First, we aver that we have friends who work quite happily at AIG. We are glad that they've found an outlet for their considerable talents with this organization, and we wish them well in their endeavor.
Second, we aver that we look forward to opportunities that might present themselves to cooperate with AIG in matters of shared interest. Such opportunities have not been forthcoming in the past, but we welcome them in the future.
Third, we aver that we are in general grateful for anything that provokes public discussion about important issues. The museum certainly has done that.
However, we are not at all pleased with what we know of the museum from many reports delivered by a wide range of professional journalists and other observers, some professionals in various fields and some interested amateurs. That accords with what we have observed about AIG in the past.
Our SWNIDish reservation is this: both from science and from biblical interpretation, AIG has less warrant for its insistence on young-earth creationism and flood geology than Darwinists have for the origin of life from primordial soup and its development and diversification through mutation and natural selection. The organization has spent far too much time,effort and money defending the indefensible on these points, while simultaneously attacking other skeptics of Darwinism--call them "old-earth creationists" as a general label--with greater vigor than the Darwinists.
In particular, we note some matters on which AIG and its museum expresses an inappropriate level of confidence as it relates to biblical interpretation:
- AIG asserts that the Bible teaches that the earth is now about 6000 years old. In fact, there is nothing in the Bible that expresses any particular notion of how old the earth is. The attempt to add up the numbers in the genealogies has been shown multiple times to fail because of what the text itself acknowledges: that the genealogies are partial at best. Further, texts like Job 15:7; Ps 90; Prov 8:25; Eccl 1:10; Hab 3:6; and 2 Pet 3:5 seem to imply that the earth is amazingly ancient. But in sum, it is not the aim or implication of any biblical text or set of texts to assert the age of the earth in even approximate terms, and we find a troubling lack of consciousness on this point in AIG rhetoric.
- AIG asserts that prior to the fall, all animals were herbivores. This is likewise not a biblical notion. The Bible says nothing about the diet of animals prior to Genesis 3. It does say that death entered the world through Adam (Rom 5:12-21), but it's gratuitous to assume that this implies that nothing at all died prior to the fall. Further, we assume that even AIG understands that plants died prior to the fall, unless they really mean to assert that plants and animals photosynthesized their food prior to the fall.
- AIG asserts that the Genesis flood is the major cause of many geological features, including sedimentary rocks and their fossils as well as dramatic features of erosion like the Grand Canyon. This is also not a part of the biblical view, which asserts nothing about such matters whatsoever.
- AIG asserts that dinosaurs and humans lived side-by-side. The Bible, of course, doesn't mention dinosaurs, let alone whether humans lived alongside them.
Since our business is biblical interpretation, and since we begin with as much respect for the authority of the Bible as anyone else (we believe in the truthfulness of every part of the Bible, rightly interpreted, the notion that is commonly labeled "biblical inerrancy," a term still widely abused and misunderstood, and we defy anyone to suggest how someone can be more committed to the authority of the Bible than that), we insist that all biblical interpreters with such respect for the Bible's authority must respect the boundaries and limits of the Bible's statements. To put this one way, we must forever be conscious of the difference between what the Bible says and what we might conjecture from the Bible and other data. AIG has ignored this distinction, and they and their conversation partners are the worse for it.
As an untrained philosopher, we also insist that AIG's epistemology is highly suspect. Their penchant is for asserting that because there are no observers--except God--for the origins of the universe and of life, then one hypothesis about the origin of life is as good as another. This is disingenuous at best. The hypothesis that makes the best sense of the available data, that explains it most coherently, is obviously to be preferred: humans make inferences all the time about events that no one has witnessed, and we readily distinguish between reasonable and unreasonable inferences in such matters. Scientists aren't being deceptive when they say that there is massive evidence from multiple disciplines and sources that clearly imply that our earth and our universe are older than the AIG folks assert by a factor of a million or two, but AIG is being sloppy at best by equivocating about the implications of such evidence.
In our experience, young earthers like AIG parry such data by suggesting that things were created with what might be termed "apparent age." E.g., the stars were created with streams of light already extended from them so that the light reached earth from various stars at various distances all at once; hence, the fact that certain galaxies are billions of light years away says nothing about their age. The biblical anchor for this notion is that Genesis 2 apparently suggests that the first humans were created instantaneously as adults. A hypothetical observer from the future who saw our first parents five minutes after creation would probably assume that they had lived many years before their actual origin. So, it's said, God created the universe with certain features that look older than they really are.
Fair enough. But let's reason backwards through this sequence. If the biblical God created the first humans instantaneously as adults, we would expect them to have normal adult features: full growth, adult strength and coordination, adult intelligence including linguistic fluency, adult social skills and the like. In short, we would expect them to be very much like any two young adults whom we might know--say, Shakira and LeBron James.
