"I am not calling Dr. Enns a heretic. But he has a very low view of the Word of God and some of his beliefs are certainly not a part of orthodox Christianity and thus are heresy." Ken Ham link
"So, is he or isn't he?" -Dee
The Sombrero Galaxy-Hubble
This concludes our series on the science that proves the earth and solar system are ancient. However, if Christian leaders continue to make statements that "science proves a 6,000 year old earth," we will continue to answer otherwise. Believe me, there is a lot more that we can say.
This last post is a combination of two essays written by Jim so it is a bit longer than usual. TWW thanks Jim for taking the time to write these essays. He has always been a help to us when we get out of our comfort zone.
Does Science support a six day creation: Part IV
Tim Challies has made the claim that a reason to believe the earth and universe are young, in accordance with what he believes is a correct interpretation of the Creation narrative in Genesis 1, is that “Science Confirms It”. In the previous essay, we looked at what the evidence from the stars and the distant heavens have to say from a scientific standpoint. And the message there is loud and clear: The heavens are very, very old. Indeed, nearly every available observation screams is it so much older than a young earth interpretation would allow for it is simply absurd to make the claim Tim Challies has made.
In fact, the heavens scream ‘old’ so loudly that even the mainstream advocates of a scientific defense of a young earth, literal six days, creation account accept and advocate a theory that acknowledges millions and billions of years of time have passed for that far distant universe. And that ‘theory’ is Russell Humphries ‘White hole cosmology’ where he speculates that God used a reverse entropy black hole to create the universe in a way that allows the Earth and Solar system to be in fact quite young, but the distant universe we observe to be in fact quite old and to have effectively evolved to its current state basically over the same course of time implied by our observations of it.
So what of our solar system? Sure, science has a lot to say that is overwhelming when it comes to the far, far away universe, but what about our sun and our planetary system? Is the evidence as equally overwhelming there? Or does “Science Confirm” a relatively recent creation for these elements of the universe as Tim Challies claims?
Meteor Craters on the Moon and Planets
If one goes out on a pleasant evening when the moon is out and grabs a pair of decent binoculars, or a small telescope, and points it at that same moon, one will see a surface marred with a virtually uncountable numbers of round pockmarks and holes. These are called meteor craters. They are what is left when a large piece of rocky material slams into a planetary surface at several miles per second. The energy unleashed from a collision of this sort is simply unimaginable. In fact, In the case of the larger impacts, the explosive power and force would measure millions of times the power of a Hiroshima Atom Bomb. Many of these lunar structures are hundreds of miles across.
And there are literally thousands of them. The implication: thousands if not millions of space rocks have at one time slammed into the moon. Now here is the problem. The moon orbits not all that far away from the Earth. If that many space rocks slammed into the moon within a period of at most a few hundred years (if YEC is correct), how did this big old swarm of space rocks manage to hit just the moon and not the Earth too? And if they did hit the Earth too, where are the massive craters on the Earth like we see on them moon? A few thousand years is nowhere near long enough to wipe the Earth surface clean from THAT kind of bombardment. And further – how did anyone or anything survive such a concentrated smash up? (more on the Earth in the next essay)
But it gets worse. In the last half of the 20th century, we have managed to send probes to all the inner planets and explored many of the outer planets and their moons. And guess what? Almost all of them have the same kind of pockmarked, meteor crater infested surfaces as the Moon. Even the asteroids we’ve visited have this same remnant from being bombarded by swarms of space rocks, millions of them.
Why Aren't There More Meteor Craters on Earth?
So this swarming bombardment by space rocks is essentially universal across the entire solar system excepting one kind of planet or moon: those with active surfaces have much fewer craters on them. Planets like the Earth, Venus, and very active moons like Io of Jupiter, or some of the ice surface moons like Enceladis or Europa. Places where sufficient amounts of time could have allowed their active surfaces to erase the consequences of the solar system wide event.
But how much time? Even with very active surfaces, erasing holes hundreds of miles across takes a lot of time. Way more than a few thousand years. No lesser cratered surface in this solar system has such an active surface that what we find on the moon could be significantly erased or even reduced in <10,000 years.
So the implication then is two fold:
- The first is that this massive solar system wide bombardment needed to have happened very long ago, long enough for it to have been for the most part erase by our planets geological and atmospheric activity.
- And second, it simply could not have happened in the incredibly compressed time frame implied by YEC without rendering our planet uninhabitable.
We are talking about hundreds or thousands of events that would have vaporized each one tens or hundreds of cubic miles of rock or ocean. To have so many happen in so short a time would have left nothing for us. And remember, we can look at the Moon and see it happened. We can look at Mars and Mercury and the Asteroids and giant planet moons and see it was solar system wide. The Earth would not have escaped the same fate (indeed, it did not, but more on that when we talk about the Earth itself).
So what is the most natural and logical scientific conclusion? For this bombardment to have been any sort of recent event would have left lots for us to see on this planet, and further would have eliminated us and every living thing on the planet. It HAD to have happened a very long time ago. And that means this solar system has been around a very long time – much longer than 10,000 years.
How Does the Sun Figure Into This?
But how long? That is a bit of an interesting story as well. Our Sun happens to be at the point in its consumption of its hydrogen fuel that to all best estimates imply it ought to be around halfway through what is theoretically a 10 billion year life span, or about 5 billion years old. “Coincidentally’, nearly all meteors that can be radioisotope dated ALSO show that same age: around 4.5 to 5 billion years. Further, rocks from the moon tend to also run in that 3.5 to 4 billion year range. The fact of the matter is, nothing around us in this solar system registers older than 5 billion years, but a lot of things ring in near around about that point.
So what is the most logical conclusion based on all these factors, and what is most strongly implied by the physics of how stars burn, how solar systems form, and the direct measured ages of the oldest things in the solar system? It is that it the Sun is about 5 billion years old with the system of planets around it having formed at approximately the same time or a short time thereafter.
So in summary:
- Nearly every object in the solar system capable of retaining over a period of millions and billions of years the pock marks from some massive meteor storm have the same kind of battered surface of our moon. This includes Mercury, Mars, the Moon, all observed asteroids, and all rocky moons of the outer planets (excepting Io with its tidally driven massively active geology).
- Such a storm in recent history would have rendered the surface of the Earth uninhabitable and required much longer than the YEC view could allow to have recovered, if it could ever have recovered.
- Further, enough time has passed on the Earth to have allowed most (but not by any means all) of the results of this bombardment to have been erased.
- And further, the Sun and the ancient specimens of rock found on the Moon and in meteors all tend to clock in at 3-5 billion years of time. Meteors almost always date in around 4.5 billion years. And the sun sits having burned about half of a 10 billion year hydrogen supply.
So once again: how Is it that Tim Challies finds there to be ‘compelling’ scientific evidence the solar system is ‘young’? Keeping in mind a scientific conclusion proceed from the data and must account for the known set of data and observations, the solar system doesn’t look young at all! In fact, not only is it not compelling, but it is strongly contradicted. For to be young, Tim Challies needs to find a way for literally thousands of massive space rocks to have slammed into the Earth without obliterating its atmosphere and biosphere, and to have recovered sufficiently in time to allow for mankind to be unable to notice the event as having affected this planet! And further, he needs to explain why the Sun is where it is in its process of burning fuel, and why so much of the non-earth related material we have access to tends to be 3.8 to 4.5 billion years indicated age! And these, once again, merely scratch the surface of what it is about our solar system that is only consistent with an age of around 4.5 to 5 billion years.
Does Science support a six day creation Part V: The Earth
So far in this series on whether or not science confirms a young Earth – a claim made by Tim Challies in a recent blog entry – we have looked at what science is and is not, and what the proper application of science says about the age of the universe and the age of the solar system. In this essay, I will take a short look at what that same science has to say about the age of the Earth itself. And once again, I need to make clear that I will be outlining only a very small portion of the data and its implications. The goal is simply to show that when one discusses what science implies about the age of the cosmos, including the Earth itself, one is not talking about some massive debate between equally powerful parties. The evidence itself is overwhelmingly one sided. And the only consistent parsing of that evidence leads to only one conclusion. Those who advocate otherwise are simply ignorant of the data itself, or chose for various reasons simply to ignore or remain un-persuaded for non-scientific reasons.
As mentioned in the previous essay, every rocky body in our solar system with a non-active geology is covered with meteor impacts. These represent a massive swarm of rocky debris that moved though the solar system over some short period of time, or also perhaps simply the result of distantly spaced impacts over a very long period of time. Either way, for the Earth to have been in the solar system at the same time as these events means that it too would have experienced a similar bombardment.
And that presents two rather significant problems for the young earth conclusion.
- The first is that, we can all see that our Earth’s surface looks nothing like that of the moon or mars or mercury. Something has erased most of the results of this bombardment. But how, and over what period of time?
- And second, if all these impacts were part of a history <10,000 years in age, not only would there not be time for this damage to be erased, there would be no plausible way for life to have survived it’s terror (or likely even the surface of the Earth itself).
Is there any evidence that Earth was bombarded like other planets and moons?
First, is there any evidence the Earth itself was around to experience the kind of bombardment the Moon and mars and Mercury have experienced? Perhaps God made the Earth later, just 10,000 years ago, but let everything else form more or less naturally? Well, unfortunately for the view ‘Science Confirms’ a young earth, there are in fact a rather large number of impact features on this planet. However, they are not easy to find like on the moon or Mars or Mercury, because sufficient time has passed (especially for the larger craters) to allow them to be buried and eroded to the point we no longer recognize them from simple surface photographs. But they are there, and some of them are massive.
Could the Flood have hidden the craters?
Considering their size and number and the lack of any historical reference to all but perhaps a few, we know they must have occurred before mankind, or within a very short period of time after we came to be on this planet (assuming a young earth). That is a very real problem – for several of the known impact sites are so large they quite simply would have created a disaster that would have wiped mankind off the face of the Earth and rendered the Earth effectively uninhabitable by mankind for a rather long period of time, decades if not centuries.
Further, they are so eroded and buried that, the only plausible young earth explanation would be they came before Noah’s flood and the massive sediment loads and erosion found in them came by that same flood. Which means all or most of the large impacts either occurred before or during the flood. A scenario almost impossible to render with a straight face. Why? Because to survive such an event would have require far more than an ark, and would have required far more than a year of protection in whatever hideaway might survive such events.
What do radioactive elements have to do with it?
But there is a good bit more that points us to a grand age for the Earth. One rather simple metric can be found in the radioactive rocks of our planet. Radioactive elements are elements that gradually over time due to their instability break apart into smaller components. They do this at a very, very regular rate. Could that rate somehow be variable? There has been little if any experimental evidence that shows any natural processes that are capable of altering the natural rate at which these elements decay (and a large number of experiments have been done to try to find just such a capability). And further, accelerated decay means more heat, and the current rate of decay keeps the Earth’s core molten. Thus, big changes would not be good for the solidity of our planet’s crust.
So a radioisotope will decay away by half over a certain period of time. And then another half again over that same period of time. Until after about 10 to 13 ‘half-lives’, the element disappears altogether – or exists in such a small fraction it simply can no longer be detected.
Radioisotopes come in two flavors:
- those that can only be created in massive events like Supernova
- those that are created by natural processes.
When one limits oneself to only those elements that require a big supernova to create, one finds an interesting result. The only ones that can be found on the Earth are the ones whose half-lives would allow them to exist for at least 4.5 billion years, which, as previously mentioned, is also the almost universal radioisotope measured age of the meteors in our solar system. So, unless there is a process to create a radioisotope on the Earth (e.g.. c14), it doesn’t exist unless it can survive 4.5 billion years or more.
Layers and layers
But there is a good deal more. One doesn’t have to limit oneself to things that point to 4.5 billion years to find evidence the Earth has been around far longer than 10,000 years. One can just start counting layers in things which make layers in regular cycles. For example, many water born sediments are laid down on the bottoms of lakes in seasonal cycles to form what are called varves. One such lake is Lake Suigetsu in Japan. We can count somewhere around a hundred thousand layers in this lake’s sediments. In the green river formation we can find millions of varves. There are, in fact, a rather large number of these kinds of formations on the Earth, and many of them contain vastly more than 10,000 layers. But what if something made the layers faster? Well, take for example the well studied varves of lake Suigetsu.
C14 and Trees
One of the more common high resolution dating methods for more recent biological remains is C14. C14 is produced in our atmosphere daily and becomes part of living things through normal respiration. It stays at the ambient concentration until that living thing dies. Once it dies, the C14 decays at the normal rate in its remains. But there is a bit of a trick with C14. C14 doesn’t always form at the same rate. Its formation depends on how much radiation the Sun is creating and even on how much cosmic radiation we are receiving from the heavens. So what we need is a calibration curve that lets us know how much C14 formed in a given year. Where would we find such a calibration?
It turns out, the answer is trees. Trees have this nice property In that most of them form regular, annual rings. Some of them almost exclusively form rings only once per year. Some of those trees live very long periods of time, 2, 3, even 4,000 years. But it gets even better. In some areas on the earth, there are not only the living trees, but the remains of dead trees that go back even further.
If we can ‘line up’ the rings in common between the living trees and the dead trees, we can use the C14 in the dead trees rings to take us back even further. As it turns out, the current tree ring calibration goes back about 12,000 years. Now, given most Young Earth advocates want the world to be about 6,000 years old, that presents quite a dilemma. But one will hedge a bit and allow for 10,000 or so, which is not all that far from 12,000.
C14, Trees and Layers Help to Work It Out
This is where Lake Suigetsu comes in. Remember, I mentioned it has around 100,000 layers. Suigetsu’s layers are also a bit unique in that one of the seasonal processes that contributes to the varves in an annual algae bloom. So in these varves are annual samples of the c14 in the air. Only they go back 100,000 years or more. So what happens if we take C14 samples from these varves and see how they correlate with the varve count itself?
Well, using our tree ring calibration curve, it turns out that for the first 12,000 varves in Suigetsu the match is absolutely perfect. That is, the amount of C14 our tree ring calibration says should be found in layer 8,000 of Lake Suigetsu is EXACTLY the amount found there. So that gives us rather incredible confidence these layers are formed annually over a rather long history.
But what happens when we look at layer 20,000 or 30,000? Does it match what we might expect in terms of C14 content. And the answer there is also yes. So what does that say about the age of the earth? Well, since there are around 100,000 layers there, it pretty much says we have a direct indication the Earth is AT LEAST that old. 100,000 is 10x 10,000, and about 17 x 6000.
We can find other layerings – like ice cores in the glaciers of Antarctica or Greenland. As you might guess, these layers count in the hundreds of thousands as well. In fact there are a lot of layers of things formed once per year that count way beyond 10,000 and from many different and varied annual processes. Also, I have left unexplored what geology has to say. I have not spoken of peleorivers or fossils or plate tectonics or a whole host of other topic that all have the same inescapable conclusion: our planet is much, much older than 10,000 years.
So – what does this have to say about what science says about how old the Earth is. Does it look like the evidence ‘Confirms’ a young (<10,000 year old) Earth? Does it look like that is what a scientist doing research on these various phenomena is going to think is the most logical and most direct implication of the data they are studying? I think the answer is clearly and resoundingly no. So what is it that Tim Challies is looking at? He doesn’t really say in his blog, but it certainly isn’t the actual data and science that I have outlined in these essays. It is ‘something else’. Something that is NOT science.
Lydia's Corner: Jeremiah 6:16-8:7 Colossians 2:8-23 Psalm 78:1-31 Proverbs 24:26
Does anyone know of anyone who has looked at the data and changed their mind?
It seems to me that is a rare event.
@ Bennett Willis:
If anecdotal counts, we received an email from a man who said he switched from YEC-TE after reading a post here and then doing lots of reading at RTB and Biologos.
At which point they trot out Flood Geology a la Ellen G White and claim that all those impact craters were erased in 40 days by the violence and chaos of Noah’s Flood. (Apparently missing a couple smaller craters here and there, like the one between Winslow and Flagstaff and a couple on the Canadian Shield. But that’s only greater proof that “GAWDDIDIT!”)
Today on NPR’s Science Friday, about 10 minutes into the first hour, there is a discussion by physicists about understanding the universe and the questions that are still out there. Most interesting to me was the attitude of looking for the unexpected information that research may provide.
The show will be available on line this evening.
