Inerrancy and Creation

Probably one of the chiefest reasons modern evangelicalism is wholesale abandoning Biblical inerrancy is the discomfort many have with the plain reading of the Biblical account of Creation.

This has led some to put forward the idea that the Creation account was simply an observational statement which is not itself an actually accurate description of the real events – much like when we say “the sun rose” – obviously, the sun don’t rise none; our world, caught in a stable orbit within our sun’s gravity well revolves around our parent star exactly once each solar year.  It is simply a statement of observation; from the perspective of the viewer, the sun seems to rise while the horizon appears from our frame of reference to remain fixed.  It is technically inaccurate to use the phraseology, “the sun rose,” but even planetary scientists use the term descriptively; it is an idiomatic peculiarity of the human experience expressed in language.

Those who seek to accommodate current scientific assumptions, to help the Bible out and excuse what they view as an obvious contra-scientific view of origins, try to argue that the first several chapters of Genesis are obviously in the same category; they are observational, phenomenological descriptions only which are something more than myth but less than strictly accurate.

You have several galactically massive problems with that view.  Not the least of which is that the Creation account is given in such exacting detail down to an explicit chronology, that the Spirit sure does seem to have Himself at least at one time believed that He was accurately recording the events He claims to have not only been witness to but actually the active agent in.  Too bad the Holy Spirit didn’t have the benefit of modern science, there, eh?  Poor divine Guy…

The Spirit’s not the only Person of the Trinity Who suffers from this myopia, either; Jesus apparently didn’t have that information, either.  He certainly seems to have been victim to the mistaken idea that Genesis is accurate and trustworthy.  He didn’t have the advantage of living in the modern era, here in the Year of Our Lord Darwin 200, where such silly misconceptions could have been corrected and He could have spared Himself (to say nothing of His less conservative followers) considerable embarrassment.

The bottom line for me, and one which those who hold this sort of view vigorously deny is the case, is that it all boils down to a question of authority.

Either the Bible is the final authority for the Christian, or it isn’t.  You can’t have it both ways, and there is no via media.  If it is the final authority, then all things must be viewed through its lens.

The modern (and the postmodern, ironically enough) view Scripture through a lens other than itself.

The modern views Scripture through the lens of current scientific understanding.  The idea is that the Biblical authors were genuine and sincere, but also ignorant, and while the Bible is accurate in the message it seeks to convey, the particulars must be viewed through our much more complete understanding of the way of things and must be redacted to fit more comfortably into the worldview we now know to be established scientific fact.

Except…that it’s not established.

Science, by its very nature, is constantly (dare I use the term?) evolving, constantly learning new things which put the older, “established” things into a different light, allowing for wholesale reinterpretation of previously unquestioned tenets.  We are vastly more ignorant than our premodern ancestors if we think that we have things so nailed down scientifically that we can now offer editorial help to God.  Even previously understood laws of science are vulnerable to reinterpretation in light of new information.  Just in the previous century, our entire understanding of the physical nature of creation had been turned on its head – not once, but several times.  In another hundred years (should the Lord tarry) I expect that our current understanding of physics (and with it, cosmology) will be again completely revolutionized.

By contrast, the Bible is fixed, unchangeable.  And given its origin (the God who created all things and exists wholly outside of Creation), is the only viable lens through which the Christian can and should view the world.

The modern views Scripture though the lens of our current, limited understanding of science; the postmodern views Scripture through the lens of culture.

Even worse an option.

I view both through the lens of Scripture.

So when the Bible sure does seem by every internal indication to teach that God created the universe in six consecutive chronological days, I have no choice but to accept that, and to view all data through that presupposition.

As Dr. Morris states in this tremendous article:

The difference is this: we believe the Bible must take priority over scientific theories, while they believe scientific theories must determine our biblical interpretations.

The issue is, categorically, one of authority.  If I view Scripture through any external lens, that lens is my true authority.  If I accommodate Scripture to culture, culture is my authority.  If I accommodate Scripture to current scientific understanding, then that is my authority.

If I instead accommodate both culture and current scientific understanding to Scritpure…then Scripture is my authority.

Read the article “Old-Earth Creationism” and consider its arguments.

 

Twilight

Good article here from the Institute for Creation Research, which among other things looks at the current evangelical trend of soft-pedaling the all-important doctrine of inerrancy.

"Oh, I really don’t see it that way," he stated. "My church teaches that the Bible may be inspired, but it’s not inerrant. It’s all about man’s description of God."

