Feedback archive → Feedback 2003

A ‘more glorious’ means for creation?

14 November 2003

It would have been nice if you had followed our Feedback rules and checked our website first. We have clearly explained why we believe that creation was in six normal-length days and why long ages contradict the Bible in Genesis Q&A.

God inspired the writing of Scripture to instruct us, so it was in understandable language that the original reader would have understood. Therefore the goal of the interpreter is to find out what the author intended to convey. Therefore historical narrative, such as Genesis, should be interpreted as historical narrative; poetry (such as Psalms) should be interpreted as poetry, etc. See Should Genesis be taken literally?

Interpreting Genesis as straightforward history is the same interpretation that Jesus had:

Mark 10:6, ‘But at the beginning of creation God ‘made them male and female.’

Jesus never said that God made man at the end of creation as big bang teaches. In your view, is God right or the assumptions man used to arrive at the interpretation called ‘big bang’ right?

Glorious? It would be a god that I would never serve. I serve a loving God, not a god that says suffering and pain and death are ‘very good’. Please see The god of an old earth.

My God created a perfect creation in 6 literal days and death is an intruder due to sin. In fact, death is an enemy and will be destroyed (1 Corinthians 15:26). If you believe in the big bang and evolution you believe in hundreds of millions of years of violent death, suffering and struggle for survival before there were any people. So death pre-dated Adam and Eve, if you believe such people actually existed. So God created a world of natural evil and man’s sin had nothing to do with the entry of such into God’s very good creation. That makes God evil.

No, the Bible attributes death to sin and sin to Adam (Romans 5:12). Please see the logical problems with death prior to Adam in Death Before Sin.

But the earth was there before the light was created. Big Bang teaches the opposite. Which is right—God or men’s interpretive assumptions about the past? Also, leading big bang cosmologists do not agree with you, but regard it as a classic atheistic theory.  E.g. Alan Guth, the inventor of the inflationary hypothesis, claimed that the big bang was ‘the ultimate free lunch’—see also The Universe is nothingness! The latest cosmological wild ‘guess’?! The big bang is also derived from an anti-biblical assumption called the Cosmological Principle, that there is no center or preferred direction in the universe. This was covered in a Feedback response earlier this year.

God is revealed correctly in the Bible and not in the theories invented by fallible people. Why do you trust what men tell you over what God says? Do you raise these men’s words to be equal to God’s word? After all, Proverbs 29:25 says, ‘The fear of man brings a snare, But he who trusts in the LORD will be exalted.’ God’s word is equated with God Himself in John 6:63.  If these men’s words are equal to God’s word by your standard, then you are raising them up to be equal with God.

I fail to see your connection here. My God can create an entire universe with diverse kinds of life in 6 days and yours … can’t. How is my God weak? My God is also the measure of goodness, holiness, perfection, the god of the big bang is evil, as explained above.

In fact, my God, the triune God of the Bible, even gives a purpose as to why He created in 6 days. It is the basis for our working week in Exodus 20:8–11.

My God is revealed in the Bible just as He said over and over again.

Now let me explain something that I fear you missed. As a scientist, I thought you would’ve been aware of this. There is a major difference between operational/experimental science and historical science. Let me explain in more detail. Operational science is the highly reliable repeatable science that has a tremendous reputation. This is the type of science that put men on the moon, builds computers and automobiles, genetic mapping, etc. Most of these fields of science are well respected. As Christians, we fully believe in operational science. In fact, most of these fields of science were developed by Christians. Please see Creation scientists of the past.

The other type of science is called historical science. It isn’t repeatable because it deals with events in the past. Evolution, radiometric dating, etc. deal with reconstructing the past. So there requires quite a few assumptions to fill in the gaps.

Many times, these assumptions change and/or are shown wrong and the whole concept of what was believed changes. This happens frequently in historical science. This type of science is not very reliable and changes quite often. Sometimes, I wonder why it is even called ‘science’ with such a bad reputation and non-repeatability. It makes people lose hope in good operational science just because it uses the name science.