Bennett Willis wrote:
I was YEC by default, because that is what I was taught from the moment I left the womb, like many people who have been raised in a conservative Baptist environment in the last few decades. It was in a Sunday school class at a [non-Baptist] church I attended during college, taught by a retired physics professor, where I came to see that old earth and evolutionary creation models seemed to fit the facts better than what I had been taught growing up.
So there’s one bit of anecdotal evidence for you.
We can find other layerings – like ice cores in the glaciers of Antarctica or Greenland. As you might guess, these layers count in the hundreds of thousands as well.
The EPICA core, for one, goes back 740,000 years.
I am not a scientist so my comments will be brief seeing we are out of my league. I’ve tried to read and study on this to at least be informed. I guess my only response is that one must extend grace to either side of this debate. We don’t have all the facts yet whether you are YEC or Old earth. I hold to a young earth even though I wrestle with certain aspects of it…light for example. I do believe that when it is all said and done, science will confirm what the Bible teaches and the Bible will confirm what we see in science.
PP wrote:
Here is the problem with that. I can extend grace. However, when I see young people walking away from the faith over this and the many testimonies prove this is the case, then I must do my best to show them that they can believe in OE and be a Christian. I can also show them the bogus science that is put forth by some of these groups and point them to stellar scientists like Francis Collins who believe in TE and is a committed Christian.
Salvation issues are at stake here and that is what drives my concern.
Amen Dee, Amen!
We need to make it clear to the young folks that it isn’t necessary to check your brains at the door of the church to be a believer. Most around the world don’t, and indeed most of the leaders in history of what has become evangelicalism didn’t. It is a relatively new development and one that needs quickly to not be the default setting.
I’ll give them grace to understand the Bible for themselves and come to a different understanding than I do. I will not let that grace become license to bind other’s consciences with their thoughts to the hurt of the other people.
@ PP:
But, the Bible doesn’t actually say anything about modern science, so Science can’t prove whatever it is so many evangelicals have tired to make it say.
Gen. 1 and 2 contradict the creation order thoroughly – don’t list the the Hamm types, just go read it for yourself – preferably with a pen and paper and write down when things were created. For example note plants show up before sunlight – remember there is algae that lives off the sun, and only lives for 24 hours max, -in Gen. 1 and humans show up last. In Gen. 2 (don’t read the NIV here, they actually fudged it to fit with the notion the garden was a separate creation from the rest of the earth, but the actual texts – both Masoric and Septuigent (I can’t spell those) – mean all plants) Adam is created before the plants or animals (God also somehow seems a bumbling moron in this chapter who is looking for a mate for Adam and creating each species trying to find a match), then Eve is created last.
The NIV tries to fudge it, the YECer’s try to convince people it is just a more detailed creation account, it isn’t, it is a different creation account. The Gen. 2 account is found in various forms all over the ancient Middle East, but it is not as much about Earth’s creation as it is about Human-God interaction – the garden is a temple image is found from Egypt to India in the ancient world, so is the Tree of Life, the serpent as a trickster, the four rivers flowing out of the garden (and the garden being the source of 4 rivers that actually originate on 2 separate continents), etc. This reads, loud and clear as a text about God coming down to interact with humans, not as a text about how this world was created. Ancient science was tied up in creation stories of gods/goddesses and humans, it wasn’t concerned with the material world, only the spiritual.
You are turning a story about God/human into a science textbook and then hoping that science will come around to your view. It won’t, not this physical universe anyways. It doesn’t need to, the Bible isn’t teaching you science, any more than it is teaching you your ABCs or Alephs, Bets, etc. The Bible is true in that God has interacted with us since the beginning, that is what the Bible is trying to explain. The Bible is true in that God has interacted with humans, and humans have rejected God for other things, the Bible is true in the fact that the Jews have continued to this day, and their record of their relationship with God has continued for 4,000 years. God has preserved them while forces on this earth have attempted to wipe them out several times in history. That is what the Bible is, it isn’t a “This is how I made the world, and one day you will see despite all evidence to the contrary” book, or a “I am just testing your faith by having all evidence work against what the Bible supposedly says about science, just to see who is more (gullible) faithful then the next person, because God just loves setting up spiritual contests to pit Christians against one another” Um, not at all.
So, the whole “one day science will confirm what the Bible teachings” is a waste of time – One Day, everyone will see that Christ is Lord is the most powerful and awesome experience in the known universe. The verse “every knee shall bow” sort of stuff is what will happen in the future, not every tongue will confess science was wrong.
Dee,
Will you do evolution next? Love that one the best!
dee wrote:
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i.e. the “walking away from the faith” argument. Dee, I’ve always believed that when one stands before God in judgment, all rationalizations will appear empty and useless. You’re not going to have an excuse such as; “It’s Ken Ham’s fault.” I’m pretty sure God’s not going to let you off the hook if you try the “It’s Ken Ham’s fault” defense.
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dee wrote:
Ken Ham et al also believe “salvation issues are at stake here”. Just that Ham’s definition is a flat-out “no YEC, no Salvation” (“Salvation by YEC Alone”?)
Bennett Willis wrote:
That would be me! 🙂
Zeta (Jim)
I’d rather grow tomatoes in my garden and see if they will grow this year.
Fifty plus years ago I heard that there were some people in the States who believed the world was 4,000 years old. I was amazed to learn in the last few years via the internet that so many people grew up with YEC, as I had always just assumed that creation was done by God, but we don’t know or particularly care how he did it. As a boy, our minister and our family went to a park where there were statues of dinosaurs and the issue of when, where how etc. never came up. Also, in sixteen years of schooling in secular schools (grade 1 through university), I never learned anything about creation OR evolution. So I see the insistence on YEC as something other than Christianity — more like Christianity Plus other stuff added in.
ME too! I was born into a conservative Baptist home, raised mostly in an SBC church (with two years out to help start another SBC church), etc. And when in the ’60s, I decided to be a chemist, and had intensively studied the Genesis accounts, I came to the conclusion that Genesis was not about the process but about the reason. As in, Genesis in general is a parable, not a history, of God interacting to cause people to exist and to relate to them. And like other parables, its truth does not depend on historicity but on the meaning of the parable.
dee wrote:
I would just gently disagree with that statement. I, too, believed in a young earth until, you know, I started looking at the evidence and then I came to believe that the earth could be millions of years old, but so what. I’m not majorly scarred and if it turns out that the earth is only 6,000 years old, then so be it.
I think as soon as you dogmatically take a side on these issues, then that is a major turn-off. People actually have the ability to see shades of grey and not need a black or white answer to the mysteries of our world. Even science can’t bring 100% certainty. I think completely dissing the Young Earth people is taking just that same black or white approach. Can be a major turn-off.
As an old pastor once said, this stuff is just majoring in the minors. If you wrap your Christian worldview over some of these minor issues, you stop seeing the bigger picture…what really is important.
I guess I kind of know one reason why “conservative” folks fall into line with a lot of stuff. It is easier and it is safer. Please permit me a story of kids and “lies” and it’s impact on faith.
I was four years old when I had an “aha” experience that severely impacted my life forever, both for better and for worse. In a blinding flash of childish insight, that year at easter I suddenly knew–just knew– that
there was no easter bunny
there was no santa clause
there was no Jesus
“they” were lying to me.
Now that is a problematic kind of “aha” moment. But kids do this, I have since found out, and also sometimes adults when they discover the treachery and the lies. My flash of insight there was not when I first believed but was when I first doubted. That story does not play too well during testimony time at Wednesday night prayer meeting, or standing around the bonfire at camp, or in trying to tell some parent what you are looking for in a boyfriend in the way of faith commitment.
Now, lest someone may wonder what I think, I think the following:
there is no easter bunny,
the jury is still out on santa clause
there is a Jesus, same as the one in the Bible, and I was just talking to him a minute ago
they really were lying to me.
So when the issues of cave men, dinosaurs and biblical stories needed to be reconciled in my mind later in childhood it was not actually a problem–I already knew that lots of the time stories contradict each other. It did not seem like treachery, just more same old same old. In that way, the earlier experience was a good thing.
So a couple days ago my 11 year old fifth grade grandchild wanted one more time to go through the whole dinosaurs thing (which she knew a lot about) and the genesis stories (which she also knew a lot about) so we went through it all, one more time. She is OK, but I guess now she just has one more thing that will distance her from her peers at sunday school. It would have been nicer if this had not been a “church” issue. Now she has to speak up or shut up. That is why she wanted to go through it again. Now she will either say what she thinks or else pretend and then herself lie to her SS friends. She will speak up, that is her default position. Her mother and I will stare down some folks in her defense (they need it anyhow) and something that could have been kind of nice now will not be so nice in the fifth grade SS class.
We were not the ones that wanted to turn it into a schoolyard fight, but neither will we be the ones to cry uncle. Confound this whole fight anyhow.
Would that we all loved the pursuit of truth, all truth everywhere, as much as we say we love the Truth.
Mark wrote:
Please reread what I said. I did not say that the issue YEC vs OEC/TE was a salvation issue for those who believe either side. I said that , and I really mean this, young people are leaving the faith over an insistence on an YEC position. And that is why I will continue to stay on top of any attempt by anyone who says that people cannot love the Lord and Scriptures and believe in TE.
In fact, read why Hugh Ross started Reason to Believe. He met scientist after scientist who was told that they could not be both a Christian and believe in an Old earth. So, they choose for the evidence and choose against those who say to ignore the evidence. That is unacceptable to me.
Wout wrote:
Thank you for your input. I have been told that many Christians outside of the US are flabbergasted by the numbers over here who believe in a young earth,
@ Headless Unicorn Guy:
His “theory” that young people are leaving the faith because we do not stress young earth creationism is as believable as the science he refuses to peer review.
@ Val:
Evolution, you say….hmmmm… How about we do that sometime when I can get Jim and Old John J to write a couple of essays!
I don’t believe young people leave the faith because we do or we don’t teach Young Earth Creationism. I think young people leave the faith because of many reasons, none of which will stand as good excuses when you come before God at judgment.
@ dee:
As long as one of them is pro-Theistic Evolution, I’m game 🙂
I walked away for a time (late teens) simply because I wanted to “do my own thing” which included a desire for “sex, drugs rock ‘n roll.” I surmised I couldn’t pursue those things and be a follower of Jesus Christ. To outsiders, I blamed a very conservative Christian college I attended briefly before they tossed me. The conservative stance of the Christian college was simply the rationalization to pursue what I wanted to pursue.
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It wasn’t them, it was ME.
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@ dee:
I was never aware of YECs who are being so horrible and mean to kids that they are ditching the faith.
Some kids, as they get older, and hear that the earth is millions of years old in some science classes, may decide to leave the faith, since they assume all Christians reject that (they believe Christianity and science are not compatible), but that would not necessarily be the fault of people who believe in or promote YEC.
I’m alarmed that there is a backlash against YECs in place now, and I see it on numerous Christian blogs and forums, where people like me who are still YEC (so far as I stay a Christian) are being insulted, mocked, ridiculed, said we are anti science, we hate science, etc.
I’ve never bullied any one over any of this age stuff, or dinosaurs, or evolution.
I have had anti-YEC persons in years past want to debate me about these topics, including one Christian friend who believed in Age Gap, or whatever it was called.
I was simply not interested in debating about it (then or now), but this guy kept bugging me about it over a course of years.
It wasn’t important to me that he believe in a literal, six day account, but it sure bugged him I didn’t believe each day was really millions of years, or whatever.
That debate can and does go both ways in that regard, but it’s seldom acknowledged by people who don’t agree with or like YECism. I just hope all the folks here who don’t like YEC realize that.
It also doesn’t make me feel too warm and fuzzy about a faith I am already having issues with (over other reasons) to be told I’m a dupe, idiot, or anti- science and uneducated (not saying that anyone here specifically has done this, but those attitudes do come up on other sites that talk about these things.)
@ Headless Unicorn Guy:
I don’t really think Ham is saying that. I do believe his views on this are usually mischaracterized by people who hate YEC or feel YECs are bumpkins.
Oh, and I can comment ad nauseam on genetics and evolution, but all I will say here is: when I began to look into it, the Christian apologetic sites from die hard young earthers to Discovery Institute didn’t have a single geneticist on their staff list. Hamm actually had one lady, but listening to her, you wondered what price tag was dangled in front of her to deny all of it. Of course, (no alternative solution was offered by her to all the problems creationists face with genetics, just the usual I have a PhD in science (likely of basket weaving) and I say it is wrong.
The sites were filled with Physicists and Chemists, even Biochemist, but biochemistry is just a branch of chemistry called organic chemistry, and not biology at all. They were lucky if they even had one biologist on their contributors/staff lists, most don’t, and even if they found one, that person’s discipline wasn’t even in the realm of Genetics.
I haven’t checked for years and years, I did hear Discovery Institute hired a Geneticist who was a Moony, because that will witness to God, but most of the critics of Francis Collin’s are hysterically under qualified to even comment on evolution (Chemists are about as well trained as the rest of us in genetics) never mind tear apart Francis Collins.
Anyways, once people caught wind of the genetics of it all, the anti-evolustion sites were all scrambling to come up with a credible defence – you know, instead of saying “oh, we didn’t consider this, maybe this will change our minds – like a good scientist would. The garbage they try to pull over on others would be comical if it weren’t so sad.
Seneca wrote:
Jesus Juke alert…
dee wrote:
1) When all you have is a YEC Hammer…
2) “If at first you don’t succeed, USE A BIGGER HAMMER.”
3) “Increase Political Consciousness Indoctrination, Comrades.”
@ Seneca:
Maybe it was you. But that doesn’t mean it is everyone else, too. If I deny the interpretive premises of “conservative Christianity”, then by definition is THEM, not me.
The difference between us is that you grant them the right to define your existence for you and I (and others) prefer another standard.
@ Daisy:
I have been reading these interesting threads and I don’t know where anyone here called any YECer an idiot. I have been extremely critical of TWW, but on the whole this powder-keg issue has been handled here with unusual civility.
In defense of the YECers, I grant them that the “laws” of physics and mathematics are products of the human observer. But they are pretty comprehensively codified at this point. If you want to “prove” a young earth you need a “young” (e.g. new) science. You can’t put new wine into old wine skins.
dee wrote:
I think you are exactly right.
Forty years ago, as a college student who planned to get a Ph.D (which I got), I was a guest at an evangelical church. I walked past a Sunday School room and saw a large poster on an easel. On the left was a red circle with a slash through it. In it was written the names of various sciences- biology, chemistry, physics, etc. On the right was the Bible. I never returned to that church. What if this had been my only experience of Christianity?
Mark wrote:
We don’t make snide comments about “Not Really Saved” or “You Stand before God on Judgment Day” (i.e. indirect Hellfire & Damnation) or Evolution = SATANIC.
We don’t write 12-volume Christian Apocalyptic novels where Christ casts the Antichrist into Hell at The End for Teaching EVIL-ution. (I’m not making that up; in LB that’s the only reason Christ gives at the Last Judgment scene.)
We don’t preach “Salvation by Evolution Alone”. (Except maybe for Trekkies…)
Nancy wrote:
“Swear allegiance to the flag,
Whatever flag They offer;
NEVER LET ON WHAT YOU REALLY FEEL…”
— Mike and the Mechanics, “Silent Running”, 1986
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3-KFhT9O6-A
(One of the best YouTube mash-ups; much more appropriate to the lyrics than the song’s official video.)
Seneca wrote:
And now you’re in “I have X problem, so everybody else must have the same problem” mode? Like recovering alcoholic Billy Sunday preaching Christless sermons against Demon Rum?
@ Val:
Don’t forget, I am pro!
Headless Unicorn Guy wrote:
*
Less “demon rum,” more Thunderbird
*
Argo wrote:
*
You jest Argo
*
I have to back up Dee. I live in a university town and talk to college kids frequently. I also have a 24 year son. When he starting speaking about evolution, my whole family had a fit. I finally had to say, ” Back off. Jesus didn’t die on the cross for creationism or evolution”! I have spoken to many college kids who go to college and decide the whole “God thing” is a lie, because their parents raise them in a black and white world. Then these same kids are exposed to different concepts and cultures, but they are still thinking in black and white, either-or. Of course the evidence from science opens them up to a different world. They weren’t raised to be critical thinkers so they think they need to choose either God or science( no God).. They have not yet learned to embrace the grey areas or the both-and possibilities. As they mature, hopefully they learn to deal with both the mystery and truth of God and the realities science opens up to us. Unfortunately some have families who tell them they have to make a choice, either God or science. You can not be saved and embrace both. For these young adults, I grieve. Ann
Val wrote:
The Genetic connection pretty much undoes any real debate over evolution, beyond perhaps proposing God made certain changes and not a natural process. There is an article this week in Science tracking the path the Neandertal DNA and the interbreding between them and Homosapiens. Of course one of the most amazing short stories here is the merger of 2 chromosomes found now in the Chimpanzee into the single Human Chromosome 2. Other stories are the implicit hierarchy formed by mapping retro-viral insertions. It really is becoming very HARD to stay abreast of science and maintain some sort of legitimate Non-evolutionary proposition for the history of life on the Earth.
