Creation Science and Flood Models
One of the common false accusations against Christians and biblical creationists is that we use "GodDidIt" as our primary argument for creation, the Genesis Flood, and so on. Not hardly! Anyone serious about learning what creationists actually believe and teach can check out the major creation science ministries (several of which are frequently linked on this site). A seeker will learn that while we believe that God "did it", creationary scientists want to know how God commenced to doing certain things.
Like their secular counterparts, scientists who believe the Bible have hypotheses and models to try and explain the historical science of their views. Also like their counterparts, creationists are not in lockstep and have disagreements about various models. Further, secular scientists have their materialistic presuppositions upon which they base their models, and creationary scientists hold to the inerrant Word of God for their presuppositions; everyone has a final starting point.
Some folks consider their models to be sacred writ and don't cotton to having their views challenged. That is wrong, especially since no model is perfect having strengths and weaknesses, and some data fit more than one model. Several creationary proposals have been discarded over the years and rejected with further scientific analyses, and some are being reconsidered. There are models regarding the Genesis Flood that are strong, and better explain scientific evidence than deep time uniformitarian conjectures.
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| Credit: Pixabay / PIRO4D |
Some folks consider their models to be sacred writ and don't cotton to having their views challenged. That is wrong, especially since no model is perfect having strengths and weaknesses, and some data fit more than one model. Several creationary proposals have been discarded over the years and rejected with further scientific analyses, and some are being reconsidered. There are models regarding the Genesis Flood that are strong, and better explain scientific evidence than deep time uniformitarian conjectures.
... where the Bible is genuinely silent, we are free to use science to help build models to help elucidate the clear teachings of Scripture. But these models are just man-made—they must never be given the same authority as Scripture. In any case, science is always changing, so being married to a model today will probably result in being widowed tomorrow. Worse, if the Bible is too tied up with a model later discarded, many will think that the Bible itself was refuted (cf. the church’s adoption of Aristotelian cosmology v Galileo).To read the entire article, click on "Flood models and biblical realism".
Model-building should be an example of the ministerial use of science.
In contrast, the magisterial use of science, practised by all compromisers on Genesis, overrules the clear teaching of the Bible to come up with a meaning inconsistent with sound hermeneutics. Instead of the Reformation principle of Sola Scriptura (Scripture alone), this is Scriptura sub scientia (Scripture below science). With these principles, some popular ideas can be examined.