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Can
God’s Existence and Natural Law Morality Be Proven by Human Reason Alone?
Is It Wrong for Christians to Prove God’s Existence? Must Faith and Reason Be Opposed? Does a Christian Lack Faith When Proving God’s Existence?
A Critique of Presuppositional
Apologetics and Fideism, as Promoted by the Worldwide Church of God
Why should we
Christians believe that God exists to begin with? Why should we accept the Bible as the infallible word of God in
the original autograph (first manuscripts)?
Why should we believe that God created us, instead of believing we
humans are the product of spontaneous generation[a], random mutations, natural selection, and the
survival of the fittest? In short, WHY
should we be Christians at all? This
question can be answered in two basic ways:
1. By faith--blind
faith--alone. 2. By using human reason to support the tenets,
preambles, or articles of faith. Today,
the traditional Christian theologian who best exemplifies the former approach
is the Dane, Soren Kierkegaard (1813-55), while the latter is found most
classically in Thomas Aquinas (1224?-1274), the “Angelic Doctor” of Roman
Catholicism in the five ways he attempted to prove God’s existence in Summa
Theologica. The former approach is
known as fideism, the belief that the existence of God (or the truth of the
Bible) can ONLY be accepted by faith ALONE.
The creed of fideism was best stated in an extreme form by the early
Catholic church writer, Tertullian (155?-230?): “I believe because it is absurd.”[b] The opposite view, which could be called
evidentialism, was dogmatically stated
as Roman Catholicism’s official doctrine at the Vatican I Council in 1870: “If any one say that it is not possible, by
the natural light of human reason, to acquire a certain knowledge of The One
and True God, let him be anathema.”[c] Hence, given our belief in Christianity, we
can take two highly contrasting approaches to justifying our belief in it.
Now, in
the Worldwide Church of God and its split-off groups, wracked by controversy
over whether the Sabbath, Holy Days, and tithing are still in force, followed
by disputes over the nature of God, we may initially be tempted to say
Pasadena’s changes dealing with the general subject of Christian apologetics[d] are small potatoes.
We, being the pragmatic Americans (or Anglo-Saxons) that we are, may be
much more interested in what “works” rather than what is actually true. But it must be realized that Pasadena’s
changes concerning fideism and evolution are a major philosophical and
theological disaster in slow motion, for they undermine the foundation of our
beliefs rationally. For, after all, why
argue about whether the Sabbath is still in force, if you aren’t sure whether
God exists to begin with! Or, if
dealing with those who believe in another religion entirely, such as Islam,
Hinduism, or Buddhism, why should any of them care about what the Bible says
about God being two personal Beings (John 1:1) when they have no reason to
believe in it to begin with? Hence, below,
Pasadena’s newfound views tending towards fideism and a more liberal view of
evolution will be critiqued, while Herbert W. Armstrong’s (HWA’s) views shall
be defended.
First,
we should note HWA’s diehard “Thomistic” views on the subject of Christian apologetics. He strongly stated that God’s existence
could be proven, as well as the Bible’s inspiration:
But now I had, first of all, to prove or disprove the existence of
God. It was no casual or superficial
study. I continued in this research as
if my life depended upon it--as, in actual fact, it did, as well as my
marriage. I also studied books on the
other side of the question. Suffice it
to say here that I did find irrefutable proof of the existence of God
the Creator--and I found proof positive of the fallacy of the evolutionary
theory. . . . I had proved the reality of the great Majestic God! But my wife’s challenge was still tormenting
my mind. Already, in the evolutionary
research, I had studied Genesis. I knew
each of the world’s religions had its own sacred writings. Once God’s reality was proved, I had
expected to continue in the pursuit of comparative religions to see if any such
sacred writings proved authoritative.
Through which of these--if any--did God speak to mankind? Since I had to research the Sabbath question
anyway, and already I had delved into Genesis, I decided to continue my study
in the Bible.[e]
Have
you ever proved whether, as the book itself purports, it is the
authoritative Word of the Creator God?
Rather, have you not simply assumed, from what you have heard, read or
been taught that it is either authentic, or else the religious writing of an
small ancient Jewish race, groping in the darkness of human ignorance and of
superstition, trying to develop a concept of God? . . . A world famous evangelist [Billy
Graham?—EVS] has confessed publicly that he accepted the authority of the Bible
without having seen it proved. Even
though he had seen no real proof that the Bible is the authentic word of God,
he had decided to accept it as such on sheer faith. But the Bible quotes God saying:
“Prove me now herewith . . .” and again: “Prove all things.” This
evangelist apparently accepted the authority of the Bible because he had
“accepted Christ” and at the same time blindly accepted what those humans who
led him into the acceptance of Christ themselves accepted. Isn’t it about time--and the point of
rational wisdom, that you prove this important question once and for
all? Because, if the Bible is in
fact the inspired authentic Word of a living, all knowing, all powerful God,
then your eternity will be judged by it.[f]
Here I don’t wish to imply HWA was infallible, and
therefore these views of his must be
accepted. But the tradition of the WCG
in this area should be made clear, because in recent years the waters have been
muddied by various fideistic statements, or by views that concede too much to
evolutionists. This tradition may not
have been entirely clear to the laity either--I distinctly remember running
into two laymembers raised in the church, both highly intelligent, both of whom
were attending college (one as a grad student) who have made similar fideistic
statements. We should not think that
having a sophisticated theology involves embracing fideism or weak views on the
falsity of evolution. There are three
very helpful books by traditional Christians on this subject which show
equating naiveté with natural theology or a rationalistic defense of Christianity
is unwise: R.C. Sproul, John Gerstner,
and Arthur Lindsley, Classical Apologetics
A Rational Defense of the Christian Faith and a Critique of
Presuppositional Apologetics (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Zondervan, 1984); J.P. Moreland, Scaling
the Secular City A Defense of
Christianity (Grand Rapids, Mich.:
Baker Book House, 1987) and John Warwick Montgomery, ed., Evidence
for Faith Deciding the God Question
(Dallas: Word Publishing, 1991). With books such as these at our command, as
well as the rationalistic Thomist tradition in the Roman Catholic Church, we
should be able to see the wisdom and correctness of Mr. Armstrong’s approach to
Christian apologetics.
Alas! As in many other areas, Pasadena has been
departing from HWA’s position on these kinds of issues, and embarking upon
theological error. There are a number
of places where fideistic or more relaxed views on evolution manifest
themselves: Paul Kroll, “Who Really
Wrote the Bible”,” Plain Truth, October 1988, pp. 7-10; “Letters to the
Editor,” Plain Truth, February 1989, p. 26; Kathy Johnson,
“Footnotes--or Fakes”,” Good News, November-December 1990, p. 28; John
Halford, “Religion and Science Bridging
the Gap,” Plain Truth, July 1993, pp. 14-20; Neil Earle, “Eyeing the
Creation-Evolution Debate,” Worldwide News, February 1, 1994, p. 4; John
Halford, ‘sabbath: The Days and Nights
of Genesis,” Worldwide News, February 1, 1994, p. 4; Neil Earle, “The Battle Over Genesis 1,” Plain
Truth, March 1994, pp. 20-23; Neil
Earle, “The “Monkey Trial” Retried,” Plain Truth, July 1995, pp. 10-13;
Keith W. Stump, “Digging Up the Bible,” Plain Truth, July 1995, p.
23. Also, Dr. Herman Hoeh’s “pre-Adamic
men” theory will be investigated.
Paul
Kroll and the person (Hernan Herrara?) who replied to the atheist/agnostic in
the February 1989 Plain Truth were mistaken because they evidently
weren’t familiar with modern traditional Christian apologetics--at least
outside of what Cornelius Van Til and company have written. For example, Pasadena has intoned:
The
writer [the agnostic/atheist] said something almost no defender of the Bible is
willing to admit. His point is that
it’s not possible to “prove” the Bible’s God-breathed authority to
another person solely on the basis of rational argument. Something else must be in operation in the
person’s mind [i.e. the Holy Spirit as a result of being called--EVS].[g]
Actually,
as Josh McDowell describes, all historical documents can be evaluated by three
basic principles of historiography.[h] The military
historian C. Sanders called them the tests using bibliographical evidence,
internal evidence, and external evidence.
The
bibliographical test is based upon how many ancient manuscript copies of the
document exist, and how many years between the first copy being written to the
earliest manuscripts current existing.
The Bible ranks very highly by this test, especially the New
Testament. The latter has 24,633 known
copies in manuscript form, including fragments, and portions of them survive
from within a hundred years of its original composition. In contrast, only eight copies of
Thucydides’ history of the Peloponnesian War exist, and 1,300 years exist
between when it was first written, and the earliest copy of it still in
existence. Tacitus’ Annals were
first written about 100 A.D., but the earliest copy presently existing is from
about 1100 A.D., and only 20 or fewer manuscripts of it exist.[i] Yet
historians don’t doubt the general accuracy of these works (unless they are
heavily influence by post-modernism, in which case they doubt just about
everything). As F.F. Bruce pointed
out: “. . . [N]o classical scholar
would listen to an argument that the authenticity of Herodotus or Thucydides is
in doubt because they earliest mss of their workers which are of any use
to us are over 1,300 years later than the originals.”[j] The same kind
of secular reasoning can be used to support the Bible’s reliability.
The
internal evidence test involves checking how credible the written record is and
to what extent it contradicts itself or engages in self-evident absurdities. One checks how close in time and
geographical location the document was written to where the events it narrates
occurred. Since the Gospels were
written by eyewitnesses or by people who recorded eyewitness accounts, they
have a high a priori[k] possibility of being correct. Also, since they were written in the
lifetime of those who saw Jesus preach, hostile witnesses, such as the
non-converted Jews, could have attacked harshly any inaccuracies in the
Gospels. The non-Christian Jews knew
Jesus had done miracles, so as a result Peter could make statements such as
Acts 2:22: “Men of Israel, listen to
these words: Jesus the Nazarene, a man
attested to you by God with miracles and wonders and signs which God performed
through Him in your midst, just as your yourselves know . . .” If Jesus hadn’t existed, or hadn’t done
miracles, Peter wouldn’t have dared to appeal to the “common knowledge”
of the Jews that Jesus did exist, and had done miracles. Hence, the internal evidence test yields
powerful secular arguments for the reliability of the Bible.[l]
The
external evidence test concerns whether other historical documents or
archeological discoveries agree with the document you are presently examining
for its reliability. Here, the higher
critics have suffered repeated reverses throughout the twentieth century, and
especially so since the end of the Second World War. For instance, skeptics have doubted the existence of the Assyrian
king, Sargon, the last Babylonian king (according to Daniel), Belshazzar, and
even Pontius Pilate, the Roman procurator of Judea. Archeological discoveries have decisively refuted such
views. Likewise, some said the village
of Nazareth didn’t exist--up until the Nazareth stone was unearthed.[m] As for
archeology’s support for the Bible, the Jewish archeologist Nelson Glueck was
willing to say: “It may be stated
categorically that no archeological discovery has ever controverted a biblical
reference.”[n] John Warwick
Montgomery acknowledged the major area
where the Bible and archeology may seem to conflict:
[American]
Institute [of Holy Land Studies] researcher Thomas Drobena cautioned that where
archeology and the Bible seem to be in tension, the issue is almost always
dating, the most shaky area in current archeology and the one at which
scientistic A PRIORI and circular reasoning often replace solid empirical
analysis.[o]
Hence, the Bible has shown itself to be remarkably
historically accurate, which again is an assertion backed by human reasoning
using the external evidence test.
Fulfilled
prophecy could also be called an “external evidence” of the Bible’s
inspiration. The Bible’s prophets have
repeatedly seen their predictions fulfilled.
The destruction of Babylon (Isa. 13:19-22), Jerusalem (Luke 21:20-24),
Nineveh (Zeph. 2:13), and the Persian empire by the Greeks (Dan. 8:3-8, 20-22)
were predicted long in advance. The
destruction wrought against Tyre (to date) was also predicted long in advance
(Eze. 26:3-4, 7-8, 12, 14, 21), although this prophecy is not yet totally fulfilled. These predictions often use much detail, yet
are fulfilled to the letter, implying the writers had access to knowledge
unobtainable humanly. Certainly, their
reliability far exceeds that of the supermarket tabloids” psychics! Again, this argument for the Bible’s
reliability just doesn’t blindly accept its claim to be God’s word, but
constitutes external evidence for its inspiration and reliability.[p]
Now,
the writer of the Plain Truth’s reply to the agnostic or atheist
mentioned above implies that only those who are called and obey what the Bible
says can prove it is God’s Word: “His
point is that it’s not possible to “prove” the Bible’s God-breathed
authority to another person solely on the basis of rational or scientific
argument. Something else must be in
operation in the person’s mind. . . . However, the Bible shows that being able
to “do what it says” in the true spiritual intent is dependent on God’s calling
and on his spiritual power . . .”[q] Mr. Kroll
said in the article cited above: “How
can we possibly prove whether the Bible is the inspired Word of this God? . . .
The biblical formula for proving the truth of the Bible is simply to do what
God says. . . . One “proves” the Bible only by living it. There is no other way.”[r]
Fortunately,
this argument is incorrect. Many who
became traditional Christians (who likely were never called by God based upon
Acts 5:32 as applied to Sabbath-keeping) used to be atheists or agnostics. These traditional Christians were persuaded
by the rational evidence for God’s existence and/or the Bible’s reliability
before committing themselves to a Christian way of life personally. For example, Josh McDowell set out to refute
Christianity based on history and philosophy--and came back a believer. Frank Morison, a journalist, set out to
prove the resurrection of Jesus was a myth--but came back a believer after
carefully investigating the actual historical facts concerning it in the New
Testament.[s] Sir William
Ramsay, the famed archeologist, was an agnostic who totally distrusted the New
Testament. Due to actual field
excavations he oversaw, such as the discovery of the city of Lystra mentioned
in the book of Acts, he became a believer.[t] Lew Wallace,
who wrote Ben Hur, had been an agnostic and intended to portray Jesus as
only a man in this novel, but after his run-in with the famed unbeliever Robert
Ingersoll and further research, became a believer, and so described Jesus as
both God and man in this novel. C.S.