But what if on examination, we saw that they had not just the capacities of adults but also the signs of wear-and-tear that adults display who have lived their lives in the usual way from conception to adulthood: worn and decayed teeth, some scarring of the skin, uneven pigmentation from exposure to the sun, knitting together of broken bones, wrinkles from repeated motions, worn joints, toes and fingers bent from repetitive tasks, etc.? If we found such a couple, would we be justified in considering the hypothesis that they were recently created as adults without prior history? There is clearly no way to test such a hypothesis in such an instance, and one would be hard pressed to explain why a creator would act in such a way unless the purpose was to deceive observers.
The fact is that the earth is much more in that latter kind of condition than the kind asserted by AIG. It is, of course, possible that God created in just this way: he created an earth and universe that in all respects, not just certain purposeful and necessary ones, look profoundly older than they actually are. But we must then ask two questions: (a) why would a God like the God of the Bible do such a thing? (b) How would we know if he did?
For the latter question, we observe again that there's nothing in particular in the Bible that necessitates that the biblical creator God acted in this way: the Bible says nothing about the age of the earth. So it won't do to say that we must belive this because the Bible asserts as much, for it doesn't. For the former question, we note that the AIG folks are happy to label natural selection as a "wasteful" process for the biblical Creator to have undertaken. Why they feel so comfortable deriving that conclusion about how God must have acted and can't see their own hypothesis as suggesting a God who creates a world whose physical structures are "deceptive" is beyond our ability to grasp. Certainly the latter label is at least as warranted under their hypothesis as the former is under the Darwinists'.
We close with a recommendation. We have not visited the AIG Creation Museum, but we did recently visit the American Museum of Natural History in New York. We find that brilliant collection to be, for the observer with faith, an impressive testimony to the creative power of the biblical God. In particular, one prominent display includes statements about the philosophical, religious and existential meaning of natural history as currently understood by scientists. Three prominent scientists speak. One is an atheist. One is a pantheist. One is Francis Collins, the head of the human genome project, an evangelical Christian, and the author of a recent book expressing the reasonableness of belief. I doubt that a more honest or impressive presentation would be possible in the public forum. We therefore recommend a visit to the museum, a thoughtful reading of Collins's book, or at least a thoughtful reading of his presentation to the American Scientific Affiliation in 2002 on the subject of science and faith.
27 comments:
Dear SWNID,
(Should the Job passage read "15.7" instead of "15.1"?).
Thank you for weighing in on this topic--I have always been curious to hear your take on it. I especially liked the point about not stretching the boundaries of the Biblical text beyond what it can bear. That is certainly what AIG is guilty of (to varying degrees) both exegetically and philosophically.
I was able to visit the museum back when they had a "friends-and-family" day for their charter members--I was the friend of a friend whose other friend was a member. (The progress, at that point, was about 2/3 complete). The layout and the quality of the museum was certainly well done. When it came time for the presentation from Ken Ham, however; the quality of the whole experience began to fall off the table. The controlling exegetical/philosophical paradigm you noted came to the fore rather quickly and it was given as gospel truth. At that point, I went back out to look at the cool animatronic (sp) dinosaurs.
15:7 it is. 15:1 doesn't contribute much on this subject. Thanks for the correction.
To be commercially viable, the museum needs the support of people like you and me. Your experience is pretty typical of those from whom I've heard who have visited.
I'm not a prophet, but given the generally difficult environment for startup museums these days, I don't think the prospects for the museum's survival are bright. Call it economic Darwinism.
On this particular issue, SWNID and myself are in agreement. Being employed by a mega-church which brought in the AiG people for a conference, I was rather disappointed in what was presented, how it was presented and the lack of any real substance, aside from accepting things on "faith," that was demonstrated by the presenters.
In addition, I have a moral objection regarding the spending of $25 million dollars for a museum such as this. While the novelty may draw individuals to it in the foreseeable future, I wonder if the money would have been better spent elsewhere. But, then we couldn't fight those secular, progressive Darwinites, who want to exploit our children and kill our God :)
On a side note, I recently heard a news report that it was discovered that the individual that AiG used for "Adam" in their museum videos is the entrepreneur behind an online porn website. I guess better checking of resumes would have been in order.
I have a couple of concerns from your post.
1) You stated that "both from science and from biblical interpretation, AIG has less warrant for its insistence on young-earth creationism and flood geology than Darwinists..." How is that so from a biblical interpretation view? I can think of no verses that indicate long gaps (millions of years) in the genealogies, and certainly not in the creation account in Genesis 1-3. Reading the text, there is no reason to conclude anything other than old earth creationism. While you may disagree with that conclusion, it seems inaccurate to say that AIG has less biblical warrant to insist on this that Darwinism has, despite the "missing links" which have never been found, the contradiction between Darwinism and other laws (increasing entropy, for instance).
