young earth creationism Archives - DOES GOD EXIST? TODAY

July 8, 2020July 7, 2020

Time Debate and Genesis

Several years ago, I was involved in a three-way debate in California between a Young Earth Creationist, a Modern Apologist Scholar, and myself. I was supposed to present design arguments while the other two engaged in an intellectual tug-of-war over the Genesis account. I learned from that experience not to get involved in that kind of time debate again.

I have engaged in debates with atheists for over 50 years, but those debates were easy to understand, and the different views were clear. This Califonia debate was between believers. Because the subject was the integrity of the Genesis account, I used a chart that shows that the SEQUENCE of the Genesis 1 account and the fossil record are identical. The Apologist Scholar denigrated my chart by saying that the events described occurred over a 600 million year period, and, therefore, the Genesis account could not be viewed as historically accurate. The Young Earth Creationist reacted to that claim, and they engaged in a free-for-all about the time issues and the purpose of Genesis 1. The point of my chart was lost in the time debate.

Humans always get hung up on the time issues. God created time. Psalms 90:4 says, “A thousand years in your sight are but as yesterday when it is past and as a watch in the night.” God is outside of time, and the Bible tells us over-and-over not to restrict Him by demanding a time-scale for what God does. “But, beloved, be not ignorant of this one thing, that one day is with the Lord as a thousand years and a thousand years as one day” (2 Peter 3:8). “It is not for you to know the times or the seasons, which the Father has put in His own power” (Acts 1:7).

The message of Genesis is not about time. The first verse of the Bible describes an event and process that is not dated or timed. The fact that the first chapter gives an accurate account of the SEQUENCE in which God created the Earth and all that is on it is excellent evidence that it came from the Creator. Since God created time, there is no reason for us to get hung up on how long God chose to do His work.

Theologians have led us down a rocky road of ascribing dates and times to the things God has done or will do. The birth of Christ certainly did not happen on December 25. Denominations have been created by theologians who try to establish when Christ will come again and when the judgment will take place. This is even though Jesus said, “…of that day and hour knows no man, no not the angels of heaven – only my Father” (Matthew 24:36).

People want to know when things will happen so that they can be prepared, but 2 Peter 3:11 anticipates that and warns us to always be prepared. It is hard for us to comprehend the fact that time for us ends when we die. It is equally difficult to realize that God acts outside of time. Many people stumble by putting the Genesis account at odds with the scientific evidence or relegating the Bible to symbolism and mythology rather than being literally true. Don’t get caught up in the time debate and make time an enemy of faith in the God of love, truth, and wisdom portrayed in His Word.

February 18, 2020February 17, 2020

Flood Geology and John C. Whitcomb

The co-author of The Genesis Flood, John C. Whitcomb Jr., passed away on February 4, 2020. Whitcomb and Henry M. Morris wrote the book advocating Flood Geology and supporting Young Earth Creationism.

Morris was an engineer, and Whitcomb was a theologian. John C. Whitcomb was long associated with Grace Theological Seminary, where he received his degree and taught until 1990. Grace is located in Winona Lake, Indiana, and associated with the Grace Brethren Church, which has Anabaptist and Calvinist roots.

Whitcomb and Morris used the so-called Flood Geology to fit scientific data into their religious beliefs. Ronald Numbers, the author of the book The Creationists, says, “By showing how the deluge of Noah compressed earth history into no more than 10,000 years, Whitcomb and Morris at one stroke eliminated the need for ‘biblical gymnastics’ and deprived evolutionists of the time required for the natural origin of species.”

The problem with their approach was that neither of them was trained in geology. Many of those reading The Genesis Flood were also not trained in geology and had grown up in a religious tradition that demanded a young earth. Dispensationalists hailed the book as gospel, and end times teachers and preachers used it extensively as a source of information. The result was the wide acceptance of Flood Geology as the book became a best-seller.

We are dealing with a different population in the 21st century. Young people today have had academic training in geology and earth science. National Geographic, Smithsonian, and Scientific American have popularized modern understanding of the facts of astronomy and geology. Most of us know that the cosmos is larger than 6,000 light-years, indicating that the light from distant stars has been traveling for far longer than 6,000 years. In places such as the Grand Canyon, we can see rock layers that contain fossils that were clearly not produced by a flood. Anyone with basic geology knows the difference between a clastic sedimentary rock and a chemically precipitated rock. That understanding tells us that a flood did not produce structures like the Grand Canyon since they are mostly made up of rocks that are never associated with a flood.

Flood Geology, which Whitcomb and Morris wrote about in 1961, will not stand up in 2020. Students of the Bible today know that the Genesis account is not dated or timed. They know that attempts to use the Bible as a clock of history are not only bad theology but violate the intent of the writers. For more on this discussion, please read “God’s Revelation in His Rocks and His Word,” which is available free at THIS LINK.

We need to speak where the Bible speaks and be silent where the Bible is silent. John C. Whitcomb and Henry M. Morris spoke where the Bible is silent. Today many of those who believe that their message accurately presents what the Bible teaches are leaving the Christian faith and looking for more plausible explanations. The “Does God Exist” ministry is dedicated to showing people that God does exist, that He is the Creator, and that the Bible is God’s inspired Word. We do not defend the claims of those who have twisted God’s Word to fit their human theological beliefs.

July 18, 2019July 17, 2019

Bible Age of Earth

Bible Age of Earth - Misleading Claims One of the most destructive teachings of denominational creationists is teaching that the Bible says the Earth is a very young planet. That is a human denominational tradition that has no biblical basis. The Bible gives no age of the Earth.

