A Whirl Wind Weekend

Right on schedule, little Noah Caedmon was born on Thanksgiving day. If I knew how to up load pictures on the computer from a cell phone camera, I would show you all what he looks like.

The entire event reminded me of a sitcom episode. Around 10:30 am on Thursday, my wife comes into the bed room where I was studying and announces, "It's time." Thankfully, I kept my wits about me and didn't drive off to the hospital in my underwear and without my wife. Once we arrived, she was quickly examined and it was determined that she was not ready. The doctor told us to come back in the evening.

My mother rushed together our Thanksgiving day meal and it was so rushed she forgot to make stuffing. All the time my wife was experiencing the on set of early labor. She would take a bite of turkey, then pause for a contraction, take another bite, pause for a contraction.

Finally, we went to the hospital by 6 pm and by 10:22, little Noah was born. His name comes from Noah, the biblical figure from Genesis, and Caedmon, the 9th century Anglo-Saxon shepherd who did early translations of the Latin Vulgate into English.

He had a touch of jaundice, a lot less than his brothers, but the doctor wanted him to stay in the hospital. My wife of course has to stay with him, but we are thankful that the nursing staff have made her prolonged stay comfortable. Our doctor is a tad eccentric. He is an older, Indian man who holds to a lot of out dated methods. For example, the scale in his office to weigh children looks like it came from the 17th century. He puts the baby on one side and then adds counter weights to get it to balance. I kid you not.

When our baby was seen to have jaundice, he told my wife to stop breast feeding altogether and only give him formula from now on. That of course sounded weird to us, because both the older boys had serious jaundice, and we were instructed to only breast feed them. When we mentioned this odd request to our nurses, they would roll their eyes and say, "He believes this out dated idea that the breast milk can increase the jaundice." What?! They also use to believe illness was caused by an imbalance of bodily humors caused by a troll living in your tummy. We may be looking for another baby doctor soon.

Before I leave for the weekend holiday

There is a lot going on this weekend in the Butler household for which to be thankful.
First is the impending birth of the 3rd Butler addition, Noah Caedmon. He is still stuck inside his mother and is refusing to budge. His official due date is Thanksgiving day, however, I kind of hope he is born on Friday, for that is my birthday. It would be neat to share the date with one of the boys.



Having my birthday in mind reminds me to scan through Cap'n Wacky's gallery of unfortunate Birthday cards.

Allow me to share some of my favorites:

Why Creationists are Treated Like Red-headed Step Children by Christians [pt. 2]

In the last two posts (here and here) I have been exploring the reasons why young earth creationists [YEC] are disdained, slimed, ridiculed, mocked and treated as the proverbial red-headed stepchild by the vast majority of those in the Christian community.

Young earth creationists are those individuals who believe the historical narrative of Genesis teaches that God created the world and all that is contained therein during 6 days as we understand the word day. In other words, in 6, 24 hour days, God created the earth, the plants, the sun, moon and stars, animals and man in a week's time. They are called young earth creationists because they use the Genesis narrative as the starting point of all existence here on earth, and by calculating the genealogical lists provided in scripture, the Bible clearly indicates that the world, humanity, society, and culture has only been around for about 6,000 years - this figure being greatly opposed to the consensus of secular science of 4.2 billion.

So why exactly are YEC disparaged by their beliefs by the majority of Christians in the contemporary Christian church? That is the question I have been exploring. I noted last time that I believe there are three key reasons, the first of which is that the majority of Christians opposed to YEC hold to the philosophy of evidentialism pertaining to apologetics and evangelism. There are two final reasons I have noted:

Young earth detractors have a disdain for American fundamental Christianity and are ashamed of the public behavior often displayed by fundamentalist Christians in America during the last century. My intention is not to paint all fundamentalists as being kooky. I would consider myself to be an historic fundamentalist, and I will wear that title with pride. However, I understand historic fundamentalism, what I believe to be the historic Christian faith, to be separated from fundamentalism as a political movement in American culture. Way back in June of this year I wrote of this distinction in a series of articles critiquing the values of a group of liberals who believe the values of fundamentalism are an aberration departing from the historic Christian faith. Such a notion is woefully misinformed. Yet, I do not want to excuse American fundamentalism of presenting a Christian faith to the world that appears foolish and irrational. I cringe when I hear Christian believers make ignorant comments against something non-Christian. Once during a Christmas get together with some family, one of my cousins expressed his dislike for creationism. In his limited worldview, he thought of creationists as being small minded and anti-intellectual, similar to Hugh Ross's feelings even though my cousin was coming from a non-Christian point of view. I didn't get in on the entire conversation, but how does his grandmother, my aunt, respond to his evolutionary convictions? By saying "no grandchild of mine is going to believe in that evolution junk." What compelling argumentation.

