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FanofChrist
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Over the last two years or so, I've had much difficulty, as many have, with the evolution/creation debate. It is difficult for me to create a hybrid of the two because it seems challenging to make the Biblical narrative match up with 13.7 billion years of secular, scientific history. To make matters worse, I've always prided myself on embracing as many intelligent concepts and ideas throughout my life as possible, and most information sources depict YEC as something backwoods, superstitious, etc. If you read the Wikipedia page it even references how percentage of acceptance of YEC decreases depending on whether a certain polled group consists of individuals with college degrees. Only 22% of people with degrees accept it. Most individuals within the Catholic Church in this day and age seem not to accept YEC either, though I'm sure that's gone back and forth over the years with ongoing changing leadership within the Church (just for the record I'm not Roman Catholic though I do find interest in its history and statistics).
As a college student and person who finds immense interest in the animal kingdom, science and history in general and owns several books dealing with "history of dinosaurs," "history of extinct animals," etc. how can I compromise the two? How do I find harmony between evolution, which I find very interesting, and creation - which deals directly with our faith, which we are to base our lives on? When I say "harmony," I don't mean accepting logically theistic evolution either - that's not my goal. What I mean is, how do I find harmony with Biblical six-day creation which I honestly think the ancient Hebrews were trying to express in Genesis, and the scientific evidence we have in 2012?
Hugh Ross is one individual I find very interesting. He's not a YEC but he does believe, from everything I've heard and read, that God created life in various phases. Certain animals may not have evolved into others, but rather God created some, caused/allowed them to die out, and created new ones in their place. In his opinion the days in Genesis weren't literal, either, Ross being one of many that holds to that view. Within the YEC camps themselves, I find The Way of the Master creators (Kirk Cameron, Ray Comfort, etc.) to be influential as well as Shawn Karon, aka VenomFangX from YouTube. Coming from an upper-class Jewish-Canadian background, Karon seems like someone unlikely to hold such views but it's interesting to see. I do think it's funny when people claim that only those in the uneducated, rural American south hold to YEC views: Ken Ham is Australian, Comfort is from New Zealand, and Karon is Canadian. I don't see a connection between these three and the American rural south at all. All are very educated and knowledgeable, and though the mainstream scientific community would throw them to the curb any day of the week, they obviously can't all be put into a box or categorized as one homogeneous group of people. Ben Stein, for example - creator of Expelled (documentary criticizing the animosity towards religion in the scientific community) - is an educated American Jew from Washington, D.C. who lives in Beverly Hills now. But, stereotypes live on regardless.
Anyway, one thing that had confused me or seemed to be one solid shot against YEC was the fact that all of these remains we have dating back tens of millions of years of dinosaurs for example are the only remains we have that date back that far. According to radiometric/carbon dating, we have no rabbit remains that date back 96 million years, but many of dinosaurs. If all animals were created the same day 6,000 years ago, why don't we have rabbit remains that date back as far as dinosaur remains? Even if radiometric/carbon dating is inaccurate, these things should still be dated equally. So, I wondered...has there ever been an argument that God purposely made these things older in a sequential pattern as a way of sending a message? I know that many in YEC camps have dealt with similar issues, so here's the idea I had - ancient early "Triassic" reptile remains are dated 250 million years ago, Jurassic less, Cretaceous less than that, etc. Then, you have remains of later animals dated in even newer times, all the way to creatures like Australopithecus Afarensis dated 3-4 million years ago. In between you have all sorts of animals dated several million years ago in a sequential pattern that allows scientists to date humans as having showed up in Africa 150,000 years ago, before that the first existence of primates several million years ago, the first existence of mammals/birds out of reptiles altogether, reptiles from amphibians, amphibians from fish, all of these from the first brained animal the worm, the first living cell 3.5 billion years ago, the Earth forming 4.5 billion years ago, and the Big Bang happening 13.7 billion years ago.
The main YEC argument is that many of these creatures ended up dying in the flood all that time ago. What if during the flood God literally "killed off" - for lack of a better way of putting it - ancient amphibians first, then reptiles, then mammals/birds, etc. in that sequential order, and caused through whatever means necessary the remains to be dated in that order as a way of saying "Hey, I killed off first the animals least like you ("you" being humans) and worked my way up to humans last" as a way of sending a message? That He would protect us as long as possible but eventually we'd still be punished for our sins? Of course there are newer animals in which the remains are dated as newer than certain human or human-like remains, but maybe that was His way of saying He was destroying our "way of life" along with us by ending the reign of animals we were familiar with, along with us as well. As the two remaining versions of each animal moved forward after the flood, God created newer versions of these animals as a sign of the new world we were living in.
Some outside of the faith may call this a crazy conspiracy theory, some may call this someone grasping to try to make his Biblical views fit with modern science, but I don't see it as really that wacky in a world that has a lot of wackier people and things within it than this. Has this idea ever been concocted by anyone over the years?
