My introduction: Creationism Revisited 2020, A Defense of a Recent Creation, 270 pg by James Stroud. It has a lot of updated information, combining theology, history and science. It also has recent updates on cosmology, geology, the flood, the dispersion at Babel and a good review of world history. The author is fair in comparing young earth creation(YEC) views old earth creation views(OEC) and naturalist views. The book is well researched and documented and quite technical. It documents the truth of the bible.
The author Stroud has an impressive resume on pg vii with degrees in Philosophy of religion and Ancient History and also books on these topics and on christian apologetics. Even more impressive is his history of meeting and studying with and questioning many of the top apologists and creation experts, over many years, who have differing viewpoints, and also doing this with philosophers and historians.
It is a challenge to give a summary of this book, but I will start with his Conclusion pgs. He acknowledges a few of the great scientists and philosophers he has studied with and picked their brains: Humphreys, Baumgardner, Stanford, S. Austin, and Craig; and says Time is a fascinating concept whether the Egyptian, lunar or Gregorian calendars, or understanding time dilation and how it reacts to gravity,; We have only begun to scratch the surface of how it operates with space and gravity. Although we are inundated with stories of millions and billions of yrs from the media and scientists; sure, unchanging empirical evidence of this is lacking. In the book ‘How Not to be Secular’ by J.K. A Smith, he suggests we become less enchanted with our modern self knowledge and the Idea we have got it all figured out and encourages Christians to abandon the idea of the Bible + secular science. “Christians need to understand just how far the transcendent, biblical God is above our understanding” When we interpret scripture to line up with the latest thinking in science, we are actually playing science as authority over the Bible and can never be sure what we believe today will be true next month. We may say it proves the bible, but what will a non believer think of a changing bible ? W. Craig says ” What I mean by a good argument is one that makes its conclusions more likely than not. A good argument does not need to make its conclusions certain–” So adding the common science and logic of Douglas Axe and McCullagh premises on biblical exegesis and( JT adds Occam’s razor) and the proofs from the the social science and history, it appears that YEC is at least 51% more probable than OEC, assuming you are not a follower of scientism or naturalism, of course. In Part 2 of Stroud’s book on YEC vs social science- History, he makes a strong case for History supporting the bible. I will discuss his parts 1,2,3 later. P. S. He advises not to limit oneself to YEC groups like AIG or ICR. Also consider other groups like Logos Research Assoc, Discovery Institute- Intelligent design, Creation Research Society. AIG has history of being critical of all other apologetic groups. We should be civil and exchange ideas with other groups including OEC ones. We should take Gen. chaps 1-11 as genuine history for these 4 reasons:
1. The original creation was miraculous and perfect and free of sin, death, suffering, disease, and predation. To reject this, calls into question God’s character and the the glimpses her gives us of heaven. 2. The literal fall in Gen 3 explains the origins of human sin, natural evil, suffering, disease, and predation. Rejecting this, may make us question does God support evil? If there was no fall, why does man need savior? 3. God did purge some evil by the catastrophic global flood, and this reflects his holiness and wish to purge evil. It Sets up his progress to the Mosaic law. To reject the global flood calls into question the coming final judgment and Christ’s return as in Matt. 24:36-44 mentioning the flood. 4. It the was no global flood and no tower of Babel as in Gen. Chap. 10-11, there is no good explanation for the diversity of ethnic groups and languages we see today, and the great validity of the Table of Nations.(Gen. 11) This will be discussed more in Part 2. Christianity is an historical religion and its teachings are grounded in history. The history included the creation with the 7 day week( we have today) , the fall, the flood, the new languages at the tower of Babel with the dispersion of peoples forming nations, the call of Abraham, Moses exodus from Egypt, David and the temples, Jesus life and resurrection, starting the AD calendar. There is much confirming history from the flood on, pg.78-81.,