I heartily agree with those who state that evangelicalism is in its twilight. Evangelicalism, ironically due to its obsession with relevance, is becoming increasingly irrelevant.  In seeking to accommodate itself to the zeitgeist, it has both consciously and unconsciously watered down the core tenets of the Scriptural faith and has become little differentiated from the moderate-to-liberal mainstream of modern Christianity.

There is a reason why most theologically paleoconservative church Statements of Faith (including CC Lakeshore’s) begin with a clear declaration along the lines of, “We believe the Bible to be the inspired, inerrant, verbal, plenary, confluent Word of God” or something along those lines. The reason is that without an inspired, inerrant Bible, we have no firm basis to believe in God in the first place – at least, no firm basis to believe in the God revealed in that very Bible.  It is the Bible which tells us of the Triune God, of the fall of man, of God’s work of redemption on the Cross, and of His soon-return for us at the end of the age.

And of Creation, and other bugaboo topics that theological neoconservatives really and fervently wish weren’t in the Bible, as they cause great embarrassment for them in their quest to be relevant and must be explained away rather than accepted and dealt with head-on.

 

Villify ‘Em All!

Right off the bat, let me state I’m no huge Gary De Mar fan.  He’s pretty solid as long as he stays on the topic of history – specifically American history as viewed through a Biblical lens – but he has a tendency to veer off into tirades about eschatology, pontificating on the merits of postmillennialism and preterism.

He’s perfectly entitled to so so; postmil and (non-Hymanaean) preterism are both theologically orthodox positions.  And I suppose I’d get more out of his stuff if he’d come up with newer, better arguments; but he doesn’t, and I just don’t want to read the same hackneyed platitudes over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over again and again and again and again…and again…

Look, Gary, I get it.  Margaret Macdonald invented the entire rapture thing out of whole cloth, Edward Irving was a boob, Darby was a flake, Paul really didn’t mean what he sure did seem to think he meant when he talked about us not being appointed to wrath which is to come…etc.

Gotcha.

Move along, or come up with something else – something which isn’t so easily answered and which hasn’t already been dealt with a googolplex times over.

Sheesh.  It’s enough to make me think postmil preterists don’t have much else to offer the discussion.

But that having been said, so long as Gary refrains from knocking over pretrib straw men, hastily righting them, and then gleefully knocking them over once more, he’s actually got some good stuff to say.

Enter today’s article, Scapegoating Christians: The New Nazism. In it he uses John Sack’s very disturbing book An Eye For An Eye to point out the somewhat obvious parallels between the progressive and programmatic dehumanization and eventual destruction of political enemies in totalitarian states (like Nazi Germany or Communist Russia) and the hauntingly similar process already at work to marginalize and disenfranchise Christians in today’s America:

The final tactic is to disenfranchise the opposition by keeping them from making a living or holding positions of authority in government, law, and education. The Communists understood the strategic necessity of policing every open gate to the institutions where ideas can get out to the masses without the sanction of the State. Leon Trotsky stated the following in 1936: “The old principle: who does not work shall not eat, has been replaced with a new one: who does not obey shall not eat.” If a person does not follow the Party line, he cannot get a Party job. As government increases its power and reach, there will be more government jobs that Christians will not be permitted to hold if religious ideology becomes a prerequisite for employment.

Guillermo Gonzalez, who received his Ph.D. in astronomy from the University of Washington and did his post-doctoral research at the University of Texas, Austin, and the University of Washington, received fellowships, grants, and awards from NASA, the University of Washington, Sigma XI, and the National Science Foundation, authored nearly 70 peer-reviewed scientific articles, and has had his work has been cited over 1500 times in the scientific literature, was denied tenure (also see here and here) by Iowa State University because he had the audacity as a scientist to question naturalistic evolution. He is not alone.

It’s an interesting read.

 

True, dat…

From the Stand To Reason blog.

 

Talk about an apropos billboard…

Tee. Tee hee. Tee hee hee.

Kudos to Master Mondok for posting this gem.

 

Selfishness = Selflessness…?

Scientific American recently published an article in their science news section that I found really instructive and very, very amusing.

Evolution postulates “the survival of the fittest,” and that species improve over time largely due to the violent competition of life which tends to favor traits that give individuals or groups an advantage over others (and by extension, mutations which convey evolutionary advantages – leaving aside, of course, the discussion on “advantageous mutations” for another time, since such a thing does not exist…). In fact, many believe that selfishness is an evolutionarily ingrained trait that’s really good for the individual and species.

It is a bloody, brutal enterprise.

So why do humans on a whole demonstrate compassion?

