I wasn’t certain whether this fourth post was even necessary, given that I think I have provided adequate justification for my position in parts one and two. Still, I suppose that there’s nothing wrong with me providing reasons for my not falling into either of these camps.
Hopefully, this post won’t be nearly as long as either of the first two, and most of my justification will be aimed against Young-Earth Creationism (as I have already stated that I am not dogmatically averse to Old Earth models).
Broadly, my reasons are as follows:
- Unreasonable presuppositions
- Novelty
- Empirical evidence
- Arbitrary stopping points
Unreasonable Presuppositions
The first, and most important reason that I do not fall into either camp is the presuppositions that they impose on scripture and exegesis, especially through their literalism.
Young Earth Creationism specifically holds to both a chronological and literal viewing of Genesis 1. The Bible is very much more a book detailing the story between God and mankind, than it is a book of science.
Now, although I do not believe that it is metaphysically impossible for God to create the world as is literally described in Genesis 1, we also need to be wary of presuming that the Spirit’s inspiration intended to convey that Genesis 1 was literal. This is something I caution against in my first post, explaining the reasoning for my methodology.
Novelty
The following will be a summary of points raised in another excellent video by Inspiring Philosophy and will be directed specifically at Young Earth Creationists. I encourage you to watch his video yourself because the following is a summary.
Secondly, and surprisingly to most, a non-literal interpretative method is not at all foreign to Christianity. Multiple Christians throughout the ages have interpreted Genesis allegorically or figuratively, such as St. Irenaeus of Lyons in the 2nd Century AD (Against Heresies 5.23.2, 5.28.3), St. Clement of Alexandria (Stromata (Miscellanies) 6.16), St. Augustine (The Literal Meaning of Genesis 4.27).
Of course, the views of the aforementioned Church Fathers do vary, one holding to instantaneous creation (St. Clement), one holding to ‘thousand-year’ days (St. Irenaeus), and one holding to ‘God divided days’ (St. Augustine). Multiple other influential figures in the Church held to allegorical, or figurative interpretations, but the point to be made here is simply that non-literal interpretations of creation are not new within the Church.
There have existed other individuals, such as Isaac Newton, Bishop Ussher, and Johannes Kepler who have agreed that the date of creation was around 4000 BC, however, at the time, the scientific research was very limited regarding the age of the Earth. Thus, these individuals held to this belief because the contemporary evidence supported it, and that was because there had not been research against it.
Around the late Middle Ages, many Christians promoted something similar to what is called the ‘gap interpretation’ of Genesis 1:2. The text says that the Earth was ‘without form and void’ (or, ‘without shape and empty’ in the NET), such interpretation says that this could have been during an unspecified amount of time, during which there was only chaos that was later ‘reworked’ into creation. Some people even thought that this could have been millions of years.
In 1865, Reverend Richard Main wrote:
“Some school-books still teach to the ignorant that the Earth is 6000 years old.… No well-educated person of the present day shares that delusion”
As a matter of fact, in a publication of the Geological Society called ‘Myth and Geology’, Historian Michael B. Roberts writes on pages 47-48:
“Christian thinkers were open to a slightly longer time-scale long before geological evidence was apparent, as may be evidenced by Grotius, Mersenne, Burnett, Bishop Patrick and myriad others in the seventeenth century, who accepted a long duration of chaos and thus ‘deepish’ time, before there was any geological evidence for a great duration of time. And that is without going further back to the broader interpretations of Genesis of the Church Fathers such as Augustine…. Despite the date of 4004 BC being found in many English bibles a strict six-day creation was never the dominant view and was the official position of no church in Europe or America (until the late twentieth century)”
Regarding evolution specifically, multiple Christians, even around the time of Darwin, were supportive and/or saw no conflict between the theory of evolution and Genesis. Examples of such are Botanist Asa Grey, Philosopher James McCosh and Geologist and Mineralogist James Dwight Dana. Palaeontologist Richard Owen and Zoologist St. George Jackson Mivart both promoted their own models of theistic evolution. Historian Ronald Numbers writes in his book ‘The Creationists, Expanded Edition’, writes:
“Even in the conservative south, dominated culturally by Bible-believing Baptists, a number of Church-related colleges had been teaching the theory of evolution for decades.”
This is not to say that there was no Christian resistance to the Theory of Evolution, but it is certainly overinflated by people who are uneducated on the history of this topic. The Christians who left writings behind were largely accommodating to the research that was available at the time.
The ‘Young Earth’ movement, on the other hand, is quite modern.
Within the period of 1900-1950, there was one group that was mostly comprised of Young-Earth creationists – the heretical Seventh Day Adventist movement, who elevated the visions of their ‘prophet’, Ellen G. White, to be on par with scripture. Ellen had a vision that God took her back to the time of creation and revealed to her that everything was created in six, literal, twenty-four-hour days.
Among these Seventh-Day Adventists, was someone called George McCready Price – an ‘armchair’ geologist (as some have referred to him). He wrote several papers and books, arguing that the geological record had been formed as a result of Noah’s flood (which was what God had allegedly showed Ellen after the six days of creation), and he referred to this as ‘flood geology’, and taught that the Earth, and life on it, was 6000 years old, and was created in only six days. As a result, many arguments that Young-Earth Creationists use today date back to Price – not actual geological specialists.
