Ken CoulsonIn part I, I discussed the importance of God’s creative strategy—to frame a world in literally six days. Such a strategy would require vast amounts of process condensed into a narrow window of time. Since humans interpret process in terms of time, then unbelievers (those who do not accept God’s revelatory Word) will ONLY interpret these processes in terms of time.
The following article has been reblogged with permission from Creation Unfolding. The views expressed in this article reflect those of the author, and not necessarily those of New Creation.
A little more difficult is accounting for accelerated radioisotope decay in rocks that formed during the Flood and/or in the Pre- and Post-Food worlds. Most creationist models fall very short here. Nevertheless, the RATE group has provided some data that tentatively support this model.
Of particular interest is radioisotope discordance (differing “ages” dependent upon differing isotope systems). In order to test this, the RATE group took over a hundred samples from ten different geologic “time periods” spanning more than two billion years. Importantly, the rocks from these various geologic time periods had already been dated using various radioisotope decay systems. These are K-Ar, Rb-Sr, Sm-Nd, and Pd-Pd. Each of these systems has a parent isotope, for example potassium (K), and a daughter isotope, for example argon (Ar). Simplistically, obtaining “dates” is a matter of calculating the parent/daughter ratios and then applying the corresponding decay constant.
Their results persuasively show that different systems of radioisotope pairs furnish different “ages.” This is called “discordance.” For example, in the figure below (adapted from Snelling 2005, p. 414), the Cardenas Basalt was originally dated using the Rb-Sr system at 1103 million years old. Yet when the Sm-Nd system was used on the same rocks, the “age” increased to 1588 million years. Even taking statistical error into consideration (not included in the table), the “ages” differ by about 250 million years. That’s a difference of about 20%. The K-Ar system fared even worse with an “age” of 516 million years. That’s about 50% difference!
These discordances were common across these data as a whole, and tended to trend older “ages” for heavier isotope systems (see figure below). Despite the 15 years that have elapsed since the RATE project was published in 2005, no one has cogently offered a serious rebuttal. After scanning the Internet, the best defense I could find came from Randy Isaac’s Assessing the RATE project (https://www.asa3.org/ASA/education/origins/rate-ri.htm), “Discordances are not at all unusual and the source of discordance is not always understood but these fail to invalidate the vast amount of concordance.” I hope you caught that. To concede that discordance is not always understood while at the same time saying the results “fail to invalidate the vast amount of concordance” is nothing more than question begging. THAT was the whole point of the exercise. We must keep in mind that radioisotope dating is expensive. Only selected rocks are dated and typically only once or twice. These “ages” then set the bar for all future research at that exact location.
RATE’s results deserve better than this. I think they have truly stumbled upon an anomaly that is not being taken seriously by the secular scientific community. The discipline of geochronology has had over a hundred years to hone its methodology. And, the rest of the world are told that absolute dating is, mind the pun, “rock solid.” Yet clearly there are issues.
Ok, so where does that leave us? Scientifically, it should lead to humility not hostility. Opposing naturalists with false statements such as, “all radioisotope dating techniques are bogus” is just plain wrong. Radioisotope “ages” are factually based on geochemical relationships that do suggest millions of years’ worth of decay has occurred. However, as we have seen, Christians must allow God the right to supernaturally accelerate certain rates of change, especially when those rates pertain to earth’s structural origin (Creation Week). This is why the writer to the Hebrews says, “By faith we understand that the universe was created by the word of God” (Hebrews 11:3 ESV).
The same rationale could also be applied to the Flood since this event changed the earth’s physical character. This is extremely important in light of supernatural revelation that expressly reveals God’s intervention during both of these periods. Having said that, I think supernaturally accelerated rates of radioisotope decay during the Flood be limited to a theoretical possibility rather than a theological certainty. Unlike Creation Week where all geologic rates of change were altered supernaturally, rates of change associated with the Flood were natural. This means creationists should never default to supernatural-only explanations for Flood events, even though such solutions might reflect reality. Creationists should, therefore, always be seeking naturalistic explanations for all geologic phenomena that has occurred subsequent to the Fall (the Fall altered the physical universe as did Creation Week).
Footnotes
Snelling, Andrew. 2005. “Isochron Discordances and the Role of Inheritance and Mixing of Radioisotopes in the Mantle and Crust.” In Radioisotopes and the Age of the Earth: Results of a Young-Earth Creationist Research Initiative. In L. Vardiman, A.A. Snelling, and E.F. Chaffin, 49-94. Dallas Texas: Institute for Creation Research, and Chino Valley: Creation Research Society.
