Evangelicals and Science; The Rise of Creationism 1961 -2007, Chapter 7

By 1961 the issue of anti-evolution had apparently receded and left in the wilds of Dayton, Tennessee

but then came back with a vengeance with the publication of The Genesis Flood by Henry Morris and John Whitcomb.

And so we have all animals on the ark, including (baby) dinosaurs.

Slowly and surely like a heavily laden WWII bomber it took off and created havoc among evangelicals, first in the USA and then around the world.

Ken Ham is now the leader with his Creation Museum which has cameos of humans living with dinosaurs!!

The core work is The Genesis Flood published in 1961, written by Morris, a hydraulic engineer and Whitcomb an Old Testament bible college teacher.

Evangelicals were slow to review it but here is the best of the critical reviews

https://michaelroberts4004.wordpress.com/2020/01/03/the-genesis-flood-a-revue-in-1969of-the-creationist-pot-boiler/

I attempt to give a history, an exposition and criticism of the content of YEC and then a bit on Intelligent Design. Here is a blog on the Church of England and Creationism.

https://michaelroberts4004.wordpress.com/2014/02/27/the-church-of-england-and-creationism/

However it is not the only evangelical understanding of science as chapter 8 will show. But now open this link for a brief account of Creationism from 1961

Chapter 7; The Rise of Creationism

GNWD018C07_p165-200

Sorry Ken, Young Earth pseudoscience was invented by Seventh Day Adventists.

Ken Ham gets Vischious on Phil Vischer’s dismissal of YEC as Seventh Day Adventist

Ken Ham has recently got all upset by Phil Vischer’s comments on twitter stating that YEC comes from the Seventh Day Adventist ideas of George McCready Price in his book The New Geology of the 1920s.

https://answersingenesis.org/blogs/ken-ham/2020/12/19/phil-vischer-veggietales-creator-responds/?fbclid=IwAR0FvNdicbQd-8BROtEcaXMgmjmTdsi7d6cIHYHK42Er3y-VvxCUkzQLp4w

Young Earth Creationism is a new-fangled pseudoscience movement with no roots in the past beyond the prophecies of Ellen White in the 19th century.

Here’s what Ken didn’t like;

I also wanted to make a correction to a false statement he made implying where my beliefs about Genesis originated. Vischer stated:

+

It’s the idea of evolution and millions of years being added into the Bible that’s new!

This is simply not true. The scriptural geologists, as they’re called, were defending the historicity of Genesis and a global flood a century before A New Geology was published—and they were using many of the same scriptural arguments we use today because  God’s Word hasn’t changed!

Poor Ken , so wrong on so many counts. Let’s consider them in depth. (If you are lazy just read my brief script, but if you are not indolent you can read all the links to get a full story.)

The classic long account of the origins of Creationist is in Ron Numbers The Creationists, -an excellent book – but here is a short account I wrote in 1985 and won’t change much of what I wrote!

rootsof creationism1986

The so-called Scriptural Geologists were a group from 1817 to 1855 in England who opposed geology as they didn’t accept a long timescale. They started from a literal interpretation of the Bible insisting Genesis spoke of 6 24 days, all strata laid down in the flood , no death before Adam and Eve scrumped some apples etc.

Their geological incompetence was considerable, and apart from one, George Young, none wielded a geological hammer . Mortenson describes them in his Ph D thesis and book  – on AIG website as   “British Scriptural Geologists in the First Half of the Nineteenth Century”  It’s hilarious to find Mortenson saying most were competent geologists. They weren’t, whether by today’s standards or those of 1830. . Just read what I say about Fairholme on p115-6 from my book

GNWD018C04_p83-112 .

Anyway thanks to efforts of Sedgwick and Buckland these Scriptural Geologsits had gone extinct from 1855 and after that any British Christian with a little education accepted geology. not so in the USA as many slave supporting theologians were biblical literalists!! These two were Anglican clergy who were two of the leading early 19th century geologists.

Read Adam Sedgwick’s battles with younger earthers from 1830 to 1844. It was a fun paper to write.

sedgwick

In fact, before the rise of uniformitarian (slow and gradual) geology, the overwhelming view of fossils was that they were the result of the global flood!

Again simply untrue.  Uniformitarianism took effect after 1831 with Lyell and with Hutton earlier. However many geologists before 1831 were not uniformitarian and from 1780 or so.  Virtually no geologists from 1770 or so accepted fossils were the result of the Flood. In England think of Smith (after 1798),

Rev  Michell, rev Richardson, Rev Townsend, Revs Conybeare, Rev Sedgwick , Rev Buckland, Rev Henslow (all Anglican clergy), de la Beche, Phillips,  Greenough , Murchison, Otley, Brogniart, Cuvier  just for starters. I could give some more if I bothered. For more read Martin Rudwick (a Christian) Earth’s Deep History.

Vischer has simply not done his homework—a simple search on our site reveals articles such as “Where Did the Idea of Millions of Years Come From?”

Loads of mistakes here . Too many to list or discuss.

it’s the idea of evolution and millions of years being added into the Bible that’s new!

No, deep time was first suggested by Llwyd and Ray in the 1680s and many after that. Few scientists disagreed with deep time  after 1780.

And as for me personally, my father and I were dealing with the creation/evolution issue and what God’s Word in Genesis teaches when I was in grade six (at age 11) at school. The pastor of the church we went to started teaching evolution from the pulpit. My father was very upset and challenged this pastor using God’s Word in Genesis. Then at age 13, when in grade 8 at high school, we were using the latest science textbooks that presented naturalistic evolution as fact. My father and I discussed Genesis and that evolution did not mesh with God’s Word. It was because of an understanding that Genesis is God’s Word and is written as literal history that formed what I believe about creation—God created in six literal days about 6,000 years ago. Believing in a young earth is a consequence of what we believe Genesis taught. It had nothing to do with some Seventh Day Adventist, as Vischer claims. And I should know—I was there when my father and I discussed these issues. I held these creationist beliefs long before I ever read The Genesis Flood by Whitcomb and Morris. In 1974, before I had even heard about The Genesis Flood book, I read a small booklet from England that dealt with the issue of death. How could the fossil record have been laid down before man sinned when it’s a record of death, disease, bloodshed, and suffering? I saw this as a powerful theological argument against millions of years before I ever read The Genesis Flood.

Yes, I met a 400lb American baptist missionary in Uganda, and a pentecostal diamond driller in South Africa who were creationists and I bet they  hadn’t read The Genesis Flood.

I am afraid poor old Ham has got it wrong again and Vischer is essentially correct.

No, Young Earthers cannot claim that their brand of science-denying biblical literalism has roots in the early 19th century and before

With George McCready Price it comes from the “prophesying” of Seventh Day Adventism. It began to rear its head during the Scopes Trial and was a rumbling sore during the interwar years.

My book chapter on the Scopes years.

GNWD018C06_p139-164

and then the plagiarism of Price by Morris in his woeful geology in The Genesis Flood of 1961 and subsequent developments of increasingly bad science and intolerance.

My chapter considering many aspects of YEC and ID.

GNWD018C07_p165-200

and finally, consider how bad Morris’s geology was – and that of Answers in Genesis is no better. Here is an excellent review of The Genesis Flood by the Dutch geologist van der Fliert in 1969. If YECs were truly honest, they would have ditched the book.

https://michaelroberts4004.wordpress.com/2020/01/03/the-genesis-flood-a-revue-in-1969of-the-creationist-pot-boiler/

If you want more read Young  and Stearley The Bible, Rocks and Time.

To conclude; Vischer is right in his comments about Ham. Perhaps it’s time to see YEC as pseudoscience pretending to be the Gospel

Is the Geological Column Evolutionary and Anti-Christian

Is the Geological Column anti-christian?

Red, Orange, Yellow, Blue, Green, Indigo, Violet

Many will know the colours of the rainbow/spectrum off by heart and won’t need an aid lie;

“Richard Of York Gave Battle In Vain

There don’t seem to be many on the geological Column

(c) Ray Troll, @ratfishray

@ratfishray

Camels Often Sit Down Carefully; Perhaps Their Joints Creak? Persistent Early Oiling Might Prevent Permanent Rheumatism.

One cannot even study Geology 001, yet alone 101, without needing to remember; “Cambrian, Ordovician………………..”

The Geological Column is as central to geology as the Periodic Table to chemistry, yet it is frequently dismissed by Young Earth Creationists and has been since McCready Price challenged it a century ago. Price wrote an apparently erudite book, replete with references The New Geology (1923). Here he claimed that the arguments geologists put forward for the order of strata is based on circular reasoning and that strata could occur in any order and thus you could find Cambrian lying on top of Jurassic. The leading geologist Schuchert called it a “geological nightmare”.

The accusation of a circular argument has stuck and was repeated by Morris in The Genesis Flood  and many subsequent creationists.

https://michaelroberts4004.wordpress.com/2020/02/04/geologists-going-round-in-circles/

Essentially it is that you date the fossils from evolution and use the fossils to prove evolution. Sometimes geologists almost speak like that!! And so the Geological Column is often called the “Uniformitarian Evolutionary Geological Column” to stress that the column is based on the Uniformitarian Geology of Lyell and the theory of evolution Thus in one go you can discredit Lyell and Darwin and all they stand for.

But is it actually true to say the Geological Column is Uniformitarian and Evolutionary and anti-Christian?

Uniformitarianism stems from James Hutton in the 1780s and most of all from Charles Lyell in 1831. Though evolution had been suggested, it was only widely accepted after Darwin published The Origin of species in 1859. You need to note the dates 1831 and 1859 as you read this.

The Geological Column is a way of putting the strata in order of deposition and was worked out in the early 19^th century. Before that most “geologists” were convinced the earth was “tres vieux” (de Saussure) and there was an order which they couldn’t work out.

The first to give a kind of order was the Rev John Michell of Cambridge which was written down by a Mr Smeaton on the back of a letter!

Mr Michell’s Account of the south of England Strata

This gave a tolerably complete  list of strata from the Chalk (Cretaceous) down to the Coal Measures (Carboniferous/Pennsylvanian) you would find travelling from London to Yorkshire. Michell probably produced his “column” while travelling by coach or horse back and doing a little fieldwork. Thirty years later William Smith produced a classic cross-section of the strata of England and Wales from Snowdon in Wales to London to accompany his map of england and Wales, but had worked much of it out before 1800, almost fleshing out the sketch of Michell.. This order was impressed on me at the age of 16 and 17 as on three occasions cycled from mid- or north Wales to our house south of London. My geology then was just about good enough to identify the basic geology. Not that I’d studied geology then, beyond high school geography, but my geography teacher was a geologists and mountaineer. I even got commended when I wrote an essay describing one of my trips with a bit of geology thrown in! I’d broken the journey into geological stages. The third time I did it, I cycled the 350 miles home from Capel Curig in Snowdonia. I started by climbing Snowdon by the Snowdon Horseshoe and then still had 340 miles to cycle. It took me six days but I had climbed Snowdon and Cadair Idris as well. I can assure you that the hill of yellow strata on the right of the diagram (the Jurassic scarp of the Cotswolds) – Birdlip Hill is a very steep climb on a heavily laden bike.

(Smith’s 1815 Cross-section annotated by  Callan Bentley)

The cross-section is slightly simplified, but it shows progressively younger rocks lying on top of the oldest around Snowdon, which are about550 my to those in the Vale of Thames (Tertiary) i.e. London at 50 my. It was another fifteen years before Sedgwick and Murchison began elucidating the Welsh rocks, first into the Cambrian and Silurian and later with Ordovician in between (the three names are based on ancient tribes in Wales.)

The usual (mythical?) history of geology puts the rise of geology down to two men, Hutton and Lyell. Lyell was a late comer in 1830 and Hutton,

though he grasped the concept of geological time due to the discovery of the unconformity at Siccar Point, he did not put the rocks of Scotland into a timeline. That was for reasons beyond his control in the actual geology as even the Southern Uplands were too complex as “starter” strata and as for the Highlands, which defied geologists for nearly a century. (Oldroyd) . To put it simply Hutton in Scotland and de Saussure around Chamonix had chosen the short straws as the strata were too folded and metamorphosed for straightforward elucidation in the early stages of geology. They could demonstrate that the strata were ancient but not put them in hisotorical order. What was needed was to be able to follow essentially almost flat lying strata over many miles. That is what Michell did in 1788 but never published.

