The creationists at the time that Gosse introduced his compromise position said “yes” to your question about whether it was deception. And again, there are problems from a theological standpoint with God’s rationale for “creating with age.” What would that accomplish for him in his message to us? How would it square with other revelations of and messages from him represented by the scriptures? How would that square with the treatment of nature as a message from God represented in other places in the Bible?

I’m not saying that you can’t or even that you shouldn’t believe what you do. I’m just noting that a literalist reading of Genesis causes perhaps as many theological difficulties as it solves, and those are things you’ll have to deal with as someone holding this position.

Kerry, there actually is geological evidence of a cataclysmic event surrounding the black sea that involves massive flooding and the end of a number of points of human habitation around the time people suggest for the flood. This evidence suggests geological support for the flood narrative, though obviously such a reading is also open to interpretation (for those who want to read the evidence as proof of the flood, it would require the notion that the “whole world” in the account was hyperbolic or metaphorical).

As for your assessment that the Grand Canyon “could have been made in a matter of hours” or your argument that Mount Saint Helens produced geological formations in “days that looked identical to those that geologists say took millions of years to create,” there are difficulties with both positions. First, chemistry–which is a plainly reproducible and therefore verifiable science–contradicts both examples. Stone of the sort in the walls of the Grand Canyon dissolves at a predictable and reproducible rate. Second, the structures we see couldn’t have been made “in a few hours.” Erosion over time produces predictable structures in a given sort of stone that aren’t reproduced in sudden cataclysms. Plus, scientists have measured actual erosion in the actual valley over the years and have extrapolated from these results the formation time taken for the structure. Most do point to a cataclysmic release of water–in this case, many suggest the melting of the glaciers during the various ice ages–but even then, the stone decays at a predictable rate. So the only possibility that would reproduce the results we see without the need for a many-millions-year-old-earth is Gosse’s “God made it already old.”

As for St. Helens, the structures may look superficially like those that are ancient, but on a chemical and structural level, they differ significantly–again as predicted by changes we can observe and reproduce in chemistry (and especially those relating to nuclear decay–which I myself witnessed and reproduced in an advanced physics class in high school).

So no, these contentions of yours don’t appear in textbooks because the science necessary to undermine those views is hard to contradict. But of course–and this is the problem those original creationists had with Gosse’s view–creationism isn’t provable by science because it holds to different standards of evidence than science and has different strategies for finding and contextualizing that evidence. Those initial creationists believed that Gosse was selling out by trying to “prove” creation with science since they felt science was speaking an utterly foreign language that had little to do with faith concerns.

As for this issue, it’s one about which Christians disagree (as people always do about whether and when to read things figuratively or literally). The young-earth view–and especially that espoused by Gosse–presents theological challenges, but they’re not, I suppose, insurmountable ones. In either case, though, this clearly isn’t a salvation question and therefore it’s not something we should take very seriously in considering fellowship (and I make this claim because Jesus, for example, spends absolutely no time dealing with it, nor do any of the New Testament writers). So the question isn’t what we believe about the creation event–literalist or metaphorical reading, young earth or old earth, fact or poetry. The question is whether we can still come together under Christ and let such differences sort themselves out.

The love of Christ is the real creation–the real thing that brings light out of chaos according to the Gospel of John, and that is done not by human will but by the divine will. So the real question is whether we’re willing to let God be in control of this issue regardless of our personal positions.

Though I disagree about this issue, I’m proud to fellowship you, and I hope you’ll do likewise for me.

After Mount St. Helens erupted, geological formations were made in just days that looked identical to those that the geologists say took millions of years to create. You don’t read about those in the textbooks, do you?

I guess I’m not sure how it wouldn’t be deceptive. Placing apparent age in the planet would by its very nature fool people into thinking the earth was old, and God would therefore be complicit in deception.

What most young-earthers say to overcome this is that God did this to test people’s faith, but if this is the case, it causes further problems. Romans 1 tells us that the creation is a “text” to be read by all of humanity. It condemns those who have misread creation, worshipping and serving the creature than the creator. But if God created nature with a built-in deception–the appearance that the earth was actually older–then the “text” of nature would be untrustworthy, because it would seem to point to a meaning that would contradict the truth of God’s literal 6 24-hour-day creation (upon which young earth creationism depends).

In either case, therefore, God would be acting in a way that seems contrary to his nature.

When James Ussher, the Archbishop of Armagh, first proposed the chronology to which TimP is referring in 1650, he calculated the earth’s age at 6000 years by adding up the life-spans of the figures in the various genealogies in the Bible. However, many scholars of Hebrew and other ancient languages point out that the language of kinship used in the genealogies may not point directly to those of the next generation but may point to later descendents, leaving the possibility of single- or multi-generation gaps in the lists of who “begat” whom…

The particular flavor of young-earth creationism espoused by TimP was proposed by Philip Henry Gosse in his 1857 book Omphalos: An Attempt to Untie the Geological Knot. The science of geology had posed serious and mounting problems for young-earth creation, and many had abandoned a literal reading of Gensis because of it. Gosse, too, realized the undermining impact that mounting geological evidence posed to the young-earth view and sought to overcome it by making the evidence of the earth’s age also a part of its creation. His thesis was that Adam had had a navel (omphalos in Greek) and therefore bore the signs of an only apparent, fictional past. He posited that since this was the case with Adam (as he had argued), it could also be true of the whole earth.

