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Feedback archive → Feedback 2002 Creationists can't agree any more than cosmologists?Yet another letter from self-styled ‘Professional Biologist’ and professing Christian Dr Richard Meiss from Speedway Indiana. His letter is printed entire, then reprinted (indented) with a point-by-point response by Dr Jonathan Sarfati.
No! Evidently Dr Meiss fails to comprehend the main point of the article. Dr Hartnett was not criticizing any scientists for looking at alternatives. Rather, the article he critiqued claimed, ‘Cosmologists are beginning to agree with one another.’ So it was perfectly in order to demonstrate disagreements to refute this claim.
But as we have amply shown, evolutionists, whether overtly materialistic like Lewontin or Todd, or professing Christians like Dr Meiss, have already made up their minds that one possible rational choice is disallowed a priori, namely an intelligent Creator. We have also pointed out that with rival evolutionary models, the proponents of one model shoot fatal wounds into the theories of the other, leaving all materialistic models mortally wounded. This includes the cursorial v. arboreal theories of bird evolution and punctuated and gradualistic theories of evolution in general.
No need — CMI has already repeatedly done so, and also proposed the solution: return to the Bible, the Word of God, understood the way the original readers would have understood this, i.e. the grammatical-historical hermeneutic; and stop trying to impose outside ideas from so-called ‘science’ as people like Pattle Pun and Gleason Archer do. Dr Meiss has previously admitted that the argument from Hebrew literary style for a literal interpretation is ‘a good one’; his problem is unbelief, and our response showed that there are good reasons to believe it is historically true.
This is a common skeptical ploy — implicitly criticizing a true position by rattling off a million similar but incompatible positions that are not true. But CMI, as the name suggests, is not primarily focused on literal creation days, a ‘young’ Earth and a global Flood. Rather we focus on Biblical authority, and these views are merely corollaries, i.e. they follow logically from the propositions of Scripture. Such tactics can also rebound on the user when he doesn’t really understand these positions parroted from some biblioskeptical site. Otherwise he would have realized that there would not be ferment between all these options. How could there be ferment between Progressive Creationists and Day-Agers when they are basically the same thing? How could there be ferment between them and old-earthers when they are just a subset? How could there be ferment between old-earthers and local flood advocates when consistent old-earthers tend to be local flood advocates, because a global Flood would lay down the rock layers rapidly and thus obliterate a major ‘proof’ of antiquity? Geocentrists need not be creationists at all — the founders of geocentric cosmologies did not believe in a personal creator. In any case, Dr Meiss admitted, ‘I found Danny Faulkner’s November the 14th letter [i.e. this major paper] (regarding geocentrism and its errors) to be well written and to the point.’ Our response showed the fallacy of claiming that evolution was as proven as geokineticism. And we could point out the very real ferment between atheistic evolutionists, theistic evolutionists (whom atheists co-opt as ‘useful idiots’ but regard with complete contempt), New Age evolutionists, astrology-believing evolutionists (New Ager astrologers nearly all have an evolutionary mindset), crystal-power–invoking evolutionists, Raëlians …
What of this? This says nothing about whether they promote an essentially different creationist view (they accept the authority of God’s revelation in the Bible, as we do, regarding our origins), as opposed to presenting some alleged evidence with which CMI disagrees.
This may be an interesting observation of their personal psychologies, but what matters is whether they are right. None of the other views can be derived from the Bible or science.
Another puerile smear. So you can actually document claims that they all claim that others are of the devil? Can you document that even CMI claims so? We have made it clear that trust in man’s fallible opinion is the cause, and ‘men love darkness rather than light’ even without any help from the devil.
Of course. We defend Biblical creation, and won’t deign to defend other species. And of course, as we point out frequently, there is room for debate about the scientific models that can be added to the Biblical account of history. Our Journal of Creation (formerly TJ) has published many forums where creationist scientists have debated different points of view — on cosmology, plate tectonics, the position of the Flood/post-Flood boundary in the rocks, and many other issues. Science is always changing, but God’s revelation was accurate from the start and will still remain when current scientific ideas are long since forgotten. This was also a major point of the article Moving forward — arguments we think creationists shouldn’t use.
We don’t claim to speak for ‘creationists’ in the broad sense, but will certainly defend our own view as a logical deduction from the propositional revelation in the Bible.
There is one, as mentioned above.
This is accusing us of hypocrisy. However, the ultimate in hypocrisy (being two-faced) would have to be someone who professes to be a Christian but who does not endeavour to obey Christ in everything. And consistently obeying Christ includes following His example in treating the account of Creation, the Fall and the Flood in Genesis as history (see Jesus and the age of the world). Those who ‘run with the hares and hunt with the hounds’, such as theistic evolutionists, are the ultimate hypocrites.
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