A Letter to my Son about Creation

Faith & Science Conversation
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Surely parents are supposed to proactively teach their kids something, and not just constantly present every idea anyone might come up with. I don’t want my kids “inquiring” into a lot of things because I think they are wrong. It would be an abdication of my parental responsibility to present every perspective available as equally worthy of inquiry.

We have some racist relatives. We like them and hang out with them, but I am definitely going to teach my kids they are flat out wrong about some things, and I’d rather they not spend any time on alt-right fringe websites engaged in open-minded “inquiry.”

Young earth creationism is not merely a matter of interpretive differences on a verse here and there like you find with other secondary doctrines. It requires a whole worldview and approach to Scripture that I think is wrong. (Demonstrably so, in the parts that concern scientific evidence.) Most theological differences between Christians can’t be demonstrably proven right or wrong. The best you can do is show they are internally consistent or inconsistent or offer a more or less compelling exegesis of relevant Scriptures. YEC is different because it makes claims about the natural world that go beyond Scripture interpretation and theology, claims that can be tested empirically. I’m not going to instruct my kids to keep an open mind about flat earth theory or the anti-vax movement either. I’m going to teach them what I am reasonably confident are facts about the world.

Of course, there are theological and interpretive issues within an evolutionary creationist perspective that are far from nailed down, and I would want my kids to keep an open mind about those. But I don’t feel at all bad for telling my kids that little Susie is definitely mistaken when she says there were dinosaurs on Noah’s ark.

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Mark, in my mind a problem does arise when Christian faithfulness is presented as being dependent on one’s viewpoint on these issues, as some vocal YEC advocates do. It is presented as not just being “in error” but at being “less faithful” or “led away from the truth by satan.” There is a big difference in holding an erroneous concept in science vs. being spiritually compromised, which you brought out in what Paul was concerned with in discussing circumcision.
There are times when I am sympathetic to ID, as my understanding of EC is sort of ID on a grander scale, but I do not consider ID as science, as it is really philosophy in my opinion. Likewise, when you state it is “utterly unscientific” to say YEC is wrong, I would have to disagree, as YEC is making scientific claims, and it is the essence of science to say, "the data does not support that position, and it is therefore in error."
It does get complex when those statements then bleed over to theological interpretation and we then are led to conclude that a particular interpretation of scripture must then be wrong, since the conclusions that interpretation leads to are incorrect.

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Hi Mark,

There are a couple of points you’ve made here that others haven’t addressed, so here goes.

That is true, but cross-checks between different methods give you exactly that. The fact that different methods (radiometric dating, lake varves, ice cores, tree rings, and a whole lot more) give the same results even though their assumptions are completely independent mean that dating methods are testable and repeatable.

As for “observable,” you’re setting something of a moving target there. There are a lot of things in the “operational” sciences that aren’t directly observable, but that can be inferred from the evidence. For example, geologists don’t directly observe magma chambers beneath volcanoes, but they can tell that they are there, and that they are indeed magma chambers, from seismic studies. Another example is determining crystalline structures. It’s only relatively recently that scientists have been able to observe these directly, but in the past they were able to tell a lot about them from X-ray diffraction.

You’re expressing several popular YEC misconceptions here. It’s common for YEC literature to take uncertainties about the fine details of the evidence and portray them as if they call the whole bigger picture into question. But that’s absurd. When you see a cat from a distance, you can still clearly identify it as a cat, even if you can’t make out its whiskers.

For starters, the evidence isn’t changing arbitrarily – instead it’s converging on its conclusions. For example, in the nineteenth century, estimates for the age of the earth and the age of the universe were all over the map, varying from twenty million years to pretty much infinite. In the past fifty years scientists have narrowed down the age of the earth to 4.54±0.05 billion years – that’s an uncertainty of just one percent. Your car’s speedometer is less accurate than that.

I don’t think you realise the full extent of the evidence that we have to contend with. The number of samples that have been dated far, far in excess of six thousand years, by multiple independent methods, with close agreement, runs into hundreds of thousands and quite possibly millions at the very least.

Does fraud happen? Undoubtedly yes. But is it systematic, widespread and pervasive enough to call the age of the earth into question? There are a couple of reasons why this is very, very unlikely.