Gosse’s attempts to create a middle ground that accounted for scientific evidence while maintaining a young-earth view was savaged by critics on both sides of the debate. The scientific side believed that the simpler view that held that the earth was actually old was more compelling, and the religious side couldn’t accept that God would be involved in the deception required by Gosse’s view. Met with such a harsh reception, Gosse did not publish further on his proposed view, though some recent groups of young-earth creationists have revived it.

For those wanting to know more about young-earth creationism and its reception, a quite even-handed article can be found here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Young_earth

It’s just a thought.

Genesis one and two (and other parts of the old testament) are poetry and stories meant to explain complex things to a people who didn’t have the ability to understand them at that time. Some of it is history… others its hyperbole and parable.

I want to describe the work of Linda Skitka who has done some very interesting psychological research on moral convictions (see: Skitka, L., Bauman, C.W., & Sargis, E.G. 2005. Moral conviction: Another contributor to attitude strength or something more? Journal of personality and social psychology, 88, 895-917.) which I think helps us understand what happens on Mike’s blog and why some people get so frustrated they have to leave the space.

Specifically, Skitka has uncovered three features of moral convictions, features that psychologically distinguish them from other opinions we may have. All these features are in play in this post. The preceding comments are a case study of Skitka’s work.

Feature 1: Moral convictions are held to be UNIVERSAL. If you have a moral conviction you feel, viscerally, that it is binding on ALL people. It’s not just a convention or opinion. We can’t agree to disagree.

Feature 2: Moral convictions are experienced as OBJECTIVE FACTS about the world. This is critical to understand. When we argue in Mike’s blog we are convinced that our position, if we are speaking about a moral conviction we hold, is just plain OBVIOUS. Like the nose on your face. Thus, if someone disagrees with us, it’s like they are claiming the sun doesn’t shine. I just doesn’t compute. Thus, we are left with the only other conclusion: Something is wrong with my debating partner (common diagnoses are stupidity, dishonesty or evil).

Feature 3: Infractions and disagreements regarding moral convictions evoke very strong EMOTION. The argument, if moral convictions are in play, isn’t going to stay civil. It just isn’t.

There it is, the psychology of PreacherMike’s comment section. I don’t know if we can escape the black hole psychology of moral convictions. If we could I fret our convictions would have to be watered down, and I don’t know if lukewarm people change the world. So I fear conflict on this earth (and this blog) may be our lot. Call it Original Sin.

I’ve written a lot of what I have on these threads because I’m afraid people won’t recognize shoddy thinking, self-aggrandizement, and factionalism for what it is. I guess I’m afraid that people aren’t very good critical thinkers any more. The fact that so many have taken my satire literally or haven’t seen what I was doing in my posts seems to support that view…

But I guess it just boils down to a lack of faith in both God and in my fellow creatures for me. It’s a hard thing to let go and trust when it seems like so much depends on the outcome. It’s a difficult test of self-control.

But I think you’re right. The way of Christ isn’t the way of endless, pointless confrontation. And clearly even he knew that not everyone was going to get what he was saying and what he was up to–”He who has ears to hear, let him hear.” At some point, people have to take responsibility for their own thoughts, reactions, and pronouncements. Thanks for reminding me of that.

Mike, I also really appreciate you. I know that you put up with a huge amount of grief from some of the folks who post on your blog. I know you must often feel hijacked by people with dubious agendas–like myself at times. Thanks for calling us to simple and important pleasures–baseball, funny commercials–for your respect for people of character–Andy Benton, people who live with chronic pain–for the beauty and importance of tradition–Wednesday nights–and for calling us to live ethically and justly–to think about the responsibility we have to one another in our churches, as demonstrated by that horrible situation at that Texas church.

What you’ve written about are all GOOD THINGS, and it’s hard to imagine how anyone could argue against them.

So Mike, I’d like to apologize to you too. Sorry for being so spiky with some of the people who post on your threads and for making what you do harder. Sorry for tweaking people when my efforts weren’t really necessary. Sorry for not demonstrating faith in your readers. What you do here is great, and I really appreciate it.

I used the term a few posts ago, so I’ll fill you in. Most of these people who buy into the “science tells us more than the Bible does” claim that the earth really is millions of years old. They subscribe to a theory that there were millions or even billions of years in between the words “God created the heavens and the earth” and “the earth was void and without form”. They claim that some cataclysmic event happened in that time period which made the earth become void and empty. How you get this from a verse that does not say that is beyond me, but they do (they also claim a very similar verse over in Jeremiah says the same thing). Additionally, they sometimes claim that creation happened through the method of evolution (i.e. God allowed species to evolve and form new species, thereby “creating” new animals).

A clear and simple reading of the Bible, however, tells us that the earth is about 6000 years old, or, in comparison to the 13 billion year old universe model, “young”.

What is scary is that it isn’t just the scientists on the other side of the church walls who believe this. There are MANY christians who believe this. As much as you folks dogpile Harding for being conservative, I have several friends who actually subscribe to the “old earth” theories, because they were in classes there where they were told that it wasn’t only possible, but likely! Hardly the conservative viewpoint, eh?