Ken Ham's response to my explanation of why I don't believe in a YET AGAIN about the age of the earth is 6,000 years old was bad and misleading in many ways, and I'm here to offer my rebuttal to it.
00:01:54.420I just think that, you know, we have a disagreement on that topic.
00:01:58.820So there was a lot of reaction to that episode.
00:02:01.060Some of it was thoughtful and interesting, and this was a few weeks ago, probably almost about a month ago that I did that episode.
00:02:07.040And, you know, the reaction has hardly slowed down.
00:02:14.200And as I said, some of the, you know, I've heard from a lot of people that agree with me, and some of whom are afraid to say out loud that they agree because they're afraid that they'll be, I don't know, disowned by their families if they come out as an old earth heretic.
00:02:31.700But some of the responses I've gotten, a lot of the responses have been disappointing, to be honest.
00:02:39.640I say disappointing not because people agreed with me.
00:02:42.840But disappointing because a great many Christians made it clear that they were simply unwilling to listen to anyone who would dare disagree with the young earth view.
00:03:08.100Ken Ham over at Answers in Genesis issued a response as well.
00:03:12.460Ken Ham is, if you aren't familiar, Ken Ham, probably the most well-known young earth creationist in the country.
00:03:19.380He runs the Creation Museum where you can learn about how dinosaurs and people coexisted and other interesting facts.
00:03:26.280At first, at first, you know, at first when I read his response, I wasn't going to issue any further rebuttal to it.
00:03:36.120But he so mischaracterized my view and he represented it so falsely.
00:03:42.600And he made such a straw man of what I said that on top of my readers and listeners, you know, being ticked off at me for my position on this, I've been getting emails and messages from his followers for weeks accusing me of saying things I never said.
00:03:56.980And taking positions I never took, all because Ken Ham told them that's what I said.
00:04:02.660For some reason, a lot of people have come under the impression that Ken Ham is an expert on science and theology.
00:04:11.380And they trust him implicitly on those subjects and apparently on every subject.
00:04:17.600Because when he responded to me and blatantly misconstrued my opinions, they just went with it.
00:04:37.560So he just, it was just his, he just expected people to trust, take his word for it.
00:04:43.980For, you know, he was going to represent what I said and you're supposed to take his word for it.
00:04:48.240And a lot of his followers did exactly that.
00:04:49.960Um, and so because Ham has done this, because he attacked my faith, rather than simply rebutting my opinions, he attacked my faith.
00:05:02.800So I have no choice then but to respond and to clarify some things.
00:05:06.660Now, uh, just to review my, my basic contention, to summarize it very briefly before getting into Ham's response, I agree with the vast majority of scientists, Christian and secular scientists alike, who say that the earth is about 4.5 billion years old, the universe is around 14 billion years old.
00:05:26.800Um, I think an honest evaluation of the, of the geological data, the cosmological data, astronomical, uh, data, anthropological, archaeological, mathematical data, all of that, um, supports this view.
00:05:37.680The, the young earth view, um, can only cherry pick a few bits of data from each of these disciplines while rejecting most of the rest of it.
00:05:47.720And, and, and that, that just isn't how you do science.
00:05:50.900Um, in other words, you, you can't reject almost everything that say archaeologists and anthropologists have discovered while hanging your hat on a cave painting of a dinosaur in Utah, which is, which is, you know, I'm not, that's not a straw man.
00:06:08.320That's a lot of people sent me the stuff about cave paintings of dinosaurs.
00:06:11.800They, they, they think that this is really good evidence of, of a young earth.
00:06:15.680Um, you know, the problem is, first of all, these dinosaur cave paintings are not actually dinosaurs.
00:06:22.640And that's really clear when you, when you look at the, an undoctored photo of them.
00:06:27.560And for some of these photos, people were sending me, I had to go look it up myself because the photos they were sending had been enhanced.
00:06:34.240Um, not by the person's, I think the person sending it didn't realize that these were doctored enhanced photos.
