From the brief survey I did after reading Walton’s book, I doubt that there is anywhere near a consensus of scholars that support his position of cosmic temple inauguration as the main or sole intent of the author.
So we must still decide which “scholars” we wish to follow. Since I have a strong background in Biblical studies and Biblical education through the masters level, I believe I am well qualified to at least assess the various arguments and positions, and I don’t find Walton’s particularly compelling.
I probably wasn’t real clear about the comparison of Walton and Lennox. Walton spent about a third of his book defending the position of philosophical naturalism and arguing that Christians should never teach their children that evolution is wrong. But he is clearly not qualified in this area. So Lennox commented on that, and also noted that since Walton had strayed into his area of expertise, he felt emboldened to comment on issues in Walton’s area of expertise.
And I am emboldened also to comment that although Lennox does not have a degree in theology, he has three PhDs and has studied and written extensively and debated on the interface of science and religion. I understand that you likely feel that although a person like Lennox who is a polymath and who self educates in a particular field still can’t be “qualified” to comment in that field. At least in Lennox’s case, I don’t agree. If you ever read those who may challenge your evolutionary faith, I would recommend you read Lennox’s “God’s Undertaker, Has Science Buried God.” And if you want to read some timely scholarly biblical exposition, you might want to read his commentary on Daniel.
Wow, Craig, you’ve posted a really long screed here that seems to catalogue just about every YEC misconception and misunderstanding in the book. I’ll just highlight some of them.
First of all, I’m sorry, but it doesn’t work like that. Yes, there are interpretations and worldviews, but these are not a free pass to let you dismiss anything and everything that you don’t agree with. There are rules that interpretations have to follow – rules that are the same for everyone irrespective of their worldview. The basic rules and principles of mathematics and measurements are the same whether you are Ken Ham or Richard Dawkins, the Dalai Lama or the Pope, Donald Trump or Joe Biden.
And no, the data isn’t “sketchy.” The number of published papers in evolutionary biology, petroleum geology, astrophysics and related disciplines numbers in the millions. In many of these disciplines, scientists are working with petabytes of data.
I’m sorry, but you’re not getting your facts straight. I’ve already explained before that modern radiometric methods do not make these assumptions. Isochron dating does not need to know the starting percentages of parent and daughter elements and includes a built-in test for contamination or leakage. And changes in nuclear decay rates would require extraordinary new laws of fantasy physics that would have vaporised the Earth if they had any basis in reality.
Be careful here. YECs blow these discrepancies completely out of all proportion.
Let’s say that you had to bake a cake for your child’s birthday party. You wouldn’t use a weighbridge at a quarry to weigh out the ingredients, and even if you did, when the results came out all mushy and inedible, you wouldn’t claim that meant that Jamie Oliver, Heston Blumenthal, Gordon Ramsay, Mary Berry and Nigella Lawson were all so bad at cooking that they could be teaching us to make rat poison on their TV shows for all we know.
But that is what YECs are doing with their “fresh rocks dated at hundreds of thousands of years old.” A hundred thousand years may sound like a lot, but it is just 0.01% – one ten thousandth – of the half-life of potassium-40. It gives you an error in dating Permian Or Triassic rocks (200-300 million years) of just ±0.1%. That falls far, far, far, far, far, far, far, far short of proving that all dating methods are so unreliable that they must be consistently out by factors of a million.
You need to realise here that:
There is a difference between “doesn’t always work” and “never works.”
There is a difference between “occasionally out by a few percent” and “consistently out by factors of a million.”
There is a difference between “doesn’t work when you do it wrong” and “doesn’t work when you do it right.”
There is a difference between “doesn’t work at the limits of detection” and “doesn’t work anywhere.”
Real scientists recognise these differences and account for them in determining what the evidence does or does not support. Young-earth pseudoscientists ignore them completely.
It doesn’t. This is another example of YECs blowing things completely out of all proportion.
Fossils do not contain “intact soft tissues” – they contain soft tissue remnants. These remnants are rare, tiny, hard to extract, and no they do not contain even fragmentary DNA. They are a far, far cry from the complete carcasses of woolly mammoths (a few tens of thousands of years old), Ötzi the Iceman (5,000 years old) or Tollund Man (2,000 years old). If the Earth really were just six thousand years old, we would have sequenced the entire T-Rex genome by now. Why haven’t we?
Again, this is something that gets blown out of all proportion by YECs.