True, selfishness defines our race. However, in aggregate, and mostly in the individual, there is at least an echo of compassion which sure would at least seem to be contra-evolutionary.

And so, evolutionary biologists and sociologists have long been perplexed by this one (of very, very many) observable facts which sure do seem to militate against evolutionary presuppositions.

Enter Economist Samuel Bowles of the Santa Fe Institute. He’s suggesting that selfishness actually equals altruism in evolutionary terms; that it’s our very selfishness, ingrained in our very DNA by evolution, which produces selflessness.

…huh?

I’m selfless because I’m selfish?

Yet another example of the desperation of the evolutionist to explain away actual facts so that he doesn’t have to examine his presuppositions too closely and be forced to conclude that his philosophy really has little to do with actual science.

The Bible tells us that we are created in the image and likeness of God Himself. Now, that’s a shattered image since the Fall, but it still holds even in its degraded state; we love because our God loves. We sacrifice for the greater good because that’s His character. And we look very much down on those who are selfish or possess other similar character flaws because these things are ingrained in us – by design, not by [start: Carl Sagan voice] billions and billions [end: Carl Sagan voice] of years of freak accidental random mutations.

Reeeeeal instructive, the lengths to which men will go to avoid dealing with the obvious…

Anyway, an interesting, amusing read…

 

Flying Spaghetti Monster

A lot of my “extracirricular reading” involves reading the blogs of some of those involved (whether self-consciously or not) in the Emergent Church Movement. I do this, among other reasons, because of all the recent hoopla over the ECM. Instead of relying on predigested summaries of the beliefs of those in the movement, I consider it part of my duty, as a pastor, to do at least a modicum of my own homework. Being, as I am, “bivocational” (a fancy clergyese word meaning, “I have a day job to support my habit”), time is certainly not a commodity I have in any great abundance. My solution has been to monitor ECM blogs, for at least two reasons:

1. It’s instructive to find out what they consider “required reading” and focus my efforts there
2. Blogs are great summaries & internal critiques of their ongoing conversation, and as such are superb sources of context.

One of the blogs I read had a link to a Wired Magazine article about the “New Atheism” – which, by the way, is just the old atheism without even so much as a facelift.

Dawkins rejected all these claims, but the last one — that science could never disprove God — provoked him to sarcasm. “There’s an infinite number of things that we can’t disprove,” he said. “You might say that because science can explain just about everything but not quite, it’s wrong to say therefore we don’t need God. It is also, I suppose, wrong to say we don’t need the Spaghetti Monster, unicorns, Thor, Wotan, Jupiter, or fairies at the bottom of the garden. There’s an infinite number of things that some people at one time or another have believed in, and an infinite number of things that nobody has believed in. If there’s not the slightest reason to believe in any of those things, why bother? The onus is on somebody who says, I want to believe in God, Flying Spaghetti Monster, fairies, or whatever it is. It is not up to us to disprove it.”cience, after all, is an empirical endeavor that traffics in probabilities. The probability of God, Dawkins says, while not zero, is vanishingly small. He is confident that no Flying Spaghetti Monster exists. Why should the notion of some deity that we inherited from the Bronze Age get more respectful treatment?

This just jumped out at me. It’s probably one of the most popular arguments that atheists use against God’s existence; it’s clever, it’s catchy, and it’s been used to devastating effect.

It’s also quite flawed.

For one, the argument sophomorically lumps God into the same category as the Flying Spaghetti Monster et. al.. This won’t work; they’re in completely different categories. Same goes with unicorns, Thor, Wotan, the Tooth Fairy, bigfoot, life on Mars, Elvis, or honest politicians. It’s roughly akin to lumping “hard science” initiates like Dawkins in with pseudoscience adherents like astrologers. They’re in completely different categories, though there might be some superficial similarities.

To be fair, the argument that because science can’t disprove the existence of God, therefore He exists, is quite weak. It’s a non-argument, which Dawkins easily defeats in his witty riposte. So I find no small irony in noting that he falls for a similarly weak premise. He assumes that because he’s batted down a poorly formed theistic argument, that his position must be true. Bow to the applause, pat self on back, rest contentedly on our rhetorical laurels, our job here is done.

…except that all he’s done is pointed out the soft underbelly of perhaps one of the weakest arguments for God’s existence that there is, and in the process exposed the most glaring weakness of his own atheistic position.

He makes the very bad (for him) mistake of tying the issue to probability and (by extension) proveability.

