Ervin and I have already had this argument about YEC

Comment on An appeal to our leadership by David Read.

Ervin and I have already had this argument about YEC vs. YLC once. The executve summary is that, based upon arguments from radiometric dating, GRI once made an unwise and unhelpful concession about the age of earth’s inorganic material, and now Ervin is anxious to hold all traditional Adventist believers to GRI’s silly concession. Well, sorry, Dr. Taylor, GRI doesn’t do my thinking for me, and your fetish about the YEC/YLC distinction just isn’t interesting or significant to me nor, I supect, to many other traditional Adventist believers.

The long version is that inorganic radiometric dating (using measurements selected by convention and tossing out thousands of other measurements) gives a date for the age of the earth of about 4.5 billion y.a. In order to explain this date, some creationists hypothesized that the earth, as a sphere of inorganic material, was already long in existence at the creation week, only it was “without form and void.” Then, during the creation week, God created life on this planet in 6 days, about 6 to 10 thousand years ago. In this scenario, the radiometric dates for earth’s basement rocks could be accurate.

The problem with this scenario is that (1) it isn’t suggested by Scripture or the writings of Ellen White, and (2) it doesn’t help much in trying to blend radiometric dating into a creationist model.

This theory is really a kind of modified “gap theory,” in that there is a gap between “In the beginning, God created the heavens and earth,” i.e., the creation of the sphere itself, and the rest of the creation narrative. All the linguistic arguments against the gap theory are applicable to this theory as well. In addition, some of Ellen White’s statements could be interpreted to mean that God called the earth’s matter into existence at the creation week, and not before. For example:

“The theory that God did not create matter when He brought the world into existence is without foundation. In the formation of our world, God was not indebted to pre-existing matter. On the contrary, all things material or spiritual, stood up before the Lord Jehovah at His voice, and were created for His own purpose.” 8T 258, 259

“In the formation of our world, God was not beholden to pre-existent substance or matter. â€œFor the things that are seen were not made of the things which do appear.â€ On the contrary, all things, material or spiritual stood up before the Lord Jehovah at His voice, and were created for His own purpose. The heavens and all the host of them, the earth and all things that are therein, are not only the work of His hand, they came into existence by the breath of His mouth.” Ms 127, 1897.

So this idea that God created the sphere, then waited 4.5 billion years, then created life on earth, is not a natural reading of Scripture and seems to be in conflict with Ellen White’s writing on the subject.

Moreover, this modified gap theory doesn’t really help to accommodate radiometric dating. The age of the basement rocks is one small aspect of the radiometric problem. In any creationist model, the fossiliferous geological strata must have been formed after the creation week, because these strata contain so many fossils of plants and animals. In most creationist models, the great bulk of the fossiliferous strata were formed during the year-long Genesis Flood, and within a relatively few centuries thereafter. But there are many igneous intrusions into the sedimentary fossiliferous strata, and these intrusions are dated radiometrically, showing results in the millions and hundreds of millions of year b.p. They obviously grossly conflict with a “young life” scenario, regardless of how old the basement rocks are concede to be. Moreover, organic radiometric dating, or C-14 dating, routinely returns dates on organic remains (plant and animal life) back to 50,000 years b.p., far older than the biblical time frame of 6 to 10 thousand years.

From the foregoing, it should be obvious that making this concession (that the earth is really very, very, very old, and only the life on earth is young) can address only a small fraction of the problems that radiometric dating causes for a creationist model, and does so at the very steep price of conceding the basic validity of the technique. It concedes that which should not be conceded, and gets only a mess of pottage in return. So the concession of some GRI staffers to this effect was both unwise and unhelpful; I don’t choose to be bound by it, and I doubt many other traditional Adventist believers would be either.

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David Read Also Commented

An appeal to our leadership
Erik, I think I understand your argument now, although the Socratic method was probably not the most efficient way to get it across.

You’re saying that Genesis 1:1: “In the beginning, God created the heavens and earth” is a summary ahead of time, or “proleptic” summary, and that the actual creating starts in verse 2. You’re also saying that the “earth” that Exodus 20:11 indicates was created in six days was the “dry land” that God created in Genesis 1:9 on day three (not the solid matter that you believe pre-existed the creation week).

