If literal Creation ain't true?

The Adventist Review continues upon its course of fundamentalism with the article from Mark A. Kellner the news editor of the Adventist Review. In his article entitled If the Creation Account Isn't True... he presents his best evidence why the Genesis 1 account is true:

If the Bible account of Creation isn’t true, as Giberson and Stephens imply in offering to “incorporate” Darwinism in Christian faith, what must logically follow?

If there’s no Creation . . .
. . . where, and how, did sin enter the world?
. . . why do we need a Savior?
. . . from what did God, if He even exists, rest?
. . . why should we rest if, absent Creation, there’s nothing from which God rested?
. . . how can we believe anything else in the Bible?

Let us first define Darwinism since it seems for many Adventists it is a scary word with meaning that they really must not know.

A theory of biological evolution developed by Charles Darwin and others, stating that all species of organisms arise and develop through the natural selection of small, inherited variations that increase the individual's ability to compete, survive, and reproduce. Darwin's ideas have been refined and modified by subsequent researchers, but his theories still form the foundation of the scientific understanding of the evolution of life. Darwinism is often contrasted with another theory of biological evolution called Lamarckism, based on the now-discredited ideas of Jean-Baptiste Lamarck. The American Heritage® Science Dictionary Copyright © 2005 by Houghton Mifflin Company.

Is natural selection incompatible with Christianity? It has considerable evidence to indicate the genetic action of natural selection, why should it not be able to be incorporated into Christianity. Do we have trouble incorporating Electronics or Physic into Christianity? But apparently biological science is not acceptable to many Adventists and of course to Christian Fundamentalists.

Let us take a closer look at the reasons Mark Kellner gives us:

If there is no Genesis 1-3 literal Creation story “. . . where, and how, did sin enter the world?”

You will notice that I did not say as Kellner deceptively said, “If there’s no Creation” because even if one is a theistic evolutionist or an Intelligent Design believer there is still a creation, the how is simply not known, it does not mean there was not a first cause or creation event. But as you read the fundamentalists you will see that they are very manipulative and love to distort the beliefs of others. That is understandable...when you have a weak theory you need to support it and promote it as best you can and for them the best way is to distort information.

Where did sin enter the world? According to the Genesis 1-3 creation story there is no sin...sin is not mentioned until the Cain and Abel story in Gen 4:7. So we have to read the sin into the story based upon subsequent information. But let us assume that the actions in the story are taken as disobedience which is sin, where did sin enter the world?

The answer is in Eden which is located:

Gen 2:10-15 A river watering the garden flowed from Eden; from there it was separated into four headwaters. The name of the first is the Pishon; it winds through the entire land of Havilah, where there is gold. (The gold of that land is good; aromatic resin and onyx are also there.) The name of the second river is the Gihon; it winds through the entire land of Cush. The name of the third river is the Tigris; it runs along the east side of Asshur. And the fourth river is the Euphrates. The LORD God took the man and put him in the Garden of Eden to work it and take care of it. (NIV)

Where is or was that you may ask? No one knows. So the first answer the where is unknown, we don't know where. “How” is his next question. The answer assuming the sin was found in the act of eating the forbidden fruit is to be found in the temptation of the couple in Eden by the most crafty of creatures the talking serpent! You may wonder where do talking serpents come from? A good question we don't find many talking animals in the world or even in the pages of the Bible. This serpent then seems to be the instigator of sin because he contradicts God (later in the book of Revelation we read of the serpent of old as a reference to Satan, but Satan was unknown in the Jewish religion until much later, so to understand the story let us look at it from the perspective of those who heard it). So the how for Mark Kellner is sin came because a man and woman of relatively little experience decided to believe a talking snake and follow its arguments (remember Satan is not a part of the story until several thousands of years later). How comfortable are you with that as the story for how sin entered the world? A talking snake that not only spoke the human language but who happened to be in that particular tree at that time with those particular insinuations about God. I suppose if you are comfortable with that you will be just as comfortable with God expelling them from Eden for this one mistake instead of teaching them about what truth is and what lies are and why God may have more reason to be believed then a talking snake.

His next point, why do we need a Savior? Again there is no savior or mention of a savior in the first several chapters of Genesis. There is an announcement of the human superiority to the snake, at least after the snake is cursed for being such a crafty creature. The snake is cursed to crawl on its belly, nothing is said of it losing it ability to talk however which really seemed to be the root of the problem. But with the curse the descendent's will be able to stomp on the heads of the snakes:

Gen 3:14-15 So the LORD God said to the serpent, "Because you have done this, "Cursed are you above all the livestock and all the wild animals! You will crawl on your belly and you will eat dust all the days of your life. And I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and hers; he will crush your head, and you will strike his heel." (NIV) Actually many people take this verse as a Messianic prophecy. However it is never in the Bible, the old or new Testament used in any way as a reference to the Messiah. That is a later view developed later during the time of the Early Church Fathers, which is where a lot of our traditions come from, even though many of them are purely fanciful ideas. Ultimately the Genesis story says nothing about a Savior or our need for a Savior.

His third point, “from what did God, if He even exists, rest?” According to the story He rested from speaking, because that was the method of creation, “And God said”. The Genesis account says nothing about anyone else needed to rest. So his fourth point is once again not something from the Creation account.

“Why should we rest if, absent Creation, there’s nothing from which God rested?” According to Jesus the Sabbath rest was made for man not because God rested. Mark 2:27 And he said unto them, The sabbath was made for man, and not man for the sabbath: (KJV) Even if you use one of the versions of the ten commandments it is rest from human work that is given as the reason. Then there is the common sense argument that one should take some time away from working everyday. Could we not answer the question from experience? Or must we like him make it appear that it comes from a creation account that says nothing about people resting? When people ask questions which have nothing to do with the real subject you can be pretty sure that are desperately searching for something to support their preconceived idea.

Kellner's final point in his list is “how can we believe anything else in the Bible?” Now if he really has no ability to tell an analogy from a metaphor or a parable or a symbol, then in fact he must have serious problems interpreting the Bible and everything else that is written or spoken. Should we ask him how can we believe anything of Jesus Christ because he told the story of the rich man and Lazarus.

