If we’re needing to get rid of it, we should at least know what it is. What is Protestantism?
At the end of the 15th century and the beginning of the 16th century, the Roman Catholic church held almost complete power over the governments, churches, and lives of the West. Heroic men like Jan Huus, William Tyndale, Martin Luther, and John Wycliffe courageously stood against that power because the Roman Catholic Church had been abusing their power by enacting & teaching serious errors for centuries. These men and other paragons, who were committed to the truth of the Bible, protested against the corruption of Rome. Their collective movement became known as the Protestant Reformation. This movement reformed Christianity to its 1st century roots, which focused on Jesus, the Bible, and God’s glory rather than what Rome had been preaching: indulgences, Mariology, and worldly power. Today, the branch of Christianity that is committed the Bible as the highest authority is known as Protestantism. But this post is not about the history of the Reformation or of the steady corruption of the Roman Catholic Church.
Simple. It’s a rebrand. 500 years ago, it was distinctive to be known by which theological tradition one held in relation to the Roman Catholic Church. Today, Protestants have no interest in being identified by their rejection of the ecclesiastical structure of the Vatican. We need to replace the moniker of Protestantism with:
Scripturian
Why did the reformers push to leave the Roman Catholic Church? Because Rome had left the authority of God’s eternal word for ecclesial authority. Scripturians recognize the authority of the Bible as preeminent. We should be identified by what we believe as distinctive and not from whom we once split 500 years ago.
Why not simply Christian? Good question. Yes, as the Apostle Paul said over and over in his epistles, our identity is “in Christ”. But the Roman Catholics and Eastern Orthodox also claim this title. What makes Scripturians distinct from the Vatican and Byzantium is that we regard the Bible as our authority. While Rome seemingly prefers to be known by their statues of Mary, Scripturians prefer to be known by SOLA SCRIPTURA.
When Jesus questioned the reigning theological powers of his day with: “Have you not read…?” He was explicitly declaring that God’s Word is the authority to which the lacking shepherds (Pharisees, Sadducees, scribes) SHOULD have submitted rather than their worldly traditions. The Roman Catholic church should listen to Jesus. They should submit to the Word of God rather than their worldly traditions.
Thankfully, there are many Christian teachings that both Roman Catholics and Scripturians can unite, but the reasons that I am not a Roman Catholic are because of the significant unbiblical errors that the Vatican teaches.
So, let’s unite in this rebranding. Let’s get rid of Protestantism and embrace what truly identifies us as distinct: God’s Eternal Word captured in scripture. We are Scripturians because we want to be identified as believers in what God has revealed in the Bible. Roman Catholics could rebrand as Mariologists, or Papists, or Indulgencians because those are the things that identify them as distinct within Christendom
We’ve got 2 more chapters to go through. In chapter 3, Dr. Ball took the opportunity to look at some evidence (that in the past) was presented to support a young earth. What happens when a scientist, who believes in evolution, views evidence through their lens of evolution? You guessed it, they see evolution and deep time everywhere. Let’s looks specifically at Dr. Ball’s statements about evidences for a young Earth. His comments are in red, with my reply following directly in the default black
At this point, it may appear to the reader that conspicuously missing from the list of scientific evidences are the evidences for a young Earth. I can assure you that it isn’t an oversight.
I addressed this kind of thinking in my article which scrutinized Dr. Ball’s work in Chapter 2. Essentially, there’s no “evidences for an old Earth” or “evidences for a young Earth”. There’s just evidence. Everyone interprets evidence in accordance with their worldview. For Dr. Ball, his worldview is that the Bible is pliable to whatever the latest conclusions from the modern academic paradigm tell him. For Young Earth Creationists, we hold the Bible to be the highest authority, and we view the evidence through the lens that what God has revealed in the Bible as true.
Short Period Comets
Short period comets appear to suggest that the solar system is only a few thousand years old, since comets actually burn away each time they pass close to the Sun, where they interact with the solar wind in producing the fiery tails we observe
Yes, I covered this in Chapter 2. And as expected, Dr. Ball proposes an unseen hypothesized ring of extra solar system objects. Unscientific.
Thickness of Lunar Dust
estimates (if billions of years old) of dust accumulation both on the Earth and on the Moon had been made as early as 1960, using mountain measurements of nickel dust fall [31], which suggested that there may well be an extensive layer of Moon dust, as much as 145 feet…In fact, only about two inches of Moon dust was found at the landing site…This was then hailed as evidence for a young Moon (since accumulation would have only been happening for about 6000 years)…This was then hailed as evidence for a young Moon
This argument has not been used by young Earth creationists in over 30 years. In 1993 (a decade BEFORE Dr. Ball wrote his book), the preeminent young Earth creation organization, Answers in Genesis, wrote an article telling Christians not to use this argument, as it is flawed. Since Dr. Ball considers himself a man of science, there’s no reason that in the next edition of his book, he will have been able to address the latest and most advanced arguments from AIG, Creation.com, and ICR.org rather than trying to defeat an argument that has not been used since before Al Gore invented the internet.
Decay of the Earth’s Magnetic Field
At the present rate of decay, the magnetic field may actually go to zero in a few tens of thousands of years from now…Since the field appears to dying, one can attempt to extrapolate backwards in time to some plausible upper limit to the field strength to calculate an age for the Earth. As expected, such estimates lead to an age for the Earth no more than 10,000 years
Dr. Ball cites the work from Paul Taylor, p50 in the Illustrated Origins Answer Book in 1992. Much work has been done regarding this field of research since 1992. This article from CMI directly addresses Dr. Ball’s objections and shows that rather than the conclusions to which Ball came to, the conclusions of a young Earth are more appropriate. Another from AIG shows that the problems of the old earth models persist given the assumptions that Dr. Ball takes. Dr. Ball’s primary objection to the conclusion of a young Earth with regards to the Magnetic decay relies on radiometric dating, which as we discussed in Chapter 2, are both filled with assumptions and are wildly inaccurate
The rock layers can also be radiometric dated, so that we can determine when the magnetic north pole was near which geographic pole
There’s no reason to accept the conclusions about magnetic decay from Dr. Ball as they are both discordant with the biblical timeline and the conclusions from scientific evidence
Radio Halos in Primordial Rock
Dr. Ball explains the reason why young Earth creationists think that the decay of Polonium in granite is evidence for YEC
The discovery of radio halos by Oak Ridge laboratory scientist Robert Gentry was touted as a clear counterexample to the claims of antiquity made for the oldest primordial rock layers in the Earth. Such halos were claimed be formed from the decays of Polonium-218, which has a halflife of only 3 minutes. They can only form in hardened or crystallized rock. If such halos were found in the oldest rock layers, which as we’ve discussed in the last chapter required a long period of time to cool off sufficiently before solidifying, then how did the Polonium-218 get inside of the rock after it formed? Young Earth proponents claim this is clear evidence that God instantly formed the rock layers of the Earth
Then Dr. Ball explains why he doesn’t like this evidence:
To examine this evidence properly is difficult, since the discovery of various types of halos in rock is still being investigated
Of course it is still being investigated. Those, like Ball, who hold to an old Earth belief, do not like the obvious implications of the rapid cooling of pre-Cambrian rock and the presence of halos from fast-decaying radioactive elements. In the same way that Dr. Mary Schweitzer did not like the implications of finding soft tissue in dinosaur bones, so she repeated the experiment SEVENTEEN times before finally accepting the results. To protect their worldview, they have to try to find a rescue device. Dr. Ball continues with the proposed rescue devices:
Geologist Jeffrey Richard Wakefield carefully examined the locations indicated by Gentry and concluded that each one was actually a younger infusion of igneous rock into the older primordial rock layers…At least one recently discovered mechanism involves a slow gradual process, favoring a much longer period of time in their development
The panic is real. Dr. Ball says that the location is particularly a problem and there might be other ways to explain the data…though he gives no details. Dr. Ball continues:
But the bigger problem I see here is the attempt at using some complex phenomena, without the benefit of a more thorough investigation into its mechanisms, to support a particular age of the Earth
I’ve been told that creationists aren’t REAL scientists, yet Dr. Ball says here that Dr. Gentry is examining “complex phenomena” to make conclusions. Dr. Ball may not like the conclusions, but the research is definitely being done my qualified scientists with qualified investigative methods. I also find it somewhat rich for an old Earther to criticize a scientist making conclusions about the age of the Earth based on the perceived lack of “thorough investigations” considering the failed evolutionary arguments from the last few decades given thorough investigations:
It is a common question of young Earth creationists: “how did light get to Earth in only 6000 years if the light source is billions of light years away?” Dr. Ball asks this question without a very careful investigation of the 1 possibility he critiques or the other possible solutions
Finally, we consider a recent cosmological model claiming support for a young Earth, a model proposed by Gerald Humphries in 1996 in his book, “Starlight and Time”
“Gerald Humphries”?!!?!? Perhaps he means Dr. Russell Humphreys, who wrote the book in question.
Dr. Ball was critical of Dr. Humphrey’s model, but he used arguments, that if applied consistently to his own Big Bang model, would have destroyed it. He didn’t mention how he solves the problems:
Obviously, Dr. Ball could not have known about the fulfilled YEC prediction that was confirmed by the James Webb Space Telescope in 2022 since Dr. Ball wrote his book in 2003. But I added it to the list a a further complication for his foundational assumptions for this article. Dr. Humphreys has been met with fierce opposition to his proposal and has answered many of his critics with technical papers. Dr. Ball may not have known that the answers to many objections have been forthcoming since he didn’t even know Dr. Humphrey’s name.
Neither did Dr. Ball address the many other solutions to the light time travel “problem” that have been proposed by creationists:
Again, I will note that Dr. Ball couldn’t have known about all of these proposals since many of them have emerged as valid solutions in the last few years. The point is that scientists, who hold the Bible as the highest authority, have done and continue to do real scientific work without compromising the fidelity of the specially-revealed Word of God
Here lies the problem with Creation Science. It is not an attempt to understand the physical universe through application of basic laws and principles
This is not the problem, but the foundation. While the shifting conclusions from naturalistic assumptions will constantly change as new paradigms come and go, the eternal word of God will never change. It doesn’t need to change. Because God knows everything, his revelation cannot be overturned. The comment from Dr. Ball could be better said as: “Here lies the beauty of Creation Science. It is not an attempt to understand the physical universe through the eyes of unbelievers, but by accepting the history of the universe that God revealed in his word, creation scientists employ the application of basic laws and principles to make discoveries and solve problems.” As this graphic the humorously represents this principle, the universe has aged faster than the “speed of light”. Notice that the believed age (according to the reigning paradigm of the time) of the universe has changed through the decades and most times, the changes have been outside the previous supposed “error bars”:
Looking through the lens of evolution and the modern academic paradigm, Dr. Ball and other old Earthers will always see old Earth. When we look at the world through the lens of the Bible, we will be able to make sense of what God intended. Reality makes sense and the evidence is fully affirming of the YEC view. There is no logical reason for Christians to think that the constantly-changing theories/stories from old Earthers need to be used as counterfeit authorities to redefine the clear teaching of the highest authority: the Bible.
Dr. Steven Ball is a physics professor at LeTourneau University, a Christian university in Texas. He has written a few papers advocating for old earthism, that could use some cross-examination. His first paper is titled “A Christian Physicist Examines the Age of the Earth”. I will note his comments in red with my comments directly underneath in the default black. Any bold or underline in Ball’s quotes are my own and not in the original. Each of his chapters will be divided into a distinct blog post to keep the posts from being too long. You can read my review of chapter 1 here.
