ARE WE MORE SUPERSTITIOUS TODAY THAN EVER BEFORE?

In 1692 the Massachusetts Bay Colony was in the throes of the “Salem Witch Hunt”. Lacking any better explanation of some unusual occurrences in the Colony, a panicked mob accused several unfortunate fellow colonists of witchcraft ― and lynched them. There was a time when we modern Americans could look back with an air of contemptuous superiority upon those ‘superstitious fools’; but sadly, no longer. Many Americans today are more ignorant (relative to the amount of scientific knowledge available) and certainly more superstitious than the Salem mob; superstition being a home remedy for the wounds of the chaotic emptiness of modern American life. I am referring, of course, to the burgeoning obsession of “New Age” religionists with rocks and minerals, and of the miraculous claims attributed to them. You will also have deduced my opinion of those claims — any metaphysical properties granted to crystals, agates, rocks or the dirt they are found in is fantasy, and obsession with fantasy is dangerous.

I don’t know what you were expecting in beginning to read this commentary, but if you will be so good as to stick with me, I will try to make make your time well spent. You might rightly demand to know who am I to to make such criticism of others’ beliefs. I am simply an old man who was trained in the science of Geology before most of you reading this were born, and brought up to believe in Freedom of Speech. And though my time here may be short, I have children and grandchildren and a great stake in the future, and a great concern for their future.

I have held this…’hateful rant’, some might say, for a long time for fear of offending and driving people from this site; I hope I don’t, but it’s time to get it off my chest. I don’t write this to ridicule or condemn anyone’s beliefs, but to suggest a better alternative―an old fashioned, time proven remedy to the ‘cosmic angst’ that besets so many fellow Americans (lack of faith and hope, confusion, anxiety, lethargy, and weakness in the face of ever changing, and artificially induced, winds of popular culture). If I wasn’t sure of that better cure I wouldn’t suggest it, for ‘cosmic angst’, rather than a joke, is a killer. The streets of our country are lined with victims of it, so I suppose that any relief is better than nothing.

There are real, if ephemeral, benefits to the acquisition of such talismans as crystals. Buying things is pleasant in itself, and there is a placebo effect in having something to grab hold onto, to put faith and hope in, even something you have to pretend is real. Of most importance, I believe, is that becoming a part of some community of shared beliefs is comforting in this age of increasing social isolation. Moreover, there is a normal human response of pleasure to any objects of natural beauty and fascination be it to crystals, rocks, flowers, trees, sunsets, mountain views, etc. That pleasure is generated from within us however, not some ‘vibration’ from insensate matter. We are, after all, beings made in the image of the Creator of natural beauty and the astoundingly vast and complex cosmos. That is why we traditional rockhounds enjoy our hobby. But our hobby is eclipsed by a corrupt industry preying upon scientific illiteracy and spiritual and emotional confusion to cheat vulnerable people out of vast amounts of money, and worse, harm them spiritually and perhaps physically.

Two extreme examples of that corruption are particularly odious to me. ‘Andara monatomic crystals’ are frauds, bits of colored glass or cheap mineral crystal sold at absurd to downright obscene prices by unscrupulous dealers. One can look on ebay and find identical chunks of glass sold for hundreds and thousands of dollars as “Andara” this and that; and on honest sites as “slag glass” for a few dollars a pound as landscape decorations. On one slag glass site I noticed spirited bidding for a lovely multicolored chunk of recycled scrap glass ($51 at the time). It will probably be morphed into “Andara Crystal” or the slightly more accurate “Andara Glass”, perhaps on etsy, accompanied by outlandish fantasy (and price tag). That cockeyed demand is raising the price even of scrap glass. And ‘Lemurian seed crystals’ are even worse, common striated quartz crystals accompanied by comic book sci-fi fantasy pretending seriousness. I could go on and on listing such frauds but they are all pretty much the same.

I won’t waste much time debunking the pseudo-sciences behind these frauds, people who accept them do so because of spiritual and emotional needs, not scientific evidence. That being so, your reaction to my comments will depend more upon your attitude and openness than on my powers of persuasion. Besides, there is little even pseudo-science behind these claims to debunk. After a lot of disappointed searching, I happened upon one dealer’s website advertising the “science behind” their claims, and found nothing but more outlandish nonsense liberally sprinkled with scientific sounding buzz words.

