Re: I AM RIGHT AND YOU ARE WRONG

Walt writes,
“Charitable contributions, like many other things, is a zero sum game. Is ASA a
worthwhile effort? Is it just a dominantly incestuous group with a commitment to
kill a young earth philosophy at any cost to the Christian community -- instead
of attempting to either dialog or attack the LEADERS in the ICR, etc.?”

Walt--let me throw in a little history here, which might illuminate this conversation. Henry Morris (for example) was a member of the ASA from the late 1940s to the early 1960s. In that period, there was significant conversation between YECs and OECs/TEs on the issues under discussion here. Several YECs were in fact published by the ASA journal in those years, and a few have been published by the journal even since the early 1960s.

Morris' story is interesting, let me tell more of it. He had modeled his early career after Harry Rimmer, who liked to confront scientists and "liberal" religious leaders in face-to-face debates, and who liked to represent "biblical" science (he believed that science and a "literal" Bible were fully compatible) on college campuses. Somewhere in the late 40s, Morris also became attracted to Price's ideas. At the ASA meeting at BIOLA ca. 1949 (I don't have my sources here at home to check the precise date), there was a session in which Columbia geochronologist Larry Kulp directly attacked Price's "flood geology" position, with Price silently present at the session. Kulp's paper was published in the ASA journal, leading Morris to respond anonymously in defense of Price in the next number of the journal.

Throughout the 1950s there was much conversation about the earth's age, the fossil record, and other such issues. In the early 1960s, after the journal published a couple of highly negative reviews of The Genesis Flood (by Morris and John C. Whitcomb, Jr.), Morris resigned from the ASA and, with several fellow YECs, formed the Creation Research Society. Since then, direct conversation among Christian intellectuals about these issues has been more difficult.

I think that several things have led to this, in addition to the fact that the YECs mainly pulled out of the ASA. One factor is the tone that has been emitted by many leading YECs, not only in person when they speak to various audiences, but also in their writings and in their web-based materials. The tone has two important parts: (1) The deliberate ridiculing of much modern science, as if the view that the earth is very old were equivalent to believing in perpetual motion machines. They like to give their mainly amateurish audiences (I speak here simply descriptively of the fact that most people who attend creationist presentations lack professional expertise in one of the sciences) the overwhelming impression that scientists are driven to the conclusion that the earth is old, not by the evidence, but by a prior conviction that the earth is old and the Bible is wrong. This is dishonest in the extreme. (2) The claim that an old earth is not only unbiblical, but spiritua!
lly dangerous–indeed, that it is even Satanic in origin. Ditto for evolution, which American creationists might as well spell the way that English scientists pronounce it: “evil-ution.” Witness Morris’ patently ridiculous (but seriously intended) claim that evolution originated with Nimrod. The “double-edged” sword of this tone, when coupled with the amateurish audiences to whom the YECs tailor their message, makes it extremely difficult for OECs/TEs actually to engage YECs in serious conversation. Please read the last sentence again, and further times if necessary, to see the full force of this point before going further.

In addition, many YECs do in fact engage in something like lying–that is, they know that they are using faulty arguments, based on misrepresentations of the actual facts or upon misapplications of scientific theories to facts of their own choosing. Some YECs are exceptions to this pattern, for which I praise them, but many of the most popular speakers are not. An example you may quote me on is Kent Hovind–truly a snake-oil salesman if there ever was one. Hovind (for example) makes the absolutely spurious claim, that Uranus’ reverse rotation on its axis (opposite to the direction in which all the other planets rotate) disproves the big bang. There is of course no connection whatsoever (I do not exaggerate this) between Uranus’ rotational motion and the big bang, indeed nothing in the big bang even implies that Uranus needs to exist, let alone rotate in any specific direction. But a significant percentage of my students believe this argument “disproves” the big bang.

I could add many other things, but let me just note how the two paragraphs above can be tied together by the point that YECs seek popular explanations that appeal to simple understandings of amateurs in science, rather than serious scientific explanations that actually do stand some chance of explaining the genuinely complex natural world that science investigates. Most church people aren’t capable of understanding the complexity of modern science–heck, even scientists in one field often can’t understand what scientists in another field are doing. But it’s essential to the creationist message to popularize the message that science and a “literal” Bible are compatible, so they create a kind of “science” that will do the job for their primary audience. When other Christian scientists (the great majority of whom are not YECs) object, the typical response is to question the faith of those scientists while belittling the scientific basis for their position. This makes convers!
ation enormously difficult.

Nevertheless, here at Messiah we have plans to have just such conversations, in the not-so-distant future. Already this year, we are sponsoring three talks on origins, by people who represent YEC, ID, and TE. They aren’t being offered together at the same time–that is our next step, to host a symposium for the average church goer in which genuine diversity is presented–but it’s step in the right direction.

I’m not personally bothered by the fact that so many Christians believe that YEC is true. What bothers me, is the fact that many of them have not had a fair chance to see why most Christian scientists do not agree with that position. Perhaps the best set of scientists to focus on here, is that group of scientists who are adult converts to Christian faith–people like Francis Collins or John Suppe, who can’t be accused of having their faith “liberalized” by evolution, since they only came to know God after having been established as leading scientists. I am also (frankly) bothered by the tone of much of what has been said here recently on this forum, and that’s one reason why I have not been contributing to it myself. Indeed, I’m on the verge of dropping out.

Ted Davis
Received on Sat Dec 27 11:36:41 2003