About a thousand scientists have signed the “Scientific Dissent from Darwin.” Very few of them are young-earthers. Most of the signatories of the Dissent from Darwin do accept the scientific consensus on the age of the Earth, and many of them accept the scientific consensus on universal common ancestry. The wording of the Scientific Dissent from Darwin may sound specific but it does not actually object to either of these things. It only objects to one specific (and outdated) model of evolution, not to the whole thing in its entirety.
Basically, this being the case, “Darwinism” is a weasel word. It sounds like it means something specific, but it is a lot more vague than it first appears.
I’m sorry, but that is simply patent nonsense. You cannot overturn the scientific consensus on the basis of a single person’s opinion. Galileo was not the only person who was right here; his findings were accepted because other people managed to reproduce his work.
If it only took one person to overturn the scientific consensus, you would be granting a free pass to astrology, homeopathy, water divining, reading tea leaves, and tobacco companies claiming that smoking is good for you.
The rules are the basic rules of accurate and honest weights and measures. They are the same for every area of science, for “naturalists” and “supernaturalists” alike. Arithmetic, geometry, trigonometry, calculus, linear regression, Bayes’s theorem and error bars work in exactly the same way whether you are a Christian, a Muslim, a Jew, a Hindu, or an atheist.
And why should we accept them? Because in most areas of science, if you didn’t, you would kill people.
We would not expect to see any kind of segregation of fossils into different layers. We would see whales and plesiousars in the same strata. We don’t.
We would not expect to see evaporite deposits miles thick, such as what we see at the bottom of the Mediterranean. We would certainly not expect to see evaporites alternating with layers of sedimentary rocks, igneous rocks and so on.
We would not expect to see sedimentary rocks made up of very fine particles, such as shale for example. These can only form in very still waters over very long periods of time because the particles from which they are formed are typically only a few microns in size and can only fall through water very slowly. For deposits such as these to form quickly in turbulent flood conditions would require a complete rewrite of the laws of physics.
Young-earth claims may be able to make some very superficial “predictions” about things that we might be able to see. But when you drill down into the details, they fail completely.
Well yes, there is a philosophical side to the debate. But there is also a side to it that has nothing whatsoever to do with debates between naturalism and theism. It’s perfectly possible to believe that “in the beginning, God created the heavens and the Earth.” What is not possible is to maintain, with any integrity, that science supports the idea that that was only six thousand years ago.
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Klax
(The only thing that matters is faith expressed in love.)
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I’m disappointed that the USA isn’t as faithful as Turkey in this matter, even though the former has influenced the latter in it. One can rest assured that in the even less educated parts of the world the faith is stronger.
Do you really believe that reading books and watching YouTube videos is a legitimate substitute for hands-on experience?
There are far too many self-proclaimed wannabe experts in science in the Church who think that they know more about science than “secular scientists” because they’ve been spoon-fed videos by “reliable” sources such as Answers in Genesis and creation.com and they haven’t been “brainwashed” by a science degree. But they haven’t set foot in a laboratory since they finished compulsory science education at age sixteen. And it shows. They are the people who come out with the most clueless falsehoods I hear in the entire debate. They describe evolution as “a cat turning into a dog.” They will happily tell you that Sir Arthur Keith said something about evolution being “unproven and unprovable” on the hundredth anniversary of On the Origin of Species – four years after he died. They don’t even understand that the age of the earth is determined by measuring things. They will happily tell you that DNA is “just carbon.” It’s hard to get more clueless than that.
In the meantime, the people they deride as “secular scientists” are spending time in the laboratory and out in the field, getting hands on experience applying the stuff with which they were supposedly “brainwashed” to real-world situations where getting it wrong would kill people.
Nobody seriously denies basic mathematics. It’s patronizing and insulting that you think I’m on par with somebody who denies that “one plus one equals two.” I hope you weren’t making that accusation. In any case, the creationist objection to secular dating methods is not in their mathematical soundness. I admit that radiometric dating and isochron dating are internally sound. The problem is in their starting assumptions, which are unprovable, and which are based on worldview commitments that are contrary to Scripture (in my humble opinion). Ages are never observed as empirical facts. They are always calculated. And those calculations are only as good as the assumptions that go into them.
Thanks for bringing up isochron dating. I understand how isochron dating works. Unfortunately, just like all dating methods, isochron dating requires unprovable assumptions too. You say that “[isochron dating] contains a built-in test for [contamination], because if there had been any contamination or leakage, the points would not lie on a straight line.” However, mixing lines are indistinguishable from true isochron lines, so a straight line does not necessarily eliminate the possibility of contamination. Isochron dating does eliminate the need to assume the initial amount of daughter isotopes, but it just creates a new assumption: Isochron dating must assume that the daughter isotopes distribute themselves evenly throughout the rock matrix as it solidifies, and that the parent isotopes do not.
