Christians, Compromise, Secularists and the Age of the Earth
We expect secularists to promote the view that the earth is millions of years old. Unfortunately, many Christians are willing to go along with that view as well. Some of these Christians are active compromisers, accepting the dubious science and bad theology of people like "progressive creationist" Hugh Ross (among others). What is worse is that many of them actively oppose those of us who hold to a biblical creationist view. There are others who just agree with the scientists and liberal theologians because they simply have not bothered to investigate. Oh, we can explain things, but we cannot make people understand them or accept the explanations; their inability (or unwillingness) to understand is not our fault.
Many will consider the age of the earth as a fact, even though this "fact" has changed several times. At The Question Evolution Project on Facebook, we receive comments like, "...it is proven that the Earth is greater than 6,000 years old. ... Do you understand the Earth is greater than 6,000 years? Kens [sic, meaning Ken Ham's] argument is to bring up some faults of various dating methods. However, did you know that many of these methods can be cross confirmed with other methods and data to come up with a generally 'reliable' result". I do not know if the writer is a Christian or not, nor does it matter in this context. The point is that this was primarily a statement of faith.
There are many methods of obtaining an age of the earth, and the ones that do not fit uniformitarian preconceptions of billions of years are rejected. Both secularists and Christians are uninformed about the flaws in secular dating methods and of the many other dating methods about the age of the earth. It is in the best interests of people on both sides of the issue to become better informed about the science behind them — especially the material that creationary scientists present that is often ignored or suppressed by evolutionists. More importantly to Christians is to consider the theological implications of compromising with biased secular views.
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Many will consider the age of the earth as a fact, even though this "fact" has changed several times. At The Question Evolution Project on Facebook, we receive comments like, "...it is proven that the Earth is greater than 6,000 years old. ... Do you understand the Earth is greater than 6,000 years? Kens [sic, meaning Ken Ham's] argument is to bring up some faults of various dating methods. However, did you know that many of these methods can be cross confirmed with other methods and data to come up with a generally 'reliable' result". I do not know if the writer is a Christian or not, nor does it matter in this context. The point is that this was primarily a statement of faith.
There are many methods of obtaining an age of the earth, and the ones that do not fit uniformitarian preconceptions of billions of years are rejected. Both secularists and Christians are uninformed about the flaws in secular dating methods and of the many other dating methods about the age of the earth. It is in the best interests of people on both sides of the issue to become better informed about the science behind them — especially the material that creationary scientists present that is often ignored or suppressed by evolutionists. More importantly to Christians is to consider the theological implications of compromising with biased secular views.
Most readers and commenters to this site generally agree with and use CMI’s arguments for refuting evolution. However, whenever articles are published that specifically deal with the age of the earth issue, many Christians seem only too willing to accommodate an old-earth view without really understanding where the idea of millions of years comes from. Why do we think that they don’t understand? Because most times they fail to engage with the actual content of a ‘young-earth’ article, but instead defer to a type of belief that the age of the earth is settled or somehow proven scientifically. In essence, they defer to or trust in scientists who believe this. Suprisingly, they still prefer to do this even after the theological reasons are carefully laid out as to why the millions of years damage the actual Gospel, meaning they actually defer to secular science.You are encouraged to finish reading "Geologists are not biased?"
In this vein, Paul M. wrote to us (as many did) to comment on Gary Bates’ article An ‘old-earth’ answer provides only problems. Gary’s replies are interspersed below.