First, scientists would have to be throwing away vast quantities of very expensive data. An isochron date for a single sample typically costs as much as a brand new family car. Given hundreds of thousands of “valid” dates, this would imply that billions if not trillions of dollars worth of “bad” dates were being systematically discarded every year. Why is nobody creating a stink about this colossal waste of money? It’s also a problem that could easily be fixed by compulsory pre-registration of all radiometric studies. Why are none of the YECs in the US Congress calling for such a register?

Second, much of the evidence comes from sources that are completely free of ideological bias – in particular, oil exploration. Geologists need to know both the age of the rock samples and their thermal history in order to predict whether they’ll get any usable oil out of the ground. If the oil is too young, or too cool, it will be “premature” and still solid. If it’s too old, or too hot, it will have been baked away into oblivion. They are under pressure to produce results that are correct, not results that are ideologically convenient.

This is why people say that the evidence for an ancient earth is overwhelming – and the same is true for common descent as well. How we respond to this as Christians, and how we reconcile it with the Genesis account, is obviously a matter for debate, but we don’t do ourselves any favours by claiming that the evidence doesn’t exist when quite clearly it does, or that it is ambiguous on the matter when quite clearly it isn’t.

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James, thank you, you have given me much to think about.

What still gives me pause is the assumption behind all of this is uniformitarianism and the speed of light being constants when they could be relative. Do the calculations of Newtonian physics functionally work? Yes. They do not need to account for relativity to be useful, but we would need to acknowledge they are incomplete and do not take into account a larger context.

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Thank you James (jpm)!

I think we are in agreement on the analogy - my point in elucidating on Paul and circumcision was how very unlike that the old earth / YEC debate is. Agreed - they are not on the same level in discerning Christian faithfulness!

I appreciate what you are saying about ID and YEC not being ‘science’. I just don’t see how you can totally separate the philosophical moorings from science, and that really is the point of much of what I am saying. Historically you have to look honestly at the work of 19th century scientists like Lyell and Darwin and acknowledge that the philosophy that drove their work was quite antithetical to Christianity, however true some of their observations may be.

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Hi Mark, thank you for your gracious contributions to the discussion.

On the “assumption” of uniformitarianism, I wrote the following comment some time ago in another thread:

I hope that helps to shed some light on “uniformitarianism”.

Now, concerning the speed of light, we have verified that this value has remained constant with many different measurements / lines of reasoning. For example, if it would not have been constant, many physical systems would have collapsed. Think about the famous equation: E = mc^2 (or in words, energy equals mass times the square of the speed of light). Now imagine tweaking the speed of light, c. Suddenly, all nuclear processes that convert mass (m) into energy (E) will produce totally different amounts of energy! Stars in the universe would not remain stable if we would allow the speed of light to vary even a very small amount. Yet we see normal, stable stars even very, very far away from us.

Casper

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Thank you Christy.

I agree with you that you have to provide healthy boundaries of what is right and wrong and can’t have it completely open ended. Certainly Deuteronomy 6:4-9 is our clearest admonition here, and we see it throughout the book of Proverbs, that the foundation is love for the Lord, and the fear (awe) of the Lord, which is the beginning of knowledge and wisdom (see 1:7, 9:10).

I also have some concerns with what you describe as YEC as a whole, e.g. I would never insist that dinosaurs were on the ark because the Bible does not require that. So I would certainly differ with some of my YEC friends on that.

I am deeply concerned that you believe that the evolutionary creationist perspective is absolutely right and all aspects of YEC are absolutely wrong, treating that as a primary and not secondary doctrine. I hope I have misunderstood that. You seem to be equating all aspects of YEC with flat earth theory (a viewpoint that has always been a significant outlier even in historical Christianity). Really? You definitely KNOW that dinosaurs weren’t on the ark. Really? For you to be as insistent on your perspective is no better than what you accuse YEC’s of doing. Are you not going beyond Scriptural interpretation and theology in your very own claims?

What must be believed about creation to be faithful Christians? As I see it, Hebrews 11:1-3 tells us succinctly, that God created the world, something we understand by faith by the revelation of God in His word. Psalm 33 speaks of this as well, particularly vv. 6-9. Yes, He did create all that existed by divine fiat! The mechanisms by which He did this are open to debate and cannot be made matters of absolute doctrinal conviction.

