No comment on the fact that a SDA source makes the same claim that you keep saying “isn’t relevant”?
Before the rise of scientific knowledge, starting well before the theory of evolution, nobody had any idea of how old the earth was. So it is no surprise it was accepted for thousands of years. How long was the geocentric view of the Bible accepted before scientific knowledge resulted in a change?
You keep conveniently ignoring the fact that geologists were proposing >6,000 years for the age of the earth long before Darwin. YEC folks like to argue that the time needed for evolution is what pushed back the age of the earth, ignoring yet again, that by this time the geologists were already up to the millions of years which kind of puts a crimp in the YEC theory.
Could you please point out a conspiracy theory? You keep bringing it up but I have yet to see one.
More like rapidly expanding hot air. Can you point to any recently gained knowledge that actually changes something?
Oh please. Biology has nothing whatsoever to do with the big bang (that would be physics). Evolution has nothing whatsoever to do with the origin of life. The theory requires life to begin with.
First of all, “evolution” did not propose an old earth. The fact that the earth is far older than six thousand years was well established before Darwin was even born.
Second, the fact that the earth is 4.54±0.05 billion years old and not just six thousand is one of the most well established and incontrovertible facts in the whole of the earth sciences. Old earth geochronology has important and valuable commercial applications, such as for example in oil exploration. There is a word for people and organisations who denounce hard, well-established facts – especially hard, well established facts with commercial applications – as “heresy.” The word in question is “cult.”
You’re forgetting something. In YEC-ese, “evolutionist” is a swear word used to refer to anything and everything about science that they don’t like, regardless of whether it has anything to do with biological evolution or not.
Not only that but it is interesting to note that evolutionists were not getting what they wanted regarding age of the earth for quite a while. According to Kelvin at the time, based on his thermodynamic calculations of a rate of planetary cooling prior to having any knowledge of radioactivity, he calculated the age of the earth at between twenty and forty million years old. And his calculations at the time were widely respected as based on solid math. Evolutionists had fits with this knowing that the time was way too short for what they were seeing. It wasn’t until the mechanism of added radioactive heat became known that Kelvin’s lock on the age of the earth was finally broken and it was seen that it actually was vastly older.
“Anecdotage” is a term I haven’t run across in reading except maybe once almost a decade ago. I picked it right up, though, and I’m not afraid to apply it to myself, as illustrated here. ; - )
The best advice I ever got was from my father, who told me: “Don’t give advice.” I think it was the second or third time he said it that I asked him: “Did you just give me advice?” He paused, smiled, and never said it again.
Allow me, instead, to offer a suggestion: In future exchanges–at least in this forum–consider avoiding mentioning “plagiarism” and “conspiracy theory”.
I suggest that because it’s clear to me from the responses that you’ve gotten in this thread that the uninformed won’t have a clue what you’re talking about, at best. At worst, they’ll become annoyed. You could, instead, briefly cite the venerable Ronald Numbers and the work of Karen Douglas, PhD, of the University of Kent in the United Kingdom.
Specifically, regarding the word “plagiarism”, Venerable Numbers briefly mentioned it in his book, The Creationists, (which ought to be required reading for all future applicants to Biologos), to wit:
My note: the previous paragraph focuses on the charge of plagiarism against Ellen G. White. Numbers also describes the charge of plagiarism against George McCready Price, by Charles Schuchert, a Yale geologist. Schuchert had co-authored a text containing a number of pictures and he was upset that 32 of them appeared in Price’s book, New Geology (1923). However, the two charges are different, and the latter would have less significance to an SDA, IMO, than the former.
Regarding the term “conspiracy theory”, in an 01/13/2021 podcast of an interview with Kim Mills, in the American Psychological Association podcast, Speaking of Psychology, Douglas “discusses psychological research on how conspiracy theories start, why they persist, who is most likely to believe them and whether there is any way to combat them effectively.”
“…a conspiracy theory can normally be defined as a proposed plot carried out in secret, usually by a powerful group of people who have some kind of sinister goal. So something to gain from what they’re doing and they usually don’t have people’s best interests at heart.”
