Still God's World
Table of Contents
‘One can’t believe impossible things’
“Let’s consider your age to begin with — how old are you?’
‘I’m seven and a half exactly.’
‘You needn’t say “exactually,”’ the Queen remarked: ‘I can believe it without that. Now I’ll give you something to believe. I’m just one hundred and one, five months and a day.’
‘I can’t believe that!’ said Alice.
‘Can’t you?’ the Queen said in a pitying tone. ‘Try again: draw a long breath, and shut your eyes.’
Alice laughed. ‘There’s no use trying,’ she said: ‘one can’t believe impossible things.’
‘I daresay you haven’t had much practice,’ said the Queen. ‘When I was your age, I always did it for half-an-hour a day. Why, sometimes I’ve believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.”
― Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland (Through the Looking Glass)
Like the Queen in Alice in Wonderland, I am in the somewhat difficult position of trying to convince Alice – and you, dear reader – of a seemingly impossible thing. Unlike the queen, my task is not to convince Alice that the age of something is much older than she believes, but quite the opposite. Leaving aside the queen’s age, here we are concerned with the age of the heavens and the earth, and our proposition to ‘Alice’ is that it is vastly younger than most everything she has ever heard on the matter.
Now some of you may be saying at this point: “Why does it even matter? Let dumb rocks be dumb rocks, who cares what their age is?” Yes indeed, who could argue with this? Assuredly, not the dumb rocks! But I will tell you what does really matter here, and that is nothing less than the history of the heavens and the earth and everything in them. History is something that matters greatly. The past. The sequence of events that got us here. The past is afterall the only vehicle by which we arrived at now. So if the past is not important, than neither is right now, nor is ‘forever.’ If the past is not important, than nothing is, and existence doesn’t matter … nor does it make sense. The good news I have for you, is that God’s history is one filled with greater hope, love, and joy, than we can now comprehend.
The proposition I’m asking you to consider is that the origins accounts of the ancient Hebrews – of Moses and of the biblical prophets, vouched to by Jesus and his 12 apostles – accounts which spoke of times going back to Abraham, Noah, Adam and Eve – have not been nullified by modern scientific knowledge, and that these narratives are plausible, and can be believed in even today. For those of you who are already Christians, or who already to some degree respect the Holy Scriptures, my purpose is to awaken you to the thoroughly naturalistic, materialistic, and thus ultimately ‘atheistic’ underpinnings of today’s popular origins accounts. That is not even a religious statement. It’s just a logical statement made with open eyes, one that in fact most serious atheistic scholars (like Richard Dawkins) agree on. Of course origins accounts that were constructed by men who’s chief motivation was to describe everything by naturalistic means, where the hand of God, let alone his person, were strictly forbidden from ever entering the picture …. of course such origins accounts, scientific though they may be, don’t ‘mesh’ with the biblical creation accounts, the later of which have God specially, intentionally, and personally creating everything in the heavens and the earth by his Word, by his Power, and by his Will.
Coming back to Alice then:
‘I can’t believe that!’ said Alice.
If only it were so easy to settle such matters with a bit of literary wit, I could respond with Lewis Carol:
‘Can’t you? Try again: draw a long breath, and shut your eyes.’
And our job would be done! What I will do, however, is my very best to demonstrate that:
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God’s story is not so unbelievable as you may have heard. And that:
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by adopting the naturalistic origins “myths,” you have by no means escaped impossibilities.
