The Creation Controversy, Part Four: "Man's Fallible Opinions"

Also in this series:

Introduction

Part One: Biblical Authority

Part Two: Authority from Tradition - The Jewish Sages and Early Church Fathers

Part Three: The Weight of Traditional Views

In an article published by WorldViewWeekend.com in September of 2014, Ken Ham argued that Dr. Hugh Ross—the founder and president of old-earth creationist organization Reasons to Believe—“twists the Bible to fit man’s fallible opinions about origins” by his acceptance of long ages of time and animal death before the fall of man.[1] This argument concerning “man’s fallible opinions” is a very common argument put forth by young-earth teachers. They do everything possible to cast doubt on scientific methodologies and discoveries, arguing that such are fundamentally irreconcilable with scripture, whereas their own interpretations are alleged to demonstrate “that Genesis really can be trusted from the very first verse.”[2]

I’ve already offered some observations on Ken Ham’s approach to the creation controversy in chapter one. To recapitulate in brief here, we’re dealing with a matter of interpretive differences, not a decision on whether or not to “trust Genesis.” Old-earth creationists are not arguing with God in their approach to scripture, despite what is alleged in the sensational claims of young-earth ministries. Beyond this consideration, however, I would like to offer a few other observations with regard to the issue of “man’s fallible opinions” within the context of the creation debate.

Misrepresenting Science and Scientists

 When I was growing up, young-earth authors and lecturers had me pretty well convinced that scientists as a whole were so inept in their approach to origins that they probably couldn’t have found their way out of a telephone booth with a map. Evidences for a young-earth were often presented as “obvious” to anyone who wasn’t either helplessly deluded or else actively working to overthrow the Bible and destroy Christianity. In the world’s eyes, this derision and dismissal has made at least some Christians appear to be fire-breathing champions of irrationality and anti-intellectualism. It has done considerable harm to the reputation of the church and even the gospel message itself.

As for its effect within the Christian community, when young John or Sally leaves the doctrinally accommodating environs of First Baptist Church and steps into a paleontology class at the state university, they are apt to discover that their professor is not so comically inept after all, and that there may be a wee bit more to the subject than was covered in the talking points provided by their church’s last Answers in Genesis conference speaker. Such scenarios are being played out in classrooms all across this country on a daily basis, and in many instances the young people caught up in them will be tremendously weakened with respect to the faith. Some will even forsake the faith altogether.

Ken Ham lays the blame for this unfortunate state of affairs at the feet of old-earthers, arguing that old-earth interpretations “offer…a contorted creation ‘story’ that claims to accept to the truth of Scripture while all the time denying it,” and are “a major factor in these young people doubting and then disbelieving the Scripture.”[3] Ham lashes out at astronomer Hugh Ross in particular, but by implication also condemns other believers who hold to the same opinions:

 

Dr. Ross misrepresents God to unbelievers by stuffing millions of years into the Bible and disconnecting death and suffering from its ultimate cause: man’s sin. This does not encourage faith but suggests to them that God’s Word is not trustworthy and damages the salvation message.[4]

These arguments amount to an astonishing bit of rhetorical sleight of hand. It is young-earth teachers who are telling America’s youth that they cannot believe the Bible and accept the findings of modern science with respect to the age of the universe, yet it is somehow the fault of old-earthers when young people embrace this false dilemma fallacy and decide against the Bible. How can old-earthers be held responsible for the results of young-earth teachings? It’s the young-earth view that creates the conflict here, not the old-earth view. It’s the young-earth view that has, in the minds of many, “disconnected” the Bible “from the real world,” not the old-earth view. If young-earth teachers are going to argue that Genesis is incompatible with science, and demand that believers choose between the two, then it is they who are going to have to accept the responsibility for what happens when people believe them and act on their teachings.

Indeed, some former Christians have gone out of their way to attribute their departure from the faith to Answers in Genesis and various other young-earth organizations.

