TiL- Defending Young Earth Creationism

Young Earth Creationism and the Role of Presuppositions

Welcome to the truth in love podcast. Thank you for joining us again tonight. We are going to be discussing and defending young earth creationism. Stick with us.

Join this Baptist and Presbyterian as they discuss theology and it's application to life together. Let's seek the son and glorify the father. Stay tuned as we speak truth in love.

What's going on Dan?

Did we get another intro?

Sort of.

Same British guy but different music.

It's different music.

Yeah.

I like it.

I was not pleased with the other music that we had. So I wanted to update it and I was. I was trying to rush and find something decent and I come up with that. So You you think it's okay you good.

Yeah, it's good. I like it. I'm easy, please. I'm sure somebody out there won't like it, but they can just get over it.

You know, you're not gonna please everybody.

Yeah.

That no, no, but we do want to strive to please the Lord and There's different theories tonight. You wanted to talk. We're taking a break. Seems like for a couple weeks now on Reform Covenant theology, not the book that we're trying to read the other.

Yep, and. And you directed this toward defending young earth creation because it's something that you were working on for Your pastoral ministry.

Seminary Study, Ordination, and the RPCNA Standards

Yeah, yeah, I'm taking a class in seminary right now called origins. Going through with first half of the class we're looking at. Yeah, first half of the class. Our textbook is this book looking at four different views of Creation Intelligent design.

Creation.

Evolution and Tell I paid a lot of attention to it. Creationism old earth creationism so that that is either the the day age theory or the the gap theory and then theistic evolution and. Then the other book we're doing is four views on the historical Adam.

There's some other books we're using in there and we're doing a lot of journal articles, so I had to read a or had to write a paper on Defending young earth creationism, so I figured hey, we'll do that and then in between there I had to write a sermon and present it to the presbytery.

Was that last Friday. Sustained by everyone who voted. Some people walked in late and didn't vote. They're like we're only here for the last bit of it. Um, so we're not gonna we're not gonna vote but everybody who voted for me voted to sustain me.

So and that's a good thing. That means that you did. Well, okay.

So and that that ended one of the what part of your process and.

Nothing. It didn't end anything. It ended the sermon portion I was going to be able to. I was gonna be eligible to be licensed to preach. This time had I taken a different exam I needed to finish a history paper and it would have been able to be licensed to preach.

However, I did not do that one. I did my sermon for the second level so I'm. I've done four out of the five to be licensed to preach. I've done one of the five in order to be eligible to receive a call to a particular gospel ministry.

Okay. All right. So if you are not familiar. Or if you've heard us talk about it before and you forgot Dan is Dan is talking about the process of Ordination in the RPCNA which is the branch of a Presbyterian Church that he is a part of.

So it may be different in your denomination may be different your church or if you're Presbyterian maybe a little bit different in your branch of Presbyterianism, but this is I enjoy hearing and listening to.

The steps that Dan has to follow and his process and the success that he's having the Lord showing him in this process of ordination, so.

Yeah, yeah one of the things that's there's a few subordinate standards that define what the RPCNA believes. That would be the Westminster Confession and Westminster larger and shorter catechism. Specific to the RPCNA.

We also have the the RP testimony. It stands for the reformed Presbyterian testimony and it's a commentary basically on Certain aspects of the Westminster Confession of Faith.

So.

Where.

Some more modern ideas may have popped up. The Westminster can or the RP testimony defines things a little bit more specifically one of the points That they define is that their gospel ministers Need to believe in a young earth creation model of creation.

So while some other Presbyterian denominations May allow for theistic evolution or an intelligent design or something of that sort.

Our.

Denomination requires that their ministers believe in a Six day creation model a young earth creation model. Okay.

Does my mic sound different.

It does now it sounds like you climbed out of that that small bathroom stall that you're Podcasting from a minute ago and now we're speaking directly into the microphone there.

We did have some confusion. I was mostly the one that was confused before we got started and so that interrupted the automatic connection with their correct microphone. So I I'm glad the Lord brought that to my mind and when I got that straightened out.

