What Should Christians Think of Radiometric Dating? pt. 1

Hi Dale,

Your quote from Augustine needs to be taken in context:

“Therefore, it is an utterly disgraceful and ruinous thing—and something that should be greatly avoided—if [a non-Christian] hears a Christian speaking like an idiot on these matters and trying to make them accord with Christian writings. When that happens, [the non-Christian] will say that he can’t keep from laughing when he sees how totally in error they are. In view of this and in keeping it in mind constantly while dealing with the book of Genesis, I have, insofar as I was able, explained in detail and set forth for consideration the meanings of obscure passages, taking care not to affirm rashly some singular meaning to the prejudice of another and perhaps better explanation.”

Augustine interpreted the Scriptures using the grammatical/historical method. Many of his peers, however, used “allegory” to interpret Scripture, much of which was applied to the creation account in Genesis. This is what Augustine is talking about; it has absolutely nothing to do with the creation account itself. Augustine was fully committed to a universe that was less than 10,000 years old. He also believed that God supernaturally created the universe during Creation Week. For whatever reason, Augustine believed that God created the universe in one, single, 24-hour period, rather than over six days, but this in no way means he was critical of special creation. On the contrary, he was completely committed to it.
 
As for the “The world’s largest rock tumbler,” I appreciate you posting this link! I haven’t heard of this particular argument until now. I, of course, disagree with the conclusions of the writer, R. Joel Duff, and was able to come up several other hypotheses off the cuff that could explain these data using a short-age chronology. I’ll be sure to digest this and get back to you soon.

I also want to briefly talk about this quote of yours: “I used to be a YEC, decades ago, and there was no ‘temptation’ involved in the change.” That’s interesting. You see I used to be an evolutionist who believed in millions of years. I also lived in Australia which, as you may know, is an incredibly secular culture. When I came to faith, I honestly never even knew that the story of Adam and Eve was understood historically by Christians. I just thought it was a myth and that everyone, Christians included, believed this to be the case. I certainly had never even heard of people that believed the earth was 6000 years old. Quite honestly, I didn’t even know Moses from Jesus and the NT from the OT. I had never even cracked a Bible.

So, as I read the book of Genesis for the first time, I can say with confidence that I did not apply any young-earth creationist “baggage” to the text. Yet I knew what it was saying. I still remember becoming quite angry and offended that this book that I had just accepted as true (I hadn’t read Genesis prior to faith), was telling me “fairy stories.” So, you see, when old-earthers or theistic evolutionists try to tell me that I’m not interpreting the text correctly, I must object. The text is very, very clear, as it was to my then (28 years ago now) completely biased evolutionary mind.

And this brings me to your quote again. You see, you say you were not “tempted” by the science. That tells me that you accepted the science and reinterpreted the Scriptures to fit the science? I, on the other hand, believed that the science was solid. I believed (and still do) that there was much evidence in support of evolution and an ancient earth. But I also understood what the Bible was clearly saying.

I, unlike you, was tempted to “give in” to the science. But instead, I have chosen to remain faithful to the Scriptures and to instead reinterpret the scientific data. You see, I realized that, according to the apostle John (1 John 5:19), “the whole world is under the power of the evil one.” Now, that doesn’t mean I believed in scientific conspiracies. But it does mean that humans are influenced by a superior spiritual power whose sole objective is to destroy confidence in the Word of God.

Since most scientists (and in fact all humans) are, unknowingly helping Satan achieve his task, we as Christians must be very, very sensitive to the authority of the Scriptures first. You seem to accept without much reservation any and all scientific data. But one wonders how much science you would have accepted had you lived 200 years ago? Yet much of that science has since been reinterpreted. Where will science be in another 200 years? How much of what we “think” is true today will be rejected in 200 years?

But God’s word never changes. I encourage you Dale to trust in God’s word. I am quite confident that you are being deceived. That doesn’t mean I doubt your faith in our savior. It just means that on this particular level, I am 100% convinced that you are deceived and are deceiving others. “Let not many of you become teachers since you will incur a stricter judgment.” I take this verse very seriously. I KNOW what the Scripture is saying and I don’t what to stand before our Father and he says that I had it wrong and led people astray. Do you feel 100% secure about the things you are teaching others about the Bible?

Moving on,

Many of your links discuss cosmological phenomena. Had you watched the Youtube links I sent you, you would know that I mostly agree with these data. I have a slightly different mature creation view that most YEC. So, I challenge you to read my article here:
https://www.creationunfolding.com/post/is-the-phrase-creation-science-an-oxymoron

As for evidences of a young-“biosphere,” check out these resources:
1.      In this article, I talk about my experiences while doing my capstone class in geology in Montana. https://www.creationunfolding.com/post/when-rocks-bend
2.      In this article, I talk about the formation of coal beds. Specific to this thread is the presence of tall stumps in coal beds that, according to the secular view, must have been sitting in upright positions for tens of thousands of years. Obviously, this is false and a better interpretation is that they were buried rapidly in place. https://www.creationunfolding.com/post/on-the-origin-of-coal-beds
3.      In this article, I talk about soft tissue in dinosaur bones. Nothing really needs to be said about this since the description in and of itself bears testimony to the problem of Deep Time. https://www.creationunfolding.com/post/dinosaur-soft-tissues-can-ages-and-ales-really-preserve-flesh-for-two-hundred-million-years
4.      This link is to a Nature article that discusses extremely rapid biological evolution. (I did post this above but you did not comment??). In that article, the scientists report on a new species of finch that evolved in the past few decades. This is interesting because the other 15 species supposedly evolved over two million years. How is it that you get 1 new species in 30 years, yet the other 15 evolved over an average of 133,000 years each? It seems better to interpret the evolution of the entire 16 species over a short timeframe of just a few thousand years. But of course, those figures don’t “calibrate” with radioisotope “ages” for the Galapagos Islands. https://science.sciencemag.org/content/sci/359/6372/224.full.pdf
5.      Here is the paper that I was talking about earlier. In this paper, the author discusses problems with the traditional interpretation of varves as annual layers.
H. Paul Buchheim; Paleoenvironments, lithofacies and varves of the Fossil Butte Member of the Eocene Green River Formation, southwestern Wyoming. Rocky Mountain Geology 1994;; 30 (1): 3–14. doi: https://doi.org/10.2113/gsrocky.30.1.3
 
Dale, at the end of the day, you and I could sit here going tit for tat with scientific evidence. But what’s important is the Bible. What does God say? (I’m pasting this here again since you did not comment on it previously).

Consider Peters words, “Knowing this first of all, that scoffers will come in the last days with scoffing, following their own sinful desires. They will say, ‘Where is the promise of his coming? For ever since the fathers fell asleep, all things are continuing as they were from the beginning of creation.’ For they deliberately overlook this fact, that the heavens existed long ago, and the earth was formed out of water and through water by the word of God, and that by means of these the world that then existed was deluged with water and perished” 2 Peter 3:3ff.

Importantly, Peter is not asking his adversaries to don boots, hat, and pick, travel to the nearest quarry and study the strata! He is rebuking his opponents because they do not believe the account of God’s judgement as it is described in Genesis. In other words, they do not have faith in God’s word. They are completely entrenched in their uniformitarian experience of the present and think that God’s future judgment will, therefore, never come. Peter is essentially saying that believers should reject a uniformitarian view of the world that is solidly entrenched in our current experience, and should instead accept the biblical accounts that discuss God’s judgement in terms of geologically non-uniformitarian processes. This mindset, of course, can only be believed. Now we know what Peter meant when he called such unbelievers “scoffers.”

What do you think of Peter’s words Dale?

Regards,

Ken Coulson