9. Dealing with Young Earth Creationism – Is science really the issue?

Dealing with Young Earth Creationism – Is science really the issue?

This is the ninth in a series of posts describing my transition from young earth creationist to theistic evolutionist. In the first post, I described how Alan Roxburgh's 5-phase description of paradigm change describes this transition well, and I have been using his framework to shape this discussion. See the introduction for a list of all the posts in this series.

The fourth phase in Roxburgh's description of paradigm change is that of transition. In the first part of this transition phase I dealt with the arguments for atheism that had drastically diminished my faith. The second part of this transition phase involved dealing with Young Earth Creationism. This is the subject of this post.

Having grown up being taught (and believing) that the earth, moon, and stars are all 6000 – 10,000 years old, it was quite a painful and confusing process learning about how each scientific discipline paints the same story of the history of the universe. This is a story of immense antiquity: a 13.6 billion year old universe, 4.5 billion year old earth, and a convincing record of the history of life on this planet, showing that all life on earth has come from from a single ancestor.

Although believers in Young Earth Creationism invest incredible amounts of effort to provide “evidence” for their views, I had investigated these claims and found them extremely lacking. Not only were they totally wrong scientifically, but they bordered on deceptive. (I discuss this in a previous post) The final nail in the coffin came via a radio debate featuring YEC evangelist Kent Hovind. His incompetence made me embarrassed to call myself a believer. (I discuss this here)

In a future post, I'll discuss my interactions with the friends, family, and pastors who affected me significantly during this time. During this time, I had a lengthy interaction with one of my pastors (I am a member of a Baptist church). During our discussions he (and others) asked me to take another look at the evidence for young earth. One of the books he handed me was In Six Days – Why 50 Scientists Believe in Creation. As the title suggests, this book contains essays from 50 different scientists describing why they believe the universe and earth are young. (The full text is available here)

As I turned the pages of this book, I realized that this was a great resource: Here I had concise statements from 50 intelligent people who had rejected the scientific consensus on the the age of the earth. I could quickly determine how they had come to this conclusion, and by reading multiple essays, perhaps a common thread would emerge.

I decided to make a list of the reasons these scientists give for their personal belief in a young earth. But as I continued to read, I found this to be grueling; many authors gave similar reasons or evidence, and I was finding it difficult to tabulate everything. Soon I found two incredible resources, the first is an attempt to index every Creationist claim and give a rebuttal. The second is a Creationist's response to each item. Although I didn't consult it at the time, a third resource addresses each of the claims from an old-earth viewpoint:

Index to Creationist Claims
Creationist's Response
Old-Earth Response

Using these resources, it becomes easier to identify a claim, look it up in each index, and make a judgment as to its veracity. In this way, I was able to read each essay, tabulate the reasons given by each scientist, and evaluate the strength of the evidence.

A bit about motive: One might suggest that since I had already come to the conclusion that the arguments for a young earth were extremely weak and misleading, I would simply find what I hoped I would find. Would I simply see that there was a reason to believe in an old earth and stop there? Well, I agree that our preconceptions drastically affect how we perceive any argument, whether for or against our own views. I don't intend to try to convince you that I approached this exercise with an unbiased, neutral mind. That is simply not possible. I will simply describe my experience in investigating these claims. I invite you to do the same. If you come to a different conclusion, I'd love to discuss that with you.

As I read these essays, I noticed over and over again that the arguments these creationists gave were simply “reasons” that didn't stand up to any amount of serious thought. Claims like “The second law of thermodynamics proves that evolution can not occur” or “interpreting evidence is not the same as observation” are so easily dismissed, yet are so common in these essays.
It quickly became obvious to me that in order to be a consistent Young Earth Creationist, one must deny the basic principles of cosmology, physics, geology, biology and paleontology. These disciplines, using completely independent methodologies, have come to an undeniable conclusion regarding the age of the earth, and to claim otherwise requires a sweeping dismissal of all of modern science.

The real issue, however, is not science. The “scientists” of In Six Days don't dismiss the process of science because they have evaluated the evidence and have determined that it shows the earth is 6000 years old. No one would come to that conclusion without an external motive. That motive is the Bible.

In his essay, geologist Kurt Wise describes in an extremely instructive way what is really going on here:

Although there are scientific reasons for accepting a young earth, I am a young-age creationist because that is my understanding of the Scripture. As I shared with my professors years ago when I was in college, if all the evidence in the universe turns against creationism, I would be the first to admit it, but I would still be a creationist because that is what the Word of God seems to indicate. Here I must stand. [source]

Here Kurt says most plainly what all the others were saying: That it doesn't matter what science says, it matters what the Bible says. No matter how much evidence exists against a young earth, creationists will deny that it represents truth, and instead find ways to make science say what they think the Bible says.

In all my years as a YEC, I had assumed that scientists that call themselves young earth creationists were YECs because they had examined the evidence and determined that it agreed with what the Bible says. I was shocked to learn that in reality, the opposite was actually true; YEC scientists believe the evidence points to a young universe because that is what they believe the Bible teaches.

This realization convinced me that it was utterly pointless to continue examining evidence for Young Earth Creationism. The evidence would never convince me, because it is not the reason one becomes a YEC.

So, the next step in understanding Young Earth Creationism was to attempt to understand how YECs read the Bible, and to ask the strange question: Should I abandon science because of what the Bible teaches? This is the subject of the next post.

