Old Earth Creationism : Incompatible With Science

Creation vs. Evolution: Old Earth Creationism : Incompatible With Science · Correspondence of Hans Georg Lundahl: With Christian Publishing House

Christian Publishing House: How Should a Christian Understand the Age of the Earth Controversy?
Edward D. Andrews, 23.VII.2024
https://www.christianpublishers.org/post/how-should-a-christian-understand-the-age-of-the-earth-controversy

The age of the earth controversy is a significant discussion among Christians, particularly between young-earth creationists (YECs) and old-earth creationists (OECs). This debate did not become particularly heated until the latter third of the twentieth century. While theistic evolutionists and those who do not hold to biblical inerrancy have little interest in the issue, the primary dispute lies between YECs and OECs. Both sides agree that Adam’s creation occurred thousands of years ago, not millions, and both reject Darwinian common descent.

If an Old Earth Creationist thinks Adam was created less than a million year ago, he is not respecting the dating methods that give us for the Mojokerto site, with a Homo erectus child(1), the ages, depending on method:

1.81 Ma old (1994, argon-argon, error margin 40 000 years)
1.49 Ma old (2003, fission track dating, using zircons, error margin 130 000 years)

If he thinks Homo erectus was not human, he is not respecting the science that tells us (much more definitely than with above dating methods or others), that Homo erectus was endowed with Broca's area. While this area exists in the brain, soft tissue that has disappeared, it leaves traces on the inside of the skull. Broca's are today only exists in Homo sapiens, but has existed in now extinct populations of Homo erectus, Neanderthals, Heidelbergians, Antecessors, and for all we know, Denisovans (I'm not sure we have a skull of them yet). We must therefore conclude, much more certainly than about argon argon dates or zircon fission tracks, which disagree between them anyway (2), Homo erectus was human.

However, presumably an Old Earth Creationist would agree that Adam was the first man.(3) So, he must either ignore the science of Homo erectus having Broca's area, which means he is not doing science any favour by being OEC, or pretend Broca's area doesn't mean you are human, or redefine "image of God" as something added to biologically human, rather than inherent in it while surpassing mere biology. Being able to say "I ate yoghurt and a kiwi for breakfast yesterday" is proof you are human, it also surpasses mere biology. It's proof that I am created in the image of God. Supposing the Mojokerto child, probably(4) between 4 and 6 when he died, knew yoghurt and knew kiwi, he could have said that too, if on some occasion it had happened.

But "Adam created thousands of years ago" is not quite enough.

If, as William Lane Craig suggested, Adam was created 750 000 years ago "before the divergence between Neanderthal and Homo sapiens"(5) there is no way that:

• God could have been just to mankind in promising the Redeemer to Adam, and then delaying Him so long;
• or that Adam could have got the story faithfully transmitted (6) to Moses, who lived 746 500 years after Adam if that were the case.

And if some suppose instead Genesis 3 was known by prophecy (which wouldn't solve the former problem), that's incompatible with there being such enormous gaps in the Genesis 5 and 11 genealogies, which at face value seem to be chrono-genealogies, and for the chronological information of which no satisfactory explanation has been proposed.

100 years ago, some people were already calling out Old Earth Creationism in both forms, Day-Age and Gap Theory, as incompatible with Geology (as seen and interpreted by Deep Timers), one had better chances of saying "well, that may be a fluke" than now.

By now, it would involve putting Adam too far before Moses in time, and too far before Jesus in time. Let's say Jesus arrived 5199 years after the creation of Adam, how many Adamic lifespans are that? Only five will stick to BC years only.

5199 - 930 = 4269 (I)
4269 - 930 = 3339 (II)
3339 - 930 = 2409 (III)
2409 - 930 = 1479 (IV)
1479 - 930 = 549 (V)

Jesus arrived in the sixth Adamic lifespan, 549 BC to 381 AD, just as Adam himself arrived on the sixth day.

750 000 / 930 = 806 times and some.

