Perspectives : Resolving Genesis - Partus Duo

The class went through three 45 minute lectures today, which one can partition into the following sections :

I. Perspectives on Creation and Evolution (Part Two)

1. The Failures of Gap Theory

2. The Impossibility of Theistic Evolution

3. The Day-Age Theory

4. Other Compromise Theories

II. The Age of the Earth

1. The Evolutionist's Perspective

2. The Creationist's Perspective

3. A Refutation of the Evolutionist Evidence

4. A Presentation of Creation Science's Evidence for a Young Creation

I. Perspectives on Creation and Evolution (Part Two)

This was a continuation of last week's sharing on the gap theory and other Christian attempts to explain the biblical creation account.

1. The Failures of Gap Theory

The speaker's main point was that the Gap Theory is ultimately superfluous as it calls on us to read around the literal meaning of the creation account, introducing many events on a speculative basis when much of the evidence that we see can be explained by creation science and the flood of Noah. Ultimately, the gap theory and its proposition set the precedent for reading around and reinterpreting scripture, which places the interpretation of man above the dictation of God, and this attitude of pushing the literal meaning of the Bible has eroded the authority of God's Word. The speaker still acknowledges the well-intentioned spirit behind the Gap Theory - that it still denies the veracity of evolution and attempts a reading of the creation account that allows each verse to remain intact.

2. The Impossibility of Theistic Evolution

Basically, this doesn't work. Theistic evolution is the position which holds that the evolutionary epic holds true, but God was behind it all and used these natural processes to create the universe as evolutionists explain it. The speaker argues that this is a lazy compromise, that doesn't think about the heretical implications that result. He points out that the order of Genesis and the evolutionary order don't at all match up. One goes: Light, Sky and Seas, Land, Plants, Sun, Moon, Stars, Fish, Birds, Animals, Man, while the other goes: Light, Stars, Sun, Earth, Moon, Seas, Prokaryotes, Eukaryotes, Plants, Fish, Insects, Reptiles, Mammals, Birds, Man. Theistic evolution implies a heap of death before sin, man and woman emerging simultaneously, and fluidity of kind, which contradicts with the Genesis account. He also notes that a theistic evolution dispenses with a literal Adam, which contradicts the words of major authors of the Bible, Moses and Paul, and the words of Jesus Himself.

3. The Day-Age Theory

The speaker notes that while 'yom', the Hebrew word for 'day', does occasionally indicate an indefinite period of time, its grammatical context in Genesis 1, placed next to a numeral, indicates a literal 24 hour day. This is similar to how one might say 'back in the day' in contrast with 'on day one we went hiking'. Furthermore, the creation days are days with evenings and mornings, and it would seem rather strange for plants to go by for a millennia or more without a sun, or that Adam lived out two ages of day 6 and day 7. If God defines a day with the sun here, but we choose not to say it was a literal day, then we also challenge God's definition of things.

4. Other Compromise Theories

The speaker goes through several more bizarre compromises that I've mostly never heard of before. The revelatory day theory (the days are the days when God told Moses what happened), the alternative day theory (the days are 24 hour days, but there were long gaps in between), the progressive creation theory (all the oddities of evolution are explained by miracles and divine intervention). The speaker notes that all these theories, the gap theory included, are trying to wrap the scriptures around the idea that the earth is an old planet, with millions of years of development. He then goes on to challenge the evolutionist doctrine of an old earth in the next section.

II. The Age of the Earth

The speaker mentions that while Christians remain mum about the age of the earth, the outside world, schools and documentaries are all telling children and students that the earth is an aged aged sphere, undermining the credibility of the Bible not only in creation but in everything else.

1. The Evolutionist's Perspective

The earth is about 4-5 billion years old, and this age is necessary to grant the time for evolution to take place. Although, in the speaker's opinion, no matter how old the universe is, evolution wouldn't have gotten started or produced anything noteworthy.

2. The Creationist's Perspective

The earth is between 6,000 to 10,000 years old, dated from biblical genealogies and matched up with archaeological evidence.

3. A Refutation of the Evolutionist Evidence

The speaker argues that the evolutionists have a preconceived notion that the earth is very old because their worldview demands it, and then they assume uniformitarianism and that present day processes can be extrapolated backwards to suggest the age of the earth. He takes radiometric dating and demonstrates how many assumptions really go into such a technique.

a. We know the original composition of the rock.
b. The rate of radioactive decay is constant,
c. The system is closed, so no substances enter or exit.

None of which we can say for certain, and definitely not over the supposed age of the rock in question. The speaker also pulls on studies that show how rocks of known ages were dated to wildly inaccurate times of formation.

Because of the unreliability of radiometric dating, most evolutionists rely on index fossils, which are supposedly from species that lived for a short geological period of time, to tell how old the rocks they are embedded in are. Unfortunately, the biologists in turn take the geologist's description of the age of the rocks to date their fossils, resulting in a circular chain of fossils dating rocks and rocks dating fossils. In addition, the fossils are not arranged by anything more than their supposed evolutionary tree, based on biological complexity. This also implies that evolution is being used to support the dates and ages that are being used to support evolution. Another circulus in probando.

4. A Presentation of Creation Science's Evidence for a Young Creation

The speaker now goes through evidence, much of which I have not heard previously, for how the universe ought to be young. This ranges from the helium levels in earth's atmosphere, the abundance of carbon 14 in certain coal beds and in diamonds, the decay of the earth's rotation, the shrinking of the sun, the concentration of minerals in the oceans, the erosion of geological features, the abundance of hydrogen in the universe, the increasing orbit of the moon, the instability of spiral galaxies and saturn's ring system, and population statistics and records for human activity.