3: Enter Kent Hovind

This is the third in a series of posts describing my transition from young earth creationist to theistic evolutionist. In the first post, I described how Alan Roxburgh's 5-phase description of paradigm change describes this transition well, and I have been using his framework to shape this discussion. See the introduction for a list of all the posts in this series.

Discontinuity - Enter Kent Hovind

Discontinuity came very slowly. It began when I took a zoology course at Grand Rapids Community College. It didn't shake my belief in YEC in any way, it simply began to help me understand what evolution is, what it claims to explain, and why it makes sense. I remember coming home one night and telling my Dad that I was starting to see how someone could think that it made sense. He continued to wonder out loud "How anyone could actually believe that stuff?"

So, my scientific knowledge updated with a basic understanding of evolution, I finished college (electrical engineering) and grad school (materials science) without significant change in my faith; mainly because my faith had a very small place in my life. During this time, my god was not the creator of the universe, but a creator of music... I lived and breathed The Dave Matthews Band. You could delete this section of my life without effect. It's sad, but true.

When the music was over, I found myself at a Baptist church, becoming challenged to either make my faith a real part of my life, or stop pretending. I decided to do the former; to embrace Jesus as my savior. But I was again surrounded by people who believed that evolution wasn't true.

At one point, the evidence for an old earth came up in a Sunday School class I was attending. An elderly man, one I had come to know well in recent months, made the statement: "What's wrong with that? Weren't there rings on the trees in the garden of Eden?" This was surprising to me. This was the first time I had encountered a Christian who admitted that the earth might at least look old. As I look back on it, I am shocked that it took that long. In any case, the door was open to at least consider the characteristics of the earth that made it look older than 10,000 years.

In the following months, I read a considerable amount of Creationist writings, by people like Ken Ham and Johnathan Sarfatti. My intention was to build my knowledge and confidence in my faith; to equip myself to defend my belief in creation. The result of all this reading, however, was a growing uneasiness.

I was troubled by the seemingly complete lack of understanding of evolution. This is not the place for a discussion of the failures of YEC, but their statements repeatedly show either a complete incompetence in all things scientific, or an incredible lack of integrity. I won't make this judgement, but both options are detrimental to the YEC crusade to disprove evolution.

A typical YEC tactic is to present a barrage of statistics and "proofs" that the earth is young, and that evolution cannot occur. In my effort to evaluate and understand this viewpoint, I decided that I needed a better understanding of evolution to more accurately decide who was right. I decided to use my 45-minute commute to "take" an audio course titled "Darwin, Darwinism, and the Modern World" by Chandak Sengoopta. This helped greatly in gaining a correct understanding of evolution, but increased my uneasiness with the YEC arguments.

At about this time, I found on the internet a radio debate between Kent Hovind (a YEC), and Massimo Pigliucci (an evolutionary biologist). I was excited to hear the two viewpoints presented side-by-side, and was anxious to see a Christian (and a professional evolution "debunker" at that) deal with the evolution problem head-on. I completely expected for the Creationist to give compelling reasons why evolution should be doubted, and to show that Creation, as laid out in Genesis, was the most viable alternative.

If you listen to the debate, you will be able to predict what happened. Pigliucci presents an easily understandable, well-reasoned explanation of evolution, and Hovind presents an air-tight case for his own incompetence. Hovind made statements that I knew anyone who even attempted to understand evolution would not make. Statements like:

The dogs change to get big dogs or little dogs, but they don't change into cows or bananas or pine trees.

and

You think humans and dogs came from a rock.

Or when asked what kind of evidence would convince him of evolution:

I want to see a frog come from a pig.

Hovind made statements that show that he is either intentionally deceptive, or incredibly dense and stupid. I'll avoid making that determination, but I wanted nothing of either alternative. As I listened, I couldn't believe the shame and embarrassment I felt for believing the same things as Hovind. My expectations of Hovind slam-dunking evolution had gone down in flames. I was ashamed and disappointed.

This is where the second phase of paradigm change reached its climax. The old system wasn't working so well, and it scared me to death.

Now, to be fair, Kent Hovind is the bottom of the barrel. Other YEC proponents like Ken Ham and Johnathan Sarfatti do not act like children, and at least they pay their taxes. As I said before, I was familiar with these guys, and my entire YEC worldview did not crumble with Hovind's incompetence. But I realized that I couldn't take their claims at face value. I at least needed to look into their claims to make sure they were true.

So that's what I did. What happened, in short, is incredible [heavy sarcasm]: I actually checked these claims. It's embarrassing, I know, but this was the first time that I actually looked at the claims of YECs to determine if they were true. I was disappointed.

I have to admit that this was also my first time I had actually seen a lot of the evidence for creationism. Frankly, up until that point, I didn't really have a reason to read any creationist literature. I was content that someone, somewhere had some reason for me to keep believing what I had been taught since I was a child.

I've decided not to discuss specific creationist evidence in this post. I'm sure I'll discuss this in future blog posts, but I don't think that proving the inadequacy of the YEC position is necessary, and would only prolong this lengthy post.

So, this is how discontinuity set in, in this retrospective look at my paradigm change from creationist to evolutionist. My next post will continue from this point, into the next phase of Roxburg's description of paradigm change: Disembedding.

"Evolution... is the dumbest idea in the history of humanity" -Kent Hovind