2) Sometimes things that are not expressly stated in the Bible are indeed true and necessary inferences (e.g. the doctrine of the Trinity - never mentioned as such, but required from certain passages; also the doctrine of free will, among others).
3) I follow AIG and I have never heard whatever statements you refer to with "Their penchant is for asserting that because there are no observers--except God--for the origins of the universe and of life, then one hypothesis about the origin of life is as good as another. This is disingenuous at best." What they do say is that because part of the scientific method is observation (and this is impossible in this case), that true scientific proof is not possible. One may present scientific evidence, but not proof. Then the facts (which can have multiple interpretations) must be fit together. It would be more like a judicial investigation than a scientific experiment, as is true with all history, since it is not repeated.
4) The AIG page on the issue of distant light specifically denies the arguement that God created light or the earth with false appearance of age, on the basis that "[t]his would be a strange deception."
Correction to paragraph 1, about half way through: should read "anything other than young earth creationism."
-Mike
Hi SWIND et al! Got this email from a friend recently, and thought it was relevant. His wife used to work there. It's a different side of the story than the one that normally hits the press...
----
[name redacted] left AiG a few weeks ago. the FBI had a near-constant presence
there due to threats, and AiG hired on a THIRD bomb-sniffing dog. add
to that the protests outside the entrance, and the stress just wasn't worth it. . . .
----
I will break a rule for you, anonymous, and reply. I deign you a serious commenter.
On point 1, you're missing my point. It's not just that the genealogies contain obvious gaps. That only illustrates the larger point: that the genealogies don't propose to offer a means of understanding the age of the earth, so it is gratuitous to make a definitive inference from them on that point. The genealogies function very differently in the Biblical text: to provide the people of Israel with the truth that they are not, per the mythologies of their neighbors, divided into various tribes because they all arose from separate interactions of separate deities with various portions of the mundane sphere. The same may be said for the seven days of Genesis 1. The Genesis 1 week is clearly the organizing structure to a highly stylized narrative. It is not at all clear that those "days" refer to anything that is strictly temporal in a way that would be registered as such by a hypothetical observer to the process. I would say in passing that Ken Hamm's attempts to define yom in Genesis 1 as deciding this issue in the direction of a young earth are pretty embarrassing from the point of view of those of us who have made it our life's work to deal with these linguistic matters. For a discussion of this, see any of the major evangelical commentaries on Genesis.
In the larger sense, you persist in reading the biblical text as if it were attempting to address the scientific community instead of the array of Ancient Near Eastern religious and political ideologies. None of those hinged on chronology, or "when," but on what kind of God did this ("who") and for what purpose ("why").
On point 2, you are, of course, correct that Christians have traditionally inferred certain matters from the Bible. The question is the boundary of such inference. But even with the matters you cite, there are limits. Yes, I would argue that the trinity is a valid inference. However, there are limits to how much one can say about triune relations based on the biblical text. One doesn't have to go far to find ways in which interpreters have drawn problematic conclusions because they have pressed texts to address issues or questions that lie outside their objects in their historical and literary contexts. The same may be said on free will: among Protestants there are Arminians and Calvinists, and even these can't all decide on the exact means by which to reconcile all the issues, precisely because such precise formulation lies outside the intended boundaries of any biblical discourse understood in its historical and literary setting.
You are also right in point 3 that paleontology is different from other scientific matters and that it resembles judicial questions as a matter of the investigation of the past. It isn't exactly fair, though, to say that paleontology isn't scientific, as some do in the creationist community. Granted that too many secular scientists tend to gloss over the differences between physics and chemistry on the one hand and paleontology on the other, creationists do the same when they confine "science" to the one and not the other. Paleontology is both similar to and different from other branches of the natural sciences, and both aspects need consideration. Paleontologists deserve to be called scientists as much as forensic anthropologists do.
But if AIG is acknowledging this epistemic reality, as you suggest and however imperfectly, the fact remains that they utterly lack a means of explaining the multidisciplinary confluence of evidence for the enormous age of the universe and the earth. I have waited since Ken Hamm's arrival in Cincinnati to hear some kind of comprehensive explanation of geology and astronomy, let alone the biology of the fossil record, from AIG, and it's simply not there. What we get mostly is a species of false-choice rhetoric about the meaning and authority of the Bible, rife with the kind of unwarranted conclusions about the implications of the Bible that I have noted, coupled with a slippery-slope critique of Darwinism's social impact, as if social dysfunction didn't exist before the publication of Origin of the Species.
If you are right in point 4, and I assume that you are a closer observer of AIG than I, that they post a web page denying that specific means of reconciling a young universe with the scientific observation of the distances between galaxies, I think we're back at what I mentioned above: what are they affirming about the impressive evidence from astronomy and physics about the age of the universe (which by the way leads back to the dilemma of ultimate origins that affirms the existence of God via the cosmological argument) that is both plausible and consistent with a young universe? I haven't heard anything so far, and I've been waiting a long time.
