AN OLD-EARTH CHRISTIAN AT A YOUNG-EARTH CONFERENCE This is the first in a series of articles about a young-Earth creationism (YEC) conference held in Bozeman, Montana in April, 2016. 1. This article – Bozeman creation conference preview and expectations 2. Does Genesis Really Matter? – Yes Genesis does matter, whether a Christian believes in a young Earth or an old Earth. 3. What you haven’t been told about radioisotope dating – I will tell you what YECs haven’t told you about radioisotope dating. 4. Coming in the future – Ice ages, seafloor sediments, dinosaur bones, and more.

On April 1-3, 2016, Grace Bible Church in Bozeman, Montana will be hosting a Creation Conference featuring three prominent young-Earth advocates. I plan on attending this conference, and posting reviews and critiques here on The GeoChristian. My goal is not to be provocative or argumentative, but to listen, think, and write. I am usually pretty quiet when I attend events like this, though I will ask a question or two at the appropriate times, and interact with speakers and people sitting around me. I plan on writing summaries similar to those I wrote when Dr. Nathaniel Jeanson of the Institute for Creation Research spoke in Billings in 2012.

Young-Earth creationists are first and foremost my brothers and sisters in Christ. I love and respect them, and appreciate their zeal for the Bible, for Christ, for evangelism, and for discipleship. In these things they and I are on the same page (for the most part). I do, however, believe that young-Earth creationism is not required by the Bible, and that it is not credible scientifically. Because of this, YEC apologetics (defense of the faith) sometimes does far more damage than good, especially among the scientifically literate.

It is important to add that I was a member of Grace Bible Church when I was an undergraduate student at Montana State University in the early 1980s. The church was (and I assume still is) an excellent, Bible-believing, Christ-honoring, people-loving church, and the teaching I received there laid a strong foundation for my life as a Christian. I am deeply thankful for the influence Grace Bible Church has had on my life.

I plan to attend the following Friday evening and all-day Saturday sessions. The biographies of the speakers can be found here.

1. Brian Thomas (Institute for Creation Research) – Why Genesis Matters.

From my experiences at previous YEC seminars, I expect that I will be in substantial agreement with the speaker on this one. Genesis lays the foundation for many key themes that run throughout the Scriptures: The one and only true God, humans created in the image of God, human sin, redemption, marriage, grace, forgiveness, covenants, and so forth. One thing on which I will disagree with Mr. Thomas will be his insistence that if Earth is millions of years old, then these foundations crumble. There is nothing in the Scriptures that ties any of these doctrines to the age of the universe.

2. Dr. Jake Hebert (Institute for Creation Research) – What You Haven’t Been Told About Radiometric Dating.

My expectation is that Dr. Hebert will talk about discordant dates, accelerated nuclear decay, and carbon-14 found in coal and diamonds. What Dr. Hebert will not tell the audience is that radiometric dating usually works, which was the major unspoken finding of ICR’s RATE study. Because radiometric dating usually works, the main thing YECs have fallen back on is the idea of vastly accelerated nuclear decay rates, a hypothesis that has a number of serious problems.

3. Michael Oard (the “Mr. Ice Age” of the YEC world) – The Ice Age: Only the Bible Can Explain It!

I expect that Mr. Oard will state that the ice age is “impossible with evolution, easy with creation.” I, on the other hand, find YEC post-flood ice age scenarios even less credible than their whole flood geology schemes.

4. Hebert – Ice Cores and Deep Seafloor Sediments: Do They Really Prove Millions of Years?

I suppose that means what one means by “prove.” Does the signature of John Hancock on the U.S. constitution prove that John Hancock existed? I’m sure we could come up with some conspiracy theory to cast doubt on Hancock’s existence. I haven’t read much YEC material on this topic, so I am not really sure what to expect. I have been conditioned by YEC writings, however, to expect problems.

5. Oard — What Does the Lake Missoula Flood Teach Us?

Mr. Oard will tell us that there was only one Lake Missoula flood. The driver for Oard’s conviction is that the YEC timeline is already squeezed to the limits, so any evidence for multiple Lake Missoula floods must be disregarded. One thing the Lake Missoula floods teach us that Mr. Oard is unlikely to mention is that if Earth’s surface was shaped by catastrophic global flooding only 4300 years ago, then the dominant erosional geomorphic features on Earth’s surface ought to be extensive channeled scablands such as found on the Columbia Plateau. And this is not at all what we see.

6. Hebert – Exciting New Research at ICR.

(This is the topic listed on the creationsciencedefense.com site; the ICR events site lists the topic as “Does the ‘God Particle’ Prove the Big Bang?”)

The ICR Research page lists several projects, including:

• Column Project: analyzing rock layers globally to reconstruct the stages of the Genesis Flood and explain why certain fossils are found only in certain areas, and to determine the approximate topography of the pre-Flood world.
• Refuting Milankovitch Project: exposing circular and inconsistent reasoning in secular methodologies

The fact that YECs have to have a research project about the geologic column reminds us that the geologic column is a valid concept, and that YECs haven’t figured out how to explain it yet. And of course Milankovitch cycles are clearly anti-Biblical and must be exposed!

7. Thomas – The Beginning of Life.

I will probably agree with much of what Mr. Thomas has to say. The simplest conceivable, metabolizing, reproducing cell is an incredibly complex thing, and sixty years of origin-of-life studies have only accented the gap between non-life and life. But this is a tentative position on my part, and is based on my understanding of the science of abiogenesis. I don’t think the Bible precludes the possibility of God creating a universe that is so wonderfully designed that life could spring from non-life.

8. Hebert – Science or Science Fiction? Why the Laws of Physics Could Not Have Created the Universe.

I am not sure whether this will be a presentation of the cosmological argument, which I would be in agreement with, or an attack on Big Bang cosmology. I will probably be getting rather sleepy by this point on Saturday afternoon.

9. Thomas – Soft Tissues in Solid Rock.

YECs believe that the discovery of soft tissues in dinosaur fossils (a discovery made by a Christian paleontologist!) was a nail in the coffin of old-Earthism. The finding of protein fragments and pliable tissues in Cretaceous fossils was certainly unexpected, but for several reasons is not a death blow to the concept of millions of years.

In addition to these grown-up sessions, there will be a number of meetings for young people, with topics such as “Why the World is Only Thousands of Years Old,” “‘Global Warming’ and the Christian,” and “Dinosaurs & Dragons.” Those teaching the children are certainly well-intentioned, but are also setting some of the kids up for a fall.

As I often say: Young-Earth creationism is neither required by the Bible nor credible scientifically. Bad science is bad apologetics that turns people away from the gospel.

Please pray for me, the speakers, the audience, and most of all, the youth who will be attending this conference.

Grace and Peace