The naturalists’ impossibilities
For instance, consider the best naturalistic cosmic origin account today: the inflationary Big Bang model. To make things all work naturalistically, the inventors of this model ended up postulating that the entire universe started out as a point so small, that they have to call it a singularity. Listening to Alan Guth, the acclaimed inventor of the inflationary model of the Big Bang, he modeled the size of this singularity (not ‘measured’ it, for he doesn’t know, it’s just a model created by man, even within my lifetime) as some 10-22 of a meter. Compare that to some sizes:
- The width of a human hair (50+ micrometers): (10-5)
- The wavelength of visible light (400+ nanometers): (10-7)
- The size of a water molecule (280 picometers): (10-10)
- The size of a helium atom (56 picometers): (10-11)
- The size of an electron (6 femtometers): (10-15)
- The size of a proton (~ 1 femtometers): (10-16)
- The size of a quark (~ 1 attometre): (10-18) 1
And yet they want us to believe that THE … ENTIRE … UNIVERSE fit into something nearly a millionth the size of a proton?! That the entire cosmos could fit 10,000 times into the smallest object we know of today, a quark?! Not just a few mountains, or planets, or even galaxies, but the entire cosmos, with hundreds of billions of galaxies each of which has hundreds of billions of stars and star systems?!?! If this doesn’t scream “impossible,” then what does?! And you can be assured of this: These are smart men, and no incredulous (or embarrasing) details in their models were ever adopted unless they really felt restricted to having to do so, that is: In order to keep true to their greatest commitment: That everything be explained with no hand or person of God allowed. This absuridty of theirs, that the whole cosmos could somehow be crammed into the size of something zillions of times smaller than the point of a needle, proves true the statement:
Professing to be wise, they became fools. ~ Romans 1:22
What were such men foolish in? In not giving credit to the Maker:
… because, although they knew God, they did not glorify Him as God, nor were thankful, but became futile in their thoughts, and their foolish hearts were darkened.
Just as it is the height of absuridty to try and explain a beautiful house as having “formed” by a bunch of chance, naturalistic processes, without giving credit to the architect who actually built that house. If men liked God’s story, his history, and his recorded dealings with man, then they wouldn’t have tried to kick him out of the world he himself made when accounting for its origins. If YHWH, the God of the Hebrews and the Christian God, really did create the heavens and the earth, and yet man vigrously removes all mention or reference to him when explaining those origins, then it’s the greatest case of copyright infringement of all time.
Genesis and the Big Bang: A match made in heaven?
In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.
Unfortunately, many believing Christians and Jews are happy to hang their hat on this singular point of agreement between the biblical account and the Big Bang model: that the cosmos had a beginning. But as Dawkins once quipped: for any cosmic origins model, you only have two choices, a single flip of a coin, either the cosmos is eternal (like with the former steady-state model) or else it had a beginning. It’s almost a point of desperation on the part of religious people to act like this agreement is so meaningful. What’s more, it wasn’t the original model that was most favored, instead observational evidence of an expanding universe finally pushed the community to such a model, that is one that had a beginning. So this point of agreement was only adopted on a widescale out of necessity, while Scriptural accounts all along pointed to evidence not just of a beginning, but of cosmic expansion, as the Scriptures repeatedly speak of God stretching out the expanse of the heavens.
That said, note clearly that it was not naturalistic accidents occuring over lots of purposeless time that is accredited here, but God. According to Genesis 1, God created all things, and that includes the heavens themselves, in a mere six days (compare Exodus 20:11). Of course, many are happy to allegorize the days in order to fit in with the world. I submit to you that this is comparable to making God into the mold of Ba’al, like the ancient Israelites did. At least then they were still conflating God with what they thought was another living god. In this case, it’s conflating the living God with a model that says: “the cosmos is all that is, or ever was, or ever will be,” as Carl Sagan famously stated.
Note the likely intentional blasphemy inherent in this: Sagan was stealing the holy phrase that God spoke of himself, relating to the very nature and meaning of his Name: That YHWH is He who Is, He who Exists, He who Was and Shall be, famously translated as: “I Am that I Am.” This would take a great commentary, but see Exodus 3, and other passages like Revelation 1:4: “from Him who is and who was and who is to come.”
