Author: henry

Agape press (associated with the American Family Association) has now attacked the , which produce the Clergy Letter signed by more than 10,000 clergy. Starting with their news story Pro-Evolution Clergy Sign Letter Affirming Faith in Darwin’s Theory, in which the headline is inaccurate, and continuing with an opinion piece by Rev. Mark Leech entitled Rebuking the ‘Clergy Letter Project’, in which the author manages to severely misrepresent the issues involved.

Now this attack is not at all surprising. It’s what one would expect the AFA to do. Further, I don’t have a problem with AFA advocating their own position. But these articles are much more an attack on other peoples’ positions, specifically of those Christians who do accept the theory of evolution, and it’s not a very good one.

Let’s look briefly at the two quotes used in the article. First, Theodosius Dobzhansky is quoted talking about the inappropriate standards of evidence which creationists request in their challenges to evolution. The quote is characterized as an admission. But it is important to note that Dobzhansky is not “admitting” anything. He is simply stating the facts of the case. In a theory that involves historical data, the standards of evidence are different, and appropriately so. I have heard creationist speaker’s ask for all steps of evolution between two very distant species, i.e. a fossil for every single physical stage, which would mean many thousands of very specific fossils. This request is ridiculous, and I think those who make the request know that it is. No theory of creation could meet the request either, and no theory with an historical element could manage it.

Dobzhansky is merely stating a fact that should be obvious to anyone with any understanding of the field at all. (As an aside, a theory is never proven; it is always subject to review and could be invalidated by any new discovery. For example, the recent find of a water mammal from the jurassic requires adjustment of portions of the history of life on our planet, but no basic restructuring of the theory of evolution as such. Creationists tend to use such finds as evidence against the theory of evolution, but they are, in fact, some of the best evidence that the scientific method is working in studying the historical aspects of the theory.

Despite this debate over the evidence required for historical reconstruction, there are many aspects of the theory of evolution that are subject to laboratory testing. A theory by nature integrates a variety of data, and not all are necessarily subject to the same type of testing. In general, a theory would not be “proven” by any single experiment. The experimental data would be collected, and individually would either be in accord with the theory’s predictions or not. If they are not in accord with the theory’s predictions, then the theory needs to be updated.

When creationists use this type of argument they merely use the scientific illiteracy of a substantial portion of the public to manipulate them by pretending that routine facts are surprising revelations. This is an excellent reason for improved scientific education in this country. It is also one reason why many creationists attack the public school by attempting to water down teaching of evolutionary theory. If the public understood the nature of a scientific theory and the standards of evidence involved, this type of attack would not work.

(To look at the other quote, from L. Harrison Matthews, see http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/quotes/mine/part4.html.)

But what I find even more objectionable in this article is the attack on the faith and commitment of those Christians who accept evolution. Creech says, “Moreover, to doubt a literal interpretation of the creation account is to undermine everything taught in the Bible.” That is an incredibly stupid statement. There is no doubt introduced by believing a portion of the Bible is one type of literature or another. The question is what type of literature it actually is. In fact, someone who demands that one take a figurative passage literally is simply setting up Bible students to lose their faith when they discover that the literal interpretation makes the passage false. (See my comments in my previous entry, The Bible and Young Earth.)

Further Creech then blames a lack of commitment to God on this failure to read Genesis 1 literally. This is a false accusation, and Creech should be deeply ashamed of this sort of tactic. He can’t argue from the literary nature of the text itself, so he resorts to this sort of ad hominem.

Just for the record, I accept the theory of evolution. At the same time I believe that God is constantly and actively present in the universe. Not only my next breath, but every movement of every subatomic particle occurs because God sustains the universe. If God chooses to use evolution to diversify life here–and the evidence is that he has–that’s up to him. If he chooses to represent creation in the Bible with something other than a literal historical narrative, he can do that as well.