That isochron dating is unreliable can be seen from it’s failure on rocks of known age. Rocks gathered from Mt. Ngauruhoe in New Zealand gave a K-Ar date of 270,000 to 3.5 million years, a Rb-Sr date of over 133 million years, a Sm-Nd date of nearly 200 million years, and Pb-Pb dates of 3.9 billion year - all from rocks known to be less than 60 years old. This is but one example of isochron dating failing to calculate a known age. And it demonstrates my point that dating methods don’t measure age. They calculate ages, based on a number of unprovable assumptions. If isochron dating is off by orders of magnitude on rocks of known age, we cannot trust it on rocks of unknown age.
As for your comments about decay rates, you may be right. I don’t know enough about the subject to confirm or deny. Even if what you said is true, it doesn’t affect my point that you must make a number of unprovable assumptions whenever you date something. Scientists have not, and could never, prove the age of the Earth. As Christians, we shouldn’t be intimidated into accepting bizarre interpretations of Genesis just because we’re afraid to appear “unscientific.”
There are laypersons on both sides of the creation / evolution debate who get the facts wrong. Unfortunately, this is not always their fault, since they are peddled false information by irresponsible biology textbooks and pop-science articles. A majority of which reiterate the disproven nonsense that “phylogeny recapitulates ontogeny” or the bizarre, unsupported notion that life can come from non living chemicals. But I don’t think this is a reflection on all evolutionists, most of whom are intelligent, well meaning people. Is there a problem of scientific inaccuracies among lay creationists? Of course there are. But that’s low hanging fruit. You seem to ignore the dozens of eminent PhD scientists who are six-day creationists. Do you think they are all stupid? This isn’t an appeal to authority fallacy. I only wish to counter your mistaken notion that all creationists are inbred retards who don’t understand science and are afraid of university educations. It’s a straw-man, it’s factually incorrect and it’s insulting.
A reasonable strategy is to rely on books that rely on results appearing in peer reviewed publications. As for which sources have been adequately ‘proven’, science is less authoritarian than that. Every result is available for revision upon further testing and discovery. At least that is the way it works in mainstream peer review publications. Organizations dedicated to establish the historicity of implied science in the Bible are agenda driven where arriving at the truth is less of a priority since their belief is they are starting with the Truth.
Of course it depends on what we mean by “evolution.” Creationists don’t believe in the fixity of species. I think Darwin was right about variation and natural selection. We all know that creatures change over time in response to their environment. That is uncontroversial, and it is acknowledged by all creation scientists. The debate is really about universal common ancestry. To me, evolution is the thesis of common ancestry. And the scientific evidence is against that idea. First of all, natural selection is not a creative force. Natural selection only narrows down the genetic resources of a population. It can explain the survival of the fittest, but not the arrival of the fittest. So the real source of evolutionary innovation must be found in mutations. To get from a microbe to a man (for evolution to be true), you need a bunch of mutations that create new genes for improved function and complexity, creating new DNA information for novel body plans and proteins. We don’t see this. Michael Behe wrote an excellent book on this subject called Darwin Devolves. Mutations invariably break genes and destroy pre-existing genetic information. On rare occasions this is beneficial for the organism, and it’s picked up by natural selection. However, it isn’t the kind of change we would need to see in order for evolution to be true. It should be called devolution, because that’s precisely what’s happening. We can’t keep breaking genes forever. This is actually the cause of antibiotic resistance (it’s not “evolution in action,” as many claim). Darwin’s mechanism is not capable of explaining the complex innovation required for evolution to be true.
As you can see, not all change is evidence for evolution, unless we can demonstrate that it was an increase in genetic information for improved function / complexity or novel body plans. That’s the kind of change that would be required if evolution true. We do not see that kind of change.
Now that I’ve explained that, you still claim that evolution is observable - so let’s see what you’ve got:
No. The fossil record can also be explained quite well by flood geology. Are there unanswered questions in flood geology? Of course. But there are more serious problems for evolutionists. The Cambrian Explosion is one such massive problem, as it flips Darwin’s tree of life upside down.
This is a myth that was based on Ernst Haeckel’s fraudulent embryo drawings. It was disproven over a hundred years ago, and it is even rejected by Steven J. Gould. I think it’s revealing that you list this as one of the compelling evidences for evolution, although it is a known fake. Biology textbooks continue to peddle this lie, so I don’t blame you for thinking this. Note that Haeckel literally fabricated these drawings, it was not simply an honest mistake.
