One is free to believe in long-ages, but I don’t appreciate when people pretend like it’s based on an objective assessment of the scientific evidence. There is no amount of scientific evidence I could present an evolutionist for him/her to doubt long-ages / evolution. For example, how do you explain soft tissue in dinosaur fossils, allegedly 65 million years old? That’s a smoking gun if I’ve ever heard one. That evidence seems to fly in the face of long-ages / evolution, since soft tissue shouldn’t be preserved for any longer than a million years - even under the best circumstances. But a committed evolutionist will bring in a rescuing device in order to save his prior beliefs. The scientist who discovered this soft tissue, Mary Schweitzer, said the soft tissue was preserved in an excess of iron. This might convince the true believer, but I recognize it as a desperate, ad-hoc attempt to maintain the paradigm.
But don’t get me wrong - I don’t blame evolutionists for clinging to their beliefs in spite of contrary evidence. The truth is: we all do this. Because nobody is a totally rational, objective observer who develops their beliefs strictly based off the evidence. Nobody is like that, because the evidence doesn’t speak for itself. It must be interpreted. And that is my point. Just as there is no scientific evidence that could convince Schweitzer of YEC, there is no scientific evidence that could convince me of long-ages / evolution.
At bottom, this is a debate about philosophies / worldviews. Not science. I reject evolution because I reject the secular creation myth. Rather, I choose to believe what God says in Genesis. It’s that simple. And by the way, as I indicated above, I used to believe in evolution, until I realized it’s only a godless philosophy, masquerading as science.
Again, I define “creationism” as the belief in six-day creation about 6 or 7 thousand years ago and the Global Flood. This is not just the view of Fr. Seraphim Rose. It is the view of all the Saints, all the Church Fathers, our hymnology, etc. It is the way Genesis was understood by nearly all Christians for about 1800 years. The Byzantine (and later, Russian) Imperial calendar says we are currently in the year 7529 since the creation of Adam. Creationism is literally all over our Holy Tradition. That’s what I mean when I say “creationism is very Orthodox.” I’m not referring to modern creation-science, which is mostly done by evangelicals.
I’ve made this distinction between “creationism” and “creation-science” many times. You either haven’t been listening, or you’ve been deliberately conflating the two. Yes, I understand that the Church Fathers weren’t building life-size arks in Kentucky and talking about dinosaurs living with people. But they were absolutely six-day creationists. There is no doubt about that.
If you believe in evolution, then I challenge you. In what way can God be said to be our Creator? Evolution depends upon random mutation and natural selection. These mechanisms are inherently purposeless. If you want to say God guided the process, then how did he guide it? Seriously, how? As far as I’m concerned, even the omnipotent God cannot guide an unguided process.
All the Church Fathers were creationists. Read “Genesis, Creation and Early Man” by Fr. Seraphim Rose. Even a “real historical Adam and Eve” is difficult to reconcile with evolution. If you believe they existed, they were in-no-way our first parents - which is what the Scriptures and the Fathers affirm. They do not merely affirm that Adam and Eve existed, but that they were our universal first parents.
Actually, I’ve never been more liberated than when I became a creationist. It felt like a conversion experience, since I no longer saw the purposelessness in nature. I no longer believed in a God who would create the world 14 billion years ago and only create mankind in the last moment, after billions of years of death and extinctions. That’s a deistic God. That’s not the God of Christianity.
I no longer saw nature “red in tooth and claw.” I had more appreciation for God’s creative power and goodness. It was like taking off blinders. Everything was more beautiful and vivid.
By invoking their magic wand of let’s just imagine something else that will remove this difficulty. In this case being “catastrophic plate tectonics” for which there is no evidence it happened and again some basic physics that says it can’t.
And then there is the usual creationists ploy of playing with the numbers.
Even a factor of 10 doesn’t get you down to young earth time spans but that doesn’t seem to be an issue.
Yes there is. If she had actually found DNA that would probably do it. But she, or anybody else for that matter, has ever found dino DNA despite what the movie said.
No at the bottom it really is about the science and who has to twist reality to fit their preconceived, human, fallible interpretation of Scripture.
That’s because scientists already have mountains of independent evidence for what they think. You don’t - so when you do come up with something that is allegedly a problem, it takes more than that to get everyone else to drop (or radically re-interpret somehow) the mountains of evidence already there against you. It’s far more likely that the “problem” you bring up really isn’t a problem at all - and in deed that’s what happens nearly all the time. The things that you do bring, once explained, turn out to not be evidence in your favor at all - or at best perhaps remain unexplained things; which still aren’t going to come close to making everybody ignore the mountains of evidence already there.
It isn’t an “even battle”. It’s comparable to a flat-earther wanting everybody else to reevaluate everything about the round earth because they allegedly “know something that doesn’t fit.” Sorry - but reality just isn’t on your side here.
Nobody is “pretending” that long ages are based on an objective assessment of the scientific evidence. They are stating it as a fact.
