Creation as the result of the Creator’s work and the act of creating
Creationists are allowing their opponents to frame issues backwards, which puts us on the defensive. The real question they’re trying to answer is, How can modern science fit with the Bible without distorting it? Their opponents keep asking the reverse: How can the Bible fit with modern science? That puts the pressure on the defenders of […]
The word “creation” is used by non-creationists in a minimal sense. The existence of the universe is explained as the creation of God. This is the core meaning that all monotheists accept. But what about the essence and nature of the universe — was that created, too? The success of physics has led to a
Naturalism assumes that what is true in local places or times must be true for all places and times — after all, isn’t that Occam’s razor? But it does not follow. For example, the earth seems flat in each locality but globally it is not. In mathematics there are many examples where what is locally
Jason Rosenhouse’s “Among the Creationists” (Oxford, 2012) is a journalistic-style exploration of “creationist subculture” by a mathematician who claims to be open-minded but skeptical. The reality is he’s an atheistic evolutionist looking for weaknesses in creationism while trying to understand these “insular” people. It’s still a good read but what are the weaknesses he finds?
For evolution time and change are critical. If there is insufficient time for evolution, it fails. If time and change don’t explain everything, evolution fails. The backbone of evolution is its dating methods. Time is the key to evolution. But time is not a critical variable for creationists. Creation is basically the same as it
It sounds outrageous to attempt a model of the Creator but consider this: there have been models in the past and evolutionists continue to argue against them. Even atheists have a model of the Creator they reject. Creationists are at a disadvantage without a better model of the Creator. It does no good to say
Although intelligent design proponents avoid talking about the designer, the critics of intelligent design “know” that they are trying to sneak God into science. After all, who else could the designer be? The critics of creationism reject bringing God into science because God is a wild card that could make any hypothesis true. We seem
Louis Agassiz wrote: …if species do not exist at all, as the supporters of the transmutation theory maintain, how can they vary? And if individuals alone exist, how can differences which may be observed among them prove the variability of species? Darwin responded to Asa Gray: I am surprised that Agassiz did not succeed in
What is a real explanation? We are so used to dumbed-down “explanations” we hardly know what a real explanation is anymore. A real explanation describes all the causes of something. These were divided by Aristotle into four kinds of causes: the material, efficient, formal, and final causes. The early scientific movement of Galileo, Bacon, etc.
It’s rare to find an attempt to understand creationists. But here’s one, in an excerpt from “The Intellectual Civil War within Evangelicalism: An Interview with Molly Worthen” by Tiffany Stanley, December 3, 2013: I think it’s a mistake to understand creationists as “anti-science,” at least if we want to understand how they see themselves. The reality