That work was largely carried out in by English, and some French, geologists in the first half of the 19^th century. Before that, following Werner, rocks were seen as Primary, Secondary or Tertiary. This could lead to confusion as Primary were meant to be “original” rocks and thus not sedimentary, and, of course, granites can be of any age.

Who invented the Geological column?

Below is a table of the Geological Column showing who had actually worked on it and named the systems

As we see from the diagram below, most of the names setting up the column were British (Lyell and Murchison were Scots, and Sedgwick, Phillips, Conybeare and Lapworth were English) And at the bottom is the great Christian geologist J.D. Dana of Yale.

As the whole development of the Geological Column was empirical, piecemeal and observational, the result is more coherent than its unfolding. It was not sorted out after a few weeks in the field, but after several years, an immense amount of fieldwork and argument, at times acrimonious, between the geologists. The work on the Devonian has been exhaustively expounded by Martin Rudwick and the Cambrian, Ordovician and Silurian by Jim Secord. For myself, apart from reading the literature, I went on a field trip looking at Murchison (and Lewis) on the Silurian in South Wales and traced out much of Sedgwick’s ramblings from his notebooks in North Wales. I particularly walked, yes walked, most of his routes from august to October 1831. That covered most of the country between Shrewsbury and Holyhead. That included several long mountain hikes in Snowdonia following his routes. The longest was 18 miles and involved 6000ft of climbing. My dog and I were knackered!! At the end of 1831 Sedgwick hadn’t got and had to return for several years before working out the Cambrian.

Let’s look at the major workers and consider how godless or godly they were!

The 3-fold division – Palaeozoic, Mesozoic and Cainozoic.

As each of the Systems were being worked out, it became clear that they fell into three groups, and in 1841 the geologist John Phillips (1800-1874) named them Palaeozoic (Old Life Trilobites and fish) Mesozoic (Middle Life – dinosaurs) and Cainozoic (new life – rise of Mammals). Phillips was the orphaned nephew of the founding geologist William Smith, who trained him up as a geologist. He had no formal education and never went to university. He worked for the British Geological Survey and published many technical papers and semi-popular books on geology. In 1856 he succeeded Strickland as Professor of Geology in Oxford, after Strickland was killed by a train while looking at the geology in a railway cutting. I think he’s the only non-graduate professor at Oxford.

So how godless was Phillips? He wasn’t! He was a lay member of the Anglican Church in contrast to others mentioned here. In his many popular books on geology he discussed the relation of geology and genesis. In the 1820s he accepted a deluge but moved to a Day-Age understanding of Genesis, to the annoyance of young earthers of his day like Dean Cockburn of York. Cockburn attacked many geologists including Murchison, Buckland and Sedgwick, as described here;

In 1860 Essays and Reviews was published which took a very liberal view of the faith, including denying miracles. Bishop Samuel Wilberforce was furious  so he organised and edited Replies to Essays and Reviews and asked Phillips to write a chapter of genesis and geology. Wilberforce and Phillips held similar views on the subject. Phillips’ biographer, Jack Morrell, portrays Phillips as a liberal Anglican, but as his views on geology was that of most Anglicans – liberal or evangelical – I feel he overstated the case.

The Precambrian

After the 1840s when the order Cambrian to Pleistocene was elucidated , the non-fossiliferous strata older than the Cambrian were simply called Precambrian and then split into two by American Geologists. The newer was known as Proterzoic as life was suspected in it (and demonstrated in the last 70 years) and was named by Stuart Emmons of the USGS in 1888. I don’t know what his faith stance was.

The older Precambrian was termed Archaean by Prof James D Dana of Yale in 1872 (1813-95) .Dana wrote the standard textbook Manual of Mineralogy (1848) which went through 21 editions until 1999. Surely DeepTime for a book! Darwin sent him a copy of The Origin of species  in 1860 but he did not read it for several years due to a breakdown. When he did he was largely convinced by Darwin. In 1872 he advised the Princeton theologian, Charles Hodge, on creation for his Systematic Theology. So much so that several pages of Hodge’s Systematic Theology  were written by Dana. It would be fair to say Dana was a convinced evangelical on good terms with the Princeton theologians.

And now to work our way religiously up the column!

The  Palaeozoic

These represent strata from 250 my to 560my and simply means Old Life

Except for the Carboniferous, the main players were Rev Adam Sedgwick and (Sir) Roderick Murchison

The main deviser of the Carboniferous

was the Rev William Conybeare, an Anglican priest, who was educated at Oxford and was then ordained. He belonged to the liberal wing of evangelicals and served in the parish of Axminster in Devon and then Dean of Llandaff Cathedral. During the 1820s he advised the editor of The Christian Observor, an evangelical paper founded by Wilberforce, to combat the views of Anti-geologists like George Bugg. In 1822 with William Phillips he wrote Outlines of the Geology of England and Wales, an excellent (long) summary of geology at that time, where he put forward the Carboniferous (Mississippian and Pennsylvanian in the USA).

A major contribution  was his delineation of the Carboniferous (300-355my). These strata are particularly well- formed in northern England. At the base are massive limestones, best seen at Malham Cove. Above are a mixture of sandstones and shales, notably the Millstone or Pendle Grit. Above again are the Coal Measures, which both outcrop on either side of the Pennines and below surface resulting in deep mines.

So the Carboniferous was hardly atheistic but Christian!!

From 1831 Sedgwick and Murchison tried to sort out the geology of Wales, working in what we now call the Cambrian, Ordovician and Silurian strata.

story of the geological challenges and relationship breakdowns are related in Jim Secord Controversy in Victorian Geology. (1986). Their work started amicably in 1831 with Sedgwick (and Darwin for a few weeks) going to North Wales and Murchison to the south. Their aim was to find a place where the Old Red Sandstone (Devonian) could be followed conformably down into the older rocks Sedgwick drew the short straw as the geology was against him as there was no ORS from Llangollen to Snowdonia.  Murchison soon struck gold as Rev Thomas Lewis, curate of Aymestry in Shropshire, and former student of Sedgwick, had already worked out the succession down from (what would be) Devonian to (what would be) Silurian. This effectively handed everything on a plate to Murchison, while Sedgwick was floundering in North Wales “climbing every mountain”. One may say Sedgwick worked up from the “Cambrian” and Murchison worked down from the Devonian to the “Silurian”. Let’s say there was conflict, geological and personal, when their geology met up. On top of that Murchison did not give enough recognition to Lewis.

There was no resolution in their lifetimes and in 1879 Charles Lapwoth, termed many of the middle strata of the then Silurian and Cambrian, Ordovician. This resolved nearly half a century of controversy. In fact the three systems are subtly different. The Cambrian contains more sandstones, the Ordovician lavas and the Silurian slates. (A gross over-simplication, but whenever I am in Wales or Northwest England, climbing or geologising, the differences are manifest.)

Towards the end of the 1830s a number of geologists carried of fieldwork in Devon and Cornwall trying to make sense of the confusing strata commonly called Culm. The comlex story has been unravelled by Martin Rudwick (a Christian) in The Great Devonian Controversy. The main players were Murchison and Sedgwick, with a fair number of clergy as part players eg Buckland, Conybeare and Williams and, more topically, the former slave-owner de la Beche.

And then to finish it off in 1841 Murchison went off on a campaign in Russia getting as far as the Urals in the Great Perm east of Moscow. As a result he termed the strata above the Carboniferous as Permian (250-295my)

Thus 300 my of strata were classified in 20 years. A fantastic achievement – by British geologists.

But what of their religious beliefs?

Charles Lapworth. I know little about him, but he did go to a church teachers training college. From the silence we can say he was no active atheist, but little more.

Sir Roderick Murchison. He seems to have made no public comment about his faith. However he opposed Darwin’s theory of evolution and supported a successive or progressive creation of species. He never fully subscribed to Lyell’s Uniformitarianism. I suggest he was like John Phillips.

Adam Sedgwick, William Conybeare, Thomas Lewis. All three were Anglican priests and devout. They were evangelically inclined, Sedgwick more so. Sedgwick was the only one to see Darwin’s Origin of Species published– which he opposed strongly, even though Darwin was his pupil. Conybeare opposed Lyell’s Uniformitarianism and argued vociferously against him! Sedgwick was more sympathetic. If they were alive today they’d be seen as conservative Christians in the Church of England and very conservative in the American Episcopal Church and untouched by “liberalism”

Mesozoic (strata from 65 to 250 my)

I am afraid I know nothing about the religious views of the three mentioned

That is not to say there was no British involvement. In 1780 the Rev John Michell had worked out an outline of Mesozoic strata and then from 1790 William Smith worked out the strata in detail giving them delightful local names, some of which are still used for stages today. Michell was for many years vicar of a parish and quite diligent. There is no evidence that he was evangelical, but no reasonable question would doubt he was a Christian.

William Smith was a canal engineer working near Bath (near Bristol) in the 1790s

involved in the digging of two parallel canals. He observed the same succession of strata and the same succession of fossils, some of which he used as markers elsewhere. As he travelled the country he could observe the geology either where he was working on looking out from a coach. From this he produced the first geological map of England and Wales in 1815, giving the strata in order (see the cross-section above) but not our familiar names. The map is remarkably accurate even by today’s standards. Smith did much to clarify and understand what came to be called Jurassic strata.

What about Smith’s faith? The evidence is extremely poor. The little I can say is that before 1800 he thought the earth was only 6,000 years old. He then changed his mind because of his advisers! These were three local vicars the Revs Richard Warner, Benjamin Richardson and Joseph Townsend. Townsend was fiery evangelical preacher, who in 1813 wrote The Character of Moses established for Veracity as a Historian. Though it contained some material of Genesis and adopted the old Chaos-Restitution interpretation, recently popularised by Thomas Chalmers, allowing for considerable geological time. It was also a good summary of the state of geology in 1810, though it looked more to the Christian Swiss geologist Jean Andre de Luc, rather than William Hutton.

Smith has a copy of George Faber’s A Dissertation on the Prophecies relative to the Great Period of 1,200 Years, the Papal and Mahomedan Apostasies, the Reign of Antichrist, and the Restoration of the Jews,’ 2 vols. 1807 in his small library. Faber, an evangelical was fascinated and supportive of geology and friendly with Rev William Buckland of Oxford. In his  A Treatise on the Genius and Object of the Patriarchal, the Levitical, and the Christian Dispensations,’ 2 vols. 1823, he devoted one chapter to Genesis and geology and had learnt his geology from Buckland.

Cainozoic – strata from 65 my to now

The crucial person here is Charles Lyell who put forward a threefold division – Eocene, Miocene and Pliocene in 1833, working out the boundaries from the fossil content.

Lyell extended Hutton’s Uniformitarianism – though he did allow some catastrophe.

Relgiously he was Unitarian and thus no atheist. Like Sedgwwick , Buckland and others he objected to trying to argue that all strata were laid down in the Deluge and sometimes made scathing comments on that. They are often quoted in a way to make Lyell seem atheistic.

Further in his Principles of Geology he rejected any kind of evolution and did not accept evolution until the 1860s, several years after The Origin.

The names Eocene, Miocene and Pliocene were coined by Rev William Whewell of Cambridge, a man in the religious mould of Sedgwick and Conybeare.

To include the Ice Ages Lyell proposed the Pleistocene in 1839, after Agassiz (a Unitarian) and Charpentier discovered an ice age some years before. The idea was brought to Britain the year before by the Rev William Buckland of Oxford. In 1840 Lyell, Buckland and Agassiz travelled from the south of England to Scotland to find evidence of glaciation. That they did, but the first evidence were the drumlins near Lancaster a few miles from my home.  In 1841 Buckland worked out that Snowdonia had been glaciated, a fact which Darwin confirmed in 1842.