Look, if you are going to attempt to debunk established science, you need to debunk what real scientists do in reality, and not just throw around cheap shots laden with unsubstantiated accusations of “pretending.” The age of the Earth is determined by measuring things and making testable predictions. “Pretending” has nothing whatsoever to do with it.
That’s because there isn’t any scientific evidence that calls long ages/evolution into question.
Once again, if you are going to claim to have evidence, you have to make sure that you’re describing the evidence accurately and that it really does support what you claim that it supports. YECs repeatedly blow their much hyped findings of soft tissue remnants completely out of proportion, presenting them as if they were far more extensive and far better preserved than they really are. Look, we know what soft tissue looks like when it is a few thousand years old. It consists of whole carcasses with fully preserved muscles, skin, bones, internal organs and the like. It consists of vast quantities of fully sequenceable DNA. That is a far, far, far, far, far, far, far, far cry from the tiny, rare, badly degraded, partially mineralised, difficult to extract samples of soft tissue remnants that are occasionally found in dinosaur bones. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: if the Earth really were six thousand years old, we would have fully sequenced the T-Rex genome by now. Why haven’t we?
Rubbish. It’s nothing whatsoever to do with “rescuing devices.” It’s a matter of getting your facts straight. Nothing more, nothing less.
If you want to see what a “rescuing device” really looks like, take a look at the RATE project. Nuclear decay accelerated a billion fold by some new mechanism hitherto unknown to science? That is a rescuing device. Made-up new dimensions of space to try and hand-wave away where the 22,000°C of resulting heat could have gone? That is a rescuing device.
The so-called “rescuing devices” that you are accusing so-called “evolutionists” of coming up with are all perfectly reasonable explanations fully consistent with known laws of science, careful measurement, and rigorous cross-checking. The rescuing devices that YECs come up with, on the other hand, consist of absurd new laws of fantasy physics that would have vaporised the Earth if they had any basis in reality, supported by nothing more than tiny samples with huge error bars at best.
Nonsense. At bottom it’s about making sure that your facts are straight.
At the end of the day, I take my position on creation and evolution from the Bible. Specifically from Deuteronomy 25:13-16:
¹³Do not have two differing weights in your bag — one heavy, one light. ¹⁴Do not have two differing measures in your house — one large, one small. ¹⁵You must have accurate and honest weights and measures, so that you may live long in the land the Lᴏʀᴅ your God is giving you. ¹⁶For the Lᴏʀᴅ your God detests anyone who does these things, anyone who deals dishonestly.
That’s how long those samples can be preserved. Where’s the problem?
All you have is an ad hoc and subjective claim that these structures shouldn’t last for that long. You have no evidence to support your claims.
Did you know that Schweitzer was a YEC when she started her education in the sciences?
It is about science, and your inability to use the scientific method. Instead, you reject conclusions based on their fit with your pre-existing religious beliefs, not because of their scientific validity.
No, that isn’t true. I’m happy to assume the universal constants and physical laws of the universe are constant. Even then, radiometric dating methods make other unprovable assumptions about the past (namely, assumptions about the starting conditions and whether the sample was always a closed system). These are assumptions about the distant past that can’t be proven. All dating methods calculate age based on a number of assumptions. We never observe the age of a rock. Rocks and fossils don’t come with birth certificates. When somebody says the Earth is four billion years old, that’s an interpretation of the scientific evidence - not an indisputable fact.
I’m agnostic about whether decay rates have changed in the past. But for the record, it’s a uniformitarian assumption to think they’ve always been the same as today. If the true history of Earth (in the Divine Scriptures) is our first authority, then we won’t always make uniformitarian assumptions about the past.
Yes, you are right: Ideas about the long-age of the Earth were around long before Darwin’s “Origin of Species” in 1859. But I think that’s a little simplistic. Darwin’s theory, based on variation and natural selection, is just the most successful theory of evolution which has survived to the present day. There were many people before Darwin who believed in evolution - including Lamarck, and even Charles Darwin’s grandfather. These evolutionary ideas arose mostly in the mid-to-late 18th century, which was simultaneous with the first speculations about long-ages. Deep-time is required for evolution. The two go hand-in-hand. Both are godless philosophies, not science.
My point about methodological naturalism was to demonstrate that even if all the evidence pointed to a recent six-day creation, secular scientists would still have to deny it. I even quoted Dr. Scott Todd in support of that point, and you didn’t have a response. This demonstrates what I’ve been saying all along: The creation / evolution debate isn’t about the scientific evidence - it’s about worldview assumptions.