Lewis had been an atheist for many years, but his “faith” had begun to crumble
after having read George MacDonald, G.K. Chesterton, and various
romantics. Then a key nail in the
coffin of his unbelief was delivered thus:
But I
hardly remember, for I had not long finished The Everlasting Man [by G.K.
Chesterton which had made Christianity much more sensible to him] when
something far more alarming happened to me.
Early in 1926 the hardest boiled of all the atheists I ever knew sat in
my room on the other side of the fire and remarked that the evidence for the
historicity of the Gospels was really surprisingly good. “Rum thing ,” he went on. “All that stuff of Frazer’s [author of The
Golden Bough] about the Dying God.
Rum thing. It almost looks as if
it had really happened once.” To
understand the shattering impact of it, you would need to know the man (who has
certainly never since shown any interest in Christianity). If he, the cynic of cynics, the toughest of
the toughs, were not--as I would still have put it—“safe,” where could I turn”[u]
All these cases by uncalled agnostics, atheists, etc.
Choosing to become traditional Christian believers largely or entirely based on
the rational evidence for Christianity shows these statements in the Plain
Truth to be mistaken, for these people didn’t commit themselves to Christ
and His lifestyle first, and then see belief in the Bible as
rational. Understanding (of a basic
sort) preceded obedience.
The
writer for the Plain Truth in the letters section also said that:
The
article [by Paul Kroll] pointed out that the Bible describes miraculous events,
which defy natural laws. They are
events that cannot be duplicated in the laboratory; they are events none of us
have seen. There is no way to
demonstrate scientifically that these events occurred. How much less that they were from the hand
of God.[v]
Paul Kroll made a similar point implicitly in his
article:
You and
I did not see Jesus rise from the dead.
We never saw a highway-sized trench open up in the Red Sea except,
perhaps at the cinema. None of us have
gaped at a grotesquely withered hand and deformed arm being made like new. We haven’t seen God face to face. How do we know Moses did? Or Abraham?
Or Jeremiah? Or Peter? Or Paul?
Why should we accept countless miraculous happenings recorded in the
Bible?[w]
Two
philosophical mistakes are made in these passages. The first one is that scientific knowledge and historiographical
knowledge are not distinguished. The
statement “Napoleon lost the battles of Waterloo and Leipzig” is not a
scientific fact. Nobody alive today
observed either of these events, nor are they even reproducible, which are two
key parts of evidence for any scientific theory’s or law’s validity. These battles occurred only once in history,
and never will happen again, which is the nature of all historical events. By contrast, scientific theories deal with currently
observable, reproducible events that can be predicted to occur in the
future, such as rocks falling to the ground (as per the theory of
gravitation). History deals with
particulars normally, such as in biographies, while science deals with the
general and the universal, not the particulars as such. I can go out right now and drop rocks to the
ground to test the law of gravity, but I can’t go out and refight the battles
Napoleon fought in 1814-15. What is
past is in the past, and can’t be changed. Therefore, historians can’t be actual observers of events that
occurred before their lifetimes.
Instead, they rely on eyewitness or secondhand accounts of past events,
and check on these primary documents’ reliability before using them to write
monographs, textbooks, or other historical works. We can be as certain that Julius Caesar was assassinated in 44
B.C. as of any law of science, even though nobody alive today witnessed that
event. The events that occurred in the
Bible can be proven to have happened by the same methods of historiography that
we can prove Thomas Jefferson was the third President of the United States and
the author of the Declaration of Independence.
The Bible’s history and record of miracles, events, reigns,
personalities, etc. Is not scientific--but nor is any history book “scientific”
either. The epistemology[x] of science and historiography are quite
different, and should not be confused.[y]
The second philosophical mistake made
in the quoted passages above is that they assume historical accounts are not
historiographically provable. Here the
ghost of the Scottish philosopher David Hume lurks. But so long as we avoid anti-supernaturalist presuppositions--which
are rampant among historians today--and realize others do have such a priori
biases, miracles should be as provable as any other witnessed events that
occurred in history. We can use the
three historiographical tests McDowell listed above, and apply them to the
Bible’s eyewitness and/or recorded accounted of miracles to see if such
accounts are believable. Since most
historians assume ahead of time fundamentalist Christianity is false, that there
is no God, and that all reports of miracles to be false in any historical
document they encounter, even in one (such as the Bible) which has shown itself
reliable otherwise. What we have to
realize is that those who assume a priori there is no God and that the
miraculous is impossible will then proceed to try to “explain” away or
disbelieve any accounts or miracles they encounter. For if there is a God, and He made this universe and set
up all its natural laws, it then makes perfect sense this Almighty Creator
could have in the past temporarily suspended nature’s laws to accomplish or
that purpose. And, if the Bible has
shown itself reliable in its history of the kings and others of Judea and the
Middle East which can be checked in part, then it’s “very likely” its record of
various miracles should be believed as well, though those can’t be checked
directly.. Much more could be said on
this subject of being able to prove miracles did occur, but this much above
makes it clear that miracles are not necessarily scientifically impossible or
historiographically unprovable.[z]
The Plain
Truth writer in the letters section also said:
The
writer [of “Who Really Wrote the Bible?“] was not asking anyone to
accept the Bible on blind faith.
The article itself implied that the Bible is not to be understood in
this way. The writer was stressing that
a person can only prove to himself whether the Bible is God’s Word. This is done not by blind faith but by living
faith--which means doing what it says.[aa]
Behind
this particular passage I see the shadow of Cornelius Van Til and his system of
presuppositionalist apologetics, or some such similar form of thinking. Norman Geisler described one tenet of
fideism this way: “The tests for truth
are existential, not rational. Truth is
tested personally in one’s life by submitting to God, and so forth, but not by
human reason.”[bb] However, we
in the United Church of God (UCG) should not accept fideism or
presuppositionalism, especially when the following book exists: R.C. Sproul, John Gerstner, and Arthur Lindsley,
Classical Apologetics A Rational
Defense of the Christian Faith and a Critique of Presuppositional Apologetics
(Grand Rapids, Mich.: Zondervan,
1984). This book is a simply
devastating refutation of fideism and presuppositionalism. Those interested in seriously pursuing this
topic should purchase this book.
First,
Let’s define and explain the term “fideism” more than has been done above
previously. Fideism is the belief
God’s existence cannot and should not be proven, but that it should be accepted
by faith alone. This belief is normally
extended to accepting the Bible by faith alone. The first and obvious problem with this doctrine is: How are we to know which religion is
correct” The Muslim will say he
believes in the Quran (Koran), the Hindu in the Bhagavad-Gita, etc. and the
Christian in the Bible. Obviously,
since a contradiction cannot exist, somebody has to be wrong here, for
these religions uphold contradictory doctrines. God gave us reason not only to keep us alive physically, but to
sort out from among the various religions which one is the true way. Hence, fideism is a doctrine only of
possible value to those who have the true religion already--presumably the
Sabbatarian followers of Herbert W. Armstrong’s teachings, and various assorted
other Sabbatarian Christians. If we
accept fideism, we can’t easily rebuke Catholicism, Lutheranism, or Methodism
as being errant, since those believing those ways could simply choose to
fideistically accept their church’s interpretations of the Bible. Fideism is a doctrine admirably suited to
those raised with a certain faith who don’t wish to change, for if all
religions are equally blindly chosen, there’s little reason to change from what
their parents taught them. Since a
fideist doesn’t appeal to objective criteria that support his belief, he has no
right to say to those who believe in others must be wrong: They could reply to him, “Obeying the Quran
works for me!,” or, “If I can’t prove any religion to be right, then I’ll stay
a Buddhist.”
Now the
Bible tells us: “Prove all things: hold fast that which is good” (II Thess.
5:21). If we are to prove all
things, may not this include the existence of God and the Bible’s divine
inspiration” “Because that which may be
known of God is manifest in them; for God hath shewed it unto them. For the invisible things of him from the
creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are
made, even his eternal power and Godhead; so that they are without excuse”
(Rom. 1:19-20). Here Paul appeals to
the existence of the universe as evidence of God’s existence and certain of His
attributes (“His eternal power and Godhead.”)
The gentiles are “without excuse” when they deny God’s existence. “. . . [B]e ready always to give an answer
to every man that asketh you a reason of the hope that is in you with meekness
and fear” (I Pet. 3:15). We can’t do a
good job of following Peter’s injunction if we believe there aren’t objective,
external-to-the-Bible criteria for belief in Christianity. As it has been pointed out in a slightly
different context:
What
the advocates of this stance toward Scripture [which maintains you need not
believe it is infallible to believe in it--EVS] fail to observe is that it is
fundamentally dishonest to adopt the line of least resistance in the face of
difficulty and say to the rationalistic skeptic, “Okay, in this instance you
may be right. But I still have a right
to hang on to my faith, no matter how many technical errors you may be able to
discovered in the text of the Bible.”
He who assumes such a position of intellectual surrender can only be
classed as a weak-kneed irrationalist who has retreated into his own shell of
subjectivity. He no longer has anything
meaningful to contribute in the arena of debate and intelligent consideration
all thinking men are responsible to engage in.[cc]
Paul’s sermon on the Areopagus in Athens (Acts
17:22-31) presupposed external objective criteria existed, especially in its
reference “to an unknown god” and its quote from a pagan poet, “We are his
offspring.” Notice Acts 17:27 in
particular: “That they should seek God,
if perhaps they might grope for him and find him, though he is not far from
each one of us.” It seems that even
uncalled people may be able to respond to God in some way, even if by mistaken
means. Jesus said (John 14:11): “Believe me when I say that I am in the
Father and the Father is in me; or at least believe on the evidence of the
miracles themselves.” Similarly, he
said elsewhere (John 5:36): “[T]he very
works that I do, bear witness of Me, that the Father has sent Me.” As Bernard Ramm pointed out:
Miracles
are believed in non-Christian religions because the religion is already
believed, but in the Biblical religion, miracles are part of the means of
establishing the true religion. This
distinction is of immense importance.
Israel was brought into existence by a series of miracles, the law was
given surrounded by supernatural wonders . . . It was the miracles
authenticating the religion at every point.[dd]
As pointed out in I John 4:1: “Dear friends, do not believe every spirit,
but test the spirits to see whether they are from God, because many false
prophets have gone out into the world.”
It’s not wise--especially these days--to believe in the first person who
says he knows the true way to God.
Hence, the Bible doesn’t necessarily support a fideistic view of
accepting Christianity and believing in the one true God.
A
standard definition for “prove” is “to establish truth or genuineness of, as by
evidence or argument: to prove one’s
claim”[ee] Now--why does
this term make us Christians so nervous when applied to God’s existence or to
the Bible’s divine inspiration” First
of all, we must realize that when we “prove” something, we are not creating it
out of thin air. There must be facts
from the external, real world that support the proof, directly or indirectly,
for it to even be a proof. The rise of
modern technology shows that the human race’s reasoning processes in
scientifically proving nature’s laws, etc. must be getting at something “real”
that doesn’t immediately appear to the naked eye’s perception, but which lies
beneath the surface of things. To say,
“The universe’s complexity didn’t happen by chance, therefore a Creator exists,”
doesn’t create God from nothing due to our argument. If the premises are true, and the inference correct, then there’s
nothing to worry about: The conclusion
must be true, if its a syllogism (since we are using the laws of logic
then). There’s no sensible reason to
doubt the human race’s intellectual processes are fundamentally flawed at their
base when we have the technology to wipe ourselves from existence on this
planet today. (As for being morally
flawed--well, that’s another story!)
The main
reason why we are nervous when the word “prove” is used in connection with
proving God’s existence or the Bible’s inspiration is that we think reason’s
role here denies the necessity of faith.
People think: “If I can prove
God to exist by reason, what’s left for faith?“ But this kind of thinking is in error: As Thomas Aquinas observed:
Faith
has not that searching of natural reason which demonstrates [through a chain of
proofs, such as a geometry theorem--EVS] what is believed, but a searching into
those things through which a man is led to believe, for instance that such
things have been uttered by God and confirmed by miracles.[ff]
Notice that believing in something due to seeing a
miracle accompany the revelation in question is not a denial of faith,
as is implied in what Jesus said in John 14:11 and 5:36 as quoted above.
The
reason why faith is still needed even after seeing a miracle accompany an
expression of God’s thoughts through (say) a prophet is that there is no
scientific or philosophical demonstration accompanying or proving the statement
God inspired the prophet to make. When
God said, “You shall not murder,” He did not proceed to add a philosophical
reason for this statement to Israel.”
He didn’t say, “You shall not murder because of (say) “the greatest good
for the greatest number, the categorical imperative, or the intrinsic value of
human life.[gg] The act of
doing a miracle is not logically connected to the content of a
revelation from God. You can’t derive
“You shall not steal” from earthquakes, storms, lightning flashes,, or even the
hearing of God’s own voice by any philosophical or scientific
demonstration. God instead would rely
on his authority (“Do this because I am the Eternal”--compare Lev. 19:37) or
because of what he had done for Israel (Deut. 5:15): “Remember that you were slaves in Egypt and that the Lord your
God brought you out of there with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm. Therefore the Lord your God has commanded
you to observe the Sabbath day.”