Luke 16:20-31

At his gate was laid a beggar named Lazarus, covered with sores and longing to eat what fell from the rich man's table. Even the dogs came and licked his sores. "The time came when the beggar died and the angels carried him to Abraham's side. The rich man also died and was buried. In hell, where he was in torment, he looked up and saw Abraham far away, with Lazarus by his side. So he called to him, 'Father Abraham, have pity on me and send Lazarus to dip the tip of his finger in water and cool my tongue, because I am in agony in this fire.' "But Abraham replied, 'Son, remember that in your lifetime you received your good things, while Lazarus received bad things, but now he is comforted here and you are in agony. And besides all this, between us and you a great chasm has been fixed, so that those who want to go from here to you cannot, nor can anyone cross over from there to us.' "He answered, 'Then I beg you, father, send Lazarus to my father's house, for I have five brothers. Let him warn them, so that they will not also come to this place of torment.' "Abraham replied, 'They have Moses and the Prophets; let them listen to them.' "'No, father Abraham,' he said, 'but if someone from the dead goes to them, they will repent.' "He said to him, 'If they do not listen to Moses and the Prophets, they will not be convinced even if someone rises from the dead.'" (NIV)

If you are going to take something in the Bible literally that sounds way more literal then the talking snake story. But of course the point of the story is that people don't just change because they see a miracle. And that is really the point of the Genesis creation story, the miracle of creation does not make us believe, whether as literal 24 our days or some other method. God was there and He was the cause, God is the power of the creation, it is not about how it was done. When we see the evidence from nature we simply can't ignore it to cling to the simplistic explanations used to help a privative man understand that there was more to this life then what they could see. Which is such an important lesson because the more we learn the more we find that there are vasts areas of information that we could never see before. We keep exploring and learning more, it makes no sense to me that God did not expect us to continue to grow in understanding of our world and universe. He would not expect us to cling to a simplistic story made for people who did not even know that they lived on a planet, let alone one that was not the end of the universe itself.

So please don't let the Fundamentalism take over the Adventist church even though that is our current leaderships desire.

More on Newman's Adventist Today Article

After my last post I have been having a bit of an E-mail correspondence with Adventist Today Editor J. David Newman. In that dialog I perceived that the basic problem in our presuppositions is that the literalist creation side has taken upon themselves a very fundamentalist view of scriptures. Fundamentalists have dominated much of Christianity in 20^th century as it was the Christian response to modernist reason, that reason gave us the disciplines of Higher and Lower Biblical Criticism. The Fundamentalist could not argue with the reality of Lower Criticism but they found that the more subjective ideas of higher criticism was to be decried. In Higher criticism we could see an advance in understanding through the timeline of the Bible. That the writers could actually insert their own ideas into the Bible books, that we don’t have to accept the idea that just because a text says that God said or did something it may not in fact be God who did or said what the author claims. Did God really kill thousands of Israelites for David’s transgression, did God really want to destroy Israel and Moses showed God the faulty logic of God’s intention, or that God really was sorry for creating mankind as the flood story says. The Traditionalist side of Adventism on the other hand does not seem to comprehend this idea very well. For them tradition decides their interpretations. For example the Jews have a tradition that the first five books of the Bible are the law of Moses and therefore written by Moses. Apparently even the material that describes the death of Moses, which rather makes the assumption false on it’s face. But with the Jewish tradition the Adventists prophet maintained the same tradition that Moses wrote Genesis and the other 4 books. If Moses the greatest of the prophets wrote the Genesis story it must be from God, though of course the book itself makes no such claims.

On top of this assumption Adventist have added many other traditions, mostly they can be laid at the feet of Ellen White but in most cases they were not ultimately developed by Ellen White but they became incorporated into Adventism through Ellen White. It is one of these that we find mentioned by David Newman toward the end of his Adventist Today article. He writes:

But there is an even bigger curse to come. Genesis tells us that God did not create the world to experience rain. We read in Genesis: “When the Lord God made the earth and the heavens, no shrub of the field had yet appeared on the earth and no plant of the field had yet sprung up; the Lord God had not sent rain on the earth and there was no man to work the ground, but streams came up from the earth and watered the whole surface of the ground” (Gen. 2:4-6, NIV).

It was not until the time of the great Flood in Noah’s day that rain began to fall. “In the six hundredth year of Noah’s life, on the seventeenth day of the second month—on that day all the springs of the great deep burst forth, and the floodgates of the heavens were opened. And rain fell on the earth forty days and forty nights” (Gen. 7:11-12, NIV).

Of course the Gen 2 text is not about rain falling after the creation it is the beginning statement of the alternate creation account of Genesis 2 describing the earth before anything was created. The flood account says nothing about there never being rain before but by placing the two verses together the Adventist tradition becomes there had been no rain before the flood. The creationists then will take this insertion of meaning into the Bible as one of their tools to say that physical laws have changed.

Interestingly enough in my conversation with Newman while he has no problem inserting such meaning as no rain before the flood he does not really want to deal with the idea that the Genesis story includes the law of entropy and the law of conservation. The story of creation talks about eating food, after all that is the meaning of the beasts of the field; the animals that forage on grass.

Genesis 1:30 And to all the beasts of the earth and all the birds of the air and all the creatures that move on the ground--everything that has the breath of life in it--I give every green plant for food." And it was so.

Food implies entropy and conservation of energy. So you can’t simply pretend it is not there. It is there and an animal like an Elephant would eat a lot of it not to mention what a dinosaur would eat or a whale, and these big mammals are kind of indiscriminant eaters. They aren’t going to be checking for crickets in their clump of grass. Did they just not eat until after Adam sinned even though in the creation account food is mentioned in both Genesis 1 and 2? If an animal was to eat but was not losing energy in someway what would be the purpose of food? It tastes good yes but if the idea was just to give a pleasurable sensation why not just use smell? Were they just to eat until they reached maturity and then stop their lifelong habits? With the ploy to changed natural laws the creationist asserts the change but has no evidence to support the claim and when ideas counter to their claims are made they can simply say the laws were different so it does not matter that they ate the law of conservation did not exist or entropy, a type of magical thinking which always solves any problem because they believe in a circular fashion and their belief is their evidence to support their belief.

In his article Newman writes:

I believe this law [law of entropy]—along with other laws that lead to decay and death—did not exist before sin entered the universe. Let’s take a look at Scripture to see when God changed fundamental laws under which our Earth operates.

He then quotes the curse that God declared on the ground, thorns and thistles. But as is the way of the traditionalists who think they are literalists Newman then adds material that is not found in the Bible, he writes:

All animals were vegetarians, but now some could prey on other animals for their food. This meant a change in how they processed food. Microevolution comes into play. And Satan can use all of his skills to help evil develop.

