This post is pre-programmed for Inventio Crucis, May 3rd. I have given the link, and copied all of the ten questions by a "priest-in-charge at St Annes Woodplumpton" (who as Anglican isn't a priest), and am starting the answering today, the feast of St. Paul of the Cross (unlike Michael Roberts so far at least, he was a real priest in earthly life and is so for eternity). Each question is given the proper html only when answered - then it has a header in bold and is given as a blockquote./HGL
10 questions to ask a young earth creationist
13 November 2018, by Michael Roberts
https://www.premierunbelievable.com/topics/10-questions-to-ask-a-young-earth-creationist/12015.article
1. Can we start by agreeing that the Gospel is more about the Rock of Ages than the ages of rocks?
The centre of the Gospel is the crucified and risen Christ, and everything in the Old Testament leads up to that. Jesus, and not the age of my rock collection, is the heart of the Christian faith.
It's a Christological question whether He always spoke truly, or sometimes only subjectively truthfully, but deceived by a cultural wrong understanding.
The latter does not stand, if He came to witness to Truth.
2. Does the age of the earth – or its shape – matter to a Christian?
For a Christian, the earth could be 10,000, 10,000,000 or 10,000,000,000 years old and it does not matter which, as the Bible is not clear on the matter. But to go against the proven results of science is simply folly. For 250 years, geologists have only found evidence for an ancient earth and none for a young earth.
Three things to note.
- Even 10 000 years old is iffy, how one avoids at once pre-Adamites (human beings dying before Adam's sin), large gaps in genealogies of Genesis 5 and 11 (when we find gaps in other genealogies, they are shorter than the genealogy as given, not longer) and non-historicity of Genesis 3 - so, yes, it does matter, even apart from the Christological point already made;
- The Bible is clear on the matter that the earth is NOT 100 000 years old, and so were the Church Fathers - Khemetism and Zuism or Caldanism actually have longer religious chronologies, that were directly opposed as fabulous by Church Fathers noting them;
- It is far from foolish to oppose what's wrongly presented as the "proven results of science" and the geologists finding evidence only for an ancient and none for a young earth are a selection that doesn't include Tas Walker.
3. Does the Bible teach that the earth is spherical?
Young earth creationists will often argue there is science in the Bible because the biblical writers were inspired to teach that, contrary to the wisdom of their time, the earth was spherical.
Some claim Isaiah 40:22 points to the earth being spherical. But the translations rightly say a “circle” not a sphere. Neither is it possible to read a spherical earth into Genesis 1:6-8. This is because the Bible is not interested in science. Galileo said “The Bible tells us how to go to heaven and not how the heavens go.”
Here there are even five things to answer:
- to the first audience, the Bible was neutral, precisely as the first audience of the NT didn't know its praise of Thessalonica and Beroea added up to a Bible with 72 or 73 books overall and 45 or 46 books in the OT - the distance is, as we know from modern measurements, 45 miles or 73 km - likewise, the first audience did not know that the four corners go better with maps on a globe than with the best known flat earth map, but we know it now
- Isaiah 40:22 uses, in the LXX, a word meaning circuit or circumference - compatible with a round earth as well as with a flat earth - however, it is less easy to combine circuit and four corners on a flat earth than on a globe, where the continents have four main corners as they approach the sea
- St. Augustine had no problem combining Genesis 1:6 - 8 with a round earth - it is very different to see what the text says from cross checking one term in the text with other cultures and concluding - perhaps too soon - that the other cultures in the Ancient Near East had a flat earth view, and than to conclude from that that the term chosen implies a Flat Earth view in Genesis 1 - too
- there is therefore neither in Isaiah 40:22, nor in Genesis 1, nor in Apocalypse 7:1 any scientific clear counterfactual statement that proves "the Bible is not interested in science"
- Galileo is a very bad rolemodel for Christian thinking. He's a heliocentric too.
4. How could people in 1000 BC grasp the idea of geological time?
Geologists gradually began to see that the earth was older than Ussher’s age of 4004BC after 1680. Looking at the rocks in Nant Peris in Snowdonia the Rev John Ray, a great botanist, began to wonder if the earth was older than Ussher had suggested. He was tentative and rather sceptical, but was asking the right questions. By 1800, most thought the age of the earth was in millions and that included most Christians.
In the 20th Century, radiometric age dating showed the earth is 4.6 billion years old. That is based on the physics of radioactivity and has nothing to do with evolution. If the dates are wrong then so is all physics.
