Most Adventist members today would support what is called Young Earth Creationism (YEC) - a statement of faith which says at the very least that all life on earth was craeted in a literal creation week less than 10,000 years ago.

However I recently learned about a 1994 survey done among SDA college science teachers where only about 43% would go along with that belief.

I have also recently heard about an SDA forum/session/meeting that took place in 2002 and 2004 where theologians and science scholars within the SDA church met to reaffirm the doctrinal statement. However that meeting also revealed that there was a lot of variance with that position even though a general statement of support could be obtained by some means.

Question for the group -- why in the world would anybody be taking evolutionism seriously these days now that some many of it's junk-science frauds have been exposed. (Most recently the Neanderthal dating fraud).

Plus we have Dr Dawkins, Provine, Meyers and Darwin himself all giving personnal testimony to the fact that Darwinism destroys Christian faith.

(And we have the witness of post-Christian Europe confirming the fact that once 90+% of your population goes along with Darwinism so-ends-the-church)

Any ideas?

Also - is there some place where Adventists are contributing to the support of the defense of Academic Freedom in pursuing Intelligent Design?

in Christ,

Bob

You might get more response to this thread topic if you post in the Origins forum, Bob.

For my own part, I'd just say that if YEC is true then we serve a trickster God, because the evidence sure *looks* as though the earth, and life on earth, is much older than that.

I also don't agree with the position that tries to tie the loss of belief in YEC with the loss of belief in God/Jesus/Christianity... except partly as a self-fulfilling prophecy. That is, people are told "If you don't believe in YEEC, you can't believe in God". So when the evidence convinces them that the world is older, they feel they have to leave the church.

I've seen this happen too often. We have to come to terms with (and teach our children) that belief is a choice we make, not dependent on being able to prove any particular set of facts, scientific or otherwise. What we believe about the Bible or about God cannot be proven in an objective sense. Our evidence is subjective, internal, something we feel. That doesn't make it less real or meaningful, but it does make it a different kind of truth.

First of all thanks for pointer to the Origins forum - I will go there for the science part of this topic.

But the problem with evolutionism is worse than simply pointing out areas where it is being propped up by junk-science (probably a topic for the Origins section).

1. Darwinist evolutionism exposes the fact that it is distinctively atheist when it comes to it's opposition to Intelligent Design. Remember that Romans 1 claims that non-believing non-Bible aware barbarians CLEARLY SEE the invisible attributes of God through the things that have been MADE and yet Darwinists claim a distinctively atheist opposition that claims nothing is "seen to have been made" regardless of the amount of time involved.

So that distinctively atheist undercut of Christianity (as Richard Dawkins, Dr Provine, P.C Meyers, and Darwin himself admit) becomes an anti-Christian argument that in fact (as Dawkins points out in the movie Expelled and in his book "the God delusion") is at war with Christians.

It is in fact a very religionist system that is the mirror or antithesis the Christian view.

As for God making the earth fully functional (as Adam was not created single-cell-zygote to preserve a 1 day old appearance) that too is probably for the Origins thread so I will refrain from talking about that point here

2. As SDAs we believe that the Bible is the Word of God, is accurate, is trustworthy and "can not be broken". In fact we believe that we are took keep "THE Seventh day Holy ... FOR IN SIX days the LORD MADE the heavens and the earth the seas and all that is in them".

So I don't see how we of all people can get out of that problem.

3. Third we have the problem of salvation and redemption. If in Gen 3 "man" is really some brutish colony of hominids where it turns that that one of them while sitting on his cave floor bashing in his rations of monkey brains -- suddenly "has a bad thought - and falls into the lost state" so to speak -- then exectally what are we being "redeemed from" because by comparison TODAY is heaven!

in Christ,

Bob

All good and important points. Mind you, all ones that have been discussed here in the past, so there may be some value in using the Search functions and reading up on some of those old discussions.

To address just one point: I agree that Dawkins' position as an atheist (I'm not familiar with the work of Provine or Meyers) is a religious position. But when he speaks as an atheist he is not speaking as a scientist. The fact that some prominent atheists are evolutionists does not logically imply or require that all evolutionists are atheists. There is a very large theistic evolutionist community.

(And that also leaves aside old earth creationist positions.)

The Sabbath issue is one we've talked about. If the 6 'days' were in fact long periods, phases in the creation, but God wanted a frequent rest and worship and reminder day, and commanded a 7 day week and a Sabbath, I'm not sure that command would be meaningless given that the days were not literal days. Others milage varies strongly.