Because YEC are fundamental in belief, they are identified with the narrow minded mentality of uneducated, hayseed fundamentalism that only reacts emotionally, and swings widely at its opponents. The contemporary Christian community does not wish to be perceived by the world as supporting these attitudes, so they will express embarrassment over what creationists believe and teach and basically do their best to distance themselves from them.

Then finally, YEC are dismissed and ignored because many in the Christian community desire the secular world to accept Christianity as reasonable. Naturalistic evolution has so brain washed the world into believing billions of years of history has passed on the earth, that the idea of a world only 6,000 years old and dinosaurs living along side men is too outrageous and fanciful. Who could believe such ridiculous nonsense? Can you believe that YEC quack thinks dinosaurs and men lived together? How can I take Christianity as being reasonable if I have to believe in such stupid things? Thus, in order to make Christianity more palatable, believers marginalize YEC by holding them at arms length and categorize them as a camp of eccentrics.

Last year I exchanged some emails with a Ross supporter who appealed to this line of reasoning as why he rejected YEC. In his mind, young earth proponents jeopardize the gospel by believing in such unbelievable stuff that cuts against known science. His claim is of course fraudulent, but it is an appeal straight from the Hugh Ross handbook, none the less. I had to remind him that Christianity is founded on one unimaginable, unbelievable reality: the resurrection of Christ. The truth of the matter is that any scientist who rejects Christianity because of what YEC teaches with regards to the age of the earth, etc., is also going to reject Christianity because of the resurrection. In the unbelieving scientist skeptic's mind, a man raising from the dead just after three days is as incredible as believing the world is 6,000 years old and dinosaurs lived with men. In order to make Christianity reasonable to the skeptical world, a person will have to remove all the miracles of the Lord. To take that approach just to save face with the secular world only endangers one's faith.

Those are the three key reasons why I think Christians reject young earth creationism. None of them have any merit, but still Christians will sadly think along those lines and not consider the viability of what creationists teach. Of course, that goes back to what we consider is our authority. Is it the Bible, or man-made ideas brought to bear upon the Bible?

I am currently re-teaching a lecture series on progressive creationism and old earth arguments leveled against young earth arguments. It can be listened to here for those interested.

Why Creationists are Treated Like Red-headed Step Children by Christians

As I noted previously, there are many in the contemporary Christian church who willfully oppose the work of young earth creationists (YEC). Despite how well researched and argued they may be, they are met with a scornful disdain that seems to be hopeful they will fail in their scientific pursuits. Hugh Ross and the men who comprise his ministry team at his Reasons to Believe organization fall into this category.

However, apart from them, there are other Christians who oppose YEC but are perhaps not as hostile. Generally, their opposition to YEC is born out of being misinformed. They operate from a position of ignorance. Some of these misinformed folks, not knowing any better, may feed their ignorance with anti-YEC apologetic propaganda generated by the willfully hostile group. Yet, for the most part, the ignorant group remains ignorant of both positions. The don't read any literature, especially from the YEC position and any information they may get is surface level at best.

I encountered some of these folks over on the Stand to Reason blog. Stand to Reason is the ministry of Greg Koukl, and for the greater part, I consider them to be one of the more outstanding apologetic ministries around today. The one area where they terribly fail is with their misrepresentation of what YEC believe and teach.

I listen with regularity to Greg Koukl's STR radio program through the internet. He presents a Bible Answer man style program in which he takes caller questions, but Greg does it with much more depth and insight. Every once in a while, however, a caller will ask Greg about YEC vs. OEC, how to read the creation week in Genesis, and other related creationist topics, and to my sad disappointment, Greg will label their position as being "incredible" meaning unbelievable, or he will parrot some of the comments made by Hugh Ross against YEC. Stand to Reason is a ministry that prides itself in being "good ambassadors" for the Christian faith, and one of the important ways of being a good ambassador is by accurately representing the position of the ones with whom you disagree. I have yet to read or hear STR do this with YEC. What I do see is the erection of a strawman caricature and then the dismantling of that strawman as if it genuinely represents young earth believers.

Greg is friendly with Ross and his Reasons to Believe ministry, so I can understand how he can be biased towards them against YEC. But I think he is an example of a larger, misinformed group of believers who don't have a clue about YEC. This general cluelessness was demonstrated clearly by several of the folks who posted comments on a blog entry addressing whether or not we can trust our senses. Melinda, the regular poster on the STR blog, was making reference to a caller from a previous Sunday broadcast who questioned whether or not we can trust our senses so as to gather knowledge about our world. The caller came from a skeptical, "we can't really no if we exist, let alone if there is a God," point of view, but Melinda took the call and used it as an illustration against the claims of YEC.