Science is inextricably tied to empiricism. If something can be empirically demonstrated, it is (generally) presumed to be true. Thus the scientific method. And therein lies the greatest single weakness of that atheism which tries to maintain a patina of scientific rigor: the very empirical reality of God. Hence the “Intelligent Design” movement which in spite of the frantic attacks of open-minded atheists is gaining incredible steam in the scientific community.

The Flying Spaghetti Monster has exactly zero evidence to support its existence. Ditto the unicorn, Thor, Wotan, Jupiter, fairies, guileless politicians, or the hope that Proposition 2 will actually be enforced in the Sovereign State of Michigan what with the results of this month’s election of the state executive and legislature. But I digress.

God, on the other hand, is in an entirel different category. Consider:

1. The empirical improbability of life arising spontaneously outside of the agency of an intelligent Designer:
   

   THE GOLD WATCH
   Creation Model	Evolution Model
   Hans created timepieces.  As a young man he made ordinary sundials.  He later built hourglasses and water timers.  And he fashioned all kinds of clocks… magnificent grandfather clocks, pretty little anniversary clock… clocks of every shape and size.  But his most prized creation was a watch.  Hans worked on details of his gold watch for many years.  Day after day he labored over design – sizing every gear, calculating every small weight and detailing the exquisite artwork.  Meticulous care went into the manufacture of each piece.  Tiny gears were microscopically measured, formed and polished for precision.  The balance wheel was carefully calibrated ensuring maximum accuracy.  The spring, the casing, the face, the crystal… every detail was crafted to create the most "perfect" timepiece ever.  Finally, when the last gear was delicately placed, the polished crystal gently set and the gold band lovingly attached… Hans marvelled at the beauty and precision of his masterpiece.  He realized, however, that he was still holding just a beautiful ornament.  Then Hans began to wind the watch.  The sound began…  "Tick, tick, tick."  The ornament had become a timepiece.	Billions of years ago, the earth was far more favorable to "manufacturing" than today.  Surrounding the earth was a sea of "ooze", richly laden with the precise elements to create timepieces.  Bits of gold, bits of silica, even bits of paint.  Years and years went by.  Then the inevitable happened.  Bits of metal were joined together by volcanic heat.  Amazingly, metal molecules bonded in the exact way needed to create intricate gears and balance wheels.  As the parts tumbled in the "ooze," delicate polishing occurred:  Precision polishing in the exact way to produce a perfectly calibrated timepiece.  Then, molecules of black paint formed together in exact patterns to create numbers.  And they coincidentally landed on a surface randomly covered with pure white paint.  As the years continued to pass, eventually gears, wheels, a face, a crystal and a beautifully engraved band came together to form an exquisite gold watch… a product of the right mix of materials and billions of years.  It was beautiful.  It was complete and meticulously formed.  It was perfect in every way.  Almost…  It still needed someone to wind it.

   Sound ridiculous? Absurd? Consider that the simplest “simple” organism is orders of magnitude more complex than a precision watch, and then insert “simple cell” and things like “amino acids” and “organelles” and the like into the story above, and you quickly realize that it is statistically absurd to believe that life appeared by accident all on its own through natural, materialistic, uniformitarian processes.

   That is at minimum just as much of a fideistic position to take as to simply accept the statistical reality that it is for all intents and purposes impossible that the universe created itself and life arose on its own, and make the short leap from there to the realization that there is a creative God behind it all.

2. In the famous debate between Wilberforce and Huxley, the latter asked the theologian/mathematician for three assumptions:  Ten monkeys that never die, ten perfect typewriters that never break or run out of ink, and unlimited amounts of paper.  Having granted Huxley these assumptions, Wilberforce was backed into a mathematical corner:  According to the Probability Formula, as you reach infinity in the amount of time, the probability for anything becomes "1," or "a foregone conclusion.  Therefore, Huxley’s monkeys, clanging away at the typewriters, would eventually type out all the works of Shakespeare, and other works — including Psalm 23.  Shamed, Wilberforce never again spoke in public; the defeat was rabidly pounced upon by Darwinist and liberal theologian alike as a death-knell for rational thought.

   Huxley, however, had a problem that neither he nor any of his contemporaries ever picked up on.  His starting assumptions were grossly faulty.

   Leaving aside for the moment a discussion of amino chirality and reversible processes (which dictate that in a random environment amino acids will never form proteins or even peptides due to the nasty little problem of "critical mass"), we note that the universe is not infinitely old.  Even rabid evolutionists agree that the universe had an origin.  Seeing as how it did, that seriously truncates Huxley’s monkeys chances.&nbsp

   The most liberal (i.e., "favorable to chance") probability I’ve been able to find calculates the odds of DNA spontaneously producing itself from a primordial "ooze" at 1 in 10⁷⁰.  Let’s put that into perspective.

