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[An excerpt The Young Earth: The Real History of the Earth--Past, Present, and Future by John Morris]

We're all scientists, but we're also Christians. We love science, but we also love the Lord, our Savior Jesus Christ, and His Word. We encourage Christians to go "back to Genesis," to see the true history recorded there and then interpret the scientific data relating to the unobserved past in submission to Scripture...

It would probably be helpful to give some definitions, so questions in the reader's mind can be avoided. Terms: Biblical model, creation model, evolution model, Stasis, Catastrophism, Evolution, Micro-evolution, Macro-evolution, Mutations, Natural Selection, Punctuated Equilibrium, Uniformitarianism, Geologic Column, Index Fossils, Neo-Catastrophism, Theistic Evolution, Progressive Creation, Framework Hypothesis, Local Flood Theory, Evolutionism, New Age Thinking (Morris, pg. 8-9)...

[C]ircular reasoning...obviously should have no place in science. In circular reasoning, instead of proceeding from observation to conclusion, the conclusion interprets the observation, which "proves" the conclusion. The fossils should contain the main evidence for evolution. But instead, we see that the age of rocks is determined by the stage of evolution of the index fossils found therein, which are themselves dated and organized by the age of the rocks. Thus, the rocks date the fossils, and the fossils date the rocks. The unquestioned assumption of evolution provides the context for the entire process (Morris, pg. 11)...

All other factors being equal, a Christian, reasoning from a scriptural position, has greater potential for understanding these things than the non-Christian, who starts the process with a non-biblical (i.e. false) world view. This is due to the fact that the Christian has input from a source not available to the non-/Christian--the Holy Spirit. Jesus taught that when "the Spirit of truth, is come, he will guide you into all truth.... He shall glorify me" (Jn 16:13-14). Morris, pg. 17.

Previously, science was defined as "the search for truth," but not it is nearly always equated with naturalism, the search for a

naturalistic answer to all questions...My former faculty colleague, Dr. David Kitts...often engaged in spirited discussions with me on the issue. He claimed to be a religious man, who believed in God, yet he scrupulously kept his beliefs out of his reasoning about earth history. He insisted that even if creation is true, even if God created all things in six literal days, just like it says in the Bible, even if Noah's flood deposited the rock strata and the fossils, even if it happened just that way, even if that is absolute truth, it is still not science and its study has no place in science. Science is the attempt to find the best naturalistic explanation for things, even if the supernatural explanation is true and fits the data better!

My contention is that evolution is the religion of naturalism--that it is at least as religious as creation and that creation is at least as scientific as evolution...

Facts are like rocks: they don't talk; they must be interpreted by one's assumptions. When I was in graduate school, the professors frequently admitted, "There is no such thing as a value-free fact," especially when it comes to unobserved history. Facts must be interpreted: they must be placed within an existing world view before they have much meaning at all...both interpretations cannot be true [naturalism and creation]...

[An] older man, a professor with a long history of "fighting creationism" as he put it...said He didn't like creationism because it disagreed with all the great scientists of our day--Stephen Gould, Carl Sagan, Isaac Asimov, etc. (atheists all). My view was different from theirs; therefore, I must be wrong. But his main point was that my view mixed science and religion, and we all know that only naturalistic (read atheistic) evolution is science, but creation is religion...I didn't not disagree with scientific data, just the religious opinions (i.e., naturalistic opinions) of some scientists about those data and their reconstruction of unobserved history. ...I had not disagreed with the facts!...The place we differed was in the interpretation process...[W]hen I asked him to find fault with my interpretations given my assumptions [biblical creation], he got strangely silent. The only thing he would say was to repeat the oft-repeated charge that science has no room for the supernatural, and that I could not be a scientists if I believed in God...

Until a person is willing to think on an assumption or presupposition level, there can be little movement on this issue (Morris, pg. 18-19)...

Evolutionary theories generally start with either nothing or chaos. Something happens to cause matter to coalesce into particles, atoms, molecules, stars, galaxies, planets, and life. Over time, the life becomes more and more complex: single-celled organisms branch into plants and marine invertebrates, then into fish, amphibians, reptiles, birds, mammals, and finally, into man. All of life, modern extinct, came from a common ancestor through innumerable stages, all by natural, unguided process. Biblical creation ideas start with nothing other than an omnipotent God, the God of the Bible. The state before creation is totally unknowable, but there came a point in which He called into existence the space-mass-time universe, out of His own inexhaustible power (Morris, pg. 21)...

