out of a liberal bias against Mosaic authorship and a late date for the Book of Genesis. An examination of Genesis will quickly show a distinct difference in approach from other ancient myths, in my opinion.
The fact of any similarity at all would not require any kind of borrowing or redaction but would arise out man’s common desire to make sense of existence.
So, I personally do not see Genesis being written against any sort of mythological backdrop, even though I would agree Moses knew of these myths from his life in Egypt.
I guess the idea of Genesis as a “response” to other ideas sits sideways with me.
By the way: little is ever “settled” in science by definition. This is because science continuously opens itself to scrutiny and further testing. Before the Bohr model, there was Sir J.J. Thompson’s model of the atom, which worked for a while, until research done by Bohr (as well as Heisenberg and others) called it into question. Such changes as this are not failings of science, but if anything, are its successes.
John
I was with ya, till here;
“Before the Bohr model…”
Then my eyes glazed over as you spoke of things way over my head. 😉
Then you recaptured me on the last sentence. LOL
Seriously, the little (very little) I know about science makes me chuckle most times when I hear or come across the phrase “its settled science” as you are right there is very little in science that is forever settled scientists are ever “reinventing understandings” as we go along.
On the other hand….
Psalm 119:89 – 91 “Forever, O Lord, your word
is firmly fixed in the heavens. Your faithfulness endures to all generations; you have established the earth, and it stands fast. By your appointment they stand this day, for all things are your servants.”
Something I recall from seminary (though I do not recall if it was a professor or something I read) is that it is not a question of whether or not to take the Bible literally; rather it is a question of when taking it literally means taking it factually and when it means taking it figuratively.
John
John I don’t think I used the word “failings.”
As you point out unsettled ness is the nature of science and the reason it can never give answers to the Absolute. It is merely one tool in an epistological tool chest. It is not even the most important tool–which is where the problem arises.
Most OE views seem to include some sort of rationale for death and decay prior to Adam’s sin, but Romans 5: 12 clearly shows death is a consequence of sin which entered the world through Adam. God’s original creation did not include death, aging, illness, etc.
Also it is difficult to take the genealogy of Luke 3: 24-38 in anything but a literal sense. While a generation skipped here and there might be explained, it would not be plausible to impose more than a few thousand years from Adam to Jesus. An OE view which includes the idea that humanity has existed for millennia would not really conform to this passage.
“Also it is difficult to take the genealogy of Luke 3: 24-38 in anything but a literal sense. While a generation skipped here and there might be explained, it would not be plausible to impose more than a few thousand years from Adam to Jesus. An OE view which includes the idea that humanity has existed for millennia would not really conform to this passage.”
What of an OE who contends that well the earth itself has been around for a while longer, man himself has only been around for about 6000-8000? That would answer that concern, would it not?
Tarheel,
But would it explain this passage from Mark 10:
~6 But from the beginning of creation, God made them male and female. 7 For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother, 8 and the two shall become one flesh; so they are no longer two, but one flesh. 9 What therefore God has joined together, let no man separate.”~
Here Jesus equates the creation of man with the creation at the beginning. He would know! It is hard to imagine that Christ is speaking of a 4.5 million year [or more] beginning in a world where man has been around only 6-8000 years.
I’m not sure that Christ was teaching on creation (in fact I know he was not) at that point…he was referencing that marriage is a God ordained institution from the beginning….He no more is specific about ALL that that means than was Moses.
There is so much detail left out (for obvious reasons) of the biblical text of the creation account that, IMO there is lots of room within orthodoxy for somewhat varying opinions as to HOW it all happened – after, of course, the baseline of agreement that God and God alone did it by his own creative power and by his own words.
Tarheel,
Some passages mean one thing and to another, a different thing. So yes, there is room in orthodoxy for disagreement on this matter. We should not divide over it or call OEC anti-Bible, for they are not.
My guess is that science will seek to make the gap larger between their metaphysical beliefs that they draw from the physical evidence and the supernatural beliefs we hold as Christians, both camps: YEC and OEC.
Tarheel,
In Mark 10:6, From the beginning of the creation God made them male and female. Tarheel, notice the word made, in the Greek it means to place around. It supports the Gap. The word beginning in the Greek also means made. This to me says to me, In the beginning of the re-creation God made them male and female. Which supports the Gap between Genesis 1:1-2. Can I swear there is a Gap? No I cannot. But, I do think it’s on equal footing as what others might believe. If someone could show me a better theory I might accept it but, until then no. It would have to be in harmony with the scriptures.
Jess,
I am no Greek scholar I will freely admit. But I do have some skill in reading dictionaries and lexicons. I also teach Latin, referring to the Latin Vulgate often.
I know of no scholar that translates poiew in Mark 10:6 “to place around.” Nor do I know of any scholar that translates “arche” (Greek) or “initio” (Latin) as made, in the text above. The Hebrew, “reshith,” in Genesis 1:1 does not mean made, and is translated by the Septuagint with “arche,” that I’ve already said I’ve never seen translated “made.”
Could you share your resources that support your view that these words mean, “to place around,” as in to propose a “gap?”
Jack,
That sounds pretty reasonable.
Jack,
Of course creation in Genesis 1:1 does not mean made. God spoke the Universe and Earth into existence. But if you notice from there on God made all things using other things. For the ground brought forth, the sea brought forth, even Adam was made of the dust of the Earth. I don’t know what to say, it seems pretty squared away to me.
Jack, by me being an old coal miner, I have worked in different coal seams, from some of the lowest in elevation to some of the highest in elevation, these coal seams are made up of dense vegetation, covered over with earth because of some cataclysmic event. What I am saying there had to be time for the Earth to grow new vegetation in a dense form and covered again to make a new seam of coal. I have personally found fossils which was easy to find. I enjoyed finding them in different seams of coal.
To tell me the Earth is only 6 to 8 thousand years old is laughable. I’m not saying you are telling me this but some have said it.
Some of the seams of coal are from 80 to 500 feet apart. A seem of coal marks an era. Why there are so many seams of coal I don’t know.
It could have been when the devil was cast out of heaven during the time between Gen. 1:1, and Gen.1:2. In Gen. 1:1 I would imagine God had created a perfect Earth, but when the devil was cast out of heaven it brought nothing but chaos.
It also seems that in any discussion of Old Earth versus Young Earth, the Old Earth advocates typically don’t bring up the Flood and its cataclysmic effects on the Earth. I’m not sure that Old Earth advocates can adequately factor in a true world-wide, water covering the earth for a year, the great eruptions of the deep, etc. and what that actually would have done to the earth. I think the Flood is, with the texts of Ex. 20 and 31, quite substantial arguments for a Young Earth. We could throw Romans 5 into the mix as well.
Good night for now, folks. Maybe I can get back here tomorrow morning, if the discussion is still open then. If not, then thanks to all for a good discussion. Forgive me if I’ve offended anyone, as it wasn’t intentional.
Peace in Christ!
Ken,
Night? It’s morning in the USA. As some folks in my neck of the woods might say, “Where you at?” I’m guessing Asia – maybe the Pacific – although your blog says Ohio. I was born there.
Jim,
Ken works nights. Thus he sleeps days. What he means is that he is going to get his beauty sleep.
And the darkness he called Day, and the light he called Night.
David,
Don’t lose that sense of humor!
Good one, David!
Gotcha.
Ken, my sympathies. I worked 3d shift for three years and hated it. My body rebelled in all kinds of ways.
These discussions are interesting. This is a worthy topic to discuss.
As far back as Augustine, some faithful Christians have argued that the account of creation is intended to be a metaphor. But one can only go so far into the text before bumping into the historical nature of the text – people, places, etc.
We will never know exactly how to harmonize all the Scripture says with all that science says. But that’s o.k.
Jesus held a standard of truthfulness of the OT that is higher than any modern one – “Not one jot or tittle…”
The OT scriptures are more true than we are capable of realizing.
They are not simply the mythology of another religion, which is the error that many make when they are unable in their minds to reconcile Scriptural revelation with scientific discovery.
These things are mysteries that should not cause us to shy away from believing and teaching Scripture and being scientifically and technologically educated.
Also, we needn’t be apologetic about the difficulties in this area.
Those who try to weave a story of what we see today from nothing and from no God, really have the more difficult task. Christians can become too defensive about the challenge we face when it is actually materialists who face an insurmountable challenge. They, however, usually get away with an unexplained starting point and a boat load of unexplained and unproven assumptions. Christians have those, too, but ours are on the table. We allow them to avoid answering those questions because we are too focused on what the word “day” means or where Cain got his wife.
Jess, Bill Mac, Parsonmike,
I have taken the time to find you some sources for some of the things you have discussed. I list them in order of quality. I do not consider any of them less than good sources. All sites have a “search box”, just type in the key words and receive quality material.
1st creation.com
2nd icr.org
3rd answersingenesis.com
Parsonmike, you had asked for an explanation of the theories of theistic evolution. There are quite a few. It would take a very large article to explain them all. You obviously see that the information is important. Type in “theories of theistic evolution”.
Jess, I said before that I lost confidence in the Gap Theory due to Biblical and scientific arguments. Type in “Gap Theory”.
Bill Mac, you made a statement above about the vast majority of scientific evidence indicating an old earth. That is what I have been taught by culture and education also. It is very untrue. The vast majority of scientific evidence indicates a world vastly younger than evolutionary theory requires. Type in “Age of the Earth”.
Brothers, I mention these sources so you can check for yourselves. There really is no space to address them in Ken’s comment stream without sending the point of Ken’s post off on a major tangent.
Not quite. I said the overwhelming scientific consensus favored the old earth position.
According to whom? That’s the rub, isn’t it? We can always find scientists who support our view.
To find balanced views, you could also look at Reasons to Believe, Old Earth Ministries, and Biologos, to name a few.
Our own Ken Keithley of SBTS has an excellent article called “Confessions of a Disappointed Young Earther”
http://baptistcenter.net/journals/JBTM_10-2_Fall_2013.pdf
Bill Mac,
Thank you for correcting me. Your words said one thing, my bias said something else. Sorry to be annoying.
You are right about the differing interpretations that scientists often put upon the same data. I remember never-ending-lines of experts testifying before congress about whether The Strategic Defense Initiative” (Star Wars) would work or not. How typical that the Republican experts all affirmed the program and the Democrats all condemned the program.
I totally agree that the vast consensus of scientists favor the old earth view. I do wonder what percentage of this group also deny the resurrection. I know that many are Christians. But I would hazard the opinion that the Christians within the group would be in the small minority about the resurrection.
I will check the link you posted for me. Thanks.
Jerry: Not annoyed at all. This has been a pretty good comment thread, all things considered.
Bill Mac,
Really? I misquote you and then tell you how wrong you are based on my own obvious bias…and you are not even a little, tiny, minor bit annoyed?
And now I’m “finding fault” with your gracious attitude?
May God have mercy on us all.
Jerry: Not really, but I’ll go re-read it and see if I can work some up. 😉
That’s because Bill Mac is a pretty gracious dude, at least from what I’ve seen in his comments over the years. It’s a little harder to get him riled up. Now me I start off riled up.
Bill,
i read Ken Keithley’s article and found it interesting and fair
He pointed out that Ken Hamrick’s OP is not a new theory and that is more of an apologetic than a creation theory.
I do have a question for you and then back to reading from the inks you and Jerry provided.
What do you believe about the great flood and the number and types of animals that were init, and the extent of the flood waters?
thanks
Mike: Frankly I don’t know. I’m not trying to waffle here. I think OE adherents would tend toward a local flood view, and I’ve read compelling arguments on both sides. I haven’t taken a strong position either way. I think the issue with the flood is more about translation than hermeneutics but I’m not a theology major so I could be off.
I’m not quite satisfied with my answer. If someone holds to OE (and thus millions of years of life and death on earth) AND to a global flood with 2 or 7 of every living creature on the ark, I think YECers could fairly point that out as an inconsistency.
Bill,
Thanks for the honesty.
In reading one of the links Jerry gave me, it pointed to this passage from Mark 10:
~6 But from the beginning of creation, God made them male and female. 7 For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother, 8 and the two shall become one flesh; so they are no longer two, but one flesh. 9 What therefore God has joined together, let no man separate.”~
Now to me, the plain easing of this passage is that Jesus is telling us that God made man at the beginning of creation.
This seems to rule out the gap theory.
Does my interp also rule out OEC?
Do you believe man was on the earth at the beginning of creation or do you believe man came many, many years later?
If the latter, how do you interp the words of Jesus here in this passage?
Thanks
Well, technically speaking even in the YE view, they weren’t made strictly in the beginning of creation, so Jesus is a little loose with his words here. Creation was 83% finished when Adam and Eve were created. I see your point, but I don’t think I’m ready to concede on the basis of those verses. I would say these verses aren’t about creation but about marriage.
Bill,
Thanks for your answer.
You are right in that the main topic of that passage is marriage, but God does not say unneeded things, but has purpose and meaning for everything He says.
So Jesus was a little sloppy there -eh?
Assuming that I am right in my YEC idea, Jesus would have said those words about 4000 years after the Genesis creation account occurred.
So “in the beginning of creation” would refer back to that first week including when Eve was created from Adam’s rib. I think that such an interp is reasonable and your objection without water.
Bill, I can’t answer all the questions my YEC theory brings up, so I don’t expect you to answer every question either, but my hope is that you ponder your position on just how much of the plain reading of the Word you are willing to gloss over in order to rely on science as your base for interpreting God’s Word in this matter.
My guess is that the gap between the answers science is giving and what the Bible is saying will continue to widen.
blessings brother,
mike
A whole lot of people run marathons. Everyone who completes the distance gets glory for the task. The one who does the best (fastest) gets more glory than the others.
We are not just talking about the marathon, but about what God Himself said He did.
And lesser glory, in the presence of clear statements by the “finisher” is more than interesting speculation. No one likes their righteous glory diminished.
And so my point is not about guilt or which of us is “better”. My point is about the magnitude of the importance of the question. Six days or not?
Jerry and Bill,
Thanks for the info.
-mike
All joking aside, the most important thing about this article is not changing minds (sorry Ken) but to prove we can discuss things like this in a civilized manner. We all have inconsistencies. I’m a Calvinist who often acts like a non-Calvinist. I’m an old earther who doesn’t want to give up a global flood and a literal Adam. I’m a moderationist who thinks alcohol is generally a really bad idea. I hate the Yankees but think Dave Miller is a moderately decent guy. We’re inconsistent because we’re human, and the things we are dealing with are not simple because they are real, and real things usually aren’t simple. I think the world can learn more from our discussion than from our unanimity.
I have read some of the posts here and enjoyed them as well as looking at the interaction and though I have not ever commented here it has been some really good stuff. Today however in reading Ken Hamrick’s essay I must confess this essay and its claims are highly mistaken and disturbing. As others have already noted two of Hamrick’s comments in particular are troubling.
Early in the essay he proposes:
“I propose that—for the sake of argument-–we eliminate the evidence question all together.”
This statement completely goes against the nature of the Christian faith and the Christian worldview. How so? Because the Christian faith and the Christian worldview involves a total dedication and search and openness to what is true. And how do we know what is true? While some things are known immediately and directly (e.g. God designed my eyes to see things in my environment, so when I look and see my wife in my immediate environment I know that it is really her and I do not need logical syllogisms to prove it!). Other things are known via our mind and reasoning (e.g. for example when we are interpreting some text, be it the daily newspaper, a memo at work or even the Biblical texts). And when interpreting a text we are using our minds, following sound rules of interpretation (e.g. when interpreting scripture we use the grammatico-historical method of interpretation), examining the evidence and coming to a conclusion based upon available and relevant evidence. Thus for a Christian if he/she is acting in line with the Christian world view, there is no such thing as discovering truth without examining available and relevant evidence.
As Christians we are to use our minds, this is part of being a faithful disciple of Jesus (cf. Love God with all your heart soul and mind). So this proposal to “eliminate the evidence question all together” completely contradicts the Christian world view and its commitment to discovering truth by carefully and rationally considering available and relevant evidence. This proposal is similar to saying: let’s just throw out rationality, throw out our minds and see what truth we arrive at. This is not good reasoning nor is it what God wants us to do with our minds.
And doing so “for the sake of argument” fails as well, as a good argument will also involve a presentation of the available and relevant evidence.
At the conclusion Hamrick claims:
“The real question is whether you are willing to accept revealed truth in spite of the evidence or prefer to reinterpret revelation to make it accord with the evidence.”
Permit me an analogy that may help to clearly express my concern here. I am part of an organization that produces Bible Correspondence studies by mail. These studies include books that are intended to help people learn the Bible. These books start out with content and at the end have questions for the students to answer. We have structured the course books so that students have to read the Bible and directly study the Bible in order to answer the questions. We have also to the best of our abilities produced answer keys so that volunteer graders can use these answer keys to grade the courses sent in by students. One of the things that is part of my responsibility is to train new graders. And a point that I make with them is that while the Bible is infallible, inerrant, and revelation from God: our answer keys are not infallible, inerrant nor are they revelation from God. So the answer keys though we have tried our best, may be mistaken. I want our graders to keep this distinction in mind between the Bible itself and our answer keys. We would be completely out of line and treading on dangerous ground if we claimed our answer keys were infallible, inerrant and a revelation from God.
This distinction must also be kept in mind when it comes to our interpretations of the Bible as well. While the Bible ****is**** infallible, inerrant, and revelation from God: our interpretations of the Bible are ****not**** infallible, inerrant nor a revelation from God.
Hamrick’s claim is both troubling and wrong, because he is equating the young earth creation INTERPRETATION of Genesis with the revelation of Genesis. The revealed truth **is** the text of Genesis: the young earth INTERPRETATION of Genesis is not revealed truth (nor is the old earth INTERPRETATION of Genesis, nor any other proposed interpretation of the Genesis text).
All of us who believe the Bible to be the Word of God (whether young earth creationists like Ken Ham or old earth creationists like Hugh Ross or whatever other view that is held by people with a high view of scripture) accept that the text of Genesis is revealed truth from God.
That is not the area where we disagree.
Hamrick ASSUMES that his young earth creationist INTERPREATION **is** revealed truth. When he says that: “The real question is whether you are willing to accept revealed truth”.
Fact is that everyone who has a high view of scripture believes it to be revealed truth though they may disagree in their interpretations of this revealed truth. In his mind, the “revealed truth” **is** the young earth creationist INTERPRETATION of Genesis. He goes on to claim: “in spite of the evidence”. Which seems to be in his mind the evidence for an old earth or universe that contradicts the young earth creationist INTERPRETATION. Recall he tells old earth creationists to just put aside the evidence for the sake of argument at the beginning of his essay. He continues with: “or prefer to reinterpret revelation to make it accord with the evidence.”
Again the “revelation” he has in mind is the young earth creationist INTERPRETATION of the text. Hamrick’s error is to equate the young earth INTERPRETATION with revelation.
They are not the same, the text is one thing, the interpretation of the text is another.
The disagreement is about which is the better interpretation. And in all cases of interpretation where there are competing interpretations we have to examine the available and relevant evidence to come to a rational conclusion. Which again points to the utter ridiculousness of Hamrick’s earlier claim that we ought to put the evidence aside. No, we never put the evidence aside: instead if we are going to properly and rationally interpret the revelation of God we will use our minds and we will consider the available and relevant evidence. As this is what we ought to do, Hamrick’s “experiment” is a complete failure and unwittingly contradicts the Christian world view and contradicts the Christian faith. There is no context of intellectual inquiry and search for truth, whether it is scientific investigation, a court setting, or interpreting biblical texts, where we ought to put aside the evidence “for the sake of argument”. Instead, if we are genuinely concerned about truth then we sift through the available and relevant evidence to arrive at our rational conclusions.
Robert
Robert,
Great comment.
I work with Ken, and he probably is sleeping now because he works nights, and I am laid up due to surgery. So if you do not mind, and i hope he doesn’t, let me address your concerns.
First, Ken is a zealous guy whose confidence overflows into his writings. I agree with you on the idea that he has gone somewhat overboard with this theory.
I hold to YEC simply because it seems exactly what the Bible is saying. I realize there are problems with outside [re:scientific] proclamations. These proclamations SEEM to be based on the facts they have found in the field, which SEEM like facts to them. I can in no way dispute whether what they have found in the field and their conclusions from the evidence they promote.
So even as you rightly say that our interps of the Bible are not infallible, EVEN as we are being led of the Spirit into truth, so also are the interps of scientists, many of them against even the possibility of a supernatural creation, are to be even more questioned as to their validity.
OEC and gap people can be and are sincere Christian brothers and sisters who love the Word, love the Lord, and love the Body. I assume you do as well. And as important as this issue is, it is not important enough, at least not now, and maybe never, to allow our differing opinions to divide us as seek to be witnesses for Jesus and proclaim the Gospel near and far.
My advice to you is to understand that what Ken is proposing is an apologetic theory that explains the discrepancy between the plain reading of Genesis and the interpretation of the scientists in the field. It is not the only way to understand the two, but one way.
Grateful for your service to our King.
mike
Hello Mike,
“I work with Ken, and he probably is sleeping now because he works nights, and I am laid up due to surgery. So if you do not mind, and i hope he doesn’t, let me address your concerns.”
Was Ken asleep when he came up with his theory? 🙂 🙂
“First, Ken is a zealous guy whose confidence overflows into his writings. I agree with you on the idea that he has gone somewhat overboard with this theory.”