Religiously Buckland was devout and very similar to Whewell, Conybeare and Sedgwick, except that he was a total eccentric. He became Dean of Westminster in 1846 at the height of cholera outbreaks. As an elite scientist (as were the other three) he became a scientific adviser. Part of this was descending into the sewers of London. In a sermon at Westminster Abbey he later expounded the Christian duty of providing decent sewerage and for illustration graphically described what he saw and smelt in the sewers. Queen Victoria was in the congregation.

Is the Geological Column ungodly?

As a scientific concept it makes no judgement on what is godly and what is not.

However it is a historical fact that a high proportion of those developing the Geological Column were Christian  – and not those only in name. Having read many of the writings of Sedgwick, Buckland, Whewell, Conybeare and Townsend, I found they were not time-serving clerics and their aim may be summed up in the memorial to Sedgwick at Dent Church in the Yorkshire Dales.

Further there is no evidence that there was any atheistic and antichristian purpose behind the development of geology. Even Hutton, who is often accused of this, was not anti-Christian but deist and had good relations with many Christian clergy like Playfair and Robertson, a Moderator of the Kirk.

On this score the Geological Column is no more godly or ungodly than the Periodic Table, Newton’s Laws of motion  or the structure of DNA. It is simply good science, which in the execution included the work of many Christians.

As for the Geological Column being evolutionary, that can be swiftly dealt with. Darwin only began to develop his evolutionary ideas in 1838, by which time the Geological Column was well and truly sorted. I’m quite sure Darwin who was born in 1809 did not influence the Rev John Michell in 1788, or Smith in the 1790s, or Conybeare in 1822.

To say the Geological Column is based on evolution is just plain silly, as much was worked out before Darwin was out of diapers..

As for it being Uniformitarian the case is nearly as feeble, as none of the British geologists, bar Lyell of course, were Uniformitarian. They were either Catastrophists or partial converts to Uniformitarianism as was Sedgwick. However though until the 1840s they reckoned the Deluge could have deposited the top 30 ft of strata, all rejected any idea that all the strata were laid down while Noah was on a cruise.

Perhaps the watercolour of de la Beche (and a recent re-enactment) sums up their views.

The sooner the popular idea that the Geological Column is based on a circular argument from evolution  and a result of godless Uniformitarianism is ditched the better.

It would help if devout Christians could also accept that many early geologists and workers of the geological column were devout Christians – even if some weren’t.

2 Corinthians 11 vs1

Books

J. Secord Controversy in Victorian Geology 1986

M Rudwick The Great Devonian contoversy 1985

M Rudwick Bursting the Limits of Time 2005

M. Roberts Evangelicals and Science 2008

Answers from Jeanson: Revealing the Truth of Joseph’s Global Famine?

He ‘s got the whole world in His hands” – even during famines. Poor Joseph, he must have found it difficult getting grain to Latin america. Pity his sailors didn’t bring back some potatoes.

This blog takes a serious look on how Answers in Genesis deal with the world wide flood which Joseph dealt with while in Egypt. It is difficult keeping a straight face at times

Naturalis Historia

A few years ago I wrote a satire piece titled Answers from Genesis: Reclaiming the Biblical Authority of Joseph’s Global Famine. It was meant to call attention to the fact that Hebrew words used in Genesis 41 to describe the severe famine at the time of Joseph are the same as those used in the Creation Account of Genesis 1 and 2 and Noah’s Flood in Genesis 6-9.  An example of this language can been seen in verses 56 and 57 (ESV) of Genesis 41 which reads: “So when the famine had spread over all the land (erets) Joseph opened all the storehouses and sold to the Egyptians, for the famine was severe in the land (erets) of Egypt. Moreover, all the earth (erets) came to Egypt to Joseph to buy grain, because the famine was severe over all the earth (erets).”

My understanding of the original text follows…

View original post 1,444 more words

Can a Christian believe the earth is billions of years old?

For nearly sixty years now Young Earth Creationists have been trying to convince the world that the earth is only a few thousand years old and evolution never happened.

The book which started it all.

Most stop short of saying that if you accept deep time and evolution you cannot be a Christian. However, I’ve been told that many times.

The result is that Creationists, and especially Ken Ham have been successful in convincing both Christian and non-Christian that to be a Christian you must believe in a young earth.

Ham and other believe there were dinosaurs in the Garden of Eden.

I prefer this!

Recently Ken Ham has been asking this question and then answering it

Can a person believe in an old earth and an old universe (millions or billions of years in age) and be a Christian?

It’s was on Facebook on 28th September 2019, with the following introduction and a web reference.

https://www.facebook.com/BiblicalCreation/

and

https://answersingenesis.org/age-of-the-earth/does-the-gospel-depend-on-a-young-earth/?fbclid=IwAR0T1vGnkR6NLHSBl6aJrdjhJp23ow5ChqEAb6q7QG37Jy2reHIR2uM6FCY

 

“If you confess with your mouth the Lord Jesus and believe in your heart that God has raised Him from the dead, you will be saved.”
~Romans 10:9

Numerous other passages could be cited, but not one of them states in any way that a person has to believe in a young earth or universe to be saved.

And the list of those who cannot enter God’s kingdom, as recorded in passages like Revelation 21:8, certainly does not include “old earthers.”

Even though it is not a salvation issue, the belief that earth history spans millions of years has very severe consequences. […] The point is, believing in a young earth won’t ultimately affect one’s salvation, but it sure does affect the beliefs of those that person influences concerning how to approach Scripture. We believe that such compromise in the Church with millions of years and Darwinian evolution has greatly contributed to the loss of the Christian foundation in the culture.

https://answersingenesis.org/…/does-the-gospel-depend-on-a…/

https://answersingenesis.org/age-of-the-earth/does-the-gospel-depend-on-a-young-earth/?utm_source=articlesmedia&utm_medium=email&utm_content=1-banner-cta&utm_campaign=20190928&mc_cid=3778e71b84&mc_eid=e396ad77f1

So here it it in its full glory and unexpurgated.

I’ve included it all and put my comments in quotation form

like this. Anything in a grey background is yours truly.

Chapter 1

Does the Gospel Depend on a Young Earth?

by Ken Ham on September 28, 2019

 

Can a person believe in an old earth and an old universe (millions or billions of years in age) and be a Christian?

A typical Ham question where the answer is “yes” but really “no”.

First of all, let’s consider three verses that sum up the gospel and salvation. 1 Corinthians 15:17 says, “If Christ is not risen, your faith is futile; you are still in your sins!” Jesus said in John 3:3, “Most assuredly, I say to you, unless one is born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God.” Romans 10:9 clearly explains, “If you confess with your mouth the Lord Jesus and believe in your heart that God has raised Him from the dead, you will be saved.”

Numerous other passages could be cited, but not one of them states in any way that a person has to believe in a young earth or universe to be saved.

I think I second him on this

And the list of those who cannot enter God’s kingdom, as recorded in passages like Revelation 21:8, certainly does not include “old earthers.”

 

Elsewhere we can find more as in Galatians 5 vs 20

Many great men of God who are now with the Lord have believed in an old earth.

This is rather patronising to say the least. In fact it is most since geologists started hammering the earth.

 

Some of these explained away the Bible’s clear teaching about a young earth by adopting the classic gap theory. Others accepted a day-age theory

What Ham doesn’t seem to realise is that these interpretations of Genesis weren’t “made up” to make geological time palatable , but go back hundreds of years earlier and right back to the early Fathers.

See my chapter in Myth and Geology, Geol soc Special Publications 273 2007.

sp273-39

 

or positions such as theistic evolution, the framework hypothesis, and progressive creation.

This is rather sweeping and dismissive of the many who have considered Genesis in the light of science

My chapter (in English from Streitfall Evolution

Evolution and religion in Britain from 1859 to

Scripture plainly teaches that salvation is conditioned upon faith in Christ, with no requirement for what one believes about the age of the earth or universe.

In many ways I agree with that, but Christians can put others off beleif in Christ by holding silly beliefs themselves or rejecting science. St Augustine sums it up

Now when I say this, people sometimes assume then that it does not matter what a Christian believes concerning the supposed millions-of-years age for the earth and universe.

 

Now we are getting to it! I disagree with Ham as rejecting “billions-of-years” makes the Gospel absurd. I find this rather duplicitous  as the diagram shows what Ham really thinks as his honest answer is that you cannot.

 

Even though it is not a salvation issue, the belief that earth history spans millions of years has very severe consequences.

Having softened his readers up, he nows let rip.

Let me summarize some of these.

Authority Issue

The belief in millions of years does not come from Scripture, but from the fallible methods that secularists use to date the universe.

 

As the Bible was written some 2 to 3 thousand years ago, this is not surprising. Neither do the following come from Scripture; heliocentrism, genetics, DNA, periodic table, but according to Paul in I Corinthians 15 seeds actaully die before they germinate. That is simply untrue!!

To attempt to fit millions of years into the Bible, you have to invent a gap of time that almost all Bible scholars agree the text does not allow — at least from a hermeneutical perspective.

Here Ham is alluding to the Gap Theory, which suggests a gap of time between the initial creation in vs1 and the final re-ordering in vs2, which was the most common view of conservative evangelicals up to about 1970 to accommodate geological time. Here Ham implies it was invented/concocted as an adhoc response to deep time.

That is not the case. Some in the early church held it. In fact before 1800 most western Christians reckon God first created chaos and then later re-ordered it after a period of time. Before geology opinions differed on the duration of Chaos. Ussher nobly allowed a few hours, but others allowed much more. Thus in 1801 Thomas Chalmers took this “Chaos-Restitution” interpretation and allowed most geological time to be in this period of Chaos.

Hence it was not invented but an old interpretation modified. OK it was rejected by most in later years.

Or you have to reinterpret the days of creation as long periods of time (even though they are obviously ordinary days in the context of Genesis 1).

 

Again this is not another invention but a modification of an ancient interpretation which was held by some in the early church. It was not as widely held as the Chaos-Restitution

See my chapter in Myth and Geology and also this paper in The Evangelical Quarterly

Genesis of Ray

In other words, you have to add a concept (millions of years) from outside Scripture into God’s Word. This approach puts man’s fallible ideas in authority over God’s Word.

Sorry, Ken. You misrepresented this “alternative” views and failed to acknowledge they were common before any geologist wielded his hammer.

As soon as you surrender the Bible’s authority in one area, you unlock a door to do the same thing in other areas.

Ken would do well to read John Calvin on accommodation in his commentary on Genesis, on chapter one!! Here Calvin stresses the Bible is about God and not scientific detail. In other words

the Bible tells you how to get to heaven

Not how the heavens go.

Once the door of compromise is open, even if ajar just a little, subsequent generations push the door open wider. Ultimately, this compromise has been a major contributing factor in the loss of biblical authority in our Western world.

Ken loves the word compromise, possibly because it puts those he disagrees with in a bad light. It implies we all lack integrity, which is very offensive

It is not compromise, but striving to understand the world around us in the light of Scripture.

The Church should heed the warning of Proverbs 30:6: “Do not add to His words, lest He rebuke you, and you be found a liar.”

Not a kindly remark. One should not weaponise the Word of God.

Contradiction Issue

A Christian’s belief in millions of years totally contradicts the clear teaching of Scripture. Here are just three examples:

Thorns. Fossil thorns are found in rock layers that secularists believe to be hundreds of millions of years old, so supposedly they existed millions of years before man. However, the Bible makes it clear that thorns came into existence after the Curse: “Then to Adam He said, ‘Because. . . you have eaten from the tree of which I commanded you, saying, “You shall not eat of it”: Cursed is the ground for your sake. . . . Both thorns and thistles it shall bring forth for you’ ” (Genesis 3:17–18).

Nope. Gen 3. 18 does not say thorns came into existence at the so-called Curse.

Disease. The fossil remains of animals, said by evolutionists to be millions of years old, show evidence of diseases (like cancer, brain tumors, and arthritis). Thus, such diseases supposedly existed millions of years before sin. Yet Scripture teaches that after God finished creating everything and placed man at the pinnacle of creation, He described the creation as “very good” (Genesis 1:31). Certainly calling cancer and brain tumors “very good” does not fit with Scripture and the character of God.

