Yes, great observation. My rule of faith is that I look to the Scriptures first to develop my worldview, and I then interpret the world around me through the lens of that Scripturally-bound worldview. In this way, I can say that the history of the planet has not been uniformitarian – that the earth changed, perhaps gradually, but fundamentally, upon the fall of Adam and Eve, and then upon the occurrence of the global flood, the earth experienced drastic, sudden change.
No. Only YEC are confused what people mean when applying the term evolution generally. They want it to refer to just adaptations while everyone else is using it to refer to that plus the genetic and morphological changes that brought it from a jawed fish to a tetrapod to what they are now.
There is no space within the creation narrative to logically interpret a literal understanding and nothing in science points towards a 6-10k earth.
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To me it seems that a modern western fundamentalist worldview filtered scripture to confirm what you already believed.
I’m curious why do you believe that humans have a tailbone? Was God making us with tails and then changed his mind? Why did he do that with gorillas and chimps as well? Why are we morphologically and genetically so similar to chimpanzees and then to gorillas? Why is it that just a little past this we are very similar to smaller monkeys that still have tails snd are fairly common to us genetically and morphologically?
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The following things about evolution are indisputable facts:
- Biological populations change over time.
- When biological populations are separated geographically, they diverge to the extent that they can no longer interbreed.
- This has been going on for more than 3.5 billion years, not just six thousand.
- Over time periods that long, the changes will accumulate to become massive.
- No-one has ever demonstrated the existence of a limit to the extent to which biological populations can change.
- Mutations can, and do, produce new information.
- These things are all still facts even if it can be shown that life can not come from non-life.
Having a Scripturally-bound worldview means that you must be committed first and foremost to honesty and factual accuracy in how you approach matters of science and faith. Deuteronomy 25:13-16 again.
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That is an incorrect rule of faith and worldview.*
*It also leads to self-righteousness and the false sense of nobility that we so often see in YECs.
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You articulate very well the WV my younger brother holds. I’ve often asked him how he can be so sure that a creator God could not have created the world/cosmos over billions of years in a manner consistent with what careful observation and measurement indicate actually happened. Like you, he insists the Bible means what it says in a straightforward manner for English speakers of our time. Of course he doesn’t claim we were the intended audience for the Bible but I’m not shy about pointing out this naive assumption you both seem to share. You were quick to cop to living in a Biblical world, would you be just as eager to claim that a literal twentieth century interpretation of the English translation is the proper way to understand the Bible?
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I’ve read through most of “Why Evolution is True” by Coyne, so I’ve considered some of these arguments. Why shouldn’t genetic similarity point to a common designer, as opposed to a common ancestor? I’ve never found the argument of similarity to be the least bit compelling on that basis. No knowledge of genetics is required to make this argument by cursory observation, of course – most eyes on most organisms appear quite similar; auditory glands appear similar; toes, feet, hooves, limbs, fins, mammalian hair follicles – I firmly believe that what you are seeing is due to the one Creator that all of life has in common.
Tailbones – it is quite a presumptuous leap to claim that a tailbone is vestigial in some manner, and so goes the entire vestigial argument.
Then let’s try this. Sometimes when someone refuses evidence or can’t understand it the best thing before ignoring them is having them defend their position.
So the scientific proof that everything was created 6,000k years ago and that chimps look similar to us because of common design by a designer.
Also there is a lot of various ro eyes. There are simple and complex snd some have no eyes and some have 5+.
Also explain why do humans not show up in the earliest geological layers? Why do we never find humans and dinosaurs together?
Also if possible cite peer reviewed scientific journals.
Since YEC is based off of biblical interpretation I am also curious about a few things .
- Did Adam lose a rib or was he cut in half?
- Can you explain on what day God created the dark waters.
- If dead only occurred after the “fall” then why was there a tree of life in the gardens of immortals?
- Can you show me another 11 chapters anywhere else in the Bible that covers 1000+ years, multiple characters and at least two major events that is similar to genesis 1-11?
Can you provide some sample problem passages where you believe my approach leads to a wrong, fundamentalistic interpretation? Using modern English in a word for word translation like the NASB, I think the combination of the doctrine of the perspicacity of Scripture and sound hermeneutics lead us to clear interpretations. I subscribe to the Westminster Confession of Faith and the three forms of unity, so that helps greatly where the hermeneutics are concerned.
I don’t understand how the scientific method can be adhered to in a rigorous fashion when attempting to use it to discern the truths of the deep past. We can speculate, sure. But why should scientific speculation trump my Bible, particularly when my Bible does have evidentiary support:
- Nearly every ancient culture has a flood myth – which I believe is very good evidence for the biblical account, which presents us with a global flood that destroyed all of humanity save for 8 human beings. We can then infer that the globe was repopulated from this family of eight, leading to one oral tradition that is the source of the many different, but in some ways strikingly similar, accounts.