Four things. And a fifth. Here:
5. Does the Bible always speak in a direct literal way?
The biblical writers use language in many different ways. There’s narrative, poetry, simile, metaphor and more. At times narrative, even when historical, may contain poetry. Thus Genesis 1 appears to be narrative at first sight but then each day is written in a poetic-like form; “Then God said, ‘Let there be…” followed by “And God saw that …. Was good” with a refrain “And there was evening and morning…” Just because poetry is used does not mean it is “untrue”. Psalm 23 is pure poetry using great imagery to bring out the love of God.
A historic narrative can contain inserted pieces of poetry. Adam makes a poem about Eve, Lamech makes a poem about revenge. Deborah and Barak sing poetry about Jael killing Sisera (part of the reason why Luke 1:28 and Luke 1:42 are proof texts for the Immaculate conception - "blessed among women" is a military award for killing (or crushing the head of) an important enemy of Israel). But such pieces of poetry are usually identifiable.
Seth also lived a hundred and five years, and begot Enos.
This does NOT seem to be (105 or 205 years, depending on text version, Enos or Enosh also) poetry. It's Genesis 5:6.
The genealogies of Genesis 5 and 11 put, depending on text versions, Abraham going to Egypt or Abraham born 1599 to 3434 (may be slightly incorrect) years after Adam was made. If anyone says "the genealogy in Matthew 1 is incomplete," it leaves out about 5 % - not 95 %. If we might extend it to just below 4000, we can't extend it to 5000 years, let alone 40 000 years.
If we limit ourselves to figurative or other not immediately intuitive usages within Genesis 1, combining millions of years before the first man with men only existing for c. 5000 - 6000 years prior to Christ is theologically a not too bad option, accepted as not heretical by the Catholic Church, defended, along Young Earth Creationism from 1830's to 1890's both in Gap Theory version and Day Age theory version. B U T, it is, at least since carbon dating, incompatible with the scientific evidence.
And apart from clear Sapiens type skeleta dated beyond 20 000 BP, we now have clear evidence Neanderthals too were men, like clear traces of human behaviour, things needing planning that only a rational mind created in God's image (and sometimes deviating from God's likeness) could do, plus the genetic fact that we have partly Neanderthal ancestry. This means all Neanderthals, none of whom have actual body parts dated to more recently than 40 000 BP, descend from Adam. If the atmosphere they breathed was still relatively young (1655 to 2262 years old, perhaps just 1306 years old when the Flood struck), this could be because the carbon 14 level had not yet reached anywhere near 100 pmC in the atmosphere.
The Flood would certainly leave lost of the things used to date "millions of years" and we can't put Noah on a time machine to BC times.
6. Why do you assume that animal death only began to happen after Adam ate the fruit?
The theory goes that because no animals died before the fall, therefore the earth must be young. But Genesis 3 actually says nothing about animals and whether they only died after the fall. This has been read into Genesis. It comes from John Milton’s epic poem Paradise Lost and should not be part of Christian belief.
While I favour the view that animals with "the breath of life" didn't die before Adam sinned, as a patristically warranted but not compulsory reading of Romans 5, defended by early Church Fathers, but not all Church Fathers, we can definitely conclude that Adam didn't have parents that died before he sinned - or parents at all. If he had parents that could speak, they were created in God's image, and Adam isn't the first man. If they couldn't speak, this would have made Adam a feral child, which is a terrible condition, and which God could not have imposed on His image and likeness before He sinned.
7. Is young earth creationism the traditional Christian view?
The early Christians, right up to 1800, were not clear on the age of the earth as that depended on how literal they thought Genesis was and they had no geological evidence to guide them. Later, as geology began to show an old earth, most Christians accepted that as it did not affect Christian teaching. From 1850 onwards few Christians were young earth and it only came back in for some in the 1960s, with the coming of young earth creationism in Morris and Whitcomb’s The Genesis Flood.
Wrong. I have already mentioned that Catholics from 1830's to 1890's were divided into YEC, Gap Theory, Day-Age Theory, but the early Christians were only YEC. They may have taken different approaches to the literality of six days, but none took a non-literal approach to Genesis 5 and 11. The only lack of clarity was about what text version to best use, and some exegetical choices too.
