My 15 year old son, Mark, is very involved in the debate world and is now adding speech competition to it.
This is the speech he has started delivering this month; I think it has some great wisdom for Christians wrestling with the questions of how to interact with other believers, especially with whom they disagree about age-of-the-Earth issues.
This original article and speech he developed seemed appropriate given the series that I have just finished on The Creation Debate.
Well done, Mark. You are my son and I am well pleased.
Minimizing the unnecessary conflict between old earth creationist and young earth creationists
The topic presented today is on a controversial issue that has arisen recently in the Christian church. Yet the way I shall present this subject should not offend, nor should sway you against one side of belief! The matter, is on old earth creationism. Which is the belief of some Christians that the earth is more than 10,000 years old. This speech is not about it directly, but how the church as a whole and its individual members should treat old earth creationists. I will not be defending the validity that the earth is older than 10,000 years old, only certain rights given to those who believe in it.
The reason I chose this topic is that generally when old earth creationists suppress the young earth creationists, they do so by insulting their intelligence. Whereas when young earth creationists insult the old earth creationists, they undermine their Christianity. One such example is when a leading old earth creationist was present at the annual creation conference in which Russel Akridge titled OECs as “high priests from a decade old cult” and as “persuasive speakers who have deceived an unsuspecting public.” (Ross, 15) Also, in a blog, a man named Brian had recently converted to Christianity after coming to the knowledge that OEC was accepted by some as a Christian belief. He received persecution in the form of an email. He writes:
“The sender [of the email] politely and succinctly informed me of my apostasy. According to this brother in Christ if I didn’t correct my views on the age of the universe, I was at risk of eternal damnation… the sender was actually concerned for my eternal wellbeing.”(Apologetics.com)
This problem actually exists. The first thing to point out is that it is by Jesus Christ’s grace that we are saved, not by a trivial theological or scientific belief. This is the message of the gospel, and many times in the scriptures it makes clear that Christ is the only way to heaven. For now, I shall only provide one: “Jesus said to him, ‘I am the way and the Truth and the Life, no one comes to the father except through me.’” (Jn. 14.6). The offender in the email is ironically making a heretical statement against God, not defending a moral truth.
My second point is that in the community of a church, the members are in the wrong in outright rejecting the idea in hatred. Many churches create a hostile atmosphere, either unintentionally or intentionally, toward old earth believers. This idea creates an unnecessary disunion in churches. As proof of this overbearing rejection, suffer a story. My dad was once sitting around a campfire late at night with some other men. My dad lightly, and out of curiosity, asked the men around the fire what their thoughts were on old earth. They, one by one, the Christian brothers admitted to believing in it, if only slightly. This caught my dad by surprise. He had known some of these men for years! One dad mentioned that he had never said it because it’s something you stay away from in church, and that people are scared to admit it. They had a good laugh. But truly what they said that night ringed in my ears. This is not what the church is called to be. “…but speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in all aspects into Him who is the head, even Christ,“(Ephesians 4.15, 16 bold print added). And: 1 Corinthians 1:10 “I appeal to you, brothers, by the name of our Lord Jesus Christ…that there be no divisions among you…”
From this we can gather that we should all seek peace and truth with one another. I’m not asking you to avoid the subject, far from it. You should help create a community in which the discussion of it is welcomed, and not shunned. My friends and I enjoy partaking in lively discussion of the topic. The current Pope recently made this statement: “Evolution in nature is not opposed to the notion of Creation, because evolution presupposes the creation of beings that evolve.” (religionnews.com). He takes it a step beyond just old earth, but takes it to the idea of theistic evolution.
As it is now, most conservative Christians are afraid to even admit it, much less discuss their standing beliefs on the age of the earth, and be it over 10,000 years. To conclude, I will ensure its clear what you are agreeing to when you accept this speech. First of all, you’re not agreeing to old earth or young earth. I showed that we should speak the truth in love, whatever it be. To openly discuss any issues. And God forbid, claim that such an insignificant belief would justify excommunication or damnation. This applies to your daily life only when the topic arises in a conversation. And whatever your stance, please keep an open mind while still. In sight of scriptures, please stand with me today, to fight not old earth or young earth, but against the hatred and radicalism in this unnecessary division in the Church.
Works cited
Apologetics.com: why OEC vs. YEC?, Brian, May 2011.
Ross, Hugh. A Matter of Days. Colorado Springs: Navpress, 2004. Print.
Religionnews.com: Pope Francis: ‘Evolution … is not inconsistent with the notion of
creation’, Josephine McKenna, October 27, 2014.
I don’t think evolution was the point of the piece. The point was to emphasize the difference between peripherals and essentials with regard to salvation. The mistake many people make with regard to OEC is an assumption that they do in fact subscribe to evolution (theistic or otherwise) which is not the case. Many old earthers in fact find evidence of an old earth overwhelming when looking at all disciplines (astronomy, physics, chemistry, geology, cosmology, and archaeology) but still find evolutionary biology untenable.
I do agree that at the end of the day it will be genetics and information theory that will unwind the evolutionary models.
Somebody gets me!
May I direct you to Dr. John Sanford. He is a genetic engineer and has over 20 patents. He wrote a book entitled “Genetic Entropy” which may serve to help you understand this issue a bit better.
Here’s why: The Human Genome is decaying in both information and integrity over generations, and this is both emprically and statistically provable. Sanford shows that the human genome is actually devolving, not evolving. In fact, all genomes of all living things are rapidly evolving to extinction.. Animals aren’t adapting and they are not evolving. In fact, “extinction without replacement” – is the rule of the living systems.