I don't know how many times I've read that the evidence shows that the earth and life on it are very old. The selected evidence as presented by evolutionist authors certainly would lead one to conclude the earth is old, but how often do you read the evidence that the earth is young? Rarely will it be reported that the rates of mineral accumulation in the sea point to a young earth age, or that the rate of decay of the earths magnetic field is such that if it had occurred at a constant rate, no life could have existed here a million years ago. Have you read of the rate of slowing of the earth's rotation? Again, if it is slowing at a constant rate, the earth would have been rotating too fast for life to exist as we know it millions or billions of years ago. The rate and number of genetic mutations in human mitochondria point to a young age for the first man/woman. Radioactive defects in granite rocks imply they were formed quickly, not over millions of years. The presence of radioactive C14 in virtually everything argues for a young earth age. Not all the evidence is subjective and truth will be accompanied by evidence to support it. steve.

Fair enough, Steve. Lots of claims there, which we would probably need to take one by one. Again, the Origins forum is probably a better venue - I think I'm going to take the liberty of copying your post and starting a new thread there. That way the people who are most likely to be interested can find it.

"The earth was without form and void"

It doesn't say how long the earth stayed there before life was created. Also, aren't these the same scientists that once said that the earth was the center of the universe, and that the world was flat, because they "knew" it?

I take it an faith. I'm sure Jesus will explain it all to me in Heaven. I can wait.

All good points. Since I am so new here and still my first day actually - I don't think I have rights yet on the Origins forum -- but will be there soon.

In the mean time - one comment I would make is that the C14 argument even for Darwinists is going to be that anything 70,000 years old or less would have C14 traces in it. Your statement is highlighting the problem (for example) of C14 in the newly found "soft tissue" of Dinosaurs.

But there is another huge C14 problem for Darwinists. N14 becomes C14 through the addition of "cosmic ray" from the sun (so to speak) that causes one of the Protons in N14 to become a Neutron changing the atomic number to 6 and thus changing the element to C14. The rate at which that happens is called the SPR (Specific Production rate). At the same time the backlog of C14 undergoes beta decay and that neutron becomes a proton changing C14 back to N14 (SDR - specific depletion). The rate at which the C14 changes to N14 through beta decay is based on the half-life of C14 which is about 5600 years. In any case the problem for Darwinism is that after about 30,000 years the expected SPR/SDR ratio should become "1" - should reach equilibrium.

(Imagine a very tall barrell with holes drilled up the sides -- eventually as water pours in and the water level rises -- the rate at which water is spilling out of the holes in the sides will equal the rate at which water flows in and the water level will cease to rise in the barrell).

So that means that our atmosphere is something less than 30,000 years old.

As I recall the SPR rate is about 18.8 atoms per gram per minute and the SDR rate is only 16.1 atoms per gram per minute currently. So C14 is still in the accumulation phase - not at the equilibrium phase.

Bob

But Darwin, Dawkins, Provine and Meyers ARE speaking as scientist that "know what Darwinism is" and they are all speaking as scientist that USED to be christians until they took a hard look at what Darwinism was saying about the trustworthy nature of the Bible (and lack thereof).



My argument is not that all Darwinists are atheist -- my argument is that the Darwinist model is logically atheist and the proof is seen in 3 areas.

1. Notice the distinctively atheist position argued against ID by Darwinists. This is particularly noteworthy when you combine what they are saying against ID as compared to what non-Bible-believing barbarians (Paul's words in Romans 1 not mine) are said to "see clearly" without any acceptance at all of God's word.

2. Notice that testimony of Darwin himself as well as other former Christians - like Dawkins that testify to the impact this Darwinian model had on their acceptance of the Bible as "reliable".

3. Notice the impact that Darwinism had in driving Europe to a "Post-Christian" status. There is an interesting U.S survey that points to the difference between full acceptance of Darwinism vs something less than full acceptance as being directly attributable to Christianity in America.




Not sure what "Old earth Creationist" is. If you mean -- young life created in 6 literal days less than 10,000 years ago but "the rocks" were around for much longer than that -- then I agree that is a possibility.



Interesing idea but what does exegesis of Ex 20:8-11 show?

I tried that question on some Orthodox Rabbi's and they argued that even though their position is evolutionism -- they could not find a way to bend the exegesis of Ex 20:8-11 to anything other than the "yom" of 6 days being real days. "SIX days YOU shall labor... for in SIX days the LORD made" --

Same author, same text, same paragraph, same audience for each term for "yom" and codified in law -- not poetry.

I have yet to see anyone exegete Ex 20:8-11 so that the text is made to make the case that "yom" needs to be redefined mid sentence as Darwinism might need it to be (as if Moses meant to teach Darwinism to his readers).

Certainly we all agree that Darwinists NEVER frame the teaching of Darwinism with the words "SIX days you shall labor -- For in SIX DAYS the Lord MADE the heavens and the earth the sea and all that is in them".

I have yet to read that from any science text describing Darwinism as though that was ever considered to be an acceptable way to describe the Darwinist model.

Bob