It’s also interesting that most pronounced believers at the time of Darwin’s publishing had no problem with the concept of evolution as a means for the bio-diversity.

The sad thing is many fail to understand what ‘evolution’ means, most assume it has to assume naturalism and either a deism or atheism.

Most also think of it as a unified theory of everything, but as a theory (I mean this in the scientific sense, ex. Germ Theory) there is much debate over certain mechanics. It’s not so simple as Darwin (who didn’t even know about Mendel and his research!) had originally posited. Things like epigenetics and the emergence of mind are baffling still.

Cal

Haha! That’s good! I’d love to see a knock-out fight of Bible cow vs. Bible dinosaur. On a Sunday!

“A hundred years ago, we could not have imagined DNA, let alone mapping of the human genome(which, by the way, was done under the guiding hand of Dr Francis Collins, a self-identified Christian and Southern Baptist).”
(For the record, DNA was isolated in 1878, so it’s been more than a hundred years; I’m not trying to bust your chops, just sayin’ 😉 )

“If the age of the earth is about 4.6 billion years, which is the current, best estimate of science, and we have evidence of abundant and complex life 3.5 billion years ago (which we do), then that means that there was only about 170 million years for the earth to cool from its initial formation and all of evolution to have taken place. That simply isn’t enough time apart from some form of external intervention”
Also for the record, I think he’s confusing the earliest evidence of life with the Cambrian Explosion 530 million years ago.

Generally, I’m glad he’s willing to accept evolution as a possibility, but I don’t think he really has a deep understanding of the subject. He uses a few too many ID buzzwords/phrases which don’t really carry through when you look closely at the evidence. But whatever; as long as he isn’t going to wage war over the issue I’m glad for it. Not everyone needs to be a scientist, and this definitely isn’t the only issue where the public at large might not be well informed.
Personally, I believe that God directed (and directs?) evolution in some way to some degree, and I wouldn’t claim to know more than that about the nuts and bolts of it. His ways are higher than ours, and He can be very subtle.

Thank you so much for this post. I get so tired of the “well if you don’t believe God did it 6 24 hour days 6000 years ago you don’t really believe the Bible” argument. Could God have done that? Sure? But I don’t believe the Bible mandates that view, and in fact I think there are significant hermeneutical difficulties with the YEC approach. Starting with the fact that “when” is probably the least important question we could ask of the Genesis accounts. If people want to believe it, that’s fine, but it annoys me to no end when folks start acting as if you’re either a heretic, deceived, or just plain stupid if you disagree with them on this.

I would also add (and maybe this pastor said this) that no matter the age of the earth, a real Adam and Eve had to exist. If those two didn’t exist then this whole Christ has to come and be the second Adam thing would have to be false.

It is disheartening that the age of the earth has become so intertwined with when did we originate from monkeys?

Hi, Cal.

Had to look up “demiurges”. So, I’ll run with my new fragment of knowledge and say that no, I haven’t named time and chance as creator gods, but I suppose they qualify as forces which are the product of another being, and which are participating in the fashioning and maintenance of the physical universe. But certainly there are other factors, like probability. (I realize i’m venturing deeper and deeper into things I am no expert on, but it’s nice to explore my thoughts.) I AM did it through forces and factors that are observable which science is ever discovering and deciphering. My boring thesis at present.

Dee – I really feel like a Yankee now (after reading some of your comments) and think I would have to live in a college town if I ever moved south of the Mason-Dixon line again. (or at least, further south than I lived before, since D.C. and Baltimore aren’t really “Southern” cities.)

Another thought: it dawned on me a couple of months ago that we tend to create highly human-centric accounts of the world (whether factual or fictional).

But in fact, the world is teeming with life forms that outnumber us in the gazillions.

Why is that, I wonder?

Maybe God, in his good pleasure, thinks just as highly of animal and plant life, for example, as he does of us? And maybe the rest of creation is far more important in the greater scheme of things than we could ever imagine?

I have a feeling – quite frankly – that the answer to both of the questions I posed in the last ‘graph is “Yes.”

But please don’t quote me on that. 😉 (“That” being something that I have no way of proving.)

Most also think of it as a unified theory of everything, but as a theory (I mean this in the scientific sense, ex. Germ Theory) there is much debate over certain mechanics.

Funny thing — Young Earth Creationists have no problem with Grand Unified Conspiracy Theory…

elastigirl:

I think I started on the wrong foot of understanding you!