Here you make the point that we both agree that the rock strata formed naturally - so methodological naturalism isn’t a factor in the age of rocks. That is a good point. But I think it’s a bit too simplistic. While methodological naturalism might not necessarily preclude young ages per se, secular scientists hold to many additional worldview assumptions which do preclude young ages. For example, virtually all secular scientists assume uniformitarianism - which is the belief that past processes are generally the same as present-day processes (i.e. “the present is the key to the past”). This is an unproven assumption about the past, which essentially precludes enormous world-wide catastrophes like the Global Flood of Genesis. Also, if there was a Global Flood, it would be responsible for laying down nearly all the fossil-bearing rock layers around the world. But that would contradict evolution, which claims that the fossil-bearing strata were laid down gradually and thus represent a window to the history of life on Earth. Since evolution is assumed a pirori by secular geologists, the Global Flood is ruled out as an explanation for the fossil-bearing strata - even if all the evidence suggested it. And evolution itself is based upon methodological naturalism, as explained before. So, as you can see, there are several worldview assumptions (in addition to methodological naturalism) that the secular scientist accepts unquestioningly. It is through their naturalistic, uniformitarian, evolutionary worldview that they interpret the evidence. At no point are the Scriptures assumed to be true. But it’s even worse than that, because the assumptions of uniformitarianism, methodological naturalism, and evolution contradict the Bible. In other words, no Christian scientist (who held a Biblical view of the past) would accept those starting assumptions since they directly conflict with Scripture.
You clearly don’t understand the point I’m making. Let me explain:
Radiometric dating isn’t evidence - it’s a dating methodology. A dating methodology for calculating the age of a rock (based on the ratio of radioactive isotopes in the present and a number of unprovable assumptions about the past). Our disagreement isn’t with the bare evidence on the ground (in this case: the ratio of radioactive isotopes in the present rock). I don’t disagree that rock X has a particular ratio of radioactive isotopes. This is the evidence we have in the present and nobody denies it. We’re both dealing with the same evidence. I merely disagree with you outlandish conclusion that: “Since rock X has this composition, it has to be XYZ million years old.” That conclusion of yours is an interpretation of the evidence. Scientists don’t dig up rocks that say “Hi, I formed 56 million years ago.” Rocks don’t have birth certificates. This is such an obvious point, but it’s crucial to understand. The disagreement is in your interpretation of the evidence, not the evidence itself.
Likewise, you talk about the evidence for common ancestry. One of the most common evidences that is cited for common ancestry is homology: The remarkable similarities among different animal species (mammal forelimbs, for example). This evidence of commonality is agreed upon by all people, even creationists. In other words, we all agree that mammalian forelimbs are remarkably similar. This is the evidence, and it is undeniable. The controversy comes when you claim, based on your prior assumption of naturalistic evolution, that this demonstrates common ancestry. That is a conclusion about the evidence, a conclusion which is not inherent in the evidence itself. After all, it isn’t as if common ancestry is the only possible explanation for homology. It might interest you to know that before Darwin, people recognized this homology but they interpreted it as evidence for common design. This is precisely how creationists interpret homology today.
So as you can see, the difference is in our interpretations of the evidence, and not the evidence itself. Evidence never speaks for itself - it must be interpreted.
It looks like you are repeating a lot of what you’ve been told. The thing is though, and I hate to say it, but you actually aren’t dealing with the same evidence. You’ve been told by young earth creationist leaders that you are looking at the same evidence, and its just a matter of one’s personal preference how to interpret it. But that’s not true either. You can’t just reinterpret any physical phenomenon through any theoretical framework. For example, you cannot explain the orbit of Mercury around the sun using Newton’s equations just like Einstein’s. However, if you are including supernatural explanations in your model, you can explain away any data.
That is the inherent problem to including God in scientific explanations. You can just say, like Russ Humphreys recently did, God supernaturally sped up the radiometric decay rates, and then opened up a 5th dimension of hyperspace that took away all of the excess heat generated by speeding up billions of years worth of radiometric decay. And voila, nobody can say you are wrong. But if I’m a scientist, which I am, and can’t explain something, I don’t get to just make something up because “its just my worldview.”
So this lets me know a few things. When you describe things this way, it’s clear that you are a true young-earth creationist disciple. You speak the same, parrot the same arguments, and also don’t seem to be aware of many of the things a scientist might be looking at when talking about evidence for common ancestry. This is a fundamental flaw of much YEC writing on these topics, where you are under the impression that you are looking at the same evidence, but it turns out, you are only being shown the tip of the iceberg for what makes up scientific explanations.
The only way to really escape is to stop reading exclusively YEC sources, and really try to understand why or how scientists came to the conclusions that they did.
Let’s take a look at zircons. When zircons form they include U and exclude Pb. This is due to basic chemical laws surrounding crystal formation and charge. You would have to change the physical laws of chemistry in order for Pb to be included in zircons when they form. You then have the decay of U which is based on fundamental nuclear forces.
On top of this, there are multiple independent methods for radiometric dating that use different parent and daughter isotopes.
3 completely independent methods all agree with one another. This is as objective as it gets, but you reject these findings because they conflict with your religious beliefs.
You are disagreeing with yourself:
“I’m happy to assume the universal constants and physical laws of the universe are constant.”
Remember when you said that just a paragraph earlier?