It is this very matter that I encourage my professing Christian friends to be honest about. I am thankful to attend a church where we do not require a stand on the timing of creation or the end times, but invite discussion and inquiry on such items while not compromising our stand that the Bible is the very word of God.

Proverbs 1:7 says that 'The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge; fools despise wisdom and instruction.’ We are all wrong about some things, likely many things. To not be open to this possibility, particularly where the Bible does not speak specifically, is arrogant and foolish.

I lean toward young earth creationism, but I diligently read other sources to grow in my understanding. I am disappointed when I see people like yourself, Christy, not being willing to do the same.

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Would you insist that dinosaurs inhabited the earth with humans? Because in my mind that is essentially the same contention as “dinosaurs were on the ark.” The Bible may not specifically “require it,” but it seems to me that a 6,000 year old earth with all animals created a day before or the same day as humans logically entails it. And there isn’t a shred of physical evidence to support it.

I think we need to separate out natural history and biblical interpretation. I hold aspects of my biblical interpretation loosely. What exactly was the Fall, what exactly is the image of God, if and how thoroughly Adam’s sin corrupted the human race for all generations, what exactly happened at the Atonement, what exactly does it mean to be a new creation in Christ?-- these are doctrinal issues related to creation theology (and not all are secondary, by the way), and I don’t think my perspective or any generic evolutionary creationist perspective is “absolutely right” at all. In many of these areas I have open questions or answers I think are less that fully satisfactory.

But when it comes to natural history, I think we can comfortably assert some facts about the world based on multiple lines of converging evidence and patterns of observation. We don’t learn natural history in the Bible, and it has nothing to do with primary or secondary doctrines. I think it is a demonstrable fact that the universe is 4.5 billion years old. It is a demonstrable fact that dinosaurs died out 65.5 million years ago in the K-T event. It is a demonstrable fact that modern day continents were once connected in the land mass Pangaea. The models scientists have proposed to make sense of these facts in relationship to other facts, (the Big Bang, the asteroid theory of dinosaur extinction, plate tectonics) not only adequately explained the known facts, but they have also repeatedly made accurate predictions about future discoveries.

Yes. I am totally comfortable asserting certainty on that. Dinosaurs did not live on earth with humans. We know this from studying natural history, not the Bible.

I agree. I don’ think one’s beliefs about natural history or one’s acceptance or denial of scientific consensus on the age of the earth or the extinction of dinosaurs have anything to do with being a faithful Christian, because it isn’t about doctrine at all. I personally know many Christ-like people who are effectively working for God’s coming Kingdom who believe in YEC.

I think we should definitely be open to the possibility that our understanding of any doctrine or Scripture passage is mistaken. But I don’t think we need to insist that the Bible is the only source of truth about the world, or even the primary source of truth about the natural world. Science and math reveal true things about reality, and I don’t think we need to automatically hold those true things in suspicion because the Bible doesn’t corroborate them or seems to present a conflicting picture based on ancient understandings of how the natural world operated.

For the record, it’s not that I haven’t given YEC a fair shot in marketplace of ideas. It is what I grew up with. I was homeschooled until sixth grade and we used Answers in Genesis materials. I thought it was the only “Christian” view of origins until college. I went to a conservative Evangelical liberal arts college and was surprised to find that all of my science professors found YEC untenable. When I started to look into it seriously for myself, it became obvious why. One huge problem I found was the blatant dishonesty and misrepresentation that was rampant in YEC materials. It makes it very difficult to compare the two perspectives on their own merits.

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I agree with you that we tend to see things through the lens of whatever philosophy or worldview we have, but ultimately have to deal with the data, and try to make sense of it. Have a blessed day!

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Excellent point, Casper. The speed of light is constant both across enormous distances–as far as we can detect electromagnetic radiation–and across time. The light we see today from those vastly distant stars was emitted millions and even billions of years ago.

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Thanks Phil.

The kind of dogmatism around scientific interpretation must always be avoided, if for no other reason that scientific data is constantly changing and theories tweaked. Let’s be wary of this - whether that be from YEC, ID, or theistic evolution positions.

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Thank you James, you’ve provided some excellent points to consider.