Many years ago I read an explanation of the sciences and where entropy affects them. It said that all sciences are subject to entropy except for biology, “because evolution is true”. However, if evolution isn’t true, then biology is no different from the other sciences. DNA is an information database and rigorously follows the principles of information theory, one of which is Information Entropy, that with each replication of data there will be some loss (to noise in the signal) unless steps are taken to preserve it. When I typed this into my web browser and posted it, a wide array of error-control mechanisms kicked-in to guarantee that what I wrote is what you received.
Compare this to DNA, where its replication/transcription processes have a wide range of regulation and error control, validating a copy as it goes, validating when completed and even periodically thereafter. Researchers at University of Washington recently reported their findings that the “language” of DNA is actually permeated with a completely separate language, one that controls the first language. In systems that are far simpler than DNA, the functionality to regulate, orchestrate and control completely eclipses the core functionality of what it is controlling.
Since evolutionary progress is borne on mutations, why would evolution allow a function to rise (error correction) that stands it its own way of progress? There is no good answer without resorting to special pleading. Moreover, the progressive creation viewpoint also presumes the truth of evolution as a starting point. But what if evolution isn’t true at all? This pops-the-bubble of progressive creation as well.
And this is the primary crux of the problem. The YECs do not have angst with OECs over doctrine alone. The YECs openly wonder why the OEC’s are taking sides with a theory (evolution) that has been thoroughly falsified and is even now propped-up only with rescue devices and thought-experiments. .
Sanford took the ages of the patriarchs of the Bible, starting with Adam to King David, and mapped them to the exponential decay curve, off-tolerance by mere fractions. Did the writers of the Bible have access to this algorithm and map the human ages accordingly, or are these simply “the records” and this observation falls out for free? The human genome is indeed decaying and all living systems are marching inexorably toward extinction. This flies in the face of the evolutionary narrative.
God claims to have made all animals “very good” and with the ability to be fruitful and multiply. If this is true, we would expect the original genomes of all creatures to be “overloaded” with hyper-adaptability, not under-loaded where long ages are required to produce a new variation. Case in point – when Darwin witnessed his finches on Galapagos, he presumed that the various finch beak shapes and sizes were “new”, that they had spontaneously formed as the dietary needs arose. If he had stayed on the island a while longer until one of its periodic climate shifts, he would have witnessed a change in the food supply and with it the finch populations shifting in favor of beaks that aligned with the food supply. If he then came back a few years later when the climate shifted back, he would see that the populations had once again shifted back to the finch beaks he had originally observed. The capacity of the population to survive with these genetic adaptations – is a gift from the Creator – the beaks aren’t “new”. The bottom line is: the genes adapt to the habitat. The habitat is passive and has no control of the genes. How sad that Darwin based his entire premise on a false observation, or rather, selective observation.
Think about this: Gregor Mendel breeds some flowers and ends up with three red flowers for every one white flower. In a particular case, he keeps getting red flowers over many generations, so he hands the experiment over to a lackey. Years later a white flower arrives and the lackey exclaims “Mendel! It’s new stuff!” to which Mendel replies “No, it was always there”.
Something Sanford points out is that genes are held in unbreakable chains, themselves in unbreakable clusters, and can be clustered many levels deep. If a “good” gene shows up, the “selection” process has no ability to take this gene only and leave the rest behind – the chains and clusters are unbreakable. It’s like this: If I give you a box of two dozen donuts and tell you that I licked all but three of them, would you feel comfortable eating the whole box? But you cannot tell which of the donuts are good. You have to take all or nothing. Sanford notes that selection is blind to the genetic level, and makes a pretty solid case for all this. Deleterious mutations cannot be excluded, they can only be removed at the level of the individual, not the genes, and if so this takes any “good” mutations with it.
The point being – the OEC or YEC positions are irrelevant if evolution is false. In your post, you alluded to the notion of evolution’s truth. (there isn’t any) If evolution is false, and it is, then why discuss OEC or YEC? Evolution is merely an unprovable narrative about the history of the world. It’s not science and never will be.
Dawkins was once asked if someone could believe in God and believe in evolution, and his answer was “of course, but they are delusional”. The point being, why do OEC believers presume that believing in God and evolution will be seen as the “high road”? Creationists who know that evolution is false will reject them as unscientific. Secularists who accept evolution will reject them as unscientific. The very reason they took the position, intellectual high ground – falls apart.
So I applaud your desire to reconcile believers. But reconciling these two very different philosophies will never happen. Either God has used allegory to deliberately deceive us (and he cannot be trusted) or fallible humans (who do lie and do petty things) are either deceived or deceiving concerning evolution and the age of the earth. For that matter, science is not a demoocracy, the “more who believe” a “scientific truth” has no bearing on whether it is actually truth or not. Humans are easily deceived, both individually and in mass numbers (see Ferguson Missouri, see Islamic terrororist and 70 virgins).
Do I accept that humans lie, and often, or that God has lied to us? Is it about humans figthing over a viewpoint, or is it really about distrusting God’s words?
Lastly, I find it fascinating that fallible humans attempt to rewrite or redescribe the first chapter of Genesis without regard to the fact that – if any-old-story can be forklifted into the pages – then the original words have no authority or meaning at all. Whatsoever.
More disturbiing, it’s their reasoning for redescribing the first chapter: to help them to believe its words even less. Don’t you think that’s odd?