All that from thorns and thistles, vegetarians yes we could determine that from the story but there is nothing there about predation, nothing there about Satan using his skills, of course the idea of Satan is of much later development. But what of microevolution why did it suddenly appear or was it as the theistic evolutionists believe always a part of the natural laws of God, no change needed?

It always amazes me when listening to the creationists who pretend that they are accepting the literal story of creation and when you really look at it they are inserting all kinds of details to make the story work…the details which the story does not have at all yet for some reason they still think their view is the literal historical view and that anyone who interprets the story differently is not taking the Bible literally enough.

Response to objections of death before Adam

In the Fall 2010 issue of Adventist Today J. David Newman presents his article entitled: Death Before Sin – No

I thought I would take some time to counter a few of his statements.

So Christian evolutionists say that death is natural and normal, while the Bible says that death is an enemy. “For as in Adam all die, so in Christ all will be made alive. ...The last enemy to be destroyed is death” (1 Cor. 15:22, 26, NIV). And it will not exist in the new earth (Rev. 21:4).

This is one of those techniques which frankly we see all the time right now during the political ad season. Blanket statements which seem so certain but are in fact really misinformation. Take the above as the example. The Bible says that death is an enemy. Does that mean that all death is the enemy? After all when I eat my apple or pull up my carrot and eat them I am in fact killing the fruit or for my carrot the whole plant. The Genesis story talks about eating of the fruit of the Garden that means the cessation of life for at least the fruit, or perhaps the nuts which after all are the seeds which if their life cycle was to complete they would grow into a new tree. So actually even in the Genesis story death is not treated as an enemy. At least not until it concerns the human being. And after all that is really what the text quoted above is about. It is not about plants, animals or bacteria it is death that is the enemy of Human beings, those individuals who are capable of understanding the consequences and lost opportunities that make death our enemy.  Death as the enemy of man is the concern and that is the death that will not exist in the New Earth. That statement in Revelation is not really meant to indicate that all things we know will cease to exist and all laws of the universe will change. Perhaps they will but that is not very likely the intent of a statement that reads:

And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, "Now the dwelling of God is with men, and he will live with them. They will be his people, and God himself will be with them and be their God. He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away." (Rev 21:3-4 NIV)

Newman then quotes the texts from Paul in Romans chapter 5 about how through one man sin entered the world, strangely missing the literary device Paul uses contrasting Jesus as the one man that brings life with Adam the one man who brought death because everybody in the family of Adam dies, which includes Jesus who died but stopped the death cycle by promising resurrection. It is a literary device because of course death still reigns everybody still dies, the hope of resurrection is still future for all the rest of us. So we see that being overly literal when we read these texts is not the wisest course.

Therefore, just as sin entered the world through one man, and death through sin, and in this way death came to all men, because all sinned--(Rom 5:12 NIV)

Newman uses the above text but is Paul consistent here or is he using it as part of his literary comparison? According to most conservative scholars Paul also wrote 1 Timothy and it says:

And Adam was not the one deceived; it was the woman who was deceived and became a sinner. (1 Tim 2:14 NIV)

We must therefore ask if Paul wrote both of these verses which is true? My answer is that Paul uses what will fit the comparison or point he is trying to make. He is not bound by the kind of literalistic view that subsequent traditional Christians have placed upon his writings. To Paul we all sin and we all die, the cure for one is the cure for the other. It is simple and pragmatic. We can’t really argue about it we don’t see anyone who does not sin nor do we see anyone that does not die; salvation, the healing; heals both. Death cured by resurrection and sin cured by reconciliation but you have to alive to be reconciled. The cure to sin is meaningless if you are still dead. Resurrection to a life filled with sin and misery is not a terribly appealing idea either; just doing it all over again and again, the two are intimately connected in Paul’s usage.

Newman asks:

If death were taking place in the world before Adam, and if Adam was simply the end result of the evolution of human beings, why would death be an enemy? And why would it need to be destroyed?

In the above I answered Newman’s second question as to why death would need to be destroyed. What about the previous question? This is a purely philosophical question which could probably be answered many ways depending upon ones presuppositions. The most common would be that death that was leading to the human being capable of individual understanding and reasoning to things beyond himself was not the enemy just as the death of my apple or carrot are not my enemy. Death only becomes the enemy when we understand the larger issues involved to thinking individuals. After all is the hawk grabbing up a mouse evil because the hawk lives upon the flesh of the mouse. Is the hawk sinning because Adam sinned? Or if we looked at it from a six day creationist viewpoint who made the hawk behave the way it behaves, who created it with the talons and beak made to rip flesh? Some I am sure would say that Satan did it. That being a popular excuse when all explanations fail but at least we have to admit that such an idea is not presented in the Bible.

Newman than uses the argument that is so very popular among traditional Adventists, the argument those of us who read the various discussion forum of Adventists see often.

This subject is very important, because it impacts how we look at Jesus, at the cross, and at the whole question of sin. If science explains where we come from, then the same science tells us that people do not come back from the dead, and that Jesus may have lived and died on a cross but could never have come back to life again. The same people who believe in Christian evolution also believe what the Bible says about the end of this age—that one day death will no longer exist—even though that is not what science says. So why accept what science says for the beginning of this world but not accept what science says for the end of this world?

In fact science does tell us that ordinary people don’t come back from the dead on their own. It says nothing at all about what would or could happen if there was a God, a supreme being with all power and knowledge involved. Again science tells us what would happen to a man hung on a cross but not what would happen if God came down and became a man and was hung on a cross. Science can tell us nothing about God resurrection Himself if He came as a man and died on a cross. It does not even try to tell us these things. Science has the limitation of only being able to really study what exists now. What the evidence we have now says. Granted there are scientists who will produce theories about things that happened and are not currently observable or without much evidence. For example some scientist will produce theories about what happened in the first 10^th of a second after the big bang. But like a lot of science those theories come and go, science obviously changes it grows and expands and corrects itself but it does not attempt to explain the Christian Atonement.

Ultimately Science never tries to tell us what will happen if there is a supreme being who wants to step into our time and space and do something. So why accept what science says for the beginning? Because there is evidence for the beginning, we look at that evidence we compare different observations and see a lot of evidence which is very compelling. Why not accept what science says for the end of this world? Because there is precious little evidence about the end of this world since it has not happened yet, if there were multiple big bangs in a collapsing and expanding universe all the evidence from a previous end of the world would be gone so all that is left is various speculations and speculation is not science. This is Newman’s most important point and it is totally contrived and meaningless.

