Flat Earth? Flood Geology? Young-Earth? Steve Hays & Edward T. Babinski discuss Steve Austin, Kurt Wise, Henry Morris & Henry Gee

Flat Earth and Ancient Hebrew Cosmology

Steve Hays of Triablogue is a young-earth creationist with whom Iʼve been having a bit of a discussion since I too used to be a young-earth creationist. In his blog entry, “Babel, Babble, & Babinski,” he told me that he read John Waltonʼs NIV Application Commentary On Genesis (2002) in which Walton pointed out that “Moses used architectural metaphors [in the creation story of Genesis, chapter 1] to foreshadow the tabernacle. That would also fit with the literary unity and intertextuality of the Pentateuch.” Therefore, the flat-earth creation account in Genesis 1 is an accommodation to Mosesʼs “flat-tent” view of the cosmos—strictly metaphorically speaking that is.

Hays also stated, “Iʼm more concerned with exegeting Scripture than exegeting Steve Austin.” (Austin is a Ph.D. geologist who is a formal member-teacher at the Institute for Creation Research, a young-earth organization).

Hays ended his blog entry with mention of the pro-evolutionary geologist Dr. Henry Gee, “who has documented at length that the fossil records is not a continuous sequence frozen in rock, but discontinuous data-points which are rearranged into a continuous sequence by a value-laden reconstruction of the record that is enormously underdetermined by the actual state of the evidence. A thousand theoretical interpolations to every isolated bone fragment. Of course, Gee isnʼt trying to undermine evolution. Rather, like so many others, heʼs trying to retrofit the theory. But to clear the ground for cladistics, he must slash and burn phenetics [=the phylogenetic ancestor-descent trees involving arrows showing which fossilized creature descended from which other fossilized ancestor], and itʼs quite a spectacle to see how little is left over after his scorched earth policy. So now we have another outbreak of the Darwin Wars.”

My response follows on those three topics that Hays raised:

Steve Austin, Kurt Wise, Henry Morris, The Genesis Flub

I brought up Steve Austin and Kurt Wise because they are two of the most prominent young-earth creationists in the entire U.S. who have also published a lot since the 1970s in creationist books and magazines. They are also among the few young-earth creationists in the world with Ph.D.s in geology and paleontology, repsectively. (Henry Morris who wrote The Genesis Flood and founded The Institute for Creation Research [ICR] only has a Ph.D. in hydrology.) I say “few” because I once checked the ICR and Answers in Genesis lists of young-earth creationists who work for both institutes and who had advanced degrees, and I counted only about 8 scientists there with Ph.D.s in geology, and no Ph.D.s in paleontology other than Wise. And they both agreed that Morrisʼs attempt in The Genesis Flood to cite the Lewis Mount Overthrust (the largest such “reversal of fossil layers” found anywhere in the world) as not a genuine overthrust, was a failure.

Yet it was Henry Morrisʼs book, The Genesis Flood, along with the founding of ICR, that is credited at ICR as being Godʼs means to bring back Flood Geology (from the grave in which it had lain since Christian geologists of the 1800s had proven it to be indefensible). Unfortunately for Morris, his book has since been thoroughly discredited, and found to consist of unchecked folk science tales, strung together with faulty photos, and mistaken geological assertions. If thatʼs the book that “God used” to give “Flood geology” a recharge (and “the book that God used to get Ken Ham [of Answers in Genesis and the Creation Science museum in the U.S.] in creation ministry”) then it seems more like the devilʼs book, full of lies spoken in Godʼs name to embarrass the Christian faith. At least thatʼs what some of my old-earth creationist friends might say. And since then, creationists have continued to back down from a host of ridiculous assertions that formerly were touted as disproving modern geology. Just read the Answers in Genesis online piece, “Arguments We Think Creationists Should Not Use.” Instead, modern young-earth creationism tries to invent accommodations with modern geological evidence of an old-earth. It does not try to disprove it like it once did. Both ICR and Answers in Genesis admit that the search for “pre-Flood” human remains and artifacts or any new startling evidence of a young-cosmos, is probably hopeless: “Where are all the human fossils?” by Don Batten (editor), Ken Ham, Jonathan Sarfati, and Carl Wieland. The final line of that article is classic: “When God pronounced judgment on the world, He said, ‘I will destroy [blot out] man whom I have created from the face of the earth’ (Gen. 6:7). Perhaps the lack of pre-flood human fossils is part of the fulfillment of this judgment?”