Christian Ryan
Sara Anne
Matt McLain
Chad Arment
Art Chadwick
Thank you very much for this series of articles. I have no problem believing in the Bible as epistemologically superior to scientific data and methods, and even arguing for that point. At the same time, though, it’s difficult to be in a place of not having a clean scientific answer in this area, where Christians and unbelievers alike beat the old earth drum the loudest! Is there anything like a “RATE part 2” project being worked on where some of these theories about accelerated rates are being fleshed out?
I don’t think ‘flood geology’ is true. A site search here did not result in any hits for ‘Hawaii’. Check this out, please:
https://biologos.org/blogs/guest/how-old-are-the-hawaiian-islands
Hi, I’m not sure I’m following your argument? As for “flood geology,” you should also read my latest paper in Answers Research Journal. Thank you
The argument for the antiquity of the Hawaiian and Emperor seamount chains is easy to follow.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hawaiian–Emperor_seamount_chain
Hi Dale, no one denies the chain of processes involved in the creation of the Hawaiian Islands. And they did not originate in The “Flood.” The Islands probably formed over hundreds of years after the Flood. Now it is true, there is a set of geochemical ratios associated with those Islands that scientists “interpret” as millions of years, but that doesn’t mean they are millions of years old. There are no “dates” in the rocks, just geochemistry.
God engineered a lot of clocks into his creation for us to discover and to learn how to use. Interestingly, they mutually validate and calibrate each other. He didn’t mess with the mechanisms after they were made. Here is a good example of said mutual validation and respective calibration:
A 60,000 Year Varve Record from Japan Refutes the Young-Earth Interpretation of Earth’s History
thenaturalhistorian.com/2016/08/16/a-60000-year-varve-record-from-japan-refutes-the-young-earth-interpretation-of-earths-history/
Hi Dale,
Rates of change is an interesting topic. It is not true, however, that they “mutually validate and calibrate each other.” This is only a “perception.” I’ve pasted a few links below. Two of them are to my two-part video series on soft tissue in dinosaur fossils. The rate of decay of biological material does not agree, even in the least, with the rate of decay of radioisotopes for the rocks found with the fossils.
The other link is to a Nature article that discusses extremely rapid biological evolution. 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.
Rates of the deposition of sediment is another good example. Why is it that in the present, sediment is deposited at vastly faster rates than it was deposited in the past? Could it be that the radioisotope dates associated with the rocks in the rock record are incorrect? This is a viable possibility. And there are many, many other examples where rates of change do not accord, even remotely with each other.
Dale, I understand the temptation to “trust” the science completely, but we must trust God’s word over that of fallen humans. Uniformitarianism is a human concept that is foreign to the Bible. 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.”
So, if there was such a thing as a global, non-uniformitarian Flood (and Peter says there was), then isn’t it conceivable that rates of natural change may also have been drastically different than they are today?
I think you might benefit from my recent book, Creation Unfolding: A New Perspective on Ex Nihio. You can find it on Amazon.
Thanks Dale
https://youtu.be/rWiCsbrK8ho (Part 1 soft tissue)
https://youtu.be/iyREJZblaJw (Part 2 soft tissue)
I also think you would benefit from my four part series on “Isn’t Creation Science an Oxymoron” which you’ll find on my YouTube channel.
https://science.sciencemag.org/content/sci/359/6372/224.full.pdf (Darwins finches)
I am a septuagenarian and have been involved in the sciences all my life so far, from nuclear physics to medicine. I used to be a YEC, decades ago, and there was no ‘temptation’ involved in the change. The YEC explanations for how light came to be before the the creation of the sun never did sit well, since my youth. They always seemed forced and contrived, not scripturally well supported.
It has nothing to do with God’s omnipotence, either. He was not short of time that he needed to do it in six days. Why didn’t he do it instantly?
There is so much more besides just varves and radiometric dating (and you seemed to have not mentioned the dendrochronology that was also in that article, speaking of varves). Try these on for size, all by Christians in the sciences:
“A Small Big Universe”
“The Defeat of Flood Geology by Flood Geology”
“100 Reasons the Earth is Old”
“Radioactive Atoms — Evidence about the Age of the Earth”
about extinct radioactive atoms:
This is a favorite, about girdled rocks:
“The world’s largest rock tumbler is an unusual testimony to an ancient earth”
New evidence always supports the antiquity of the earth and it continues to build. It’s too bad that YECism is so frequently so closely identified with Christianity as to be integral to it, to the dishonor of God among the nations. About that,
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
“I am quite confident that you are being deceived.” Your confidence is misplaced.
As I just this afternoon commented elsewhere,
That is borne out in the fairly recent Barna Group survey (I suspect you are familiar with them, an evangelical Christian polling firm?).
