We're all pagans now?

The website of the Sydney Anglical Diocese features the 'acknowledgement of country' effectively a paean to the paganised 'spirits of land and ancestors'.

I am astonished that a prominent Christian church would advertise pagan ideas.

 

Now I wonder if the Sydney Anglican disparagement of the direct reading of Genesis 1 might play into this.

 

Cutting off God from our material world and active obvious presence in our flow of history must make him less palpable (not palpable at all).

 

It must reduce his closeness and real-ness to some extent, and must make him less present to those who do this. He becomes figurative, part of a tale rather than part of our history and our life-world and one becomes de-sensitised to his glory and wonder.

Days ain't days, so God ain't God.

Comments on a video by William Lane Craig - Creationism is an Embarrassment:

Integrate the Bible with the modern science worldview? A 'worldview' is the foundation of one's religion. The 'worldview' of modern science is metaphysical naturalism: a closed order of cause and effect, not subject to any external or prior factors or actors. Yet the Scriptures are wholly predicated upon the priority of word over cosmos, its energy field and its material. Information before matter. Indeed, science is based on the coherent objectivity and causal rationality set out in Genesis 1-3:8.

Modern science is nevertheless methodologically biblical theist: Genesis shows in its tersely objective list form (compare Numbers 7, for example) a rational causality, which science relies upon. The cosmos itself springs from the close couple of God's word and its effect in our phenomenal world, with no intervening actors, principles or 'forces'. As the western world view drifts to a materialistic monism (expressed, for instance in Evolutionary conceptions of being) the ability to do science will erode. We see the skirt edges of this in some current rhetoric that prizes 'gender' positions over mathematics, for example.

AND, reply on 'days'

The days could not be anything but days as we know them. They are objectively calibrated in a culture-independent and terse phrase as 'evening and morning' type days. If they are not regular days, then their theological impact is destroyed and they dehistoricise Genesis 1. The passage is written to obstruct pagan or mythical interpretations and the days place the creation in the continuity of the history that we are in and that extends back to the God who speaks. They show God is present, not distant; communicating, not enigmatic; loving, not indifferent; intentional not capricious; purposeful not reactive. The days finally demonstrate that reality is grounded in God's word (ref John 1:1-10, etc.) and the creation is thus existentially grounded in what is really real. No days, then we have either a platonic/deist god who does not connect with his creation, or a god who/that is indistinguishable from his/its creation, reifying monism in all its glum dullness and diffusing god to meaninglessness. The latter is evident in both Theistic Evolution and to a lesser extent in Long Age Creationism.

William Lane Craig - Creationism is an Embarrassment https://youtu.be/pC9wokZGL8w?t=381

Letter to Zaphod

This letter wasn't really sent to Zaphod Beeblebrox, but to a tutor in a Christian school. Nor did I write it. It was composed by a pal.

Dear Zaphod,

Having been a Christian for many years - this being against all odds given my family lineage – and now well into my maturity, it never ceases to amaze me that Christians are often oblivious to the Evil One’s machinations. Sometimes his intrigues are subtle, on other occasions far less so. (In my extensive travels and working life overseas I have on several occasions witnessed first-hand his unambiguous malevolence.) One thing I can tell you is that whenever a man thinks he has steeled himself sufficiently against his wiles or, arguably worse still, ignores his influence, that is when the man is most vulnerable to his influence. For us Christians it often doesn’t begin or end with any overt signalling that he is present or even operating; it is his secretive, secondary layer of attack which charms a man to a parlous falsehood.  Falsehoods are always dangerous; it’s just a matter of degree. (Don’t forget Paul recognised him as “the god of this age” and the “unseen ruler of this world”!) Let me illustrate my point through analogy.

A man borrows a car from a friend and within a few metres of moving off he realises the brakes are deficient. He returns the vehicle to his friend as he understands that continuing his journey will be hazardous, if not fatal. However, let’s imagine that the car has solid braking and so the man drives on. After some time it begins to rain and on approaching a bend in the road, he eases up on the throttle to compensate for the turn and poor weather conditions. What he doesn’t realise is that his tyres are perilously bald and no matter whether he brakes (which would be entirely inappropriate once in the arc of a corner and given the wet road) or not, he is destined to accident.