I will conclude by discussing the following quote:

If Adam and Eve were not historical figures, then we have no information on how we became sinners. If human beings gradually evolved from the Neolithic man to Homo sapiens, at what stage did they become sinners? If other humans existed along with Adam and Eve, how did they become sinners? Who, then, did Christ save?

This is another commonly held Traditional Adventist idea. It tends to ignore the reality of what we as human do since recorded history which is we hurt each other and often ourselves. Pragmatically we understand we are sinners; is it all that important to know which of our ancestors was the first to realize or to be accused of being a sinner? It does not change the reality of where we are one bit. I suppose it is about as useful as asking where did God come from. We don’t have any idea so we say He always was, fine then why not say humans were always sinners. Historically it certainly works; actually this wanting to know the beginnings of everything generally does not work for anyone. We have a whole Adventist sub doctrine about how Satan was once Lucifer and how sin began in him. It is not from the Bible, it is not from Jewish religion it is based upon early church traditions. Jesus was more pragmatic and simply said of Satan that he was a liar and murderer from the beginning. He did not see a need to invent a back story, just give the present reality. Surely the present reality of being sinners is enough. As for who then did Christ save? He saves whoever He wants and whoever will accept His salvation. I think I can trust Him on that issue, and I only see problems when I try and say who God saves or not, being that I am not God it would only be speculation based upon lack of knowledge and I am enough of a scientist to know that such speculation is not good for science or religion.

Jan Paulsen lives in the miracle world

The Adventist church has begun a new You Tube channel called Adventists About Life.

In the Science vs. Faith presentation “Pastor Jan Paulsen, world president of the Seventh-day Adventist Church talks about miracles and challenges posed by the world of science and the world of faith..”

The following is my transcription of the almost 2 minute video:

The world of science and the world of faith, two seemingly separate worlds are they on a collision course or do they run parallel to each other or maybe occasionally both.

The world of science generally will accept only that which is empirically verifiable for which there really is, they can look back and say this is it how it happened and this is an actual pattern for how it will happen. I tell you what my problem with that is. That when you lock things into that kind of a model they cannot accept something in which the world of faith call miracles. To me the world of faith is a world in which God’s creative powers are constantly on display.

From the beginning, go to the book of Genesis the first chapter of Genesis through the mighty acts of God in history. You see it in the resurrection of Jesus, you see it in the second coming of Jesus, in the resurrection of our own bodies. The way scriptures present it. In the creation of earth made new. These are all displays of God creative power and it’s full of miracles.

The mind of science generally will not accept as reality that which is miraculous. To me this exists this is real. Miracles that is not a problem I have it for breakfast every day. If you cannot accept the miraculous God’s creative powers revealed in miracles ah…your done, finished you have no future.

This is the reality of my life and I observe God’s creative power on display all the time. To me as an Adventist this is important. To accept God’s creative powers and that is being manifested in many many ways.

The series seems professionally done. I did notice several times when he said miraculous that the camera was focused upon his open hand, which I though was kind of a nice subliminal symbolic message. But most of the message was really utter nonsense. That is the reason I transcribed it because somewhere I had read about this and the person thought it was a really good little talk. After I watched it I wondered if we had seen the same thing.

Let’s look at it in more depth:

The world of science generally will accept only that which is empirically verifiable for which there really is, they can look back and say this is it how it happened and this is an actual pattern for how it will happen. I tell you what my problem with that is. That when you lock things into that kind of a model they cannot accept something in which the world of faith call miracles. To me the world of faith is a world in which God’s creative powers are constantly on display.

Our SDA world president has a problem with Science dealing with empirical evidence for what really is and being able to predict what will happen based upon the empirical evidence. Science has given us so many wonderful things we no longer have to think that because it rains or the wind blows it is a miracle of God. Sure that is the way most all ancient religion including the Israelites thought, but we actually have evidence of things like water cycles. It is really not a problem that science has locked into a model of observation and evidence for cause and effect. There would have never been any real progress had they locked into the faith model. Of course recorded human history had a few thousand years of that, times in which man did not really improve himself or his situation and knowledge was limited to a few and even those few limited in their knowledge.

Paulsen continues with the account of God’s creative power’s constant display:

From the beginning, go to the book of Genesis the first chapter of Genesis through the mighty acts of God in history. You see it in the resurrection of Jesus, you see it in the second coming of Jesus, in the resurrection of our own bodies. The way scriptures present it. In the creation of earth made new. These are all displays of God creative power and it’s full of miracles.

Actually we read about the creative power of God in Genesis we don’t see it; neither did the writers of the book of Genesis. They are stories about the creation, the faith is about the belief in God as creator, it is not about how God created, and we don’t have to assume that the stories were meant as the literal method of creation. Even the resurrection of Jesus is not something we have seen. We do count it as credible because we have accounts of people who witnessed or were informed by witnesses and held to their witness even under persecution, more than faith it is a faith based upon some evidence. The other areas mentioned; the resurrection of our bodies and the creation of an earth made new are entirely based upon faith. We have not seen those things; in fact neither have those who wrote those statements in the Bible. We accept them because it is part of our understanding of the kind of person God is. It is our faith and our hope in the gift that God will give us. But it is not seen as a display of God’s creative power, it is an expectation as yet unfulfilled. It may be that we are living in the midst of multiple miracles or it may be that we are not; just as the ancient world thought everything was caused by God only through time and examination and compiled evidence do we see that perhaps the creator creates natural processes which make constant miracles unnecessary. It may even be that the creator’s miracles are so slight, acting upon DNA that we could never witness them until we have greatly advanced in science.

The mind of science generally will not accept as reality that which is miraculous.

And we should be ever thankful that science does not purport the reality of the miraculous. I can’t imagine a more fruitless source of knowledge than to try and study a miracle. Let us assume someone died and after a couple of days came back to life. Documented, the scientists were there and saw the whole thing. They could study the person for the rest of their lives but if the miracle was caused by an outside source say God they are studying the wrong thing. Empirical data may not tell us the origin of something but the processes involved with the thing can be studied. And no one is really studying them if their first or primary reaction is this is a miracle, I eat them for breakfast. If you don’t, then you have nothing, your done, finished; rather an obnoxious put down of science and the scientific method.