Are you saying, in effect, that God created ‘laws’ and ‘forces’ that are observable and measurable? If so, then we agree. Design language, for me, is the believer’s way of seeing the Lord in what are called ‘natural’ phenomena.

In one way, I can say that when my mother was impregnated, I was at first a zygote and by cell division developed through all the stages of pregnancy; then in another I can say that the Lord knit me in the womb. Is there a conflict? I say not!

The Lord, who created all, upholds all by the power of His word. So I say, quoting Einstein, that “chance is God being anonymous”. He’s still Sovereign in creation.

ooh I like that — “chance is God’s way of being anonymous”. That’s great!

Yeah, guess that’s what I’m saying. God created matter and forces, set them in motion, and they did their thing and it was very cool. Occasionally he did something like part the Red Sea.

Man, Mohler is out there. What does he mean by “. . . Adam – and his federal headship?” Federal headship is a new phrase for me. His statements are in the same vein as “gender gospel” but it’s the “creation gospel.” I’m beginning to think that these men don’t have a clear understanding if what the “Gospel” or “Good News” actually is. Did Jesus or Paul, or any of the Apostles, refer to Adam’s federal headship? I think they’re making their own gospel – the gospel of make up enough false doctrines so nobody will be saved but me!

“If we get the story of the gospel wrong in the beginning, we will have what Paul called another gospel in the end.” — Mohler

Isn’t this the same as calling someone a heretic?

Mohler’s entire statement made me sick 🙁

Bridget2,
I’m thinking that Mohler has begun from another “another gospel” rather than the rest of us ending up there. His is a gospel of power and control – where the sheep are constantly in danger of sliding down slippery slopes to freedom — which WOULD be good news, methinks. 🙂

This is an important topic and I appreciate your posts regarding it.

As a young Christian, I was taken in by the creationists arguments. As I aged, I see that some of those arguments are not scientifically strong.

However, I believe the questions raised about the seamless presentation that some atheistic evolutionists try to present – nothing plus chance plus time equals everything, does not really withstand logic or analysis, in my opinion.

Pastors are not scientists. They should be very careful when addressing this topic. It is so easy to get something wrong.

There are a whole lot of options other than – 1. The Bible is totally true and to show it is totally true, I must believe in a certain interpretation of the creation passage and 2. The Bible is a fairy tale. It presents a laughable creation account and miracles that did not happen to prove a moral point.

The truth is that there is no seamless, naturalistic explanation for all that is. The extreme naturalistic, atheistic scientist is going to have a very hard time explaining some things. There is just no way around that.

I think that the heat needs to be turned down on this debate. Whatever we may believe is not going to change what happened – a creation that we seek to understand, but never fully will.

I think of Jesus’ parable when he says, “The Mustard seed is the smallest of seeds, and yet…”

It is a reflection on the unique time that we have lived in over the last 150 years, where someone would look at that parable and say – “The Mustard seed is not the smallest of seeds. There are smaller seeds. Therefore, Jesus is wrong. The Bible is wrong etc.”

That is what this debate reminds me of.

I think it is a mistake to insist on a historical Adam and Eve as the only possible interpretation. Jesus, Paul and other writers could refer to Adam and Eve as if they were historical without debating their historicity. There still was a fall that affected all of mankind. So to speak of Adam and Eve may be to simply refer to the truth of the account, however it is interpreted.

I think it is trap to insist on something so strict.

I will also say, however, that far to many of my Baptist forefathers were too quick to come to the opinion that because scientific discoveries challenged us to allow for less than literal interpretations of some texts that this means the entire Bible should be seen as simply proving moral points. There is nothing historical, to them, about much of the OT or the NT, and all we are left with is moralisms recorded in the Gospel.

The Bible is both historical and literary. The Apostles were real. The Jesus they followed was real. He rose from the dead and performed miracles. Just because some of the ancient texts may be interpreted in a different fashion from strict literalism, doesn’t make them less true,nor does it make the entire text subject to the same interpretive method. Christianity claims a historic basis, and claims to be a historic faith.

Hopefully, the church will continue to move along a path that does not at all result in the denial of scientific truth, but also does not result in the denial of the faith itself. There really is a lot of room for disagreement that doesn’t result in apostasy.

Dee:

You said: “If one does not believe in their version of “gospel” gender roles then one is denying the gospel. Ipso Facto-we suddenly become non-Christians.”

I personally am sick of this having to believe what someone is telling me I must believe to be a “Christian”.

Is he further aware that church fathers CENTURIES BEFORE DARWIN were questioning whether to take the Genesis account literally?

Does he read anything other than Reformed material? Anything at all?