One cannot easily prove, or disprove, anything about metaphysical claims, but these points however, I can make. Much of this mineralogical mystique is based upon a misrepresentation of crystal vibrations. In the late 19th Century and early 20th Century it was discovered that crystals, especially quartz, under specific circumstances, vibrated to radio waves, and ‘crystal radio receivers’ were developed and the world changed. However, the crystals produced nothing themselves, they merely reacted to external stimuli, and those vibrations had to be converted into sound to be perceived by humans.

An associated claim is that there is some commonality between the crystalline structure of minerals, especially quartz, and human DNA that allows communication between man and mineral. That is an absurdly false comparison. The quartz atomic lattice, for instance, is designed for simplicity and stasis. Changing geological conditions produce changes in the outward expression of the mineral but the internal structure is static. Even the simplest DNA is infinitely, and I do mean INFINITELY, more complex than the most elaborate mineral lattice, and is designed for functions so astoundingly intricate that biologists, bio-chemists and bio-physicists are only now beginning to understand them. But with these tawdry misrepresentations of “science” to back it, old superstition gained new credence, and customers.

“Monatomic crystals” in the sense used in these metaphysical claims is an oxymoron, a term that contradicts itself. For some reason, probably sales promotion, fine glassware is sometimes called “crystal”; but glass by its nature is not crystalline. It is amorphous, the opposite of crystalline; that is the chief defining characteristic of glass. The only monatomic anythings in our world are gasses (not glasses). I understand that the claim is made that these “monatomic” this and that (crystal, glass, liquid gold elixirs, etc.) are of extra-terrestrial origin or in some other sense not of our common stuff and therefore not subject to normal earthbound physical principles, but there is not the slightest proof of that claim, and from what I have seen of them, they are very common stuff indeed. The buzz word “monatomic” itself seems enough to insure an uncritical acceptance of any ridiculous product or claim, and there are all kinds of claims. There are so many hawkers of “monatomic” junk that it has created the effect of “If you tell a lie often enough, people will believe it.”

Now let’s turn off on what may seem an unusual path with a partial explanation of this unprecedented epidemic of the ‘cosmic angst’ I referred to earlier. I say “unprecedented” at least in my lifetime, and I am over half way through my eighth decade of life in these United States. The indisputable failure of modern education and cultural continuity behind this phenomenon is not accidental, or a natural evolution of thought, but a side effect, ‘collateral damage’ we might say, of a ruthless campaign over a period of generations to separate citizens from their Natural Rights (Remember this from our founding document the Declaration of Independence: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, …”).

Why this overt animosity to the faith of our founding fathers? If there is no Creator, there are no Natural Rights (God given rights) ― our rights then are granted, or denied, by our earthly rulers who acknowledge no superior authority. Placid acceptance of that tyrannical ideology is the goal of the government’s official (and unconstitutional) establishment of a materialistic religion that is forced upon our public schools and popular culture ― the cosmos is self existent and eternal (no Creator of the Cosmos), humanity is the accidental product of natural forces and Darwinian evolutionary processes (no Creator of Human kind), and possesses no immortal spirit (no Creator Spirit).

So with appeals to hedonistic materialism and a pop-culture effigy of science, backed by government coercive power, those powerful and aggressive interests who despise our rights have succeeded in separating millions of Americans from their Christian religious and cultural heritage and left them adrift; “Alone, alone, all alone, alone on a wide wide sea”, as Coleridge’s Ancient Mariner puts it.

In so doing, they have set enmity between man and science. As the Bible says, God “has set eternity in the human heart” (Ecc. 3:11). Even many of us who absentmindedly accept the Darwinist/materialistic dogma that has been drilled into us from infancy can sense that we are more than mere random accidents enduring a pointless and transient existence in a insensate cosmos. So we are always seeking answers to life’s riddles, sometimes even in empty promises and bits of glass and stone.