And if I didn't say before I may have can't remember but the comment line is open if you listen or watch it later. Even years down the road leave us a comment. Let you know. Let us know that you watch this program listen to this program.

If you have a question critique we're open to that as well. So so get us started on this this young earth creation.

How We Interpret the Evidence for Creation

Yeah.

When you look at creation in general. Really? What what our task is? Is to look at the world around us. Look at all the evidence and See, you know, how did we get here? What is the creation? How did it get started?

There's a couple different types of evidence as you can look at. There's the physical evidence the scientific evidence of it's observable measurable repeatable. That sort of thing. And that's where a lot of folks stop.

Um, especially your naturalist those who believe that there's only the natural world no atheists things like that. The the Christian also believes that there is a there's a some historical evidence as well.

Now that these things were actually written down for us by people who knew better who were if not There were how these things were revealed to them by Someone God who was there?

So.

When examining the evidence. Really what you're doing is you're interpreting the world around you. So one thing I don't know if you've ever heard heard this. There was like a whole bunch of blind folks.

And they all stuck out their hand to see what an elephant was like and the one grabbed on to the leg and said well, this is. It's it looks an elephant looks like a tree. It's big and strong. No one grabbed on to the tail.

On the end of it said well this thing's a little bit furry. The one grabbed on to the trunk or the ear and you know, they had different things. And so they were all very dogmatic about this is exactly you know, what this elephant is, but each of them Only had the bit of information in front of them.

Each of them had their own preconceived notions of what things were going to be like. Also, if you have two people who come across a number, you know. Say a number six or a number nine. Just drawn on the ground and one person standing on one side of it one person standing on the other side of it.

They're both staring at it. Yeah. Somebody will say hey, that's a six similar say that's a nine. Their preconceived Notions of what it is is based upon how they're approaching the subject. Now here's one thing that's very very important.

There's somebody who drew that number on the ground and they know exactly what number that they drew on the ground. So there's an objective truth there to be found. But we're going to be interpreting the data that we see in front of us based upon our presuppositions.

Yeah, right. Which is it's okay presuppositions aren't necessarily a bad thing. It's when our presuppositions are Incorrect that it can lead us down the wrong the wrong path. Yeah, so This was brought up in my in my class.

I gotta give credit to Dr. Thomas Gentry. He's my professor. He in a lecture. He brought these up, you know, so there I go I can't get plagiarism. I done cited my source over. He brought up that there are there are two two basic types at least in this Discussion.

There's an epistemic presupposition. In other words, how do we gain knowledge? How do we understand and believe things? So, is there an underlying belief.

That.

There is no supernatural or there must be a supernatural that Underlying belief is going to predetermine to some extent. What what sort of conclusions you can come to from your evidence and. Then there's a moral presupposition.

Say you come at at The creation debate and.

You.

Say say you for whatever reason have I've had an abortion. And you did so because You you're thinking led you to believe that what you're doing wasn't necessarily wrong. But if you were to accept a creationist view of of creation then God would have created the world who would have endowed each and every human being with an Inherent worth and the the ending of the life of that unborn child Would be considered a great sin.

Maybe you're not ready to accept the fact that you've sinned in that way. So people to to to salve their own consciences will come up with all sorts of things. I don't want to be to be responsible before God in heaven.

So I'm just going to assume that there isn't one. No go about interpreting the data. However, I feel like I Mean to some extent Christians do that, too. We'll read the Bible. No saying we love gender equality.

Therefore. I'm going to go through You know first Timothy 2 and and not see Paul's prohibition against women pastors as being a prohibition against women pastors. Yeah, I mean it happens to people not all over the place.

But I just say all that to bring up that in the interpretation of the data. Our presuppositions do play a large part in in what?

Conclusions we will allow ourselves to arrive at. Yeah, a lot of people call that your your lens.

Sure.

This is this is the lens in which I see or interpret scriptural or I see the evidence through this particular lens, so. Right based on my My culture my background how I was raised. All sorts of things can influence and and be considered your lens and in how you view what's in front of you.