All and all Paulsen has presented us with total nonsense but we have to ask why? What is the purpose for such nonsense where he finds the problem of science in that it does not embrace miracles? Even if it did, even if you thought the world was filled with miracles it would not mean that they were produced by your particular God or your particular religious view. There are all kinds of faiths out there in the world, there is simply no reason to pit science against faith in the way that Paulsen has done. This makes me think there is a larger agenda to this. That it is a way to deny scientific reality in favor of the current fundamentalist young earth creationism. At a time when many Adventist theologians and science professors are attempting to reconcile scientific ages and processes with other ways God could create besides by the literalistic 6 days of creation. Paulsen is offering the traditional faith in the literal Genesis account. In other words the same old thing delivered by the science that he decries.

Do 6 literal day creationists really believe the account is literal?

The answer to that question is no they don’t. What is so hard to pin down with these people is what they really believe. They constantly revise their statements. They will say how literal they take the story of creation and the flood and then as you discuss with them you see that they take only certain parts literally. All the while claiming they are the ones who accept the Bible just as it reads. Here I will examine with the aid of a review of David’s Read’s comments why he does not do what he claims. Adventist Today has an interview with Read about his new book Dinosaurs: An Adventist View ($34.95 you can see why I am not going to buy it and review it).

Notice this quote from the Adventist Today interview:

Q. Do Ellen White's writings figure into the content of your book?

A. Absolutely. The book's central thesis revolves around a cryptic statement by Ellen White concerning "amalgamation." She stated that the worst sin of the people who lived before the Genesis Flood was the sin of amalgamation, which produced species that God did not create, and that one of the most urgent reasons for the Flood was to destroy the amalgamated species. For many years, the most knowledgeable, doctrinally well-grounded Adventists have seen a connection between extinct pre-historic animals, such as dinosaurs, and Ellen White's "amalgamation" statements. My book explores the thesis that dinosaurs were the products of amalgamation-now understood as genetic engineering-by people who lived before the Genesis Flood. While this theory, like any theory about origins, has its problems, it turns out to be a very defensible thesis. Moreover, it explains much about the fossil record that cannot otherwise be explained within the "young earth creationist" paradigm. This theory has been discussed by and among Seventh-day Adventists for more than three decades, but there has never been a book-length exploration of it. An appellate court justice I worked for back in Texarkana, Texas, once told me, in the context of legal appeals, "You don't really know what you've got until you write the opinion." In other words, you do not know how strong your position is until you write it down on paper, and explain and argue it in a logical, step-by-step manner. That's what I've tried to do in this book. I hope everyone who reads it will find it interesting, and receive a blessing from it.

So here we see the fantasy position that the antediluvians were technically so savvy and scientifically so advanced that they created dinosaurs. Judging by the number of different dinosaur species they were an industrious bunch as there are hundreds of species. As the USGS says:

Approximately 700 species have been named. However, a recent scientific review suggests that only about half of these are based on fairly complete specimens that can be shown to be unique and separate species. These species are placed in about 300 valid dinosaur genera (Stegosaurus, Diplodocus, etc.), although about 540 have been named. Recent estimates suggest that about 700 to 900 more dinosaur genera may remain to be discovered.

But how does this conflict with a literal view of Creation? Let’s look at the Bible verse that begins the Genesis account of animals created:

(Gen 1:21 NIV) So God created the great creatures of the sea and every living and moving thing with which the water teems, according to their kinds, and every winged bird according to its kind. And God saw that it was good.

(Gen 1:25 NIV) God made the wild animals according to their kinds, the livestock according to their kinds, and all the creatures that move along the ground according to their kinds. And God saw that it was good.

Now does the story contain anything about new creatures created by amalgamation by man and beast? Now of course not it is not found in the story that they claim to take literally, no it is found in a nineteenth century writer…that is roughly 1700 years after the books of the Bible were combined into what we call the canon of scripture. No, what these people mean is that when they believe in the literal 6 days of creation they believe in their traditional interpretation of what happened. Of course then if you don’t believe like they do then you simply don’t believe the “word of God” or the word of Moses because they think that Moses really did write all the Pentateuch because that is what tradition has held.

But David Read even goes farther as a recent comment on my article on Adam’s Busy Day shows. The article shows the huge number of animals that he would have to name in a 24 hour period. David Read puts forth this argument on 02 June 2009 at 4:17 on the Spectrum Blog under the thread The Creation Wars:

No creationist argues that every one of the modern "species" was originally created by God in its present form and brought aboard Noah’s ark. There was a period of rapid speciation immediately following the Flood….

Some creationists believe that as few as 1,000 pairs of animals were brought on board the ark and that all modern land animals and birds descended from these….

Now what does the book of Genesis literally say. I mean that is what these people claim to believe isn’t it?

(Gen 6:19 NIV) You are to bring into the ark two of all living creatures, male and female, to keep them alive with you.(Gen 6:20 NIV) Two of every kind of bird, of every kind of animal and of every kind of creature that moves along the ground will come to you to be kept alive.

(Gen 7:2 NIV) Take with you seven of every kind of clean animal, a male and its mate, and two of every kind of unclean animal, a male and its mate,

(Gen 7:3 NIV) and also seven of every kind of bird, male and female, to keep their various kinds alive throughout the earth.

So here is a guy right in the fight with David Asscherick to decry evolution, who claims that man created dinosaurs and that only a limited number of animals were taken on the ark and that: “There was a period of rapid speciation immediately following the Flood.

He in his book is not only speculating about the creation of dinosaurs but it is a book against evolution.

Q. I assume that you are writing from the creationist perspective?

1. Absolutely. Darwinism has plenty of defenders; it is the dominant point of view in academia, media, the museums, foundations, government, entertainment, business, etc. Darwinism has no need of additional advocates.

Q. Do you bring any new insights into explaining the young earth creationist model and the critique of Darwinism?

1. Maybe not, but I think I have presented the material in a fresh and interesting way. One example is my discussion of the theory of evolution: When our DNA copies itself, it does so flawlessly 99.99% of the time, but occasionally there is a copying error. The modern theory of evolution posits that those copying errors accumulate to create new biochemical mechanisms, new organs, and eventually change species into different, new species. That is the theory of evolution in a nutshell. But our real-world experience with DNA copying errors is that they cause all kinds of problems, including thousands of diseases. The notion that DNA copying errors are responsible for all of the diversity of plant and animal life that we see around us is an idea that I don't find at all credible, and I marvel that it has become scientific dogma. But it has, and to remind readers what the theory is, I refer to it throughout the book as "the copying error theory of evolution."

