ARTICLESThe Reliability of the BibleRobert M. Bowman Jr.
Post date:
August 27, 2013
No book has had more said about it, good or bad, than the Bible. We now live in a time when many people passionately believe the Bible to be the word of God while many others strongly criticize the Bible as textually corrupt, scientifically naïve, historically incredible, and morally backward. Many people who grew up accepting the Bible as true come to question, doubt, and even reject it. Yet there has never been more evidence in support of the reliability of the Bible than there is today. Recent advances in science and scholarship have answered many of the common criticisms of the Bible. It is unrealistic to try to prove every detail of the Bible or to vindicate all of its statements. However, we have very good reasons indeed to be confident in the Bible and to accept its message: that the God who created us has acted to reconcile estranged humanity to himself through the revelations given to Israel and especially through the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.
The Text of the Bible
One of the most common concerns people have about the Bible is whether the actual, original words of the Bible have been preserved. They have heard that the handwritten manuscript copies of the books of the Bible contain numerous differences. Perhaps they were taught that in the process of copying and re-copying the Bible, many passages were changed and even lost. A couple of hundred years ago, this seemed quite plausible because very few manuscripts of the Bible existed from earlier than about the ninth century (or about 800 years after the last books of the Bible were written).
In the past two centuries, however, new evidence has come to light that, properly understood, should lay those concerns to rest. Treasure troves of biblical manuscripts were discovered in monasteries throughout the Middle East and Europe, in an archaeological site in Egypt called Oxyrhynchus (in piles of trash!), and most famously among the Dead Sea Scrolls. The Dead Sea Scrolls are writings used by a Jewish desert sect at Qumran that flourished in the century before Jesus and throughout the lifetimes of Jesus and the apostles. The surviving scrolls include multiple fragments from every book of the Old Testament except one (Esther) and a complete copy of Isaiah. These Dead Sea Scroll manuscripts date from about a thousand years earlier than the oldest manuscripts of the Hebrew Bible known prior to their discovery. The differences in wording between the Dead Sea Scrolls and the medieval manuscripts of the Hebrew Old Testament text are minute.1 Archaeologists have found papyrus manuscripts of the New Testament dating from the second and third centuries, including a famous fragment of the Gospel of John copied very early in the second century, perhaps twenty to forty years after John was originally written.2
As more and more manuscripts have been discovered, what scholars have found is that nothing in the Bible was lost in the process of copying. Rather, scribes would add a word here or there, or more rarely a sentence, so that what we have in the biblical manuscripts is ever so slightly more, not less, than what was originally in those books. For example, there are now about 5,800 manuscripts known to scholars, each containing various parts or the whole of the New Testament in the original Greek language. In all of these manuscripts, not one sentence has been found that is missing from the King James Version or other translations! In other words, no evidence whatsoever has been found of anything that was ever “lost” from the New Testament. As for what was added, scholars identify some twenty or so verses that were probably added by scribes to the New Testament. Only two of the additions are longer than a sentence—the traditional ending of the Gospel of Mark (16:9-20) and the story of the woman caught in adultery (John 7:53-8:11). When we take into consideration the fact that there are 7,958 verses in the King James Version of the New Testament, twenty suspect verses is a very tiny amount—about one-quarter of one percent!
It is no exaggeration to say that manuscript studies have vindicated the New Testament as at least 99% pure in the text that has come down to us. This conclusion is confirmed by the many ancient translations of the New Testament into Latin, Syriac, Coptic, and so on, and by the many New Testament quotations in the writings of the church fathers—from which quotations alone one could reconstitute the entire New Testament. What little variations there are among the manuscripts do not significantly affect the message or doctrine of the Bible. As several scholars have pointed out, the most common variations in biblical manuscripts are spelling mistakes!3
The Canon of the Bible
The many manuscript discoveries of the past two centuries have also brought to light a number of books that are not part of the Bible, both Jewish writings that are not in the Old Testament and Christian writings that are not in the New. Some critics of the Bible argue that these newly discovered writings were “suppressed” by the early church, suggesting that they have just as much right to be considered scripture as the books that “made it” into the Bible. On this basis, critics often question the validity of the canon of Scripture—the collection of scriptural writings in the bible that are accepted by Christians as authoritative in their teaching about God and how we are to relate to God.
By far the most famous of these noncanonical books are the so-called Gnostic gospels, such as the Gospels of Thomas, Peter, Mary, and Judas. The titles of these works suggest to the uninformed that they are just as credible as the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. Such is actually far from true. Nearly all scholars date the four New Testament Gospels to the second half of the first century (roughly AD 50-100), within the lifetimes of the apostles, but date the Gnostic gospels to the middle and later parts of the second century (about 125-200). No scholar thinks that Thomas, Peter, Mary, or Judas (!) had anything to do with the composition or contents of the gospels that bear their names. Even skeptical and agnostic scholars agree that the New Testament Gospels are our most reliable sources of information about what Jesus really said and did—and that very little if anything new about the historical Jesus can be learned from the Gnostic gospels.4
If anything, the study of these apocryphal writings vindicates the judgment of the early church in setting them aside as inferior to the canonical Gospels. As long as we were lacking most of these alternative scriptures, it seemed reasonable to wonder if we were missing something that belonged in the Bible. Now that we have a lot of those “missing” books, we can see that we had the best and most reliable books in the Bible all along.
Creation, Science, and the Bible
If we take our cue from the media, it must seem as though modern science has thoroughly discredited the Bible, especially its account of creation in the opening chapters of Genesis. Ever since the Scopes trial in 1925, when Tennessee’s law prohibiting the teaching of Darwinism was tested in the courtroom, the issue has been framed as a conflict between educated scientists and ignorant fundamentalists, between science and the Bible. Yet this is grossly unfair to the Bible. Ironically, most of the controversial questions endlessly debated in this conflict, such as the age of the earth, are not directly addressed in the Bible. (What the Bible says may have some implications for such questions, but answering them does not seem to be part of the biblical agenda.) Meanwhile, the basic worldview that Genesis (along with the rest of the Bible) teaches has actually been corroborated by advances in science, especially in the twentieth century.
In the nineteenth century, many scientists held out the possibility that the universe was eternal, meaning that it had simply always existed—and therefore did not need to be created. Those who were looking for an atheistic view of the universe thought that science was on their side. The bigger the telescopes got, the bigger the universe appeared. It was natural to guess that the universe simply went on in all directions forever, that it was infinitely large as well as infinitely old, so that the universe was literally everything and had no Creator.
This rosy atheistic picture of the universe was shattered by discoveries in astronomy in the twentieth century. Albert Einstein’s relativity theories contained mathematical implications that the universe had not always existed—implications that Einstein himself tried to find ways of avoiding. But then astronomers made observations that confirmed the math. They found that the universe is expanding in all directions, like a balloon inflating, implying that the universe had originated at a single point some finite time ago. This new theory, called the Big Bang, predicted that there would be an extremely faint background radiation left over from the initial creation event—a radiation that two astronomers accidentally discovered in 1965 when cleaning their telescope. In addition to this evidence that the universe had a beginning, scientists discovered that the universe appears to be “fine-tuned” to function as a stable environment in which interesting things like planets, plants, and people can all exist. Many scientists grudgingly admitted that the evidence implies some sort of Creator, even if they continued to search for loopholes in that evidence.5
Advances in biology have also brought surprising evidence for the biblical worldview in which God is the Creator of life. The assumption of modern biology until about the mid-twentieth century was that life could have originated naturalistically from very simple, very small “building blocks.” That paradigm changed when scientists discovered the incredible complexity of the cell and of its components. Rather than simple building blocks, cells turn out to be something more akin to miniature cities, involving complex mechanisms for taking in nutrients, expelling waste, and performing various other internal functions. The molecules of which living things are composed are incredibly complex, information-rich systems. In these and other ways, life now appears more clearly than ever before to have been designed.6
These scientific advances, then, actually confirm the biblical worldview taught in Genesis: that the universe was created by a transcendent Creator (God); that the world has not always existed; and that life on earth was designed and made by God. The details of when and how God did these things remain controversial, but the evidence definitely supports belief in the kind of God described by the Bible.
Archaeology, History, and the Bible
In some circles it is still popular to think that archaeology can prove (or disprove) the Bible. That’s really asking too much from a discipline that gets much of its information from the trash and the tomb. Broken pottery, graffiti on walls, inscriptions on coffins, figurines of deities, partially preserved pieces of paper—these are the stock in trade of the archaeologist. Besides locating ancient manuscripts of the Bible, archaeology has done two things very well.