We must get away from thinking of evolution as a science. Evolutionary naturalism is a philosophical world view about the past, loaded with religious implications, which historically and presently exists in a

frantic attempt to explain the fact that we are here without accountability to a Creator/God. It results in bad science, a denial of true history, and much misery to people and nations who have adopted it (Morris, pg 24)...

The most assertive anti-creation organization today is the Berkeley, California, based National Center for Science Education. Its director, Dr. Eugenie Scott, knows the true religious nature of the issue and even calls herself a "philosophical materialist"--a religiously held commitment to naturalism, that nature is all there is. This is essentially the same as atheism. Unfortunately, she and her religion are welcomed at school boards, legislatures, and universities nationwide, often in the name of separation of church and state.

Many Christian writers who attempt to accommodate long ages into biblical history recognize the obvious meaning of yom as a liter day, but claim science has proven the old earth and, therefore, Scripture must be interpreted to fit...

Recognizing that the historic view of the church was "young-earth creation," Dr. Young [Christianity and the Age of the Earth] has chosen to hold a different view. He started out his career as a young-earth creationist, "evolved" into an old-earth creationist, then a theistic evolutionist, and now teaches that since the old earth and evolution have been proven by science, Scripture must contain little factual scientific or historic content. He recommends we even stop trying to incorporate evolution into Scripture, and adopt the "Framework Hypothesis," wherein one simply allegorizes those portions of Scripture that appear to present facts about the past. He now advocates gleaning only "spiritual" implications from Genesis, not historic or scientific implications (Morris, pg. 28). Contradictions Between the Biblical and the Secular View and Faulty Thinking Process Employed by Many Christians.

The old-earth concept is a necessary part of evolution. Everyone agrees that evolution is an unlikely process, involving millions of favorable mutations, fortuitous environmental changes, etc. Only as one shrouds evolution in the mists of time does it become respectable. Time has become a vast carpet under which all the problems of evolution are swept. If someone brings up a problem--the lack of transitional forms, living or extinct; the paucity of mutations which could be called beneficial; the conservative nature of natural selection; the precise design of living things, far beyond the reach of unintelligent processes to produce; the downward spiral of the second law of thermodynamics vs. the upward trend of evolution; the lack of new species in the present but extinction all around--oh well, just wait; in billions of years nature will overcome them. Just sweep them under the carpet of time.

But a realistic look at the evidence insists that time does not perform miracles, nor has real evolution ever happened. The fossil record shows no evidence that any basic category of animal has ever evolved from or into any other basic category. The laws of statistics show that favorable mutations, which actually add genetic information to the genomes, are so improbable that they would most likely never happen even once in 20 billion years, let along happen millions of times. The laws of science absolutely preclude evolution, pointing toward degradation of life's complex systems and not toward evolutionary integration. The more time there is, the more extinction and the more harmful mutations will occur. De-evolution will occur, not evolution. Time is the enemy of evolution, rather than its hero (Morris, pg. 37-39)...

God told us when He created, in case we were inclined to make an error of judgment. In fact, if creation were really long ago, he deceived us, since in His Word He tells us He created things recently...

We dare not make the error of limiting God to that which we see occurring today. Creation week was different in every respect from today. The omnipotent, omniscient Creator was using creative processes that He is no longer using, and which are certainly not happening on their own (Morris, pg. 40).

For I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ, for it is the power of God to salvation for everyone who believes, for the Jew first and also for the Greek (Ro 1:16)

The concept of radioisotope dating assumes uniformity. It assumes that there has never been any world-restructuring catastrophe. It assumes there has never been any supernatural creation, and it assumes the earth to be old...

[T]he Bible-believing Christian need not be intimidated by radioisotope dating...

As it stands, the dates are accepted or rejected based on their agreement with an unproven and unprovable idea about solar-system formation. The scatter, which is very real, seems more impressive and important than the forced agreement with the theory (Morris, pg. 54-60). Also see: Evidences of Accelerated Decay Discovered by RATE and Biblical Arguments for a Global Flood.

An effective debating technique is to show that the assumptions used by one's opposition lead to illogical conclusions, conclusions that even they do not like. In that spirit, we can use the set of assumptions employed by old-earth advocates and demonstrate internal inconsistencies in that way of thinking. When we do this, the weight of the evidence, even using their assumptions, points toward a young earth. Most of the evidence implies that the earth is far too young to be compatible with the evolutionary world view (Morris, pg. 72)...