You don’t have to have an eyewitness account from someone to determine when something in the past occurred. You simply need sufficiently trustworthy evidence left behind in order to make an intelligent determination. For example, a coroner can determine when a person may have died based on the body condition and its temperature compared to both the surrounding environment and the original living body temperature. Although there may be complications, which increase the uncertainties in the actual time of death such as a changing temperature of the environment, it is still possible to make reliable estimates. In fact, the evidence left behind can be a more reliable source than a living eyewitness with a watch, as the next example will show.
I have 3 key issues with Dr. Ball’s assertion about evidence.
The myth of neutrality. Dr. Ball tacitly asserts that evidence just speaks for itself and any observer can come to evidence and just make an unbiased conclusion to determine truth. This is not true, because there are no unbiased observers. EVERYONE has a worldview through which they view evidence. Christians should view evidence through the lens that God is the Creator, Sustainer, and Author of the historical account of his revelation in the Bible. Christ is LORD over everything, and even those, who claim to be neutral or unbiased have a bias denying Christ’s definitive claim as Lord. Dr. Bahnsen has a tremendous lecture series on this which I recommend for all Christians to inject.
“sufficiently trustworthy evidence” – By what standard does a person determine what is sufficiently trustworthy? While it sounds reasonable on the surface, when pressed even a little, the claim devolves rather quickly into item 1 addressed just above. A person can easily say that such-and-such evidence (or source) isn’t sufficiently trustworthy due to an arbitrary or biased standard. That’s not to say that all evidence has equal weight or that every eye-witness is equally trustworthy, but the claim itself (if it were to have universal applicability) must have a transcendent standard by which to compare which Dr. Ball leaves unanswered.
This is verifiably untrue as was pointed out in the Chapter 1 review regarding Mt. St. Helens. In 1992 the rocks from Mt St Helens were radiometrically dated anywhere from 350,000 years old to 2,800,000 years old depending on the method. But the ACTUAL date of the rocks was 12 years. The eye-witness account is dozens of orders of magnitude more accurate than the radiometric dating extrapolations from the forensics practitioners. Just considering Ball’s assertion about the ability of a coroner to determine the when a body died would only be possible within the first few hours after death when the temperature would equalize with the surrounding environment
In experimental high energy physics research, it would be rather absurd to stick a person inside of our detector region, near where high energy particles are collided and numerous new particles are generated from this energy. Beyond the problem of intense radiation exposure, this person would be a completely worthless witness.
He makes an analogy to a worthless human eye-witness, but Ball is unfortunately trying to compare this worthless human eyewitness to the Almighty. God is the One, who revealed his creative acts to Moses. Why would Ball work so hard to demean the original Eyewitness to the creation? Strange indeed for a self-professing Christian.
One can calculate the rate of fuel being burned inside the core of a star and estimate its lifetime, approximately 10,000,000,000 (10 billion) years for our Sun, of which present indicators reveal that nearly half of its lifetime supply of fuel is exhausted
Speaking of extrapolation, how does Ball solve the Faint Young Sun Paradox? Essentially, in the old earther’s view, as Solar has aged, it radiates more light and heat. In their view 3.8 billion years ago when they presume that life emerged and began to evolve, there was not enough light or heat on earth to preserve light. Extrapolation eviscerates old earther’s expectations. The point is that extrapolating deep into the past requires many assumptions and the further back in time, one hopes to predict, the more assumptions need to be made and the greater the error is probable.
The reliability of the evidence can be determined in a number of ways. First of all, since our universe obeys certain laws and principles, the evidence should be examined in light of these well-established laws and principles.
When one presumes to reject what God said in the Bible (“For in 6 days the LORD made the heavens the earth, the sea, and all that is in them”) in favor of the modern academic paradigm (MAP), to be consistent that person must reject other parts of the Bible. For instance, it would be consistent for someone to say:
“The science says the Earth is 4.5 billion years old, so we have to reinterpret what the Bible says”
“The science says that virgins cannot birth children, so we have to reinterpret what the Bible says”
“The science says that dead people do not come back to life, so we have to reinterpret what the Bible says”
“The science says that water does not turn into wine, so we have to reinterpret what the Bible says”
“The science says that axe heads do not float, so we have to reinterpret what the Bible says”
But I’m sure Dr. Ball accepts at least a few of those. It’s inconsistent to deny the historical passages in the Bible because of some outside authority . As Christians, we mustn’t let MAP be an authority at the expense of the Bible. His next quote is ironic as he desires consistency in scientific work (something everyone should want).
Secondly, when several independent sources are all giving very similar answers, it increases the measure of confidence we have in the results. Good science requires both the measures of self-consistency and consistency with other independent, yet equally valid methods
So let’s look at the specific “independent sources” from different fields of science to see how they measure up to scripture itself, and offer a little scrutiny to his conclusions
Geology of the Earth
Just one glimpse of the multitude of layers of rock exposed in the Grand Canyon…The shades of color from one layer to the next going down over one mile deep from the canyon rim down to the Colorado River tells us that there is an incredibly vast and changing history associated with how these layers were deposited…We find fossils in many of these layers, showing the history of life forms going backward in time as you go down through the successive layers to earlier time periods…It is not easy to estimate the rate of rock layering, since this fluctuates greatly in time…However, it is clear that vast intervals of time are necessary to produce the layers of rock we do observe
There are indeed a multitude of layers exposed in the grand canyon. Water-sorted layers. Dr. Ball makes no mention of the effects of the global flood that is recorded in Genesis 6-9. Fossil-bearing water-sorted layers is EXACTLY what biblical creationist would expect to find in the Grand Canyon. Dr. Ball (not a geologist) is completely unfamiliar with the evidence against his view, which is that erosion/bioturbation in and between the water-sorted layers is so rare as to declare them virtually absent from the entire Canyon. Follow the link below listen to Dr. Ron Neller, who is a fluvial geomorphologist, explain why the geologic column is disconfirming evidence for an old earth…and instead affirms the biblical account of a global flood
Notice from Ball’s comments that he assumes that the accumulation of the layers takes “incredibly vast” amounts of time and the “vast intervals of time are necessary”. He completely ignores the Biblical account of the global flood in his question-begging claims of extended time. Never does he consider that the layers formed rapidly during and shortly after the year-long flood. Were Dr. Ball’s view true, then there would be no distinct layers. If the layers were indeed exposed to the elements for millions of years of wind/water erosion and the affiliated periods of bioturbation, the layers would be indistinct as in figure 4 below. Be instead we find that each layer is perfectly distinct as if it were never exposed to erosion or bioturbation as in figure 1 (like we would expect from the global flood)
He did however notice that the layers were sedimentary (laid down by water) and bearing marine fossils…just as Bible-believing Christians would expect since they were deposited by the waters of the global flood
steady marine sedimentation during below sea-level periods…sedimentation rates
Fossils? Let’s discuss fossils
Only the painstakingly slow process of replacement of bone tissue with minerals from the surrounding soil can produce a true fossil…fossils can very rarely form. And since there appears to be an abundance of fossils in the Earth, it is clear that there has been an incredibly long history of life preceding us
He did say 1 correct sentence from above: “fossils can very rarely form”. Why is that? Because fossils only form in very specific conditions: flood conditions. Biological material must be buried rapidly do avoid the scavengers and corruption processes, so that fossilization (mineral replacement of biological material) can occur. He incorrectly concludes that because there are billions of dead things buried in rock layers, laid down by water, all over the Earth – that it took an incredibly long time. The opposite is true. Because we have a correct historical account given to us in Genesis 6-9, we know that all of the air-breathing creatures not on the ark were buried by catastrophic deluge in judgment for the sin of mankind. Contrary to what Dr. Ball has claimed, ALL of the evidence is in strong support of the Biblical account of a global flood. I cover this evidence in a blog post, here. Those, who deny this catastrophic worldwide flood, are described as “scoffers” by Peter
Other geological studies have examined processes believed to be rather constant in time such as rates of coral reef build-up, tectonic plate motion, mountain building, certain weathering and erosion rates, and even the rate of continental mass build-up
Unfortunately, Dr. Ball is wrong about ALL of these items. They not only disconfirm the old earth paradigm, in which he believes, they are STRONG confirmation of the biblical timescale held by young earth creationists
Coral Reef Buildup – “Pandora Reef is approximately 10 metres in thickness; 1.8 metres of this coral has grown in the last 118 years. On this basis the whole 10 metre thickness of coral that makes up this reef would have taken only about 660 years to grow!”
Mountain Building – All mountain ranges in the world are evidently young. Were they millions of years old, they would be smoothly rounded by the erosion forces of wind/water/ice
Erosion Rates – The continents are definitevely NOT billions of years old as has been claimed. “At the present rate of erosion, all of the continents would be reduced to sea level in 10 Ma (10 millions years)”. 10 million years is the UPPER limit. If you take into account the monumental erosion rates after the global flood, the continents look exactly as we would expect if the global flood took place about 4500 years ago.
Exactly opposite of what Dr. Ball claimed, the evidence is strongly in favor of biblical creation and disconfirms the assertions of old earthers. It’s doubtful that Dr. Ball has researched the overwhelming scientific evidences of a young Earth/universe that corresponds with the biblical account, but if you’re interested, so can see 101 of them here.
Radiometric Dating
Radiometric dating is the method of using nature’s natural clocks to date events such as when rocks were first formed
Radiometric dating has many problems of which advocates are completely unaware. I covered many of the problems with radiometric dating in this article, so there’s no need to duplicate the effort here. But in short, since radiometric dating shows itself to be completely wrong on the samples that we have seen formed, why should we trust the dates that this extrapolation gives for unknown/unseen samples?
Lunar Geology
Precise dating of the birth of our Earth is difficult based only on knowledge of the Earth’s geology and radiometric dating of its rocks, primarily since primordial rocks may not have formed until long after the Earth’s initial formation
True. Based on his presuppositions (extrapolations), dating Earth is difficult. Based on my presuppositions (The Truth of the Bible), dating the Earth is much easier.
So while no rocks can be found older than about 3.8 billion years old on Earth, the Earth itself is older than this. We must go outside the Earth to get a more accurate measurement, namely the Moon
This line of reasoning is related to his assumptions about radiometric dating, but notice how even before he applies a “scientific test”, he assumes (in bold above) “the Earth itself is older than this.” Not for scientific reasons, but ideological ones
Rocks brought back from these missions (Apollo) have been dated up to 4.3 billion years old, confirmed through measurements using several different isotopes
Again, you see how even though he categorized this Lunar argument as separate from the others, it is a regurgitation of the radiometric dating argument with its unwarranted assumptions.
On the contrary, the moon is actually strong evidence that the Earth/moon system is NOT billions of years old. Because the moon recesses (moves away) from the Earth at a measurable rate in accordance with Kepler’s third law of planetary motion (conservation of angular momentum), we know that the moon could only be as old as 1.5 billion years since at that time, the moon and Earth would be touching. Again 1.5 billion years is the UPPER limit of time. Life on Earth would be impossible for much less time than that if the the distance to the moon were 1/4, 1/2, or even 2/3 of its current distance, the tides gravitational effects on the Earth would be too destructive to sustain life. So, instead of proving a billions of years old creation, the moon specifically refutes that belief and is affirmation of a young Earth.