Not coincidentally, we see the empty promises of these junk peddlers parodying the truths that have grounded western Judaeo-Christian civilization for millennia. Yes, “grounding” is one of the most common claims of the hucksters; this rock or scrap of glass will (or ‘is thought to’) promote “grounding”. Obviously “grounding” is a powerfully felt need among people today, although I’m not certain exactly how various people today understand the term. One website I visited uses the meaning of ‘being in tune with the vibrations of Mother Earth’. Whether that or some other grift, I believe that what people are missing and desperately searching for is more of the old fashioned understanding of being grounded.

Thankfully, I was grounded, to my way of thinking, a long, long time ago, without help from bits of glass and stone. Not that I was endowed with wisdom, that comes (as much as it ever does) with time; but I learned who I was, what I was, and had a good idea of where I was going and how to get there, although the road has been rocky and uphill much of the way. The primary talismans of my grounding were faith, family, and country. Ok, I can readily see that grounding is much more difficult in today’s world, as fragmented as it is and at war with itself. We can see the open wounds of that war reflected in the claims of the charlatans. Frankly, I am glad that I am an old man and have reminiscences of a true “lost civilization” (not Lemuria), but with children and grandchildren, as I mentioned, I have a great stake in the future.

Many prior generations, and many people in current generations, have found grounding in the Word of God. Let’s take a quick look at a few of God’s promises from the Holy Bible:

Jesus promises “Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.” (Mathew 11: 28-29)

“Rest for your souls”, isn’t that what we all are seeking? And that comes from peace with God. In his letter to the churches in Rome St. Paul declares, “Therefore, since we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ”. (Romans 5:1) Ever since Eden man has been trying to displace God, “knowing good and evil for himself”, but it hasn’t worked well.

One huckster boasts that his lump of dead mineral matter “grants healing and cleansing to its owners”; what loathsome chutzpah. Another chip “promotes feelings of joy and happiness”; and another “frees one’s self from the shackles of the past”. Promises of a panacea for “pessimistic feelings”, low self-esteem, loneliness, hopelessness, inner turmoil, even physical healing (“stimulates circulation, strengthens the immune system, and counters the physical effects of aging.”) are all bound up in an amazingly wide array of mineral bric-a-brack available at greater or lesser prices from almost countless dealers throughout the world. Odd that with such miraculous help abounding humanity should be in such need.

Let’s look at a few Biblical promises on the subject of healing, cleansing and freeing “one’s self from the shackles of the past” from Old Testament prophets: “He will again have compassion on us; he will tread our iniquities underfoot. You will cast all our sins into the depths of the sea.” (Micah 7:19) That’s a pretty definite way of putting away the past. And Isiah 1:18 “Come now, let us reason together, says the LORD: though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they are red like crimson, they shall become like wool.” Again, a pretty definite statement on healing and cleansing.

Before you say, ‘That doesn’t apply to me’, let’s hear from St. Paul the Apostle again, to the church in Corinth:

(1 Cor 6:9-11) “Know ye not that the unrighteous shall not inherit the kingdom of God? Be not deceived: neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor effeminate, nor abusers of themselves with mankind, nor thieves, nor covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor extortioners, shall inherit the kingdom of God. And such were some of you: but ye are washed, but ye are sanctified, but ye are justified in the name of the Lord Jesus, and by the Spirit of our God.” The point is forgiveness and newness of life; “such were some of you”.

What does Christian grounding look like? Probably different ways to different people, I believe though, that St. Paul’s continuing Letter to the Romans most concisely describes it: “Through him we have also obtained access by faith into this grace in which we stand, and we rejoice in hope of the glory of God. Not only that, but we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us. For while we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly. For one will scarcely die for a righteous person—though perhaps for a good person one would dare even to die, but God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” (Romans 5:2-8)

No pie in the sky promises of crystal hucksters, or shady health and wealth gospel televangelists (first cousins to the crystal hucksters) selling ‘special prayers’. “I have said these things to you, that in me you may have peace. In the world you will have tribulation. But take heart; I have overcome the world.” (John 16:33) Yes, in this world we will have tribulations, I think that’s why I’ve always found Psalm 23 so comforting:
“The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want. He maketh me to lie down in green pastures: he leadeth me beside the still waters. He restoreth my soul: he leadeth me in the paths of righteousness for his name’s sake. Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff they comfort me. Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of mine enemies: thou anointest my head with oil; my cup runneth over. Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life: and I will dwell in the house of the Lord for ever.” This is King James’ English of course, and it may sound odd to some people. If so, just drop eth and est and ad an s and it will be back to modern English (pretty much).