“…it is definitely the case that the conspiracy theories have ways being with us. Believing in conspiracy theories and being suspicious about the actions of others is in some ways quite an adaptive thing to do. We don’t necessarily want to trust everybody and trust everything that’s happening around us. And so they have always been with us and to some extent, people are all, I guess you could call everybody a conspiracy theorist if you want to use that term at one point or another.”
“We argue that people are drawn to conspiracy theories in order to satisfy or in an attempt to satisfy three important psychological motives. The first of these motives are epistemic motives. .”
“The second set of motives, we would call existential motives.”
"The final set of motives we would call social motives:
1 Like
Klax
(The only thing that matters is faith expressed in love.)
205
Hopefully you’re being puckishly ironic. Because that does not follow and will not be the case. Learning biology, chemistry and physics and their highly numerate confluences to Ph.D. level does not require acceptance of evolution and greater materialism by orders of magnitude. Virtually if not actually none at all at high school. Adventist universities include one in the world top 5%.
@adamjedgar Adam,
I recently discovered (i.e. just a few days ago) that Ted Davis is: Edward B. “Ted” Davis, author of “Fundamentalist Cartoons, Modernist Pamphlets, and the Religious Image of Science in the Scopes Era.” In Religion and the Culture of Print in Modern America, edited by Charles L. Cohen and Paul S. Boyer (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2008), pp. 175-98.
I’ve seen it and consider it a great introduction to the subject. In the article, he includes marvelous examples of visual media drawn by Ernest James Pace (1879–1946) who, according to Davis, was “[p]robably the most widely published fundamentalist cartoonist of his period”.
The Pace cartoon that grabs my attention the most is The Descent of the Modernists. It portrays three men descending stairs labeled: CHRISTIANITY, BIBLE NOT INFALLIBLE, MAN NOT MADE IN GOD’S IMAGE, NO MIRACLES, NO VIRGIN BIRTH, NO DEITY, NO ATONEMENT, NO RESURRECTION, AGNOSTICISM, ATHEISM. The youngest man is near the top of the stairs and the oldest is at the bottom.
It was used as a frontispiece in William Jennings Bryan’s pamphlet: Seven Questions In Dispute, (New York, 1924).
…well… yes, but isn’t that the very essence of anyone (religious or not) having an opinion? “As it seems to me - or better yet ‘us’” is the best we can do if we’re to believe that there exists any objective truth at all to be found or known. And we all live functionally as if that were true every time we put one foot in front of the other as directed by the eyes in our head. Secularists might imagine they are being less dogmatic about this than theists just because they leave the “God” language out, but make no mistake - if they are not radical post-modernists, they believe every bit the same thing every bit as dogmatically: there is an objective reality, and you ignore it at your own and others’ peril.
No, I’m not. Evolution is essential to understanding biology. “Nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of evolution,” said Theodosius Dobzhansky. As for doctors, I can’t imagine a doctor not understanding that viruses evolve, or that bacteria can acquire resistance to antibiotics via evolution. I know they are out there, but there must be some big-time cognitive dissonance at work!
Klax
(The only thing that matters is faith expressed in love.)
210
Well you’re wrong. Understanding and getting good grades and even a Ph.D. are two entirely different things. Microorganisms don’t count for anti-evolutionary doctors, they don’t regard what happens to them as ‘macro’.
@adamjedgar Adam,
Now, regarding the Youtube video that the OP links to …
I have watched it again, and this is what I saw:
The video is obviously an Anti-YEC film, which is NOT surprising.