Zeta (Jim)
Ann wrote:
Within certain groups, everything is black and white and essential to salvation. I have watched faith die in kids who grew up like that.
@ Headless Unicorn Guy:
Agreed. Seneca “believes” what fits his carefully constructed paradigm.
What exactly is theistic evolution? Would you call it creation as well? Intelligent design?
@ Val:
Well said. Seems like the right explanation to me.
Kathy wrote:
In lay people’s terms, since that’s what I am (…I’m an engineer, not a scientist!), it’s the belief that God created physical laws and processes to function in the way we recognize as the theory of evolution to bring about the diversity of life that we see today.
Orion’sBelt wrote:
Are you suggesting that:
a) my great,great,great,…,great grand-pappy was Cheetah the chimp?
b) and if so, will you hire Clarence Darrow (re-manufactured of course like a Tleilaxu ghola or a unanimity fabricant) to prove it in court?
all in good levity Jim, all in good fun ===> (smiley face goes here)
Muff Potter wrote:
Well, of course not. Cheetah the chimp was a known lout and womanizer and no self-respecting chimpina would have ever admitted he was her husband, or father for that matter …
🙂
Jim
Are the laws of physics a manifestation of the faithfulness of God?
that seems to be what nancey murphy thinks anyway
Seneca wrote:
You’re right, it was YOU. YOU know about YOU. No-one else. YOU.
For some reason your post is making me really angry.
Many people have far different, heart breaking stories as to why they lost belief in a faith they desperately wanted, or just could never believe in a good God no-matter how they tried.
I understand that whatever christian system you subscribe to hermetically seals the universe into black & white, us & them, in & out, & that everyone who doesn’t believe just wants to go out sinning (oh sex, drugs rock & roll)….but out here in the real world, where sometimes the amount of evil someone experiences may grind away their ability to believe…your interpretation of the faith looks inadequate Jimmy, & your ‘god’ incapable of dealing with the complexity of the world he made. Stop writing people off just because their stories don’t match yours, there is always this niggardly subtext to what you write about how none of us realise our sin enough & you’re here to remind us. FYI you’re not the Holy Spirit.
Do you even know any people who aren’t your brand of Christian, who bleed & hurt & suffer & fail…& who you share life with & would stand before God for & ask for mercy as they seem to have no chance? Or do you not bother with all that messy love that costs because you can reassure yourself that you need not bother as they marched themselves away in order to do some sinning? The teenage stuff you may have gone off to do is not so compelling to many adults they’d turn their back on belief for it. Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaargh.
Seneca wrote:
Finally I see what lies behind your stated view on nones.
Well, it’s true that you’re not unique in that respect. We’ve all heard people rejecting the Christian life for the most fatuous and shallow of reasons that are almost certainly not their real ones. They’ve left it to pursue a life that is, if not debauched, then certainly self-centred. And I have to say that the realisation “it was me” is a big step further than many people ever get.
On the other hand, you aren’t normative either (none of us is, of course, even me). I have also met people who are led by a desire to do something useful and beneficial, who are outraged at injustice, or who just thing “somebody should do something about that” and realise that they are somebody. Or are just searching for something; consider the Ethiopian eunuch up until he met Philip. And they reject the Christian life because the best evidence they can find on it – the professing Christians they meet – convince them that “God”, insofar as he/she/it exists, is at best a numpty and at worst a liar and a monster.
One point of theology for peer review. In pronouncing woe upon those who cause little ones to stumble, Jesus said that these things must happen. People are driven away from him, and however God will judge them for it, he will judge those who drive them away more severely. I can see no good reason not to try and stop it happening, and in fact it is surely part and parcel of preaching the good news.
In other news, a plumber from the south of England holds the record for building (and driving) the world’s fastest toilet.
This video is well worth a look; I hope you all find it inspiring.
dee wrote:
I did as you asked and reread your post. My only follow-up is that have you considered that the same argument could probably be made for many issues, not just YE. For instance, I would bet many more young people leave the faith because they believe that homosexuals should be allowed to marry and that the church is intolerant.
Orion’sBelt wrote:
If you need to constantly scramble to Biblically try to explain away every new scientific finding or simply dismiss science as wrong, maybe your interpretation of the Bible in this area is wrong. I can hardly believe that God would tell us a Creation story that wouldn’t hold up to future knowledge. God’s not telling us how he did it, God is telling us what it all means to us.
Mark wrote:
Yes, I have. For years, prior starting this blog, I spent time on the atheist blogs, especially ExChristians.Net. There was one consistent theme, over and over, which shocked me. Well over 50% of those I read, and believe me, I read a lot, said that young earth creationism was the key that caused them to walk away from the faith. 50%+. Within my own circle, I experienced this with my daughter’s friend. That made it personal.
Go to Reasons to Believe and see what Hugh Ross has discovered within the scientific world. Many scientists will not consider the faith due to the insistence on YEC. That is what caused him to start Reasons to Believe. Francis Collins has confirmed this very thing as well.
So, if well educated people believe we have lied about the age of the earth, you can be darn sure that they do not trust us to adequately explain sexual mores and everything else. Once you open the door to a lie, then everything could seem to be a lie as well.
dee wrote:
Yes, we are. Or at least, we were until recently. But with all the evangelical material (books, music, films) coming out of the US (the nation with the highest number of evangelicals, and still one of if not THE richest country), this issue starts popping up over here as well. Also, the need of (evangelical) christians for hero worship brings a lot of American speakers (and books) to Europe.
Sad.
If you do not close your eyes and ears completely to the facts, YEC is impossible. For YEC to be true, there is only one possible explanation of scientists’ findings: a HUGE worldwide conspiracy by scientists in order to keep the truth hidden from ordinary people. As with all conspiracy theories, you may not want to go there – it’s not a good place for your sanity.
I’ve said it before, in comments on this blog and in other places: like other aspects of fundamentalism, YEC is a symptom of fear and of a lack of faith. Fear of the facts.
In addition to that, it’s also a symptom of cynicism: the cynicism of those who exploit those fears for their own personal gain in terms of money and power. And they’re milking the movement for all it’s worth.
@ Nick Bulbeck:
I will one up you. The Japanese people have some of the funniest prank shows in the world. My daughter introduced me to them. You may not understand what they are saying but you can figure out what they plan to do. Here is a prank they pulled on a ski slope in Japan. The funniest part of it occurs with a jet ski spa chair @ the 3:15 minute mark. http://tinyurl.com/kbyt348
The only thing I can’t figure out is why they don’t get sued! They must have some liberal laws over there!
Nick Bulbeck wrote:
Awesome comment!
Daisy wrote:
Yes, there probably is. But at the root of it is not everyone else’s malicious persecution of people who believe in YEC; what lies at its root is the fact that the proponents of YEC have been running for years declaring everyone who even questions their pronouncements heretics and “not saved”. It doesn’t help their cause that they include people like Ham and Hovind – need I say more?
As for Tim Challies: I don’t think that anything in his education enables him even to make pronouncements on what he finds more or less credible. The fact that he invents “science” “supporting a much less ancient universe” – invents, yes, I know, that sounds harsh, but he does in no way back up his claim – robs him of the last bit of credibility he may have had.
[rant]
I’m sick and tired of theologians (and pastors, many of whom aren’t even theologians with any proper insight into how scientific work is conducted) making pronouncements about everything and anything, particularly in those fields they know nothing about.
In science, there have been errors, of course, and there has been fraud, too, but in general, there is a lot more accountability than in churches. If you make up your data or draw conclusions that the data doesn’t support and know it, you will be found out, even if it takes longer sometimes than it should, and you will be fired, and lose all reputation among scientists.
If I had to draw a bar chart showing accountability for scientists and for pastors in fundamentalist and certain evangelical churches, one bar would not fit on an A4 page, the other wouldn’t even dirty the paper, on 1200 dpi laser printer. [/rant]
gus wrote:
My husband, who published in some respected journals keeps telling me this. If someone could prove YE to be true, they would win the Nobel Prize.
And when these people claim a conspiracy, they condemn many of their own brothers and sisters in Christ who would champion truth wherever they find it. I have actually had people tell me that my husband, and good people like Collins and Ross refuse to do this because they have been brainwashed into fearing for their careers.
That is absolute nonsense and derogatory to Christians and honest scientists of all sorts. It truly gets me mad.
@ gus:
Great comment.
I did. But I had to become Catholic, thereby questioning most of my fundamentalist worldview in the first place, before I became open to questioning YEC. @ Bennett Willis:
@ Daisy:
All I can say to this is that you have not been looking. My son was thrown out of Sunday school for suggesting that special relativity could reconcile 6 day creationism with the 4.5 billion year old earth. YECers are some of the most vicious “Christians” I have ever met. I put the quotes because I believe they are out to make money more than they actually believe this stuff–at least at the top. I note I have not actually met any SGMers.. They may be worse.
@ Beakerj:
I, too, get angry at Christians who claim people walk away from the faith because they want to sin. Well, I have news for all of those who think that.
This blog has been publishing sin after sin in the evangelical church: domestic violence, pedophilia, affairs, foul mouths, substance abuse, etc-all within the church.
Why the heck does anyone need to leave to have the freedom to sin?? We are doing just fine within the church, thank you very much! (Rant almost over).
@ Beakerj:
And to add to that observation, one can use child pornography for years or molest their students and still get pastors running to the court trying to get the judge to go lenient because these people are now “Christians.” Argghhhhh……
This response always makes me angry too. It so trivializes the huge struggle many undergo as they try to reconcile the cognitive dissonance their faith traditions cause. When I think back and try to remember how I ever believed that ‘every one who never professed the name of Christ’ would go to hell, it seems to me that I bought in to the rationalization that every non Christian of apparently good morals on the outside, must have some secret terrible sins they were hiding. @ Beakerj:
@ Seneca:
Read what i just wrote to Beaker. No one has to leave the church to sin. The church is doing just fine protecting those who sin within the church.
Nick Bulbeck wrote:
Seneca is myopic, thinking that all people who leave Christianity do so to sow their wild oats or to stretch their rebellious limbs. Some do but many leave because Christianity doesn’t make sense. Omniscience and omnipotence (not to mention omnibenevolence) create so many logical fallacies that one inevitably has to play the “mystery” card to untie the knots (or rather cut them). I’m not even going to go into all the problems with the lack of historical evidence, the problem of evil, the obvious contradictory commands in the “perfect” word of god, or the biblical accounts that defy all reason and experience. All of this must be pushed aside and accepted on faith. Nonsense. A great god could do better. Instead, the universe looks exactly like what we would expect it to look like if no god existed. And even if he does exist, there is little reason to choose the Christian god over any other.
No, Seneca lives in a cocoon of his own making, safely nestled in a comfortable chrysalis of superiority and willful ignorance that people who leave the faith just don’t like a cosmic lawgiver telling them what to do. All I can say dude is wake up!
That’s where I disagree. Dogmatically denying physical evidence (God’s creation, if you are a believer)in favor of a sectarian interpretation of Scripture….is not majoring in the minors. It is hugely important to recognize that as fundamentalist, harmful, and in opposition to our Christian freedom, especially when the YEC continue to call into question the orthodoxy or salvation of those who stand firmly against such teaching. @ Mark:
@ AJG:
The years I spent reading ExChristians.Net helped me to understand that there are many reasons why people leave the faith or do not choose the faith. I respect that and them. I have read really smart people who reject the faith due to the problems that you outlined: the problem of evil, the character of God, concerns over the historical narrative, etc.
I think many Christians like to blow off the difficulties because they, themselves, have not seriously thought through the issues. Many have been raised in the faith and can parrot pat answers and become withdrawn or even angry when challenged.
Years ago, I came to a point in my faith in which I needed to stop with the easy believism and deeply explore the faith. Through that process, I have enjoyed being challenged by those who are atheists along with people of many different sorts of faith.
Just know this, I respect you even if we deeply disagree with the reason for the world around us. I know that you have thought through the questions and have come to your conclusions carefully. I wish you peace and joy as you journey through life.
@ SarahS: Ditto.
SarahS wrote:
Through this blog, I have learned that Christians hide lots of sins while they point fingers away from themselves and out into the world.
@ Mark:
My reasoning is backed up by a recent Barna poll that says one of the 6 reasons young people leave the church is because they believe the church is antiscience. Unlike Ham Barna backs it up with fact.
https://www.barna.org/barna-update/millennials/528-six-reasons-young-christians-leave-church#.UpLUUsRwqa8
gus wrote:
Having listened to a number of seminary courses from conservative seminaries, I heartily agree. These courses, taught by experienced professors with Ph.D’s, when discussing Genesis spout the YEC viewpoint, present the AIG and Creation Research Institute propaganda as scientific ‘fact’, and claim that anyone who believes in an old Earth and/or evolution is placing the authority of science above the authority of Scripture, and placing general revelation above special revelation. These are supposedly learned men but they refuse to recognize reality and turn Genesis 1-3 into a history book rather than a teaching parable. This what they believe and what they are teaching a new generation of ministers.
The result is that they have made YEC and anti-evolution into a mandatory foundation of the Christian faith. The result is that when people, particularly the young, have had this pounded into their heads and then experience what’s taught in the wider world and all the evidence that supports a contrary view, they reject what they were taught about Genesis and their entire faith collapses.
No, it’s not the teaching of an old Earth and evolution causes people to turn away from God. It’s the teaching of YEC and anti-evolution as a foundational Christian truth but is actually contrary to reality that causes people to leave the faith. Such is the price that is paid for failing to teach the real lessons of Genesis 1-3.
I wonder if the author of this article might do two things for us:
1. Explain with some detail the assumptions that behind the dating methods relied on here. He has mentioned a number of them, but hasn’t really explained them. What are the assumptions, and why are they justified? What would it take to falsify them, or call them into question?
2. Answer two questions regarding the craters and meteorite explanation: (1) Are there any other explanations for these craters? And (2) Why are the craters virtually unrecognizable on earth because of the passing of time, but still clearly recognizable in other parts of the solar system that have been here for about the same length of time? You suggested that some posit a more recent earth creation that would explain why the earth doesn’t have the craters, but disavowed that and never gave any other explanation as to why they are so obvious other places, but not here.
Thanks.
Val wrote:
FYI, assuming that you mean Gen 1 and 2 contradict each other, neither the actual Hebrew text nor the Septuagint (spelled correctly) will sustain that. Gen 1 and 2 are complementary passages that contain no contradictions aside from the presuppositions that one brings to the text.
Many years ago I heard a YEC scientist on Christian TV say that one proof of a young earth was that granite could only be formed in a second, something about the chemical makeup of it. I just remember his argument was very convincing to me at the time. Can anyone speak to that for me?
@ Orion’sBelt:
Oh I know, right? It is like a new discovery a week when it comes to ancient humans and our Neanderthal cousins, latest I read was that Neanderthals were severely overrun by the arrival of humans into central Asia and Europe (from Africa) that they had to interbreed to maintain their declining populations. So Neanderthals are an early case of human-caused extinction (we have a long legacy of doing this to the world).
One of the YEC sites, I believe, says that our Neanderthal and Denisovan (like Neanderthals) DNA is a result of beastiality and another YEC site has declared all the Homo groups (Homo Habilis, Homo Erectus), and the Australopithecus/Ape-like populations to all be humans! However, I think they would classify mating with a Chimp beastiality, but according to their definition of human, it shouldn’t be.
To Orion’s Belt,
Sorry, I meant to reply to Zeta (Jim) on that comment!