It’s too bad that YECism cannot just do the pure science, but always has to be defensive to a flawed hermeneutic.
The ‘secular’ hard sciences* all concur and attest to the antiquity of the universe. They share much of the mathematics, measuring tools and techniques and technologies, and these are the same sciences that put men on the moon. They also brought us the atomic and hydrogen bombs. (Feel free to argue with THEM. 🙂)
The physical and earth hard sciences and their subcategories that ALL attest to the antiquity of the earth and the universe would have all advanced to where they are today even if the concept of biological evolution had never been dreamt of, or even if the life sciences did not exist.
——————————
*Astronomy, cosmology, astrophysics, elementary (high energy) particle physics, planetary science, geology, physical geography, oceanography, meteorology, hydrology, climatology, …and more.
What do I think of Peter’s words. “…the world that then existed”? Did Peter necessarily have a concept of a spherical earth? Regardless of that, he meant “world” in the same sense that I mean it in a limited way when I say “the Western world” or “the world of the ancient Greeks.”
But Peter says, “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.” Notice that Peter thinks the world was flooded by the same oceans God created in Genesis 1. This means two things. 1. The “earth formed out of water” is an historical event to Peter that he is simply re-reading from his Bible. And 2. These same historical oceans flooded the world. Now he is referencing the account in Genesis 6-8. Displacement of entire oceans do not create local floods. Clearly, Peter believed in the historical accounts of both the Flood AND Creation Week. And he also thought in terms of a universal Flood. Was Peter wrong?
“Was Peter wrong?” No, you are.
But I am interested to know what Peter meant by “the earth formed out of water.” He is quoting Genesis 1. Did Peter believe that the earth formed by “coming out of the water”? Yes or no? If yes, was he wrong?
Science confirms Genesis 1. The earth was a water world early on, covering the preexisting peaks.
“..and that BY MEANS OF THESE the world that then existed was deluged with water” only says that it was the same water, not that it had to cover the whole planet again. We’ve already covered what “the world that then existed means.
(There is no such thing as ‘secular’ science. All scientists study God’s creation, and it does not matter who is doing it. There are plenty of Christians in the sciences I listed*, and they don’t have to be in Christian universities. I presume you knew that Francis Collins is an evangelical Christian?)
———————
*Astronomy, cosmology, astrophysics, elementary (high energy) particle physics, planetary science, geology, physical geography, oceanography, meteorology, hydrology, climatology, …and more.
“I have chosen to remain faithful to the Scriptures.”
That is, I’m afraid, a common refrain of YECs, reflecting a tendency towards self-righteousness (of course a danger for any Christian), but it especially evidences a sense of false nobility.
I fell out of the window. 🙂 Acts 20:9
I am a septuagenarian and have been involved in the sciences all my life so far, from nuclear physics to medicine. I used to be a YEC, decades ago, and there was no ‘temptation’ involved in the change. The YEC explanations for how light came to be before the the creation of the sun never did sit well, since my youth. They always seemed forced and contrived, not scripturally well supported.
It has nothing to do with God’s omnipotence, either. He was not short of time that he needed to do it in six days. Why didn’t he do it instantly?
There is so much more besides just varves and radiometric dating (and you seemed to have not mentioned the dendrochronology that was also in that article, speaking of varves).
The Hawaiian islands formed of periods of many tens of millions of years. Here is a critical point, that Genesis is theology not fact.
– Genesis contains God’s great self-reveal, a.k.a. theology
– Day Four and Day two place the rest of the visible universe within the heights of the vault of the sky (firmament) hence beneath the waters of origin placed above the firmament.
– Creation does not lie.
– Yet Creation includes Planet Earth orbiting the nearest star at a distance of ~93 million miles.
How can Genesis be mis-read as fact? It clearly is not.
Instead Genesis is story because it presents profound truths without the need for fact.
Yes Jesus, the Gospel writers, and Paul quote Genesis, chapter-and-verse. Each and every time the point is theology. When referring to a theological point, quote the short form of its explanation.
Or would you rather that God, in Genesis, had bothered to destroy the extant image of Earth (ball of water, firmament, Six Days, by insisting that the ancient Hebrews learn enough cosmology, life chemistry (DNA) etc. to understand *at* *a* *factual* *level*l precisely how God made the universe?
Hint – Genesis verses 1 and 3 are as close as you can come to God announcing to the age of science that “I am the sentient uncaused first cause. I spoke the universe into being. You understand that as the ‘big bang.’ ”
Verse two roots God’s message into the here-and-now of that time: Earth began as a big ball of water, Earth itself managed to emerge from it [to rest on pillars so it didn’t fall back in] plus a vault of the sky capable of holding above it half the waters of creation to be an everlasting source of rain.