In a video for YouTube entitled “Ken Ham Made Me an Atheist,” Paul Ens, who claims to have been raised in a Christian home and to have been a believer for three decades, directly attributes the loss of his faith to young-earth creationist teachings. After experiencing doubts in regard to science-related matters, Ens decided to do some research and was led to the Answers books, among other recommended young-earth materials. In reading these materials, Ens did not find “the intellectual honesty” he was looking for, but rather, was confronted with answers he considered “vague, insulting, and outright disingenuous,” including what he felt were “comically inaccurate representations of the science that I wanted to challenge and refute.” As a result of this, Ens quickly came to the conclusion that “creationists had nothing” and that he had been lied to.[5] This is by no means an isolated incident, as atheist comments on Ens’ video demonstrate, and they are but a sampling of the wider commentary that is available online.

While not all who have struggled with these issues have been driven into atheism, many believers testify that they did nearly forsake the faith because they were taught that accepting the Bible as God’s authoritative revelation also meant accepting a young creation, which was entirely incompatible with the findings of the rigorous scientific disciplines in which they were trained. Discovery of the old-earth interpretation ended a tremendous crisis of faith for these believers, allowing them to embrace and defend Genesis, and theism as a whole, with a new vigor.

One such believer who has gone on the record is Glenn Morton, who worked in seismic processing and interpretation, doing work for companies such as Atlantic Richfield. An active young-earth creationist in association with the Institute for Creation Research (ICR) at the time, Morton’s occupation left him routinely handling evidence that seriously challenged the young-earth and global flood paradigms he had previously embraced. In his article, “Why I Left Young-Earth Creationism,” Morton says that when he raised his concerns with some of his young-earth associates, they appeared to have no interest in the data he presented, but instead subjected him to ridicule and accused him of being a deceiver and having ulterior motives. It was not until he found an alternative view of the Genesis creation account that the crisis ended for him. “I very nearly became through with Christianity,” Morton writes. “I was on the verge of becoming an atheist.”[6]

Not only has the faith of some believers been saved by old-earth teachings, but some non-Christians have even come to faith in Christ as a direct result of them, after having been hindered by the perception that they had to embrace the young-earth view to be a Christian. Prominent Christian apologist William Lane Craig recounts one such instance while he was giving a talk at the University of Northern Ireland. A student came up to speak with Craig after his talk, remarking that some Christian friends had been witnessing to him recently, and asked if he had to believe that the earth was created in six literal days in order to become a Christian. When Craig assured him that this was not necessary, the young man was quite relieved:

 

“And this kid threw up his hands in the air and said, ‘Hallelujah! That’s been the one thing that’s been keeping me from giving my life to Christ.’ So, just explaining to him that there’s a range of options was all he needed to hear.”[7]

 

Craig goes on to comment that such considerations are a common hindrance to faith in the young people he encounters in his ministry:

 

“They think that if you’re a Christian you’ve got to believe the world was created six thousand years ago in six consecutive twenty-four hours days, and they can’t believe that…For them, it’s like committing intellectual suicide.”[8]

Nor are these matters simply a modern consideration. In the fifth century AD, Augustine warned Christians against advocating notions that flew in the face of learning and reason where the natural world was concerned, lest non-Christians come to associate Christianity with belief in absurdities and treat the faith with scorn:

 

Now it is a disgraceful and dangerous thing for an infidel to hear a Christian, presumably giving the meaning of Holy Scripture, talking nonsense on these topics; and we should take all means to prevent such an embarrassing situation, in which people show up vast ignorance in a Christian and laugh it to scorn. The shame is not so much that an arrogant individual is derided, but that people outside the faith think our sacred writers held such opinions, and, to the great loss of those for whose salvation we toil, the writers of Scripture are criticized and rejected as unlearned men.

 

If they find a Christian mistaken in a field in which they themselves know well and hear him maintaining his foolish opinions about our books, how are they going to believe those books in matters concerning the resurrection of the dead, the hope of eternal life, and the kingdom of heaven, when they think their pages are full of falsehoods on facts which they themselves have learnt from experience and the light of reason?[9]

Who’s Afraid of the Big Bad Bang?