One of the things I observe is that these converged conclusions have in common the assumption of uniformitarianism. I believe that needs to be considered, in particular its historical and philosophical roots. Creation.com had a recent article on this which I think is worthy of consideration: The science of Charles Lyell

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Thank you Christy, that is very enlightening. It sounds like your upbringing in some of these issues was not as robust and healthy as it should have been, and I am sorry to hear that. I think you and I may find common ground in some of the things you object to! I too was exposed to some things in the YEC world that I find, frankly, ridiculous, although those things were not a strong emphasis at all in my childhood. I remember for example, a book called ‘The Handy Dandy Evolution Refuter’, and let’s just say that I don’t recommend it!

That said, I am intrigued at how loosely you hold on to biblical interpretation and how firmly you hold on to scientific interpretation.

There is no evidence per se that God created the heavens and the earth - yet we do believe it by faith. My observation is that there are things you need to reconsider believing by faith even if there is no scientific evidence for it.

Thanks as always for listening and engaging so helpfully.

Mark

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I appreciate the dialogue as well, Mark. It is good to have your voice here on the forum.

I think you raise important the important issue of epistemology or how we know what we know and how certain we can be of that knowledge.

I would say there are different kinds of knowledge, based on how we arrive at it.

Would you agree that the knowledge that 2+2=4, and an oxygen atom has 8 protons, and the speed of light is a constant approximately equal to 299,792,458 meters/second are fundamentally different kinds of knowledge than “my husband loves me,” “the Holy Spirit indwells believers,” or “the Bible is God’s revelation.” Whereas the first three can be arrived at via logic, measurement, and empirical observation, the second three are arrived at via personal experience, intuition, and faith.

I don’t think that all “real” or “certain” knowledge must be based on empirical evidence or deducible via reasoning and logic. Some of the most important things we know are not arrived at by purely rational processes.

It’s not that I hold Bible interpretation loosely and scientific evidence firmly, so much as I recognize that because we know things in a variety of ways, we need different tests and standards for how we evaluate the certainty of our knowledge. Given the subjective, personal, fallible nature of human communication, experience, intuition, and faith, I think more humility is in order when we claim knowledge arrived at by those means. Math, chemistry, and physics are by their nature more objective and straight-forward when it comes to truth value. Those areas of knowledge are always developing and refining and exploring new areas of insight, so I realize that scientific knowledge has its limits and blind spots as well, but I think some basic facts have been pretty well nailed down empirically.

What, specifically? Also, do you acknowledge there is a difference between believing something by faith when scientific evidence clearly contradicts the truth claim and believing something by faith when science does not provide any evidence to support the truth claim? I do think there is a difference. Jesus died for my sins to reconcile me to God is not “scientifically provable.” I still think it is true and something we can know with certainty by faith and personal experience.

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Hi Mark,

I’ve seen this response to the converged conclusions from YEC ministries before. It seems their stock answer to anything they can’t otherwise explain is to hand-wave it away as “the same assumption of uniformitarianism.” I’m sorry to have to say this, but it’s complete nonsense. The converged conclusions don’t assume uniformitarianism; on the contrary, they test it.

Here’s why. “Uniformitarianism” isn’t one single unified assumption, but many. There are hundreds of different processes and constants that may or may not have varied in the past. Nuclear decay rates, the speed of light, the fine structure constant, rates of continental drift, lake varves, atmospheric carbon-14, and so on. The “uniformitarian-nesses” of these processes are, in many cases, completely independent of each other.

Now here’s the thing. If you take two measurements – visual counting of lake varves and radiometric dating, for example – and get the same result, you can conclude one of two things. Either the two rates were indeed constant, or else there was some unknown factor that caused them to vary in exactly the same way.

Similarly, if you take three methods and they all give the same result, there must have been some factor that affected all three of them in exactly the same way.

Not only that, but the effect on each process must have been linear. If you had an effect that caused lake varves to be deposited at a rate of x per year, and that also causes nuclear decay rates to be accelerated by a factor of x squared, you would not get the same concordance. If this effect had any kind of lag between accelerating nuclear decay rates and accelerating deposition of lake varves, again, you would not get the same concordance.

Furthermore, the processes that aren’t independent of each other tend to be coupled together in ways that are definitely not linear. To give just one example off the top of my head, if you changed the speed of light, you would change the rate of energy production in the sun by the square of that amount, in accordance with e=mc2. This means that you’re going to have to postulate additional unknown factors in these cases to balance things out even more.