And now a word about cost. Oh yes, there is a price for peace with God, but a price even the poorest can afford. It is the surrender of your own claim to godhood, the reversal of Adam and Eve’s delusion that they could be as gods knowing good and evil for themselves. It is even the false hope that a few ‘good works’ will buy a place in God’s favor, or that crystals, even by the ton will avail you anything. And where does one apply for this ‘peace that surpasses all all understanding’? Jesus is always near to take our burdens, and when the transfer is made, you will know it; but that is only the beginning of the journey of faith.

Here is a brief addendum to the preceding commentary:

Do I sound a bit paranoid, or political, about the roots of America’s Cosmic Angst? I probably do, but I want to emphasize the cause of Americans’ estrangement from our past source of grounding as an inducement for re-examining it. “They” say that the attack on our Christian heritage is all about promoting ‘science’ but that excuse doesn’t seem to work. Even though the USA spends by far the most money on primary education, we consistently rank far down the list among nations in academic achievement, especially in math and science. Let’s look for another possible motive for engineering a new religion. America’s Declaration of Independence, in its time, was shocking and threatening to kings, noblemen and the other wealthy and powerful of the day. Nothing before or since has been as revolutionary. Che and the other dead Commies were penny-ante revolutionaries compared to Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, John Adams and the others who signed the Declaration of Independence.

But not all who signed were committed to the doctrine of Natural Rights. Some wanted independence from their English overlords only to make themselves the new lords. There was truth in the warning given by Benjamin Franklin: “We must all hang together, or we will surely hang separately.” Hanging, followed by beheading, drawing and quartering the body (just what it sounds like) and public display of the mangled remains was the punishment for treason to the Crown (hence the Constitutional prohibition of “cruel and unusual punishment”). Tongue chewing compromise was necessary for survival then, and even today there is the camouflaged goal of destroying what their moral ancestors approved with fingers crossed behind their backs — the belief that all men are created equal, etc.

The Natural Rights doctrine, stated in the Declaration of Independence and enshrined, as far as possible, in the Constitution, forming the basis of this nation, is a Christian religious doctrine. It permeates the Bible in such New Testament passages as Jesus’ admonition “Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself”, the Parable of the Good Samaritan, St. Paul’s admonition to Philemon to treat his slave Onesimus “as a brother”, and his admonition to the Corinthians “Do not threaten them (slaves), since you know that he who is both their Master and yours is in heaven, and there is no favoritism with him”. The unprecedented egalitarian nature of the early Church was a witness of that doctrine. And in the Old Testament, Prophets held the rich and powerful, even kings, to the Mosaic Law the same as anyone else. That doctrine of equality before the highest power is the basis of the claim that the USA is a “Christian nation”. Those of us who believe in God given rights can be considered “Christian Nationalists”, a term which, sadly, has been deformed into an epithet and a name for phantom bogeymen.

In just such ways the heroes of American history have been smeared in order to disparage their work. Thomas Jefferson is despised as a ‘slave holder’ and ‘proven’ to have had children by a slave. It doesn’t matter that he inherited the slaves in a state where it was illegal to free slaves, and if he had ‘freed them’ they would have been subject to capture and sale to who knows who. So he kept them, and died in debt. It matters not that in his first draft of the Declaration of Independence and in his arguments in framing the Constitution he opposed the continuance of slavery. And if he, as a widower, had children by a slave woman he was legally forbidden to marry (a very sketchy claim by the way but popular among his enemies) that makes him less a racist and more of a human being. No, it’s not those supposed sins for which he is hated but opinions like this: “all eyes are opened, or opening, to the rights of man. The general spread of the light of science has already laid open to every view the palpable truth, that the mass of mankind has not been born with saddles on their backs, nor a favored few booted and spurred, ready to ride them legitimately, by the grace of god. These are grounds of hope for others.”