Meteorites
While iron meteorites have been found not to have the long-lived radioactive isotopes needed for dating, they are invaluable for dating the Earth, since they provide us with pristine samples of primordial lead, whose isotopic ratios yield the original lead isotopic ratios on Earth, which have since then been modified by the daughter products from Uranium and Thorium decays. By this method we find the Earth to be 4.6 billion years old
Dr. Ball again relies on radiometric dating for this line of evidence. So there’s nothing new here. But if we’d like to talk about the philosophical implications of objects orbiting the sun, how do they scientifically account for short-term comets? Many comets disintegrate completely in only a few trips around the sun, yet these short term comets persist. If the solar system were truly billions of years old, there would be no more short term comets. Their rescue device for their old universe view is that some unseen source provides new comets every now and then. It’s unscientific, but they try to protect their worldview from falsification.
Stellar Astronomy
Are there non-radiometric methods, which can be used to determine such vast ages? Yes, and the natural clocks they depend upon are very reliable…Nuclear fusion is a powerful source of energy we can understand…This energy conversion has been occurring steadily in the core of our Sun, where temperatures are sufficiently high enough, for as long as Earth has been around, thus bathing the Earth with heat. From the rate of energy produced and the supply of fuel initially inside the reaction core of the Sun, we can determine its lifetime. As mentioned previously, this is approximately 10 billion years
What were the initial conditions? What was the Hydrogen:Helium ratio when the sun was created by God on Day 4? How do you know that the rate of fuel consumption has always been the same for nearly 5 billion years? How do you overcome the Faint Young-Sun Paradox?
Other stars have been dated to be much older than ours, up to 14 billion years old. In fact, innumerable stars have already exhausted their supply of fuel and met their deaths. A star dies by running out of the very fuel that sustains an outward pressure to prevent its own self-gravity from collapsing it. The larger stars die rather violently, in a process called a supernova
The remnants of supernova are supposedly visible for many millions of years after their demise. Over time astronomers have measured the rate at which supernova occur, and can make predictions on how long a galaxy has existed based on that rate. If the Milky Way is billions of years old as Dr. Ball and the atheists think, there should be about 7500 super nova remnants in various stages of decay. If the Milky Way galaxy is only as old as the Bible says (about 7000 years old) then there should be only about 125. How many do we actually observe? About 200. By this “clock” the biblical predictions are much closer, while Dr. Ball’s predictions are off by a factor of about 40
The Universal Expansion
How do we extract an age for the universe? Astronomer Edwin Hubble demonstrated in the 1920’s that the universe is expanding; by showing that the further away a galaxy is from us the faster it appears to be moving away from us. This expansion rate tells us how long the universe has taken to expand to the immense size it is today. But it has been very difficult to determine this expansion rate accurately until recently…Combining measurements of several different distance indicators such as variable stars and distant supernovae, we have narrowed down the age of the universe to approximately 14 billion years old, uncertain to 0.5 billion years
I’m not quite old enough to remember when the scientific consensus agreed with the Bible that the universe was about 6000 years old, but the scientific community believes that the universe is aging faster than anything else in existence. I asked Grok to collect data from around the planet across time on how quickly the universe has been (supposedly) aging, and this is what is has come up with:
1800AD – the universe was 6000 years old
1840AD – the universe was ~100,000 years old
1850AD – the universe was ~1,000,000 years old
1860AD – the universe was ~10,000,000 years old
1870AD – the universe was ~20,000,000-100,000,000 years old (±10-50 million)
1880AD – the universe was ~20,000,000-100,000,000 years old (±10-50 million)
1890AD – the universe was ~20,000,000-100,000,000 years old (±10-50 million)
1900AD – the universe was ~100,000,000-1,000,000,000 years old
1910AD – the universe was ~1,000,000,000-2,000,000,000 years old (±.5-1 billion)
1920AD – the universe was ~1,000,000,000-10,000,000,000 years old (±1-5 billion)
1930AD – the universe was ~2,000,000,000-10,000,000,000 years old (±1-5 billion)
1940AD – the universe was ~2,000,000,000-5,000,000,000 years old (±1-2 billion)
1950AD – the universe was ~3,000,000,000-6,000,000,000 years old (±1-2 billion)
1960AD – the universe was ~10,000,000,000-20,000,000,000 years old (±5-10 billion)
1970AD – the universe was ~10,000,000,000-20,000,000,000 years old (±5 billion)
1980AD – the universe was ~10,000,000,000-20,000,000,000 years old (±3-5 billion)
1990AD – the universe was ~10,000,000,000-15,000,000,000 years old (±2-3 billion)
2000AD – the universe was ~13,000,000,000-14,000,000,000 years old (±1-2 billion)
2020AD – the universe was ~13,800,000,000 years old (±.02 billion)
2025AD – the universe is 13,800,000,000 years old (±.02 billion)
The parentheses in the above notes are the error bars. Error bars are the estimated error possibilities on either side of the possible date range. I do think it’s extremely humorous how the error bars in 1960 included the original Biblical timeframe of about 6000 years and how each new “age”, was outside the previous “age” error bars. It confirms that as biological evolution began to have a greater effect on the modern academic paradigm, the universe/Earth had to age at an appropriate rate to accommodate its assumptions. In 2019 a scientific paper claimed that the universe was only 11.4 billion years old. The error bars at this time was only 20 million years, but suddenly over 2 billion years went missing?!?!?? How could billions of years suddenly go missing? They must have found those years, because the it’s back to 13.8 billion. In 2024, there was a peer-reviewed paper saying that the latest findings showed that the universe is a whopping 26.7 billion years old…almost 14,000,000,000 years OUTSIDE the error bars. What’s a few billion years between scientific allies? To be fair, this paper has not been widely accepted, but it goes to show that atheists, naturalists, and sadly some Christians are always looking for more time in the universe to accommodate their evolutionary (whether galactic, chemical, stellar, planetary or biological) beliefs.
The Cosmic Microwave Background Radiation
Additional evidence of a beginning 14 billion years ago is the leftover remnant of the initial explosion nicknamed the “Big Bang”, which was discovered first in 1965, nearly 20 years after it was predicted. This is the Cosmic Microwave Background Radiation (CMBR), which pervades all of space. It is the radiation released near the beginning of the universal expansion, and has been cooling off gradually ever since, until today it is now a chilly 2.73 degrees above absolute zero temperature.
Chilly indeed, but not nearly enough. There are MANY problems with the Big Bang Theory, but #3 in the linked list shows the CMBR to be evidence NOT of an ancient universe but of a light time travel problem for naturalists. Based on their assumptions, the universe should not be so thermodynamically balanced.
So, what we have found as we’ve critically analyzed the claims of Dr. Ball is that instead of supporting an ancient universe like the atheists believe, we find that the observations are correctly seen to affirm the biblical timeline of only about 6,000 years. There’s no reason for Christians to capitulate to the modern academic paradigm. God’s Word is absolutely trustworthy as written and needs no injection of worldliness in order to accommodate their beliefs about origins. The Bible is NOT a science textbook, and that’s a good thing so that it doesn’t need to be completely rewritten every few years as new discoveries change the theories. God’s revelation cannot be refuted. I’m sure Dr. Ball is a friendly Christian professor, but his writings about Christianity trying to accommodate worldliness are unnecessary at best and deceptive at worst.
One of the giant problems for those who believe in evolution is the missing evidence for the transition of single-celled organisms into multicellularity. According to the story of evolution there was a single-celled Last Universal Common Ancestor LUCA from whom all biological life descended. No evidence for this supposed LUCA exists, but it is a philosophical place-holder for the theory of evolution to persist. If the theory of evolution is true, at the VERY LEAST, the evolutionists must have some kind of explanation for transition from single-celled creatures into the multi-cellular creatures that we see today
In an online interaction, an evolutionist made the claim that the problem was solved in 2019. Some researchers had their paper pass peer-review, and in they claim that multicellularity evolved in response to predation. At the time of this writing, their paper has been cited 181 times. Commonly, a case gets accepted simply by passing peer review. I’ve not found evidence that the experiments described in their paper have been duplicated anywhere, but it’s reasonable to cross-examine their claims to see how they stack up. This is a very biblical response to their claim:
So, let’s cross-examine, to see if there are any weaknesses in their claims and if their claims hold up to even the mildest of scrutiny:
According to the story of evolution, the algae in question has persisted unchanged for ~310 million years. That’s some pretty amazing longevity (if true). But the researchers from this paper claimed to have observed the evolution of this novel trait in the comparably instantaneous time of 50 weeks…less than 1 year. Despite it being one of the biggest problems for evolutionists, the emergence of multicellularity from single-celled organism, these scientists claim to have taken one of the most stable genotypes (having existed fixed for over 300 million years) and watched it evolve new traits in less time than it takes to complete a cricket tournament (I think…as I’ve never really understood those rules). It’s mind-numbingly absurd to believe that evolution can happen that fast considering the claims of evolutionists themselves and the well-known waiting-time problem. The biggest single leap in evolution from single to multiple cells happened right before the eyes of these researchers in under a year. I’m unpersuaded
They didn’t show that natural selection acting on random mutations (evolution) was able to produce this change, yet they use some form of “evolve” NINETY-SEVEN times in their article. I’ve been told that science is supposed to try to disprove a theory, but it’s clear that these biased researchers were good company-men…sticking with the party-line: evolution only all the time!
This is they key: The evolutionists said that predation was the selection pressure that forced single-cell algae populations into multicellularity, but they did not show that the algae developed new biological code via random mutation that produced this ‘novel’ ability. New code is needed, but evolution does not have that power
The experiments show instead that the ability to aggregate into multi-cellular clumps is a pre-existing trait. The algae were designed to cluster, and the expression of genes for multicellularity is turned off most of the time when not exposed to predation
There is no fossil evidence of unicellular-to-multicellular transition. It is an imagined transition, which evolutionists need for their theory. But it is not supported by any existing evidence.
As already noted, the evolutionists NEED this to imagined transition to be true for their theory to work. So, even though there is no fossil evidence that evolution produced this change, and there is no experimental evidence that natural selection acting on random mutations can build the cohesive interrelated interdependent functional code for transitioning single-celled organisms into multicellular organisms, they will continue to believe it
If you are interested, you can see a more robust examination of the claims of Herron’s paper here.
This is not the only time that I have scrutinized the supposed airtight arguments for evolution:
After posting these “Can Evolution Explain…articles, I inevitably hear evolutionists respond with some form of: “get your paper peer-reviewed and only then can you get your Nobel Prize for disproving evolution. Until then STFU!”
To be clear, these “Can Evolution Explain…” articles are NOT intended to disprove evolution. They are simply meant to analyze the assertions of evolutionists to see whether the subject matter is actually evidence for evolution by their own standards or not. It’s an internal critique. What I find in all of these articles is that what’s been proclaimed as “mOuntAinS oF eVidenCe” for evolution is really just story-telling and assumptions. We’ve seen that this article is more of the same bluster devoid of actual evidence.
There will be no shortage of “papers” that the devout evolutionists will propose that I must analyze. I don’t have the time or the desire to expose EVERY single article, but I do analyze the top authors and the articles that evolutionists THINK are actually evidence as shown above. Hopefully, given the example of my analysis, other Christians will be motivated to expose how the “mOuntAinS oF eVidenCe” for evolution are really massive canyons. These articles are not intended to prove creationism or anything else. They are simply meant to push back against the dominant paradigm rather than just blindly accepting what is being taught. If these works of evolution can survive scrutiny, then so be it, but so far, I’m finding that their claims are impotent.
But let’s walk through the peer-reviewed paper, which an anonymous internet philosopher claims was the ‘silver bullet’ in proving evolution. Here’s some of their musing in red, followed by my commentary in the default black
“The evolution of novel traits necessitates the evolution of novel gene regulatory architecture”
True! Evolution requires evolution of evolution within evolution…all the way down
“coevolve when duplicated genes evolve new regulatory control”
Not just evolution of evolution, but coevolve evolution.