And alternate rendering of the creation story in language the peoples of the Mid-East would not have understood or believed: In the beginning, God created the laws of physics, from which the laws of chemistry arise, from which the laws of biology arise. God created all of the matter of the universe, so that it complies with the laws he created, and released it at once. After a period of time (yom), consistent with those laws, God created the first stars and, after another period of time (yom) other cosmic objects. After a period of time (yom), on one of those objects, consistent with those laws, God created the conditions for life, and brought about life over periods of time (yom(s)), plants and animals, male and female. After a period of time (yom), God caused a life form to have a soul and a mind with ability to communicate and interact with God, and with the ability to love and serve Him. And God gave to mankind (adam) a garden in which to live. But in creating mankind, God also gave to mankind the ability to reject Him and to serve selfish interests, and mankind chose to exercise that ability.
JeffT wrote:
I would add to this also the fact that as the Church has focused on what it feels are the evils of evolution and trying to fight a losing battle against legitimate science, it as effectively abrogated its responsibility to be salt and light in the world. The reason being, the world wants to say that because we descended from animals, it is ok to then act like animals. A church that accepts and deals with OE and the ToE can focus its efforst where it really matters : giving people the message of hope and grace. Of finding ways to present the message of the Gospel as a means of salvation from that kind of carnal thinking about the world. When we fight so hard in the direction of Ken Ham et all, we are effectively saying that kind of thinking is true(that because we descend from animals we are no more than animals).
We really need to be helping people understand that what Genesis shows us is that although God simply commanded the Earth to create life and let life come forth in response to that command, He specifically formed man from the dust of the Earth. Then He breathed the breath of life into man, making Him a living soul. We are NOT mere animals, even IF the physical, corporeal element of who we are is the product of a natural process. God has taken special interest in and care with us. And, in addition, has added something else to us – His breath. We are made in his image. We can’t merely look to what is ‘natural’ to guide our behavior. God has made us to be and given us the capacity to be more than mere animals.
Our fall binds us to that natural animal nature, but what Christ has done frees us from it, and gives us new life and the capacity to be once again in direct relationship with the living God. And ALL of that is real and valid regardless of the mechanism God used to create our physical for and environment.
Ken Ham’s message is, if the universe is billions of years old, if the earth is billions of years old, if life has been on the Earth billions of years, if evolution is true, then Christ is not raised and you may as well behave like an animal.
Anyone with any bent toward science can see all but the very last one of those is true beyond and reasonable doubt.
So let the church rise to the real challenge. Bring the message of scripture, of the Resurrection, to the world as it is, not as we’d like it to be. It is still ‘good news’. There are a lot of hurting people out there that NEED to know what Christ has done. But they need to know it’s not merely fantasy, that it is real. So let’s let them know it’s real. Let’s believe God is not afraid of the truth and that the message of Christ is relevant and powerful in the world as it actually is.
Zeta (Jim)
@ Patti:
I can’t speak to that one so perhaps Jim can. However, if you really want to explore the subject, read studies on AIG and then go to some sites like RTB, Biologos and Old Earth Ministries (which used tot be called Answers in Creation until Ham threatened to sue them because it was too close to his name and people were going there) and do a one to one comparison on the studies, how they are peer reviewed and corroborated, etc. It may surprise you. It takes time but it is worth it to get at the truth.
Patti wrote:
That is a tad vague. I know of two YEC arguments focussing on granite, one regards the formation of polonium halos, the other is trying to deal with the particular crystalline form. The Polonium halos issue is the one that I’ve seen used the most to imply instantaneous creation. And the idea is that there are these circular marks left in the granite that conform to the decay of a particuarly short lived radioisotope of polonium.
The YEC conjecture is that for the halos to exist in the granite, it had to have been formed almost instantly and with some polonium in it so the halos could form. If it had formed slowly there could be no such halos because all the polonium would be gone.
There are a good number of problems with this, not the least of which is that granite tends to have a good bit of uranium in it, and one of the daughter products are several isotopes of polonium. So new polonium can be created in situ as the U238 in the granite decays naturally over its 4.5 billion year half-life.
However, there are other issues, and this is a bit out of my depth. I will point you to the talkorigins article on the claim, and then perhaps others more deeply versed in geology that I might offer a more in-depth analysis (e.g. our friend DC?)
Gentry’s Polonium Halo Hypothesis discussed in detail
The other issue of granite cooling seems less likely to be what you referenced, as I think that is more a response to the typical conclusion that it takes Granites a long time to form and cool. That is, the YEC’s in that case are trying to find natural ways granites can form relatively quickly, as opposed to some kind of real evidence they actually did form relatively quickly.
Zeta (Jim)
@ Daisy:
I find you interesting Daisy. On one hand, you question a lot about Christianity and are losing trust in much of the culture that surrounds it, yet you often express on here you hold to quite entrenched Christianese views of the world.
I guess I just don’t come form a part of the world where one could lose their faith, begin questioning and still maintain a YEC worldview. But then, I am from Canada, and there were very few evangelicals when I grew up. So, there were fewer Christian schools, less support in our world for things like YEC. When Christians said in class they believed in YEC, most teachers could actually be quite respectful, but, our peers were the ones who ridiculed us, etc. Trying to defend it worked in high school – none of us had that much scientific knowledge to really push it one way or another (and 25 years ago, there wasn’t as much against YEC either). University was a different kettle of fish, though. There was more info than the average Christian apologetic argument could refute, many of us Christian’s weren’t even scientists and most of us had learned not to argue outside of an area we knew so little about.
But here is where I really began to notice the divide, those church folk who were die-hard YECers (and some were, actually quite pushy and hostile) were very under educated, none had a science degree (I am talking about those whom I interacted with), while those who just asked some questions about it were well educated in science, and lived better Christians lives from what I could see – they interacted with the Bible, rather than spouting verses from it. To add to all this, once people get into university, they tend to hang out with fellow university students, so the types of churches and view on faith is altered to be more thoughtful, and more questioning of who is teaching what at churches (I guess in my limited world, since Mark Driscoll seems to collect many university students for his church, and I find him very poorly thought out and not well educated, as I’ve mentioned on this blog numerous times).
I question people who tell me the way I need to read the Bible, so Ken Hamm saying YEC is essential to my faith needs much, much more proof for me than his comment being able to settle that. It hasn’t damaged my faith at all. I love reading Genesis now, because I don’t waste my time trying to reconcile evolution and the two (different) creation accounts, now, I read how the Ancients began to replace their ancient fertility cults with a monotheistic faith, how they viewed God as an amazing God to a thankless group of people. Also, living in India and Nepal, I saw a lot of the remnants of the ancient fertility cults the Bible railed against up close and personal. I mean, how often do you go to a restaurant for a nice goat curry and get told these meats may have first been sacrificed in the temple, as this was a restaurant connected to the temple? gulp! Had to do some quick scrabbling through my Bible that night, to learn I was fine. The point being, Genesis answers 3,000 year old questions people had about humans and God, their ‘why were we created?’ was seeped in near-eastern beliefs about Gods making humans as slaves for themselves, Genesis is radical because it teaches us we have dominion over a god-created earth – they always felt that if the gods made the earth, then the gods had dominion over it, not us. They were, form archaeological studies of those cultures, surprisingly uninterested in the non-farmed world. My prof pointed out that clay at the bottom of a river bed was nothing to them, but take that clay and make something of it, and that type of clay had a special god or goddess for it. They were interested in farming – this is the dawn of the agriculture revolution, when these stories were first told – in the world that they farmed, they weren’t worried about the wild (chaotic) spaces beyond their civilized world. Surprisingly uncurious actually. Shepherds were the lowest cast (think Abraham) because they didn’t own land and didn’t farm it. They wandered out in the wilderness (the Edin as it was called, that was west of Mesopotamia), feeding their sheep. Yuck, they thought, “there is nothing but primitiveness out there!” The wilderness was always bad in their lit. Think of Adam getting cast out of the garden and Cain getting sent to wander after his murder. They were also terrified of that wideness, they believed devil-like creatures populated the wilderness and one would surely die if they wandered too far from civilization.
I like to wonder if these fears came from a much earlier time when there were still Neanderthals on earth and humans were afraid of them – they were much larger than us, just not a bright, so we out-hunted and out-fished them – but we wouldn’t have been able to beat them in a fight. That and the world was descending into one of it’s numerous ice ages when humans arrived in Asia/Europe, so food was already scarce by then.
http://creation.com/granite-formation-catastrophic-in-its-suddenness
Well I just found this one about granite.. And thanks for your reply Dee. Just for the record I’m not arguing anything. I was raised YEC and I still have my 6 week long 6th grade IFB school creation project that I kept, it’s 40 years old now, lol.
When I first started my quest into the Bible alone to see what I really thought about what Hugh Ross was saying vs. my indoctrination I noticed that Genesis says that in the beginning God created the heavens and the earth but it doesn’t say how long the earth was without form and void. So, I just sit back and am interested in the debate among the scientists. When the atheist scientists proclaim proof of no God and the young earth scientists proclaim apostasy if you don’t agree, then I get bored.
Orion’sBelt wrote:
Second that.
dee wrote:
This is a very important point.
If only it weren’t…
But it is, because so many para-church groups (aka “churches”) are held together mainly by a shared ideology. That’s why sins against the ideology are a bigger deal, to them, than sins against people. People are expendable, but the dogma is not.
In other news, my son’s 14th-birthday-get-together pizza order is now at stage 4 of 5 (“quality control” – which presumably means they’re eating some of it, which is certainly what I’d do). Should be winging its way hither from Alloa any minute now…
Gene wrote:
Well, he did in the article:
If I understand this correctly, what he means is that there is no wind or any other kind of erosion on the moon;
The fact that erosion by wind and water is a slow process for large craters means that must have taken a long time, much longer than just 6,000-8,000 years, given that many parts of the earth’s surface are not that much changed from Roman times, despite heavy human intervention like deforestation, which would accelerate erosion.
“Why are the craters virtually unrecognizable on earth because of the passing of time, but still clearly recognizable in other parts of the solar system that have been here for about the same length of time?”
I can speak to this one.
Craters are harder to recognize on Earth because our planet is biologically and seismically active, and because most of it is underwater. Earthquakes, volcanoes, and plate tectonics have all acted over millennia to subsume or cover many craters. Plant life and oceans have hidden others, although developments in imaging technology are bringing more of them into view. It’s no coincidence that the best-known craters are in the desert, eg Barringer Crater in Arizona, where they are clearly visible.
Also, since most meteorites headed toward Earth are burned by friction in the atmosphere before landing, we would have fewer impact craters than on planets and moons with less atmospheric insulation.
One other question that I would like to see answered:
Why, if all the YECs are such good christians, do many of them resort to all kinds untruths and subterfuge to further their “agenda” (gotta love this word in the context of fundamentalism).
In case anyone’s interested: Ken Miller’s presentation on how ID proponents tried to sneak it into school textbooks can be found here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JVRsWAjvQSg
An article by Ken Miller on how he reconciles his faith with his scientific work can be found here:
http://www.beliefnet.com/News/Science-Religion/2005/07/Darwin-Design-And-The-Catholic-Faith.aspx
And, please, YECs, don’t say: “But he’s a Catholic!”
Nick Bulbeck wrote:
Interesting. I never thought of denominationalism (this word in place of ideology/dogma) in that way, but it it appears to fit. Conform or form your own. Christ and the saints are diminished in cause to the ideology.
Patti wrote:
Without knowing why he claimed granite could only be formed in a second, I can’t say much more than the fact that granite typically forms deep underground when other (and, by definition, older) rocks melt in the presence of water, mix with magma and then gradually change into the right kind of mixture such that it will all solidify together instead of one compound at a time.
If you put boiling water outside on a winter’s day; it will gradually cool to zero degrees, then tiny ice crystals will steadily spread through the liquid, each one forming almost instantly. But the water actually took hours to freeze. Each tiny particle of granite, therefore, does solidify straight away; but the process that enables this to happen must happen first, and takes a huge amount of time. Or, imagine typing out War and Peace, but only timing how long it took you to type the last full stop. Amazing – you just wrote War and Peace in a tenth of a second. Except you didn’t.
Many different types of granite are known, each one showing a different composition consistent with its having been formed from a particular blend of older rocks. To repeat, I don’t know what the fellow in question actually said on the program whereof you spake. But if he zeroed in on the final, rapid, stage of granite’s formation and argued that granite can only be formed in a second, then at very best, he had no idea what he was talking about.
@ Nick Bulbeck:
Nick, you were probably still typing when I posted this explanation from creation.com that I had just found. Can you speak to it for me? http://creation.com/granite-formation-catastrophic-in-its-suddenness
I don’t know why it matters to me, purely just interested in the different explanations, thanks.
Dr. Furman wrote an excellent article yesterday related to the upcoming Ham/Nye debate. http://t.co/whBx5XiMC6
He was a long-time YEC who has changed his beliefs a few yrs ago.
dee wrote:
My guess backed by personal experience is that probably more important than any YE theory is skepticism of the virgin birth of Jesus and his death and resurrection. I don’t believe they are leaving in droves because they believe in Jesus’ resurrection but think evolution is bunk.
Sorry Gene, I missed this:
Gene wrote:
The primary ‘assumption’ associated with radiometric dating is that the decay rates themselves are constant or very nearly so over time. I did address this issue, though somewhat briefly, over the course of the essays. The reason I put ‘assumption’, in quotes is that it is not merely assumed: all evidence to date shows it to be a fact. As also has come up in some of the other threads, the decay rate is observed to be the same both in the OKLO natural reactor and in the observations of SN which create new radioisotopes. There have also been a good number of laboratory experiments trying to force decay rates to change, to no significant result.
Secondarily, we also have good reason to believe they would be constant because who fast redioisotopes decay is tied directly to the fundamental nature of the universe, the constants which define its nature, such as the speed of light.Secondarily, we also have good reason to believe they would be constant because the rate of radioisotope decay is tied directly to the fundamental nature of the universe, the constants which define its nature, such as the speed of light. And again, in all our observations, specifically of the fine structure constant and the speed of light, we can observe no evidence they have ever been any different that what they are now over the life span of the solar system.Given the strength of the observations that cause us to conclude the decay rates are constant, we would need to observe a process that could be expected to be seen in nature changing the decay rates themselves. So far that has not happened, but were it to be seen, it would certainly be cause to revisit that conclusion. How much doubt it would put on the current conclusions would depend on the nature of the observation.
Which brings us to the other observations that force a non-YEC conclusion. While redioisotopic dating allows us to put nice, clear numbers on what we observe, there are huge datasets that cannot be resolved to a 10,000 year old universe. Records of annual processes which span 100,000 or even millions of years. Varves, pleorivers, inverted river channels, the massive meteor craters on the Earth, etc ,etc, etc.
2a) Are there other explanations for Meteor craters on the Earth.
In short – no. The kinds of activities that could occur naturally to produce large craters (volcanism and/or associated steam explosions) simply can’t generate the kinds of special markers used to identify an asteroidal impact. The first of these is shocked quartz. Shocked quartz was first noticed IIRC in the craters of Nuclear explosions. It is a consequence of overpressures that were only known to be produced in nuclear explosions at the time. However, what was discovered later is that shocked quartz was also found in the moon rocks taken from craters, and then later it was found and the Arizona “meteor crater” which at the time was postulated to be of unknown origin, possibly volcanic (though there was no evidence of any volcanism in the area).
Another indicator of meteor impact (also due to the immense pressures involved) are called ‘shatter cones’. These immense pressure from the impact explosion produce unique radiating fractures in the rock beneath it, again only if pressures beyond that possible from volcanic explosions are created.
Finally, there is the ejecta itself, tektites and micro diamonds produced in the massive heat and pressure of the impact.
The reasons these are used as indicators of an impact are because they just don’t happen any other way.
2b) We have very clear examples of some smaller craters (re Meteor Crater in Arizona), but the reason most of the large ones are not readily visible is that – fortunately – at the current time large asteroids hitting the earth is relatively rare. The events that created most of the craters on the moon and mars were actually fairly ancient. Most estimates put it around 3.8 billion years ago and corresponding to a massive destabalization of disk material left over from the solar systems creation (to see an example of present day stellar formation disks, take a close look at the Hubble Orion Nebula montage). Between that even and now the Earth’s surface has been remade through plate tectonics several times.
Continued in the next post …
[[MOD Corrected per request of commenter.]]
Edit- I don’t believe they are leaving in droves because they believe in Jesus’ resurrection but that a church thinks evolution is bunk.