   Granting for the moment the ridiculously inflated estimates for the universe’s age given by evolutionists, and assuming that present estimates for the universe’s actual volume are correct, we find that: 

   • There are only 10¹⁸ seconds in the history of the universe
   • There are only 10⁶⁶ atoms in the universe
   • There are only 10⁸⁰ particles in the universe

   What this means is that a) there’s not been enough time in the universe for DNA to spontaneously generate [if you had one try every second, you’re out of luck; even if you had one try every microsecond, that’s still only 10²⁴, so you’re still out of luck]; b) there’s not enough material in the universe to experiment with.

   Now, that’s using a very liberal estimate of the chances for DNA to develop randomly. But once you have the molecule, you’re still not out of the woods; for DNA to be viable, all the required attendant protein apparatus are necessary for reproduction! It’s not as simple as "cooking up the stuff" (the way Stanley Miller tried — and failed to do back in 1953); the entire molecule must be completely present, absolutely without error, the first time, along with attendant servant proteins, in order to be viable; i.e., to reproduce.

   Why? Superb question! Here’s the answer:

   The DNA molecule contains coded information and complex interactions that are so interdependent, that if one of the necessary pieces is out of order or missing, the entire construct becomes unviable. This is made all the more impossible when one considers that in order for DNA to reproduce, there must be a special error-correcting protein that has to travel up the nucleotide chain to check for errors. This protein is in turn produced by the DNA molecule (of necessity, since that’s how we get proteins in the first place; from DNA) Which brings up a very irritating (to the evolutionist) twist to the old quandry, "which came first?" The duplication protein, or DNA?

   Both had to be present, in perfect working order,at the same time.

   Add to that the fact that DNA is a truly breathtaking — and absolutely unparalleled — example of an information storage system. The information encoded on the DNA molecule is, first of all, digital. It is encoded in 4-bit code [the four bases that make up nucleotides: adenine, thymidine, cytosine, and guanine]. DNA has built-in redundancy to ensure error-free data transfer; that is, many nucleotide sequences occur in multiple places, so that if one sequence is damaged (the special duplication protein knows when it is so!), the backup sequence can take over the production of the necessary proteins! DNA also is error-correcting (the duplication protein travels up the "daugher molecule" checking for errors). In summary, the DNA molecule stores coded information in 4-bit binary, redundant, error-correcting chains. And all this must be in place, perfectly, before any duplication (i.e., "reproduction") can take place.

   Harold Morowitz estimates the probability of all necessary conditions existing simultaneously for a single "simple" cell to be at 1 in 10^{100,000,000,000}, or similar to the odds of winning 10,000 lotteries in a row.

   Sir Frederick Hoyle (an avowed atheist) calculates the odds of only the proteins of an amoebae arising by chance as 1 in 10^40,000!

   What are the odds? Well, in order for all of this to occur (and it must in order for evolution to be a viable theory of origins), we compute as follows:

   • 10¹⁷ seconds in the history of the universe (average age estimated by evolutionists)
   • 10⁸⁴ particles in the universe (counting baryons)
   • 10²⁰ events per second (maximum number of conceivable interactions between subatomic particles)
   • 10¹²¹ total events (10¹⁷ x 10⁸⁴ x 10²⁰= 10¹²¹)
   • 10^{100,000,000,000} events necessary to produce a single living cell (estimate by molecular biologist Harold Morowitz)

   The equation would be thus:

   Probability of evolutionary start = 10¹²¹ / 10^{100,000,000,000}= 1 / 10^{99,999,999,879} = zero

   One final thing should be noted: Whereas nothing is mathematically "impossible," strictly speaking, statisticians define odds beyond 1 in 10⁵⁰ as being absurd, or as being so incredibly unlikely that it will never occur. So, not only is there not enough time in the universe (even granting evolutionists their mythological "billions of years"), and not enoughmaterial in the universe for the necessary tries, and not enough chances in the first place in the universe, the best-case scenario for DNA producing itself randomly calculates out to zero, but even the best odds available are definitionally absurd!!!

   Conclusion: Evolution is irrational on pure mathematical grounds.