“understanding the features that coordinate gene regulation is particularly challenging in eukaryotes because it involves the simultaneous action of cis- and trans-regulatory factors, chromatin state, and three-dimensional interactions of chromatin, including the precise coordination of enhancers and promoters”
Particularly challenging indeed! Simultaneous action? 3D interactions? Precise coordination? Simultaneous is not one of the expectations or predictions of evolution. Evolution is said to have occurred via numerous successive slight modifications…not simultaneous (undefined, ambiguous) action. Three-dimensional interactions sounds very mysterious…even supernatural. But evolutionists just accept these supernatural interactions as if they were somehow truly part of their theory. And that brings us to “precise coordination”. They claim that natural selection acting on random mutations (the mechanisms of evolution) are unguided and blind. There is again the assumption that nature can somehow provide “precise coordination” though blind, directionless, and purposeless
“most VGs are thought to have evolved through tandem duplication of genes with other physiological functions”
Thought to have evolved? Doesn’t sounds like science
“the evolutionary origins of their regulatory architecture remain poorly understood“
Poorly understood indeed! But I’m sure that won’t keep them from trying to educate us. All of these evolution stories are based on assumptions, and though the actual history (AS THEY CLEARLY ADMIT) remains poorly understood, they still demand complete obedience to their story. No dissent from their narrative allowed
“that may play”
May
“have remained largely unexplored“
Largely unexplored.
“provide an example of how multiple genomic mechanisms may together establish a novel regulatory system”
May. ‘May’ again. No science…just ‘may’
“likely contributed to the evolution of novel regulatory mechanisms”
Likely? I thought we were talking about science, but ‘likely’?
“makes foundational progress toward closing a long-standing gap in our understanding of snake venom systems and their origins”
They are making progress in closing the gap in their understanding. They have not solved the problem…they just claim to have closed the gap. No science. No evidence. Hopium is a powerful drug
If it’s evidence, we should expect to see explicit demonstrations of natural selection acting on random mutations to produce information for biological traits like venom. If it’s not evidence for evolution, we will see words of assumption like perhaps, possibly, may have, likely & suggest intermixed with some clever story-telling. God-deniers tend to make grand claims about the power of evolution, but when their claims have been scrutinized by simply reading the peer-reviewed articles, it’s clear that what they believe to be evidence is actually a collection of assumptions wrapped in the façade of scientific language. The origin is biological traits is a well-known problem for evolutionists, so we’ve seen how these authors tried to handle the problem. They left us with the admission that they made “progress toward closing the gap in their understanding”. Unfortunately for them, the gap is 100 miles wide, and they think they built a 3″ bridge.
This is not the only time I have scrutinized their supposed airtight arguments for evolution:
After posting these “Can Evolution Explain…articles, I inevitably hear evolutionists respond with some form of: “get your paper peer-reviewed and only then can you get your Nobel Prize for disproving evolution. Until then STFU!”
To be clear, these “Can Evolution Explain…” articles are NOT intended to disprove evolution. They are simply meant to analyze the assertions of evolutionists to see whether the subject matter is actually evidence for evolution by their own standards or not. It’s an internal critique. What I find in all of these articles is that what’s been proclaimed as “mOuntAinS oF eVidenCe” for evolution is really just story-telling and assumptions. We’ve seen that this article is more of the same bluster devoid of actual evidence.
There will be no shortage of “papers” that the devout evolutionists will propose that I must analyze. I don’t have the time or the desire to expose EVERY single article, but I do analyze the top authors and the articles that evolutionists THINK are actually evidence as shown above. Hopefully, given the example of my analysis, other Christians will be motivated to expose how the “mOuntAinS oF eVidenCe” for evolution are really massive canyons. These articles are not intended to prove creationism or anything else. They are simply meant to push back against the dominant paradigm rather than just blindly accepting what is being taught. If these works of evolution can survive scrutiny, then so be it, but so far, I’m finding that their claims are impotent.
As a reformed Christian, I hold to SOLA SCRIPTURA, which is the idea that the Bible is the highest (and only infallible) authority for matters of faith and practice. The words of the Bible were inspired by the Holy Spirit, so they cannot fail to be true. My highest appeal in all matters will always be to the text of the Bible itself.
But is there some value in seeing what the church always believed about a topic? Of course. My authority structure is
Why are the historical fathers so low on the list? There’s some debate about who counts as a church father, and there’s some debate about which side of the sad schisms a church father might represent. Regardless, the reason why it’s worthwhile to see what the church has historically believed on a topic could help us find aberrations and cult-like teachings from trendy revisions. In my lifetime, I’ve seen several trendy ideas (Pentacostalism, faith healing, dispensationalism, prosperity gospel…) burn through Christendom, like a wildfire. Most of the time, they are short-lived and burn out quickly because there’s no root or truth to them. Sometimes, they cling like Texas-heated road tar…sticky and difficult to get rid of. So, there is every reason to see what has been the historic Christian position on topics of interest. Most theological heresies were dealt with early on and have been recorded in the confessions and the creeds. I expect old earthism will be a road-tar type of false teaching that becomes very difficult to cleanse from Christianity due to its strong ties to scientism, which has the appearance of authority even though it changes its position with nearly every new discovery.
Obviously, this is a 30,000 foot view, and does not address specific writings of specific authors. But we get the idea that in general, Christians prior to the writings of Darwin fully accepted the Biblical account that there was no death or suffering in the world until after Adam had sinned. NOTE: Any bold, italics or underline is my own addition. Let’s look at a few individual men, who are generally recognized as church fathers:
Irenaeus of Lyons (c.130-202 AD): In his “Against Heresies”, Irenaeus argued that death was not part of the original creation, and that sin brought both physical and spiritual death to all of creation. The curse of sin introduced corruption and mortality into creation, and that the promises mentioned in Isa 11 would restore the harmony of animals to their pre-fall state.
Tertullian (c. 160-220 AD): In “Against Marcion”, Tertullian emphasizes that the Creator is good, and his creation was absent of death and corruption which entered creation through human sin. He describes death as an “intruder“. He understands Romans 8:19-21 to teach that futility and subjection to corruption for ALL of creation is due to the fall into sin. In “On the Resurrection of the Flesh” Tertullian describes the peace and harmony of animals in the future to be a renewal of the harmony that was once known before the fall.
Theophilus of Antioch (c. 168 AD): In his work “ad Autolycus” Theophilus says “And the animals are named wild beasts, from their being hunted, not as if they had been made evil or venomous from the first—for nothing was made evil by God, but all things good, yea, very good,—but the sin in which man was concerned brought evil upon them …. When, therefore, man again shall have made his way back to his natural condition, and no longer does evil, those also shall be restored to their original gentleness.”
Athanasius (C. 296-373 AD): In “On the Incarnation” he emphasizes that the state of the creation today (death and corruption) was brought by human sin. Though animals are not specifically mentioned, the context of his broader theology and the deduction that animals are included within creation leaves little room to doubt that he understood that the fall into sin was the corrupting force that invaded God’s once-very-good creation
Augustine (354-430 AD): In “The City of God” Augustine says that death, including animal death, was not part of God’s original creation. It was an intruder into the creation that before sin was very good. In “On the Literal Meaning of Genesis” he says further that the predatory behaviors and mortality of animals started after human sin. Before sin the original creation was free from violence, corruption, and predation
Basil the Great (c. 330-379 AD): I’ll spend the most time on Basil of Caesarea. It was just recently that I was challenged by an internet personality to research to see whether Basil the Great taught (as the Bible says) that there was no death among animals prior to the fall. Basil is known mostly for his 9 Homilies, the Hexaemeron, which means “The Six Days of Creation”. Clearly, Basil agreed with the authors of scripture that Genesis was history of the works of God in creation. In Homily 5 Basil writes: “But then (pre-fall) the rose was without thorns; since then (post-fall) the thorn has been added to its beauty, to make us feel that sorrow is very near to pleasure, and to remind us of our sin, which condemned the earth to produce thorns and caltrops.” Basil understood from the text of scripture that creation was changed after the fall. As Genesis 3 teaches, there were no thorns in creation prior to the fall. This is a serious problem for those, who deny YEC since fossil thorns have been found in layers that they think were formed millions of years prior to the sin of Adam. More relevant to this discussion, in his work:
“On the Origin of Humanity” Homily 2 section 6 Basil says: “God did not say: “I have given you the fishes for food, I have given you the cattle, the reptiles, the quadrupeds.” It is not for this that He created, says the Scripture. In fact, the first legislation allowed the use of fruits, for we were still judged worthy of Paradise…To you, to the wild animals and the birds, says the Scripture, fruits, vegetation and herbs (are given) … We see, however, many wild animals which do not eat fruits. what fruit does the panther accept to nourish itself? What fruit can the lion satisfy himself with? Nevertheless, these beings, submitting to the law of natures, were nourished by fruits…after the Flood, knowing that men were wasteful, allowed them the use of all foods; “eat all that in the same was as edible plants”. By this allowance, the other animals also received the liberty to eat them…Since then (post-flood) the lion is a carnivore, since then also vultures watch for carrion. For the vultures were not yet looking over the earth at the very moment (creation week) when the animals were born; in fact, nothing of what had received designation or existence had yet died so that the vultures might eat them. Nature had not yet divided, for it was all in its freshness…the beasts, for their part, did not yet tear their prey,for they were not carnivores … But all followed the way of the swans, and all grazed on the grass of the meadow.” You can see from Basil’s writings that he was in agreement with the scriptures when he taught that there was no animal death prior to the fall. No carnivory behavior. No scavenging because there were no dead animals…no corruption. Sidebar: to learn how I was able to get the information from “On the Origin of Humanity” and the screenshots of the source material, see *** below
In his Homily on Fasting, Basil argued that the original diet of both humans and animals was limited ONLY to fruits, herbs, and plants.
Gregory of Nyssa (c. 335-395 AD): In “On the Making of Man” Gregory says that the fall into sin introduced corruption and death not only humanity but also the created order, which includes animals
I could find NO church fathers who explicitly taught that there was human or animal death prior to the fall
When Did Christians Begin To Believe That Animals Died Before Sin?
The first Christian of note to write and teach definitively that animals died before the fall was George Frederick Wright in his 1906 book “Scientific Confirmations of Old Testament History”. In that book he tried to bring the Bible into concordance with the modern academic paradigm. Sadly, in order to do so, he had to deny the Bible’s account of a global flood, which is the biblical explanation for the geologic layers. But at the time when Wright was writing, historic Christianity was under deep attack from the modern academic paradigm, which has come to be known as “the science”, even though it has little to do with actual science. Today, the view that Wright espoused has metastasized throughout Christendom. What was considered historic Christianity for 1900 years has been dismissed by modern mainstream thought as a cult.
So instead of Basil being an old earther, the evidence confirms that Saint Basil the Great was an outspoken advocate of young earth creation as were all of the church fathers because it’s just what the Bible says. Old earth creationism is a trendy fad that is brand new to Christendom first appearing about 1800 years after the Creator Himself walked the Earth. No church father held to a billions of years old earth. Until Darwin in 1859, nearly every Christian held to what we would today call young earth creation.
You might wonder: “What about the Roman Catholics? Today they believe evolution. What has been their traditional view of Genesis 1-11?” I’m glad you asked. The Roman Catholic Church for 1800 years accepted the strict young earth creation view, but today that branch of Christianity has almost completely capitulated to Darwin. Sadly, the RCC has capitulated to many other false teachings and worldliness as well.