Book Part 1: here is some of the bible exegesis for YEC:pg 47-49They believe the days in Gen. 1 were 6 literal days which occurred 6000 to 10,000 yrs ago. All land animals and birds not on Noah’s ark perished in the world wide flood and were buried in the sediments. This is responsible for most of the rock layers and fossilized sediments. Genesis is history not poetry, or mythology. Gen. 1-11 has the same type of historical narrative as Gen 12-50, most of Exodus much of Numbers, Joshua, 1, 2 Kings and most scholars classify it as an historical narrative book. The meaning of Yom(day) in the Old testament is a literal day. It is used with numbers (one day, second day, etc), and evening and morning. God created the first things supernaturally. They were fully formed and functioning; For example, plants, animals and people were fully functional adults able to reproduce after their kinds. Exodus 20:8-11 compares the 7 days of the week to the 6 creation days and one day for rest, dedication and worship. Jesus comments about Adam and Eve, Cain and Abel, Noah and the flood etc, taking them as history, as did all the new testament writers. Many of his miracles created and immediate result, like turning water into wine, calming the storm, and raising Lazarus ; confirming his power with God. The bible seems to teach that there was little or no living animal(nephesh) or human death before the fall.( Ham says nephseh does not include insects) and animals were vegetarian and the creation very good (Gen. 1:29-31). After the fall, Gen. 3:14-19 then animals and the earth became cursed, starting death and disease. Genesis is foundational to christian doctrine: If there was no fall, why are we all sinners needing a savior? Marriage: Gen 3:21″And the Lord God made clothing from animal skins for Adam and his wife.” What is the basis for disease and natural catastrophes if not the fall? Didn’t the flood show God’s righteousness and distaste for sin by destroying all wicked men and this included most animals,not on the ark? If there was no global flood and there was million of yrs of fossilized animals before man, the bible appears invalidated. For most of the church history the church leaders believed in an historical Genesis, and the genealogies dating man and the world wide flood. This is also true of the protestant church reformers through the 18th century. Then in the 19 century, he used godless men( scientists, who rejected the Bible and God’s inerrant word) to correct the church’s understanding of Genesis. Why would God allow the church fathers to be deceived so long? p.49
One common OEC view is that of Hugh Ross of Reasons to Believe. It’s vastly different that than YEC view, pg 55-57Here is a brief summary: The universe began 13. 8 billion yrs ago according to the big bang theory. The days in Gen. 1 are long ages and the universe was created during days 1,2. The sun was created before the earth, but the atmosphere on earth cleared so on day 4, so now the sun and stars were visible from the earth’s viewpoint. There was no global flood; its was local. The large sedimentary layers with fossilized animals occurred over millions of yrs. before man. Man is much older than 6000 yrs( maybe up to 50,000 yrs) and was preceded by ape like men. Adam was uniquely created by God. Quoting Stroud on pg 57 “The question is not whether one of these OEC views are right or wrong, but whether they are so right that the YEC view is un-viable?” (JT Paraphrase: IF there is some way the YEC view is possible, then it should not be discarded, as it appears to align more with the strait forward exegesis of the scriptures( a historical Genesis) and is simpler and more straight forward and fits Occam’s razor better( assuming one believes in God’s miracles and speaking things into being) and aligns with the history in Part 2. JT opinion- (The YEC view also avoids the often twisting of scriptures interpretation to align with the latest scientific discoveries; this is not to say that parts of some OEC views are not valid; Personally I have problem of understanding how the earth could have been created days before the universe – sun and stars-but if it was all spewed out of a white hole, somewhat together as Humphreys suggests, that sounds reasonable, as does the sun being there, but appearing, from the earth viewpoint on day 4, as Ross says. Isa. 38:13 “My own hand founded the earth, and My right hand spread out the heavens; when I summoned them, they stood up together.” It would seem to me that God is one of order and the great abundance of mass and energy in the universe would have been created in one process with the earth, sun and milky way galaxy being the center; this may then solve the starlight travel and time dilation problems so that the fabric of space was stretched out very rapidly, while time passed very rapidly at the edges of the universe and very slowly near the universe center and earth, so it appeared to happen in days from earth perspective). Stroud agrees with Francis Shaeffer , pg 59, of not knowing how the dating and time occurred for the earth and universe, while pointing out the historicity of all other events of Gen. Chap. 1-11. If we deny the historic, Adam and Eve, the fall , the global flood, the tower of Babel then much of the history in the bible is false, then the prophets, apostles and Jesus were misinterpreted about these events. Then this view approaches naturalistic uniformitarianism and it excludes major catastrophes, like Noah’s flood as does W. Craig. Prior to the 1700’s few people believed in and old earth; also many church founding fathers during the reformation believed in a young earth.;see pgs 66-69 for a list. and see the 2019 film ‘Is Genesis History’, by Tackett, and M. Ross pg 74-6. The old earth view came with Darwin and geologist Lyell and other naturalists, denying God.