Or perhaps God just didnʼt want to supply young-earth creationists with the evidence they so desperately crave?

And what about the new “Creation Museum” museum opening soon in the U.S. with its exhibits of humans alongside dinosaurs? The folks who built that museum admit that pre-flood human fossils have not been discovered, but they built exhibitions showing humans alongside dinosaurs. How scientific of them!

And speaking of the age of the earth what about the evidence of an old-earth from a variety of sources like Lake Suigetsu, Ice Cores, The Greenriver formation and what about the way radiometric dating has been done on individual varve layers, individual ice layers, individual tree rings (in three known series of tree rings that each stretch back in time at least 10,000 years), individual sections of sea floor that arose via the expanding molten rifts from the center of the Atlantic as it continues to spread—and in each case the processes of lake varves forming, ice layers forming, tree rings growing, and sea floors spreading, continue to take place today at known rates of formation that show agreement with the radiometric dating of individual portions of older sections of those formation? What are the odds that a load of coincidences would match up? See here and here and here. And my own story, here.

John Walton And His NIV Application Commentary On Genesis

Walton admits in his commentary that the ancient Hebrews, and the author of Genesis, assumed a flat cosmos and a solid firmament.

Whether or not one also assumes that the creation story in Genesis may be interpreted as a metaphor of the tabernacle-tent spoken of in Exodus is another question. Such a view of the cosmos as a house or tent (built flatly and on a firm foundation) does not lay outside of ancient near eastern assumptions in general, for instance note the ‘wall-ring’ representations of the firmament lying above a flat earth in ancient Egyptian iconography, or ancient mestopotamian cosmologies in general.

And more importantly, the lack of any insight into how the cosmos is truly shaped, means that the ancients wrote and assumed things on par with the pre-scientific knowledge of their day, and not a sign that one can cite that Genesis demonstrates in was composed via special inspiration.

Henry Gee, Creationism, And I.D.

Lastly, about Henry Gee. Creationists and I.D.ists donʼt understand correctly what heʼs saying, as Gee himself has complained about numerous times, even directly to creationists and I.D.ists. I have some of his correspondence with them from 2006. Heʼs describing the difficulties of dating the exact chronological order of fossils that lay relatively close together in the geological record, and advocating a greater use of cladistics to aid in determining the order of relationships in such cases. (Note: The way evolution works is that populations split from one another, then the more robust sections of a population grow more numerous and more widely established in different places round the world, which increases the odds of the new speciesʼs fossilization, but by the time the new species has spread far and wide enough to increase its chances of being fossilized, it is not likely to simply be the direct descendant of species that precede it in the fossil record, but a cousin. Hence, Geeʼs complaint about the drawing of direct lines between species in textbooks. The actual evolutionary lines of descent are more complex, and what we have are the fossils of the most robust cousin species that were living during certain overlapping eras.)

Henry Geeʼs Response

Henry Gee (henrygee) wrote,
@ 2006-06-12 22:43:00:
“I have become somewhat irked lately at the way that some creationists continue to attribute beliefs to me to which I do not subscribe. For example, creationists of the ‘intelligent design’ tendency have used my book Deep Time (sold in the US as In Search of Deep Time) to suggest that whereas I donʼt support their views, my own work somehow legitimizes them… even though I have explicitly refuted this attempt at hijack, many years ago.

“I pointed this out recently to creationist Jonathan Witt at ID The Future and as a result have had a civil and gentlemanly email exchange with him (and by extension his colleague Jonathan Wells, who has also quoted from my book).”

See also this discussion at the Quote Mine Project of the use that creationists/I.D.ists have tried to make of some Gee quotations.

