Depends on what you mean by “back then”… which for Ehrnan might be the 70s? …I have no idea but likely no earlier than that…I didn’t attend Wheaton but sat in on a class plus years of theology conference lectures vs there.They told me in one conversation that the school has always taught an old universe perspective — however that is interpreted…As for E…he is a great speaker and I have watched him debate.other scholars etc.No problem here on my part at least, with him having his own view…but I think there is more than has been said .He is allowed his perspective though., But likely some of his rationale is personal…
And the subject of “variant readings” is another large issue. From what I remember, most of those variants don’t demolish the meaning of the text (in MOST cases) and none are said to impinge on important Christian doctrines of the sort that might demolish faith.
that is an absurd statement to make. People dont leave Christianity for this reason…you need to study your own bible better. People leave Christianity specifically because of unbelief!
Now you can claim their unblief is because of a conflict between religion and science all you like, however, the bible is also very specific on what unbelief is and it has nothing to do with that. Unbelief is very specifically a philosophical issue… a breakdown in personal relationship with God. If your relationship with God remains strong, you wont lose your faith. Faith does not come from studying rocks!
We need to nip in the bud these fundamentally errant arguments claiming that science proves God…that is absolute bumkum!
and just before moderators attempt to sanction the post citing innappropriate language…bumkum is a real word in the dictionary!
Science has nothing to do with Salvation…nor can it in any way provide a pathway to Salvation (or even conversion for that matter). In fact generally i would argue that those who follow a very science driven philosophy have some of the poorest theology i have seen in religion. The inconsistencies in their belief structure suffer greatly at the hands of atheists who know their bibles. These are the types of individuals who lose the faith and its for the same reason…no relationship with God.
God is not restricted to or driven by Science. The Bible very specifically states God spoke time (day/night), energy (eg light) and matter (the earth and its contents) into existence.
No … but when young people discover their elders (who had discipled them toward salvation) have been willfully lying to them, that tends to send them elsewhere to seek after more truthful teachers and mentors. Bearing false witness about God and about God’s creation tends to overshadow all the other witness and testimony you may have had, no matter how true or important the spiritual part of that witness is. When one throws their own credibility under the bus, it is no great surprise that even the spiritual truths they had shared may consequently be rejected by a great many as well. We tragically see this playing out in front of our very eyes today, contrary to what you claim.
When I was at university the largest category of students who abandoned Christianity were those who’d been raised YEC – that’s just the way it was.
And that should be expected because students raised that way were taught that the Bible is 100% scientifically accurate and if there is just one error then the whole thing is false – propositions that YECists here have stated. So when they find out that the first premise is incorrect they act on the second one – they’re following exactly what they were taught.
The tragedy is that they didn’t doubt the second premise as well, which they should have done since it was taught to them by the same people as the first one! The students who faced this crisis and didn’t lose their faith were those who were smart enough to conclude that the second premise is also false, that the foundation of the faith is not Genesis but Christ.
So did they leave because of unbelief? Yes – but that unbelief was the logical step given what they had been taught by YEC adherents.
I didn’t say that at all. I said their unbelief came from following what they had been taught, that if the Bible has even one error in it then the whole thing is false. That’s a claim that’s been made here, sometimes in different words, but it’s the same claim whether stated baldly or in terms of “If this is an error, then how can we believe any of it?”
No, but it can be demolished by studying rocks when you’ve been told that the Earth is only six thousand years old and that if that age is wrong then the whole Bible can;t be trusted. Faith doesn’t come from believing the principle that the Bible has to be 100% scientifically accurate, either, especially since that principle doesn’t come from scripture, it comes from the worldview of scientific materialism. Faith comes from the crucified Christ and has Him at its center, so when students inevitably find out that the Bible doesn’t teach science at all they can shrug it off and keep trusting Christ.
Not according to YEC! The YEC claim makes science the entire foundation of the faith by its insistence that the opening of Genesis has to be taken literally as scientifically 100% accurate and that if it isn’t 100% accurate then the Bible can’t be trusted.
To claim that YECism is lying to its members about this is ridiculous. What you are doing is simply pretending that your interpretation of the world around you is scriptural and yet you have no scriptual support for it…if you do then please post texts that tell us that what we read in the bible is Old Age Earth.
I can post plenty that directly support a Young Age Earth…starting with the following:
4th Commandment
Exodus 20:8 “Remember the Sabbath day by keeping it holy. 9 Six days you shall labor and do all your work, 10 but the seventh day is a sabbath to the Lord your God. On it you shall not do any work, neither you, nor your son or daughter, nor your male or female servant, nor your animals, nor any foreigner residing in your towns. 11 For in six days the Lord made the heavens and the earth, the sea, and all that is in them, but he rested on the seventh day. Therefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy.
That literal day has been kept as a holy day since the creation of this world by God
The Israelites have kept that day historically since at least the time of Moses (1500 years before Christ)
A large number of Christians have kept that literal day holy for 2000 years since the life, death, and resurrection of Christ
Revelation 14:12 says, The Saints who will be saved in the second coming … “here are those who keep the commandments of God and have the faith of Jesus”
The reality is this, when young people are faced with evolutionary claims from atheists, and scientists who are atheists, what they actually are told is that God is a mythical lie. Atheists point to the various secular scientific claims about the universe, biological dilemmas…all of the science based theories put forward by atheism and those claims are used in order to discredit religion (both YECism and TEism). You are not immune from this and to claim otherwise is naive and stupid.
