We have been going over an article by Luke Nix from Cross Examined concerning the debate between Ken Ham and Jeff Zweerink on Unbelievable. You can view the full article here, and the full debate here. The article was called "20 Myths About Old Earth Creationism" and each point Nix titled "myth" in order to claim a different "strawman" that Ken Ham had allegedly committed against Jeff Zweerink on Unbelievable, as well against Old Earth Creationism in general.
In the first of my responses to this article I have gone over the first five "myths" that were presented by Nix. As I did so, it not only became clear that Ken Ham had not strawman Jeff Zweerink nor OECs (Old Earth Creationism/Old Earth Creationists), but Nix had actually straw-manned both Ken Ham's and YECs (Young Earth Creationism/Young Earth Creationists) positions. Although we were just up to the five of Nix's "myths" his arguments thus far was heavily fallacious. Let's see how he fair on the next five of his objections. In this article we will deal with Myth 6-10 of his 20 alleged "myths" that Ken Ham had allegedly made. As always, Nix's comments are in red, and my responses are in blue. Each of the "myth" points set up by Luke Nix will be black, bold, and in all caps to make them distinguishable from the rest of the post.
MYTH #6: THE IDEA THAT THE UNIVERSE IS YOUNG HAS BEEN WELL-ESTABLISHED IN CHURCH HISTORY; THEREFORE, IT IS TRUE.
Nix: This is an interesting argument. The falsehood is not found in the first part; young-earth creationism (along with other views) we debated and held by many Church Fathers; the falsehood is found in the logic. A well-established doctrine is not necessarily a correct doctrine (this goes for all sides of the age debate). Ken Ham, as a member of the Protestant tradition of the Church, would hold that many well-established doctrines of the Church (Catholic Church, at the time) were false. So, being well-established does not mean true, even for Ken Ham. Anyone who argues this way is simply incorrect.
Now, many people try to claim that young-earth creationism originated with the Seventh Day Adventist “prophetess” Ellen G. White, but since some of the Church Fathers already held to this view, it can hardly be said to have originated recently. But, again, that early origin does not mean true. Young-earth Christians need to be careful about which conclusion they are drawing from the early articulation of their view, and old-earth Christians need to be careful about which conclusion they are drawing from a later (more developed) articulation of the young-earth view.
Brian: This is another strawman argument by Nix on both Ken Ham & YEC arguments and positions. The problem may even be how Nix is wording his objections. Since Ken Ham referenced the church fathers during the discussion with Zweerink, Nix assumes he is arguing for a particular doctrine's truthfulness on the basis of what the church fathers had said, and then Nix words it accordingly. However, no young-earth creationists, including Ken Ham, would ever argue that "day" in Gen. 1 is 24-hour periods of time because most of the early church just happen to agree with it. In fact, Jeff Zweerink had also brought up the church fathers. We are allowed to discuss Church history. Besides, I think Nix is missing the point. Ham is arguing for the plane reading of the text as the most natural reading of the text. He does so, in one way, by showing that the vast majority of interpreters of Gen. 1 read and interpreted that way. We think it is true, not because of what some church fathers had said, but the context of Gen. 1 demonstrates this. It does this by a number of qualifiers such as its use of "evening" and "morning" with each day of Creation, the fact that it companies the word "day" with both cardinal & ordinal numbers, etc. As well as the fact that whenever other Biblical writers refer back to it they indicate that these are 24-hour periods of time (Ex. 20:11).
I do agree that such arguments whereby someone assuming that just because a church father claimed it makes it true is logically fallacious, namely because it becomes an appeal to authority fallacy when you realize that almost all church fathers were ignorant of the background of the Old and New Testament, as well the original languages of Scripture, with the exception of Origen and Jerome. This is another good reason that we don't argue this. However, I have seen OECs make similar arguments whereby they do argue for its truthfulness on the basis of what some church father said or didn't say, or what some church council said or didn't say. However, there's nothing wrong with discussing church history as long as you be careful with how you are arguing it.