The theory is not only “overboard” (i.e. making an argument in which you tell others to ignore and get rid of available and relevant evidence) it also leads to the conclusion that God himself is deceiving us. That will not only not fly with nonbelievers but believers ought to be alarmed as well with any theory in which God intentionally misleads us.
“I hold to YEC simply because it seems exactly what the Bible is saying. I realize there are problems with outside [re:scientific] proclamations. These proclamations SEEM to be based on the facts they have found in the field, which SEEM like facts to them. I can in no way dispute whether what they have found in the field and their conclusions from the evidence they promote.”
As I am sure you already know there are problems with the YEC interpretation within the text (e.g. the meaning of “yom”) and also a major problem with the purpose of Genesis 1 and 2. Moses did not write this text to “prove” whether young earth creationists or old earth creationists are right. Instead he was writing an apologetic essay. Intended to show that the gods of the Egyptians were false gods, that there was only one true God, the God of Israel, and that He had created the entire world ex-nihilo (out of nothing). The text itself tells us WHO created the universe and WHAT he created (i.e. everything): but not HOW or WHEN.
A very helpful book on this neglected purpose is: “In the Beginning… We Misunderstood: Interpreting Genesis 1 in Its Original Context” by Johnny V. Miller and John M. Soden. They get into what the Egyptians and others at that time believed and how Genesis directly contradicts and refutes all these pagan beliefs and ideas. Genesis 1 and 2 then are not meant to be “scientific” but instead are “apologetics” for its first readers.
Regarding the evidence outside of the text it appears (at present) to lead to the conclusion that the universe is very old
“So even as you rightly say that our interps of the Bible are not infallible, EVEN as we are being led of the Spirit into truth, so also are the interps of scientists, many of them against even the possibility of a supernatural creation, are to be even more questioned as to their validity.”
But the issue is not the interpretations of nonbelieving scientists who deny the possibility of the supernatural. We are not talking about the interpretations of someone like Richard Dawkins here. Hamrick said he wanted to make things easier not for people like Richard Dawkins but for people like Hugh Ross (note Ross affirms all of the miracles in the Bible, holds to inerrancy, he is no unbelieving scientist). The issue is believers who do believe in the supernatural including believing in the physical resurrection of Jesus from the dead, the miracles that Jesus did, and the ex-nihilo creation of the world out of nothing: and yet hold to differing interpretations of the Genesis text.
“OEC and gap people can be and are sincere Christian brothers and sisters who love the Word, love the Lord, and love the Body. I assume you do as well. And as important as this issue is, it is not important enough, at least not now, and maybe never, to allow our differing opinions to divide us as seek to be witnesses for Jesus and proclaim the Gospel near and far.”
I agree with your statements here: but the problem is that I have observed on multiple occasions that Young earth creationists have attacked OEC people as unbelievers, compromisers, not believing in the Biblical text, etc. etc. They seem to equate their interpretation with orthodoxy (thus if you do not hold their interpretation there is something wrong with you and you cannot be orthodox).
The other major problem is what if the YEC’s are wrong? What if in fact their interpretation is wrong? This would partly explain why many young people seem to have their faith severely challenged in college when they come in contact with well-established facts concerning the age of the universe. If it is those facts versus a mistaken interpretation (i.e. the YEC view) and if those young people mistakenly equate that interpretation with the Christian faith, if they take the facts then they have to reject the faith. Or if in their minds it is science versus faith (that “faith” being commitment to the YEC view), then the faith will lose.
Seems to me that if Genesis is properly interpreted as the apologetic it is, then the age of the universe while being a disputed issue, does not become a stumbling block for either nonbelievers acquainted with the facts or for young Christian college students.
I have said for a long time that Genesis presents the WHO and the WHAT (God who created everything) but not the HOW or the WHEN (that will be determined outside of the text of Genesis). It seems to me that in order to be an orthodox Christian you ought to affirm that we don’t know how God created the universe out of nothing, but that he did so.
“My advice to you is to understand that what Ken is proposing is an apologetic theory that explains the discrepancy between the plain reading of Genesis and the interpretation of the scientists in the field. It is not the only way to understand the two, but one way.”
I understand what he is attempting to do: but it is a complete failure as it recommends not using available and relevant evidence something no rational person who seeks truth will really want to do.
The discrepancy which you refer to “that explains the discrepancy between the plain reading of Genesis and the interpretation of the scientists in the field” is not a discrepancy between the actual text of Genesis (as the text does not tell us how or when those things were done) and the findings of science regarding the age of the universe (Moses was not writing about the age of the universe or the evidences for the universe being old or young).
No, the discrepancy and it is real, is between YEC and the findings of science about the age of the universe. The findings of science contradict that interpretation of scripture, not the scripture itself (again the scripture does not say how old or young the universe is). If the text of Genesis said for example: “and God created the universe a few thousand years ago . . .” Then there would be a contradiction, a discrepancy between this text and the findings of science, but there is no such text in Genesis.
And regarding the “plain reading of Genesis” does that mean a plain reading in light of Egyptian beliefs and the things that Moses was directly contradicting and refuting in those texts? No, you mean a “plain reading” to you a twentieth century person. But Moses was not writing to twentieth century persons with our knowledge of science and concerns about science. He was writing to people who did not know science, but were concerned about the Egyptian beliefs and gods. To them a “plain reading” of the text would not even have included the notion of the universe being young or old (it simply was not on their radar). In a properly done grammatico-historical interpretation of a Biblical text the “plain reading” must always be understood in light of the first intended readers of a particular biblical text. Again the book by Miller and Soden gets into this well. I am willing to wager that you know very little about that context. And yet every text has a context and they present the context for Genesis 1-2 for the first intended readers.
Robert
Robert,
Thanks again for your reply.
The theory Ken is giving us is not new, although I do not know if it is new to him or not.
Let me take your points as you made them.
As to the “deceiving” you bring up. I think Ken has already addressed this, but let me hit a few points. The supernatural is many times observed as it happens, like Lazarus coming from the tomb, the man born blind seeing, the fish and loaves eaten by the thousands, the resurrection of the Lord, but they are not scientifically evidenced, in that after the event is over there is no scientific date left to verify the event’s veracity.
Therefore to accept these events as true by un-observers, like you and me, we have to rely on someone else and their witness. And as time passes the amount of people we must rely on increases. So we rely on Moses to give us the account of Red Sea crossing, and we rely on every transcriber who copied it from ancient scroll to scroll, and from those who transferred it from Hebrew to Greek to English. Ultimately we are relying on God to tell us the truth of His supernatural works through the process of getting the Bible to us in our own languages.
And we believe these acts as true, not based on evidence we can verify, but based on trust in God and the Bible as His Word. Those who do not trust our God and His Word, do not believe that Jesus walked on the water and that He was God in the flesh, who rose from the dead. They think the Gospel truth is foolishness.
In other words, they are deceived, believing the lie and not the truth.
Now what Ken, and others before him, is putting forth is a theory that, if true, reconciles the evidence scientists find with the words of God we take as truth. What is assumed is that there is no supernatural creation as per the plain reading of the Bible tells us, but instead, the Bible is either just wrong, or that it is not telling us plainly the truth and must be apologized away to bring it in line with the physical evidence.
In this case, the evidence is taken as more true than the plain reading of the Bible. Now it is not saying that such a position makes one an unbeliever, because the Bible isn’t always literal in all of its writings and that even what seems plain to one, means something different to another, even as you have already said, and i agreed.
But the deception is not in Ken’s theory, it is in the unbelieving interpretation of the evidence. Unbelieving, that is, in the plain reading of the Bible on this matter.
Now I think you can admit that since God made Adam and the Garden mature, that it is possible that God made the earth mature. That in making a tree mature, it would also have the rings in it that depicted its age.
So if one starts with the idea that God made a mature world, then one is not deceived by the physical evidence that depicts a mature [long-aged] world and universe.
As to the public, who do not believe in Jesus as the crucified risen Lord, they neither believe in the supernatural events of God throughout the Bible. Miracles do not bring about belief, especially to those who hear of them second hand or more. Only the Holy Spirit through the ministry of the Gospel brings about faith in God through Jesus Christ.
As to your next paragraph, and i am sorry this is long, but so is your post, so I hope you do not mind. By cutting out quoting what you said, I seek to reduce its length.
As to the difficulties in yom, I do know about them and I am satisfied in what I have read as how to answer them. Later today, I will post a link to those answers,but they are too long to get to here and I don’t have that link readily available… I need to find it.
As to Moses and your point, I agree somewhat. But there is the rest of the Bible to read and to accept input from. And in reading all the Lord has to say in His Word about the Genesis early accounts, I think the WHEN is established. And by HOW, if I have you right, then yes, God created the way He said He did.
As to Genesis being an apologetic, okay. But can’t God have His Word written that both addresses the present needs of His people and His timeless truths so that later on, His people can learn and understand Him and themselves in a greater way?
As to your points made in connection to men like Hugh Ross:
I plead ignorance to what Hugh believes. The conclusions of scientists for the most part could be off only because they begin at the wrong point. They begin at a world that began as a primordial goo and evolved into a mature planet and that given that,of course the evidences they find collaborate their hypothesis. But that doesn’t san that they might ignore the clues that don’t fit their hypotheses because they can’t see the relevance of them.
If, when making theology, you start with Jesus just being a good man and teacher, and discount any possibility of supernaturalism, you won’t end up with Him being God in the flesh.
I agree that YEC people have attacked OEC people and labeled them as unbelievers. Again, this is not an issue we should divide on now if ever. And it is wrong to judge someone’s salvation based on anything less than primary concerns, of which this debate is not one of them.
As to the “other major problem,” you see, I really have no answer to that. What if OEC is wrong? And young people learn to put science over God’s Word? Let us pray for each other and for each camp that God will lead us all into truth and understanding, trusting Him to work out all things for the good of His people.
You said…
“I understand what he is attempting to do: but it is a complete failure as it recommends not using available and relevant evidence something no rational person who seeks truth will really want to do.”
This is speaking about ken’s theory and its goals.
But the Gospel truth isn’t made real to a person by rational worldly means, for we read in 1st Corinthians 2:
~And when I came to you, brethren, I did not come with superiority of speech or of wisdom, proclaiming to you the testimony of God. 2 For I determined to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ, and Him crucified. 3 I was with you in weakness and in fear and in much trembling, 4 and my message and my preaching were not in persuasive words of wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power, 5 so that your faith would not rest on the wisdom of men, but on the power of God.~
As to the final two paragraphs, I concede that Genesis by itself does not tell us the WHEN. But I was speaking generally since the other evidences from the Bible add to what Genesis tells us,such as the genealogy in Luke, the words of the Lord in Mark 10, and other places. Thus it is the Word of God that points us to a YE. It is the evidence the world interps that points us to an OE.
What some do is use that physical evidence to help them interp the Word of God. What others do, like this theory from Ken, is to seek to use the Word of God to help them interp the physical evidence.
Blessings to you brother in Christ,
mike
Robert and Mike,
Please let me take this opportunity to risk putting my foot in my mouth.
I don’t work with Ken, barely know of him.
But I don’t think Ken is offering a stand-alone theory. I am rather sure he understands a lot about the scientific theory and evidences of virtually all theories having to do with the Creation-Evolution question.
Isn’t Ken’s post about a hypothetical situation? He is presuming that we are able to separate our cultural bias and secular education from the question of origins, and, instead, draw conclusions from the Scripture alone.
Yeah, I’m laughing as I write this. His idea has merit, and is a great exercise in attempted objectivity, but bloggers are not well practiced in thinking this way. Especially Pastors.
And there is the fact that Ken doesn’t have to change his own bias to participate. In my opinion, following Ken’s “hypothetical case” leads one toward Young Earth Creationism.
Of course, in blogs, I am sure you will let me know if you think I am wrong. I do that wrong-thinking thing sometimes.
Jerry,
I know that Ken reads a lot.
And I think your words have much merit.
But I can not be sure if you are right or not, so I will leave that to Ken to verify or disagree.
And oh yes, there is no doubt that if you have no physical evidence left pointing to an old earth, than there is no Biblical reason to hold to a YEC, at least tentatively.
And Ken realizes that many YEC people like Ken Ham and Answers in Genesis is fighting an uphill battle in seeking to reconcile the physical evidence with the Bible.
The problem is that the evidence seems so real, its conclusions so inescapable, that going that direction will eventually lead to the conclusions that the Genesis story is a myth UNLESS it is taken by faith, and the evidence is discounted in some way.
So Ken and other YEC people are saying don’t discount the Bible’s message here, use it to interpret the evidence, not the other way around. And one way of doing that is with the mature earth creation idea.
In the past, whenever men judge the Bible with secular ideas of truth, they lose their way and spiritual problems magnify. “We have to find the real Jesus, not that doer of supernatural miracles that the conservative evangelicals claim he is, but that good teacher misunderstood by the masses.”
My guess is that the OEC, though lovers of the Word they are, will find it harder and harder o reconcile the physical evidence with the Bible and could cause some of them to not give the Word its rightful place in their minds for discerning truth.
That in looking forward to the great apostasy, whenever it may come, the world will discount the Bible as a truth book because the physical evidence [as interpreted] stands against it with increasing force. And that the things we stand for, not just God creating the world, but those things which make us distinct from the world will be those things that we hold only by faith alone.
Oops This paragraph left out the word ‘not’:
And oh yes, there is no doubt that if you have no physical evidence left pointing to an old earth, than there is no Biblical reason ~NOT~ to hold to a YEC, at least tentatively.
Mike,
I agree with what you have said.
Current findings of soft tissue in many fossilized animals dating at up to a million years (or more) is causing cutting edge evolutionists real problems. Now they have to find reasons why the laws of physics do not apply to the breakdown of organic molecules.
The complexity of DNA and the molecular operation of proteins and organelles in cells is blowing away any chance that the arrangement could be by chance. Cutting edge evolutionary theorists do not yet have a theory to explain it.
There are also slight hints that the whole Big Bang (quantum singularity) may be seriously flawed. Dark matter theories are being challenged.
Frankly, the 14.5 Billion year theory for the origin of the universe is going down.
These are additional things that can be researched.
Not that I think you are addicted to learning new things or anything.
Jerry,
I am already way behind on the info you and Bill suggested. But I can not do much tomorrow, but I can go to church Sunday. And I have all next week to heal, and maybe another week after that. So maybe i will learn some new things.
mike
Mike,
Get well soon. I’m willing to guess it is not your fingers that are ailing, Bro.
Foot.
Robert,
You stated:
Early in the essay he proposes:
“I propose that—for the sake of argument-–we eliminate the evidence question all together.”
This statement completely goes against the nature of the Christian faith and […] worldview […] Because the Christian faith and […] worldview involves a total dedication and search and openness to what is true. And how do we know what is true? While some things are known immediately and directly (e.g. God designed my eyes to see things in my environment, so when I look and see my wife in my immediate environment I know that it is really her and I do not need logical syllogisms to prove it!). Other things are known via our mind and reasoning (e.g. for example when we are interpreting some text, be it the daily newspaper, a memo at work or even the Biblical texts). And when interpreting a text we are using our minds, following sound rules of interpretation (e.g. when interpreting scripture we use the grammatico-historical method of interpretation), examining the evidence and coming to a conclusion based upon available and relevant evidence.
Wow, Robert. “Highly mistaken […] disturbing […] troubling […] completely contradicts the Christian [faith and] worldview”? I must have really hit a nerve. There’s nothing like an effective argument to rile up the opposition. I contend that the really disturbing aspect of my argument is that it brings to light your own inconsistencies with the Christian faith and worldview.
You said, “[…] the Christian faith and […] worldview involves a total dedication and search and openness to what is true.” I agree in part. But that total dedication is not just to any so-called truth, but only to real truth—and when it comes to truth that is revealed in Scripture, our “openness” is to the Bible and the Spirit, and not an openness to all that the God-hating world insists is true. You said, “And when interpreting a text we are using our minds, following sound rules of interpretation (e.g. when interpreting scripture we use the grammatico-historical method of interpretation), examining the evidence and coming to a conclusion based upon available and relevant evidence.” Scripture needs no outside authority, such as the Godless science of the world, to determine what it really means. The Bible is self-sufficient to communicate it’s intended meaning. Extracting the in-depth meaning from a passage may require work on our part, but it never requires bringing in extra-textual evidence or authority. Textual evidence is the only evidence necessary for faith and understanding.
You continued:
You seem to have completely misunderstood the article above. Throwing out rationality is not even close to what I proposed. Rather (and this is not complicated), I insisted that God can create an earth that, at the moment of creation, would predate it’s own creation by billions of years according to all scientific measurements. Therefore, the disregarding of the evidence would not be a refusal to use our minds, but quite the opposite—it is because we use our minds that we can see the futility of expecting scientific evidence to shed light on the question of if and when a miraculous creation occurred. You see, your problem is in your assumption that such available scientific evidence would be relevant to that question; but you’re simply begging the question of its relevance. Prove it’s relevant!
Furthermore, what you put forth as a rule for the Christian faith and worldview, “there is no such thing as discovering truth without examining available and relevant evidence,” goes against the very fabric of that faith, if you mean all the evidence available outside of Scripture. Oh, there’s nothing wrong with researching to find all the different historical documents and artifacts that support what the Bible says is true; but how many believers examined all such extra-Biblical evidence before they were certain that they had “discovered the truth?” I was saved through Scripture alone and did not investigate all the external evidences until long after I had already discovered the truth. It is your view that fails to accord with the Christian worldview in this, not mine.
You continued:
Robert, there is no need for a good argument to present evidence that is irrelevant. First, establish that the evidence is relevant. Show me how one iota of physical evidence regarding age can be relevant to the question of when God supernaturally and miraculously created an ancient world out of nothing in an instant. You cannot. Until you do, my argument solidly stands. You continued:
When it comes to a recently created earth versus an old earth, it’s not really a matter of one interpretation over another, as if the two were equally based on Scripture. No, it’s a matter of an interpretation versus an incorporation. The former relies on revealed truth alone, while the latter incorporates both the revealed truth and the supposed discovered truth of [a particular interpretation of] physical evidences. Can we be honest here? It’s not like the Bible is vague and mysterious regarding how long it took God to create the world or how long ago it happened. No, the fog didn’t roll in for most of the Church until “science” insisted that the earth was far older than is indicated by the plain reading of the Biblical account. The insistence of science fueled the drive to come up with alternative interpretations—ones that wouldn’t contradict the science of an old earth, and so various alternatives came about, including the latest employing a “literary framework” to explain the six days.
Text without an understanding is not much better than garble. The text is simply the tool by which God conveys His truth to the reader—that’s called revelation. It’s the truth, and not merely the text, that’s revealed. But to get that truth from the text—to understand it—requires an interpretation. Now it is precisely because we hold the Word of God to be revealed and authoritative that we ought to take great care not to read into its meaning what God did not intend. Toward that end, it is agreed among all good Bible students that “If the plain sense makes sense, seek no other sense.” Exegesis means to extract the truth. You cannot claim that all interpretations are equal merely because all are fallible. Those interpretations that use a faulty method of extracting truth are much less reliable than those that use a competent method of extracting the truth. Disregarding the plain, straightforward, common-sense reading without sufficient warrant to do so is a faulty method. I did not claim that the Young-Earth exegesis was infallible, but only that it is far more reliable-==and for this same reason.
The creation account is one of the clearest, most straightforward chronological-historical accounts in Scripture. As if in anticipation of end-times compromise with the materialistic-naturalists, God specified, “and evening and morning were the ______ day.” And now, not even that is enough, as Christians jaded by the scientific overconfidence read such a sentence and say, “What ever could He mean by that?? It’s so vague and mysterious. What kind of evening? What kind of morning?” What kind of nonsense! If words have meaning, then accept them. But the scientist whispering in your ear tells you, “Not so fast—it can’t mean what it plainly appears to mean. You better look for some other interpretation.”
Old-earth and Young-earth interpretations are NOT EQUAL. The Old-Earth interpretations only appear to be justified in their rejection of the plain, straightforward, common-sense reading when backed up by the supposed need to acknowledge the legitimacy of the [scientific interpretation of the] physical evidence. So then, once it has been established that God is fully capable of creating a world that is old from the first moment of existence, then the solid ground of physical evidence that justified resorting to Old-Earth interpretations vanishes. No amount of dancing around that point will make it go away. You continued:
Since there is no way that evidence can ever shed light on when God created it if God is capable of creating it already “old”, then who is really being ridiculous here? One cannot come to a rational conclusion by basing that conclusion on irrelevant evidence. It’s not that we ought to put evidence aside for the sake of putting evidence aside. Rather, it is that we ought to put what is irrelevant aside, since it cannot give us the answer and can only bring bias to those who are unable to comprehend its irrelevance. “There is no context of intellectual inquiry and search for truth, whether it is scientific investigation, a court setting, or interpreting Biblical texts, where we ought to” depend upon evidence that has no bearing. If we are genuinely concerned about the truth about whether or not God recently created the world by fiat, then we will not limit ourselves to only that option that can be detected by physical evidence—we will not rule out from the start that option that cannot be found by physical evidence or by scientific inquiry.
Robert, you make some very good points. I have not had time to digest them all, but I certainly tend to agree.
John
A general note on origins: most of the discussions of evolution involve the biological realm of science and the disciplines that support it–chemistry, geology, etc.