Evolutionary ideas...would insist that humans diverged from ape-like ancestors some three million years ago and through a gradual increase in culture developed into Stone Age people and then Bronze Age, Iron Age, and up into the modern era. This gradual increase in technology and cultural levels should be reflected in archaeological discoveries.

In reality, this is not borne out. Archaeologists have shown that in a variety of places around the world, very advanced, modern cultures sprang up suddenly, almost simultaneously. These were complete civilizations, each possessing a complex language, sophisticated culture, agricultural knowledge, rather impressive technology, and many time a written language. These cultures were able to devise elaborate calendars and build pyramids, impressive buildings, and seagoing vessels. Most eventually lost their advanced technology, and only in the last few hundred years has mankind begun to regain it. This early technology, even more advanced in some cased than modern technology, is not what would be expected if humans had recently been beetle-browed, stoop-shouldered, long-armed knuckle-walkers, hunting and gathering for their daily food.

Yet, true history--that is, written history--relying on human observation and authentication agrees remarkably with that suggested by biblical history. According to Scripture, human culture from its very start was advanced, and humans have always been intelligent. The only claims which disagree with this perspective are those derived from the illegitimate use of dating techniques as described before, as well as from the evolutionary assumption of human development. But evidence for primitive cultures can be more easily understood in terms of isolated language groups of intelligent people, migrating away from the Tower of Babel, having been separated linguistically, and no longer having access to the broad array of technology available to other groups. "Primitive" people groups were those which totally lost their technology from misuse or hardship, and who did not compete well against larger, better-situated, and advanced language groups (Morris, pg. 73)...

Anthropologists have noted remarkable similarities between the historical folklore of nearly all cultures. Hundreds of widely dispersed people groups have a similar legend of a flood, sent by God because of man's wickedness, but survived by a favored righteous family, who built a huge boat for survival which eventually landed on a high mountain. Their common themes speak of a common ancestry that alone survived the Flood and passed the story of it on to their descendants.

Less well-known are the common creation legends, again held by groups in all corners of the globe...

A smaller but not insignificant number of legends tell of a God-induced dispersion of tribes, followed by migration and reestablishment of civilization. The similarities with Genesis are obvious, and fit the thesis that all people alive today descended from Noah, and remember their legendary histories. Indeed, the creation, Fall, Flood, and dispersion are all such monumental events they would be hard to forget, and remain by having been passed down through the generations. The stories have all changed somewhat in the telling and retelling, but their essence remains. This is what we would expect if biblical history is true (Morris, pg. 73).

...[T]he earth and its fossil contents are quite compatible with the Flood and young-earth model, and not at all compatible with an old-earth model. Population calculations and volumetric quantities can only be made compatible with the old earth by adopting unusual conditions and unrealistic assumptions about the past (Morris, pg. 75).

It has been claimed that the human and chimp genomes were up to 99 percent similar, proving they came from a common, ape-like ancestor, and it is held that mutations in their supposed original DNA must have produced both. Careful analysis now reveals that they are much more different than claimed...

The largely intact genomes of chimps and man imply that the creation of both was not very long ago, or neither would still exist. Thus, the evidence supports the biblical truth of recent creation. Chimps were "after their kind," while humans were created "in God's image." They did not descend from a common ancestor (Morris, pg. 76).

* The igneous rocks on the rim of the Grand Canyon date "older" than the igneous rocks at the bottom, according to radioisotope dating (Morris, pg. 78).

Plate tectonics is the idea that earth's surface is divided into numerous "plates" which move relative to one another, which is sometimes called continental drift. These continent-bearing plates are thought to spread apart, converge, or slide past one another. While no one observed the proposed separation of the world's landmass into the present-day continents, the evidence that supports this movement is strong. Not only does the rather amazing fit of the continents support the idea, but also, once the continents are placed back together, mountain chains and stratagraphic layers on the now-separated continents line up, as do major fault zones...

Continental separation was most likely part of the overall restructuring of the earth's surface at the time of Noah's flood, a tectonic even with no equal...

[T]he idea that the continents were once connected and have moved to their present separate locations is a subjective reconstruction of history, although fairly well supported by a lot of data...

[P]late tectonics is an observable fact. The plates do exist and some do move with respect to one another. Furthermore, the idea of the separation of a prior super-continent in the past is well supported by the evidence. But large-scale movements are most likely made possible only by the rapid and dynamic events surrounding the Flood. At very least, the Flood provides us with the energies and circumstances capable of moving a continent (Morris, pg. 83-85).