00:06:38.880But when you go and look at the real image, um, it's, it's, you know, the, the dinosaur outline isn't, isn't nearly as clear.
00:06:47.280But the main point is, how can you latch onto that while rejecting every single artifact, all of the thousands of artifacts discovered, which have been dated back well over 10,000 years?
00:08:11.580I think that someone drew it 50 years ago, after dinosaur bones have been discovered.
00:08:16.640And then you say, no, well, that's a painting that dates back 2,000 years before dinosaurs had been discovered,
00:08:21.400which must mean that dinosaurs existed and were walking around back then.
00:08:24.120Well, how do you know that it dates back 2,000 years?
00:08:27.440Because you're, you're trusting the dating of scientists.
00:08:30.800But then you dismiss their dating on almost everything else.
00:08:34.140So, so, so they don't know how to date anything except the one thing that proves your theory?
00:08:40.240I mean, do you see the problem with that approach?
00:08:42.680I think there's a problem with that approach.
00:08:44.200I'm not saying that we have to accept everything that scientists tell us.
00:08:47.940But if we're combing through the scientific data furiously and then accepting implicitly as dogma only the little bits of things that support what we already thought ahead of time,
00:09:00.940that's just not an intellectually honest way of going about it.
00:09:06.440Now, as far as the theological premise, as far as the theology of this whole thing, I argued a few things.
00:09:21.360Number one, nobody takes the whole Bible literally.
00:09:24.240I'm going to get more into that a little bit later.
00:09:26.360But just so we'll, we'll, we'll dog ear that one and come back to it.
00:09:30.440Number two, a person can read the Genesis story as non-literal without throwing out the whole Bible and while still affirming the inerrant truth of the Bible.
00:09:47.200In other words, yes, we could say Genesis is true in what it says, but then the question is, what does it say?
00:10:05.380The third, third theological thing, the 24-hour creation day interpretation, well, this isn't even really theological, this is back to scientific.
00:10:12.920The 24-hour creation day interpretation isn't the most literal interpretation.
00:10:18.500A day literally is when the earth makes one full rotation on its axis.
00:10:23.620As I argued, there is nothing, nothing in the text which suggests, at least through the first three days of creation, that the earth was rotating on a 24-hour schedule.
00:11:12.020Because I have no idea what a morning before a sun even looks like or what that consists of.
00:11:18.580So, what that tells us is that this is obvious, when it says evening and morning, this is a different kind of evening and morning.
00:11:26.280It's not the evening and morning you're thinking of, because that evening and morning is dependent entirely on the sun.
00:11:35.140So, it's a different kind of evening and morning, which I think would show us that it's also a different sort of day that we're talking about.
00:11:42.520So, the point is that 24 hours is not the literal meaning of a day.
00:11:49.140The literal meaning of a day is one full rotation on the axis.
00:11:52.860There is no reason to think that the Earth was on that schedule before outer space and the solar system and the galaxy even existed.
00:12:00.240Now, I don't take a literal interpretation of the creation story, but if you do, I think you're taking the wrong literal interpretation.
00:12:07.860I think young Earth creationism fails on its own premise, because it has the wrong idea of what a literal day is.
00:12:16.900Fourth theological point, young Earthers say that, and this is very important, young Earthers say that, well, the Earth could not be so old,
00:12:22.660because that would mean that plants and animals were living and dying for millions of years before the fall,
00:12:30.340but the Bible says that death came with the fall.
00:12:39.780Therefore, just as sin entered the world through one man and death through sin,
00:12:43.420and in this way, death came to all people because all sinned.
00:12:49.560So, it is perfectly theologically consistent to have dying animals and dying plants before the fall.
00:12:55.560Now, I do admit, okay, I do admit that it raises a question about why God would let this very violent process of life and death go on for millions of years.
00:13:05.880It is strange to think about all these animal species living and dying and many going extinct long before humans walked the Earth.
00:13:13.860So, it's a weird thing to think about in theological terms.