There are some that try to claim different things with our "origins", but none of these are actually true. It becomes the genetic fallacy upon arguing that something is true or not true on the basis of where it originated. However, someone can make points about it, like if they think it was a recent invention. However, as Nix himself noted, this wasn't "invented" recently. Again, I do have a problem with his choice of word as only "some" church fathers took this position. The implication is that such positions were few and far between, but this is false, as we established in the previous post. Most of the church fathers that commented on it held this position including Irenaeus. By the way, even if the term "young-earth creationism" was new, this wouldn't make the point of view new. It is only in the past three hundred years do we find anything about people believing the Earth was billions of years old. No one in church history thought that was the case. Also, even though we do not argue for the truthfulness of our view based upon what the early church fathers said, I do think of the vast majority of them held such a position than it is likely to have originated with the apostles themselves.
MYTH #7: BELIEVING THAT THE UNIVERSE IS OLD UNDERMINES GOD'S WORD.
Nix: Many young-earth Christians (but not all) are not even open to alternative views because they have heard this myth so many times, presented in so many different ways, that they believe it. As mentioned in my response to Myth #1, this is not true, as demonstrated by the very attempt to reconcile God’s Word with God’s actions (creation). That recognition is enough to demonstrate the falsehood of the myth in general.
Brian: For once, Nix doesn't strawman our, nor Ken Ham's, position, but I don't think he fully understands it either. This isn't about being "open" or "close" to alternate views, but about what Scripture clearly says and teaches. If the Bible clearly says the Earth was created in six days, but you believed it was created over periods of billions of years because of what secular scientists claim then you are undermining God's Word. If the Scripture says "X" but a scientist says "Y" then I believe "X" over "Y" and the scientist in question is wrong. One cannot argue, then, that, "Oh, you just aren't willing to accept alternate views!" When those views directly contradict Scripture and the evidence to the contrary, then no I'm not, but it isn't because I'm not willing to accept the possibility of being wrong, but where the Bible explicitly says that's the issue.
Btw, this is not a "myth." All you would have to do is review the debate between Ken Ham and Jeff Zweerink to see Zweerink doing this with man's understanding of the past, and then using that to try and cast doubt on the plain reading of the text. However, Nix's objection here does reveal his act of elephant hurtling his objections at us. Although elephant hurtling doesn't require it, a tell-tell sigh of someone elephant hurtling is when someone takes an objection, but then split it up into multiple parts, but rewords it to make it look like it is a separate objection, when, in fact, it is the same objection. The obvious attempt at doing this is to create more objections to elephant hurtle at us. Nix does this with this objection. This is a similar objection to his "myth #1" as he, himself, had indicated within the passage.
Furthermore, Nix claims that this demonstrably false "by the very attempt to reconcile God’s Word with God’s actions (creation). That recognition is enough to demonstrate the falsehood of the myth in general." It seems to me that Nix is hoping to "prove" this claim is false if he can establish cause the universe to come into being (God acting upon Creation), but this is a non sequitur. How is God acting in Creation "proof" that OECs are not rejecting, or undermining, a biblical truth? Also, deep-time assumptions are rooted in manmade principles, not Biblical authority, in spite what they may claim to the contrary.
MYTH #8: YOU WEREN'T THERE TO WITNESS THE CREATION; THEREFORE, YOU CANNOT KNOW WHAT HAPPENED EXCEPT BY AN EYEWITNESS TESTIMONY (GOD'S WORD).
Nix: This myth attempts to strike at the foundation of scientific claims about origins: the ability to know origins. In this myth the young-earth creationist takes a hyper-empiricist view of knowledge that states that only the five senses can reveal truth about the physical world: in order to know anything that happened in the past, you had to be there to witness whether it happened or not, and since we were not there to witness the creation, we cannot know how it happened. They then say that we can only rely upon the eyewitness record in Genesis 1, which they assume is only compatible with their view.
Even if we were to grant that the Genesis 1 account was only compatible with the young-earth view, they have a serious problem. If we cannot know something happened in the past unless we witnessed it, then how do we know that Genesis 1 was reliably handed down through the generations? We were not there to witness each transcription. In order to defend the reliable transmission of the text to today, we rely upon another source of knowledge that uses inductive and abductive reasoning (neither of which are sense-based). If those are valid sources of truth to discover past events, then the young-earth creationist must allow such sources of truth in the debate over origins. So, by their own epistemology (how we know what we know), this myth falls and falling further, their attempt to use the process of elimination to get to their view also fails.