Neither of these is a philosophical reason for obeying one of God’s
laws. Hence, there would be evidence
for accepting God’s decrees--his miracles and actions on behalf of Israel of
humanity as a whole--but the decrees weren’t proven directly by logical
arguments. Hence, faith is still needed
after you have seen actual miracles (i.e. indirectly supporting evidence), as
Israel’s murmuring in the wilderness showed despite having seen an incredible
series of miracles.[hh]
Because
of these consideration, the evidence for the Bible’s inspiration still
constitutes indirect evidence, which is the kind of “proof” being done
above. For we can’t prove everything in
the Bible independently of the Bible, or else there would be little need for
revelation. For the whole purpose of
revelation is for God to tell us information we couldn’t--or couldn’t easily
or with certainty--find out on our own.
Nor can natural theology prove all the attributes and characteristics of
the God of the Bible. We can prove the
natural can’t always explain the natural, that the universe hasn’t always been
there, that God is infinite,[ii] that He has a mind,[jj] “even his eternal power and Godhead,” but not
everything. Proving God’s complete love for humanity by human reason can’t be
done, or else we wouldn’t have all these people, including many professing
Christians, so uneasy over God allowing evil to exist. As for accepting the Bible itself, this
involves an inference that says that if some of it can be shown
to imply knowledge unobtainable humanly, and some more of it lines up
with archeology or ancient history, then ALL of it is inspired by
God. Hence, a degree of faith is always
necessary, even if there is excellent evidence for the Bible’s inspiration and
for the existence of God.[kk]
Of
course, other reasons exist for faith.
First, it is always hard for people to believe in something with 100%
certainty (which is the attitude faith always demands) which is hotly disputed
and highly controversial. To believe in
God and the Bible’s infallibility--or that Herbert W. Armstrong was used by God
to restore Truth to the Christian church--are totally against many of our
natural impulses and desires since many people don’t accept any of these
beliefs. Even when you can prove God to
exist to your own satisfaction, the fact that others aren’t persuaded always
can leave uncertainty in your mind concerning your rational arguments. You need faith in order to go against the
(often) vast majority mentally. Second,
it’s hard for us humans to believe in something we can’t visually see. Even though science has believed and still
does believe in the existence of entities that weren’t seen or haven’t been
seen, such as electrons, quarks, and other subatomic particles, people are less
accepting of God’s existence since, among other reasons, He makes moral demands
on them! To believe in quarks doesn’t
affect your sex life--to believe in the Eternal does (or ought to). Third, we have to assume God is not trying
to deceive us when He commands this or that--that He wills what is in our
overall best interests. If God died
for our sins, this shouldn’t be anything to worry about! Fourth, as Thomas Aquinas maintained, the
existence of God is not an article of faith, but a preamble to faith:
The
existence of God and other like truths about God which can be known by natural
reason, are not articles of faith, but are preambles to the articles. For faith presupposes natural knowledge,
even as grace presupposes nature, and perfection supposes something that can be
perfected. Nevertheless, there is
nothing to prevent a man who cannot grasp a proof accepting, as a matter of
faith, something which in itself is capable of being known and demonstrated.[ll]
Fifth, if we carefully define the roles of reason and
faith, they need not conflict. Reason
is mostly used for dealing with material things, and the few spiritual things
(like God’s existence) that can be inferred from material things. In other words, reason tells us how to catch
our dinner primarily. Faith is used to
keep us steady and stable in our belief in spiritual things, so that our
emotions or the various temptations we are subjected to don’t cause us to sin
or to doubt the Bible. For you can
always find evidence to cause you to doubt the Bible or God’s existence. As Ellen White observed:
God
never asks us to believe, without giving sufficient evidence upon which to base
our faith. His existence, His
character, the truthfulness of His Word, are all established by testimony that
appeals to our reason; and this testimony is abundant. Yet God has never removed the possibility of
doubt. Our faith must rest upon
evidence, not demonstration. Those who
wish to doubt will have opportunity; while those who really desire to know the
truth, will find plenty of evidence on which to rest their faith.[mm]
But the real issue is where most of the
evidence lies, and will we stay committed to God’s way of life” Faith and the resulting commitment coming
from it are absolutely necessary to stick to God’s ways and to try to overcome
sin. In short, so long as we realize
that faith and reason don’t conflict since they both provide knowledge,[nn] we need not be nervous about using this word “prove”
concerning God’s existence or the Bible’s divine inspiration.
Let’s
consider this concept of “certainty” before moving on. I have coined the term “rational certainty”
to refer to facts or propositions (statements) that seem virtually certain, but
for which 100% certainty doesn’t actually exist. For human reason can’t provide us with 100% certain except in
math, logic, and certain direct sensations (perceptions), since we can always
misinterpret the evidence of our senses, or lack enough information about the
world for a fully certain judgment.
Consider the following example:
I have rational certainty that there is not 100 tons of gold 50 feet
beneath my feet. I am so certain that
there isn’t this 100 tons of gold buried beneath me that I would bet all I own
that there isn’t any gold there. But I
can’t honestly say I have 100% certain that no gold is there. The only way I would have 100%
certainty--ignoring some important epistemological problems about the nature of
empiricism[oo] and the interpretation of sense data--is to go dig
underneath the apartment I live in and see if any gold is buried 50 feet
underneath me. Similarly, it is
impossible to have 100% certainty when it comes to any scientific theories or
law, or to most other facts gained by empirical research. For something could always be left outside
our sample, and we could always have misinterpreted what we have observed. Since this 100% certainty simply can’t be
gained by human reason alone, God insists upon faith, which is an attitude in
which we have 100% certainty about something which by human reason we simply
can’t get 100% certainty in. Faith,
with its 100% certainty attitude, makes life and death commitment
possible, which human reason, because it can’t get full certainty, hesitates to
make. While you could argue, despite
all my logical arguments for Christianity, that I can’t be 100% certain
rationally Christianity is true, I could reply you can’t be 100% certain you
won’t die the next time you get into an automobile. Humans routinely commit themselves to courses of action, even
life-threatening ones, in which the chances of failure or death exist, and 100%
certainty or 100% safety don’t exist.
God merely wants us to be totally committed 100% to Him and His way of
life, even if the rational evidence available won’t give us 100% certainty based
upon human reason alone.
C.S.
Lewis once made s similar point to that above about faith and rational
certainty when he defined one of the meanings of faith thus: “Belief, in this sense, seems to me to be
assent to a proposition which we think so overwhelmingly probable that there is
a psychological exclusion of doubt, though not a logical exclusion of dispute.[pp]
Much
evidence exists that uncalled people can find evidence that persuaded
them to believe in God, the supernatural, or at least make them doubt evolution
some. Consider the following quotes:
[The
authors here are describing the chances for certain parts of the first living
cell to occur by random chance through a chemical accident--EVS]. Consider now the chance that in a random
ordering of the twenty different amino acids which make up the polypeptides it
just happens that the different kinds fall into the order appropriate to a
particular enzyme [an organic catalyst--a chemical which speeds up chemical
reactions--EVS]. The chance of obtaining
a suitable backbone [substrate] can hardly be greater than on part in 1015, and the chance of obtaining the appropriate active
site can hardly be greater than on part in 105. Because the
fine details of the surface shape [of the enzyme in a living cell--EVS] can be
varied we shall take the conservative line of not “piling on the agony” by
including any further small probability for the rest of the enzyme. The two small probabilities are enough. They have to be multiplied, when they yield
a chance of on part in 1020 of
obtaining the required in a functioning form [when randomly created by chance
out of an ocean of amino acids--EVS].
By itself , this small probability could be faced, because one must
contemplate not just a single shot at obtaining the enzyme, but a very large
number of trials as are supposed to have occurred in an organize soup early in
the history of the Earth. The trouble
is that there are about two thousand enzymes and the chance of obtaining them
all in a random trial is only one part in (1020)2000 = 1040,000, an outrageously
small probability that could not be faced even if the whole universe consisted
of organic soup. [The number of
electrons within the universe that can be observed by mankind’s largest
earth-based telescopes is approximately 1087, which gives you an idea of how large this number
is. This number would fill up about
seven solid pages of the Plain Truth to print this number--40,000 zeros
following a one--EVS]. If one is not
prejudiced either by social beliefs or by a scientific training into the conviction
that life originated on the Earth, this simple calculation wipes the idea
entirely our of court.[qq]
The
only acceptable explanation is creation.
I know that this is anathema to physicist, as indeed it is to me, but we
must not reject a theory that we do not like if the experimental evidence
supports it.[rr]
After
having chided the theologian for his reliance on myth and miracle, science
found itself in the unenviable position of having to create a mythology of its
own: Namely, the assumption that what,
after long effort, could not be prove to take place today had, in truth, taken
place in the primeval past. [He says
this because spontaneous generation cannot be observed taking place today, but
scientists assume it took place billions of years ago, unobserved by any human,
just like the first five days of Gen. 1--EVS].[ss]
One has
only to contemplate the magnitude of this task to concede that the spontaneous
generation of a living organism is impossible.
Yet here we are--as a result, I believe, of spontaneous generation. [If we Christians had this kind of
faith, as this evolutionist had, we should be lifting up mountains for warm-up
exercises daily--EVS][tt]
The
hypothesis that life has developed from inorganic matter is, at present, still
an article of faith.[uu]
Astronomers
are curiously upset by . . . proof that the universe had a beginning [as the
Big Bang theory implies]. Their
reactions provide an interesting demonstration of the response of the
scientific mind--supposedly a very objective mind--when evidence uncovered by
science itself leads to a conflict with the articles of faith in their
profession. . . . There is a kind of
religion in science; a faith that . . . every event can be explained as the product
of some previous event. . . . This conviction is violated by the discovery that
the world had a beginning under conditions in which the known laws of physics
are not valid. . . . the scientist has lost control. If he really examined the implications, he would be
traumatized. As usual, when the mind is
face with trauma, it reacts by ignoring the implications.[vv]
Hence, uncalled people can come to the conclusion God
exists, or that at least something supernatural exists by reason alone,
without committing themselves to a Christian lifestyle first.
Now the
WCG also maintains: “How, then, can
mere humans prove God’s existence or that the Bible is the word of God” God is beyond the reach of human, rational
and logical thought.”[ww] While God
will always be beyond our full comprehension, He is still knowable to a
degree even in this life, and He will be much more knowable in the next: “Now we see but a poor reflection; then we
shall see face to face. Now I know in
part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known” (I Cor. 13:12). As the apostle John put it: “Dear friends, now we are children of God,
and what we will be has not yet been made known. But we know that when he appears, we shall be like him, for we
shall see him as he is” (I John 3:2). Thomas Aquinas put it this way:
Therefore
some who considered this, held, that no created intellect can see the essence
of God. This opinion, however, is not
tenable. For as the ultimate happiness
of man consists in the use of his highest function, which is the operation of
the intellect, if we suppose that the created intellect could never see God, it
would either never attain to happiness or its happiness would consist in
something else beside God, which is opposed to faith. For the ultimate perfection of the rational creature is to be
found in that which is the principle of its being, since a thing is perfect so
far as it attains to its principle.
Further, the same opinion is also against reason. For there resides in every man a natural
desire to know the cause of any effect which he sees, and from this wonder
arises in men. But if the intellect of
the rational creature could not reach so far as the first cause of things, the
natural desire would remain void. Hence
it must be absolutely granted that the blessed see the essence of God.[xx]
Hence, God is by no means unknowable in this life
even, and will be much more knowable in the next.[yy]
This
view God can’t be known at all, or that His existence can’t be proven, leads to
a game of spiritual one-upmanship, similar to the games played by those who
accept the old healing doctrine, and so will rely only on God for their
healing. The fideist mystic says, “I”m
more spiritual than you because I believe in God by faith alone, not by human
reason.” Likewise, the man or woman who
says, “I”m more spiritual than you because I rely on God for healing, not the
doctors.” The root fallacy here was
that God gave us our rational faculty as well, and created a world in which we
have to use it. We don’t see it a
contradiction of our faith that “The Lord will provide” by going out to our
secular jobs to earn money to support ourselves. God normally isn’t going to drop food by our doors when we rely
on Him in faith to supply our material needs.
He expects us to do our part, just as Jacob made prudent measures when
he was about to meet Esau and his 400 men, yet he still prayed for deliverance
(Gen. 32:6-20; 33:1-16).Therefore, let’s avoid judging one another for using
human reason in the service of the defense of the faith, just as we no longer
condemn the use of human reason in the form of medical science. HWA was inconsistent to be such a diehard
believer in using human reason to prove the Bible’s inspiration and God’s
existence, yet deny human reason’s role in medical science in aiding humanity
as being either a sin, or showing a lack of faith.
Hence,
these views are seriously mistaken:
“Man does not prove the Bible or God’s existence through his own
reasoning ability. God proves himself
to those humans he has chosen to understand him.”[zz] “One “proves” the Bible only by living
it. There is no other way. . . . But we
cannot prove it to ourselves unless we test out its claims by obeying the
commands from God contained in its pages.”[aaa] However, as
illustrated above, too many agnostics or atheists turned traditional Christians
(or believers in the supernatural) exist to agree with these statements. Many evidently by an intellectual
process have been willing to accept Christianity as true, and only later begin
to live a Christian life after having proving God to exist or the Bible as the
word of God. The uncalled, as
abundantly evidenced above, are perfectly capable of proving the existence of
God, the inspiration of the Bible, or at least the existence of something
beyond the natural and material, by human reason.
Now,
let’s evaluate the following fideistic claim:
How
important are archeological finds and “religious relicts”? Should we doubt what the Bible says if the
remains of past civilizations don’t directly prove the biblical text” Certain discoveries can add to and improve
our understanding of the Bible.
