A Response to Dr. Hugh Ross by Masami Usami
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http://web.fou.telenor.no/fou/ttolge/mn ... /usami.htm)
It is a great privilege to be here to give my testimony and respond to Dr. Ross' presentation.
First I want to tell a little about my own experience. I was born into a Shinto family. In school I learned only evolutionary thinking, so I was an evolutionist when I returned to Japan from Sakhalin (Russia). My brother became a Christian and I was surprised. I thought, "There is no creator and we have traditional, good religion, so why would my brother become a Christian?" I looked in my brother's Bible and read, "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth." I thought this was an unscientific thought because I had learned that evolution is science, and there is no creation. When I entered university I thought that science was the only way to reach truth.
At the university I searched every book in every field of science to find the answer to the Bible, to prove evolution. In the end, what I learned was that there is no scientific basis for evolution. There is only guess work, assumptions and circular reasoning. So I came back to the Bible and after days of turmoil in my mind, I trusted God and received Jesus Christ as my Savior and Lord.
I agree with many arguments Dr. Ross provides in disproving non-theistic evolution. Many of those arguments were developed by young-earth creationists. Yet some of his ideas do not agree with the Bible. Let us review his view of creation briefly.
1. God created the universe around 17 billion years ago, using the Big Bang. Dr. Ross was so convinced of this theory that he couldn't take the Bible literally. As a result, the rest of his view had to follow the evolution time scale.
2. Creation days are not 6 literal 24 hour days, but billions of years. The present age is the seventh day, which will continue until the end of the age.
3. Death and bloodshed have existed from the beginning of creation and is not the result of sin. Man was created after the vast majority of earth's history of life and death had taken place.
4. The flood of Noah was local, not global, although it did kill all humans outside the ark.
I certainly do not view these ideas as being Biblical. I believe Biblical creation requires these beliefs: 1. God created the universe several thousand years ago. Heaven and earth were created on the first of the 6 creation days. 2. Everything was created in the order mention in Genesis ch.1. These creation days are literal and not long periods. The seventh day is as literal as the rest, one 24-hour day. 3. Death and bloodshed were the result of Adam's sin. 4. Noah's flood was global and killed all humans, land animals and birds except those in the ark. Further, I believe such Biblical creation to be essential to Biblical Christianity.
Concerning the Hebrew word "Yom" (day), Strong's Concordance says, "a day whether lit. (from sunrise to sunset, or from one sunset to the next), or fig. (a space of time defined by an associated term.)" In Gen. 1 there is no associated term to indicate a figurative meaning, so we must take it as literal. In Ex. 20:8-11 Moses used the word in a very literal way. God created for 6 days and rested 1, and thus did God sanctify the seventh day and commanded the people to rest the seventh day. He did not say to work 6 long ages and rest 1 long age. Anyhow, God is not still resting; He is working. Jesus said, "My Father is working still, and I am working" (Jn. 5:17). And Paul said, "God is at work in you, both to will and to work for His good pleasure." God is certainly working, not resting. The Bible says "God rested." That is past tense. It does not say, "God started resting." Let's get it right.
If, indeed, those were long ages, all flowers that are pollinated by insects and birds would have become extinct before insects were created. It had to be a short period. Dr. Ross' teaching that there was death before Adam sinned and that his sin resulted only in spiritual death is old news. The heretic, Pelagius, taught this around 400 A. D. The Pelagian view is that man was created mortal. He taught everything about us dies sooner or later, so it is and has always been with man. The principle of death and decay is a part of the whole creation. Pelagius was rightly denounced by the early church, for which we should be thankful. According to Dr. Ross' beliefs, Jesus Christ would have eventually died anyhow, even if He had not been crucified.
Does the Bible teach that natural creation was not affected by Adam's sin? Not at all.
Romans 8:20-22. "For the creation was subjected to futility, not willingly, but because of Him who subjected it in hope; because the creation itself also will be delivered from the bondage of corruption into the glorious liberty of children of God. For we know that the whole creation groans and labors with birth pangs together until now." Corruption includes death, part of the futility to which creation was subjected, as in Gen. 3:17, "Cursed is the ground because of you. . . "
I Cor. 15:21-22. "For since by man came death, by Man also came the resurrection of the dead. For as in Adam all die, even so in Christ all shall be made alive." The words show that Adam's sin resulted in physical death as well as spiritual death. We must not say Adam would have died physically, but not spiritually, had he not sinned. The resurrection of Jesus Christ was physical, not spiritual, so we know that Jesus died to redeem our fleshly bodies, and not only our spirits.