A couple of things that I thought of as you were doing that little introduction there.

It's.

We're talking about defending young young earth creationism, and I think it's interesting to think It's it's not just against atheist That we defend because we think maybe Maybe some people think that or if you've not been introduced to this topic before you think well, there's really only Two views you have the atheistic view which is gonna promote evolution or you have creationism.

Yeah, but with I think the Well a young earth creationist must Must defend young earth creationism with a Evolution because you have millions of years, but then you also have which may be a surprise to some folks that there are Christians Who believe in a older?

So you have a young earth defense against some of your brothers and sisters in Christ who because of their maybe because of their lens or maybe they're being Putting forth effort not to use their lens that will be their defense just like it would be our defense we we try to set aside our lenses or Biases as we interpret scripture and that's going to be their argument as well.

We want to be aware. But but they find when they study scripture. I see an older I See millions of years, I think evolution and creation are compatible. So there's quite a different view there there's quite a few different views and Then the other thing was you were talking about God being an eyewitness because he was there.

I also thought about Witnesses. If you look at the Old Testament and the genealogies. You've got you've got men and women who lived hundreds and hundreds of years so you have You have somebody who Adam and his and his sons lived hundreds of years.

So they were able to recount The story of creation and they're they're walking with God in the garden throughout generations.

Yeah, yeah, there's a real interesting theory that touches on that a little bit I'd like to bring up later. I don't want to get a sidetrack, but it was it was really interesting. I was reading a what seems to be a Conservative.

Jewish.

Writer.

And he had some interesting thoughts. He's not a Christian, but he would believe that that Yahweh of the Bible created. But yeah, it's some interesting stuff that he may be right. You may he may not be but it'd be be interesting to talk about that here a little bit.

But you're absolutely right. There's several different views. Even among atheists there's different views. It's fallen out of favor. But some atheists believe that there was an eternal cosmos.

Oh.

Wow, it was just went on forever. Like they had no beginning. It was eternal just like we would believe God is eternal. I know God he's always been there creations always been there.

That's that's fallen out of favor. That's gonna. That would be a concept that. Um, that would break my mind to try to harmonize those two things together to have To have evolution or no God not to have a ultimate cause And but have an eternal Universe.

Yeah, well, I mean a lot of those those Weren't necessarily atheist but pagans. Who believed that there was there was basically that creation was their God. Okay, because it was eternal it it was the thing that gave life to them.

They would live in a cycle in harmony with their with their God and then upon upon their death they would be reunited with their God by being Decomposed back into the earth being assumed back into their creator, which is an interesting interesting.

Deception on the part of the devil, I would say yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. What you got for us first.

There I guess I guess what we should just look at the the basic Theories amongst Christians, okay. Looked at the a couple atheistic ones, you know, they've got the Atheistic evolution pure naturalism where you believe that there is no supernatural or you've got your eternal Cosmos which you know, it was it could be a little bit.

They could add in the supernatural aspect just not necessarily call it God. But create. Christians generally break down into Four or five depending on how you you count it. Different camps you have. The young earth creationist which says that God created by the word of his mouth in the space of 624 hour periods with no gaps in between.

According to that in the genealogies found in chapter 5 of Genesis you then have an earth that's somewhere between six and ten thousand years old depending on if there are. Some people skipped over in the genealogies or not.

You can stretch it out from six to ten thousand years somewhere there some people even go as far as 20 or 25 something like that saying that it was like every fifth generation was recounted in in In the genealogies or whatever, but that's the basic framework.

Is it in 624 hour periods God spoke things into existence in the seventh day?

He rested giving us the principle of the Sabbath period. Yeah, and that that theory relies heavily on the.

Genealogies the genealogies and and especially Genesis one. Mm-hmm as it takes at face value. Evening and morning the first day. There's some some some wording in Genesis that I guess you could take a little bit differently.

And that's where these other views start to come in. For instance, let's see. We'll grab the big one today.