The sad thing is this book probably does represent an Adventist perspective. Poorly reasoned and largely based upon the writings of Ellen White treated as if her writings are the literal Biblical story. Because frankly the literal Biblical story is not all that likely at least not as mankind realizes the scientific method of reasoning. The story still teaches some important lessons and that is what is really important, that the Bible story can inspire ideas from the primitive to the modern mind is encouraging that God is able to communicate to us on any level of knowledge that man has. The problem comes when we try to remain stuck in a previous more primitive mindset and claim that that is simply the right thing to do and the right way to interpret the Bible.

Is Radiometric dating flawed

Here is my response to Pickle's latest comment:

Your reply comes across as if you aren't interested in a serious discussion.

When you say that Ellen White said such and such, are you saying by that that you reject the biblical teaching that it is Jesus who testifies by His Spirit through the prophets? See 1 Pet. 1:10-11. If you reject what peter taught on this in the New Testament, I would be curious to know what part of the Bible you do accept as authoritative.

Feel free to cite a specific article that gives specific U/Pb ratios, and then perhaps we can discuss that, if you really are as open to scientific evidence as you apparently want creationists to be.

A 1976 Science article reported U-238/Pb-206 ratios as high as 27,300, which suggests a time of formation more recent by a factor of 270 for Cretaceous and 760 for Triassic.

If it truly is all about science, then this scientific evidence will be properly and objectively considered. But if the root of the matter is certain philosophical and religious presuppositions, then it will probably be ignored or ridiculed even if it can't be refuted. That's just the nature of how this topic seems to work.

Before I get to the scientific side you can see from Pickle's circular reasoning is the order of the day for some people. As Pickle (I am assuming this is Bob Pickle) said:

When you say that Ellen White said such and such, are you saying by that that you reject the biblical teaching that it is Jesus who testifies by His Spirit through the prophets? See 1 Pet. 1:10-11. If you reject what peter taught on this in the New Testament, I would be curious to know what part of the Bible you do accept as authoritative.

What nonsense. if you can show things where Ellen White is clearly wrong you must be rejecting the Bible in entirety. As if Ellen White is somehow even talked about in the Bible. It is complete nonsense. But the assumption is Ellen White is a prophet, that assumption carries even when Ellen White is wrong because the assumption is the most important thing, not truth and not reality.

Do a Google search and see just how often the radiometric dating techniques are used. The science is against your position, that is all there is too it. In most all areas of science the sub specialities have become too technical for us amateurs to pretend that we understand the data.
Here is an article that refutes Gentry.

http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/po-halos/gentry.html

Yahoo answers has a good answer to the question, has Science refuted Gentry
http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20080423224447AAKW4OR


Odom, L.A., and Rink, W.J., 1989, "Giant Radiation-Induced Color Halos in Quartz: Solution to a Riddle," Science, v. 246, pp. 107-109

Wakefield, J. Richard , 1988, Geology of Gentry's "Tiny Mystery", Journal of Geological Education, May, 1988

If you are specifically referring to Gentry's 1992 "Creation's Tiny Mystery" 3rd Edition, then almost every peer reviewed work dealing with radioactive decay refutes it, because in order to avoid internal conflicts within his argument Gentry was forced to conclude that decay rates for his chosen polonium isotopes remained constant while those of a select few other radioactive isotopes were much, much greater until recently for some unknown reason, after which time they have remained absolutely constant.

I will give him credit though, to my knowledge he is one of the very few people (if not the only) to make a serious attempt, at least in the past half dozen or so decades, to publish Creationist oriented work for mainstream peer review on a subject similar to what he has some credentials in (Master's degree in physics from the U of Fla and an honorary doctorate of sciences from a small liberal arts college).

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Here is an article that may help you

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http://www.answersincreation.org/rate_admit.htm


"RATE" Leaders Abandon Geologic Fantasies and Admit that Extensive Radioactive Decay has Occurred

Kevin R. Henke, Ph.D.

The following material may be freely copied and distributed as long as the author is properly acknowledged
and the material is not altered, edited or sold.

For decades, young-Earth creationists (YECs) have vainly searched the geology and geochemistry literature to find ways of discrediting radiometric dating and protecting their antiquated biblical interpretations. YEC John Woodmorappe (a pseudonym), for example, has been at the forefront in misquoting and misrepresenting radiometric dating results from the geology and geochemistry literature (e.g., Woodmorappe, 1979, 1999). Woodmorappe's shotgun attacks against radiometric dating even include the ridiculous accusation that concordant radiometric dates may be nothing more than products of "chance"; that is, random numbers (Woodmorappe, 1999, Figure 20, p. 51; p. 52, 87-92). Woodmorappe (1999, p. 85) even endorses YEC Robert Witter's outrageous charge that geochronologists could obtain just as good radiometric results by throwing darts at a concordia diagram. I often refer to this groundless attack as "Woodmorappe's Crapshoot".



A small group of YECs with legitimate Ph.D.s (including D. Russell Humphreys and John R. Baumgardner) have formed the RATE (Radioisotopes and the Age of The Earth) committee to attack the validity of radiometric dating. Rather than embracing the embarrassing distortions and nonsensical accusations of Woodmorappe or John and Henry Morris, Humphreys and Baumgardner have finally realized that geology and geochemistry are not going to give them the answers that they want. In an Answers in Genesis (AiG) article Carl Wieland had this to say:

When physicist Dr Russell Humphreys was still at Sandia National Laboratories (he now works full-time for ICR), he and Dr John Baumgardner (still with Los Alamos National Laboratory) were both convinced that they knew the direction in which to look for the definitive answer to the radiometric dating puzzle. [new paragraph] Others had tried—and for some, the search went on for a while in the early RATE days—to find the answer in geological processes. But Drs Humphreys and Baumgardner realized that there were too many independent lines of evidence (the variety of elements used in "standard" radioisotope dating, mature uranium radiohalos, fission track dating and more) that indicated that huge amounts of radioactive decay had actually taken place. It would be hard to imagine that geologic processes could explain all these. Rather, there was likely to be a single, unifying answer that concerned the nuclear decay processes themselves.