What about Noah's flood? In Gen. 9:11, God said to Noah, "Thus I establish My covenant with you: Never again shall all flesh be cut off by the waters of the flood; never again shall there be a flood to destroy the earth." If the flood was only local, God did not keep His covenant, because there have been many floods since that time, killing lots of people. If the flood was local, why spend 90 years building an ark? Why not just move animals and believers to higher ground? The language of the account, besides passages like Psalm 104, require a global flood . . . destroying "all flesh".
Dr. Ross has many theories. Theories are not based upon absolute truth, and so are not absolutes. Many people think that scientists are completely unbiased and their theories based upon pure observation. This is not true. Einstein said, "But on principle, it is quite wrong to try founding a theory on observable magnitudes alone. In reality the very opposite happens. It is the theory which decides what we can observe."
The Big Bang is no exception. Evolutionists have for a long time presented "proof" of the Big Bang, only to have their "proof" proven wrong. Their assumptions which "proved" the Big Bang, turned out not to prove it after all. This is what Einstein said, "It is the theory which decides what we can observe." The big bang theory is a belief, not science.
Astronomer Halton Arp wrote in "Nature" magazine, "Cosmology is unique in science in that it is a very large intellectual edifice based on very few facts." (Nature, Aug. 30, 1990 pp. 807-812). He means that cosmology is mainly constructed of guesswork and imagination. Dr. Ross would have us believe his edifice is nothing but fact. Dr. Arp says it has very little fact. I have to wonder if Dr. Ross has just accepted the Big Bang blindly, or if he knows the truth of the fragility of the theory and is willingly misleading people.
We are witnessing the collapse of the theories of evolution. The Big Bang hypothesis has largely changed, being modified into the inflation theory. In viewing the history of the universe and the earth, how can we really get to the truth? Since theories are only guesses, what we need is an eyewitness. Here is a good example of that fact. It is the case of Mr. Sakamoto and his family who were murdered by members of Aum Shinrikyo. For 5 years the police and Mr. Sakamoto's mother searched for the Sakamoto family. All theories and ideas were futile. Finally one of the murderers came forward and admitted the crime and showed the police where the bodies were buried. How could he do that? He, committed the crime; he was an eyewitness. Police theories would never have found the truth. It is the same in creation. In the matter of the theoretical Big Bang, who was there to witness it? It is only an assumption of the past. The only possible Eyewitness is the Creator. He really should be taken as seriously as the killer of the Sakamoto family. The police accepted the words of the killer and found the bodies. We might wonder why people will take the words of a killer, but not the words of the Creator God. The Big Bang is now a passing theory - or a passed theory. The cosmology was greatly changed with the discovery of the "great wall." We have material that shows that the Big Bang and other cosmologies depending on evolution are only guess work and assumptions. Truth is usually in the minority rather than the majority. We see that in the record of Noah. Noah believed God and built an ark to save his family and himself. After the flood Noah and his family were then in the majority. This is God's record of the event. We must seek truth and receive God's Word, regardless of men's opinions.
Astronomers, and other leading scientists, are bringing devastating evidence against the Big Bang. As I check the details of the Eyewitness's report, I find it (the Bible) to be rational, with sufficient evidence. For example, in the Genesis account, on day three the earth dried up quickly, at least within one day. One very strong evidence of that is taken from research done on polonium halos in basement granite. The explanation is tedious, but please hear it.
When radioactive material decays within a solid, the escaping alpha particles burns or etches the record of that escape in that material. In a solid, it is a sphere, but when sliced and examined, it looks like a halo. There are three kinds of polonium halos: Po 210 (half life 138 days), Po 214 (half life 0.000146 sec.) and Po 218 (half life 3 1/2 min.) Since magma is not yet solid, no radiometric halo can form in magma. This means that the Po 218, having a half-life of only 3 1/2 minutes, had to be in the granite when it was formed. Therefore the granite must have been formed within 3 minutes. These polonium isotopes are the daughter products of Uranium, a radioactive material which decays through a chain of elements, finally to lead. Along the chain of decay it passes through the three stages of polonium mentioned above. However, there are many instances where polonium halos have been found with no uranium nearby, and no marks of uranium having been present. The presence of these Po 218 halos independent of the uranium decay chain is evidence that a primordial liquid cooled and crystallized almost instantaneously to form the earth's granites. This is in sharp disagreement with the evolutionary position which states that the earth cooled down from a molten condition over a long period of time. Polonium halos are mute evidence that the earth's basement rocks were formed suddenly. There was no need for long ages, not even one whole day.