Brian: This next one that Nix laid out for us is a very common strawman fallacy that a lot of OECs commit, not just Nix. What we are actually claiming is that you can't empirically prove a past event using the methods and tools of empirical science, not that you can't know anything at all about a past event through any method, including historical ones. What uniformitarians are doing is trying to use the methods and tools of empirical science, and then trying to formulate an argument on the basis of it, to derive at a historical conclusion about the past, but any assessment about the data is going to come with a number of assumptions, and must be interpreted through a framework of beliefs call a worldview. In addition to that, without a historical source to appeal to, the uniformitarian is forced into a position by which to speculate about the past, and these speculations form the "grid" by which they make their conclusions.
However, none of these speculations are representative of empirical science. Christians have a historical source by which to make their conclusions called the Bible, so, for us, such speculations are unnecessary. Even when OECs adopt such speculations, they do not have if they allow the Bible to speak for itself, and stop bringing into it foreign standards by which to interpret it by. God was an eyewitness to Creation, and sense He claims plainly in His Word that He made the universe, the world, and us within six 24-hour periods of time (Ex. 20:11) then we should believe Him whenever he says that's what He did.
Nix's second paragraph seems to reiterate his strawman even more. In one sense, he's right, if we can't know anything at all in the past then how can we know that Creation was created in 6 24-hour periods of time or that Jesus rose again from the dead, but once again, these are all of the right responses to the wrong argument. We are, once again, not arguing t6hat past events cannot be proven by any means, nor are we arguing that the only way to ascertain knowledge is through empirical means. That are the kinds of arguments an empiricist makes, but that's not our argument, and, thus, Nix has strawman us again.
His last sentence was completely false. We are not trying to use the "process of illumination" to derive at our position. The fact that an OEC feels like such a thing would even be necessary with the Bible in the first place is very telling. However, the whole point was to emphasize the limitations of empirical science, and the assumptions that must go into it that is behind the data in question.
MYTH #9: ONLY THE YEC BELIEVES THE EYEWITNESS OF GOD'S WORD.
Nix: As demonstrated in my answer to Myth #8, this myth falls flat immediately. However, it gets worse for the YEC, not only can they not know that they have the eyewitness account about origins as it was originally recorded, they cannot know that they have a reliable eyewitness account about the Resurrection of Jesus as it was originally recorded! The staunch YEC may be able to live with not having a reliable account of the events of creation, but I do not believe for one second that they are willing to follow the logic to its necessary conclusion and accept that we then also do not have reliable accounts of the Resurrection of Jesus Christ. For such a necessary implication would give us no confidence whatsoever in the truth of Christianity, which would then give them no foundation for holding onto their YEC view. The ground crumbles beneath them.
This is not a problem of belief (I know Ken Ham believes that the Bible we have today was reliably transmitted through the generations), but rather it is a problem of a lack of a foundational explanation for the belief in the reliability of the transmission of the Bible. If Ken Ham is to maintain the “you weren’t there” mantra, then he has no explanation for the reliable transmission of the Bible, and worse he has unwittingly provided an explanation for precisely why the Bible he holds in hands cannot be trusted as what was originally inspired by God! This is the myth, among all other ones because it strikes at the very foundation of the Christian worldview, that must die in the Church.
Brian: Wow! The elephant hurtling really shown through with this response by Nix. The title is a bit of a strawman, but the rest of his response seemed to reiterate his strawman in Nix's previous response to Ken Ham. He assumes that our position is that one can't get any knowledge at all from the past without being there themselves, but that's not our position as explained in my previous response to him. Technically he would be correct if we can't have no knowledge at all without being there then we would lack knowledge over a number of things that we defend. However, once again, these are all right questions and objections to the wrong argument. The object of it is that without empirical observation one cannot use the methods of empirical science, not that they cannot use other methods, including historical ones. I just don't think Nix gets that point.