In other words, after decades of YEC failures to undermine radiometric dating with geology and geochemistry, these YEC leaders now recognize that enormous amounts of radioactive decay have occurred. They are now relying on nuclear physics, e.g., Chaffin, 2003 (Adobe Acrobat file) and probably an ample supply of groundless miracles to speed up the decay rates without frying Adam or Noah. Humphreys et al. (2003) (Adobe Acrobat file), although full of errors and bad assumptions, also makes the following candid admission (p. 3), which is a veiled attack on Woodmorappe's "crapshoot" and similar YEC schemes that involve bogus accusations against radiometric dating methods and equipment:

Samples 1 through 3 had helium retentions of 58, 27 and 17 percent. The fact that these percentages are high confirms that a large amount of nuclear decay did indeed occur in the zircons. Other evidence strongly supports much nuclear decay having occurred in the past [Humphreys, 2000, p. 335-337]. WE EMPHASIZE THIS POINT BECAUSE MANY CREATIONISTS HAVE ASSUMED THAT "OLD" RADIOISOTOPIC AGES ARE MERELY AN ARTIFACT OF ANALYSIS, NOT REALLY INDICATING THE OCCURRENCE OF LARGE AMOUNTS OF NUCLEAR DECAY. But according to the measured amount of lead physically present in the zircons, approximately 1.5 billion years worth — at today's rates — of nuclear decay occurred. [my emphasis]



CONCLUSIONS



Over the years, YECs have invoked a large array of imaginative and fruitless excuses to defame radiometric dating. These attacks include: magma mixing, Woodmorappe's crapshoot, excess argon, neutron fluxes, neutrinos, and just plain creationist magic. Humphreys, Baumgardner, and other YECs in the ICR-AiG alliance have finally realized that they can't use geology and geochemistry to undermine radiometric dating. They are now relying on physics and probably a liberal dose of untenable miracles to save their dogma. YECs must realize that they're rapidly running out of "scientific excuses" for confusing and deluding the public about the true nature of radiometric dating.



REFERENCES



Chaffin, E.F., 2003, "Accelerated Decay: Theoretical Models," Proceedings of the Fifth International Conference on Creationism, R. Ivey (ed.), Creation Science Fellowship, Pittsburgh, PA. Chaffin, 2003



Humphreys, D.R., 2000, "Accelerated nuclear decay: a viable hypothesis?" in Radioisotopes and the Age of the Earth: A Young-Earth Creationist Research Initiative, L. Vardiman, A. A. Snelling, and E. F. Chaffin, editors, Institute for Creation Research and the Creation Research Society, San Diego, CA, p. 333-379.



Humphreys, D.R.; S.A. Austin; J.R. Baumgardner and A.A. Snelling, 2003, "Helium Diffusion Rates Support Accelerated Nuclear Decay", Proceedings of the Fifth International Conference on Creationism, R. Ivey (ed.), Creation Science Fellowship, Pittsburgh, PA. Humphreys et al. (2003).



Woodmorappe, J., 1979, "Radiometric Geochronology Reappraised", Creation Research Society Quarterly, v. 16, September, p. 102f.


Woodmorappe, J., 1999, The Mythology of Modern Dating Methods, Institute for Creation Research, El Cajon, CA.


Here is some links to important articles:

Here is a site whose purpose is to contradict the prevailing idea that it is not Christian to believe in Theistic evolution.

http://freespace.virgin.net/karl_and.gnome/origins.htm

Here is an article which deals with that as well as several other Young-Earth Arguments: A Second Look There is also a lot of other articles, some of which deal with the idea of a global flood. Certainly there is much evidence for amazing water activity through geologic time, but most all of these do not fit in with the global flood idea.

Who defines what an Adventist is?

I walked out of the sermon today. It was a special youth rally sponsored by our conference. The music was good the lighting was dramatic and then the sermon began. The speaker for the rally was an Academy student probably from Auburn Academy. He recapped some of his sermon from the previous Friday night meeting. He began by saying that Jesus came up with a plan to come and die to save man. He brought the plan to God who twice rejected it because He did not want Jesus to die. I left.

Of course this child of our educational system did not arrive at the above atrocity on his own. He is parroting what the confused Arians and Tri-theists of Adventism think. He is repeating the errors of our own so called prophet; Ellen White says in a number of places usually under the title The Plan of Salvation. Here are some excerpts so you can see the source of this Arian idea:

Sorrow filled heaven, as it was realized that man was lost, and that world which God had created was to be filled with mortals doomed to misery, sickness, and death, and there was no way of escape for the offender. The whole family of Adam must die. I saw the lovely Jesus and beheld an expression of sympathy and sorrow upon His countenance. Soon I saw Him approach the exceeding bright light which enshrouded the Father. Said my accompanying angel, He is in close converse with His Father. The anxiety of the angels seemed to be intense while Jesus was communing with His Father. Three times He was shut in by the glorious light about the Father, and the third time He came from the Father, His person could be seen. His countenance was calm, free from all perplexity and doubt, and shone with benevolence and loveliness, such as words cannot express. He then made known to the angelic host that a way of escape had been made for lost man. He told them that He had been pleading with His Father, and had offered to give His life a ransom, to take the sentence of death upon Himself, that through Him man might find pardon; that through the merits of His blood, and obedience to the law of God, they could have the favor of God, and be brought into the beautiful garden, and eat of the fruit of the tree of life.

…that He would die the cruelest of deaths, hung up between the heavens and the earth as a guilty sinner; that He would suffer dreadful hours of agony, which even angels could not look upon, but would veil their faces from the sight. Not merely agony of body would He suffer, but mental agony, that with which bodily suffering could in no wise be compared. The weight of the sins of the whole world would be upon Him. He told them He would die and rise again the third day, and would ascend to His Father to intercede for wayward, guilty man.

… The angels prostrated themselves before Him. They offered their lives. Jesus said to them that He would by His death save many, that the life of an angel could not pay the debt. His life alone could be accepted of His Father as a ransom for man.

... Satan and sinners would be destroyed, nevermore to disturb heaven or the purified new earth. Jesus bade the heavenly host be reconciled to the plan that His Father had accepted and rejoice that through His death fallen man could again be exalted to obtain favor with God and enjoy heaven. (Early Writings of Ellen G. White, page 149 1882; Spirit of Prophecy Vol. 1 page-45 1870 ; Spiritual Gifts, Volume 1, page 23 1858;)

I bring this incident up in light of the past two posts where some in the Adventist church are demanding that scientifically accepted evolutionary theory not be taught in Adventist Colleges. If you read the arguments they make their primary reason is that the SDA church teaches a literal 6 day (assumed 24 hour) time period in the recent past, most again assuming that recent means 6-10,000 year period of time. If you are a Seventh-day Adventist this has to be your belief or you simply are not a Seventh-day Adventist. Here is a quote from the Adventist Theological Journal article from a few years back:

But Scripture does not only indicate that the miracle of creation was performed in a short period of time. Through its genealogical listings and its naming of generations traced back to Adam, the first human being, it strongly indicates that the creation occurred not long ago, as compared to the claims of evolution.And so, we Adventists accept the account of a recent creation on the basis of the credibility of God’s supreme revelation, Scripture. And we believe also on the basis of the credibility of God’s recent revelation through the visions and writings of Ellen G. White,10 which likewise emphasize that creation took place approximately six thousand years ago. (What Is an Adventist? Someone Who Upholds Creation Journal of the Adventist Theological Society, 7/2 (Autumn 1996): 142-167. Article copyright © 1996 by Marco T. Terreros.)