First, archaeology has illuminated our knowledge of the ancient world in which the biblical writings originated. In doing so it has refined or corrected our understanding of what the Bible means when it refers to people, places, objects, events, or cultural practices that are foreign to us.
Second, archaeology has confirmed or corroborated many specific details of the Bible. Archaeologists have located towns and villages mentioned in the Bible but otherwise unknown today. They have found political and military inscriptions referring to various rulers and other major figures in the biblical world, such as the famous House of David inscription, the Pontius Pilate inscription, and the ossuary (burial box) of Caiaphas, the high priest who called for Jesus’ execution. In some instances they have found evidence confirming specific events, such as the obelisk from the time of the Israelite king Jehu depicting him paying tribute to Shalmaneser, or the bronze and iron arrowheads at the base of an ancient tower of Jerusalem left behind in the battle between the Babylonians and the Jews in 586 BC.7
The most controversial issue in biblical archaeology is the series of events known as the Exodus and the Conquest—the escape of the Israelites from Egypt and their conquest under Joshua of the cities of the Canaanites. If these events happened, they did so well over three thousand years ago, making the task of confirming them through archaeology somewhat daunting. The farther back in time one goes, the sparser the evidence and the more difficult it is to interpret the evidence and correlate it chronologically with other information. Given these limitations, it is somewhat surprising to learn that there is evidence outside the Bible that gives at least some support for the Exodus and Conquest. The Ipuwer Papyrus, dating about 1200 years before Christ, describes a chaotic period in Egyptian history in which slaves were rebelling against their masters, the Nile River turned to blood, and famine and death ravaged the land. Archaeological work in Israel has confirmed that various cities there, including Jericho, were destroyed by conquerors. The main difficulty that scholars have had correlating such information with the Old Testament has been matching biblical chronology with the archaeological timeline. If this problem is solved—and various proposals for doing so are on the table—we could be looking at spectacular confirmation of the Old Testament’s most important historical events.8
The Gospels as Historical Sources
Skeptics in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries dismissed the Gospels as fables, legends, or myths, and for much of that period biblical scholarship seemed to pose little threat to such views. As recently as the 1970s most New Testament scholars confidently asserted that the Gospels were not “biographies” and therefore were not meant by their authors to be read as sources of historical information about what Jesus actually taught and did. By this reasoning, it seemed difficult to defend the Gospels’ claims that Jesus had performed miracles or risen from the dead.
Although the skeptics have not caught up, the picture now looks very different in Gospel scholarship. Several studies, most notably one by British scholar Richard Burridge, have shown that the Gospels are biographies, though written according to the standards or genre of ancient Greco-Roman biographies, not modern Western biographies. So, for example, the fact that the Gospels focus almost entirely on the last few years of Jesus’ life is consistent with Greco-Roman biographies, which are often similarly “lop-sided” in their emphasis on one period of their subjects’ lives.9
The “quest for the historical Jesus” has also taken a more positive turn in the past thirty years or so as scholars have begun to integrate their studies of the Gospels into a richer understanding of first-century Galilee and Judea. Something close to a consensus has emerged on a number of issues about Jesus, even among scholars who do not view the Gospels as inspired. Doubts about the historical existence of Jesus have been relegated to the fringes of pseudo-scholarship.10 There is now no credible doubt that Jesus was a Jewish man from Galilee, that he was baptized by John the Baptist in the Jordan River, that Jesus had an itinerant ministry throughout the area accompanied by a group of close followers, and that he was widely reputed at least to have performed miracles of exorcisms and healings. Historians do not deny that Jesus was arrested during Passover time, that Jewish and Roman authorities were both involved, and that Jesus died by crucifixion on the order of the Roman governor Pontius Pilate. Most historians even acknowledge that Jesus’ body was buried in a tomb and that soon after his followers had experiences they sincerely understood to be appearances of the risen Jesus, alive from the dead.
The Miracles and Resurrection of Jesus
Of course, the central issue of biblical reliability is whether Jesus Christ is the supernatural, risen Son of God, as the Gospels and the rest of the New Testament proclaim. If he is, then Christianity is true and the Bible’s most important and astounding claim is true. On the other hand, if Jesus did not rise from the dead, or if we simply have no reason to think that he did, then a giant question mark hangs over the Bible and the Christian faith.
Once again, the evidence has never looked better. For most of the past two centuries skeptics and humanists could get away with dismissing the miracles of Jesus on the grounds that such things simply don’t happen. Such dismissiveness seemed reasonable to philosophers such as David Hume and Immanuel Kant, in whose Western European early modern culture the reality of miracles was mostly a matter of belief regarding miracles of the past. However, as Christianity has become a global religion and in particular has grown exponentially outside of Europe, and as historians and anthropologists have studied miracles in Christian history worldwide, it has become apparent that miracles like those performed by Jesus are not mere curiosities of the past. Craig Keener’s massive two-volume study of miracles published in 2012 documents literally thousands of miracle reports throughout history and on every continent.11
In the light of this evidence, historians should take a fresh look at the evidence for Jesus’ resurrection. Once one gets past prejudices against miracles in general, the evidence for the Resurrection becomes compelling. That Jesus was crucified is historically as certain as anything can be from that era. That Jesus’ followers were convinced a few days later that he had risen from the grave is a hard fact acknowledged by the vast majority of scholars. A year or so later, a Pharisee named Saul (Paul) who opposed the Christian movement himself testified that Jesus had appeared to him and appointed him to preach the Christian message to Gentiles—people that Paul had regarded as unclean. The best explanation for these facts is that Jesus did indeed rise from the dead.12
Conclusion
The evidence for the reliability of the Bible has never been greater. We have surprising evidence that God exists, that he intervened in history to reveal himself to the Jews, and that Jesus Christ died on the cross and rose from the grave, vindicating himself as the Son of God and confirming the truth of the biblical message. While the truth of Christianity cannot be proved in the same way one proves a theorem of geometry, the evidence that the Bible is historically reliable has never been greater.
NOTES
1. A standard introduction to the subject that provides detailed information about the Dead Sea Scroll biblical manuscripts is James C. VanderKam, The Dead Sea Scrolls and the Bible (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2012).
2. This manuscript, part of the John Rylands Library at the University of Manchester in England, is a papyrus fragment with the classification symbol P52. (See the Library’s page devoted to the “St. John Fragment.”) Its importance is not in how much text it preserves (only parts of a few verses in John 18) but in its early date. Nearly all scholars date P52 to between AD 110 and 140, though a very few scholars have argued for a date in the second half of the second century.
3. This is a point on which agnostic Bart Ehrman and evangelical Daniel Wallace, both prominent scholars in New Testament textual criticism, agree. See, for example, Bart D. Ehrman and Daniel B. Wallace, “The Textual Reliability of the New Testament: A Dialogue,” in The Reliability of the New Testament: Bart D. Ehrman and Daniel B. Wallace in Dialogue (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2011), 21, 40-41.
4. On these books, see especially Darrell L. Bock, The Missing Gospels: Unearthing the Truth behind Alternative Christianities (Nashville: Thomas Nelson—Nelson Books, 2006); Craig A. Evans, Fabricating Jesus: How Modern Scholars Distort the Gospels (Downers Grove, IL: IVP Books, 2006).
5. See Robert Jastrow, God and the Astronomers (New York: W. W. Norton, 1978); Hugh Ross, The Creator and the Cosmos: How the Greatest Scientific Discoveries of the Century Reveal God, 3rd ed. (Colorado Springs: NavPress, 2001); Alister E. McGrath, A Fine-Tuned Universe: The Quest for God in Science and Theology, The 2009 Gifford Lectures (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2009); and many other excellent works on these subjects.
6. See especially Fazale Rana, The Cell’s Design: How Chemistry Reveals the Creator’s Artistry (Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 2008); Stephen C. Meyer, Signature in the Cell: DNA and the Evidence for Intelligent Design (San Francisco: Harper One, 2009).
7. There are many excellent reference works on biblical archaeology and history. See, for example, the Archaeological Study Bible (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2005); James K. Hoffmeier, The Archaeology of the Bible (London: Lion Hudson, 2008); and Gary M. Burge, Gene L. Green, and Lynn H. Cohick, The New Testament in Antiquity (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2009).
