The only firm “position” I espouse on the Young Earth Creationist v. Old Earth Evolutionist ongoing debate is that I wish it didn’t exist. Both sides would probably agree with that, but both would still be unwilling to concede one letter.
Why I am not a young earth creationist: The Bible does not give us the details of creation that YEC’s have a yearning to claim. “God said let there be light, and there was light”… light exists because God said to let it happen. We can’t necessarily conclude that light was inevitable unless He kept it from happening, even though a strict understanding of the wording might suggest that. But we can be quite certain no details about energy production, photons, light’s finite speed and the universal speed limit are included because they are beyond our understanding; certainly of ancient times, but most likely also today if He really told us these things. Maybe even in the world to come to have a grasp of what was really happening in the world we knew may require a doctorate that takes centuries to achieve.
But at any rate, it doesn’t seem to be hard to accept the “let it happen” explanation in regard to light. So what about life then? “Let the earth bring forth every living thing…” That living things are made up of the same substances of mineral earth is not part of the debate, fortunately, except where the element carbon is involved in its unique natural property of forming large and virtually unlimited compounds which react in unique and virtually unlimited ways. Just as God had determined the properties of light before He said “Let there be light,” He must have determined the chain-forming property of carbon before he said “Let the earth bring forth…living things.” Considering the location of the earth in relation to its main light, the abundance of water, and the tendency of carbon to form large molecules with other abundant elements, perhaps life was also inevitable unless He deliberately kept it from happening. But even with all these qualities present to nurture life and make life forms which depend on other life forms, the “inevitability” question depends on time, and that for me is the essence of this whole topic.
To think that God created the idea of day with the set figure of what we know as 24 hours (an arbitrary division thereof, at any rate) does not do justice to an almighty creator. Scripture itself disproves that day=24 hours and not more nor less in the story of Joshua’s answered prayer for the sun to remain visible for 22 hours, making that particular day about 34 hours altogether. A day can be anything God determines it to be, and that is not even exclusive of a period of time. I don’t profess to know Hebrew, but the abundance of information appears reliable that “day” does have the multiple meanings of sun appearing to sun disappearing, era, or emphasis. In English it does foster the same connotations… “In my day…”,”There is a new day dawning,.. “—these figures of speech can mean an indefinite time or an era characterized by something in relation to something else. If God has literally all the time in the world, why wouldn’t He use it to create and enjoy His creation? Most of us have seen computer models speculating how mountain ranges and canyons were formed over the eons. If God had a “front-row seat” to watch the real thing actually happening resulting from His own predetermined natural laws and He could just watch it for millions of years, then who are we to say he couldn’t have done that because of His own time scale. That would compare to Moses and Aaron refusing to make that bronze serpent He told them to make because of His own law, “Thou shalt not make any graven image…” Literalism can go amuck if it compels us to limit God by His own laws or His own time.
Why I am not an old earth evolutionist: While I don’t know if I made any kind of positive impression on the “old earthers” who post in this forum with my explanation of why I am not a “young earther,” this part will unquestioningly make a negative one. My question to young earthers, “Why wouldn’t God take pleasure in enjoying His creation” in a step-by-step way eras and eons before the man/sin/redemption “day” came, can be translated to old earthers as “Why would He…?” Why would He, for instance, create the planet earth and not fast-forward through the first billion or 2 years to see life begin? That’s not to ask why would He not have slow-motioned it either, of course, but why must the earth and it’s life forms be as old as our best dating methods indicate? But perhaps more important, why would He give us in His Word deliberately misleading language about the creation of Adam and the first woman [if man did evolve, it seems nonsense to really believe the first woman was formed of a ribectomy]? And then to include these accounts in conveying the message of salvation to us? As young earthers limit the scope of what God could have done by subjecting Him to His own laws He proclaimed for us, then you limit God by declaring what He must have done because our investigations into the processes thus indicate. Did He create carnivorous predators to eat the comparatively gentle herbivores for no other reason for millions of years but to watch the “show” of His creation? I don’t know. It’s only in recent years that we have come to get a grip on our sympathies for when we watch a coyote chase down and kill a harmless furry rabbit. The explanation of non-theists to this question is simple: nature is indifferent to the wishes or feelings of any being which has them. You have to substitute God for “nature” here if you are “theistic evolutionist.” God simply lets His creatures be violently killed and eaten, or occasionally trapped by rocks or trees or burned to death by a wildfire or a lava flow. On the other hand, He did create the natural violence of this world and He does today treat it with indifference; so the issue of the “justice” or “fairness” of all this is out of scope; if it happens today, it could have happened millions of years ago. But it must not be assumed that it must have thus happened because going that far is out of our scope.
I see scientific theories never as facts, but as useful foundations. It may not be true that an electrical current flows negative to positive, but that is a useful foundation of so many implements that we use daily. Newton’s gravitational theory is another useful foundation, even though modern physics requires a bit of an adjustment thereto. The theories of the development of the universe, the solar system, the earth and our life forms are all useful. They can serve us to perform many useful endeavors. But we still may have them wrong; certainly in the way God ‘engineered’ them. There could literally be “nothing new to discover” if all things were within our understanding. But “man’s wisdom is foolishness to God.” That’s what I believe on that.
In summary (and I hope this short concluding paragraph is not the only part read by many in this long post), both young earthers and old earthers underemphasize the power of God. What did happen can happen, but what can happen did not necessarily happen; but what can’t happen still may have happened with an all-powerful God. This is why I have no definitive position on this matter, and why I wish there were not such a conflict.