Here’s the the first minute and 49 seconds of the video:
00:00 Many people today think that the belief that the earth is 6 000 years old is an essential belief of Christianity that the bible teaches that the earth is young and some Christians only started to reinterpret Genesis after modern scientific advances demonstrated that the earth was billions of years old. But you might be surprised to find out that this is a caricature of the truth. 00:22 Several Christians in the past didn’t believe the earth was necessarily young, and some that did still interpret a Genesis figuratively or allegorically. In fact the modern young earth movement is relatively new and has a peculiar origin many people are not aware of. The National Center for Science Education defines young earth creationism as the idea which requires that the earth be no more than ten thousand years old and that the six days of creation described in genesis each lasted for 24 hours. 01:04 This is what we see with modern young earth creationist organizations Answers in Genesis states on their website that creation took place in 4004 B.C. Creation Ministries International and the Institute for Creation Research also have articles on their websites stating that the earth is roughly 6 000 years old. 01:23 I have encountered some young earth creationists who state that the world is a bit older based on a literal reading of the Greek Septuagint, but they still tend to fall into the definition of stating that the earth is less than ten thousand years old and most seem to state that it’s roughly six thousand years old and the common belief among many non-Christians today is that this is how Christians read the bible until modern science demonstrated that the earth was 4.6 billion years old.
And here is the last ten minutes and nine seconds of the video.
15:19 Why, today, is the word “creationist” synonymous with young earth creationists? And if young earth believers were a minority 100 years ago even among self-proclaimed creationists, why do they appear to be a major group among Christians today and have so much influence? 15:38 In the first half of the 20th century there was only one group that was mostly comprised of young earth creationists which was the Seventh Day Adventist movement. The Seventh Day Adventists were considered heretical, proclaiming things like Sunday-worshipers would be given the mark of the beast and for elevating the visions of their prophetess Ellen G. White to be on par with scripture. The Seventh Day Adventists were a very charismatic group that broke off from the Millerite movement of the 19th century. Their leader, Ellen G. White claimed she received visions from god where she was taken back to the creation week and saw that everything was created in six literal 24-hour days, then the world was destroyed in a global flood that lay down the rock layers we now have. 16:25 Among the Seventh Day Adventists was a man named George McCready Price who was something of an armchair geologist. He wrote several papers and books arguing the geological column was the result of Noah’s Flood, so all the rock layers that demonstrated the antiquity of the earth were really laid down during Noah’s flood. He called this “flood geology”, and he also taught the earth was only six thousand years old and everything was created in six days. 16:54 Many arguments modern young earth creationists use date back to Price and not actual geological specialists. For instance, price appears to be one of the first to incorrectly claim the geological column was based on circular reasoning where the rock layers were dated by their fossil content and fossils were used to date rock layers. He also, like modern creationists, appealed the 2 Peter 3, where it talks about scoffers coming in the last days and he interpreted this to being a reference to modern evolutionists. He also utilized Exodus 20:11 to argue that creation week had to be a normal seven day week. He is the basis for other common creationist arguments famously touted by Ken Ham and others. Price said geologists and paleontologists looked at their facts through the colored spectacles of Darwin and Lyle. And likewise creationists also look at the world through the lens of scripture. Therefore, any data used to support evolution can also be used to support young earth creationism. Price also promoted ideas that are not used by modern creationists and some were quite racist. He claimed that there was a rapid degradation after the Babel incident of Genesis 11 which produced darker skin colors. This also produced Neanderthals, other hominids and possibly even the great apes 18:17 But to Price’s credit, unlike modern creationists, he didn’t claim the universe was 6000 years old, only that the earth and life on it was but this was because Ellen G. White claimed that she saw in her visions, other planets with life that existed before earth. 18:34 So the Seventh Day Adventist creationists only argued for a young earth not a young universe. Ronald Numbers notes Price’s ideas were mostly rejected by the fundamentalists of his day. By the 1920s, Price had found few followers. Numbers says before about 1970 the few disciples of disciples of Price brave enough to enter graduate programs in geology usually found evolution so pervasive they either abandoned geology or discarded flood geology. But all that changed in the coming decades. 19:08 In 1954, Bernard Ramm wrote a book where he exaggerated the influence of Price and criticized Price’s flood geology in the younger stance. 