8. Stimulating defenses of the historicity of the Exodus taking somewhat different perspectives include Emmanuel Anati, The Mountain of God (New York: Rizzoli, 1986) and David M. Rohl, Pharaohs and Kings: A Biblical Quest (New York: Crown Publishers, 1995).
9. Richard A. Burridge, What are the Gospels? A Comparison with Graeco-Roman Biography, 2nd ed. (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans; Dearborn, MI: Dove Booksellers, 2004).
10. See for example Robert E. Van Voorst, Jesus outside the New Testament: An Introduction to the Ancient Evidence (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2000), who thoroughly refutes the claim that Jesus never existed.
11. Craig S. Keener, Miracles: The Credibility of the New Testament Accounts, 2 vols. (Grand Rapids: Baker, 2011).
12. See especially Michael R. Licona, The Resurrection of Jesus: A New Historiographical Approach (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2011).
IRR.org (Institute For Religious Research)
bib.irr.org/reliability-of-bibleGBN News
www1.cbn.com/cbnnews/us/2016/march/incredible-proof-for-why-you-should-have-faith-in-the-bibleExcerpt
WASHINGTON -- These days, many Christians, especially college-age students, face having their faith in God and the Bible questioned if not downright assaulted.
Dr. Jonathan Morrow teaches Christian students how to defend their faith at the Impact 360 Institute in Pine Mountain, Georgia.
He knows how tough it is for Christians at secular institutions.
"Sometimes they're going to have a professor that's going to outright challenge why they believe what they believe and say, 'Look, what you believe is actually a fairytale,'" Morrow said.
Check below this story for eight extra videos of lively conversation and teaching on why you can trust the Bible. Bible experts also explore how Christianity rests on a deep and substantial bedrock of fact.
The Babblings and Contradictions of False KnowledgeBY HENRY M. MORRIS III, D.MIN. * |
THURSDAY, OCTOBER 31, 2019
O Timothy! Guard what was committed to your trust, avoiding the profane and idle babblings and contradictions of what is falsely called knowledge—by professing it some have strayed concerning the faith. (1 Timothy 6:20-21)
There are many warnings in Scripture of the power that deception can have. The manipulation and misrepresentation of factual truth and biblical insight can undermine our faith and confidence in God’s Word. The apostle Paul cautioned the church at Colossae: “Beware lest anyone cheat you through philosophy and empty deceit, according to the tradition of men, according to the basic principles of the world, and not according to Christ” (Colossians 2:8).
Paul challenged young Timothy to avoid the “falsely called knowledge” since it would cause some Christians to stray from their faith. We live in an age that could well be a candidate for the most deceptive age since the one before the great Flood of Noah’s day. The twisting and distortion of facts by evolutionary naturalism are brazen in their falsehood but extremely shrewd in their presentation.
Recently, Dr. Neal Frey carefully analyzed a potential series of biology textbooks that are recommended for acquisition by Texas schools.1 Because those recommendations affect the purchase of tens of thousands of textbooks, many other state schools across the nation are likely to acquire the same books. These textbooks will be required reading and the source for mandated instruction throughout public schools.
Christian parents must be prepared to cope with the sophisticated shaping of this “falsely called knowledge” foisted on their children and taught by gifted instructors and “expert” proponents of the open onslaught against the Bible’s message. The following insights, drawn from Dr. Frey’s analysis, will help you teach your children to become critical thinkers, enabling them to tell truth from error.
Open Fraud and Tricks
Phylogenies, or evolutionary trees, are diagrams that illustrate how certain plants or animals supposedly evolved and branched out from common ancestors.2 Evolutionary biology textbooks falsely imply that evolutionary phylogenies (tree diagrams) that are based on biochemical similarities usually agree with the trees that are based on anatomical similarities. Essentially, it’s taught that trees drawn from the similarity of chemical composition in living organisms align with trees that are based on the similarity of body features (anatomical structure). Therefore, evolutionists assert that these similarities demonstrate the evolutionary relationships between living creatures.
The textbooks never note that the trees based on biochemical similarities often contradict each other. Nor is it ever mentioned in these textbooks that no amount of deep time is sufficient to enable the evolutionary development of any branch of these trees, let alone an entire tree itself. This body of “falsely called knowledge” is simply presented as known and accepted fact among the expert scientists of our day.
The implied argument is that all scientists have accepted the inferred evidence from these dissimilar trees as sufficient evidence to know that evolutionary development has been the process that has driven the upward growth in complexity and diversity of life over the ages.
Flagrant Gaming and Salesmanship
The massively discrepant facts openly declared as science in these evolutionary trees are carefully obscured by vaguely defining evolution as “descent with modification” or “change over time” without specifying descentfrom what with which modification(s) or exactly which changes from what over time. Evolutionary textbooks blur this huge problem by insisting that various life forms “converged” based on one characteristic that is often alleged to have diverged from another life form.
That is, somewhere in ages past, a living creature developed a divergent feature in its anatomical or biochemical composition that converged into another life form, bringing about a major change in evolutionary development. As ICR geneticist Dr. Jeffrey Tomkins stated: “Convergent evolution is the idea that the same trait, or set of traits, in completely different organisms were somehow produced through independent evolutionary processes.”3
This is a fascinating presentation of sheer fiction based on nothing more than purely subjective opinions. ICR’s Dr. Randy Guliuzza pointed out that “convergence is not an observable process but is rather ‘observed’ only in someone’s mind as imaginary visualization. Convergence is another evolutionary mystical, mental construct.”4No hint is given in these textbooks that such reasoning is not based on objective facts.
Unscrupulous and Malicious Information
Often unstated and completely ignored is the evolutionary assumption that processes during the unobserved ages of the past were operating at the same rate and with the same chemical and physical properties as we observe and measure today. This uniformitarian assumption is usually expressed as “the present is the key to the past.” Thus, modern measured rates and processes are used to extrapolate the long ages of past evolutionary history—which itself is an assumptive dogma not demonstrated by empirical data.
Natural empirical science involves objective analysis and detached investigation, careful quantification and classification, as is done in chemistry and physics. Evolutionary textbooks ignore the condemning evidence of the many anatomical and biochemical contradictions exposed by the trees of evolutionary relationships. These rival and disruptive phylogenies discredit any notion of a uniformitarian evolutionary past, while at the same time aligning well with a non-uniformitarian understanding of the only available empirical data of the unobserved past—the fossil record.
Yet, in spite of the evolutionary story resting so firmly on a uniformitarian assumption of the unobserved past, the same evolutionary biology textbooks will insist on the openly opposite idea that life spontaneously generated from non-life, a non-uniformitarian principle that has absolutely no data to support it. Science—the observable, testable, repeatable study of present processes—insists that life only comes from pre-existing life. Everything that science knows about life verifies this simple principle that new life is never the result of non-life. To state otherwise is to consciously fabricate and willingly promote a fallacious error.
Babblings and Contradictions
It is interesting to note that 2,000 years ago the apostle Paul was inspired to use the very terms that most aptly describe the evolutionary doctrine enshrined in the biology textbooks of the 21st century. The studies of biology and genetics have exposed a marvel of complexity and informational instructions that define the myriad details of living things. The facts shout the reality of a Creator who has brought life into existence by His own omnipotence and omniscience. The “babblings” of convergent evolution are nothing more than aggrandized terms for an effort to explain away the evidence of God’s presence and power.
The contradictions to evolution offered by the overwhelming evidence of the design of living things are the antithesis of evolutionary biology. It’s clear from the Scriptures that those who embrace these manufactured evolutionary stories—no matter how cleverly arranged and shrewdly couched—do so because they wish to have an intellectual basis for rejecting the Creator so clearly presented in the “things that are made, even His eternal power and Godhead, so that they are without excuse” (Romans 1:20).
Although they knew God, they did not glorify Him as God, nor were thankful, but became futile in their thoughts, and their foolish hearts were darkened. Professing to be wise, they became fools, and changed the glory of the incorruptible God into an image made like corruptible man—and birds and four-footed animals and creeping things. (Romans 1:21-23)
Biblical Responsibility
Most of ICR’s readers are familiar with the Bible passages that instruct Christian parents to make sure their children are brought up “in the training and admonition of the Lord” (Ephesians 6:4). It is certain that the Lord expects a father to “command his children and his household after him, that they keep the way of the LORD, to do righteousness and justice” (Genesis 18:19).