But in the same respect, some people get confused and think the deserved reputation of operational science can be applied to historical science. This is a fallacy of transfer. Please take a look at the following pictures:

Operational/experimental science

Historical science

This helps visualize the differences. In historical science, there is quite a bit of imagination. In historical science what is said to be ‘correct and true’ today will probably be wrong tomorrow. In operational science, what is ‘correct and true’ today will likely be ‘correct and true’ tomorrow.  Here is an example of flawed thinking and failure in historical science regarding an isochron dating method:

• The Failure of U-Th-Pb ‘Dating’ at Koongarra, Australia
• Jupiter origin mystery

Historical science literally changes its view everyday on some topics.

Now, if God was truly omnipotent and omnipresent, then why couldn’t He get it right in Genesis? It would have been easy for God to tell us the big bang was true and if evolution was true. However, it is written otherwise. Why the deception?

Jesus did; Moses did (as shown above). Therefore, I do.

One of the more historically accurate cartoons! ;)

It is written in Genesis 1:24-28:

The Bible is clear that this was the same day. Deuteronomy 27:8 says the law is written clearly and Genesis is part of the law. Why are you trying to add another religion to the Word of God? The religion of evolution is an attack on the Word of God. A Christian is required to demolish arguments that stand against the knowledge of God (2 Corinthians 10:5). Please see:

• How did bad things come about?
• The Religious Nature of Evolution

Strangely, you are the one adding men’s interpretations of science as being equal to God and rejecting God’s plain words. So actually, you are raising men to be equal with God. 

I would say, ‘think biblically’! Regardless of your and my thoughts, we can not compare to the wisdom of God—return to the Word of God beginning with Genesis. It is the truth and (true) science fits with it very nicely.

Where is this in the Bible? Is this another instant where you are elevating man’s word to equality with, and even superiority over, God’s word? The only passage I can find says that it is an evil practice:

Romans 1:21-25:
²¹For although they knew God, they neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him, but their thinking became futile and their foolish hearts were darkened. ²²Although they claimed to be wise, they became fools ²³and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images made to look like mortal man and birds and animals and reptiles.
²⁴Therefore God gave them over in the sinful desires of their hearts to sexual impurity for the degrading of their bodies with one another. ²⁵They exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and worshiped and served created things rather than the Creator—who is forever praised. Amen.

Evolutionists worship created images as the truth (recall all the evolutionary pictures of transitions that are made to look like mortal man and birds and animals and reptiles) and reject God’s word (the truth of God in Genesis) for this lie. This passage also says that these people think they are wise but they are futile in their thinking and hearts are foolish.

In our experience, it is the opposite. It is those who compromise who drive potential believers away. After all, compromisers are, in effect, saying that people should trust uniformitarian ‘science’ rather than the Bible about the history of Earth and life upon it. So why shouldn’t the potential believer be consistent and trust ‘scientists’ who claim that dead men can’t rise; virgins can’t conceive; and that adultery, homosexuality and even rape are just the results of our evolutionary ancestry? We have hundreds of letters on file about how people were led astray by compromise but restored or brought to faith by CMI’s firm stand on Biblical authority, e.g.

• Sonia’s Testimony. Creation magazine opened my eyes to the Gospel!
• A testimony: ‘Joel Galvin’—Faith shipwrecked by compromising ‘Christian’ colleges; restored by creation ministry
• ‘No excuse to disbelieve’ How CMI articles helped current CMI writer Lita Sanders come to faith by answering her questions

Jesus said something simple:

John 3:12:
‘“I have spoken to you of earthly things and you do not believe; how then will you believe if I speak of heavenly things?’”

How can someone trust Jesus (or the Bible) about something heavenly like morality or salvation, if He (and the Bible) are wrong about something earthly, like its origin and age? I find it strange that you would accept Jesus in the first place, if you were an evolutionist before you came to faith in Christ. I mean, in a God-used-evolution framework, where death is ‘good’ and came from God, why would someone accept Jesus to save them from death? It is quite a contradiction. Please take some time to read some of the problems with theistic evolution.

I pray this helps and have a great day, God bless.

Sincerely
[Editors]Published: 3 February 2006