I was first introduced to the gospel of Jesus Christ by a close friend of mine roughly twenty years ago. It was after a series of in-depth Bible studies within his home exploring the nature and meaning of the gospel that he and his wife prayed over me and I gave my life to Christ. (I'm sorry, I realize that this is extremely abbreviated. The whole thing was truly a much more involved and emotional series of events but the point of this story, here, regards something that happened many years later.) He and his family belonged to a Baptist church and I joined them for corporate worship on Sunday mornings, followed by further Bible studies in the afternoons. This was not something imposed on me as a kind of obligation; my spiritual appetite was voracious—and still is—so I enjoyed these studies with tremendous enthusiasm. Since he was not only a very close friend but also my spiritual mentor, I placed a great deal of trust in him and his counsel. Obviously, then, most of my beliefs were reproductions of his own convictions, which among other things included a young-earth view of creation. [1]
Almost from the very start I was drawn into the scientific creationism version of the young-earth view, reading books by such men as Henry Morris and others. [2] (There was an alternative version that I would not discover until much later, biblical creationism, which was taught by the likes of Ken Ham and others. The former presented supposedly scientific arguments for a young earth with select appeals to Scripture, while the latter focused more on biblical arguments with select appeals to science.) At any rate, I was passionate and super energized, utterly convinced that my new faith was absolutely true and unassailable. That conviction was emboldened by a notion that practically all relevant scientific data supported a young earth and a world-wide flood—or so I was told by these books, the details of which I all but memorized over several years.
Also around this time I had discovered the internet, which back then was still a relatively new thing accessible using a dial-up connection. Does anyone remember how someone picking up the phone would kick you off the internet? (Back then these were land-line telephones, these things which were left in the home plugged into the wall.) Back then, if you wanted a search engine you would have to choose between Webcrawler, Dogpile, Excite, Alta Vista, or Ask Jeeves, depending on the sort of results you wanted. Back then, you could chat with your friends online in real time using the ICQ platform. (Get it? I -seek-you.) And back then, there were these other high traffic areas on the internet besides the world-wide web, such as newsgroups, places which may not even exist anymore. But that was the era when I discovered the Talk Origins newsgroup, which was sort of like a large collective email discussion group. This is where energized creationist soldiers went for combat training against the godless forces of Darwinian evolution. And I was armed and ready.
Or at least ready. As it turns out, I was not armed. Nearly all of the arguments against evolution which I had carefully learned failed to hit their mark because they attacked caricatures of the theory. I had not realized this because I never actually understood evolution. Like any good young-earth creationist, everything I knew about Darwin and evolution was derived from creationist resources, but it seemed not even they understood the theory. I had not myself read any primary source material, books written by scientists or evolutionists, because honestly I was scared of them. I had been told they were godless men bent on corrupting the faith of God’s children. Clearly it would be unwise to read their poison, so I stayed within the safe confines of creationist resources which I assumed were accurate, fair, and honest, as they professed to be Christians who I expected would treat others with spiritual, moral, and intellectual integrity.
But it didn't end there. Even the arguments for a young-earth creation failed. One confrontation after another made it unmistakably clear that science does not actually support a young earth. Never mind a world-wide flood 4,000 years ago, I couldn't establish that the heavens and the earth were less than 10,000 years old. My arguments were defeated in the heavens before getting to the earth. From cosmology to physics, the scope of the universe and the realities of space-time made it abundantly clear to me that the universe could not possibly be as young as I had been told. When you look at the moon you are not seeing it as it is, but as it was nearly one and a half seconds ago. What you see happening on the surface of the sun actually happened about eight minutes ago. It takes time for light to reach us. Makes sense to me. All right, now look at that galaxy over there. That is not what it looks like now, but what it looked like two and a half million years ago—that's how long it took the light to reach us. Interesting. Err, no. Wait, what? So the universe has to be at least a few million years old? Yes, and the farther away the objects in our telescopes are, the older the universe has to be. [3] According to our best observations and measurements from multiple independent lines of evidence—using some of the most expensive technology in the world—the universe is 13.819 billion years old. Although my faith was intact and unshakable, it was evident that there was some kind of mistake being made with Genesis 1. It seemed that I was going to have to think about this.
Click here to read Part 2.
John M. Bauer
@JohnMBauer1
Approx. 950 words
Footnotes:
Unless otherwise indicated, all Scripture quotations are from the Holy Bible, English Standard Version (ESV), copyright © 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
[1] Interestingly, this friend was also strongly opposed to Reformed theology. He thought the only thing worse than the foolish error of Darwinism was the diabolical heresy of Calvinism. It makes me wonder, then, what kind of connection lies between my beliefs and his, given that many years later (the middle of my thirties somewhere) I would become (i) a Calvinist (ii) defending evolutionary creationism.
[2] The very first book I read on the subject of origins was Henry M. Morris, ed., Scientific Creationism (San Diego, CA: Creation-Life Publishers, 1974). This was the sixth printing from 1980. I have no idea if there was any material difference between this and the first printing. There was no indication that this was a different edition.
[3] Some have tried to argue that the speed of light has dramatically slowed down over time, but observational science rules that out conclusively.
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