In coalized wood Dr. Gentry found many specimens of polonium in the presence of uranium, not apart from uranium as he did in granite.
The Lord raises the question, "Where were you when the earth was formed?" (Job 38:4-7). Was Dr. Ross, or any other scientist, there when the earth was formed? No? Then they are all guessing. Just guessing. It is absurd for men to make dogmatic statements about how things were billions of years ago. Even many Christians swallow such atheism-based nonsense. Evolutionists begin with an a priori assumption of long ages uniformitarianism, renounce young earth creationists as unscientific, devise some plausible explanation, and then point out that the present condition agrees with their explanation. Sadly, they do not understand that they are guilty of circular reasoning. God, the Creator Himself, was the Eyewitness. Only God was there, and He, alone, knows what happened. Fortunately for us, He gave us a record of what happened. Unfortunately, men like Dr. Ross choose not to believe it. Carbon 14 is well known for age dating. Its weakness is that it can only date things up to several thousand years old. So other methods were developed. The potassium to argon decay test has been widely touted as the most accurate dealing with long ages. The problem is that no one knows that the universe is as old as dates given by this method. Some tests on known ages of rocks show that this method cannot be trusted at all. Consider some Hawaiian lava rocks.
The Journal of Geophysical Research, volume 73, July 15, 1968, reported that lava rocks formed in 1800 and 1801 in Hawaii were dated by a potassium-argon method and showed an age of formation of 160 million years to 3 billion years. This shows a tremendous discrepancy between the actual age and the age as determined by a radiometric dating method. Another example of erroneous dating is reported in Science, volume 162, October 11, 1968. Volcanic rocks known to be less than 200 years old were dated by a radiometric dating method and showed ages of 12 to 21 million years, showing that the reliability of these dating methods is in question when tested against materials with a known origin. We must remember that these same dating techniques are one scientists believe give a positive proof of the earth being billions of years old. The following is a list of lava rock samples known to be less than 200 years old, showing the test results using the potassium-argon method.
1. 160,000,000 years
2. 791,000,000 years
3. 960,000,000 years
4. 1,500,000,000 years
5. 1,580,000,000 years
6. 2,040,000,000 years
7. 2,470,000,000 years
8. 2,960,000,000 years
Would you rest your faith in the age of the earth upon such methods rather than the revealed word of God?
It is objected that recently formed rocks give erroneous dates. How do they know that any rocks give correct dates? About 90% of all radiometric dating tests are thrown out because they do not give the "correct" dates according to the theory of evolution. If the dates of these rocks were not known they would adopt a method of averaging the dates, and accept the dates as being valid. The Grand Canyon is often given as great proof of evolution and long ages. The evidence is otherwise. The eruption of Mt. St. Helens and the subsequent events give us some very important data relative to the formation of canyons. At the time of the eruption the river was dammed up creating a large lake. About three years later there was a smaller eruption creating a mud flow which burst the dam on the river. Down river sediment from the eruption had been washed in and settled out. After three years it was all settled and began to harden. However, when the dam burst, a path was quickly cut through this relatively new sediment. The result of this was to create what some call a "mini Grand Canyon" (about 1/40 the size of the Grand Canyon). Many features look remarkably like the Grand Canyon. So much so that some scientists are questioning the necessity of long ages to create the Grand Canyon. How long did it take to cut the mini Grand Canyon? About three hours. Probably a few days to a few weeks would have been enough to cut out the Grand Canyon had there been a similar situation. There is strong evidence that such a condition did exist.
If you will look at Appendix II you will see that Dr. Ross' model is almost identical to that of atheistic evolution and theistic evolution, except he has God involved just a bit more than theistic evolutionists. I return to the matter of the revelation of an eyewitness.
1. The record must be clear, objective and easily understood. In Genesis the Eyewitness did not show us everything about the universe, but what is written is true.
