Bob G.

I did not at all mean to sound as though I reject science altogether. In my limited understanding, there is plenty of sound science that refutes macro-evolution (which is of course, less important than what the Word of God says on the matter) and that attempts to explain the appearance of the age of the earth and the universe. The first being the idea that it was all initially created with the appearance of age. Do we not understand that the light from the first stars was immediately visible on the earth; and more obvious, that Adam and Eve were given life as adults? I realize that with some of the models, the first point about the stars may be debatable, but is the second one? Not to mention that I suppose all the trees didn’t have to initially grow from seeds. My main point about the endeavor is that with someone who fancies a very deep study of the topic, like most of you here, it is not long before I would indeed be out of my league and would, at some point, have to start taking someone else’s word on it.

Still, upon the contemplation of these things, it is so often that these men of science, as you have acknowledged, come to conclusions I can not embrace. It is interesting that you mention the creatures in the great deep, for some time ago I watched the entire series “The Blue Planet”. In one of the series they explore the deepest area that man has been able to reach. The narrator went on and on about the fact that this was the first time these things had ever been seen; but my thought was that God has always known about it. I remember watching it and thinking, “O the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are his judgments, and his ways past finding out!”, but the narrator’s next words, uttering his conclusions to all he was seeing, belied a blind man. Observing the general revelation ought to, and has for me, led me to worship. I don’t necessarily feel the need to plumb the very depths of knowledge nor answer all the skeptics since what I see and learn can be interpreted within the framework of Scripture. Nor do I advocate ignorance at all. When it gets into areas I cannot understand with the intelligence and wisdom God gave me, I am forced to rely upon the Word of God first and foremost. After all, some things have to be taken on faith. Some reading this might consider that willful ignorance.

But I do not say that your article was misguided and hope it didn’t sound that way. I think I said at the beginning that your challenge is relevant and we shouldn’t want to just ignore things that are inconvenient. I just wanted to express why I would proceed with great caution and hopefully, to get answers to questions I had purely as a result of reading your article.
Thank you

(1) You express some reserve in studying science in order to educate one’s theology.

I think I share you concern in part. I certainly don’t think we need to be experts in science in order to understand the basic truths of the Bible. Moreover, scientists can sometimes overwhelm laypeople with extravagant claims that they (i.e., the laypeople) are not always equipped to assess intelligently or refute. So that puts us in some ways at a disadvantage. And that’s why, in Part 2 of this study, I urge believers not to be swayed too quickly by assertions made by science. Scientific paradigms have been and are continuing to change. Furthermore, I think scientists (as John Frame points out) need to study theology in order to understand properly the world around them.

The one minor caveat or small qualification I’d made with respect to your comments is that we cannot truly understand divine revelation without some knowledge of ourselves and the world around us. God intends general revelation to be the backdrop against which we read special revelation. So in order to appreciate what the Bible means when it says the “heavens declare the glory of God” (Ps. 19:1), we’ve got to know something about the heavens. Moreover, as Calvin argued in his Institutes, we cannot truly know God without knowing ourselves and we cannot truly know ourselves without knowing God. There’s a kind of reciprocal relationship. This is not to place human science on an equal footing with human interpretations of Scripture. The revelation of Scripture is, I believe, more perspicuous than the revelation of nature. Accordingly, though general and special revelation are equally authoritative since they’re equally the voice of the one true God, Scripture plays a normative role over our interpretations of the world around us. All of this is not to discount your wise cautionary words. Just wanted to attempt to expand on the relationship of our study of Scripture and our study of the world around us (which is sometimes called “science”).

(2) You say above, “I have to say I disagree with the interpretation the author gave this historical event and entirely agree with Layman.”

Apparently, you didn’t read Part 2 of this series. There I point out that the geocentric view was initially given its “scientific” credentials not from the church but from early pagan science. I pointed out that “Claudius Ptolemaeus, a 2nd century mathematician and astronomer first systematically expounded that view. But the Christian church made the fatal mistake of equating the Ptolemaic view with Scripture. We must avoid that mistake.” Hope this clarifies.

(3) You and others have a hard time understanding why some Christian scientists would argue for an “old earth” yet reject evolution. After all, long periods of time without an evolutionary process would seem pointless.

As I indicate at the end of this article and argue in Part 2, I see no reason at this point to interpret the framework of the creation week in terms of long ages. I’ve read Christian scientists, like Hugh Ross and David Snoke, who marshal evidence for an old earth and remain unconvinced that their conclusions are conclusive. Yet, in an attempt to be fair to them, they really do, as far as I can tell, reject macro-evolution though holding to a universe and earth that is quite old.