Does he read anything other than Reformed material? Anything at all? — Sad Observer

“Everything that is not True is False.” — random line from Sibyl

And to him, only Reformed material is True.

The Apostle Paul makes the historicity of Adam – and his federal headship – central to our understanding of the gospel. .”

“Federal headship”? He sounds like Doug Wilson!

For a “brilliant” man he does not realize there is no such thing as “headship”? To Paul, that would be like saying there is such a thing as “armship”. :o) but it does sound real “lordly” for those who love to lord it over. These guys love to take a metaphor way too far when it suits them.

“His attack on the evolution theory has this reasoning behind it: If we deny that Adam and Eve and the Fall happened like the Bible story goes, then pop goes the preaching that God ‘originally created’ men to be in charge of women.”

…there is too much at stake for “headship” not to be true. Not the least of which being ego (in the sense of appropriate pride in oneself, but also the exaggerated one).

To have campaigned for the truth of headship for this long and at such volume levels (& smugness) and for it to end up being unfounded would be unbearable. Humbling (humiliating?) in greater proportion. (smugness without substance — what could be worse).

John:

You said:”This kind of strict biblicism both majors in the minors and drives away a lot of faithful people, thus diminishing and weakening the church. I can only conclude that they either don’t realize this, or don’t care.”

Excellent comment! Why must it be for some people their way or the highway? Or like you say maybe they do not realize what they are doing.

Most of these comments seemed to be directed inwards, to the effects of YEC theology on the individual believer. Agreed that YEC is a secondary issue but it is still important. There is another problem with YEC that might be viewed as looking outward from the church. With the extremely rapid development of genomics and its application to medicine (A viable bacterium has been created with its DNA generated from a computer description, the synthesis step that corresponds to sequencing.) the world needs our moral input. The coming battles about genetic modifications and enhancements will make the abortion debate seem quaint. We, Christians, won’t have the opportunity to influence the use of such technology if the institutional church mutes itself by adopting a rigid YEC position, denying current science.

Good follow up to this post in an interview with Christian Philosopher, Alvin Plantinga, in the NY Times regarding his new book, “Where the Conflict Really Lies: Science, Religion and Naturalism”.

The link is below the following quote:

“Mr. Plantinga says he accepts the scientific theory of evolution, as all Christians should. Mr. Dennett and his fellow atheists, he argues, are the ones who are misreading Darwin. Their belief that evolution rules out the existence of God — including a God who purposely created human beings through a process of guided evolution — is not a scientific claim, he writes, but ‘a metaphysical or theological addition.'”

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/14/books/alvin-plantingas-new-book-on-god-and-science.html?pagewanted=all

Mohler:

“The Apostle Paul makes the historicity of Adam – and his federal headship – central to our understanding of the gospel. Those who insist that evangelicals must accommodate the gospel to the prevailing evolutionary dogma are actually insisting that the gospel be denied.”

Yeah, well, it isn’t JUST evolution he will have to contend with. Genetics also shows we never arose from a single couple. The lowest our human population ever came to was around 10,000 people. This isn’t unsupported or fudged. This is our mutation rate/genetic diversity. It is the same genetic analysis we look at to determine how related two people are – paternity tests for example.

If these guys want to say you have to deny genetics to be a Christian, out goes modern medicine, criminology and anthropology with science.

Frankly, having people like Mohler declare a literal Adam is essential to Christianity just puts another hurdle up. And he isn’t even smart enough to realize he is now fighting science on two fronts: evolution and genetics.

dee:

You’re spot on, redefinition is such a problem. Does one flee to new language constructs, how do you let everyone know what you’re talking about? Or do you be stubborn and refuse to move?

So on the issue of women “submitting” to their husbands, I can say yes, this ought to be happening. Hold on. Stop. What does this mean? Paul plays it out in the meaning of mutuality,’Wives submit to your husbands, husbands serve your wives’. It is suppose to be self-sacrifice for each other. But now, redefined, it means “Ok wife, you need to stay at home, I can the tie-breaker vote on things to do, I need to teach you, you need to be my servant, etc etc.”. Where did that come from? Husbands ‘serving’ your wife means “making the hard choices for her”. Then you say, no that’s not what it means, they throw open the Scripture, point at it, and leave you the false questions of “accepting or rejecting Scripture” when that’s not even what’s it’s saying.

Thanks be to God that the Shepherd knows His own.

One of the good takeaways from my time at SBTS was the hermeneutics course taught by Bob Stein, who must be deceased by now. He drove home the point that interpreting a text literally meant respecting its genre, and this, in turn, means recognizing that the literal understanding looks different in a poetic text vs. a narrative.