2b continued:
There are, however, still present a large number of meteor impact craters in various states of erosion and reformations. One fairly close to US dwellers on the east coast is the Chesapeake Bay impact structure, about 53 miles in diameter:
Chesapeake Bay Information
Others include the 170km Chicxulub impact that we believe initiated the massive extinction of the dinosaurs,
Chicxulub Information
and an even more massive 250 km crater in Canada at Sudbury. Generally, the larger they are, the older they are, for obvious reasons. Given the crater in Mexico probably wiped out the dinosaurs, imagine what happened with Sudbury.
The largest known Earth impact crater is over a billion years old, and is call Vredefort in South Africa.
Here is a list of large impact structures on the Earth, with links to information on each one, both confirmed and suspected.
List of the largest Earth impact craters
If you scroll to the bottom, you will see a link to a very nice resource on impact craters: the Earth Impact Database.
Zeta (Jim)
(I apologize for the typo’s and grammatical mistakes. I’m supposed to be painting a room in my house today and only had time for a ‘stream of consciousness’ reply: which unfortunately for me is typically a bit rough around the edges)
Zeta (Jim)
@ Orion’sBelt: Zeta, for some reason, those links in your last post aren’t working for me – they turn red, but don’t take me to the websites in question.
Perhaps a coding error of some kind?
[[MOD Deleted per Jim’s request due to bad links. See below.]]
Zeta (Jim)
hmm, they are doing that for me too. Sorry. I will try again, first doing what I thought I already did (to bad there is not a preview function)
Largest impacts list
Chicxulub infomation
Chesapeake Bay information
Zeta (Jim)
dee wrote:
Much agreement here Dee. One of the critiques I have of the Biologos & Reasons to Believe sites is that they seem to be for ‘the choir’ so to speak of highly trained specialists. Us laypeople can become quickly bamboozled and bogged down in the technicalities. I think it’s a splendid idea that Jim and Old John J do some essays to try and simplify the main concepts so that reasonably intelligent folks can grasp them. I also realize of course that there’s a danger of over-simplification, much like trying to explain the concepts of limits & differentiation to those with barely a cursory knowledge of basic algebra and no knowledge of functions.
@ Mark:
I strongly disagree. I believe the easily shown shoddy science of YE leads kids to believe that they are not being told the truth. That leads to further questions about everything else. There is a saying “Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.”
@ Julie Anne:
I have just learned about him. Thank you for pointing him out. he has a great website.
@ Patti:
I also like to ask lots of questions. For example, Adam was created outside of the Garden and then placed in the Garden. Why was he created outside? What was outside? When did the angel rebellion occur? How long were they here before men? Did their presence upset the perfect balance of this world in the beginning? I best stop-I need to mop the floor!
@ Orion’sBelt:
You are being requested to do do an essay or two on evolution. Do not groan!!! Take your time.
gus wrote:
Because (just like the Jacobins of the French Revolution and their fanboys from Paris to Phnom Penh) The Cause is so Righteous as to justify any evil whatsoever to bring it about. The Republique of Perfect Virtue always beckons from the other side of the “regrettable but necessary” Reign of Terror.
Nick Bulbeck wrote:
Citizen Robespierre, Comrade Pol Pot, and Dear Leader Comrade Kim Jong-whatever would agree.
@ Patti:
I suspect you’re right, and that our posts passed like ships in the night… Be which as it may, I’ve had a quick look at the link you provided.
Essentially, the authors do no more than quote (out of context) Professor John Clemens as saying that granites can form quickly compared with the extent of geological time. Nowhere do they offer any evidence that the many different types of granite found all over the world did so; much less do they offer any evidence that the older rocks, from which granites are formed, were created in seconds. Where Clemens disagrees with them they simply (and explicitly) assume he is biased.
The final paragraph, headed “More and more consistent with the Biblical timeframe”, is one of the most contemptible assemblies of cynically twisted half-truths and deception I have ever seen in anything purporting to be either scientific or biblical. (Frankly, the Watchtower would have been proud of it.) In reality, YEC was for centuries the only allowable paradigm, based on literal readings of selected verses of Genesis 1 rather than any observation of the word around us. But it was challenged by physical observation until eventually it collapsed under the weight, not of a “conspiracy” or some sinful agenda, but of physical evidence against it. Remember that “science” is not actually a “thing” that thinks or talks; it’s just people measuring numbers and explaining as many of them together as they can.
All that is happening now is that YEC “scientists” are cherry-picking selected tiny portions of data that could perhaps be explained by a young earth, and ignoring the vast mass of evidence that could not.
@ dee: I have yet to see convincing evidence for an angelic rebellion, apocalyptic (and similar) literature aside.
I know that Wenatchee the Hatchet recommended some books on the development of the idea of Satan/demons in some posts a while back, and I have them myself (after seeing his posts), but am blanking on the author’s name – ah, it’s Jeffrey Burton Russell. These books aren’t the easiest reading, but they are really, really good.
Might change your perspective on a lot of things, though. (fwiw, they’re used as texts in many academic settings.)
@ Orion’sBelt: Many thanks for those! I am especially interested in the list of impact sites, out of sheer curiosity (and because I liked imagining meteors streaking through the sky when I was a kid).
dee wrote:
I’m not sure if this is what you are saying, but do you think that a teen being told there’s a YE makes that teen consequently question the resurrection of Jesus? I personally think skeptics aren’t inclined to believe either. I have never witnessed a young person leaving the church solely on the teachings of YE.
Mark,
The effect of the young earth and no evolution insistence of many Christians drove my son away, drove me away for a while, etc. And we both lived basically moral lives while away. He is still away but reading and thinking, much of the same things that I read on my way back to faith. I believe in a Creator God, of an old universe. That God created the laws of physics, chemistry and biology, created all matter in the universe (aka the “big bang”), and caused everything that there is and has been, that evolution is how we have the diversity of organisms that share many characteristics, and especially that he chose to make humans to be his eternal companions in the universe he created. Up thread, I have suggested a bit more of my belief in an alternative, 21st century, rendering of a theistic creation story.
And as Dee has reported (and as I believe Barna has), an insistence on YE and no evolution has driven most young “nones” away from Christianity. They cannot believe what they have been told Genesis means. And I, for one, agree with them that it cannot mean what many say it means.
“If you don’t believe Genesis like we do, you don’t believe the Bible and you don’t believe in Jesus.” Exactly what I was told, and my sone was told as well. And it is sending a generation of young people away from the church and faith. And it will keep their children away as well, for generations to come, unless Christians seriously examine the science and find a way to integrate the science with the text by finding an alternative meaning that preserves the role of God in creation without some of the restrictive literalism, which, btw, no one applies to all of the scripture.
I saw a really cool special on the history channel today about the volcanic formation of Scotland. Very cool. And just one more evidence of our very old earth.
@ Dr. Fundystan, Proctologist:
Volcanic formation sounds rather hot, more than cool!!!
Mark wrote:
Your contention immediately brought this to mind:
Phil Robertson on Southern Racism: I Never Saw the Mistreatment of Any Black Person
Just because you have never witnessed a young person leaving church because YE was forced upon him/her is irrelevant. It is happening throughout Christendom whether you have 'witnessed' it or not.
Mark wrote:
I think teenagers..of all people…are the first to realise if they’ve been misinformed by good Christian folks about the age of the earth then they’d better be looking hard at the truth of other historical events they’ve been told about. Truthiness won’t wash here.
Mark wrote:
I watch my son leave the church and declare himself an atheist for both YE and the churches restrictive stand on women’s roles.
And yes, I’m angry with the preacher who mocked Old Earth from the pulpit and made believing in evolution into a, “Well then you make God a liar” issue. He did not need to go there.
An Attorney wrote:
All-or-Nothing Package Deal. Take It or Leave It.
Val wrote:
They might be singing a different tune if Homo Habilis, Homo Erectus, Australopithecus, etc, were available instead of conveniently extinct.
AJG wrote:
“That’s why I left, so that’s the only possible reason.”
AKA
“I have X Problem, so everyone else must have the same problem.”
Josh wrote:
Thanks for your response.
Is this is in contrast to atheistic evolutionists who would say that the physical laws and processes have always been? Or came into being randomly? Or…?
Just trying to understand.
@ Nick Bulbeck:
Thanks Nick
Kathy wrote:
Saying “atheistic evolutionists” is like saying ‘atheistic plumber’. The theory of evolution says that natural processes are sufficient to explain the diversity of species on our planet. Some of those who accept the theory are atheists, some are not.
Re theistic evolution: Some people have told me that AE is the belief that all species on earth EXCEPT man evolved and that man was a special creation. OK, so why did god have to use the genome of an ape to create humans? Others are really deists: a supreme being set the universe in motion then walked away to let things happen as they might.
One thing bugs this old earth believer: when we bash “Christians” or “the church” for teaching YEC and driving off younger nones that way, we are acting like evangelical fundamentalism is “the church.” There are so very many churches, many quite conservative, that do not hold to YEC.
It also bothers me that we so often make it sound like we aren’t seeking the truth to teach and preach, but rather must teach and preach only what people are willing to hear.
People, including younger people, are quite able to self sort themselves into churches that teach what they believe, be it YEC, evolution, or whatever. It really is a bit of a cop out when anyone of us comes up with the “I left church because I didn’t believe XYZ” line as if the church owed it to us to never teach anything we object to.
If you don’t hold to YEC, don’t attend that sort of church, buy their books, frequent their websites, etc. Speak up about what you do believe. But understand they get to do the same.
Better yet, expend the energy in a positive way, sharing Jesus.
I was once at a mining museum and commented to a family member as we viewed gorgeous crystals that “God sure made a wonderful world.” A stranger overheard me, basically pinned me against the display case and went into a loud rant about young earth creationism being absolutely stupid and how stupid I was to believe “fairy tales.” When he finished I calmly told him I never said a word about young earth creationism, didn’t believe in it, but did believe in God the Creator. From that the rant went on to some social issues. I pushed my way around him and we found a docent.
We don’t want to imitate him.
@ Gene:
They compliment each other as a response to “who is man?” in the Ancient Near Eastern (ANE) Philosophy of the day. They aren’t the same creation story. There are two different ones being blended because the authors were incorporating different belief systems along side their own (for example, Canaanite – Mesopotamian creation myths are very, very similar to each other and Genesis 2 – not the same, but the same motifs are used. Genesis one is different, and not found readily in the ANE, except it is more in line with a later world-view that became popular as cultures shifted. It would sort of be similar to taking the Ancient world view of a circular, but flat earth – like a CD Rom and a dome over the sky and then blend it with the later Greek notions of a spherical earth. Put those two sciences together, and they don’t compliment one another, they just confuse people. As a story, however, they could work quite well together.
Genesis one and two compliment one another, IF you read them as a revelation of God and humans – Genesis one would have read to them as God’s temple is earth, his idol (idols were images of the god/dess that the temple was dedicated to) were humans – they are “created” last because they are the centre piece of creation – or the idol showing which god/dess’ temple it was. Gen. 2 is addressing a miss-mash of ancient cultural beliefs about why humans were made – in much of the ANE’s eyes, and therefore in ANE’s “sciences” humans were the gods/goddesses’ slaves, made to do the hard labour so they could rest. If they were bad – then watch out! the gods or goddesses, or both, would send difficulties to them – drought, hail, etc. to teach them a lesson. Later, it wasn’t just due to being “bad” but not being worshipful enough for the gods/goddesses’ that trouble came. So, the surrounding religions began sacrificing people to appease the god/desses and get their attention. A drought might mean a human sacrifice, as the god/dess clearly needed to be appeased for some unknown wrong. Temple Priests and Priestesses, who claimed to hear from these god/desses would tell the crowd what the god/dess wanted for appeasement. If a farmer hadn’t given enough to the temple, his family may be singled out to appease the wrath of the god/dess. Some ANE cultures did this more than others, but you will notice little to no surprise or pleading from Abraham when God asks him to sacrifice Isaac. Apparently just another day on this God-controlled earth to Abraham.
To further ANE and Genesis 2 – consider the flood. Gen. 1 and 2 are prototype stories to give background to the real event – ANE literature used a method of story telling called a Chiasis – where the most important point of the story is written in the middle. Gen. 2 -11 is one long story blending ANE myths and world views together to explain why God would have chosen Abraham, to ANE peoples, not us, and not to our modern need for scientific accuracy to verify it as true. Again, Gen. 1 is a slightly different story, but it is in there to fit the chiastic structure of creation, destruction, re-creation. The main point of telling it was to fit God into what they considered their history. Why is God worshipped by us? why aren’t we in paradise with him? Why is he hidden from us? Why did he get so mad and send a huge worldwide flood if it wasn’t because the gods got tired of us? (this was all accepted as fact by ANE readers/hearers). If you doubt God would answer these question because they just aren’t true in reality – then read Job. Does God tell Job “where were you when the universe was created? or the Earth was just a blog of space rocks stuck in orbit around the Sun” No, he talks about “the foundations of the Earth” (think of the Greek god Atlas holding up the earth’s pillars on his back, think about the earth as a flat, round table top with pillars underneath is and a snow-glob like dome called a “firmament” over top of it – so that the Earth looks like a large snow dome or butterfly cage on legs. That is what Job thought of when he thought of the Earth, that is what the readers/hearers of Job thought of when they thought of the “foundations of the earth” or stars fixed in the sky – they thought stars were set into the firmament and then the firmament spun around the Earth.
God answers people in their day and their way. They didn’t ask questions like “how did the Universe form?” with scientific observations, they answered the philosophical life questions, such as, why are we here? Are the gods’ mad at us? That sort of stuff, so those are the questions God answers from them in Genesis 1 and 2 – very complimentary, unless you try and use them to describe the actual material creation of this world.
@ numo:
What I find interesting about the development is that the Old Testament is more in line with a cataclysmic fall of (their) universe (sky and earth) than the NT is. Satan – Leviathan, Evil – Chaos, Hell – the Deep. (Sorry for the terrible summary, but I have dishes waiting for me, so I am hanging out here, instead).
Basically, in the Ancient world, the Hell we think of a separate and somewhere else was believed to circle the flat disk-shaped earth. Their own god or goddess was always at the centre of the world, surrounded by land, and OK ocean then The Deep (que scary music). If you were an Egyptian, you were in the middle of the world and those Babylonians were awfully close to the Chaotic Deep, so they couldn’t be as trusted, and their water and crops were definitely suspect. Vice versa if you were Babylonian.
There are numerous motifs still surviving from the ANE depicting the earth surrounded by an ancient sea monster-type snake – many called it Leviathan, sometimes it was called Rehab, anyways, that was their view of Chaos and the sea serpent was the controller of chaos and to be greatly feared – no sailing into the sun set for them.
Anyways, I agree I don’t see a direct reference to an Angelic rebellion in the OT, but their Hell and demons/satan are very present, just not in the Greek from. Not sure if that book is as aware of that, as ANE studies are very different from Classic Greek Roman studies and most scholars aren’t well versed in both cultures.
@ Val:
Oops, left out that the Flood story. It is the story of God giving the world over to evil – a warning to not give up on God. So pretty similar to our modern concept of Hell as a place that one my end up in if they are not following God. Fire and Brimstone, a place “down below” and human-like devils with pitch-forks, etc. are all later developments, but the view of evil subsuming bad people is entrenched in the Bible, both OT and NT.
@ Val:
Double oops, I mean a place people perish in is in both OT and NT – eternal suffering, that is a development, but Perishing isn’t.
Val wrote:
Well, no. Chapter 2 is a further description of the specifics of chapter 1. It would be most similar to a story where an author gives an overview, and then goes back to highlight a part of it. Such as telling your friends about a vacation where you outline the days: The first day we went to the beach, the second day we went to the museum, the third day we went on a bus tour of the city, the fourth day we went to another beach. The museum had some really interesting artifacts …
There is only one author. The multiple author myth was dispelled long ago. The suggestion of multiple authors stretches the faith of even the most naive. The text reads as a single unit, written by the same author, telling a story.
linda wrote:
Exactly. People who claim to have “left the church” over YE failed to also just go down the street to another church that doesn’t teach it. I tend to see reasons to abandon church are just convenient excuses. Justifications. I know. I’ve done it before.
You can spend the rest of your life trying to stamp out the 5 or 6 things “wrong” in the church in order to get kids to stay, but guess what…there will be 5 or 10 different things by the time you are done.
@ Val: it is a series of books (covering everything fron the most ancient beliefs right up to modern times in chronological and developmental order) and isn’t cursory by any means! All of them are academic tomes.