Edit - As I think about new issues I'll try to come back to this post and add more. I guess the strange thing about the dating too, is that you don't have amphibians just disappearing once reptiles enter the history. Groups obviously co-exist every time a new group is introduced. Regardless, you could argue God "took out" at various phases during the flood different combinations of amphibians/reptiles/mammals, etc. as a way of each one of them representing different phases being destroyed, moving into the last phase before starting anew after the flood altogether. I would guess you could also argue many animals killed during the last phase of the flood extermination could have continued into the new world as many animals today existed, I'm sure, in their current form before humans existed. The reason for God manipulating the dating method to make thousands of years look like millions would be unknown, but maybe as a way of reiterating the importance of each phase/combination of reptiles/amphibians/etc. that lived during each phase.
As a college student and person who finds immense interest in the animal kingdom, science and history in general and owns several books dealing with "history of dinosaurs," "history of extinct animals," etc. how can I compromise the two? How do I find harmony between evolution, which I find very interesting, and creation - which deals directly with our faith, which we are to base our lives on? When I say "harmony," I don't mean accepting logically theistic evolution either - that's not my goal. What I mean is, how do I find harmony with Biblical six-day creation which I honestly think the ancient Hebrews were trying to express in Genesis, and the scientific evidence we have in 2012?
Hugh Ross is one individual I find very interesting. He's not a YEC but he does believe, from everything I've heard and read, that God created life in various phases. Certain animals may not have evolved into others, but rather God created some, caused/allowed them to die out, and created new ones in their place. In his opinion the days in Genesis weren't literal, either, Ross being one of many that holds to that view. Within the YEC camps themselves, I find The Way of the Master creators (Kirk Cameron, Ray Comfort, etc.) to be influential as well as Shawn Karon, aka VenomFangX from YouTube. Coming from an upper-class Jewish-Canadian background, Karon seems like someone unlikely to hold such views but it's interesting to see. I do think it's funny when people claim that only those in the uneducated, rural American south hold to YEC views: Ken Ham is Australian, Comfort is from New Zealand, and Karon is Canadian. I don't see a connection between these three and the American rural south at all. All are very educated and knowledgeable, and though the mainstream scientific community would throw them to the curb any day of the week, they obviously can't all be put into a box or categorized as one homogeneous group of people. Ben Stein, for example - creator of Expelled (documentary criticizing the animosity towards religion in the scientific community) - is an educated American Jew from Washington, D.C. who lives in Beverly Hills now. But, stereotypes live on regardless.
Anyway, one thing that had confused me or seemed to be one solid shot against YEC was the fact that all of these remains we have dating back tens of millions of years of dinosaurs for example are the only remains we have that date back that far. According to radiometric/carbon dating, we have no rabbit remains that date back 96 million years, but many of dinosaurs. If all animals were created the same day 6,000 years ago, why don't we have rabbit remains that date back as far as dinosaur remains? Even if radiometric/carbon dating is inaccurate, these things should still be dated equally. So, I wondered...has there ever been an argument that God purposely made these things older in a sequential pattern as a way of sending a message? I know that many in YEC camps have dealt with similar issues, so here's the idea I had - ancient early "Triassic" reptile remains are dated 250 million years ago, Jurassic less, Cretaceous less than that, etc. Then, you have remains of later animals dated in even newer times, all the way to creatures like Australopithecus Afarensis dated 3-4 million years ago. In between you have all sorts of animals dated several million years ago in a sequential pattern that allows scientists to date humans as having showed up in Africa 150,000 years ago, before that the first existence of primates several million years ago, the first existence of mammals/birds out of reptiles altogether, reptiles from amphibians, amphibians from fish, all of these from the first brained animal the worm, the first living cell 3.5 billion years ago, the Earth forming 4.5 billion years ago, and the Big Bang happening 13.7 billion years ago.
The main YEC argument is that many of these creatures ended up dying in the flood all that time ago. What if during the flood God literally "killed off" - for lack of a better way of putting it - ancient amphibians first, then reptiles, then mammals/birds, etc. in that sequential order, and caused through whatever means necessary the remains to be dated in that order as a way of saying "Hey, I killed off first the animals least like you ("you" being humans) and worked my way up to humans last" as a way of sending a message? That He would protect us as long as possible but eventually we'd still be punished for our sins? Of course there are newer animals in which the remains are dated as newer than certain human or human-like remains, but maybe that was His way of saying He was destroying our "way of life" along with us by ending the reign of animals we were familiar with, along with us as well. As the two remaining versions of each animal moved forward after the flood, God created newer versions of these animals as a sign of the new world we were living in.
Some outside of the faith may call this a crazy conspiracy theory, some may call this someone grasping to try to make his Biblical views fit with modern science, but I don't see it as really that wacky in a world that has a lot of wackier people and things within it than this. Has this idea ever been concocted by anyone over the years?
Edit - As I think about new issues I'll try to come back to this post and add more. I guess the strange thing about the dating too, is that you don't have amphibians just disappearing once reptiles enter the history. Groups obviously co-exist every time a new group is introduced. Regardless, you could argue God "took out" at various phases during the flood different combinations of amphibians/reptiles/mammals, etc. as a way of each one of them representing different phases being destroyed, moving into the last phase before starting anew after the flood altogether. I would guess you could also argue many animals killed during the last phase of the flood extermination could have continued into the new world as many animals today existed, I'm sure, in their current form before humans existed. The reason for God manipulating the dating method to make thousands of years look like millions would be unknown, but maybe as a way of reiterating the importance of each phase/combination of reptiles/amphibians/etc. that lived during each phase.