I notice that "anonymous" signed the second time as "Mike." Would this happen to be Mike Riddle of the AIG staff?
Anyone who cares to point out the hypocrisy of an anonymous poster demanding an identification may do so. But I still think it would be helpful to know if an AIG staffer is commenting on this post.
Mike/Anonymous, we want to further clarify a couple of things.
First, we don't think that Darwinism has more biblical warrant than AIG's young-earth creationism. We think that it has more warrant, period. Darwinism has no biblical warrant, but it has an impressive warrant from its ability to explain a considerable amount of empirical data. We insist that young-earth creationism, as opposed to old-earth creationism or what we might call agnostic-about-the-age-of-the-earth creationsim, has no biblical warrant because the Bible is silent on the age of the earth, and it has no empirical warrant because there's lots and lots of empirical evidence for an old earth but essentially none of which we are aware for a young earth. You have inserted, innocently I'm sure, the limitation of "biblical" to our statement about "warrant." Our point is that the Christian who takes seriously both the Bible and the evidence of the earth and sky can readily conclude, we believe ought to conclude, that because the Bible is silent on the age of the universe but the evidence of the earth and sky seem to speak rather clearly on this point, one has much reason to opt for an old earth and little for a young earth.
Second, when we referred to "tribes" in our previous explanatory comment, we refer to the various nations of the Ancient Near East, not the tribes of the nation of Israel. We realize in rereading that post that such was not clear.
From a different anonymous (a non-Mike anonmymous), SWNID is right on target in many ways. I'm a little confused about his belief with regard to how much Darwinism is "warranted." But other than that, his thinking is clear and cogent.
2 major points are lacking though.
One is that evolution is more philosophy than science. Evolution is the face of naturalism and materialism. In that sense, it is in constant competition with God and Christianity, whether it should be or not (from a scientific perspective). Darwin states at the opening of his book that he is applying an economic / social / philosophical theory to the natural world (to the animals below us). Read a short bio on Thomas Malthus for more info. Darwin was an observationist. He observed that weaker animals die the same as weaker people (Malthus), and that natural forces were at work (famine, pestilence, climate change, etc.) in killing off those weaker animals. But I digress.
The 2nd major point is a corollary. AIG is a political organization. They are fighting one front of the culture war. They do it successfully, but at huge cost. They are like the Rainbow Coalition or PETA. Their market is/are those who can't see the obvious stupidity of their logic (theology, hermeneutics, science, natural history).
Unfortunatley, there are a lot of these people in evangelical and fundamental Christianity. Enough to raise $20 million to be exact, regionally.
AIG is fighting the school boards over the future of our children. But they are a complete embarrassment and do much harm to the Kingdom that is trying to evangelize (in the name of Christ) the very same political enemies that AIG is fighting in the name of Christ.
They isolate the scientific community (a secular community) for unmitigated bashing in the name of Christ. Parts of the church did the same in the 80s and 90s with the homosexual community (again a secular community) and any hope of reaching that community through compassionate service to HIV/AIDs victims was lost.
While Christians should fight politically, they should be very careful what they fight for and very careful how they fight. Ken Ham is the Jesse Jackson of evangelical Christianity: tremendous power to wreak havoc. But he has only negative influence on the work of the church and his political enemies (he distances them).
I have firsthand experience, attending his presentations and reading his books. As Dick Alexander recently wrote in the LifeSpring weekly church newsletter (and yes it deserves as much attention as the NYT for quality journalism and commentary), Ken Ham routinely makes fun of people he disagrees with. It's great stand up comedy. It's great humor. It even helps people feel more self-righteous. But it is ungodly on multiple levels. It is so bad that I can't agree with Paul in Philippians "that the gospel is still being preached" regardless of the imperfections of its preachers. This is a false gospel preached over a false battle, and the Kingdom is losing big-time.
Gold Star to Anonymous. We also liked Dick Alexander's newsletter piece on AIG and will thank any gentle reader who cares to supply a link (we couldn't find it at the church web site) or the text itself.
No, I am not in any way associated with AIG. I merely try to follow what is going on with them. I do hold to their stance on this issue. Their website does deal with a variety of issues that have been raised here. My particular interest is the Biblical side of the argument. Science and evidence are fine, but the Word of God must be held in higher regard. The interpretation of "yom" which you pointed out is important. It is not just Ken Ham, though, who says that. My former professor of Hebrew at Kentucky Christian U. said the same thing, and presented evidence to support his conclusion. Whatever the purpose of the genealogies, they still include the ages of people when they fathered the son. Whatever the purpose they are true in anything they report.
I'm sorry, I just moved and the internet in the library is about to kick me off. I must go.