It’s odd that Christians in previous centuries did not have this problem with “very good”. Why should “very good” mean the absence of death?

Diet. The Bible clearly teaches in Genesis 1:29–30 that Adam and Eve and the animals were all vegetarian before sin entered the world. However, we find fossils with lots of evidence showing that animals were eating each other — supposedly millions of years before man and thus before sin.

To be pedantic this does not preclude meat in one’s diet.

  Death Issue

Romans 8:22 makes it clear that the whole creation is groaning as a result of the Fall — the entrance of sin. One reason for this groaning is death — the death of living creatures, both animals and man. Death is described as an enemy (1 Corinthians 15:26), which will trouble creation until one day it is thrown into the lake of fire.

Th is is eisegesis on eisegesis. Paul is not clear at this point – hence the diversity of opinion among commentators. Paul neither says or implies “One reason for this groaning is death”.

Romans 5:12 and other passages make it obvious that physical death of man (and really, death in general) entered the once-perfect creation because of man’s sin. However, if a person believes that the fossil record arose over millions of years, then death, disease, suffering, carnivorous activity, and thorns existed millions of years before sin.

 

Again Ken his selecting his preferred interpretation.

The first death was in the Garden of Eden when God killed an animal as the first blood sacrifice (Genesis 3:21) — a picture of what was to come in Jesus Christ, the Lamb of God, who would take away the sin of the world. Jesus Christ stepped into history to pay the penalty of sin — to conquer our enemy, death.

 

This depends how you consider Genesis 3, but nowhere does it say animals did not die before this point. Most importantly it does not say god offered a sacrifice to make those clothes. This is ingenuous.

By dying on a Cross and being raised from the dead, Jesus conquered death and paid the penalty for sin. Although millions of years of death before sin is not a salvation issue per se, I personally believe that it is really an attack on Jesus’ work on the Cross.

Well, this is not an argument, but what he personally believes! It is better to follow Scripture and look to all commentators to see how we should understand it. One person’s personal views do not count for much.

Recognizing that Christ’s work on the Cross defeated our enemy, death, is crucial to understanding the good news of the gospel: “And God will wipe away every tear from their eyes; there shall be no more death, nor sorrow, nor crying. There shall be no more pain, for the former things have passed away” (Revelation 21:4).

Far more important is to see that through the cross Christ forgives us and that the resurrection opens the way for new life.  (Could write much more here.)

Rooted in Genesis

All biblical doctrines, including the gospel itself, are ultimately rooted in the first book of the Bible.

• God specially created everything in heaven and earth (Genesis 1:1).
• God uniquely created man and woman in His image (Genesis 1:26–27).

This is universal Christian belief.

• Marriage consists of one man and one woman for life (Genesis 2:24).

I won’t challenge this as the ideal, but it is a pity many Creationists don’t follow it!!

• The first man and woman brought sin into the world (Genesis 3:1–24)

.However you read Genesis, sin started with humans

• From the beginning God promised a Messiah to save us (Genesis 3:15).

Not all Christians accept this “bruised heel” argument

• Death and suffering arose because of original sin (Genesis 3:16–19).

Genesis 3 16-19 does not actually say this. It is a popular interpretation which owes to John Milton than the Bible

• God sets society’s standards of right and wrong (Genesis 6:5–6).

Not the best biblical passage on this!!

• The ultimate purpose of life is to walk with God (Genesis 6:9–10).

I think all Christians would agree, but prefer to look elsewhere in the Bible and especially Jesus’ teachings.

• All people belong to one race — the human race (Genesis 11:1–9).

Agreed. I reject the views of Creationists in Apartheid South Africa and the Confederate States who used Genesis to support racism.

 

False Claims

The New York Times on November 25, 2007, published an article on the modern biblical creation movement. The Creation Museum/Answers in Genesis received a few mentions in the article. However, I wanted to deal with one statement in the article that the writer, Hanna Rosin, stated concerning the Creation Museum:

The museum sends the message that belief in a young earth is the only way to salvation. The failure to understand Genesis is literally “undermining the entire word of God,” Ken Ham, the founder of Answers in Genesis, says in a video. The collapse of Christianity believed to result from that failure is drawn out in a series of exhibits: school shootings, gay marriage, drugs, porn, and pregnant teens. At the same time, it presents biblical literalism as perfectly defensible science.

“Note particularly the statement: “belief in a young earth is the only way to salvation.” Had the writer done just a little bit of homework, she would have found that not to be true! Even if Christians believe in an old earth (and even theistic evolution), they would know that such a statement is absolutely false.

 The Creation Museum avoids saying this explicitly, but it is implied in everything Ham, AIG and the Creation Museum say.

The Bible makes it clear that, concerning Jesus Christ, “Nor is there salvation in any other, for there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved” (Acts 4:12). When the Philippian jailer in Acts 16:30 asked, “Sirs, what must I do to be saved?” Paul and Silas (in verse 31) replied, “Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and you will be saved, you and your household.”

He’s on stronger ground here, but reflects standard Christian belief

In Ephesians 2:8–9 we are clearly told “For by grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves; it is the gift of God, not of works, lest anyone should boast.” And Jesus Christ stated “Jesus said to him, ‘I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through Me’ ” (John 14:6).

Creation Museum/Answers in Genesis Teachings

As one walks through the Creation Museum, nowhere does it even suggest that “belief in a young earth is the only way to salvation.”

Not so, Maybe it does not state it, but the whole approach of the Creation Musuem and AIG, not only suggests it, but makes it to be the only conclusion.

In fact, in the theater where the climax of the 7 C’s walk-through occurs, people watch a program called The Last Adam. This is one of the most powerful presentations of the gospel I have ever seen. This program clearly sets out the way of salvation — and it has nothing to do with believing in a young earth.

As I often tell people in my lectures, Romans 10:9 states “If you confess with your mouth, ‘Jesus is Lord,’ and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.” By confessing “Jesus is Lord,” one is confessing that Christ is to be Lord of one’s life — which means repenting of sin and acknowledging who Christ is. The Bible DOES NOT state, “That if you confess with your mouth, ‘Jesus is Lord,’ and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead — AND BELIEVE IN A YOUNG EARTH — you will be saved”!

You protest too much!!

Concluding Remarks

So it should be obvious to anyone, even our opponents, that this statement in the New York Times is absolutely false. Sadly, I have seen similar statements in other press articles — and it seems no matter what we write in website articles, or how often we answer this outlandish accusation, many in the press continue to disseminate this false accusation, and one has to wonder if it is a deliberate attempt to alienate AiG from the mainstream church!

I was not aware that AIG was part of the mainstream churches !

I believe that one of the reasons writers such as Hanna Rosin make such statements is that AiG is very bold in presenting authoritatively what the Bible clearly states. People sometimes misconstrue such authority in the way Hanna Rosin has. It is also interesting that people who don’t agree with us often get very emotional about how authoritatively we present the biblical creation view — they dogmatically insist we can’t be so dogmatic in what we present! It’s okay for them to be dogmatic about what they believe, and dogmatic about what we shouldn’t believe, but we can’t be!

In my lectures, I explain to people that believing in an old earth won’t keep people out of heaven if they are truly “born again” as the Bible defines “born again.” Then I’m asked, “Then why does AiG make an issue of the age of the earth — particularly a young age?” The answer is that our emphasis is on the authority of Scripture. The idea of millions of years does NOT come from the Bible; it comes from man’s fallible, assumption-based dating methods.

Here we go again. The false questioning of anything connected to geological or cosmological dating.

That has been dealt with so many times.

 

If one uses such fallible dating methods to reinterpret Genesis (e.g., the days of creation), then one is unlocking a door, so to speak, to teach others that they don’t have to take the Bible as written (e.g., Genesis is historical narrative) at the beginning — so why should one take it as written elsewhere (e.g., the bodily Resurrection of Christ). If one has to accept what secular scientists

i.e atheistic scientists. Ken will not admit how many Christian scienitsts have been involved in all this old age stuff, whether those geologists like Sedgwick and Buckland

 

in the early 19th century or Fr leMaitre, the Belgian astrophysicist and priest who put forward the idea of a Big Bang.

say about the age of the earth, evolution, etc., then why not reinterpret the Resurrection of Christ? After all, no secular scientist accepts that a human being can be raised from the dead, so maybe the Resurrection should be reinterpreted to mean just “spiritual resurrection.”

This is plain deceptive as he wishes to imply all non-creationist scientists are atheistic and deny the resurrection.

Perhaps he has not heard of Francis Collins,

Sir John Polkinghorne and a whole galaxy of greater and lesser scientists throughout the world , who see no conflict between faith in the resurrection of Jesus and acceptance of the vast age of the universe, and those things which go along with it.

The point is, believing in a young earth won’t ultimately affect one’s salvation, but it sure does affect the beliefs of those that person influences concerning how to approach Scripture. We believe that such compromise in the Church with millions of years and Darwinian evolution has greatly contributed to the loss of the Christian foundation in the culture.

You have not proved your point!!

However you have shown  that you are prepared to misrepresent other Christians, history  and science to make your claim.

Your approach is deficient both in the Ninth Commandment and our Lord’s Second great commandment and rather replete with what Paul warns us about in Galatians 5 vs16-21

I think I prefer Adam Sedgwick’s ways two hundred years ago. We should do the same today . Here it is;

sedgwick

 

Is Genesis History? Well, nope

 

Is Genesis History? is a DVD to show that early Genesis is “history” and that the earth is a few thousand years old, God talked the universe into being in 144 hrs, the flood was worldwide and most of the strata were laid down at that time. Evolution is a big no-no.

It has the support of most creationist groups and many of their “experts” have contributed to this beautifully flawed production.

More can be found on their website. https://isgenesishistory.com/ 

The introductory page makes it clear.

“Will strengthen confidence in Scripture, clarify understanding of the relationships of revelation, science, history, and faith, and enhance understanding of difficult questions all while being both beautiful and entertaining.” – E. Calvin Beisner, PhD

Is Genesis History? features over a dozen scientists and scholars explaining how the world intersects with the history recorded in Genesis.  From rock layers to fossils, from lions to stars, from the Bible to artifacts, this fascinating film will change the way you see the world.

The film’s goal is to provide a reasonable case for Creation in six normal days, a real Adam and Eve, an actual fall, a global flood, and a tower of Babel. Dr. Del Tackett, creator of The Truth Project, serves as your guide—hiking through canyons, climbing up mountains, and diving below the sea—in an exploration of two competing views … one compelling truth.

This says it all, but who are the experts?

Experts Interviewed

Many people don’t realize just how many scientists and scholars see Genesis as the key to understanding the world around us. Each of these experts has spent decades working in his respective field to better understand how it relates to the history recorded in the Bible.

• Kevin Anderson, PhD – Microbiologist
• Steve Austin, PhD – Geologist
• Steven Boyd, PhD – Hebraist
• Robert Carter, PhD – Marine Biologist
• Arthur Chadwick, PhD – Taphonomist
• Danny Faulkner, PhD – Astronomer
• George Grant, PhD – Pastor
• Paul Nelson, PhD – Philosopher of Science
• Douglas Petrovich, PhD – Archeologist

• Marcus Ross, PhD – Paleontologist
• Andrew Snelling, PhD – Geologist
• Kurt Wise, PhD – Paleontologist
• Todd Wood, PhD – Biologist
• Stuart Burgess, PhD – Mechanical Engineer (Bonus Features)
• Douglas Kelly, PhD – Theologian (Bonus Features)
• Larry Vardiman, PhD – Atmospheric Physicist (Bonus Features)

 

Those who fllow Young Earth Creationism will recognise most of these names. It’s true that they have Ph.D.s and have worked for years in their chosen fields, but…..

I’ve met five of them, but none have more than a few academic papers to their name – which, in the case of geology, do nothing to refute “old earth ” geology. At times their treatment of standard science is duplicitous.

