The speaker was Dr Robert Carter, affiliated with Creation Ministries a business dedicated to the idea that the earth is 6K years old and they can prove it "scientifically".
First of all, let me say that I'm sure that many of the people taking part in this are well meaning and truly believe that they MUST somehow "debunk evolution" in order for people to believe in God, the Bible, and Jesus. I'll refer to them as "Young Earth Creationists" (YEC)
My main concern here is idolatry -- focus on the physical over the spiritual. Thomas could only believe if he thrust his hand into the side of the risen Savior. YECs seem to think that belief in the miracle of God taking human form and dying for our sins requires that we thrust our minds through "science" into the physical world and SEE that it is created via "scientific" knowledge.
My view is that our original sin lies in us seeking knowledge and power in the physical world, rather than relying on "The Word" of God -- meaning Christ ("and the Word was with God")" and the Bible (in that order). Science and thinking in a materialist manner puts the creation ahead of the creator. The choice of the material "fruit" over the WORD of God was the fall.
Science is all about stuff (material), but God didn't create ONLY stuff. He created man "in his image", which is SPIRIT, not "stuff" (matter) ... our consciousness, which science also can't measure, and therefore does not exist to science. Science deals with what humans are able to perceive, or they create machines to perceive and MEASURE the scientific (materialist) view of "what is". If it can't be measured, it doesn't exist for science. The consciousness of the scientist that is doing the measurement isn't part of science -- which I suspect is part of the reason for "quantum effects". The quantum superposition doesn't "collapse" until a consciousness (spirit) could view it) -- Schroedigers cat is in the superposition of dead AND alive until a consciousness views the result.
Science seeks truth in matter, and has chased matter to the point where it becomes waves, particles, quarks, strings, fields, quanta and all sorts of wispy ghosts that behave more like quantum spirits than "stuff". The search for the "truth" of matter has led to "spooky effects at a distance". Both time and space have become "relative". Perhaps energy is all there is -- or "data", or perhaps, spirit -- dare we say it -- God?
Looking at matter will never provide eternal truth. Matter isn't eternal -- as far science can tell the physical universe will die in cold entropy or a super hot "big crunch" according to physics. Long before either of those happen, physical life will be gone -- in a mere universal heartbeat of a few 10's of billions of years next to the vastness of eternity.
The Bible says that God created the earth. It doesn't say how and it doesn't say when. Certainly it can be "wired" to give someone the impression that the earth "must" be a certain age, just as the Catholic church once persecuted those who said that the earth orbited the sun, because Joshua 10:13 says "So the sun stood still, and the moon stopped, till the nation avenged itself on its enemies, as it is written in the Book of Jashar. The sun stopped in the middle of the sky and delayed going down about a full day.".
They were completely certain that the sun HAD to move, since the Bible "said so", so it was better to kill a heretic who failed to believe this "truth" than to allow such madness to spread. As all of us who share the beginning of wisdom ought to know each day, their (and our) God is too small! If you follow the link, you will be taken to my review of a small book by that title that has a very large message. It is US who attempts to put an infinite God into a box and explain how he MUST operate.
As I've repeated too often, I'm willing to let God create the world via any mechanism he chooses. He may have created it "during" the time I wrote this sentence -- and it would all look exactly like it does now. Not to "fool" anyone, but because that is how God chose to create it! He is beyond time and space -- and certainly beyond the thoughts of man.
I used to work on the startup code for a large operating system where we created a "boot image" and loaded that into the memory of the computer. If you looked at it when it started running, you could assume that a whole bunch of things had "happened", that really had not. They had been set up so they appeared that way because that is how they needed to be to work with the rest of the operating system -- not to "fool people".
This is but a single possibility. To believe that understanding the MECHANISM of how God may have created somehow helps us understand an eternal God is counterproductive to faith. Becoming mired in a never ending argument over matter, cells and calendars is to miss God -- that he is eternal, spirit, light, love and not of this physical universe (except as Christ).
Western civilization is dying because it has put it's faith in matter rather than spirit and truth. Science is ONLY about measurement and mechanism, and proudly so. It has, nor recognizes, a soul, nothing at all that is spiritually human. To science, we are all "naked apes", soulless animals living meaningless lives in a meaningless universe. Science is "psychopathic" -- it denies consciousness and values since they are not observable or measureable. Science is a TOOL ... like a hammer, like a computer. (psychopaths don't see others as "conscious")
CREATION -- even the puny human form of a new song, painting, novel, technological innovation or flower arrangement, is outside of science. The divine creation is a gap so large that God needed to become human in the form of Jesus Christ in order to bridge the gulf created by sin -- one of the chief of which is our idolatry of matter over spirit.
"Creation Science" demeans creation and attempts to use "science" in it's own idolatry of the physical -- to say with doubting Thomas, that "faith is NOT enough, I muse SEE the marks of creation"! Our current "Standard Model" of physics is "timeless", defined by mathematics that make time relative -- it says that what is happening now has always been happening and always will be. If you add in quantum mechanics, everything that "could be happening" is (each "decision" causes a "fork" creating a new universe from that point on.
So "true" evolutionists are turning on physics -- they want a NEW MODEL that shows that what we see "can happen" with no outside intervention or "timeless principles" it may well take 10 to the 400th or 10 the google UNIVERSES, but ANYTHING is more palatable to them than "timeless".
Apparently anything other than a timeless God is palatable to young earth creationists as well -- no matter how many strange "flood hoops" they have to jump over to have their 6K year cake.
My bottom line concerns with young earth creation are:
- Idolatry -- the desire to put the physical ahead of the spiritual. The idea that "unless I can physically touch the risen savior, I will not believe", transposed to "unless the physical evidence viewed by science in the world aligns directly with Genesis, I will not believe that God created the earth / universe".
- Moneychangers in the temple. YEC is an opportunity for some to attempt to profit from the creation of a cult like set of followers that feel that their "faith" (actually if it is proven by physical evidence, it is not faith) depends on physical defense of 6K year creation. Which is of course is not faith at all : Hebrews 11:1 11 Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.
- Loss of spiritual authority and increased loss of youth to paganism. The modern world has no shortage of idolatry for the physical. The battlefield of the spiritual has been virtually abandoned, and the YEC movement wants to abandon the spiritual in the case of creation and fight on the physical plane as well. It is as if Elijah had joined the pagans in cutting himself to obtain the attention of the true God.
The only "physical matter" that proves the spiritual is the person of Jesus Christ. All other attempts are idolatry -- often well meaning idolatry, but idolatry just the same. At one time I wished it were not so, but I believe I understand more of the reason that God demands we worship him in SPIRIT and Truth.
Being flesh, we are so drawn to the physical that if any form of the physical save the person of Christ, present at Calvary and in Holy Communion was really worthy of our study and adulation, we would be inexorably drawn to that form to the exclusion of Christ, writing books, creating web sites and holding endless discussions on the minutia of this "physical truth", rather than worshiping "The Way, the Truth, and the Life". We might possibly even build a physical "Ark" as a talisman for the spiritual protection of Christ through the waters of this world.
Only the Trinity is eternal, however we share an eternal future though not an eternal past. We will know the HOW, WHEN, WHY, etc of creation -- for now, let us have faith that God Created!
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