False. An Old Earth was already widely accepted before the mid 1800’s.
What is godless about radiometric dating?
And you are wrong.
You believe the same thing.
" I’m happy to assume the universal constants and physical laws of the universe are constant."
Evolution doesn’t date rocks. Geology does. There is absolutely no reason why radiometric dating would not be able to date young rocks, so there is no bias here. The evidence is in.
Just like all theories in science.
They are the same assumptions you use, namely the uniform nature of physical laws and constants through time and space.
Because, as I’ve explained numerous times already, it relies on unprovable assumptions about the past. Dates are not directly measured from rocks. This is such an obvious point but it’s crucial that we understand it: Rocks don’t tell us how old they are - they don’t have birth certificates. Rather, we make certain assumptions about the past and calculate an age based on the ratio of radioactive isotopes in a rock. That’s not infallible or objective, since the calculated age depends entirely on the validity of those assumptions. This is radically different from measuring the volume or the weight of a rock, for example. These things can be directly measured. Age can’t be directly measured.
No, that isn’t true. Before Schweitzer’s discovery it was commonly believed that soft tissue couldn’t possibly survive for more than about one million years. This discovery directly contradicted that evolutionary prediction.
Next time you order KFC, I challenge you to throw the chicken bones out your window and see whether any of it still exists in 6 weeks. It’s pure fantasy to think soft tissue could last for 65 million years. Heck, it’s even remarkable to see soft tissue in dinosaurs on a creationist worldview (assuming this thing died about 4,000 years ago that’s still been dead a very long time). But it’s just unfathomable on an evolutionary time scale. But we must not challenge the paradigm, right?
That’s really not relevant here. When Schweitzer abandoned the authority of the Scripture as a methodology for her science, she became a “secular scientist.” I don’t particularly care if she’s a Christian behind closed doors. Now don’t get me wrong, I’m glad she’s a Christian. But if it has no bearing on her science, then she’s doing it wrong - as far as I’m concerned. When a scientist accepts the evolutionary paradigm and filters all his / her data through methodological naturalism, he / she effectively operates like an atheist in the lab. So he / she will come to atheistic conclusions about the past - regardless of whether they are a Christian on Sundays.
Nope, it’s not about science. And yes, I do reject conclusions that don’t fit with my prior religious beliefs. I have the integrity to admit that. But evolutionists do the exact same thing - because they also have prior religious / worldview commitments. And that’s my point.
For example: “Soft tissue must be miraculously preserved for millions of years, since otherwise it would contradict evolution, and we can’t have that.” This is the reasoning of a religious apologist, not an objective scientist. My point is that we’re all religious, and nobody is completely objective.
I don’t deny that certain rocks are composed of certain ratios of radioactive isotopes. I just deny your interpretation that these rocks must therefore be X million years old - which is based on unprovable assumptions about the past.
I don’t deny that mammalian forelimbs look similar. I just deny your interpretation that homology is the result of common ancestry - which is based on your prior-assumption of evolution.
If there’s any evidence I reject, you need to tell me what it is (instead of simply claiming I do).
I agree. But I’m not rejecting any physical phenomenon. I’m rejecting your naturalistic philosophy about the past.
I agree. But this is a terrible analogy. It has nothing to do with the creation / evolution debate.
I don’t endorse everything Russ Humphreys believes. As a creationist, I’m not required to agree with everything that every creation scientist believes.
You attack the idea of including God in scientific explanations. I agree that God shouldn’t be invoked to explain repeatable, observable scientific phenomena in the present. But the problem is, if you preclude God from all scientific explanations, you will inevitably believe in some form of evolution. If strictly natural causes are invoked to explain questions of origins, then we will have to conclude that all creatures gradually evolved over long periods of time (since supernatural creation is ruled-out a priori). Don’t you see how this is a problem? Methodological naturalism means that secular scientists could never conclude that the world was supernaturally created in six-days, even if it was true and even if all the evidence pointed to it.
Ok, well, you still haven’t showed me what evidence I’m denying.
I’m not an idiot. I’m not a scientist, but I’m an educated person, and I’m familiar with the evidence that’s alleged to prove evolution. In fact, I believed in evolution my entire life. I was happy to reconcile my faith with evolutionary biology. About a year ago I realized that evolution isn’t a fact, but rather a materialistic hypothesis about the past. Now I am happy to trust what the Bible actually says about origins.
I don’t think that you are rejecting evidence that you are aware of, but my point is that people who follow YEC as the correct way of understanding reality, aren’t aware of most of the evidence scientists are looking at. You receive a filtered version of the physical world when you consume exclusively YEC material.
I do… because you can make God explain away any evidence. There are not really predictions that one makes from a YEC framework in terms of what we should find in the natural world. For example, I can make predictions of what kinds of remnants of genes should exist in mammals based upon the fossil record and go test my idea. A supernatural creation makes no such predictions, but tends to explain away any predictions from common ancestry that are later confirmed by evidence as “well God just made it that way.” That’s not exactly a helpful strategy for understanding our physical world.