And so another page deals with their answers to “questions”.

https://isgenesishistory.com/category/questions/

I’ll focus on one – the theologian Douglas Kelly

 https://isgenesishistory.com/when-did-the-church-stop-reading-genesis-as-history/

When did the Church Stop Reading Genesis as History?

Dr. Douglas Kelly explains the history of the church’s relationship with Evolution and the Bible.

DEL: Where do you see all of the sudden the thought beginning to work its way in, that there is something less than historical record found in Genesis?

DOUG: Dr. Nigel Cameron, who did a book a number of years ago which unfortunately it’s out of print, Evolution and the Authority of the Bible, in which he shows convincingly to me after serious study on his part that the whole church as far as commentators and creeds on into Protestant confessions held straight six day creation, until the European enlightenment. And particularly two things happen, well many things happened in the European enlightenment but two things particular reference to creation. One is there was the introduction of the thought of vast geological ages being evidenced by geological structures. That was happening largely in the 18th Century, late 18th Century. And then in the 19th Century of course we have Charles Darwin. It was not that theories of evolution were totally novel. They weren’t, because if you go back to certain pre-socratic philosophers, Democritus, Lucretius and others, they held some kind of evolution, but that Christianity had purged that out and said it’s ridiculous and it goes way underground.

DOUG: It’s able to come back to the surface by the European enlightenment. Geology first and then with particularly Darwin and his grandfather was teaching Erasmus Darwin but Charles Darwin’s major work came out in 1859 and sold out in about two days because people were so desperate to find an intellectual alternative to divine creation. Well Cameron shows that when about five years, five or six years after Darwin’s book became popular i.e. by the late 1860s there was scarcely a protestant commentator, a protestant commentator that didn’t accept some form of evolution or at least say this is a matter best left to the scientists. Let’s deal with the spiritual.

DEL: It happened that fast.

DOUG: It happened that fast within six or seven years. Now there were exceptions. Good Bishop Wilbur Force resisted it, but that’s how quickly it happened.

I facepalmed at the last sentence “Bishop Wilbur Force”. It clearly they meant Bishop Samuel Wilberforce, son of William Wilberforce.

Wilberfoce was competent in science and attended geological lectures by William Buckland for three years while at Oxford. His 1860 review of the Origin of Species was competent though rejecting evolution.

Kelly studied for his Ph D in Edinburgh under T F Torrance, the leading 20th century Scottish theologian, who had a sound view of science and theology!

In 1999 he published a YEC book supporting a six day creation , full of poor theology and worse science.

The quotes by Kelly here are weak. He is wrong to say theologians held to a six day creation until the Enlightenment. See my chapter here; Genesis 1 & geological time from 1600-1850 Until there was geological evidence for an ancient earth theologians took varied opinions but after 1780 few opted for a young earth. What Kelly does not say is that after 1800 very few theologians, Protestant or Catholic accepted a 6-day creation. That includes conservative protestants and evangelicals on both sides of the pond. By 1870 most accepted some kind of evolution.  This is just for Britain, the situation in the USA was similar  – at least til the Scopes trial. Evolution and religion in Britain from 1859

So lets get on with this blog  on

6 Reasons Christians Should Embrace 6 Day Creation

https://isgenesishistory.com/6-reasons-christians-embrace-6-day-creation/

The blog  has a clear purpose – to give 6 reasons why Christians must accept a 6-day creation.

When Is Genesis History? opened in theaters last year, we had no idea it would be the top grossing Christian documentary for 2017. We were even more surprised when our distributor said they were bringing it back to theaters on Feb 22, 2018 for an Anniversary Event.

Why did this film resonate so much with audiences?

Perhaps it demonstrated that it’s intellectually reasonable for Christians to embrace 6-day creation.

By ‘6-day creation,’ I’m referring not just to one’s view of Genesis 1, but to an entire chronology of historical events. These include the immediate creation of everything in six normal days, a Fall that brought corruption and death into the universe, and a global Flood that destroyed the world.

I recognize that among some Christians this is not a popular view of history. Instead, some have adopted the framework hypothesis, analogical days, or the cosmic-temple model to interpret Genesis 1.

They then accept the conventional chronology of universal history. This includes the slow formation of everything over billions of years starting with a Big Bang, the corruption and death of trillions of creatures before the arrival of Adam and Eve, a Fall that introduced death only to mankind, and a local flood during the days of Noah.

It is the events included in 6-day creation that are essential for Christian theology.

I realize that intelligent and godly Christians hold to this model of Earth history. Nevertheless, many seem unaware of the actual events they must inevitably adopt when affirming a 13.8 billion-year-old universe.

After all, one cannot extend history for billions of years without attaching new events to it. Those events have theological consequences.

This is why thinkers like Geerhardus Vos, Louis Berkhof, and D. Martin Lloyd-Jones embraced 6-day creation. They understood it is the events included in 6-day creation that are essential for Christian theology.

Note that included is not only a 6-day creation, but also a Fall which brought death into the world. This latter is a plank for YEC as the death of Christ is often presented as reversing the effects of the Fall, thus giving more plausibility to YEC. Note how the expression “corruption and death” is put forward in contrast to a “good2 and “very good” original creation.

Then Six theological reasons for YEC are considered.

Here are six theological reasons worth considering:

N.B. Here I give the blog in “quotes” , the rest are my comments

1. God’s Goodness Must Be Reflected in the Original Creation

Ligon Duncan observed in an interview for ‘The Gospel Coalition’ that affirming the goodness of the original creation is non-negotiable. As the Westminster Confession states, the goodness of the original creation is the manifestation of the glory of God’s own goodness. (WCF 4.1)

 

If the expression “original creation” was not used, most , if not all Christians subscribe to this. Creation,( however it came about, however old it is), “is the manifestation of the glory of God’s own goodness. (WCF 4.1)”. However the use of “original Creation” is used to imply that creation took place in a matter of 144 Hours. That most Christians disagree with.

they then ask;

What does that goodness look like? It is full of life-giving power and bounty.

I find this photo an odd one to show the earth without corruption 🙂 In fact it shows beauty and tranquillity and so much of our scenery and wildlife shows the beauty and wonder of Creation. Here are two taken from near home I quickly found at random . It is difficult to see it as “not good”. I try hard to see the corruption here.

 

This is what we see in Genesis 1. God pronounces His original creation ‘good’ and ‘very good.’ It was a world of plenty and beauty without animal carnivory (Gen 1:30) and without corruption and death (Rom 8:21).

Yet this picture of an artistically-designed, beautiful world only fits within the chronology of 6-day creation.

 

I’d be very surprised if any reader does not see this as a “picture of an artistically-designed, beautiful world”. Just look at the colours and delicacy of the plant’s structure and the exquisite tiny flowers coming into bloom. Many will recognise it as sundew (drosera rotundiflora) which is common in boggy areas. I found this ten miles from my home in a gorgeous boggy lake full of drosera and surrounded by Bog asphodel.

Beautiful though it is, the sundew is  – er  – um -” a product of the Fall and Curse” as it is a  carnivorous plant and gains some sustainence from catching insects with those tentacles in the leaves. as well as that the boggy area is a morass of dead plants and animals in varying stages of decomposition. So if the sundew and bog asphodel are beautiful they are the result of the Fall and Curse!! This rather contradicts the claim that “this picture of an artistically-designed, beautiful world only fits within the chronology of 6-day creation”.

Further they are right to say “This is what we see in Genesis 1. God pronounces His original creation ‘good’ and ‘very good.’ It was a world of plenty and beauty …..” We see this good and very good all around us, and especially if we are tuned to see the wonder of creation in both large and small things.

But then they say “It was a world of plenty and beauty without animal carnivory (Gen 1:30) and without corruption and death (Rom 8:21).” Well, we see a world of plenty and beauty WITH corruption and animal death. We must ask how the Fall and Curse changed creation. The photos I chose all show a world of plenty and beauty with carnivory present! Gen 1 vs 30 has to be squeezed very hard to make it affirm carnivory. I’ll deal with Romans 8 later.

If one adopts the conventional chronology, one must accept that the Earth was absent from the universe for its first 9 billion years. After a galactic cooling event, the Earth slowly formed through billions of years of uninhabitable environments. God eventually created the first complex marine life, then progressively created or evolved different types of organisms. These experienced death and massive extinction events that led to the destruction of trillions of living creatures.

All this happened long before the appearance of Adam and Eve.

I realize that some Christians may not be interested in these sorts of details. Yet anyone who chooses to accept an old universe implicitly accepts the historical events that go with it. It is a history filled with lifelessness and death, not the goodness of God.

This flight of fancy begs some questions. Yes, we have a long evolution over 13.4 billion years and during most of that there was no life – but why is that bad? To correct an error of emotive appeal, the earth was not “slowly formed through billions of years of uninhabitable environments”. Yes, earth was formed 4.6 billion years ago, but life was almost certainly there by 4 billion. There has been life ever since.  But even “lifeless creation” has beauty and wonder.

Now this is the “lifeless” view from the present summit of Mt St Helens taken in October 2009. The foreground is “lifeless” lava and glacier! Behind the area was wiped clean of most life in May 1980, but is now regenerating.

2. Adam’s Sin Resulted in Universal Corruption and Death

According to the conventional chronology, corruption has always been a part of the universe. This can be seen in the fossil record which supposedly represents 540 million years of animal suffering and death. It provides snapshots of a world often full of thorns and thistles.

It’s a funny use of corruption, when it is used to denigrate the endless cycle if the universe changing over time. The universe has a history of stars being born and dying, but why is that corruption? The next sentence is rather inaccurate. The fossil record goes back 4 billion years, not 540 million!!

In this view, Adam’s sin could not have been the ultimate cause of universal corruption. As an historical event, his disobedience occurred long after “corruption” was present. Of course , their assertion is that the earth is young and geological and cosmological ages are wrong. But no evidence for that is given. Neither do they point out that arguments for these vast ages go back 300 years or so, so cannot be laid at the door of Darwin.

By ‘6-day creation,’ I’m referring not just to one’s view of Genesis 1, but to an entire chronology of historical events. These include the immediate creation of everything in six normal days, a Fall that brought corruption and death into the universe, and a global Flood that destroyed the world.

Where does it say the Fall brought “corruption”  to the universe. It is simply not in any version of Genesis 3. Yes, Genesis 3 speaks of thorns and thistles (vs18) but not animal death, earthquakes or anything else. They really need to show that DAY must mean 24 hours. For 2000 years Christians have varied on this and though until about 1680 most reckoned the earth to be young, a significant number did not on theological grounds as they had no scienitific evidence to guide them.

Further the popularity of their view of corruption stems from Milton’s poem Paradise Lost, rather than a theological consensus.

https://michaelroberts4004.wordpress.com/2016/02/19/why-the-apple-didnt-kill-adam-and-eve/

However animal pain and death is a problem to all who beleive in a benifient God. As Darwin asked about the Ichneumon fly and a cat playing with a mouse

 

https://michaelroberts4004.wordpress.com/2015/05/06/parasitic-wasps-and-the-death-of-jesus-with-hat-tip-to-darwin/

Ultimately there is no resolution and either the Curse or “billions of years of suffering and death ” does not get God off the hook!! It is a hard thing to accept that God created a world with death and suffering, but equally hard if God introduced death and suffering because a pair of nudists went scrumping.  It is irresolvable.

Or even more starkly 

https://twitter.com/i/status/1158800625775206400

This is what Paul affirms in Romans 8:21. It is what Christian theology has always affirmed: Adam was given dominion over the entire creation at the beginning; when he sinned, the entire creation was subjected to corruption as a consequence of its unique relationship to him.

Here we have the usual appeal to Rom 8 vs21. It is the standard interpretation but not unanimous. This turns on the translation of several Greek words. The word translated creation is ktisis, which can mean humanity in both parts of the New Testament and Apostolic Fathers. Few accept that today, but it was the view of the 18th century commentator John Gill and the 17th century John Lightfoot, who dated creation to 3926BC, making him more young earth than Ussher.

https://michaelroberts4004.wordpress.com/2017/03/18/mis-reading-romans-chapter-8/

Too many “orthodox” (i.e old earth) theologians seem to go for a Fall in creation as did the commentators Sanday and Headlem and also NT Wright  in Evil and the Justice of God p 117 and p109.