And this doesn’t prevent me from being an active Christian. My faith comes first. That’s why I’m a Bible teacher. That’s why I lead seminars on prayer and encourage people to dedicate more time to their faith and to daily time with God. My understanding of the facts of evolution doesn’t prevent any of this. In fact, my study of nature increases my faith in God and my awe of his creative power.

Old earth creationists differ from young earth creationists primarily on the age of the earth. There is good reason for this. The evidence that the earth is more than 6,000 years old is overwhelming. While there may be debates on speciation and on many details of biological evolution, lines of evidence from many different branches of science converge to demonstrate that the earth is old.

But the change in the age of the earth is not so simple. It has an impact on many other aspects of how the Genesis account is to be read.

First let me distinguish old earth creationism from another view, ruin and restoration, which also accepts the general evidence for the age of the earth. I’ll discuss ruin and restoration in a separate entry, but old earth creationism views the days of creation as long periods of time, culminating in the creation of human beings. Ruin and restoration, on the other hand, still takes Genesis 1-11 literally, but sees this as a recreation. The earth itself is much older, but the earth was restored, and and Adam and Eve were created only 6,000 years ago.

Further, it’s important to understand the difference between the “young” and “old” in terms of the age of the earth. Young earth creationists suggest 6-10 thousand years. Old earth creationists accept the age generally accepted in scientific circles, 4.5 billion years. Taking the most common time frame of 6,000 years, which is about 1/750,000^th the time. Often young earth creationists point to errors in various dating method as evidence that the earth really could be young, but it is important to note that these errors are generally very small compared to the difference between the two time lines.

The key elements of the old earth creationist view are:

1. Each day in Genesis 1 represents an indefinite period of time
2. God was active in creation throughout that time
3. Though there may be considerable variation, and thus evolution, within groups of creatures, major groups are products of creation
4. As a corollary to this, physical death does occur before the fall, i.e. creatures created on the fifth and sixth days would die
5. Humanity is a special creation of God
6. The fall changed humanity’s spiritual nature, but was not responsible for introducing physical death into the environment

In my previous entry, Young Earth and the Bible, I mentioned three points regarding the Bible that are accepted by young earth creationists. If one accepts these three points, one must accept a young earth. Old earth creationists hold a modified view of the first and third of these points. They believe that one must determine whether something in the Bible is to be taken literally starting from a neutral position. Gleason Archer, for example, indicates that it is equally wrong to take something figurative literally as it would be to take something figuratively taht was intended literally. In his words, “We grievously err in our interpretation when we interpret figurative language literally; we likewise err when we interpret literal language figuratively.” (From The Witness of the Bible to its Own Inerrancy, quoted from http://www.biblicalstudies.org.uk/article_witness_archer.html.)

Archer is, of course, no liberal, and in fact is one of the major advocates of inerrancy. The issue here is not the authority or accuracy of the Bible, but rather about what the Bible is actually saying. Thus when young earth creationists criticize old earthers for abandoning the Bible, in fact the problem is that the old earthers have abandoned the young earthers’ view of the Bible.

This difference extends to the third point, in that old earth creationists don’t view the Genesis story as narrative history. They do, however, view it as containing and assuming certain history. They will provide explanations for the time taken when Adam names the creatures, and also look at how the earth existed under the conditions described in each of the creation days. In other words, while it is not a simple narrative, the Genesis narrative does describe natural history in figurative language.

Most importantly, old earth creationists generally accept the second point, that when the Bible speaks about science it does have priority. They would simply maintain that the Bible makes less statements, and less precise statements, about science.

While old earth creationists generally believe that physical death occurred prior to the fall, they do see the fall of humanity (Genesis 3) as an incident in historical time. Humanity chose to disobey and as a result was separated from God, and made subject to mortality.

Finally, old earth creationists generally hold that the flood (Genesis 6-9) was a local event, not a global one. With the geological record explained by an old earth, there would be little room in the evidence for a worldwide flood.

My next entry will be on the ruin and restoration theory.

(For more information at an outline level, see God the Creator, The Two Flood Stories, and Genesis Creation Stories – Form, Structure, and Relationship.)