Thus you shall say to the children of Israel: ‘I Shall Be’ (/ I Am) has sent me to you. ~ Exodus 3:14
In my view, the simple truth is that, despite the volumes upon volumes written by those trying to synchronize the biblical text with today’s naturalistic (“nature is all that is or was”) origins myths, what’s behind this is simply the desire to fit in with the world, so no matter what, no matter how, they’ll find a way to make it work. I plead with my brothers to love the truth more than that, and I would encourage us all to remember the words of our Lord:
If the world hates you, keep in mind that it hated me first. If you belonged to the world, it would love you as its own. As it is, you do not belong to the world, but I have chosen you out of the world. That is why the world hates you. Remember what I told you: ‘A servant is not greater than his master.’ If they persecuted me, they will persecute you also. ~ Jesus, John 15:18-20
A brief synopsis of God’s story
Beyond Genesis 1:1, beyond that single verse, what then is God’s story? First, this account was given to us through Moses, a man of the Hebrews to whom God appeared and spoke face to face with, and it was built upon by the ensuing Hebrew prophets, and it was likewise fully endorsed by Jesus the Messiah and by his apostles. The story, in a nutshell, goes something like this:
God created the world beautiful, and he loved man, whom he even made in his own image. This really means he made us as his own children. We were made to look like him, just as a son looks like his father (see Genesis 5:1-3). We were the most special part of his creation, made last of all, the sons and daughters of God, who were made intelligent and able to rule creation with him. The Maker also loved the rest of the creation he made, as it reflected in countless facets God’s beauty and glory, as well as his many characteristics, from the lion’s roar, to the dove’s coo, from the eagle’s fierceness and swift flight, to the grace of the stag. We could go on and on; his creations are innumerable and awesome. But man fell to the temptation of the evil one, a fallen being of rebellion and wickedness. In doing this, man fell from the glory of God, and in his shame, he ran and hid from his Maker. At the same time, rebellion and darkness entered his heart. Ever since then, man has been running, and the Creator has been calling him back to himself. However, there were consequences for his sin, for God had directly forbidden just one thing to the man. By doing this very thing he was strictly forbidden from doing, our Father Adam entered into rebellion against God, and as a result God had to kick him out of the beautiful garden of God. Worse, this meant he had to lose the intimate relationship he originally had with God, who used to walk in the garden with him, talking with him face to face. Now, man would have to eat food by the sweat of his brow, and thorns and thistles would fill the fields where there once was nothing contrary. Woman would give birth through pain and sorrow. Finally, the warning of the Creator would also come true: Man would die, he would return to dust. He could no longer live forever:
Then Yahweh God took the man, and he rested him in the garden of Eden, to cultivate and keep it. And Yahweh God commanded the man, saying: “From all the trees of the garden, you may freely eat. But from the tree of knowledge of good and evil, you shall not eat, for in the day you eat of it, you shall surely die.” (Genesis 2:15-17)
This is the world of pain and sorrow we live in today. And in case it seems the Creator was unjust in his assessments of man’s fall and in his punishments, the true nature of the fall of man was quickly seen, when even the first brothers could not live together without the one wickedly murdering the other out of jealousy and anger. Creation was now marred and fallen, enmity entered all relationships, between man and wife, between brother and brother, and between all the animal kingdom as well, on every level. Man had fallen, creation was lost. Soon, cities of darkness rose up, and now the wicked and envious Snake, who had tripped up our ancestors, was worshiped instead of the one and only Maker. Soon their wickedness and violence spread to such an extent, that it was said:
And Yahweh saw that great was the evil of man in the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart were only evil, all the time. So Yahweh was sorry that he had made man on the earth, and it pained him to his heart. (Genesis 6:5-6)
Despite all of this sorrow, there was still good news to come! For God promised to send a second Adam, one who was not from the earth this time, but one who had been sent from heaven, and he would restore man back to himself.
Thus it is written, “The first man Adam became a living being”; the last Adam became a life-giving spirit. But it is not the spiritual that is first but the natural, and then the spiritual. The first man was from the earth, a man of dust; the second man is from heaven. As was the man of dust, so also are those who are of the dust, and as is the man of heaven, so also are those who are of heaven. Just as we have borne the image of the man of dust, we shall also bear the image of the man of heaven. (1 Corinthians 15:45-49)
This man from heaven was none other than God’s only begotten Son, which the Father was offering up for our sins, just as he had called Abram to offer up his own beloved son, as a prediction of this promise (Genesis 22:1 ff). By becoming a man and succeeding where the first man had failed, he would swallow up death in victory — though at a great cost: The thorns that came into the earth at man’s fall would have to be worn as a crown of torment on his head, and other sufferings were foretold by the prophets (Isaiah 53:1 ff). Finally, to overcome our death sentence, he himself had to taste death, but the grave could not long hold him. All who came to this second Adam was promised a restored fellowship with God, and with it, eternal life:
For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whoever believes in him, would not be destroyed, but would have everlasting life. (John 3:16)
God was offering man eternal life again. These words were spoken by Jesus, who had to be made like us in every way, seemingly just another son of Adam, but who John testified was the very Word of God who had been with God in the beginning. “And the Word became flesh, and he pitched his tent amongst us…” sent from the Father, full of grace and truth, come as a second Adam, to undo the sin of the first Adam.