Book Part 2: Is natural Science greater than social science and history? Stroud and Morland say no. pg. 85. The social sciences include History, anthropology, archeology, geography, linguistics and others. However many historians today have endorsed naturalism and OEC, but often can’t give reasons why. J.M. Roberts says in ‘A short History of the World’ what happened before writing is called prehistory and historians have left it to other scholars. Roberts admits that there is no real evidence for languages or writing, evolving over time, but the Sumerian language seemed to appear rapidly near 4000 BC and more languages by 3500 BC. McCullagh’s criteria for justifying history see pg 89, must be plausible as possible with an hypothesis, have great explanatory power and scope and not include ad hoc components. Stroud says biblical theism fulfills these points better than naturalism or OEC. The Genealogies of Gen. chap 5 and 11 Give an approximate date no more the 7500 yrs from today to Adam(3500 yrs Adam to Abraham and 4000 from Abraham to today). AIG used the Masoeric text to give 6000 yrs to Adam. Stroud cites many other authors (30), some secular, giving similar date ranges pg 92-99. We also have the genealogies in Chronicles 1 and Luke 3. This supports YEC. OEC sites either say the genealogy dates can’t be used or Adam and Eve are not real, but archetypes. H. Ross appears to not use the genealogies, but uses the molecular chromosome dating for dating man, which give a much older Adam: this has science trump history and the bible, and may not agree with Occam’s Razor, pg 104-5. Thus Ross and Rana date humans as 10,000 to 100,000 yrs ago, pg 108. On Noah’s global flood history also supports the YEC position. There are at least 270 historical flood legends. Stroud had researched these and found most legends in the world state the flood was wide and global, only a few persons survived in a boat, animals were taken, it was due to man’s wickedness. Most OEC sites say it was a local flood and also question the ark. So are both the old testament the new testament and 1Peter 3:20 wrong, that Noah used an ark and only 8 people survived? Also God said in Gen chap. 9 there would be no more world destruction by floods, and gave his rainbow as a sign.
History and the Tower of Babel and the Table of Nations is also on the YEC side., but is often scoffed at by OEC. The tower has a rich history of legends from many different cultures that aligns with the bible, pg 120 “According to Ethnologue there are about 270 total languages found throughout the world. Where exactly did these come from? Although there are many hypotheses regarding the origin of languages, there is not one general consensus among scholars. The oldest belief-that there was a single language that eventually evolved into many- is detailed in the many Tower of Babel stories from various cultures. All of these stories, despite coming form different cultures and religions, bear an uncanny resemblance to one another. Can this be brushed aside as a bizarre coincidence, or is there some truth to the story of the Tower do Babel?” In history there appears a jump for prehistoriy with guesswork to history with rapid development of language, writing and civilization.. This is often referred to as a Neolithic revolution. textbooks may say man used fire 100,000 -50,000 yrs and progressed to simple farming; McDowell says this was OEC guesswork, with little historical backup. The real history of great progress on language, writing and organized civilization occurred in 3400-3000 BC and this fits well with YEC dating history, pg 121-129. Gen. chap. 10 give the genealogy of Noah’s sons and their descendants and who the traveled and started nations. A book by Cooper titled ‘After the Flood’ documented that this is very accurate history of the starting of many nations. Dr. W Albright, an expert on archeology, agreed its very accurate, p. 130-1 this again confirm YEC and the historical accuracy of the bible.
