Bible – Page 45

The Great Illusion

January 22, 2018 by Dan Olinger 5 Comments

This time of year, it’s not unusual for the death rate to rise. And this time around, a lot of people I know have graduated from this life to the next. It started with a former student and advisee of mine, a recent graduate of BJU, a valued team member of an evangelist, another former student, in a car accident. His sudden departure was a shock to all who knew him, and a sobering reminder that we have only a brief time to know and serve God here.

Then came a wave of older friends, showing the wear of their years of faithful service, moving on at a more “normal” age. Dr. Stewart Custer, the teacher I had for more classes than any other, the gentle intellect whose clear faith and love for his God was impossible for any who knew him not to notice. Then Geneva Anderson, a stubbornly godly woman who battled cancer, it seemed, forever, and who in the end did not succumb so much as overcome. “The Lord be praised!” And then Bud Rimel, who taught my EMT certification class and with whom I had the joy of playing criminal during security training simulations. If it weren’t for Bud I never would have had the opportunity to “steal” that police car. (Wish I’d known how to turn off the light bar at the time.) And then Kay Washer, veteran missionary in Africa, whose example is being followed by her own descendants as well as many others.`

Then Don Horton, the California boy who spent his entire ministry life pastoring just one church in Statesville, North Carolina, who 43 years ago spent a year directing my undergraduate ministry internship, from whom I learned lessons that I have never forgotten. Then Gertrude Chennault, unassuming relative of the great Gen. Claire Chennault, whose life as an administrative assistant at BJU facilitated the accomplishment of great things but kept her out of the spotlight, which was just exactly where she wanted to be.

And Saturday I attended the funeral of Dolores Wood, wife of Bill for 72 years, a war bride, a member of the Greatest Generation, but much more importantly, a woman who met Christ at the age of 36 and spent the next 55 years serving him with the kind of love and joy you come across only once in an age. She loved her husband, and her family, and nearly everyone else; everyone who met her came away thinking she was Mom. For years of Wednesday night prayer meetings I heard her share prayer requests for people she was concerned about and ministering to.

And here’s the thing. Every one of these people—every one of them—has died, but only sort of. Death, for them, is just an illusion. For them, it is not death to die.

Every one of them is a child of God by faith, a fellow-heir with Jesus Christ, a sinner forgiven by grace through faith. And that means that every one of them is separated, but only temporarily, from the physical body but alive and well in the presence of Christ, safe and rested and painless and at peace, exponentially better off than they were even on their best days here, let alone during those last painful days or moments. But at the same time, they’re looking forward with eager anticipation to better days to come (2Cor 5.1-9).

What could be better than being instantaneously free of pain and sorrow and in the presence of a loving God? Well, there’s more coming for them. The day will come when their discarded bodies will be raised, reconstituted and flawless, impervious to pain, sickness, and death, and reunited with their waiting consciousnesses (1Th 4.16; 1Co 15.20-23, 42-43, 51-55). They’ll be complete again, embodied as they were designed to be, and prepared to serve their God flawlessly, expertly, and eternally.

What a day that will be.

Photo by Scott Rodgerson on Unsplash

The Judgment Believers Face

January 18, 2018 by Dan Olinger 3 Comments

The Bible talks a lot about judgment. Jesus anticipates the day when he will sit as judge over the nations (Mat 25.31-46). And readers of the Bible are all struck by the bleakness of John’s description of the Great White Throne judgment in Revelation (Rev 20.11-15). These are harsh and terrifying scenes.

I can remember wondering as a boy if I would come before Christ, confident that I was saved, and learn to my shock that I was mistaken: “Depart from me; I never knew you” (Mat 7.21-23). It’s a frightful thought.

Paul tells us that all believers will stand before Christ for judgment, and that this judgment will be on the basis of our works (2Cor 5.10). And he intensifies the picture with his main verb; the English says, “We must all appear,” but the Greek verb does not mean simply “we must all make an appearance”; it means, “we must all be made transparent.” There will be no hiding, no excuses, no covering up hidden secrets. Everything will be out there.

Is this our lot? Are we going to stand before Christ and face his disappointment with us—even his wrath, the “wrath of the Lamb,” because of our sin? And will all our sin be paraded before everyone, shouted from the housetops, with nothing held back? How can we live in “grace, mercy, and peace” in the face of that prospect?

It’s true that we’ll be made transparent before the judgment seat of Christ. But the description I’ve given is nothing close to accurate. Here’s why.