Well, it is a good argument, but not compelling. First, verse 2 states that “the earth was without form and void,” and if there was preixisting matter then surely this formless and empty “earth” is it, because God had not said, “let there be” anything yet. But the word for “earth” in Genesis 1:2 is again Strong’s 776, “ha’aretz” or “erets,” the same “earth” that God named the “dry land” in verse 9, and the same “earth” that Exodus 20:11 says was created in six days.

In other words, there isn’t a different word to distinguish the hypothetical pre-existing solid matter from the “earth” that was created by gathering together the waters below the firmament into “seas” and thereby creating dry land. If Moses was trying to communicate that some solid matter pre-existed the Genesis week, why not use a different word for it? Why use the same word for everything? I again mention the very different cosmologies, because we may be trying to fit Moses into what we know about our cosmology. But maybe Moses was trying to describe not an empty solid sphere of inorganic matter, but empty space, or a cloud of gases, or who knows what?

Second, we’re still dealing with a gap theory of sorts, because you’re not denying that God created the formless and void “earth,” you’re just denying that He did so at the creation week. He must have created it long ago, 4.5 billion years ago, if convetional dating is to be trusted. But it doesn’t sound like God’s way of doing things to create a formless, void, chaotic, unfished, lifeless sphere, then wait for billions of years, then take a week to finish it off and stock with living creations. Does that sound to you like God’s way of doing things?

An appeal to our leadership
Geanna:

Dial back the melodrama. People here have tried to dialog with you, and patiently explain things to you, and you’ve been completely dismissive of everyone’s opinion but your own. You’ve latched onto weaknesses in the creationist model (chiefly re: biogeography), have not treated these subjects in a helpful or constructive way, have seemed obtuse and unable to understand creationist interpretations and approaches, have refused to acknowledge weaknesses in the mainstream origins model, and have been determined to interpret and misconstrue Scripture to make it fit with mainstream scientific assumptions.

It is clear that you are mainly interested in accommodating Adventism to mainstream, Darwinian science. I’ve warned you repeatedly that if you pursue this course, you will be an ideological opponent of all traditional Adventists. So please don’t be shocked and surprised when we treat you as such.

Your assertion that there was a time when Adventists didn’t have a strong doctrinal structure is just as fantastical and unreal as your previous assertion that Adventists only recently became creationists. The reality of the situation–and the only explanation for the Geanna Danes of the world–is that we are LESS “focused on theology, doctrine, rules, and self-governance” than we’ve ever been in our history as a movement. How in the world did we ever get to the point where we are producing people who imagine themselves to be Adventists yet seemingly have no clue what Adventism is? If we don’t get back to focusing on “theology, doctrine, rules and self-governance”, we’re going to become completely incoherent as a movement. Sadly, as demonstrated by LaSierra and the need for this website, this is already happening to a significant and substantial extent.

An appeal to our leadership
Erik:

I disagree with your argument that “the earth” that was created in six days, as indicated by Exodus 20:11, is the “dry land” of Genesis 1:9. The Hebrew word is the same in Genesis 1:1 as in Exodus 20:11: haÂ·’aÂ·retz. (Strong’s 776). The “earth” that God created in Genesis 1:1 is the same “earth” that Exodus 20:11 indicates was created during the creation week. By contrast, the “dry land” of Genesis 1:9 is translated from the Hebrew term ” haiÂ·yabÂ·baÂ·shah” (Strong’s 3004). Therefore, I cannot go along with you that the “earth” (Ha’aretz) was created before, and pre-existed, the creation week of Genesis 1 (if that is in fact what you were arguing).

I’ll concede that you make a very interesting case for pre-existent water. There does seem to be a Hebrew belief that the world was made out of water; Peter states that, “the earth was formed out of water and by water.” 2 Peter 3:5. The Hebrew cosmology doesn’t seem to correspond to ours. The Hebrew word translated as “heavens,” shamayim, seems to literally mean “upper waters.” In Genesis 1:6-7, we are told that God created a “rakia” (ususally translated as “firmament”) to separate the waters above from the waters below. But in our cosmology, we only have the waters below. Thus, according to our cosmology, it would seem that the “heavens” or “upper waters” would correspond to outer space and the “firmament” to earth’s atmosphere, or the sky.

All this is interesting but irrelevant to the radiometric dating issue, because it is clear from Scripture that the “earth,” ha’aretz, was created during the creation week.