Those basic principles were part of what motivated ICR to build the Discovery Center for Science & Earth History. Our culture is dominated by godless evolutionary naturalism and humanism. The academic world is steeped in those philosophies, and it is almost impossible to carve out a niche where our families can easily learn of the foundational doctrines of Jesus Christ as Creator, Redeemer, and coming King.
Our mission at ICR has not changed, but our platform has expanded. As ICR prepared to construct the Discovery Center, we all felt strongly that a passage from Psalm 78 encapsulated the commitment that would center our thinking and guide our decisions going forward with the center’s design and purpose.
We will not hide them from their children, telling to the generation to come the praises of the LORD, and His strength and His wonderful works that He has done....He commanded our fathers, that they should make them known to their children; that the generation to come might know them, the children who would be born, that they may arise and declare them to their children, that they may set their hope in God, and not forget the works of God, but keep His commandments. (Psalm 78:4-7)
May the Lord help us all to be part of the solution to these eternal responsibilities.
References
1. Educational Research Analysts Newsletter, September 2019.
2. Thomas, B. and F. Sherwin. 2009. Darwin’s Withering Tree of Life. Acts & Facts. 38 (5): 16.
3. Tomkins, J. Convergent Evolution or Design-Based Adaptation? Creation Science Update. Posted on ICR.org July 7, 2016.
4. Guliuzza, R. J. 2017. Major Evolutionary Blunders: Convergent Evolution Is a Seductive Intellectual Swindle. Acts & Facts. 46 (3): 17.
* Dr. Morris is Chief Executive Officer of the Institute for Creation Research. He holds four earned degrees, including a D.Min. from Luther Rice Seminary and an MBA from Pepperdine University.
Cite this article: Henry M. Morris III, D.Min. 2019. The Babblings and Contradictions of False Knowledge. Acts & Facts. 48 (11).
www.icr.org/article/babblings-contradictions-false-knowledgeNovember 11, 2015
The Undeniable Reliability of Scripture: An Interview with Josh McDowellJonathan Petersen
Content manager for Bible Gateway
Are you prepared to answer if a person should ask you why you trust the Bible? Can you articulate how Scripture communicates the very awe, mystery, passion, and power of God? And how God’s Word is living, relevant, reliable, and historically trustworthy?
Do you believe that God not only used transformative words to bring about the existence of all things, but that he also used words to bring meaning to lives and relationships?
Bible Gateway interviewed renowned speaker and apologist Josh McDowell (
josh _mcdowell) about his book, God-Breathed: The Undeniable Power and Reliability of Scripture (Barbour, 2015).
[Read the Bible Gateway Blog post, Father and Son Josh and Sean McDowell Team Up on New Edition of Evidence That Demands a Verdict]
Debate among evangelicals about the inerrancy of the Bible and veracity of Bible stories seems to be more common today than in years past. Why do you think that is?
Josh McDowell: One of the main reasons is the existence and size of the Internet. Before the Internet, people that oppose everything that an evangelical person would stand for (atheists, agnostics, and skeptics) had very little access to our young people. But today with the Internet, it has leveled the playing field. They’re just one click away. As a result, the Internet is taking the issues of inspiration, inerrancy—everything—younger and younger and younger, broader, and broader, and broader.
Now, this is also good because it gives us a great opportunity to answer some of these issues, and to use the Internet to make biblical truths clear and to defend them. But the Internet is probably one of the main reasons why it’s become more relevant today, because people have more access to the arguments against our faith.
While you were a college student, you were an unbelieving skeptic of Christianity and the Bible. How did you become convinced to trust the Bible?
Josh McDowell: When I was young and in the university, I was an ornery agnostic—the kind who says “you don’t know, I don’t know, so forget it!” Life was hard, having been homosexually raped for seven years (from six to 13 years old) and growing up with an alcoholic father. Because of this, I was very bitter, and I took it out on God.
I left and traveled to Europe. I went all throughout England, Cambridge, Oxford, Manchester, London, Germany, France, and Switzerland to gather the evidence to show that Christianity was not true. I checked out the manuscripts and the scrolls, because if I should show that they were not reliable or significant, then I believed my case was won. Now, you have to realize: I didn’t understand Hebrew and Greek back then, so I had to trust others. But I found out in all these universities that people were more than willing to share their knowledge with me. I became convinced that the scrolls are solid, physical evidence that the Old Testament had been recorded accurately. With the abundance of the manuscripts, and the ability to recreate such a high percentage of a pure text, I concluded that to not accept the Bible’s accuracy would mean becoming a total historical skeptic.
I would also add that a lot of the Bible was written by eye-witnesses. I didn’t believe that at first, but I was eventually convinced, and realized that this is the best historical testimony you can get. On top of that, they appealed to the knowledge of their opponents concerning the truth that they were talking about. In other words, they said “Not only do we believe this, but you do too! You saw this! You were there!” When you do that, you’re on pretty solid ground. It’s like going into a court and your opponent totally agrees with you. That carries a lot of weight with the judge and the jury!
Explain the title of your book, God-Breathed.
Josh McDowell: We chose the title “God Breathed” because the New Testament says that the Scriptures are the outward breath of God, and it’s God sharing his heart, mind, and soul with his creation. The title depicts that it came from God—he breathed it out! When that’s established, we can conclude that the Bible is accurate.
The main purpose of the book is twofold. For the believer, that they might know him better and be more committed to their savior because they walk away with a greater conviction of the truth of His Word. I’m convinced that the greater knowledge we have of the truth of the Scriptures, the greater convictions we have and courage in our faith. For the non-believer, the main purpose of the book is so that he/she will see there’s evidence that God did breath out his Scripture, and that Scripture is accurate and true.
Ultimately, I wanted to bridge the gap between the mind and the heart. I wanted to write a book that would take all this evidence with the manuscripts, scrolls, etc. and intellectually bridge it down to how it should impact our lives.
Why do you say the Bible is “alive” when it’s content extends back thousands of years?
Josh McDowell: I like to say that the Bible is alive for two reasons. For one reason, despite being thousands of years old, they’re relevant to every single generation for all people in all places at all times. It’s not static, and it’s not dead. The other reason I like to use the word “alive” is that it literally changes lives! I saw this in my own life. When I finally got up the courage to tell someone about being sexually raped, that man began to mentor me out of the Scriptures for six months. As a result, I literally saw my life change right before my eyes. My attitude, my feelings, my emotions, and my behavior started to change. As a result, I always look to the Scriptures as being alive and relevant. And let’s not forget that the Holy Spirit (who is alive) always uses the Scriptures every day to teach us things.
How did you come to acquire rare Egyptian artifacts and what role do they have in corroborating the veracity of the Bible?
Josh McDowell: I can’t go into detail how I acquired the artifacts because I want to acquire several more. But I will say this: you must always do it legally, and you do it through a broker. Don’t go to Israel, enter a shop, and think you’re buying something authentic—you’re usually not!
Try never to buy anything that’s been stolen out of a country. (Sometimes you’ll never know, but your heart’s desire should be not to do that.) Also, never use the black market. If you do, it’s often stolen goods, and it will ultimately destroy the pricing of significant artifacts.
We hired a broker who took a long time traveling and searching for items that might contain Scriptures. You have to understand: what we did was a crapshoot. We did not directly purchase manuscripts. We bought a number of items that might have biblical manuscripts within them. There was no guarantee that we would end up with anything valuable after our purchase. By God’s grace, we ended up hitting the mother-load with a number of manuscripts that are probably the oldest ever discovered.
Long story short: you do it legally and honestly, and you spend a lot of money doing it. I had thousands of dollars invested into this before we even found something to purchase, because we had to send people there to check it out, determine authenticity, etc.
What do you identify as the purpose of the Bible?
Josh McDowell: Very simply! It is “to know Him, and to make Him known.” I believe the Bible is about how God created us to be in a relationship with him. Sin entered the human race which broke the relationship, but the story unfolds as God restores the relationship through the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ as forgiveness for our sins. Ultimately, God revealed his heart and mind through the Scriptures that we might know him, grow in him, and make him known.
You say people commit a common error when they say “what this verse means to me is…” Explain your thinking here.
Josh McDowell: You can only understand this in the light of our culture. World culture will pretty well say that there is no objective moral truth, even to the point of denying truth altogether. It’s all individually determined, they say. From this viewpoint you get the phrase, “Well it might be true for you, but it’s not true for me.” In other words: “Look, if you believe it and it works out for you, then it’s true for you. But I don’t believe it, therefore it’s not true for me.”