First, you and I will never have to face the wrath of God for our sin. We deserve to, and we would have no argument had God chosen to do that. But he has not chosen to do that; he has chosen instead to pour out his infinite wrath on his Son, who has equally chosen to receive it. Not only is the wrath of the Lamb not directed at his people, but the love of the Lamb is the very reason that he chose to intercede for us against the Father’s wrath. God’s wrath was poured out on him (Mat 27.45-54), and his wrath has been propitiated (1Jn 4.10); there is no more left for us.

You will never face God for your sins. The mighty Lamb, the Lion of the tribe of Judah, has done that in your place. We have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ (Rom 5.1).

So what’s the judgment seat of Christ about? The passage tells us: “that each one may receive what is due for what he has done in the body, whether good or evil” (2Co 5.10). We’re giving account, not of our sins, but of our service—whether what we’ve done for Christ has been valuable (“good,” Gk. agathos) or worthless (“bad,” Gk. phaulos). We’re giving account of our stewardship.

Christ often spoke of this in his parables. The master returns from a long journey and sees what his servants have done with the resources he left with them (Mat 25.14-30; Lk 19.11-27); the king calls his servants to evaluate the quality of their service (Mat 18.23); even the crooked servant is commended for his diligence (Lk 16.1-13). Paul describes our works being tested by fire, so that the worthless and insubstantial (“wood, hay, stubble”) will be burned up and the valuable (“gold, silver, precious stones”) will be left for display (1Co 3.10-17).

Paul writes of the judgment seat of Christ in a context of warning—as does Jesus in telling his parables. This is serious business; you don’t want to disappoint the master or position yourself as an incompetent servant. He calls for diligence.

But the judgment seat doesn’t have to be a disappointment. Won’t it be great, if you’re a diligent servant, to present your service to him when he comes? Isn’t it great when a little child joyously and confidently greets her father at the door with “Daddy! Come see what I made for you!” Won’t that be something?!

Our father’s out of town on a trip (metaphorically speaking). He’s left us lots of really important things to do, but things that he’s equipped us for, things we can do well, things that bring great enjoyment. So we devote ourselves to those blessed tasks, and we anticipate his return, when we’ll be able to show him what we’ve done: “See what I made for you!”

There’s nothing to fear here. There’s no need for doubt, or apprehension, or a nagging dread in the pit of your stomach.

Serve with joy, and prepare for the reunion with delight.

Photo credit: Arek Socha

Christmas

December 18, 2017 by Dan Olinger 2 Comments

Every Christmas there’s a rash of articles about Christmas myths: Jesus wasn’t born in winter; there weren’t 3 wise men, and they didn’t show up at the stable; the angels didn’t sing.

It’s proper to insist on the accurate retelling of the biblical story, and it’s really important not to say God said things when he didn’t (Rev 22.18), but sometimes I get the idea that the Christmas Mythbusters are just getting their jollies from popping the children’s balloons at the party.

Pedants.

For starters, there may have been 3 wise men; we don’t know how many there were. And Jesus may have been born at any time of year, even in December; we just can’t think of a reason shepherds would have been watching their flocks by night other than lambing season in the spring. And sure, the text says that the angels “said,” but are you really going to insist that angels don’t sing because of that? “Glory to God in the highest” as monotone? Seriously?

Get the biblical story right; but get it right for good reasons.

May I offer a counterexample?

Back to those wise men. They came from the East, according to the oft-mocked song, “bearing gifts … following yonder star … westward leading, still proceeding.”

I beg to differ, and for what I hope is a good reason, an edifying one.

Whatever their names were, they came “from the East” (Mat 2.1), which we take to be Mesopotamia, and thus perhaps were Parthians. They “saw his star when it rose” (Mat 2.2) and consequently traveled to Jerusalem. There is no evidence that they “follow[ed] yonder star” to Jerusalem; in fact, it seems most certain they did not—

If you’re following a star, why stop to ask directions (Mat 2.1-2)? (Especially since men never … oh, never mind.)
If the star led you to Herod’s palace, why get all excited that it’s still there when you return outside (Mat 2.10)?

So back home in the East they saw some sort of celestial phenomenon, and they went to Jerusalem to see the newly born king.

Why get so excited about another prince being born? Princes were born all over the region all the time. They didn’t make pilgrimages for every prince, did they? And an expedition to Jerusalem was a difficult, time-intensive, and expensive proposition. What made this one worth it? What made this prince special?
And how did they know to go to Jerusalem, if the star wasn’t leading them?

We’re going to have to speculate a little bit. But there are reasonable speculations, based on evidence. Crime-scene investigators do that sort of thing all the time. Let’s try to do one of those.