The cutting edge of discussions in regard to cosmology is in the area of theoretical physics, particularly some new iteration of string theory. This is a very complicated area of study and most people (myself included) lack the mathematical horsepower to wade into the deep end.
Many theologians who study quantum physics, or physicists who are also professional philosophers or theologians, have recognized that the scientific theory of strings only substitutes one “singularity” (scientific) for another (theological). In other words, we are right back to the pre-Socratic philosophers trying to define the “ultimate.”
Science can do nothing more than redefine the “singularity.” Science cannot account for it.
So, expect this discussion to continue until Jesus comes.
Here, Jack, we are in complete agreement. I have heard it put as, “Science attempts to answer the question, ‘How?’ while theology tries to answer the ‘Why?’ question. It does not mean they are contradictory, but rather will get somewhat different results because they are answering different questions. The trouble erupts when one side (and both have been guilty) tries to answer the other’s question.
John
John,
I am in some agreement with the general point of what you say. And I want to offer some similar situations that may add scope to our discussions.
The Bible has one thing to say about soul and spirit, and problems and solutions with human motivation and behavior. Behavioral Science says something quite different.
The Bible has one thing to say about crime and punishment, justice and judgment. The Justice System says something quite different.
The Bible has one thing to say about the beginning of life, the worth of man, and the end of life. The Medical profession says something quite different.
I am not insinuating that you are ready to compromise AT ALL on the conflicts between God and mankind. I know that I am occasionally tempted to do so, and quite embarrassed when I find myself farther down a secular path than I ever want to be.
And I think the history of many denominations in America have included their giving away their prophetic voice in various areas of Biblical instruction. Just one step at a time.
John,
I am sure there is a rational explanation for HOW Jesus walked on the water or HOW He fed the 5000 with one boy’s lunch, but I do not think that even if He did those things today that science could tell us the HOW. Do you?
So I draw this conclusion. that where the supernatural is done, science, as we know it, is without understanding and cannot explain the HOW.
Now I believe that creation was a supernatural act that due to its nature leaves science without the ability to tell us HOW or WHEN. And we also know that is can not be duplicated by scientists and it was not observed by man.
Science, I predict, will never find the ends of the created universe or delve into and find the smallest particle of creation. They will always find something smaller, and find more million miles of space our further than they can imagine.
Much peace to you,
mike
Well, I read it carefully, Ken, and appreciate in a brotherly way the effort that went into it. It’s a sermon, right? All the second person pronouns, the locked and loaded rhetoric? That’s fine. There is a considerable audience for such…but I’ll pass. David Rogers said much of what I would have said, and did so in a much better fashion.
Bill Mac,
I read a few articles from your suggested link, Biologos.
The best thing I can say is that they seem reasonable and love the Lord.
I just could never give up what the Bible says about creation, especially about Adam to ever buy into their position.
Although I didn’t read every word of every article, the one thing I found must disturbing/puzzling was this quote:
~~~God is the provider. He provides for his creatures in each moment, giving them what they need to survive, adapt and thrive in communities of life. The Bible speaks of God feeding and caring for animals (Jonah 4:11, Psalm 104), and modern evolutionary science is shedding light on how God has arranged complex ecosystems that support many different kinds of creatures together. But God provides for his creatures even at the genetic level, giving species a measure of biological “creativity” to help them respond to new challenges. As biologist Richard Colling says, “Evolution is not about the imposition of death and destruction and survival of the fittest. Those things are a part of it, but not the main core of what evolution is. . . [The] evolutionary process of creating duplicate genes that give rise to new possibilities [is] redemption, it’s possibility, and it’s hope.”~~~
This was in a section on how to understand God better through evolution.
“God provides for His creatures to give them a measure of creativity to help them respond to new challenges…. [The] evolutionary process of creating duplicate genes that give rise to new possibilities [is] redemption, it’s possibility, and it’s hope.”
Redemption, possibility and hope to whom? The creatures of the earth? Man?
I suppose if we all came from the same primordial goop, we are all related in some way whether bird or bug or snake or bear or man or virus. I all can say is…ugh.
Mike,
The OE camp is a diverse bunch and Biologos are just a few of the voices in it. Like anything else, there will be some stuff you can agree with and some you can’t. Hugh Ross (reasons to believe) is an old-earth creationist who rejects evolution. Not saying he’s completely right either, just pointing out it’s not a monolithic group.
Bill,
Thanks for the info.
I will check out reason to believe next.
Genesis 2:4 This is the account of the heavens and the earth when they were created, in the day that the Lord God made earth and heaven.
Genesis 1:1 In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.
The plain reading is that the heavens and earth were made in the day God created them.
This creating and making was part of all God’s work as we read in Exodus 20:
8 “Remember the sabbath day, to keep it holy. 9 Six days you shall labor and do all your work, 10 but the seventh day is a sabbath of the Lord your God; in it you shall not do any work, you or your son or your daughter, your male or your female servant or your cattle or your sojourner who stays with you. 11 For in six days the Lord made the heavens and the earth, the sea and all that is in them, and rested on the seventh day; therefore the Lord blessed the sabbath day and made it holy.
We know it was his work for Genesis 2 tells us:
Thus the heavens and the earth were completed, and all their hosts. 2 By the seventh day God completed His work which He had done, and He rested on the seventh day from all His work which He had done. 3 Then God blessed the seventh day and sanctified it, because in it He rested from all His work which God had created and made.
Now if God created one day and waited, what, millions of years to finish making the earth, Then why did He rest only after the final 6 days.
Likewise where did the vegetation come from, since it had not yet been made?
Ken,
This is my last comment as I must move on to other things. Again, let me bring the focus back to my problem with your original piece. I do not reject the theory that you propose (that God created a “mature” earth). I like David Rogers am agnostic on the age of the earth but believe firmly that what exists God created (and not by evolution). I do not reject that faith requires the work of the Spirit to confirm what Scripture tells and to overcome our sinful nature that desires to reject the reality of God. I do not reject the veracity of Scripture as the Word of God sufficient as the Word of God to speak truth in all that it affirms. I reject the premises “that—for the sake of argument-–we eliminate the evidence question all together” and “the real question is whether you are willing to accept revealed truth in spite of the evidence or prefer to reinterpret revelation to make it accord with the evidence.” I further reject the premise that the resurrection is an example of why these premises are valid and thus analogous to accepting by faith YEC.
Tarheel above claims that the path you are on is a slippery slope. The reason I am so adamant about this argument is that not only is it a slippery slope, it is a dangerous slope. Your disagreement with the conclusions of the scientific community has led you to reject sound science outright. This presents at least two difficulties.
1) It has you in the unenviable position of rejecting evidence for the resurrection. When evidence is presented to you, you reject its validity. When its validity is demonstrated, you claim it is the wrong type of evidence (historical as opposed to scientific). While I accept that most people would consider the historical accounts of the writers of the Gospels as historical evidence difference is one without distinction. What I mean is that it precisely the evidence that scientist should and would consider. For example a doctor willingly listens to the account of his patient describing what is wrong with him. He does not reject that as the wrong type of evidence. He considers more evidence than that, but he still accepts their testimony as valid evidence. An engineer when exploring a building failure takes into account the testimony of witnesses and the measurements of other engineers. He considers the validity of their evidence. He takes into account their expertise in describing what happened, but he still takes that as evidence to be used in determining his conclusions. Scientists even will use the accounts of historical documents as additional evidence to consider when determining what happened in whatever area they are exploring if those documents are available.
Thus in the New Testament we have eye witness testimony of a PHYSICAL event that happened. Just on the resurrection we have a professional Roman executioner who based on his scientific expertise and the scientific evidence available to him (admittedly this was not modern science, but if had happened in the modern era Christ’s heart rate, oxygen levels, etc could be scientifically measured) determined that Christ was dead and reported such to Pilate. Joseph and the women using the evidence available to them made the same determination thus they buried him. Three days later this same Jesus appeared to the disciples as alive. They saw him, conversed with him, touched him, and even ate with him. Thus they considered the evidence and concluded that the one who was dead is now alive. Further they concluded that this must be the work of God because there is no natural explanation for the evidence before them.
Now some rejected it. Considering the same evidence some believed the body was stolen, and the disciples made up the story, others believed he was not really dead believing instead that the executioner was mistaken, others think maybe the appearances were visions. However, they are all trying to give an account of the scientific evidence that was available to them. This is the same as any other scientific endeavor. (I said it before, I’ll say it again, yes it requires faith and the work of the Spirit to convince one of the truth, but we are not asked to reject the evidence or believe in spite of the evidence).
2) You state in a previous comment that your purpose is to confront the issue that young people enter college and their beliefs are challenged by the science. The reality is that their beliefs are challenged by the conclusions of many in the scientific community. Your answer is to reject the evidence and believe in spite of the evidence. I say this is dangerous because it goes against the very nature that God created in us (not the sin nature the created nature). Further it makes it look like we are trying to hide something and that we know that our claims cannot stand up to the test.
Your answer is to reject the evidence. My answer is to become better scientists. That means to ask questions a scientist would ask: Is the evidence valid, what evidence is missing, does the evidence point to the conclusions being made, are there alternative conclusions that account for the evidence available, etc? I also point out that part of the evidence that needs to be accounted for are the testimony of scripture and the possibility of the supernatural. True, modern science largely discounts them, but it is just as much error on their part to discount this evidence as it is error on our part to discount the physical/natural evidence.
Again, my issue with this piece is the thesis of rejecting the evidence available to us and believing “in spite of the evidence.” I would never teach my people such things, and in fact teach them just opposite.
William,
Ken is probably at work now and probably won’t reply until tomorrow.
But I would like to give you a reply from my perspective.
As to your point [1]
To accept the witness of the Bible as to the resurrection of Jesus, you must first accept the Bible as an historically accurate book and that the resurrection is real possibility. Unlike the examples you gave, where the testimony in each case was credible, and possibly heard before from other sources about similar events, the resurrection is an incredible testimony, especially when combined with the idea that it was God in the flesh who was crucified and died. Simply Incredible. Certainly not testimony usually heard and probably never heard. Such incredible testimony not only is had to believe but the underlying reasons for His death cut against the very grain of the listener’s heart. Second, it was testimony not of a regular sort but of the supernatural. Third, He only appeared to believers until His ascension, whereafter he appeared only to Paul, but not recognizable by Paul’s companions. Therefore the physical evidence of His resurrection: the empty tomb and the grave clothes easily led to other conclusions because it was too FANTASTIC to grasp that Jesus actually rose from the dead.
Thus no one believed simply by that evidence. Likewise no one believes simply by being told the story second hand [the proclamation of the Gospel] but as you agree it takes the work of the Spirit in conjunction with the Gospel to bring about faith.
Those He appeared to of course are in a different place. But they all were His disciples.
Based on these objections to your [1], I think that your objection to Ken at this point falls short. Just my opinion.
On part [2].
Since I never experienced this and do not know of any first hand stories of anyone who has, I can only ask questions as to what it might be and what it seems to be.
I really have not learned enough about OEC to understand how they deal with the Genesis story that might give them some help in dealing with the scientist and the science they encounter in school. Do you know? And could you enlighten me? As to YEC, I think that though they try, they are way behind in keeping up young and old to deal with college challenges.
If we consider that the theory Ken has put forth might be true, then we can come to the conclusion that it is a losing battle for both OEC students and scholars as well YEC students and scholars to be able to hold their own. If Ken is right, there is no answer for our students that will stand against the evidence. Eventually they will have no leg to stand on. So while you bemoan that they look like they are hiding something the one way, in the other way it will [given our supposition] be an all out rout.
Of course the tide could turn and the physical evidence could be discovered that reverses the scientific communities understanding, but I sincerely doubt it. Rather, what I think is happening is that the clues God has left for them are being ignored because they don’t fit the narrative. They are being rejected or ignored or glossed over because the scientific community thinks that the supernatural is too incredible to be considered.
And science can not verify the miraculous or the supernatural any how. They cannot figure out how Jesus fed the 5000 with one lunch and had more left over. They cannot figure out how he walked on the water. Even if he were to do either today and they swooped in right after it happened, they would be at a loss to explain. Thus they can not figure out the supernatural creation of the earth. It is beyond them. They can’t observe it, nor can they repeat it. They chase after the ends of the universe and delve into the smallest particles and are no closer to discovering the limits than when they started. So to depend on science and especially scientists that are,for the most part, rejecting God’s hand in it all as possible, is foolish.
Your answer is t become better scientists. two problems with that. Most of the scientific community, from what little I have read,is not interested in testing out hypotheses that have supernatural components to them. And they reject the work and persons who do. The second problem I have with your solution is WHAT IF Ken’s theory is true. Then even the best Godly scientist might find no evidence of a supernatural creation, and no end to the age of the earth.
What then to do?
All we can do is to seek to be true to what the Spirit is leading us to. or some that might be OEC, for others that might be YEC, for others it might be the mature earth theory [Ken’s OP]. I think that as the years go by and probably sooner than later, the gap between secular science’s ‘results’ and the Christian’s position of a supernatural Creation will get wider and wider. And that the public will laugh and snicker all the more at those dumb Christians holding on to their antiquated ideas. And that the only beliefs we have will be those we hold only by faith and by faith alone.
You finish, my brother, with this:
“Again, my issue with this piece is the thesis of rejecting the evidence available to us and believing “in spite of the evidence.” I would never teach my people such things, and in fact teach them just opposite.”
We do have evidence that should trump the scientific perspectives, namely the Word of God.
Peace in His name to you and your people,
mike
William,
Let me put it like this,
A jury in a murder trial hears two sets of narratives, the prosecution and the defense, each presenting evidence as to why they are right and why the defendant should be convicted or set free. The jury has to decide which narrative sees true to them. If they have substantial doubts of the prosecution’s narrative, they are to set the person free.
As Christians, we too get two narratives, the Word of God and the world’s. But though we agree that the Word’s narrative should be first and foremost in our minds, it does not mean that we can not listen to the world’s and also learn a few things. The problem comes when these narratives are vastly opposed. Then we have to consciously decide to either put the Word ahead of the World and use the Word’s narrative to help us understand the world we live in, or use the world’s narrative to help us understand the Word’s narrative.
And what I think is happening is that these two narratives are separating tremendously. We see this in the area of marriage, of the sanctity of life [abortions], and we are seeing it in the scientific community as it addresses supernatural beliefs.
And the church is being separated by these things as some denominations and individual churches and individual Christians follow after the world’s narrative at the expense of the Biblical narrative.
Now I am not saying you or any OEC [which you may be or not] is going down that sad road. But I think the road is widening up and many will go down that road, even as many have already.
I don’t want to be your convice-r, but my hope is that you will ponder these things anew with your Teacher and Guide. And follow Him wherever He leads you.
I believe he works all out to the good of us, for we love Him.
Excellent answers, ParsonsMike! You have my vote for MVP in this discussion.
Brothers,
In reviewing the comments made in my absence, it has become clear to me that I should have been clearer—especially concerning what sort of evidence I was referring to when I suggested that we disregard the evidence. For example, I commented:
When I said that “to believe the miracle is to close one’s eyes to the evidence,” I assumed that all would understand that I meant the evidence against the miracle. There is no reason we need to close our eyes to the evidence for a miracle. And when I said, “a supernatural, miraculous, divine act leaves no evidence,” I had in mind only that kind of evidence that scientists might seek—such as what is analyzed in the scientific theories of origins. Miracles, whether creation or any other Biblical miracles, have often had eyewitnesses, and those witnesses often directly observed and experienced those miracles. The man whose withered hand was stretched forth to become whole and well certainly carried with him all the scientific evidence he could ever want. But while these evidences are compelling and some present a seemingly undeniable case, they remain—by scientific standards—short of absolute certainty. I am far from alone in this idea. Millard Erickson, a Baptist theologian of high esteem among Southern Baptists, said the following in his Christian Theology (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1990), p. 247:
Along with this is the idea that faith is belief in what is true, while evidence is merely an imperfect reflection of what is true. But our faith is formed in a place within us that is deeper than any rationalistic weighing of evidence. Perhaps someone might say that they were saved while reading science or history books or apologetics arguments. I know I was saved while reading and hearing only the Bible. Long after I was saved, I read some apologetics books such as Evidence that Demands a Verdict, by Josh McDowell, and was amazed at all the things that affirmed that Christianity is a belief in what is true. One of the books listed some of the more than 4000 specific OT prophecies that came true in history. If you’ve never read any of these, please do—you will be amazed, too! But my point is that none of that was needed for me to embrace God and His truth. I was ignorant of all these evidences. All I really knew was that the existence and crucifixion of Jesus (and many of the historical things of the Bible) were generally accepted by the world as well as the Church, though the world denied the resurrection and divinity of Jesus, and denied as many details as they could of the historical accounts. What I knew hardly qualified as a conversion due to the evidence! No, the vital evidence that saved me was the witness of the Holy Spirit in conjunction with the testimony of the written Word of God. That was all I needed. The evidences in support of Christianity that I encountered later were pleasant to me, as I like to see truth win out against a skeptical world; but these evidences could not strengthen my faith any more than the lack of them weakened it. Anyone whose faith consists mainly in siding with the stronger material evidence is liable to change his mind if more evidence from the other side is discovered.
No, it is all evidences to the contrary that we shut our eyes to, because we stand resolute in the face of a lying enemy who will use every trick of the world—every high-sounding platform of “legitimate” authority and expert knowledge—to steal the seed of truth from the hearts of men before it takes root (even if it’s only to steal truth about unessentials from believers).
This is not to say that God cannot use apologetics or material evidences to break down barriers to conversion. But none of these amount to absolute proof—no evidence takes us all the way home to God. It is God alone who by His Spirit proves Himself to the one who believes. Evidence may bring us to the Gate of belief, but only by encountering God Himself can we be fully convinced. The evidences point to the truth, but God alone proves it.
I apologize for my earlier lack of clarity.
I’ll try to reply to as many of the comments as I can this morning.
ParsonsMike has carried my burden in this discussion in my absence—at times better than I could have. I am grateful he was here when I could not be.
Thanks much, Mike!
Good discussion all the way down. Jumpin’ in here at comment 184? One must be a student of history in all this I think. Ideas have consequences. Where do the ideas come from? Well, we need to check them out. As pertains to this discussion, where did the idea of millions and billions of years come from? From history, as we know, the Church believed in a 6×24- day mature creation and approx. 6000 year old cosmos and earth for 1800 years since inception. This wasn’t a ‘novel’ idea, as it plainly comes forth from Scripture. So what changed the Church’s position? Ideas from secularists. Ah, yes, the Church’s age old problem – compromise with the world. Bottom line, an old earth position is to adopt a secularist position. Why would a Christian do that?
There is only one truth. So when there is a contradiction or an apparent contradiction between “science” and “the Bible” then our understanding using input from one or both must be wrong.
Just because someone purports to “believe the Bible” and hold to its authority and inerrancy does not necessarily mean that this person has a correct interpretation.
Similarly, just because a scientist is a scientist does not necessarily mean that he/she jettisons belief in God or the supernatural.
The trick for me is to look to both “faith” and “reason” and try to find a cosmology that fits both. I don’t ever want to toss any fact or conjecture that could inform my decision. I weigh all bits of evidence and assign each proper weight.
Science is a cool discipline because it is self correcting. If we just do empirical studies and see the results — without trying to be politically correct and only trying to support a-priori assumptions then science will be of great assistance.
A case in point. It was generally accepted in science that there was no beginning event such as what most Christians mockingly call the “Big Bang”. The “big bang” was described in the 20th century as a result of observations.
The Big Bang is our best friend because it is consistent with the idea that the universe started at some finite time and came from nothing. Prior to this the default cosmology was that the universe is “static” and had no beginning. This is the Greek / Roman viewpoint where God and Nature are basically the “same”. Obviously, this model is totally out of sync with any reading of Genesis.
Even up until the 1950s there were a few scientists who subscribed to the steady state cosmology model. Now there are a number of independent measurements and observations, including the “cosmic background radiation” Nobel Prize winning discovery which supports the “big bang”.
Using standard candles in the universe (i.e. certain stellar objects with certain spectral signatures which have a certain absolute brightness) then it is possible to look at these objects and see how far away they are. The problem is that the spectral lines — even though that have the telltale signature are shifted to the red end of the spectrum. This “red shift” is due to the fact that they are receding from us. This is Doppler shift. Many such observations stacked up are what gives rise to the Hubble’s constant which describes the rate of expansion of the universe from the point singularity of the Big Bang. I’ve never heard any coherent argument that suggests that the Big Bang is not a correct hypothesis or that the age of the universe is not around 13 billion years +/-. When guys like Ken say, “ignore the evidence” then I guess it becomes evident that Christians are putting their head in the sand and not engaging physical reality.
If the Big Bang is a bankrupt theory then there needs to be a cogent argument raised against it. Of course, regardless of the Big Bang, there are tons of various nuanced views of cosmology — such as string theory — that under development. Many of these cosmological models contradict each other so at most only one of them is correct.
Each purported “scientific” theory has to be accepted or rejected on its own weight based upon empirical evidence. It is cheating to say “scientists have a default anti-God [or Darwinian] predisposition” so therefore any work they do is not correct. The heavens declare the handiwork to God.
So if a guy is measuring the universe and using state of the art rulers then I believe we should pay attention to what he/she is saying. Of course, some guy may come along later and present more accurate results because he is using a new improved ruler.