Now, when it comes to the Bible, what happens is the individual becomes the source of truth, not the Scriptures. Consider how Bible studies have changed with our young people. With an adult study—say, people 35 years and older—it will go like this: “Well Janet, when Paul wrote this, what did he mean by that?” “Jim, when Jesus said this, what did He mean by that?” But if you go into a younger group, it will go like this: “Well Barbara, when Paul wrote this, what does that mean to you?” This isn’t right.
When Scripture says something, we shouldn’t look at ourselves to determine what it means. We look at ourselves to determine how it applies! But we’ve reversed that. Because you see, the individual has become the source of truth. So for our young people today, it doesn’t really matter what it meant to Jesus because whatever it means to you is just as real and true. When you do that, you open up the avenue for total relativism, where all truth claims are relevant and true in accordance with however the individual determines.
What is the big picture of the Bible?
Josh McDowell: The big picture of the Bible is God working out His salvation through creation from Genesis all the way through Revelation. What God has done to create every one of us and how we can know Him personally—that’s the overall theme of the Bible. As I’ve said earlier, the Bible is all about our purpose: to Know Him and to make Him known in our culture today. On a similar note, it’s about seeing things from God’s perspective. I don’t think we can truly understand history unless we see it from God’s perspective. I don’t think we can truly understand who we are unless we see ourselves as God sees us.
God-Breathed focuses on the 66 books that comprise the Bible. What is your view of the Apocrypha?
Josh McDowell: My view of the Apocryphal books is that they are not Holy Scripture. I think Jesus outlined that, and I touch on that in the book.
But I think every Christian should read them and study them. The great value of the Apocryphal books is that it gives you a sense of the religious thinking, and of religious processes between the Old and the New Testaments. You get a sense of the religious tone, what people thought about it, how it influenced people, etc. All of this helps you to see the light in the New Testament when it comes on the scene. Ultimately, this helps you to understand Scripture even better.
Give one reason why the Bible should be considered reliable.
Josh McDowell: I’ll stick with the New Testament here, because the question is so broad. I would say with the New Testament that it was written by eye-witness accounts. You know, we think people today are so interested in the truth of what Jesus actually said and did. Back then, they were even more concerned about that! Why? The difference is they were dying for it. Many of us are not. They wanted to know more than anybody what Jesus said and did because they knew that they would probably be martyred for it. So they would ask the apostles like John, saying “How do you know that’s true? How do you know Jesus said that?” Remember in 1 John, he said “What our eyes have seen [not somebody else’s!], what our ears of heard, what our hands have felt, we declare onto you.”
I would say if I had to just narrow it down to one small area of confirmation of the New Testament, it would be that. You can’t get closer to a subject you’re reporting on than through eye-witness account.
How does this new book of yours fit in with your other apologetic books?
J
osh McDowell: This book is a little different in two ways. The first way is that the scrolls, manuscripts, mask, etc., portrays physical, historical evidence that is firsthand to me, the author. This takes it back from somebody else saying or doing this, to: I myself, saying this and doing this. So it takes the reader back to first-hand account.
Second—and probably even more significant—is that even more than my previous titles like Evidence that Demands a Verdict, More Than a Carpenter, etc., I bridge from the head to the heart. People may say “So this evidence is true. So the Scriptures are accurate. So these manuscripts are reliable as they report on God’s Word. So the scrolls record incredible history of preserving the Word of God. So what? How does it affect my life? How should it affect my attitude, or my behavior?” And one of the keys to God-Breathed is it takes the intellectual stuff and brings it down to how you ought to live.
Bio: Josh McDowell has been at the forefront of cultural trends and ground-breaking ministry for over five decades. He shares the essentials of the Christian faith in everyday language so that youth, families, churches, leaders, and individuals of all ages are prepared for the life of faith and the work of the ministry. This includes leveraging resources based on years of experiences, new technologies, and strategic partnerships. Since 1961, Josh has delivered more than 27,000 talks to over 25,000,000 people in 125 countries. He’s the author or coauthor of 142 books, including More Than a Carpenter and The New Evidence That Demands a Verdict, recognized by World Magazine as one of the top 40 books of the 20th century. Josh’s books are available in over 100 different languages. Josh and his wife, Dottie, have been married for 43 years and have four children and ten grandchildren. For more information, visit
www.josh.org. Also see the Publishers Weekly article: Christian Bookseller Association’s Lifetime Achievement Award-Winner Reflects on Five Decades of Writing.
www.biblegateway.com/blog/2015/11/the-undeniable-reliability-of-scripture-an-interview-with-josh-mcdowell/Center for Scientific Creation
IN THE BEGINNING: COMPELLING EVIDENCE FOR CREATION AND THE FLOODwww.creationscience.com/Hard Cover Book
The 8th Edition of In the Beginning: Compelling Evidence for Creation and the Flood by Dr. Walt Brown is available to order here. It can also be read or printed out at this website; just use the links at the left to navigate through the outline of the entire book.
The 8th Edition was published in December 2008. From time to time, new developments are added throughout this online version of the book.
About the Author
Walt Brown received a Ph.D. in mechanical engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), where he was a National Science Foundation Fellow. He has taught college courses in physics, mathematics, and computer science. Brown is a retired Air Force full colonel, West Point graduate, and former Army Ranger and paratrooper. Assignments during his 21 years of military service included: Director of Benét Laboratories (a major research, development, and engineering facility); tenured associate professor at the U.S. Air Force Academy; and Chief of Science and Technology Studies at the Air War College. For much of his life Walt Brown was an evolutionist, but after years of study, he became convinced of the scientific validity of creation and a global flood. Since retiring from the military, Dr. Brown has been the Director of the Center for Scientific Creation and has worked full time in research, writing, and teaching on creation and the flood.
For those who wish to know more about Walt Brown, a new book (Christian Men of Science: Eleven Men Who Changed the World by George Mulfinger and Julia Mulfinger Orozco) devotes a chapter to Brown. It may be read by clicking here.
Oral and Written Refereed Exchange
For anyone who disagrees with the hydroplate theory (explained in Part II of this book), the refereed exchange is appropriate. Anyone, regardless of their scientific credentials, can engage Dr. Brown, provided they have read the theory. For details, see page 550.
Written Debate
The issue is: Does the scientific evidence favor creation or evolution? Dr. Brown’s standing offer for a strictly scientific, written, and publishable debate is on page 547. Note that a few initially agreed to a strictly scientific debate, but later changed their minds, insisting they would only take part if the exchange included religion. One evolutionist is so upset that a written debate will not include religion that he now misleads by saying that Walt Brown has refused to debate him. (Correspondence in our files shows how he no longer wanted a strictly scientific debate after reading the 6th edition of this book.) Dr. Brown has consistently maintained his position for 31 years: the debate should be limited to scientific evidence. If someone says, “Walt Brown has refused to debate,” we suggest you ask to see that person’s signed debate agreement.
This greatly expanded new edition—comprehensive, understandable, and meticulously documented—will give insights to readers of all backgrounds. In the Beginning: Compelling Evidence for Creation and the Flood takes a different look at a currently hot topic. Evidence that could revolutionize our understanding of origins is carefully explained. You will be challenged to consider fresh ideas in this age-old debate.
Part I of In the Beginning discusses, in quick overview, 131 categories of evidence from biology, astronomy, and the physical and earth sciences. More technical discussions and documentation are found in the author’s extensive endnotes.
Does the scientific evidence support evolution or creation?
What insights do genetics and the fossil record provide?
How old is the earth? What dating techniques indicate a young earth?
What discoveries in outer space relate to our beginnings?
Does Noah’s Ark exist? What is the CIA’s “Ararat Anomaly”?
Part II describes the hydroplate theory, developed during more than 35 years of study by Dr. Walt Brown, a former evolutionist. This theory explains a catastrophic event in earth’s history and solves a host of recognized problems. For decades, evolutionists complained that creationists only criticized evolution and did not offer sound scientific theories of their own. The hydroplate theory ends that complaint and explains, with overwhelming evidence, earth’s defining geological event—a worldwide flood.
If there was a global flood, where did the water come from? Where did it go?
What were the powerful fountains of the great deep?
How was the Grand Canyon carved in weeks after a post-flood lake (Grand Lake) breached?