I have spent a long time in the church, i have also been a school teacher in both secular and Christian high schools…i can tell you our children are not leaving God behind because of a conflict between YECism and TEism. They are leaving God behind because society and lifestyle in society today simply isn’t interested in the slow pace of traditional religion! As an example of my point here…and you may attempt to blow by this if you like but the reality is going to overwhelm any claim to the contrary…our young people are being attracted to hi-energy churches in droves…such as Hillsong and various other pentecostal type movements. These groups are playing on the emotions of kids…they are not winning them through any kind of creation vs science debate…that doesn’t even come into it!
Those kids who do not move into the high-energy churches are leaving God because he isnt relevant to their lives out in the world. Again, that has nothing to do with science and i would challenge you to prove from surveys of young people in senior high school that i am wrong on this point. In terms of university students, what percentage are doing science-based degrees exactly where this would even come up? You appear to claim a majority here…i reject that as not only unlikely but impossible.
As i said in a previous post, people do not leave God because of science. They leave because of unbelief in God and the Gospel.
The Gospel has nothing to do with science…its not even remotely connected!
Christ dying on the cross, rising again and then ascending into heaven is not scientific…its a miracle.
Salvation, not scientific…its a miracle!
Relationship with a God you cannot feel or touch or see, not scientific…its a miracle!
please understand, I am not claiming we cannot view the wonders of God through His creation using science. However, attempting to interpret things into God using scientific observation without direct biblical support most definitely is wrong.
No, it isn’t: YEC totally depends on ignoring what the scriptures actually are and instead insisting that they were written from the perspective of a modern worldview.
That is a lie, pure and simple.
In other words, they’re manipulating kids.
All university students have to take a certain number of science courses.
Right – they leave because they learn in science courses that they have been lied to.
The droves of YEC-raised students I saw leave the faith when I was at university were following exactly what they’d been taught: that if there’s any scientific error in the Bible, then the whole thing is untrustworthy.
There’s the lie: that there is any biblical support for a scientific position! But that’s what YEC depends on – people believing that the Bible teaches science.
I reject YEC because it has no support in the text, it only has support if you force a modern human worldview onto the text.
Study of geology, cosmology, physics, history, paleontology, and biology are devastating to the dogma of a young earth, therefore YEC organizations have no recourse but to lie to their followers. This takes the form of out of context quote mining, selective presentation of information, disregarding the consilience of data, misrepresentation, and often enough, outright fabrication. When students have to engage with science on their own and realize the dishonesty for themselves, of course they ask, what else was fibbed?
There’s nothing ridiculous about it whatsoever, Adam. Honesty has rules, and if you don’t want to be accused of lying, you need to stick to the rules. And if you are accused of lying, you need to demonstrate that the claims that you are making do in fact stick to the rules. People don’t just throw out accusations of lying at young earthists as if it were some kind of insult or personal attack. They give specific examples, and if you want to fend off those charges, you need to respond to and justify those specific examples.
To give one example, young earthists repeatedly claim that scientists have found unstable biomolecules in dinosaur fossils that could not have survived for millions of years. Some even go so far as to describe the findings as “fresh dinosaur meat.” Yet when you go back to the original peer reviewed papers, all that we find being reported are the ultimately stable breakdown products of those original unstable molecules. This has been pointed out time and time and time again to young earthists but they still persist in making these same claims despite having been told that they aren’t getting their facts straight. On some young earth forums, they will even go so far as to delete your response and block you altogether if you point these things out. How is that not lying?
Some of the points that you are making about the Bible are valid and important ones that do require careful consideration. But when you trot them out in response to this particular issue, that becomes a diversionary tactic that just avoids the issue. You need to come up with a satisfactory response that addresses this specific point and that stays on topic. Because anything else is at best shouting and at worst brings the valid points you are making, and even the Bible itself, into disrepute.
Like all clocks, the “clock of carbon-dating” must be calibrated. Unfortunately, carbon dating for the times described in the Old Testament was calibrated in accordance with dates drawn from Egyptian history.
Whatever else one may think about carbon dating, it is blatantly false to claim the calibration curve is based on archaeological artifacts or Egyptian history. Nor is there any circular reasoning involved.
Every dating laboratory issues reports for northern hemisphere terrestrial samples based on the IntCal calibrations, which are in turn based on multiple studies including lake varves, cave speleothems, and for the period younger than 22,000 years, most heavily on an extensive array of continuous tree ring studies. Nothing to do with Egypt anything. When the test results come back from the lab, there will be a reference such as Intcal20 right there on the report. You cannot possess an understanding of the practice of carbon dating and not know this stuff. That would be like an electrician having never heard of the electrical code.
I could go on. Just this month Ken Ham repeated untruths about carbon dating. Intrinsic radioactive carbon in diamonds and coal is another common lie, although the discussion for that requires a technical understanding for which most YEC are not prepared.