However, in a world increasingly filled with false values and lies, we
must be careful that we don’t base our faith on physical things. [Even when they bear witness of spiritual
things (Rom. 1:20-21)”--EVS]. . . . We don’t need to worry about the
authenticity of religious relics [the Shroud of Turin”--EVS] or the
interpretation of archeological finds that seem to contradict the biblical
record. Any truly authentic find will
uphold the biblical record [Here, she is right--EVS] and, in any case, should
be treated as no more than an interesting footnote to history.[bbb]
What’s wrong here” If we say,
“we don’t base our faith on physical things,” what’s to keep a Muslim from believing
in the Quran (Koran), a Hindu in the Bhagavad-Gita, or an agnostic in his
unbelief” While we can’t prove
everything about Christianity, as explained above, by human reason, there is
enough physical evidence that an inference to its truth is perfectly
rational. Also, since we can plain see
so much evidence already favoring Christianity, nothing possibly can now be
unearthed that can falsify it. For if
there is a God, and the Bible is true, nothing can possibly exist that
can prove it false. The revelation of
the earth and of the Word can’t contradict one another, if the Eternal
exists. Only misinterpretations of the
data, or fraud a la the Piltdown skull,[ccc] can really conflict with the Bible.
For
example, the archeologist Kathleen Kenyon believed Jericho didn’t exist in the
fifteenth century B.C., which was when Joshua’s army would have helped cause
its destruction if the Bible’s chronology is taken literally. Instead, she said the destruction associated
with the Exodus was pointed to by possible signs of demolition that occurred
about 1325 B.C. Such a dating scheme
would seriously conflict with the Bible’s dating for this event, which points
to the destruction of Jericho’s walls circa 1405 B.C. However, in 1981 professor John J. Bimson reinvestigated evidence
of a destruction that occurred in the 16th century B.C., and reinterpreted it
to fit the 15th century, which was much closer to the time of Joshua. Supporting this view was the fact that only
one pottery shard out of 150,000 found there in a cemetery was of the Mycenean
type. This type of pottery was heavily
imported into this area from 1400 B.C. onwards.[ddd] Hence, while
Kathy Johnson is right to say we shouldn’t be concerned at present-day
interpretations of archeological data that conflict with the Bible, it’s
nevertheless mistaken to fideistically imply the physical evidence is
completely irrelevant to believing in the Bible. If such a conflict does occur, we Christians should put the
controversy “on the shelf” of faith and not worry about it, and wait for a
solution to show itself, as it did above.
Some faith is necessary for such issues, but that doesn’t mean we should
become fideists.
More
recently, and similar to the foregoing, we find this: “Despite archeology’s valuable contributions, archeology doesn’t
prove the Bible true. We cannot anchor
our faith on the tattered remains of the past. . . . The validity of the Bible
lies beyond the competence of archeology either to prove or to disprove. Matters of faith are not subject to objective
testing.”[eee] This attempt
to sidestep higher critic assaults on the Bible by saying it can’t be
objectively tested is doomed to defeat.
The likes of the Danish philosopher and theologian Soren Kierkegaard and
(basically) the American philosopher William James tried this approach in one
manner or another in the nineteenth century.
However, the twentieth century higher critics know all about this means
of ducking objective testing of religious truth claims, and have demolished
it. A.J. Ayer’s Language, Truth, and
Logic (1936) did just that. But
now, we need to explain the strange world of logical positivism and
non-falsifiable hypotheses to see what’s wrong here.
The
philosophers Anthony Flew, A.J. Ayer, and Rudolf Carnap all maintained that a
statement or proposition is meaningless unless it affects your present or
future empirical experience. This
principle, the infamous “verification principle,” maintains that unless a
statement could be prove true, or proven false, it is worthless and
“means” nothing more than a set of nonsense syllables. It’s as if you said nothing coherent unless
your statement can be tested.
Let’s
give an example of how the verification principle works. Suppose somebody told you the world is only
four minutes old. You would say that’s
nonsense, that you remember getting out of bed and taking a shower this
morning. But he would reply, that
memory also was created in your mind four minutes ago, and that you didn’t
actually experience it. You would
mention dinosaur bones and sedimentary layers proving the earth is millions of
years old. He would reply they were
created four minutes ago also, and just appear to be older than
that. You would mention chronicles and
histories written by people long ago.
He would say all those books and records were created four minutes ago
also. You might say, where did my
grandmother and mother come from” He
would reply they were just created in the forms you see them, wrinkles and all,
as is. And so on and on with your every
counter-statement, he could “explain” it to fit his belief. But since his hypothesis can’t possibly have
any imagined refutation, it means nothing.
By “explaining” every possible counter-example, he has explained really
nothing. If it can’t possibly be imagined
to be false by any future empirical (sense-data) experiences you could have, it
isn’t true or false--it is meaningless.
By being able to “explain” every possible counter-example in advance
that could falsify his belief about the four-minute-old earth, he has explained
nothing and proven nothing. It all
amounts to mere speculation--or rather, a non-falsifiable hypothesis, because nothing can possibly prove it to be
false. In short, unless you take the
“risk” and maintain certain future events (such as enough archeological
evidence against it, or simply irreconcilable contradictions could be found) could
prove the Bible false, the Bible is meaningless. (Whether there are such contradictions, or such
archeological evidence, are other issues).
Such an attempt to “protect” Scripture by the claim it isn’t subject to
objective testing opens it up to A.J. Ayer’s charge it is empirically
meaningless since no possible set of future experiences could prove it
false (“falsify” it).
To give
another example of how this principle works, suppose you state the moral
truth, “God loves humanity.” A.J. Ayer
would ask how does this affect our experience in this life. We experience in one way or another are
hurts, personal betrayals, crime, poverty, wars, hurricanes, earthquakes,
famines, etc. that will kill or hurt millions of people. These sensory experiences are opposed to the
idea of an almighty, all-knowing God who loves everyone. How does such a statement, if it is true,
make our future or present sensory experience any different for
us than if it is false” If its being
true has the same affect on our present or future sense data as if it was
false, then why does such a statement matter”
Then, if it has no effect on our lives presently or in the future,
whether it is true or false, then this statement is meaningless as far as our
personal experience is concerned, so then we can ignore it completely.
This
same kind of reasoning can now be applied to when the literal text of the
Bible, and its historical and scientific statements. When it is applied, these statements get discarded as irrelevant,
since fideists say these should never be tested. However, unless you are willing to take the “risk” the Bible
could be theoretically proven false, the logical positivists (or those
influenced by them) will say it is automatically rendered meaningless. Unless you let the Bible stand for something
that could be falsified (i.e. the Old and New Testaments concerning scientific
and historical facts), the Bible is rendered irrelevant. The atheististic scientist (say) wants to be
able to prove the Bible true or false as if it was a court trial or a lab
experiment. If the Bible does not stand
for something that can be tested, it stands for nothing. If you won’t take a “risk” and let future
empirical experience judge whether it is true or not, atheists will declare the
Bible ignorable and thus meaningless.
Of course, one could rely on future verification to eventually prove
them wrong”the Second Coming and/or the Great White Throne Judgment”but
atheists will want to focus on something they can test in this life now.
Speaking
more broadly, why should we maintain a
rationalistic, objective base for Christian apologetics” It’s very simple. It is very dangerous to let the faculty of human reason fall into
the hands of unbelievers as their sole property. If people generally believe accepting Christianity is irrational,
the number of western people willing to give the Bible or God an unprejudiced
look will continue to decline. The
Christian world has never recovered from the blows inflicted on it by the likes
of Hume, Kant, Darwin, Marx, Freud, Feuerbach, etc., for they believed human
reason and the available evidence refuted the Bible’s worldview. Hence, western intellectual take their
secular premises almost totally for granted nowadays, and don’t normally count
God into their calculations seriously.
However, since the time these men lived, the evidence favoring
Christianity has grown much stronger (such as the law of biogenesis,[fff] the second law of thermodynamics[ggg], a multitude of archeological discoveries, etc.), but
such intellectuals and those they influence has seen little need to revise
their paradigm[hhh] of the world.
It’s our job as Christians, in part, to call such secular assumptions
into question, and this can only be convincingly done when facing such people
on their own ground of human reason, much as Thomas Aquinas did in Summa
Theological and Summa Contra Gentiles. Otherwise, these intellectuals will claim, either at the
beginning of the millennium or after the second resurrection, “We couldn’t have
known better. For all we knew the
Eternal was no more rational to believe in than Baal, Mithra, Siva, or some
ancient pagan fertility cult.” A major
flaw of fideism is that it doesn’t convincingly leave atheists and agnostics
“without excuse” (Rom. 1:20), since its arguments make the intellectual
acceptance of Christianity subjective, instead of as a logical inference
concerning its base. Since western man
is still very much a rational animal, despite all the extant
epistemological skepticism among these same intellectuals, people even in the
general public have the need to see Christianity as a rational option., not
just an emotional one. Hence, we have
the popularity of C.S. Lewis, Josh McDowell, Henry Morris, etc., all of whom
use or did use a rationalistic base for defending Christianity.
Mr.
Armstrong himself was very attractive intellectually for this reason: He said you could prove it all, whether it
be from you Bible or by human reason.
This surprisingly sophisticated approach--It’s so anti-fideistic at its
base--was what made the theology of the WCG attractive to many in the
past. That’s how, after God called her,
HWA was able to persuade the atheistic secretary of the local communist party
to accept Christianity, and to successfully put another communist on the
defensive.[iii] As the former
put it:
To tell
the truth we three girls thought it would be good sport to come out here and
laugh at the ignorant medieval religious superstition we expected to hear. I”ve always believed religion is a silly
superstition--the “opium of the people.”
But tonight we couldn’t laugh. I
never heard anything like this. I have
to admit no human writer could have written that long prophecy [of Dan.
11--EVS] and made it come to pass, step by step, over so many years. What I heard tonight makes sense. It is not like any religious teaching I ever
heard. I want to ask you some
questions.[jjj]
A fideistic approach, emphasizing blind faith, such as
was found in the July 1993 Plain Truth article “Religion and
Science Bridging the Gap,” will
inevitably fail to bring such people to God.
While some will come to the true God based upon emotion or family
tradition, we should also be ready to use human reason to win the diehard
skeptic, or at least put him on the defensive intellectually. We have to become all things to all men that
we might be able to save some (I Cor. 9:22), using human reason when necessary
at the bare minimum. Normally only a
hard-line position on the objectivity of the evidence for Christianity which
can be verified before commitment to Christ will cause such people to
give us a second look. Even concerning
the general public’s willingness to consider Christianity it would take only a
small dose of skepticism, or a refusal to address in a convincing fashion such
unbelief, to cause many of them to just tune us out. Take this kind of “comme si, comme ca” approach to apologetics
that is found in various recent WCG publications has a high cost. It leaves Christianity (at best) as one
possibly rational choice out of several, which will sound too uncertain a note
for such strong skeptics to really give Christianity a serious look
normally. By contrast, HWA’s hard-line
position--that is, one insisting upon the objective evidence for faith in
Christ--as illustrated above can much more successfully challenge and jar free
the intellectual honest (and called) agnostics and atheists from their
unbelief. Of course, many such people
will never believe this side of the millennium or the second resurrection, but
it will at least put them on notice. We
should follow the lead of Thomas
Aquinas and appropriate human reason for the service of Christ, or else
unbelievers will us it to draw at least some of the called to their eternal
deaths since they”ll persist believing Christianity is irrational. Hence,
we in the UCG today should give serious thought to routinely using Christian
apologetics in our message to the world in order to deal with common
intellectual objections made against Christianity.
Consider
the problems with this statement: “But
from a strictly scientific point of view, other interpretations of the design
of the universe, including the earth, are possible. Thus, many scientists do not regard design
as irrefutable proof of God’s existence.”[kkk] But are other
interpretations possible” Can nature
always explain itself, without ever referring to the supernatural to explain
it” For example, above was used the
calculation by the astronomers Fred Hoyle and Chandra Wickramasinghe. They calculated that the chance of getting
the 2000 enzymes a living cell must have in order operate as no less than one
out of 1040,000 by a random chemical accident. By contrast, the number of electrons in the
observable universe is a mere 1087 approximately. This leads to the key point: If nature can’t explain nature, then
a resort to the supernatural is perfectly rational. We shouldn’t worry about creating a “God of the gaps” when the
problems in question are surely permanent.
The problem Hoyle and Wickramasinghe found here in explaining
spontaneous generation is an embedded feature of nature, and future discoveries
almost certainly won’t get rid of it.
Hence, these two men abandoned their agnosticism for a kind of
pantheism, knowing there was no way out rationally for any kind of dogmatic
anti-supernaturalism when facing such a number. While some will claim in reply to such calculations as theirs
that the universe has natural laws built into its matter that will inevitably
cause life to arise, and that molecules do not act randomly, there is in
fact no evidence for such a claim. It
is an unprovable, nonfalsifiable hypothesis.[lll] Proving
spontaneous generation is possible is the biggest hurdle any atheist or
agnostic faces. Had the law of
biogenesis been known in the eighteenth century, or the second law of
thermodynamics, one wonders if David Hume would have sat down to write Dialogues
on Natural Religion.
Mr.
Halford also says: “Gaps in
understanding of the process of evolution do not automatically provide evidence
of a divine creation. Literalists and
creationists must be careful not to seize on gaps or limitations in knowledge
with a triumphant “Ha, there you see.
We were right all along.”“[mmm] However, the
very existence of the punctuated equilibrium school of thought is proof
scientists think the gaps in the fossil record aren’t about to be closed. Why”
By now it’s reasonable to believe we have a roughly representative sample
of the fossil record with all the searching done to prove Darwin right since
the publication of The Origin of the Species in 1859. Humanity has discovered literally billions
of fossils, and museums have altogether around 250,000 different species of fossils,
which are represented by millions of catalogued fossils.[nnn] As T.N.