Anyway, during the two years that I taught Genesis 1-2 as part of the freshman theology seminar at my school, I came to two conclusions: first, there’s something poetic about the account in Genesis 1, and this should change our approach to the text. I don’t read Hebrew, but the symmetry of chapter (day 1 and day 4, day 2 and 5, day 3 and 6) and other repetitive elements lead me to conclude that this portion of the story is more artistic than narrative or scientific. Second, the senior faculty member who led the teaching fellows’ workshop on this text pointed out that the accounts in chapters 1 and 2 make different points about the nature of God–in the first account, he is the transcendent, sovereign realty around which the universe is ordered. In the second, he is portrayed in more anthropomorphic terms as a creator who engages in relationship with his creation (immanence) and who hands over some of his sovereignty to human beings, who are the center of his creation (the description of the location of Eden puts human beings at the center). These revelations about who God is and who we are in relation to him are the focal points of the texts, not the things left unsaid, like the age of the earth. What we need to be asking is, “How is our understanding of God enriched by the two accounts? What would we miss out on if we didn’t have both?”

I have never looked at these texts the same way since, and I still consider myself an inerrantist, whatever the Calvinistas think.

“So on the issue of women “submitting” to their husbands, I can say yes, this ought to be happening. Hold on. Stop. What does this mean? Paul plays it out in the meaning of mutuality,’Wives submit to your husbands, husbands serve your wives’. It is suppose to be self-sacrifice for each other. But now, redefined, it means “Ok wife, you need to stay at home, I can the tie-breaker vote on things to do, I need to teach you, you need to be my servant, etc etc.”. Where did that come from? Husbands ‘serving’ your wife means “making the hard choices for her”. Then you say, no that’s not what it means, they throw open the Scripture, point at it, and leave you the false questions of “accepting or rejecting Scripture” when that’s not even what’s it’s saying.”

Cal, EVen better, let’s contrast that teaching to that particular church with the prevailing pagan culture of the time. Women were chattel unless Roman and rich. It was the civil code they “obeyed” and were owned by their husbands to breed children. There was even child sacrifice and fertility cults in the pagan temple of that time. We read this stuff through “enlightened” Western eyes and then make up entire doctrines that look more like what the pagans believed!

But this whole passage starts earlier with “be filled with the spirit” and verse 21 which shows that “believers” (both genders) will submit to one another. (In the Greek, submit is not repeated in verse 22 and it reads more like a chiasm without the chapter and verse breaks and added words. That word was added by translators to verse 22 and it makes it look like husbands are encouraged to “submit” to believing wives)

Dee,

As you & TWW well know, I am a perennial skeptic and quite the mixed bag when it comes to the Bible and topics such as the one on this thread. For example I can wax enthusiastic and with resonant certainty (in my own gut instincts anyway) that the Almighty did indeed contravene the laws of mass & inertia in the Book of Joshua on the day the earth stood still. And yet at other times, I can agree with Bart Ehrman and his critique of the Pauline texts.

I’m glad that you brought up Johannes Kepler! His work has been verified and replicated over and over again. Orbital geometry (conic sections) are hard facts which can be expressed in symbolic form to cover all replacements of any variable.

I don’t think the same can be said of evolutionary theory, whether it’s atheistic neo-Darwinism or the evangelical theistic version. I think it’s too big and cannot be contained within linear and curvilinear bounds. It can go both ways. It makes me think of the time here at TWW when Bounded Reality demonstrated conclusively with a simple chain of linear propositions that there is no such thing as a kind and all powerful God. All you have to do is show one case where the premise doesn’t hold (contradiction) and that’s all she wrote so to speak.

I like Wright’s proposal at the end of your post. If I’m reading the guy right, he’s saying that no matter what dog you have in what fight, OE, YE, or that cheetah the chimp is my genomic ancestor, it still doesn’t negate the mechanism of faith (non-linear) in many believers.

Dee, Muff (and all) – you might get a kick out of this video.

Meanwhile, I’ve been reading some very interesting novels – set in the late 17th through mid-18th centuries – in which several of the main characters are “natural philosophers” (scientist/naturalists). Isaac Newton’s studies of the orbits of comets and planets are part of the plot, and the Royal Observatory at Greenwich is featured, too. (In case anyone’s interested, it’s The Baroque Cycle by Neil Stephenson, which is a series of 9 interlinked novels. Definitely worth a read, though the writing style is a slightly updated version of 18th c. prose and picaresque novels – lots of fun, yet might be slow going for some.)