There is a lack of clear thinking in this area, but it must be said that if the earth is even a few million years old, then death is of the order of creation and not due to a Fall. Creationists cash in on this lack of clarity. Perhaps I spent too long in scorching temperatures in the Namib Desert sorting out the geology !!

3. The Pattern of Creation-Fall-Redemption Culminates in the New Creation

If the universe contained death and corruption that wasn’t the result of Adam’s sin, what does that mean for Jesus’s redemption of both man and creation?

This is a superficially appealing argument, BUT it shifts the emphasis of the redemptive work of Jesus on the cross from the atonement of human sin to sorting out the mess of the Fall and Curse.

Consider His miracles: He was re-forming the world according to the goodness of the original creation. Whether Jesus was healing the sick, raising the dead, or feeding the hungry, He was showing that redemption results in tangible bounty to actual people. It is a goodness that culminates with the new creation. Passages in the Prophets and Revelation suggest a return to the space-time goodness of the original creation.

Yet it is only the chronology of 6-day creation that provides the historical framework for this pattern to have meaning.

If the original creation was not good, or if the Fall did not transform that creation into something evil, then what is the real nature of our redemption? And what is the real potential of the new creation?

For the bookends of creation to match, they must be mirrors of each other. This is only possible with 6-day creation.

This is a bit rambling.

4. Scripture Must be Used to Interpret Scripture

In the Odyssey, when Penelope wants to prove her husband’s identity, she requests he shoot an arrow through 12 axe handles placed in a row. She knows he is the only one who can do it. In the same way, although different interpretations claim to be accurate, only those which pass intact through the entirety of the Bible are true.

This is what we see with the events associated with 6-day creation: they are affirmed throughout the entire Bible.

Whether it is Moses connecting creation week with a normal week in the fourth commandment; or Isaiah affirming God created man at the same time He created the heavens and the earth; or Jesus explaining the global destruction of the Flood in light of His second coming; or Luke tracing the history of the world through a single genealogy; or Paul relating the work of Adam to the work of Christ; or Peter showing the relationship between the creation, global flood, and judgment to come, there is only one historical sequence that consistently fits: 6-day creation.

This is not what it says as it is an appeal claiming that THEIR interpretation is correct and the others wrong. To interpret Scripture one must use other parts of Scripture, but alway consider the context and genre and use extra-biblical information, especially on the cultural context.

5. Essential Doctrines are Embedded in History

Last year, I had lunch with a friend who takes a more liberal view of the Bible. As he heard what was in the film, he said, “if there really was a global flood, that changes everything.” This is similar to the line of thinking we see in Acts: if a man really rose from the dead, that changes everything.

Paul establishes the necessary connection between the events of history and Christian doctrine in 1 Corinthians 15. Peter does the same in 2 Peter 3 with creation, the flood, and the final judgment.

Yet it is only within the historical framework of 6-day creation that all these events cohere to the fabric of time.

For instance, if the thick fossil-bearing rock layers are the result of a global flood, they are a physical reminder of God’s global judgment on the earth in the past—as well as in the future.

If, however, one adopts the conventional chronology, those huge layers are merely a testimony to millions of years. God’s judgment is erased from the earth—and perhaps overlooked in the future.

This is based on an obvious assumption  and that is that the history of the New Testament is the same as early Genesis. It is hard to say they are. This overlooks so many differences. I note that they look to God’s judgement in the Flood as if this were a proof of a young earth.

6. Presuppositional Thinking Helps Us Understand the Discipline of Science

Finally, what about science itself?

When I started researching our documentary, I came across a book entitled The Structure of Scientific Revolutions by Thomas Kuhn. Although there is much that could be said about Kuhn, his method is easy for philosophically-minded Christians to grasp: he applies presuppositional thinking to the discipline of science.

Anyone who has read Christian philosopher Cornelius Van Til can see the similarities between them:

Both point out that data is not “value-neutral,” but that people bring a ‘set of glasses’ toward the interpretation of the world around them. Both recognize the intense commitment people have toward certain views to the exclusion of all others. Both note that groups consistently interpret what they observe in light of their base presuppositions.

Now what makes Kuhn interesting is that he explores the history of science in light of this thinking. The result is that he effectively questions the absolute epistemological authority of modern science.

This is a total misreading of Kuhn. He argued that accumulated evidence changes the “paradigm” of scientists  eg geocentricity to heliocentricity. It was not a case of changing “presuppositions”. It can also be done on geological time and evolution (though Kuhn did this v badly), plate tectonics etc. People did not change their views on geological time due to changing presuppositions, but accumulated evidence gleaned from a methodologically naturalistic perspective. Thus scientists gradually changed their views on the age of the earth, from a few thousand in 1660 to millions in 1800 to billions by 1910. It is often overlooked that many of these geologists were Christians.

Having read both Van Til and Kuhn I cannot see the similarities, though I have to admit I’m a fan of neither!

 

In Closing

I regret the abbreviated nature of these thoughts. They are only a few of the many I arrived at during my three year process researching this film. I have explored them at greater depth in the Is Genesis History? Bible Study that accompanies the film.

In closing, it is my strongest conviction as a Christian that 6-day creation is the only longterm viable option for Christian theology. As D. Martin Lloyd-Jones said, “I have no gospel unless Genesis is history.”

They have not made their case!! To claim Genesis is history as we know it today is to make the Gospel incredible and thus no gospel.

Michael’s Conclusion; is Genesis History?

In the normal sense NO and it does not claim to be. To ask this question and to put it in a way that you must answer YES is to misunderstand early Genesis and the rest of the Bible.

It stems from the view that the bible is written in the same way from Genesis to Revelation and all is equally “history”. The Bible is variable on history. When we study the Gospels and Acts we find that is akin to our historcal understanding today and that of its time. It can stand alongside Caesar’s Gallic Wars as a narrative account. This, in itself, does not mean it is accurate history and Caesar was prone to massaging the facts for his own purposes. Opinions vary on the historical reliability of the New Testament, but I am persuaded that it is reliable history, and to some I take a hopelessly conservative position.

Once we consider the Old Testament things change. and its historicity and reliability  becomes less the earlier the events are. From Saul onwards i.e. after c1000BC the account fits with other contemporary accounts. But this is far less so for the Exodus and conquest, though some link it to contemporary events. For the Patriarchs – Abraham, Jacob and Joseph, the sitz-im-leben is the early Second Millenium, but there is no supporting evidence. Hence some say the Patriarchs are non- historical figures. I disagree there.

And so we come to Genesis 1 to 11, the substance of these films and blog. It is fair to say they were seen as history until the 18th century, but discoveries of an ancient earth – both geological and anthropological challenged that.

Most important is to see the historicity of Jesus Christ and not a pair of anti-diluvian nudists.

I reckon G M Hopkins gives us a better way to consider Genesis

https://michaelroberts4004.wordpress.com/2014/08/26/gods-grandeur-gerard-manley-hopkins/

How insane is Ken Ham’s Creation Museum

An amusing and  poll on how daft it really is

However Darwin wasn’t daft

https://www.ranker.com/list/unbelievable-creation-museum-attractions/cheryl-adams-richkoff?ref=browse_list&fbclid=IwAR0G87kKq_paWD4Y912iu7lZ50hNwJ0dBZDFMy6aGrf8S94-xIrCFWG9Vx0

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The Most Unbelievable Attractions At The Creation Museum

 

Cheryl Adams Richkoff

7.5k votes1.5k voters74.9k views12 items

List RulesVote up the most insane things that the Creation Museum teaches.

Located in rural Kentucky is a most interesting and controversial museum called the Creation Museum. It was founded by Young Earth supporter and Evangelical minister Ken Hamm. If you’ve ever visited a natural history museum, you’ll find the Creation Museum quite different from that experience – in fact, you’ll see the some of the most unbelievable attractions at the Creation Museum. The museum is designed to encourage the Evangelical faithful to accept the Bible in the most literal sense without involving science, as a majority of Christian institutions do not support the notable creationist beliefs.

Creationists use the museum both explicitly and implicitly as a medium to try to convert and convince those who believe in the theory of evolution. It is one of the best museums in the world to visit, as it is guaranteed to shock you, make you laugh, or even upset you. Take a look below and vote up the craziest things the museum displays as truth, from how the Earth was formed to how dinosaurs were man’s best friend.

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Kangaroos Reached Australia During The Flood By Hanging On To Floating Trees

Photo:  PanBK/Wikimedia Commons

Another hard question put to the Creation Museum by academic scientists has to do with the animals presently residing in the Southern Hemisphere. How did animals such as the kangaroo make it to Australia after the flood (since the Ark came to rest on a mountain top in the Middle East)? The answer is simple, according to the Creation Museum. Isn’t it obvious? During the Flood, Mr. and Mrs. Kangaroo jumped ship, grabbed hold of some floating trees, and rode the waves right down under to Australia. Seems legit.

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Is this insane?

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Velociraptors Were Cuddly Vegetarians Before Original Sin

Photo:  David Berkowitz/Flickr

One of the first things visitors see upon entering the Creation Museum is an exhibit of a happy, prehistorical child playing next to a velociraptor dinosaur. In traditional science, the fossil record clearly points to such dinosaurs as not only predatory meat-eaters, but also as predators of a particularly vicious nature that were built for strength and speed.

However, according to the Creation Museum, this is not the case. Prior to the Edenic “Fall” of the first humans (Adam and Eve), dinosaurs were cute and cuddly vegetarians. Even the raptors. Thus, they were the perfect pet for children. Then along came that apple and original sin, which ruined everything.

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The Earth Is Only 6,000 Years Old

Photo: NASA/Public Domain/Wikimedia Commons

According to the Creation Museum and a number of Christian Evangelicals, planet Earth and the rest of the universe are actually only about 6,000 years old. They make this claim based on verses from the Christian Bible. There is even a philosophical school of thought called “Young Earth.” Again, supporters of that school dismiss carbon dating and actual historical evidence of human civilizations in existence prior to 4,000 BCE. The museum claims that each year, more professional paleontologists join their numbers in supporting the Young Earth theory.

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Humans And Dinosaurs Lived Happily Together

Photo:  Acdixon/Wikimedia Commons

According to Creation Museum director and founder Ken Hamm, dinosaurs and people co-existed happily. He claims that fossil records and carbon dating present poor evidence to support that dinosaurs lived and became extinct long before homo sapiens ruled the Earth. The museum features a number of exhibits showing humans and dinosaurs getting along quite well, cooperating together at work and at home. Some displays even show dinosaurs with saddles and riders.

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The The Greatest Show on Earth collectionEvery Single Human Attraction From P.T. Barnum’s Freak Show

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10 people have voted onTeaching Science Has Pretty Much Turned The World Into A Hell Hole

Photo: FlyDime/Wikimedia Commons

Not all the exhibits at the Creation Museum are about how the world came into existence and how humans became best friends with dinosaurs. There is a series of exhibits that show the aftermath of the fall of Eden. To see them, a visitor must go through a tunnel that leads to a variety of frightening, hellish experiences.

According to creationists, after the fall in the Garden of Eden, mankind descended into every sort of vice, sin, and degradation because humans disobeyed God. The only way to return to a state of peace and happiness is to believe the word of God literally.

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Is this insane?

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30 people have voted onEarth’s Entire Paleontology Record Comes From Noah’s Flood Sediment

Photo: Daniel Tuttle/Flickr

Since the claim that the Earth is only 6,000 years old is supported by the Creation Museum, the staff have to provide some sort of evidence for the enormous, deep fossil record that is found all over the world. Creationists turn to the Bible and argue that all the sediment that created the innumerable fossils of innumerable creatures did not build up over many millennia; no, the sediment from Noah’s flood created ample layers to account for the extensive record.