These men were court astrologers from Mesopotamia. They would have been knowledgeable regarding the history of their region, and especially of the history of their craft of predicting the future. They would have known about their prophetic ancestors. And they had a couple of ancestors whose prophecies would likely have informed them when they saw the star.

The first was Balaam. He was from “Pethor” (Num 22.5), which is commonly believed to be Pitru, near Carchemish in northern Mesopotamia. He was a well-known prophet; records of his extrabiblical prophecies have been discovered at Deir Alla, a town in modern Jordan. The wise men could well have been familiar with his work.

And his work includes the following statement: “I see him, but not now; I behold him, but not near; a star shall come out of Jacob, and a scepter shall rise out of Israel; it shall crush the forehead of Moab and break down all the sons of Sheth” (Num 24.17). He finishes this prophecy with these words: “Alas, who shall live when God does this? But ships shall come from Kittim and shall afflict Asshur and Eber; and he too shall come to utter destruction” (Num 24.23-24).

Hmmm. A star. Out of Jacob. Who will destroy kingdoms, perhaps including “Asshur.” I think the Mesopotamian astrologers might have been interested in that.

The other prophet is Daniel. He would certainly have been well known, as a high government official in Babylon who was so effective that Babylon’s Persian conquerors kept him on in their government too. He prophesied of an “anointed one” who would be “cut off” (Dan 9.26) along about, oh, 30 years from now, in the wise men’s day. They’d be interested in that too.

They see the celestial phenomenon. It disappears. They remember the star prophecy of the king from Jacob. They check the timing of Daniel’s prediction. Yep. They saddle up and head for Jerusalem, report to the palace, and ask where the prince is.

The king’s reaction puzzles them. He doesn’t know what they’re talking about. The prince is apparently not his son. Bethlehem, he tells them. Go there, and find the child.

How are they going to do that? Of course there will be children there; but which one is the Anointed? How will they know?

Shaking their heads, they head for the caravan outside in the courtyard. As they exit the building, a strange but familiar light envelops them. They jump for joy.

God’s Word is reliable.

And he clarifies it for those who want to know.

Photo by Inbal Malca on Unsplash

__________

I’m taking a break from blogging for the holidays. See you after the New Year.

Billions of Years? Part 10: Summary and Conclusion

October 12, 2017 by Dan Olinger 1 Comment

**Why I’m Still a Young-Earth Creationist, Even Though It’s Getting Increasingly Lonely over Here**

Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4 Part 5 Part 6 Part 7 Part 8 Part 9

In this series I’ve sought to lay out my reasoning process in continuing to hold to a young-earth creationist position, despite the fact that a great many evangelical Christians have moved to an old-earth view.

I begin by determining the narrative genre of the biblical creation account in Genesis 1-2 and consequently committing to a straightforward (“grammatico-historical”) hermeneutic: I’m going to take it at face value, as I would any other literary work, but with the added recognition that unlike all other literary works, it is the inerrant and authoritative Word of God.

With that foundation laid, I can move to a careful reading of the text and determine its key literary themes. I find that it speaks of direct divine agency, through means of both voice and hands, built around a chronological framework of six days involving “mornings” and “evenings.” Further, I find that chronogenealogies later in the document place the Creation “week” just a few thousand years before the birth of Christ.

I then examine the claims of the popular secular version of the story, alongside the similar claims of its Christian cousin, old-earth creationism. I look for incompatibilities with the biblical presentation, and at precisely those points, I look at the quality of the evidence, since my thesis is that the evidence for a supernatural source behind the biblical account is very strong. To reject the biblical account, I’m going to hold competing accounts to a very high evidentiary standard.

I begin with the currently popular “Big-Bang” model of cosmic evolution. I find its basis to be weak in two ways: first, its proponents confess that the beginning of the model is beyond the reach of scientific investigation; and second—and less importantly, I concede—I have the anecdotal observation that most of its most vocal proponents don’t really understand the model themselves; they are essentially fideists.

Then I move to the Neo-Darwinian model of biological evolution. I find that it requires three things: mutation, natural selection, and eons of time. I find serious evidentiary weakness in all three of these requirements, specifically with the ability of the first two to deliver on the promise of the current complexity of life, and with the scientific basis for the third, given the broad range of ages produced by the many geochronometers available. There’s clearly a lot of room for disagreement in the current state of Darwinism.

Returning to my own academic area, I find two serious theological problems with all of the evolutionary models, including the accommodationist Christian ones: the necessity of Adam’s sin as the cause of biological death, and the repeated New Testament assignation of Christ’s redemptive work to the undoing of Adam’s specific sin and its consequences.