What evidence shows that the material in comets, asteroids, and meteoroids came from Earth?
What suddenly froze and buried the mammoths? How could they have survived the 6-month winter nights inside the Arctic Circle?
How did mountains ranges, volcanoes, submarine canyons, coal and oil deposits, and deep ocean trenches form?
What processes sorted fossils and produced layered strata?
Thirty-nine other frequently asked questions fill a fascinating Part III, including:
Is global warming occurring? If so, what causes it?
Have scientific tools detected traces of Adam and Eve within us?
Is evolution compatible with the Bible?
How accurate is radiocarbon dating?
What about the dinosaurs?
How can the study of creation be scientific?
Is there life in outer space?
Galaxies are billions of light-years away, so isn’t the universe billions of years old?
What hydroplate predictions have been confirmed?
Center for Scientific Creation
IN THE BEGINNING: COMPELLING EVIDENCE FOR CREATION AND THE FLOOD
www.creationscience.com/Radicalizing young peopleEditorial
by Don Batten
The mass protests of school students about ‘climate change’ have caused many of us to wonder how it has come to this. Even supposed adults are falling over themselves to genuflect to a 16-year-old kid. We are scratching our heads wondering what the world is coming to.
I believe that we can largely trace this radicalizing to the loss of faith in God, particularly in young people. Since the 1960s, once-Christian countries have increasingly indoctrinated all young people in an evolutionary way of thinking—there was a ‘big bang’, where nothing exploded with no cause billions of years ago, and we are the product of purely natural processes (‘evolution’) since then. In other words, we are ‘star dust’, as one famous commentator put it. We are ultimately a chance product of atoms randomly banging around over billions of years.
Such a view has no room for the Bible’s message of God creating us with a purpose; our fall into sin, sickness, and death in Adam; and salvation in Jesus Christ. This brings a life of purpose lived now and a wonderful hope for eternity, including that we will be free of sickness and death.
Because of the evolutionary brainwashing, the indoctrinated now have no purpose to their lives and no eternal hope or perspective. Consequently, young students are looking for some sort of self-authentication, and a crusade to save the planet fits the bill. Hence the fervour, and we are awash with ‘virtue signalling’!
But not many get to consider that if we were all nothing but stardust from a big bang, and it will all end forever when the universe runs out of useable energy, there would be little point to ‘saving the planet’ anyway. How does one get a moral imperative—what we ought to do—from atoms banging around?
Creation magazine provides a powerful counter to the cultural demise around us, for young and old. This issue presents powerful evidence that God did indeed create everything, just like the Bible says. Our ears (pp. 14–17) reveal incredible design! The wonderful world of bats (pp. 28–31), with their amazing echolocation and flight, speaks of divine invention. In the children’s section, the size of the universe (pp. 32–35) highlights God’s all-powerful nature.
This issue also counters the fake history that has taken popular thinking captive. We have articles correcting the notion that Neandertals were primitive sub-humans (pp. 12–13) and that scholars of the past could not reason logically and scientifically (pp. 26–27). Other articles cover the origin of languages, which backs up the Bible’s real history (pp. 52–55); Egypt’s pyramids and where they fit in (pp. 18–20); how Earth’s inner core should not be as it is if Earth were billions of years old (p. 21); how proteins in fossils refute their claimed age of millions of years, as researched by Brian Thomas, our Ph.D. scientist interviewee for this issue (pp. 38–41); and how the Ice Age needs a catastrophic cause like Noah’s Flood to explain it (pp. 48–51).
But how can we share this vital information? Ian and Heather Hartley show how it can be done at public gatherings (pp. 22–25). (One of their secrets: they give away Creation magazines!) I trust that this encourages others to get active too.
Creation.com
creation.com/radicalizing-young-peopleDinosaur eggs point to the global Genesis Flood
by Mike Oard
The first well-known discovery of dinosaur eggs was in Mongolia during the early 1920s. Then in the 1970s, Marion Brandvold found more dinosaur eggs, a few even containing embryos, in Montana, USA, at a 9-metre-high hill called ‘Egg Mountain’. This was later excavated by famous dinosaur paleontologist John Horner and colleagues. Researchers have now discovered eggs on almost all the continents of the world (figure 1).
New egg sites are found each year and the estimated number of fossil dino eggs is in the millions. The best-known sites are in Mongolia, China, India, Kyrgyzstan, Argentina, the US (Montana), Canada (southern Alberta), and southern France. Some groupings of eggs are claimed to be dinosaur nests (figure 2). Further, some of the eggs have broken tops, as if they had hatched. In some areas, eggs are found in multiple sedimentary layers one on top of the other, suggesting the dinosaurs came to this particular site over and over again.
Other features, such as mud cracks, raindrop imprints, bird tracks, channels, and burrows, have been reported at some egg sites. In addition, some dinosaur remains seem to have been scavenged. Skeptics argue that these features together with dinosaur eggs and nests represent normal activity over a long period of time and would need far more time than Noah’s Flood provides. However, as with all challenges against the Genesis Flood, a careful examination of the evidence reveals that there is no problem.
Many contradictory observations if normal egg-laying
Secular scientists interpret data assuming the rocks formed by normal, everyday processes over millions of years. However, this assumption raises many questions when trying to explain dinosaur eggs.
Since the Flood level can oscillate many times, it would not be unusual to produce egg layers at multiple levels in an area in the Flood.
One issue is that rapid burial would be required to preserve the eggs before they had a chance to decay. But burial also had to be slow and gentle, so the eggs would not be pulverized. And why are they occasionally found with dinosaur embryos still inside? Dinosaur experts Chiappe and Dingus exclaim:
Also, exactly how did the eggs and embryos become fossilized? We are sure that floods buried the eggs and nests in mud, but what process of mineralization operated quickly enough that the poorly formed embryonic bones and skin became fossilized before they could decay?1
The problem of rapid burial is compounded because some eggs are found in marine sedimentary rocks, even chalk that is believed by uniformitarian scientists to accumulate very slowly. And if the eggs represent normal dinosaur activity, why have so few nest structures been found? The number is probably less than a dozen, even using the most lenient criteria, such as the presence of a depression and/or a raised rim (figure 2). Some paleontologists have even claimed a ‘nest’ based simply on the existence of an egg clutch (a group of eggs found together) or just eggshells.
To add to the trouble, the dinosaur eggs were laid on top of flat sediment surfaces,2 and there is rarely any evidence, such as pollen or macrofossils, that vegetation was subsequently placed on top of the eggs. Most reptiles, such as alligators and crocodiles, bury their eggs, either with sediment or thick vegetation. Why would the dinosaurs just lay their eggs on exposed flat layers of sediment? This leads to probably the most serious problem. Dinosaur eggs are porous, generally like reptiles’ eggs, and the embryo would quickly dry out sitting on an exposed sedimentary surface.3–5 All these features suggest that the eggs were not laid under normal conditions in a natural environment, and that a better explanation is needed.
The Genesis Flood explains dinosaur eggs
A model based on the processes operating during the Genesis Flood can solve most of the uniformitarian challenges. The dinosaur eggs, as well as tracks and scavenged bonebeds, are generally found in sedimentary deposits that extend many hundreds of kilometres across the continent and are many hundreds of metres thick. There is also evidence that sediments (figure 3) once sat hundreds of metres above the present land surface, and that these were eroded away, revealing the eggs. This means the dinosaurs were active in the first ‘half’ of the Flood as the floodwaters were rising, and before all the animals perished. The overlying sediments were eroded in the second ‘half’ of the Flood as the waters were receding.
As the floodwaters were rising and depositing the sediments, periodic changes in the water level would temporarily expose the tops of freshly laid sediments. Several mechanisms, such as tides and up-and-down movement of the earth’s crust, would cause the floodwater to oscillate over variable timescales. Sediments would be briefly exposed during a local fall until the next upward pulse of the water. Figure 4, which can represent an area of many hundreds of kilometres, illustrates this effect. Dinosaurs in the water as well as on higher land nearby would clamber onto the exposed sediments. The stressed pregnant dinosaurs would lay their eggs in haste on the sediment surface. A subsequent rise in water level would bury the eggs and begin the fossilization process. The dinosaur activity can be placed between Day 40 and Day 120 of the 370-Day Flood.