I cannot give more of this story now, but you can get the full account, beyond my own feeble retelling of it, by reading it for yourself, starting with the first 11 chapters of the Bible and forward. I wanted to tell this condensed version of God’s story, because we must understand just what it is the world is rejecting: God’s own story of the world’s history, which is a story from first to last about God’s attempt to reclaim lost man. Fallen man today has attempted to preempt this story of God by replacing it with their own story of cosmic history, which conveniently removed the Creator and any need for him entirely from the scene.
An old earth is essential for evolution
The old-earth eons are essential to this end. A recent creation puts us very close to the Creator and to his original creative deeds; it means only very recently did all of the wonders of the universe get designed by him. This simply will not do if one wants to replace the biblical story, it’s far too uncomfortably likened to it’s claims. So James Hutton and Charles Lyell (and other Enlightenment men before them) sought to put the beginning as far back into the inconceivable past as possible, so far back that Hutton could famously state that there was “no vestige of a beginning.” Lyell himself astutely avoided even talking about the initial beginning, sort of like evolutionists today mostly avoid the issue of biogenesis, but in his private letters, you can find him continuing to talk about the origins of all things in a purely naturalistic way. Even atheist Stephen J. Gould admitted that Hutton’s main ideas were developed with virtually no empirical evidence … they came from an Enlightenment philosophical outlook, and he only added the scientific proofs afterwards. Lastly, the following point should be blatantly evident, though it is rarely stated: Without the old-earth eons, evolution of “the species” is utterly impossible. So why is God’s story from Scripture so radically different from the old-earth origin’s account that is popular today? Is it because science just proved this? No, it seems clear that many leading men didn’t like the biblical story of our origins, and so they came up with their own version, one which purposefully was designed to remove the Creator from the scene. The old-earth eons part of this is essential to their alternative history.
Not so impossible afterall: plenty of evidence backs up God’s story
On the day Jesus Christ was crucified, he testified to the Roman governor, where he claimed his chief purpose for coming to the world was to testify to the truth:
εἶπεν οὖν αὐτῷ ὁ Πιλᾶτος· οὐκοῦν βασιλεὺς εἶ σύ; ἀπεκρίθη ὁ Ἰησοῦς· σὺ λέγεις ὅτι βασιλεύς εἰμι. ἐγὼ εἰς τοῦτο γεγέννημαι καὶ εἰς τοῦτο ἐλήλυθα εἰς τὸν κόσμον, ἵνα μαρτυρήσω τῇ ἀληθείᾳ· πᾶς ὁ ὢν ἐκ τῆς ἀληθείας ἀκούει μου τῆς φωνῆς.
Then Pilate said to him: “So you are a king then?!” Jesus answered him: “You say that I am a king. It was for this very thing that I was born, and it was for this that I came into the world: To testify to the truth. All those who are of the truth hear my voice.” (John 18:37)
If we hear the truth, are we willing to listen and believe? On the flip side of the coin, you might legitimately ask: But what if all the evidence does in fact stand against the veracity of God’s story? Let me admit to you who are either agnostics, atheists, or unbelievers, that I would be one of you if in fact the God of Moses, and the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, the God of Genesis, were found to have put forth a basically bogus creation narrative, one that conflicts with all the evidence, and if the historical record these prophets gave us were not found to be reliable and true. Contrary to the frequent claims of some opponents, many of us biblical creationists believe strongly that the evidence is very important, and we would admit that if the wide-scale evidence strongly condemned the historical truth claims of Scripture, starting with its origins claims, that we would be in very big trouble.