You might also wonder: “What about the Eastern Orthodox Church? What has been their traditional view of Genesis 1-11?” In general, the EOC was pliable on the length of days, but they held strongly to the Genesis chronogenealogies on the age of the Earth. They have also accepted God’s revelation of a historical global flood in judgment for sin, and that death, disease, suffering, and corruption were a result of the sin of mankind. Sin affected all of creation as the Bible clearly teaches. Here is a book from one of their teachers
So all three principle branches of Christendom held to the truth of God’s word as authoritative until the modern paradigm stole the “throne” of magisterium from the Bible.
The Gospel of Jesus is: The Creator made a very good creation that was free of the curses for sin. But because of the universal effects of the curse of sin over all of creation, Jesus took on the human form as a descendant of Adam, was born of a virgin in accordance with scripture, and lived a perfect life by keeping the whole law. After He was crucified for the sins of those, who would repent, He defeated death by rising again and is seated at the right hand of the Father. Those, who repent and put their faith in Him will have abundant life
***
In my research for this blog post, I searched using the usual tools available to me on if Basil taught that animals died before the fall: Grok, Google, Brave search…Grok answered my question with the quotes that I used above, but the attribution was to the Hexaemeron by Basil. There are several links to English translations of the Hexaemeron, but the quotes did not appear in any of the text of the Hexaemeron itself. I kept digging and digging for any writings that show that Basil taught that animals died before the fall, because I had been ASSURED by The_Blind_Guide that Basil taught death before sin. A link from oldbelieving.wordpress.com attributed the quote to Basil’s work “On the Origin of Humanity”. There is NOT an English translation of Basil’s “On the Origin of Humanity” readily available on the internet…as far as I can find. My next step lead me to archive.org…the Internet Archive. I created a free account and began to search for the writings of Basil. There were all kinds of writings, duplicates, and writings ABOUT Basil. Filtering the Media search to “Text” and Author search results to “Basil, Saint, Bishop of Caesarea” there were 36 results. Still no “On the Origin of Humanity”…except there was something called “Sur l’originè de l’homme”. Looks kinda Frenchy for the origin of hominids (humans). I checked it out and found that it was the French translation of the original Greek in which Basil wrote his works. I speak neither French nor Greek. It’s all Greek to me. But being the intrepid ApoloJedi that I am, I started working my way through the text with Google Translate. Homily 2 chapter 6 yielded the pot of gold. Basil cannot be considered anything other than a young earth creationist based on his own words as shown above. I did find all of this information from creation.com as well, but I know that scoffers and the Christians, who have been deceived by old earthism, refuse to listen to the scientists from creation organizations. Source materials are harder for them to ignore. Having completed my research, I began to imagine what it must have been like to be an investigator from as late as 1990. To get the information, that today I was able to get from my desk during my lunch break, might have taken months or years of deep investigative work and collaborations with multiple people. Technology has been a wonderful tool for searching and learning
ark:/13960/t0204f225 Property of archive.orgark:/13960/t0204f225 Property of archive.org
Across time and space, authority has shifted from one perceived power to another. Who or what was able to make authoritative statements to which there was no greater appeal? Let’s look at how authority has changed hands over time and see how we as Christians should handle authority.
Might Makes Right
Throughout history we have seen world powers demand compliance because of the might of their armies. From the Assyrians, to the Babylonians, to the Persians, to the Greeks, to the Romans…those with the mightiest armies have said what is right.
In the midst of these world powers, we have records of the Hittites, the Huns, the Mongolians, and the Turks kill people who disagreed with them.
Should a soldier in a Roman army force you to carry their gear 1 mile, there was no recourse or appeal. If the Roman centurion came into your village and told you to join the legion as a soldier, you were conscripted. Whatever they said had authority because of the might of their arms
Authoritative statements were proclaimed by the kings and commanders of those armies. There was no appeal higher than those with the most might
Roman Catholic Church Magisterium
Power shifted from armies to theologians as the Roman Empire was both consumed by its own depravity and picked apart by barbarians. Authoritative power began to be condensed within the walls of the Vatican and its sister in Byzantium. Proclamations from the bishops of those ecumenical ivory towers carried the greatest weight. Peasants and princes alike fell into step when pushed by the papacies. Christianity was established as the dominant ideology throughout western civilization. Amidst this shift from military power to the church, the seeds of the scientific revolution were planted. As that unchecked authoritative power grew, so did the corruption among the bishops. Indulgences, worldliness, and idolatry weakened the power in Rome…while the militant barbarism of the Muslims crushed the power of Byzantium/Constantinople in the East. Anyone (like Martin Luther, Jan Hus, William Tyndale and others) who questioned the authority of the Roman Catholics was met with swift and brutal retribution. Luther escaped death, but the others were killed for questioning the authority of the Papacy. Until the Reformation, there was no appeal for justice or truth higher than the Papacy.
Scientism
As the scientific revolution matured, it began to grow in influence, the authoritative power of the Roman Catholic church waned. What scientists said carried unquestioned authority. Anyone who dissented from what scientists said were summarily and ruthlessly expelled from academia. You hear this authority being expressed even today as “the science says…” and “the science is settled” and “it’s been peer-reviewed”. The priesthood garments of the Roman Catholic’s authority shifted to the white lab coats of the scientists. Anyone wearing a white lab coat was seen as having unquestioned authority in claims about truth. The hierarchy of the Roman Catholic bishops, priests, and deacons were similarly transformed to the peer-review journals and accompanying gatekeepers. Those, who wished to produce “sacred” texts into the peer-review journals must swear “fealty to Saint Charles Darwin”. Anyone, who questions the “most holiest” of ideologies in scientism (natural selection acting on random mutations produced all biodiversity) were viewed as heretics and denied entrance. As with those, who questioned the authority of the Papacy from the previous era, anyone, who makes the slightest inquiry about evolution, is swiftly and prejudiciously expelled from academia by the gatekeepers of scientism.
Statism
Governments in the 20th century began to take power from the scientists in matters of authority. From the monumentally destructive policies of Woodrow Wilson and Franklin Roosevelt, the federal government metastasized far beyond its intended borders. It wasn’t a complete transfer of authoritative power from the scientists to the state, but with the military and financial power of the American government, scientists began subjecting themselves to the funding and judicial authority of the state. Funding subservience is evident in the way that scientists have requested grant money and structured their requests from the public funds. We also see that many scientists have capitulated to the narrative of global warming. Public funding for scientific solutions for energy problems went almost completely to “green energy”, so the authority was logically in the hands of those holding the purse strings (the state) rather than the scientists. Judicial subservience was highlighted most obviously in the Dover trial of 2005. When the evidence for scientific advancement was strongly favoring the intelligent design movement, the scientific gatekeepers appealed to what they viewed was a higher authority: the state. In the trial, it was determined by a rogue judge that intelligent design was not a scientific theory, so he denied educators from questioning the theory of evolution.
Experts and Artificial Intelligence
Statism devolved rather quickly to the belief that “experts” have the greatest authority to which there was no higher appeal. In the 21st century, authoritative power began to be accumulated in the hands of experts. The power of the “experts” reared its ugly head in 2020 when they told the world that a bio-engineered virus was simply a natural pathogen that got into the food supply from a market in China. They told the world that this most deadly of human contagions could be solved by shutting down all businesses, wearing a thin cloth mask, and standing 6 feet apart. None of those things were true yet the “experts” retained their power over the government and the populace. Experts were interviewed by the media for issues like the epidemics, economy, climate, health/medicine, philanthropy, politics, and the environment. Sadly, “expert” isn’t an objective measure by having so many expertise points or expertise units…it’s a completely subjective title – and many so-called experts have shown themselves to be unqualified as paper-tigers. With the advent of artificial intelligence, everyone with a phone can now be an “expert”. Authority in the information space is now manifest in the gargantuan processing power of super computers (and the programmers that have built the response algorithms.) If you’ve spent time making searches and questions of AI apps, you’re sure to recognize the biases that have gone into their “authoritative” responses. As artificial intelligence is still in its infancy, it has yet to be determined how large an impact AI will have on culture, the economy, politics, industry, and humanity itself.
As Christians, what should we view as our ultimate authority?
The Bible
Over and over in the Bible, we read “Thus says the LORD…” and “The LORD said…” and “Jesus said, Truly I say to you…”
The Bible records the very words and expectations of the Creator. What the omniscient omnipotent God has said cannot fail to be correct. All of the Bible has been inspired by the word of the Holy Spirit. Worldly authorities like armies, ecclesiastical fiefdoms, nations, and experts can claim to have the standard of truth, but only God’s eternal Word “will not pass away…remains forever…will stand forever…endures forever…”
Jesus claims to be “the Truth” and that if you hold to the teaching of Jesus as his disciple, “you will know the Truth and the Truth will set you free.” As Christians we should believe what Jesus has said in his eternal word: our ultimate authority. Now before anyone accuses me of being a bibliolater, we worship God alone (not the Bible), and we trust the revelation of God in his written word.
In the early 21st century there are competing authorities vying for the title of magisterial. The aforementioned Roman Catholic Church claims to be the only authoritative entity from which all truth resides. Sadly, they have proven to be a false authority with their false teachings of Mariology and the prevalent breaking of the 2nd commandment. The RCC disqualified itself as the authority for truth by fabricating the sale of indulgences to substitute money/works in place of time in purgatory. Scientism, has corrupted itself with bias and self-indulgence. While the scientific method is good and works because Christianity is true, scientism is a self-defeating ideological assumption. The State continues to demand obeisance in matters of right/wrong even though states are frequently the most corrupt and wicked entities. Experts are biased and can ignore the truth when it suits them. Other competing authorities are “the science“, culture and autonomous reasoning. Each of these claim to be proven truth or the “right side of history” or “just common sense”. But in every case, they fall short of Truth as revealed by God. In some cases, these counterfeit authorities want the facade of the Bible to hide their deficient epistemology, so they try to inject their teachings into the Bible, so that their advocates can say:
In my most recent journey through the Bible, I’ve made a list of phrases that in the past have been used as colloquialisms in American culture. Because of the general biblical illiteracy in 21st century America, I thought it would be a good idea to identify some of these common phrases as having origin in the Bible, since most people would probably not recognize their origin or its basic meaning. Here are the ones I’ve come up with:
Genesis 3:19 “for dust you are and to dust you will return”
Exodus 3:8 “a land flowing with milk and honey”
Exodus 21:24 “eye for eye, tooth for tooth”
Deuteronomy 32:10 “the apple of his eye”
Job 19:20 “I have escaped by the skin of my teeth”
Proverbs 13:20 “He who walks with the wise grows wiser, but a companion of fools suffers harm”
Proverbs 16:18 “Pride goes before destruction”
Proverbs 17:22 “A cheerful heart is good medicine”
Although not a direct quote, we see the source for the colloquialism “Laughter is the best medicine” as coming from Solomon’s wisdom
Proverbs 17:28 “Even a fool who keeps silent is considered wise; when he closes his lips he is deemed intelligent”
Abraham Lincoln is believed to have said “It is better to be silent and be thought dumb, than to speak and remove all doubt.” Whether he said it or not, the quote clearly has its origin in the Proverbs
Proverbs 27:17 “As iron sharpens iron”
Proverbs :29:24 “The partner of a thief hates his own life”
You can see the colloquialism: “there’s no honor among thieves” as having its genesis in Proverbs 29
Isaiah 22:13 “Let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we die”
Isaiah 40:31 “They will mount up with wings as eagles”
Ecclesiastes 1:9 “there is nothing new under the sun”
Ecclesiastes 1:17 “chasing after the wind”
Ecclesiastes 3:1 “For everything there is a season”
Ecclesiastes 3:2 “A time to be born and a time to die”
Ecclesiastes 3:20 “All are from dust and to dust all return”
Similar to the Genesis 3 phrase, Americans, who have watched movies that have funerals or have attended a funeral will be familiar with the phrase the God created Adam from dust, and while our souls are immortal, our bodies return to the dust in death
Ecclesiastes 4:12 “a cord of 3 strands is not quickly broken”
Ecclesiastes 5:15 “naked I came from my mother’s womb, and naked I will return”
Jeremiah 13:23 “Can a leopard change his spots?”