   …and if evolution is not a viable explanation for the origin of all things, then that leaves… oh, dear… ahhhh… oh, help me out here… starts with a “G”…

Then, and here’s the clincher which places God in an entirely different category than the Flying Spaghetti Monster, or unicorns, or Thor, or a winning Lions season, etc.:

None of them have ever revealed themselves to man in an empirically verifiable way; none have ever entered human history in a redemptive way; none

…post in progress, more to come, eh?…

 

A Young Earth

Okay, having mulled the whole Creationist thing last night while working on our brand spanking new (to us) small yet tiny house to get it ready for move-in, I thought I’d kick off the day’s festivities by citing a few articles which highlight the superb scholarship of Creationist scientists engaged in the study of the age of the universe and correctly choosing to self-consciously interpret science through the lens of Scripture rather than the reverse (ahem… Hugh Ross, et al).

• Evidence for a Young World by Dr. Russell Humphreys
• New RATE Data Supports a Young World by Dr. Russell Humphreys
• Carbon Dating Undercuts Evolution’s Long Ages by Dr. John Baumgardner
• Radioisotope Dating of Grand Canyon Rocks: Another Devastating Failure for Long-Age Geology by Dr. Andrew A. Snelling

Just a small, small sampling. ICR (and Answers in Genesis and other Creation Science organizations and networks) have done a superb job of lending the lie to the calumny that Creationists are iggnit’ knuckle-dragging droop-jawed flat-earthers, and that all real science has proven that the earth is (start: Carl Sagan voice) billions and billions (end: Carl Sagan voice) of years old, and that it’s only scandalized-minded evangelical dolts and other inbred doofuses who take the opening chapters of the Bible at face value.

Pshaw.

 

Mark Driscoll on the Chucks – (1) Creationism

Quoting from Driscoll’s blogpost:

Creationism: Chuck Smith Sr. holds the conservative position of a young earth while Chuck Smith Jr. holds the apparent position of an old earth. This is an issue where there should be some room for disagreement among even biblical literalists. Why? Because though the Bible is clear that God created the heavens and the earth, it does not tell us the age of the earth. The age of the earth can only be inferred and is therefore not a point on which Christians should divide, though we can certainly debate and disagree about the issue as it relates to the Bible.

First off, I’d like to acknowledge, right off the bat, that I’m very biased on this issue. I grew up a committed evolutionist,indoctrinated in a decidedly Darwinian public education system which effectively stifled any spiritual stirrings I may have had, and it wasn’t until the United States Navy trained me in the practical (i.e., outside of the insulated, isolated, and largely surreal environment of school and into the crucible of real-world) application of the scientific method as part of my undergoing the Advanced Electronics Field training for working on high-tech shipboard fire control radar systems, and subsequently meeting three guys onboard ship who took the Bible seriously, that I began to finally think for myself and question my presuppositions. After coming to the stunning conclusion that evolution is based on a very tenuous set of assumptions, and that the evidence alone (without an a priori commitment to materialism, for instance) just doesn’t support it, and after learning what Creationism actually taught (as opposed to the many caricatures of it that one encounters), I rapidly became convinced that I had been sold a bag of goods, and after examining the evidence on its own merits, became a Creationist. Then I became a Christian.

I became convinced of the Bible’s testimony of origins before I became convinced of it’s testimony of destiny; in fact, for me, the latter flowed organically and necessarily from the former.

So I admit to a fair amount of bias on this subject.

That said, though I do not place Creationism in the same hand as Driscoll puts Trinitarianism or the Virgin Birth, I hold to it, if anything, even more tightly than I do eschatology or pneumatology. Whether you like it or not, one’s view of Creation says volumes about their view of the perspicacity and sufficiency of Scripture. If you can’t take the first few chapters of the Bible seriously enough to take them at face value, where does that leave the rest of it…?

Now, having said that, I don’t believe it is an issue to divide over any more than one’s view on the gift of tongues, for instance, or the Rapture. Important, yes, but entirely secondary in importance to what someone has called “left-hand” issues of the faith.

And having said that, I disagree wholly with Driscoll’s statement, “[t]his is an issue where there should be some room for disagreement among even biblical literalists.” Why? Because the more literally you take the Bible, the more you’ll move away from an Old Earth view and move toward a Young Earth view – and thus, Creationists are definitionally biblical literalists.

This isn’t just a “because I said so” assertion, either.

Consider: If you take a child and give him the Bible, without any prior conditioning or coaching, and have him read it, then come back and report on what it says about things, you will not have him deliver a dissertation on why Genesis 1 doesn’t really say what it says it says. You won’t have him conclude that there are (begin: Carl Sagan voice) billions and billions (end: Carl Sagan voice) of years of death and suffering before Adam. Taken at its most basic, face value, unless you have a prior commitment to another worldview or to a higher interpretive authority through which you read the Text, you will conclude that the universe is at most a handful of millennia old.