Christians need to chill out a little. While it is true that Darwinian evolution has no warrant either Biblically or scientifically, we shouldn’t toss out the baby with the bathwater. It could be that some stuff scientists say is actually not only true, but consistent with Christian orthodoxy.
For me at least I say that both the Young Universe View and the Old Universe View should both be able to enter into a Christians’ hermeneutic grid. If that is the case, then maybe “science” can be the tiebreaker.
Notice I don’t use the term “Young Earth” or “Old Earth” because I am not a geologist. I think we are going to make more progress by separating the age of the earth from the age of the universe.
Because I admit my ignorance of geology I have no problem with the age of the earth being some thousands or tens of thousands of years old. But I don’t hold to that view tenaciously because I admit that I lack the scientific knowledge in that area to make an informed decision. I just don’t rubber stamp some particular controversial hermeneutical view on a third or forth order Biblical viewpoint because some guy at a seminary or behind a pulpit or on a blog says it is correct.
I realize Dave Miller desires SBC VOICES to become a blog that entertains serious theological discussion in an orderly, gracious, and respectful manner. I know he has worked hard toward that goal and I salute him for it. HOWEVER:
Today at 3:30 the CRIMSON TIDE under the coaching genius, ST. NICK SABAN, shall stomp a mud hole in the FL GATORS big enough to drive a D 10 dozier through with room to spare!!
Based upon this fact all sane people who frequent this blog should rise up and shout:
ROLL TIDE ROLL!!!!
I do not like Florida and I cannot stand Alabama…so I’ll be doing something of value during that time instead of wasting time on that.
I think that the way some of the OEC characterize the superficial appearance of age view is errant. They present it as though it is deceptive, but I just see it as a natural result of God calling creation into existence in maturity. If indeed, God created Adam in maturity he would look much older than he actually was. I do believe that OEC proponents have some very good arguments on certain points, I just don’t believe that this is one of them.
I would like to ask a question from the OEC folks and it’s not designed for argument, I’m just trying to understand where you are coming from: Do you believe that man evolved from lower forms? Do you believe that man is a highly evolved animal?
John:
This will be my last comment. I guess I shouldn’t answer here regarding Old Earth Creationism, because I am NOT an OLD EARTH guy only a OLD UNIVERSE guy.
I don’t hold to evolution. But I do hold to the idea that God did stuff incrementally — such as making men from dirt.
I don’t know why this is but, for some reason, people seem to automatically conflate all four of these concepts:
(a) holding to an old universe view,
(b) holding to an old earth view,
(c) holding to evolution
(d) embracing materialism
I think we could make more progress by separating these various points and arguing them “bottoms up” based upon BOTH “scientific” and “Biblical” evidence.
Too much argumentation around here involves supporting a point you already hold to rather than being open minded and letting both faith and reason inform you.
For decades I was guilty of arguing against the Young Earth view but I didn’t really know (and still don’t know) what I’m talking about to engage that point. I don’t have the pre-requisite scientific knowledge in earth and life sciences — such as biology, geology, or chemistry to have paid the price of admission to enter the debate.
Relative to the age of the universe. I have done at least the first tier of my homework. I have some graduate level exposure to physics and some “entry level” seminary training so I guess I can at least enter the fray.
The reason I like William Lane Craig and Hugh Ross is because those guys know what they are talking about. They can hold their own in a debate. They are not novices like me.
CB:
Rolling tides are a powerful agent when they are unleashed by a unbeatable force.
Maybe tidal activity had something to do with “floating Noah’s boat.”
Roger Simpson,
I don’t know if the TIDE had anything to do with “floating Noah’s boat.” However, I do know that Bear Bryant walked across the Coosa River twice, the second time with Joe Namath riding on his shoulders.
You know, I think I saw that.
John
After reading the post and the many comments, I realized that the truth is that the world was created just a minute ago. All the things that we think we know and our thoughts about things were also created in that instant–an instant ago.
This is just as reasonable as “the world was created ‘old’ some 6K years ago.” And it deals with the bad things that God allowed to happen–they really did not happen. They were just created as part of our memories along with everything else.
I feel so much better.
Bennett,
This has already been answered. As believers, we insist on what the Holy Spirit has convicted us as true: Scripture is our source of truth. Since Scripture does not indicate in any way that all was created moments ago, then your sarcastic theory has no basis and is false.
Scripture certainly does not say that it was created
“old” 6K years ago either. Was yours a theory or just your comments.
This has to be one of the… After some thought, I just can’t find anything that fits. I still like what I proposed and feel that you have no basis for discarding it that does not apply to your posting too.
What did you propose Bennett? What I saw was a sarcastic caricature of YEC beliefs. You know instead of making drive by comments actually engaging in dialogue would be more helpful.
Hello John, It is nice to be back on our usual footing (no sarcasm in that :)). You are absolutely correct about the sarcasm in the remark. However, it still seems to me that my comment was just as valid as Ken’s thesis for the original posting. If he wants to propose that the earth was created “old” some 6K years ago, it seems just as fair for me to propose that the earth was created “old” some 6 seconds ago. I still see no reason that my (sarcastic) thought is not just as valid as his (cynical?) thought.
As best I can tell, there is exactly as much support for my thought as there is for his. And I certainly don’t think that either of them can withstand even the smallest amount of “critical” scrutiny. He wants to claim scriptural support, but how can he do that any more than I can? But never let it be said that an obvious shortage of facts discouraged Ken.
When I first read Ken’s posting, I was convinced that he was being sarcastic too. But then I reviewed what I know about Ken’s usual writing and quickly saw that I was probably wrong.
You may notice that a significant number of the normal commenters are conspicuous by their absence. And I probably should be also.
I hope that you are enjoying the end of summer. Here on the Gulf Coast, we get (practically–Chinese Tallow are the small exception) no fall color. I miss that along with the blooming of trees in the spring.
Bennett,
Thanks for responding to my comment. We are blessed here where I live in South Oklahoma, we have beautiful Fall colors, but not quite yet. I do love the Texas Gulf Coast though. Are you originally from Texas?
Concerning the discussion at hand, I wouldn’t call Ken’s proposition cynical, but serious. The truth is that I’m not so sure about the age of the earth anymore, I’m certainly not as dogmatic about it as I once was. One thing I can say for sure though is that YEC proponents are not stupid, they don’t check their brains at the door. They simply believe that creation was a supernatural act rather than a natural act of God, and as such cannot be completely apprehended by natural means.
Thank you, John.
This discussion’s getting too big for me to keep up with. But with answers like you just gave, I’m not really needed anyway. It has been a good discussion, though, hasn’t it? Who said these things turn into nasty fights after 100? I’m glad with how it’s turned out.
Ken,
Yes it has been a great discussion. Disagreement, but no disrespect or allegations of stupidity or apostasy. You did a great job on the article.
John, I grew up in Tennessee (north-west, which is meaningful if you are from TN) on a farm. I went to Union University (where I was the only chemistry major, at the time). I worked for Dow Chemical (in Freeport, Texas) for 33 years and taught chemical technology at a community college for 15 years. My first wife and I went to all 50 states and enjoyed road trips. As I mention somewhere, I have seen lots of rocks.
We live 50 miles due south of Houston. Most think that this is 12 miles out in the Gulf, but it isn’t. We’re still 6 or 8 miles “inland” and at 16.5 feet elevation (a relatively high spot).
It is way late. Enjoy the fall. I’ll start talking about weather about December and quit in May when it gets hot again.
That’s all for today—it’s way past my bed time. Be blessed!
I know I’m late to this discussion. I’ve been debating whether it was worth it to jump in.
One of the assertions I’ve seen repeated throughout this discussion is that OEC arguments are not based on Scripture but on science–that if we remove the scientific evidence we don’t have a leg to stand on. I’d like to counter that. Is my belief in an old earth influenced by science? Sure. But it it also based in my belief that Genesis does not demand a young earth. Could you read it that way? Absolutely. Is it the best reading? Not in my opinion.
First of all, can we agree at least on this one thing–that the creation accounts in Genesis were not primarily written to give us the age of the earth? And perhaps that the age of the earth was not a major concern for the Hebrews who first read these chapters? The question the text answers is Who created the world–not when he did it.
Secondly, let’s address the genealogies since they are the major factor used in deriving a recent age for the earth. I acknowledge the YEC point that the Genesis genealogies are structured differently than other biblical genealogies because of the x lived # years and begat y formula. I don’t think that necessarily eliminates the possibility of telescoping, since we see it so commonly in other ancient genealogies and elsewhere in Scripture. However, there are still other factors that indicate to me that the genealogies have been arranged for literary effect. Look at the numbers the Genesis 5 list. All of them end in 0, 2, 5, 7, or 9. Okay, so that’s half the digits. But find a random number generator and see what kind of spread you get over 30 numbers. The probability of the first number you draw ending in a 0,2, 5, 7, or 9 is 1/2. The probability of the second being from the same set is 1/4. The third is 1/8, the fourth is 1/16, the fifth is 1/32, and–well you see where I’m going. The probability of that many numbers randomly ending in the same set of 5 digits is pretty low. Now, could God have arranged it that way just so we’d look at it and say “hmm, that’s interesting?” I suppose so, but to me it seems more likely that the author deliberately chose those numbers for a reason–making them not useful for determining the age of the earth. Additionally, there are some parallels in the structure of the Genesis 5 and 11 genealogies–roughly 10 names (yes, I know it depends on how you count) with three sons listed in the last generation. We know that biblical genealogies are at times arranged for a theological point. I see evidences of that at work in Genesis as well. I don’t think we should read them as giving us a timeline for the earth’s creation.
Then there is the creation story itself. It seems to me that one of the main points of the story is God as creator and establisher of order. That’s why day 7–the only unpaired day–is the climax of the story. Creation culminates with God’s rest. He has established order, and unlike other ANE creation stories where the god’s rest could be threatened or disturbed, there are no threats to God’s sovereignty. He is creator and Lord over creation and there is no other.
With all this in mind, I find John Walton’s arguments in “The Lost World of Genesis 1” and his scholarly treatment of the same topic, “Genesis 1 as Ancient Cosmology” very compelling. Walton points out that other ANE creation accounts were functional creation accounts, not stories of material creation. In other words, they are concerned not about when the world began to physically exist but when it began to exist as an ordered universe. Walton finds similar features in Genesis. For example, “bara,” “to create,” is frequently associated with creation of function. “Tohu,” and “bohu,” (formless and empty) are also associated with function. “Tohu”–is generally used to describe that which has no purpose and is unproductive. Genesis 1 actually begins with material–the cosmic waters of the formless deep, which God then separates to form the waters above and the waters below and commands to gather together so that the dry land appears. Walton’s thesis is that Genesis 1 describes not God creating the materials of the universe (though other Scripture references make it clear that he is responsible for this) but God stepping into the chaos of the unordered world and making it function for his glory. If he is correct–and again, I find his arguments interesting and compelling–we should not attempt to use Genesis to date the beginnings of the world. The story was not written for that purpose.
Finally, I would say this. Is it really that shocking that we would allow the interaction of science and scripture to shape our beliefs about the world? Haven’t we always done this? Does anyone today still believe the earth is supported by pillars and that the mountains hold up the solid dome of the sky? That’s the cosmology the ancient Israelites held, and Scripture never challenges it. Or do any of us believe that it is impossible for there to have been mass extinctions in the past because the “works of the Lord endure forever?” Theologians responded to the discovery of dinosaur fossils with this argument. Or do we still believe that our emotions and thoughts come from our bowels/liver? It wasn’t metaphor for the Hebrews–that was their understanding of how the body worked. Science has shaped our understanding in all these areas and yet we see no conflict with Scripture. The Bible tells me God created the world. Science tells me the earth is old. I don’t see any conflict between the two.
Leigh,
I am a YEC theory guy.
But I think it is okay for you to be an OEC theory person.
But when I read the Bible, Adam and the events in the Garden, and the consequences that ensue, seem to taken as real events by the Lord Jesus Himself, as well as Paul, and maybe others.
So what I see by OEC theory people is the diminishing of theological truth at the expense of belief in science. It is not a first-order thing, and I would never break fellowship over it, but I see it as a growing problem in my OEC brothers and sisters position.
When science steps beyond the boundaries, as it has, and seeks to impose upon all a metaphysical materialism POV, I can no longer trust that it is pure science that they are doing. Rather I think their POV has, and will so even more in the future, filled them with a bias that will continue to skewer their findings.
And I think that the gap will widen so that two things will happen: YEC apologists will be so far behind in their goal to explain their position scientifically, and the OEC people will have to give up more and more of their Biblical beliefs to hold on to their scientific loyalties.
Blessings to you in Jesus,
mike
Mike:
I promised to not comment any more but I’ll break my self enforced silence to ask you one question.
Namely, “What does the age of the earth have to do with whether Adam, Noah, Abraham, etc. were real people?” I think there must be a ton of pre suppositions you are holding which cause you to see some relationship between the age of the earth and whether the Garden of Eden scenario is correct as reported in Genesis.
I am not joining the debate on the age of the earth because I am not qualified. But I think people who do take sides should put their cards on the table.
As an aside, of course I hold that the Genesis account regarding the Garden of Eden is an “accurate historical account”. The problem is that this is irrelevant to solving the “age of the earth” question.
Roger
Roger,
Thanks for your comment.
That I am somewhat confused about OEC is partially due to my lack of study and the various takes they have.
Do you believe that when the earth was created and inhabited that Adam and Eve and the garden happened then? And thus the history of man is much longer than YEC people take it as?
Or do you believe that the earth was created and many years, maybe centuries, maybe millennia passed before God created man? If so, was the earth inhabited by plants and animals during that time?
Or do you believe something different altogether?
Here is a web site I am currently reading that advocates both an Old Earth and fidelity to the Genesis story in the creation of man:
http://www.reasons.org/articles/who-was-adam-an-old-earth-creation-model-for-the-origin-of-humanity
Parson Mike:
Thanks for engaging me on this.
I am going to be brutally honest here. I don’t know what the age of the earth is and I don’t know of any coherent argument by either side of the “age of the earth” debate. As I said in a previous post, I don’t have enough skill either exegetically from the Bible or “scientifically” to come to terms with the debate.
I have heard outlandish claims from both sides.
I don’t know how long it was between the time of the “creation of the earth” and the time that Adam appeared in the garden. The Bible says that Adam showed up on day six. Depending upon how you take the meaning of “yom” you can come to different conclusions.
Here are my understandings. I admit that I hold some of these understandings “in tension” pending more knowledge. Some of this “knowledge” I probably will never, even in principle, be able to know.
1. Age of earth is somewhere between 6,000 and 13,000,000,000 years.
2. Age of universe is 13,000,000,000 years old +/- 20%
3. Adam and Eve were real people.
4. Noah was a real person. The flood was a real event. The flood was universal. [I disagree with Hugh Ross and William Dembski who say that the “universal flood” was actually an event local to the then known world — namely the Ancient Near East]
5. Evolution is totally bogus for two reasons: (a) it is not supported by any reading of scripture, (b) it couldn’t happen by “random chance” even if age of earth/universe was 20,000,000,000 years.
6. Satan really did show up in the garden leading Adam and Eve to eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.
As far as I know no one else holds to the same view as I do. Of course, I could be wrong on this.
I used to be an OLD EARTH guy but I gave up that position. Now I don’t have any position. However, I am definitely not your typical YOUNG EARTH guy.
I don’t hold to crazy stuff such as the creation having “the appearance of age”, the speed of light varying over time since creation, or that the red shift is an artifact that God put there to fool us into thinking that the universe is old.
However, as it relates to the garden narrative of course I hold that Adam was created and not born so he was a “grown man” from the outset. I guess that Adam is a special case where “the appearance of age” is applicable. A partial analogy was that Jesus was a special case, he was “born” but in a very supernatural way.
Mike, it could be that we see many things the same!
To the extent that I hold to a position then I want to be able to take a stab on defending it with enough specificity that I’m able to expose my own strong/weak points with someone who disagrees with my position. And, if warranted, I’ll change my mind. That is why I gave up on the OLD EARTH argument. To me the OE argumentation just doesn’t cut it. But again I admit it is probably due to my own ignorance of earth science.
I’m holding to my OLD UNIVERSE position though. I don’t know if this has anything to do with the “gap theory” or not. I am not hung up on the gap theory one way or the other. All I know is that there is STRONG empirical evidence for an old universe that I don’t think is contradicted by a plain reading of the Bible.
Roger
Roger,
Again thanks for your input.
My take is that each of us can only rely on the understanding we have and continue to trust the Spirit to guide us and to grow us in truth.
As to the information on the web site noted above:
They believe that God intervened into a functioning world [that He had been created many millennia ago] and created man from the dust of the earth [per Scripture]. They do not deny evolution except in the case of man.
Hominids, from which evolutionists believe humans evolved from, are on the earth at the same time God creates Adam, and soon become extinct, about 40,000 years ago, but are not human for they are not in the image of God, only the recently created humans [Adam and Eve] are.
The website article is full of technical language as he seeks to explain the deficiencies in science that allows him [and Hugh Ross] to keep Adam the first man and seeks to be true to as much as Genesis as they can, including the Fall and the Flood.
I appreciate that for I believe that one’s ability to have a coherent grasp of the Scriptures depends on that.
But here is my take from what they are saying.
They compromise both what science declares as true and from what the Bible says is true. Life is on the earth living and dying long before the sin of Adam. The six days God created all things and rested on the seventh, is not really the way it happened. They pluck out of the creation story the creation of man and place it in a million plus old earth at about 40,000 years ago. The rest of the creation story happened millions of millions before Adam.
Two things.
One is I believe they love our God and seek to respect His Word.
Two is that the science they are using and circumventing is full of holes and speculations [by both them and the secular evolutionists] that the narrative that will come from the scientific community will marginalize their position to the point that what they believe is true is really only what they hold to by faith. [Which is where it just about now any how given the uncertainty of the science involved.]
peace,
mike
Well, Mike that’s good to know. I don’t have any problem with you being a YEC theory person, so I guess we’re equal.
As Roger pointed out, the age of the earth doesn’t have anything to do with the historicity of Adam. I hold that Adam and Eve were real, historical people, that stood “at the headwaters of humanity,” to borrow a phrase. I think the text–and Jesus and Paul–ask us to see them as historical people.
Leigh,
I’m glad you decided to join us. You stated:
I don’t think you’re facing this squarely. Your “belief that Genesis does not demand a young earth” is itself founded on the scientific evidence, without which you never would have had a problem with a young earth. And the longer this movement to incorporate the scientific evidence of age into the creation account goes on, the more sophisticated and nuanced it becomes, until you actually begin to believe that it’s the text rather than the science that primarily drives the Old-Earth view. I’m not buying it.
If the words of the text mean anything, then it also clearly answers the question of how long God took to create. The age of the earth question is not answered until the genealogies and general historical accounts are considered. But considering that most of the Bible contains factual, historical accounts and specific details that would be expected of a true historical account, then dancing around that is going to be insurmountable. And it is the concerns of the writer and not the readers that we should try to determine.
“Other ancient genealogies” were not divinely inspired and preserved Scripture. And I would not call the skipping of a generation or two “telescoping.”
Wow. Is there no limit to how creative Old-Earthers will get in trying to discredit the plain historical accounts of Scripture? Your numbers problem is nothing but a curiosity. True randomness doesn’t result in uniformity, but in apparent clusters. Math and I don’t get along, so I don’t know how far that might apply here, but it’s worth considering. And in fact, there’s a lot thrown into the mix that’s not truly random, such as the biological and social cycles associated with the human existence. So no one really knows what kind of digits a factual account might end up with. Speculation is all you have. Scripture tells us that God “numbers all our days.” And when it comes to theological significance, God doesn’t merely write it into the text—He writes it into real lives. When God wants to make a point about the second-born being chosen over the first-born (as a type of the Second Adam being chosen over the First Adam), He causes two brothers to be born and uses their very lives to make His point: see Esau & Jacob. God isn’t limited to mere digits on a page if He needs to make a symbolic point by using the age of a man when he dies. Personally, I wouldn’t be bothered if all the ages in the genealogy were the same number. We ought not to let such curiosities as number patterns, or things like “Bible codes” secretly written into the text, or any other such thing cause us to reject what Scripture presents as a factual, historical record.
You and Walton must do more than come up with an alternative to the plain reading that is plausible—you must come up with one that is better than what it proposes to replace. Speculation is the least authoritative theological statement. Direct statements are the strongest. Inference is in the middle. Old-Earthers attempt to replace the direct, explicit statements with inferences, deductions and speculations—thinking them better not because they accord better with the text but because they accord better with their presupposed need to incorporate Old-Earth scientific evidence. Scripture has nothing to do with ancient creation myths of other cultures, except this: all creation myths (and every culture has one) are based on the true fact of the real creation, which Adam and Eve experienced and passed down the info to their descendants (the same for the flood account of Noah). It is because these events really did happen that every people on earth has stories that are somewhat similar about them. However, only one people were give the divinely preserved truth, passed on to us in Scripture. Walton’s hypothesis, as you’ve described it, is insufficient for me to reject what is by all other standards a plain and clear historical account of Scripture.
The Bible tells me God created the world 6000 years ago. Science tells me the earth is much older. I don’t see any conflict between the two.
1. My belief that Genesis does not demand a young earth is grounded in my reading of the text and my attempt to begin by understanding what the text meant to its original audience. The simplest reading for us is not always the correct reading if we fail to take into account the cultural context in which it was written. My contention is that to read Genesis 1 correctly, we need to attempt to understand the cultural context and priorities of the audience.
