Creation Week at Torrey Gazette
Sometime last week (before April was a thing) it dawned on me that I had three books on creation ready to be reviewed. On occasion my review stacks lines up this way and I try my best to take advantage of it. As a fan of weeks dedicated to specific topics I asked around and got some tentative head nods (I also got scared nods). It was official, we would be doing a week dedicated to creation and evolution. None of us are experts but we are all honest Christians who have questions and experiences. So why not just throw them all out at the same time?
The books being reviewed range from the more conservative to more progressive positions within the evangelical community. The posts from various authors ... well I actually have no idea what many of them believe about the book of Genesis or evolutionary science. All I can say is that this could be fun. If you are reading this and are interested in participating send us an e-mail. You can also participate on Twitter or Facebook discussion with #TGCreationWk. Be kind to one another.
Before we dive into posts, reviews, and discussions I felt it would be beneficial to provide some distinctions. These definitions could be very helpful in reviews and in understanding one another. All of these distinctions come from 40 Questions on Creation and Evolution. A review of this book will be posted later today but these definitions, provided early in the book, can go a long way towards fruitful discussion online and in person.
- YEC: Young-earth creationism "argue[s] for a literal, six-day creation that occurred approximately 6,000 years ago" and that "death, disease, and predation entered the world through the fall of Adam" (15).
- OEC: Old-earth creationism "is sometimes called progressive creationism" and "argue[s] that God created in successive stages over a period of millions or billions of years." They "theorize that God miraculously created Adam and Eve about 60 to 100 thousand years ago" (16).
- EC: Evolutionary creationism "accept[s] the current scientific theories both of the origin of the universe and of the human race." Thus "all life, including humans, descended from a common ancestor" while some "do not understand Adam and Eve to be literal persons" (16).
- ID: Intelligent design is "unconvinced by the Darwinian hypothesis" yet "contends that arguing over the age of the earth distracts from the bigger adversary" (16-17).
- Presuppositionalism (not to be confused with the apologetic presuppositionalism): "believes that the validity of one's presuppositions must eventually be tested by using laws of logic" (20).
- Fideism: "By contrast, does not believe one's presuppositions can be tested" (20).
- Concordist: "Interpretive models that attempt to harmonize Scripture and science" (21). Examples include: 24-hour theory, gap theory, day-age theory, and promised land theory.
- Non-Concordist: "Believe that attempts to harmonize the Bible and science fail to take Scripture on its own terms" (22). Examples include: Genesis as myth, Genesis as allegory, and Genesis as literary device (eg. Framework theoryand temple inauguration theory).