No, DNA similarity isn’t evidence for evolution. This is just another version of the homology argument (applied to the genome). It is not surprising that humans would share a large amount of DNA similarity to other creatures, since our bodies perform a number of similar tasks. However, the DNA similarity between humans and chimps was widely exaggerated when it first came out. The true number is not 99%, as is often reported.
This is the argument from homology, and it can just as easily be explained by appeal to a common Designer (as opposed to common descent). The funny thing is, there are plenty of creatures that have similar features which aren’t alleged to have a common ancestor (for example, our eye and an octopus eye). Therefore, evolutionists have been forced to redefine homology. It no longer means “similiarity.” Now, homology is defined to mean “common traits that are the product of common ancestry”. The problem is, with this new definition, if we are to use homology as evidence for evolution it is a circular argument. Homology therefore doesn’t demonstrate evolution in the slightest.
Unless I am mistaken, this is just the argument from homology again. See above. It is a circular argument.
Bacteria can change and acquire resistance to bacteria. But this is not evolution, since it always involves pre-existing resistant bacteria, or the breaking of existing genes / loss of genetic information. These mutations are not what would be required for innovative evolution. See my comments above.
I do not deny speciation. No creationist denies speciation. Again, see my comments above.
Also, I need to point this out - because this is my main point. Even if all those things you cite (above) are good evidence for evolution (and they are not), they are not observations of evolution. Evolution is not observed. For example, evolutionists choose to interpret homology as evidence for common ancestry, rather that common Design. But the hypothesized common ancestor is not observed, and never could be observed. The past history of life is unobservable and unrepeatable. We are all working with evidence in the present, and interpreting it based on our pre-existing worldviews. Evolution is not an observable, repeatable, empirical fact.
Ignoring the conclusion of dozens in favor of the conclusion of millions is not calling them stupid, it’s calling them clearly wrong. Science works on consensus, not being smart.
I’m not referring to Haeckel and ontogeny recapitulating phylogeny, I’m referring to evo-devo, which is a quickly advancing field since the 90s. Embryos develop along certain pathways until genetic switches turn on or off paths of development and these developmental pathways provide ample evidence of common ancestry.
There are long threads here on this forum produced by actual geneticists explaining how the 99% number was correctly obtained and what it means.
Here is an article “Letters to Creationists” essay by Scott Buchanan, that discusses these layers (such as the Coconino Sandstone) and whether or not they formed in marine or terrestrial environment. Actually the angles of the dunes do more closely match the averages of the land formation slopes.
I am curious what evidence you put forward for this. According to the same essay linked above, creationists must ignore the vast bulk of footprints, raindrop impressions, evidence of nesting - regular lifecycle stuff - all of which would be impossible to carry on during a raging flood. In short, you need to ignore vast amounts of actual reality in order to reach the preset conclusions you already had decided to arrive at.
One type of geologic formation that seems odd to find under a single, global flood deposition system is one with indications of repeated significant changes in sea level. Such a set of formations is abundantly clear from the marine faunas of the southeastern United States.
The specific points of evidence for repeated changes in sea level are the fact that most of the formations, or subunits of them, have indurated (turned to limestone) or leached (certain minerals removed) upper sections (or are completely indurated or leached). Induration and leaching both require at minimum a few decades of fresh groundwater percolating through the layer (or compression, which is implausible given how shallow these deposits are, and that the limestone is intermittent). Thus, we can observe a sequence of layers that require many changes from above sea level to significantly below and back. In addition, each layer must have lasted long enough for large bivalves and corals to grow, and then their shells/skeletons to sit on the ocean floor with other things living on them (at minimum, about a century, given the lifespans of the organisms involved).
The Waccamaw Formation (which is among the shorter-duration ones) alone gives an absolute minimum total depositional time of about a thousand years, given the four separate indurated layers (ignoring sedimentation and erosion rates). This estimate makes some rather unrealistically high assumptions about how densely you could pack the organisms in life, thus the actual time is much longer.
Given the abrupt faunal changes, like Ecphora and Chesapecten disappearing between immediately overlying formations (most sites have significant unconformities, though), there is very little mixing of the formations, and, if the timescale is only a few thousand years, unreasonably rapid faunal turnover (i.e. a typical species goes extinct within 50 generations, and in many cases within 10).
The deposits are also very definitely not sorted, as one would get with current action: you can find 150 mm Mercenaria campechiensis shells alongside 2 mm tornids. Strong current action is also implausible given how fragile many of the shells are: Spisula shells are about as strong as a thick eggshell, pteropods will shatter if you set a small coin on them.