As the number of cross-checks that you carry out increases, the probability of multiple such unknown factors being at work, affecting everything in exactly the same way, in perfect sync at all times, becomes vanishingly small to the point of absurdity. At this point, the only realistic option you can claim is some kind of concerted divine effort to make the earth look older than it really is. Omphalos again.

There’s actually been quite a lot of research into establishing numerical limits on how much the physical constants could have varied in the past. For most of the fundamental constants of nature, physicists have established upper limits of one part in 1010 to one part in 1011 per year at most.

For more information, see Time variation of fundamental constants on Wikipedia; “Have physical constants changed with time?”

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Hi Mark,

I hope you’re well. Perhaps I shouldn’t re-engage in discussion, as you didn’t respond to my last comment. I do seek to engage graciously, even if I’m a bit “dogmatic.”

Just chiming in to agree with you here, in part: Scientific data IS constantly changing and theories are being tweaked. That’s why, for me personally, I don’t take a dogmatic stance on abiogenesis, or even on the various mechanisms by which mutations or selection occurs, or on the weighting to be given to each of those mechanisms. As far as I’m aware, these are still up for grabs, and I’m excited to see where science goes with all that for as long as the Lord gives me life and time to keep learning.

But the basic notion of common descent over geological time has stood the test of 150+ years of science. 99% of scientists accept it. It draws support from numerous corroborating independent lines of evidence from disparate fields of inquiry. It’s not going anywhere. New scientific finds will not be overturning the basic outline of this model.

To me it makes as much sense to say we shouldn’t be dogmatic about common descent and geological time periods as to say that we shouldn’t be dogmatic about heliocentrism or the most basic notions of gravity.

That said, I really do get that the issues surrounding evolution and scripture can make us uncomfortable about embracing evolutionary theory. (That’s why we’re all here on this forum, anyway; we all get that.) But I don’t think it’s a matter of these scientific “interpretations” being shifty or subject to major overhaul.

Best,
AMW

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Hi Mr. Wolfe: I read a bit about the book your recommended for me to check out and I don’t think it is worth my time a seems maybe a bit too basic and flowery. There are very intelligent folks in the theistic evolution camp and very intelligent folks in the creationist camp. Just as a piece of American history will never be relayed by the author as exactly what occurred and rather will be their interpretation of what occurred by the fact that human beings have presumptions that taint even the most worthy pursuit to report even a recent historical event with accuracy…so with the history of the world…if my base assumption is one of naturalistic tone, then the history and interpretation of this will naturally will follow the naturalistic curve, which the Christian scientist may follow because they sound smart.

For this, I still choose to side with the basic assumption that God created kinds with the ability to evolve in small ways and that He has only given many thousands of years for this paradigm. I choose this side by faith in God and in the same way that history is written with naturalism basic assumption that sound smart, so can history written with God created kinds. I am going to have to leave it there.

I see a lot of attempts for science to support micro evolution over long amounts of time towards change in species that thus is accepting of naturalistic worldview of evolution from a cell to intelligent complexity and still sense huge leaps in logic in that there are basic assumptions they cannot knock away from view in the attempt.

God CREATED the kinds. And He did it in a much shorter timeframe than millions of years. My God has done miracle after miracle before my eyes in these last years and I trust Him and His revelation in this.

Blessings to you and your theistic evolution crew. One day you may be surprised to find a theologian of a very different type sitting on the top of the hill of truth that you and yours are climbing. Blessing in that journey.

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Hi Mr. Rogers (with apologies for not having disclosed my first name on this forum… you could just call me Wolfe without the Mr.),

I appreciate the time you’ve taken to respond. Thanks. It’s rare in this day and age that people get to sit down and talk respectfully about things they disagree about. I think that kind of dialogue is worth it even if we all still disagree in the end.

A couple of clarifications, if I may.

You continue to imply that Christians who believe in macroevolution do so because of social pressures to sound smart. Please reconsider this approach. First off, it is unloving to slander your brothers and sister in this fashion. We are all (YEC and EC proponents alike) truth-seekers, not fashion-seekers. Second, this argument can cut both ways, because there are others who could potentially choose to follow the YEC approach because it makes them “sound holy.” What I’m getting at is, there are social pressures in every social situation. Some people may be swayed by these social pressures, even subconsciously. In the case of evolutionary creationists, I don’t think for most of them that that’s their primary rationale, and it’s not appropriate to assume that it is.