19:18 The point of his book was to encourage Christians to abandon views like the gap theory and young earth creationism and hold to progressive creationist interpretations. Unfortunately Ram’s book had the opposite effect. The book sparked a young theologian named John Whitcomb Jr. to write his doctoral dissertation as a response and a defense of Price’s young earth views. After this Whitcomb looked to get his dissertation made into a book but publishers wouldn’t take it up because Whitcomb had no scientific credentials. So he sought out a scientist who would not only endorse his work but would also co-author a book arguing for a young earth. He sent his manuscript to geologists all of which rejected the invitation pointing out the geological evidence could not be used to support a young earth. Eventually Whitcomb contacted Henry Morris who was not a geologist. But he did have a Phd. in hydraulic engineering. Morris agreed to co-author the book, but both Whitcomb and Morris were embarrassed to admit they were recycling many of Price’s old arguments because the scientific community had already considered Price’s arguments and had rejected them for decades. So they worked to distance themselves from Price while utilizing many of his arguments for a young earth. However, they also argued the universe was young, being that they were not followers of Ellen G. White, and put forward many arguments creation is still used today, like the idea that before the flood there was a great vapor canopy that surrounded the earth and created the long lifespans listed in Genesis 5 and was responsible for altering modern radiometric Carbon-14 dating. 20:59 At the time, they could not find a geologist with a Phd. to review and endorse the book. But nonetheless, they went forward and in 1961 The Genesis Flood was published. Experts familiar with Price were quick to catch at the book with simply rehashing many of Price’s old arguments. Whitcomb and Morris, instead of being dragged into the scientific debate, stated the real issue is not the correctness of the interpretation of various details of the geological data but simply what God has revealed in His Word concerning these matters. Despite the scientific community rejecting their thesis, there wasn’t a strong effort to pass this message on to the populace that lacked the scientific knowledge. And in the first decade, the book sold around 10 000 copies, and in 25 years it sold around 200 000 copies. Morris and Whitcomb became celebrities and were invited to travel around the world to speak at various colleges, churches, and conferences promoting their young earth interpretation. Soon after the publication of the book, the Creation Research Society was formed. They could not find a geologist to join their, cause, but Clifford Burdick had some training in earth sciences and joined the committee. Morris also helped to form the Institute For Creation Research which still promotes young earth creationism to this day and, in part, helped to give rise to Creation Ministries International and Answers in Genesis. 22:27 By the 1990s, the word “creationists” became a term synonymous with young earth creationists. This interpretation of Genesis which had been a tiny minority position among anti-evolutionists in the 1920s almost entirely limited to the small sympathy Adventist community became, by the 1970s, the very definition of creationism. If one said he or she were creationist in the middle 1970s, friend and foe alike would have assumed that that person was a young earth creationist. Now I’m not saying there were no young earth creationists before the Seventh Day Adventists. As we noted earlier in centuries past many believed the earth was relatively young. But with the rise of fields like geology and paleontology, the majority of Christians that left writings behind abandoned young earth ideas. Writers before the rise of modern science based their dating of the earth on the most up-to-date research of the time. 23:40 The Christian reaction to the rise of modern science was, at first, mostly welcoming. It wasn’t until the 20th century that many, driven by fear that paleontology and evolution would do away with the bible, that the modern creationist movement began. At first, the anti-evolutionists were mostly old earth creationists, but over time as evolution became more supported by the evidence, and the anti-evolutionist push seemed to be gaining a little ground. 24:07 My suspicion is the reaction, evolution, became more fanatic, and so many Christians began looking for alternatives to the old earth approaches that may have seemed like compromises to many laymen. But the modern movement did not come from an official church interpretation of Genesis that was dogmatically accepted before Darwin. It was simply eroding away in light of modern sciences. It stems from Seventh Day Adventist apologists who based their belief in a young earth on the visions of Ellen G. White. Long before Darwin, Christians were interpreting Genesis in a plethora of different ways. The age of the earth was not a huge issue until very recently. So despite the claim from organizations Answers in Genesis, they are not defending something that was pivotal to Christianity and undisputed before Darwin. Christianity has always been compatible with multiple interpretations of genesis and the modern dogmatic adherence to a young earth really traces back to the visions of an alleged prophetess.
Total video time: 25 minutes and 28 seconds
Video time above: 11 minutes and 58 seconds
Difference: 13 minutes and 30 seconds
“So what?” you ask?