“To give an idea of the magnitude of the error, to believe that the world is less than 10,000 years old, given that we know the world is actually 4.6 billion years old, it’s equivalent to believing that the width of North America … is less than 10 yards. And that’s the scale of the error we’re talking about. So you’ve either got to be staggeringly ignorant, which most of them are, or if you’re not ignorant, you’ve got to be … insane. … Sometimes they were even told things like: Don’t believe when people bring something they call evidence, faith is more important than evidence.”
Only in Richard Dawkins’ imagination is evidence and empirical data shunned by leading biblical creationists, and replaced with blind faith, something that most mature Christian leaders in these fields speak against.2 On faith and evidence, I greatly admire A. E. Wilder-Smith’s thinking (16:59). Dawkins was well aware of men like Wilder-Smith, who also attended Oxford, and who once debated Dawkins. In my opinion, Dawkins didn’t deserve to share the stage with the likes of Wilder-Smith, though you can be the judge of that:
Question: But doesn’t that work the other way around. Isn’t the belief first, and the reasoning afterwards?
Wilder Smith: I think they both go together, I think they’re dialectical. I don’t think that you suddenly come to a perfect faith. I think that you take a first step in trusting a fact that you find out, and the fact that I found out was that Christ died for my sins. And having trusted that, then other facts turn up in which I can trust too. Faith is not a blind matter, there are certain matters in which I have to have faith because I can’t see. But in the matters where I can see, then it needs to be reasonable, otherwise I can’t believe it.
Many people have dedicated their lives to conducting advanced research in support of the creationist position, so Dawkin’s claim is rubbish. Consider Dr. John Baumgardner’s inspiring testimony here for example, and there are many more such testimonies in the book Persuaded by the Evidence and elsewhere. Consider the testimonies of Jerry Bergman, Russ Humphreys, and of one of my favorites just now highlighted, Triple PhD A. E. Wilder-Smith, who had tremendous fruit in his life in the medical field (he developed anti-Tuberculosis drugs, anesthetics, and anti-leprosy drugs). Meanwhile, what has Dawkins produced … beyond nonsense about “selfish genes”?
On Dawkins assertion that we are “insane” who believe in a young earth, I find it deeply ironic. He claims this right before assailing us as those who reject evidence, but then he fails to cite one bit of evidence in support of this grand-standing claim. The key line was this: “…given that we know the world is actually 4.6 billion years old…” But that was precisely the topic of debate! Did it escape him that this is a circular argument? Who is anti-evidence then? Who is the one making poor logical assertions? The only authority to such a statement is in the word “we.” Yes, materialistic and old-earth thinking totally dominates academia today, but tell us something we didn’t know. Intelligent design is also extremely unpopular in academic circles, so is anyone who believes in an intelligent designer also to be labeled “insane”? I could just as well have used Dawkins’ exact same analogy to show that he himself is the insane one, because the age of the earth he adopts is so vastly at odds from ours. But then it would be me who was making the circular argument, devoid of evidential reasoning.
That is not to say I have an answer to every problem and to every question, certainly not! But the materialistic (matter is all there is) paradigm has far greater problems to face than anything we do (take biogenesis for example). So the question is not “who can answer every single difficulty,” but rather: “which side is most consistent with the evidence?” I unabashedly admit that my position requires faith, and I also admit I am vulnerable to doubts just like anyone else. At the same time, in answer to that last question, I strongly believe our position is far more consistent with the evidence, contrary to Dawkins’ portrayal above. While the Enlightenment movement spurned the idea of supernatural and biblical revelation, and exalted in its place human reason, I urge you, if you currently adopt such a position, to spurn that rebellious, anti-God path, and to instead listen to what God spoke in days of old through his prophets and wise men. “The fear of Yahweh (the LORD) is the beginning of knowledge, but fools despise wisdom and instruction.” (Proverbs 1:7) These men claimed to have seen God with their own eyes (Exod. 24:10-11), and heard him with their own ears (Gen. 15:1), and some even physically wrestled with him (Gen. 32:24-32). And yes, their account of earth history is radically different from today’s naturalistic origins myth. Is it a valid option to believe the origins testimony of those ancient prophets instead? Is that outdated? Is that foolish and irrational? I submit to you that while this still takes faith, that nonetheless evidence for a young earth (Genesis 1-5) and for a world-wide flood (Genesis 6-9) is abundant, and this corroborates their claims. Beyond this, if there really was a God who could just speak a word, and out would come, in a day’s time, millions of new creatures, how great and beyond description or imagination would that Being be? The evidence from biology is daily confirming the magnificence of this one true God, and the absurdity of supposing that any naturalistic means can create any life-forms. I hope you will consider that evidence carefully. Just maybe God is closer to us than we ever thought or imagined? (Acts 17:25-30)
For my Christian friends
Are you a Christian who believes in an old-earth, if not also in some form of theistic evolution? If so, I want you to know that I fully understand that such positions are often adopted with a good motive, which is to remove scientific objections to our commonly held faith. Even so, I hope you will consider that evidence from 1) science, from 2) history, and from 3) Scripture shows that this compromise is needless, it’s dangerous, and that in the end it’s wreckless.