I praise God with you in these miracles. To be clear, embracing evolutionary timelines and processes does not mean rejecting miracles. These are two separate issues. There are certainly some folks (especially in the atheistic camp) who categorically reject miracles, including miracles of special creation. But I think probably a majority of the folks commenting here in the Forum (at least, from what I’ve observed, and I just passed the one-year mark in my participation here) both believe that God created through evolutionary processes AND affirm God’s ability to do miracles, both the ones recorded in Scripture and others throughout history. There are a variety of ways to approach this issue but please understand that it’s a separate issue from evolution per se.

In general, I get the sense that, despite some comments to the contrary, you still feel that a belief in evolution somehow undermines one’s respect for Scripture, or one’s trust in what God says. It sounds like you feel that a belief in geological time scale is in chorus with the snake of Eden, taunting, “Did God really say…?” Most of us here don’t see it that way. If you believe, as we do, that the actually message of Genesis 1 (what God intended to communicate) is something other than “God directly created each of these groups of creatures out of nothing,” then advocating macroevolution does not mean joining in the snake’s chorus. Far be it from any of us to join in that chorus.

There is a lot of actual evidence that God used the process of macroevolution over millions of years to create all the diversity that we see today. There’s a coherent picture that comes together from a lot of different fields, whether it’s plate tectonics, or the different layers of rock and the fossils we find (and don’t find) in them, or the distribution of what kinds of animals we find where on earth, or what we find in the genetic code, or the chemical properties of different elements, or the speed of light and the appearance of the heavens… etc. Falk’s book explains some of these quite effectively, if you should happen to change your mind.

Saying this evidence doesn’t exist is kind of like trying to describe the Civil War (to continue your analogy) or do Civil War scholarship without bothering to read the journals that people wrote from the period, or to look at official records. The contention of evolutionary creationists is that a young earth model rejects massive amounts of evidence from several different fields of science, and that it doesn’t take much diving into the details to see that a recent creation doesn’t square with the evidence.

That’s true. I know some of both. But most intelligent folks aren’t intelligent in every area of life and study. I’ve got an advanced degree in my field, but that doesn’t mean I know what I’m talking about in the domain of, say, Civil War history. In that field, sure, I can state some things because I trust other people who have said them, but I myself haven’t studied in that field, so what I say wouldn’t really be worth listening to. And the vast, vast majority of people, Christian and non-Christian, who have studied biology believe that God created using macroevolution and did it over many millions of years. This isn’t because they all got brainwashed or that they all as a group decided that they wanted to “sound smart” but because that’s where the evidence leads. Mind you, they argue over the details… some believe that every mutation in the genetic code was a miracle of God, whereas others see a more hands-off role for God in the process, and there are all kinds of variations on a theme here (which you’ll see here on the Forum, where we debate these things ad nauseam)… but the general picture is that, somehow or other, all of life is a big family that God created and diversified over millions of generations of procreation.

There are PhDs in biology that are also YECers. I know one. But he takes the YEC view that is in my view the most intellectually coherent, which is that God created the universe with the appearance of age. That, by golly, the entire universe looks like it’s 15+ billion years old, and it sure looks like macroevolution happened, given all the mountains of evidence in its favor, but it’s actually an illusion, just like God miraculously creating trees that have rings and miraculously creating Adam with a belly button.

In closing, I would encourage you first to look at the question of Scriptural interpretation. As long as you believe that evolutionary creationists are putting God on trial, you’re going to find ways to discount everything we say. And rightly so. Anything by John Walton is good in this vein, in my opinion. If at some point you start to see that there are other ways of reading Genesis 1 that are at least plausible, if not probable, then maybe it might be a good time to pick up that Falk book and see if it could be worth your time. Meanwhile, please reconsider your position that all of us evolutionary creationists are just putting on airs so we’ll look smart around our hoity-toity friends. That simply isn’t true, and it’s not charitable.

Respectfully yours,
AMW

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I pray your son gets a Biology teachers who is honest about the paltry claims of evolution, which are more faith than science.

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