Why a YEC came to be...Fifty questions I pose to thee! (part one)
I have been asked if it is necessary to be a Young Earth Creationist (YEC) in order to be a Christian. No. I was asked if being saved (born-again) required one to be a YEC and again I say, no. I have been asked if you can be a Christian and at the same time believe in an old earth and my answer is that yes, you can. The only part of being a YEC that has to do with being a Christian is the "C" part. There are Christians that believe in evolution. There are Christians that believe in space aliens. I find such beliefs to be unbiblical and illogical but Christianity is not about science. Science can learn a lot from the Bible, but God intended the Bible to first be a message from Him that would help His people understand and know Him. The science aspect is there but it is tertiary to the main point.
I was a dedicated believer in evolution when I became born again. I believed in space aliens and I was convinced that there were other worlds inhabited by sentinent beings. I had even trained to be a paleontologist for a time. I did not grow up in a church environment. My background was in sex, drugs and rock and roll...along with classic literature and all sorts of other stuff. My tastes in music and literature have tended to be eclectic. I doubt anyone else who reads this blog ever had a genuine copy of the Boo-Hoo Bible in their possession. How many of you have read from Siddhartha, the Koran, the Mormon Bible? I have read apocalyptic tomes and learned to chant meditative and repetitive things that I did not understand. So anybody who thinks this blog comes from some anal raised-in-church source has another think coming!
HERE IS THE BIG POINT...DON'T MISS IT! I did not become a YEC because I was a Christian. I became a YEC because I wanted to know the truth. It had never occurred to me to take the Bible seriously or for one minute consider that the earth could possibly be 6,000 years old. A logical read of scripture will tell you that the Bible asserts that about 6,000 years ago God created everything, put man on earth and all of the creatures and all of man's history and triumphs and tragedies have been encompassed within this 6,000 year time frame. I set out to find out if the Bible was true or false or whether I did or did not understand the teachings thereof.
Any honest and inquisitive person would do the same, right? If I was going to accept the Bible as a guidebook for my life I was sure going to figure out if it had any validity. So naturally I first assumed that the days of creation were analogies, poetic license, vague fairy tales told by God to a feeble race of beings unable to accept the real truth. I was sure evolution must be true and yet...and yet I found out that many serious scientists believed in a literal translation of the Bible! Dr. Henry Morris, who was a funny guy as a speaker, by the way, was remarkable effective in pointing out the massive gap between what is found in the rock layers of the earth and what is asserted by the ruling paradigm.
Here are some things I have learned in my journey:
1) Many of the supposed best scientists are out and out liars. There are plenty of NAM (Naturalistic Atheistic Materialists) who will withhold information or change results that are not favorable to the evolutionary paradigm. The University that dated the first Acambaro statues changed their dates when they found out the statues represented dinosaurs. Uh, too late, hot dogs...no take-backs!
2) The reason some will do this is to protect their religion. Yes, NAM is a religion adhered to by men like Richard Dawkins with all of his heart, soul, mind and strength. Jesus Christ could probably appear bodily to a man like Dawkins and not move him. That is a sad thing but frankly Dawkins has the right to choose and he has chosen.
3) Many well-meaning YEC have proposed and promoted ideas that will not withstand scientific scrutiny. The idea of a water canopy above the atmosphere that made the earth a greenhouse until the time of the Flood was very popular in YEC circles for a very brief time and it had my temporary adherence. But once you do the math, such a thing is not possible, for the pressure of the water atop the atmosphere alone would make life unbearable on the surface of the earth, plus the heat factor is greater than expected, plus all sorts of other variables. A water canopy is just not conceivable but it had a few of us going for awhile.
4) Some YEC are also just plain liars. Dr. Dino continued promoting the remains of a basking shark as a dinosaur even after careful study of the remains revealed shark cartilage instead of dinosaur bone. Lots of us were at first sucked in, thinking that a Japanese fishing vessel had dredged up the carcass of a Pleisiosaur. But when the truth was revealed we all said, nope, sorry, better luck next time. Dr. Dino kept his post about the "dinosaur" up on his site. I even emailed to his site suggesting that they take that down! They didn't. I finally gave up on them and labeled them as phonies. I have not even gone to that site for years, so I do not know if they still have that dino-shark posted or not and I do not care. They cannot be trusted.
5) There are NAM sites just as phony or phonier than Dr. Dino. I just finished pointing out why talk origins is a phony site that purposefully posts falsehoods. I directly pointed out to them several errors in more than one place on their site and they have steadfastly refused to remove or change the page. How bad can you get? One of the writers actually emailed me and told me he was building faith by showing how God and science could coexist. He could not grasp the idea that scientists might be held captive by their belief systems and crank out a set of falsehoods and would not be moved no matter what evidence I suggested he investigate. It angered me that a guy like that would actually be working to destroy faith. He can't see it for what it is...
6) You cannot get set in your ways. If you completely close your mind then you can never learn anything new. Some of you readers may think I am close-minded but far from it. I have changed a few concepts just in the four or so years I have done this blog. I once thought the water canopy idea was likely. I once thought the days of creation probably were millions or billions of years. I once thought God may have hit the fast-forward on the speed of light and time at the moment of creation and then put us all on regular speed at the end of those six days. I have considered and held and studied many ideas, throwing out the bad ones, holding on to the good ones. I hope my readers are able to do the same.