The notion that the Bible’s real-world relevance is entirely dependent upon a young-earth reading of Genesis is seriously undermined by reactions within the scientific community to the implications of Big Bang cosmology, which Ken Ham dubs a “Bible denying notion.”[10] Witness here the testimony of Professor John Lennox of Oxford University, who comments on how some secular authorities reacted in the 1960s when evidence began to emerge that the universe was not eternal:

 

“It’s interesting, ladies and gentlemen, isn’t it, that we only got the idea that the universe had a beginning—evidence for it—in the 1960s? It was very exciting. I remember it well. Because for centuries Europe was dominated by the thinking of Aristotle, which put the earth fixed at the center of the universe, everything rotating about it, and everything existing eternally. The fascinating thing is this, that when evidence began to arrive that there was a finite beginning to space-time, some leading people in the journal of Nature, the editor…Maddox, said, ‘This is dangerous. We don’t like this because it will give too much leverage to people who believe in Creation.’”[11]

Sir Fred Hoyle, a British astronomer credited with coining the term “Big Bang,” was an atheist who found his atheism “greatly shaken” by evidence of “a deliberate plan” woven into the fabric of nature and the complexity of living organisms. Hoyle came to believe that “a common sense interpretation of the facts suggests that a superintellect has monkeyed with physics, as well as with chemistry and biology, and that there are no blind forces worth speaking about in nature.” For Hoyle, the evidence of this was “so overwhelming as to put this conclusion almost beyond question.”[12]

Astrophysicist Robert Jastrow, writing in his famous book, God and the Astronomers, comments that science has had “extraordinary success in tracing the chain of cause and effect backward in time,” but finds itself stymied at the moment of the Big Bang. As Jastrow puts it, this is “a strange development, unexpected by all but the theologians”:

 

Now we would like to pursue that inquiry farther back in time, but the barrier to further progress seems insurmountable…at this moment it seems as though science will never be able to raise the curtain on the mystery of creation. For the scientist who has lived by his faith in the power of reason, the story ends like a bad dream. He has scaled the mountains of ignorance; he is about to conquer the highest peak; as he pulls himself over the final rock, he is greeted by a band of theologians who have been sitting there for centuries.[13]

In recent years, physicists—perhaps most notably the late Professor Stephen Hawking—have been doing their best to circumvent the Big Bang and produce a universe that requires no beginning—and, by implication, no beginner. Hawking went so far as to argue in 2010 that “because there is a law like gravity, the universe can and will create itself from nothing.”[14]

Hawking’s argument reduces to a logical absurdity in that it has a thing acting before it exists to do the acting, but rather than yield to logic on the matter, Hawking actually went on to target logic, suggesting that “philosophy is dead…because it has not kept pace with modern developments in science, particularly physics.”[15] Hawking’s devotion to materialism was so complete that he was willing to put the cart before the horse here, forgetting that philosophy is actually the basis for science, not vice versa. Anyone who doubts this should try doing science without logic sometime.

Prominent theoretical physicist Alexander Vilenkin admits that the universe “probably did” have a beginning, noting that “We have no viable models of an eternal universe.”[16] Vilenkin says that many physicists are uncomfortable with this idea of a beginning “because it suggests that something must have caused the beginning, that there should be some cause outside of the universe.”[17] Vilenkin asserts that quantum physics subverts the need for an actual cause for the universe because its emergence from ‘nothing’ can be represented as a probability without an actual cause, but even here he acknowledges that something must transcend the universe, namely, the laws of physics:

 

A deep mystery remains: The laws of physics that describe the quantum creation of the universe also describe its evolution. This seems to suggest that they have some independent existence.[18]

Note that this uneasy relationship secular thinkers have with their own cosmology is the result of an old-earth paradigm. Big Bang cosmology has driven them inexorably to the point where they have had to confront the beginning of the universe, and this in turn has fueled the intelligent design debate, providing strong evidence for a transcendent creator. Young-earth creationism, on the other hand, stands aloof of the data from physics and observational astronomy, resting solely on an interpretation of scripture. As such, it provides no such evidence, and provokes no such discussion. Its claims are almost irrelevant outside of the church.

Young-earthers should ask themselves why it is that an alleged “Bible-denying notion” is giving such strong credence to intelligence design, whereas their own paradigm, which supposedly upholds the Word of the creator, is actively driving people away from the faith.