Literal Reading of Genesis 1 and the Gap Theory

While you're looking that up it caused me to think about our last guest that we interviewed Gary DeMar and Some of the things that I've learned from him when it comes to Bible interpretation, you know.

People have watched us any amount of time. They know that we're both partial preterists. We would consider ourselves post millennialist and so we see Many of the things that are prophesied as some would see them literally.

Just.

Yet they're going to happen literally, but they've yet to happen there. They're going to be in our future. We would see many of those things as Figurative descriptions. So, why don't we see all these other things as Figurative or symbols or signs?

Well, it's because we take the approach and and I think I think that he mentioned this in our interview. But I know I've heard him say this a million times.

Oh.

We do take the Bible literally and the word literal means according to the literature.

Yeah.

Yeah, I was a part of a forum discussion as part of my class work just today where somebody said that my interpretation of Zechariah 9 was in verse 10 was a.

A.

Spiritualized interpretation. I was like no, I believe it says exactly what it says. They're.

Just the.

Different understandings of how that plays out. Yeah. Yeah.

Could another way to say that would be authorial authors intent.

It could be yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, I guess one way would be literal meaning. You have and this is the way it's used a lot today literal being. There's there's basically one Understanding of what a word is.

So if you see kingdom, it's always a certain type of kingdom if you see Israel. It's always the nation of Israel from the Old Testament. You see church. It's always a separate entity in. You gather you gather those really wooden structures.

But you can also look at things literally. No in this Placing it in its genre looking at it with the figures of speech understanding the typology behind it. And then you can understand the same things in different ways.

Because it's being used in a different way because language is somewhat fluid. I mean, it's not Complete Mishmash of jello, but like words have meaning but they also have what's called. It's a semantic domain a certain range of meanings that it can have.

And so you don't go you could be over here or over there, but you're gonna be within this range. And it's up to the context to determine which specific instance you're you're using, right? Yeah, so look for instance some of these different views.

Verse 1 Genesis 1 1 in the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. And some people will just stop and say All right, cool. He's done that verse 2 and The earth was formless and void and don't say hey something happened between verse 1 and verse 2.

There's a gap here the gap of a large amount of time and they call this the gap theory. Some people will squeeze incredible amounts of stuff that happened in between verse 1 and 2. Yeah, I'm Talking about there was how the earth was formed.

God created the heavens in the earth. He created Satan and his angels and Satan and his angels lived over the whole face of the earth. And then while Satan was ruling the earth He gathered his angels together to the third of them to to rebel against God and God destroyed the earth and separated the angels into demons and angels and that all of that happened In between verses 1 2.

So when you get to verse 2 and it says the earth was formless and void. It was because it was a it was a chaotic structure that had already been Created and then destroyed by God and now he's starting over no more spiritual beings.

But now we're having mankind being being put on the earth. So God's remaking the earth a second time in verse 2. So I do it. I don't I don't know where you get that. Just I mean like I'm looking at all this white space in between the words and I don't see it there.

Yeah, I don't know. Oh, yeah is interesting because.

I.

Was talking in that same form Today like bringing up like you you wouldn't put a gap there in Genesis 1. Talking to this particular guy. I was like, so why would you put a gap in between verses 9 and 10 of Zechariah 9?

You don't you don't need to put a gap in places when there's there's no gap there. You look at the context you look at The words that are in front of you and if there's something if there are some words there that point to it.

No, maybe we we have that discussion, but there's nothing here to suggest that there's anything other than. It's saying hey, this is a big topic in the beginning. God did it. Yeah. How did he do it? Here's how I did it and That's that's how I would take it.

So the gap theory is that there's a big bunch of time. So that's how it would look like. Stars are Billions of light-years away because they are they were made that long ago. In between the time of of the first creation and in a second creation.

That's yeah, so I don't know we think about that one Robert.

Two creations.

Well one one creation two creation events. Some people go even further and talk about a third creation account in Genesis 2.

Wow, I don't I don't think that I've come across the that theory before the the gap theory was real popular.

In the earlier.

