Intelligent Design, Modern Science

1
Intelligent Design, Modern Science Your
Grandchildrens Future

• Will the Bible be relevant in 2050?
• Will Darwinism be relevant in 2050?

2
ID Blog This Week

• See link to Ray Williams blog proposing that the
  PCA adopt the Analogical Day view
• Mentioned in byFaithonline.org email by Dominic
  Acquila that many of us get

3
The Four Accepted Views

• Six contiguous 24 hour days (144 hours)
• God created the world in 144 hours about 10,000
  to 100,000 years ago (aka Calendar Day view)
• Day-Age
• The six days of Genesis correspond to geological
  ages observed in nature
• Framework
• Genesis 1 2 provide a literary framework do
  not provide a chronology of Gods work in
  creation
• Analogical
• The six days are Gods workdays (of undermined
  length) and are analogous to mans 6 days of work
  followed by the seventh day of Sabbath

4
Day Age View

• Summary of the View
• The events of Genesis 1 2 occurred over a long
  period of time
• The Bible uses Hebrew yom to mean other than 24
  hours
• Example And these are the generations of the
  heavens and the earth in the day when the Lord
  God made the heavens and the earth (Gen 24).

5
Day Age View

• Summary of the View
• The six days of Genesis are to be associated with
  geologic ages discovered by earth sciences
• Gods creation was by both providence
  supernatural intervention in each age (day)
• Creation was progressive, each age being
  perfected by God in the succeeding age

6
Day Age View

• Variations of the View
• Intermittent-Day view
• The Genesis days are indeed 24 hours long
• Between each day there were many millions of
  years (each age)
• Schroeder View (to be considered under Calendar
  Days) can also be view as a day-age approach

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Day Age View

• Strengths of the View
• Aligns with scientific findings that claim an old
  earth and old universe
• Doesnt require an appearance of age, and thus
  doesnt suggest a divine deceiver (or Satan as
  author of fossils)
• Doesnt impose our human concept of time on God,
  as Scripture says With the Lord a day is like a
  thousand years, and a thousand years are like a
  day (2 Peter 38)

8
Day Age View

• Strengths of the View
• Has been held by theological giants
• B.B. Warfield, J. Gresham Machen, E. J. Young,
  Charles Hodge, A.A. Hodge
• Provides better explanation for Day 4
• Narrative from the vantage point of earth
• Sun created on Day 1, but clouds hid from view
  until Day 4

9
Day Age View

• Challenges to the View
• Seems to require overlapping day-ages, else how
  would vegetation on Day 3 be able to survive for
  a long period without birds/insects created on
  Day 5?
• But overlapping days dont appear in the Genesis
  text
• Geologic dating doesnt line up very well with
  the Biblical order
• Example vegetation in Day 3 prior to sunlight in
  Day 4

10
Day Age View

• Challenges to the View
• Most frequent use of yom is 24-hour day
• Genealogies in Genesis 5 11 have to be
  interpreted with gaps
• Initial creatures of every kind would have to
  have an appearance of age
• Day-age view seen as reaction to Darwinism

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Six Calendar Day View

• Summary of the View
• The events of Genesis 1 2 occurred in 6,
  contiguous, 24-hour days 144 hours
• Usually associated with a young earth, the
  earth is about 6000 - 10,000 years old
• Usually associated with a world-wide flood at the
  time of the Biblical Noah

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Six Calendar Day View

• Variations of the View
• Gap / Catastrophe / Restoration
• God created a perfect world in Gen. 11 after
  which vast time passed, evolution occurred, etc.
• Satan destroyed the Earth in Gen. 12
• God recreated it in 144 contiguous hours

13
Six Calendar Day View

• Variations of the View
• Appearance of Age
• God created the world in 144 hours 10,000 years
  ago but appearing old radioactive elements in
  rocks, fossils in sediments, light on the way
  from stars, etc.

14
Six Calendar Day View

• Strengths of View
• Maintains plain reading of the text
• Hebrew word for day is yom, which most
  frequently means 24-hour day in the Biblical
  text
• Maintains that Genesis is historical and factual
• Consistent with doctrine of inerrant inspiration
  by Holy Spirit

15
Six Calendar Day View

• Strengths of View
• Held by a vast majority of the Westminster
  Divines
• Authors of the Westminster Confession of Faith
• Note, however, they use the term in the space of
  six days Scripture rather than 24 hour days
• Addition of (universal) Flood geology provides
  explanation for fossils, geological features of
  the earth

