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Is biblical creation anti-science?

Bible-Genesis

The article reporting on the Lutheran Church Missouri Synod’s resolution reaffirming 6-day creation received several comments from both Christians and skeptics with objections to biblical creation. We print them below, with responses from CMI-US’s Lita Sanders.

Charles H., Australia, writes:

Are you the anti-Christ. where did Jesus teach that the earth was 6000 years old? Your interpretation of the timeline is warped. Organized religion has a lot to answer to for confusing people. You draw a long bow between ‘Gay’ and people not accepting the truths in the Bible. You are mistaken in your timeline 4000 years first written record. 2000 years prior to this your start of the universe. Christ message was about different things. Your message comes from the old testament what the Jews believed in. (including a flat earth, sun around the earth ,many unanswered questions re universe ,etc. Are the scientist that wrong re Carbon dating 6000 years against 60 billion years?

Jesus taught that the earth was 6,000 years old in Genesis 5 and 11, along with other chronological markers in the rest of the Old Testament. Surely you weren’t going to try the old trick of implying that Jesus only spoke the red letters? Jesus said that Scripture cannot be broken (John 10:35) and that not even the smallest mark of it would pass away (Matthew 5:18). He had every chance to correct people if they understood Genesis wrongly, yet Jesus affirmed the recent creation of man and the global Flood of Noah’s day. Also, note that He was speaking to Jews who certainly believed Genesis was historical!

In short, we believe exactly what Jesus taught about Genesis. And the Old Testament authors most certainly did not believe in a flat earth nor geocentrism. And I would suggest that makes us the exact opposite of an ‘anti-Christ’. But if you claim to be a Christian you would have done well to research these very topics that have been extensively covered on our site, before claiming that we were ignorant of such things and unable to answer them.


Fred P, UK, writes:

Please explain how since 4000 BC we had the Stone Age, the Iron Age, the Bronze Age and maybe 10 ice ages, continental shift—as evidenced by coal and fossils being found in Antarctica—plus such readily dateable events as the building of the Pyramids. Sure was a busy time for all concerned. Don’t you begin to think—just a teeny bit—that your hypothesis of an Earth just 6000 years old is riddled with flaws?

Lita Sanders, US, replies,

Nice setup there! By assuming evolutionary history and demanding I cram that into the biblical timeframe, it’s clearly giving me an impossible task. But let’s look at those assumptions. Most people realize that Stone, Iron, and Bronze ages are a bit of a fallacy. Today we can find groups of people that fit into those categories, living side-by-side. 10 ice ages? 1 is plenty and fits the evidence we have, and would be predicted from the global Flood. See What caused the ice age? And interesting thing about those pyramids—the stones are often limestone and sandstone which are sedimentary rocks (formed under water). They have marine fossils in them which indicates they came about because of a global Flood (see Egyptian Chronology and the Bible, and particularly the reply to David B in the comments of that article).

You have your own time problem—chimpanzees and humans supposedly shared an ancestor as recently as 6 million years ago. However, generation times and mutation rates make it impossible for the differences to arise that quickly. And it’s once again amazing how advocates for an old-earth (an unbiblical idea if we take the Genesis chronogenealogies and the words of Jesus at face value), actually have no idea where the secular age of the earth comes from. See See Did God create over billions of years? And why is it important?


David M., UK, writes:

There is no scientific evidence for the existence of God, and therefore it must follow that the act of irresponsibly teaching gullible people that ‘God created the Earth’ must constitute a deliberate lie, which is itself a shameful act. Further, we know that the Universe continues to expand and cool, and from this information we can deduce its age as 13.75 billion years. Equally, the scientific method tells us that the Earth is 4.6 billion years old, and that humans are animals evolved from earlier forms and—together with all other plants and animals—will have shared Common Ancestors throughout evolutionary history. The chemicals that we see on the Periodic Table, displayed in most schools, are the direct result of the deaths of stars caused by their failing battle with the forces of gravity, as their hydrogen fuel begins to run out. Therefore, it is both poetically beautiful and scientifically accurate to say that we are all made of stardust!

This statement by the Lutheran Church seems to me to be a desperate and ill-informed response to the overwhelming scientific evidence, which itself provides us with modern medical and veterinarian services, as well as keeping many of us alive when Natural Selection would simply have us die much younger. Such obstinacy in the face of knowledge is not to be praised, but rather ridiculed for its stubborn and foolish rejection of Science. Books? A Universe from Nothing by Lawrence Krauss; Why Evolution Is True by Jerry Coyne; The Greatest Show On Earth by Richard Dawkins.

David,

Asking for scientific evidence for the existence of God is a category error. It’s like asking for geometrical proof for the existence of Abraham Lincoln. God is by definition outside of science. If we could put Him in a test-tube, He wouldn’t be God! The evidence we put forward is historical and philosophical. First and foremost, Jesus Christ claimed to be the Messiah and to fulfill the Jewish Scriptures. He was raised from the dead, in history.

You assume that people who believe the earth is 6,000 years old are gullible. But just among our staff we have scientists and other specialists who have earned advanced degrees from secular universities. Many started out as evolutionists, but the science itself drove them to biblical creation.

When you say, “The scientific method tells us that the earth is 4.6 billion years old” you demonstrate you don’t even know what the scientific method is and fail to provide any scientific evidence for your assertion anyway (we call that ‘elephant hurling’). You can use the scientific method to get facts like, “Water boils at 100 degrees Celsius at sea level” or “Rubber is a good insulator”. You know what you can’t test with the scientific method? Historical events that only happen once. You might as well say, “The scientific method tells us that Queen Elizabeth’s reign began in 1952”.

The scientific method gives us facts like the ratio between isotopes. We have to make assumptions to get from those facts to the interpretation that the earth is billions of years old. Biblical creationists have different interpretations of those same facts. The scientific method actually rules out evolution from microbes to man, because it gives us facts like DNA is a tremendously complex code, and mutations to that code are almost always bad, and often catastrophic, so it can’t be the engine of evolution.

The scientific method tells us that the laws of science don’t lead to the formation of stars, so you can’t appeal to their death as the furnace for the elements. Why is it beautiful to say that we are stardust? What basis does your worldview have for the concept of beauty?

You praise medical science which keeps humans alive when ‘natural selection’ would dictate otherwise. But in an evolutionary worldview, why would that be a good thing? Mercy to the ‘unfit’ individual would be cruelty to the human race, which would suffer when worse genes are allowed to persist in the population. In fact, until the world was horrified by the Holocaust, eugenics, the application of evolutionary theory to the human race, was widely practiced in America and parts of Europe, and many people were sterilized because they were seen as ‘unfit’.

You equate skepticism about evolution with a ‘stubborn and foolish rejection of science’. But the Ph.D. scientists on our creation scientists list would not say they are rejecting science. Rather, they are following the science which excludes the big bang, billions of years, and evolution.

Krauss, Coyne, and Dawkins have something besides their evolutionism in common—they are all three vocal atheists. And just as creationists ultimately have a religious foundation which serves as the lens through which we interpret the science, so do evolutionists. And creationists have interacted with the books you cite. In fact, we’ve published an entire book in response to Dawkins’s book: see The Greatest Hoax on Earth? Refuting Dawkins on Evolution. I encourage you to acquaint yourself with creationist thinking, starting with all the links I’ve provided in this response.

Published: 31 August 2019

Helpful Resources

Christianity for Skeptics
by Drs Steve Kumar, Jonathan D Sarfati
US $12.00
Soft cover