2. The testimony must be such that it can be verified.
3. If symbols are used the text or context will show clearly that it is symbolic. We must not add to the Record.
Throughout history, people misunderstood and believed contemporary science to be truth, as Dr. Ross does. However, science is and has always been biased by the dominating philosophy or world view of the time. When those views changed, so did the scientific theories.
Before Magellan people thought the Bible taught the earth was flat. The church at that time was strongly influenced by Greek and Roman philosophy. So, it was not the Bible that taught the earth was flat, but the dominating philosophy of the time. The Bible, in fact, teaches the earth is a sphere. Pro. 8:27, Isaiah 40:22. The church also took up the philosophy of geocentricism from Plato and Aristotle. We still suffer from that mistake. Christianity has suffered much damage from teaching as Bible the philosophies of the world. Every time the church falls for some world philosophy we get hurt. We can, we must avoid this today.
Look at other wrong ideas in the past. 1. Ptolemy. In Almagest he wrote "the earth was the center of the universe and not moveable." Intellectuals of the time accepted this explanation until Copernicus. The Roman Catholic Church compromised with this view, making it Catholic dogma. When Galileo rejected this view, the church court labeled him a heretic, but he insisted he said nothing different to that in the Bible. (See "Conflict Between Science and Religion" by White.) In Job 38:12-15 the earth's rotation is mentioned.
2. Linneus. When Linneus classified living things the secular mind misled the church. Creatures were classified by phyla, family, genera, species and other taxinomical units, and species were identified as a "kind" as written in Genesis ch. 1. So he taught that each species is fixed and has not changed since creation. The Anglican Church accepted this view and it became church dogma. Darwin learned this at Cambridge University. When he went to the Galapagos Islands he found variations from island to island. He concluded the various forms came from a common ancestor. Following this thought, he assumed that given enough time ameba could become humans. Now we know that what Darwin saw was only a minor variation which some call, "micro evolution." Genesis ch. 1 says all life was created "after it kind." There is variation within the kind, not real evolution.
3. Darwin. When Darwin's view was popularized, many Christians compromised with this view. This world view has become the last religion for the final age of the world. Now the Big Bang theory is collapsing as is shown by many scientists. Sir Fred Hoyle, a famous astrophysicist, has renounced it. He says if there were a Big Bang, there would be a quantity of hydrogen, a little helium and a smattering of a few other gases, and after that, "a dull-as-ditch water expansion." Of course, if there had been such an explosion, the matter would still be speeding through space, and there is no law in physics that can produce stars and planets out of that. We should not let Dr. Ross, or anyone else, deceive us by assuring us he knows what is happening hundreds of light years away.
Dr. Ross gives a very impressive presentation and if we do not hold strongly to the Word of God we may be deceived. II Cor. 11:13-15 gives a timely warning for our day. "For such men are false apostles, deceitful workmen, disguising themselves as apostles of Christ. And no wonder, for even Satan disguises himself as an angel of light. So it is not strange if his servants also disguise themselves as servants of righteousness. Their end will correspond to their deeds." Brothers and Sisters, although this is hard to say, I beg you to hear it. Dr. Ross is doing the work of Satan.
The Big Bang is in the future, not in the past! "But the heavens and the earth which are now preserved by the same word, are reserved for fire until the day of judgment and perdition of ungodly men" (II Peter 3:7).
Even if we cannot find all the answers to scientific questions, we should not accept ideas different to the clear teachings of the Bible. We need to wait until science catches up to the Bible. Hear the words of II Timothy 3:16-17.
"All Scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, thoroughly equipped for every good work."
Dr. Ross says that his presentation is very effective in reaching people with the Gospel, but that young earth creationists are not effective. We have found in our church that as we present the Gospel from the standpoint of a young earth, Biblical, direct creation, people are convinced and trust Jesus and follow Him. In our church about 65% of the members have been reached through young earth, Biblical creation. We do not need to compromise to preach the Gospel...
In closing I give a quote from Josh McDowell. "The message of the Bible is clear for those who will read it and seek to find out its meaning. The problem comes when people bring their preconceived notions to the Bible and attempt to make the Word fit their ideas. This is not the fault of the Bible, but of the persons who force the Bible to say what they want it to say." (Creation and Time by Van Bebber/Taylor, p. 58).
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