I’m sorry David, but I don’t think that you really are familiar with say the evidence for common ancestry. Homology is actually good evidence for common ancestry but is only a small portion of the evidence. Obviously, you would say “homologous structures are the way there are because a common designer made them that way.” But again, there are no predictions you can really make from a “common design” perspective because no matter what you find, God just made it that way. Common design is very different from common ancestry which makes predictions of what we should find in genomes or in the fossil record and common ancestry cannot explain every possible fact.
And? I mean I “believed” evolution, then rejected it, then stopped rejecting it. I realized it isn’t a “materialistic hypothesis” about the past any more than General Relativity is. And I do happily read the Bible better in its original context instead of force-fitting my 21st century preconceptions into it.
Your YEC sources are incorrect when they say this. The beginnings of the speculations about the long age of the earth started way back in the 1600’s with fossils of all things. Robert Hooke, who died in 1703, believed fossils were older than the global flood. The change was gradual but by the mid 1800’s no one believed the earth was young.
No David, you are the one who is saying things that aren’t true. Assumptions about the distant past very often CAN be proven. They can be proven using methods that have nothing whatsoever to do with “uniformitarianism” or “secularism” or any other “ism” and that don’t require you to have “been there to see it happen.” Furthermore, even when we can’t prove our assumptions, we can still place constraints on the extent to which they could have been violated.
You can test assumptions about the distant past by cross-checking different methods whose assumptions are independent of each other. If they give the same results as each other, that is evidence that those assumptions were valid in those particular circumstances. There is nothing “secular” or “evolutionist” or “uniformitarian” or “godless” about that. You don’t have to have “been there to see it happen.” It is simply the basic rules and principles of how measurement works in every area of science – historical and operational alike.
No, we all understand fine the point you are making. But you are missing the point that we are making – namely that the point you are making is simply not true.
We understand fine that evidence and measurements have to be interpreted. But you can’t just cry “interpretation” as if it were some kind of magic shibboleth that could hand-wave away anything and everything about science that you don’t like. There are strict rules that interpretations of the evidence – and challenges to those interpretations – must follow. Rules that, as I’ve said, have nothing whatsoever to do with “secularism” or “uniformitarianism” or “evolutionism” or “methodological naturalism” (or, for that matter, any other weasel word ending in “ism” that you might try to throw at them). Rules that apply to every area of science, “historical” as well as “operational.” Rules that are simply concerned with having accurate and honest weights and measures. Basically, mathematics.
Scientists accept long ages and reject young-earth timescales because long ages stick to the rules but young-earth claims do not. “Assumptions of naturalistic evolution” have nothing whatsoever to do with it.
David, these points have been made to you repeatedly on this thread. Yet you’re just repeating the same arguments over and over again, even after it’s been clearly explained to you not only that those arguments are untrue but also why they are untrue. Are you actually paying attention to the responses you are getting?
I can’t find anywhere in the Bible that says animals did not die before the Fall.
It seems to me that Adam could not have evolved from a lower animal simply because the gap between humans and non-humans is too vast.
Furthermore, Genesis 2:7 says God created Adam from inanimate matter (“dust”), which would seem to rule out evolution. Genesis 3:19 - “… and to dust you shall return” – implies “dust” is inanimate matter and thus 2:7 cannot be interpreted to mean some sort of living organism.
… which means that very little of the Darwinist narrative of the history of life on earth can be verified as factual. We don’t know what happened between the appearance of Fossil A and of Fossil B, let alone claim to know that Fossil B “evolved” from Fossil A and to know the mechanism responsible for that alleged evolution.
As far as I can ascertain, there is evidence for evolution and there is evidence against evolution, but I can understand why atheist scientists choose to see only the former and ignore the latter.
I think there is an overwhelming amount of scientific evidence for long ages of life on earth – even if one ignores the atomic evidence. As far back as the eighteenth century, geologists were suggesting that the earth could be millions of years old.
But as for long ages of Darwinian evolution, I don’t buy it - I suspect it’s a bed-time story invented by atheists that has risen to become a sacred dogma within the scientific community.
Obviously I am biased, and the creation sites I visit are “echo chambers.” However, as I said, I used to believe in evolution. Not only that, I used to argue with YECs like myself. That doesn’t make me an expert, obviously. Of course I’m sure there are evidences I haven’t heard of. But the point is, none of that evidence convinces me. I agree that evolution is one hypothesis that seems to explain a fair amount of the data. But I believe creationists have satisfying answers to these questions. And, in some respects, creation makes much more sense of the data. Ultimately I’m convinced it’s a matter of starting assumptions. I trust Divine revelation more than fallible human hypotheses.