...[T]he flood is the key. Such a Flood could account for the fossils and the strata that have traditionally been misinterpreted as evidence of long ages of uniformity. ...[B]iblical inerrancy could be considered a credible, scholarly position. On the authority of Scripture, the catastrophic Flood really occurred on a wide scale, and the evidence for extensive catastrophism in geology abounds. The young-earth position directly follows from the global Flood doctrine, just as belief in an old earth by otherwise Bible-believing Christians necessitates holding to the local Flood concept.

...The creation movement has...caused a revolution in secular geologic thinking...[I]deas were routinely scoffed at in the days before [the publication] of The Genesis Flood [Whitcomb and Morris, 1961]...[I]t is no longer considered laughable to argue that each horizontally bedded layer of fossil-bearing strata in the Grand Canyon was laid down by a catastrophe of one sort or another...

[T]he real evidence points toward a rapid catastrophic deposition which took very little time...Virtually all of the actual evidence in the rocks points toward catastrophic flood processes lasting only a short period of time (Morris, pg. 97).

The lack of evidence for time passing between the layers is compounded by the immensity of the supposed time gaps between layers...The change of sediment type necessitates a change in depositional environment, and for each change, uplift or submersion must occur. Large-scale, vertical continental movements obviously require significant time and energy. Uniformitarian thinking stresses that this happens quite slowly, but consider the changes to the land that would ensue. Wouldn't there be a gradual change in sediment type and a mixing of both for a while? If this happened suddenly, there would be no mistaking the change in conditions. Given the abrupt change in strata between the two successive layers, isn't this exactly what we see? See photographs Morris, pg. 102.

...How long would it take [a] dead tree trunk to fall over? Could it remain upright for millions or for even hundreds of years, while the mud slowly accumulated around it? Obviously not. Penetrating completely through overlying layers, some fossilized trees even intersect more than one coal layer! These trees have come to be called polystrate fossils because they penetrate many [poly] strata. Did such trees ride the strata down and up again and then down again for millions of years? From studying these fossilized trees, we can conclude that the length of time for accumulation of the peat (which later turned into coal) and the overlying sediments was shorter than the time it takes for wood to decay. Obviously, wood decays in only a few decades at most, whether in an active ocean environment, standing in air, or

buried in sediments.

Polystrate fossilized trees which extend through more than one layer in effect tie the entire series of layers together into a short period of time. This period of time cannot be explicitly determined from the data, but it is wholly incompatible with the long-age model normally taught.

...Most fossils are formed by rapid burial. This fish (see photo) was so rapidly buried he didn't have time to swallow lunch (Morris, pg. 105).

The majority of fossiliferous column can be resolved into a single, continuous depositional sequence...

In many cases, an individual formation may be overlain conformably by another formation, but the fossil content of the two demands (to evolutionists) that the formations' times of deposition be separated by many millions of years! This is called paraconformity (illustration C) or pseudo-conformity. A "surface of non-deposition and on-erosion" is implied--a surface that remained absolutely stagnant for millions of years. Obviously, there is not such stagnant surface on land today, with nothing happening on it, not erosion, no rooting by plants or burrowing by animals, anywhere on earth. Nor can a surface be stagnant underwater, with no bioturbation or deposition. This is a totally hypothetical concept illustrating the lengths to which old-earth advocates will to to salvage their millions-of-years theory.

Evolutionists...say...if a rock is deeply buried and confined on all sides by surrounding pressure, bending can occur on an otherwise brittle rock. This is, of course, quite true, especially for certain rocks that can "flow," like rock salt. But in a hard rock like the Tapeats sandstone, that sort of bending always results in elongated sand grains or broken cement crystals, neither of which have been found in these deformed Grand Canyon rocks...

Any rock can be incrementally loaded up to the failure point by the addition of stress. If the stress is maintained at a constant level below the rupture point, deformation will continue in most rocks to a terminal value, at which time the rock will either become stable, or it will fracture. Most rock types will not continue to undergo unlimited deformation. There is a limit to the amount of creep that will occur over time...Rock is not at a like a homogeneous material such as steel. Any tiny irregularity in the rock, either due to deposition or the increasing stress, would quickly propagate, causing failure of the whole.