00:13:17.380But just because I don't understand that, just because I can't wrap my head around it, doesn't mean it isn't true.
00:13:23.140And besides, the young Earth view raises an even tougher theological question about, you know,
00:13:28.660if you're saying that animals didn't die before the fall, and now they do die because of the fall,
00:13:37.280well, why would the sin of Adam mean that dogs and lions and elephants and cats have to suffer and starve and die?
00:13:45.240Why would God punish animals for the sins of human beings?
00:13:48.980So, you don't really escape the theological difficulty by going to young Earth.
00:13:53.580I think, in fact, you end up with a greater theological difficulty.
00:14:18.980The post titled, Matt Walsh and a Young Earth.
00:14:22.860Recently, the popular Catholic political blogger, Matt Walsh, made a fairly lengthy video explaining why he was not a young Earth creationist
00:14:31.100and why he thinks young Earth creationists are a stumbling block to the faith of many people.
00:14:35.540The video is filled with straw man fallacies, misunderstandings, and mischaracterizations of what creationists actually believe.
00:14:41.380After watching the video, I was left wondering if he had even read any of our literature discussing the age of the Earth.
00:14:49.560He was wondering if I had even read his literature.
00:14:54.580Well, I have, and I'll get to that in a minute, but why should I have read his literature?
00:15:00.200He is a person with, I believe, an incorrect theological view, and he has taken it upon himself to spend his time advancing that view as the only correct view.
00:15:13.880Just because someone stands up there, or they make a website and they call it Answers in Genesis, that does not make them an expert on theological interpretations or on science.
00:15:27.200So it doesn't, I don't have to consult with him before making my, before forming my opinions, but what I found is that an awful lot of Christians really do think that Ken Ham is the expert on this.
00:15:40.960So when I, you know, when I was, you know, giving my opinion on it, I mean, probably, I don't think it's exaggerated, hundreds of people were saying, well, you got, well, what about the, you have to go to the Creation Museum.
00:15:51.480Well, you haven't even looked at Answers in Genesis.
00:15:55.560Now, as it happens, I have read his literature, and frankly, I find it to be extremely misleading, and I want to give you just one example, and this is important, because a lot of people think that, you know, a lot of people, as I said, trust Ken Ham and his organization.
00:16:15.180They trust it implicitly, and I think they should have some more, a little bit more skepticism.
00:16:19.860I want to give you just one example to show you, you know, to show you the problem with the way that Answers in Genesis goes about things.
00:16:28.560There's an article on the site, on Ken Ham's site, dealing with the problem of population, okay?
00:16:34.900So it seeks to answer the, the, the objection that if the Earth is only 6,000 years old, how did we reach 7 billion people already, right?
00:16:43.320Now, I actually don't think that that's a very compelling argument against the young Earth view, because population rates vary so much, and they're so dependent on other factors.
00:16:55.400So really, who knows how many people we would have or should have if the Earth was 6,000 years old.
00:17:01.940But I was curious as to how AIG answers this problem.
00:17:07.080And so I found an article on the subject titled, Billions of People in Thousands of Years.
00:17:13.720Now, let me read the first few sentences of this article.
00:17:17.060It says, creationists are often asked, how is it possible for the Earth's population to reach 6.5 billion people if the world is only about 6,000 years old, and if there were just two humans in the beginning?
00:17:27.120Here is what a little bit of simple arithmetic shows us.
00:17:30.880Let us start in the beginning with one male and one female.
00:17:33.640Now, let us assume that they marry and have children, and that their children marry and have children, and so on.
00:20:00.460Walsh's main points were that the days in Genesis could not be 24 hours and that science has proved that the earth is billions of years old.
00:22:42.260However, the fundamental point that Mr. Walsh is making is that he is more willing to rely on man's fallible word than to trust God's infallible word.
00:23:17.880It's that sentence, I think, in particular that has misled a lot of people about my point and has caused people to assume that I reject the Bible and that I don't think that the Bible is infallible.