Allow me to go on. For those of you who are Christians and Bible students, you will understand that until about six/seven years ago I was a dispensationalist. I am now a preterist. I can go into great detail and may well do so in this blog at another time. For those of you who do not understand those terms, this is a real sea change in my belief system within the big thing we call Christianity. I no longer believe in a Rapture of believers leaving the rest of the world behind. I no longer believe stars are going to fall on the earth (hey, wouldn't just one star burn the earth up, throw off the rotation of the entire solar system, etc?) or that God wants to terrorize the planet for either 3.5 or 7 years and then rebuild the temple (who needs the temple, when we have the Lamb of God?) and bring the Jews back into power (Christians are the modern day version of Jews. The first Christians were all Jews. Jesus was a Jew! Many many Jews are also Christians) etc. etc. I believe the Book of Revelation was a prophetic book written in prophetic language (such language as also found in Ezekial and Isiaiah, for instance) to warn believers of the coming persecutions under Nero and the bloody and wrathful destruction of Jerusalem and the temple. Jesus had said that the temple would be thrown down stone by stone and that the end of (Old Testament style) days was coming with a generation of the sound of His voice. Jerusalem fell less than forty years after the death and resurrection of Christ. Oh man, I am going down a rabbit trail now!
7) If you have read this far, you are ready for the news. In addition to doing a study of the Book of Genesis, I am also reviewing and challenging NAM of the world to look with me at the fifty reasons why evolution will not fly from the Rocky Mountain Creation Fellowship. I will post probably five at a time and make comments and invite responses from the NAM community. A gauntlet is coming and being thrown down, are you up to the challenge?!
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Let us start with an introductory preface to the 50 questions series by posting what the authors began with right here:
FIFTY REASONS WHY
EVOLUTION WILL NOT FLY
CO-AUTHORED BY MIKE TOLER & ERIC SAMUELSON
FOR
ROCKY MOUNTAIN CREATION FELLOWSHIP
REVIEWED BY DR. ED HOLROYD FOR SCIENTIFIC CONTENT
WHAT IS SCIENTIFIC CREATIONISM?
Creation Science is the practice of science with the assumption and acknowledgment that there is a creator God. The current, prevailing assumption in much of the scientific community is Naturalism, the belief that life and the formation of galaxies are the result of random, chaotic events. Both systems agree on the basic facts. The dispute lies in the interpretation of those facts. Since no scientist was present to observe either the creation of any star or any species, and since no one can replicate the conditions when life or planets began, reputable investigators are left to interpret the data.
Creationism is not opposed to legitimate scientific inquiry! In fact, the biblical mandate to "subdue" the earth (Genesis 1:28) requires us to understand the physical processes at work in the universe, which is the general purpose of science. Once we leave the realm of data, however, and enter in a discussion of interpretation, science ends and religion begins.
At the beginning of this new millennium, two opposing belief systems are being offered as valid descriptions of scientific evidence. This article outlines 50 types of evidence contrary to Naturalism, or macro-evolution. Examine the data yourself and arrive at your own conclusion.
WHAT IS EVOLUTION?
The term “evolution” requires immediate clarification before intelligent discussion can occur. The word is often used interchangeably to describe widely different processes, thus leading to confusion. If we were to witness an increase in organic complexity over eons, such as reptiles mutating into birds, we would properly call this “macro-evolution.” To describe small changes that occur in a species over time, such as alterations in color or bone structure, the proper term is “micro-evolution”.
No one, including creation scientists, disputes the occurrence of so-called "micro-evolution", or the variation within a type of organism, caused by natural selection. This genetic function may be responsible for the large number of species found within a type. Almost all evidence for evolution falls into this category. Examples include Darwin’s finches or the British peppered moths. However, "micro-evolution" is a misnomer, as it implies that "a little" evolution is taking place. In actuality, NO evolution is occurring, as no increase in complexity, such as the development of a new organ, is being generated. “Micro-evolution” merely describes how some existing genetic traits are emphasized over others.
Large-scale change of one type of organism into another cannot be produced simply through mutation coupled with natural selection. Given the absence of transitional forms in the fossil record, evolutionists quietly acknowledge this is still a "research issue". Even non-creation scientists, such as Denton, Behe and Spetner have written books providing hard, scientific facts that document why macro-evolution is impossible.
Take another example. The geologic column, that layering of rocks which is seen in canyons and mountain ranges, is cited as physical evidence of evolution. However, these layers are better explained as the result of a devastating global flood. Such a flood occurred approximately 5,000 years ago and is fully described in the Bible. Even evolutionists acknowledge that the fossil record is one of "fully-formed abrupt appearance" and "stasis" (i.e, no change over time). There is precious little in the fossil record that can be used as evidence of a transitional lifeform. When apparent examples of useful mutations are examined thoroughly, it becomes clear that no transitional creatures exist anywhere in the fossil record.
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To all you NAM who are going to participate, now you have a chance to look ahead and begin to formulate your arguments in advance. Best of luck to you!!!
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