So where does that leave me?

Well.

The Book is divinely sourced.
I’m following all the exegetical and hermeneutical rules.
The alternative(s) don’t meet anything like the evidentiary standard required to set aside the first two points.
Six days.
Then a few thousand years.
Not gonna change. Wouldn’t be prudent.

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Billions of Years? Part 9: Theological Issues

October 9, 2017 by Dan Olinger 1 Comment

**Why I’m Still a Young-Earth Creationist, Even Though It’s Getting Increasingly Lonely over Here**

Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4 Part 5 Part 6 Part 7 Part 8

So far I’ve laid out my thinking regarding the biblical creation account and the evidentiary weaknesses in the competing evolutionary account. There’s one more area to address: the theological one.

The Bible’s theology of sin is rooted squarely in Adam (not in Eve, despite the allegations of some feminists—but that’s a topic for another post, preferably in the far, far distant future). According to the Scripture, Adam was a real, historical figure, whose willful sin—disobedience to a specific divine command (Gen 3)—had three results. First, since he stood as the representative of the human race—their “first father” (Isa 43.27)—the guilt for his sin was imputed to all his descendants (Rom 5.12, 18-19). Second, his nature was corrupted by his choice, so that for the rest of his life he was inclined in the direction of sinfulness rather than righteousness. This change in nature has been inherited by all his descendants as well (Rom 3). And finally, as God had warned (Gen 2.16-17), Adam and his descendants became susceptible to death (Rom 5.12).

Consequently, any theory of origins that claims to be biblical must address two theological issues that arise from this biblical view. First, the theory must account for biological death in the way that Scripture does. And second, the theory must account for the redemptive work of Christ, the “second Adam” (1Cor 15.22, 45), in the way that Scripture does. Both of these issues deserve a deeper examination.

Scripture asserts that sin entered the world through human agency, specifically Adam’s, and that death is a consequence of that event (Rom 5.12). Any theory of origins, then, must date fossil evidence—the one thing you can say for certain about fossils is that they’re really most sincerely dead—after Adam’s sin, and thus, obviously, after Adam.

Old-earth creationists would respond that since the Romans 5 passage is clearly talking about only human death, then the fossils in the geologic column would not be included in that passage and thus were free to die millions of years before Adam. But that seems to mean that hominid fossils must not be related to Adam, since they died before he did. Further, it’s not so clear that the Romans 5 passage refers only to human death; Paul speaks elsewhere (Rom 8.18-22) of “all creation” groaning under the consequences of Adam’s sin. My colleague Kevin Bauder has artfully and soberly captured the problem of the old-earth creationist view on this matter.

[Sidebar: This question on the reference of the word death does present an interesting opportunity for meditation. We know that Adam and Eve were free to eat fruit; since digesting a mango would result in cellular death in the fruit, it seems that Paul’s use of “death” in Romans 5 would not include that. It’s worth noting, I suppose, that the tree survives the “death” of its fruit. How about root vegetables? Did Adam and Eve eat carrots before the fall? That would kill the plant, after all. Most young-earth creationists would draw the line not there, but at organisms “in which is the breath of life” (Gen 7.15), which God chose to protect through the flood, by which he decreed that “everything that is in the earth shall die” (Gen 6.17). I’m inclined to think that this definition of death should be considered in interpreting Romans 5. And if that’s valid, then nothing in the fossil record that respired could have died before Adam’s sin.]

The presence of fossils as evidence of death before sin, it seems to me, remains a problem for old-earth creationist.

The second problem is the meaning of the work of Christ. Paul finds the significance of Christ’s work in the undoing of what Adam did (Rom 5.17-19; 1Cor 15.22). If there was no historical Adam, then there’s nothing for Christ’s work to undo, and the evolutionary view simply cannot be squared with biblical theology. Suggesting that Adam is a symbolic everyman really doesn’t get you there; we’d think it was silly if Paul based the work of Christ in undoing the sin of the boy who cried wolf or some other fabulous figure. Nothing in the text of Scripture, in either Testament, inclines us to believe that Adam was merely symbolic. You don’t list symbols in genealogies.

So the significance of Christ’s redemptive work hangs on the question of whether a particular man disobeyed God, and whether we—all—are the biological descendants of that man. I can’t find any of the other choices appealing.

Next time, we’ll summarize and draw some conclusions.

