The Highway Forums General Discussion Open Forum Paul on a Young Earth

The date forever tied to Bishop Ussher appears in the first paragraph of the first page of The Annals. Ussher wrote: “In the beginning, God created heaven and earth, which beginning of time, according to this chronology, occurred at the beginning of the night which preceded the 23rd of October in the year 710 of the Julian period.” In the right margin of the page, Ussher computes the date in “Christian” time as 4004 B.C.

I think if we could show people that Paul believed in a young earth, it would shut a lot of mouths who have a high view of Scripture.
Tom

those who do know the science are more likely to reject ID not on scientific but on theological or philosophical grounds. That is rich with implications.

Currently at the theistic evolutionary website BioLogos, Discovery Institute’s Stephen Meyer helps clarify this. BioLogos published a series of critical reviews of Meyer’s book, Darwin’s Doubt, and graciously invited him to reply. Dr. Meyer writes:

I have especially appreciated how the reviews in this recent series have unexpectedly clarified the nature of disagreement between proponents of the theory of intelligent design (ID) and the proponents of theistic evolution (or evolutionary creation) associated with BioLogos. I — and many others — have long assumed that the debate between our two groups was mainly a scientific debate about the adequacy of contemporary evolutionary theory. Surprisingly, the reviews collectively have shown that the main disagreement between ID proponents and BioLogos is not scientific, but rather philosophical and methodological.

In particular, the reviews have revealed that the central issue dividing the BioLogos writers from intelligent design (ID) theorists concerns a principle known as methodological naturalism (MN). MN asserts that scientists must explain all events and phenomena by reference to strictly naturalistic or materialistic causes. The principle forbids postulating the actions of personal agency, mind, or intelligent causation in scientific explanations and thus limits the explanatory toolkit of science to strictly material processes or physical causes. The principle of methodological naturalism is, of course, not a scientific theory nor an empirical finding, but an allegedly normative methodological rule, against which I have argued in depth, both in Darwin’s Doubt (see Chapter 19) and in my earlier book, Signature in the Cell (see Chapters 18 and 19). My colleagues have also argued against MN in their responses to some of the BioLogos reviews of Darwin’s Doubt (see, for example, here and here).

Recall that Darwin’s Doubt argues that intelligent design provides the best explanation for the origin of the genetic (and epigenetic) information necessary to produce the novel forms of animal life that arose in the Cambrian period. In making this case, I show first that neither the neo-Darwinian mechanism of natural selection acting on random mutations, nor more recently-proposed mechanisms of evolutionary change (species selection, self-organization, neutral evolution, natural genetic evolution, etc. — see Darwin’s Doubt Chapters 15-16) are sufficient to generate the biological information that arises in the Cambrian period. Instead, I show — based upon our uniform and repeated experience — that only intelligent agents have demonstrated the power to generate the kind of functional information that is present in biological systems (and that arises with the Cambrian animals). Thus, I conclude that the action of a designing intelligence provides the best ("most causally adequate") explanation for the origin of that information.

Now, one might have expected that Ralph Stearley, a paleontologist, and Darrel Falk, a geneticist, both of whom have extensive knowledge of evolutionary theory, would have critiqued the main scientific argument of Darwin’s Doubt on scientific grounds. In particular, one might have expected that they would have argued that either the neo-Darwinian mechanism, or some other evolutionary mechanism, does have the creative power to produce the information necessary to build new forms of animal life. Instead, except for raising a few minor objections about incidental scientific matters, both acknowledged that evolutionary theory has left the problem of the Cambrian explosion unsolved — i.e., that the mutation/natural selection mechanism lacks the creative power to account for macro-evolutionary innovations in the history of life.

As Stephen Meyer notes, the difference between ID and theistic evolution, as articulated by theistic evolutionists who are also scientists or philosophers of science, centers on an issue apart from the science:

Of the three reviewers, Wheaton College philosopher of science Robert Bishop was the least persuaded by DD‘s arguments — but, interestingly, he was also the most explicitly committed to the principle of methodological naturalism. Indeed, he objected to the thesis of the book precisely because it openly rejects (and violates) the principle of methodological naturalism.

Consequently, his four-part critique, by far the longest in the BioLogos series, said very little about my scientific arguments. (He did argue that I was wrong to claim that newer models of evolutionary theory represent significant deviations from neo-Darwinian orthodoxy. Yet, notably, biologist Darrel Falk’s review affirmed my assessment of these newer theories over and against Bishop’s.) In any case, Bishop focused his critique on what he called my "rhetorical strategies," giving particular attention to philosophical issues concerning the legitimacy of design inferences in biology.

In Bishop’s judgment, intelligent design flagrantly violates the rule of methodological naturalism — a rule that he regards as normative for the practice of all natural science because he believes (incorrectly, as it turns out) that "methodological naturalism is the way scientific investigation has been done since before the time of the Scientific Revolution." Indeed, as my colleague Paul Nelson pointed out in his response to Bishop’s critique, Bishop badly misreads the history of science. The design arguments developed by Isaac Newton — in the Opticks and the Principia, for instance �– alone contradict Bishop’s claims.

You sense that between the view of Stephen Meyer and Robert Bishop there is room for a fascinating and profound discussion — not so much about the science, though, as about philosophy"

Anthony, I hear you and agree. I think it is only fair to say that not all Christians who believe in an Old Earth believe in evolution; many of them believe in a literal Adam and Eve. I believe they are sincerely wrong, but....
I will also state that years ago I bought into an Old Earth as a fairly young believer out of ignorance. Mainly because a scientist from NASA came to our Church and preached on Genesis. He did not say anything definite, but he seemed to believe that the six days of creation were compatible with 'big bangs". I thought God could very well have used big bangs to create. Back then, I was not mature enough to understand some of the ramifications of this view. Similarly to how at that time I was a Dispensationalist simply because that was the only view I heard about.

Tom

I think it is only fair to say that not all Christians who believe in an Old Earth believe in evolution; many of them believe in a literal Adam and Eve.

Once he moves into his review of Enns' book Beale finds many a fault and points them out in painstaking detail. The 8 major points are:
1. Enns finds myth in the narratives in Genesis (creation; flood) that doesn't correspond to actual historical events. 2. Enns assumes the biblical writers were not objective in narrating history and recorded events in ways that lack correspondence to modern writers would record them. 3. Enns never details his understanding of Jesus' incarnation which is his model analogy for his understanding of Scripture. 4. Enns objects to using modern definitions of truth and error to evaluate Scripture without defining ancient understandings of truth and error. 5. Enns doesn't take his own advice to evaluate others' ideas with humility, love, and patience. 6. Enns' book is ambiguous at important junctures of his discussion. 7. Enns doesn't present and discuss viewpoints other than his own. 8. Enns caricatures evangelical scholarship by presenting fundamentalist arguments and making no distinction