I thought her comparison was irrelevant, if not illogical, and posted a comment suggesting for her to actually read what YEC believe. Other posters who represent the ignorant, misinformed group against YEC also made comments questioning our understanding of the word "day" in Genesis 1, raised the old canard about how the ancient Hebrews believed in a geocentric cosmology, and other such nonsense.

My interaction with these dear folks began to stir my thinking. Why exactly do Christians so easily gravitate toward a non-YEC position to embrace an old earth position, what I believe to be a theological untenable and scientifically problematic view point? I think there are at least three key reasons. Let me deal with the first one with this post and hit the other two in a later one.

These Christians adhere to an evidentialist philosophy in their approach to apologetics and evangelism. Evidentialism is an approach to defending the Christian faith in which the Christian apologist appeals to the reasonableness of evidence when presenting the gospel. For example, the evidentialist when evangelizing an unbeliever will point to evidence for defending the reliability of the Bible. Such things as the internal consistency of the scripture, even though it has been written by 40 different authors over a 1,400 year time frame, and the fact that it is the most attested ancient document known to man. These evidences when presented to the unbeliever forces him or her to evaluate the reasonableness of the Christian truth claims. If the evidence demonstrates that the Bible could possibly be the Word of God, then the Bible's claims about Christ could be possibly true and hence the Christian faith is established by reason. Only an unreasonable, illogical person would reject such undeniable evidence.

The problem with this line of reason, to borrow the term, is that evidence must be interpreted. There are no neutral facts floating around in the world that "speak for themselves" as we would say, so that everyone would come to the same conclusions about them. Even though the evidence may be undeniable, the Bible is quite clear that the unbeliever is opposed to truth (Romans 1:18 ff.). Moreover, unbelievers have their "understanding darkened" as Ephesians 4:18 states, so they don't reason properly to begin with. Thus, they explain away the evidence because they don't want it to be true. The issue with the unbeliever is not one of evidence, but one of the heart. They are in need of a spiritual heart operation and that is a work only God can do.

Also, evidentialists hold to an improper view of General Revelation (GR). The Bible implies there are two forms of God's revelation to man. First, general revelation is God revealing Himself in nature through His creation (Psalm 19, for instance), but special revelation(SR) is God revealing Himself to His redeemed more specifically. All men know God through GR, but GR cannot show the way to salvation. If anything, GR merely declares God is and holds man accountable in judgment. Only SR can show the means of salvation and that is only contained in scripture.

Evidentialists tend to believe GR is self defining in terms of its scope and authority apart from SR. In other words, GR is an authority in and of itself, and moreover, it has sufficient authority to inform and correct SR. Thus, where GR is believed to be telling us one thing about creation, say the world is billions of years old, well then GR can inform and correct our understanding of SR where it appears to conflict with the GR. A young earth belief is considered incredible, as Greg Koukl asserts, because geologists, who are believed to be dealing with self defining absolutes like the age of rocks, tells us the world is really old. Thus, the only reasonable conclusion is that the Bible must be re-interpreted to fit the alleged absolute and undeniable conclusions of the geologists.

Again, any and all evidence is interpreted, and secular geologists regularly work from a presupposition opposed to the scripture, so all the so-called evidence will be interpreted to stand against the Bible. Furthermore, science is not infallible and what is considered self defining absolutes for understanding our world many times get overturned by later findings. Only the Bible is infallible because it is tied to the character of our infallible God. Our understanding of General revelation, then, should be conformed to the text of scripture (special revelation) not the other way around.

I'll conclude this discussion next time.

Young Earth Biblical Creationism: The Red-Headed Step Child of Contemporary Christianity

More and more I am becoming annoyed with Christian thinkers who marginalize biblical creationists who teach a young earth cosmology, i.e., the world was created in 6 ordinary, 24 hour days as Genesis 1 and 2 teach, and is no more than 6,000 to 10,000 years old. Biblical creationists are either ignored outright by the Christian community, or dismissed as cranks from out among the lunatic fringe.

I wanted to spend a couple of posts exploring why that is. Why are young earth, biblical creationists (YEC) treated like the proverbial red-headed step child by the contemporary Christian Church? Let me begin with the second group who willfully dismiss YEC as ignorant cranks.

A recent example of this attitude come from old earth, progressive creationist champion, Hugh Ross. He of course makes it his job to criticize YEC so there really is nothing new to report. However, in an interview with a Florida newspaper, he proclaimed that 6 day creationists are "anti-intellectual" and "terrified of science." Anti-intellectual and terrified of science? Perhaps he was misquoted or the reporter interviewing him took the liberty to put those words in his mouth, but the descriptions of YEC as being "anti-intellectual" and "terrified of science" does reflect Ross's perspective that they are a bunch of red-neck, "bybul thumpin" hill-billies who think science is of the devil. I find that to be an amazing comment coming from a person who excels at milking personal persecution to the fullest by constantly complaining of being called names and slandered by mean hearted YEC detractors.