Part 10

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Billions of Years? Part 8: The Geologic Time Scale

October 5, 2017 by Dan Olinger Leave a Comment

**Why I’m Still a Young-Earth Creationist, Even Though It’s Getting Increasingly Lonely over Here**

Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4 Part 5 Part 6 Part 7

Having considered mutation and natural selection, I turn now to the third leg of the evolutionary stool: the time scales that are necessary for all of this naturally directed change to occur. Evolution needs billions of years, and that’s why we have old-earth and young-earth views.

So is there evidence for the geologic ages, or not?

Well, that’s an interesting question.

There are lots of geochronometers, or ways to calculate the age of the earth. I remember seeing a documentary years ago narrated by Donald Johanson, the paleontologist who discovered Lucy. He talked briefly about the age of the earth and cited 3 different geochronometers, completely unrelated to one another, that triangulated nicely on about 4.5 billion years. I remember thinking, “Wow. That’s really impressive!” So I started reading. And I found out that the geochronometers are all over the place. Lots of them point to 4.5 billion years, yes, but others point to widely differing ages—with a good many well within the range called for by a straightforward reading of Genesis.

Two questions, then. First, why is there so much variation? And second, which ones are you going to believe?

With that much variation, they can’t all be right. So what’s up? A look at a single method might help answer the question. As you know, there are lots of elements and compounds in sea water—most obviously salt, but lots of other stuff too. You can pick one of those—let’s say salt—and measure its concentration in sea water. Then you can try to calculate how much saltier the sea is getting every year—or you can just log your measurements over a period of several years—and you can run that number back to calculate how many years ago the sea would have had no salt in it. That gives you a presumed date for the beginning of the ocean, which is not necessarily the same as the age of the earth, but at least it’ll tell you whether you’re dealing with thousands or millions or billions of years.

[As usual, there’s more to this than what I’ve mentioned here. Salt settles out of sea water in sediment, and there are other variables as well. The method attempts to take all of this into account.]

Well, it turns out that when you run those numbers for different substances—salt, magnesium, calcium, whatever—you get different dates, sometimes widely varying dates. Why?

I think the answer is obvious. There’s an assumption behind the method. When you extrapolate the rate of increasing concentration back into previous years, you’re assuming that the rate was essentially constant over time. That seems to be a reasonable assumption, but it’s an assumption nonetheless; it’s uniformitarianism, which underlies pretty much all of evolutionary thinking.

But imagine another scenario. What would an unusual year—say, a year with a significant flood, even a global one—do to the numbers?

So our calculations are hostage to annual deviations in runoff to the oceans. And the very fact that our numbers differ from substance to substance tells us that the deposition has not been uniform. Our assumption is wrong, and our results are therefore invalid.

So we have dates, “measured” by geochronometers, that are all over the place.

Which ones do we pick?

Ah, there’s the rub. Our choices will be driven by our assumptions. If you’re Donald Johanson, and you’re confident that the earth is 4.5 billion years old, you’re going to select those indicators as examples of how science is done. After all, the ones that take us below 10,000 years can’t possibly be right. They’re statistical outliers. Obviously.

That’s called slanted selection of evidence, and like assuming your conclusion, it’ll get you an F on your freshman research paper.

(Now, this is a sword that cuts both ways. I’m strongly tempted to listen to just the geochronometers that indicate a young earth; I’ve even linked to several above. I need to do the best I can with the data myself, not letting my bias cloud my openness to hard facts.)

But my point is that the geochronometers don’t tell a single story, because we can demonstrate that a great many of them are based on illegitimate assumptions. So why do we insist that only one story can be told, and that the tellers of other stories are mythematicians? And where is the robustness in the evidence that seeks to turn me from the Scripture?

Next time, we’ll touch on a significant theological concern.

Part 9 Part 10

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Billions of Years? Part 7: Natural Selection

October 2, 2017 by Dan Olinger 1 Comment

**Why I’m Still a Young-Earth Creationist, Even Though It’s Getting Increasingly Lonely over Here**

Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4 Part 5 Part 6

In the evolutionary system, mutations get you the possibility of change in living organisms. But the changes are random and thus are not directional; they’re not going to get you to anything that looks like a line of development, which is what the term evolution means. You need a mechanism to give the force of change some sort of direction. That mechanism, as proposed by Charles Darwin in On the Origin of Species, is natural selection.

Much has been written on the topic, but perhaps the best known is Richard Dawkins’s The Blind Watchmaker: Why the Evidence of Evolution Reveals a Universe without Design. Dawkins speaks reverently of the concept, divine in its simplicity: the many random changes that don’t work die out and are thus discarded, while the relatively few random changes that enhance the organism’s ability to survive and reproduce are preserved in future generations. What you end up with, then, is a whole bunch of stuff that works pretty much perfectly, giving the appearance that someone planned that way. But there is no Someone; he’s superfluous.