Daniel 3:27 “Not a single hair on your head is harmed”
Daniel 5 “The writing is on the wall”
This exact phrase does not appear in Daniel, but the promise of impending doom is clearly communicated from God’s hand to Belshazzar for his rebellion and wickedness. The colloquialism is clearly understood to be an inevitable calamity
Hosea 8:7 “reap the whirlwind”
Matthew 3:12 “separate wheat from chaff”
Matthew 5:39 “turn the other cheek”
Matthew 5:43 ” Love your neighbor”
Matthew 5:44 “Love your enemies”
Matthew 6:24 “You cannot serve 2 masters”
Matthew 7:3-5 “Why do you see the speck that is in your brother’s eye, but do not notice the log that is in your own eye? Or how can you say to your brother, ‘Let me take the speck out of your eye,’ when there is the log in your own eye? You hypocrite, first take the log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your brother’s eye.”
Matthew 7:10 “Do to others as you’d have them do to you”
Matthew 15:14 “blind leading the blind”
Matthew 25:32 “separate sheep from the goats”
Matthew 27:24 “he took water and washed his hands before the crowd saying ‘I am innocent of this man’s blood'”
Again we don’t see the exact phrase, but we hear people say “I wash my hands of this” as if to declare themselves innocent/unaffiliated of/with a failing or guilty entity
Mark 8:36 “What good is it for a man to gain the whole world, yet forfeit his soul”
Mark 12:17 “Render unto Caesar that which is Caesar’s”
Luke 14:27 “anyone who does not take up his cross and follow me is not worthy to be my disciple.” The colloquialism is usually phrased “It’s my cross to bear” or something similar
Luke 16:10 “Whoever can be trusted with very little can be trusted with much. Whoever is dishonest with very little will also be dishonest with much”
Acts 20:35 “More blessed to give than to receive”
1 Corinthians 15:32 “Let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we die”
1 Corinthians 15:33 “Bad company ruins good morals”
I’m sure there are many that I missed. Feel free to add them in the comments. The idea behind this post is the importance of an understanding of the Bible. At one time, the American populace had a much greater knowledge of God’s eternal word. So colloquialisms that appeared in the lexicon were well understood because of how familiar Americans were with the scripture.
Fathers, read the Bible. Fathers, read the Bible with your family. Make sure that your family has a deep and abiding knowledge of the Bible
Fitting evolution into Christianity is like forcing a square peg in a round hole
Although much ink and digital pixels have been spilled on a possible answer to this question, what follows will be the definitive answer to the question. No need for anymore searching or endless debate: THIS is it!
Well, perhaps not. Long after I’m gone, I’m sure theistic evolutionists will still be trying to syncretize worldliness into the Bible, but there’s really no need: the Bible is clear – evolution is incompatible with Christianity. Let’s investigate
Definitions
First we need some definitions. What is Christianity? In my personal definition, Christianity is the logical understanding and application of what God has revealed in the Bible. Wikipedia defines Christianity as
This definition will do as there is plenty of overlap between the 2.
Now for the more difficult one. What is evolution? From the various atheists and theistic evolutionists online definition 1 might be something like:
“Evolution means you’re not the same as your parents”
“Evolution is science. No theory has more evidence to support it than evolution”
Who could argue with the idea that biological creatures change? No one. Creationists and evolutionists agree that creatures change. Who could argue with the idea that allele frequencies change within a population over time? No one. Creationists and evolutionists agree that allele frequencies change. Who could argue with the idea that you’re not the same as your parents? No one.
Regarding the claim that “evolution is science“, I heartily disagree. Science is the “system of knowledge covering general truths or the operation of general laws especially as obtained and tested through the scientific method.” Creationists agree with this definition of science…in fact it was young earth creationists like Newton, Boyle, Faraday, Joule, Lister, Pascal and Kepler that helped kick start their respective branches of science. A common pejorative from theistic evolutionists to their creationist brothers is “science-denier” as if to impugn a denial of physics, zoology, mathematics, chemistry, magnetology, geology and the like simply because we reject biological evolution. It’s an ad hominem fallacy aimed at discrediting arguments from Christians, who uphold the Bible as the magisterial authority, so that theistic evolutionists can escape from dealing with the arguments themselves. Now, there are *scientists* who believe the whole theory of evolution (defined below), but the scientific method cannot duplicate a dinosaur becoming a bird via natural selection acting on random mutations or a land vertibrate changing into a whale with numerous successive slight modifications. That is all assumed, and since the scientific method cannot repeat this process, evolution (as shown below in Definition 2) is not science. It is an ideology, and as we all well know, it is a tyrannical ideology that suffers no dissent.
Alleles
Sidebar: What is an allele? Wikipedia defines it as “a variant of the sequence of nucleotides at a particular location on a DNA molecule.” An example of an allele would be eye color or blood type. There is variability in the DNA that can produce different eye colors, but not every variant is expressed in each phenotype. Genetics has shown that changes in allele frequency produce different eye colors in different generations due to the existing variability stored within the alleles. Evolutionists love to say that “evolution is simply the change in allele frequency within a population over time.” And creationists agree with this. So what’s the big deal about alleles? Evolutionists believe that alleles have been constructed by an accumulation of random mutations. It’s very much akin to the belief that the operating system that controls the hardware on a phone was aggregated by random keystrokes. Creationists do not grant this origins story of alleles to the evolutionists. Yes, alleles exist. Yes, alleles contain variability, but this variability has existed from the beginning. It has not been cobbled together randomly. Yes, we see the variability of eye colors, hair colors, and blood types because that information ALREADY EXISTS in the genome. Natural selection is a descriptive process of the selecting of existing information for preservation, but this results in a LOSS of information…not the creation of it. Since there is no evidence for the construction of alleles via natural selection acting on random mutations, we (creationists) do not grant the use of alleles to evolutionists. They cannot account for alleles.
So that my detractors do not think I have misrepresented evolution in my shortened definition, here is Wikipedia’s definition of evolution. They too recognize the key elements of
single common ancestor of all life (hypothetical as evidence for LUCA is missing)
natural selection acting on random mutations is the mechanism
billions of years are necessary
all biological life including mankind are the result of the natural processes that require no intelligent intervention
If we want to determine by Darwin’s own metric of what makes his theory possible (“If it could be demonstrated that any complex organ existed which could not possibly have been formed by numerous successive slight modifications, my theory would absolutely break down”), then all biology must be able to be explained by natural selection acting on random mutations (even though Darwin was unaware of the specifics of mutations, his theory includes the modifications which we now know is mutations)
THIS (definition 2) is what Christians, who accept the Bible, are arguing against when we say that evolution is not compatible with Christianity. Definition 2 focuses on the historical nature of biological life on earth, and has nothing to do with what’s measured/repeatable in the laboratory. Many times, theistic evolutionists join their God-denying colleagues in claiming that evolution is science, but this is the motte-and-bailey fallacy. When Christians rightly voice that evolution is incompatible with Christianity, both theistic evolutionists and their comrades declare with mockery “Evolution is just change! How can you deny change? Are you the same are your parents? You’re driving people away from Christianity if you tell them that they can’t trust science!” Notice below how theistic evolutionist, Bishop, decries the idea that me, a Christian, would question evolution when he defines evolution as science itself…and the atheist ankle-biters snuggle in warmly to those who embrace evolution.
Definition 1 is the motte: an easily defensible position that is uncontroversial. They retreat to the motte and throw rhetorical stones at the Christian “heretics” for denying something obvious. When in reality the Christians, who accept the Bible, are using Definition 2 of evolution, (in this case, the bailey) which is completely at odds with the Bible. Since everyone agrees that change happens, we will no longer consider Definition 1 as part of this article. Henceforth, Definition 2 is the only idea that is considered when referencing evolution.
To elucidate just a bit more about the theory of evolution, we should talk about natural selection, which is a description of the survival of the fittest…or more recently “the differential survival and reproduction of individuals due to differences in phenotype”. Essentially, natural selection is the idea that the those creatures, who are less fit, are removed from the population. Those creatures with the greatest number of offspring are said to have higher fitness. The culling of the less fit is central to the theory. Richard Dawkins employed the phrase “red in tooth and claw” (which arose in Darwin’s day to describe the pitiless indifference of nature) to summarize the cruel behaviors of the doctrine of survival of the fittest. For the fittest to pass on the traits that make them the most fit, the death of their lesser peers must take place, and it takes a great deal of time to get fixation within a species. Death and time are the heroes of evolution
Compatibility
Let’s look at what the Bible says about the past as opposed to what advocates of evolution teach. The chart below shows some of the differences:
1 Cor 15:45 and Gen 3:20 confirm that Adam and Eve were the original human pair from whom all humans descended
Between 250K and 350K years ago a population of between 1000 and 10,000 (depending on which theory you believe) anatomically modern humans were mostly isolated from populations of erectus and habilis…although there was some interbreeding between the non-human homo populations
Acts 17:26 confirms that all humans are descended from one man, Noah
About 600K years ago, Homo Heidelbergensis emerged. From this stock along with some cross-breeding with other pre-human hominins produced a population of homo sapiens
Caveats
As a Christian, who accepts the Bible in its literary context and genre to mean that God created the universe in 6 calendar days about 6000 years ago, I recognize that there are Christian brothers and sisters, who disagree strongly with me. They have worked hard to bring into concordance with the Bible, the teachings of evolutionists. So, my caveat is that while theistic evolutionists laboriously strive to harmonize Christianity with evolution, it does not mean that they are not Christians. One is not saved by the quantity of correct information that one believes. One is saved by grace through faith in Jesus Christ our Redeemer alone! This article is intended to show their inconsistencies and failed attempts to ‘put a square peg in a round hole’.
Objections
Let’s now analyze the differences from the table above and the attempted rescue devices that theistic evolutionists employ.
Difference 1: The order of creation in the Bible is different than the order taught by advocates of evolution. The theistic evolutionist is left with 2 choices:
“The Bible is not a science textbook. It wasn’t intending to tell us a specific order of creation. It’s just a theological treatise telling us that God is the Creator.“
“Since Moses didn’t know about modern science, he could only write from what he knew. And since God’s revelation in the book of nature in evolution is right, we can correct Moses’s ignorance. Moses is just writing poetically as a polemic against pagan creation narratives.“
The 1st attempt at a resolution is both a category error and shows a low view of scripture. I agree that the Bible is NOT a science textbook…it is mostly a history book (although it is so MUCH MORE than a history book), but in questions of history, historical documentation is the better tool for answering than forensics (extrapolation). The assumption exists that science must answer questions about the past, but when we want to know the age of the statue of liberty, Caesar’s crossing of the Rubicon, or the founding of Jerusalem, historical documentation trumps scientific extrapolation every time. The theistic evolutionist might counter with “But those are all examples that exist in human history. What about pre-human history?” And the answer is that there were only 5 calendar days prior to human history according to the Bible, and Jesus confirms that mankind was created at the beginning of creation. Why disagree with Jesus?