Klax
(The only thing that matters is faith expressed in love.)
213
We’re all past masters at deceiving ourselves. Being technically brilliant neither requires nor engenders intellect.
The distinction between the three time periods is this:
A. 11 minutes and 58 seconds of the video are about the “origins of Young Earth Creationism”.
B. 13 minutes and 30 seconds of the video are not.
C. The length of the whole video is 25 minutes and 58 seconds.
There are several points that I’d like to make:
I watched the video.
I’m in a position to say that the video is neither a “review” nor a “well-done summary” of Ronald Number’s book, The Creation, nor any other book by Numbers or, for that matter, by George McCready Price, Bernard Ramm, Henry Morris, John Whitcomb, or Ken Ham. IMO, the video is a scurrilous, anti-YEC opinion-piece, introduced in this forum by an even less informative OP.
Correct me if I’m wrong, but, IMO, it is a fact that we (you and I) disagree with a fundamental feature of a claim stated in the OP and in the video: i.e. that an E.G. White vision is “the origin of modern YEC-ism”. Is that your objection too?
At this time, I’m looking at two mysteries, one much ess important than the other. The first mystery is why is my/our objection important to anyone in Biologos? I wasn’t preaching my objection before the OP appeared. Were you?
The second mystery is the difficulty I’m having in tracking down the precise “origin and lineage” of the claim that YEC (2022) originated in the ravings of a madwoman deemed a prophetess of the Seventh Dad Adventist Church. Don’t worry about it: I’ll figure it out. I’m searching for the crashed airplane’s “black box” now.
I view the resistance to the notion that moden YEC had roots in or could have arisen in non-SDA soil as odd.
I have my father’s 3 volume set of Franz August Otto Pieper’s Christliche Dogmatik,published in St. Louis MO in 1920 and translated into and published in English in 1950. Pieper (1852 – 1931), a Confessional Lutheran theologian served as the fourth president of what was known at that time as the German Evangelical Lutheran Synod of Missouri, Ohio, and Other States (Missouri Synod).
Vol. I, “The Creation of the World and of Man”, Page 468: “The time in which creation was completed was six days, as Gen. 1:31 qne Gen. 3:2 expressly state (hexaemeron. These six days are neither to be shortened, for pious reasons (to set forth God’s omnipotence), to a moment (Athanasius, Augustine, Hilary), nor are they to be extended, for impious reasons (to bring Scripture into agreement with the “assured results” of science), to six periods of indefinite length (thus almost all modern theologians). Scripture forbids us to interpret the days as periods, for it divides these days into evening and morning. That forces us to accept the days as days of twenty-four hours.”
The idea that Pieper could describe creation as occurring in six 24-hour days and be a Lutheran theologian and yet not be led to that belief by E.G. White’s vision-experience suggests to me that the desire to harmonize Scripture with geology really doesn’t require “a vision”.
Everyone agrees that there were people throughout history who believed in a 6 day creation in the relatively recent past. Let me repeat. Everyone agrees that there were people throughout history who believed in a 6 day creation in the relatively recent past.
We are talking about Young Earth Creationism, which is a specific set of beliefs that goes beyond just believing in a young Earth. YEC is the attempt to scientifically justify the belief in a young Earth, and that heritage can be traced to EG White through Price and then through Morris and Whitcomb.
The black box is George McCready Price.
What is odd is your continued refusal to understand the nuanced difference between Young Earth Creationism and a basic belief in a young Earth.
Price claimed his motivation to harmonize Scripture and Geology was inspired by a raving madwoman deemed a prophetess of the Seventh Davy Adventist Church?
I don’t think so. Quote his words.
I realize that it’s really important to you to think that you know what I have a problem with, … but you don’t.
Ahh! Appeal to Common Belief! Why didn’t you say so? That changes everything.
What’s even more odd is why an atheist would hyperventilate over my intentional refusal to make a distinction between Young Earth Creationism and a basic belief in a young Earth when I insist there’s a distinction between Ellen G. White and George McCready Price and the big “We” doesn’t.