Actually, that isn’t true: Creation scientists have made testable predictions. While not six-day creationists, ID scientists made the prediction that further study into the human genome would reveal functional uses for “junk DNA.” This is a prediction that fits well with the creationist paradigm too. By contrast, before the Human Genome Project, the mainstream Darwinian establishment believed “junk DNA” was vestigial - which was based on their worldview presuppositions, not science. In this case, the Darwinian assumption was preventing further investigation into so-called “junk DNA.” Another prediction made by creationists is the strength of the magnetic fields of Uranus and Neptune. Dr. Russell Humphreys correctly predicted the strength of those magnetic fields based on Biblical assumptions (the secular scientists got it wrong, by the way).
How can science, if it requires methodological naturalism, be a search for the truth about the natural world? Let’s assume, for sake of argument, that six-day creation is the truth about the world. If that’s true, then a science restricted by methodological naturalism could never arrive at the truth. Those scientists would have to believe in some form of evolution, even if it was wrong, and even if all the evidence supported six-day creation. Don’t you think that’s a problem?
Methodological naturalism only makes sense if we believe in metaphysical naturalism (i.e. atheism).
I’m a fallible human being and I’m not a scientist so there could very well be things I’m not familiar with. In fact I’m certain there are things I’m not familiar with. My point is, I’ve probably heard almost every argument / evidence there is for evolution. I’ve been on the other side of this debate, and I continue to talk with people who disagree with me.
No matter what you find, you can just say “evolution made it that way.” After all, analogous structures don’t fit well with evolutionary assumptions. Why would natural selection develop so many similar traits in things that aren’t alleged to have a recent common ancestor? For example, the mammalian eye and the octopus eye are remarkably similar (i.e. analogous) - and they are remarkably complex. What are the odds that evolution created these fascinating machines twice?
General Relativity is directly observable and testable in the present day. Also, it wasn’t an attempt to explain origins apart from God (as is evolution). These things are not analogous.
Six-day creation is undeniably the original reading of Scripture. All the Church Fathers were six-day creationists, except Augustine (who believed in a recent instantaneous creation). Nearly all Christians, until the 18th century, were creationists (by today’s definitions). The only reason anyone would accept such a contorted interpretation of Genesis as theistic evolution is if they were intent on marrying the godless philosophy of evolution with the Bible.
What is it about “the earth is ancient” or “species change over time” that philosophically requires atheism?
You don’t know this. Scientists have a long track record of adjusting their paradigms to fit data. The problem remains that there is absolutely no evidence at all that points to a recent six-day creation, so this claim about what scientists would do in an alternate reality is pure imagination and has no bearing on arguments about reality.
This is a strawman argument. Assuming consistent natural laws govern processes and that processes in nature continue the way they are normally observed is not the same thing as disallowing the idea that catastrophes ever change the landscape of earth.
Scientists accept the asteroid hypothesis based on evidence of the catastrophe. It was an event that disrupted all the “normal” parameters that had been observed on earth at the time. It also left evidence in the iridium layer, in the chemical makeup of fossilized sea creatures, in shocked quartz, in the aftermaths of tsunamis recorded in rocks, in fossil evidence of mass extinctions.
Scientists would accept evidence of a global flood catastrophe too, if it existed. But there isn’t evidence of that catastrophe.
David, I have not desire to change your mind, but am curious about your journey and how you came to your current state when my thought process was much different.
When I considered the evidence for an old earth (not so much evolution though that came later), I saw the multiple lines of evidence (size of the universe and time for light traveling; geologic layers indicating ecosystems buried beneath ecosystems and layers of sediment that would takes eons to erode from solid rock, buried, reformed to solid rock, lifted and eroded to canyons and caves; radiometric dating; archeologic evidence etc.; literally too many to list) and concluded that either God must be a deceiver and a liar, and must hate those who saw the false evidence rather than loved, or else the literal historical interpretation of Genesis must be erroneous, and the problem was mine, not God’s. How did you resolve that problem to your satisfaction reaching a far different conclusion?
And instead of accepting this as an example of how science self-corrects and refines its models when it is wrong and that scientists do indeed change their ideas based on evidence, you think it is proof that all of science is wrong? That’s not logical. What actually happened was scientists spent several years studying the previously unobserved phenomenon, they came up with hypotheses to explain it, those hypotheses made predictions, more evidence was discovered based on those predictions, and the observed phenomenon was incorporated into the model. That’s how real science works. You don’t just throw out everything you already know when an aspect of what you thought you knew is called into question by evidence. You figure out what’s going on.
Also, I am sorry that I haven’t been able to reply to your previous messages. As you can see I’m also talking with many others simultaneously, so I’m very preoccupied.
That’s a really great question.
When I was in high school, I had a friend who was a militant atheist, and he suggested that evolution disproves Christianity. He was one of those detestable new-atheists. My friendship with him pushed me to get involved in Christian apologetics. For years I was deep in study. The first subject I investigated was this: Does evolution contradict the Bible? After a lot of thinking and research, I was convinced that evolution doesn’t contradict the Bible. I was a big fan of sites like BioLogos and I read books by old-earth Christians / theistic evolutionists. I even used to debate with YECs online. I thought YECs were tarnishing the public image of Christians in the modern world. How could anyone deny evolution? It’s a fact. There wasn’t anything that seemed more obvious to me.