One has to wonder then if we must believe that God and His Son are not in fact One That one of them had to convince the other about a plan to save humanity. That Jesus was pleading with the Father to give His life a ransom. Because that is the way Ellen White saw it in a vision and we are Adventists and we have a fundamental belief about Ellen White whereby we say she is an authoritative source of truth. Likewise if Ellen White says that creation was six literal days approximately six thousand years ago we all must accept it to be SDA’s.

Today I saw at least in part the power of our schools indoctrination, not even indoctrination in the Bible or Christianity but in a very faulty Adventist tradition that we can easily trace to Ellen White. To be a true Adventist then is to be fully indoctrinated into whatever beliefs the denominational hierarchy or some self appointed traditional Adventist chooses to assert as our beliefs. Accept it and people like the Adventist Theological Society will accept you. Reject some of their beliefs and you are simply not a Seventh-day Adventist. Teach our students current scientific theory in a Biology class and those teachers should be released or restricted, they are violating Adventism.

The problem is that most Adventists don’t really pay all that much attention to what the church leadership says. We don’t feel that they are defining our positions, some of them perhaps but not all of our positions. We feel it is appropriate to live up to the light we see from God, science, history and even tradition. We don’t need the official denomination to define for us what an Adventist is. Then there is the other side which says we will cleanse the church. These are the Churches beliefs accept them or don’t but if you don’t you should not teach, you should not be in any kind of leadership role and you should not call yourself an Adventist.

It is pretty plain why so many of us don’t ever call ourselves Adventists but use terms like Progressive Adventists. We want to indicate that we are not of those who are trying to restrict the freedom of belief that is found in Christianity. To be a Christian we don’t have to hold to what somebody in some position of supposed authority calls “orthodox Christianity” and we don’t have to violate our conscience to believe in traditional Adventist views either. May our tribe increase! But to do that we have to fight the traditional Adventists attempts to cleanse thinking Christians from the Seventh-day Adventist church. Because make no mistake about it they are after you.

Theistic Evolution or Evolutionary Creationist

I ran across this interesting article on Evolutionary Creationism (AKA theistic Evolution). The article is an interview with Denis Lamoureux makes some very good points. The article is published by Candian Christianity .com Here is a segment of the article:

Denis Lamoureux: First, a comment on terminology. The better term for born-again Christians who accept evolution is 'evolutionary creationist.' This is to distinguish us from deists (those who believe in the impersonal God-of-the-philosophers) and liberal Christians. Evolutionary creationists believe in miracles. I'm charismatic and have often experienced signs and wonders. We believe that the Bible is the inerrant and infallible Word of God, inspired by the Holy Spirit. I drink from it daily, for my spiritual nourishment. And we believe in intelligent design in nature, as revealed in Psalm 19 and Romans 1 -- for example, that complexity within the cell declares the glory of God. In fact, evolutionary creationists will even say the Big Bang and the evolution of life reflect the mind of God.

The problem with the term 'theistic evolution' is that the substantive -- the more important term -- is a scientific theory (the noun 'evolution'); and God is only the qualifier (the adjective 'theist'). I refuse to have the Lord as secondary to a human theory about the origin of the physical world. I am first and foremost a creationist. I believe in the Creator. I believe the world is His creation. From my perspective, it is clear to me that the Father, Son and Holy Spirit created the world through an ordained and sustained evolutionary process, in the same way that God created each of us in our mother's womb through an ordained and sustained embryological process.

Now to your question, and it is a very good one. I am in complete agreement with Billy Graham's approach to the Word of God: "The Bible is not a book of science, but a book of redemption."

For example, I do not go to God's Word to find out about the size of mustard seeds (Matthew 13:31-32 and Mark 4:30-32 say it is the smallest of all seeds), or how they germinate (John 12:23-24 and 1 Corinthians 15:34-37 state that they must die before growing). Moreover, I do not go to Scripture to understand reproductive problems (only women are barren in Scripture: Genesis 11:30, 25:21, Isaiah 54:1, Luke 1:7, 23:29, Galatians 4:27, Hebrews 11:11). And I do not use the Bible to inform my understanding of the structure of the cosmos (the earth is immovable, in 1 Chronicles 16:30, Psalms 93:1, 96:10 and 104:5; the sun moves across the sky in Joshua 10:13, Ecclesiastes 1:5 and Psalms 19:6; a solid firmament exists overhead in Genesis 1:6-7, 14-16, and Psalms 19:1).

Therefore, if I do not use the Bible to understand the structure and function of the world, I will not use it to find out about how the Lord created the world. The scripture simply reveals that God created everything in the universe. During the Biblical inspiration process, the Holy Spirit employed the science of the Hebrews as a vessel to deliver this foundational theological fact. In other words, the Holy Spirit accommodated to the intellectual level of ancient peoples. This is the very same communication technique that parents use to answer a four-year-old's question about where babies come from. They spare all the physical details of the sexual act, but reveal the most important point: that babies are a gift from God, because mom and dad love each other.

Back to Reverend Graham. He also said: "I believe that God created man, and whether it came by an evolutionary process . . . or not, does not change the fact that God did create man. Whichever way God did it makes no difference, as to what man is and man's relationship with God." I applaud Dr. Graham's honesty. He is not a biologist, so he will not make a statement about an issue that is not his area of expertise. However, he understands the purpose of God's Word perfectly. It is to reveal that we have been created in God's Image, and that we have sinned against God.

To conclude, I do not reconcile my position with Scripture -- because the intention of the Bible was never to reveal scientific facts generations prior to their discovery by modern scientists. Thus, there is no need for any reconciliation. Of course, the belief that the Bible is scientifically correct is a common assumption (termed 'concordism' -- or better 'scientific concordism') held by the majority of evangelical Christians. But it is a mistaken interpretive principle. In fact, it is an un-biblical assumption, because the science in the Scripture features an ancient science from 3,500 years ago.