I ncant summarize what he says in blog comments; you’ll have to check for yourself. I think it’s a complicated topic and that beliefs morphed a lot over time. Am not saying that Russell’s books are the last word on it by any means, only that they’re worth some time and effort.
linda wrote:
We are not talking about accepted “rules” like adultery here. We are discussing blatant falsehoods when it comes to science. You strike me as a well educated woman who knows how to take things with a grain of salt.
But take TWW’s neck of the woods. Almost all of the local churches endorse YEC. We also have a YE cavalry here in the form of a YE community group which is dedicated to eradicating any sort of nonYEC teaching.
Take an 18 year old kid who grew up around here. That is all he is ever heard. In fact it has been pounded into his head that he cannot be a Christian and believe in anything but a YE. When he learns the truth in science class in college, he realizes that the church to which he has been devoted all of his life has lied to him. Then, as I just learned recently, another friend of his also had a similar crisis.
They go to their pastor who just throws more AIG material at them and suggests they just keep attending YEC classes at the church which will “prove” that their science is wrong. It doesn’t.
I am glad to hear that you live in an area in which OEC and TE is openly discussed and encouraged as viable alternatives. I, too, grew up in such an area. However, in many areas of the country, especially in the South, YEC is the gospel as far as many are concerned.
And I will not allow this to go unchallenged. I know that this issue causes young people to leave the faith.
Kathy wrote:
Yes. However, it is possible, in science, to observe a process in nature and say “this is what I see occurring and this how I measured it.” That person could be an atheist or a Christian since the statement is only referring to an observed phenomena. In that sense, both can agree with what they see.
However, who/what started the process is where faith or lack thereof comes in.
That Japanese prank clip was hilarious. I’ve been stuck in bed sick for days and that was just what I needed. Note: Always wear a towel in the sauna…especially if you are in Japan.
dee wrote:
This is part of what I am talking about. “Blatant falsehoods.” Honestly, you are just talking about the “majority opinion.” I am not a Young Earth Creationist, but I don’t begrudge that viewpoint. Likewise, I bring up geocentrism is just as valid of a model as heliocentrism, as I have demonstrated with expert opinions, but it is summarily dismissed too.
Just don’t fail to see that your Jesus resurrection story is just another pagan myth, like Mithra. There was no resurrection. And, there was no virgin birth. Although I am sure kids don’t leave the church because they don’t believe in Jesus.
@ Mark:
It boggles my mind to hear people apparently say that nobody falls away from “church” because they find the church unwilling or unable to deal with the great questions of the day-including but not limited to the age of the earth, and how to or not to understand scripture, or whether science and religion are incompatible, or whether demons as a cause of disease is just a paradigm or an actual spirit being. These kinds of things are really, really huge for a lot of people. How do I know? I listen to what folks say in discussion groups at my church. And sometimes people don’t “just go down the street” because the church down the street does not answer their questions any better.
Now for an example:
There was a young Methodist preacher (see next paragraph) who wanted to do a church plant and who looked at the population and spotted folks who, it looks like, could well include lots of the very sort of people that we are talking about here. So he did- plant such a church- with amazing response.
So while people debate all this and similar topics regarding various things about scripture, there is the United Methodist Church of the Resurrection, a 20,000 member church plant in the greater Kansas City Area which has created a place for prior church drop-outs (and others) who, according to Adam Hamilton the pastor, are comfortable with nuance and want a place for the mind as well as the heart. I got this information when we did one of his study series at my church, but this information and more is available on Wikipedia if anybody is interested.
If such people do not exist, who are these 20,000 in that church, for example? Who are these people who I listen to at my church? Figments of my imagination? Worse sinners than the fundygelicals that apparently Dee is running into in her area? Ridiculous. This is just one more dividing variable in christianity as people try to deal with the issues of today.
linda wrote:
I overheard a similar exchange some years ago at Hoover dam when an elderly gent quipped about the Almighty as the master of wizards and electricity and a young woman on the tour lit into him like Grant’s artillery at Vicksburg. Oddly enough it was sort of like a rabid fundamentalist proselytizing in reverse.
Mark wrote:
Majority opinion backed up by tens of thousands of peer reviewed scientific papers. I have seen with my own eyes and heard with my own ears, YECS that misquote and lie about what a scientist has actually said about a subject. And I have seen and heard YECs repeat the same lie even after being corrected hundreds of time.
I that LYING that drives people away from faith. Like I’ve said before, YEC didn’t force me to leave the church, but the lying I have encountered was the final straw.
nmgirl wrote:
And your holy book says nothing about evolution, but it’s pretty clear that lying is a sin.
Mark wrote:
Part of the problem is you don’t seem to understand what ‘Valid’ means from a scientific perspective. You don’t even really seem to understand what the relativistic transformation is really saying when is shows geocentrism is a valid reference frame. If you did, you would not be trying to equate the standard understanding of orbits begin driven by the gravitational interaction of different masses in motion and what would be an entirely new and uncharted physics that could produce the state the relativistic transformation describes.
As an example of the absurdity of your claim here: I can jump out of an airplane and the reference frame where the Earth suddenly moves towards me and then slows when I pull my parachute is just as valid a frame of reference as the frame of reference on the surface of the Earth where I fall to the Earth and then my parachute slows me down.
YOUR use of the logic here would be the equivalent of saying that the Earth moving frame is scientifically valid as an explanation for the observations associated with my parachute jump. And it just isn’t. IT is just as idiotic to think it makes scientific sense to explain my jump per the Earth itself suddenly moving towards me as it is to offer the Earth standing still and the universe rotating about is is a scientifically equivalent explanation for what we observe in the solar system. There is simply no physical cause to account for either. I fall to the Earth because compared to me it is massive and my gravity is teeny tiny compared to the Earth’s. Likewise the Earth and the Sun. The fact all of these reference frames can be transposed relativistically means NOTHING in terms of which of them makes sense scientifically or which of them has explanatory power from a scientific perspective.
Zeta (Jim)
The next Big Box post is up.
http://scarletlettersblog.wordpress.com/2014/02/02/the-influence-of-older-children-on-younger-children-tbb/
Mark wrote:
Hmmm, not sure how that happened. What I wanted to note was how harsh this is – how might some of these people know to go down the street? How do they know the breadth of beliefs demonstrated by local churches? I wouldn’t, even now. I fail to see why you doubt the word of those here who’ve seen this as a big factor in others walking away. Which bit of ‘if they’re wrong about the details of the origins of the universe maybe they’re wrong about everything’ don’t you get? This puts everything under a cloud of doubt.
As for your own ‘justifications’ – they’re yours…not anyone else’s. Don’t do a Jimmy & paint everyone with your own sin.
Hester wrote:
I read that
I hope this isn’t too obvious a point, but diluting one’s own sin by projecting it onto a large number of other people and despising them for it is not an effective form of repentance. I know of no biblical evidence that it washes with God – quite the reverse, actually – and it does nothing to purify one’s character.
Beakerj wrote:
I’d never paint everybody with my own sin. I’d paint everybody as sinners however who use justification and rationalization. You don’t agree with that BJ?
Orion’sBelt wrote:
I actually read the article and understand the different “frames” he was talking about. Don’t miss what he said: “For a Geocentrist, you have to assume that the Universe itself is revolving around us, and affecting the weather here. Again, the math works out, but it’s standing a pyramid on its tip: you have it precisely backwards. And with one poke the whole thing falls over.”
Yes, the math works out, and I tend to thing God could stand a pyramid on its tip. Jesus rose from the dead, no?
I think someone had it right on here. There is such a judgmental “fundamentalist” tone on here towards YECs. I too, believe in an old earth, but the tone of what I read here towards those who disagree with your old earth “science backs me up” views— that would send anyone running away from your church.
Maybe, just maybe, what is needed are a few thousand more churches who brand themselves as either YE or OE. YE Church of Christ, or the OE Presbyterians, or the YE Methodists. Or, the Geocentric Episcopal Young Earth Universalists.
Jesus would be happy, no?
Sorry, I just had to share… The Catholic Church teaches, wait for it… Theistic Evolution! TE
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catholic_Church_and_evolution
Seneca “j” Griggs wrote:
But that is not the point, is it? We are talking about what WE can do to bring young people to Christ. And clearly, one way is to let them know that they can learn from scientists or study to become one without giving up their faith.
This reminds me of the responses to talks I used to be asked to give about child abuse and neglect. I had done a study which followed children in families where CPS had had to intervene. Children were likely to grow up to be law abiding adults when intervention occurred early. If however, the dysfunctionality continued for some time before intervention, children were likely to become involved with the juvenile or criminal justice system. And if one child with siblings offended, a second was very likely to as well.
My point was that cutting funds for CPS doesn’t save the state any money because intervention is cheaper than incarceration.
Invariably someone would comment that abuse was no justification for criminal behavior and I would endeavor to explain that I was talking about helping innocent children and preventing crime. Arghhh
@ numo:
Oh, I actually didn’t know anything about him, I have read some articles very critical of our modern (think Western or Protestant) version of Hell, but it was only going back to the mixing of the Greek notions of Hades and the devil that they got into.
I think Satan is an integral part of the Bible story – whether he/it is really a literal being or a force of evil personified I don’t know, possibly not, since it/he keeps shape shifting into different forms (sea monster, devil) but I can’t see a universe where there is only the Good of God vs. Human Evil that seems even more improbable than forces of evil and good in war against one another. See, to believe only in God, a supreme being, and not in a force of evil makes God either a deist-type God – created the world, then sat back to watch it all unfold, or a God who is only on equal footing with humans. Our evil overpowers his will that we all be saved (John 3:16 stuff) and crushes the world. I know it is pretty much the Calvinist view, but since you aren’t Calvinist, it should make us wonder more.
I suspect there is a much larger battle between Good and Evil going on, even beyond earth, perhaps beyond the created universe, who knows? Many verses, some even said by Jesus, point to limits God is under. I know, I know, scandalous. But I just no longer cater to a Greek world view on this. It makes no sense, none, that Jesus would tell a parable of the sower and the evil weed planter, then explain it to his disciples saying God can’t tear up the weeds yet, or good people would die too IF God could do anything. Since he is not saying God is unwilling for some odd reason, but he is unable to leaves me to doubt that he can everything. Can he make a rock too heavy for himself to lift? Of course God has limits, they are just so far beyond our limits it is irrelevant, but it is true, he can’t extinguish evil right now, we just all have to learn to live with it in our midst. At least for some time yet.
There will come a day… the Bible teaches, sure, but until then, God is limited. I look at it as a kidnapping situation – in our sin Satan/Evil/Chaos bound us to it. We became it’s slave. God is working in constraints to free us from this bondage. You could say he came to die for our punishment from God, but that means God was constrained to kill us. If He is God, why is he constrained this way? He can do whatever he feels like. If you say killing us is a good thing we just can’t figure out in our fallible little minds, like some Calvinistas, that overthrows the Bible’s teachings that it is God’s will we all come to know him and follow him. I guess I see a huge theological weakness in not including or underestimating the power of evil in the Biblical Narrative. I don’t think it matters if that evil is portrayed as a red devil with a pitch-fork (but the Flintstones made that too cute to be believable) or a giant sea monster or just a darkness, like those black riders in the Lord of the Rings, that isn’t the point. The point is, God is working with us, to free us, from the bonds of satan’s power over us. Over our souls, over our lives and over our world.
It fits the overall narrative of the whole Bible better than we sinned, we’re totally depraved, and God had to kill us, he can do anything, of course, but he has to kill us for our sins. So, he sent his son to save us from his “good” death penalty. The death penalty is eternal, but Jesus only lasted 3 days, somehow, he paid it in full, even though he only went there temporarily he technically still owes God eternity in Hell, minus 3 days, which equals eternity, so in a sense, he didn’t actually pay our penalty, but that’s OK because God can randomly undo the penalty, however, he is unwilling to undo that penalty for humans, so unwilling, in fact, he thought it would be better to send his son to go die painfully for us first, instead of just erasing the penalty altogether.
I get this is practically blasphemous to Protestants, and how on earth can anyone be grateful to God and understand Grace if we don’t first think of ourselves as little worms and God as all powerful?, but, seriously, God is amazing, he never gives up, he keeps his side of the bargain, to be our God while we be his people. We mess up, we lose focus we get distracted, but I don’t think he wants a people who feel indebted, just a people who realize what he is offering – freedom. Freedom from what? Ourselves? Well, he made us, and many people enjoy who they are and don’t feel the need to change this – do we try to trap them into admitting a sin to prove to them they are worthless? Good luck. Or, is God offering freedom from a world and life battered and taken over by evil. See, there are people who feel they, themselves are good, that our Evangelical notion of sin is out dated and silly, but even they will agree the world can be a pretty awful place and evil abounds throughout. Most would take freedom from things we all agree are evil: death, sickness, “Acts of God” – which may well be Acts of Satan, who knows? – greedy dictators, etc., etc.
I get the Substitutionary Atonement Theory allows people to drop Satan from the picture, but I wouldn’t be so quick to drop forces of evil, they have been there since the second chapter of the Bible story, God calls us to overcome them – he tells Cain: “…But if you do not do what is right, sin is crouching at your door; it desires to have you, but you must rule over it.’ (Gen. 4:6) – a) sort of a funny thing to say to a depraved person who can’t help sinning and because he has already fallen and b) a funny thing to write to a group of people with no concept of Satan – what on earth, then, is this evil if it isn’t also Satan?
I understand people report leaving the church because they could not accept YEC and their church did, or were for or against women’s ordination and their church taught the opposite, or were pro gay marriage and their church taught it was a sin, or vice versa, or that church was too family oriented or not family oriented enough.
I believe those people believe what they say when they give that as their reason for leaving.
BUT–our job is not to say what they want to hear so they will stay. If we do that, they will find something else they object to and want to feud and fuss over. It is our job to seek the truth, and when we think we have found it, preach it whether folks want to hear it or not.
My Mennonite good friends think I sin when I wear jeans instead of a dress. I disagree. I don’t go to their church, but neither do I use that as an excuse to leave church altogether. I recently left a church that moved to bless something I believe is sin. I did not use that as an excuse to stop fellowshipping with other believers, I just left THAT church. And since I’m not a fundamentalist or young earth, I made sure I didn’t pick one of those to visit.
When folks find a bone to pick and gnaw it to death or leave, they would have found some other reason to leave had we fixed their “issue.”
We need to be very careful. We do not sin in teaching what we believe re creation, be it young earth, old earth, or whatever. But we do sin when we begin using our disagreeing to turn from Christ. We do sin when we begin using it as just another opportunity to bite and devour one another as believers.
I’m deeply ashamed that often when we rightfully address problems in the church, we become just as mean and snarky as those we want to call out. My theology family teaches the possibility we can have cleansed hearts, no longer happy to gossip, backbite, and fuss over doubtful disputations, as KJV puts it.
Maybe we need an altar call here.
O@ Val: oh, I believe that evil is real, but even those “chaos monsters” appear to be created beings. The actual word “Satan” is used only a handful of times in the OT, and it’s not about the Satan/devil of the NT period. There simply isn’t a personified evil being of that kind in the OT. If you can back away from belief per set and just look at text, it’s more like all of a sudden, bam! Satan/demons!!! in the NT. So where did that come from, and how and why is there this highly developed concept of evil personified, with minions, yet?
That’s one of the things that Jeffrey Burton Russell takes on in his books. Part of the answer is to be found in some of the crazier writings that were in circulation during the 1st c., like the Book of Enoch. (Held by many in the very earliest days of the church to be divinely inspired – you can easily find the entire text online.) A lot of writings that ended up outside the canon were highly thought of (sometimes, as with Enoch, by both Jews and xtians) during the 1st ew hundred years of the church’s existence. There are references to some of these writings in parts of the NT, most notably in Jude.
The history of the canon and how we ended up with it is far more complex and difficult than most any of us (me included!) realize. And part of the story behind the Story is the development of many ideas, including concepts of the afterlife and the idea of evil personified.