C. S. Lewis Resources… Pro And Con

  1. Christians Who Praise C. S. Lewisʼs Writings
  2. Christians (Lying To The Right of Lewisʼs Views) Who Criticize Lewisʼs Presentation of Christianity & Liberal Ideas
  3. Admiring Readers of C. S. Lewis Who Later Left Christianity
  4. Critiques of C. S. Lewisʼs Arguments
  5. C. S. Lewis: Provocative, Poignant, & Profound Words

C. S. Lewis Time Magazine
  1. Christians Who Praise C. S. Lewisʼs Writings

    (Forgive the shortness of part 1., there are nearly 1 & 1/2 million hits for “C. S. Lewis” on the web, and the vast majority of them are from people who praise his writings. So, I shall name a few fairly prominent representatives who have praised Lewis recently.)

    • Josh McDowell — Author of Evidence That Demands a Verdict, apologist/evangelist for Campus Crusade

    • Rev. N.T. Wright — Anglican Bishop of Durham, England, and author of scholarly and popular books, most recently, Simply Christian. Wrightʼs address, Simply Lewis, was delivered at the annual meeting of the Society of Biblical Literature in mid-­November, 2006, and besides praise, it contains a few paragraphs critical of some aspects of Lewisʼs argumentation, especially Lewisʼs Lord, Lunatic or Liar argument.

    • Dr. Francis Collins — Head of The Human Genome Project, and author of The Language of God: A Scientist Presents Evidence for Belief. See his debt to Lewis here and here.

    • Tom Tarrants — Raised Southern Baptist, became KKK terrorist, read the Bible in prison and converted to Christianity, now head of the C. S. Lewis Institute in Washington, D.C.

  2. Christians (Lying To The Right of Lewisʼs Views) Who Criticize Lewisʼs Presentation of Christianity & Liberal Ideas

  3. Admiring Readers of C. S. Lewis Who Later Left Christianity

    • “J Milton” [a pseudonym], and his brief testimony, Paradise Lost — posted Thursday, October 26, 2006 — “I… came to the Christian faith via more of an intellectual, mystical path… through the writings of John Milton, Edmund Spenser, C.S. Lewis, and the spiritualist and mystic Renaissance man known as William Blake… If you havenʼt read Paradise Lost, I highly encourage you to do so. It truly is wonderful… as is the Faerie Queene by Edmund Spenser as well as Lewisʼ Narnia series… they all create mythological worlds on top of the bible, and in my mind, make it all come to life… I still believe in the ethereal plane, sans any man-applied dogma. John Milton will always mean something to me and Paradise Lost will always have a place in my heart… [But I am a] freethinker… exchristian.”

    • Valerie Tarico — Psychologist, author, graduate of Wheaton College, her favorite Christian author during her Evangelical years was C. S. Lewis (Wheaton College features one of the most impressive collections of “Lewisiana” in the world). Chapters of her book about leaving the fold were published on ex-Christian.net. Her blog. Chapters of her book can also be found here, here, and here.

    • Edward T. Babinski — If It Wasnʼt For Agnosticism I Wouldnʼt Know What to Believe, a chapter in Leaving the Fold: Testimonies of Former Fundamentalists.

    • Ken Daniels — From Missionary Bible Translator to Agnostic (2003)

      Mentions his earnest love of Lewisʼs writings, and how they saved him from apostatizing even earlier than he eventually did. He also mentions having read my own book, Leaving the Fold, mentioned directly above. Later, Ken expanded his testimony into a full length book thatʼs available free online, Why I Believed: Reflections of a Former Missionary.

    • John Stephen Ku — Philosophy PhD student, Started Fall 2002, U of Mich. — C. S. Lewis and the Search for Rational Religion: A Memoir — a memoir that is no longer on web, but which might still be on the Way Back Machineʼs Internet Archive.

    • Kendall Hobbs — Why I Am No Longer a Christian (2003)

    • Dr. Robert M. Price — Former campus minister, now a theologian with two PhDs and an author, wrote in Beyond Born Again, “…C. S. Lewisʼs The Screwtape Letters considerably advanced my progress in piety,” though later Price would leave the fold.

    • A cold and broken alleluia: How did a former minister become an atheist?

    • Chris Hallquist — College student. Read The Screwtape Letters a month before becoming an atheist, see his blog entry, How I Became an Atheist [Oddly enough, Chris seems to have read the same passage in The Screwtape Letters that the ex-minister did in the testimony directly above this one, and that passage influenced both of them to become atheists.]