As can be seen from the photographs of the point of greatest bending [see right], these rocks bent at a 90-degree angle within a distance of 100 feet or so. This would place the rock in the outer half of the fold in tension. Hard rock is notoriously weak in tension, and yet this material stretched quite a bit. At places along the monocline, the entire layer visibly thinned as it bent. It's hard to imagine how hard rock could have withstood that much stretching, even if it confined. Hard rock simply does not behave this way. From all we can gather, both visually and under the microscope, the rocks were still in a soft, unconsolidated condition at the time of bending (Morris, pg. 112).

Many people have the mistake impression that geology has proved that the earth is billions of years old. As we have seen, nothing could be further from the truth!

One of the classic arguments used in favor of the old earth comes from the Petrified Forest of Yellowstone Park, where beautifully preserved petrified tree stumps are found in great numbers...

...[P]etrified wood does not take millions of years to form. Wood can, under certain conditions, be petrified rapidly, as several laboratory experiments have shown...

[S]everal recent interpretations of the Yellowstone Petrified Forest have included references to the events at Mount St. Helens. Many geologists are not agreeing that the Yellowstone petrified trees were, indeed, from the same standing forest, transported on a series of mud flows. And, wonder of wonders, the evolution lesson along the roadside has been removed. The classic argument that the Bible is wrong has been shown to be wrong. The Bible Stands, Dr. Ron Numbers was misled! [Ronald L. Numbers, The Creationists, 1992].

...[R]ocks are rather generic with respect to age...[T]here is no hard evidence that they are of any particular age. Each rock must be understood within a world view, using certain assumptions about the past...I have given significant evidence that fits much more easily in the young-earth model than in the old-earth model. In fact, some of the evidence does not seem to be at all compatible with old-earth ideas. The weight of the evidence comes down on the side of the young earth...My contention...has been that only Scripture gives specific information about the age of the earth and the timing of its unobserved events. Rocks, fossils, isotope arrays, and physical systems do not speak with the same clarity as Scripture...

In the biblical model derived from a straightforward reading of Scripture, fossiliferous rocks were by and large deposited by Noah's flood. Fossils are the remains of organisms that descended from those created during creation week and dies in the Flood (with some exceptions). Radioisotope dating methods suffer from wrong assumptions about the past, mainly because all physical systems were drastically altered by the global and destructive nature of the Flood, and also because the assumptions used deny the possibility of creation. Scripture does not give us all the details, but only as we place our interpretations in agreement with the teachings of Scripture do we have a chance to rightly understand the past.

Evolutionists follow exactly the same method of thinking, only they bow before a different philosophy--that of naturalism, evolution, and uniformitarianism. These doctrines about the past are, at best, based on unprovable assumptions, and are not well-supported by the data. By definition, they deny the great worldwide events of Genesis. But if creation and the Flood are facts of history, they must be included in one's view of the past. To deny historical truth before attempting to reconstruct history is forever to embrace error (Morris, pg. 120).

The questions then arise: "Why are we concerned with something so elusive?" Shouldn't we concern ourselves only with knowing the Rock of Ages, and forget about the ages of rocks?" Followed by the statement, "Let's talk about where we're going, not about where we've been."

Comments and questions like these may seem very spiritual, but they are little more than cop-outs. All too many Christians have chosen not to see or become involved in the battle around us, in effect surrendering to the enemy, and in so doing, abandoning all those who come under the influence of the enemy.

Battlefronts captured by those with views adversarial to Christianity include the news media, television, politics, academia, the judicial system, public education, and, in this case, much of science, with resulting havoc everywhere. Each of these battles was winnable, and some of the still are! The Christian's resources far surpass those of the humanist, and the evidence is very clearly on our side. Losses are avoidable.

The evidence is especially on our side in real science. Creation far excels evolution as a scientific model. Evolution survives only by suppression of alternatives. The tactics of evolutionists include ridicule, personal attacks, bureaucratic policies, and court rulings. Mostly, evolution survives because so few people have ever been allowed to hear a credible case for creation. All that most people know is what they have been taught.

Few advocates of either creation or evolution even recognize the philosophical nature of the question. The discussions usually sink to a "my evidence versus your evidence" level, while in reality all evidence must be interpreted, and nearly all evidence can be included in either model. The discussions should be "my interpretations based on my assumptions versus your interpretations based on your assumptions" and the reasonableness of each set of assumptions and interpretations. And, of course, we must never confuse circumstantial evidence with the direct evidence...

Often rules are set up so that creationists are not even allowed in the discussion, let alone taken seriously (Morris, pg. 121).