It’s indisputable that organisms are more likely to survive if they’re capable than if they’re not. So the idea works great in theory—and in practice, up to a certain point. As long as the changes are relatively simple, you can just work your way up the long slow ramp, after the fashion Dawkins suggests in Climbing Mount Improbable. But the data don’t seem to match the metaphor; as Michael Behe noted in his work Darwin’s Black Box, there are many structures in nature that would require multiple changes to occur simultaneously in the organism in order to confer any advantage for natural selection to, well, select. Behe coined the term irreducible complexity.

(And yes, I know that Behe is an old-earth creationist. I don’t think that invalidates his observations to the extent that they are observable and verifiable.)

Perhaps the example most often cited is the eye. To have any vision at all, the human needs an opening in the epidermis; an eyeball, containing a light opening (pupil), a translucent center (vitreous humor), and a light-sensitive retina; an optic nerve to carry the retinal output to the brain; and an area of the brain (the thalamus and, eventually, the visual cortex) to process what’s coming up the pipe. And all that needs to be tied into the circulatory system, or the whole kaboodle shuts down after a few seconds. If any one of those links in the chain is missing, you have no vision and hence nothing worth selecting by the blind watchmaker.

That’s a lot of stuff to evolve at once.

Dawkins has responded to this apparent problem by observing that there are ways to develop increasing vision over multiple generations in small, incremental steps. In what he seems to think is the coup de grace for Behe and his fellow benighted, he notes that some of those steps are observable in nature. But what he does not do is demonstrate that the examples from nature are in any way related to one another (though he does call them “relatives” in passing); he does not demonstrate a chain of development over time. He speculates that many different kinds of eyes developed independently, but again he does not demonstrate a sequence of development for each, or any, of them. In the standard college freshman English course, we call that assuming your conclusion, and it gets you an F on your research paper.

Some old-earth creationists have suggested a workaround for irreducible complexity. In his “progressive creationism,” Hugh Ross posits that at certain unbridgeable gaps in the process—say, the first life, or the first vertebrate, or the first human—God stepped in with an act of special creation. This is a concept referred to as “the God of the gaps,” and to my mind it seems far simpler, if you’re going to bring God into it, to bring him in in the way he described in the first place.

Recall that I’m expecting a high standard of evidence to draw me away from the evidentially supported elevated source of the Scripture. Showing how something might have happened is not showing that it did. And so irreducible complexity remains a problem for the process of natural selection and thus for the evolutionist.

Part 8 Part 9 Part 10

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Billions of Years? Part 6: Mutation

September 28, 2017 by Dan Olinger 1 Comment

**Why I’m Still a Young-Earth Creationist, Even Though It’s Getting Increasingly Lonely over Here**

Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4 Part 5

My concerns with Big Bang cosmology are relatively vague, given my limited exposure to physics. On the matter of biological evolution, though, I have more specific concerns.

Those concerns begin with the origin of life from non-living material. I can recall in high school biology–which I took just shortly after life actually began–attempting to reenact the moment by zapping amino acids in grape juice with electrical current. I found the experience completely unconvincing. This single event remains the most difficult of the evolutionary problems.

Once you have a living organism, however simple, where do you go from there? I think every evolutionist would agree with me that Darwinian evolution—including whatever the current form of it is—absolutely requires 3 things: mutation, which is the mechanism by which organisms can change; natural selection, which is the mechanism by which deleterious mutations can be discarded and beneficial ones preserved; and time (LOTS of time), which is necessary because there are a lot of differences between an amoeba and, say, Pele. Since all 3 of these elements are necessary, raising significant doubt about just one of them would disable the theory. I have concerns with all three.

Let’s begin with mutation.

Of course mutation happens; the reason you are not short, bald, and brown-eyed like me is that you are a mutant. There are a bazillion mutations going on right around us all the time. But Darwin and his successors didn’t simply posit that change happens; they posited that positive changes occur that slowly, gradually enable an organism to become better at surviving in its environment, eventually culminating in organisms as diverse as the life we see on the planet today.

I have 3 questions about that.

