I've been going through Genesis again. I particularly like this book, and if I haven't already said so, I'm quite convinced that the available evidence best fits a young earth, but I may differ from some other young-earthers out there. I was thinking today I might get into my understanding of the science behind that, and some of the steps I take on my road to that conclusion. Also, I feel like I've been writing a lot about things I don't know these days. I feel like I floundered through my past few blogs.... I'm not an expert on this topic either.

I'm tempted to just post links and references to some of my favorite "summarizing" lectures... I'll do that here, but in case you're like me and you'd rather have things explained to you in brief and all in one place, I'll also explain myself in text. I'm not going to go back and watch the lectures to make sure my information is correct; I'm just going to explain myself as I currently understand things. You're getting "Zac" here, not anyone else necessarily. This isn't intended to be a scholarly article.

Here's a good lecture by Bahnsen on evolution. Some of his points are dated, but in general it's still relevant (I hope you'll excuse the background music. I really hate when youtubers do that):

Here's the beginning on a well conceived, though perhaps poorly produced, documentary on creationism. Pretty sure the rest of that is available on youtube if you follow the links:

I also want to recommend "Is Genesis History?", the netflix documentary. I skimmed through the bad reviews, and the ones I read seemed mostly to be frustrated that it only presented creationism as offered by creationists. I honestly can't imagine why that bothers them, though, considering that for 12 formative years of our lives in America we're fed nothing but Darwinism as offered by Darwinists in school, and anyway the movie is about creationism! [...thinks about it some more...] oh I get it, the title is misleading. Well, considering how readily available the other points of view are, I still think the movie is best as it is.

OK, now onto my personal thoughts etc.

When I have a discussion about science or "the evidence" with atheists, they tend to throw key words at me. For example, "what about the big bang?", "what about the fossil record?", "what about the layers of the earth?", "what about the polar ice caps?", and "what about carbon dating?", etc.. The problem is, neither me nor the people I talk to are experts in the fossil record, the polar ice caps, the geological layers, or the big bang. So after the first challenge, even if I actually do know a good answer for it (and I suppose I do), it's not as if either of us have the ammunition necessary to meaningfully discuss it, so they just present the next keyword! The most frustrating thing about it in my mind is that they present these topics without explaining them, as if I should just already know that the thing they are talking about is so obviously against Christianity that I have to present a wild convolution of the available data to frame my worldview. That's actually what they may think, though, and I can't blame them for acting consistently with their worldview, especially because of the way schools indoctrinate us against Christianity these days. Praise God for parents who receive their kids home from school and ask, "what did you learn?" and then say, "well, you know, your parents believe differently from what you were just taught. Let's talk about the different perspectives." -- because that's how you foster critical thinking.

It's the same in formal debates on the sciences. You can't expect a single person to be an expert in every field of science, so it's extremely frustrating to me when I see Christians go to debates where they're hit with rapid-fire broad questions about entirely distinct fields of study, and as soon as they fail to answer one of the questions all the atheists in commentary jeer at them as if they've decidedly lost the debate. Atheists suppose they don't have to prove anything simply because they read a textbook written by more decorated atheists who agree with them.

Anyway, for the above reasons, I think the epistemological argument is the best and most valuable argument for everyone to consider, scientist and layman alike, because it cuts through all the BS and asks, "are your premises actually capable of bringing you to these conclusions?"

[/RANT]

OK, now I'm going to give my understanding of the events surrounding creation, and I'll try to hit each of the keywords I listed above while I'm at it. Also, I intend to point out some of the stuff that confuses me. Atheists complain to Christians all the time for presenting "God of the gaps" on issues where Atheists are ignorant; I nonetheless expect Atheists to present to me "Atheism of the gaps" in areas where I'm ignorant. What I present here isn't a perfect explanation of everything; rather I hope that it leads you to conclude, as I have, that there are perfectly reasonable interpretations of the available evidence which do not necessitate against Christianity. In fact, I suppose that these interpretations are "more reasonable" than the ones taught in schools, primarily because of the philosophical argument I've alluded to.

In the beginning, God expressed his will, and the universe exploded into existence.

Here's where I differ from some other young earthers, and I hesitate to post this opinion because I secretly wish that a Hebrew grammarian would correct me. I think that the Bible leaves room for a wide gap of time between Genesis verses 1 and 3. During this time, it makes sense to me that God spun the planets into alignment, crashing them into one another over the course of who-knows how many years. This is where my understanding of physics also breaks down, because it appears that God, again by means of His will, manifested light on the first day, after creating the universe. So, what boggles my mind is how he created stars without creating light.