My point is obvious: A man can believe he has compassed the entire terrain but has submerged something of clear importance, relegating it to a stumbling block status.

Let me be bold. Contrary to the oft-repeated misconception, creation is a salvation issue. Get the Creator even a little wrong here, and everything comes asunder, including all that our unique soteriological arguments’ purpose.

It is oddly naïve to believe that error, even if conceived in ignorance, attracts no further casualty against truth. Error, particularly one so integral to God’s primary office of Creator, can affect nothing and be contained to itself. Error, like disease, grows and spreads and ignoring it by, well, turning one’s back to it, makes the Evil One extremely satisfied as his work is already near completion. C.S. Lewis, somewhere in his Screwtape Letters I believe, alludes to this zero-sum outcome.

You claimed in your mail that you “have no problem with a young-earth interpretation of Genesis [or an old-earth]”, as though truth somehow depends on your particular state of mind and hermeneutical preference and not on what actually happened. Well before I completed my Philosophy degree I was aware of the ubiquity of post-modernal epistemology in our media and political environment. What I was not prepared for was its controlling influence in the Church and, more parochially, its effect on university Christian groups’ thinking when I was an undergraduate. Far more than an occasional meme is the eisegetical defence “I have no problem with God’s creating in 6 days [but I prefer to believe that God did it over eons].” Textual considerations are set aside and, though it is not recognised, a priority is given to feelings or personal indulgence as the controlling “epistemic”, rather than God’s Word, revealed to us by His Spirit, undergirded by His written word.

Your belief – and it is merely a belief, not knowledge according to His revelation – that both a young world and an ancient world can be accommodated is an egregious error. First, it falls foul of the Law of non-Contradiction. That is to say, one thing cannot be another mutually exclusive thing. Second, it is claiming that God’s revelation about what and how he created is nugatory. That is, the Holy Spirit, despite textual statements to the contrary, has not only failed to impart unambiguous and accurate information about God’s creative works, but he has serially misled men like myself who read the Bible and conclude that it is unequivocal God created quickly and the world, for both textual and scientific reasons, screams young, young, young. (Again, the Law of non-Contradiction applies: either I am wrong and you’re right or its contrary is true.)

The yardstick must be independent from the things being measured. The only yardstick we have concerning the beginning is God’s Word, not our relativistic measuring tools. Zaphod, you are not at liberty to take Exodus 31:17 any way your feelings dictate (after all, what verses can you point to that unambiguously tell us that the world is old?). It’s neither biblical nor according to a Christian epistemology to do so. I fear, and know, that teaching young people that the creation toledoth is not a toledoth (Genesis 2:3) is a serious dereliction of your duty to instruct the young.

I can recognise when a man does engage with an argument. I don’t think you really have with mine. That’s disappointing as I don’t converse with people on such important matters in order to hear myself talk. You’ve relegated Creation to a bin of the unimportant; I on the other hand have argued that the issue cannot be separated from salvation. The substance, the nuts and bolts, of the topic form a whole.

The issue you’ve brushed aside is that you, without any explanation, hold God could have taken eons to bring the whole creation to its completion. What you didn’t address is the purpose for God’s taking such an enormous amount of time when he could have done it far more quickly, as intelligent beings tend to aim toward. There is a point at which God’s taking eons becomes God’s not being there and time obfuscates or even erases God’s actions and footprint. God and Time become indistinguishable to the extent that God’s presence is invisible. Do you really think that young people don’t go on to reason to this conclusion given the vagueness and two-bob-each-way stand you’ve claimed is a logical possibility?

Over my working life I’ve worked in factories, picked fruit, taught in seriously prestigious schools, taught in underground schools where the pupils belong to violent street gangs, worked with murderers and other psychopathic patients…but I think working in cocoon environments, like Chatterhouse, insulate you from what people really are about, what they go on to become and, far more importantly, what they believe about the world.

Screwtape instructed his nephew with the following advice: “[R]emember, the only thing that matters is the extent to which you separate the man from the Enemy. [It’s the] cumulative effect to edge the man away from the Light and out into the Nothing…Indeed the safest road to Hell is the gradual one – the gentle slope, soft underfoot, without sudden turnings, without milestones, without signposts.” Encourage a man (or, in your case, a Chatterhouse lad) that he is at liberty to impose meaning upon a biblical text which already has its meaning well and truly contained within it, and you’ve begun to redirect his attention from the Light back to himself.