First, how frequent are beneficial mutations? I’ve seen suggested examples here and there, mostly at the level of bacteria and viruses. But the great majority of mutations seem to be either harmful—Down syndrome, fragile X, sickle-cell anemia—or at best neutral (hair color, eye color). I know, blondes have more fun, and don’t it make my brown eyes blue, and all that. But since human sexual attraction is far more complex than eye color, it’s hard to argue that blue eye color makes the survival of the species more likely. Observational science seems to indicate that mutations are on balance not a good thing for the organism.

I realize that according to the view, natural selection will kindly weed out the negatives. But doesn’t the rarity of clearly beneficial mutations mean that the process will take even longer than a few billion years? I mean, Climbing Mount Improbable involves a lot of little tiny steps.

Second, and much more important, is the problem of what mutations actually do: jumble the genetic code, either by dropping “letters” (nucleobases) or rearranging them. What it can’t do is create genetic information that is simply not there. How would one rearrange the genetic code of an amoeba, regardless of the number of steps, to produce a spine, or a lung, or an ear, or a prefrontal cortex?

Third, what observational evidence do we have of mutations crossing all lines in the alleged family tree? That’s the old question of “missing links,” of which there are far more than just the one between Bonzo and Bono. Why do they seem to be missing from the phylogenetic tree with such irritating regularity? Shouldn’t the fossil record be full of them? And isn’t it assuming your conclusion to observe microchanges within species and extrapolate that to macrochanges across orders, classes, phyla, and even kingdoms?

These questions are enough to give me serious pause on the mutation leg of the stool. But there are 2 other legs to go.

As we’ll see next time, natural selection doesn’t seem to be the cure-all for these deficiencies.

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Billions of Years? Part 5: Cosmic Evolution

September 25, 2017 by Dan Olinger 5 Comments

**Why I’m Still a Young-Earth Creationist, Even Though It’s Getting Increasingly Lonely over Here**

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According to the current popular view, cosmic evolution—the development of the universe—began just less than 14 billion years ago with a singularity: space and time did not yet exist, and all matter was infinitely dense. This singularity began a rapid expansion (the so-called “Big Bang”), with every particle—subatomic particles in the early stages—moving away from every other particle as the space containing them expanded. Eventually these particles began regathering—in space—to form nuclei, then atoms, then clouds of gas and dust, then stars, then galaxies.

The physics behind all this is not simple. Lots of really smart people have wrestled with the questions raised; there are names like Einstein and Planck involved, and not a few Nobel prizes. The Big Bang model has made predictions, perhaps most notably the expected presence of Cosmic Background Radiation, which have been confirmed by later experimentation. This is pretty serious stuff.

But any scientist—and lay person—should question his presuppositions, beginning with the very first ones. I have lots of questions; I’d like to focus on the singularity model for now.

Some—many—of my questions, I’m pretty sure, stem from the fact that I’m not a physicist and don’t understand the model. I wonder, for example, how the expansion occurred without being restrained by gravity, which at that time had to be practically infinite—that is, the most gravity possible in the universe. But for all I know, that’s not even a legitimate question. I’m going to leave the heavy lifting to people who have actual expertise in the field.

But I would like to raise a couple of considerations, one philosophical and one sociological (since my academic credentials are more right-brained than left).

What caused the expansion? It seems to me that this is the very first question to be asked of the model.

My first exposure to a serious answer to that question came in Stephen Hawking’s seminal work A Brief History of Time: From the Big Bang to Black Holes, where he addressed the question briefly. At singularity, he said, all the laws of physics are rendered inoperative; we have no scientific tools with which to investigate it.

In the decades since Hawking’s book, the model has been refined, but I’m not aware of any suggestion that Hawking’s observation is viewed as incorrect; physicists today still agree that the singularity is not open to investigation by the tools of science.

So the first premise of the entire worldview is outside the realm of scientific investigation. I’m OK with that—the existence of God in eternity past is outside the realm of scientific investigation too. But it seems ironic for adherents to the Big Bang model to ridicule supernaturalists on scientific grounds.

In his Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, Douglas Adams took a swipe at supernaturalism with his question, “Isn’t it enough to see that a garden is beautiful without having to believe that there are fairies at the bottom of it too?” But how do we grant veto power to the Big Bang model when its first question is beyond scientific examination? Isn’t that a mite overconfident?

My second question, the sociological one, has been generated by several decades of experience interacting with people who think I’m crazy—or hopelessly ignorant—to believe in a Creator God. When I ask them about their own model, their answers often indicate that they don’t understand it themselves. I recall several years ago, when I was still laboring under the misconception that the Big Bang was an explosion rather than a rapid expansion (and yes, the difference is significant to physicists), I asked an engineer how the explosion could overpower all the gravity in the universe. His reply was, “Hmm. I’ve never thought about that.” Now, to be fair, he’s an engineer, not a physicist, and yes, it’s a complex theory. But this is just on the surface of the model, and it astonished me that as an engineer, whose job it is to think through systems, he’d never even asked the question—literally the first question about his worldview, about which he was so confident. I, the religious guy, was the one asking the questions and seeking to understand the model.