George conceded: “There is no need to
apologize any longer for the poverty of the fossil record. In some ways it has become almost
unmanageably rich and discovery is outpacing integration.[ooo] David Raup is
on record as saying we now have such an enormous number of fossils that the
conflict between the theory of evolution and the fossil record can’t be blamed
on the “imperfection of the geologic record.”
He even conceded: “. . . ironically,
we have even fewer examples of evolutionary transition than we had in Darwin’s
time. By this I mean that some of the
classic cases of Darwinian change in the fossil record, such as the evolution
of the horse in North America, have had to be discarded or modified as a result
of more detailed information.[ppp] If
evolutionary scientists have to resort to the punctuated equilibrium theory to
explain the fossil record, after having (mostly) been committed to gradualism
(neo-Darwinism) for so long, it’s a sign they think the gaps are never going to
be filled. Hence, the scientific
creationists should be given credit for constantly bringing this problem to
public attention, otherwise most evolutionary scientists might still believe in
neo-Darwinism wholeheartedly.
Hence,
this statement isn’t correct: “Faith
must no find refuge only in unexplained gaps in human knowledge. Those gaps have a habit of closing suddenly,
sometimes on the fingers of those clinging to them.”[qqq] Instead, we
can see that the gaps have been closing hard on the hands of the
evolutionists. As Raup (who is the
curator of the Field Museum of Natural History of Chicago) said above, there
are even fewer transitional forms known today than were over 100 years
ago, and this despite we could well have a statistically representative
sampling of the fossil evidence available.
As Stephen Jay Gould and Niles Eldredge once said:
At the
higher level of evolutionary transition between basic morphological
[structural] designs, gradualism has always been in trouble, though it remains
the “official” position of most Western evolutionists. Smooth intermediates between Bauplane
[that is, as Gish defines them, “basically different types of creatures”--EVS]
are almost impossible to construct, even in thought experiments; there is
certainly no evidence for them in the fossil record (curious mosaics like Archaeopteryx[rrr] do not count).[sss]
Furthermore, future fossil discoveries can mess up the
evolutionists, unlike what is implied by this statement quoted above. The discovery of the human skull KNM-ER
1470, originally dated at 2.9 million years, posed enormous problems for the
traditional view of the evolutionary development of mankind up until the date
was massaged down to 1.9 million years after a decade of scientific
controversy.[ttt] Discoveries
of fossils being out of place in the geological strata have been a continual
problem for evolutionists. The faith
evolutionists have is far more likely to be upset by future fossil discoveries
than the strict creationist’s.
Indeed,
for years the scientific evidence has been moving in our favor, as loath as
evolutionists are to admit it. Much
more evidence has come to light favoring catastrophism over uniformitarianism,
and creationism over evolution (i.e. the gaps in the fossil record). Otherwise, scientists wouldn’t be seriously
speculating about how an asteroid may have led to the extinction of dinosaurs,
which would have been the wildest of heresies even 30 years ago. Likewise, the same goes for how the gaps in
the fossil record have placed neo-Darwinism very much on the defensive in favor
of the punctuated equilibrium theory--or special creationism. Halford worries about how future fossil
discoveries could fill in these gaps, but if scientists after millions of
fossils have been found and catalogued over more than a century of research are
still no closer to filling them in, why should WE be the ones
worrying”
Another
problem with this statement above is that it implies God’s existence can never
be inferred or deduced from the existence of the universe or its design. Instead, the atheist or agnostic can always
claim that future discoveries which would fill in these current gaps in our
knowledge will prove him right. The
creationist is surely more rational for pointing to all the evidence that right
now exists to prove his point of view as opposed to the atheist’s, who
hopes future evidence might come to exist to prove his point of
view. Furthermore, the creationist
really, fundamentally has nothing to worry about concerning future
discoveries. For should his point of
view be correct, then the revelation of the earth cannot contradict the
revelation of the Bible. If God did what
He says he did in the Bible, then nothing possibly can be unearthed that would
refute God’s written revelation, barring human misinterpretation of the
discovery, or outright fraud (a la the Piltdown skull). We can already find such overwhelming
evidence for the Bible’s inspiration that we can count on what is unknown not
to contradict the already existing evidence.
In case it seems there is a contradiction, such as over the age of the
fallen walls of Jericho, we should simply have faith and confidence that a
solution may be found to any such problems that may arise. In the case of Jericho, earlier dating
estimates that made the fallen walls exist at the wrong time have been
contradicted by later findings. Hence,
we shouldn’t worry that the revelation of the earth may one day contradict the
written revelation of the Bible ultimately.
Halford
also maintains: “It is possible that
new discoveries could yet provide irrefutable evidence that one kind of
creature can change into another, as a result of macromutations.”[uuu] Now this may
refer to Richard B. Goldschmidt’s “hopeful monster” mechanism. He believed in massive, all-at-once
mutations between basic kinds of animals were necessary to explain the fossil
record. However, evolutionists
themselves have largely refused to accept this type of evolution as occurring,
for massive mutations will result in a quick death for the creature so
afflicted. Also, such a spectacular
accident would make mating virtually impossible for such a creature as well,
even if it miraculously survived.[vvv] As for the
punctuated equilibrium theory, it can be emphasized enough that this theory is
a non-falsifiable hypothesis, for it was created to explain a lack of
evidence (i.e. transitional fossils), not to explain something that has been
actually observed. This theory just
maintains we can’t find fossil evidence of transitional creatures because the
alleged evolution in question occurred in small, isolated group(s) of a species
very rapidly, leaving no trace in the fossil record. Lubenow brilliantly summarized the problems with the punctuated
equilibrium theory in this manner:
For a
hundred years evolutionists paraded the fossils they had found as evidence for
evolution. They promised more and
better fossils in the future, hoping that luck and the tooth fairy would
validate their hopes. In the early 1970s,
when it became obvious that we had a more than adequate sampling of the fossil
record, the grim reality dawned that those transitional fossils were not to be
found. The punctuated equilibria model
of evolution was then invented to explain why they were not found. However, it is imperative to emphasize that
the punctuated equilibria model does not remove the need for
transitional fossils. It just explains
why those transitions have not been found.
Certainly, the punctuated equilibria theory is unique. It must be the only theory ever put forth in
the history of science which claims to be scientific but then explains why
evidence for it cannot be found.[www]
Evolutionists claim they are merely just arguing about
the mechanism by which evolution occurred (its “how”), not about whether it
occurred (its existence), in the debate between neo-Darwinism and the
punctuated equilibrium model. However,
this claim betrays an anti-supernaturalist a priori bias. Taking secularism for granted, and wiping
God out of the picture from the start, and using the premise that ONLY nature
can explain nature, they are confident evolution occurred even though they
don’t know how it occurred. But
is not science supposed to explain the “hows”,” leaving the “whys”“ to
religion” If they can’t explain how it
occurred, and nobody has observed marcoevolution personally, why should we
believe in it in the first place, as opposed to God creating all the basic
types of creatures” If they can’t explain
how evolution occurred, based on their anti-supernaturalist assumptions, maybe
it’s time to question these assumptions, instead of assuming evolution is a
fact and inventing the punctuated equilibrium model to explain the lack of
evidence for that “fact” occurring in a scientifically explainable manner.
Also,
we need to emphasize that the scientific term ‘species” should never be
equated with the word in Genesis 1 translated “kind” (min). A rough, crude equivalent to “min”
would be a taxonomic “family,” or perhaps “genus.” These are the next two higher categories over ‘species” in the
biologist’s taxonomic scale by which he (or she) categorizes all
creatures. The error made by Bible
literalists who were scientists in the past, such as Linneaus (who devised the
Latin naming system for animals), was to say God created all the species
during the six days of creation that now still live. This mistake has continued to figure in most assaults on
creationism by evolutionists since the time of Darwin, for there is good
evidence that some evolution is possible (“microevolution.”) All creationists need to maintain in reply
is that microevolution is possible, but that fundamental changes greater than
those on the level of a “family” are impossible due to the intrinsic limits on
natural biological changes built into animals and plants. Creationists must concede changes on the
species level in order to have any hope of scientific credibility. For example, Kozhenvikov developed a new
species of vinegar fly from two strains of Drosophila melangogaster, and
correspondingly named it Drosophila artificialis. In nature, the spontaneous crossing of two
white flowers, A. Pavia and A. Hippocastanum created the pink
flower, Aesculus Carnea (which is a horse chestnut).[xxx] Hence, the
species of finches Darwin observed on the Galapagos Islands during his famous
voyage on the HMS Beagle probably were derived from one or more basic kinds
that survived the Deluge of Noah’s time many thousands of years before. These basic kinds then speciated in their
relatively isolated environments on these islands. Evolutionists can easily prove species have changed. However, they can’t prove anything higher
than a taxonomic family has changed naturally.
Halford
also maintains that: “Once more, let’s
stress that you cannot scientifically prove nor disprove the existence of God.”[yyy] This
statement’s truth depends on what definition of ‘scientifically” is being
employed. Does ‘scientifically” refer
to all human reasoning, or just those aspects of it that involve the systematic
observation, collection, and organization of reproducible phenomena (i.e.,
‘science” strictly considered). For
humanity has information that is obtained by other means than the scientific
method, such as by history and that obtained by the kind of abstract reasoning
used in philosophy, logic, and
mathematics that is largely non-empirical.
The statement, “Wellington and Blucher won the battle of Waterloo in
1815” is not scientific. This
event cannot be reproduced, nor was it observed by anyone alive today. Historians simply have to rely on what past
eyewitnesses, or other primary and secondary documents have said about the
past. This historical method of gaining
knowledge is simply not scientific, strictly defined, but this doesn’t mean it
isn’t a reliable means for unaided human reason to find knowledge. “Historical evidence,” i.e. eye-witness
evidence, is the kind of evidence our court system normally relies upon to
convict criminals and determine the outcome of lawsuits, not so much scientific
evidence. (The O.J. Simpson trial’s
focus on DNA evidence, like other aspects of this case, was hardly normal!) Hence, the Bible isn’t a science textbook
for the specific reason that much of the information it conveys is
historical in nature.
(Nevertheless, though it’s not a science textbook, whatever statements
it makes on scientific subjects will be without error). And then while philosophy will rely on the
information science and history will yield to it, nevertheless it features a
heavy reliance on a priori, abstract reasoning that makes it somewhat
different in its epistemology than these other two fields. In this regard, the science of mathematics
is also extremely dependent on a priori, abstract reasoning as well, yet
repeatedly later on we find evidence in nature of its accuracy
empirically. There’s simply something
about such abstract, “pure” (i.e. without using sense data) thinking by humans
that often can be very accurate in describing what really is out there
in the real world. (This is no surprise,
since the same God who designed the universe the human mind perceives also
created the human mind to begin with).
Hence, while ‘science” narrowly considered may not be able to prove
God’s existence (for example, God isn’t directly observable--yet--nor
reproducible), data provided by science can make the inference (not
a “leap of faith”) to the existence of the supernatural from the natural a rational
judgment. This one out of l040,000 number provided by Hoyle and Wickramasinghe is in
this category: The impossibility of
spontaneous generation by random chemical reactions implies God exists. So does the second law of thermodynamics,
since it implies the universe had a beginning.
While human reason can’t give 100% certainty for Christianity, it can
give enough evidence that those who reject it are “without excuse” (Rom.
1:20). We aren’t 100% certain that the
next time we get into a car that we will survive the ride, but we don’t find
this to be a major hurdle in committing ourselves to care ownership and
ridership. Neither should the slight--very
slight--lack of rational certainty that exists about Christianity being
provable by human reason this side of the millennium should keep us from
committing ourselves to Christ.
Halford
also said in this article: “But this is
not saying that the facts uncovered by science inevitably pile up to the point
where the agnostic--or even the atheist--must conclude there is a
Creator.” But, is this true due to a
lack of evidence to persuade, or is it one of volition, a lack of willingness,
for the unbeliever to capitulate” As
the authors of Classical Apologetics
point out:
The excuse
that is banished, the excuse every pagan hopes in vain to use, the excuse that
is exploded by God’s self-revelation in nature is the pretended, vacuous,
dishonest appeal to ignorance.
[The authors, in context, are discussing Rom. 1, and, in particular,
verse 20--EVS]. No one will be able to
approach the judgment seat of God justly pleading, “If only I had known you
existed, I would surely have served you.”
That excuse is annihilated. No
one can lightly claim “insufficient evidence” for no believing in God. Though people are not always persuaded by
sound and sufficient evidence, it does not follow that the evidence is
therefore insufficient. The failure
here is with human, not with the evidence.
[My emphasis here--EVS]. The
problem is not a lack of evidence, nor a lack of knowledge, nor a lack of
natural cognitive equipment--it is a moral deficiency. We are culpable for our refusal to submit to
the evidence God plainly provides.[zzz]
Hence, contrary to the view there aren’t enough facts
to automatically persuade those called in this life that Christianity is true,
I maintain such coercive evidence does exist, but that modern western
intellectuals have striven to ignore it, cover it up, or even intentionally
create fabrications that seem to falsify it (i.e. the Piltdown skull). Instead, since we have minds clouded by an
evil human nature that is hostile against God intrinsically (Rom. 8:7),
atheists and agnostics can always seize upon this or that loose end in the
evidence to justify their stance. After
all, there are those who believe in a flat earth, not withstanding all those
NASA photographs, right” The human mind
can always rationalize away evidence contrary to its beliefs (“cognitive
dissonance.”)