Fwiw, I doubt it’s possible to get away from the so-called “Greek worldview,” some popular evangelical writers notwithstanding. Again, history is complex: the ancient Middle East was Hellenized. *Paul* was Hellenized, in his education and likely in many other ways. He couldn’t *not* have been, unless he’d grown up in some place far from any of the Greek colonies – but in fact, he grew up in a thoroughly Hellenized place, in a Hellenized world. I can’t see that his devout observance and practice of Judaism negates that one bit. The NT doesn’t give us Paul’s bio and memoirs; it tells us many things about him, but is, of necessity, a partial glimpse at best. A man who can easily quote Greek literature is.. Someone who is, to a greater or lesser degree, Hellenized. I wish we had a copy of his reading list (_I bet Plato and other philosophers are on it), but nobody saw fit to include it. 😉
linda wrote:
There is a distinct difference between women’s ordination and YEC. The first is a doctrinal disagreement and is only theologically based. The age of the earth is also a scientific as well as a theological disagreement. When there is scientific proof that some of the junk science delivered by YEC is out and out wrong, then we are dealing with a lie, not a theological disagreement over what some words mean.
And when some guy tells a kid to ignore salient, scientific proof, then we have a problem that goes far beyond a theological dispute. The kid is told to believe what he knows to be untrue in order to be a Christian. You cannot compare women’s ordination to scientific proof. It is apples and oranges.
To have some junk scientist offer 40 year old outdated science as a reason to believe is not the same thing as wearing jeans to church. Once again, science is a different animal than simple theological disputes and should not be put in the same bucket.
And if you have a met a Christian who has reached that hallowed heights in which they no longer gossip, backbite and, have all sorts of doubtful disputations and instead, act loving and kind at all times, this I want to see. Color me skeptical. I want to be able to do all of that but I also know that I do not and probably will continue to fail in these areas. Perhaps I haven’t learned the secret or am unregenerate?
Nick Bulbeck wrote:
My pastor calls it cooking the books. Especially when we point out the favorite sin du jour (homosexuality or contraception are trending in these circles). So, slap around a homosexual because it is not something with which you struggle. And totally ignore your own sin-be it greed or gluttony. And feel really “regenerate” while you do so.
@ Mark:
I am no longer going to debate you on the subject. I have made my points and do not wish to beat it into the ground.
Let me point out something to you from a practical standpoint. I attended a church which hid from me, at the time I joined, that they would only allow a young earth perspective to be taught in the church. The pastor admitted to doing so because he didn’t want people not to come to the church because of it. So, after they got you, then they beat you over the head on the subject. That is downright deceptive, despicable and caused much heartache, not only for me but for others as well.
This blog is blatantly OE/TE. I tell you that up front. No surprises. I also do not apologize for those beliefs and I am very, very comfortable with where I am at on the subject. If you want YEC stuff, go to AIG. In fact, ask me and I will give you other YE sites to visit. Goodness knows how much time I have spent on many of them trying to understand what they believe.
We don’t hide what we believe like some churches and pastors. And unlike my former church, we also allow YEC to come on this blog and to disagree with us and we pay the bills to allow them to do so. We do not delete comments on the matter and we even allow guests to let us know just how mean spirited, unChristian, “un-whatever” we are in so doing. In fact, compared to many churches, I think we are doing just fine in this department.
As for Jesus being happy, I am not sure we always understand how each of us make Jesus unhappy with our behavior on a daily basis. On the other hand, I am not so sure we truly understand how much jesus loves us and enjoys us in spite of our shortcomings. He loves us so much that He died on the Cross to forgive us and He plans to enjoy us for eternity despite our 50,000 denominations.
@ Nick Bulbeck:
By you, I did not mean you. I meant the finger pointer out there, whoever he/she is. The Seattle win has me flummoxed.
Mark wrote:
I remind you, God can do it whether the math works out or not.
The overall topic of these essays is “what does science confirm” in response to Challies assertion it confirms YE. Speculating what God can do outside of natural law is NOT what science can confirm. I covered that in the first or second essay. When someone asserts that science confirms a Religious belief, they should be telling the truth and not making up stories or inventing pseudo-scientific clap trap and calling it science.
It is within that context that I have responded to your comments about Geocentrism.
Zeta (Jim)
@ numo:
OK, that makes more sense, I am fine with our concept of Satan, and especially Hell being a later addition to our faith from Genesis to Rev. Yes, some of the Apocryphal and Pseudepigraphic writings were considered part of the “word” when Paul refers to it. I never thought much about it before, I certainly knew our ideas of Hell stemmed from some of those writings. That is interesting, but makes perfect sense that it is our view of Satan now.
I am with you on the force vs. being, if Satan was “just” a spiritual being running around, it/he couldn’t do the damage that a force of evil could, as a force of evil could blanket the earth, I suppose the Hellenistic view was that Satan accomplished world torment by having minions to be where he wasn’t?
Do you believe Satan was created by God but went bad, or just an opposite force God is up against that manifested in his rebellious angels?
SarahS wrote:
Of course, Sarah. If they didn’t have secret terrible sins they were hiding, how could you possibly be better than THEM?
dee wrote:
Sorry, Dee. We were cheering for Seattle all the way. But I thought it would at least be a contest. Denver looked like they hadn’t played a game all year. Wasn’t expecting that.
Seneca “j” Griggs wrote:
As long as SENECA is the one to define “justification and rationalization” for sin.
War is Peace
Freedom is Slavery
Ignorance is Strength
Orion’sBelt wrote:
Twenty years in Furry Fandom, a subculture which tends to attract Crazies who DO want to “behave as an animal” instead of Transcending the Animal by uplifting animals into fictional non-human people. I have had encounters with such Crazies.
In the encounters with these Crazies, I have also been exposed to REAL pornography; those Christians who rant about pornography and depravity have never seen the real thing. I have. (Google “soiled diaper fetish” and “vore” sometime for a real eye-opener. Oh, and Orion’s Belt? You might want to change your signature moniker; “Zeta” is a Greek letter recognition code word for Bestiality, just as “Lambda” is for Gay.)
And all I can say is most Christians who preach against it have NO clue whatsoever. They’re like boots straight out of Basic who have never seen action and think they’re Nick Fury and his Howling Commandoes; if they’d seen the elephant, their demeanor wold be more like Sgt Rock than Sgt Fury.
@ dee:
Nae bother hen – I read “you” as being a generic reference anyway!
Headless Unicorn Guy wrote:
Thanks for the warning on Zeta – but unless such a ‘recognition code’ enters the common usage to such an extent it is a distraction (like the word gay) I’ll not worry about it. Zeta is here short for Zeta Orionis, the scientific name of the brightest star in the belt of the constellation Orion. Lamda is in fact the technical term for an unnamed function definition in a computer language like c++ or python. In fact, the use of greek letters is so pervasive in the sciences and mathematics which are both my hobby and my life’s work that such adoption for ‘other means’ will have to remain ignored by me until and unless such use manages to force those fields to adopt other terminology (which I find unlikely)
Zeta (Jim)
linda wrote:
I appreciate your thoughtful comment.
*
@ Orion’sBelt:
Jim,
With respect, it seems as though you are contradicting yourself in the same thought. You concede the relativity of movement and then explain that relativity itself is irrelevant to describing what is actually going on. But you cannot have it both ways. If movement between bodies is ultimately relative then there is no rational violation in declaring that the earth moves and the jumper is static. The science then is merely making the body with greater gravity (that with more observable mass) the default reference point, and then creating a mathematical proof to fit that paradigm. Which is fine, but to say that it is “natural law” (science) which demands that your reference point is the “true” one is illogical. The only “true” reference point is that of the observer. Which is man.
So the science fits man’s particular frame of reference with respect to how he observes his environment. This makes science both objectively true AND relative at the same time. True in a sense that man is able to organize his environment in an efficacious way according to his senses (man’s life being the only objective standard of truth, I submit) and relative in the sense that the universe retains its fundamental identity of SELF; meaning that there is no invisible “law” which governs. All objects retain their inexorable identities so that they can “do what they do”, so to speak, and man is free to observe and quantify it in a way that best organizes it theoretically in service to the perpetuation and affirmation of his life.
This might be a good time to bring up a recent attempt to defuse the science-religion conflict. Specifically the book: “Rocks of Ages”, Stephen Jay Gould, Ballantine, 1999 subtitled “Science and Religion in the Fullness of Life”. From the dust jacket: “At the heart of Gould’s penetrating argument is a lucid, contemporary principle he calls NOMA (for nonoverlapping magesteria) – a ‘blessedly simple and conventional resolution’ that allows science and religion to coexist peacefully in a position of respectful noninterference. Science defines the natural world; religion, our moral world, in recognition of their separate spheres of influence.” The title is a clever blending of key concepts from the two magesteria, Rock of Ages and ages of rocks. Religion to Gould is a much more inclusive topic than evangelical protestantism.
Gould’s books, especially those intended for more general audiences, include occasional autobiographic references. Early in the cited book he describes him self as agnostic while giving some details of his secular Jewish heritage and upbringing. His religion magesterium appears to be primarily moral in nature and not directed towards Christian salvation. A wikipedia article provides extensive coverage of Gould.
Of course by suggesting limiting comments to your own magesteria NOMA doesn’t appease the militants in either magesteria so it will continue to be ignored in the dialogues where it would be most useful. For starting entries of lists of extreme violators of the NOMA principle I’d nominate Albert Mohler for religion and Richard Dawkins for science.
Orion’sBelt wrote:
Is Z Ori Alinilam, Alnitak, or Mintaka?
Mark wrote:
Mark, that was me and I made no reference to YEC whatsoever. My comment was strictly anecdotal and was only used to illustrate extremes on both sides of any issue. I am far more interested in relating to people on a human level apart from ideology. People can believe that the Earth rides on a great turtle of enormous girth for all of me, and that all of creation is held together by twelve force beams converging on a great dark tower. I am far more concerned with how we treat each other as humans and how our words and deeds ripple outward for good or bad.
dee wrote:
In other news, Man City host Chelsea tonight (about 20 minutes to kick-off at the time of writing).
Nick Bulbeck wrote:
On reflection, that sentence was itself entirely wrong, went grossly beyond the available evidence and was unworthy of TWW. It was probably the least acceptable comment I’ve ever placed in the blogsphere and I can only apologise for what I cannot now un-say.
The paragraph whereof I spake, which can be read here, is certainly not accurate. If its author(s) published it with full, premeditated knowledge of its inaccuracy that that would be contemptible and more besides, but I have no evidence that they did so. I think it more likely that they got carried away with their enthusiasm for YEC. I can’t blame them for that as I’ve got carried away with enthusiasm myself for things that I now, with a little time for reflection, no longer believe.
@ Mark:
I (and some others I personally know here) know a lot of folks who think the world is only 6000 years old. Or maybe 10,000 years. In that ball park. We don’t argue. We eat together at times. We socialize. But it isn’t a big deal day to day.
What brings out the harsh tone you see here is when folks start talking about science proving a young earth or that any science which would tend to disprove a young earth is wrong no matter what else. What they are talking about is much more wishful thinking than anything related to the term “science”. And most of those in person directly and indirectly online start saying basically “You can’t be Christian and believe science about an old earth.”
Seneca “j” Griggs wrote:
Hmmmm, how to respond? Yes in one sense I do agree that everyone is a sinner, who uses justification & rationalisation. I think it’s how I understand that, & how I apply it to others that is different.
Let me give you some feedback Jimmy – often when you comment here you at least sound like someone who doesn’t meet many people outside of your own Christian circle, because the way you apply concepts like this one (we are all sinners) is very narrow,& involves a lot of mind reading. You certainly do give the impression of painting others with your sin…& if you don’t realise that, you may want to do some reflecting on why it comes across that way. This started out with you talking about why you walked away from the church for a while as a teenager, & what your reasons were. The way you stated this (added to the history of your comments here) certainly sounded like you then thought this could be applied much more globally – i.e. because I walked away for poor self-serving reasons that means everyone else who walks away does so for similarly spurious reasons. This is where we differ – yes I believe we’re all sinners – but no, I absolutely do not believe that everyone who turns away from God or the church is necessarily doing it for some shallow sin-seeking reason, actually far from it. I’ve known people desperate to believe, but something just doesn’t add up for them, no matter what they do. I can’t write them off (& don’t mind read them)as secretly desiring to throw off morality…there is no evidence of that in their lives.
You do seem to use the ‘we are all sinners’ refrain to negate a lot of things… this style of thinking easily does things such as allowing an abuse victim to have messy, negative, human reactions for years maybe, while their abuser may be being celebrated as an amazing case of repentance. Here the victim gets victimised as not spiritual enough by this line of thinking. But it isn’t either or…we can all be sinners & yet the victim’s suffering can still be important & the normal human reaction to trauma. We can encourage people towards repentance (over time, things take time) & yet feel enormous compassion or their suffering & see how just their anger is – it simply isn’t one thing or the other. If you add compassion into mix (as being as important to the heart of God as righteousness)along with ‘we’re all sinners’, a more complex, longer term resolution becomes possible – one that doesn’t require that anyone pretend they’re not sinners, nor that they’re not hurt. What is it about this so called Christian state of mind that embraces sinners & rejects the wounded…
I’m not explaining the heart of this well, but it’s somewhere in their Jimmy. It’s like you leave an ingredient out of the mix, & what should be warm & loving becomes cold & heartless, & only interested in being right. It may be a love of the letter of the law, without any love for the spirit of the law.
In other news, it’s half time at the Etihad with neither side having taken any wickets. Beyond that, my lips are sealed.
Missed a word , that should be ‘NOT allowing abuse victims to have messy negative, human reactions’.
Beakerj wrote:
I actually appreciate, BJ, the very thoughtful post. But the troubling, bottom line appears to be; when you stand before God, will you have an excuse for turning away? My belief is, nobody will have an excuse. IF you’re a follower of Jesus Christ, the sins have been paid for by the death of God Himself on a cross circa 3 A.D. or there abouts. But if you reject that sacrifice, I think there is nowhere to turn and you will stand before God without excuse condemned by your sins.
Seneca “j” Griggs. wrote:
Indirect Hellfire-and-Damnation Jesus Juke, Great White Throne sub-type…
Sure you didn’t understudy for Jack Chick? He got a LOT of mileage out of that imagery.
Seneca “j” Griggs. wrote:
@ Seneca “j” Griggs.:
But we are talking about interacting right now, here on earth, with other human beings who are created in the image of God, whether believers or not. Jesus treated each person he came in contact with as an individual and walked and talked to them based on their individual self. He met THEM where they were at and didn’t project sin or generalize their existence; and he presented the Kingdom of God to them. Paul talked about being all things to all men as well. The point is . . . Jesus loves his enemies and didn’t continually preach, “But if you reject that sacrifice, I think there is nowhere to turn and you will stand before God without excuse condemned by your sins.”
So, did you totally miss what BJ was saying about interacting with people, Seneca? If you did, then perhaps yoir view of mankind is that we are just empty shells that should walk around emotionless and void, declaring, “Repent you evil being and believe in Jesus and be saved . . . so you, in turn, can do what I’m now doing.”
Nick Bulbeck wrote:
Thank you for saying that.
I, myself, have often said things of which I am now heartily ashamed. And those that I am most ashamed of are those that I said unthinkingly, with a complete lack of sensitivity and reflexion, to people who probably knew three times as much about the problem at hand as myself.
The older I get – and I’ll be 57 this year – the more I find that there aren’t any easy certainties, neither of the evangelical kind nor the atheist kind. What’s sad is that so many Christians seem to be so scared of the truth that they’d rather believe anything, and any snake-oil peddler, than have some trust.
I’ve come to the belief that most apologetics does more harm than good. And the most harm is done to the believers.
Bridget wrote:
I’m saying people make excuses for turning away from God. I don’t think He accepts them. That’s pretty straight forward. It is not about anybody’s interactions, it’s about excuses. The interactions thing is a different conversation.
My attempt to simply the post and conversation; two threads.
THREAD A) Young Earth creation vs a more evolutionary approach.
Dee doesn’t hold to young Earth and I think that is true for the majority of the commentors. I, and perhaps a few others, do.
THREAD B) People reject God because they were taught young Earth creation in Sunday School.
My argument; In judgment before God, will He accept as an accuse for your unwillingness to follow after Him the fact that you were taught Youth Earth Creation in Sunday School. I don’t think so. I think you have No Excuse for rejecting God.
@ Seneca “j” Griggs:
I have been reading over your comment. I get it. You have said a number of times- no excuses. Let’s talk about something else. You will be patted on the head by God for your obvious good sense.
@ Seneca “j” Griggs:
No one has an excuse, ever. So that discussion is closed. But we as Christians are obliged to not PUSH people away from faith on the basis of an assumption about God, and if we do, we will have to account to God for those actions and for their eternal fate. And an insistence that one must believe in a young earth to believe in Jesus and accept his sacrificial gift of grace does, in fact and in truth, push young people away from faith. It says one must reject evidence of an old earth or reject the Bible in its entirety, and that is not true. NO ONE READS THE ENTIRE BIBLE LITERALLY!!! So why an insistence on reading Genesis literally? And at the cost of pushing young people away from faith?
