Essays on Science & Christianity

Battle for a Credible Creation

by Bruce Sidebotham 1

Science cannot prove that chance rather God created the universe and mankind, yet public education favors atheism over creation. This bias sabotages society's moral compass and creates a survival-of-the-fittest kind of violence in public schools. We must fight to restore neutrality to public school curriculum. Unfortunately, in this battle, we are channeling resources and energies into an alternative that is not viable.

Most of the Evangelical Bible believing Christians who I have surveyed here in Colorado Springs "strongly agree" with the statement, "The Bible teaches a literal recent creation and a global cataclysmic flood making all theories about long ages of evolutionary geology Biblically untenable." Materials teaching that dinosaurs were contemporary with humans and that Grand Canyon rocks came from Noah's flood proliferate in home and Christian schools. These materials make two dangerous assertions. First they say that young-earth creationism fits the scientific data better than any competing theory. Second they claim that young-earth creationism is the only Biblical option.

These assertions are killing Evangelical access to public schools. Current scientific research indicates the earth is old. Several different ways to exegete the Scriptures accommodate these observations without compromising Biblical inerrancy and authority. Creation science literature tries to discredit data supporting an old earth and evolutionary theory. Then it promotes itself as the only other option by default. But it never offers a scientifically credible alternative interpretation of the data. Insisting that young-earth creationism is the only correct interpretation of Scripture and the only correct understanding of scientific observations is counter productive. By uncritically promoting this perspective, Evangelical churches are compromising their integrity and sabotaging their ability to compete in the market place of ideas. Many Christian youths may rebel when they learn facts that challenge their indoctrination.

The earth appears to be very old. A metamorphic rock from Canada's Northwest Territories appears to be 3.96 billion years old. Rocks in the bottom of the Grand Canyon appear to be 2 billion years old. Young-earth advocates object to the assumptions used to date these rocks, but that doesn't change the fact that they appear to be old. Geologists accept these dates that result from analyzing a variety of radioactive isotopes because they are reproducible, can be cross checked, are predictable, and conform to field observations.

Field studies of sedimentary rocks do not conform to a flood theory of origin. If rock layers and the fossils in them were formed during cataclysmic flooding, then different lava flows in them should be the same age, fossils in them should be hydrodynamically sorted, and particles in them should evidence rapid deposition. These expectations do not exist. Instead, lava flows separated by sedimentary rocks are always different radiometric ages. Fossil species appear and disappear in a nested and indexed fashion, frequently showing micro evolutionary development in successive layers. They are almost always associated with rocks of the same relative age and environment. Some breccia and conglomerate layers show signs of rapid deposition, but many more layers appear to have settled slowly as shales, precipitated gradually as limestones and salts, or accumulated extremely slowly as chalks. Successive layers of rock are almost always associated with changing ecological environments as opposed to changing degrees of turbulence.

The Colorado River, for example, appears to cut through a record of dozens of alternating terrestrial and aquatic environments. These thousands of feet of rock do not look like they were laid down by a flood. Animal footprints, insect wings, ferns, erosion surfaces, mud cracks, rain drops and 350 vertical feet of sand dunes occur interspersed between marine sediments. We might expect a cataclysm to bury mature forests but not stack them. One cliff along the Bay of Fundy in Canada records more than thirty inundated mature forests and sixty-five separate thin beds of coal. Each forest has vertical trunks with roots in a fossil soil. A slowly sinking river delta accounts best for this rock formation.

Thousands of scientists in over sixty geological surveys in the US and Canada do research, make maps, and write reports. All of these specialists operate on the assumption that the earth is old. Their work helps locate oil and gas, engineer roads and airfields, build flood control systems, and anchor sky scrapers. Assumptions that work bring more blessing than dogmas that don't. A world that looks and acts old may as well be treated that way whether or not it is according to special revelation.

Young-earth advocating organizations do not do their own field work, and they do not advance verifiable alternatives. For example, the theory that water for the flood was stored in a vapor canopy2 is a rational impossibility. Young-earth creationism is not science, because it does not rationally explain the data. Furthermore, it is dishonest because, in its zeal to discredit the supposed only alternative, it frequently misrepresents and distorts reported observations.