When I was about 20, I met my friend Bob. Him and I went to the same university. He is an evangelical Christian, but he also has a bachelors in biology from UNC. A very intelligent, well read person - maybe one of the smartest people I’ve met. One day we were studying in the library at my school and he told me he didn’t believe in evolution. I was absolutely shocked. I had never really met a YEC. I thought they were just those stupid people on the internet. I was well versed in all the arguments for theistic evolution, so we had a good back-and-forth debate. There was just one point he made that I didn’t have a great response for. This is how the conversation went:
Bob: “So if you’re right, God created a ‘very good’ world with millions of years of death and suffering.” Me: “Yes. But the Bible doesn’t say there was no animal death before the Fall. St. Paul’s words in Romans 5 seems to only suggest human death.” Bob: "Okay, maybe the Bible doesn’t explicitly say there was no animal death before the Fall, but it suggests there will be no animal death in the New Heavens and the New Earth (Isaiah 11) - so what does that say about the pre-Fall world? Also, even though the Bible doesn’t deny it explicitly, do you really think God is so malicious as to create such a world (inherent with death and suffering)?
I didn’t have a good answer for Bob’s question. Nevertheless, this was only one chink in my armor and I was a long way from giving up on theistic evolution. The question of animal death still bothered me though. It was a nagging doubt I had. It wasn’t until over two years later that I had more time to think about this in depth (due to COVID-19 stay at home orders).
I looked into ID material. These people seemed more reasonable to me, since they don’t think the Earth is young, and they don’t even doubt common ancestry. They merely have doubts about Darwinism. ID folks make the point that methodological naturalism precludes intelligent design. This seemed obviously true to me. But then I realized that methodological naturalism also precludes supernatural six-day creation (for the same reason: it isn’t a naturalistic explanation). Evolution started sounding less like real science (“the search for the truth about the natural world”) and more like a religious principle for atheists. Even if all the evidence pointed to ID / creationism, secular scientists literally couldn’t conclude it as true.
At this time, I realized there are more theological problems with evolution. The animal death / suffering question was not resolved. But it’s deeper than that. Evolution, by making the original created world full of death and decay, disturbs the traditional Paradise-Fall-Redemption arc of history. There was no Paradise if evolution is true. I realized that nearly all the Church Fathers were six-day creationists. I realized that if I accepted six-day creation, Adam and Eve would make more sense as our first-created parents. Before I had believed in a mythical Adam, which was theologically fraught. I realize there are theistic evolutionists who do believe in Adam, but even they don’t typically believe Adam was the first human person or that he was created from the dust of the Earth. I realized that my theology would be a lot more harmonious if I believed that Genesis is history.
I also realized, to my surprise, that many cultures around the world have Flood myths which are remarkably similar to the story in Genesis. We’re talking about cultures as diverse as the Middle East, North America, and the Caribbean. The details are nearly identical (same number of passengers, worldwide flood, sending out doves / ravens, etc.). Is it more likely that these stories were borrowed / invented independently, or that they are all describing the same event? I also found that there are many intelligent people who believe in six-day creation - even many scientists, like Kurt Wise, Todd Wood, and Jason Lisle (these aren’t men of the Ken Ham or Kent Hovind variety ).
Let me now address your main concern. You worry that YECism makes God a deciever:
As a YEC, I don’t believe God deceived us. I think the world looks old, but only if you assume methodological naturalism and uniformitarianism. In other words, if you assume that the world came about via the same slow, gradual, natural processes we see today, then the world must be very old. However, if God really created everything recently, in six-days, and if there was a Global Flood (as I believe God tells us in the Bible), then he isn’t being deceptive at all. Consider the following thought experiment:
You and your friend Tom walk into a dark room with a lit candle. Next to the candle is a note from Susan, saying,
Hi Phil and Tom, I left at 6 PM to get some groceries. Before I left, the power went out. I lit this candle, so you could see. I’ll be back soon.
Suppose the time is 6:15 PM, but you and Tom observe that the candle is very short and there’s lots of wax at the base of the candle.
Tom: “There’s no way this candle has only been burning for 15 minutes. There’s no way Susan left at 6 PM. Based on the amount of melted wax and the rate of melting, she has been gone since at least 3 PM.”
But then suppose, at about 6:30 PM, Susan comes home with the groceries.
Tom: “I know that you left at 3 PM, not 6 PM. Look at all that wax. You’ve lied to us, Susan!”
She denies it, and calmly explains:
Susan: “I lit an already-used candle, not a tall fresh one. This short candle is only evidence that I was gone for 3 and a half hours if you assume I started burning a fresh candle. You incorrectly assumed the initial conditions, so your estimate of when I left was wrong.”