A needless compromise — science supports a young earth and world-wide flood
It’s Needless, because abundant evidence points to a young earth. Likewise, abundant scientific evidence shows that a recent world-wide flood is the true source of the geologic record. It shows that a recent world-wide deluge accounts for the main features of the earth we see today, not millions of years of slow, uniformitarian, geologic eons.
A dangerous compromise — history shows these views were a humanistic attempt to remove God from the world
It’s Dangerous, because these theories were fabricated in the first place in order to remove God from the world! Not all compromises are created equal! So this is an extremely dangerous compromise. You need only look to Western society today, whose schools and public squares demand God have no mention or place. How do you think that came about? Do you really think evolution, as well as the old-earth eons it is founded upon, where no creator is ultimately needed, has nothing to do with this state of affairs? And if so, please tell me why the same people fight so strongly against even the minimal claims of intelligent design? Speaking of the fruits of these ideas, we need to also consider the communist, Marxist states of the last century, which rested firmly on an evolutionary, old-earth, God is not here and never was ideology. These states banned belief in God, they viciously wiped out Christians and anyone else of faith, and in the end they enslaved or murdered hundreds of millions of mankind. I am not saying all atheists are bad people, nor am I claiming that “Christians” have never committed atrocities. But I would like you to consider, first of all, the real fruits of these materialistic ideas. Is it any wonder that when you remove God’s hand from world history and from its creation, that you end up with a wicked and godless world?
While it is true that there have always been genuine Christian leaders and scientists who compromised with old-earth views, the chief founders of these ideas, the ones who ruled the day in the end, particularly Hutton and Lyell, were anti-Christian deists. It’s important to understand that the Enlightenment deists strongly denied Christian claims on biblical revelation, and many of them mocked Scripture. So deists of the day were not just intelligent design advocates, which seems to be what a lot of Christians seem to think today. Rather, the hallmark of deism was the rejection of the supernatural, and of Christian biblical revelation in particular. In place of revelation they exalted human reason. This all lead in the end to humanistic rationalism and a rejection of biblical faith entirely. The historical undergirdings of this worldview were the geological earth-histories of James Hutton and Charles Lyell. The fruits of Lyell’s writings were made immediately evident, as his earth-history, one which purposely supplanted the biblical earth-history, strongly influenced Lyell’s younger contemporary and in a sense apprentice: Charles Darwin.
