This month’s Adventist Review features a cluster of articles on origins. Especially helpful was Art Chadwick’s article, “Science and Faith.” Dr. Chadwick writes:
In historical geological research, direct experimentation can rarely be done to test ideas. Instead, we must think of all possible explanations for what we observe, then try to eliminate those that seem less likely by comparing the ideas with the data. Experimental re-creation of past events is not possible, since so few of the conditions are known. Thus, we are reduced to creating a possible scenario as an explanation.
I share this so you can better appreciate the issues that challenge our understanding when it comes to what we can know about Noah’s flood. There are no addressable eyewitnesses we can ask. Scientists must rely on interpretation of indirect, consequential data for an event that is not reproducible, is worldwide in scope, occurred a long time ago, and for which there are no modern counterparts. We are additionally challenged to derive from these data information about a world that no longer exists and that was very different from the world we know today in ways that we cannot properly fathom.
Indeed, conception of that world might be impossible if it were not for the existence of a secondhand eyewitness account recorded in Genesis 6-8, as well as other support in Scripture. Jesus recognized the authority of the Genesis account (Luke 17:26, 27). Paul repeatedly asserts the fall of a literal, perfect Adam (Rom. 5). These scriptures are reliable witnesses to real events. In 2 Peter 3:3-6 we are told that Creation and the Flood were real events that scoffers would deny in the last days. This prophecy is fulfilled abundantly in the philosophy of modern naturalistic geology which denies God a role in Creation and the Flood.
Another key insight is this one:
It is widely recognized that the layers of rock on the earth’s crust are the results of catastrophic action, but this is rarely admitted because of a concern that this would play into the hands of creationists, who expect catastrophic events.
And here is another:
Sediment is rarely stationary for long. It can be eroded by currents or burrowed by organisms. Estimates based upon modern sedimentary environments suggest that within an hour to a year, all of the sediment will have been reworked by burrowing to a depth of several centimeters so that none of the original internal sedimentary structure remains. A careful study by Leonard Brand and his colleagues determined that the sediments were rarely disturbed after deposition, and thus that the evidence for passage of time was absent. This is counter to what the Standard Model predicts, but entirely consistent with a global catastrophe in a short time.
Another helpful piece is Noemi Duran’s “Natural Selection, Darwin, and the Biblical Worldview.” She points out that “survival of the fittest” was not God’s original method of creation, but came in after the Fall:
Natural selection has to do with resource shortages, a fight for survival, and with death. That is the norm in nature today, but it was not the case before Genesis 3. Food was plentiful (Gen. 1:29, 30), and nothing in the text suggests any struggle, violence, or fear in the original plan. All of that came later, for it was only after sin that the earth had to be forced to bear its crops (Gen. 3:17), plants developed defenses to avoid overgrazing (verse 18), and enmity arose between humans and animals (verse 15).
She also points out that natural selection is generally a conservative force and the changes it brings about are minor ones:
It works only on available variations among organisms within the groups God created. It can turn one population of finches into two populations of finches with slightly different characteristics, such as beak size or feather color, but it can’t turn a finch into an eagle, because finches lack characteristics of eagles for natural selection to select. How much more impossible to turn a bacterium into a human being!
Another interesting piece is Raul Esperante’s creation timeline, which notches significant events in the history of creationism. It includes scientific events, but also political and judicial events.
Sadly, this issue of the Review also features a review by Lael Caesar, a professor of Religion at Andrews University, of Isabel Wilkerson’s book, “Caste,” the thesis of which is that America has a race-based caste system. The book is recommended by Oprah Winfrey, whose existence as a self-made black billionaire falsifies its thesis, but that irony seems lost on all involved.