Bernard Williams, writing in his book on Descartes, stated “one false belief can be the condition of my acquiring or retaining many other false beliefs, through its logical relations to them [and one way this may occur is] in some holistic adjustment of my beliefs to produce a coherent whole, misguidedly adjust my beliefs to some false assumption, and thus make everything worse.” I suggest this is exactly what you’ve done by saying that a young earth and an old one have equal epistemic value. Claiming God took ages to bring the Creation to this present state comes with much unwanted baggage and some terribly uncomfortable conclusions directly related to soteriological concerns.

Here’s a neat historical summary of what the Church did believe, contrary to people like Hugh Ross, John Dickson and a plethora of other heterodox have claimed.

https://www.robibradshaw.com/chapter3.htm

Methodological Theism?

We are often told that science proceeds on the basis of an underlying 'methodological naturalism'. Not so, to my mind. It is dominated today by philosophical naturalism, but it depends on methodological (Christian) theism to make the reliable presumption that the universe is amenable to rational examination and that our rationality is congruent with the nature of the universe. For these reasons science flowered in the soil of modern Christian thought (that typically took Genesis 1 seriously). I think we are seeing science under attack today, with the shrill dominance of 'critical theory' so called, and a growing 'identity' based subjectivism a growing undercurrent in all cultural streams. Both turn their back on the idea of rational examination and methodological objectivism.

Why did God create in 'days'?

Comment on: https://creation.com/the-creation-hyperbola

I think there are a couple of possibilities in God's creating over six days as we experience them (very clear from the 'evening and morning' definition of 'day'). Firstly, God demonstrates that, while the eternal creator, he is present and active in the world that we live in and is created as the stage for our communion with him. God is 'here', not distant. He is in our 'space' not some ethereal unobtainable place that is incomprehensible to us (pace Plato, Aristotle and pagan stories in general). Each day shows a sequence of events that commence with God's will: with 'mind', and result in an effect, which God then evaluates. He demonstrates that mind (a person) is the source, and not things visible, as per Hebrews 11:3, and each stage of creation is complete, established to get on with life and its cycles of reproduction, ecological adjustment, and cultural development (for man). He also demonstrates a creation where rational causality operates. Finally God demonstrates that he is in fellowship with his creature-in-his-image, reinforcing the 'imageness' that is exhibited in creative work: mind applied to the creation. He adopts the same tempo that we are constrained by the daily cycle that dominates our lives. God demonstrates that he knows our limitation but nevertheless exhibit his capability. Thus he shares, fellowships, despite our finitude, making sense of the 'imageness' that allows the fellowship.

 

If God had created instantly, it would seem to make God one with creation: monism. If he 'created' through evolution (over long periods) it would seem to absorb him into the creation, making him included in it.Either way a creator disconnected from the creation and its creatures. We know from Genesis 3:8 that this we have a fellowshipping God, not a god like the pagans imagine, distant, impersonal, impassible.

The creation in 6 days shows God separate from the creation and its creator. He demonstrates this by describing the way he created. All of God's acts in the Bible are public, and they are all about the fellowship (or not) of man and God. The creation account is similarly public. We weren't there, so the next best thing is its description showing it was done in terms of the world that we are in. The creation account, unlike any pagan account, is clearly in and about *this* world, not some other figmentary world of which we can know nothing and cannot make sense of in our lives denominated by the passing of time, location in history and setting in place.

A fistful of books

I've been looking for concise books that would introduce the main issues of origins for (particularly older high school age) Christians.

I contacted a couple of creation organisations, and got either directed to their website, or recommendations for massive tomes, or nothing!

Then, in a recent 'specials' leaflet from one such organisation I saw what looked like the books, and bought them.

All good.

Here they are:

The Dawkins Proof by Barns

Taking aspects of Dawkins' book The God Delusion and uses them to provide evidence for God that Dawkins must rely on to prosecute parts of his argument. Irritatingly quotes from the AV, for some reason. NASB would be far better.

Evidence for Creation by de Rosa

A brief but sufficient survey of the basic evidence for Special Creation.