But let’s not forget: These godless men were preceded by centuries of devote Christian scientists of excellence. Most of the pioneers of science were young earth, flood endorsing Christians, from the father of geology himself, Nicolas Steno, to Sir Isaac Newton. There is no conflict between “science and religion,” a phrase we’ve had to hear ad nauseam, but rather the conflict is between godless, anti-Christian materialism, with the worldview of the Bible. Lastly, on this compromise:
A wreckless compromise — it contradicts Scripture in letter as well as in spirit
It’s wreckless, because it does violence to the Hebrew and New Testament Scriptures. The writings of the Hebrew prophets betray not a single inkling of a thought of such old-earth eons. Even from a purely secular point of view, this is an obvious and blatant case of reading a popular cultural view into a text that not only knew nothing of that idea, but worse, which supported a quite opposite notion on how the heavens and the earth were made, namely: Supernaturally and speedily, in only six days, and by the voice of the Almighty. The only problem the ancient believers seemed to have in former times was why did God need to take any time at all to do this. They were worried that even taking 6 days was perhaps limiting the power of God, that was the concern of some early Jewish theologians (like Philo of Alexandria) and of some of the early church fathers. Some of those men compromised in that day and said that the six days therefore must have really just meant something allegorical, that in fact it was all done in a moment. Now we can see how this was just a case of altering the text in order to make it conform to popular views of the day. But today’s compromise of conforming Scripture to old-earth eons is far more wreckless! Because this attempt does not just do violence to the text in letter (i.e. to the “literal” sense of the text), but beyond that it utterly violates the spirit of the text of Genesis by turning creation into a hellish account of endless eons of death and sorrow, of pain and of sadness, even though no sin had been committed. So many Christians just want to adopt the old earth years for rocks and dumb dirt and stars, and thereby think that they aren’t adopting evolution. But it eludes them, mostly because they’ve never thought long on the problem, that the fossils in those rock layers must have an explanation! If those rock layers are a hundred million years old, then so must be the animals who perished and were buried there. But as we’ve seen, this compromise is needless, because these animals were clearly buried in the flood, in a grand, year long world catastrophe.
About me
By the way, my name is Nicholas Petersen, how do you do. I’ve been interested in science, in the evidence for the Flood and for Creation, and in the evidence against evolution, ever since I was in Jr. High School, when I was strongly confronted with these origins issues (though my love of dinosaurs goes back to Kindergarten years). You can see a little bit more about me at another site of mine, hebrewcosmology.com. I made this website — creationontrial.com — in order to put forth what I believe are some hard-hitting, and yet “in a nutshell” type evidences, that demonstrate points addressed above.
At this point I would like to register my hearty approval of the following statement that is listed on the Logos Research Associates about page. Though I am not a part of this association, I love how this statement was worded. I particularly want to emphasize what was said concerning my own fallibility. I do indeed urge you not to put your faith in me. Putting one’s faith in man may be the biggest problem with regard to this origins issue, at least as far as the church is concerned:
As Ambassadors for Christ we seek to encourage others to believe in Jesus, to faithfully and deliberately believe what Jesus taught, and to believe God’s revealed Word – the Gospel – which is the power of God to salvation. We use scholarship, logic, and the scientific method to show that the historical claims of the Bible are not only credible, but are superior to evolutionary theory to explain the origin of the world we see. We freely acknowledge our own fallibility, the inherent limits of “historical science”, and the need for “faith” by adherents of any view about ultimate origins. We urge all people to NOT put their faith in us, or any other form of human authority, but ultimately to put their faith in Jesus Christ.
There are many terrific creationist organizations and websites out there which I depend thoroughly upon: http://creation.com/, http://www.icr.org/, https://answersingenesis.org/, https://creationresearch.org/, and others as well. I deeply appreciate having gotten to fellowship over the years with some of the individuals who are part of these organizations. I hope the contributions I and others make on this site may add a little something which will be of value as well.
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For grasping comparative sizes here, see this nice description: “The data tell us that the radius of the quark is smaller than 43 billion-billionths of a centimetre (0.43 x 10−16 cm). That’s 2000 times smaller than a proton radius, which is about 60,000 times smaller than the radius of a hydrogen atom, which is about forty times smaller than the radius of a DNA double-helix, which is about a million times smaller than a grain of sand. So there. Quarks (along with electrons) remain the smallest things we know, and as far as we can tell, they could still be infinitely small. ~ Jon Butterworth, “How big is a quark?” accessed online ↩︎
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Jonathan Sarfati shows how even in the case of the resurrection of Christ, “blind faith” was not being asked for. Was it faith still? Yes. But not blind faith, because they had ample evidence to support this belief: “some … critics claim that the ‘doubting Thomas’ passage (John 20:24-31) promotes a blind faith. In reality, Thomas’s problem was rejection of ample evidence—the testimony of at least 11 men whom he had gotten to know intimately over at least the past three years, plus personal experience of the miraculous powers of Jesus, including raising Lazarus from the dead and even an empty tomb.” ↩︎