John Loftus over at Debunking Christianity describes his conversion/deconversion story in brief - the full version he is publishing as a book in the near future.
In his story he includes some of the information that caused him to abandon his faith and become an atheist. To be fair to him, he probably does not include everything in this short article - all the details are probably in his book, but the reasoning that he does include seems to be somewhat flawed.
He says that he was eventually convinced by his cousin that "the universe is as old as scientists say it is, and the consensus is that it is 12-15 billion years old". He says that on its on, that thought was not too much of a problem, but it lead him to two important issues:
First of all, this is not an argument I would follow when trying to help someone believe in God - it is important to answer it as an objection, but if I have a choice about what evidence to present, I would much prefer to focus on the evidence for Jesus' resurrection.
Secondly, it is very important to realise that none of us will ever fully understand God's plans, purpose, and previous actions. God is an infinite being - it is ridiculous to expect that a finite human could understand him fully, as his perspective is significantly bigger than ours. That of course doesn't mean that we can just explain away any problems as simply that 'we can't understand that'.
But it does mean we shouldn't assume that there is no explanation for something just because we don't know what that explanation is - assuming that means that we are saying that God is more smarter than us.
So, to answer John's problems specifically. I don't have any problem with scientific evidence showing that the earth is about 12-15 billion years old - in fact that is exactly what I believe. I don't think that Genesis 1 teaches a literal 7 day creation (the Hebrew word used for day does not necessary mean a literal 24-hour day), and so evidence showing the earth is fairly old fits in exactly with what I believe the Bible teaches.
His second objection I think is fairly easily answered. His problem is with the discrepency between the time it took to create the earth and the time it took to create humans. Well, it actually never says in Genesis how long it took for God to create Adam. You could argue that Eve was created in a short timeframe as she was formed from Adam's rib, but nevertheless I don't think this proves anything. I really don't see what John's problem is here. He seems to be arguing:
I just really don't think this one is at all a problem.
So, onto his first problem - his claim that the account of creation in Genesis 1 contradicts what is known from astronomy, namely that they have opposing versions of when the sun, moon, and stars were created. I agree that this is more of a concern, as if his claim is true, it could be understood as an error in the Bible - conflicting with the Christian's claim that the Bible is God's word and therefore inerrant.
My first point here would be to warn that the book of Genesis is not written as either a police report, or a scientific explanation of the details of creation - so attempting to read it as such is not correct. Having said that, neither is it written as a myth or legend.
Secondly, John claims that the sun, moon, and stars were not created until v14 (day four), but in Gen 1:3 (day one) God creates light. Presumably he did not create a separate light source here, but at this point created the sun, stars, etc. So the sun and stars (and quite probably the moon) were created back on day one, on the same "day" as the earth. If this is the case, then there is of course no contradiction between the Biblical account of creation, and that recorded by astronomy.
So how then do we understand Gen 1:14-18 (day four):
And God said, “Let there be lights in the expanse of the sky to separate the day from the night, and let them serve as signs to mark seasons and days and years, and let them be lights in the expanse of the sky to give light on the earth.” And it was so. God made two great lights—the greater light to govern the day and the lesser light to govern the night. He also made the stars. God set them in the expanse of the sky to give light on the earth, to govern the day and the night, and to separate light from darkness. And God saw that it was good.
Well, earth's has atmosphere changed considerably over its 14 billion year history - specifically it has changed from being translucent to being much more transparent (still not completely transparent which is while you can see space much better from the Hubble telescope than from any telescope on earth).
This is what I think occurred on "day four". Earth's atmosphere became more transparent, so that the sun, moon, and stars were now visible. Previously light from the sun could filter through, but the sun itself was not visible (like on a cloudy day - the light of the sun gets through, but you cannot see it).
Consequently, there is no contradiction between astronomy and the Bible. They fit together just fine, and I'm afraid the objections that John has raised do not really have any justification.
In his story he includes some of the information that caused him to abandon his faith and become an atheist. To be fair to him, he probably does not include everything in this short article - all the details are probably in his book, but the reasoning that he does include seems to be somewhat flawed.
He says that he was eventually convinced by his cousin that "the universe is as old as scientists say it is, and the consensus is that it is 12-15 billion years old". He says that on its on, that thought was not too much of a problem, but it lead him to two important issues:
- In Genesis 1 it states that the earth was created before the sun, moon, and stars, and that this does not correspond with astronomy.
- If God took so long to create the world, why did he all of a sudden create human beings - what reason can be given for the difference in the creation timescales.
First of all, this is not an argument I would follow when trying to help someone believe in God - it is important to answer it as an objection, but if I have a choice about what evidence to present, I would much prefer to focus on the evidence for Jesus' resurrection.