Mike (a former CCU student)
SWNID,
Alas, your entry is intriguingly bewildering. The entire tone of your entry -- from the opening comments concerning AIG to its end -- suggests that you have an axe to grind with AIG and/or Ken Hamm. Regardless of that apparent desire on your part, I take issue with a few of your comments.
Since you are an impressively trained biblical scholar, your glaring neglect of the Genesis text is, quite frankly, perplexing. You proclaim, "AIG asserts that prior to the fall, all animals were herbivores. This is likewise not a biblical notion. The Bible says nothing about the diet of animals prior to Genesis 3."
Come on, SWNID! You need to review Genesis 2:29-30, wherein you'll find that God declares after creating all land animals and man on the sixth day, "I give every green plant for food" (v. 30); about mankind's diet of plants, God dictates, "They will be yours for food" (v. 29).
Expounding on the old earth versus young earth debate, you write, ". . .we must then ask two questions: (a) why would a God like the God of the Bible do such a thing? (b) How would we know if he did?"
Really, SWNID, do you suppose to know and understand the mind and ways of the Creator God? Your answers to the questions characterize the typical scientific arrogance of evolution's core maxim: Mankind will indeed -- somehow and someday -- completely comprehend and fully explain the origin and complexities of the universe.
After having read your entry several times, I'm suspicious that your advanced training has become a bit of an obstacle to your faith, at least regarding the biblical account of creation. Despite the fact -- or maybe because -- I have lived the Christian life for over 35 years and been trained at CCU as well, I'm humbled by the hubris that overtakes many Christians who attempt to explain the universe within their own minds as if God's creative abilities can be sufficiently comprehended by us, His creation. How pitiably presumptuous! I only hope our Creator God gains a certain degree of humor from our feeble folly in attempting to elucidate His means and motives.
Respectfully yours,
Faithwalker
Correction to my, Faithwalker's, Previous Post:
The reference in paragraph 3 should be Genesis chapter 1 -- not 2 -- verses 29 and 30.
This, of course, comes even earlier in the Genesis text, further countering your claim that "The Bible says nothing about the diet of animals prior to Genesis 3."
Press on, Good Brother!
Faithwalker
"Faithwalker," do I have an ax to grind with AIG or Ken Ham (whose name I apologize for misspelling)? Yes, but only because I believe that he and his organization distort the Bible in the name of defending it, making it difficult to get the real message of the Bible out to people who need to know it. I also think that they unnecessarily defame other believers who disagree with their particular point of view. I don't know Ham personally, and his organization has no effect on anything that I do personally or professionally.
I'm not glaringly neglecting the Genesis text, as you suggest. Your conclusion about 1:29-30 assumes that when the text asserts that plants are given for food, other sources of food, like fungi or yeast or fish or birds or mammals (yum to all, by the way!), are excluded. That is a logical error, the commission of which is significant because it reveals what the interpreter is assuming about the text, namely, that God is here restricting the diet of his creatures rather than welcoming them into a world that has been lavishly prepared for them. You also underestimate, I think, the degree to which a very specific theology of death assumed by the AIG folks leads them to construct the unscientific and (I believe) unexegetical conclusion that no animals died before the fall. We will also note that the Bible pictures eternity as a banquet at which meat is served (Isa 25), something rather odd if it wasn't part of the design of perfect creation.
You mistake me severely, and you exaggerate what you read here, to think that I for a moment believe that anyone except God himself can understand all mysteries and all knowledge, even given more generations of scientific advance. The more we know, the more we know we don't know. But we do know more than we once did. And you know that. Oddly enough, our advances in knowledge about life are making it harder and harder to conclude that it arose by chance.
You have quoted my remark about whether or not God would do a certain thing as if it were a comment on the entirety of the young earth view. Review the context and you'll see that it's a comment on a strategem sometimes employed by young earthers to explain the impressive signs of the earth's age.
But this now gets at a key point: it is no less a manifestation of hubris to assert certainty about a young earth than it is about an old one. To assert that belief in an old earth is a manifestation of overconfidence in the human ability to know such things is also a condemnation of belief in a young earth, also a claim to know such things. To put it differently, why should I be any more confident that I've understood the Bible than I am that I've understood geology, by your reasoning?
So there's the significant point I'd suggest you consider: that we approach our knowledge from all sources--empirical and biblical--with humility, but that we not despair of ever knowing anything. That is walking by faith.
Mike, I don't doubt that you had a prof at KCU who offered arguments that yom must refer to a 24-hour day in Genesis 1. Suffice it to say that a significant number of scholars of the languages who also affirm the authority/infallibility/inerrancy of the Bible aren't convinced by those arguments. Counter-examples have been adduced for all the allegedly definitive marks on "day" in Genesis 1; the arguments that insist on a 24-hour day there don't bear up under scrutiny. But the real interpretive question is about more than the sense of yom; it's about the way that the narrative functions in its ancient Near Eastern setting, in which "when" was not the significant question and so was probably not in the horizon of the text's "answer."
