Understanding the enemy’s schemes: Long ages of time is the atheists’ “bedrock and launch pad”

missile-rocket-launch — Many Christians rightly understand that the evolution-derived ‘doubt-missiles’ that atheists hurl at believers to undermine their trust in God’s Word are dangerous especially to young people’s faith, and therefore need to be destroyed. But there’s plenty more missiles coming unless the launch pad (analogous to rock strata assigned ages of millions and billions of years) isn’t also dealt with.

In 2 Corinthians 2:11 the Apostle Paul speaks of not being “outwitted” by Satan, of not being ignorant of his schemes. We recently received this insightful testimony from Craig P., of the Northern Territory, Australia. Note especially his identifying of the atheists’ “bedrock and launch pad”:

I converted from atheism [from age 8 until 23] to Biblical creation and Theism through the correct interpretation of our geology and topography. … As I grasped the correct Biblical perspective about our planet’s major features, I also understood that the anti-Biblical movement requires a steadfast faith and adherence to Charles Lyell’s uniformitarianism—the bedrock and launch pad used by atheists to bring doubt into people’s minds, ‘Did God really say?’

This undermining of the authority of The Word of God as being true has been clearly demonstrated in U.S. colleges and growing general illiteracy about The Bible generally, including in Australia …

For readers who are unaware, 19^th century geologist and lawyer Charles Lyell’s uniformitarianism can be succinctly described as the notion that “the present is the key to the past”. So with that mindset, the history of the earth must be very old for canyons and gorges to have been eroded by the rivers and creeks that flow through them today. Given that Charles Darwin’s theory of slow step-by-step evolution intrinsically needed long ages of time, Charles Lyell’s uniformitarianism indeed provided the ‘bedrock’ that Darwinian evolution required.

However, Charles Lyell was no unbiased scientist. He had an agenda, in his own words, to “free the science from Moses”. He didn’t want people to believe that the global Flood of Noah’s day was a real event. But as the likes of Craig P have realized, it’s the biblical Flood, not today’s small volumes of flowing water, that makes sense of dramatic geological features such as the Grand Canyon, and ‘water gaps’ where small creeks flow through massive gorges running transversely across mountain ranges.

And note how Craig P’s conversion from atheism was contingent on his realization that it’s the Bible, not Charles Lyell’s uniformitarianism, that allows correct interpretation of the earth’s geology and topography. So he is most definitely personally qualified to identify that the secular timeline with its millions and billions of years is the atheists’ “bedrock and launch pad”. The key platform they use to blast ‘doubt-missiles’ towards all and sundry. “Did God really say …?”

There’s a key lesson here for us all, and especially for Christians who are rightly opposed to evolution but might not otherwise have thought that long ages of time are a problem for Christianity. Of course anti-evolution but silent-on-long-ages Christians deserve credit for endeavouring to blast the doubt-missiles out of the air. But if the launch pad isn’t also dealt with …

Published: 9 March 2021