Let me repeat that nowhere in the Bible is there any statement about the age of the Earth. Those who twist the Bible to force an age on the Earth ignore references that suggest the Earth is old. In James 4:14, for example, we read, “For what is your life? It is even a vapor that appears for an instant and then vanishes away.” If the Earth is 6,000 years old and Methuselah lived 969 years, that is hardly a vapor. The Bible is not a clock, and twisting scripture to support a human belief system always results in misleading teaching.

Young people who are well-educated about the scientific evidence, have a massive problem with “scientific” claims made to support Young Earth denominationalism. Recently a publication carried five “global evidences” that the Earth is very young. All of them have glaring scientific weaknesses. Very briefly, they are:

Continental erosion. It is claimed that the rate of the erosion of the continents is so great that if the Earth were more than 6,000 years old, all of the land would have been eroded away. Dirt erodes quickly, but rock does not, and new land can be formed quickly, as recent volcanic activity in Hawaii demonstrates.

Ocean salinity. Salt is continually added to the oceans, so it is claimed that if the oceans were old, their salt content would be huge. The salinity of the world’s oceans is remarkably constant at 35 parts per thousand. This is accomplished because marine life removes sodium and calcium at a rate that maintains the constant ratio. The fact that the beaches in Florida are all made of seashell material demonstrates how efficient this system is.

Earth’s magnetic field. The magnetic field of the Earth is decreasing and would be zero in an old Earth. There is copious evidence that, like that of the Sun, Earth’s magnetic field reverses periodically. There are over 20 magnetic reversals preserved in the rocks of the mid-Atlantic ridge.

Radiocarbon. Carbon 14 exists in fossils, and it has a short half-life. There is no carbon 14 in any of the fossils that I have personally studied. I have read that contamination has been an issue in some fossils. Scientists never use carbon 14 to date ancient specimens, and they never use radiometric dating for mineral specimens.

Helium in zircon crystals. Creationist Russell Humphreys published a study on this topic indicating that the Earth could not be millions of years old, but no peer review has verified the work.

Since the Bible gives no age of the Earth, the issue is not whether the Earth is old or young. God doesn’t need time to do what He has done. The real issue comes when someone makes a human denominational claim about the Bible and tries to support that claim with invalid evidence. That wounds the faith of intelligent, seeking, well-educated young people. Unfortunately, that is what is happening in the world today.
— John N. Clayton © 2019

Reference: Acts and Facts, July 2019, pages 10-13.

April 17, 2017April 16, 2019

Picking and Choosing Einstein

As an old physics teacher, I find it interesting to watch people on both sides of the argument about the existence of God pick and choose various parts of Einstein’s work to support their positions. Picking and choosing Einstein to prove your point is not an option.

Recently I had an atheist and a Christian dispensationalist both use Einstein’s time dilation equation to support their position. That equation says that your time in motion is determined by your time at rest divided by the square root of one minus your velocity (v) squared divided by the speed of light (c) squared.

This formula indicates that the higher the velocity of motion, the smaller the value of the denominator of that equation becomes. Therefore, time expands. This is a fact. Neutrons in nuclear accelerators might live 18 minutes at rest before decaying into protons and electrons. When accelerated to 80% of the speed of light, they last much longer before decaying.

My atheist friend maintains that since the cosmos is accelerating in its expansion, it will eventually reach the speed of light and time will stop. He then proposes that time will reverse since the value of the denominator in Einstein’s equation would become negative. He then suggests that this process will be repeated in an eternal universe. Therefore, no beginning and no God.

My dispensationalist friend is one of several authors who propose that the universe started out expanding at a much higher velocity with time passing at a different rate than we experience today. This would mean that the evidence for the cosmos being very old is an illusion. In the beginning, time passed more slowly because of the much higher velocity of expansion. Since we move more slowly today, time is passing faster. Therefore, the universe is much younger than it would appear.

Both of these people were picking and choosing Einstein to support a personal religious opinion. Both of them are ignoring much of Einstein’s work. When the neutron referred to earlier is accelerated to 80% of the speed of light, not only does its time frame change but its relativistic mass changes too. Another one of Einstein’s equations looks just like the time equation but deals with mass. The change in the relativistic mass of a particle is equal to its mass at rest divided by the square root of one minus its velocity squared divided by the speed of light squared.

Experimentally this calculation works and can be verified. Perhaps the most well-known equation of Issac Newton is F = MA. This tells us that the force (F) needed to accelerate a mass (M) is equal to its mass multiplied by the acceleration (A). We all know from experience that the greater the mass of an object, the harder it is to speed it up when we push it, and the faster we want it to go the harder we have to push. If the relativistic mass increases as you get near the speed of light, what happens to the force you have to exert? Obviously, It increases too. At the speed of light, you would have infinite mass, and it would take an infinite force to move it.

Another fascinating equation from Einstein is that the length of an object changes as it approaches the speed of light. In the reverse of the change in time and mass, the length contracts in the direction of motion as the object gets closer the speed of light. At the speed of light, the length would be zero, and the object would cease to exist.

These are simplifications of Einstein’s work, but the point is that picking and choosing Einstein to prove your point is not honest. Relativistic effects cannot be picked and chosen while ignoring other effects. God created the cosmos with certain constants and relationships. These choices allow us to exist, but they also put a limit on what is possible. We struggle to comprehend all that is involved in the simple phrase, “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.”