The same goes for the geneaologies, by the way. There's nothing in the environment of the text to suggest that "when" is what they're after. You're right: like the rest of Scripture, what they say is true, but they don't speak to everything we might think.
Sure, AIG has a response to all this on their web site and in other materials. They are paying attention, big time. But their responses are pretty awful--an amalgum of logical fallacies, ad hominem attacks, and hysterical warnings about slippery slopes. The theology and exegesis are embarrassing, and there's no science at all. It's rhetoric only.
SWNIDish moral to this tale, or why anyone should bother with such matters: the church causes much mischief by trying to get the Bible to address questions that it simply doesn't address. Such mischief is at the root of much disunity among believers and much discrediting of the Christian gospel. We'd all be well advised to think carefully about what the text isn't talking about so that we can concentrate on what it is talking about. Those of us who have foregone other careers for biblical scholarship hope by our imperfect efforts to bring some measure of unity to the church and clarity to its message.
SWNID,
Even after considering your rebuttal to my rebuke concerning your glaring neglect of Genesis 1:29-30, I remain bewildered. You have failed to admit your oversight of this text in relation to your original claim that "The Bible says nothing about the diet of animals prior to Genesis 3."
As a proud biblical interpreter, you should review words -- your own, by the way -- concerning proper application of hermeneutics: "To put this one way, we must forever be conscious of the difference between what the Bible says and what we might conjecture from the Bible and other data. AIG has ignored this distinction, and they and their conversation partners are the worse for it."
Therefore, SWNID, from what text do you conjecture that animals and man, before Genesis 3, were given dietary supplements, i.e. meat, along with the prescribed formula in Genesis 1:29-30 that can be understood by even the untrained Bible reader? It appears you are employing a double standard because it is convenient to your own purposes just as you charge AIG does.
By the way, I am not an apologist for AIG and/or Ken Ham. Likewise, I did not mean to imply that I hold that animals and plants were created to live forever in the Garden before the Fall. I only responded to your original point in order to expose your precarious interpretive position.
Faithwalker
To stir the pot even more via a "cannonball" from the high dive, I submit the following link: www.veritas.org/3.0_media/talks/277.
This presentation is given by William Lane Craig, and the topic of discussion is the origin of the universe. If someone is going to argue science in order to justify a young-earth cosmology, then they need to hear the arguments given by Craig before doing so. (I am not suggesting that he is THE authority on the issue; I am merely suggesting that his argument is worth an auditory gander).
As SWNID has (rightly) said, the scientific datum cannot be employed and/or "fired" for matters of convenience--or, only to support a personal agenda. (SWNID, if I am wrong in this summary statement, I accept your subsequent tongue-lashing). The contributions of science must be given their due--no matter how inconvenient and/or uncomfortable some of their conclusions may be.
Just by way of a slight warning: if anyone does choose to listen to Craig's presentation, then please be patient and attentive to the whole argument. How he proceeds requires a hermeneutic of trust from the listener. In other words, don't fly off the handle when he says something with which you do not agree. More times than not, the needed qualifier (which is agreeable) comes later in the argument.
Also, if one is so inclined and/or bored out of their head; I refer you to his secondary site containing numerous articles on similar subjects: http://www.leaderu.com/offices/billcraig/menus/articles.html.
In the interests of full disclosure, we disclose: (a) we were Bill Craig's student at TEDS; (b) we would have pursued a ThM in philosophy of religion under Dr. Craig had the TEDS academic schedule been more accommodating to our full-time ministry; (c) a few years ago we attempted to distill for popular consumption Dr. Craig's arguments regarding the Kalam cosmological argument and the Big Bang in “Who’s Afraid of the Big Bang Theory?” Lookout 114:46 (November 17, 2002) 6-8.
Craig is a superb scholar who, for those who care, can also testify firsthand to the power that a believer's unafraid look at the issue of origins can have on someone without faith but with an interest in the sciences.
Genesis 1:30 does talk about the diet of animals. I am sorry to say your information of the Bible is distorted. So to say that the Bible does not refer to any diet before Genesis 3 is, well, wrong.
I just went to the Creation Museum and have to say it uses science and biblical accounts to back up their view. I would recommend it to people, even if it is just for to make up their mind.
Adam and Eve did not have disease. Their bodies would not be in decay. They had the Tree of Life to eat from. They had the original "fountain of youth" so to speak. They would not look like we would at a certain "age". Heck Adam lived 930 years. I wonder how many wrinkles he had. We would have decayed and blown away by then. Sorry, your interpretation about Shakira and trying to compare them to Adam and Eve was weak.
Dear No Billions,
Please know that this is said with absolute respect. Nothing of what is said is directed toward you personally. My focus is solely on the arguments given by you. If you, however, see this as a personal attack, that's your problem--not mine.