Some creation science literature tried to discredit radiometric dating by publishing reports of recent Hawaiian lava flows that tested at millions of years old by potassium-argon dating. But that literature omitted reporting that distorted potassium-argon dates are expected in deep submarine flows where high water pressure keeps naturally occurring argon gas inside the lava as it cools.

Whitcomb and Morris in The Genesis Flood point to a site in Glacier National Park where rocks with older fossils rest above rocks with younger fossils to discredit the geologic timescale. In a footnote on page 187 they selectively quote from an article by C. P. Ross and Ricard Rezak on the Lewis Overthrust to support their claim that there is no physical evidence for tectonic disturbance which would explain the unexpected ordering. The portion they cite says, "Most visitors, especially those who stay on the roads, get the impression that the Belt strata are undisturbed and lie almost as flat today as they did when deposited in the sea which vanished so many million years ago." The unselected portion says, "Actually, they are folded, and in certain places, they are intensely so."3

In It's a Young World After All -- Exciting Evidences for Recent Creation, on page 83, Paul D. Ackerman points to a vertically oriented whale fossil discovered in a diatomite quarry as evidence for rapid deposition of fine deep sea sediments. He fails to report that these quarry rocks are tilted 40 to 50 degrees from horizontal so that the nearly vertical fossil actually lies parallel to the bedding and appears to have been covered slowly.4

Young-earth creationists say geologists use circular reasoning to date rocks by fossils that are sequenced according to evolutionary theory. But fossil sequences and the geologic time scale are independent of evolution. William Smith used fossil sequences to map rocks in southern England in 1815, forty-three years before Darwin proposed his theories of evolution.

The supposed discovery of dinosaur tracks and human footprints side by side in the Paluxy River bed is a hoax. Using the Second Law of Thermodynamics to say evolution violates natural laws lacks integrity. While the Second Law of Thermodynamics is good evidence for a creator and sustainer, this law cannot be used against evolution on earth, because the earth, which is constantly bathed in energy from the sun, is not a closed system. Finally, allegations that no evolutionary development can be seen in the fossil record are patently false. While many gaps exist in what should be found according to evolutionary theory, many fossils like trilobites, foraminifera, and cephalopods exhibit substantial gradual change over time. Some fossils, like the bird-reptile archaeopteryx, are touted as intermediate forms between one class of animals and another.

Our interpretation of the Bible needs to agree with physical reality. After Columbus sailed to America, many Europeans had to abandon a literal understanding of Biblical "ends" and "corners" of the earth. Special revelation does not demand a young earth any more than it demands a flat one. Indications that the earth is old can be harmonized with a high view of the Scriptures in at least four ways.

The day-age theory applies to Genesis the idea that "with the Lord one day is as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day (2 Peter 3:8)." But spreading the literal Genesis account over six age-long days begs the inspiration and rationality of a chronology which has the sun created three "ages" after light, plants created one "age" before the sun, and birds and fish created one "age" before land animals.

The gap theory infers that Genesis 1:1 circumscribes a gap of billions of years. "In the beginning God created5 the heavens and the earth" through the big bang and eons of evolutionary development. Then a third of the angels fell, and the earth became "formless" and "empty." The rest of chapter one and the Exodus 20:11 foundation for the Sabbath ("In six days the Lord made6 the heavens and the earth, the sea and all that is in them") describe a re-creation rather than the original creation out of nothing (Hebrews 11:3). How the fossil record of the previous age got preserved through the first three days of re-creation before the sun, moon, air, land, and sea were formed presents a challenge, but it is not fatal; especially if the gap theory is combined with the literary device theory or revelatory day theory.

The literary device theory maintains that the Genesis sequence is logical rather than chronological. Everything in Genesis chapter one is literal, but the days (complete with evening and morning) are figures of speech used to arrange the material memorably and logically. Genesis one is Hebrew poetry. Verse one contains seven words. Verse two contains fourteen words. Heaven and earth begin formless and empty. Days one through three, which describe forming, parallel days four through six, which describe filling. Days one, two, four, and five each contain one creative act. Days three and six, which respectively end the forming and filling sequences, contain two creative acts.

