Aug
The ugly of lectures held at Church’s
Yesterday, that is Friday the 17th of August 2007, I had the pleasure (or is it displeasure) of attending a public lecture given by Dr. Tas Walker from creation ministries about “The evidence for Noah’s flood in Australia”.
Whilst I do agree with a lot of what Dr. Tas Walker had to say, I felt that it was nothing more than a rallying of the masses. This is something that does unfortunately get on my nerves. Its not that the material was wrong, rather it was completely glossed over. For something that seemed to advertise it as being scientific, particularly in that it was meant to have ‘evidence’, it was really lacking.
The talk started of with a reference to 2 Peter3:3-4 and whilst it may hold some reference, it gave the impression that the view about to be presented was right because it was persecuted by ‘modern scientists’ which is simply ignorant. Regrettably this underlying assumption was restated several times in the lecture and gave no basis to his arguments. I’m thankful to God that my Brothers didn’t attend the lecture as they wouldn’t have been convinced by the ‘evidence’ presented.
The bulk of the argument/evidence put forward was that there is evidence for a global flood on Mars but still the denial of it on Earth. To his credit he went on to expand about how many formations of the Earth’s surface are caused by extraordinary events, though the conclusions he drew from that were neither scientific nor Biblical.
Let me expand upon my reasoning for the above comment a bit. Science completely rejects such an assumption on the grounds of it being unreproducible. The Bible is silent on the issue in that whilst it does say there was a flood, it doesn’t give much in the way of geological specifics or describe the nature of the erosion that results from such a flood. So then, how do we make sense of this? What was presented by Tas was neither scientific or biblical.
I will take this opportunity for a tangent and talk about Noah’s flood and just exactly what God promised he would do and why he did it. First lets look at the why, and this is found in Genesis 6:11-12:
Genesis 6:11-1211 Now the earth was corrupt in God’s sight, and the earth was filled with violence. 12 And God saw the earth, and behold, it was corrupt, for all flesh had corrupted their way on the earth. (ESV)
What we see here is that there was evil on the Earth. Was God right in the right to demand such a thing? Yes. Case closed. So, well for any reformed Christian that is case closed. Scientifically, God is the one who created and established society. He set down the rules and the ethics. He determines right from wrong. Therefore, God has the legal and scientific right to demand punishment.
Now lets examine scale of the flood. Again, the misunderstanding of science is a result of a misunderstanding of the Christians. Many Christians claim that it was a ‘Global flood’ and this does carry with it the connotations of covering all the Earth so that there was no land mass. This isn’t what the Bible says. To look at this we must investigate further (only by a couple of verses) into chapter 6 of the book of Genesis, namely Genesis 6:17 which reads:
Genesis 6:1717 For behold, I will bring a flood of waters upon the earth to destroy all flesh in which is the breath of life under heaven. Everything that is on the earth shall die. (ESV)
We also see in Genesis 9 that God makes reference to the flood when he establishes his covenant with Noah. Namely, verses 11 and 15 which read as follows:
Genesis 9:1111 I establish my covenant with you, that never again shall all flesh be cut off by the waters of the flood, and never again shall there be a flood to destroy the earth.” (ESV)
Genesis 9:1515 I will remember my covenant that is between me and you and every living creature of all flesh. And the waters shall never again become a flood to destroy all flesh. (ESV)
Here we see that it was a flood to destroy ‘the earth’ and ‘all flesh’. As far as what can be drawn from this we know that all flesh was destroyed. We know that the earth was destroyed. But, but I here the scientist stutter as they hear a claim that the earth was destroyed. To which any Christian will gladly point out the figurative nature of such an expression.
What needs to be remembered about Noha’s flood is that it is folly to try and pick out geological formations and say ‘that was created by the flood’. In a lot of cases whereby the formation under investigation is several thousand years old we can make an assumption, though that is only that. Scientists are right in pointing out the folly in our ‘God in the gaps’ style argument just as we are right in our pointing out their inconsistancy with regards to providing an age using scientific methods. It all comes down to subjective reasoning and a matter of trying to shout “No, I’m right!” the loudest.
Having said all that, do I disagree with what he put forward? No. Is this contradictory? No. I’m simply saying that his assumptions are nothing but that. He is simply trying to use science to prove the Bible and I find that nothing but folly.
Now getting to the rest of his argument, he did make the correct statement of Scientists often dismiss the evidence presented to them rather than accept it. But why is this the case? It can be found by looking at Paul’s opening statement in the book of Romans, namely Romans 1:18-25.