MYTH #10: ANIMAL DEATH AND SUFFERING ARE INCOMPATABLE WITH THE ALL-POWERFUL GOD OF THE BIBLE.
Nix: I find it very interesting that young-earth creationists often raise the logical problem of evil against God in these discussions. Simply put, the logical problem of evil has been a go-to challenge to God’s existence for atheists for centuries (and still is today in popular/internet atheist circles), but such a challenge is no challenge at all. The challenge relies upon the idea that an all-powerful and all-loving God could not possibly have justifiable reasons for allowing evil, pain, and suffering in the world. However, since we cannot possibly know all of God’s purposes comprehensively, this challenge fails on epistemic grounds- no one has enough knowledge to make such a grandiose claim. And not only that, the Bible teaches that any suffering that God does allow does has an ultimate, eternal purpose.
So we do have enough knowledge to claim the very opposite: that God does have a purpose for allowing all pain and suffering, even if we cannot specifically identify that purpose with our current amount of knowledge. This would include any and all animal suffering. So for the young-earth creationist to be in the company of atheists with raising this challenge is to simply place the God of the Bible in the same box that the atheist attempts to place Him: “since I cannot see what purpose God may have for suffering, He must not have one.” This is only one way to demonstrate the falsehood of this myth, but others exist as well.
Brian: This is one of the reasons I find Nix's titles to his responses to Ken Ham so deceptive, he, intentionally, words them in a way to make Ken Ham look like he is saying something that he's not. Ken Ham never said this in the course of the debate. Whether, Nix rewords Ken Ham's statement in order to make it look like he is throwing out the logical problem of evil that some atheists use which says, "How could an all-powerful and all-loving God allow evil and suffering into the world." Of course, philosophers have refuted it, so Nix throwing it out there would mean that Ken is throwing out a refuted argument that some atheists make. However, Ken Ham did not argue that, and if Nix was listening to the debate (which I'm thinking he paid little attention to given the kinds of arguments he has been making thus far), then he would know that was not the argument Ken Ham had made. In fact, I went back to the video just to get the exact quote. I even placed it in its respected context. Ken Ham's exact statement on Unbelievable was:
"You know in the fossil record is a record of death, but not just death, but disease, there's diseases like Cancer, abscesses, arthritis. If all that existed before Man, then after God created Man, he said, 'everything was very good,' so if you believe in millions of years you are accusing God of being responsible for death & suffering, the death & suffering that has gone on for millions of years...and so how can you have death, bloodshed, disease, & suffering before sin? It doesn't fit with what the Scripture says, which is why we would say the fossil record would have to come after the Flood..." (Ken Ham in a debate with Jeff Zweerink on Unbelievable at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aNmuB9EF_vk, accessed at 03/31/2022).
Nowhere in that does Ken Ham ever present the "logical problem of evil" to Jeff Zweerink. Again, Nix has just simply reworded it within his objection in order to attack Ken Ham's position, but in doing so he has made another strawman argument. Ken's argument is actually that if you take this position of millions and billions of years before sin, then death is no longer the punishment for sin, and therefore God becomes ultimately responsible for bring death, disease and suffering in the world. In fact, this is the position of all YECs, myself included.
The context of Genesis 1, combined with the references of "good" and a final "very good" at the end of his creative acts indicates that God created this world perfect and without sin. It is Man that brought death and evil into the world and that had ramifications upon the rest of Creation. However, if death already existed in the world then death is not the penalty for sin. If that's the case, then why did Jesus have to die as a sin atonement for our sins? Why did death be the punishment that appeased the wrath of God? In spite OECs minimizing this objection that we have, this is a very important concern.
We have gone through two of these evaluations, five in each part, and ten total, and so far Nix has shown to us with every turn that he doesn't fully understand the arguments nor the issues. He has even try to deceptively reword Ken's arguments to make them easier to respond to. We have two more parts left by which to evaluate Nix's arguments regarding the debate between Ken Ham and Jeff Zweerink on Unbelievable. Let's see if he does better than he has done so far.
Comments