On day one God forms the light and darkness. On day four he fills them with heavenly bodies. On day two God forms the sea and sky. On day five he fills them with fish and birds. On day three God forms the land and vegetation. On day six he fills the land with animals and makes man. God fills the regions he has formed with plants, fish, birds, and animals which come forth from the land and sea "according to their kinds." In this approach, an old earth with either micro or macro evolution of nonhuman life does not conflict with the Bible. These just describe different aspects of how God created. One is logical. The other is chronological. Both of these presentations of history can be true.

Some young earth creationists contend that fossils could not have been forming on an old earth before Adam's rebellion, because then original sin is not the cause of death in the animal world. But the Bible does not say that animals did not die before Adam sinned. This assumption requires God to create carnivores and saprophytes7 on or after the seventh day. This is especially illogical if species are fixed, and life is not evolving. The account of Adam's expulsion from the Garden of Eden implies that eating from the tree of life was what had kept man immortal. If Adam died in the day that he ate the forbidden fruit, then the most significant consequence of his sin was not his physical death (coming much later) but his spiritual separation from God. The creation is groaning and in bondage to decay (Romans 8:19-25) because man, as creation's steward, is separated from God; not because man's sin brought the curse of physical death upon all animal life.

The revelatory day theory says the literal content of Genesis one is chronological according to how it was revealed to Moses over six days rather than how it was done. Its implications for evolution and an old earth are the same as the literary device theory. The content is also ordered logically rather than chronologically.

Some people may object to the literary device theory and the revelatory day theory, because the forth command to rest on the Sabbath is patterned after God creating for six days and resting on the seventh. Whether God's rest is literal, figurative, or revelatory does not change the gravity of the fourth commandment. The meaning of a creation day in Genesis one and Exodus twenty must be consistent in both passages according to the interpretation given to it. Personally, I am more persuaded that God rested logically and figuratively on the seventh day than actually. Man is then commanded to rest based on a divinely established figurative and revelatory pattern rather than on an only marginally possible historical reality of God literally resting.

Science and the Bible are not mutually exclusive. Science is limited and so is our ability to understand and interpret Scripture. Both need to conform to reality rather than preselected philosophical and theological agendas. Set backs in public education from hostility to creationism as science are self inflicted. If we want to get respect for God and creation back into the public schools, then we must be more intellectually honest about our limitations and open to all the Biblical possibilities.

Response of Scott McClatchey"
Response of Rob Sheldon"

END NOTES

1 Bruce Sidebotham has a bachelor's degree in Geology from Wheaton College, is a certified Civil Engineer in Training in the State of Virginia, has a master's degree in Intercultural Studies from Columbia International University, and is a Doctor of Ministries Candidate at New Geneva Theological Seminary in Colorado Springs.

2 A teaspoon of liquid water weighs the same in vapor form. Before falling to earth, any flood waters would have weighed the same in their vapor form. Anything living below the proposed vapor canopy would have been crushed to death by extreme atmospheric pressure, and it would have been cooked by the temperatures required to keep breathable air at that pressure in gaseous form. This does not refute a miraculous flood, but it does discredit the vapor canopy theory.

3 C.P. Ross and Ricard Rezak, "The Rocks and Fossils of Glacier National Monument," U.S. Geological Survey Professional Paper 294K, 1959, p. 420.

4 Darby South, "Polystrate Whale Fossils," Talk Origins FAQ Archive, Sept. 2, 1995, http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/polystrate/whale.html

5The Hebrew verb translated as "created" in Genesis 1:1 is bara. It is only used of God who can create from nothing. In Genesis chapter one, it is used for the first act of creation (1:1), for the creation of sea life (1:21), and for the creation of man (1:27). In participle form throughout the Bible, it is translated "the Creator."

6The Hebrew verb translated "made" in Exodus 20:11 is asah. It is also used of man who creates by reorganizing preexistent material. Elsewhere in participle form, it is translated maker and producer.

7Saprophytes are life forms (mostly bacteria and fungi) that feed on dead things.


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