Secondly, it is very important to realise that none of us will ever fully understand God's plans, purpose, and previous actions. God is an infinite being - it is ridiculous to expect that a finite human could understand him fully, as his perspective is significantly bigger than ours. That of course doesn't mean that we can just explain away any problems as simply that 'we can't understand that'.
But it does mean we shouldn't assume that there is no explanation for something just because we don't know what that explanation is - assuming that means that we are saying that God is more smarter than us.
So, to answer John's problems specifically. I don't have any problem with scientific evidence showing that the earth is about 12-15 billion years old - in fact that is exactly what I believe. I don't think that Genesis 1 teaches a literal 7 day creation (the Hebrew word used for day does not necessary mean a literal 24-hour day), and so evidence showing the earth is fairly old fits in exactly with what I believe the Bible teaches.
His second objection I think is fairly easily answered. His problem is with the discrepency between the time it took to create the earth and the time it took to create humans. Well, it actually never says in Genesis how long it took for God to create Adam. You could argue that Eve was created in a short timeframe as she was formed from Adam's rib, but nevertheless I don't think this proves anything. I really don't see what John's problem is here. He seems to be arguing:
- If there is a creator God, he must have had a good reason to taking a short time to create humans relative to the long time to create the earth.
- No good reason exists.
- Therefore, there is no creator God.
I just really don't think this one is at all a problem.
So, onto his first problem - his claim that the account of creation in Genesis 1 contradicts what is known from astronomy, namely that they have opposing versions of when the sun, moon, and stars were created. I agree that this is more of a concern, as if his claim is true, it could be understood as an error in the Bible - conflicting with the Christian's claim that the Bible is God's word and therefore inerrant.
My first point here would be to warn that the book of Genesis is not written as either a police report, or a scientific explanation of the details of creation - so attempting to read it as such is not correct. Having said that, neither is it written as a myth or legend.
Secondly, John claims that the sun, moon, and stars were not created until v14 (day four), but in Gen 1:3 (day one) God creates light. Presumably he did not create a separate light source here, but at this point created the sun, stars, etc. So the sun and stars (and quite probably the moon) were created back on day one, on the same "day" as the earth. If this is the case, then there is of course no contradiction between the Biblical account of creation, and that recorded by astronomy.
So how then do we understand Gen 1:14-18 (day four):
And God said, “Let there be lights in the expanse of the sky to separate the day from the night, and let them serve as signs to mark seasons and days and years, and let them be lights in the expanse of the sky to give light on the earth.” And it was so. God made two great lights—the greater light to govern the day and the lesser light to govern the night. He also made the stars. God set them in the expanse of the sky to give light on the earth, to govern the day and the night, and to separate light from darkness. And God saw that it was good.
Well, earth's has atmosphere changed considerably over its 14 billion year history - specifically it has changed from being translucent to being much more transparent (still not completely transparent which is while you can see space much better from the Hubble telescope than from any telescope on earth).
This is what I think occurred on "day four". Earth's atmosphere became more transparent, so that the sun, moon, and stars were now visible. Previously light from the sun could filter through, but the sun itself was not visible (like on a cloudy day - the light of the sun gets through, but you cannot see it).
Consequently, there is no contradiction between astronomy and the Bible. They fit together just fine, and I'm afraid the objections that John has raised do not really have any justification.
Comments
Hey, I just now noticed this. Thanks for commenting. For your information, according to Genesis 1 the universe of stars and galaxies, moons and planets, meteors and comets, were all created after the earth existed.I share the studies that show this, from the original Hebrew.So there are huge discrepancies after all.According to the Bible, God created the earth and then afterward he created the universe.
John:
I lovingly offer you some things to consider. First, if you study the current theory about how our solar system formed you find that it was a big gass ball that congealed to form the sun and earth. However, no nebula (gas ball) has ever been observed that is doing this. Gas theory says it expands not contrats. Also, the earth is only about 2% hydrogen while the sun is 98%- they should be similar if they came from the same gass ball! The sun should be spinning very fast according to the theory but it does not- it spins very slowly. None of the evidence supports the theory. I would suggest that you look at the evidence with the Bible as your pre-supposition and you will eventually discover that the Biblical account better explains the facts rather than using the current scientific pre-suppositions of long ages and evolution.
This will lead you to some awesome discoveries as this former atheist/evolution/long age big banger found out! Put the two theories side by side in an honest comparison of ALL the data and you will see what I mean.
David
Simple grammar suggestion:
"Well, earth's has atmosphere changed considerably over its 14 billion year history" Instead of, 'earth's has atmosphere, it should be, 'earth's atmosphere has changed." I may comment on the subject matter later, but this is an initial thought.