This concept has been called the BEDS model, where BEDS is an acronym for Briefly Exposed Diluvial Sediments. Diluvial is another name for the Flood. The BEDS model also explains other challenges associated with dinosaur eggs, such as mud cracks, burrow holes, and channels. These features are to be expected during the global Flood, when flat sedimentary surfaces would be exposed above the water for short periods of time. Eggs with broken tops can simply be due to sediment compaction or scavenging. It is possible some embryos hatched, although this would be rare. Since sedimentation was rapid, and the Flood level oscillated repeatedly, it would not be unusual for eggs to be laid at multiple levels in the same area.
The BEDS model illustrates how to solve other challenges
The BEDS model based on the biblical worldview provides reasonable answers for many geological challenges. It shows how interpretations from a biblical perspective make sense of a wider range of data and provide a more intellectually satisfying explanation than the uniformitarian approach. Be encouraged; research into claimed problems for Noah’s Flood often leads to novel insights and solutions. I have discovered that the uniformitarian approach repeatedly results in problems that can be solved by applying models based on biblical Earth history.
Creation.comcreation.com/dinosaur-eggs-point-to-the-floodObservations Support Grand Canyon Flood OriginBY TIM CLAREY, PH.D. * |
THURSDAY, OCTOBER 31, 2019
Old-earth geologists claim that observations contradict the Flood model origin for Grand Canyon.1 However, recently exposed sediments at Lake Mead refute their claims and instead fully support the Flood model.
These geologists argue that if the Flood rapidly carved Grand Canyon, the freshly deposited and unlithified (not yet stone) sediment layers should have collapsed, thinned, and slumped into the chasm (Figure 1). In effect, they predict “piles of mixed sediment at the base of the exposed embankments,” with no vertical cliffs.1
They further assert that only fully lithified, ancient rock layers would maintain Grand Canyon’s pattern of vertical cliffs and slopes. They report they have actually observed these processes in today’s world, postulating, “So, what is actually observed? None of the expected features for the flood geology model are observed. All of the expected features from the conventional geology model are observed.”1
It sounds convincing, until we look deeper. Their explanation is a classic example of the straw man fallacy. We don’t actually observe the thinning and slumping they predicted. We only observe the mixed vertical cliffs and slopes of the modern canyon walls, and this clearly doesn’t disprove the Flood model.
Geologists agree Grand Canyon was formed by the removal of about 1,000 cubic miles of sediment and rock.1 The canyon is 277 miles in length. It’s 4 to 18 miles in width and has a depth of over 6,000 feet in some locations.
In 1935, Lake Mead formed behind Hoover Dam, creating a trap for water and river sediment. Fluctuating snow pack and runoff levels caused the lake to drop from its high-water level of 1,225 feet above sea level in 1983 to about 1,080 feet today. A white-colored band—a bathtub ring—visible above the current lake level showcases this drop in water elevation.
As a consequence, the Colorado River has eroded through the former lake sediments at the eastern end of the lake, exposing sandy cliffs 20 to 40 feet high. These cliffs make a perfect test of the Flood model since the sediments consist of unlithified, packed sand and clay just like many of the Flood sediments at the time Grand Canyon was carved.
This past August, I rafted the last 100 miles of Grand Canyon. As I passed the freshly exposed sediments in Lake Mead, I observed firsthand the rapid erosion of unlithified sands and clays that had been deposited over the past 80-plus years.
Amazingly, the exposed lake sediments look like a miniature version of Grand Canyon (Figure 2). There was no mixing of the sediments or thinning of the layers. Instead, we observed vertical sandy cliffs, some sloping layers, and more vertical cliffs. In fact, the cliffs showed frequent cross-bedding and angular unconformities likely caused by lake currents and fluctuating lake levels. All these features match perfectly with what’s observed in Grand Canyon rocks.
The recent “little Grand Canyon” exposed by Lake Mead is exactly what Flood geologists have predicted. Packed, water-deposited sediment will stand vertically even if unlithified. Real observations made in the field, not mere assumptions based on an old-earth worldview, match perfectly with a late-Flood carving of Grand Canyon.2
References
1. Helble, T. and C. Hill. 2016. Carving of the Grand Canyon: A lot of time and a little water, a lot of water and a little time (or something else?) In The Grand Canyon: Monument to an Ancient Earth. Tulsa, OK: Kregel Publications, 163-172.
2. Clarey, T. 2018. Grand Canyon Carved by Flood Runoff. Acts & Facts. 47 (12): 10-13.
* Dr. Clarey is Research Associate at the Institute for Creation Research and earned his Ph.D. in geology from Western Michigan University.
Cite this article: Tim Clarey, Ph.D. 2019. Observations Support Grand Canyon Flood Origin. Acts & Facts. 48 (11).
www.icr.org/article/observations-support-grand-canyon-flood-origin/Continuing Troubles for the Big Bang ModelBY JAKE HEBERT, PH.D. * |
THURSDAY, OCTOBER 31, 2019
Cosmology is the study of the origin and structure of the universe, and the Big Bang is the dominant secular cosmological model. Some Christians say God used the Big Bang to create the universe, but that model contradicts Scripture at multiple points.1 There have been some recent developments involving the Big Bang model, nearly all of which are bad news for Big Bang proponents.
According to the Big Bang model, the universe was once very dense and hot. Supposedly, the universe began expanding rapidly about 14 billion years ago and is still expanding today. This expansion, inferred from clues within light from distant galaxies, is one of three main arguments for the model.2 A second argument is that the Big Bang does a good job of accounting for the light chemical elements hydrogen and helium. A third is the existence of faint cosmic microwave background (CMB) radiation coming to us from all directions in space (Figure 1). Big Bang proponents interpret the CMB as an “afterglow” from a time about 400,000 years after the Big Bang occurred.
Despite these apparent successes, the Big Bang model has serious scientific problems. One enormous difficulty is that Big Bang proponents have concluded that about 95% of the “stuff” in the universe is composed of mysterious entities called dark matter and dark energy, but they don’t know what these things are. How can Big Bang theorists claim to understand the process that supposedly brought the universe into existence when, by their own admission, 95% of the universe’s contents are unknown?3
As a creation ministry, ICR wants people to be up-to-date on the current version of the Big Bang model, not one that was popular decades ago. For instance, Big Bang cosmologists used to say the universe went through an enormous “growth spurt” called inflation shortly after the Big Bang. However, most theorists today claim that inflation happened first and caused the Big Bang.4
Hubble Constant Contradiction Persists
Most astronomers think the universe is expanding, causing galaxies to move away from each other. Scientists use a number called the Hubble constant, denoted by the symbol H0, to characterize this expansion. They use two different methods to calculate H0. One way is to calculate the value directly, using estimated distances and speeds of distant galaxies. A second way is to infer this number by looking at details of the CMB radiation. The values calculated from these two methods conflict with each other, and a recent study hasn’t resolved the issue.5-7
When Big Bang proponents use the CMB to infer a value for H0, they are assuming the Big Bang model is correct. Naturally, if the model is wrong, there’s no reason to expect this method to yield an accurate result. Creationists aren’t surprised these two different methods yield contradictory results. And even though the CMB is arguably the strongest argument for the Big Bang, there are details about this radiation that do not align with the Big Bang model.8 For instance, Cambridge astrophysicist George Efstathiou commented on how the CMB doesn’t match the expectations of inflation theory:
The theory of inflation predicts that today’s universe should appear uniform at the largest scales in all directions….That uniformity should also characterize the distribution of [temperature] fluctuations at the largest scales within the CMB. But these anomalies, which [the] Planck [satellite] confirmed, such as the cold spot, suggest that this isn’t the case….This is very strange…..And I think that if there really is anything to this, you have to question how that fits in with inflation…..It’s really puzzling.9
Missing Baryonic Matter Found?
Heavy subatomic particles like protons and neutrons are called baryons. Because protons and neutrons comprise nearly all the mass of an atom, the normal atomic matter we interact with in our everyday experiences is called baryonic matter.
As mentioned earlier, one of the three main arguments for the Big Bang is that it can account for the observed abundances of hydrogen and helium in the universe. However, this is because the model has an adjustable parameter, like a tuning dial on a radio.10 Big Bang scientists choose a value for this parameter to ensure that the model matches the observed abundances of hydrogen and helium.11
So, contrary to popular perception, the Big Bang does not successfully predict the abundances of hydrogen and helium. Rather, the model’s proponents choose a value for this parameter to make sure the model gives the right answer.12-14 Nevertheless, secular scientists consider the model’s ability to match the observed abundances of hydrogen and helium to be a major success.