NOTE WELL that the Flood did not end because God ran out of water – He merely shut the gates in the vault of the sky.
Those two verse, 1 and 3, tell people in this age of fact that the Big Bang is quire real, and God made it happen.
Yet having learned at our mothers’ knees that Genesis is this very matte-of-fact condensed version of how God made this universe, respect compels us to approach as a little child, full of belief.
One thing — infants nurse at the breast, while three-year-olds have teeth and can eat meat. Paul refused to eat meat sacrificed to idols so that new Christians would not become confused seeing him do that – yet Paul knew that those restaurants (which is where the sacrificed meat really went) had no effect on his soul.
Likewise the meat of fact has no harm on a Christian’s soul. The child looks at the fact and marvels at God’s utter control of everything. The need to remain at mother’s knee (nursing at the breast) and award Genesis status as fact simply means that milk Christians will spit up on Jesus’ loving shoulder. Cling to your view.
But PLEASE do not make Christianity look ignorant of simple fact.
Science has decoded Creation; philosophers, by reputation careful thinkers, leap from “God is not anywhere in the blueprints, therefore There Is No God while scientists find themselves drawn to God by what they discover when obsessing over the beauty and majesty of what God made.
Hi Michael, not presently. As Christians, we must accept the authority of Scripture. And at the Fall, we must accept that God stepped into creation in some non uniform way to alter it. The curse changed both the biological and physical realms. In my latest paper (just published in Answers Research Journal), I argue for a supernatural heating (and thus accelerated rates of decay) of the earths crust at the Fall that would eventually precipitate the Flood 1600 years later.
Truth comes from reality – the truth that comes from the reality of the data that God has revealed in the Bible and the truth that comes from the reality of data that God has revealed in creation. They do not and cannot conflict. If they appear to, then our interpretation of one or the other or both is flawed.
Hi Dale, so, if i gave you one of Jesus’ supernaturally created fish (please humor me), and you didn’t know where it came from, what might “reality” tell you about its origin?
I am not denying Jesus’ supernatural miracles, his virgin birth nor his resurrection. But I don’t have to invoke supernatural miracles to counter what creation so loudly decalres. I think you belittle the import of Psalm 8:4, not only because of the vastness of the size of the universe, but also because of the vastness of its antiquity.
“What is man, that you are mindful of him?[!]”
https://biblehub.com/psalms/8-4.htm
It seems then that you do not deny that “sometimes,” especially when we are told in Scripture, the origin of created objects will, without a doubt, contradict scientific methodology?
I repeat (with typo correction 🙂), “I don’t have to invoke supernatural miracles to counter what creation so loudly declares.”
God engineered a lot of clocks into his creation for us to discover and to learn how to use. Interestingly, they mutually validate and calibrate each other. He didn’t mess with the mechanisms after they were made. Here is a good example of said mutual validation and respective calibration:
“A 60,000 Year Varve Record from Japan Refutes the Young-Earth Interpretation of Earth’s History”:
thenaturalhistorian.com/2016/08/16/a-60000-year-varve-record-from-japan-refutes-the-young-earth-interpretation-of-earths-history/
See below
Hi Dale,
Rates of change is an interesting topic. It is not true, however, that they “mutually validate and calibrate each other.” This is only a “perception.” I’ve pasted a few links below. Two of them are to my two-part video series on soft tissue in dinosaur fossils. The rate of decay of biological material does not agree, even in the least, with the rate of decay of radioisotopes for the rocks found with the fossils.
The other link is to a Nature article that discusses extremely rapid biological evolution. 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.
Rates of the deposition of sediment is another good example. Why is it that in the present, sediment is deposited at vastly faster rates than it was deposited in the past? Could it be that the radioisotope dates associated with the rocks in the rock record are incorrect? This is a viable possibility. And there are many, many other examples where rates of change do not accord, even remotely with each other.
Dale, I understand the temptation to “trust” the science completely, but we must trust God’s word over that of fallen humans. Uniformitarianism is a human concept that is foreign to the Bible. 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.”
So, if there was such a thing as a global, non-uniformitarian Flood (and Peter says there was), then isn’t it conceivable that rates of natural change may also have been drastically different than they are today?
I think you might benefit from my recent book, Creation Unfolding: A New Perspective on Ex Nihio. You can find it on Amazon.