1900s.

Okay. Now I've heard of the gap theory, but I've not heard of that multiple different creation. Not accounts, but just multiple different creations.

Yeah, like like this this is uh, this is earth 2 .0 and One day Jesus will return we'll have earth 3 .0. Yeah. Yes. Yeah, I don't know and that's not all gap theorists. So I'm just theorized that there was a long period of time a long stuff to grow and spread out to where it is today so that's a the the material of the universe would then be billions of years old even though God, you know, he threw out the the stuff of creation and then he spoke into existence everything you see in the six days.

They would say that.

Okay.

You also have the the day age theory We've seen in Different places where time is like irrelevant to God. I mean he transcends it. He's over top of it. See that in places like as if in Peter what says a day is like a thousand years and a thousand years is like a day.

They'll take that same idea And run to Like say, where are we at? So verse 3. And God said let there be light and there was light and God saw that the light was good and God separated the light from the darkness and God called the light day and darkness.

He called night. And there was evening and there was morning one day. Let's say okay. That was one day. That was the first age of creation Where God made the light and separated it from the darkness no day is like a thousand years to God.

So some indeterminate amount of time where God made No, separate the light from the darkness in that age. Yeah. Yeah, they said well, they said here day the Hebrew word yom is Actually an age of time and they'll say well you say well, what do you mean?

It says morning and evenings like well, it just means the beginning of the age in the end of the age and.

Then.

They point to you got to go all the way down here to verse. Where is it? 14. Where it says I let there be lights in the expanse of heavens to separate the day from the night and let them be signs and For seasons and for days and for years so you see time wasn't even really.

The way that we was the days weren't defined until day four but what's really interesting about that is. You have God in Day one two and three saying evening and morning day one evening and morning day two evening and morning day three.

Then you come when you come to day four. It says let there be lights in the expanse of the heaven to separate the day from the night. Let them be for signs so this is going to signify The seasons the days and the years.

So instead of it saying that you don't know how long it was for the first three days. What verse or what verse 14 and day four tells us is that? God made the rotation of the earth and the revolution of the earth around the Sun.

The exact speed and distance that he did to To record for us how long that morning and evening of the first second third day actually were yeah. So it's it's like the fourth day of creation where he puts a sun moon and stars and sun moon and stars are a witness To God's time stamp of his creation.

You know, here's how long it took me to do this. Here's some planets that are going to scream out. This is how long it took me to do this time stamp. So I don't see where a day age theory really comes in now.

There are instances where the word young is Is not necessarily as literal as as an evening in the morning, but I don't see that here at all.

Right. You have qualified. Yeah, and when it comes to the gap theory when it comes to day age theory I can't help but think and I've not done my historical research on this. This is just me, you know.

Right off the cuff thinking. What would be common sense. It seems like they would come from something post Darwin post evolution and.

That's when you see him pop up.

Because they're trying to you you've got to have Modern science. You in modern science says there's millions of years. There's evolution and so we've got to come up. We've got to read interpret and see that in Genesis so therefore there's got to be this.

There either had to be gap or there had to be a day age theory. And so talking about the historical research on it. Yeah.

Well, what happened was people saw these theories they saw the science behind evolution. You know as all this stuff was coming out before evolution was even that widely accepted people were hearing that.

But there's there's hard science out there. That's telling us that the world looks and acts older than we thought it was much much older and that doesn't line up with the Bible, so they went to the Bible and Tried to read it in light of the scientific evidence that they had seen.

Instead of trying to interpret the scientific evidence in light of what the scripture says yeah. We got a cart and a horse type of thing. See their presupposition was that the science is correct. Then we have to make the Bible match the science because we believe that the Bible is true.

But we know this the science is true the science. We have to make the Bible match the science however. What I would contend is that they got it backwards that that Just because the science says one thing doesn't mean it has to be interpreted the way that's presented to you.

So you've got the genealogical record that runs or geological record that runs through like say the Grand Canyon. You got fossils and stuff like that. No, they're saying it's it's really really old you know look it's old you know radiocarbon dating all sorts of stuff and If you if you start from the assumption that The earth is that old you can come up with the understanding of no evolutionary processes that people have come up with.