2. In regards to the genealogies, what I am presenting is evidence that there is more to them than just a list of names and dates. They have been carefully composed for a purpose–just as Matthew’s grouping of Jesus’ genealogy into 14 generations had a purpose. To me that calls into question their effectiveness in dating creation.
I know you have dismissed this as irrelevant, but for comparisons sake, the odds of the “number problem” in the genealogies happening randomly is the same odds as you flipping a coin and getting 30 heads in a row. That’s a 1 in 1,073,741,824 chance. You might get some clusters, but run a few trials of coin flips and let me know if you get a cluster of 30.
3. Other ancient documents and creation accounts are not inspired, but they do help us understand the cultural background of the people who wrote and read this text. That matters because Israel did not exist in a vacuum. There are many places in Scripture, particularly in older passages, that borrow imagery and language from the myths of the nations surrounding Israel. This is carefully done, and what they do not borrow is as instructive as what they do borrow. Understanding this background gives us information that can illuminate the text. We don’t ignore this background information for any other passage of Scripture. I see no reason to do so for Genesis 1.
4. In all honesty, my view of Scripture is such that if I were convinced that Genesis taught that the earth is young I would be willing to disregard the scientific evidence to agree with Scripture. I am willing to agree with you that God could have created a young earth that looks old if he so desired. My issue is that I disagree with your interpretation based on my own study of the text. I’m not rejecting it; I have simply studied it and come to a different conclusion than you.
And Ken, please hear my heart on this: I love God’s word. I love the Scripture. I love digging into deep study and translating it for myself. I love it when God speaks to me through his word–those moments when the Spirit illuminates a verse I hadn’t regarded before. I love those moments when I’m preparing a lesson or writing a Bible study unit and God just brings it all together and I know with absolute clarity this is what God wants to say to his people. I absolutely honor and worship God as Creator. But I disagree with the YEC interpretation of Genesis–just as I disagree with those who think you can lose your salvation, or that we should baptize infants, or any other number of issues on which orthodox Christians can disagree. I can respect how you got there, but I disagree. My position is one I have come to after careful study and with a high regard for God’s word. I’m not asking you to agree with me, but I would ask you to understand that I don’t hold this position because I’m looking for an escape clause. I didn’t come to this position because I don’t respect God’s word–I got here because I do.
I think OEC doesn’t support science (although it seems to but not intentionally), but a lot of science supports OEC, unintentionally. OEC doesn’t affect creationism in any way, God recreated the world just like the scriptures say in Gen. He done it in six literal days. Why wouldn’t the OEC believe in a flooded earth, as was mentioned above.
Hey Dave Miller,
ALABAMA beat FLORIDA and gained over 650 yards against their defense. Just thought you might want to write a post about it. Might make you feel better since the Yankees have no chance of a WS shot this season.
When did it first rain?
According to Hugh Ross, an OEC theorist, the world’s weather before man was much like it is now, with tornados, hurricanes, volcanic eruptions, seasons of hot and cold, and thunderstorms among others.
But what does the Scripture say?
Genesis 2
~4 This is the account of the heavens and the earth when they were created, in the day that the Lord God made earth and heaven. 5 Now no shrub of the field was yet in the earth, and no plant of the field had yet sprouted, for the Lord God had not sent rain upon the earth, and there was no man to cultivate the ground. 6 But a mist used to rise from the earth and water the whole surface of the ground. 7 Then the Lord God formed man of dust from the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living being.~
Now the account of creation in Genesis 2 seems different than the account in the 1st chapter. For in the 1st chapter the shrubs were created before man.
Genesis 1
11 Then God said, “Let the earth sprout vegetation, plants yielding seed, and fruit trees on the earth bearing fruit after their kind with seed in them”; and it was so. 12 The earth brought forth vegetation, plants yielding seed after their kind, and trees bearing fruit with seed in them, after their kind; and God saw that it was good. 13 There was evening and there was morning, a third day.
What can be said? That on the second day there were no shrubs and no man. AND no rain.
Then on the third day shrubs were made. Did the rain come then? Rather we read a mist rose from the surface of the earth and watered the land. And then in the sixth day, man was created.
The Scripture tells us that there was no rain but rather a mist that watered the land. Hugh Ross and one strain of the OEC is telling us that, ‘No, there was rain before man was created.’
So I ask myself this question…
What is the purpose God had when He told us about the “no rain” and the “mist that watered the earth”?
If the OEC theory is correct, there certainly was rain and vegetation for maybe a billion years before man was created.
Same is true for Gap theorists. [a version of OEC]
So why does the Bible tell us there was no rain, only a mist?
Six days to work and rest on the seventh.
Exodus 20
Then God spoke all these words, saying…
8 “Remember the sabbath day, to keep it holy. 9 Six days you shall labor and do all your work, 10 but the seventh day is a sabbath of the Lord your God; in it you shall not do any work, you or your son or your daughter, your male or your female servant or your cattle or your sojourner who stays with you. 11 For in six days the Lord made the heavens and the earth, the sea and all that is in them, and rested on the seventh day; therefore the Lord blessed the sabbath day and made it holy.~~~
Hugh Ross, an OEC theorist, says that we are still in the 7th day. That would because the first 6 days were each millions upon millions of years long. So how long is a day? How long is a day is the question the jewish people might have asked themselves when they read the Genesis account of creation. But I doubt it. Everyone knew how long a day was. Oh maybe some called the day from one morning until the end of that day’s night, or maybe they called a day from sun up to sun down. But I doubt that they thought of a day as millions upon millions of years.
So when God gave them the 10 commandments, and told them to work for six days and keep the 7th holy as a sabbath before the Lord, they knew exactly what He meant. And when He told them that he created the heavens and earth in six days, they knew what He meant.
The purpose of language is to communicate an idea from one mind to another. Words represent ideas. As do sounds. If the sound of the horn from the village was indecipherable as to what it meant, the laborers in the field would not know if it was lunch time or if their homes were being attacked.
Now words can have different meanings based on the context they are in. But if the context they are in is the same, as we see from the above quote from Exodus 20, we should take the meanings to be the same.
Six days to work and rest on the seventh.
Just how long did it take God to create the world?
Exodus 20
Then God spoke all these words, saying…
8 “Remember the sabbath day, to keep it holy. 9 Six days you shall labor and do all your work, 10 but the seventh day is a sabbath of the Lord your God; in it you shall not do any work, you or your son or your daughter, your male or your female servant or your cattle or your sojourner who stays with you. 11 For in six days the Lord made the heavens and the earth, the sea and all that is in them, and rested on the seventh day; therefore the Lord blessed the sabbath day and made it holy.~~~
“For in six days the Lord made the heavens and the earth, the sea and all that is in them…”
God said that.
God didn’t say that He RE-made the heavens and the earth, the sea and all that is in them.
God didn’t say that He made them 4.5 billions ago and then made man 40,000 years or so ago.
Nope.
Actually God did not say WHEN he made them.
But He did say that He did make them in six days, and in that six days He made everything, including man.
God said it.
Regarding the words “tailless” and “godless”.
I am tailless. I have no tail. It doesn’t bother me for someone to call me tailless. My point of view, my desires, my moral code and my choices are all tailless.
Some people are godly and some are godless. The godless should not feel offended by the word “godless” (and I CERTAINLY am NOT implying that anyone is this conversation is godless). I am making a point.
The Industrialized West is primarily (not entirely) led by godless people. And godless people still think, sometimes quite clearly and very deeply. Their points of view are godless, their desires are godless, their moral codes are godless and their choices are godless.
Yet the godless still ask important questions. Like “How did everything get here?” And How did such a variety of flora and fauna become real?” The godless think their opinions are better than godly opinions. Like everyone else they don’t like to be told they are wrong.
I dare say this tension between the godly and godless is self-evident. The godless vast majority of the Industrialized West will present their opinions as the very best opinions possible. Like everyone else on the planet, they will not easily accept that they can be wrong.
The godly can look at the very same data and scientific laws and arrive at a totally different conclusion. The difference is that they believe what God says. Some slower, some faster, none perfectly.
While the problem of godlessness has been around since the very beginning (Enoch in Jude :14, 15), the final solution only comes with the physical return of Messiah.
In the meantime, the Messiah’s people will struggle with the dissonance between the godless and the godly. The difference in wisdom will ultimately be decided in favor of faith in what God has said and done.
While great care should be taken to believe and apply what God has said; equally great care should be taken before believing and applying what the ungodly have said.
These are some very interesting comments but yet there are those two plaguing words, create and made. According to Strong’s these words are different.
CREATED AND MADE
-Looking at the Differences when it comes to creation.
-The Gap theory has no Scriptural basis.
Genesis 1 In the beginning God created H1254 the heaven and the earth.
H1254 is the Hebrew word bara’ which means to create.
So let us look at where and how God uses this word. These verses are copied directly from Strong’s online.
Gen, 1:21 And God created H1254 great whales, and every living creature that moveth, which the waters brought forth abundantly, after their kind, and every winged fowl after his kind: and God saw that it was good.
Gen. 1:27 So God created H1254 man in his own image, in the image of God created H1254 he him; male and female created H1254 he them.
Gen. 2:3 And God blessed the seventh day, and sanctified it: because that in it he had rested from all his work which God created H1254 and made.
Gen 2:4 These are the generations of the heavens and of the earth when they were created, H1254 in the day that the LORD God made the earth and the heavens,
Okay let me stop right here for a moment. As noted, H1254 bara’ means to create and is used in Genesis 1:1 to tell us that God created the world. The other word Jess has brought up is the world ‘made’. And here in Genesis 2:3-4, this word is used twice, once in each verse.
And this word ‘made’ is Strong’s word H6213 ‘asah.
Gen. 2:3-4 And God blessed the seventh day, and sanctified it: because that in it he had rested from all his work which God created and made. H6213 These are the generations of the heavens and of the earth when they were created, in the day that the LORD God made H6213 the earth and the heavens,
Now notice that the words ‘create’ and ‘made’ are both used in both of these verses:
Gen. 2:3-4 And God blessed the seventh day, and sanctified it: because that in it he had rested from all his work which God created *H1254* and made. * H6213* These are the generations of the heavens and of the earth when they were created *H1254*, in the day that the LORD God made *H6213* the earth and the heavens,
The plain reading of this passage is that on the day God created He also made. And in reading from Exodus 20, where God says In six days He made the heavens and the earth and the sea and all that is in them, and rested on the seventh, and that likewise we should work six days and on the seventh rest, the plain reading and understanding is that God did BOTH His creating and making in that same 6 days.
In Gen. 1:21 God CREATED [not made as per the Scriptures] the living things in the sea and those in the air. He did this on the 5th day. According to the Scriptures, when were these sea creatures and flying creatures created, at Genesis 1:1 or later, on the 5th day?
On the 5th day. That would be within the 6 days God had created and made all things in heaven, in earth, and in the sea.
So let us look at the word ‘made’ H6213.
Gen. 1:7 And God made H6213 the firmament, and divided the waters which were under the firmament from the waters which were above the firmament: and it was so.
Were these things part of the heavens, the earth, and the sea? Yes. When are we told that God made tese things? According to Genesis 2:3-4 and Exodus 20, God created and made these things in the six days before He rested on the 7th.
Gen. 1:16 And God made H6213 two great lights; the greater light to rule the day, and the lesser light to rule the night: he made the stars also.
Are these two lights and the stars part of the heavens God made and created in the six days? Yes they are.
Now what the gap theory wants us to believe is that God made the world and then remade it. But it wouldn’t be just the earth that He remade, it would be all of the universe. It would be all of the creatures in the sky and sea.
Is there a single verse that tells us that God made animals and birds and vegetation and stars and light before the 6 day creation?
Nope. Not one.
So then the gap theory is simply speculation, NOT built on the Word of God, but built on the theories of secular science whose proponents are biased against God [for the most part and certainly as a community when taken as a whole and this would include most academic schools], and who areworking, for the most part, OUTSIDE the scientific theory, seeing how they neither have observed these things when they happened, nor can they repeat these things. They can not even fathom all of the complications and consequences of the theories they put forth, or of the actual events of which they really can’t ascertain. Likewise the math involved, the probabilities involved is so staggering and beyond astronomical, that it becomes obvious that their position is more faith based than fact based.
And the idea that the difference between the words ‘made’ and ‘create’ explain everything is ludicrous, as least as a pillar of promoting the ‘gap’ theory. I suggest that any that hold to that theory reconsider it completely and drop it.
Peace,
mike
Mike,
What do you say about all the fossils and seams of coal in the mountains and in the ground. Do you thing a plant can fossilize in 6 to 8 thousand years. How do you explain carbon dating. If you remember you and I are not suppose to be communicating. Maybe a few comments will not harm us.
Jess,
I will say I respect your gap theory views very much, but having said that you do know that you already have petrified forests at the site of Mt. St. Helens right? The flood would have laid down the fossil beds, and coal seams. And Carbon 14 is not accurate at all especially after you have a major barometric event like the flood.
Additionally, carbon 14 dating assumes at least the following: a) that the earth is old enough for the carbon ratio to be in a state of equilibrium in the atmosphere, and b) that the ratio is uniform throughout the atmosphere. ‘b’ is clearly not the case as is testable today and ‘a’ must be an assumption in order to prove itself, so it’s circular reasoning.
Additionally, carbon dating regularly has dramatically varied results. Scientists typically pick the results that already fit their model and dismiss the results that don’t fit. To use carbon dating as a proof for the age of the Earth is problematic as best.
Even still, Carbon 14 dating is only reliable (to the extent is, see Jim’s comment above) to several thousand years. Unfortunately if accurate it could date in an imprecise nature far enough back to give trouble to YEC, but not into 100,000 much less millions of years for OEC.
Further C-14 requires some form of remaining tissue to date. It cannot be used for rocks or even fossils. Although other radioactive isotopes might be used, even they are not reliable into the millions of years.
It is my understanding that C14 is easily accurate back to 20K years, and perhaps a little farther. Certainly enough to be problematic to the YEC view. But if one simply declares that science invalid, then it will not be convincing.
Bill,
I don’t think there is anything one could say that would be “convincing” that would convince any person who doesn’t believe in God that God supernaturally created the earth.
An OEC and a YEC agree that God supernaturally created the earth. The scientific community [as a whole and as an example here] does not accept God’s supernatural creating actions.
And from I have read, it is not just for *science* reasons. Therefore, at least not until Jesus returns, do I think that there ever will be a place where *science* and the Biblical account can be reconciled or put into a harmonious relationship.
Thus what YEC-ers and OEC-ers need to do is each follow their conscious as they allow the Spirit and the Word to guide them.
I think that you and are others are right, that the YEC will struggle much more with the scientific *evidence* than the OEC, but then the OEC struggle much more with the Biblical evidence. It is the nature of the problem. I think it will get worse for both groups as to the science.
much peace,
mike
Mike: Some scientists are godless, no doubt. But not all. But even for scientists who have faith, they cannot insert God into the scientific process, because when they do it ceases to become science. YEC, as I think Ken has conceded, is not evidence based. It is not, as you assert, simply biblically based, but rather based on a particular biblical interpretation. As Dr. Keithley points out in his article, YEC is a relatively recent occurrence. That doesn’t make them wrong. I just bring it up to point out that many Christians, for a lot longer, have not had a problem with an old earth view. We OECs believe we have both science and the bible. We don’t concede the biblical ground to the YECers.
Here is a question: Would anything convince you that the earth is really old?
It just seems to me that we like science when it agrees with us and disparage it when it doesn’t. It’s a little too convenient. Right now science has not located a genetic basis for homosexuality. H’ray Science! What happens if it does? (I’m not predicting it will). Then we will hear about godless scientists with an agenda.
Bottom line, I believe God speaks to us through revelation and creation. Fallible theologians help us out with the revelation and fallible scientists help us out with the creation. Since God is the author of both, I expect them to be compatible.
Bill,
Thanks for your reply.
I agree, not all scientists are godless.
I doubt anything will convince me that the earth is old.
I recognize that OEC are Bible lovers too. Just as much as I am. It is not your lack of integrity in Bible reading I was speaking about, for I do not doubt your sincerity, but that your interpretation is influenced by the other facts you feel are relevant.
As far as YEC goes, I am not like those who seek to pry bar the scientific evidence into a YE theory. I simply believe what I read in the Bible, and it tells me, *note me*, that God created the universe in 6 days. The genealogies seem to indicate that the earth is young. It tells me that God created Adam aged, the trees aged, and the flowers and animals aged. That Adam was not aged in appearance but in his mind as well, allows me to gather that the earth and all creation was created aged.
This theory cant be proved or disproved, but it certainly is Biblically based.
Up to about 500 years ago, people thought the world was young. They relied on the Bible and ancient philosophers. And about 200 years ago, they thought it old, this due to Darwin and science. So YEC has been around a while, but some of its adherents are using different agendas to apologize for it.
mike
Carbon 14 is not used to determine the age of the earth. C14 cannot be used to date inorganic material such as rocks and fossils.
It’s true that C14 cannot determine the age of the earth and I’m sorry if I seemd to imply that. On the other hand many people, even scientists, often use it (erroneously) as evidence that the earth is very old.
No misunderstanding on my part Jim, and I think Bill is of the same view (though, I cannot speak for him). The original comment made reference to C-14 dating used as evidence for an Old Earth. You correctly pointed out that it would be prudent to consider the validity of C-14 considering the assumptions that must be made for C-14 dating to be useful.
I in general agreement with you that one also must consider the usefulness of C-14 dating as evidence of an Old Earth in that it is only useful to several thousand years (far enough back to give YEC problems but not out of the realm of possibility for them), and that C-14 cannot be used for any thing apart from tissue.
My point is the same as I have made throughout this comment stream. One needs to consider the evidence given to them, and account for its validity and what does and does not indicate.
In summation both you and I are making the same point but from different perspectives: C-14 cannot be used as evidence for an old earth.
Jim,
Are you saying at Mt. Saint Helen’s there are already trees that have been turned to solid stone. I haven’t heard this, it sounds ridiculous. If it is true, I will have to reconsider some things. I will check on it.
It wasn’t Jim who was saying that l, it was me.
Watch this short video. Makes sense in only one scenario. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aFC9EF81COU
Les, the only way this link makes any sense is if you believe that the speaker generates things that he knows are not true and then tells them to the world in an effort to deceive. If this was not a listener’s opinion at the start of the video, it certainly should be by the end of it.
I grew up in a part of the country with soil that is similar to Mt. St. Helens–it is a soft soil and is easily eroded. We have gullies on (small hills) that are similar to those around Mt. S.H.–just ot as deep–and they form quickly if you farm carelessly. We had small hills were I grew up, there are small gullies. The earth and ash flows from a volcanic eruption are almost fluid and are so very easily eroded. Of course they find impressive gullies there on those mountains.
To try to link the cause of The Grand Canyon and the erosion at Mt. S.H. would only be honestly done by a person who had never gone to both places.
The speaker also mentions one “fact’ that is obviously untrue. He says that the blast produced material moving at 100 mph. How far would the ash/earth go if it was moving at 100 mph. Think of pitching a baseball as a good reference.
I don’t understand why “The Scablands” of Eastern Washington is not cited as proof of the flood. The land there was honestly shaped (with gullies that are several hundred feet deep) by repeated flows of water out of Montana. Of course there is a much simpler explanation for those flows of water–glaciers blocked flow of water out of Montana and much of the state flooded. Then the water broke through the glacier. There was an impressive “flash flood” that shaped “The Scablands” so it fits the name. Happened several times. It is an ugly area (speaking as a farmer).
If you listen to the speaker carefully, he says the trees “have started to petrify.” He does not say that there are petrified trees there. Petrified trees are commonly found in areas that were covered by volcanic ash. I am a bit surprised that they have not been found in the Mt. S.H. area since that has been volcanic for at least 6K years.
The only people who could possibly believe this speaker are those who are convinced he is right to begin with. He offers no information. He makes random statements that somewhat support what he wants to say and then quickly moves on without offering any supporting information or giving any time for evaluation of his statements.
Bennett. I’m not a scientist and I’ve been to none of the places mentioned. I’m not even sure who this speaker is. But he echoes this guy who has been there, studied and is no geological slouch.
Steven A. Austin, Ph.D.
Creationist Geology Professor (USA)
Education
B.S. (Geology), University of Washington, Seattle, WA,1970
M.S. (Geology), San Jose State University, San Jose, CA, 1971
Ph.D. (Geology), Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA, 1979
But maybe you’re a Ph. D. geologist too and just haven’t told me and are just reeling me in. 🙂
Les, I’m an industrial chemist by trade (now retired) but happen to have been to both the places mentioned (Mt. S.H. and The Grand Canyon). The speaker I saw in your link appeared to be the fellow from AIG–an organization that I have nothing but disrespect for. I feel that they generate words that they know are false and then spread them with the intent to deceive.
My exposure to geology is fairly wide but relatively shallow (mile wide/foot deep). But I have seen lots of rocks and layers of rocks. And I like to read about rocks. A vacation that I recommend is to do the Utah Canyons. You start at Arches and go toward the Grand Canyon. Layers of rock keep appearing as you move from one park to the next–as more of the “top” has worn away. And eventually you get to the Grand Canyon where you can see them all, from the sandstone on the top to the green schist that the Colorado river cut into most recently.