 

The Nature, Purpose, and Reliability of Human Intellect

Ken Ham seems very dismissive of what he dubs “man’s fallible opinions,” and it’s easy to understand why in light of the fact that he believes that God has told us that the universe and the earth are recent creations. If God has spoken—and he was there, we weren’t—then his word is the truth and what men say to the contrary must be wrong. Now, this is certainly true enough in theory, but as I’ve pointed out previously, Ham is assuming that he has correctly and completely understood what God has said. What I think he fails to consider is that “man’s fallible opinions” may also be a problem when applied to the interpretation of scripture—including, potentially, his own interpretation of scripture. As I discussed in chapter one, Christians are at loggerheads over a number of theological issues, and perhaps the only thing that all sides involved can agree upon is that someone is wrong.

Think now for a moment on the nature of man’s intellect. What is it, really? How reliable is it?

Man’s intellect is his God-given capacity to rationally process the data provided by his God-given senses, and thereby, to successfully interact with his God-created environment. In short, our ability to understand the creation has been given to us by the God who made that creation, and as such we have every reason to expect that ability to be reliable. The steady progress of science and the technologically sophisticated age in which we find ourselves are testimonies to the power of the mental capacity with which God has blessed us.

I do not mean to imply here that man’s intellect is somehow flawless. We’re all painfully aware of just how irrational human beings can be at times. We’re given to superstition, prejudices, belief in all manner of ridiculous things, and wild leaps of illogic. All of that is beyond dispute. In fact, the Bible is full of references to the foolishness of human beings.

That said, however, I would point out that the vast majority of biblical references to man’s foolishness have to do less with man’s intellectual capacity than with his moral capacity. For instance, when David and Solomon wrote about “fools” in Psalms and Proverbs, they weren’t referring to people engaged in disciplined scientific inquiry; they were talking about morally degenerate individuals who have forsaken wisdom and the pursuit of godliness in favor of fulfilling their lusts. The apostle Paul tells us this directly in Romans 1 where he notes that foolish individuals who forsake God are given over “to impurity” (1:24), “to degrading passions” (1:26), and “to a depraved mind to do those things which are not proper” (1:28).

I have heard some young-earth creationists insist that man’s intellect was somehow damaged or dulled as a result of the Fall. In other words, sin has made us less intelligent than we would otherwise be, and we’re simply unable to grasp the truth about creation apart from divine assistance. In response, I would point out two things:

First, there is no direct scriptural evidence for this. God did not mention man’s mental capacity in the various curses he pronounced upon Adam and Eve after the Fall, and no other passages of scripture weigh in on the issue. It is true that man’s thinking is skewed by his pursuit of sin, but as noted already, the scriptures that reference this are clearly referring to man’s moral and spiritual judgment and pursuits.

When Paul writes his indictment against those “whose foolish hearts were darkened” in Romans 1, the context makes it clear that these people once knew God but deliberately decided to turn away from him. In fact, he says that they are “without excuse” because “that which is known about God is evident among them. For since the creation of the world His invisible attributes, His eternal power and divine nature have been clearly seen, being understood through what has been made” (Romans 1:19-20). These are not people who are incapable of understanding the truth of God’s existence. Paul says that they did and could understand it. Further, he bases this capacity for understanding, not even on scripture, but on the evidence of the creation itself.

Think a bit on this for a moment. Paul tells us here that men are without excuse before God, not because of what has been written, but because of what has been made. The implication here is that man has the capacity to correctly understand what has been made, apart from written revelation, and to thereby identify the fingerprint of God, to the point where he becomes responsible before God. This conforms nicely with what we saw previously in the scientific community’s reactions to Big Bang cosmology, but it absolutely flies in the face of the common young-earth argument that man cannot properly understand creation without a young-earth interpretation of Genesis.

Second, I believe we can gain some insight into this issue from the account of the Tower of Babel, found in Genesis 11. When God sees that men are working together to build a tower “whose top will reach into heaven,” he confuses their languages in order to thwart the effort and scatter them across the earth, remarking “…and now nothing which they purpose to do will be withheld from them” (Genesis 11:6). This remark is consistent with a high view of human intelligence and ability, very much in line with David’s observations in Psalm 8:3-6, written long after the Fall:

 

When I consider Your heavens, the work of Your fingers,

The moon and the stars, which You have ordained;

What is man that You take thought of him,

And the son of man that You care for him?

Yet You have made him a little lower than the angels,

And You crown him with glory and majesty!

You make him to rule over the works of your hands;

You have put all things under his feet.

In this psalm of praise to God for his care for man, David is likely referencing Genesis 1:26:

 

Then God said, “Let us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness; and let them rule over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the sky and over the cattle and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.”