I was *so* wishing that “Star Trek” was real after watching that video… would love to be a passenger on a Federation starship.

Dee:

Thanks. Glad you liked my answer.

I do not agree with Dr. Mohler on this question, but I think that his opinion on this is a bit more gracious than some quotes would have us believe. I have heard him say unequivocally that the scientific facts show that the earth appears to be very old. I have also heard him say that he has friends whom he believes are genuine Christians who believe in an old earth, and that he could work with them in Christian cooperation.

Mohler, I believe as a philosophical matter, has chosen to interpret the Scriptures literally, and that somehow the facts will fit the theological picture, though he is quick to say that he is uncertain how, and doesn’t know the details.

Here is one such clip of his understanding: http://youtu.be/I_Wi5OYZ7Ks

I did not find his answer really all that outrageous at all, and was probably in keeping somewhere along the continuum that the author in this post uses.

i would be interested in your comments regarding this clip.

Nice discussion. Not much to add really – except that we need to carefully consider the theological implications of our assessment of our science. Sometimes we can accept the philosophy of the atheist scientist along with his careful and well done science. We really should not do that as Christians.

The main place we fail, and part of the reason so many Christians stuggle over the issue of Evolution, is in accepting that if events can be explained in terms of secondary contingencies (event a causes event b which causes event c) then God can somehow be backed out of the equation. As Christians this just isn’t reality. God is part of life from the most mundane to the most grand. God is just as much a part of the miracle of birth as the parting of the Red sea. And just because we have a causal relationship that helps us understand the mechanics of one or both says NOTHING about the level of Gods actual and real involvement in the process or the event itself.

Zeta

Thanks for posting this! It’s encouraging to read and know that there are “measured” voices out there! Sometimes it feels like we’re the only ones who are OEC….

We homeschool and I plan…in the next couple of years, to have my kids do a presentation/research (they will be high school) on both sides of the issue. I want them to know what each side says….

No pressure to believe in a certain way….but they know I’m Old Earth….I just don’t want my kids growing up and leaving the Faith b/c of stupid, inconsequential arguments…. wouldn’t the Enemy love that! I want them to learn to test all things and to hold everything up to Scripture, but in the end….only God knows it all; He alone holds and knows the Truth. One day we will, until then, we will see dimly.

Zeta:

I like your comments, as well.

It seems to me that we must recognize that there are going to be things regarding God and Salvation that we cannot reconcile. What I see again and again is that people pick what they believe in order to move this conflict to a manageable location in their beliefs.

Mohler comes down on the YEC so he won’t have to decide what to do about Genesis. It is easier for him to ignore science than to admit that the first chapters might be showing God is in control rather than absolute, literal, fact.

The Calvinistas have concluded that saying God is in absolute control is easier than reconciling the problems that come from saying that we have free will. There are problems each way and they have picked the one that requires the least amount of decisions for them. I don’t know how they answer the question, “Is God good?”, but that is their problem.

We pick the problems that we want to deal with–but there are always some problems. Now, if “they” will just let me pick the problems I have to deal with, I will be happy for them to pick the problems they want to deal with.

My comment to all of the above is: Who cares?!

I’m so tired of these trivial issues tearing up churches, lives, and relationships. There are far more important matters.

It’s funny, those who seem to “diss” scientists probably go to doctors when they have a medical issue and most likely listen to weather reports from meteorologists to see if the hurricane or tornado predicted is headed their direction. I have a hunch that they may even go to the store and load up on water/supplies based on meteorologists’ predictions. Aren’t doctors and meteorologists a type of scientist?

What seems to be lacking is a dose of common sense and a reality check of what really matters. This is not a salvation issue. Let it go.

@Val: “They to had a chance to know and follow God. But like all other cultures, they got lured into spiritism, polytheism and so on, so that God had to start again and again, the only contact we know of are the Hebrews, because they wrote it down and persevered.”

And indeed, we do know of at least one other contact: Balaam, a flawed but genuine prophet of the true God among a pagan nation. Whatever his personal failings, we know he was used to convey God’s messages. (Also Melchizedek, though he’s a somewhat more complicated figure).

There is now a subtle influence that only the ESV, written by the Reformed set, is a really good translation. The rest are inferior. — Dee

So the ESV is the new KJV/KJV 1611?

“Oh, the more it changes
The more it stays the same;
And the Hand just rearranges
The players in the game…”
— Al Stewart, “Nostradamus”, c.1973