The
evidence for Christianity isn’t 100% certain, but then again we routinely
commit ourselves to major life decisions without full certainty as well. Can I be 100% certain I will find a relevant
job after going to college for four years”
Can I be 100% certain this woman or man I”m marrying is the right
one” Can I be 100% certain this house
I”m buying isn’t secretly a moneypit that will require endless repairs” The answer to all these questions is no, but
that doesn’t stop us from going to college, marrying, or buying houses. Furthermore, in the case of accepting
Christianity, an additional factor is operating: Since humanity has an evil human nature, we often don’t want
Christianity to be true since we don’t want God telling us what to do with our
lives. Unlike the case with accepting
or rejecting the existence of electrons, or a flat earth, to accept
Christianity seriously necessarily involves major restrictions on our choice of
actions in dealing with others. Protons
don’t crimp our “lifestyle”--but God does!
This reluctance is especially true in the area of sex.[aaaa] The evidence
for accepting the existence of God can be laid out in the form of, and is as
strong as, the scientific inferences scientists make from seen entities
to unseen ones. Scientists were quite
willing to believe in the existence of electrons long before they could be
seen. Similarly, the unseen
supernatural world can be inferred to exist by various puzzles in the material
natural world. The key difference here
is that God makes moral demands on us, while believing in electrons doesn’t,
which makes people much more willing to accept the existence of the latter than
the former.
Furthermore,
this statement by Mr. Halford just above wasn’t in accordance with Mr.
Armstrong’s experience with an atheist who he got to concede the existence of
God when skillfully verbally cornered by Mr. Armstrong. Astonishingly, he even said: “I won’t worship God even if you do
make me admit He exists!” On another
occasion later, this same man said:
“I”ll never bend my knees to your Christ.”[bbbb] True, as we
have always maintained based upon John 6:44, 65, we can’t argue uncalled people
into the kingdom of God. This cited
example shows this as well. But we can
leave the atheists and agnostics on the intellectual defensive if we play our
cards right, and encourage even the uncalled sometimes to improve their lives
some if they think God can’t be evaded intellectually. For God has commanded all to repent now, not
just the called (Acts 17:30), which implies even the broad mass of humanity can
live their lives better than they are now spiritually. Hence, we should ignore the siren call of Cornelius
Van Til and company to fideism, and instead follow the lead of R.C. Sproul,
John Gerstner, Arthur Lindsley, John Warwick Montgomery, Josh McDowell, Don
Stewart, C.S. Lewis, and Francis Schaeffer in opposition to fideism.
Now”moving
on to a different, but related subject, I have to object to Dr. Herman Hoeh’s
pre-Adamic man theories, and his view that radiocarbon dating is reliable. Here I”ll leave the main refutation of his
theories and radiocarbon dating’s reliability to my references.
First
of all, we should follow the lead of John Whitcomb and Henry M. Morris, and
discard a c. 4000 B.C.. date for the creation of Adam.[cccc] If we can get
an extra few thousand years since the creation of Adam, many of the problems
Dr. Hoeh must have encountered in his researches concerning the beginning of
civilization can be solved or alleviated.
In particular, if we can push back the date of the flood from c. 2459
B.C. to 4500 B.C. or earlier, many dating problems can be solved. For example, the great pyramids at Giza in
Egypt were built c. 2600 B.C., which would mean they survived the great Deluge
if we accept Usher’s dating for it.
However, there is a casuality to taking this approach: the 6000 year plan idea based upon the day
for a thousand years principle of II Pet. 3:8 being applied to the creation
week of Gen. 1 gets discarded. Although
this principle is very old and well attested in the early Catholic Church
Fathers and other ancient writings (as a recent piece in the World Ahead
magazine showed), nevertheless it has to be seen as speculation, albeit a very
venerable one.
Next,
radiocarbon dating is not a reliable as evolutionists think it is. It’s based on assumptions that are
decidedly shaky for anything over three or four thousand years old. Let’s give some examples of C-14 dating at work. The shells of living mollusks (sea
shells) have given radiocarbon date up to 2,300 years old.[dddd] In northern
Iraq, a prehistoric village named Jarmo has given radiocarbon dates for over a
6000 year range, yet according to the archeological evidence, was occupied for
only about 500 years. The same antler
was dated by Yale University three different times, and it gave three different
ages: 5,340 years, 9,310 years, and
10,320 years. The University of Chicago
and the University of Michigan dated the same piece of bark at ages varying
from 1,168 to 2,200 years.[eeee] The reason
for such obvious dating problems results from the flawed assumptions of
radiocarbon dating, such as the belief the amount of radiocarbon in the
atmosphere hasn’t been increasing, which I won’t discuss here.[ffff] Before the
church would go on record as saying radiocarbon dating is reliable, we should
do very serious research, especially consulting what various scientific
creationists have said.
Concerning
pre-Adamic men themselves, all we need concede is that various monkeys or apes
lived prior to the disaster spoken of in Gen. l:2. Such creatures as propliopithecus, dryopithecus, ramapithecus,
oreopithecus, and even the various australopithhecines, are all far more like
monkeys than men. Even the latter had a
brain size of only 500 c.c., which is close to a gorilla, and is about one
third of modern men.[gggg] It does
appear that the australopithecines could not walk upright, or did so no
more than gorillas do today.[hhhh] Anatomist
Solly Lord Zuckerman maintained: “Our
findings leave little doubt that . . . Australopithecus
resembles not Homo sapiens but the living monkeys and apes.” Concerning the famous australopithecine
skeleton called “Lucy,” the magazine New Scientist said it had a skull
“very much like a chimpanzee’s.”[iiii] On the other
hand, the Neanderthals and Cro-Magnons are very similar to present-day men, and
should be seen as descendants of Adam.
A Neanderthal is so much like Homo sapiens that: “It has been said that if he were given a
shave, a haircut and a bath and dressed in a business suit, and were to talk
down one of our city streets, he would be given no more attention than any
other individual.”[jjjj] Cro-Magnons
(which are the race of men who made the famous wall drawings found in a cave in
southern France) are classified as modern humans. Dr. Hoeh’s view Adam was just like creatures who had existed
before him, but had the ‘spirit of man” (I Cor. 2:11) added, is an unprovable
and unnecessary non-falsifible hypothesis.
Anyway, to say these pre-Adamic men could make arrows, engage in
agriculture, trade merchandise, and (according to my former pastor’s version)
use the wheel, waters down greatly our view of how important the spirit in man
is for making men different from animals mentally.[kkkk] All we
Christians need to do is maintain these bones of “hominids” are either those of
monkeys and apes on the one hand, or modern men (homo sapiens) on the other,
without any obvious transitional forms in-between, which is easy to do.[llll]
Finally,
much evidence exists for geological strata to be analyzed from the point of
view of catastrophism as opposed to uniformitarianism. Catastrophism maintains the fossil record
and geological strata was largely laid down by disasters and rapid geological
processes such as massive flood(s) which can’t be currently observed, while
uniformitarianism says these were laid down by slow, gradual processes such as
erosion, wind, rainfall, etc. which can be currently observed. Dr. Hoeh maintained that for mining to be
successful, mining engineers had to know the order of the strata. But is this the case” The strata aren’t as orderly as we may like
to think. Dr. David Raup, an evolutionist
and curator of geology at the Field
Museum of National History (Chicago), was willing to say: “The fossil record of evolution is amenable
to a wide variety of models ranging from completely deterministic (i.e.
compatible with evolution) to completely stochastic (i.e. random in order).”[mmmm] He was also
willing to say in another place: ‘so
the geological time scale and the basic facts of biological change over time
are totally independent of evolutionary theory. . . . One of the ironies of the
evolution-creation debate is the creationists have accepted the mistaken notion
that the fossil record shows a detailed and orderly progression and they have
gone to great lengths to accommodate this “fact” in their flood geology.”[nnnn] While in
reply the likes of Van Til and company in Science Held Hostage dwell on
the Grand Canyon in one chapter in this book, they totally ignore the many,
many more anomalies that exist for any thorough-going uniformitarianism. For example”there is the “Lewis overthrust”
of Montana, which includes Glacier National Park, in which ancient pre-Cambrian
rock sits directly on top of (much more recent) Cretaceous rock in apparent
conformity. This formation is around
330 miles long by 35 miles wide and six miles thick. There is every reason to believe the (supposedly) nearly billion
years old rock was formed in situ over the (allegedly) hundred million
years old rock layer underneath, which constitutes a particularly troublesome
anomaly to uniformitarianism.[oooo] Many, many
other anomalies could be cited, but I”ll leave them to my references.[pppp] Suffice it to
say, we should stick with the views of the Seventh-day Adventist geologist
George McCready Price and other creationist scholars, instead of embracing
uniformitarianism, which even some secular scientists seriously question (such
as Derek Ager). A few evolutionists are
willing to agree with HWA that evolutionary theory faces a problem with
circular reasoning as it uses fossils to order the strata, and then uses the
strata’s order to fossils to “prove” evolution. As evolutionist Tom Kemp conceded: “A circular argument arises:
Interpret the fossil record in the terms of a particular theory of
evolution, inspect the interpretation, and note that it confirms the
theory. Well, it would, wouldn’t it”“[qqqq] Hence, with
the intellectual foundation various creationist scholars and scientists provide
for us, we need not give in to the evolutionists to the extent (I”m afraid) Dr.
Hoeh” speculations do on pre-Adamic men.
Pasadena
also has made moves toward not taking the days of Gen. 1 literally: “This is not the time or place to go into
the reasons why Genesis might not be referring to literal days and
nights. We will explore it as time and
space permits in The Plain Truth. . . . However, we should address a
legitimate concerns: If we accept the
possibility that the days and nights of creation week are not literal, what
does that do to the Sabbath”“[rrrr] Here, the
problems becomes a failure to take seriously the highly detailed arguments
about fundamentalist interpretations of Gen. 1-2, and attempt to refute their
defenses of the seven days in question being 24 hours each. For example, Neil Earle in his article
mentions three ways of interpreting Gen. 1:
“1. The strictly literal . . .
2. The mythical-symbolic
interpretation. . . . 3. The median
view.”[ssss] He, in the
rest of this article as well as a sidebar article labeled “Origins and
Destiny,” proceeds to defend the third “median” view. What gets ignored here is that there is little difference between
the second view”the “mythical-symbolic interpretation”“and the third when it
comes down to hard tacks. Earle
maintains that the book of Genesis is partially mythical and symbolic,
which is an enormous concession to the evolutionists. After all, if it is partially mythical and partially
symbolic, how do we know when the literal aspect begins and the non-literal
ends” Instead, we should assume
non-poetic documents in the Bible are literal, until by a figure of speech they
show in some aspect they aren’t. Gen.
1, notwithstanding all the attempts by
the world’s theologians to take and make the days of Gen. 1 more than 24 hours each, reads like straightforward history
like I Kings, and not at all like Psalms” or Proverbs” poetry. Indeed, an examination of the rest of
Genesis definitely puts it in the historical category in how it is narrated,
including the Deluge and the stories of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and Joseph. To say Genesis 1-2, like Psalms, wasn’t
mainly to be taken literally like historical accounts are, ignores how the rest
of the book is decidedly non-poetic in nature.
Furthermore, Pasadena fails to refute the standard fundamentalist
arguments that the days of Gen. 1 are literal in anything I”ve seen that has
been published, but just asserts they need not be taken literally, leaning on
the questionable arguments of the world’s theologians and scholars for support.
First,
before proceeding to the text of the Old Testament directly, we should define
the word “literal,” since it gets such a bad and undeserved rap in this
context. For people ridicule the
“literal” interpretation of Genesis, forgetting that the word “literal” refers
to the normal, everyday meaning we give words.
“Interpretation,” as such, at least before the rise of post-modernism,
normally would refer to taking words differently than they normally meant. When the newspaper says, “Dog Bites Man,”
the normal, i.e. literal, meaning is that, yes indeed, Rover did put his mouth
on some bodily part of Smith and sink
his teeth into it. To be literal means
when you say the cat is on the mat, yes, indeed, some feline does sit on some
rug. Whitcomb calls the “literal”
system of biblical interpretation the “indispensable and time-honored
historical/grammatical system of biblical interpretation” in one of his works.[tttt] According to
The American Heritage Dictionary, “literal” means “Being in accordance
with, conforming to, or upholding the exact or primary meaning of a word or
words . . . Avoiding exaggeration, metaphor, or embellishment; factual;
prosaic.” The fundamentalist
understanding of Gen. l-2 is that we should
take these early chapters in a straightforward manner, since they aren’t full
of metaphors or other poetic conventions that characterize forms of language
that aren’t intended to be taken literally.
Unlike the case where, say, Isaiah mentions the trees clapping their
hands, there isn’t much in the way of obvious metaphors in these early chapters
of Genesis. Indeed, a straightforward
narrative style is maintained basically throughout the book as it marches through
the early history of the human race in general chronological order. There exists no serious differences in style
in how Gen. 1-11 is narrated, and how the rest of the book describes Abraham
and his descendants” lives. The burden
of proof really is strongly on those who wish to deny Genesis 1-2 is history,
which means it should be taken normally literally except for obvious metaphors
(such as, in Homer’s Odyssey, “the rosy fingered dawn”). It isn’t in the genre of poetry, like most
of Job and the Psalms, where non-literal meanings may be safely assumed to
abound.
Let’s
consider some standard fundamentalist arguments that the text of Gen. 1-2
should be taken literally.[uuuu] The days are
implied to be literal because it is repeated some six times statements such as
this (Gen. 1:13): “And there was
evening and there was morning, a third day.”