One wonders about the differences between a lie, a devastatingly bad mistake, self-deception, and believing someone else’s all of the above and passing them along as true, or just modestly believing them without the noise. And then there is the false nobility pushed by the noisy leaders and commentators.
If somebody sets themselves up as an authority on a scientific discipline, but does not know what they are talking about, I would consider that a lie, just a different kind of lie. Ignorance is not just a different interpretation, or a Biblical lens; and the disillusionment that comes with exposure of the falsehood is no less real.
A lie is a claim that meets all the following criteria:
It is demonstrably false.
The person making the claim knows, or should reasonably be expected to know, that it is false.
The person making the claim is attempting to persuade his or her audience that it is in fact true.
Whether or not someone should reasonably be expected to know that a statement is false will depend on various factors including their level of education, their personal and professional experience, any authority that they claim to have to address the subject, and the details of what exactly they are claiming.
For starters, anyone with a science degree or professional experience in any science-based career should have an understanding of high school level mathematics at the very least, and should be able to make sure that their claims are consistent with that understanding. It is inexcusable for any such person to make claims that disregard the basic facts that science is done in laboratories, that it involves measuring things, that error bars are a thing, and that said error bars place tight constraints on what you can and cannot legitimately claim.
For pastors, church leaders, and Bible teachers who do not have a science degree or equivalent professional experience, I’m prepared to cut them a bit of slack here. Most people at this level get their scientific information from pop-sci articles in newspapers and from YouTube channels, and these vary widely in terms of quality and accuracy. But I do expect them to at least show some evidence that they’ve done their homework and that they aren’t just making things out of whole cloth, and I do expect them to be honest about their qualifications (or lack thereof) to address the subject. And if they are advised that something they’ve claimed is untrue but they still keep on repeating it regardless, that crosses the line from good faith misunderstanding into dishonesty.
I have put this up elsewhere, but I feel like I have to make a confessional again! When I was YEC, in geology class, I had a very kind professor who responded respectfully to my own respectful queries, after having offered YEC objections to an old earth… That was in spite of the impatience (understandable) of some other students who wanted to just move on.
His response gave me great respect for an honest, kind point of view that really wanted to teach science for its own sake.
At the same time, I wound up speaking to another professor who was a Methodist, and told me that he was going through a difficult time with a fundamentalist Christian, who was questioning his every discussion of evolution. I felt rather bad on his part, even though at the time did not believe in evolution.
I was quite convinced that all he wanted to do was get through the class, and discuss science.
I looked up the record for the geologist who taught me. He has a wing of the school dedicated in his name, because of his good reputation as a teacher. He passed away sadly from cancer, however.
I wanted to express appreciation to him for having listened so carefully.
It is not just from those professors, but from others throughout college that helped me think better and with humility. Yes, college did change my mind. However, it changed it for the better.
I avoided philosophy classes because of my concern over losing my faith. Now, in retrospect, I wish I had taken them–I think that they may have strengthened me, too.
then put some bible verses alongside your claim there…because i am not seeing any in this post. What i am seeing is words…YOUR OWN WORDS and not a single biblical text that supports anything you have claimed!
so let me get this straight, you are using this as your guide for determining how you should use literary skills to read the Bible?
Can i provide an illustration that completely destroys this argument…I suggest you read all of 1 Samuel 15…but here is the gist of it that matters for this post
20“But I did obey the LORD,” Saul replied. “I went on the mission that the LORD gave me. I brought back Agag king of Amalek and devoted the Amalekites to destruction. 21The troops took sheep and cattle from the plunder, the best of the things devoted to destruction, in order to sacrifice them to the LORD your God at Gilgal.”
Do you think, Jammycakes, that there are times we pulled (as YEC) for a given belief, and yet, like Todd Wood, persevered because we believed that God would pull through for us? My own pastor recently preached that he thought we should be able to persevere in the YEC belief because of our faith, despite the evidence.
I strongly do not think I was lying—I do think I was talking to my profs out of a sincere belief. It’s only, I think, because of my parents’ kind and loving, accepting example, that I was able to accept evolution and believe God would accept my earnest belief.
I like my pastor. However, it’s really hard for people to sort this through–young and old. Science and the Bible are hard to deal with. I am glad that God is understanding and just.
Deuteronomy 25:13-16, Adam. I’ve quoted this one over and over again.
13 Do not have two differing weights in your bag—one heavy, one light. 14 Do not have two differing measures in your house—one large, one small. 15 You must have accurate and honest weights and measures, so that you may live long in the land the Lord your God is giving you. 16 For the Lord your God detests anyone who does these things, anyone who deals dishonestly.
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. Any creation model, any interpretation of Genesis 1-11, any attempt to challenge the scientific consensus on the age of the Earth or evolution, MUST obey these verses. Any that does not, is not Biblical, is not scientific, and is not honest.
If you want to make a case for young earthism, you must therefore justify young earthists’ approach to measurement. Accurate and honest measurement means that there are rules that must be followed, and when we point out that young earth claims break those rules in specific ways, you need to provide a satisfactory, on-topic, non-diversionary response to those specific observations.