But you may feel that the Grand Canyon could have been prevented by contour ploughing. I encourage the Canyons vacation. You do see some impressive rock formations and colors. You can get a book on geology at Arches and by the time you get to Grand Canyon you can name the major layers just by the color. Knowing the names does not mean you are an OEC. But looking at the rocks makes it difficult to be a YEC person, seems to me.
Bennett,
I wish I could get there some day and see the Grand Canyon. I know I would be impressed.
I don’t doubt for a minute your faith nor your earnest quest for the truth. As a brother in Christ we should assume the best of each other in our quests for the truth.
“I feel that they generate words that they know are false and then spread them with the intent to deceive.”
These words of yours about our brothers at AIG are very strong and frankly below a Christian’s calling to love one another, ” Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.” Brother I would caution you in such rhetoric about brothers that calls into question their motives and actually accuses them of intentional deception.
Your brother,
Les
I saw a debate between that fellow and Hugh Ross.
Hugh Ross did an admirable job, and sure was the better debater. And the other feller was more of a dogmatic insisting that if you believed in any death before the Fall you were heretic. I thought he went too far.
The YEC guy was a little slow on the uptake [at least as compared to Hugh] and failed to comprehend just what answer he could give to counter Mr. Ross.
Whether he was a AIG guy, I just don’t know. But he was more of lecture speaker who does better with a set speech. In the fray, he lost his way. I, who had looked at a few of his lectures talks, knew he had better answers than what he gave.
But still, and sadly, I was quite disappointed to hear him call Ross a heretic and stick to it after a reasonable reprimand from the moderator. Mr. Ross is clearly a Bible lover and a Christian.
peace all,
mike
Les, I really wish I could come up with another explanation for what they say. However, I can find no other for anyone who claims to honestly examine the information available and presents it in the manner they do.
Jess,
Brother and fellow worker for our Lord,
I suspended my communication with you because I thought you weren’t being straight with me, and you certainly wanted answers but you failed to answer my questions. Maybe I should not have thought those things, but I chose to not ‘argue’ with you and instead communicate with others whom I agreed with and disagreed with.
It is true that words can have various meanings, but it seemed to me that both in this thread and another, that you were not being fair in which meaning you chose. Thus I decided that further conversation with you, at that time, would be argumentative and unproductive for nth of us. Possibly it was all me and my problem, and my weaknesses.
As to your question above, others have answered it as well, and most better, than I could have, so I refer you to their answers.
Peace in Jesus,
mike
Jess,
you asked…
~~What do you say about all the fossils and seams of coal in the mountains and in the ground. Do you thing a plant can fossilize in 6 to 8 thousand years. ~~
You haven’t told me much of what you believe. But from what you have said, here is what I have gathered:
God created the world in Genesis 1:1 and then later, millions, possibly billions of years later, re-MADE it as per the rest of Genesis 1.
Do I have you right?
One of my points, which you failed to address, [for in fact you addressed NONE of my points], is that in the six days God made the earth, He also made the heavens and the sun and the moon and the stars. So it seems to me that you are saying that in these millions, possibly billions of years that you call the GAP, either 1 of 2 things are true:
1] There was no heavens, no sun, no stars, no moon. That these things were nt yet made. Is this what you believe? or…
2] There was the sun, the moon, and the stars, but like the earth, God remade them all. Is this what you are saying?
I find both of these options terribly incredulous. Thus I find any the GAP theory the least attractive of any OEC theories, even evolution. That is because what is purported, or what I am gathering is an unreasonable thing for God to do. It is not supported by science or Scripture.
Furthermore, we read in Genesis 1:
Then God said, “Let there be light”; and there was light. 4 God saw that the light was good; and God separated the light from the darkness. 5 God called the light day, and the darkness He called night. And there was evening and there was morning, one day.
I guess there was no light in that millions, possibly billions of years of the GAP,or when God re-MADE the earth, He also re-MADE the heavens, the sun, the moon and the stars, so as to TURN OFF all sources of light. But Why? Again this is not supported by science or Scripture.
We read:
9 Then God said, “Let the waters below the heavens be gathered into one place, and let the dry land appear”; and it was so. 10 God called the dry land earth, and the gathering of the waters He called seas; and God saw that it was good
What can we surmise about the earth in the time of the GAP from these verses? [1] Either there was no dry land on the earth, or [2] God flooded the earth so He could separate the waters from the land. Is their scientific evidence He did this? Is their Biblical evidence to suggest that God flooded the earth in the six days so He could un-flood it? Nope for both.
11 Then God said, “Let the earth sprout vegetation, plants yielding seed, and fruit trees on the earth bearing fruit after their kind with seed in them”; and it was so. 12 The earth brought forth vegetation, plants yielding seed after their kind, and trees bearing fruit with seed in them, after their kind; and God saw that it was good. 13 There was evening and there was morning, a third day.
This God did during the six day creation. Was their no vegetation on the earth during the GAP period? Or did He kill it all off and then re-make it?
I already mentioned the sun, moon, and stars. And we could ask the same questions of the beasts of the fields, as we did of the vegetation.
Thus the GAP theory makes no sense to me at all. It answers not a single point of dispute between the Bible and what scientists purport. None. It is the least of all the OEC theories in terms of coherence to either science or the Bible.
So Jess, if you want a conversation, know that such a thing is a two way street. You have to address my points and answer my questions if you want me to address your points and answer your questions.
Assume I know nothing about your belief and then share it. And as you do, answer the questions I have asked and address the points I have raised.
your servant in our Lord,
mike
John Wylie,
According to what you have told me about trees being petrified in a short time and the several articles I have read about the process. Evidently the process can be done in a very short time. I’ll admit I was wrong. Do you have any idea what it takes for me to admit I am wrong about something? The answer is a miracle.
Jess,
(-:
Well Jess,
I certainly commend you for that brother. I have had to do the same thing several times on this blog.
Mike,
“The theory Ken is giving us is not new, although I do not know if it is new to him or not.”
No, the view is not new, but the request to discard the available and relevant evidence is both new and ridiculous.
“As to the “deceiving” you bring up. I think Ken has already addressed this, but let me hit a few points. The supernatural is many times observed as it happens, like Lazarus coming from the tomb, the man born blind seeing, the fish and loaves eaten by the thousands, the resurrection of the Lord, but they are not scientifically evidenced, in that after the event is over there is no scientific date left to verify the event’s veracity.”
What you say here has nothing to do with the deception that logically follows from the mature creation view. The deception is for example in God creating a world where there are millions of fossils that **appear** to have (but did not actually) die before mankind came on the scene. These evidences are then found by today’s scientists and they are not valid evidence if the mature creation view is true. As one YEC advocate of the mature creation view put it to me once: “God planted all of that to fool scientists!”. Well THAT is deceptive and seems contradictory to God being a God of truth.
”Now what Ken, and others before him, is putting forth is a theory that, if true, reconciles the evidence scientists find with the words of God we take as truth.”
Actually it does not reconcile the evidence with the Young earth Creationist INTERPRETATION of scripture: what it does is eliminate the evidence of an old universe (the evidence is not real and valid as it suggests an old universe when in fact the universe was created a few thousand years ago).
This is not reconciling evidence with the YEC interpretation, this is eliminating the evidence.
It is in fact a desperate attempt to maintain the YEC interpretation at all costs (including throwing out the evidence, and suggesting God planted the evidence to fool people).
One can take Genesis 1-2 as “the words of God we take as truth” and not advocate a YEC interpretation of Genesis 1-2. THAT appears to be incomprehensible to some advocates of YEC. Again, in their minds they equate their interpretation of scripture with scripture (and they are not the same at all).
“What is assumed is that there is no supernatural creation as per the plain reading of the Bible tells us, but instead, the Bible is either just wrong, or that it is not telling us plainly the truth and must be apologized away to bring it in line with the physical evidence.”
One does not have to apologize away things to hold to a non-YEC interpretation of Genesis. One can hold that the universe is old, that Adam and Eve are actual supernaturally created persons (which allows you to take both the Bible seriously and the findings of science seriously (Hugh Ross is an example of a person who takes this position). In this view there is no conflict between the Biblical text and the findings of science.
It is ***only*** the ***YEC interpretation*** of the text that is contradicted by the findings of science.
“In this case, the evidence is taken as more true than the plain reading of the Bible.”
Again I spoke of the “plain reading” of the scripture in a previous post, and it is not the plain reading of you or I or other twentieth century folks, it is the plain reading of the first readers (i.e. Jews who were leaving Egypt and its false gods, false theologies, false philosophies). They did not have science nor were they concerned about science and they were not even concerned about how old the universe is. It is the twentieth century reader like yourself that is concerned about the age of the universe, how to reconcile the findings of science with a YEC interpretation of Genesis.
“But the deception is not in Ken’s theory, it is in the unbelieving interpretation of the evidence. “
No, the theory if true has God planting false evidence of an old universe when he knows perfectly well that it points to an old universe.
A good and brief article that makes this very clear is by Greg Koukl here:
http://www.reasons.org/articles/star-light-the-age-of-the-universe
“Unbelieving, that is, in the plain reading of the Bible on this matter.”
And again, the “plain reading”: is that of a twentieth century person trying to defend Christianity from attacks by unbelieving scientists or a first reader/Jewish person dealing with the false ideas of Egypt at that time who didn’t even have science or science concerns?
“Now I think you can admit that since God made Adam and the Garden mature, that it is possible that God made the earth mature. That in making a tree mature, it would also have the rings in it that depicted its age.”
We are not talking about what is possible, we are talking about what is best supported by available and relevant evidence. Mike you also seem to be missing the distinction between apparent maturity and apparent age (Koukl talks about that as well). As one earlier poster said: it is possible that God created the whole thing moments ago and planted false memories in all of our minds so that we think the world is more than a few moments old. One could argue THAT is **possible**, but again the issue is what is probable based upon the available evidence that we have.
“So if one starts with the idea that God made a mature world, then one is not deceived by the physical evidence that depicts a mature [long-aged] world and universe.”
No, it is deceptive read Greg Koukl’s brief article to see how this is so.
If the world has lots of evidence of death (i.e. fossils) before mankind existed, when in fact none of this death actually occurred, that **is* deceitful.
And let me briefly ask you a question that I never get a reasonable response from YEC’s on. You argue that Adam brought sin into the world and so no death or sin existed previous to the fall of Adam and Eve.
You talk about the fall of Adam, but why don’t you also talk about the fall of Satan???
Satan had to have fallen into sin before Adam fell in order to be coming to Adam to tempt him to sin.
When Satan came and tempted Adam and Eve and asked “Did God really say?” Wasn’t that sin?
Wasn’t Satan sinning by questioning God’s word and authority?
Wasn’t the fall of Satan before the fall of mankind?
And if that is true, which it has to be, then Satan is the one who first brought sin and death into the world, correct?
“As to Moses and your point, I agree somewhat. But there is the rest of the Bible to read and to accept input from. And in reading all the Lord has to say in His Word about the Genesis early accounts, I think the WHEN is established.”
No, this is not true at all, just as there is no statement in Genesis that the earth was created on such and such a date, or a few thousand years ago, neither is there any other text anywhere in the OT or NT that says this either.
“As to Genesis being an apologetic, okay. But can’t God have His Word written that both addresses the present needs of His people and His timeless truths so that later on, His people can learn and understand Him and themselves in a greater way?”
Yes, the timeless truths that are present in Genesis 1-2 not only refute early false ideas (the Egyptians were polytheistic) but also refute false ideas that are presented today as well. Some examples, Genesis 1-2 refutes Atheism (the claim there is no God); refutes polytheism (the claim there are many gods or more than one); refutes the Materialist claim that matter has existed forever (No, matter was created by God out of nothing); refutes materialism (the claim that only the material exists); refutes the materialistic claim that life comes from non-life by chance (God created life, including mankind directly); refutes dualism (the idea there are two gods that compete with one another and their competition brings about the world); refutes animism (that animals or planets ought to be worshipped as gods: No, they were all created by the one true God); etc. The “present need” of His people not addressed in Genesis 1-2 is the age of the universe. The age of the universe was not something the first readers needed to know and they did not have science. We have science and if we want to know how old the universe is the evidence is plentiful and varied.
“As to your points made in connection to men like Hugh Ross:
I plead ignorance to what Hugh believes. The conclusions of scientists for the most part could be off only because they begin at the wrong point. They begin at a world that began as a primordial goo and evolved into a mature planet and that given that, of course the evidences they find collaborate their hypothesis. But that doesn’t san that they might ignore the clues that don’t fit their hypotheses because they can’t see the relevance of them.”
But again you assume that the purpose of Genesis is to speak on science when it is not. Genesis is very simple and clear: the one true God brought the universe into existence and He is the source of all life. It does not do well as a science text though it does extremely well as an apologetic against all sorts of false ideas the first readers were dealing with.
Also Mike are you aware that in ancient writings sometimes they were concerned with a thematic presentation of ideas rather than a chronological presentation of ideas (i.e. chronological means in the correct order in regards to time, thematic means presenting a theme or idea and not being concerned about the actual chronology). There is an interpretation called the framework view which takes this distinction very seriously. So the first three days are God creating and preparing things (e.g. he creates and prepares the heavens; he creates the sea), and then the next three days are God filling these things which had been created and prepared (e.g. God puts the planets and stars in the heavens; he fills the seas with sea creatures). In that scenario the concern of Moses would not be the chronological order but the thematic presentation that God created all things.
“I agree that YEC people have attacked OEC people and labeled them as unbelievers. Again, this is not an issue we should divide on now if ever. “
Then why do they keep doing it??? Isn’t that divisive and sinful behavior???
“As to the “other major problem,” you see, I really have no answer to that. What if OEC is wrong? And young people learn to put science over God’s Word?”
Again it is not putting science over God’s Word, if the Bible is not interpreted in a YEC way. The YEC interpretation ***is*** contradicted by the findings of science. That does not show the Bible to be wrong it shows YEC to be wrong. You seem to equate YEC with the Bible text (“And young people learn to put science over God’s Word?”).
The Bible text is one thing, YEC interpretation is another. I can reject YEC without rejecting the Bible. People get all bent out of shape when they equate their interpretation of the Bible with the text of the Bible and then their interpretation is challenged (whether by scientific findings, alternative interpretations such as the gap theory or John Sailhammer’s view, etc. etc.).
“Let us pray for each other and for each camp that God will lead us all into truth and understanding, trusting Him to work out all things for the good of His people.”
It seems that God may have answered that prayer already. He created an orderly world that can be studied scientifically. And these findings can be a great blessing to humanity and have been (see especially in areas like technology, medicine, some diseases which killed or were debilitating have been eliminated through science, we can take airplanes anywhere in the world, take the gospel worldwide).
As Christians we ought never to be afraid of the truth, as the truth of scripture is not going to contradict the truth of nature as the same person is the author of both. God gives scripture and God created the world, what He gives in scripture (properly interpreted) is not going to contradict His creation (properly interpreted). If there appears to be a conflict, then there is a problem with our interpretation of scripture or interpretation of nature somewhere.
“You said…
“I understand what he is attempting to do: but it is a complete failure as it recommends not using available and relevant evidence something no rational person who seeks truth will really want to do.”This is speaking about ken’s theory and its goals.
But the Gospel truth isn’t made real to a person by rational worldly means, for we read in 1st Corinthians 2:”
You are changing the topic, the topic is not whether or not people can understand the gospel without the Spirit’s help (they cannot). No, the topic is what do we do with the available evidence (that both unbelievers and believers) can access and understand via scientific investigation. That evidence suggests the universe is very old. It is not a case of only unbelievers believing that, it is a case of what are the findings of science.
“As to the final two paragraphs, I concede that Genesis by itself does not tell us the WHEN.”
And neither does any other text in either the OT or the NT.
It seems to me Mike that your primary mistake is that you equate your preferred interpretation of Genesis with the text of Genesis. So in your mind those who challenge your interpretation are challenging the truth of scripture. Not accurate or true at all, again the scripture is inerrant, infallible and revelation: our interpretations of scripture are not inerrant, infallible or revelation.
Robert
Robert,
May His peace fill your heart and soul.
Gosh sir, I just can’t tell you if the evidence is being interpreted properly or not. It seems you assume it is.
And it seems that you use such secular evidence to interpret the Word of God.
That doesn’t make you a heretic, or an unbeliever. Not at all. You are welcome to fellowship with me in my church because you love the Lord and His gospel.
I think that when the truth is fully known, [and if I am right about a young earth] then we will all see that there has been no deception whatever. None. What we will see is that men blinded by sin, and blinded by the god of this age, missed some truths that were staring them right in their faces.
Now this is true spiritually. Look at the Jewish people who crucified the Lord. There He was, right there among them, and they could not recognize the truth. Look at the supernatural works He did, the authoritative teachings He gave, and still, most missed the visitation of their long awaited Messiah. But some who missed Him came to faith in Him later.
Now the physical and the spiritual have their parallels. The supernatural has been witnessed, but not always understood.
So let me challenge you to discuss ONLY the Bible. Show me how it supports, nay, how you derive your view from it, so thus you cannot be accused of rendering judgment on the Word of God.
His name is glorious,
mike
Mike,
“Gosh sir, I just can’t tell you if the evidence is being interpreted properly or not. It seems you assume it is.
And it seems that you use such secular evidence to interpret the Word of God.
That doesn’t make you a heretic, or an unbeliever. Not at all. You are welcome to fellowship with me in my church because you love the Lord and His gospel.”
Alright Mike the phrase that is a real problem for me in your words here is “such secular evidence”. There is no legitimate distinction that we could call “secular evidence” versus “non-secular evidence”.
There is only reliable evidence and unreliable evidence.
An illustration may help explain my perspective regarding the available and relevant evidence. Sometimes in a court situation the Judge will say to the jurors after some damaging evidence has been presented: “the jurors will disregard that remark”. While I understand why the judge does that (i.e. to prevent the jury from hearing prejudicial evidence), when it comes to determining the truth about something I say all of the available and relevant evidence ought to be in. I am “all in” regarding knowing and using the available and relevant evidence.
Some try to arbitrarily demarcate between the Bible versus all other evidence. But this distinction breaks down as even when it comes to the Bible we have to go to outside evidence to properly understand and interpret the Bible. For example, when it comes to the original languages (Hebrew for most of the OT, Aramaic for parts of the OT and Greek for the NT) the Bible ITSELF does not provide for us the rules of grammar for these languages. We have to get those rules of grammar from outside of the Bible (even including “secular sources” and documents for the meanings and usages of words and phrases). So the claim that we only come to truth through the Bible is neither true nor practical. We cannot even understand the biblical languages without going outside the Bible to do so. This means the issue is not whether or not we will consider evidence outside of the Bible, but whether or not this evidence is relevant and reliable.
What I find to be objectionable and not something Christians should do is to be arbitrary when it comes to the evidences provided by scientific findings. Some Christians have no trouble with the findings of science as long as these findings do not contradict their interpretation of some Biblical text. Seems to me that the issue is to figure out if this evidence from science is reliable, is it relevant and is it available. If it is then we should make use of it, just as we make use of information about the original languages (if it is reliable, relevant and available).
Seems to me your phrase “secular evidence” suggests that if the scientific evidence contradicts something you want to believe, then you label it “secular evidence” and reject it, ignore it, discount it, don’t deal with it properly. In doing so you are like the judge saying the jury should ignore that last comment. Well I don’t want to ignore evidences if they are reliable, relevant and touch on an issue being considered.
“So let me challenge you to discuss ONLY the Bible. Show me how it supports, nay, how you derive your view from it, so thus you cannot be accused of rendering judgment on the Word of God.”
This statement is problematic for the reasons stated above.
My approach is not to limit myself only to the Biblical text when attempting to interpret a Biblical text. Rather, it is to examine the available and relevant evidence concerning some issue. Whatever evidence that is helpful ought to be carefully considered. The Bible text does not tell us when the universe was created by God (only that God created it out of nothing). So since the text does not tell us when, then we need to consider other available evidence that may shed light on this. Scientific investigation in multiple areas does provide evidence of the age of the universe. That evidence suggests that the universe is old. If I confine myself to what the Biblical text alone presents then I would be an “agnostic” regarding the age of the universe (not knowing whether it was old or young).
Now to allay your fears or concerns, when it comes to miracles, science cannot prove or disprove a miracle. Science speaks about ongoing natural processes.
Science can tell us the temperature of the ocean water at the beach we plan to visit and can give us an approximation of how high the waves will be. But it cannot say anything about whether or not a miracle happens today at that beach! And if a miracle does happen today at the beach science cannot tells us how or why it occurred. So we do not have to fear that science will disprove or eliminate miracles.
What **is** a threat to miracles and Christianity is the **philosophy** of materialism that claims there is no supernatural, no God and hence no possibility of miracles.
But materialism is not science per se.
It is true that currently many practicing scientists hold to materialism as their personal philosophy. But we do not throw out the findings of science because many of the scientists hold to materialism. Rather, the question is whether or not a particular scientific finding is true or not.
Now take what I have said here and ask what is its relevance to interpreting Genesis 1-2? Scientific findings can tell us the universe is old (there is lots of varied evidence for that): but science can say nothing about the miraculous acts of God that were involved in Genesis 1-2. Now materialists who are scientists who also hold to Darwinian evolution will try to use their philosophy and evolutionary beliefs against Christianity and Genesis 1-2, but that is not the findings of science, that is their personal philosophy speaking.
