New Earth Creation
The year is 27AD. There is a celebration of a marriage in the town of
During the festivities, a problem arises – the host of the wedding celebration has forgotten to have enough wine on hand for the party. Unless something happens fast, the host will be embarrassed and the party will be remembered as a failure. Discerning that her son can somehow do something about this, Mary tells her son that there is a problem. Jesus is not particularly receptive to her suggestion that he just ‘do something’. However, his mother ignores his reaction and instead tells the head servant to ‘do whatever he tells you to do’. The servants follow Jesus’ order, and where once water had been, wine now stood – the best wine at the wedding, to the amazement of many.
As we encounter the work of God in his miracles, in his actions taken and the results that follow that only he can do, we are faced with a question directly applicable to our creation dilemma: What scientific test could we perform that would tell us that the wine now in the jars was water only 60 seconds ago? What could we do to the wine to tell us of its sudden appearance, in apparent defiance of everything we know about how wine is created?
The answer is simple – nothing. There is no scientific test that would show that the wine was created instantly. There is no scientific test that would show that the woman who had an issue of blood for 12 years was healed instantly. There is no method we could use to show how Jesus made a blind man see instantly. In every case, God spoke, and it happened immediately, and not only could we not show that it was so after the fact, but we also cannot show that each was ever broken in the first place, or that it was the word of God that did the healing.
“Young Earth” creationism is the same. Some have claimed that God making a creation that seems older than it is would be an example of God being deceptive in some fashion. Laying aside the inherent (necessary) foolishness of the assumption of universality – that, for example, the amount of Carbon-14 in a living organism now is the same as it would have been 1 million years ago – there is no more deception in a creation we can’t prove its age than the same problem with the water and the wine.
In fact, I am far more likely to assume that our failure to “prove” a young earth creation from science is answered better by the Scriptures than by science. “For God has chosen the foolish things of the world to confound the wise, and the weak things of the world to confound the mighty, and the base things of the world, and the things which are despised has God chosen, yea, and the things which are not, to bring to naught the things which are – that no man may glory in his presence.” (1 Cor 1:27-29)
Jeremy has said that to believe that the earth is young, in the face of scientific ‘evidence’ to the contrary, is completely irrational. While Jeremy is a theologian of the highest degree, I would differ slightly. I would say that it may be foolish, but that it is also an expression of humility that recognizes my limitations compared to the God who the heavens cannot contain, whose works defy all the wisdom of men. While both the old and new earth theories I’ve described fit a historical view of Scripture, I will stick with a new earth theory that affirms that “evening and morning was the first day”.
posted by Hammertime at
7/16/2007 11:31:00 PM
3 Comments:
I won't attempt to sound scholarly with my comment!
My thoughts on the gap theory are this: There is no evidence to support said gap. In fact, the first death we find in the Bible is that caused by sin. So, the "fossil record" that dates to the period that the world would like Christians to fit into their Bible, requires death before death was required.
The Bible points nowhere to a catastrophic ending to the first beginning.
I find this as another way to attempt to harmonize God/Christianity-in all it's infinite unexplainables, with secular science. Sometimes there is no harmony. However, I'll stand on the Word of God, over the ever-changing age of the earth any day!
In the late 60's, the age of the earth was determined to be about 500,000 years old. A decade later it had risen into the millions, and now stands somewhere in the billions. When you can't put God into your box, you keep rebuilding the box to fit. ;)
By
Rightthinker, at 7/23/2007 12:55:00 PM
a test
By
Paul.K.Cumming, at 3/08/2009 03:47:00 PM
Sorry about the test, Mr. Rightthinker. I was unsure if I was properly posting. I must correct your false claim that scientists in the late 1960s thought the earth to be 500,000 years old. The great antiquity of the universe has been known for centuries. My father, the late Professor George Cumming, published a paper in 1968 reporting an age for the earth of 4,5 billion years: this figure has been only slighly adjusted in the subsequent four decades, and is not disputed by any geologist, except the very few that New Earth Creationists are able to trot out (and I am not refering to the self-styled Dr. Dino, now serving time in a federal penetentary for tax fraud). Of course, you cannot accept this date of 4,5 billion years, or any radioisotopically-determined date, since it conflicts with your literal interpretation of th Bible. You must likewise do some interesting mental gymnastics if you look at the night sky and see that grand cosmic deception: the stars and galaxies casting their light, as if from the distant past. If the galaxies are indeed composed of stars, they have to be millions of light years away! How else could they seem so small? I know that these arguments are based on reason, something that you presumably consider to be simply an obstacle to the salvation of thinking men and women, something to be ridiculed, perhaps, as I am now ridiculing you. In fact, I fear it is you who most blatantly displays the sin of pride, if you think that your privileged position of faith is better and more reliable than that afforded to university types such as myself. More evidence of pride is to be found in your willful insistance that faith is to be most admired when it is most at odds with common sense and human reason. I'm sorry, but I find the contents of your posting deeply insulting, since you must believe that my father, who devoted his professional life to ever improving methods for the radioisotopic dating of minerals, was a participant in some demonically-inspired deception. Follwing his model, I have also devoted my professional life to obtaining knowledge, although in quite a different field. You can contact me, if you, like: paul.k.cumming@gmail.com
By
Paul.K.Cumming, at 3/08/2009 04:07:00 PM
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