Hi Mervin, thanks for your prompt response. I will try and address the points you made.
I only stumbled upon this website this morning,so have not really had a chance to read much at all of the forum, but I take your point about the open structure of Biologos consisting of a diverse cross section of peoples with widely differing views. I must admit that I do not know great deal about Biologos but after reading through “What We Believe” I can offer the following:
Points 1 to 7 Are accurate and consistent with the Bible and with my beliefs.
Point 8 We believe that God created the universe, the earth, and all life over billions of years.
This part is a faith position that I do not share. I believe that the universe, the Earth and life were created precisely as described in Genesis around about 6,000 years ago. I must admit that once upon a time many years ago I did believe in the ‘deep time’ myth but after extensive research, I came to understand that the millions of years is a false construct that has been forced upon the masses over the past 175 years or so.
I have worked in applied science laboratories in universities, performing atomic absorption spectroscopy when it was new technology in the 1970’s well before gas chromatography technology had been invented, I have worked for state and federal government agencies conducting regional and state scale natural resource projects with scientists of various disciplines, and as an analyst using remote sensing to monitor water use in irrigated areas to mapping extant oyster reefs in estuaries in NSW Australia.
Suffice to say I have a good handle on the scientific method and have studied this subject enough to be able to state without fear or doubt that the Earth is indeed young, the global flood of Noah did occur as stated in Genesis, the Creator (Jesus the Son, the Word, the Logos, our Saviour) created the creation in six ordinary days as we know them. I have no problem with having light before the sun. Who knows perhaps the light came from our Lord Himself, or perhaps it came from elsewhere, but I see no logical reason whatsoever to question what the Bible clearly says.
The rest of Point 8 is fine, accurate and consistent with the Bible.
Point 9 is where I must object on the grounds of the overwhelming evidence to the contrary. The entire planet is covered in sedimentary rock in places many miles thick and on continental scales both on land and under the sea. The geologic record is not one of consistent change over eons of time but rather the result of rapid geologic processes that occurred over a very short time of unparalleled cataclysm and devastation involving huge volumes of sediments transported and laid down in bedding planes that we now observe as rock strata. The eruption of Mt St.Helens in Washington state USA is a perfect scale model of how this happened. There is ample documented evidence of thousands of layers of fine sediment being laid down in minutes and hours and in the time from 1980 to the present that sediment is now solid rock. I believe that it is quite possible that God has given us the event at Mt St.Helens to show us what occurred on a much larger scale globally when Noah entered the ark.
Points 9 and 10 are also fine; thus it is really only Point 8 ‘deep time’ and Point 9 belief in ‘evolution’ where we differ, but that is an enormous difference.
I know enough about radiometric dating to know it is a flawed procedure that is governed more by the analysts worldview than it is by empirical science.
Where are all the billions upon trillions of transitional forms???
Where are all the people, alive and buried???
How can life have evolved via natural selection when all natural selection can do is select from pre-existing information at the genome level, it is not a creative force, it cannot write novel information that codes for new structures as required by belief in evolution to have generated us from a single celled organism in the proverbial primordial soup???
Furthermore, mutations do not improve, they destroy complex coded information at a ratio of about 1,000,000 : 1 for every slightly beneficial mutation at the nucleotide level, there is an overall loss of fitness in the population as some of the complex coded information is lost, despite the very rare occurrence of a short term benefit that may be conferred to the organism, if it is even visible to natural selection as most mutations are near neutral to deleterious, i.e. they are not removed from the genome but continue to accumulate incessantly, until eventually mutational overload and extinction occurs. If life on Earth is millions of years old then we would all have become extinct a long time ago. Evolution is a falsified theory that is that rubbery, it is impossible to falsify it and thus it does not even qualify to be called a scientific theory!
Even more importantly how can the saving Gospel of our Lord and Saviour Jesus, make sense in a creation that has death and suffering existing as the means of creation over billions of years, rather than as the result of mankind’s fall in the Garden of Eden when Adam and Eve disobeyed God???
Jesus Himself believed in the account of creation as described in Genesis.
What possible reason is there to not accept the historical narrative as written except to bow down tot he court of public opinion, i.e. those that are fearful that they will be looked upon as being deluded by those that ascribe to evolution in the secular academic world. Such a reason to hold onto belief in evolution will always only end in tears, weeping and gnashing of teeth.
Jesus allowed Himself to be crucified by mere humans because of His enormous incomprehensible LOVE for us all.