Another Inconvenient Truth 2: Defending Young Earth Creationism by Justin Derby (Review)

Former old-earther Justin Derby has forcefully argued for the traditional interpretation of Genesis in his latest tome Another Inconvenient Truth 2: Defending Young Earth Creationism.  He unabashedly confronts the compromising teachings from the likes of William Lane Craig, Frank Turek, John Lennox and Mike Licona.  Derby is the creator of Creation.Social - a pro free speech platform.

 

Derby takes the chronologies from Genesis chapters five and eleven to lay out the timeline from Adam to Abraham.  He also takes 1 Kings 6:1 which tells us that the interval from the Exodus to the fourth year of Solomon's reign encompasses 480 years.  These facts imply that our wonderful planet is 6133 years old in 2022.

 

The young earth position is evidenced by Scripture and science.  One easy to understand example in the book is the discovery of soft tissue in dinosaur remains discovered by Mary Schweitzer (pp. 45-49).  Soft tissue should not be present after 65 million years.

 

Derby has a helpful discussion of debate strategies regarding origins.  He details the advice and methods of Eugenie Scott, Bill Nye and Duane Gish.  I sat next to Gish at a Creation meeting as a teen.

 

Frank Turek seems to think that the rotation of the earth poses a problem for how the Bible relates to science (p. 137).  Consider this: "You have  commanded the morning ... That it might take hold of the ends of the earth ... It is turned as clay to the seal ..." (Job 38:12-14).  Henry Morris (d. 2006), the founder of modern creationism, comments: "This figurative expression refers to God’s initiation of the earth’s rotation ... like a rotating clay cylinder exposing the impressions of the seal, the earth turns to the sun ... exposing the wicked and their works of the night."  Turek should read more books from the young earth aisle.   

If the earth is relatively young, then evolution must go.  Derby quotes a lesser known section of Darwin's Origin of Species (pp. 76,77).  At first,  Darwin says that we may have started with five basic kinds of animals in the beginning.  Would that mean five essential types of plants too?  Later, Darwin posits that all life came from one primordial form.

 

If you read Genesis in a forthright manner, it is very clear that Creation took place over six normal days, Noah's Flood was global and our world is only thousands of years old (not billions).  Derby brings out a key verse to prove this point (p. 143): "When there is a prophet among you, I, the Lord, reveal myself to them in visions, I speak to them in dreams.  But this is not true of my servant Moses; he is faithful in all my house.  With him I speak face to face, clearly and not in riddles ..." (Num. 12:6-8).

 

Derby shares his take on the "slippery slope" (doctrine downgrade), alternative media platforms, net censorship, inerrancy, James Hutton - who "discovered" deep time, Erwin Lutzer, why folks reject evolution and tons of other engaging issues.

Derby holds that denying the young earth position is heretical (pp. 57-64).  Some of the historic creeds and confessions define creation in six real days, but none make a six thousand year old earth a salvation issue.  John Calvin's Institutes of the Christian Religion is a systematic survey of essential doctrine.  Regarding "profane men," Calvin stated (Inst., Ch. 21, Sec. 4): "Nor will they abstain from their jeers when told that little more than five thousand years have elapsed since the creation of the world.  For they will ask, Why did the power of God slumber so long in idleness?"

 

Derby provides a list of helpful young earth resources at the end of his book such as the Northwest Creation Network and Adam's Lost Dream.  If you want to learn more about the young earth stance, get this book.

 

#WilliamLaneCraig  #FrankTurek  #JohnLennox  #MikeLicona  #JustinDerby  #CreationSocial  #YoungEarth  #OldEarth  #AgeOfTheEarth  #Genesis  #SixDays  #GlobalFlood  #thousands #billions  #AdamsLostDream  #JohnCalvin  #Institutes  #MarySchweitzer  #dinos   #InconvenientTruth      

Bill "Kalam" Craig and the de Molina Revolutionaries

In 2010, I went to an apologetics conference at Southwestern Seminary in Fort Worth.  During the banquet I was saddened to hear sympathetic conversation of "middle knowledge" at my table.  William Lane Craig (aka Craig w/ a "K") is one of the prominent advocates of Molinism and middle knowledge (scientia media).  Craig received his Doctorate in Theology from Universität München (Germany) and studied under Wolfhart Pannenberg (Jesus - God and Man).  According to Luis de Molina (d. 1600), God sets up the cosmos, among all the myriad upon myriad of possible worlds, so that given a certain situation, you will make the free choice that the Lord wants you to make.  Almost sounds like the Multiverse escape mechanism to avoid Intelligent Design, doesn't it?  Speaking of ID, I met Bill Dembski at the same meeting!

 

It seems clear from Scripture, that the King of Kings directs his plans without middle knowledge:

 

My times are in your hands ... (Ps. 31:15)

I make known the end from the beginning, from ancient times, what is still to come.  I say, "My purpose will stand, and I will do all that I please." (Is. 46:10)

In him we were also chosen, having been predestined according to the plan of him who works out everything in conformity with the purpose of his will. (Eph. 1:11)

 

Bruce Ware (God's Lesser Glory) brings up a powerful objection de Molina's insights:

 

... it is not at all clear how God can know by middle knowledge just what choices free creatures would make in various sets of possible circumstances. Sometimes called the "grounding objection," the problem here is that, since freedom in the libertarian sense is defined as the ability, all things being just what they are, to choose differently, it is impossible to know what decision will be made simply by controlling the circumstances ... nothing grounds God's knowledge of what free creatures would do in various possible sets of circumstances; and hence, God cannot know what middle knowledge advocates claim he knows, that is, what free creatures would do in any and all possible sets of circumstances. [1]

 

In 1597, the Pope established the Congregatio de Auxiliis which tended toward  condemning Molinism.  In 1611 and again in 1625 a decree prohibited any discussion of middle knowledge.