Christians need not fear the findings of science, again the author of both scripture and nature is God. What he says in scripture will not contradict what he did with nature (and vice versa). No the real enemy of Christians is not science but the philosophy of materialism.
Robert
Robert,
I read the article you posted the link to.
When we use the word mature or aged, are we not speaking in relative terms?
So let us say that Adam and Eve and baby soft faces, does that mean they looked like babies? So if one were to see Adam and Eve, as you imagine them to have been, would they have looked more mature than a baby? Would they have looked older than a baby? I think you would answer yes to both. They would have looked like adults to you and not as babies.
Now a 30 year old looks more aged than a baby. And a 60 year old looks more aged than a 30 year old. Likewise, 30 year old looks more mature than a baby, and a 60 year old looks more mature than a 30 year old. And usually they are as well.
Now as to starlight. The truth of the matter is that light is still an unknown entity. Its speed is not constant and can be sped up and slowed down by humans, much less other variables, which include black holes and God.
Here is a problem those who rely on science and its assumptions just don’t get: man does not know all the variables, all the events, or all the processes that occurred as they seek to understand creation. And yet they are willing to use the *facts* of science, [which have had change, have they not?] as hard evidence to determine what the Bible is telling them.
And you berate me for ignoring the evidence of science as if it is some absolute truth that is as sure as the Word of God despite man’s inadequacies and limitations in their explorations of creation.
So on the one side I have a secular and an increasingly anti-god movement declaring it has facts and reliable evidence even as it continues to change and revise them, and on the other side, I have the Word of God which in its plain language tells me a whole other picture.
Now Robert, I am not saying you hate the Word. I am not saying you don’t think the Word true. I am not saying that your dependence on science makes you any less a believer in Jesus. Whatever i am in Christ is all of Him, and I have not one iota of reason to boast in me: not in my salvation, nor in my understandings. And neither do I wish to be your judge.
But when I stand before my Judge and I tell Him that I depended on His Word alone above all the din and cacophony the earth puts out, I am not going to worry that He will scold me for not listening to a community that is mostly anti-god materialists. Not all, but mostly.
So I encourage you to continue to listen to His Spirit and His Word and seek to continue to walk in obedience. And may His mercy, grace ,and blessings fall on you.
-mike
Robert,
You just don’t get it, do you? I have challenged the relevance of that evidence, and you are responding with repeated assertions that it is relevant. I gave you an argument, so you’ll need to come up with an argument of your own and not mere assertions. If God can create in an instant a world that, by all scientific standards, is billions of years old from the first moment of its existence, then what good will the evidence do you?
Now, that is funny! You object to the deceptive nature of having things in the world that appear to have died but did not actually die, and yet, I assume you have no objection to Jesus raising Lazarus from the dead so that he appeared to have never died but did actually die?! If evolutionists are correct that evolution is just as much a natural process as anything else, then God need not have “planted” any fossils or other such evidence, but only needed to step into the middle of the process as His point for creating by fiat all that is. To object to this would be to object to creating a world of natural processes already in progress. It is an objection that can never move beyond opinion. Yet, we see Scripture affirming that God made Adam and Eve as adults and not as infants—clearly they were created in the middle of the normal aging process rather than at the beginning. And Scripture affirms such things as trees in the garden already with fruit on them. Bread takes time to make, and yet Jesus created the extra abundant bread to feed the 5000, making it look as if the bread had been baked when it actually was not baked. Etc., etc.
I did not say that God planted evidence to fool people. However, God will not be found by physical evidence or proven by scientific inquiry—He requires faith. The act of looking to physical evidence to answer the origins question is an inherently skeptical act, for which the skeptic is responsible for his own deception in spite of his inner knowledge that the world was created by a supernatural God—One who left us a written account of what He did and when, but an account that could in all honesty never be plain or clear enough for those bent on looking to the physical evidence.
Rom. 5:12 tells us that sin came into the world—not just into humanity—by one man, Adam, and death by sin. Of all God creatures, only man was both spirit and body. The animals were only body and no spirit, and so they could not sin. The angels were only spirit and no body. This is why man and not angels were given dominion over the physical creation. Only when a man sinned could the physical world be corrupted so that everything now grows old and decays and dies. Man’s sin brought sin spiritual death and sinful tendency into the spiritual nature of man, and it brought the principle of physical death and corruption into the physical world, of which the physical nature of man is a part. When satan sinned, he was not a physical being but only spiritual. Therefore, his sin had no effect on the physical creation any more than it had an affect on his own physical body (since he did not have one). If he had had a physical body, then fallen angels would have reaped the same physical mortality and subjection to aging, sickness and injury that man reaped for his sin. If satan coming to earth after sinning had somehow corrupted the physical world by his presence, then it’s very strange that when God supposedly recreated the world, satan was still here, as if the rule no longer applied and his presence no longer caused chaos. And yet, not even the sin of Adam is said to have caused the need for a complete re-creating to fix the chaos.
Ken, with all due respect this just doesn’t make sense. Into the middle of what? God steps into the middle of an imaginary creation and makes it real? The sentence is irrational. How are fossils of imaginary dinosaurs who didn’t actually live or die not a deception? A recently created but mature looking earth doesn’t need fossils. What are the fossils for?
Bill,
“Into the middle of what?” —Into the middle of what would otherwise have been those natural processes responsible for bringing about this level of maturity or “age.” Just as in the case of Adam, created as an adult, God stepped into the middle of what would otherwise have been those natural processes that result in adulthood. The imaginary part is in the minds of those who approach the question from the skeptical view of looking to the evidence to provide the answer. Even though the plain testimony of Scripture is that God miraculously created everything relatively recently, the scientific skeptic imagines that such natural processes found today can reliably be extrapolated back billions of years into the past.
You say that a recently created but mature earth wouldn’t need fossils, but evolutionists would disagree with you. Nevertheless, let me remind you that I don’t really think that God created an earth with a fossil layer already present. The purpose of the arguments I’ve presented here are to point out that the most important part of the belief in a recent creation is that which Scripture affirms: a literal, 6-day creation by fiat, approximately 6000 years ago. All else is potentially negotiable. In other words, if someone is insistent on evolution (or if new evidence is presented such that I can no longer deny it), then God created the world with all natural processes—including evolution—in progress. No problem, and no compromise of the Biblical truth. If someone insists that the age of the earth can be proven to be billions of years old, then God created an earth that was billions of years old at its first moment of existence. You see, if we tie up our faith in what is revealed with the details that were only deduced, then we might run into problems if any of the details are ever refuted. Not only should we stick to the text, we should stick to the basics of the revelation—creation out of nothing, by fiat, and the plain chronology that goes with it. Therefore, I can hold to YEC, but with a foundation that is unassailable by any so-called evidence. Furthermore, by effectively separating the evidence issue from the recent, supernatural creation issue, the Old-Earth position is left with nothing stronger than the objection to the supposed deception of God in creating a mature earth. While that objection is not without any weight whatsoever, it is inadequate to justify resorting to the kind of grasping-at-straws alternatives to the plain, straightforward, common-sense reading of Gen. 1.
I have no problem with God creating bones of dead animals in a fossil layer, if that’s what He sees as appropriate. I do have a problem with rejecting the plain, straightforward reading of Scripture merely because I don’t think He should have created such a fossil layer.
But personally, I’m convinced that the great, global, catastrophic flood was responsible for the fossil layer and all associated things.
Ken,
“You just don’t get it, do you? I have challenged the relevance of that evidence, and you are responding with repeated assertions that it is relevant. I gave you an argument, so you’ll need to come up with an argument of your own and not mere assertions.”
You have tried to eliminate the evidence by arguing let’s just set it aside because God could have created a mature creation that only has the appearance of being very old. What you have done is started with your conclusion (I want to believe the universe is 6,000 years old) and then sought to develop an argument that would support your conclusion (Oh, if God created the universe as a mature creation then it would appear to be very old though in reality it really is not, it is just 6,000 years old). That is not how we should be investigating things. The way we ought to do it is to gather the evidence that is reliable, relevant and available, and then develop our conclusions based upon that evidence. Ironically that is how it is done in science when science is practiced properly. And yet you take the exact opposite approach, start with the conclusion that you want to believe then see if you can develop an argument that proves your conclusion. It is not me that “doesn’t get it” it is you.
I used to work with the late Walter Martin in counter Christian cult ministry. The cults do exactly what you do: they start with the conclusions they want to believe and then look to support their conclusions using the Bible. So for the Mormons for example the conclusion they want to believe is that God started as a physical human person just like us. They then go to certain Bible verses to prove their view and also add extra- biblical texts like the Book of Mormon to further “prove” their conclusions. I call this the “pursuit of position” rather than the “pursuit of truth”. In the pursuit of position you start with the position you want to believe THEN you go looking for confirming evidence. If evidence contradicts your preferred conclusion you either eliminate the evidence or reinterpret it to fit your conclusion. In contrast the pursuit of truth is to allow the reliable and relevant and available evidence to be the basis of your conclusions. There is a big difference between someone seeking to confirm their position and someone trying to figure out what is really true.
“ If God can create in an instant a world that, by all scientific standards, is billions of years old from the first moment of its existence, then what good will the evidence do you?”
You are right, by your method you have successfully eliminated the relevant and available evidence. You have made your position true by default. Most of us can do this quite easily if we are allowed to eliminate evidence that contradicts our position. Imagine how successful a lawyer could be if all evidence against his client was eliminated from consideration at the outset. He may “win” his court case but by no means can his method be considered a pursuit of truth.
“Now, that is funny! You object to the deceptive nature of having things in the world that appear to have died but did not actually die,”
Right because as Greg Koukl makes clear in his article this is deceptive on the part of God. My God is a God of truth who invites me to pursue the truth, he is not deceiver.
“ and yet, I assume you have no objection to Jesus raising Lazarus from the dead so that he appeared to have never died but did actually die?!”
This is an absurd and irrational comment. Lazarus never appeared to have never died, he died. Everybody knew he had died and so when Jesus raised him everyone knew it was a miracle. No deception on the part of God in that at all.
“Bread takes time to make, and yet Jesus created the extra abundant bread to feed the 5000, making it look as if the bread had been baked when it actually was not baked. Etc., etc.”
No one is questioning that miracles take place, the issue has been the age of the universe. The biblical text tells us nothing about how old the universe is, scientific findings suggest the universe to be very old.
“However, God will not be found by physical evidence or proven by scientific inquiry—He requires faith.”
And the issue has not been how to prove God exists: the issue has been the scientific findings of an old universe that by your method you conveniently eliminate from consideration. And regarding proving God’s existence probably the top current apologist for the Christian faith, William Lane Craig, uses the big bang theory to prove that God must exist. The big bang proves the universe had a beginning, if the universe had a beginning and that cause is outside of the universe that cause is nonphysical, personal, powerful enough to create a universe: boy who does that sound like???
“The act of looking to physical evidence to answer the origins question is an inherently skeptical act, for which the skeptic is responsible for his own deception in spite of his inner knowledge that the world was created by a supernatural God”
Again, the issue has been the scientific findings for an old universe, findings by your method you eliminate from consideration.
Ken you still don’t get it when it comes to the fall of Satan. Satan fell before Adam and Eve did, that is an uncontestable fact. That snake that lied to Adam and Eve in the garden when it said you will not surely die. It lied, that is a sin. When it spoke airwaves came from its mouth producing the sounds that Adam and Eve physically heard. That is actual sin in the physical world before Adam and Eve fell. So you cannot argue that sin first entered into the physical world with the fall of Adam and Eve. Unless you deny the snake lied to them (which was a sin) and this sin was committed in the world (when the serpent lied the sound waves were real and heard by Adam and Eve (the snake did not communicate telepathically with them). Despite these facts Ken responds with:
“Rom. 5:12 tells us that sin came into the world—not just into humanity—by one man, Adam, and death by sin.”
Because of the facts of Genesis, that verse means that sin came into the realm of humanity through the fall of Adam and Eve, not the universe. If it did say that sin originated in the world with Adam and Eve then it would contradict the reality of the serpent lying in the garden of Eden. The fall of man brought sin into the experience of man. Sin had already occurred with the fall of Satan and the lies of the serpent.
“Of all God creatures, only man was both spirit and body. The animals were only body and no spirit, and so they could not sin.”
So the serpent did not sin?
Or was the serpent controlled by Satan and influenced to sin?
Did the serpent sin or not? If it did not then you deny what the text presents, if it did then sin did not originate in the world with Adam and Eve.
“The angels were only spirit and no body. This is why man and not angels were given dominion over the physical creation. Only when a man sinned could the physical world be corrupted so that everything now grows old and decays and dies.”
So when the serpent sinned by lying and speaking these lies into the world, the physical world was not corrupted by the sin of the serpent?
“Man’s sin brought sin spiritual death and sinful tendency into the spiritual nature of man,”
True.
“ and it brought the principle of physical death and corruption into the physical world, of which the physical nature of man is a part.”
No, some things had to have died previous to Adam’s sin. For example whales live off eating (and killing) microbes in the ocean. Whales were created before man, so are you claiming they did not eat until after man sinned? Some flies exist for less than a day, they were created by God before Man existed, they never ate either? And examples could be multiplied.
“When satan sinned, he was not a physical being but only spiritual.”
So how do fallen angels possess people then if they are only spiritual beings with no impact on the physical world?
And more importantly wasn’t Satan involved in the sinning of the serpent?
And again that sin by the serpent involved actual words actually physically spoken into the physical universe where they could then be heard by the actual physical ears of Adam and Eve.
“Therefore, his sin had no effect on the physical creation any more than it had an affect on his own physical body (since he did not have one).”
Nice try, you start with the assumption/belief that you want to believe that sin first originated and occurred in the physical universe with the sin of Adam and Eve. You then discount clear evidence (i.e. the serpent lying and physically speaking into the universe under the influence of Satan) because it does not fit what you want to believe. Pursuit of position rather than pursuit of truth again.
“If satan coming to earth after sinning had somehow corrupted the physical world by his presence, then it’s very strange that when God supposedly recreated the world, satan was still here, as if the rule no longer applied and his presence no longer caused chaos. And yet, not even the sin of Adam is said to have caused the need for a complete re-creating to fix the chaos.”
Actually some have suggested that Satan’s fall and messing with things may explain why there is predation (some animals that viciously attack others). It may also explain why God planted the garden and started with Adam and Eve there (things may have already been messed up outside the garden).
Regardless of these thoughts, the fact is the fall of Satan and sin occurred in the universe ****before**** Adam and Eve sinned. So the correct way to deal with Rom. 5:12 is to say that Adam and Eve brought sin and death into the human realm.
Robert
Robert:
Do you mind if I chime in?
There is only one truth. Correct Biblical interpretation and good “science” must ultimately converge to agreement. If not then one or both sides has a the problem:
(a) science experiments and the knowledge springing from science is giving wrong results due to instrumentation that is not sufficiently precise and/or theories that can’t be empirically supported are held due to bias on the part of the investigator.
(b) there is a problem with a person’s hermeneutics. For example, a person starts out with some position and then “force fits” a Biblical interpretation to support his pre-conceived view.
I see both of these mechanisms at work. That is why I have given up trying to discuss the age of the earth. People don’t have an open mind. Arguing this stuff is like talking to a wall. Both sides are to blame.
However, an honorable mention in using “ad hominem” argumentation goes to certain subset of people who hold to the young earth view. I was in the room when a well known YEC guy said, [this is a paraphrase but close] “holding to a correct creation model is a matter of Biblical authority . . . if you don’t hold to the YEC view you are rejecting the inerrancy of scripture”.
If anyone is interested I have the exact transcript as taken from an audio MP3 of this guy’s talk. I’ll post the transcript if it will facilitate learning.
The YEC view should stand or fall on its own merit. No one is making any progress in elucidating their views by demagoguery.
What’s next, “If you don’t hold to my view then you are a reprobate and you probably beat your wife.”?
I actually think that the YEC guys have some decent points. But their rhetoric is so shrill that I just have to walk away from them. Right now I’m neither a YEC guy or an OEC guy. For me to embrace the YEC view then I’m going to have to see that view argued on its merits. None of this “God tricked us” stuff.
If God is tricking us, then all of us, on all sides of the debate are wasting time because, by definition, we can’t know anything by observation. I just dropped a book on the floor. Am I being tricked into holding that he fell to the floor due to Newton’s law of universal gravitation?
In summary, I pay attention first to the message and then also to the messenger. Neither the YEC or the OEC side has the high ground.
Hello Roger,
“Do you mind if I chime in?”
Of course not, throughout this discussion your posts have been well stated and reasonable. I have agreed with a lot of what you have said.
“There is only one truth. Correct Biblical interpretation and good “science” must ultimately converge to agreement. If not then one or both sides has a the problem:
(a) science experiments and the knowledge springing from science is giving wrong results due to instrumentation that is not sufficiently precise and/or theories that can’t be empirically supported are held due to bias on the part of the investigator.
(b) there is a problem with a person’s hermeneutics. For example, a person starts out with some position and then “force fits” a Biblical interpretation to support his pre-conceived view.”
You are **absolutely** correct here. I said it in my earlier post that as God is the author of both scripture and creation, when properly interpreted they will not conflict. If we find a problem between scripture and nature then somewhere someone has misinterpreted either scripture or nature.
“I see both of these mechanisms at work. That is why I have given up trying to discuss the age of the earth. People don’t have an open mind. Arguing this stuff is like talking to a wall. Both sides are to blame.”
You may be right about this, the most irrational and some of the most hateful professing Christians I have ever seen were absolutely convinced their interpretation was correct and everybody else was wrong. But they don’t stop there, if you disagree with their interpretation you must not believe, be a “secularist”, be a compromiser, etc. etc. etc.
“‘However, an honorable mention in using “ad hominem” argumentation goes to certain subset of people who hold to the young earth view. I was in the room when a well known YEC guy said, [this is a paraphrase but close] “holding to a correct creation model is a matter of Biblical authority . . . if you don’t hold to the YEC view you are rejecting the inerrancy of scripture”. “
I have seen this kind of thing many, many times so at this point I do not trust these folks at all. One of their standard techniques is to argue that if you reject THEIR INTERPRETATION, then you are rejecting the Bible, rejecting the Bible’s authority. But this is so patently absurd it is amazing to actually hear it.
These same folks who pride themselves on holding to inerrancy are completely oblivious to the fact that one of the main architects of the inerrancy position (B.B. Warfield) held to inerrancy and strongly argued for inerrancy and yet was an old earth creationist! How can that be? They have no clue.
“If anyone is interested I have the exact transcript as taken from an audio MP3 of this guy’s talk. I’ll post the transcript if it will facilitate learning.”
I am curious which YEC leader was it? Ham?
‘The YEC view should stand or fall on its own merit. No one is making any progress in elucidating their views by demagoguery.”
Agreed.
“What’s next, “If you don’t hold to my view then you are a reprobate and you probably beat your wife.”?”
They actually say things that pretty much imply that.
“I actually think that the YEC guys have some decent points. But their rhetoric is so shrill that I just have to walk away from them.”
You are absolutely correct about their shrill rhetoric, that is why I am responding to you first before I deal with some other responses.
“ Right now I’m neither a YEC guy or an OEC guy. For me to embrace the YEC view then I’m going to have to see that view argued on its merits. None of this “God tricked us” stuff. “
I am sympathetic to any believer who thinks critically and carefully about their position. I don’t expect everybody to agree with me, that is not realistic, what I do like to see however is people who are rational, informed and unafraid of science or scripture being true. You can always tell those who are afraid of science as they will try to dismiss or ignore science and argue: let’s look only at what the Bible says. But this is dumb because those of us who had to study (and continue to study Hebrew and Greek) know that we do not merely know what these words mean from **only looking at the Bible**. But from looking at other extra-biblical evidence and texts concerning what these words mean. So to say you are only going to look at the Bible means only the English translation that you are going to ignore the original languages of scripture. That is simultaneously arguing that you are not going to use the grammatico-historical method of interpretation (which includes studying the original languages).
‘If God is tricking us, then all of us, on all sides of the debate are wasting time because, by definition, we can’t know anything by observation. I just dropped a book on the floor. Am I being tricked into holding that he fell to the floor due to Newton’s law of universal gravitation?”
Read that article that I cited from Greg Koukl he shows very clearly how the mature creation view leads to deceitfulness on the part of God. It also leads to some really absurd conclusions (e.g. supernovas are fictions).
“In summary, I pay attention first to the message and then also to the messenger. Neither the YEC or the OEC side has the high ground.”
That makes sense look at the evidence first before looking at the propaganda! 🙂
Robert
Eventually this thread is going to have to end. But I’d like to tie my ribbon on this but closing up some loose ends about some of the proponents of the YEC model.
There are only two things that have been going on here on SBC Voices in the last four years that really animate me:
A. The operation of the International Mission Board — funding sources, relations between/among the IMB staff and trustees etc.
B. The argument (and I guess we might as well acknowledge it is a heated argument with more heat than light) regarding YEC vs. OEC with all the attendant circular reasoning and ad-hominem attacks.
I dug around on my laptop and found the text of the speaker at the YEC conference. I just moved that speech to my main computer — the one that I am using right now.
I am NOT going to put this text up because I want to keep this discussion focused upon the issues — not personalities. Most of you could probably “reverse engineer” the text of the conference speech to identify the speaker. Also, the material could be copyrighted and I don’t want to take any reckless steps.