There is perhaps no greater proof of the goal of government education than that Jefferson is disparaged, and despite the desire of much of the American public, and the actions of state legislatures, the US Supreme Court has ruled that no mention of a Creator, or even an unspecified “Designer” can be made in public schools (Edwards v Aguillard 1985). Whereas Charles Darwin, one of the most dangerous racists in history, who with his cousin Francis Galton pioneered Eugenics and Social Darwinism, resulting in millions of deaths, is the hero of public education.

Again we ask why? Supposed ‘great man of Science’ Sigmund Freud gives us the answer. Freud did a lengthy introspective discussion of the concept of ‘loving your neighbor’ and found it to be an impossible demand, “…their neighbor is for them not only a potential helper or sex object, but also someone who tempts them to satisfy their aggressiveness on him, to exploit his capacity for work without compensation, to use him sexually without his consent, to seize his possessions, to humiliate him, to cause him pain, to torture and kill him. Homo homino lupus” (i.e. Man is a wolf to man). That is the way many people want the world to work ― those who sell Andara Monatomic Crystals and Lemurian Seed Crystals to spiritually sick people, those who sell fentanyl laced drugs on the streets, tech moguls who squeeze another few inches of their mega-yachts out of their employees, hypocritical politicians who have turned Americans into consumer slaves at the behest of their donors, … and I could go on and on. The only barrier to the wolves in this country is the US Constitution, founded upon the concept of Natural Rights, and that is being ripped to shreds.

To sum up my contention; the deliberate assault on belief in a Creator, for the purpose of eliminating the concept of Natural Rights, has left a devastating void in the American psyche that many Americans are treating with superstitious nonsense, along with drugs, alcohol, nihilistic violence, and fanatical service to pop culture figures and causes. Only a return to the old ways will resolve our peoples’ Cosmic Angst.

Bill Kitchens
godmadeagates.com

A reader recently asked me, in a rather confrontational way, what I believed about the age of the earth. Because I did not want this website to become involved in unnecessary controversy, I answered his question truthfully, but not fully, that I am agnostic on the issue ― I don’t know the age of the earth. On further reflection, I have decided that the question deserves a more complete answer even at the risk of offending someone. There is no short explanation of how I arrived at that answer, but I have cut the explanation down to the bare minimum in the paragraphs below, so if you are interested in the question, please read on.

The issue of the age of the earth, in itself, is of little significance. What difference to our daily lives does it make if the earth is six thousand, or four billion years old? These issues that have become entangled with it are of supreme importance however: the Judeo-Christian-Islamic monotheistic creation account versus Pantheistic, and atheistic-naturalistic cosmology, and stemming from those diverse cosmological sources arise all the issues of human life ― the nature of man, of God, of human relations, of law and government. I will return to those issues later.

Unfortunately the age of the earth has become a major, and public, battleground between not only contending ideologies, but individuals and groups who have made careers stoking this controversy. The conflicting contentions of the partisans have caused a polarization to positions that may not be supported by facts. It is to one of those issues that I am addressing the following comments.

Some people may have the impression that a true Bible believing Christian has to be a “Young Earth Creationist” (holding the view that the six days of creation in Genesis are literal 24 hour periods, and the total age of the earth is about six thousand years based upon the computations of Bishop Usher). That impression simply is not true. I am a born again sinner saved by the grace of God through the blood of Christ Bible thumping Fundamentalist, and still, I believe those “days” are not intended to be taken as literal days, and the earth is much older than six thousand years. My views fall closer to, but not necessarily fully within, the “Old Earth Creationist” camp, which generally accepts the latest ‘scientific’ findings on the age of the earth. Many, and I suspect most, Christians, hold some such views on the age of the earth, but the vehemence of the Young Earthers’ battles with professional atheists obscures that fact. And I fully understand, and sympathize with those who admire the Young Earth champions, even though I can’t agree with them.

You may wonder why I am so sympathetic with something I don’t believe in. It is precisely because of the havoc wreaked upon the world by those professional atheists who have engineered an illusion of incompatibility between science and the Christian faith, and the resulting destruction of our society, of human value, human life, sound education, and assault upon personal freedom endowed by our Creator. For generations now, our Christian culture has, in general, meekly accepted their abuse. Now comes the Young Earthers with the pugnacious temerity to challenge the atheistic orthodoxy of government, academia, and media ― hooray for them! But 24 hour creation “days” is not the hill to die on, and I would not want seekers after the Christian faith to be dissuaded by this false impression, so please consider the following brief observations.