Once Big Bang scientists choose their value for this parameter, the model indicates how much baryonic matter should exist in the universe.15 When one adds up the different forms of matter thought to exist, the amount of baryonic matter predicted by the Big Bang is only 20% of the total (Figure 2). Big Bang astronomers think the other 80% is an exotic form of invisible dark matter, discussed in the next section. Previous observations indicated that visible stars and gas could only account for half this predicted baryonic matter, and scientists couldn’t account for the other half.
Last year, astronomers claimed to have solved this problem.16 (Interestingly, another scientist claimed to have solved it one year before that.17) Theorists think the missing baryonic matter should reside in thin, hot strings of ionized hydrogen located between galaxies. Astronomers didn’t detect the hydrogen per se but rather ionized oxygen that they think is associated with the hydrogen. Naturally, Big Bang proponents will see this as good news for their model. However, it’s important to realize that the missing matter hasn’t actually been found directly. Rather, oxygen was found that secular scientists think, based on their models, should be associated with the missing hydrogen.
It’s worth noting that the Wikipedia entry for “Missing baryon problem” has been flagged for possibly making too strong a claim about the problem being solved, despite the obvious anti-creation bias found in Wikipedia articles touching on the creation-evolution controversy.18
Dark Matter Still Undetected
As mentioned earlier, many astronomers think 80% of all the matter in the universe is invisible dark matter. Although astronomers deduced the existence of dark matter apart from the Big Bang model, this substance has become very important to secular cosmologists. They recognize the enormous problems in their theories of star and galaxy formation. Many claim dark matter is the “missing ingredient” that can somehow enable their theories to work.19 This is very convenient for theorists. Since no one knows what dark matter is—or even if it really exists—no one can demonstrate that their theories are wrong!20
Because the Big Bang model only allows for 20% of all matter to be baryonic (made of atoms), its proponents must assume that dark matter is something else. Other forms of matter (i.e., free electrons, neutrinos, etc.) do exist but have generally been ruled out as dark matter candidates. The scientists have no choice but to insist that dark matter is some exotic, never-before-observed substance.
So, how is the hunt for this exotic matter going? Not well. Repeated searches have come up empty,21 and theorists are becoming increasingly nervous, if not desperate.
Dark Matter Before the Big Bang?
How desperate? One theorist recently suggested that perhaps dark matter somehow existed before the Big Bang.22,23 How is that possible? Haven’t we been led to believe that the Big Bang was the origin of everything?
This theorist said dark matter came from something called a scalar field that supposedly was present before the Big Bang. A problem with this idea is that only one scalar field is known to exist, and that’s the field associated with the famous Higgs boson. All other scalar fields are hypothetical.
By the way, this should give pause to Christians who say God used the Big Bang to create the universe. If the supposed “bang” was God’s initial creative act, then according to this reasoning dark matter existed beforeGenesis 1:1. If 80% of all existing matter had an existence before then, did God actually create it prior to Genesis 1:1? If so, why doesn’t the Bible tell us? If not, is dark matter simply eternal? And if it’s eternal, what does that do to Christian theology?
Time Before the Big Bang?
This raises another point. Big Bang scientists had long insisted that speaking of time before the Big Bang was as nonsensical as asking the question “What is north of the North Pole?” Well, apparently the question wasn’t as nonsensical as we were led to believe, because they now routinely talk about time “before” the Big Bang. In fact, inflation theorists now claim the inflation process that supposedly triggered the Big Bang could have been going on for eons by the time the Big Bang supposedly created our universe. This has led to the idea that our universe is only one of an infinite number of universes in a supposed “multiverse.”24
Conclusion
This should demonstrate just how “squishy” Big Bang theories are. Secular scientists simply won’t allow data to falsify them, even if it means tacking on additional hypotheses or accepting concepts that they themselves dismissed as nonsense decades ago, such as time before the Big Bang.
Instead of attempting to harmonize the inerrant Word of God with a flimsy scientific model, Christians would do far better to simply take God’s Word at face value. The universe came into existence not through a Big Bang but by the omnipotent Word of God.
References
1. Morris, J. D. 1997. Is the Big Bang Biblical? Acts & Facts. 26 (5).
2. Some creationists (myself included) question whether this is a correct interpretation of the clues within this distant light. See Hartnett, J. 2011. Does observational evidence indicate the universe is expanding?—part 2: the case against expansion. Journal of Creation. 25 (3): 115-120.
3. Hebert, J. and B. Thomas. 2014. Does Science Support the Big Bang? Acts & Facts. 43 (7): 21.
4. Hebert, J. 2013. The Ever-Changing Big Bang Story. Acts & Facts. 42 (1): 14.
5. Hebert, J. Big Bang Hubble Contradiction Confirmed. Creation Science Update. Posted on ICR.org May 16, 2019, accessed August 23, 2019.
6. Freedman, W. L. et al. 2019. The Carnegie-Chicago Hubble Program. VIII. An Independent Determination of the Hubble Constant Based on the Tip of the Red Giant Branch. Astrophysical Journal. 882 (1): 34.
7. New Hubble Constant Measurement Adds to Mystery of Universe’s Expansion Rate. HubbleSite. Posted on hubblesite.org July 16, 2019, accessed August 23, 2019.
8. Hebert, J. 2018. Does the Cosmic Microwave Background Confirm the Big Bang? Acts & Facts. 47 (6): 10-12.
9. Discoveries from Planck may mean rethinking how the universe began. Phys.org. Posted on phys.org July 26, 2013, accessed September 6, 2019.
10. This adjustable parameter is called the baryon-to-photon ratio. It is a measure of how many baryons are in the universe compared to the number of light “particles” (photons).
11. Bergström, L. and A. Goobar. 2008. Cosmology and Particle Astrophysics, 2nd ed. Chichester, UK: Springer Praxis Publishing, 167-176.
12. Krauss, L. M. 2012. A Universe from Nothing: Why There Is Something Rather Than Nothing. New York: Free Press, 24-25.
13. Hoyle, F., G. Burbidge, and J. V. Narlikar. 2000. A Different Approach to Cosmology: From a Static Universe through the Big Bang towards Reality. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 97.
14. Even with this freedom, the Big Bang still cannot adequately account for the relative abundances of different isotopes of lithium. See Thomas, B. Big Bang Fizzles under Lithium Test. Creation Science Update. Posted on ICR.org September 22, 2014, accessed August 20, 2019.
15. Hebert, J. 2013. Dark Matter, Sparticles, and the Big Bang. Acts & Facts. 42 (9): 17-19.
16. Nicastro, F. et al. 2018. Observations of the missing baryons in the warm–hot intergalactic medium. Nature. 558: 406-409.
17. Crane, L. Half the universe’s missing matter has just been finally found. New Scientist. Posted on newscientist.com October 9, 2017, accessed September 9, 2019.
18. Missing baryon problem. Wikipedia. Posted on Wikipedia.com, accessed September 9, 2019.
19. Mo, H., F. van den Bosch, and S. White. 2010. Galaxy Formation and Evolution. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 8, 15.
20. Psarris, S. 2012. What You Aren’t Being Told About Astronomy, Volume 2: Our Created Stars and Galaxies. DVD. Creation Astronomy Media.
21. Letzter, R. Physicists Keep Trying—and Failing—to Find Dark Matter in Dark Places. LiveScience. Posted on livescience.com December 7, 2018, accessed September 3, 2019.
22. Tenkanen, T. 2019. Dark Matter from Scalar Field Fluctuations. Physical Review Letters. 123, 061302.
23. Tantibanchachai, C. Dark matter may be older than the big bang, study suggests. John Hopkins University press release. Posted on hub.jhu.edu August 8, 2019, accessed September 3, 2019.
24. Hebert, J. 2013. Hiding from God in the Multiverse. Acts & Facts. 42 (6): 9.
Dr. Hebert is Research Associate at the Institute for Creation Research and earned his Ph.D. in physics from the University of Texas at Dallas.
Cite this article: Jake Hebert, Ph.D. 2019. Continuing Troubles for the Big Bang Model. Acts & Facts. 48 (11).
www.icr.org/article/continuing-troubles-for-the-big-bang-model/A word of advice to any 2x2/visitor:
Beyond this point on this thread, with few exceptions, is TMB Babylon full of 'wolves' who have one aim - to tear down any faith you might have left after 2x2ism read there informed upfront.