I am troubled by your comments on SWNID's comments/observations. First you assert that the bodies of Adam and Eve "would not be in decay"; yet, you then (rhetorically) ask: "I wonder how many wrinkles he had?" Wrinkles in one's skin is a pysiological sign of decay--i.e., the muscles fibers are breaking down, which therefore leads to a lack of elasticty and/or tautness.
You also say that both Adam and Eve had the Tree of Life to eat from, which would allow them to not experience decay (and/or death). The problem here is that there is very little--if anything--within the Genesis account that would justify such a statement. In fact, the account seems to argue in the opposite direction. Look at Genesis 3.22:
"Then the Lord God said, "Behold, the man has become like one of Us, knowing good and evil; and now, he might stretch out his hand, and take also from the tree of life, and eat, and live forever." (NASB)
Within the Greek version of the OT--i.e., the LXX--the syntax used within this passage also suggests that they have not yet eaten from the tree of life. (I would have checked the Hebrew version of the OT; but alas, my knowledge of Hebrew is not as it should be).
While it is true that God allowed them to eat "from any tree of the garden" (Gen. 2.16), which naturally included the "tree of life" (Gen. 2.9); given the tone (and syntax) of Gen. 3.22, you would be hard-pressed to argue that Adam and Eve had in fact previously eaten from the tree of life.
I, too, have been the Creation Museam and I, too, heard Ken Ham offer "scientific proof" to justify his conclusions. No one suggesting that he is not using science in his presentations. What is being suggested, however, is that his methodology and rhetoric are the points of concern.
As SWNID has pointed on (on several occasions), the scientific proof that is given only includes what is beneficial to AIG's presuppositions. Not only that, but they will flat out reject any scientific evidence that stands in conflict to their presuppositions. This sort of apologetic winds up being counterproductive both logically and evangelistically.
Like a moth to the flame, we are drawn to this topic yet again.
Forgive our verbal imprecision from which irate gentle readers infer us to say that Genesis 1:29-30 isn't about what animals eat. We wish we had an editor to point out where gentle readers will mercilessly parse our words out of context. The point, as subsequent comments sought to clarify, is that there's no definitive statement anywhere in the Bible, including this one, that all animals were herbivores before the fall. That depends on a tendentious and illogical reading of the noted text, but more than that in the assertions of AIG it depends on a specific theology of death that is problematic at multiple levels of exegesis and theology.
We urge gentle readers to stop reading Genesis like 21st century Americans who watch the National Geographic channel and more like ancient Near Eastern herdsmen/farmers. For them, the availability of plants is what supports their subsistence. Where there are none, they have to move (hence our term "seminomadic" to describe them). In such a social environment, the statement of Genesis 1:29-30 says, Look! I've provided for you abundantly, so don't worry about what you will eat! And if you're hearing this book read while you're trudging through bleak, plantless Sinai and living on monotonous manna, you hear it loud and clear.
Ancient Near Easter herdsmen weren't especially interested in understanding the diet of predators. They were interested in keeping predators away from their herds. If the predators are content to prey on nondomesticated animals, their diet beyond that is a matter of indifference. So the question of what the wolves and lions ate before the fall is not one that we'd expect Israelite herdsmen to find addressed in Genesis 1:29-30.
I'm puzzled by your reading of Genesis even on your own terms, Nobillions. Did everyone who lived an exceptionally long time in Genesis have access to the tree of life? Or was its effect so profound that it was passed on genetically for a few generations? With the refrain, "and he died," the text leads me to believe that God excludes Adam and Eve and all who came after them from the tree and any beneficial effect it might have. Further, it is on the "day" that they eat of the tree of knowledge of good and evil that God tells the first couple that they will surely die. Let's just chew on that awhile before we speak up (on the problem, metaphorically, not on the forbidden fruit).
Now, let's get analytical about this, if we may, but in an overly simplistic way, as an attempt to provoke some thought. People like you who do the AIG thing and people like us who do the ANE (ancient Near Eastern) thing both find things in Genesis that are, well, odd in terms of our own experience. You assume that the answer to the puzzle probably has something to do with a different kind of "science" than the one to which we're accustomed. We assume that it probably has to do with something about the way that people immersed in the culture and literature of the ancient Near East would have read these texts.
The weakness of the AIG kind of answer, apart from its inability to explain a whale of a lot of empirical evidence outside the Bible, is that it ends up relying on a massively conjectural reading of the biblical text that lacks supporting evidence of any kind. The strength of the ANE kind of answer is that it explains the text using information that ought to be relevant to its understanding, based on what we know about how language works.
Oddly enough, it's the AIG approach that ends up exalting the scientific mode of discourse. It unwittingly has swallowed the assumption that the text must speak as does a scientific text, albeit to a different kind of "science."