The 2nd attempt at a resolution (very much like the 1st attempt) takes a very low view of scripture. As Christians, the Bible is our magisterial authority, but theistic evolutionists would rather take what modern academics are saying and redefine the Bible to bring it into concordance with the modern paradigm. Genesis is written as history. It does not resemble the Hebrew poetry of the Psalms. All of the biblical authors regarded Genesis as history.
Difference 2: The Bible says that the original human pair, Adam and Eve, are the progenitors of the entire human race. Theistic evolutionists (for the most part) do not accept this and are left with 2 choices:
“Adam and Eve are just figurative archetypes. Because the science tells us that the genetics requires a population of about 10,000, there’s no way that an original pair could produce all of the variance we see today.“
Dr. Swamidass “It’s just a genealogical ancestry…not a genetic one. In this scenario, Adam and Eve are created de novo by God (from dust and a rib, as per Genesis) in a distinct act, separate from the evolved population. Their offspring then intermarry with this outside group, and over time, their genealogical lineage spreads universally.“
In the 1st attempt, we see again the idea that the modern academic paradigm is superior to the biblical text itself. It is a low view of scripture. They ignore what God has said in favor of what the loudest of the lab coats have assumed about the origins of humanity. If you’re interested in what Christian geneticists have said about the claims of the evolutionists, see Dr. Robert Carter’s research and Nathaniel Jeanson’s research.
While a clever attempt, Dr. Swamidass does not take into account the theological problem of death of humans prior to sin or the importance of the Kinsman Redeemer being able to atone for the sins of those to whom He is related. If there were pre-Adamite humans, they would not be eligible for redemption. It’s a low view of scripture and bad theology
Difference 3: The Bible says that the heavens, the Earth, the seas and all that is in them was created in 6 days and that mankind was formed at the beginning of creation. The theistic evolutionist, who vehemently disagrees with what the text says, would say
“Science has determined the age of the universe and the Earth to be 13.8 billion and 4.5 billion years old respectively, so the Bible needs to be interpreted in light of what the science says.“
To argue that this view is NOT a low view of scripture is illogical. Because the theistic evolutionist chooses to uphold the modern paradigm as preeminent as the interpretive authority shows clearly that although scientific paradigms have failed over and over, they’ve been deceived into believing that THIS time, the naturalistic view is correct. Scientific paradigms have been shown to be false time and again. From when the scientific consensus believed in geocentrism, to the time when the scientific consensus believed in phlogiston, to when the scientific consensus believed that blood-letting helped sick patients, to the time when the scientific consensus believed in spontaneous generation, to the time when the scientific consensus believed in an impending ice age in the 1970s, and when the scientific consensus believed that everyone should eat more carbohydrates according to the food pyramid, to the time when the scientific consensus believed that a cloth mask would protect everyone from the most deadly virus in human history…all falsified. But maybe the current tyrannical scientific consensus of evolution with work
The Bible could not be MORE clear that the days of Genesis 1 are clear 24hr calendar days. While there is flexibility in the Hebrew word for day (yom), we can look at the context of Gen 1 to find the boundaries of the word. Since the context bounds yom by ordinal sequentials and evening/morning (and all biblical examples where both of those exist require the text to be understood as a calendar day) we know that the days of Genesis 1 are calendar days. We also see from Ex 20:9-11 that God expected his people to work for the same amount of time that He did during his creative works before sabbath. Since God’s people were not expected to work for 6 epochs (as would be necessary for evolution), we have confirmation from the Bible itself that God created in six calendar days. Sometimes, the theistic evolutionists want to say that it’s just a pattern, but for that to be true, they have to interpret the same word from the same author to the same audience in the same context be interpreted completely different. It’s bad hermeneutics.
Even John Walton, who is no friend to young earth creationists, open admits on pg 90-91 of his book that the text of Genesis 1 demands that yom must be interpreted as 24hr days.
Difference 4: While the Bible says that prior to sin animals were to be vegetarian only, advocates of theistic evolution would propose the incompatible idea that evolution would never restricted animals to eating only plants.
“Creatures today consume meat, and the fossils recovered in the geologic layers have sharp teeth. So, according to evolution, animals had no dietary boundaries. The Bible must have been talking about something else. It’s not a command. It’s just saying that plants are important to the life cycle.”
Again, their attempt at a reconciliation between the theory of evolution and the Bible takes a low view of scripture. Evolution is their highest authority, so that Bible must be changed to accommodate this view of continual violence, death, misery, and predation prior to the fall into sin. The full refutation of this idea is shown here, but is essentially: since God commanded man not to consume meat in Gen 1:28-30, God gave the same command to animals. We know it was a command because God gave a clear rescinding of his vegetarian command to Noah in Gen 9:2. The theory of evolution remains incompatible with Christianity
Difference 5: The Bible says that animals are to reproduce after their kind. Typically theistic evolutionists and God-deniers have the same lazy responses (although they are not arguments) “Kind isn’t a scientific word” and “kind is just species“. If they attempt to make an argument to reconcile evolution to the Bible, it is only that the men who wrote the Bible were middle eastern goat-herders or some similar pejorative that dismisses the biblical authors as unlearned.
Again, the theistic evolutionary view takes a low view of scripture. In order to try to reconcile their view with the Bible, they intentionally subject the Bible to the modern paradigm of evolution.
Difference 6: The Bible says that the sin of mankind brought death into creation. The Bible also refers to death as “the last enemy to be destroyed”, so it is not a benign cohabiter with life in a “very good” creation. In the story of evolution, death of the unfit for millions or billions of generations brought about mankind. In their view, death is the hero. Theistic evolutionists have a few options in trying to deal with this obvious difference
“The sin of mankind only brought about the death of humans. The Bible says NOTHING about the death of animals“
“Death is not bad. We have to die to get to heaven“
“Physical death has always been a part of creation. Adam’s sin only brought spiritual death“
In bullet point 1, the evolutionist tries to belittle the bloodshed, misery, and death of animals as simply part of the circle of life. This disparagement of God’s creation isn’t as much a low view of scripture but is a low view of animals, animal suffering, creation, and the catastrophic effects of sin itself. Romans 8:20-22 paints a completely different picture than evolutionists would sketch
The effects of sin changed all of creation from one of freedom, peace, and abundant fruitfulness to subjection to futility, groaning, and corruption. Evolution dismisses the curse and effects of sin as merely spiritual. You can see and even more comprehensive rebuttal of this point here.
In the 2nd bullet point, the evolutionist argues that death is not that bad. But this is the exact opposite of what the Bible says. In 1 Cor 15:26 Paul describes death as the “last enemy to be destroyed.” Death (as a curse for sin) is an enemy. The belief of the evolutionist requires them to have a low view of scripture.
In the 3rd bullet point, the evolutionist argues that sin brought only a spiritual death, but this is naive to the fact that Jesus died the most horrendous PHYSICAL death in crucifixion. Theologically, it was his physical death and resurrection that paid for the sins of humanity. Notice the curses for sin: death, suffering, and thorns from Genesis 3. At the crucifixion, Jesus took upon Himself all of these curses to atone for the sins of his people (Isa 53). The Bible rejects the idea that Adam’s sin brought only physical death only to humans
Difference 7: The Bible says that thorns are a curse of the sin of mankind. But according to the evolutionary story, thorns were produced naturally by plants in the ever-escalating warfare between plant reproduction and herbivores. Since thorns are found in geologic layers, which evolutionists believe were buried prior to mankind, evolutionists have to try to resolve the difference. Creationists, who accept the teachings of the Bible, know that thorns are a curse for sin, and that the thorns buried deep are a result of the judgment of the global flood. How do evolutionists try to resolve the difference?
“Thorns aren’t a curse of sin. It’s just an allegory“
Again, evolutionists take a low view of scripture, because they take naturalistic interpretations from today, ignore the effects of the Genesis 6-9 worldwide flood, and redefine the biblical text.
Difference 8: The Bible clearly teaches that Adam and Eve were created directly from God via the dust and Adam’s side respectively. Evolution teaches that a small population (about 10k) of humans evolved traits to become human. To be fair, there are some theistic evolutionists, who hold to the standard evolutionary model for all biological life except humans and believe that God did specially create humanity in Adam and Eve. While they choose to uphold the Bible in this case, it is now destructive to their theory of evolution as the standard (current) model is taught as if it can account for all human traits in the same way that it can supposedly account for all other biological traits. The group that denies special creation of mankind, who accept the theory of evolution in its entirety, have to resolve this difference somehow
“The Bible isn’t a science textbook. It’s just a theological treatise about God being the Creator. He didn’t say *how* He did his creative works. We’re only supposed to know from the Bible that He started everything. There was no initial human pair Adam or Eve. That’s a myth.“
That is a low view of scripture. They mythologize a historical text simply to accommodate the teachings of the modern paradigm. It ignites serious theological problems with who is eligible for salvation through the blood sacrifice of the Kinsman Redeemer, and it incinerates the authority of scripture that teaches an unbroken royal lineage from Adam to Jesus.
Difference 9: The Bible says that there was a global flood and from Noah (the 1 man) and his family of 8, who got off the ark, God created all the nations of mankind (Genesis 10-11). Theistic evolutionists deny the global flood and much like they say in both Differences 2 and 8, they choose to believe the assumptions of evolution at the expense of the Bible. How do they resolve the difference?
“There is absolutely NO evidence for a global flood. Human lineage cannot be traced back to a single man or woman. You misinterpret the text. You think that your interpretation is the same as the Bible itself.“
Denying the global flood of Noah’s day puts theistic evolutionists as allies with the scoffers, who Peter claims will deny that “the world was deluged and destroyed”. It’s less than a low view of scripture; it’s willful ignorance…another term Peter uses. The resolution of difference 9 is much like all of the other differences: take well-understood words and redefine them in accordance with modern sensibilities rather than how the words are used in the text of scripture itself: a low view of scripture
Conclusion
Some theistic evolutionists even declare that “there are no differences between the Bible and the theory of evolution“, but as you can see: the differences are stark, and the attempts to bring resolution destroys the Bible, the theory of evolution, or language itself. THIS is what makes the theory of evolution and Christianity incompatible. Anyone, who might be unfamiliar with the theory of evolution, wouldn’t read the Bible and think “It’s clear in the Bible that God was completely absent from creation and had no interaction with material. Instead He allowed a process of gradual formation over billions of years of death and suffering to produce both the extinct and extant creatures including humans.”
In the same way, no one reads the writings of the evolutionists and concludes, “Clearly there is intricate and purposeful design from the interference of a supreme intelligence seen in every creature. We can see from nature that the supreme intelligence loves humanity and wants humanity to have dominion over the things that he/she made.”
These two opposing stories don’t fit; they are incompatible. Any attempt to bring them into concordance fundamentally changes either the biblical account or the evolutionary account or both. If a theistic evolutionist wants to bring concordance, they must redefine the biblical text, change the order of creation, and change the evolutionary story to say “God-dun-it-differently-than-He-said-but-just-like-evolution-says”. The most common practice among theistic evolutionists is the marginalize the Genesis account by declaring it to be allegory. In much the same way that Michael Scott from the Office shouts out “I declare BANKRUPTCY!!!”, shouting that “Genesis is ALLEGORY!!!” is nothing more than bluster. In fact, it is detrimental to the authority of scripture.
If one can marginalize parts of the Bible as simply allegorical just because it does not comport with modern sensibilities like evolution, then the Bible loses its authority. By the same interpretive principles that theistic evolutionists change the Bible to accommodate evolution, LGBTQ+ people change the Bible to accommodate THEIR perversions. The progressive woke “Christians” also change the Bible to accommodate their racist teachings. Paul warns Christians over and over not to allow trendy worldly philosophies to influence the gospel of Jesus found in His Eternal Word.