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The That’s Just Science collectionScientific Terms You Don’t Know You’re Using Incorrectly

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35 people have voted onEvolution Is Nonsense, So Why Not Make A Make-Believe Ape-Man?

Photo: Tim Evanson/Flickr

The Creation Museum is not just for the serious theologian. There are fun classes designed for children to learn more about the legitimacy of creationism and the silliness of evolution. For example, one may enroll in a class where the learning activity is making an “Ape-Man,” a fantastical being that is supposed to scorn the scientific theory of human evolution. Apparently, the fact that evolutionists do not subscribe to the idea of an “Ape-Man” is not discussed in class.

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37 people have voted onThere’s An Epic Darwin Take-Down Room, Silly Evolutionists

Photo: The Hornet Magazine/Wikimedia Commons/Public Domain

The Theory of Evolution is pretty compelling, right? How else do you explain a phenomenon like Darwin’s finches, the Galapagos finches who, despite being part of the same genus, developed beak features to match the food available on the specific island where they lived? Easy! By accepting natural selection but not evolution. Here’s the thing:

“God created “every winged bird according to its kind” (Genesis 1:21). So, for example, fluctuations in the populations of finches and finch speciation occurs as a response to different environments. But after all, finches still remain finches.”

Boom! In the “Natural Selection vs. Evolution” exhibit, creationist scientists have put together a pretty strong exhibit making the case for natural selection, “a present, observable process that is supported biblically and scientifically.” Nothing proves evolution, on the other hand, because, after all nothing has “the ability to create new genetic information required for molecules-to-man evolution.” Except God, of course, and that is not at all what the Bible says he did.

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13 people have voted onGod Ordered Predatory Animals On The Ark To Behave

Photo: Charles Willson Peale/Wikimedia Commons

Naturally, the Creation Museum is often faced with hard questions from scientists, scholars, visitors, and even theologians. One of the questions that comes up the most has to do with the story of Noah’s Ark, when, according to the Old Testament, God flooded the Earth, killing all humans and animals except for one man, his extended family, and one pair of male and female animals from each species.

The question specifically addresses how dinosaurs and other predatory animals were prevented from attacking and killing the other animals aboard. The Creation Museum’s response is simple: if God could create and then flood the world, it is no problem for him to order the predatory animals to behave themselves during the Ark journey. While this answer defies all logic, it makes sense to religious believers.

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In Dr. Crawley’s Insectorium, visitors have the chance to meet Dr. Arthur Podd, who can answer all of their questions about the insects showcased in the collection. Even more exciting? Dr. Podd is a robot! Yes, a robot scientist answers your questions about a scientific exhibit. Where are all of those creationist scientists when you need them? Over in the evolution rooms railing against Darwin, perhaps?

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The The Walls Kept Tumbling Down collection14 Bizarre Things Most People Don’t Know About The Bodies Preserved At Pompeii

11526 VOTES

44 people have voted onDragons And Dinosaurs Are Essentially The Same

Photo: Chris Light/Wikimedia Commons

Human history is replete with stories, legends, and images of the fantastical creature known as the dragon. From St. George to Game of Thrones, who can resist the lure of the fire-breathing, scaly, wondrous, flying beasts? The Creation Museum, for one, cannot resist. Their website maintains that the long and oft-told tales of dragons are completely true, since dragons were a type of dinosaur. The museum even boasts a story from a 19th-century newspaper claiming that a Wild West cowboy had an encounter with a dragon in the desert.

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The Laugh All the Way to the Grave collectionThese Cryptic Messages On Tombstones Only Hint At Their Terrifying Backstories

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19 people have voted onCheck Out How The Night Sky ‘Confirms God’s Word In Genesis!’

Photo: Rachel Hanes/Flickr/CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

For many people, gazing up into the cosmos at night can be an existentially overwhelming practice – it’s so vast, and we’re so small. What else is out there? For folks visiting the Creation Museum, the Stargazer’s Planetarium provides an awesome chance to look up at the stars and “travel anywhere in the universe,” especially the places in the “night sky [that confirm] God’s Word in Genesis.” And, if you can’t see them for yourself, there are “scientists and astronomers” on hand who can “affirm” them for you. How helpful!

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The All Things The Batman collection15 Times Batman and the Joker Actually Worked Together (No, Really)

Filed Under: Polls MuseumsWeirdWeirdly Interesting

The Most Unbelievable Attractions At The Creation Museum

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Working for Ken Ham and Answers in Genesis

This is a worrying account of someone who worked for Ken Ham for Answers in Genesis

I make no comment and let Ella speak for herself. I have lifted her facebook article.

I am not impressed but have great respect for Ella. Sadly it does not surprise me

At times Christians are far better at doing the work of the devil than that of Jesus Christ – and it is not limited to Creationists

fff

https://www.facebook.com/ariella.duran.7/posts/2456808194546948

 

To those who know me and love me,

An open letter on the harm that I received since 2015 from Answers in Genesis and other entities, having biblically attempted to resolve what happened to me by following both Matthew 18 and any protocols necessary for proper reconciliation.

My purpose in writing this is that SILENCE PROLONGS ABUSE, and I can no longer be silent. “The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.” – Edmund Burke

Before I continue to say what happened, I will emphasize how I’ve attempted to biblically address Answers in Genesis:

During my time at AiG, I worked as hard as possible so that when the time came for me to speak, I would have proven my diligence and willingness to work in whatever way was needed. I originally believed that Ken Ham DID NOT know the toxic nature of AiG, but during my employment I discovered that the toxic culture of AiG goes all the way to Ken, and there is no intention of changing the burnout and bullying culture that is AiG – Ken is in fact an active part of it. After leaving AiG, I had the opportunity to speak to some board members about the state of AiG, and I did so in an objective manner that identified the necessary changes from a business standpoint, without bringing my individual pain into it. Greater and more knowledgeable people than myself have also made attempts to voice the same concerns at AiG, and suddenly left under mysterious circumstances. Quite some time has passed, and I know for a fact that nothing has changed. Google “answers in genesis workplace reviews” or talk to people still employed there, asking for an honest answer and not just “it’s great”.

Herein begins a summary of my life since 2015.

In 2015 I moved away from Northern Michigan to work at the Christian organization Answers in Genesis. During my nearly 2.25 years of employment, I worked in or with every single existing department, starting in Guest Services as Museum Host and over 9 months becoming competent in all five departments associated with that position, then moving to Point of Sale for 8 months (during which time the Ark was opened), then moving to Human Resources for 11 months.

During my time there I witnessed rank partiality and favoritism, nepotism, inconsistent or non-existent communication, bullying, and spiritual abuse – as in, guilt is used as a motivator because AiG is “doing the Lord’s work, and who are you to stand in the way of that?” When people proactively try to speak up to change the culture and pace for the better, staff meetings emphasizing “submission to authority” ensue or, in some cases, people are pushed/bullied out of the organization.

Lest you say “that’s just businesses everywhere these days”, AiG has set itself up as a pillar of Christianity, and as such, is held to a higher standard. It claims to stand on the authority of God’s Word, yet the leadership fails to treat people with basic Christian values, unless you are part of the echo chamber. If you conform to AiG, then you probably really enjoy your job besides the workload. The leadership lacks accountability and abuses its authority, effectively making said echo chamber.

Ken has built his legacy on the bones of employees he has knowingly driven into the ground. If you were to make an illustration of it, it would look similar to Dan Lietha’s “Garden of Eden on Skeletons” cartoon.

AiG overextends itself in every department, or attempts to do so unless lower management staunchly holds back the higher-ups’ demands, yet AiG is chronically short-staffed, leading to people sacrificing a work-life balance while being paid ministry pay, notoriously much lower than the value of equivalent jobs in other companies. People need either time or money in return for employment, and those who come to AiG knowing they will be on lower pay are usually under such high work expectations that many continue to work while scheduled to be off (e.g. weekends, holidays) or on vacation, instead of focusing on their families or regular lives. The turnover rate is astronomical, which they really can’t afford considering that people who agree with their statement of faith are already a niche group. It’s also an expectation to immediately respond to anything considered “urgent”, often forcing people to prioritize AiG over the needs of the employee, their family, and/or their church. AiG lauds itself as a family-oriented organization, yet that doesn’t seem to apply to those actually employed by AiG, especially those working at the Attractions who are required to work Sundays – which is an issue in itself. If AiG truly trusts God to bring people to salvation, there should be no reason for AiG to be open on Sundays, which would allow the employees to rest and be strengthened by their communities and families, and be active in their churches.

Ken Ham wrote a book “Already Gone” about young people leaving the churches, but the irony is, HE is the reason his employees are already gone from their own churches.

The “work of the Lord” has become greater than the Lord of the work.

My first role, beginning in August 2015, was as a Museum Host which worked in five departments – Guest Services (including Admissions, working the ticketing counter), Petting Zoo, Housekeeping, Retail, and Food Services. I learned each department quickly and was flexible enough to work in any one of them. My capability led to me being asked to serve as Temporary Floor Coordinator over the entire Creation Museum Guest Services on two separate occasions, even though other people had worked there longer and knew more than I. It was while working as a Museum Host that I began to identify the organizational silos, bullying, mismanagement and partiality.

The second department in which I worked, Point of Sale (POS) was created only months before the Ark opened, and it consisted of only three people including myself who, during the 40 Days & 40 Nights extended hours when the Ark first opened, needed to cover a 12 hour day at the Museum and an 18 hour day at the Ark. We were working roughly 65-80 hours a week, on salary. The artists and fabricators, among many others, were required to work those kinds of hours for weeks and months longer than we were, so it was a lot of salary abuse.

The obvious question is, why does anyone stay?

Because you love your team, and you have hope that things will change, and you believe in the mission of AiG, and some opportunities are genuinely really cool. So you tough it out another day, which becomes a week, which becomes months and years. This also means that many ex-employees who have been hurt and/or burned out by AiG remain silent out of respect for what AiG produces, and/or out of fear of appearing to have “sour grapes”. There is also a fear that they will be thrown under the bus, like AiG did to the young man in the Oklahoma University incident.

It’s more important that AiG maintain its facade than value people in a godly manner. Unfortunately, AiG is not interested in changing.

The first seventeen months in Kentucky, I lived with a woman who turned out to be emotionally abusive, and I don’t say that lightly. She was passive aggressive, controlling, manipulative, critical, and unkind, except when it pleased her not to be, like when company came over, or we were at church. She verbally tore me down and also put down and criticized my family, but then would put money in the last entries in my journal (which means she was reading it). There’s a subtle method of abuse called “gaslighting” where a controlling person constantly invalidates the other person, saying “you didn’t say that/do that” “you didn’t understand me” “I didn’t mean it, you took it wrong” sort of things, which creates mind games in order to keep the other person confused and “controlled”. I was constantly walking on eggshells because I didn’t know whether to expect niceness or her to go off on me. She justified her behavior by saying “you have to submit to me because when you’re married you’ll have to submit to a husband this way.” Not only is that scripture taken out of context, but more importantly husbands are commanded to love their wives as Christ loved the Church – Jesus DIED for the Church – and didn’t use His authority to abuse or control or manipulate.

I went through two separate rounds of Biblical counseling in order to step away from the damage that was done by her and another entity I’ll mention in a moment, and I tried to talk to her many times about what she did, but to no avail. This includes a few months ago reaching out to one of my biblical counselors to see if I had to try to reconcile any more, since that woman I had lived with is currently the head of children’s ministry at Grace Fellowship Church in Union, KY. I didn’t receive a conclusive response.

Because of her, and the long hours at work, in 2016 I began sleeping in my SUV at the Ark property, or spending the night in the Creation Museum basement (the now-demolished Last Adam theater), or sleeping at a friend’s house near work. Due to the long hours and lack of finances (salary, no overtime pay) I was unable to look for new housing nor could I have afforded the usual down payment required for an apartment. Also, NKY is known for drug and sex trafficking so I didn’t find it wise to grocery shop in the wee morning hours while exhausted, since I would get off at midnight or later. I couldn’t ask friends for help because they were almost as burnt out as I was, since they too were participating in 40 Days/40 Nights.