The earth was formless until God brought dry land to surface on the earth. This was what we call Pangaea; the single giant continent. I personally suppose it was probably a bit larger than just "all our current continents stuck together", and I think we'll see why in a bit. The earth was internally full of warm water at the time, causing a mist to rise up from the ground all around the land, and there was a lot of water in the atmosphere, creating an exceptionally fertile climate.

God created all the creatures, including mankind, in the 5 days following his decision to create light. I guess this is a good time to talk about the fossil record. So the issue is that there is no fossil record. I mean, even Darwin said that a major issue with his theory was that if we really did have billions or trillions of years of evolution, we should be kicking around intermediate fossils in our back yards. What we have instead is a systematic lack of fossils in between major groupings, and that interbreeding is still possible among all species in each major grouping  (See Ken Ham's version of the evolutionary tree of life). It is the common ancestor from each of these evolutionary types which populated the ark (getting ahead of myself).

I know that certain scientists have gone out in search of human/ape missing-link fossils and found tiny fragments of bone, which they then extrapolated into exactly what they were looking for. Truly, I don't know much about their methods for extrapolating. Here's my understanding: even if they did an excellent job of extrapolating, what we now know is that as people age far beyond 100 years, their bones begin to take on features similar to those we look for in "missing link" bones. (As it happens, the Bible records a time when people were living that long.) And even if it's not a 600 year old guy, we do have people with weird skulls alive today. The existing "evidence" for evolution is sparse, questionable, and even if they did a good job, it can still be interpreted just as easily by creationists in favor of creation, without much stretch of the imagination. The latter being the case, why do I still assert that it's questionable? It's because it is. The scientific method explicitly calls for us to attempt to disprove our own hypotheses. I don't see atheists (or many Christians, for that matter,) doing that at the moment.

Alright, moving on from evolution, all the creatures are created, sin enters the world, cool stuff happens in society, and then we have the flood. Genesis 7:11 says that water came up from underground and came down from above ground simultaneously.

So, all at once, in the span of about 190 days, Pangaea split and the entire Atlantic ocean came up out of the ground. The outer edges of the continents were grinding against the rest of the earth, producing a nice seam of fault-lines surrounding the pacific. As the oceans receded, they washed over the land repeatedly, depositing soil and producing the wide, thin layers we see in the earth. The dramatic changes in the earth caused a quick-onset ice-age over a big chunk of the planet, and water was pulled up into ice-caps (another thing I don't understand). At this time, however, a big portion of the Atlantic ocean was still warm (because the water had recently came up from under ground), and the warmth from it was blown eastward over the middle-east. When the water receded enough, this warmth allowed for a warm patch right were Noah's ark landed, enabling him to exit the ark with the animals and begin farming easily.

So I think the only things from my list which I haven't covered are the ice caps and carbon dating. As I understand it, atheists are saying that the ice caps prove that the earth is old because they are very thick, and we can see that the ice gets more dense as you go downward, and we can measure the snowfall in a year, and use that information to extrapolate millions of years of snowfall into a few inches of deep ice. The problem here is that ice doesn't keep compressing indefinitely, so you can't keep extrapolating downward and putting more years into each inch as you go down, and so it's just as easy for me to say that it all froze in a year and then compressed under its own weight as it is to say that it all froze in a million years and compressed under its own weight.

And finally, carbon dating. It doesn't work. There have been multiple studies where scientists used modern methods for carbon dating to measure the age of still-living animals. They discovered that the animals were tens of thousands of years old! The whole process depends on assumptions about the levels of various chemicals in the atmosphere at the time which we predetermine that our target must have come from, and those assumptions are based on models of global history designed to support the methods which employ the assumptions.

Alright, that's it for tonight. I hope this helps someone out there. The most important thing I'd like to tell a reader here is that God is good, and we are designed to experience joy and peace in His presence. He is so good and perfect that it is impossible (and even dangerous) for any person who has ever done wrong in their life to approach him and act on our design. So, since everyone has done wrong, God's son volunteered to come down, become a human, live a perfect life, and then receive the penalty for our sins on behalf of all who believe in him. If you believe, then pray to Jesus and tell him about it! The Bible says that we can talk to Jesus as a friend, and so you don't have to be shy or stumble over your words; just tell him that you want that relationship, that peace, that forgiveness, and that joy.

"It's close to 11."