Here is an outline of the guy’s speech:
1. OEC guys don’t hold to inerrancy or authority to the Bible
2. OEC guys start out with a pre-supposition that “science” trumps the Bible. They might use the Bible a little but only if they can bend the Bible to meet their pre-conceived secular materialistic views.
3. The reason that we are now seeing the rise in secularism in America and the reason that seminaries and churches are loosing their theological mooring is due to the rise of materialism and so-called “science”. According to the speaker, Old Earth Creationism, Evolution, and Godless materialism go hand in hand. These views are causing a cancer on the church and we are reaping that whirlwind today.
—————————-
From my viewpoint the sad things are:
(1) This guy doesn’t really engage OEC vs YEC on its merits,
(2) He tosses out all of this red meat and probably 80% of his hearers gobble it up. No wonder for rank and file Baptists [and evangelicals generally] OEC is equated with apostasy.
If I was rich like Bill Gates, I’d rent the Chesapeake Arena downtown. I’d invite key OEC guys and key NEC guys and let them debate on the merits. I’d referee and if anyone started up ad hominem attacks I’d declare them out of bounds. Christianity, of all religions, should practice civility and seek the truth.
The tenor of the debate on this site — focusing with reasoned points on the issues — needs to be modeled more generally in Baptist circles. It could be that some otherwise decent argumentation receives a deaf ear because of guilt by association with extreme proponents on either side.
Roger Simpson Oklahoma City
Roger,
I agree. One caveat to your example a) above:
“(a) science experiments and the knowledge springing from science is giving wrong results due to instrumentation that is not sufficiently precise and/or theories that can’t be empirically supported are held due to bias on the part of the investigator.”
I would add: Not considering all the available evidence or not having all the evidence available. (Which ironically is my chief complaint with the original piece.)
I must point out that this demonstrates the limitations of science as we will never have all the evidence available. However, just because we do not have available all the evidence does not mean we should not strive to utilize science to understand the world that God created (or discard the evidence that we do have). We should just recognize its limitations.
Robert,
I’ll go first.
The Bible says that God created the world in 6 days.
In the Bible, the word yom when used with a number always means a singular day as opposed to any other period of time.
How long do you think God took to create the world, including man? And what is your Biblical support?
Thanks,
mike
Look, the “plain reading” of scripture bites us any number of times. Plain reading of certain verses tells us that baptism saves us, that salvation can be lost, that God keeps hail in a storehouse, that the sun goes around the earth, that the dead don’t know anything, the list goes on. “Plain reading” is not a slam dunk. Galileo banged his head against the plain reading of scripture. This is not an argument about inerrancy. It is about elevating our interpretation to inviolate status, ala AIG.
Bill,
I agree, it is not about inerrancy but about interpretation.
Each one of the examples you gave are things you don’t believe because in using Scripture to understand Scripture, you have decided to interpret these verses as something other than ‘plain’. Some are certainly metaphors that are meant to be taken plain.
So if you will, explain to me what Scriptures lead you not to accept, what it seems we agree on as the plain reading, of what I interpret Scripture to be saying about creation.
Notice that I said “what I interpret”. Throughout this discussion I have never denied that God loving, Word loving, brothers in Christ, could be true to their conscious and yet disagree with me on this subject.
But what I am asking, and what I am not receiving, is the Scriptural reasons why they disagree with me.
Instead I am receiving that they hold their Biblical view as biased by their understandings of what they would call the facts or evidences that scientists proclaim as true.
Now maybe that is a dead on approach. But for me it is wrong. Yet my encouragement to them is to continue to listen to the Spirit and the Word and walk in obedience.
Now take your statement that I am replying to.
Are you indicting all plain reading of the Scriptures?
Of course not. But did you even explain why this [my] certain plain reading is wrong? Nope.
So what then was the purpose in what you said?
Oops…
This line was missing the NOT…
Some are certainly metaphors that are meant to be taken plain.
Should have read:
Some are certainly metaphors that are NOT meant to be taken plain.
Mike: The purpose is to show that the “plain reading” is not only a matter of interpretation and opinion, it is not the penultimate standard of biblical fidelity. I will readily admit that what I know of science informs my reading of scripture, just as it does everyone who believes in heliocentrism and not geocentrism.
The bible says the heavens declare the glory of God, but I don’t see how that is possible in the YEC universe, because the light we see is not really from those stars in the sky, and the supernovas recorded throughout history couldn’t possibly have happened because there hasn’t been time enough for stars to age and die, and certainly not enough time for their light to reach us. It’s an illusion.
I don’t think people really think through the idea that there was no physical death of any living creature before Adam’s sin. Microbes would overwhelm the garden. What about all those animals that have fangs and claws? How many vegetarian fish are there in the world? Spiders? Tyrannosaurus Rex ate leaves and grass? It is just not credible. Mayflies only live 24 hours.
Can God do it that way? Sure, but I have no reason to think that He did. I have no problem allowing general revelation to inform my reading of direct revelation.
Bill,
I never said that plain reading was the only way to read the Bible faithfully.
And the earth revolving around the sun is an ongoing occurrence certainly within the realm of science to discern and inform. So science has a place in this world and it would be wrong to say that I am anti-science. I think it is fascinating just how much science has figured out in so many areas of our lives. But they did figure out those fascinating and intricate things that have led to new technologies and understandings in every secular field imaginable through certain methods that simply do not work, and are not designed to work, in the realm of the supernatural.
There then is my point. Science seeks to solve what happened in what I believe happened supernaturally. And, FOR ME, it is wrong to trust science, or use its input, to bias my understanding of the supernatural work of God.
FOR ME, it is wrong to trust science, or use its input, to bias my understanding of the supernatural work of God.
Next you speak of the stars. You say a certain thing could not possibly happen if YEC…
Lets be real here. Are you not really saying, that given what science is telling you, and what they and you know NOW, you see no way for it to be possible.
But you didn’t say it that way. You pronounced that it had to be a certain way and if I say it is different, it isn’t really God’s glory being displayed but it is but an illusion. You *know* this because science has told you it has certain *facts* or *evidence*. Thus you have put your trust i science to declare how wrong I am. But of course this assumes that science knows the WHOLE story, and has ALL the variables, and its instruments and formulas are 100% correct and without error.
But science is not all that.
But God’s Word is.
Now I can not explain to you HOW the stars got 4 billion light years away except to say that is where God put it. Now if the star was close to the earth when it was created, and God who “spread out the heavens” flung it like a giant comet into its proper space and “hung” it there, could it be that the light emanating from that star ‘trailed’ after it and still streams to us today? For light speed is not constant. The very science community that you rely on has been able to speed it up and slow it down and stop it. And who knows the effects that black holes and wormholes and who-knows-what-else not yet discovered has had on the speed of light!
So just because you can’t see it doesn’t mean it isn’t true. And do you and I have to understand how God did it to believe that the heavens declare His glory? They declared His glory long before there was a OEC or a YEC.
So look what you are doing there: In essence you are saying that understanding how is necessary to appreciate the glory of God as displayed by the Heavens.
Some of your arguments about animals refer to what seems like a mix of OEC and YEC and are incoherent to me. I am a Bible guy, not a YEC insider.
You finish with:
“I have no problem allowing general revelation to inform my reading of direct revelation.”
Yes you do.
You believe in miracles and supernatural events that general revelation and science can’t explain. Thus you are cherry picking.
May His Spirit and Word continue to guide you,
mike
Inform is not the same thing as dictate. Supernatural implies that there is a “natural”. Science deals with the natural. I have not said, never said that the supernatural is not real, nor that God could not have created the earth just like the YECers suggest. Just that I don’t think he did. I don’t have any good reasons to think so. The “plain reading” (whatever that is) of Genesis is not one. I’m not even sure I concede “plain reading” to the YEC crowd.
“The bible says the heavens declare the glory of God, but I don’t see how that is possible in the YEC universe, because the light we see is not really from those stars in the sky, and the supernovas recorded throughout history couldn’t possibly have happened because there hasn’t been time enough for stars to age and die, and certainly not enough time for their light to reach us. It’s an illusion.”
What you say is inconclusive given what we know about time. I believe that the earth is young and the universe is old, but that the universe was created after the earth. I don’t know exactly how God did this, but as I and others have pointed out, creation was miraculous. However, there are naturalistic explanations like Dr. Humphries’ white hole cosmology. Do I think that the white hole cosmology is possible? Sure. Do I think that it’s how God did it? I don’t have a clue. The fact is that time doesn’t pass uniformly anywhere and unless we know the temporal conditions precisely, then we will always be in doubt. It’s entirely possible that God aged the the entire universe outside of our solar system billions of years in what was experienced as only a day here. God can do that. He could also create an entire history in a moment, including the starlight that recorded that history. My God is big enough to do that. Can we test that scientifically? Not really, because we need to make certain assumptions that aren’t true in order to yield predictable results.
Mike: But what is unity? YEC? That’s not going to happen. I don’t know how to keep saying this without giving offense, but to us OECers, there is nothing compelling or alluring in YEC. Nothing. One, slippery slope arguments are specious. They are illogical. Two, we’ve heard all the “scientific evidence” for YEC and it’s not even close to being compelling or reasonable (in our opinion). I’m telling you, we could lose a whole generation of young people if we tell them you can’t be a Christian if you believe the earth is old. True, no one has specifically said it here, but as I said early, it’s kind of a wink-wink, fingers crossed kind of statement.
Jim: God can do anything He wants, but he has created a universe with physical laws that we can observe and test. Maybe gravity used to be stronger, maybe light used to be faster, maybe stars are pin-pricks in a big black piece of construction paper. Anything is possible, but positing a lot of sciencey sounding speculative fiction is pointless.
Genesis 1 is an ancient responsive reading, designed to refute the pagan mythologies extant at the time.
“…but he has created a universe with physical laws that we can observe and test.”
Either creation was supernaturally miraculous or not. How do you propose we test a supernatural miracle naturally? What is more reliable? God’s self-revelation or the employment of a scientific method that is epistemologically flawed?
The only way that Genesis 1 could refute pagan mythologies at the time is if it were true in the same way (and more fundamentally) that pagan mythologies were false. The pagan mythology of today is naturalism. You can’t refute naturalism on its own ground.
Jim: “You can’t refute naturalism on its own ground.”
Norm: Evidence will either support or not support a particular theory, based on probabilistic norms, and most scientists tend to be very conservative when it comes to defining probability levels for their research, which places a high burden for collecting a necessary amount of evidence to ensure both Type I and Type II errors, respectively, are not committed. Naturalistic theories are tested via the scientific process, to which refutation is central to the process.
Granted some forms of naturalism do proceed from an atheistic perspective, but process theology, which embraces naturalism, does not proceed from what is referred to as naturalism (sam), i.e., sensationalist perception, atheism, and materialism.
Norm, are you advocating process theology?
I’m not suggesting we test the miraculous. That’s ridiculous. But we can test the natural, the natural that God created, the natural that the biblical writers say also teach us about God.
Something out of nothing is supernatural. But once the “something” is created and follows the natural laws that God also set in place, it seems reasonable to test and discover those laws.
Miracles need science, because unless science tells us what is impossible, we don’t have miracles. Floating ax heads are no big deal, except that science demonstrates that ax heads can’t float. The miracle isn’t testable, but the science that renders the phenomenon impossible is. Everyone seems to blame scientists for pointing out that the dead don’t rise, but if we don’t know, for certain, that the dead don’t rise, then the resurrection is no big deal. The supernatural only makes sense because we seek to understand the natural. Thank you, science.
If you were to test the wine that Jesus made from water, would you expect to find that it was aged appropriately for that kind of wine? I suspect so since it was real wine that Jesus made. What you can’t test after the fact is that it didn’t exist a moment before it was created.
The activity of God is always logically prior to naturalistic testing.
We can test that the universe is apparently old, but we can’t test how the universe got that way. In fact, the universe can only be apparently old given the uncertainties present in a naturalistic system of thought that we need to assume in order to generate a conclusion out of the evidence we gather.
It is far better to teach people to trust God than it is to teach people to modify their approach to understanding God based on uncertain assumptions.
OECs do trust God and everyone modifies their approach to God based on assumptions. Uncertainty is in the eye of the beholder.
“OECs do trust God…”
I didn’t say they didn’t as a general rule. If one is an OEC because their biblical hermeneutic arrives at that conclusion a priori, then they trust God. If someone modifies their hermeneutic because naturalistic scientists have propagated a false certainty, then they don’t trust God. That lack of trust may not be overt because they otherwise profess trust in God and they are ignorant of the uncertainty of a naturalistic approach to determining the nature of the universe. Nevertheless, their foundation for trusting God is eroded.
“…everyone modifies their approach to God based on assumptions.”
This is true. That’s why we shouldn’t add to the lack of clarity when we don’t have to.
“Uncertainty is in the eye of the beholder.”
Tell that to Heisenberg. There is logically discernible uncertainty. While people are often unreasonably certain or uncertain, making it subjective in practice, God has given us assurance in the reliability of his special revelation to us above and beyond any general revelation. In him we can be certain.
Oops – I didn’t close my tag properly. Sorry about that.
Jim: “Norm, are you advocating process theology?”
Norm: It solves some problems, creates some, too, but I am comfortable enough with it. I advocate it for myself and invite others to take of look if interested. It’s a bit of a learning curve.
Norm, is this your theology?
“Process Theology departs from traditional Christian beliefs mainly because of its view of the nature of God and His relationship to the universe. Many critics relate this deviance to the low view of Scripture held by Process Theologians who by and large deny the divine inspiration of the Bible. Others critique Process Theology as panentheism which says that God is to the world as a soul is to a body. It is believed that God is not the universe as in pantheism, but that God is apart from the universe, yet also in it. As the world is in the process of changing, so is God, and he is in the process of becoming all that he can be.” Theopedia
Les: “Norm, is this your theology?”
“Process Theology departs from traditional Christian beliefs mainly because of its view of the nature of God and His relationship to the universe. Many critics relate this deviance to the low view of Scripture held by Process Theologians who by and large deny the divine inspiration of the Bible. Others critique Process Theology as panentheism which says that God is to the world as a soul is to a body. It is believed that God is not the universe as in pantheism, but that God is apart from the universe, yet also in it. As the world is in the process of changing, so is God, and he is in the process of becoming all that he can be.” Theopedia
Norm: If a deviant theology is a problem, then we all have a problem, given the state of Christianity at the macro level and given such at the level of denomination or school of thought, too. There must be the thing and all in line with the thing under consideration, and this must true for all things considered, otherwise a measure of deviancy is present. I have not observed such congruence of thought anywhere, not even on this forum. And I would say such is a good thing. Let’s keep the thoughts coming and let time be our friend. We have theologies, we have not a theology, and some theologies we are more comfortable with than others.
Given non-sensational perception, affective a-priori basis for religious knowledge, God’s di-polar being, and a luring of individuals to their best end, it is difficult to suppose scripture that has influenced the world (mainly) for good would be absent God’s activity. And yes, process does posit panentheism, a position that probably many on this forum are supportive. It speaks to both the immanence and transcendence of God, which is not a particularly controversial notion, I would think. Finally, the world and God would be in process, which invokes also an element of risk. Such reveals the freedom of man and the love of God for humanity and its freedom to be while undergirding the ability to be.
I am OK with such a theology; I rather prefer it, but still grapple with objective immortality. It’s not everyone’s cup of tea, but certainly within the bounds of Christian thought which is, of course, quite diverse. Not surprising. We are finite beings trying to understand something far greater than ourselves.
Bill,
you said,
“It is about elevating our interpretation to inviolate status, ala AIG.”
Not for me it is not. AIG seeks to make the evidence fit the YEC.
I am defending MY point of view that we should trust the Scriptures alone in matters of the supernatural.
The Scriptures tell me that God made the world in six days, that He flooded the earth, that He drowned the Egyptians in the sea, that Jesus walked on the water, and healed the sick, and made the blind see, and rose from the dead after dying for my sins and the sins of others.
And I also see that science can not ascertain any of these things as true. Thus the supernatural is beyond the realm of scientific discovery.
Science is looking for a world that started from nothing and grew up into what we have now. The Bible says the world and the stars and the sun was created by God in six days. That in this world we have trees with leaves, plants with flowers, and fruit ready to eat.
Exactly how God did it, I do not know, but I accept no evidence but what the Word of God tells me. It tells me that God made the world I see, expanded the heavens, and put each star in their place.
Why do I need to believe in what science thinks happened?
Mike, agree. I think it’s fair to say that AIG and other similar orgs seek to demonstrate that the biblical record can be reconciled with what we see in science. And since none of us was there, they stick to the record of the One who was there.
At the end of the yom, we must acknowledge that 6 day fiat creation is miraculous. A simple definition of miracle is “A miracle is an event not explicable by natural or scientific laws.” Let’s see a scientific explanation for this:
“When they arrived at the Jordan, they began cutting down trees. 5 But as one of them was cutting a tree, his ax head fell into the river. “Oh, sir!” he cried. “It was a borrowed ax!”
6 “Where did it fall?” the man of God asked. When he showed him the place, Elisha cut a stick and threw it into the water at that spot. Then the ax head floated to the surface. 7 “Grab it,” Elisha said. And the man reached out and grabbed it.”
Les
Les,
They believe in miracles and in supernatural events. They think that science can help them understand this certain one called creation.
Yes, I know they believe in the miracles. But by definition miracles cannot be explained by science. It’s my view, and no offense intended to OEers, the only reason to not believe in 6 day, 24 hour creation is so some can try to square what is perceived to be scientific fact with the biblical record.
Les,
Yep.
But I think that science will *discover* more *facts* that will push our OEC brothers and sisters further and further away from the truth, like a wedge driven in. i think the YEC people like AIG will not be able to keep up for the very reason I believe in a YE, science can’t explain the supernatural.
Science will discover more and more reasons why being gay is a healthy, maybe even a preferred, life style. That is just the way it works. God’s way has always been the way of faith in His Word. And our Enemy moves and directs anti-god forces to marginalize the Church and the truths they stand for.
Which is why we should seek unity even now. For there may be a time when this debate must cause separation in the church at large.
So we do not want to push each other apart when we do not have to. We need each other.
I have to admit to not reading all 280 comments that come before, but would like to recommend John Sailhammer’s “Genesis Unbound” for a uniquely text-based analysis of Genesis 1 & 2.
“IN THIS GROUND-BREAKING WORK, Old Testament scholar John Sailhamer shines new light on the opening chapters of the Bible, revealing how centuries-old misunderstandings have continued to shape popular biblical interpretation — as well as greatly contributing to unnecessary conflicts between the Bible and science.”
http://www.genesisunbound.com/
There are certain presuppositions I see coming up again and again in the various postings:
1) That there are absolutely no errors in the Biblical text, including not only the “original autographs” but also commonly available translations in whatever version;
2) That the truth of the Scriptures extends not just to matters of faith and practice, but in all matters upon which the text touches on or even mentions;
3) That the truth of the Scriptures is not just theological and relational but also is propositional for every topic which the text touches or even mentions;
4) That Middle Eastern Biblical writers 2000, 4000, or however many years ago used literary devices and techniques which can also be interpreted within modern (or post-modern, whatever) patterns of thought in the western cultural traditions without any need for adjustment or change;
5) That God so literally dictated the contents of the inspired text that it can be applied to situations, issues, and problems which the human writer had no concept of and no appreciation for (which seems to me to demand some sort of “automatic writing” theory of inspiration, in which the human writer had no input whatsoever even down to the exact words chosen, tenses, etc.);
6) That even though the Bible is a product of the ancient Middle East, at least each complete thought within it (if not each word itself) can be interpreted in ways that began with the tenants of Greek philosophy and logic, and were brought to their apex in the European Enlightenment beginning about the 16th Century–in other words, each Biblical statement can be used as a major or minor premise in a logical syllogism to create systems or draw conclusions which are not directly addressed in the text, AND believe that those conclusions have the same force of Scripture itself;
7) That previous failures of these presuppositions (such as the dogmatic stands of the Church in the 14th-17th centuries against such things as a heliocentric solar system and the size of the earth) have no bearing on the use of these presuppositions in the 20th and 21st centuries;
As long as your presuppositions are such as these (and there may be more, but these are the ones that I see), logic dictates that a church (or denomination or individual) which claims to take the Bible “seriously” will arrive at the conclusion of a “young earth” and/or “young universe,” while downplaying or ignoring conclusions contrary to that, such as those of science. The question is: are all these presuppositions valid? For that matter, how many have ever grappled with them?
John
John, I feel that your list of “presuppositions” covered it well. And I have no issue with those who want to take and run with them. The folks that I get “sarcastic” about are those who start with your list and then abuse the observable “facts” to make them fit with the “presuppositions.” If you are going to make observations, you should be obligated to at least make a reasonable effort to reconcile the observations with each other. And it is inappropriate to pick one or two observations and use them to throw out the others because this fits your pre-conceived notions. All observations are not of equal quality and value.
I would not state some of these as you have, but yes, we fought a lengthy battle for inerrancy so that the SBC would unite around the fact that the text of Scripture is truth and authoritative.
To use an oft used phrase from talk radio…
Mega Ditto’s (Mr. Miller)
Are you saying inerrancy without any qualifications or limitations, such as the original autographs or matters of faith and practice? If not, what qualifications do you see?
John
Ditto.
I was dittoing John.
Oh well. 😉