Six-Day Creation by Burney

Examination of the defined duration fiat creation of the Bible. Another irritation, he adopts the tedious Puritan authorial habit of enumerating points in ordinals (firstly.....sixthly.... ninthly...), when the modern pattern of simply numbering paragraphs would suffice.

World Winding Down by Wieland

Overview of the Second Law of Thermodynamics and its application to information theory.

Did God Use Evolution? by Gitt

Another tedious presentation, yet with good content from a largely scientific point of view. He doesn't really deal with the theological reasons very well, although he does touch on them relevantly.

Foolish Faith by Judah Etinger

An apologetics summary covering origins, the Bible and faith.

What is design?

Design naturally implies teleology: to achieve a future state to meet a prior purpose.

Design can therefore be characterised in these terms, but what about design itself.

Thus this comment to a video by Behe:

I think his definition of design needs work.

Design features the bringing together of components, whether they be parts, assemblies, systems, or systems-of-systems to interface in a way not predictable by the components themselves. That is, that cannot arise from the operation of the component taken in isolation.

With parsimony this is the mark of mind. Coordinated across components it denies random 'trials'.

The other problem that foolish 'component' level natural selection skips over is the concomitant change in interlocking supporting systems, themselves not dependent on the primary function in question, but are essential for the function in question.

The eye for instance. To work it would need continuous congruent changes in the skeletal system, muscular system, autonomic nervous system, and its component parts, the endocrine system, the brain's 'software' to turn the electronic signals into smoothed images, the balance system and its multiple parts, the blood supply, the operations of eyelids, tears, the presence of eyebrows, motor coordination (e.g. for throwing a ball at a target).

All these complex systems, sub-systems and 'systems-of-systems' (system congregates) must be coordinated and in step to allow the eye to function and to be 'selectable'. Darwinism is early-Victorian gross morphology fantasy that is at best naive, at worst ignorant, implausible and finally impossible.

What's wrong with theistic-evolution?

What we need is a simple, clear statement that goes to the heart of the question.

Here it is:

Theistic evolution merges the creator with the creation to the point of indistinguishability.

The creator is taken into the creation and rather then 'theise' the creation, is engulfed and depersonalised by evolution. He becomes invisible and subject to nature, tinkering with it, not defining it.

It represents a direct contradiction of all that Genesis 1 stands for:

• creator emphatically distinguished from creation
• creator creates thoughtfully and in order
• creator completes the creation as a functioning thing.

It also represents a direct contradiction for what Genesis 3:8 teaches:

• creator seeks fellowship with his creation as a person to other persons.
  

Floccinaucinihilipilfied

 

A tale of two Jeeps

There were two blokes, each driving a WW2 vintage US Army Jeep. You know, the simple 4wd workhorse of the US Army in WW2 and the Korean war.

One commentator regarded the Jeep as so useful that it was the weapon that won the war!

Good little truck. Could go anywhere in simple discomfort at a top speed of about 45 mph.

That suited bloke 1. It very much did not suit bloke 2.

B2 wanted a better Jeep, but could not afford a Landcruiser.

He decided that he would gradually change over parts of his Jeep to Landcruiser parts and that would get him where he wanted to be, only very slowly. No problemo. He had plenty of time, but no money.

The first thing he saw was the Landcruiser wheels: lovely large diameter, big rimmed wheels. He couldn't really get them to fit the Jeep, so had to jerry-fix the axles with very extended hubs. And that only worked for the rear wheels. It wrecked the steering on the front axle, so he stuck with the orignal Jeep wheels here.

The wheels at the rear stressed the suspension and the brakes failed to work properly, or even consistently. The stability of the Jeep seemed better, and the higher ground clearance was useful. But he soon discovered that the price he paid was less stability on lateral inclines. Very bad because in the bush it was mostly lateral inclines.

Anyway, B2 persisted.

At his next meeting he pulled in alongside B1's Jeep, in the service station. B1 was just getting in. He'd finished his lunch, showered, changed clothes, visited the dry-cleaner and had some dental work done. Even at 45 mph he'd arrived hours before B2 who now had to travel quite slowly as a result of his Jeep being unbalanced, far less maneuverable and a real pain to steer with the rear wheels wanting to track independently of the steered direction.

B2 spotted some Landcruiser seats and an very new looking dashboard in the back of the service station. He tossed out the Jeep seats and replaced them, bolting the dashboard to the firewall of the Jeep. In the dark it sort of looked OK.