Romans 1:18-25 Listen18 For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth. 19 For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. 20 For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse. 21 For although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened. 22 Claiming to be wise, they became fools, 23 and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man and birds and animals and creeping things.
24 Therefore God gave them up in the lusts of their hearts to impurity, to the dishonoring of their bodies among themselves, 25 because they exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever! Amen. (ESV)
What we have here is a situation which I have pointed out many times before. Man, by his own accord won’t accept the Bible and what it presents. It is not that people are dumb, it is that they are blind.
As a Christian, what I must realise is that no matter how much I argue, they will not accept what is put forward to them unless God opens their heart. There are many good things that science teaches and there are many cases whereby scientists try and prove the unprovable.
To all of my science loving readers out there I simply say this in response to last nights lecture: look at the claims of the Bible, particularly Jesus. Investigate who Jesus is, what he claimed and what he accomplished by his life, death and resurrection. Ask yourselves if it is reasonable and logical to dismiss everything with a big fat paint brush. Ask yourselves if it is reasonable to take the world (creation) and try and prove God (the creator).
Getting back again to Dr. Tas Walker, his remarks were nothing but unscientific and unbiblical. He tried to show evidence for Noha’s flood scientifically and unfortunately failed to do anything but state assumptions and bag out the silent scientific community.
When the question and answer time came up, it was unfortunate to see that there was some militant Christianity being expressed during the time. Some of the people made statements (instead of asking questions) as to that they need to change the school system so that science isn’t put forward as ‘the’ answer to everything. Whilst there does need to be some change, the way in which the statements were made was nothing except militant.
I will attempt to do a more comprehensive review once I get a hold of the audio from the talk. I do encourage people to look into the matter closely and don’t take my word too seriously. Look at what God tells us through the Bible about the flood and what we can learn from it.
UPDATE: unfortunately the talk wasn’t recorded.
Comments and all that will be open, though please keep them polite.
God bless,
Matthew Delves
Ok, Matt, a few things:
I don’t think that was the intention at all. I think what was trying to be stated by quoting that verse was something along the lines of this: It’s not a new thing for people to scoff at Christian teaching and evangelism, especially when it comes to the arena of science “Hey Noah, what do you mean there’s going to be a flood? That’s unscientific!” (possible comment)
…yet many are happy to accept the Big Bang, itself unreproducible. “Science” needs to make up its mind, and not be inconsistent.
The Bible also doesn’t explain the mechanics of the Trinity, but you still believe it’s the only Biblical model that works. The Bible doesn’t explain how Jesus rose from the grave, either, yet you believe that to be true too. I don’t see what you’re getting at…
I don’t think he was trying to do that. He was quite clear, I thought, in explaining his starting point: if there was a global Flood, what evidence should we expect to find? That is starting from the Bible, which is the opposite of what you claim there.
I think you’re being unfair here. You haven’t defined “scientific” in your post at all, so it’s hard to know what you mean by that. As for unbiblical, you got annoyed at him earlier for quoting Scripture… I’m confused.
I think that’s enough iron-sharpening from me for now
Because of Him,
&y.
August 19th, 2007 at 11:07 pmGood points Andy.
A couple of things which can be clarified briefly are:
1. The impression I got from 2 Peter 3:3-4 is what I stated above. I am willing to stand corrected about that not being his intent put forward.
2. By scientific and science I am referring to people that hold science to be an absolute truth and reject Christianity. I’m well aware that they constantly contradict themselves with their views.
3. With regards to the ‘mechanics’ of the Trinity, I don’t think I made my point here well enough. What I was trying to illustrate is that we hold to the view that the flood did happen, though saying ‘This rock formation was caused by Noha’s flood’ I find to be nothing more than speculation. Having said that, I don’t disagree with it Noha’s flood being a possible cause.
4. I shall admit though, having thought through things a bit more that I have probably been a bit unfair on Dr Walker. Mainly because the only encounter with his work I’ve had has been the talk.
Hope I have cleared things up a bit. Sorry for being unclear on a couple of terms. With regards to iron sharpening, the reason I post my rants is to get some feedback on the ideas.
God bless,
August 20th, 2007 at 2:53 pmMatthew Delves
2. By scientific and science I am referring to people that hold science to be an absolute truth and reject Christianity.
That’s a terrible definition of science.
August 20th, 2007 at 7:09 pmI too had a few thoughts on the talk.
