The myth of the young earth creationist

A review of 'The Darwin Myth - by Benjamin Wiker

Wiker tries to be fair to Charles Darwin in this brief biography, and I think succeeds. (He's far more fair to Darwin than he is to those 'irrational' young earth creationists; the favorite whipping boy of all christian liberals. I have never seen a Christian liberal present YEC fairly and honestly. Never.) The book is easy to read, informative, and much too short. (I would have liked to have read a lot more.)

Quotes and comments;

27. Darwin joked to a friend that he would, after his voyage, come back [to his club] and "beat the best of them at telling lies."
- I imagine he was joking, but in fact I think he succeeded. In my opinion (not Wiker's) he was the greatest liar of his day.
- Darwin had been a member of the Glutton club. (He was a spoiled rich kid in other words.)

65. After he'd formulated 'his' theory of evolution, Darwin wrote; "heaven knows if this agrees with nature."
- We see here that Evolution (M2M) is a product of Rationalism. i.e. you invent a theory, and then go out and look for data you can claim is evidence for the theory.

166. The claim YE creationists are irrational is simple false. If Wiker doesn't even know this much he shouldn't speak of what which he knows not. (Is Jonathan Sarfati irrational? is Ken Gentry? James Jordan? etc. Look at the writers on creation.com) It's sad that he would speak in such abusive terms. The fact a person doesn't agree with you doesn't make them irrational. Was Marx irrational because he denied Adam Smith? Was Mises irrational because he denied Marx. This is little more than the ad hominem argument. (One wonders what he means by irrational; he doesn't bother to tell us. The common meaning of reason (rational) is logic; to be logical. There's nothing illogical about the reasoning applied by YE creationists. His meaning can only be that YEC denies what he takes to be a 'well established fact'. But the whole point of the disagreement is over what we mean by e. and then over whether that's true. It's one thing to be mistaken (we all are with regards to some things) and another to be irrational. And who is to say? Is the majority always right? Is that the game he wants to play? (I might say that there are ye creationists who claim to believe in evolution. They rarely define E. either.) [3.]

- The thing that frustrates me (big time) is the Christian liberals use the word E. in so many different ways. Apart from being deceitful, this isn't scientific; in fact it's the antithesis of the scientific approach. (Our day has gone overboard in its pursuit of classification, but classification is a hallmark of science.) To use the word e. in many conflicting ways leads to all kinds of misunderstanding and needless conflict. It's a sign this debate is still in a 'primitive' stage of development. (I see no hope of this changing any time soon, as e.s love this confusion of the term. ie. if you deny e. they will bring up some minor variation and claim this is evolution. If you acknowledge such a variation happens you're called an E. denier. Not only do E.s love the conflation of terms, they deliberately encourage it and propagate it. Evolution must be the most misused word in the language.)

- Wiker claims that 'well established facts' must trump 'strict literalist' interpretations of scripture. [Who is he talking about? People like Jordan and Gentry, etc. have very sophisticated (multi-layered) models of scriptural interpretation.]This sounds plausible to many, but what does it mean? He never defines well established facts. Geocentrism was a well established 'fact' for 1500 years. (one could add many examples; such as the eternality of the universe) He believes in e. he tells us. This makes E. one of his 'well established facts'. He apparently can't imagine it being wrong. He conveniently neglects to define this well established fact. (Is he talking about so called micro-evolution (variation within kinds) or is he referring to m2m evolution? is he talking about an e. that is not 'directed' by god? or of an e. that is directed by god? (and in what ways.) We're given no idea what version (and there are many) he believes in. I don't get any grasp on what he's talking about. Anyone who denies e. is a fact is both irrational and a fideist. (These of course are the claims of the humanist critics of Christianity; and were developed as critiques by the German Idealists Wiker skewers in his book.)

- there is a tone of scientific triumphalism in this book. ie. the idea 'science' must trump scripture. i.e. if our biblical interpretation is found to be at odds with the proclamations of science it has to be wrong. (He does admit scientists are sometimes wrong; but apparently he has the gift of knowing when this is true, and when it's not.)

- he presents a false picture of YEC. Christians who oppose e. are doing so solely because they see (correctly) the atheistic implications. (He ignores the arguments against evolution theory, and thus portrays YEC as a caricature.

169. Wiker stresses the 'uniqueness of man's intellectual and moral abilities, but he doesn't tell us how man has come to have these abilities. Since he's an e. I assume it was via the e. process. If this is the case I don't see how these capacities (the result of random chance and the struggle for existence) can be meaningful, or in any way absolute.

- Though I favor the young earth position, I don't know how the world and man originated. I see no evidence anyone else does either. Because we want to know a thing, doesn't mean we are capable of knowing it. I doubt if we will ever know these things. We weren't there, and imagination will never carry us there. Our imaginings of the origins are far more likely to lead us astray than lead us to the truth. The truth about origins is simply unknowable. (This should lead us to humility, not to the reviling of those who disagree with us. Such behavior stems from pride.)

- many of us are intensely interested in the origins debate, but in the final analysis I don't think it's a subject that has much relevance or importance. (At least not to science or technology.) The world could get along just fine if there was no such debate, or no interest in it. In our day the origins issue has become (sadly) political. (As has most of social life; as needs be if people adopt Socialism.) Evolution has become an accepted form of anti-christian bias. The main reason e. enthusiasts (like P Meyers) are so big on evolution is that they can use it as an attack on Christianity. The e. papers I see are incredibly boring (not to mention unreadable, and well nigh incomprehensible) and of interest to almost no one who doesn't have a financial interest in the theory.

- one wishes people were willing to be honest about the subject, but they're clearly in no mood to do so. One can hope this will one day (before the sun goes out) change, and people will be willing to discuss the issue fairly, openly, and honestly.

Notes;
1. As there are more than one version of the evolutionary model, so there are more than one young earth model. (Arthur Custance combines old earth and young earth models. He starts off with an old universe, and then adds to that the basic Genesis position. i.e. six thousand or so years ago, God created the animals and mankind on a planet four billion years old, that had evolved to a point of being 'suitable' or ready for living forms.)
2. A problem for the old earth position is that Jesus clearly seemed to be a young earth creationist. Liberals get around this by saying, that in his earthly nature he didn't know any better than to accept the 'Jewish' fables as truth. (One problem with this is that it requires God the Father to let the Son appear like an ignorant fool, and to encourage people to believe in fallacious stories.)
3. 'Life’s built-in ability to adapt and diversify looks like Darwinian evolution, but it is not. Darwin’s theory of speciation via natural selection of natural variation is correct in principle, but it cannot be extrapolated to universal ancestry.
What we see instead is different kinds of organisms having been designed for different kinds of lifestyles, with enormous potential for diversification built-in at the beginning, but with time this potential for diversification has become depleted by selection and degraded by mutations so that we are now rapidly heading towards extinction. Intelligent design and rapid decay point to recent Creation and Fall, as the Bible tells us.' - 'How life Works' an essay by Alex Williams [Creation.com/2008]
- There are people who refer to themselves as young earth creationists who are more forthright in saying they accept evolution. (e.g. Todd C. Wood)
4. My respect for the Bible doesn't allow me to reject the young earth position in any outright manner. I believe the young earth position has to be taken seriously as an option. It's true that some evidence against its veracity seems insurmountable (e.g. size of the universe) but this is also true of materialism (e.g. the origin of matter, and the origin of life problems).