But if you take the Bible as The account of how God has created the world and how the world that we have has gotten to us, you know through the flood. Then when you look at the same evidence those same layers of rock and sediment those same fossils.

You see that the same evidence can be interpreted completely Compatible with the biblical narrative. You don't have to throw away what the Bible has said in order to accept what the science says. You just what your starting point your presuppositions determine which evidence or which way you interpret that evidence.

And and I think that it helps answer the question as to why one of the reasons why? You we want to say what is defending a young earth? Why is it important? Well, that's that's one of the reasons because you don't have to throw out science and and have science over here and biblical interpretation over here have your.

Have your morals and your theology here and your science over here and the two can't mix. No, you don't have to throw it out and. The other reason is and there may be other reasons and and you maybe can add to this.

But another reason it's important to defend young earth creationism is because in doing so you're defending What I would consider the better or the best hermeneutic. And so therefore you want to apply that hermeneutic to the rest of scripture.

Theistic Evolution, Intelligent Design, and the Gospel

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Yeah, there's even more to it than that. Um, I Think well, let's bring up these other Christian ideas and then that that's where you see the the the problems with those ideas really pop up and it's really.

It's really big when you look at it in light of salvation and the gospel. There's some real big issues that pop up here. For instance theistic evolution some people they're just like well evolutionary science is Pretty much settled.

That's what everybody says. Everything makes sense evolutionarily so we're just gonna say that that the account in Genesis is telling us a Poetic version of How God created the world through the use of evolution?

So we don't have to try to interpret the data different than the atheistic evolutionist. We can just recognize that these are the processes by which God used to.

To.

Create his world. When the big problems with this is. That in evolutionary science you have a progression. From non life to life. Which could be explained by God. Giving life no to something. They didn't have life.

I mean, that would be consistent with with Christian theology. God gives life to things that are dead. That's what we believe about salvation. God takes her dead hearts and gives us life. But the problem you have.

Isn't that the problem you have is that those living things. Would have for millions of years in order to lay down the fossil record died and decomposed. Long before Adam and Eve and long before sin entered the world.

If you have death before sin. If you have sickness and illness before sin if you have basically all the miseries of this life before sin. Then what did sin actually do to us? No, it the Bible says very clearly to the wages of sin is death.

So why was her death? Beforehand, right? Well, I was one man. Right. Why was Cro-Magnon man in the Neanderthals? Why were they dying? No, and that's why you have to they have to come up with ideas of well Adam was just the first one that God gave a soul to there's all these ones over here was like.

But but it still doesn't answer the question. How did death enter into the world if there was no sin? Yeah. If the wages of sin is death if death is just a part of of life. Then what you know, what are we being saved from?

Yeah. I mean, obviously not just physical death, but also it kind of ruins. It kind of ruins gospel proclamation. Why do why is Jesus's death any more special? Than all these other folks that died without sin.

Why didn't one of those guys pay for our sins, right? Yeah, it kind of it throws it throws it way out of whack. Now I'm not saying that every theistic evolutionist denies the gospel. I'm not saying that they deny other things in the scripture, but it's it's extremely problematic when you look at things.

It puts the cart before the horse and it kind of up ends a lot of your really basic Christian salvation. And I would say it even leads to a lot of different errors and Um, even heresies somewhere down the line, yeah.

One of the things to think about too when you're talking about God God could have done things in a process, but If you think about it this way. Nothing or non life no matter how long the process is could never become life.

Not by not by any natural. Not by itself not by itself not by any natural forces upon it. No matter how long the process is it can never become life. So there has to there had to be. If God chose to use a process there had to be at some point.

That that line that spark where he that gave my intervention divine intervention.

Yeah, it had to be miraculous. Where he he caused the lightning bolt to hit the the primordial primordial ooze and make hit the first amoeba and make it start moving and reproducing and Make the dinosaurs or something.