People didn’t really support Price initially. Some years later, Bernard Ramm, in 1954, exaggerated Price’s influence and criticised Price’s ‘flood Geology’ in his book ‘The Christian View of Science and Scripture’. However, this book instead inspired a young theologian – John Whitcomb JR., to write his doctoral dissertation defending Price and his Young Earth views. He tried to get his work published as a book with some backing from Geologists, but they were quite clear that the geological record could not be used to support his interpretation.
Whitcomb decided to contact Henry Morris, who was not a Geologist, but rather, had a PhD in hydraulic engineering. Morris agreed to co-author the book, but since Price’s arguments had been rejected for decades by now, they had to add a ‘spin’ to his work. So, while recycling some of his arguments, they argued that in addition to the Earth being young, that the Universe was young also (Price only argued that the Earth, and life on it, was young, but had nothing to say on the age of the Universe). No Geologist endorsed the book, but in 1961, they had the book published – “The Genesis Flood: The Biblical Record and its Scientific Implications”.
Although scientists themselves saw the obvious rehashing of previous arguments and rejected it as such, the populace wasn’t so well informed, and within about 25 years, the book had sold 200,000 copies. The writers became celebrities, and before long – the word ‘creationist’ quite quickly became synonymous with ‘young-earth creationist’.
Quite simply, Christianity had never dogmatically affirmed Young Earth Creationism, and had been largely welcoming to the contemporary empirical research. Therefore, with this theory drawing much of its influence from a heretical ‘prophetess’, I think I have sufficient reason to reject it.
Empirical Evidence
I have already provided the results of empirical methods in part two to support my belief in the presence of macroevolution in creation, but multiple other lines of evidence can be used to rebut a 10000-year limit on the age of creation. Such are:
- Cosmic Background Radiation:
- This is light that is the oldest and most distant light in the universe. The blackbody spectrum that we can measure with it, with a peak temperature of about 2.7K, is exactly what you would expect from radiation that had been ‘stretched’ or red-shifted over billions of years.
- Carbon Dating methods:
- These methods are used to measure the ratio of Carbon-14 (which decays over time) to Carbon-12 in once-living materials. It is most reliable for samples up to 50,000 years old, but this is sufficient to press charges on a Young-Earth view.
- The Geological record:
- As stated earlier, the geological record does not support a young-earth view. For example:
- Radiometric dating: Similarly to carbon dating, this technique measures isotope decay, but it measures it in rocks. The oldest rocks on Earth, found in western Greenland, have been dated to be 3.7-3.8 billion years old. Some zircon minerals in Australia have been dated to being around 4.4 billion years old.
- Geological processes such as Erosion, Sedimentation and Plate Tectonics: These processes are slow. The formation of mountains, canyons and sedimentary rock layers through gradual processes like erosion and deposition takes millions to hundreds of millions of years – as evidenced through direct measurement (of erosion and sedimentation rates) and radiometric dating of geological layers.
- Stratigraphy and the Fossil Record: The geological principle of superposition states that in undisturbed layers of rock, older layers lie beneath younger ones (which makes sense, right?). By studying these layers, the fossil record has shown a clear progression from simpler life forms in older strata to more complex organisms in recent layers, spanning billions of years.
- As stated earlier, the geological record does not support a young-earth view. For example:
Many more lines of evidence can be given, and of course, these evidence do not each individually refute Young Earth creationism as a whole, however, they each singularly cast doubt on the premises of the Young Earth movement. From casting doubt on the age of the Earth to the creation of microorganisms and more. Fossil records may even cast doubt on some presentations of Old Earth models.
Arbitrary Stopping Points
Lastly, this specific section will give some extra reasons as to why I currently favour Evolutionary Creation models over de-novo Old Earth models, in addition to the ‘presuppositions’.
I suppose that, simply put, I’m not really convinced with Old Earth models’ answers to the creation of Adam and Eve. For example, if you are going to take Genesis 1 literally, which I think is not loyal to the cultural context of the time, then, to me, it doesn’t make much more sense to not go the whole way and affirm a Young-Earth model, but as we have already seen, there is not strong evidence for it at all, and also, it gained much force from a heretic.
Secondly, many models struggle to answer common-descent and genetic similarities between chimps and humans. Some have responded with ‘common design’, which I think is fair, but again, this just seems to be an arbitrary stopping point. Why use a common design if you are going to affirm a largely de-novo model?
Of course, one could say that I also have a similar arbitrary point with adding God in, but I gave what I think was adequate justification for that, referring to the anthropological ‘Great Leap Forward’ and the sudden increase in human capacities. Further, I also think that there are things that natural processes cannot compensate for, but that is not for this post.
To be honest, there’s not much more in the way of me accepting Old Earth Creationism, but that doesn’t mean that there isn’t much in total. The barriers of empirical evidence are quite high, and although the evidence for evolutionary creation is not perfect (for example, the fossil record does have some gaps and uncertainties), I think it is the strongest candidate, and I think I have given sufficient evidence to warrant that conclusion.
Thanks,
Rookie
Sources: Again, are linked throughout the post 🙂
RookieApologises 