Tom: “Ok, I suppose you didn’t lie to us in your letter, but you were being very deceptive.”
Susan:smiles and says, “No, I wasn’t being deceptive: I told you exactly when I left (6 PM). Why didn’t you just trust that I was telling you the truth?”
This is just an analogy, but I think it helps explain how God isn’t a deceiver on my view. To most people, the Earth looks very old. But that’s only because we’ve dismissed Genesis and developed hypotheses about the unobservable past based on naturalistic assumptions. If we just trust what God says, and we presuppose that to be true, then there’s no deception. And in fact, when we stop assuming methodological naturalism and uniformitarianism (when we presuppose the truth of the Bible), a lot of the alleged evidence for evolution / long-ages fits nicely into that Biblical paradigm.
To see what I mean, let’s return to my intellectual journey. At this time, I realized that there are plenty of competent creation scientists who have fascinating explanations for the common evidences that are alleged for evolution / deep time. Let me just take your list and go through that:
But to be honest, that isn’t my favorite explanation. For one, I don’t understand it - it’s a little technical for me. But also, I believe the six-days of creation were miraculous acts of God. I think it would be a mistake to probe them scientifically. It would be like trying to explain how Christ turned water into wine. As a result, I have no problem thinking God temporarily sped-up the speed of light on the 4th day, and not knowing how he did this.
I don’t see this as “deceptive” anymore than it was “deceptive” that God created Adam as a full-grown man. If we were present in the Garden of Eden and we saw Adam, we might think he was 30 years old (based on his appearance, and assuming he started life as a baby). But that would be a false assumption on our part. It isn’t deceptive for God to create a mature universe. Only nature needs to start from a seed. God can create things fully-formed and functional. For more on the question of deception, please see what I wrote above in that thought experiment about the candle.
I see the geological layers as evidence for a Global Flood. The boundaries between most of these layers are flat, without much (or any) evidence of erosion. That isn’t what we would expect if there was lots of time between the deposition of those successive layers. Also, these layers are huge - spread over multiple continents. What could explain this except a worldwide catastrophe? We also see polystrate fossils, which could not form unless the sedimentary layers were deposited rapidly. We see fossils of creatures that are beautifully preserved - like this one of a fish being eaten by another fish, or this one of a mother ichthyosaur giving birth. Those kinds of fossils just can’t be formed gradually. In fact, I don’t think fossils can be formed gradually at all. To fossilize a dead creature, it needs to be buried deeply and quickly, to protect it from scavengers. This is exactly what we would predict from a Global Flood. If you want more, here’s an excellent video from Kurt Wise on evidences for the Flood.
Canyons are quite easy to explain on a Flood model. If there was a Global Flood, there were probably post-Flood lakes and other water runoff that ran into the sea and carved out the features we see today. You can explain these features in one of two ways: 1) A little bit of water over a long period of time (the uniformitarian approach), or 2) A lot of water over a short period of time (the creationist approach). It’s really a matter of perspective.
Radiometric dating relies on unprovable assumptions about the past. Scientists don’t directly measure age like they can directly measure weight or volume. Age is calculated, based on a number of assumptions, and the resulting age is only as good as one’s starting assumptions. It’s an obvious point, but rocks and fossils don’t come with birth certificates. When scientists radiometrically date something, they assume there was no contamination / mixing, they assume the initial amount of daughter isotopes, and they assume the rate of decay was constant. These are all assumptions about the past that can’t be proven. As it turns out, secular scientists believed in deep time long before radiometric dating existed as a method to date rocks. To me, that’s evidence of the philosophical nature of this debate (their beliefs in deep-time preceded the strongest evidence for it).
I’m not sure what you mean by this. I don’t think there are any unresolvable difficulties from archaeology for the creationist perspective.
I don’t bring any of that up to convince you of YEC, because I don’t expect you to change your mind, nor do I really intend to. The point is, I found that there are satisfactory answers to all those things that used to seem like rock-solid proofs of long-ages / evolution.
The real turning point for me was when I realized I don’t have to give up on science per se. Because, contrary to common opinion, the difference between creationists and evolutionists is not in their acceptance / rejection of science. We’re all working with the same evidence. The difference is in how we interpret that evidence. Fundamentally, our interpretations will be based on our starting worldview assumptions. Creationists presuppose the truth of Scripture, and secular scientists presuppose methodological naturalism. A secular scientist interprets homology as evidence of common ancestry, while I interpret it as evidence of common design. Neither view is more or less “scientific” (unless you think science is inherently naturalistic - but that is a philosophical claim). I also realized that evolution was developed by men who were trying to explain the world apart from God. Ultimately, it’s all about worldviews, and evolution really is an alternative religion for atheists. When I realized this, I chose to hold a traditional Christian view on origins. I decided to read Genesis as history - rather than trying to marry my theology with a naturalistic creation myth (an impossible task).
I hope that answers your question. Sorry for the long reply.
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