Firstly, it was the fourth event presented by Creation Ministries International that I have been to (although it was called Answers in Genesis for the first two), and it had more content than at least the last two I went to (I can’t really remember the first one). That said, it didn’t have as much ‘content’ and ‘evidence’ as I was expecting, especially given the topic was ‘Evidence for Noah’s Flood in Australia’. I was expecting explanations of why various specific geological structures in Australia are the way they are because of the flood. Instead, a number of ‘traditional’ young earth creationist arguments were put forward – ‘polystrate fossils’, ‘catastrophes’ can cause geological features, various things to do with the Mount Saint Helens eruption and radiocarbon dating doesn’t work; and not much of that was in reference to Australian geological features in particular.
Anyway, I’m getting ahead of myself. The presentation began (after the 2 Peter reference) with a mention that scientists think there was a global flood on Mars (which has no liquid water on it today) while they are quite sure that there hasn’t been a global flood on Earth (which is 75% covered in water with an average depth of about 4km). My first thought was something like ‘that’s because there’s probably evidence for a global flood on Mars but not on Earth’ (I don’t very often see scientists claiming things are true that they have no evidence for), but a bit of research makes me think the claim Tas made is not correct. What is true is that scientists do think that there has been some massive flooding on Mars in the past, even enough to name a geologic age the Noachian age due to the flooding that occurred at this time - the floods were twice as large as the largest known floods on earth, but they were not global (http://sciencenow.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/2005/722/3, http://www.nhm.ac.uk/research-curation/projects/martian-met/geology.html). However, I can’t find anything about a global flood on Mars except at various creationist sites. My comment here is that, even if the claim was true, it wouldn’t mean anything (other than being a nice one sentence argument). But the claim seems to be wrong, and this is one of the things that annoy me. Even if creationism is correct (concerning their claims about the age of the earth and the global flood), it is not going to convince people if the arguments/evidence put forward is just wrong, especially when the evidence is based on misrepresenting what scientists already think.
After this, there was a lot of talk about how various geological features can be caused by ‘catastrophes’ (namely, floods). I didn’t really see the point in this as it only demonstrated that catastrophes have played a part in shaping the earth as it is today. (I guess it would be reassuring for a creationist who didn’t follow the arguments very closely as they could see it as evidence that Noah’s flood made the earth look like it does, but that’s not what the evidence showed.) My main point here is that mainstream geologists also think that various catastrophes have played a part in shaping the earth. For example, the dominant theory for the origin of our moon is the giant impact hypothesis, which states that a Mars sized body collided with the Earth soon after the formation of the Earth (a catastrophe somewhat greater than a global flood); the English Channel is thought to have been caused by two rather large floods a few hundred thousand years ago; there are about 170 known meteor impact craters on earth, some of which are rather large (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_impact_craters_on_Earth) – the 170km Chicxulub crater in Mexico is about 65 million years old, and is often thought to be at least partly responsible for the extinction of the dinosaurs (or more correctly, the Cretaceous–Tertiary extinction event). Apart from those, there have been some quite violent volcanoes (such as http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/La_Garita_Caldera) and huge tsunamis (which can be caused by meteor impacts in water). But mainstream geologists see these events occurring on Earth where some much more gradual changes also take place – a few billion years of plate tectonics and weathering come to mind. So yes, catastrophes do happen.
There was a claim made concerning the formation of coal – that an experiment was done in which wood and clay was put in a test tube and heated for a month and that brown coal was formed from this. Tas went on to say that if they did it for longer, they ended up with something like black coal. The problem with this is that it isn’t quite true. They didn’t use wood, they used lignite, one of the materials that wood is composed of (and this does make a difference). And it didn’t produce coal (Tas may not have said that coal was produced, but if you weren’t listening closely, I’m sure you would have gotten the impression that they did make coal), it produced something that chemically resembled coal. Here again we have a claim which is misleading at best, and at least some of what was said was wrong. (http://www.newton.dep.anl.gov/askasci/gen99/gen99424.htm, http://www.noanswersingenesis.org.au/kuechmann_cretin_comedy_II.htm (although that site isn’t particularly nice at times, it does have some things that shouldn’t be ignored.))
Anyway, I was going to write a bit more (especially on radiocarbon dating), but this is probably long enough for one post.
August 20th, 2007 at 10:54 pmThanks for your reply David, it seems to be well worded (better than my heated ramblings).
I agree with much of what your interpretation is with regards to the presentation. Despite that agreement, I am still a young earth creationist.
God bless.
August 21st, 2007 at 8:40 am