However much that insults the materialist or compromised Bible student, it is the most plain understanding of the Text.

And I find it fascinating that those who raise tremendous hue and cry over taking the Bible at face value in every other area become astonishingly inconsistent at this point.

Why?

I know for me, I considered it foolish that Christians believed in a Young Earth. What idiots! How could you, when the evidence is so overwhelmingly in favor of (begin: Carl Sagan voice) billions and billions (end: Carl Sagan voice) of years as the age of the universe?

…and, frankly, nobody likes looking like a dumb dummy.

So, there is a subtle shift away from an otherwise solid commitment to Biblical fidelity to interpreting the opening verses to say what they don’t say.

(Of course, Driscoll’s also a Calvinist, so he falls for the same trap in certain thorny soteriological passages like Hebrews 6, but I digress…)

I respect those (like, for instance, Chuck Smith, Sr.) who try to compromise by imagining a “gap” between vv.1 and 2 of Genesis 1, but again – unless you have an a priori commitment to even finding such a “gap” …you won’t.

(Note, BTW, that Chucks Sr. and Jr. both adhere to an Old Earth; Smith Sr. holds to the Gap Theory, while Jr. seems to believe in progressive creationism/theistic evolution. But both seem to agree that the Earth is essentially old. So much for media accuracy…)

Many men make take far stauncher stands on far less clear points of doctrine than Creationism, without batting an eyelash. But since this one is perhaps the most uncomfortable one to take in our modern (or “post-modern,” depending on who you’re talking to and which Dilbertisms you’re willing to employ to back it up), well…

Keep in mind, Scientific Creationism is hardly the inbred yokelism that evolutionists and other Old Earthers really really really wish it would be; many of the finest scientific minds (such as the über-smart Dr. Russel Humphreys, one of my personal heroes of the faith – his White Hole Cosmology was seminal in my developing Christian walk as a spiritual young’un) have taken the wildly unpopular position of choosing to view the universe through the lens of Scripture, rather than the reverse ((::cough-cough:: Hugh Ross ::cough-cough::)).

I’d recommend especially the work of the Institute for Creation Research as representative of the finest work of the Creationist community. You can call them many things, but “slackers” isn’t one of them. These boys pay the price to do their homework.

Now, all of that having been said, I must point out that Creationism isn’t a Calvary Chapel distinctive; there are Young and Old Earthers within the ranks of Calvary Chapel. Hence, this is not one of the areas which moved Chuck Jr. outside the borders of what constitutes a CC, symptomatic as it is of the primary issue (a slow creep away from Biblical fidelity) which did.

Finally, what does this have to do with the growing divide between “older evangelicals” and the new batch of Emergents? What I’ve noticed in the Emerging/Emergent community is at best a general apathy towards the plain understanding of the first few chapters of Genesis. While that same apathy exists in the “older evangelical” community, it certainly seems all but institutionalized in the ECM. Along with eschatology, it comprises what for ECM-types can be thought of as “disposable doctrine.” Forget holding it in either the left or right hands of faith – it’s not held at all.

I find this very instructive, because, again – one’s attitude towards the opening chapters of the Bible inexorably governs his ultimate attitude toward the rest of it.

I’m not that excited about the future of evangelicalism as it currently exists.

I’m even less excited about the ultimate fate of the ECM.

I’ve said it before, but this, too, shall pass.

The Word remains.

 

There Goes Dr. Larry Taylor…

Okay, nobody panic. I still like Dr. Larry Taylor, and I still appreciate his writings and views. But I have to admit to being a bit saddened by his recent blog post, “Scandal of the Evangelical Mind,” which I found to be uncharacteristically sloppy in its logic with regard to the whole Creationism debate. I’m noticing more and more, that otherwise good and godly evangelical thinkers are abandoning the Genesis record in favor of a less offensive, “well, we really can’t know when the Beginning was…” stand which makes the critical – and fatal – mistake of assuming that the “two books of revelation” (assumed to be the Bible and Nature) are never in conflict.

Okay, first off: No, they’re not. Ever. However, that’s not the same thing as saying that science and the Bible are never in conflict – and of course, by “science” I mean “science falsely so called.” Modern secular science isn’t really all that scientific – that is, where the conclusions which one is forced to draw based solely on the evidence, when viewed through the unadulterated grid of the scientific method, militate against their presuppositions (which are overwhelmingly Darwinian), those conclusions are rejected outright and more implausible interpretations of the data substituted, in violation of the Occam’s Razor principle. Therefore, when (for instance) radiometric dating produces wildly divergent results, the one that fits with the preconception of an old Earth is kept – forget the fact that the wildly divergent results should at least cast suspicion on the very methodology used for obtaining dates. Etc.