8. Were early geologists opposed to Christianity and did they use their geology to undermine belief?
I once did a field trip with an atheist geologist and as we chatted he said that belief in an ancient earth leads to atheism. We argued and got nowhere! Yet when you read a history of geology you soon find many geologists were Christians, from Steno in 1680 up until today.
Steno was a Young Earth Creationist and a Flood Geologist.
Geology used to undermine Biblical chronology comes from clear un-Christians like James Hutton or semi-pseudo-Christians (liberal theologians) like Charles Lyell.
9. Did Christians oppose old earth geology in the past?
From my superficial reading of science books and on religion and science I thought Christians opposed geology. But I changed my mind as I did a historical study. Over several decades I have researched this question and read old theology books, journals, books by the hundred. I had to change my mind. I found that in the 17th Century Christians believed in a youngish earth as there was little geology to guide them. As geology was studied more in the 18th century more and more educated Christians realised the earth was ancient. Most Christians, often after study, concluded the earth was ancient. Very few Christians opposed geology for the last few centuries.
How much does your reading include French, German, Italian Catholic priests? Not very much, it seems. In the 1860's Paris and Louvain are still holding out against Old Earth Geology. In the 1890's, this region is indeed "Old Earth" territary, but Germany, Italy and Austria aren't.
Ottaviani at the wake of Vatican II (whether you accept the council as legitimate or not) was preparing a text to dogmatise God created heaven and earth and everything in them literally as
10. Why do you claim that so many geologists in the last 350 years got their geology wrong?
I don’t know how many geologists have studied rocks and the strata in the last 350 years. Today there are 12,000 fellows of the Geological society of London and so there must be over 100,000 qualified geologists in the world. And all except for 20-30 “young earth” geologists accept the vast age of the earth.
Undoubtedly geologists make mistakes today and did so in the past. I can give a dozen examples from Charles Darwin alone. But his and other geologists’ mistakes are minor. So far no young earther has given an argument against geological time which has any validity.
Simple math. 2018 - 350 = 1668. EVERY Geologist back then we Young Earth Creationist. AND Flood Geologist. Hutton produced his work 1788, 120 years later, and didn't get an immediate yes from all geologists.
Christians - even conservative Catholics - abandoned Flood geology for the whole Earth in response to two arguments:
- the Linnean species known from different localities all around the Earth are too many for the Ark;
- one cannot argue that the waters were adequate to cover all mountains by saying those higher than the waters of the Oceans and the ice would cover rose after the Flood, because the Pyrenees are geologically so much older than for instance the Alps.
Whatever the theological incompleteness of CMI or AiG, they are definitely adequate to answer that, and their answer can be resumed as:
- the kinds are not Linnean species, all present hedgehogs (a subfamily) have evolved from the hedgehog couple on the Ark;
- one can argue that the waters were adequate to cover all mountains by saying those higher than the waters of the Oceans and the ice would cover rose after the Flood, because the Pyrenees don't look less pointed because they are older and more worn than the Alps, but because they rose after the Flood by another process.
There is another aspect to this question.
Steno, Hutton and Lyell, Young Earth and Old Earth alike, were all of them what one may term "hobby scientists" or at least people dedicating a life work or parts of a life work (Steno died as bishop in partibus infidelium, Denmark or North Germany, among Lutherans) to something that there was no available professional formation for.
Once science becomes effectively professionalised or "expertisised" (well after Lyell, who was by training a lawyer and a botanist) most geologists have been old earth. Most, not all. Why? Because those who professionalised geology were themselves studying it in a non-professional way, in a pioneering way, among the Old Earth school, and those who weren't were marginalised by the end of the 19th C. which was by any previous standards a highly Antichristian era.
The "problem" Michael Roberts proposes is presented like parallel to "why do all Mathematicians since Pythagoras say the square of the hypothenuse is the sum of the squares of the sides adjacent to the right angle?" when it's more like a question of successive paradigm, a k a intellectual fashion, like the last centuries have seen professional astronomy monopolised (basically) by heliocentrics, while a much longer time was seeing them defending geocentrism (including, famously, Father Riccioli's Almagestum Novum).
Please Note:
- I had already written a reply to the ten questions and forgotten about it: Ten Answers (a bit more than 4 years ago, seen 298 times separately, plus the times it was seen when on the front page of the blog)
- I have made very sure than Michael Roberts knows of my answers, in advance. As per 2.V.2023, 6 pm, no answer arrived to the mail I sent from.