Now, my question was ignorant, as I later learned; the Big Bang, according to the model, did not work like an explosion. But my engineer friend didn’t know that, and he further admitted that he hadn’t given the foundation of his worldview any serious consideration. Yet he was confident that I was deluded. That doesn’t discredit the model, of course; the engineer wasn’t one of its developers. But it does make me SMH.

I have other questions—the antimatter problem comes to mind—but my gravest concern is that by far the majority of fervent adherents to the Big Bang model—the people who most aggressively ridicule young-earth creationists—seem not to have asked and answered these questions for themselves, precisely because the model is so arcane. How are they on any firmer ground than those they ridicule? How is their position not, um, religious—based on faith in the High Priesthood, which understands these Very Complicated Doctrines? 

Given the apparent philosophical inconsistency, it seems presumptuous to ask me to discard hard evidence of a supernatural book in order to genuflect before the dogma of the Assumption of the Virgin Matter. And it seems grossly immoral for the many adherents who literally don’t know what they’re talking about to pass judgment on any who disagree.

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Billions of Years? Part 4: Approaching the Question

September 21, 2017 by Dan Olinger Leave a Comment

**Why I’m Still a Young-Earth Creationist, Even Though It’s Getting Increasingly Lonely over Here**

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If the Bible’s account of creation is historical narrative and should be read straightforwardly, and if it says that creation occurred over a period of 6 “days” with “evenings and mornings,” and if the biblical genealogies place Adam a few thousand years ago, then we have a clear conflict between the biblical story and the broadly accepted modern evolutionary account. How do we respond to that conflict?

Assume that the science is settled, and the Bible is wrong?
Try to reconcile the two accounts by a creative reading of the biblical text?
Declare that Science Is Evil and move in next door to Simeon Stylites?

I see serious problems with all these approaches.

First, there is no statement more unscientific than that “the science is settled.” Science is never settled. Scientists regularly and correctly observe that errors are revealed and that models are constantly revised as new discoveries occur. Science, they tell us, is the ongoing, never-ending search for truth. I’m happy to accept their word on that. Question everything.

Second, my earlier posts (as linked above) have argued that there is no textual basis for getting hermeneutically creative with the biblical account. It is what it is.

Third, the fact that God is the Creator renders it impossible that genuine science could be in conflict with revealed truth. The heavens declare the glory of God (Ps 19.1), and the study of the heavens will not contradict God’s declarations about their origin. So I’m not going to live the rest of my life sitting cross-legged on my Luddite pillar. I’m going to study science as one more avenue toward increasing my knowledge of God.

As I’ve stated before, the demonstrated supernatural character of the Scripture requires that I give it the benefit of the doubt in any supposed conflict with science. That means that scientific “discoveries” that conflict with the biblical account have some serious burden of proof. I’m going to need more than consensus or, worse yet, allegation to bail on the biblical statements.

So I’m going to have to evaluate the evolutionary model to see just how rigorous it is. I recognize that that’s a risky business, since I’m not a scientist. In my graduate studies I learned what it means to acquire the specialized research skills necessary for a specific academic field, and I don’t take lightly the risk I’m taking on by evaluating a scientific model without those tools. I invite informed criticism. But I also note that name-calling is not rigorous rebuttal.

I’ve asked secular scientists about many of these things, and I haven’t gotten coherent, reasonable, validated answers—nothing even approaching the level of proof that I’m requiring if I’m going to reject the biblical account.

So the next few posts contain my thought process on evaluating the evolutionary model. Take it for what it’s worth, and refute it if you can.

To begin with, we need to note that there is no single “evolutionary model.” The modern secular view of cosmogeny requires at least 2 distinct phases: the beginning of the universe, and the beginning of life on earth. These phases require completely different mechanisms. The popular view is that the universe began with the so-called “Big Bang” more than 13 billion years ago, followed by material condensation into nebulae, stars, and galaxies, while biogenesis on Earth began about 4.5 billion years ago and has followed a mostly Darwinian process of mutation and natural selection since then.

How strong are the logical and observational bases of these processes? Strong enough to override the biblical account? We’ll begin by thinking about cosmic evolution, including both the Big Bang and the succeeding mechanism of star formation.

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