Book Part 3: A new YEC voice and Science. Stroud first affirms that we need to treat our brothers is Christ in OEC with respect and not disdain. AIG (Answers in Genesis) has a history of being critical of other apologetic groups, and being very dogmatic about the date of Adam as exactly 4004 BC. He also notes AIG is not the only YEC group and encourages information sharing among apologetic groups. I agree. ON the date of Adam, he again notes there are many factors that make this imprecise. Population growth models after the flood indicate about 5500 BC to Adam, and the various genealogical counting ones are all below 7680 yrs., with the Samaritan Pentateuch and Josephus one indicating about 5500 BC. One of the reasons the OEC is favored is due to their radioactive dating methods p 146-8. However Lisle and Snelling point out, assumptions are made in these, that may not be true. C14 dating of specimens that OEC supposes to be millions of yrs old often have C14 in them indicating them to a few thousand of yrs; this has been true for some diamonds. Scientists favoring old ages, will often throw out or ignore such data. OEC holds the universe to be 13.7 billion yrs old and the earth 4.6 billion yrs. My book,”Evidences for God and His Creations” gives many evidences and rates showing the earth is young, pg. 112; Stroud also notes some of these. Stroud then focuses on some of difficult issues. Naturalists, and OEC favors the big bang model of cosmology which make only naturalistic assumptions, like the universe has no center and no edge and no net gravitational force, p.165.( still their diagrams in Wikipedia show it with a staring place and an edge p.150). It started from a dense singularity and had very rapid inflation faster that the speed of light. Most scientists think that the galaxies and stars are millions of light yrs apart. So that would make them millions of yrs old correct? They could be old but, if there was time dilation and God stretched them out very quickly, they now have the appearance of age to us on earth. So with time dilation, millions of yrs could have passed at the edges of the distant galaxies, but only days of time passing on earth. Isa. 42:5 “This is what God, Yahweh, says- who created the heavens and stretched them out, who spread out the earth and what comes from it,” Quoting Stroud p. 162 “In 1994 Russel Humphreys applied the principle of time-dilation to propose a creationist cosmology that would replace the Big Bang.” He derived the cosmology from the equations of general relativity, replacing the secular assumptions of the big bang. ” A finite universe without boundaries can be represented in two dimensions by the surface of a balloon. An insect crawling on its surface would never encounter a center or and edge, even thought the surface is not infinitely large. The quantization of red shifts suggests that distant galaxies are arranged in concentric shells around the Milky way. In reality, the situation is more complex than this because several different distance intervals exist between the galaxies. His theory not only provides the first outline of a creationist cosmology, but also, in principle at least, a solution to the long standing puzzle of how light from distant stars and galaxies reached earth within the biblical time frame.;” Humphrey has also made models of the earth’s rapidly decaying magnetic field. His predictions were confirmed by space probes to mercury, Uranus and Neptune as in the article: Earth’s Magnetic Field: Is it Young or Old? | scienceandevidence Humphrey’s while hole cosmology shows that gravitational effects in the early universe could have allowed starlight to travel the required distance while a short time passed on earth based clocks. Whether the universe began as a white hole or simply acted that way mathematically, it is possible,p 164. In May, 2011 Physorg reported a paper suggesting that a known gamma ray burst, GBR060614. may have been for a white hole, p 161. We get from relativity theory that gravity affects clocks. A clock at high elevation runs faster than one at a low elevation on earth with a stronger gravity. This have been verified many times, so time dilation is possible and true, p 166. Humphreys has updated his model and answered some critic’s comments. His models are not accepted by most naturalist cosmologists. pg 176. Humphreys has a paper further describing time dilation: Creation Research Society Quarterly Volume 53 Number 4 (Spring 2017) This cosmology is also supported by a second book, ‘Universe by Design’ , 2015 by Faulkner, who has a PhD in Astronomy.
Catastrophic flood evidence supports the world wide flood of Noah. Several YEC geologists have written of catastrophic flooding in the scablands of Washington state, at the grand canyon and in Arkansas and Utah, p 178-182. OEC geologists say Noah’s flood was a local flood to maintain their billions of yrs. history. Exegesis of the scriptures supports a global flood as do the many flood legends noted before. Stroud gave many logical reasons the scriptures indicate a global flood, p 183 ( my book ‘Evidences for God and His Creations’ also also strongly indicated a worldwide flood, pg 99-111, see p. 101): p 183 If the flood was local, Why did Noah have to build an ark? He could have walked to the other side of the mountains and missed it. If local, why did the animals migrate to the ark? they could have migrated away. Animals far away would be able to reproduce. If local, why was the ark so big? and why would birds have been sent on board? They could just fly to another dry mountain. If local, why would the waters be 8 meters above the mountains? If local, people living far away would have survived and escaped God’s judgment of sin. Matt 24:37-39 Says they didn’t escape. If the flood was local, God would have repeatedly broken his promise to never send such a flood again. See Gen. 9:12-17. There have been many devastating local floods killing many people.
