Phil Vischer (VeggieTales Creator) Responds

After my post, Phil Vischer responded on Twitter. Many of his followers responded to his tweet with personal attacks on me, with many committing the epithet fallacy (where the arguer uses biased, and often emotional, language to persuade people rather than using logic).

As examples of this, consider the four following examples:

I’m sure such “logic” convinces you all I am wrong about standing on a literal Genesis (like Jesus and New Testament writers like Paul did).

But I was saddened to read this snarky response by Phil Vischer when someone commented about him possibly being “banned” (ridiculous accusation) from the Creation Museum:

It’s sad he would resort to such mocking. Actually, I would love to see Phil Vischer come to the Creation Museum and Ark Encounter. I would be willing to personally show him around both attractions, if he would like me to do that, and answer any of his questions.

I also wanted to make a correction to a false statement he made implying where my beliefs about Genesis originated. Vischer stated:

It’s the idea of evolution and millions of years being added into the Bible that’s new!

This is simply not true. The scriptural geologists, as they’re called, were defending the historicity of Genesis and a global flood a century before A New Geology was published—and they were using many of the same scriptural arguments we use today because God’s Word hasn’t changed! In fact, before the rise of uniformitarian (slow and gradual) geology, the overwhelming view of fossils was that they were the result of the global flood! Vischer has simply not done his homework—a simple search on our site reveals articles such as “Where Did the Idea of Millions of Years Come From?” and “British Scriptural Geologists in the First Half of the Nineteenth Century” that demonstrate young earth creation ideas aren’t anything new. It’s the idea of evolution and millions of years being added into the Bible that’s new!

And as for me personally, my father and I were dealing with the creation/evolution issue and what God’s Word in Genesis teaches when I was in grade six (at age 11) at school. The pastor of the church we went to started teaching evolution from the pulpit. My father was very upset and challenged this pastor using God’s Word in Genesis. Then at age 13, when in grade 8 at high school, we were using the latest science textbooks that presented naturalistic evolution as fact. My father and I discussed Genesis and that evolution did not mesh with God’s Word. It was because of an understanding that Genesis is God’s Word and is written as literal history that formed what I believe about creation—God created in six literal days about 6,000 years ago. Believing in a young earth is a consequence of what we believe Genesis taught. It had nothing to do with some Seventh Day Adventist, as Vischer claims. And I should know—I was there when my father and I discussed these issues. I held these creationist beliefs long before I ever read The Genesis Flood by Whitcomb and Morris. In 1974, before I had even heard about The Genesis Flood book, I read a small booklet from England that dealt with the issue of death. How could the fossil record have been laid down before man sinned when it’s a record of death, disease, bloodshed, and suffering? I saw this as a powerful theological argument against millions of years before I ever read The Genesis Flood.

Salvation is conditioned upon repentance and faith in Christ, not the age of the earth.

What Vischer and others like him don’t understand (or can’t or refuse to) is that a young earth has never been the main issue for me (or the Answers in Genesis ministry). To us the main issue has always been biblical authority. The belief in evolution/millions of years undermines the authority of Scripture. Over the years (as someone did in response to Vischer’s tweet), many Christians have claimed we tie a young earth to salvation. This is simply false! I have written many articles about this on the AnswersinGenesis.org website. Salvation is conditioned upon repentance and faith in Christ, not the age of the earth.

Sadly, Vischer and his friends (as seen in the Twitter responses) mock people like me and our AiG staff because we don’t believe in evolution, the big bang, and millions of years. And that’s a major problem with the church. Such compromise with millions of years by Christians undermines the authority of God’s Word.

I encourage you to read this article I wrote for Answers magazine, featured on our website in 2014, titled Millions of Years—Are Souls at Stake?

Dr. Jason Lisle, of the Biblical Science Institute, also wrote an excellent response to the misinformation and revisionist history Vischer posted to his Twitter account. I encourage you to read it: False History of Creationism is Full of Beans.

Thanks for stopping by and thanks for praying,
Ken