Oddly enough, it is also the AIG approach that ends up, in our view, disparaging the Bible, mostly by repeated assertions of what the Bible says that it clearly does not say. Even if we were to conclude that Genesis 1:29-30 says what y'all say it says, there are other items on our list of nonbiblical assertions asserted in the name of the Bible. We'd invite you to discuss those too, but that would simply distract from the central question, which has to do with presuppositions and methods.
We expect irate gentle readers to complain of bewilderment again. So be it. That's what happens when we examine presuppositions that we didn't even know we had.
So we invite the bewildered to have some fun with this, acting on curiosity instead of fear ("Greater is he," so don't be defensive or withdrawn into an ideological fortress or echo chamber). We meant it when we asked the question, "Who's afraid of the Big Bang theory?" and we add, "or old-earth creation in general?" Explore and ponder. Take seriously the thoughts of serious Christians, like Francis Collins or William Lane Craig or Hugh Ross or J. P. Moreland or William Dembski or Michael Behe or Dan Dyke (SWNID's identical cousin, separated at birth), who've given their lives to trying to understand these things. It isn't dangerous.
SWNID out!
Honest question to Faithwalker, Nobillions, Mike and others who want to reply. You've been to the museum (some of you, at least), and you like it. Will you go again? How often? Will you donate to AIG because of what you saw? Will you subscribe to their publications or buy their products more than once?
I'm interested in whether the museum can sustain its initial commercial success. Lots of museums start with a big bang and end with a whimper, as Cincinnati's Freedom Center seems about to do. This is not a put-your-money-where-your-mouth-is dare. I just wonder what you honestly think you'll do.
Call this an unscientific consumer survey.
I'll spoil the rude joke for someone else: That's just the kind of survey that suits AIG.
Jim:
Honest answer to your honest question: I have not yet had the opportunity to visit the Creation Museum. Although I might visit the museum at some point in the future, I am not a subscriber to any AIG publications and have read only a few works by Ken Ham.
As I've tried to make abundantly clear in an earlier post to SWNID, I am not an AIG and/or Ken Ham apologist. I am, however, a Christian who believes in the literal interpretation of the Genesis account concerning origins.
By the way, what is the purpose of your query?
Faithwalker
SWNID:
Of course I recognized your not-so-veiled reference to yours truly (e.g., your satirical echo of my "bewilderment") as you admonished me -- and others who disagree with your interpretation (as well as initial omission) of Genesis 1:29-30 -- "to have some fun with this, acting on curiosity instead of fear. . ."
I'm disappointed by the manner in which you couched your advice, SWNID. As an astute observer and keen critic of popular culture, you have chosen the trite and mostly feeble tactic of suggesting that those who disagree with your opinion or approach are afraid of something. Why do you suggest that I am fearful to study an alternative understanding of the creation debate? And what convinces you that I haven't in fact done so? Must I have a phobia if I am not dissuaded by your views -- or of those that you care to list ad infinitum -- on the issue? Come on, SWNID; you are certainly mutations above that ineffective albeit pervasive ploy, aren't you?
Nonetheless, I remain intrigued by your blog and its many topics. Keep cranking it out, faithful Theophilus!
Faithwalker
I must agree with Faithwalker...feeble folly, feeble folly! Methinks there is a slight double standard in thine thinking, SWNID, and it is glaringly obvious; sounds like an axe to grind( no ad hominem intended) I pray AIG can keep the scientific community isolated in a "lock box" and that the young earth message prevails. Any more secularization of the Word by the "Chrisian community" is only a watering down of the foundation God used to teach truth right from the very beginning.
Sorry if you're offended by our intimations of fear on the part of some who eschew all views of origins save a young earth. We offer the alternatives of curiosity and fear out of a fair amount of experience with this subject. Those who have read widely on the subject generally are curious. Those ready to draw conclusions without reading widely may simply not be interested. But as AIG's rhetoric depends on stirring fear, one might as well call it out and dare people to defy it.
Whether you are personally afraid, we can't know. We don't know who you are. So have you read a lot on old-earth creation? Or are you indifferent? Or convinced after hearing part of one side?
We remain mystified by this talk about grinding axes. What do you mean? Our only objection to AIG is a considerable one: they discredit Christians with irresponsible, indefensible misinterpretation of the Bible and miserable mischaracterization of science. AIG has garnered so much publicity that we have personally been called by a producer of French television looking for AIG's allies to film. Is that not reason enough to blog on this? Someone needs to make abundantly clear that all Christians don't think like Ken Ham. We are tired of all Christians being represented as acolytes of the likes of Ham, Pat Robertson or Jerry Falwell. That's our ax, in all it's viciousness.
You might be interest in, "Arguments we think creationists should NOT use" by AIG:
http://www.answersingenesis.org/home/area/faq/dont_use.asp
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