The Devolution of a Creationist

Recently a blog post appeared on the BioLogos website (an organization that promotes compromising Genesis with millions of years and evolution, and spreads that message to the church) written by a recent homeschool graduate who describes his switch from accepting young-earth creation to believing in old-earth, evolutionary ideas. He claims, “My shift away from young-earth creationism began not due to convincing answers from the evolutionist crowd, but because of the unconvincing and confusing answers of the young earth crowd.”

Question on Dinosaurs

The objection that supposedly first made Jacob begin to question God’s Word in Genesis was about dinosaurs. At one point he asked someone why dinosaurs weren’t on the Ark and was told, “There were dinosaurs on the ark, but they died out shortly after exiting it . . . This led me to think, why did God save them at all if they were just going to die out anyway?”

We actually have an article on this very question. The Bible tells us that God commanded Noah to take animals aboard the Ark “to keep them alive with [Noah]” (Genesis 6:19). There is nothing about God promising to preserve them after the Flood, and since Scripture is silent on the issue we must make speculations based on what we know of His character. Actually, lots of animals—not just dinosaurs—have died out since the Flood.

God knows all things (Psalm 147:5) and His ways and thoughts are far above ours (Isaiah 55:9). We also know that God doesn’t always choose to protect us from the consequences of the choices we make. God didn’t protect Adam and Eve from the punishment for their sin, and He didn’t preserve David from the severe consequences of his sins of murder and adultery (2 Samuel 11). In our day-to-day lives, God doesn’t suspend gravity so we won’t fall and get hurt or so that a suicide jumper won’t die. God doesn’t keep most people from having children even though those kids (in other words, all of us) will eventually die. It would certainly be a strange world if God kept people from experiencing the consequences of their choices. There would be absolutely no semblance of freedom. Of course, because of His mercy, God “has not dealt with us according to our sins, nor punished us according to our iniquities” (Psalm 103:10), and sometimes He will miraculously rescue us from the consequences of our or another’s choices. But this is the exception, not the rule.

So let’s apply this kind of thinking to the extinction of the dinosaurs and many other species. Animals are constantly going extinct from loss of habitat, environmental changes, human predation, and other reasons—because of the effects of sin, the curse, and the Flood. Should God not allow these creatures to suffer the consequences of living in a fallen world? Of course not. Sin brought death, and part of that death is animal extinction. Romans 8 reminds us that the whole creation suffers from the effects of our sin. Moreover, we do not believe dinosaurs died out shortly after the Flood. We have evidence of recent cave drawings of animals that we think could possibly be dinosaurs, which means the people who did the paintings would have actually seen living dinosaurs!

Accepting Man’s Word Over God’s Word

Now, for every one of the rest of Jacob’s questions and concerns in his BioLogos piece, there are good, solid, biblically based answers that are in harmony with what we know from observational science. A quick search of our website will answer all of his supposed objections to the science behind biblical creation.

What Jacob is ultimately doing is questioning the mind of God, thinking that his ideas are better than God’s. He did not become an evolutionist because his study of Scripture forced him to change his interpretation. Jacob became an evolutionist because he chose to accept man’s words over God’s Word. Sadly, many biblical scholars, instead of helping him trust the Bible, encouraged him to compromise with man’s ideas. And because of our sin nature, we are prone to accept man’s fallible ideas instead of God’s infallible Word—which is why we must be on guard in regard to the consequences of our sin.

Jacob also made an argument that we hear all the time: “I realized that God created the world however he wanted, and for me to limit how he could or couldn't have done it actually degraded and dishonored him.” Now we certainly agree that God could have created any way that He chose to. But the way that God chose to create is clearly revealed in Genesis! What can’t happen is for sinful human beings to decide how God created. It’s not degrading and dishonoring for us to trust God’s words in Genesis. As biblical creationists, we don’t limit God—we limit ourselves to letting God tell us in His Word how He created, and we don’t impose our fallible ideas on God’s Word!

What if Christians were to apply this way of thinking to other parts of Scripture? You see, science claims that people can’t be miraculously healed, so Jesus must have used natural means to heal people. Perhaps He gave them medicinal herbs or performed surgery to heal them. Now, it doesn’t matter that God said that He healed people miraculously. After all, we can’t limit the way that God can do things—that would be degrading and dishonoring. Now, this is silly, of course, and most Christians would agree—and yet this is exactly what many Christians do in Genesis. What actually is dishonoring and degrading is sinful, fallible, created beings thinking that they know more than the Creator and can tell Him how He did something—even if it completely contradicts His perfect Word.

It certainly is sad to see this young man turn away from trusting God’s Word and turn to believing in man’s opinions. We pray that someday he will realize the error of trying to conform the Bible to man’s word and will repent and put his trust in all of God’s Word—including the first chapters!

Thanks for stopping by and thanks for praying,

Ken

 

This blog was written with the assistance of AiG’s research team.