Thanks Dale
https://youtu.be/rWiCsbrK8ho (Part 1 soft tissue)
https://youtu.be/iyREJZblaJw (Part 2 soft tissue)
I also think you would benefit from my four part series on “Isn’t Creation Science an Oxymoron” which you’ll find on my YouTube channel.
https://science.sciencemag.org/content/sci/359/6372/224.full.pdf (Darwins finches)
“It is not true, however, that they “mutually validate and calibrate each other.” Then you did not read or did not understand the article about the 60,000 year-old records validating each other.
I knew a Christian oil exploration geophysicist. He said that there are no YECs in the business, and the couple that started as YECs soon were not.
Hi Dale,
I am familiar with just about every old-earth argument against YEC. If you wanted it, I would be more than happy to find and send you a similar kind of paper where a YEC published an article in the secular literature about varves, showing that the “interpretation” associated with them is often contradictory. Remember, a varve is an interpretation about a couplet of sediment types. That it represents an annual layer is an “interpretation,” and as I just said, that interpretation has often been found not to be true.
Dale, on both sides of the debate, there will always, always, be some kind of “answer” to a question we have. Humans will always find some way to defend their position. Our ultimate authority, however, must be the Bible. Our discussion should, then, be focused on the Scriptures, not the science.
Consider Peter’s belief in a world-destroying flood in 2 Peter (see last post). I’ve had several old-earthers till me that Peter just had it wrong. Yet Peter was authorized and inspired by God to write Scripture. To say that Peter was wrong about his interpretation of the OT is playing with fire. You could extend this kind of argument to Matthew, Luke, Paul, and even Jesus. Since, for example, Paul’s theology about man was also based on the OT, does that mean Paul was wrong about crucial subjects such as original sin, the Fall, the curse, and ultimately redemption?
Regards,
Ken Coulson
“…when we are told in Scripture”
That would be the issue, then, wouldn’t it.
“Truth comes from reality – the truth that comes from the reality of the data that God has revealed in the Bible and the truth that comes from the reality of data that God has revealed in creation. They do not and cannot conflict. If they appear to, then our interpretation of one or the other or both is flawed.”
A relevant verse:
“This is what the LORD says: ‘If I have not established my covenant with the day and the night and the fixed laws of heaven and earth…'”
Jeremiah 33:25
http://biblehub.com/jeremiah/33-25.htm
Check out the links in my recent comments in Part 1.
This is my favorite:
Girdled rocks – The World’s Largest Rock Tumbler
New evidence always supports the antiquity of the earth, and it continues to build.
Error in link somehow. Try this:
https://thenaturalhistorian.com/2018/05/14/the-worlds-largest-rock-tumbler-is-an-unusual-testimony-to-an-ancient-earth/
People wonder about God’s motivation, his purposes. The Bible gives us more than a clue why. It is not as incomprehensible as many might presume. This is hardly an extended treatise, but it touches on a few salient points…
God’s motivation is really quite understandable, and purpose for our lives is also intimately involved in it: joy for himself in our love for him and our pride in him as our Father, and joy in us and joy for us in reciprocated familial love.
The original unfallen creation was merely “very good”, not perfect (there is a word for perfect in Hebrew, and God did not use it):
God’s purpose was and still is to magnify the most valuable thing there is, namely himself (he would be lying if he said otherwise), and to increase and share his joy. He is happy in himself.*
Father’s intended purpose in creating the world was to was not to create a perfect one. His purpose was not thwarted. It was a two creations** model from the get-go, and the first one was subjected to futility on purpose, from its very start.
The original unfallen creation was merely “very good”, not perfect, since it did not and could not magnify God’s justice, mercy, grace and love through our Lord, Jesus, the Christ. Jesus’ motivation is also explicit and clear, and it was forward looking***: “for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame.” Hebrews 12:2****. That joy is us(!), if you nave been adopted into his family.
The New Earth will be perfect.
________
*See The Pleasures of God by John Piper
**”Then the King will say to those on his right, ‘Come, you who are blessed by my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world.” Matthew 25:34
***Our motivation should be forward looking, too, toward future grace. See Future Grace, also by John Piper
**** http://biblehub.com/hebrews/12-2.htm
This is a fascinating dialog and I apologize as my base of knowledge on this topic is almost nonexistent. As an engineering technician I’ve had to use mathematics, physics and chemistry throughout my entire working career. In each of these disciplines sometimes assumptions have to be made but, with an event such as creation I believe assumptions many times hamstring logic. My thoughts are that during creation wouldn’t it stand to reason that when God created he did so by creating everything across the entire spectrum of maturity. For example, when he created grasses, shrubs trees he did it where seeds, saplings and mature trees all came into existence at the same time. If this is the case why could he have not done the same thing geologically, along with plants and animals? Due to how interdependent the whole of the earth is all of it would have had to happen rather suddenly so the entirety could be symbiotic.