 

The Catholic Encyclopedia of 1911 comes down hard on Molinism:

 

... the Thomists [followers of Aquinas] urge with great emphasis the grave accusation that the Molinists, by their undue exaltation of man's freedom of will, seriously circumscribe and diminish the supremacy of the Creator over His creatures, so that they destroy the efficacy and predominance of grace and make impossible in the hands of God the infallible result of efficacious grace. ... [Molinism] is contrary to the warning of St. Paul, that we must not glory in the work of our salvation as though it were our own (1 Corinthians 4:7), and to his teaching that it is Divine grace which does not only give us the power to act, but "worketh" also in us "to will and to accomplish" (Philippians 2:13); it is contrary also to the constant doctrine of St. Augustine, according to whom our free salutary acts are not our own work, but the work of grace.

 

Thomas Aquinas (d. 1274) clearly teaches contrary to de Molina:

 

God wills to manifest his goodness in men, in those whom he predestines in the manner of mercy by sparing them, in those whom he reprobates in the manner of justice by punishing them.  This provides a key to the problem why God chooses some and rejects others…  Why does he choose some to glory while others he rejects?  His so willing is the sole ground.  Augustine says, "Wherefore he draws this one and not that one, seek not to decide if you wish not to err."

 

If we take the absolutist view of human choice, then as Paul Helm, who has written for the Guardian, points out,

 

[God] cannot instantiate complete possibilities respecting anyone's free choice. And so, because his middle knowledge of such free choices is necessarily incomplete, he cannot exercise a "no-risk" providential control over his creation via his middle knowledge. [2]

 

 As Helm says, in Molinism we see our Sustainer orchestrating the affairs of life so that we act in a certain way: "God actualizes those files [viewing God as the Great Programmer] which refer to circumstances which, if the individuals are placed in them, and act freely, they will choose accordance with the end which God desires." [3]

Even Norman Leo Geisler (d. 2019), who I heard speak at the conference referenced above, said "No!" to de Molina:

 

... either God's knowledge is completely causal, determining all events, or it is determined by these events.  There is no third alternative.  Molinists say that God's knowledge is determined by future free acts.  This sacrifices God as ultimate Cause.  He is determined by events, not Determiner.  This is contrary to the nature of God, for he becomes an epistemological spectator. [4]

Remember the film Altered States with the sensory deprivation tanks?  Now there are "no" circumstances.  Should I go to sleep at 2:34 pm?  I am nearly completely isolated - how will my state of affairs push me toward one choice versus another?

 

This man was handed over to you by God’s deliberate plan and foreknowledge; and you, with the help of wicked men, put him to death by nailing him to the cross. (Acts 2:23)

 

Craig not only has a wrong view of God's Providence, he also seems to imply that Jesus erred when he spoke of the early chapters of Genesis as real history (Pannenberg anyone?).

 

 

Notes:

1) God's Lesser Glory by Bruce Ware (Crossway Books, Wheaton, IL, 2000), p. 40.

2) The Providence of God by Paul Helm (IVP, 1994), p. 61.

3) Ibid., p. 59.

4) Baker Encyclopedia of Christian Apologetics by Norman Geisler (Baker Books, Grand Rapids, MI, 1999), p. 494.

#WilliamLaneCraig #Genesis #Molina #Molinism #Providence #Ware #Helm #Aquinas #Choice #Freedom #AlteredStates #IS46_10

Dear Jon from Malta (WL Craig)

Jon from Malta wrote a letter to William Lane Craig and it was given the title  "Should OT Difficulties Be an Obstacle to Christian Belief?"  Jon says that his trouble with the early chapters of Genesis is, "... the principal reason why I cannot bring myself to accept Christianity, to which I have yet to receive a satisfying response."

Jon confesses that, "when I read the Book of Genesis through (as I have done many times), based on the various exegetical analyses I have reviewed of the Genesis accounts I find it very difficult to avoid the necessity of a literal  interpretation."  Very good.  I would recommend Jon read chapter 6 in Coming to Grips with Genesis where Steven Boyd demonstrates that Gen. 1:1 to 2:3 is historical narrative and that the Scripture teaches a young earth.

Jon specifies a number of his puzzles:

...the whole wild account of Noah's ark and the Deluge, the inordinate life expectancy of the first men which for some reason decreased with each generation, not to mention references to the existence of giants and accounts of women copulating with evil spirits (Genesis 6:4), among many other things which I've no doubt you are aware.  These accounts incorporate very specific language and do not seem to lend themselves to figurative interpretation.

For an excellent account of how Noah and his family could have taken care of the animals and survive and thrive themselves, be sure to check out Noah's Ark: A Feasibility Study by John Woodmorappe.  Also, read more on this challenge here.  There is, in fact, a great deal of evidence for the Deluge.

Approximately one fourth of the factors affecting life span are genetic.  Adam and Eve were made perfect and could have lived indefinitely (Gen. 3:22).  Mutations accumulated over time increasing the difficulties of aging.  A genetic bottleneck occurred at the time of the Flood limiting the healthy advantage of a large gene pool.  The Sumerian King List documents long ages before the Global Flood and a drastic reduction in life spans afterward.  It shows eight kings before the flood and if we don’t include Adam and Noah, this matches the historical chronology from Genesis.  If we convert the life spans of the line of Seth from decimal to base 60 (using my method) we can see that the Sumerian King List is somewhat close to the actual values from Genesis.  Chuck Missler has some intriguing thoughts on the nephilim.     

I would argue that the whole Bible supports a young earth.  YES - Young Earth Science defends a youthful world from history, philosophy and science.  If the world is young, then evolution is wrong.