Few people, especially Christians, ever stop to think that god has ordained science, and that each human has been commanded to take part in this enterprise. As God's week of creation came to an end, He placed Adam in charge of all creation. Adam was told to "subdue" the earth, and "have dominion" over it an all of the creatures in it (Gen. 1:28). Theologians call this the Dominion Mandate, and recognize that it passed trough Adam to all his descendants.

And God blessed them, and God said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth.

The two verbs are significant. Subdue implies the serious study of the earth and its processes, as well as of all living things. We have come to call this understanding process "Science." Mankind must fully understand the creation in order to carry out the next part of the mandate.

To have dominion over creation would fall into our modern category of technology, that of the utilization of our knowledge. God has placed mankind din the position of stewards over creation. We are to care for it, manage it, protect it, and utilize it for our good and God's glory.

Frequently, humanists claim that Christians, if allowed, would spoil the environment and ruin the ecological balance between species. Although some Christians are insensitive, no support can be found in Scripture for abusing the environment.

Actually, the Christian should lead the way in environmental concerns. In recent years, the humanist has laid exclusive claim to this God-commanded activity, and is using it to capture the hears of young people. Along the way, they have twisted environmentalism into pantheism, with a host of attendant New Age evils.

A good eal of illegitimate baggage has thus been added to proper, God-commanded concerns for the creation. To modern environmentalists, man is the enemy, not the steward. Evolution is the creator, through Mother Nature and Father Time...

Another reason creation understanding is so important is that God deserves praise for His creative majesty, just as He does for His redemptive work....His Word to us includes many references of praise to the God of creation. How dare we ignore them, and it!

Thou art worth, O Lord, to receive glory and honor and power: for thou hast created all things, and for thy pleasure they are and were created (Rev. 4:11). Morris, pg. 121-122.

Every observer, from creationist to secularist, sees the intricate design in life and must ascribe it to something. Biblical creationists attribute this complexity to the creator God of the Bible, and claim things are exactly the way they should be if Scripture is correct...

Naturalistic evolutionists have no belief in a God, and thus no recourse to a supernatural mind behind it all. As did Darwin, they generally attribute the amazing design to natural selection. Unthinking random mutations have produced a written encyclopedia with intelligent information contained within. Surely some things cannot be.

...[W]e have three options: unintelligent design by random causes, intelligent design by an unknown cause, or intelligent design by the intelligent God of the Bible. Origins views like these are at their core unprovable, but which is most credible?

If God exists, creation thinking handles all the data. Naturalism only makes sense if there is no God and if natural forces are all there is. Reliance on blind natural forces stretches credibility, but that is the evolutions' faith. Any view of origins is "religious," since it attempts to reconstruct the unobserved past. The best we can do is to determine which historical view is most satisfying scientifically, historically, and personally (Morris, pg. 123).

On the other hand, many secularists today have abandoned strict naturalism in favor of hazy New Age thinking. Even scientists are leaving Darwinian evolution in droves, recognizing that strictly natural processes, operating at random on inorganic chemical, could never have produced complex information--loaded living cells. They have grown weary of arguing that random mutations in highly complex genetic code provide improvements in it.

To avoid the implications of impotent nature, new Age disciples have chosen to believe that nature is alive and well doing these things on purpose. Thus, they worship nature (some more openly than others), ascribing to nature qualities an characteristics formerly ascribed to God (Morris, pg. 123).

...By and large, seminary-trained theologians oppose or are indifferent to biblical and scientific creationism. But it does not take a seminary degree to know that the Bible teaches creation and a young earth. In fact, it probably takes seminary training to accept the various perversions of Scripture, such as the day-age concept, the framework hypothesis, theistic evolution, and the local-Flood theory. Modern evangelicals are hard-pressed to find a major seminary that unequivocally holds to a historical, grammatical view of Genesis. Most prefer to allegorize it and welcome evolution and/or old-earth thinking into their theology.

...Much is at stake, even the issue of biblical inerrancy. Can God's Word be trusted? When it gives times and places and genealogies, does it contain meaningful information? To Christian old-earth advocates, many Scripture passages must be ignored or allegorized.

...Assume, for the moment, the stance taken by many Christian leaders today, that God created the earth and its systems, but did so over 4.5 billion years. I will attempt to show that this view is internally inconsistent in its theology, promoting a view of God totally unlike the God of the Bible...

[W]hy did God take so long, as a seeming after thought, to recreate His own image...What was His purpose in the billions of years of evolutionary blind alleys and extinctions? Is He powerless, able to accomplish His purpose only with trial and error, fits and starts?...[W]hy all the death, bloodshed, and violence over all these millions of years? Why did He set up this bizarre scenario to finally produce man? If He is omnipotent, surely He could have done it in a better way?