Why I am not a young earth creationist: The Bible does not give us the details of creation that YEC’s have a yearning to claim. “God said let there be light, and there was light”… light exists because God said to let it happen. We can’t necessarily conclude that light was inevitable unless He kept it from happening, even though a strict understanding of the wording might suggest that. But we can be quite certain no details about energy production, photons, light’s finite speed and the universal speed limit are included because they are beyond our understanding; certainly of ancient times, but most likely also today if He really told us these things. Maybe even in the world to come to have a grasp of what was really happening in the world we knew may require a doctorate that takes centuries to achieve.
But at any rate, it doesn’t seem to be hard to accept the “let it happen” explanation in regard to light. So what about life then? “Let the earth bring forth every living thing…” That living things are made up of the same substances of mineral earth is not part of the debate, fortunately, except where the element carbon is involved in its unique natural property of forming large and virtually unlimited compounds which react in unique and virtually unlimited ways. Just as God had determined the properties of light before He said “Let there be light,” He must have determined the chain-forming property of carbon before he said “Let the earth bring forth…living things.” Considering the location of the earth in relation to its main light, the abundance of water, and the tendency of carbon to form large molecules with other abundant elements, perhaps life was also inevitable unless He deliberately kept it from happening. But even with all these qualities present to nurture life and make life forms which depend on other life forms, the “inevitability” question depends on time, and that for me is the essence of this whole topic.
To think that God created the idea of day with the set figure of what we know as 24 hours (an arbitrary division thereof, at any rate) does not do justice to an almighty creator. Scripture itself disproves that day=24 hours and not more nor less in the story of Joshua’s answered prayer for the sun to remain visible for 22 hours, making that particular day about 34 hours altogether. A day can be anything God determines it to be, and that is not even exclusive of a period of time. I don’t profess to know Hebrew, but the abundance of information appears reliable that “day” does have the multiple meanings of sun appearing to sun disappearing, era, or emphasis. In English it does foster the same connotations… “In my day…”,”There is a new day dawning,.. “—these figures of speech can mean an indefinite time or an era characterized by something in relation to something else. If God has literally all the time in the world, why wouldn’t He use it to create and enjoy His creation? Most of us have seen computer models speculating how mountain ranges and canyons were formed over the eons. If God had a “front-row seat” to watch the real thing actually happening resulting from His own predetermined natural laws and He could just watch it for millions of years, then who are we to say he couldn’t have done that because of His own time scale. That would compare to Moses and Aaron refusing to make that bronze serpent He told them to make because of His own law, “Thou shalt not make any graven image…” Literalism can go amuck if it compels us to limit God by His own laws or His own time.
Why I am not an old earth evolutionist: While I don’t know if I made any kind of positive impression on the “old earthers” who post in this forum with my explanation of why I am not a “young earther,” this part will unquestioningly make a negative one. My question to young earthers, “Why wouldn’t God take pleasure in enjoying His creation” in a step-by-step way eras and eons before the man/sin/redemption “day” came, can be translated to old earthers as “Why would He…?” Why would He, for instance, create the planet earth and not fast-forward through the first billion or 2 years to see life begin? That’s not to ask why would He not have slow-motioned it either, of course, but why must the earth and it’s life forms be as old as our best dating methods indicate? But perhaps more important, why would He give us in His Word deliberately misleading language about the creation of Adam and the first woman [if man did evolve, it seems nonsense to really believe the first woman was formed of a ribectomy]? And then to include these accounts in conveying the message of salvation to us? As young earthers limit the scope of what God could have done by subjecting Him to His own laws He proclaimed for us, then you limit God by declaring what He must have done because our investigations into the processes thus indicate. Did He create carnivorous predators to eat the comparatively gentle herbivores for no other reason for millions of years but to watch the “show” of His creation? I don’t know. It’s only in recent years that we have come to get a grip on our sympathies for when we watch a coyote chase down and kill a harmless furry rabbit. The explanation of non-theists to this question is simple: nature is indifferent to the wishes or feelings of any being which has them. You have to substitute God for “nature” here if you are “theistic evolutionist.” God simply lets His creatures be violently killed and eaten, or occasionally trapped by rocks or trees or burned to death by a wildfire or a lava flow. On the other hand, He did create the natural violence of this world and He does today treat it with indifference; so the issue of the “justice” or “fairness” of all this is out of scope; if it happens today, it could have happened millions of years ago. But it must not be assumed that it must have thus happened because going that far is out of our scope.
I see scientific theories never as facts, but as useful foundations. It may not be true that an electrical current flows negative to positive, but that is a useful foundation of so many implements that we use daily. Newton’s gravitational theory is another useful foundation, even though modern physics requires a bit of an adjustment thereto. The theories of the development of the universe, the solar system, the earth and our life forms are all useful. They can serve us to perform many useful endeavors. But we still may have them wrong; certainly in the way God ‘engineered’ them. There could literally be “nothing new to discover” if all things were within our understanding. But “man’s wisdom is foolishness to God.” That’s what I believe on that.
In summary (and I hope this short concluding paragraph is not the only part read by many in this long post), both young earthers and old earthers underemphasize the power of God. What did happen can happen, but what can happen did not necessarily happen; but what can’t happen still may have happened with an all-powerful God. This is why I have no definitive position on this matter, and why I wish there were not such a conflict.