There is also the problem of globally equivalent planktonic microfossil sequences, and globally equivalent stable isotope ratio sequences . Both require a few thousand years, at absolute minimum, to equalize around the globe.
Starting on page 114, Walton states, “The following chapters will explore the implication of this view (that Genesis 1 deals with functional origins only) in relation to evolution and Intelligent Design, as well as a consideration of some of the issues of policy in public education.” It is on page 114 that Walton leaves commentary on the text (he identifies his expertise as text analyst) to discuss metaphysical and philosophical questions, (in his own words.) So page 114 to page 169 is 32.54% of the book.
Perhaps you find calling this entire section a defense of philosophical naturalism is too much shorthand. But by any definition, what he dabbles in here is out of his professed area of expertise. And 32.54% is close enough to say that 1/3 is an honest estimate.
Here is my point–I have not heard Walton the text analyst called out by any of his followers for his foray into philosophical areas. And if Walton is allowed that diversion–then surely John Lennox, who is far better versed in biblical hermeneutics than Walton is in philosophy should be given due consideration when speaks outside of the arena of his primary expertise.
I have biblical or Christian faith. I also have faith in my wife, that I can trust her. I even have faith that my chair will hold me up. My faith is not limited to one object.
Jumping from “discussing metaphysical and philosophical questions” to “defending metaphysical naturalism” is either intentionally dishonest or a gross misuse of vocabulary.
I don’t care if you reject their conclusions - that’s up to you. My comment above was responding to @jammycakes, who was basically implying that all creationists are stupid people who don’t understand science, and who don’t get degrees. That’s just incorrect, as evidenced by the many eminent scientists who believe in six-day creation.
As for your comment: That’s OK, you can think creation scientists are wrong. And maybe science does work on consensus. That seems like the pragmatic way of doing things. But I don’t understand what your point is. Consensus doesn’t determine truth. Truth isn’t a popularity contest.
Yes, agreed. There’s a whole lot of really quite bad philosophy involved in this conversation. In comparing “science” with “philosophy” at BioLogos, philosophy is almost entirely left out. It’s worse with Swamidass, of course, because it’s polemical, rather than “peaceful” as he claims. Yet problems in both cases arise because the philosophical depth is simply not addressed.
The defenders of “methodological naturalism” here, as if MNism isn’t an ideology, but rather just a code word, with an ideological term - naturalism - used inside of it, for “good science”, are displaying poor philosophy in promoting MNism, not any “knowledge of science” / “scientific knowledge” that they may have.
"You seem to ignore the dozens of eminent PhD scientists who are six-day creationists. Do you think they are all stupid?”
Likely not entirely “stupid”; let’s give YECists a bit of credit, at least, DavidS.
But they’re ALL of them, to a man or woman, beyond ANY shadow of a doubt, creationist ideologues who clearly shouldn’t be trusted either within or outside of “the Church”, because they “don’t play fair or honestly”, intentionally. Would you like to test this, DavidS?
Do you think Nathaniel Jeanson is “credible” or just “deluded” by ideology to reject a vast amount of “good natural science” that goes against his “worldview-committed natural science”?
“basically implying that all creationists are stupid people who don’t understand science, and who don’t get degrees.”
Not all people who “get degrees” are competent thinkers, scholars or scientists. It’s better to trust competence, than simply as a low-level person in your local church and a “creationist” ministry that looks and sounds like people in your church, as your “go to science expert”. ALL creationists are ideologues, full stop. That’s unavoidable, since it’s what “creationist” means. Most people, especially contemplative, devout Christians, don’t want to turn “creation” into an ideology: “creationism”.
Does that “being responsible about Creation” resonate with you or make you hesitate from continuing your ideological creationist arguments here?
“That’s OK, you can think creation scientists are wrong.”
No, they’re just ideologues deluded by an ideology created by a 7th Day Adventist and peddled by a Canadian travelling salesman, rather than by professional geologists. “Creation Scientist” actually means “devil’s chaplin-helper” (unrepentant Darwin antagonist). They are highly distrustful people, who are very close often to conspiracy theorists. They’ve got a “precious” biblical eisegesis they’re invested in, so it’s really hard to “shake their trust” in anyone but their own “biblical hermeneutics.” That’s what’s at issue here at the end of the day; evangelical Protestantism’s (sometimes) wooden biblical literalism justified by hyper-individualistic “religious” feedback loops.
BioLogos, to it’s credit, is trying to “wise up” undereducated, and usually very, very proud of YECism, non-mainline evangelical protestant Americans against wooden biblical literalism and anti-science sentiment. Don’t you credit that, DavidS, as positive, at least?