16
Six Calendar Day View

• Challenges to the View
• Conflicts with widely held scientific views that
  Earth is 4 billion years old, and the universe is
  10 - 15 billion years old
• Radioactive dating a well established technique
  that dates rocks fossils at ages far in excess
  of 10,000 years
• Elegant cosmological theory explains stellar
  evolution over billions of years in which
  terrestrial abundance of elements is explained

17
Six Calendar Day View

• Challenges to View
• Alternate views employ linguistic techniques that
  suggest that yom is not limited to 24 hours
• Use of pitch by Noah suggests old age of Earth
  (Gen. 614)
• Pitch is formed from the decay of plants
  animals in the same process that forms petroleum
• Pitch was found before after the flood in the
  same place (Mesopotamia)

18
Six Calendar Day View

• Challenges to View
• Creation of sun moon on Day 4 seems to imply
  non-chronological account since a sun is
  necessary for a solar day
• But defenders of view note that God could have
  provided another source for light on Day 1 and
  still used solar days as His interval for
  measuring the passage of time

19
Six Calendar Day View

• Attempted Harmonization
• Gerald Schroeder Israeli physicist
• Because of the relativity of time in Einsteins
  relativity theory, 5800 years of universe time
  would be equivalent to 15.0000058 billion years
  of earth time
• Since God would act in universe time up to
  Adams creation, Gods six days would equal 15
  billion earth years

20
Six Calendar Day View

• Another Harmonization
• Velocity of Light Not Always a Constant
• If velocity of light was much higher 10,000 years
  ago than we see it today, then the age of the
  universe wouldnt be as old we think
• Interestingly enough, there have been several
  recent scientific papers in cosmology attempting
  to explain big bang features using such an
  approach in place of inflation theory, (in
  which the universe expands very rapidly
  immediately after the big bang)

21
Brief Note on Theistic Evolution

• Chief promoter in reformed circles is Howard
  Van Till Fully Gifted Creation
• God has so generously gifted the creation with
  the capabilities for self-organization and
  transformation that an unbroken line of
  evolutionary development from nonliving matter to
  the full array of existing life-forms is not only
  possible but has in fact taken place

22
Brief Note on Theistic Evolution

• Basically adopts the principles of materialist
  naturalism but calls it methodological
  naturalism
• Done to avoid God-of-the-gaps
• Generally rejects a historical Adam Eve in
  favor of full neo-Darwinism
• Stinging criticism from Phillip Johnson
• TEs want their cake and eat it too, i.e., retain
  tenure in the academy which is thoroughly
  atheistic, but remain theists in their personal
  life

23
Brief Note on Theistic Evolution

• Firmly disagrees with the Intelligent Design
  movement
• Informed scientific judgement is best done by
  people whose professional training and experience
  is in the natural sciences
• Or translated Phil Johnson (law professor) keep
  off our turf!
• Rebuttal (Walter Bradley) macro-evolution does
  not account scientifically for the infusion of
  information necessary for life (the genetic DNA
  code)

24
Old Earth vs Young Earth Controversies

• Within the community of those who accept
  Intelligent Design, there is a difference of
  opinion over the age of the earth/universe
• Within the evangelical community there is a
  difference of opinion as well

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Where People Stand
Organization YEC OEC Philosophy
Discovery Institute (DI) www.arn.org Both Non-religious big tent focus on education, politics.
Reasons to Believe (RTB) (Hugh Ross) www.reasons.org OEC Proactively evangelical Christian creation model based on Big Bang cosmology
Answers in Genesis (AIG) www.answersingenesis. org (Ken Ham) YEC Proactively evangelical Christian creation model based on Calendar Day view of Genesis 12
Institute for Creation Research (Henry Morris) www.icr.org (ICR) YEC Proactively evangelical Christian creation model based on Calendar Day view of Genesis 12
YEC Young Earth Creationist. OEC Old Earth
Creationist
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Within the Evangelical Community

• Calendar Day view the most widely held
• YEC view the usual view taught in Christian
  schools, home-schooling materials, etc.
• In some unfortunate cases, YECers have challenged
  authenticity of OECers Christian faith
• OECers have criticized the unscientific
  interpretations of YECers explanations of
  scientific data