The seat rails didn't meet the Jeep's anchor points, so he had to bolt them to the floor pan. It now had too many holes and was less rigid than before. The rear wheel tracking problem got worse. None of the instruments on the dashboard worked, of course, and the stereo, sat nav and airconditioning controls were useless, naturally.

B2 potted along, now he could only max out the speed at 25 mph, and the floor pan was too weak to carry the normal load.

But there was a benefit to slower travel. He could see more easily his surrounds. At the side of the road he spotted an very  new looking Toyota Landcruiser V8 engine and gearbox, all attached.

Wow! He tried to  fit them into his Jeep engine bay. No go, alas! No room at all. The gearbox would sort of fit, but the anchors were wrong and any connection to the drive shaft would be another patchup-not-real-good job.

He put the engine and gearbox onto the load tray of the Jeep.

It's maximum speed was now 15 kph. He was ho ping to find more spares over time to be able to fit the engine, airconditioning and instrumentation to the correct wiring loom. He'd grow old waiting.

B1 could still get around, carry loads and be there on time.

And therein lies the challenge of gradual improvement of an functional efficient system by random incremental change in its features. An integrated set of sub-systems with coherent and parsimonious interfaces is not improved by random changes. It is degraded.

Here's an example in real life of what has to be done to improve a vehicle by marrying it to another.

It took engineering, it wasn't a piece of 'gross morphology cut and paste, it was re-engineering all over the place.

Are mutations as evolution’s engine?

Putting it simply, or more technically

No!

YouTube and theology

It's not often one finds profound theology in a YouTube video about glitter bombs, but, here it is:

Logos is acknowledged as instrumentally effective even for a person (made in the image of the great Logos) today: “if you have an idea for something and it doesn't exist,  you can will it into existence”: an engineer speaking, knowing that logos is primary, techne is merely incidental, but as the scriptures tell us, with unlimited capability, techne is unnecessary!

Without days, watch out; you might end up without God.

Alan Shlemon makes an acute observation in his piece on the march of world views: from Theism to Naturalism via Deism.

The slide to Deism, in my view, is abetted by the rejection of the real-world significance of the 'real-world' succession of God's creative acts within our-world days.

The point of the sequence of days-as-we-know-them, as I've written, is to place God as real in our real world. Thus he is the real and relating God who has created the setting for real fellowship in real terms between his creature-in-his-image and himself.

The simple connection point of using our life-world terms (days) for his actions drives this in concrete terms.

God shows that he acts in the same history that we live in. He created the setting for that history and remains active and present in it, demonstrating this from his very first 'relationship' acts. There is no disjunct in God's relating presence, acts or commitments from the beginning of creation to its conclusion in the new creation.

The Birkett-Payne fallacy

Many years ago a colleague had a discussion with a Kirsty Birkett and Tony Payne at Matthias Media, as he recalls.

He was propounding a view of Genesis 1's timing that was in line with the historic Christian position, as do I.

Birkett and Payne considered that they rebutted this view in their contrary propounding of the Framework Hypothesis. As we know, the Framework Hypothesis is a bit of theological confection designed to suppress the real-world connection of God's creation with...well...God.

Their view was that, finally, my colleague didn't know the meaning of Genesis 1 and they didn't know, therefore, he was wrong.

The Birkett-Payne fallacy is this: because I don't know something, you don't know it either.

You will often find this fallacy played out by your charges if you are a pre-school teacher.

Upon hearing of this fallacy, my thoughts in this context turned immediately to 2 Timothy 3:16, and I reflected on Colossians 2:2, in hand with John 1:1-3, and Colossians 1:16-17, thence on to Colossians 2:2-10.

There!

Days are just days...get used to it.

In a recent article I read that seeks to rebut the views of Hugh Ross and other 'old earth' 'creationists', much time was spent, as is usual, on textual issues, without touching the important theology.

Ross et al skip over an important theological implication of the sequence of ordinary days in the Genesis 1 account. It has a general timing implication, of course, and that timing teaches us about the order, dependencies and nature of causality in the creation (that is, being directly connected to the word of God).

It also has an important implication for the relationship of God and man.

