Having Faith in Flood Geology – Dogmatic Assertions of Evidence

A comment on another site captures the essence of where I think Christians who have been told the Bible teaches the earth must be young are putting their confidence. Their confidence is placed in the belief that experts in scientific fields have provided them with not only enough evidence but overwhelming evidence that earth is young. This person is putting his faith in experts which, he admits, have bolstered his faith in the Word of God.

April 7, 2012

America’s Views on Evolution and Creation – poll results

The following image comes courtesy of Biologos.org which has created the easy to visualize summary of some of the most recent polling data regarding American's views of the origin of man. The questions posed by several national polling specialists are rather simple and many people clearly do not fit so easily into the boxes that... Continue Reading →

April 4, 2012

The “Good Creation” – Mimicry, Design, and the Young Earth Creationists Dilemma

Can you find the gecko in the picture to the right? Yeah, it is that brown leaf-like things toward the top of the image. I saw this image being used as the profile image for the facebook page "we CAN and we WILL find 1,000,000 Creationists." The suggestion of course is that such an amazing... Continue Reading →

March 19, 2012

State of the Origins Debate – Part III: Recent Genesis Books

One way of looking at the origins debate is by looking at the publishing scene. I have observed elsewhere that the last 20 years have seen more books published on the topic than the prior 100 years combined. The creation science movement has pumped out an astounding number of books and seminary professors... Continue Reading →

March 15, 2012

State of the Origins Debate – Part II: The Response to Walton’s “Lost World”

Returning to John Walton and his recent contributions to the Genesis debate: Previously I mentioned that I had picked up Walton’s book “The Lost World of Genesis One” again. I also have read his more recent book which is a more academic follow-up to that book entitled “Genesis 1 as Ancient Cosmology.” There have... Continue Reading →

March 14, 2012

On the Fringes of the YEC Movement: The Creation Ministry of Philip Stott

All movements have extremist and young earth creationism also has its own extremists that work on the fringes of the movement. In 1997 I had an experience that strongly effected my view of the age of the earth debate within evangelical Christianity and the reformed church in particular.

March 12, 2012

The Current State of Creationism in the Reformed Church – Part I

After a mental break on the issues revolving around reading Genesis 1-11 for about year the topic moved back to the front of my mind again about six months ago as I prepared to get back to a couple of larger writing projects that will focus on the age of the earth. As a way... Continue Reading →

March 11, 2012

Historical Creation View: The Garden of Eden and the Relationship of Genesis 1 and 2

What is the relationship of Genesis 1 and 2? Where was the Garden of Eden and what does Genesis 1 tell us about Eden? Continuing our series on the Historical Creation view of John Sailhamer proposed in Genesis Unbound (1997 and 2011) we ask about the nature of the Garden of Eden. The relationship of... Continue Reading →

October 23, 2011

Historical Creation View – Part 4: The Meaning of Formless and Void

I can't go into all the issues that Sailhamer interacts with but I will try to hit some of the ones that are most important in distinguishing his ideas from some others. Most of these will be explored in separate posts over the next few weeks. 1) What is the meaning of the phrase "tohu... Continue Reading →

October 1, 2011

Historical Creationism Part III: An Overview

Genesis Unbound (2nd ed) by Sailhamer (2011)

John Sailhamer calls his interpretation of Genesis 1 and 2 Historical Creationism. He distinguishes it from the Scientific Creationism which he sees as starting with the assumption that "modern science holds the answer to the meaning of the biblical text." A: Overview A brief summary of the Historical Creationism thesis of John Sailhmer is... Continue Reading →

September 27, 2011

Historical Creation View of Sailhamer – Part 2: The Issues

The questions we are faced when we seek to interpret Genesis 1 and 2. Before diving into Sailhamer’s book, Genesis Unbound we need to lay out a list of some questions concerning the meaning of Genesis 1 and 2 that any consistent interpretation of this text must be address. This is far from a comprehensive... Continue Reading →

September 25, 2011

Genesis Unbound: The Historical Creation View of John Sailhamer, Part 1

HISTORICAL CREATIONISM: A summary of the interpretation of Genesis 1 and 2 by John Sailhamer as presented in "Genesis Unbound: A Provocative New Look at the Creation Account" (1997). What follows is a fairly lengthy introduction and overview of John Sailhamer’s book “Genesis Unbound” (1997). The first edition had a small printing and was out... Continue Reading →

September 23, 2011

The Reformed Church and YEC

I have now been following the current creation debate intensively for a decade. During that time I have participated in hundreds of on-line discussions of the topic, have gathered a collection of more than 200 books on the topic and generated a library that includes over 50,000 pages of material including journal articles, copies of... Continue Reading →

September 16, 2011

Who are the people of AIG and CMI

Back when there was a significant dispute between Answers in Genesis (AIG) and Creation Ministries International (CMI) I wondered where the creation science movement may be headed. At the time I thought it would be interesting to look at who the people are behind these organizations right now and see if the backgrounds of those... Continue Reading →

September 2, 2011

Category: Creationism and the Church