The main mechanisms for evolution are touted as mutations and natural selection. Without mutations, evolution could not acquire new genetic information, and without natural selection, the survival of the fittest trend cannot work. Both obviously occur today, yet they do not produce evolutionary change. ...[T]he trends are opposite of evolution, leading to extinction, not innovation.

Consider how these mechanism mesh with the character of God as revealed in Scripture. Are those the methods He would utilize to produce His image in man?

By definition, mutations involve random damage to the genetic information code. never have mutation been observed to add useful information which was not there before. It might be conceptually possible but the odds against adding new information by random alteration are astronomical. Would God use random damage to produce His very good creation, including His very image? Perhaps He could orchestrate good damage, but this damage would not be random or consistent with His wise and beneficent nature...

Similarly, natural selection occurs all around us, but it can only select from the variety produced by random mutation and genetic recombination. It has no mind; it does nothing on purpose. It conserves by natural processes the best variety present; it innovates nothing. but god is a supernatural God, with wisdom and power quite distinct from nature. Would such a supernatural God, who strictly forbids us to worship nature, accomplish His creative handiwork by natural process? Morris, pg. 129- 130.

God's gracious, merciful, and loving nature is likewise incompatible with millions of years of evolution...Is not survival of the fittest, where the strong survive and the weak perish and might makes right, more in line with salvation by works than salvation by grace? God does not think that way. "Blessed are the meek," protect the poor and defenseless, and even children in her the kingdom. Evolution, the blood thirsty cult of tooth and claw, does not mesh with God's essence. He could not use evolution to produce His image and remain true to His character...[A]ll of this is so unlike God, the every-living source of life and love. God "saw everything that he had made, and indeed it was very good" (Gen. 1:31).

God does not call our present world very good. He deems it so bad that He has promised it will "melt with fervent heat," and then He will create a "new earth, wherin dwelleth righteousness" (2 Pet 3:13)...

Christians who advocate the old-earth idea typically feel that Satan was cast out of heaven long ago, before Adam was created, and was present on earth throughout the ages. But if that is so, where were Satan and the myriads of demons when God pronounced everything very good?...

To make matters worse, God has promised a restoration of earth to what it was like before Adam sinned. To an old-earther, Adam lived just a few thousand years ago, at the end of 4.5 billion years of history. Adam's world was essentially no different from ours. So what will this world be restored to: billions of years of extinction and death? No, the Bible says it will be a time without bloodshed and carnivorous activity, when the world and the lamb will lie down together, where event the lion will be a vegetarian, and where harmony will exist between man and the animal kingdom once again. To an old-earther, this has never happened. How can the earth be resorted to such a state?

...The creation has been made "subject to vanity" [Rom. 8:20], a state implying failure to achieve the "very good" purpose for which it was created. Because of sin and the resultant curse, it stopped measuring up to God's design as it originally did. Morris, pg. 130-131.

The tense of the verb "was made subject," speaks of a past, completed even at which all of creation was affected. There are only two candidates for this even, Genesis 1:1 and Genesis 3:14-19. If the creation of all things "subject to vanity" (as Dr. Hugh Ross and other old-earth advocates claim), then God is the author of much pain and suffering and death. Did God create bloodthirsty animals, poisonous plants, infectious diseases, parasites, etc.? Did He call it all "very good"? Did God design conscious animals, capable of expressing emotions such as loyalty and care for one another, to suffer excruciating pain and horrid death?

The situation gets worse when humankind is considered?...This world of ours could not be similar to Gods' created "very good" earth. If it is, God is responsible for al these painful and horrible things. Where is His holiness...? Where is His justice?

If, however, the even that ruined creation is the one recorded in Genesis 3, then the presence of pain, suffering, and death makes sense. Man rebellion against God brought the curse and death, the "bondage of corruption." God' holy nature and justice shine as He faithfully pronounces the penalty for sin as He had promised (Gen. 2:17), but He also promises in His grace to send a solution to the problem of sin and death (Gen. 3:15), a solution we now recognize as God's only Son, Jesus Christ (Morris, pg. 132).

The very first recorded death was that of an animal to provide a covering for Adam and Eve, painfully aware of their sin (Gen. 3:21). Throughout the Old Testament, we see blood sacrifices for sin commanded. "Without shedding of blood is no remission" of sin (Heb. 9:22). The biblical teaching of the entrance of death because of sin makes sense only if the earth is young.