00:23:29.700This is what I've been hearing from people.
00:23:31.100People think that I said that the Bible is not infallible.
00:24:44.920He repeatedly cites science as the reason the earth cannot be young.
00:24:48.380Yet, when observational science is performed, there are mountains of evidence from geology, astronomy, physics, archaeology, and so on, that the earth is indeed young.
00:24:57.240Now, he asserts that there are mountains of evidence.
00:25:00.140He provides no evidence, so we'll just move on.
00:25:04.880Ken says, by accepting the dogma of secular science, Walsh completely ignores the context of God's infallible word.
00:25:37.180His claim that the day in Genesis cannot be 24 hours because a day is defined by the earth revolving around the sun and spinning on its axis reveals a fundamental misunderstanding of what a day is.
00:25:46.720Though he's correct to say that the sun, according to scripture, wasn't there until the fourth day, the length of the day has nothing to do with the sun.
00:25:53.680It is entirely dependent on the rotation of the earth.
00:26:18.440Did you even listen to the podcast before you responded to it?
00:26:22.120I mean, you obviously don't want your followers to listen to it before they read your response, but did you even listen to it?
00:26:31.800Also, to say that a day has nothing to do with the sun whatsoever is obviously ridiculous.
00:26:36.480I mean, the parameters of a day are not completely dependent on the sun.
00:26:44.600But clearly, if you lived on a planet that was careening through space and not revolving around any star at all, how would you know when a day begins?
00:28:19.820Walsh is right that the word day in the Bible has multiple meanings, but not when it is combined with evening, morning, and a number, as it is in Genesis.
00:28:29.440Every single time it is used with those words, it means a literal 24-hour day, something he completely ignores.
00:28:36.160Every time the word day is used in the same sentence with evening, morning, and a number, it means 24 hours.
00:29:01.840It is very ironic that Walsh regularly defends biblical positions such as biblical marriage, human life made in God's image, beginning at fertilization, two created genders, and so on,
00:29:10.320but rejects the foundation for those beliefs.
00:29:13.400Without appealing to Genesis, there is no foundation for marriage.
00:29:16.400Abortion becomes perfectly acceptable if we aren't made in the image of God.
00:30:19.400And Ken Ham knows that I didn't say that.
00:30:22.880Again, my point is that he is wrong about his interpretation of day in Genesis.
00:30:29.360That has no bearing on anything else that he just mentioned.
00:30:39.220He says, Walsh did not mention it, but I wonder what he makes of how Jesus affirmed that Genesis was the beginning in Mark 10.6.
00:30:46.680Or how he feels about Exodus 20.11, which tells us everything was made in six literal days.
00:30:52.060See, this is the problem with trying to fit billions of years into Genesis.
00:30:55.740It always ends up compromising the Bible in places outside of Genesis 2.
00:30:59.480So either we accept the whole Bible naturally as it is written, or we reject the whole thing.
00:31:04.060Trying to fit the Bible with the secular timeline just does not work.
00:31:07.720Here at Answers in Genesis, we are committed to answering the questions posed by secularists and compromised Christians about what the Bible says.
00:31:16.680We have a lot of articles on these topics, some of which are listed below.
00:31:20.660So I am a compromised Christian, according to Ken Ham.
00:31:31.140Because to misrepresent one of your brothers in Christ, for your own selfish reasons, is shameful.
00:31:44.360Now, going to the points that he made there, he says that Jesus, you know, we need to accept the six-day creation idea because of what Jesus says in Mark.
00:31:58.020Well, in Mark, Jesus simply restates that God made them male and female, which, again, I don't dispute.
00:32:05.620So that's got nothing to do with anything.
00:32:07.500In Exodus, we just get a restating of six days.
00:32:11.980So it does not specify six literal days.
00:32:16.200It just restates what it said in Genesis.
00:32:19.680So once again, Ken Ham is misleading us.
00:32:22.220Those verses do nothing at all to enhance his point.