But this willful dismissal of YEC by labeling the group as anti-intellectual really only serves to embarrass Ross and others from his camp. The simple fact of the matter is that their slur against YEC is entirely baseless.

This past Saturday, I attended a creation symposium where I sat through an hour long film presenting the final, published conclusions of ICR's RATE project. RATE stands for Radioisotopes and the Age of The Earth. The purpose statement from ICR's website describes the project:

One of the most significant challenges to young-earth creationism is the perception that radioisotope dating methods have established that the earth and universe are billions of years old. A group of young-earth researchers called RATE (Radioisotopes and the Age of The Earth) have banded together to investigate the basis of these claims and offer an alternative young-earth explanation. It is believed by the RATE group that processes other than radioactive decay over long periods of time may better explain the presence of secondary decay products.

Dr. Stephen Boyd, who was a team member and did a statistical analysis of the Hebrew text of Genesis 1:1 - 2:3 to determine the genre, also spoke about his part he played in the project. He listed 6 major, pioneering objectives from the overall RATE project:

1. Applying all four radioisotophic dating methods to the same rock unit. There are 4 radioisotophic methods utilized by geologists when dating rock. Normally, only one or two are applied to the same rock unit. The date that conflicts with the geologist's presuppositions about "age" are dismissed. In RATE, all 4 methods were applied and the result was a rock dated with a huge varying margin. One method would say the rock was 800 millions years old, while another method would say the same rock was 2.3 billion years old. There is something seriously wrong with such a wide margin. If the rock is a specific age, all 4 methods should have come to roughly the same conclusion.

2. An exhaustive study of polonium radiohalos in granite. Polonium is a by product of uranium decay. The tell-tale halos it leaves in the granite crystals should not be presence, but it is, indicating a much younger rock.

3. Development of an alternative geochronometer from previously ignored bi-product of radioactive decay, helium, by measuring leak rate as a function of temperature. Rocks that are billions of years old should have no helium in them. All the rocks tested did. Hence, the radioisotophic methods are not accurate.

4. Applying C-14 to dating diamonds. This had never been done before because geologists believe no diamond would contain it - the diamond is too old for there to be any C-14 present. Diamonds tested by RATE all contained C-14. A discovery that even shocked the university labs testing for it.

5. Development of a new nuclear decay models to account for accelerated decay.

6. The development of a statistical tool to classify the genre of biblical Hebrew. In this case, the creation account of Genesis 1, and it was established with out doubt to be historic narrative, not myth or poetry.

These 6 areas developed by RATE is enough to demonstrate that Ross and other old earth proponents are wrong to classify YEC as anti-intellectual and afraid of science. Sadly, though, the RATE project will be willfully dismissed by Ross and his supporters as not worth considering. That tells me such contempt goes beyond just being misinformed about YEC, but comes from an attitude of self imposed bigotry.


more to come.

Did Anyone Catch the Overt Christological Reference in the New Superman Trailer?

I just finished catching the new teaser trailer for the Superman Returns movie to be released Summer 2006. First off, what is with the title? Superman Returns? Did he leave for a trip? From the look of the trailer, I see it as a total remake starting from the beginning, so isn't the title already misinforming? Wouldn't a better title for this remake be Superman Begins, similar to the Batman Begins from last Summer?

The story link seems to suggest that Superman has returned after a long absence. Does this new Superman movie pick up where the Chris Reeve films ended? I can understand why Superman would want to leave after that disastrous 4th sequel. Remember how the wires on the flying mechanism of Superman's rival, Nuclear Man, were visible everytime he was on screen? And I never cared for Margot Kidder as Lois Lane. Even in the first film, she had this haggard, "I'm an old lush" look about her.

Anyhow, in the new teaser trailer, a narrator, who I am guessing is Superman's father, tells about how he is different from all the other people of Earth, because he is from another world. The narration is underscored by the original John William's Superman theme and it builds up to the final shot of the trailer which is Superman hovering above the Earth at the edge of space. It is the words at this point that caught my attention. The narrator says something (I am paraphrasing here): There is good in these people; that is why I am sending them my only son. I thought, "Hmmm, where have I heard that before?" A guy who is not like the rest of the people, has great powers and abilities, and is an only son sent from another world.

I am only curious if Saddleback Community Church, in conjunction with Fuller Seminary, will put out a study guide to help aide the discussions in small group Bible studies as to the Christian imagery found in the movie. Can't wait to see.

Bad Ideas

A bit of humor for the week

They must not be in the local Union

OSHA just loves these sorts of things

Somewhere, a personal injury attorney is licking his lips. "I nearly crushed myself to death under my truck with a homemade jack, and Larry Parker got me 2.3 million dollars."

Hey, if it works and gets the job done...