Also, being new to the area, I had attended Truth Community Church in Milford, OH, on the word of acquaintances at work. It turned out later that Tcomm (as it’s known) is actually considered a cult because of how it treats people. Not knowing this at the time, I accepted it at face value and began listening to discern whether I would remain there. The pastor’s family invited me into their lives, and the oldest daughter seemed to befriend me. However, when it became clear that I differed theologically (having just stepped away from my hometown and family, I was officially figuring out what I believed and making my faith my own) they began to push me out of the church. I thought the oldest daughter was genuinely my friend, so I took her out for coffee to ask what was wrong. She told me that she believed I was a manipulative, divisive, grace abusing liar. To say I was deeply hurt is putting it mildly. It turned out she was partly motivated by jealousy since she wanted the man I was dating at the time.

I left that church to attend another one, but during 40 Days/40 Nights we had to be at work often before noon, leaving very little time for church on Sundays, and Tcomm was consistently expository so I attempted to go there during those strenuous weeks/months. I gave the benefit of the doubt that the pastor’s daughter was acting out of jealousy and that her behavior was not condoned by her parents, so I asked to speak to them (since the daughter had now publicly shunned me). I met with the pastor’s wife at the Chipotle on Mall Rd, where she proceeded to treat me as an already-condemned criminal, not interested in my side of the story. They had conflated such things as me saying “I hate purple” and then wearing a purple shirtdress, as me lying. Those were the kind of claims against me. The pastor’s wife told me the elders would “come to a decision” about me. After the meeting I wanted to throw up because of the lack of kindness and empathy. This is while living with the abusive woman, being horribly homesick, being quite hungry most of the time from overwork, and working 65-80 hours a week.

My family back in Michigan, whom I’m very close with, was in the middle of an intense season wrapping up building some houses, so it was difficult for me to communicate what was going on. I was incredibly homesick but if I had left during 40 Days/40 Nights and the period of time directly afterward, the already insane workload would’ve increased exponentially on my two coworkers. I wanted to “get through the worst of it” to support them. Unfortunately at AiG, “the worst of it” is often just a small step up from what is considered “normal”, putting constant intense pressure on employees year-round, leaving no margin for emergencies or truly urgent seasons.

I continued to do my best to follow Matthew 18 in regards to Truth Community Church, so I met with the pastor and one of the elders of Tcomm at the end of July ‘16. They told me the elders had found me “untrustworthy”, and when I asked why, they said it was “private elder business” and wouldn’t tell me. If I had indeed committed some sin, it would’ve been their prerogative as Christian leaders to not only scripturally point it out, but also walk with me through it or provide counseling since I had a willing heart to learn and grow. Instead, I was not allowed to attend any events put on by Tcomm, nor step foot on the property. Side note – churches are public places of worship, they don’t actually have a right to treat non-members that way. One of the elders stood up for me and was forced to leave and lie about why they had to go – saying it was for “family reasons”. I warned some of my friends about the true nature of the church, but they believed the lies about me told by leadership, and deserted me.

Two years later, some of those ex-friends realized I was right and apologized to me. A pastor in the Ohio area found out what happened to me, found out that Tcomm has actually treated MULTIPLE people and families in the same manner as they did me, and spoke to one of the Tcomm elders about it – but he blew it off as “private elder business, you don’t understand all the details.” So Tcomm continues in unrepentant sin, abusing their leadership and role as shepherds.

It was during this time of overwork, exhaustion, spiritual and emotional emptiness, and hunger from not having sufficient time to provide for myself, that one night as I sat on the 3rd deck of the Ark completely alone (the shifts went to midnight or later, after all) that I realized that my family was so busy; my coworkers and I stretched so thin we rarely saw each other; I was sleeping in my car or at work because I hated going to the house where I lived; that I realized I could have walked off the top of the Ark and my absence would not have been noticed for days. I didn’t “want it all to end”, I just was so tired and empty in every way that I simply wanted to fade away and be with Jesus. Jesus knew me and loved me, I was wanted by Him even if no one else wanted me, He valued me even if AiG or Tcomm or some of my friends didn’t. I prayed through that and kept moving forward, but that was the deepest moment of my depression, and I was unable to fully continue healing from all of these things until now, here in New Zealand, nearly three years later.

I write that because those who know me, know that I’m a consistently joyful person, so for me to reach that point of depression shows the severity of what was happening.

In December of 2016 I fully realized beyond doubt that the woman I lived with was emotionally abusive, and I prayed for the opportunity to leave. I began packing the day she left to go to Florida for two weeks over Christmas, and on Christmas Eve God provided housing for me. Within a week I moved, and I was completely gone from her house within an hour before she walked through the door from her return flight.

During the next eleven months I learned Human Resources from the ground up while also trying to recover from all of the above, while still facing ex-friends/coworkers who thought I was a liar and treated me as such, and people who were bullying me both at work and outside of work. I began going through biblical counseling at this time because I know that Jesus Christ gives the ability to overcome ALL of these things. It’s a process, but it’s possible. Anyone who sees my life and reads my instagram or Facebook posts can see that I have tried to live victoriously through all of this. At this time I was also ministering to people walking through their own grief by taking them canoeing or teaching them art (metalworking/jewelrymaking), and trying to encourage AiG staff with departmental ice cream sandwich days paid for out of my own pocket.

I was excited for Human Resources because I knew 85-90 percent of 1,000 employees by name, usually knowing their job, department, and some interesting fact about them as well. Because I had been “in the trenches” during the opening of the Ark, people trusted me. I purposely tried to give people time and attention, and listen to them because there’s a massive deficit of that at AiG. I also refused to show partiality – Attractions staff (Creation Museum, Ark Encounter) are the grassroots of AiG, but are often considered lowest priority and have the fewest “perks”, the most difficult hours, and often the most stressful jobs dealing with guests, weather, animals, and/or the ups and downs of food service. If they call in sick, they know their coworkers will have to bear their part of the already heavy load, so people often didn’t call in sick even when they should have. I hoped that by “paying my dues” and accumulating as much knowledge as I could, I could possibly help the employees and take the pressure off those intense situations through eventual organizational changes.

In the spring and fall, before kids are out of school and able to work, there’s a big “crunch time” when the Ark and Museum have a large upswing in guests, and because of already being shortstaffed, office employees are pulled from the back to serve at peak times like the first few hours in the morning and lunchtime when employees need to be relieved to go eat. Because I was competent in the five Museum Host departments (housekeeping, food services, petting zoo, retail, guest services) Ken Ham had specifically told the managers that I was eligible to be pulled from my HR job to work in any of those departments. Because of the overwork during 40 Days/40 Nights, I put specific boundaries in place.

My stipulations were: The department wanting me to work would have to email my manager and myself 24 hours in advance; I would have to see if my schedule accommodated it; and I had the ability to say yes or no. This protected me from trying to put too much in my day or overpromising, and it also allowed me to have the right clothes or preparation etc since each department had different requirements.

What follows is an extremely personal example of the lack of employee value. I share it because if I had been a seasonal employee instead of Human Resources, the incident would most likely have been completely unnoticed:

In September 2017, I was going to help with an indoor air-conditioned workshop at 10 am. I was wearing clothes appropriate for the cold offices, and I was scheduled to be done at noon. When I got to work one of my coworkers told me that Ken had “thrown a fit this morning because not all the food venues were open“ (due to being short-staffed), so I was being sent out to run the lemonade stand at the Museum. (I’d been popular out there previously because I’d been singing and friendly and did a good job – I’d even received a note about it).

Being told to go to the lemonade stand did NOT honor my 24 hour rule which protected me. I was not dressed for outdoors, and I didn’t have the right clothes with me either. That day was one of the hottest it had been all year, and there had been multiple weather alerts because the heat index was so high that the elderly and pets were cautioned to stay indoors. The job required me to stand on asphalt in almost direct sun from 10 am to 2 pm. Not only that, I usually ate double or triple breakfasts before I worked in food services because I was constantly hungry, in part because I hadn’t recovered my health from the stress of 40 Day/40 Nights. I told my coworker all those things, and asked if I ABSOLUTELY had to switch to the lemonade stand. She said she went to ask the Museum Director and he said yes, Ella has to be at the lemonade stand.

I submitted to that. I went out there, in clothes that were too hot, without the proper amount of food that I usually eat, to fill the role just like a seasonal employee would – I didn’t “pull rank”. It was not going to end well. I looked my coworker in the eyes and said all of those things to her.

Standing on asphalt at the lemonade stand in the sun, while serving guests, while also troubleshooting my point of sale station (turns out the heat had fried the receipt printer, if I remember correctly) all took its toll. At 1:30 I radio’d to ask if I could be relieved for lunch, but I could hear the busyness in the background as the cafe staff member asked me if I could wait. I knew they wouldn’t have asked me if they didn’t really need me to, so I waited. I had been constantly drinking water trying to stop overheating, and because I was so hot I was becoming discombobulated, while not knowing that drinking that much water on an empty stomach causes nausea.

I was finally relieved and proceeded to be extremely sick, both hot and cold at once and trying to cool down and warm up from my body going into shock, but I couldn’t throw up because I had nothing to throw up. I tried to get to my office where I could essentially “break down” in peace without bothering anyone, but right at my office door I ran into Ken Ham, Mark Looy, Officer Joe Niemeyer, and some others. They attempted to joke with me but I was crying, so they asked what was wrong. I told them I’d been scheduled for an indoor workshop but had been told to work in the heat out at the lemonade stand, and now I was going to be sick.

So if anyone doubts whether Ken knows the consequences of his arbitrary decisions, he does.

This was the absolute worst case scenario for me, because at that time I had been working with one of my mentors to develop a powerpoint to pitch to administration about handling and preventing the burnout culture I saw everywhere (and was a danger of becoming a casualty myself), and I was hoping to use my experience to make a solid presentation. Having a physical breakdown (no matter how justified) was the LAST thing I wanted to do. However, it showed me that they are fully aware of what’s going on, and they make no efforts to change.

Soon after that, my manager and I met to discuss me transferring to a different department since I was becoming miserable in HR from both the way it allowed treatment of employees and the type of work involved, even though I was giving 150% effort. However, the department I was most qualified for was closed to me because of nepotism, bullying, and illegal discrimination because I’m a woman (later, another woman was also denied an interview for that department simply on the basis of being a woman). It was at this time that the bullying I’d already been receiving escalated, both at work and outside of work.

In November ‘17 we had the staff Christmas Party put on by HR, and since I’m naturally an event organizer, it was the most fun I’d had in months, even though I was showing signs of burnout. I was also worried because I had to choose a department to transfer into by the end of November, but I knew that the best department for me was closed to me, so I didn’t know what I was going to do.

I needn’t have worried. The morning after the Christmas Party, I received news that one of my younger sisters was suddenly diagnosed with thyroid cancer, so I moved home as soon as possible. When I got home, my body crashed from all the stress and trauma finally catching up to me, and I’ve been on and off bedrest for 18 months now, even here in New Zealand. If you’ve seen me cheerfully living my life out and about, it’s been between long days in bed doing nothing, sometimes with blindness migraines completely incapacitating me.

I apologize if my words come across harshly. I’m not angry or bitter, and I’m happy to be out of that situation and finally healing. I’m simply telling the truth, and it’s the unfortunate hard truth. I haven’t wanted to write any of this, and have held off for a long time, yet there are many people like me who walk in silence and undeserved shame, burdened by how they’ve been hurt, and unable to speak about it so that they can truly heal.

SILENCE PROLONGS ABUSE. AiG and Truth Community Church have been approached in the biblical manner by more knowledgeable and wiser people than me about what they’re doing, and haven’t changed. It’s sin, and I’m calling it for what it is.

Thank you to all of you who have loved me with sincere hearts during the last nearly four years, giving time and love and kindness when I needed it most. Thank you for patience and understanding and gentleness, especially to those who’ve helped me verbally process this crud in order to get through it. And given hugs. Your love overwhelms me. The small miracles of joy and love that God has granted during the last four years are a story unto itself, as this excerpt is only ⅓ of all that’s happened.