It characterizes the immanence of God and shows that God is active and present in the 'life-world' that we are constrained by: he is God 'here and now' in the world and showing this by creating in the terms of the world that we know and are bound by.

His work is timed as is our life, and in the only tempo that is unmistakable across history and cultures: day by day. It uses the categories, constraints and historical flow of our world: driving the point that it is done in the very same world that we live in. The world of creation and the world of our lives as its stewards are the same world. This is the unmistakable thrust of the passage. It shows movingly that God's domain overlaps with ours: heaven and earth shown in spiritual connection. He demonstrates that he is with us and proximate, not remote and inaccessible. Note, God shows this, he doesn't merely assert it, but gives the grounding reality that establishes this (I am thus reminded of Chekhov: "Don’t tell me the moon is shining; show me the glint of light on broken glass."). This is echoed in Genesis 3:8, but with great sadness here as A&E hide from God and repudiate relationship with him.

All in all the Genesis 'days' show the creation within the flow of biblical history and the continuity of God's word, action in creation and our experience of that creation as the 'creatures in his image' in a continuous isotropic fabric. Creation is in the time and space that we are in. It is continuous with our world-experience, and God's presence is thus continuous with the same biblical history that connects us to the seed of Genesis 2 and his redemption. We are thus demonstrated to be part of the continuous ontology of God's creation, and the continuity of our genesis and the history of the 'seed' of Eve is intermingled from the very start, and reprised in the genealogies replete in the Biblical collection.

Denying the direct information in Genesis 1 places the creation in another time and space from ours, it inserts a disjunct in biblical history, severing us from this astonishing and gripping intimacy between God and man-in-his-image, mythologising it, deracinating it and disempowering it, and all to save materialism!

Extraordinary claims

“Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence” was a phrase made popular by Carl Sagan who reworded Laplace's principle, which says that “the weight of evidence for an extraordinary claim must be proportioned to its strangeness” (Gillispie et al., 1999). [refer to this article]

Now, here's an extraordinary claim: all life as we know it has descended from an initial microscopic organism (just comprised of one cell) through random variation and environmental selection (I prefer 'environmental' selection as a term to 'natural selection'. The word 'natural' smuggles in a higher level belief that is not warranted).

This is an extraordinary claim, and it becomes more extraordinary the more we learn about the cell, microbiological processes, protein 'machines' and the information that runs the cell. It is a claim beyond extraordinary and flies against all we know about formal systems.

The basic extraordinary claim

The basic extraordinary claim is that more specialised organisms arise from random errors in complex, finely tuned living close coupled interlocking systems of systems that are preserved, propagated and accumulated against environmental pressure to result in completely novel systems, body forms and functions.

This is first asserted, then assumed. It is never demonstrated, let alone 'proven'.

Typically it is merely propagandised by illustrations of creatures reconstructed from fossils tendentiously arranged in a series.

At a more sophisticated level it is 'proven' by gene sequencing and other microbiological comparisons. But this is vulnerable to the fallacy of affirming the consequent. A first-year science undergrad error. Much more needs to be proved than taking the observations of organisms and reversing them up a steep slope into a stupendously extraordinary hypothesis.

So, Mr evolutionist. Present your extraordinary evidence.

....long period of silence follows.

Moreland on apologetics

Moreland has an interesting and largely helpful talk on apologetics on Utube.

There are a few points that I want to enlarge upon at the given time points:

24:41 - in his list of examples he mentions 'science' telling us about unused frog organs. This sounds a bit like the shallow darwinism of 'vestigial' organs.

38:12 - "John loves Mary" an example of complex ordered symbols denoting language. What JP leaves out is that this complex ordered set only contains information in the English language. His parallel to genetic information would be strengthened by this. The gene has complex specified order. The order is nothing to do with chemistry as all sorts of orders are possible on the same chemistry. Its a code. But a code can only be read in the language of that code. Language is immaterial and independent of its coding.  So we have order > reader > code > language > information.

41:00 also relies on this concept.

53:14 - heaven tourism has to deal with Hebrews 9:27. Also Luke 16:30 bears considering.

1:07:12 - evolution is open to fundamental criticism such that it is on shaky ground. It poses no threat to the information in Genesis 1 because it has no explanation for any of its claims or conjectures. Behe's work is strongly critical of it at every level. Too often the obvious changes in creatures ('evolution' as  mere change within a kind of organism) is conflated with information-increasing change driving organism variety across 'kinds'.

