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 Nye Choked on Radiometric Dating Question

Comedian, actor and former mechanical engineer William Sanford Nye (b. 1955) is best known for the show Bill Nye the Science Guy (1993–98).  Nye gave a very poor response to the question regarding radiometric dating in the recent debate with Ken Ham (see the 2 hour and 7 minute mark).

First, he side-stepped the issue and brought up old stars.  That’s right, he was dancing with the stars!  Russell Humphreys (Ph.D. Physics, formerly with Sandia National Labs) wrote Starlight and Time in 1994 and gave a plausible answer to this question based on the General Theory of Relativity and gravitational time dilation.  A reasonable man or woman can see that the light travel problem applies to both the Big Bang and Creation models (as Ken pointed out regarding the horizon problem).

Nye defended an old earth based on depositional rates.  In 1883, Alexander Winchell, former State Geologist of Michigan, estimated the age of the earth at 3M years. [1]  That’s a far cry from 4.5 billion years.  That was back when gradualistic uniformitarianism was in vogue.  But now catastrophism has a wide following even within mainstream Geology.  So, if most deposits were formed rapidly, such as turbidites, the depositional rates favor Young Earth Science (YES).

Nye said Charles Lyell (d. 1875) came up with the phrase “deep time.”  Actually, it was John McPhee who wrote Basin and Range in 1980.  McPhee said, “The human mind may not have evolved enough to be able to comprehend deep time” (p. 133). 

Marie Skłodowska-Curie (d. 1934) came up with the term “radioactivity.”  Nye made the very common mistake in stating that radioactivity contradicted Kelvin’s age for the Earth (his final estimate was 24M).  In 1895, before the discovery of radioactivity, John Perry showed that convection in the Earth's interior modified Kelvin’s age of the Earth.

Some claim that YES is pseudoscience.  Bill Nye the Science Guy had an episode on that topic.  Nye said there must be aliens because there are so many stars.  Yet no one has seen aliens and there are no cities on Mars.  Extraordinary claims (aliens) require extraordinary evidence.  Nye was skeptical of the Loch Ness Monster.  According to the Smithsonian’s online encyclopedia, “Even though most scientists believe the likelihood of a monster is small, they keep an open mind …”  Perhaps Nye should be open minded towards YES.  An article in National Geographic was very fair towards Nessie and included reports from very reliable witnesses. [2]

A number of times in the debate ice core dating was brought up.  We have a post on ice cores.

Nye should read Kicking the Sacred Cow by former aeronautical engineer and award winning SciFi author James Hogan.  Hogan is very sympathetic to YES.  Ken Ham sent Nye a book in The New Answers Book series – will Nye have an open mind and read it and seriously consider the evidence?

As for the question posed to Nye in the debate, Ephraim Fischbach (Purdue University) gave a talk at the Institute for Theoretical, Atomic and Molecular and Optical Physics (Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics) providing firm data that indicates that the sun affects radioactive decay rates.  John Woodmorappe (M.A. Geology) has written an excellent book refuting radiometric dating and millions of years.  Jay Wile (Ph.D. Nuclear Chemistry, Univ. of Rochester), at one time a skeptic regarding accelerated radioactive decay, has some great info on varying decay rates.

Soft tissue in dinos, as discovered by Mary Schweitzer and others, says that dinos are young and the dating methods are wrong.  As Tim Stafford (The Adam Quest) asks, “How could something as delicate as blood cells survive sixty million [sic] years?” [3]

Pray for Bill.  The Apostle Paul persecuted the church.  Bill is persecuting YES.  Paul was gloriously converted (Acts 9, 22, 26).  The same thing can happen to Bill!  Will Bill Nye the Science Guy be blinded by the light (Acts 22:11)?

Nye is the head of the Planetary Society.  Feel free to send him a letter of encouragement or some creation books (such as the New Answers Books):

Attn. Bill Nye

The Planetary Society

85 South Grand Ave

Pasadena  CA  91105

Notes:

1) "Celebrating the age of the Earth" by Simon Knell and Cherry Lewis, Geological Society, London, Special Publications, 2001, vol. 190, p. 1-14, p. 7.

2) “Loch Ness: the lake and the legend” by William Ellis, National Geographic, Vol. 151, No. 6, June 1977, p. 759.

3) The Adam Quest by Tim Stafford (Nelson Books, Nashville, TN, 2013), p. 105.