If each day is said to have a “morning” and an “evening,” this by itself
virtually proves they are literal 24 hour days each. Then, one finds the days of Gen. 1-2 are referred to with ordinal
numbers, such as second, third, fourth, fifth, etc., with the seventh day, the
Sabbath day, the end of a week. Out of
over 200 instances in which an ordinal or limiting number is applied to the
word “day” in the Old Testament, the literal meaning is intended. The Hebrew word for day, “yom,” (plural,
“yamin”) approximately 95% of the time it occurs (out of some 2000
occurrences), the literal meaning is intended.
For if Moses really meant (say) a billion years elapsed for each day, it
would have been much more sensible to use such a word as “olam,” which means
“forever” or “time indefinite.” Or,
Moses could have used such a combination as “yom rab” (a long day (time)), but
he didn’t.
Furthermore,
consider the wording of the fourth commandment in Ex. 20:9-10, 11. Here we find the “creation week” directly
compared to the literal weekly work and rest cycle, with the implication that
the days in the former are as literal as those in the former: ‘six days you shall labor and do all your
work, but the seventh day is a sabbath of the Lord your God . . . For in six
days the Lord made the heavens and the earth, the sea and all that is in them,
and rested on the seventh day; therefore the Lord blessed the sabbath day and
made it holy.” The Sabbath command
loses a lot of its symbolic meaning if instead the day God rested in Gen. 2:1-3
was some randomly chosen time period in length, rather than a literal 24 hour
day. “It is quite clear that the six
work days of God are identical in duration with the six days of man’s work week. The basis for this very precise commandment
is trivial and vacuous otherwise.”[vvvv] Further, the
plural “yammin” is used in the Sabbath command to refer to all the days of Gen.
1 together. And this fact destroys the
“day-age” interpretation, for “yammin” is used over 700 times in the Old
Testament”and it’s never found in a case in which it can be proven to mean
anything other than literal days. For
if the seventh day in Gen. 2 was literal in length, so will be all the others
in the “creation week.”
Consider
HWA’s standard approach to Biblical exegesis:
“The Bible interprets itself.”
Let’s look at how Gen. 1:5 describes a “day” for us: “And God called the light day, and the
darkness He called night. And there was
evening and there was morning, one day.”
Here we find “light” equated with daytime, and “darkness” with
nighttime, and the two together make up “one day” (NASB). Similarly, note Gen. 1:14, 16, 19: “Then God said, “Let there be lights in the
expanse of the heavens to separate the day from the night, and let them be for
signs, and for seasons (such as the Holy Days), and for days and years . . .
And God made the two great lights, the greater light to govern the day, and the
lesser light to govern the night . . . And there was evening and there was
morning, a fourth day.” Can you
honestly say the meaning of a “day” changed from 12 or 24 hours each between
verses 14 and 16 to a billion years each in verse 19” And this is especially absurd when the latter verse says, “And
there was evening and there was morning”!
Maybe the “evening” and the “morning” were 500 million years each! It’s illegitimate to read back II Peter
3:8’s statement that “with the Lord one day is as a thousand years, and a
thousand years as one day” when the immediate context is what should be
used to determine Gen. 1’s meaning.
Further, as Whitcomb observes:
“To say “as a thousand years” is a very different matter from
saying “is a thousand years.”
This point has often been overlooked.
If “one day” in this verse really means a long period time, then we
would end up with the following absurdity:
“with the Lord a long period of time is as a thousand years.” But a thousand years would be a long period
of time for human beings too!”[wwww] Furthermore,
citing an obvious metaphorical statement about God’s eternity relative to man’s
shortness of life to interpret the word “day” in a straightforward historical
account of creation (Gen. 1-2) is highly suspect.
One
common objection to the literal interpretation of Gen. 1-2 is to cite the use
of the word “day” in Gen. 2:4: “This is
the account of the heavens and the earth when they were created, in the day
that the Lord God made earth and heaven.”
Then it will be said the word “day” here had to mean a time period over
24 hours in length since the period of creation took six days. However, there is a powerful refutation of
this argument which involves comparing how the word “day” is used in Numbers 7
by Moses to how it was used by him in Gen. 1-2. Here Moses was over a period of several days allowing various
individuals of the nation of Israel to dedicate the altar of the tent of
meeting. Hence, we see Nahshon the son
of Amminadab give such an offering on the first day (v. 12), then on the second
day Nethanel the son of Zuar gave an offering (v. 18), and so forth (verses 24,
30, 36, 42, 48, 54, 60, 66, 72, 78), one for each tribe. Then comes Numbers 7:84, which is a nearly
exact parallel to Gen. 2:4 here in it use of
the word for “day”: “This was
the dedication offering for the altar from the leaders of Israel when
[literally, “in the day that,” NASB] it was anointed: twelve silver dishes, twelve silver bowls . . .” As Williams
observed:
There appears to be no more justification for the idea that the word in
Genesis 2:4 is used par[a]bolically than in Numbers 7:84. In both instances we have first a record of
details which occurred in “days” of 24 hours” duration, and then we have the
same word used comprehensively of what has been previously set forth in
detail. Such a use of the word “day” is
not peculiar to the Hebrews; we use the word similarly today without
confusion. A biographer of Lincoln may
state the day of his birth and the day of his marriage, the day of his
inauguration and the day of his death, etc., and then when summing up the
details of his life may say, “now in Lincoln’s day there were no
automobiles, radios, or television.” No
one would think such a biographer was using the word “parabolically.” Rather, he would be used it comprehensively. And this is exactly what we find in Genesis
2:4. After the writer has informed used
as to what transpired on each of the six days, he sums up God’s creative acts
by saying, “These are the generations of the heavens and of the earth when they
were created, in the day that the Lord God made the earth and the
heavens.[xxxx]
Hence, citing Gen. 2:4’s use of the word “day” won’t
magically turn the days of Gen. 1 into millions of years each.
Fundamentally,
the main reason why people don’t want to say the days of Gen. 1 are literal is
because of the desire to make its account of origins compatible with the
geological column and the radioactive decay dating methods. However, we should let the Bible interpret
itself, not scientific “knowledge” based upon questionable assumptions and
unproven postulates, such as the circular reasoning built into “proving”
evolution based upon the geological strata’s order of fossils”when these layer
of rock’s order and correlation mostly get determined by those same fossils
being ordered by the theory of evolution!
The dating methods don’t just assume the rate of radioactive decay was
constant, which is a solid assumption.
More questionably, they assume that no leaching of parent or daughter
elements away from their original locations occurred, and that they couldn’t
have been created in some more recent time period in an intermediate decay
ratio between the parent-daughter elements between no decay and complete decay,
and so decay from that intermediate ratio to what scientists find today. Finally, if God is almighty, isn’t is
possible that God could create the whole universe, rocks, plants, animals,
stars, and all, in a split second” Why
do we find it so impossible He did it in seven days, other than to make it
easier for us created beings to understand and relate to the idea of creation
better (such as through the institution of the Sabbath day)”
We have
documented above that the Worldwide Church of God significantly departed from
the fundamentalist viewpoint on creation, and has largely repudiated Herbert W.
Armstrong’s anti-fideist views on Christian apologetics. The views Pasadena presently advocates are
not tenable from a scholarly point of view, despite they are popular with
various pragmatic evangelicals and mainline Protestants. While we in the United Church of God in
recent months have been preoccupied with the issues of the law and the Sabbath,
church government, and (secondarily) the nature of God, the fact remains that
Pasadena’s slide into fideism and a non-literal view of Genesis constitutes
errors of equal magnitude in their implications. For if we don’t know how it all began, it’s impossible to know
how it will all end. Such views make it
significantly harder to convert people in the world who have a skeptical, pro-evolution
mindset, and who ridicule fundamentalism and belief in the Bible. It’s time for us in the United Church of God
to pick up again on Herbert W. Armstrong’s (and Thomas Aquinas’) use of human reason to serve the cause of
spreading the gospel. If we wish to
reach the WORLD, and not just various people who already have a Christian
mindset, we should put refutations of evolution and agnosticism up front in our
message to the world, as the WCG did
before c. l980. We”ve long
lacked a (presently) available booklet in the WCG that refuted evolution, so we
in the UCG should bend to have one of these written, as well as one proving God
to exist and another that proves the historicity of the Bible. For if you don’t believe in God or the
Bible, discussions about the Sabbath, the Holy Days, the law of God, the
Trinity, etc. are totally irrelevant to begin with. For in order to fulfill I Pet. 3:15, we shouldn’t just be ready
for attacks on the law, the Sabbath, God as a Family, or voting for a Council
of Elders, but for those motivated by atheism and evolution: “[A]lways being ready to make a defense to
everyone who asks you to give an account for the hope that is in you . . .”
Links to elsewhere on this Web site: /apologetics.html /book.html /doctrinal.html /essays.html /links.html
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[a]
Spontaneous generation is the alleged process by which the first single living
cell came to exist, by random chance.
Often scientists holding to this view assert that the first cell was an accident caused by
various proteins and amino acids floating in the ocean suddenly being struck by
lightening.
[b] As quoted
in Norman L. Geisler, Christian Apologetics (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Book House, 1976), p. 47.
[c] As quoted
in Lytton Strachey, Eminent Victorians (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1918 (original
publication), p. 104.
[d] Christian
apologetics attempts to defend belief in Christianity by using various
arguments drawn from theology, philosophy, history, and science. It often attempts to prove the existence of
God, the possibility of miracles, the historical reliability of the Bible, and
the falsity of the theory of evolution.
[e] his
emphasis, HWA, Mystery of the Ages (New York: Dodd, Mead, 1985), pp. 21-22.
[f] his
emphasis, HWA, The Bible Superstition or Authority” . . . and Can You Prove It” (1985), pp.
1-2. All quotes that have emphasis in
them are original to them, unless otherwise noted.
[g] his
emphasis, “Letters to the Editor,” Plain Truth, February 1989, p. 26.
[h] Josh
McDowell, More than a Carpenter (Wheaton, Ill.: Tyndale House Publishers, 1977), p. 47.
[i] Josh
McDowell, Evidence that Demands a Verdict (San Bernardino, Calif.: Here’s Life Publishers, 1979), pp. 39-43;
McDowell, More than a Carpenter, p. 42; Robert A. Morey, The New
Atheism and the Erosion of Freedom (Minneapolis: Bethany House Publishers, 1986), p. 115.
[j] his
emphasis, F.F. Bruce, The New Testament Documents: Are They Reliable” (Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity Press, 1960), pp. 16-17.
[k] That is,
ahead of the facts (before further investigation).
[l] McDowell,
More than a Carpenter, pp. 49-54.
[m] Morey, The
New Atheism, pp. 126-127; See also Life--How Did It Get Here” By Evolution or by Creation” (New
York: Watchtower Bible and Tract
Society of New York, 1985), pp. 208-212.
[n] As quoted
in McDowell, Evidence that Demands a Verdict, p. 65.
[o] emphasis
in source, Ibid.
[p] See the
section on fulfilled prophecy in Ibid., pp. 267-323.
[q] Plain
Truth, February 1989, p. 26.
[r] Kroll, , Plain
Truth, October 1988, p. 10.
[s] See the
preface and the chapter “The Book that Refused to be Written” in Frank Morison,
Who Moved the Stone” (Grand Rapids, Mich.:
Zondervan, 1958), pp. 8-12.
[t] Morey, The
New Atheism, p. 128; Norman L. Geisler, Christian Apologetics (Grand
Rapids, Mich.: Baker Book House, 1976),
p. 326.
[u] C.S.
Lewis, Surprised by Joy The Shape of
My Early Life (New York: Walker and
Company, 1955), p. 330.
[v] “Letters
to the Editor,” Plain Truth, February 1989, p. 26.
[w] Paul
Kroll, “Who Really Wrote the Bible”,” Plain Truth, October 1988,
p. 10.
[x]
Epistemology is the branch of philosophy that studies how men and women acquire
knowledge, i.e. how we know that we know.
[y] For more
on the difference between historiographical knowledge and scientific knowledge,
see Paul E. Little, Know Why You Believe (Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity Press, 1968), pp. 59-71.
[z] C.S.
Lewis, Miracles A Preliminary Study
(New York: Macmillan, 1978); Colin
Brown, Miracles and the Critical Mind (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 1978). We have to remind ourselves that recorded, eyewitness accounts of
any events in history, not just miracles, aren’t going to be
“scientific,” as explained above. The
process by which we can believe Octavian was part of the second Triumvirate is
the same one ultimately by which we can believe the Red Sea parted.
[aa] His emphasis,
“Letters,” Plain Truth, February 1989, p. 26.
[bb] Geisler, Christian
Apologetics, p. 59.
[cc] Gleason
L. Archer, Encyclopedia of Bible Difficulties (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Zondervan, 1982), p. 26. Note the contrast to this WCG
statement: “The validity of the Bible
lies beyond the competence of archeology either to prove or to disprove. Matters of faith are not subject to
objective testing” (Keith W. Stump, “Digging Up the Bible,” Plain Truth,
July 1995, p. 23.
[dd] as quoted
in McDowell, Evidence that Demands a Verdict, p. 123.
[ee] as found
in The Random House Dictionary of the English Language The Unabridged Edition.
[ff] Thomas
Aquinas, Summa Theologica, Part II of the Second Part, Q. II, A. I,
reply obj. I.
[gg] “The
greatest good for the greatest number” is the hallmark and guiding moral
principle of the philosophers who advocated utilitarianism, such as the
Englishmen Jeremy Bentham and John Stuart Mill. The “categorical imperative” was the basis of the moral principles
of the German philosopher Immanuel Kant.
The latter said that laws based on a categorical imperative should be
such that you would will them to be universally able to be performed or acted
upon.
[hh] This
concept of faith is taken from Summa Theologica. However, I wasn’t able3 to find the place where
Thomas uses the examples of Mt. Sinai and the giving of the law to explain in
more detail what he said about faith above.