Now Stroud turns to 3 often cited catastrophic flood models, giving the possible mechanisms of this flood of Noah. The first I note is the Catastrophic Plate Tectonic, CPT computer supermodel by Baumgardner. This is probably the most popular model for creationists today. It has been questioned and refined for many yrs and critiques answered by Baumgardner. It begins with one continent ( Gen.1:9) Pangea, that has some agreement from secular geologists. The model begins with some cold, dense rock off shore of the continent, that at the start of the flood starts to sink, causing runaway subduction, breaking up the the Pangea continent into its present continents we see today. As the plates separate a long lines of hot magma is exposed in the ocean, this vaporizes the nearby ocean water and makes super-heated jet streams high in the air that then cools and falls as heavy rain for months. ( as in Gen. 7:11, 8:2 fountains of the great deep are opened). Tsunamis and eddy currents cause the flooding currents and erosion of sediments, but this a weaker point of the model. Plants, land animals and fish are deposited in layers, buried, becoming fossils. The pushing of the continental plates causes the high mountain ranges we see today of lighter rock and also forming the dense ocean ridges. As the waters drain from the continents they erode layers of sediments to form canyons, p 193-201. A number of videos are available on this: Dr. John Baumgardner – Global Tectonics and the Flood 1
A second flood model Stroud notes is the Hydroplate Theory by Dr. Walter Brown with a PhD in Mechanical Engr. The model starts with the assumption of a large layer of water was trapped under the earth’s crust. the pressure of the water caused some plates to crack and break through. The hot water exploded thru the crack which is near the mid oceanic ridge today. ( as in Gen. 7:11, 8:2 fountains of the great deep are opened). Much of the water fell as heavy rain, but some shot high into the atmosphere and fell as ice. There was erosion of the continent and the continental plates slid, collided and buckled forming mountains and trenches.pg. 203-6. Researchers found buried water layer deep in the earth in 2007, and in 2014 pg. 207, 213. Also researchers found in 2015 a layer between the tectonic plates and the mantle that helps the tectonic plates slide.p207. The CPT model is older and more accepted by AIG and ICR (Institute for Creation Research), but both models have explanatory power, p.210 AIG has done their own animation of the CPT model. MIchael Oard has done a lot of work on the ice age after the flood which is also demonstrated as young. Some of his work is published with ICR and some with Creation Ministries International, CMI p.215
As noted before, the bible events are historical, (note prior point 1 near the start of the write up) so now Stroud tells how genetics supports this, starting with the historical Adam and Eve, citing Carter with population growth modeling and Dr. John Sanford and expert geneticist, p 216. The decay in the human genome due to multiple harmful mutations with each generations appears factual. Modeling of population growth genetics shows that the genomes are young, consistent with YEC, but not with OEC, if it says Adam was 50,000 yrs. old. The very limited variation in the DNA sequence on the human X, Y chromosomes around the world is consistent with YEC. In the book”About Genetic Entropy”, Sanford gives good evidence that all genomes of creatures are degenerating due to the accumulation of harmful mutations. There is not much upward selection to overcome this downward trend with genetic errors. The end result is likely extinction of all living populations. It’s now called genetic entropy. So we not only undergo genetic degradation personally with aging, but also as a population. A graph-curve plotting the decreasing life spans of the bible characters confirms this with high probability( ages of 950 yrs, to now about 80 yrs.). The curve is very similar to that of the rate of genetic errors and degradation. The bible confirms this; PS 39:5-6 “You, indeed, have made my days short in length, and my life span as nothing in Your sight. Yes, every mortal man is only a vapor. Certainly, man walks about like a mere shadow”. Rom 8:22 “For we know that the whole creation has been groaning together with labor pains until now.” Matt 24:35 “Heaven and earth will pass away, but My words will never pass away.” Gen. 47:9 “Jacob replied to Pharaoh, “I have traveled this earth for 130 hard years. But my life has been short compared to the lives of my ancestors.” Stanford noted the genealogies and longevity data are tightly linked so its likely there are no long gaps in the genealogies, this fits with YEC but not OCE and the naturalistic evolutionary timeline is not viable. In tracking the Y chromosome of man and the mutation rate, the age of man today is about 6000 yrs., p 224. Dr. N. Jeanson, and expert in cell development biology, confirms Stanford’s work. Similarly the human mitochondrial Eve DNA fits with YEC dates. p 225. Also it is now known there is no Junk human DNA, that was previously asserted by naturalists. Growth projection rates from the 8 people leaving the ark until the population today, fit with YEC timeline, but not the OEC one, p 228. Stroud says many OEC scientists have conceded this, but still hold to and ancient cosmos and earth. Maulucioni found that mitochondrial DNA tracking map closely resembles the Table of Nations map after the dispersion of the tower of Babel, p 229-30. Linguists have tracked the spread of languages and core vocabulary words and it can fit with the dispersion maps from Babel. pg.231-3