However, when taken just at face value, the evidence leads one inevitably to only a very small handful of conclusions, and which one you wind up choosing is almost entirely based on your presuppositions, not on the evidence alone. I give you, for instance, the superb work of Dr. Russel Humphreys in which he proposes a fesh new cosmology based on the opposite presuppositions of classical Darwinian “Big Bang” theory (namely, a closed universe with a discernible center and, therefore, locus of gravity).

Dr. Taylor seems to buy into the tragic assumption that us Kreeashunnists’re stuppud ‘n dum-laaahk… when in fact some of the finest minds in science today are at least friendly to the Creationist position (and I’m not talking about the heartening, but woefully inadequate “Intelligent Design” camp). I point you to the superb Creation Ex Nihilo Technical Journal for great (if really really really really heady) information/discourse on current Creationist science trends.

Personally, the stuff on RATE (Radioisotopes and the Age of the Earth) research is top-notch. As an example.

So don’t give me that “you Creationists are fundie boobs who are stupid and dumb and dumbly stupid, you dumb dummies.” With all due respect, “pththpptphphtphphtphtphtphtttt.” And you can quote me.

However, and second off (to continue the numbering from the “and first off” comment a few paragraphs above), who says there’s two books of revelation? Does God reveal Himself in nature? Sure. Romans 1 makes that abundantly clear. However, and this is where I think both Mark Noll (the “scandal of the evangelical mind” dude) and Dr. Taylor goof, the “book of nature” is not even close to being on par with the only Book of God. Isaiah didn’t say “To the Law, the Testimony – oh, and before I forget, go outside and hug a tree while you’re at it.” The invisible things of God are clearly seen by the things which are made, even His eternal power and Godhead, to be sure; however, they are seen through a broken and shattered glass since the Fall.

It all comes down to presuppositions, I suppose. It is impossible to hold both the Bible and science on the same level – one will interpret the other. And whichever is your interpretive base is your ultimate authority.

I think it’s foolish in the extreme to interpret the Bible (which is eternal, unchanging, and has always been proven right) through the lens of science (which is constantly changing – in a humorously Clintonesque episode, astronomers are struggling over what the definition of a “planet” is… even the Big Bang theory is largely in question now). Nature never lies – but our perception of its message is at best incomplete and inadequate.

Ergo, I interpret science through the lens of the Bible.

Ergo, when given a handful of options for the interpretation of the available data (let’s say, for instance, on the age of the Earth) and the ones in my left hand stem from the assumption of an old Earth, but the ones in my right hand agree with the plain reading of Scripture and stem from the assumption of a young Earth, given that both are equally valid on the basis of the evidence alone and that the only deliberative criteria are my presuppositions (I’m not advocating a Polyanna view of the evidence that conveniently ignores inconvenient facts – I’ll leave that to the Darwinists and Old Earthers), I’ll go with the Bible.

But I’m kind of silly that way, and I don’t particularly care whether or not it’s hep and cool and emergent and all that.

And so, without further ado (since we’ve already “a-done” with all that above – I’d only intended this all to be a brief introduction to the article I’m about to recommend – I’m typing this at my workstation at tentmaking), I’d like to recommend the following Back to Genesis article which I think superbly summarizes the huuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuge (and, in my opinion, insurmountable) problem that Old Earthers have with regard to rejecting the plain reading of Genesis and allowing for (Carl Sagan voice:) billions and billions (/Carl Sagan voice) of years of death and suffering before Adam.

Oh, one final point about evangelicalism and crises and Creationism. Christian Reconstructionists like the Chalcedon Foundation and the Institute for Applied Presuppositionalism (Greg Bahnsen’s baby) are no friend to evangelicalism (calling evangelicals “evanjellyfish”). Yet they’re committed Creationists. So, too, with a lot of other, non-inbred evangelical types. Interestingly, mostly of the Reformed flavor. Ice and Rushdoony being particularly vocal about Creationism… so much for this being a crisis in provincial evangelicalism. Seems to be more of a crisis in/of those who are self-consciously attempting to take the Bible at face value.

And, with all that said, I still recommend Dr. Taylor’s stuff. Just use a bigger helping of salt, I suppose… ;P