He also mentions somewhere (found later; 5:42) - I couldn't find it in my brief scrolling through the talk - that science tells us that amphibians came from fish, or similar. Of course, it doesn't; it hypothesizes on a number of contestable grounds, and like most of evolution commits the fallacy of affirming the consequent. Besides it does not tell us how. No analysis of the microbiology that could achieve this within the combinatorial space of the required chemical and genetic changes is given.

One error in the talk is at 49:39. CDs are optical, not magnetic. But the illustration still holds water.

The work of Stephen Meyer, and on theistic evolution, Jonathan Wells and William Dembski are good references on this point, along with John Sandford.

What creation does

 My letter to Wayne Grudem

Dear Dr Grudem,

I was eager to watch the YouTube video of your talk at Biola ( https://youtu.be/rUPbMmfAp8M ) on Genesis 1 defying its corruption by theistic evolutionist tendentiousness.

I know you only had a short time, but there's at least two hours that could be spent to examine the theology that comes out of Genesis 1-3. This is an area of thought that needs the attention of evangelicals. A theology will  answer the 'so what' of defence of the historicity of Genesis 1-3.

Firstly, if I may, a couple of comments on the structure of Genesis 1. I know it is grammatically historical, and it also reads like 'dead-pan' history. It has none of the arch imprecision or time and place or existential discontinuity of myth.

From my studies (at masters level) in computer science (not my major, mind you), the narrative of the days looks like a BC Normal Form data structure, 'days' are the key, each has a count field, a definition field (evening and morning, as a calibration of their duration), a description field and an end of record field. All very economical of space and parsimoniously precise.

Another aside. People worry about incest in the first generation. Not because of the law, but because of biology. However, we can assume the gene pool of A&E was perfect, eliminating that quibble.

The major concern we should have of the three theistic-evolutionists you mentioned in your talk is their implicit philosophical idealism: this results in God communicating what is by a 'story' of what is not: that is, not true to events in our time and place (I avoid 'space' so as not to confuse this with physics). Therefore they must hold that something else really happened, not what is stated, and that it is this something else (evolution!) that defines reality and our experience of it. Thus we end up with both an ontology and an ethics denominated by chance (despite the warning of Isaiah 65:11, for instance). Yet this does not reflect our innate aspiration, or our experience of our own interaction with the world. Our 'word' is reliably casual in achieving effects. No one takes their car to an 'evolutionary mechanic'!

The theology of Genesis 1 starts, in my thinking, with God's creation over a series of days. Days are how we experience life. Specificity of place and time denominates our 'life-world'

Genesis 1 shows that God is active and present in our life-world, working in the circumscriptions of time and place that we have, by God's grace. God is near, as Jeremiah 23:23 reminds us, and not far off. God moves the creation by logical stages from the creation of energy (light) to the completed habitable setting of our fellowship with him: where, to borrow from N. T. Wright (ironically) heaven and earth are shown to 'come together', to overlap, or to become coincident existentially as God forms us in his image and speaks to us (A&E) within our place.

There is an astonishing intimacy that God shows us in coming into our constrained world, it's terms, categories and how it works with reliable causality showing us its nature, and to create it for us to bear his image and be his people in a commutative relationship (relationship expressed mutually).

There is nothing of the myth here: God is not remote or unapproachable, he is not restrained in some place of which we are unaware. Nor is he unknowable and depersonalised. He is here, in our life-space, being the relating God in community with his creatures, showing and being love.

God also creates in a rational, causally reliable continuity from Logos (he speaks) to effect (techne) making our episteme also reliable and truthful. This is not the 'world' of the Hindu or materialist illusion. It is the world where we directly and reliably experience what truly is. There is no platonic, or mythic 'is' that we need to refer to, there is only what comes from God's word (Hebrews 11:3 reminds us).

The TE theologians must split God off from his creation and sever his intimate connection with the concrete reality he creates for our habitation and pleasure, and for communion with him. They sever God's creating actions from the flow of history and its continuous ontology in which he overcomes the fall and brings about his Kingdom, yet the Bible brackets this flow of history with two great conjunctions of Heaven and Earth, both in terms of our existential place in a real reality. These are the Creation, and the New Creation, with the peak event where this also happens in the Incarnation.