What purpose would God have in creating the earth slowly? What purpose could there by in long ages passing without humans to inhabit an earth God had desired them to subdue? If I were in their shoes, I might answer something like this: (1) with the Lord, a day is as a thousand years and a thousand years as a day. In other words, what might seem like a long and monotonous epoch to us is to God but a moment. (2) God has created places in the earth and ocean and universe that no human eye has seen but his. Why would God do this? Why would he create sea creatures in the ocean who live in such deep waters that we cannot see them? Why are there presently galaxies beyond the reach even of the Hubble telescope? What good are they? Ultimately, I can’t give a definitive answer to such questions. But God is bigger than we are. He has a reason for everything he makes and does even if he doesn’t tell us. And if God wanted to make the earth and fill it with inhabitants over the space of one millisecond, on the one hand, or one million years, on the other, who are we to question him? Personally, I think the plainest reading of the Bible is that God created in the space of what would correspond to a six-day period as we know it (Exod. 20:11). I’m not convinced that scientific claims for an old earth are conclusive enough to constrain me to readjust my exegesis. At the same time, I’m willing to concede that good men who are committed to the inspiration, authority, and inerrancy of Scripture think otherwise. I differ with them on this issue but still treat them as brothers and do not believe that their position of necessity requires them to affirm macro-evolution–a view I find much harder to reconcile with Scripture.

Hope this is helpful.

Your servant,
Bob Gonzales

One problem I have with studying science to educate my theology is that for the person of ordinary intelligence, like me, it’s not long until it gets into things I do not understand at all and therefore can neither vouch for nor deny. It is/was so with one I know who, for 20 years professed Christianity then turned athiest. When he embarked upon his study, he had to admit that most of the things that changed his mind were things he honestly couldn’t really understand; yet he chose to believe the conclusions that were made. I am sure I couldn’t debate the topic with any of you; my science knowledge and interest are way too scant. With that in mind, I really don’t understand some things and maybe some of you can explain to me.

If long ages, what is supposed by these people to have been happening on the earth for all those thousands of years? It leads me to suppose that supporters of such ideas are paving the way to macro-evolution. What was happening all that time if not macro-evolution? I don’t really get their reason or need for proving the earth is old if not to establish a time-period during which macro-evolution could take place.

Layman makes a new point to me and I think it is excellent; that there could be no long years of death and suffering before Adam b/c before him there was no death. I guess it would lend comfort to at least one person I know who said he could never believe there is a God because if Cain had a wife, she was his sister and God condemns incest, so if He existed He would be a hypocrite. With these long ages theories, there could have been thousands of women from which Cain could choose. But seriously; even if the earth remained unpopulated for thousands of years (which makes no sense to me), which it must have done by some of these theories, did God reappear after eons and finally create living things and mankind? What existed for all those years, a barren rock with water on it? Did the hydrologic cycle take place? For what purpose? I guess I don’t get it. But I hope that I will never forget what THE TWO greatest minds in the world of macro-evolutionary thought had to say to Ben Stein about how life got started. One said “we think it might’ve happened on the heads of crystals”, and the great man Richard Dawkins himself suggested that super-intelligent aliens seeded the earth with life.

This may be a sophomoric point, but let us suppose that something like the Day-Age theory is correct. I’ve heard people suggest that macro-evolution could occur during these ages (and thereby they graciously give God some kind of role in the whole project) but I am not sure that is a necessity in the model. But if macro-evolution were occurring are we to suppose that the amoebae that would become human were somehow given dominion over all the other amoebae that would become other species??

I appreciated Seevers’ comments, and Layman made another excellent point in what he said about Copernicus. I have to say I disagree with the interpretation the author gave this historical event and entirely agree with Layman. Too often in this world Christianity has been equated with what became Roman Catholicism in the eastern hemisphere. So much confusion exists even today in the minds of the biblically ignorant who think that R. Catholicism and Christianity are the same thing. So much mischief came out of that ancient culture of an ignorant populace plagued by superstition and religious corruption. Even Copernicus himself was persuaded to recant.

Finally (and forgive me if this is too long), in fact, there are numerous things that have occurred in my lifetime that show that geological changes can, do and have come about in very short periods of time, so I guess I don’t see the need to pander to people who think that people of faith choose to wallow in ignorance in order to continue in their beliefs. I don’t care how intellectually one debates the issues or cloaks themselves in the aura of science, if you reject their theories, they’ll still think you stupid. But how stupid is it to say with a serious face that the earth was seeded with life by super-intelligent aliens? I guess I agree, though. It was, but just ONE, SUPER INTELLIGENT ALIEN whose name is YAHWEH.

With all due respect, I believe that when all of the double talk is stripped away, most of the proponents of the Big Bang theory do indeed believe that the matter of the Big Bang originated out of nothing. Incidentally, your statement that the Big Bang (”it”) “does not presume a creation out of nothing” contains a critical flaw: for the most part, Big Bang proponents do not presume a “creation” at all – because a creation requires a Creator, which most of them reject. A Creator is completely anathema to proponents of Naturalism (the world view of most evolutionists) because a Creator is SUPERNATURAL, something that Naturalism strictly forbids.

You said that “the Big Bang model, as far as I was aware, actually presupposes the existence of a “singularity” that is beginningless.” It is my understanding that a central tenet of the singularity concept is, in fact, the origination of matter out of nothing. It is the Steady State theory that proposes that matter is eternal.