@ dee:
No Dee. He will be asked by God to account for every person who rejected faith because Seneca J. Grriggs told them that they cannot believe in Jesus if they don’t believe Genesis literally and in its entirety. God will ask us about all whom we pushed away from faith, and “pat us on the head” for those we helped to find faith, that is, faith in Jesus Christ (not faith in a literal interpretation of Genesis, which is not salvific!)!
Argo wrote:
There is no real contradiction. But I am running into communication limits. Part of the problem comes in the kinds of terms like “the math works out”, or “is observably the same”. Let me use some simple examples that perhaps will make the distinctions I am trying to get at a little clearer.
General Relativity says that there is no ‘observable’ distinction between straight line acceleration and standing on a surface in a gravitational field. What does that actually mean – does it mean that I should never be able to tell the difference between being in a space ship and standing on the Earth? Well of course not, the space ship has metal walls and out the window I see stars and the blackness of space, the Earth has green trees and a sun in the sky.
But what it does mean is that if I was to be put into a sealed box and place on the surface of the Earth, and you were to be put into a sealed box and put on a spaceship accelerating in a straight line at a constant acceleration of 1g, you and I, by observing bouncing balls in the chamber, or the behavior of a paper airplane, or jumping up and down, none of those things would measure any differently in those two environments. They are equivalent in a relativistic sense.
But they are not the ‘same’. And only if I am very careful in how I construct those environments will I be able to tell the difference. For example, I might have hidden a ring laser and very sensitive accelerometer in my suitcase before I was blindfolded and placed in my room. And once in there I pull out my ring laser and from the diffraction patterns I can deduce I am rotating once every 24 hours. Now, if I’m in a spaceship rotating once every 24 hours, there will be a slight acceleration perpendicular to the acceleration axis. But if I’m on a planet, I’ll only get that same acceleration if I’m sitting at one of the poles. And so unless my tester happened to make sure he put my box at the north or south pole, I’m going to be able to tell which room I’m in.
Another element that is different, and uncorrectably different at that. And that is, in the rocket, I can turn off the motor and coast, eliminating the acceleration. But on the planet, the best I can do is put the box on the top of a tower and let it fall for little while. All I have to do in that case to figure out where I am is wait. The rocket will coast for a long time. But the box on the planet can’t fall forever.
The physical system is different. What I measure in physics while under acceleration is the same. But the systems are different and there are aspects of each system that ultimately will differentiate them.
Back to Geocentrism and relativity. Relativistically, not only can I model the universe to rotate around the Earth, I can model it to rotate around the moon, or Mars. Really any point. But there are differences between these systems. The first is that the Xcentric position has at most 1 center. So if I pick mars, I can’t pick the Earth. And if I pick the Earth, I can’t pick the moon. Only one of those can possibly be the center. All the others are necessarily not, even though I can model any of them as the center.
But there are other differences. For example, I CAN measure rotation. The Earth rotating will produce a different result than the Earth standing still. Relativity or not. Rotation is measurable, absolutely. We can do it with a device I mentioned above, a ring laser. Two lasers traveling opposite directions on a closed path will travel different distances if the path is rotating than if it is not. All we need do to figure out how fast the path is rotating is measure the diffraction pattern made by the beams when they arrive back at the same point.
Such a device measures the Earth’s rotation. It is not standing still, It is rotating.
And finally, We go to 1000 different points and we can throw each of those 1000 balls into the air at those different locations. And we can model 1 of those thousand balls as standing still and the Earth moving toward it, but the other 999 are being pulled back to the Earth by the Earth. And so the Earth does have an attractive force that pulls random balls to it.
Now, does it make any sense to arbitrarily pick 1 of those balls and say the earth moved towards it and attracted the other 999? Or does it make more sense to postulate the Earth’s gravity acted uniformly on all 1000 balls?
So then, what Relativity says about the equivalence of these frames does not negate that there are very real differences between them in structure and form, and that the only system which can be the product of the observed physics of the universe is the ‘Heliocentric’ one. Further, as noted in terms of the observation of rotation, even under relativity there are certain kinds of motion that are in fact absolute and not equivalent to others (e.g. non-rotation).
Zeta (Jim)
Jim
An Attorney wrote:
I don’t think you have to believe in a young earth to be saved – never said that.
@ Seneca “j” Griggs:
You didn’t, but others have, including Ham. I think you have said that to reject a literal interpretation of Genesis is to reject the truth of the Bible. If so, how does that not indicate that YE is necessary for salvation?
An Attorney wrote:
No, I’ve never said that.
Watch some of the Nye-Ham debate last night. I was rooting for Ham. Why? Because he was debating an atheist. If he were debating an OE Christian, then I would probably feel differently.
It bothered me that so many are claiming Ken Ham and AiG make YEC a condition of salvation, so I paid him a visit. It took all of a few seconds to find this on his site:
“Can a person believe in an old earth and an old universe (millions or billions of years in age) and be a Christian?
… the list of those who cannot enter God’s kingdom, … certainly does not include “old earthers.”
Many great men of God who are now with the Lord have believed in an old earth.
Scripture plainly teaches that salvation is conditioned upon faith in Christ, with no requirement for what one believes about the age of the earth or universe.”
This is all that is necessary to bypass this as (YEC) an objection to the faith, and get down to the real issues, which at some point will boil down to the bible tells us to do something we don’t want to.
@ Ken:
Oh, Ken, both sides of the mouth are talking…
@ dee:
My attitude to this issue (YEC) is ambivalent, as I can see the need to avoid putting unnecessary stumbling blocks in front of anyone expressing interest in the gospel, but at the same time also avoid allowing anyone to misuse this as an excuse not to believe.
The AiG quotes above, which I would take at face value unless I come across evidence to the contrary, should enable anyone to concentrate on man’s estrangement from God due to sin, and not get waylaid into ‘how long is a day’.
The fact that some fundamentalists may require YEC for group membership does not obligate me to follow them.
Ken wrote:
I, along with many others, would have agreed with you about 10 years ago. Subsequent years have told us a different story. I have written extensively on this subject on the blog over the years and have outlined, in excruciating detail, my thoughts on the matter.
FYI Debate between Ken Hamm and Bill Nye last evening.
Link from National Public Radio:
http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2014/02/04/271648691/watch-the-creationism-vs-evolution-debate-bill-nye-and-ken-ham
And here is one response from BioLogos website today
http://biologos.org/blog/ken-ham-vs-bill-nye
Mark wrote:
If this debate is truly about science and who has the valid science then you statement leads me to some questions.
If going into heart surgery would you want the atheist specialist with 20 years of experience or the rookie on his very first surgery after graduating from the Barbados medical school and auto shop. But the second guy is a very committed Christian?
If your car needs a repair do you hire the atheist mechanic with a good repair reputation and 20 years under their belt or the committed Christian who said he would go buy a Haines manual and some tools and study up before you came over. He has some experience in repairing a bicycle that broke once.
And on ….
NC Now wrote:
The debate really wasn’t about science. It was about faith versus non-faith. Nye rejected Ham’s premise and he also doesn’t believe God had any hand in creating the universe.
Since the debate was more about faith than anything else, and if I was looking for answers to questions that only come by faith, I’d go with the person of faith over an atheist.
The question that was posed to Bill Nye was, “where did the material for the Big Bang come from?” And he answered “Great question! We don’t know! But that makes us keep searching.”
Honestly, it was a silly debate. Like I said, let’s get an OE Christian and Ken Ham to debate.
Mark wrote:
Both men acted in a respectable fashion. Ken Ham’s strongest point was his willingness to give a concise presentation of the Gospel to such a large audience. I applauded him on that. Overall, I thought Nye faltered a bit on the Radiometric dating questions (what other than Radiometric dating convinces you of age) – he had it in the Earlier presentation – the Ice layers, tree rings, the fossils, lake varves, and so forth all point to much greater than 10,000 years.
I was also appalled, literally almost sick, at the YEC Astronomer’s bald faced lie that there is nothing in the stars inconsistent with a 10,000 year old universe. That is just about the most idiotic thing a person could say, a complete INVERSION of the truth, and from an active astronomer no less! It just goes to show that what a person believes can overshadow any potential for objectivity. I really wonder how such a person could say something like that without a major rift in their conscience, for I know there is not 1 viable explanation that has any scientific support at all for a 10,000 year old universe. Not 1. Almost everything we see out there is older than 10,000 years, and that was when the light started this way, which in many cases took millions or billions of years.
Nye really missed an opportunity on ‘observational’ vs ‘historical’, especially given his keen interest in astronomy. EVERY astronomical observation of a star or galaxy is an OBSERVATION of THE PAST. The minimum amount of direct observation into the past is 4.3 years. And it covers from there to over 10 billion years. Astronomy is BOTH observational and historical science, even per Ham’s definitions. With the CMB the actual light from the BB itself. We CAN watch it happen. We ARE there so to speak. At least from the BB forward.
Sad.
Zeta (Jim)
Mark wrote:
From within the Christian community this might be good – but then again, it’s already been done quite well. Hugh Ross/Walter Kaiser vs Ken Ham/Jason Lisle The Great Debate
A much better public debate atheism vs theism would have probably been Nye vs Ross or Nye vs. Collins, or sub in Dawkins for Nye. In the end these debates solve very little. It’s a show and whoever does not falter and/or can sway the audience wins.
It was on this latter point that I felt this debate was actually quite good. Neither overpowers the other in charisma or tactics. Neither was underhanded. It was a good clean debate with both party’s handling themselves very well and the moderator was absolutely even handed. (Some have asked for him to moderate the next Presidential debate)
So we are left mostly with what was said.
Zeta (Jim)
I kind of like some of the things I saw on Imgur today concerning the Nye/Ham debate.
http://imgur.com/gallery/SXB20Q4
This one has the age of the earth wrong. But otherwise, I appreciate what they are saying.
http://imgur.com/gallery/pQwZE
This one was funny but harsh.
http://imgur.com/gallery/ZoaSH8g
Okay, I’m done now. Sorry for so many links. But I just had to share with somebody
There’s an interesting comment from Steve Hays on this debate worth mentioning:
“There’s a very common narrative of boys who get their information from someone like Ken Ham, go off to college fired up about how they are going to trounce the Darwinians, only to lose their faith in Biology 101, Geology 101, or Astronomy 101. Enthusiasm is no substitute for know-how.
That’s one reason we need to distinguish creationist popularizers like Ken Ham from creation scientists who have real expertise.”
I do think that undue Ham bashing by Christians is a mistake, as they can end up using the arguments and even attitude of those who are enemies of the faith. The most important thing Ham could do is to argue that God created it all rather than get too deflected on the age of the universe. From what I have read, he didn’t do too bad a job in witnessing to faith in a Creator.
A little more fuel on the fire, from the AAAS: “Holt Introduces Darwin Day Resolution. Rep. Rush Holt (D-NJ) has once again introduced a resolution, app.aaas-science.org/e/er?s=1906&lid=40282&elq=89361fccfaee4d3989eb4eb11caaae4b, H. Res. 467, supporting the designation of February 12 as “Darwin Day” to honor Charles Darwin on his birth date and recognize “the importance of science in the betterment of humanity.” Cosponsors are James A. Himes (D-CT) and Michael M. Honda (D-CA).”
The problem with just “arguing that God created it all”, is that atheist scientists will inevitably ask, “How?”. To which the Creationists will say, “Ex nihilo”. And then the debate starts all over again.
The problem is that both sides ultimately lack a solid rational foundation for how they interpret the universe (environment). When all is said and done both sides concede ex nihilo. One says God made it from nothing. The other says some natural “process ” did. Of course nothing cannot produce something, by definition.
So we are left with only one rational explanation which is so obvious and simple that we ignore it: the root material which comprises every object in the universe is infinite, (the source of itself being ITSELF) and an external conscious Observer mitigates that infinity by His awareness of Himself juxtaposed to it. This allows the Infinite Universal Material (my term) to MOVE relative to the Observer and its own “parts”, of which there is an infinite number, in an infinite number of ways, becoming what we see as Creation.
Hence God creates by observation; the universe evolves.
With the lunatic fringe of YEC (and that’s not meant as a criticism of YEC per se, because everything has a lunatic fringe, including OEC, TE and TTFN), I suspect there’s a certain sunk-cost fallacy at work. I.e., we’ve invested so much in an extreme notion of scribsheral infallibility that we can’t back down over this.
As the writer of Hebrews (Apollos, for my money, though I don’t have a lot of money in that sense) famously wrote:
As you all know, he goes on in much the same vein. Furthermore, Paul writes in 1 Tim 2:
But if the Holy Spirit is still alive, the need to deify scribsher disappears. We are then free to give the Bible the high place that God has given it, without cluttering the highest place that he has given only to his Son.
That was a Party Political Broadcast by the Nick Bulbeck Party.
I hope this is helpful.
Nick,
Of course, you are postulating a totally different translation of the passages, but one reflecting the actual, on-the-ground operational understanding of the inerrancy camp
Argo wrote:
Funny, I’ve never heard an atheist ask “how?” They don’t care. Usually it is the creationist asking how the matter was there in the first place, and the atheist says “I don’t know.”
@ Mark
You don’t have a universe without the “stuff” in it. So all questions concerning the nature of material reality are rooted in “how”? Every atheist I have met asks the question of “how did all this (stuff) happen?” That was my point. They want a rational explanation of creation, and Christians cannot provide one. That’s partly why they are atheists. I don’t blame them. The “how” of God’s creative process is a weak argument for our side (Christianity). We chalk it up to “mystery”, and expect people to fawn over our “faith”. But blind faith is not attractive to humanity, whose rational brain is the only thing keeping us at the top of the food chain.
Perhaps the atheist answers “I don’t know”. But here’s the thing. When Christians answer “ex nihilo”, it is the SAME answer just churched up to sound like we have “truth”. To say “it came from nothing” is the exact same thing as saying “I don’t know”. Since “nothing” by definition cannot be known, to say that matter came from nothing is the same thing as saying “I don’t know where it came from”.
Both atheists and Christians concede the same presumptions about reality, they just use different vocabulary and then have debates about whose lexicon is more rational. Crazy.
@ Ken:
That wasn’t what the debate was about and it is disingenuous of Christians to promote it as one thing and then make it about something else in the end. Why do that to Nye?
dee wrote:
“LOORD, I THANK THEE I AM NOTHING LIKE THAT FILTHY PUBLICAN OVER THERE…”
gus wrote:
“If your Conspiracy Theory doesn’t fit the facts, Invent a Bigger Conspiracy.”
— Kooks Magazine
Anyone remember “Talking John Birch Conspiracy Blues” by Bob Dylan? After proving everyone else in the world except for himself is part of The Conspiracy, he starts “investigating myself — OMG!”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AylFqdxRMwE
Nick Bulbeck wrote:
Sunk-cost fallacy. The magic key to running a swindle. Get the mark so invested in the swindle that even when he finds out he’s being taken to the cleaners, he can’t back out and admit he was wrong.
gus wrote:
I’m reminded of a quote attributed to “Bill”, the founder of Alcoholics Anonymous:
“If you don’t want to call it God, call it Truth.”
@ An Attorney:
So just to make sure I understand: It does not matter if Abraham, Joseph, et al are real, just good stories?
Scot Mcknight just posted the commentary on this issue I’ve read in a long time……
http://www.patheos.com/blogs/jesuscreed/2014/02/20/the-benefit-of-a-spirit-breathed-perspective-rjs/
… The best commentary I’ve read in a long time, that was supposed to say, lol
@ Normal Guy:
I suspect that there were real people. But like all ancient biographies, I suspect that a great deal of fictionalization took place over time. The entire corpus of the pre-exilic OT was lost and recreated during the exile, from oral tradition. So what we have is not contemporaneous with the existence of any pre-exilic human. And oral traditions have a common feature of enhancement of the saga.
But in terms of my faith today. It does not matter. What can be learned of value to today does not depend on the historicity of the personages, but that the retained story has value for teaching. A more contemporaneous example is
George Washington and the cherry tree and dollar across the river! The cherry tree story has teaching value, the dollar one does not, except to teach us that a lot of what we think we know about history is not, in fact, historic.