These theologians  place their theology of creation in Genesis 3:8b: they hide from God. Evolution starts here: it's the means, along with the long fantasy ages of materialism and paganism ( https://creation.com/the-long-story-of-long-ages ) to separate God and his creatures. Indeed this was expressly the mission of Hutton, and carried out by Lyell ( https://creation.com/huttons-a-priori-commitment-to-materialism ). Our TE brothers advance this mission.

God is a good author

 A bad author doesn't show his characters in play, he only tells us (e.g. "Eric was a ratbag").

A good author shows us his characters in play through dialog, action and circumstances (e.g. "As Eric mounted the stairs he noticed the edge of Gwendolen's shawl dragging on the floor in front of him. He put his foot on it.")

God is a good author.

The creation account shows us.

The folklorists think he's a bad author, and can only tell us and not show us.

They think that the creation account is about something else. And so it tells us noting about something, but something about nothing.

The Genesis telescope

We've all heard the hoary old error that there are two versions of creation in Genesis: chapters 1 and 2.

Part of the problem we modern readers have is that the Bible was not written in 'chapters'. It was written in 'books'. Any chapter divisions are artificial, and as they say in legal documents, the headings (the chapters) do not form part of the contract.

Ignore the chapters, and the verses. They are just a location grid imposed on the organic unity of the books.

Besides, if one want's to talk about separate creation accounts in Genesis, I count three:

Genesis 1:1, 2

Genesis 1:3-2:4, and

Genesis 2:5-25.

However, not so.

This passage (Genesis 1-3) is composed like a journalist's telescope (or how I was taught to write governmental documents). It moves from the chief message to a sequence of more detailed elaboration.

Genesis 1:1, 2 is the grand revelation of God's creating.

Genesis 1:3-2:4 is about the cosmos in detail in terms, and elaborated on earth itself: the home of man-in-God's-image.

Genesis 2:4-3:8 focuses on man-in-God's-image and the relationship with God, coming to a jarring climax and crushing disruption in 3:8.

3:8 shows that this is the domain of God in fellowship with Man: God seeks Man. Man hides from God. This verse is where the idea of material evolution springs from: creation without God, without Word, wisdom, knowledge or understanding (Proverbs 3:19, 20); without purpose and without persons a creation where Man hides from God and puts Fortune and Destiny in his place (Isaiah 65:11),

The remainder of 3 is the denouement: man has rejected God. God leaves man to confront his choice, but yet acts to save (3:21).

All of this is the creation account. It tells us how and why we have arrived where we are.

Get crackin' Joe

 Letter to a theologian:

I've read a number of your pieces on the interpretation of Genesis 1, and while I largely agree with the position that you defend (for example, against the so-called 'framework hypothesis'), I cannot recall any conservative theology about Genesis 1.

God created in six days. So?

There's a vast theological richness in these short verses that we need to explicate. The fantasists (who engage in a view that Genesis presents fantasy, not fact) have no theology and can have no theology, because they claim that Genesis tells us nothing in the real world and therefore can mean nothing in the real world. But we do.

For example, the 6 days of creation are vital to our understanding of who God is, what the creation is and our relationship to both.

Above all God working in 6 days is not about duration or lighting conditions, per se, but a demonstration that he is present and active in the world he created for the congress of God and man. He is here, able to achieve his ends, working as we do, with the constraint of time that fixes the tempo of our lives. God shows that he works Real-ly in the space-time-event-material cosmos. He doesn't work in  Platonic forms, he doesn't work in symbols, or in some remote unreachable Mt Olympus, but, as Jeremiah teaches. He is hear, and he shows it

Of course, if the days are merely a 'framework' one has to wonder what they are a framework of; because if nothing related happened, then the framework suggests that God tells us what didn't happen to inform us about something unstated that did happen. Worse even than gnostics!

Lots flow from God's domain overlapping his created domain of time and space, where he demonstrates a collocation of persons: he the divine, we the contingent, but loved and in his image. Word is prior to material, minds are real and can know and be known, our from God's word to its result in the production of our world and our experience of our world in consistent rational categories is of a continuous ontology breeding a real epistemic. We can know things truly and act on that knowledge reliably.