[ii] See
William G. Most, Catholic Apologetics Today
Answers to Modern Critics (Rockford, Ill.: Tan Books and Publishers, 1986), p. 17.
[jj] Herbert
W. Armstrong, Autobiography of Herbert W. Armstrong (1986), Vol. I, p.
298; Richard L. Purtill, C.S. Lewis’s Case for the Christian Faith (San
Francisco: Harper and Row, 1981), pp.
22-27.
[kk] J.P.
Moreland, Scaling the Secular City A
Defense of Christianity (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Baker Book House, 1987), pp. 15-103; Josh McDowell, More
Evidence that Demands Verdict (San Bernardino, Calif.: Here’s Life Publishers, 1981); Sproul, et
al., Classical Apologetics, pp. 109-136.
[ll] Thomas
Aquinas, Summa Theologica, first part, question II, article II, reply
obj. I.
[mm] Ellen G.
White, The Greatest Love (originally--Steps to Christ) (Phoenix,
Ariz.: Inspiration Books, 1975), p. 73.
[nn] As John
Calvin once said: “Faith consists not
in ignorance, but in knowledge.” Hence,
we can worship God potentially using our minds” reasoning powers, so long as
they are used in His service, and not against Him.
[oo]
Empiricism is the philosophical belief that knowledge is gained mainly or
exclusively by using our senses, such as sight, hearing, touch, smell, or
taste. It is in contrast to
rationalism, which maintains knowledge is gained mainly or exclusively by
thought, reasoning, and logic.
[pp] C.S.
Lewis, The World’s Last Night and Other Essays (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1960), p. 17.
[qq] Fred
Hoyle and Chandra Wickramasinghe, Evolution from Space (London: J.M. Dent & Sons, 1981), p. 24. Both of these men were agnostics before
writing this book, but as a result have embraced some type of pantheism due to
calculations like these. (Pantheism is
the belief everything, including matter, is God, which is a foundational belief
within Hinduism).
[rr] Physicist
H.S. Lipson, Physics Bulletin, 1980, Vol. 31, p. 138.
[ss]
Evolutionist Loren Eiseley, The Immense Journey (New York, 1957), p.
199. Spontaneous generation is the
belief the first living cell by created by a chemical accident.
[tt] Dr.
George Wald, a Nobel prize winner and Harvard biology professor, “The Origin of
Life,” The Physics and Chemistry of Life (Simon and Shuster, 1955), p.
9. Wald was either an agnostic or
atheist when he wrote this, but later became some kind of pantheist. See Henry M. Morris, The Biblical Basis
for Modern Science (Grand Rapids, Mich.:
Baker Book House, 1984), pp. 407-408.
[uu]
Mathematician J.W.N. Sullivan, Reader’s Digest, January 1963, p. 92.
[vv]
Professing agnostic Robert Jastrow, Los Angeles Times, June 25, 1978,
part VI, pp. 1, 6.
[ww] Plain
Truth, February 1989, p. 26.
[xx]Thomas
Aquinas, Summa Theologica, first part, question 12, article I; see also
article 13 for the limits on our knowledge of God.
[yy]It should
be noted that when we predicate terms to God such as “wise” or “mighty” that
they have a somewhat difference, though analogous meaning when applied to
humans (i.e., analogical predication).
The word “cloud” is used analogously when it is used to mean “to cloud
one’s meaning” and “the cloud blocked a lot of the sunlight.” By contrast, equivocal predication involves
using the same word in totally different ways, such as using the word “cape” to
refer to an article of clothing and to a geographical feature (“the Cape of
Good Hope.”) Univocal predication
occurs when the word has the same meaning in both situations, such as saying
the word “day” in Gen. 1 and Ex. 20’s fourth commandment both refer to 24 hour
days. Hence, when the Bible uses the
same word (say, “living”) to both man and God, it doesn’t have the same
identical, univocal meaning. Specifically, this is how we “know in part” about
God through the Bible (i.e. by analogical predication, not univocal).
[zz] his
emphasis, Letters, Plain Truth, February 1989, p. 26.
[aaa] his
emphasis, Kroll, Plain Truth, October 1988, p. 10.
[bbb] Kathy
Johnson, “Footnotes--or Fakes”,” Good News, November-December 1990, p.
28.
[ccc] This
skull, “discovered” in England, was used as a missing link between men and
monkeys. It stood basically
unchallenged as a forgery for about 50 years.
It combined a real human skull with a heavily filed orangutan’s lower
jaw bone.
[ddd] See The
Bible God’s Word or Man’s (New
York: Watchtower Bible and Tract
Society of New York, 1989), pp. 50-53; Archer, Encyclopedia of Bible
Difficulties, pp. 156-157, 195.
[eee] Keith W.
Stump, “Digging Up the Bible,” Plain Truth, July 1995, p. 20.
[fff] This
scientific law, whose validity was finally proven beyond doubt by the French
scientist Louis Pasteur in the nineteenth century, says life comes only from
life. It cannot happen by chance to
dead or inanimate objects. It refuted
spontaneous generation.
[ggg] This
well-proven law of physics says that the amount of useful energy in a closed
system must always decline over time, while in an open system it will tend to
decline. A ‘system” is any place or
thing in the universe that has energy going from a place of high concentration
to a low concentration (or state of organization). A car using up its gas is a ‘system,” as are natural objects such
as a tree decaying due to bacteria attacking it. A car with a stuck gas cap could be compared to a closed system,
since no more useful energy is entering it.
[hhh] A paradigm
is a fundamental approach or structure to viewing the world around us. This term was popularized by Thomas Kuhn’s
book dealing with scientific revolutions and the ways groups of scientists
would suddenly, radically change the way they saw the world, instead of making
just incremental additions to humanity’s knowledge by routine, normal science
due to accumulating anomalies.
[iii] HWA, Autobiography
of Herbert W. Armstrong (1986), Vol. 1, pp. 581-585.
[jjj] Ibid.,
p. 581.
[kkk] his
emphasis, John Halford, “Religion and Science
Bridging the Gap,” Plain Truth, July 1993, p. 17.
[lll] See Josh
McDowell and Don Stewart, Reasons Skeptics Should Consider Christianity
(San Bernardino, Calif.: Here’s Life,
1981), pp. 137-139.
[mmm] Halford, Plain
Truth, July 1993, p. 19.
[nnn] Duane T.
Gish, Evolution: The Challenge of
the Fossil Record (El Cajon, CA:
Creation-Life Publishers, 1985), p. 42.
[ooo] T.N.
George, Science Progress 48:1 (1960), as quoted in Gish, Ibid.
[ppp] As quoted
in Henry M. Morris and Gary E. Parker, What Is Creation Science” (El
Cajon, Calif.: Master Books, 1987), pp.
131-132.
[qqq] Halford, Plain
Truth, July 1993, p. 20.
[rrr] This
fossil is the famous supposed “half reptile, half bird.” Actually, it is far more bird than reptile.
[sss] their
italics, S.J. Gould and N. Eldredge, Paleobiology 3:147 (1977), as
quoted in Gish, Evolution, p. 115.
[ttt] See
Marvin L. Lubenow, Bones of Contention
A Creationist Assessment of Human Fossils (Grand rapids, Mich.: Baker Book House, 1992), pp. 247-266. This recent work brilliantly attacks the
idea of human evolution in a readable way.
[uuu] Halford, Plain
Truth, July 1993, p. 20.
[vvv] See the
description of this issue in Gish, Evolution, pp. 234-240.
[www] Lubenow, Bones
of Contention, p. 182.
[xxx] Frank
Lewis Marsh, Evolution or Special Creation” (Washington, D.C.: Review and Herald Association, 1963), p.
13. See also p. 9-15, 42-43 for a more
general discussion of this issue.
[yyy] Halford, Plain
Truth, July 1993, p. 20.
[zzz] their
emphasis, unless otherwise noted, R.C. Sproul, John Gerstner, and Arthur Lindsley,
Classical Apologetics A Rational
Defense of the Christian Faith and a Critique of Presuppositional Apologetics
(Grand Rapids, Mich.: Zondervan, 1984),
p. 46.
[aaaa] The
English author and intellectual Aldous Huxley once confessed: “I had motives for not wanting the world to
have meaning; consequently assumed that it had none, and was able without any
difficulty to find satisfying reasons for this assumption . . . We objected to
the morality because it interfered with our sexual freedom” (As quoted in Did
Man Get Here by Evolution or by Creation” (New York: Watchtower Bible and Tract Society, 1967),
p. 130).
[bbbb] his
emphasis, HWA, Autobiography of Herbert W. Armstrong (1986), pp.
584-585.
[cccc] John C.
Whitcomb and Henry M. Morris, The Genesis Flood The Biblical Record and Its Scientific Implications (Grand
Rapids, Mich.: Baker Book House, 1961),
pp. 474-489. This classic scientific
creationist work should be carefully studied before accepting Dr. Hoeh’s
pre-Adamic men theories.
[dddd] Henry
Morris, ed., Scientific Creationism (San Diego, Calif.: Creation-Life Publishers, 1974), p.
162. This book contains an excellent
critique of all the standard dating methods based on radioactive decay, as well
as a devastating refutation of the day-age interpretation of Gen. 1 which
Pasadena has been leaning towards in recent years.
[eeee] Josh
McDowell and Don Steward, Reasons
Skeptics Should Consider Christianity (San Bernardino, Calif.: Here’s Life Publishers, 1981), p. 116.
[ffff] See Ibid.,
pp. 115-117; Morris, Scientific Creationism, pp. 161-167; Harold S.
Slusher, Critique of Radiometric Dating
(San Diego: Institute for
Creation Research, 1973), pp. 34-41; Walter E. Lammerts, ed., Why Not
Creation” (Nutley, N.J.:
Presbyterian and Reformed Publishing, 1970), pp. 80-105.
[gggg] Duane T.
Gish, Evolution: The Challenge of
the Fossil Record (El Cajon, Calif.:
Master Books, 1985), p. 145.
[hhhh] See the
discussion of Oxnard and Zukerman’s research in Ibid., pp. 148-151. The famous fossil “Lucy,” which is a member
of the australopithecine family, has been argued to be able to walk upright
(was bipedal). However, the key joint
bone in the leg used to argue for this came from an area significantly distant
from the rest of the skeleton, and most likely shouldn’t be considered as part
of the rest of the skeleton. (Shades
of the Java man problem!)
[iiii] As quoted
in Life”How Did It Get Here”, p. 94.
[jjjj] Gish, Evolution: The Challenge of the Fossil Record, p.
204.
[kkkk] These
characterizations of what pre-Adamic men could do are based upon my sermon
notes for a sermon given on October 22, 1988 by Gerald Witte in Montrose,
Michigan, and a sermon by Dr. Herman Hoeh himself on May 15, 1990 in Lansing,
Michigan.
[llll] One
wonders if Dr. Hoeh would have persisted in these speculations for so many
years if he had had a copy of Marvin L. Lubenow’s Bones of Contention A Creationist Assessment of Human Fossils
(Grand Rapids, Mich.: Baker Book House,
1992). Lubenow brilliantly lays waste
evolutionist speculations on the subject of human evolution, particularly by
pointing out the known diversity of the shapes and sizes of human beings, which
evolutionists have ended up categorizing as different species. See also Gish, Evolution: The Challenge of the Fossil Record, pp.
130-228, who deals with the austropithecines, unlike Lubenow. Additional sources are: Evan Shute, Flaws in the Theory of
Evolution (London, Ontario: Temside
Press, 1961), pp. 206227; R.L. Wysong, The Creation-Evolution Controversy
(East Lansing, Mich.: Inquiry Press,
1976), pp. 295-300; and Life”How Did It Get Here”, pp. 83-98.
[mmmm] As quoted
in Henry M. Morris, The Biblical Basis for Modern Science (Grand Rapids,
Mich.: Baker Book House, 1984), p. 361.
[nnnn] Ibid.,
p. 362.
[oooo] See Henry
M. Morris, The Remarkable Birth of Planet Earth (Minneapolis: Bethany Fellowship, 1972), pp. 21-23; Morris and Whitcomb, The Genesis Flood,
pp. 184-195.
[pppp] Derek V.
Ager, The Nature of the Stratigraphical Record (New York: Macmillian, 1981); Whitcomb and Morris, The
Genesis Flood,; Immanuel Velikovsky, Earth in Upheaval (New York: Dell Publishing, 1955); Reginald Daly, Earth’s
Most Challenging Mysteries (The Craig Press, 1972).
[qqqq] As cited
in Henry M. Morris and Gary E. Parker, What Is Creation Science” (El
Cajon, Calif.: Master Books, 1987), p.
4.
[rrrr] John
Halford, ‘sabbath: the days and nights
of Genesis,” WWN, February 1, 1994, p. 4.
[ssss] Neil
Earle, “The “Monkey Trial” Retried,” Plain Truth, July 1995, p. 13.
[tttt] John C.
Whitcomb, The Early Earth An
Introduction to Biblical Creationism
Revised Edition (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Baker Book House, l986), p. 28.
This book does a good job of dispatching various scholarly objections to
taking the Genesis account of creation literally.
[uuuu] See Henry
M. Morris, ed., Scientific Creationism (El Cajon, Calif.: Master Books, 1974), pp. 221-230.
[vvvv] Ibid.,
p. 225.
[wwww] Whitcomb,
The Early Earth, p. 32.
[xxxx] Arthur F.
Williams, “The Genesis Account of Creation,” in Walter E. Lammerts, ed., Why
Not Creation” Selected Articles from
the Creation Research Society Quarterly Volumes I through V (1964-68)
(Nutley, N.J.: Presbyterian and
Reformed Publishing Co,, 1970), p. 32.
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