    • Posted by Hawk on August 17, 1999 at 18:23:55:
      “I [was raised Christian, but] shrugged off Christianity around age 16 after a teacher told me that Moses created monotheism. David Koresh was running around claiming to be divine about the same time, so I figured Jesus was some nut like Koresh. I got real into philosophy in general, and I am an engineering student, so I have taken plenty of science classes, but I never got into creationism or philosophy of religion. I was never a serious Christian as a kid, so when I read Pascalʼs ‘Thoughts,’ I decided to give church a try. Well I was 19 1/2, and the places here on campus were nothing like any church I had ever been to. I read C.S. Lewis, William Lane Craig, Schaeffer, Geisler, Moreland and all those guys. I became converted. Unfortunately, I read up on atheistic arguments and evolution, for the purpose of crushing the atheists on this board with my arguments. I lost faith finally a few months ago. I guess I am sort of a donʼt know donʼt care agnostic right now, who just enjoys studying religion. My religious time only lasted about 3 years.”

  4. Critiques of C. S. Lewisʼs Arguments

    • Philosopher John Beversluis composed in 1985 what has become the leading (and perhaps only) book-length critique of the apologetics arguments of C. S. Lewis, a book that also includes Lewisʼs replies to letters Beversluis wrote him. The book is titled, C. S. Lewis and the Search for Rational Religion, and a revised and updated edition appeared in 2007 — In it Beversluis critically yet sympathetically examines Lewisʼs “case for Christianity,” including Lewisʼs “argument from desire” — the “inconsolable longing” that he interpreted as a pointer to a higher reality; his moral argument for the existence of a Power behind the moral law; his contention that reason cannot be adequately explained in naturalistic terms; and his solution to the Problem of Evil. In addition, Beversluis considers issues in the philosophy of religion that developed late in Lewisʼs life. He concludes with a discussion of Lewisʼs crisis of faith after the death of his wife. Finally, in this second edition, Beversluis replies to critics of the first edition. {250pp, July 2007; Prometheus Books }

      Joe Edward Barnhard (philosophy professor, author and a former Christian whose testimony appears in Leaving the Fold: Testimonies of Former Fundamentalists), has an article online titled, “The Relativity of Biblical Ethics” that includes quotations from a few of C. S. Lewisʼs letters to John Beversluis. [at the site, located here, scroll down the page till you get to Barnhardʼs article]

    • Francis Collins, the theistic evolutionist author of books about God and science, and who heads the Human Genome project, employs C. S. Lewisʼs argument concerning the miracle of morality. Collinsʼs Lewisian argument is critiqued here.

    • C.S. Lewis, Instinct, and the Moral Law — Discusses an argument by C.S. Lewis that aimed to show that we must believe in God because nothing else could explain the high levels of intersubjective agreement on moral issues we(apparently) observe.
      Source: Philosophy Carnival #33

    • N. F. Gier — author of God, Reason, and the Evangelicals (University Press of America, 1987), chapter 10, Theological Ethics

    • Dr. Robert M. Price on C. S. Lewisʼs arguments — Google Robert Price (or Robert M. Price) and C. S. Lewis together to find where Price mentions and critiques statements by C. S. Lewis for instance, Lewisʼs misunderstanding of Hume is mentioned in Priceʼs article, Glenn Miller on Miracles.

    • Jack D. Lenzo “The Jackal” (Murrieta, CA USA), in his review of The Born Again Skepticʼs Guide To The Bible by Ruth Hurmence Green (raised Methodist): “Iʼve read much of CS Lewis and considered him the ‘thinking manʼs’ proponent to Christianity. After reading ‘The Book of Ruth (Hurmence),’ I feel logically duped by Lewisʼ Mere Christianity. Ruth sets it straight using the Bible itself. A divinely inspired book should not have to use subtle logic employed by Lewis. I wonder what he would say to Ruthʼs clear, dead on approach that he hasnʼt said about Freud? Hmmm…”

    • Edward T. Babinski on C. S. Lewisʼs views:

  5. C. S. Lewis: Provocative, Poignant, & Profound Words