Thus, we see that the Bible depicts man as an eminently capable being, specially created to rule over the earth and its creatures. While he has been corrupted morally and spiritually, we do not see any indications in scripture that the Fall has somehow made him into an intellectual dullard. Quite the opposite is true. Indeed, the account of the Tower of Babel indicates that, in God’s view, even after the Fall man was capable of accomplishing whatever he put his mind to apart from divine intervention.

So, while man’s understanding is by no means perfect, and his methods are often driven by his desire to make his way apart from God, it is neither logical nor scriptural to argue that he cannot understand creation apart from a primary reliance on the Genesis account—and the young-earth interpretation in particular. In the eyes of God, man is capable of understanding the fact of creation solely through what has been made—to the point of becoming morally responsible before God, who undoubtedly knew the methods men would ultimately employ in their approach to cosmology when he inspired the writing of Romans 1.

In their attacks on scientists and scientific methods, young-earth organizations actually take a lower view of human intelligence and ability than scripture does, and it is precisely their own interpretations that have “disconnected” the Bible from the real world. There’s something terribly wrong when secular scientists recognize a connection between scripture and scientific discoveries and believers respond by insisting that they are deluded.

 

Next in this series: Clues in the Text 

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[1] Ken Ham, “Hugh Ross Twists the Bible To Fit Man’s Fallible Opinion,” WVW Broadcast Network, September 29, 2014.

https://www.worldviewweekend.com/news/article/hugh-ross-twists-bible-fit-mans-fallible-opinion?page=4

[2] Ibid.

[3] Ibid.

[4] Ibid.

[5] “Ken Ham made me an atheist. (An Intro to Paulogia.),” YouTube video, posted by “Paulogia,” December 14, 2016.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pxmedqvaP_Q

Ens notes in his video that he is more concerned with tackling “unnecessary science denial” than with attacking religion itself.

[6] Glenn R. Morton, “Why I Left Young Earth Creationism,” 2000. www.oldearth.org/whyileft.htm and www.peacefulscience.org/glenn-morton. The alternative view Morton encountered was Alan Hayward’s Days of Proclamation View, which Morton modified in a fashion he believed better fit with the Genesis text.

[7] “Doctrine of Creation: Excurses on Creation and Evolution Part 12,” YouTube video, 23:51 – 24:23, 26:36 – 27:03, posted by “ReasonableFaithOrg.” July 12, 2013.

[8] Ibid.

[9] Augustine, The Literal Meaning of Genesis, Vol 1. Used with the permission of Paulist Press (see copyright page for details).

[10] Ken Ham, “Hugh Ross Twists the Bible To Fit Man’s Fallible Opinion.”

[11] “Richard Dawkins versus John Lennox |The God Delusion Debate,” YouTube video, 42:59 - 43:40, posted by “Fixed Point Foundation.” February 8, 2017.

[12] Fred Hoyle, “The Universe: Past and Present Reflections,” Engineering and Science, November, 1981, p. 16. It should be noted that Hoyle coined the term “Big Bang” as a pejorative. He advocated the Steady-State Theory with colleagues Herman Bondi and Thomas Gold in order to explain the expansion of the universe while eliminating the need for a beginning. The Steady-State Theory was eventually put to rest by the discovery of the cosmic microwave background radiation in 1965.

[13] Robert Jastrow, God and the Astronomers, (2^nd edition, New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2000), pp 106-107.

[14] Stephen Hawking, The Grand Design, New York: Bantam Books, 2010, p. 180.

[15] Matt Warman, “Stephen Hawking tells Google ‘philosophy is dead,’” The Telegraph, May 17, 2011.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/google/8520033/Stephen-Hawking-tells-Google-philosophy-is-dead.html

[16] Jacqueline Mitchell, “In the Beginning was the Beginning: Cosmologist Alex Vilenkin does the math to show that the universe indeed has a starting point,” Tufts University, May 29, 2012.

https://now.tufts.edu/articles/beginning-was-beginning

[17] Ibid.

[18] Alexander Vilenkin, “The Beginning of the Universe,” Inference-Review.com. Vol 1, No. 4, October, 2015.

https://inference-review.com/article/the-beginning-of-the-universe