William Lane Craig makes Jesus arrive in the 807th Adamic lifespan. Impossible.

The only way in which an Adam literally the first man, literally connected to Moses by a chronology of an Exodus in Anno a Creatione Adae 2513 to 4052 is if it is also Anno Mundi 2513 to 4052. You need to scrap a method that dates the Mojakerto child to older than a million years old, and that means scrapping much of the methodology or rather all of it except geology, behind millions of years. You need to scrap or redefine a method like carbon 14 dating Mungo Lake 1 (7) to 19 000 / 24 000 (depending on tissue) BP, or La Ferrassie to 40 000 BP. As carbon 14 is actually useful in historic archaeology, I prefer redefining it. But if 17 000 BC was really in 2712 BC, that means the carbon level was as low as 17.576 pmC, and if 38 000 BC came before a 37 000 BC that was really 2957 BC (the Flood), then the carbon level in 2957 must have been as low as 1.628 pmC (8) ... I would say such levels are only possible if the atmosphere is younger than 30 000 years, after which time the equilibrial level between present rate of C14 production and the constant decay rate would be reached.

In passing, that it has already been reached is only possible (with 5730 as correct halflife) if the rate of production was radically higher, like up 10 times higher(9) between the Flood and Babel, and after Babel, still higher than now up to ... beyond the fall of Jericho? To the fall of Troy? On the other hand, if you prefer to say "equilibrium is not yet reached" ... that's only possible with a slower halflife.(10)

Hans Georg Lundahl
Paris
Vigil of St. James
24.VII.2024

(1) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mojokerto_child
(2) 1 810 000 - 40 000 = 1 770 000 > 1 490 000 + 130 000 = 1 620 000; the minimal discrepancy is of 1 770 000 - 1 620 000 = 150 000 years. 1 810 000 + 40 000 = 1 850 000, 1 490 000 - 130 000 = 1 360 000, 1 850 000 - 1 360 000 = 490 000 years, that being the maximal discrepancy.
(3) I'm obviously speaking of Christian OEC, for whom the Genesis 2 account of Adam and Eve refers to the exact same concrete beginning of mankind as mentioned in Genesis 1 from verse 26. Perhaps some Jews, certainly Ku Klux Klan, have pretended Adam lived long after that first beginning of mankind. As a Christian, I disagree.
(4) https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/9140541/
(5) I may have mislaid the exact reference while writing this, since I'm not sure that it is in this video or an earlier one I saw that he stated it:

Questions on Visions, Sin, and Young Earth Creationism
Reasonable Faith Video Podcast, 15 May 2024
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5OUFNDGC2Zg

(6) In a manner generally, if not necessarily in all detail, given by the comment of Father Haydock on Genesis 3:

Concerning the transactions of these early times, parents would no doubt be careful to instruct their children, by word of mouth, before any of the Scriptures were written; and Moses might derive much information from the same source, as a very few persons formed the chain of tradition, when they lived so many hundred years. Adam would converse with Mathusalem, who knew Sem, as the latter lived in the days of Abram. Isaac, Joseph, and Amram, the father of Moses, were contemporaries: so that seven persons might keep up the memory of things which had happened 2500 years before. But to entitle these accounts to absolute authority, the inspiration of God intervenes; and thus we are convinced, that no word of sacred writers can be questioned. (Haydock)

https://johnblood.gitlab.io/haydock/id329.html

(7) https://creation.com/the-dating-game

(8) New blog on the kid : Mes plus récentes tables de carbone 14
https://nov9blogg9.blogspot.com/2024/05/mes-plus-recentes-tables-de-carbone-14.html

(9) Limits of how much faster than now is possible without disaster are discussed here:

Creation vs. Evolution: Difference with Carbon 14 from Other Radioactive Methods
https://creavsevolu.blogspot.com/2020/08/difference-with-carbon-14-from-other.html

(10) New blog on the kid: Assume Twice the Halflife ...
https://nov9blogg9.blogspot.com/2022/01/assume-twice-halflife.html