Wherefore, as by one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin; and so death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned (Rom. 5:12).

But now Christ is risen from the dead, and has become the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep. For since by man came death, by Man also came the resurrection of the dead. For as in Adam all die, even so in Christ all shall be made alive (1 Cor. 15:20-22, NKJV).

But what if the earth is old? The fossils must then be understood to show that the dying of living creatures has already been going on for hundreds of millions of years before Adam sinned. Death, extinction of the less-fit as the more-fit survive through the process of natural selection, has dominated history. Dead is then normal; death is natural; death is just the way things are. If God created this kind of world, then what kind of God do we have? Is He sadistic, capricious, and cruel?

But it gests even worse! To an evolutionists, death is the central focus. Death fuels evolution. Death produced man. For instance, it was the extinction of the dinosaurs that gave rise to the mammals, and eventually to man. Carl Sagan, the late evolutionary spokesperson of the late 20th century, says it this way:

The secrets of evolution are death and time--the deaths of enormous numbers of lifeforms that were imperfectly adapted to the environment; and time for a long succession of small mutations that were by accident adaptive, time for the slow accumulation of patterns of favorable mutation [Carl Sagan, Cosmos].

Charles Darwin recognized the key role of death in evolution by natural selection. The final, climactic paragraph of Origin of Species points this out. After describing for several hundred pages the evidence for and effects of natural selection, he concludes: "Thus, from the war of nature, from famine and death, the most exalted object which we are capable of conceiving, namely, the production of the higher animals (i.e., man) directly follows [Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species]." In other words, from death comes man.

Actually, Charles Darwin credited the existence of pain and suffering and death for his commitment to natural selection. In response to a plea not to be so atheistic in his writings, Darwin responded: "I had no intention to write atheistically, but I own that I cannot see as plainly as others do, and as I should wish to do, evidence of design and beneficence on all sides of us. I cannot persuade myself that a beneficent and omnipotent God would have designedly created the ichneumonidae (a parasite, ed.) with the express intention of their feeding within the living bodies of caterpillars, or that a cat should play with mice. Not believing this, I see no necessity in the belief that the eye was expressly designed."

Thus, to an evolutionist, death is the natural state of things, and death produced man. The death and extinction of the unfit is absolutely essential for evolutionary change to occur through survival of the fittest. Even to an old-earth creationist, death preceded man (even the death of human-like "animals"), and God used death to prepare the way for man. In either case, a world dominated by death, pain, and suffering was here before man and certainly before man sinned (Morris, pg. 133-134).

...But what if evolution and the old earth are true? What if the fossils were deposited long before Adam lived? What if the dinosaurs had become extinct before sin entered creation? Obviously, if death was here before Adam's sin, then creation had already been spoiled, and earth is not the penalty for sin. But if death is not the penalty for sin, what possible good would have been accomplished by Christ's death? In evolution, it is "survival of the fittest." In Christianity, it is "the death of the fit for the unfit."

Do you see how the two concepts are incompatible? If death was here before sin, then Christ's death was ineffective and meaningless. The central focus of Christianity fails. The old-earth concept undermines Christ's work of redemption!...[I]t is impossible that both evolution and Christianity can be true. They are opposite world views. If evolution is true, Christianity is wrong!...

Many modern evangelical seminaries give credence to the presence of a sin nature in each one of us, all the while denying Adam as a historic person, denying the original "very good" creation, denying Adam's sin as a historic event, and denying the Curse as passing on to all creation (the animals, the plants, the earth, and all mankind) as a result of Adam's rebellious choice.

As you can see denying the historic facts of Adam's sin and the resultant curse logically undercuts orthodox Christian doctrine and places modern Christian old-earth advocated only one slippery step away from a Muslim-style, works-oriented salvation, a position shared in principle by the cults. A low view of sin requires no Savior to save us from sin...A world view with an illogical foundation and an error-filled revelation will not long endure...

[T]he old-earth idea and Christianity cannot both be right. If evolution is true, then Christianity is wrong. If the earth is old, then Christianity is wrong. These concepts are not just incompatible, they are opposites. They are mutually exclusive! As stated in the quote above [G. Richard Bozarth, "The Meaning of Evolution," American Atheist (February 1978), p. 30.] "Evolution means that Jesus was not the redeemer who died for our sin."

The Young Earth: The Real History of the Earth--Past, Present, and Future by John Morris