- Jesus refers to sufficient portions of the Hebrew scriptures to validate the entirety; we can trust Jesus as the authority based upon the historically irrefutable evidence for His bodily resurrection.
- Archeological finds seem to corroborate the history of Scripture; new finds, as they come online, have failed to contradict Scripture.
- Scripture is self-attesting – it speaks with authority and its manuscript evidence is overwhelming compared to all other ancient texts.
And again, when I see in Scripture that the uniformitarian presupposition used by scientific inquiry is inaccurate, I need to question the findings of modern science regarding the age of the earth, etc.
Leviathan appears twice in Job, three times in Psalms, and once in Isaiah – so, if we assume that Leviathan is a reference to a dinosaur, they are present in Scripture.
Psalm 104:6-9 discusses the massive impact of the flood upon the geography of the earth.
This is interesting! How many years have you studied Hebrew, Greek, and Aramaic so you can read the Scriptures? I studied Greek for 2 semesters, but I feel like I barely touched the surface.
Which is also very good evidence for widespread appreciation for floods in fertile flood plains across the globe.
I spent a few years in West Africa, and to the best of my knowledge there was no local flood mythology.
Best,
Chris
I am not self-righteous. My righteousness is not my own – it is Christ’s and Christ’s alone, given to me by grace. Apart from Him, I would be justly condemned to an eternity in hell for my sin just like any other child of Adam. 
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Leviathan is not a dinosaur. It’s a multiheaded fire breathing giant serpent that god battled during the first week of creation and tore apart.
Actually most nations don’t have a flood story. Most of the flood stories are very different. The only ones that are similar all come from Egypt and Mesopotamia. Most other flood stories did not show up in literature until after coming in contact with Christianity.
In genesis 1 it states the creatures were under God control. Thousands of years later the creation story is retold again in psalms 74 and in this recreation it changes again, just like how it changed between genesis 1 and 2. In this retelling thousand of years later they rewrote it showing a battle between god and this giant dragon.
Compare this to the stories , also in Mesopotamia that is even older than the Bible, even older than the Jews, where the gods battles a giant sea dragon.
For a fact the word in genesis 1 for “ giant sea creatures “ is actually giant sea dragons and it borrows a word from another Mesopotamian nation.
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Do you believe that one must know Hebrew, Greek and Aramaic to understand Scripture, particularly in this day age when we have the benefit of amazing study tools. I personally use Olive Tree – it enables me to drill down to the original languages and perform word studies effectively, imo. In addition, we are blessed with some outstanding reformed confessions that help us to effectively mine the Bible as a whole – Westminster Confession of Faith, etc.
When is the last time you and your pastor (or your flock, if you’re a pastor) obeyed this Scripture?
“Greet one another with a holy kiss.”
How about the use of the term “brothers” to refer to believers (including women)?
The NASB is not word-for-word. If it were, Genesis 1:2 would read:
of God and the Spirit of the deep the face over and darkness and void formless was the earth the waters the face over was hovering.
In addition, as a builder of natural language processing models, I can tell you that word-for-word translations frequently fail between modern French and modern English. How is it that word-for-word translations would work unfailingly between ancient Hebrew and modern English?
…does not imply that we will understand everything in the Scripture without any need to understand the cultural, economic, and linguistic background of the ancient Near East and the (later) Roman Empire). As the site gotquestions.org (not a liberal site in the least!) notes:
The doctrine of perspicuity does not mean that every passage of Scripture is equally clear as to its precise meaning. Certainly, there are passages that can be obscure to modern readers due to historical or cultural references.
You seem to be taking the doctrine to a much greater extreme than fundamentalist scholars I have read. Of course, you can choose the road you wish to follow, and I would not judge your faith.
However, the scientific community has the right to judge opinions on science.
Regards,
Chris
You will then be pleased that mainstream science agrees on this point. The earth has been subject to a number of upheavals, the most recent and pronounced being the asteroid hit of 65 million years ago which delivered the final extinction blow to the non-avian dinosaurs. But before that there have been cataclysmic shake-ups, volcanism, ice-ages, and die offs. So you are correct that the history of the planet has not been uniformitarian, and this has been scientifically recognized now for several generations.
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My favorite of the flood stories is the one in the far east. Amazingly, there are traces of the biblical story encoded in Chinese characters. For example, the ancient Chinese characters for boat and water essentially tell us the story, including a reference to 8 people! Flood and Ark (洪水，船，诺亚方舟): Story behind Chinese Characters (19/ 25) - YouTube (This video is ok, but there are probably better ones, tbh.)
We do have great tools, but they still have to be used with skill and knowledge, Knowing the words only can be misleading if you do not know the cultural context and the way those words are used. If I state the Cowboys were slaughtered by the Chiefs, it makes a lot of difference if we are talking football or 19th century western American history.
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