So, is evolution compatible with Christianity? Most definitely not
Post Script
With regards to the claim that “there is absolutely no evidence of a global flood“, there is ubiquitous evidence of a global flood. It is true that for over 100 years almost every university has taught that there was no global flood, so it’s no surprise that almost all academics would believe what they’ve been taught. But when one starts with the truth of scripture, which says that there was a flood that covered “all the high mountains under the entire heavens”, the evidence is impossible to ignore. The evidence is literally everywhere!
In this debate, my Christian friend @CuriousChristianity attempted to argue the positive for this case, and I took the much easier (and biblical) case for the negative
Opening
Americans on average go through 12 years of public school indoctrination in evolution. Those, who go to college and those who get advanced degrees get 4, 6 or 8 more years of deeper indoctrination into the ideas that animals have been dying for millions of years. Even those who don’t get advanced degrees are saturated with movies and tv shows and news bulletins and flyers and conversations among work associates that bloodshed and death are pervasive for the assumed millions of years of evolutionary development. Some would call this science, but it is at the very least a philosophical idea that is deeply ingrained in 21st century thinking. It takes courage and discernment not to drink in and believe the worldly philosophy of evolutionism as a basic assumption. My friend may or may not believe in evolution, but the influence of the philosophies of death for millions of years is both pervasive and assumed in this culture. Many Christians who have been indoctrinated in the philosophy of death for millions of years search for holes in the text of the Bible to see if there is room to insert these outside ideas of death and suffering before the fall into sin. See if in this debate, you can discern how the assumptions of death have influenced the arguments of my friend rather than starting instead with the eternal word of God.
My case will have 3 points: Good, Food and Blood
Good
My friend has the very unenviable task of building the case that the Bible teaches that animals died before the fall of mankind. It is particularly difficult since no where in the Bible will you find death before the fall. He might make some assumptions and you’ll likely hear him try to talk about how good death really is, but please pray for my friend: his case is hopeless
During the creation account in Genesis 1 God declares his creation to be good 7 times and the 7th time, He declared it to be very good. What does the Hebrew word (tove) mean? Those, who hold to the temple inauguration view (like my opponent) will say it means “functional” or “ready”. Does this hold up to a textual analysis from Moses, in the same context to the same audience?
Gen 1:31 “God saw all that He had made, and it was very functional”
Gen 2:17 “But you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of functional and dysfunctional”
Gen 3:22 “Then the LORD God said, “Behold, the man has become like one of us in knowing functionality and dysfunction”
Of course, this does not make any sense, but this is what the guru, John Walton, would have us believe from p50 of his book The Lost World of Genesis, where he says: “the meaning of the repeated formula ‘it was good’, which I propose refers to functioning properly…functional readiness”
This is the trendy tactic for Walton’s followers to get around the serious problem of animal death. If they can redefine good to have nothing to do with sin/morality or the fall, then they can accept the modern paradigm’s view that animal death has been happening for millions of years (or as they might say “for an unknown amount of time). But if good has to do with the absence of evil or the antithesis of evil/harm/destruction, then those who hold to this view have a serious theological problem.
This word good H2896 tove (tob) is used to describe God Himself at least 27 times in the old testament. Are we to believe Walton’s definition that the Almighty is functional? 40 times in the old testament tove is paired with ra (evil) H7451 as its inverse. And we clearly see from Isa 11:6-9 that the destruction caused by the fall includes predatory destruction. The Apostle Pual picks up this seamless theme in scripture that during creation week there was an absence of corruption but because of the curse of sin “For the creation was subjected to futility, not willingly, but because of him who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to corruption and obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God For we know that the whole creation has been groaning together in the pains of childbirth until now.”
If my friend’s case is true, then suffering, cancer, and death are “very good”. But I Cor 15:26 tells us that “the final to be destroyed is death”.
If good is to have any meaning at all, then it cannot include suffering, harm, destruction and death as would be necessary for my friend’s case
Food
Genesis 1:28-29 has 5 commands
Be fruitful
Fill the earth
Subdue it
Have dominion over the animals
You shall have them (green plants) for good
Gen 1:30 relates the 5th command of God to “every beast of the field, every bird of the heavens & everything that creeps on the earth – everything that has the breath of life”
Predation is shown to be forbidden. Humans SHALL eat the green plants for food & those under man’s dominion shall eat green plants. Why would we assume that those under Adam’s jurisdiction be granted a freedom to consume meat that was denied to humanity?
If you doubt that the Genesis 1 command to eat only the green plants is NOT a command, we can look to the recreation language of God after the global flood in Genesis 9
Gen 9:1-3 “And God blessed Noah and his sons and said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth. The fear and dread of you shall be upon every beast of the earth and upon every bird of the heavens, upon everything that creeps on the ground amd all the fish of the seas. Into your hand they are now delivered. Every moving thing that lives shall be food for you. And as I gave you the green plants, I give you everything. But you shall not eat flesh with its life, that is, its blood”
Again we see the commands of God to be fruitful, fill the earth, subdue it and have dominion over animals. But the 5th command is freed of the restriction of animal consumption. This pattern at the creation and recreation is apparent and even if not in words, is logically denied by my friend. There’s every reason to believe Gen 1:29 is also a command for humans because this command is reversed in Genesis 9. And by deduction, we see that the animals are subject to God’s pre-fall dietary commands as well – to be vegetarian
Blood
The 1st recorded bloodshed in the Bible is the penal substitutionary atoning sacrifice of an animal in the garden by God Himself to cover the sins of Adam and Eve. The skin of this animal was used to cover their nakedness. This picture of the eventual bloodshed of Jesus was represented in the garden by the 1st recorded death of an animal. Without the shedding of blood there can be no forgiveness
Before the fall, God’s creation was very good – completely absent of evil/harm/destruction/predation and God promises that his creation will be restored to a state that is absent of evil/harm/destruction/predation through the redemptive work of Jesus. There was no room for animal death suffering or predation in God’s very good creation prior to the fall. As the writer of Hebrews tells us “Without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness”. Has there been millions of years of needless suffering, bloodshed, and death in a world that God called very good as Walton tells us? Or as Romans 8 tells us, did the whole of creation become subjected to its bondage to corruption and groaning because of the sin of mankind?
It would be unexpected (according to my friend’s view) for something as meaningless as the bloodshed and death of animals to represent the atoning bloodshed of the Savior. It’s discordant with all of scripture to assume that there was some unknown epoch of meaningless bloodshed/death of animals that suddenly became the picture of Jesus’s redemptive sacrifice. But it is perfectly aligned with the teaching of the Bible that no bloodshed occurred until mankind sinned. The Spirit revealed to the writer of Hebrews how animal death isn’t meaningless as would be the logical result of my friend’s view.
Hebrews 9:13-22 “For if the blood of goats and bulls, and the sprinkling of defiled persons with the ashes of a heifer, sanctify for the purification of the flesh, how much more will the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered himself without blemish to God, purify our conscience from dead works to serve the living God. Therefore he is the mediator of a new covenant, so that those who are called may receive the promised eternal inheritance, since a death has occurred that redeems them from the transgressions committed under the first covenant. For where a will is involved, the death of the one who made it must be established. For a will takes effect only at death, since it is not in force as long as the one who made it is alive. Therefore not even the first covenant was inaugurated without blood. For when every commandment of the law had been declared by Moses to all the people, he took the blood of calves and goats, with water and scarlet wool and hyssop, and sprinkled both the book itself and all the people, saying, “This is the blood of the covenant that God commanded for you.” And in the same way he sprinkled with the blood both the tent and all the vessels used in worship. Indeed, under the law almost everything is purified with blood, and without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness of sins.”
All of the Bible is about Jesus as seen in Luke 24:44-45. The picture of the bloodshed of Jesus was represented in the bloodshed of animals as recorded for the 1st time after Adam/Eve had sinned. There is a gaping theological hole in the argument that rather than there being representative significance to the bloodshed of animals, the bloodshed and death of animals is meaningless because it happened for millions of years prior to the curse of sin. It is an unwitting diminution of the blood sacrifice of Jesus
Closing
As you can see from the video, the Bible does NOT teach that animals died before the fall. You have to appreciate the effort by my friend, but he had an impossible task. The assumptions and speculations he has made are just not found in the text itself.
There is great symmetry between the old and new creation. The Bible has a clear chiastic structure which we can see when looked at as a whole. God’s original good creation was cursed by bondage to corruption and death because of man’s sin. But because of what Jesus has done as the prophets & Revelation reveal, God will restore creation to a state that will be absent of evil and harm. This redemptive plan brings glory to Jesus. The resurrection of Jesus has power to redeem all of creation from its bondage to suffering, corruption and to defeat the last enemy: death.
Be brave and discerning dear Christians. Though the dominant paradigm is saturated with worldly philosophies like evolution and deep time, we need not be captive to this kind of thinking. We have the mind of Christ, and out thinking should be shaped according to Christ’s revelation and for His glory
The Bible tells us that humans are made in the image of God. As image bearers, humans were empowered to uphold God’s dominion over all of his lovely creation. Genesis tells us that the curses for sin were thorns, suffering, and death. Jesus took each of these curses upon Himself at the cross. Denying that the curses for sin had no effect on the creation over which mankind had dominion, limits both the universally destructive power of sin AND the redemptive work of Jesus, whose power is even greater than that of sin. His death and resurrection heals not just the hearts of the repentant, but restores the relationships of the wolf and the lamb, the leopard with the goat, the calf and the lion. There will no longer be harm and destruction that has pervaded this sin-cursed creation.
Post Debate Discussion
During the debate, Adam said, “We should let God define good”. And I heartily agree. When we let scripture speak for itself, goodness is clearly an absence of evil/harm/death. God uses the Hebrew word for good (tob, H2896) to describe Himself at least 27 times in the old testament. And at least 45 times in the old testament God contrasts good (tob) with evil (ra, H7451). The Hebrew word ra means evil, harm or destruction. The definition of good is the absence of evil, harm, & destruction. So, Adam’s entire case is discordant with what the Bible teaches. So, yes – Let God define what is good
While the argument about the tree of life is a good one, it is easily shown to be insufficient to overcome the teaching from scripture that everything in creation was very good before the fall. And since the Bible (Rev 22:2) tells us that the tree of life is for the *healing* of the nations. This healing is easily inferred to be from the mortal wound of sin. Without sin, there would be no need for healing.
What about plants or bacteria or spiders (as Adam brought up several times in the debate? Plants, while categorized as alive today, are really just a self-replicating food source. As for the others, see the article here.
If you are unfamiliar with the misery, suffering, bloodshed, and harm that animals deal with, follow these accounts on X. These are the behaviors that old earthers think are part of a “very good” creation for millions of years prior to the sin of mankind
@TheBrutalNature
@BrutaINature1
@TheeDarkCircle
Some more thoughts about how God views blood as important, check out these passages:
So animal blood, while much less valuable than the blood of Christ, is shown to be valuable for covering sins. The shedding of animal blood is the picture of Christ’s blood, so it is not insignificant as would be necessary in the views of old earthism. Predation and death of animals would not be expected from a biblical view. It is only the worldly philosophies that bring in the ideas of perpetual predation and animal death prior to the sin of mankind
Don’t overlook the effects of the cultural saturation of evolution in the arguments of my friend. The myth millions of years of death and suffering are so engrained in the cultural milieu, that Adam just assumes death has been a part of history for that long. It’s definitely not a biblical teaching. It comes from outside the Bible. So, we can say with certainty that the Bible teaches that animals did NOT die before the fall
ApoloJedi 