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Old-Earth Creationism A Heretical Belief ? GREG
MOORE (Seattle Chapter, Reason to Believe) Ken
Ham is an ardent young-earth creationist. As
president of Answers in Genesis, he generates a
steady stream of articles critiquing the
old-earth view. Although I disagree with most of
his assertions, I respect his right to express
them. However, Hams article, The god of an old
earth, crosses the line of amicable debate. By
declaring the god of an old earth cannot be the
God of the Bible and the god of an old earth
destroys the Gospel, he is accusing old-earth
creationists of heresy. Disagreements in the body
of Christ are inevitable. And history has shown
debate in the church can be edifying and unifying
when it is conducted properly. This requires
focusing on the things that unite us and avoid
passing judgment on nonessential matters (Romans
141). But, that is not the spirit of Hams
paper. By claiming old-earth creationism violates
orthodox Christian teachings, he seeks to
denigrate and marginalize it. That only serves to
divide faithful Christians and prevent them from
having fellowship together.
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Scientific Arguments

• OEC vs YEC controversies include such items as
• Radioactive dating
• Formation of the Grand Canyon (global flood vs
  long ages of erosion by the Colorado River)
• Interpretation of the red shift in astronomy
• Fossil record, and many others..
• We do not have time to do justice to these issues
  in this class if you are interested please email
  me to discuss an advanced ID class to be held
  at some future time

29
RTBs criticism of ID

• Winning the argument for design without
  identifying the designer yields, at best, a
  sketchy origins model. Such a model makes little
  if any positive impact on the community of
  scientists and other scholars. Such a model does
  not lend itself to verification, nor can it make
  specific, credible predictions. On both counts,
  scholars, particularly scientists, would be
  reluctant to acknowledge the concepts viability
  and give it serious attention. Nor does this
  approach offer them spiritual direction.
• Extracted from More than Intelligent Design on
• www.reasons.org/resources/fff/2002issue10/index.sh
  tmlmore_than_id

30
R. C. Sprouls Change of View

• 1994 Endorses (on back cover) Hugh Rosss book
  Creation Time which takes an old earth view of
  creation
• When I ran into Dr. R.C. Sproul at a conference
  in Nashville earlier this year, I asked him to
  share the reasons for his relatively recent
  conversion to six-day creationism. His answer was
  simple Doug Kelly's Creation and Change.
  (published 2003) Doug Phillips, President, The
  Vision Forum, Inc.

31
Just to add to the confusion in PCA circles

• D. James Kennedys radio program recently hosted
  Fuz Rana, Rosss colleague at RTB, to answer
  on-the-air questions
• But Kennedys Knox Seminary had hosted R. C.
  Sproul as a professor!! (He no longer appears on
  faculty rolls there.)

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3 Views on Creation Evolution

• Anthology edited by Moreland Reynolds
• YEC Paul Nelson John Mark Reynolds
• OEC Robert C. Newman
• Theistic Evolution Howard Van Till
• Each contribution followed by responses by other
  contributors other experts

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John Mark Reynolds
Presently, we can admit that as recent
creationists we are defending a very natural
biblical account, at the cost of abandoning a
very plausible scientific picture of an old
cosmos. But over the long term, this is not a
tenable position. In our opinion, old earth
creationism combines a less natural textual
reading with a much more plausible scientific
version. They have fewer problems of science.
At the moment, this would seem to be the more
rational position to adopt. Recent creationism
must develop better scientific accounts if it is
to remain viable against old earth creationism.
On the other hand, the reading of Scripture
(e.g., a real Flood, meaningful genealogies, and
actual dividing of languages) is so natural that
it seems worth saving. Since we believe recent
creation cosmologies are improving, we are
encouraged to continue the effort.
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Conclusion from PCA Report
The goal of general revelation along with special
revelation is to know God, and thus enjoy Him
forever. He has given us rational minds that are
capable of thinking His thoughts after Him,
particularly as concerns His creation. Just as
the Holy Spirit illuminates our minds as we read
His special revelation, so His providence directs
the church of Jesus Christ to know the truth of
His general revelation. In the knowing, that
truth will indeed set us free. Until we know,
Christs Church must not be divided over what we
do not yet know.
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Conclusion YEC vs OEC

• There will continue to be an active (and
  sometimes heated) debate between the parties on
  this issue.
• What should parents do in educating their
  children on this issue who want to remain true to
  their belief that Scripture is inerrant
  infallible?
• Options
• Become convinced of one of the views teach it
• Go with the flow whatever is taught in the local
  church, Christian school, home schooling
  material, etc
• Teach the controversy expose child to both views
  let them decide for themselves

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What Kind of Designer is He?

• My hope is that from this course you have come to
  appreciate the Intelligent Designer of the
  Universe the Lord Jesus Christ all the more
• His incredible designs from the smallest to the
  largest entities in the universe
• His providential guidance of the discoveries of
  science
• His sense of humor in creating the ostrich
• And me.