1. A Young Earth cosmology was never a criterion of the Christian faith. Many of the early church fathers, some who died for the faith, held views contrary to that. The fundamental creeds of the church are silent on that issue; they deal with belief in the nature and mission of Jesus the Christ. A diversity of opinion on the issue of the Genesis ‘day’ has always been accepted in the church, and it should be today. I am demonstrating that Christian freedom right now.

2. Perhaps more to the real point of the concern ― it would be wrong to assume that being ‘liberal’ rather than ‘literal’ on the creation days implies any lack of support for true Biblical doctrines such as creation by God of the cosmos, of the fall of man, and of the redemption by Christ.

I have not forgotten the origin of mankind―special creation or natural evolution? Evolution, let’s be specific: Darwinian origin of species by natural selection of random mutations, is considered to depend upon vast amounts of time for its credibility, hence much of the opposition to an old earth. Age is not the issue here however. Darwinism’s only real support isn’t found in science, but in religion; in the rebellion of man against God, and man’s delusional attempts to hide from God, as described in Genesis. In thousands of years or trillions of years Darwinist Evolution is a fantasy, one denied by the fossil record and by modern biological discoveries (despite the outrageous lies of its proponents). I won’t try to prove that assertion here, I am merely suggesting that Evolution should be taken off the table in the age of the earth argument. I will have few words more to say about the creation of mankind later, and for those who do want to pursue the truth about Darwin’s speculation, I make a few recommendations in a post-script.

3. As a Bible believer, I am committed to faith in its message, and I find that it does not command a literal six day creation, or a young earth. The Hebrew word translated as ‘day’ is used in several ways even in the creation account; for a 24 hour earth rotational cycle, for the daylight portion of the cycle, and for an indefinite period of time related to some particular event. There are many other such words used in different ways in different contexts throughout the Hebrew Scriptures, as there are in most, if not all, languages. Insistence upon understanding Genesis days only as 24 hour periods is purely arbitrary.

4. Furthermore, if we assume that the writer of the book of Genesis is logical and factual, which I do, then a 24 hour day creates many unnecessary inconsistencies in the text (not to mention with the geological record). For instance, the sun, apparently, was not created until the fourth day. I am at a loss to understand 24 hour days without the sun; both as light giver and gravitational center of the solar system.

It would be naive to assume that the writer of Genesis, with or without divine inspiration, was so ignorant that he didn’t understand the rising and setting of the sun as denoting ‘day’. The Bible, in fact, displays surprising understanding of natural processes, for instance, in Ecclesiastes 1:7 we see the hydrologic cycle described: All the rivers run into the sea; yet the sea is not full; unto the place from whence the rivers come, thither they return again. We see that bit of science paired with a complex metaphorical comment on life in the next verse: All things are full of labor; man cannot utter it: the eye is not satisfied with seeing, nor the ear filled with hearing. The text and the very grammatical structure of the book reveals a highly advanced culture, intellectually, if not in technology. We must look beyond these obvious seeming contradictions to understand it.

5. We have two great impediments to solving the riddle of the creation ‘day’. We have to remember that Genesis was written thousands of years ago in a largely alien language and culture. Beyond that it was either dictated by some angelic being of whom we know nothing, or was copied from some older source of which we also know nothing.

The second impediment is far greater than the distance in language and culture, it is the distance between God and man. Man is a prisoner of the Fourth Dimension ―Time; God is not. One of the cardinal attributes of God is that, as Creator, He stands outside the physical universe and time itself. Timelessness is beyond my understanding, and any who say they understand it are either liars or fools, and probably both. A precise technical explanation of the Creation act, even to modern science would be pointless, so we can expect only a very abridged account.

6. If these ‘days’ are not to be taken ‘literally’ as of 24 hour periods, then what are the alternative views consistent with belief in the true revelation of the Bible? There are many theories on that subject, too many and too complicated for this short commentary, so I will touch upon them only in a brief and general way.

There is the suggestion that the days were not meant to refer to sequential time periods at all, but some other organizing principle; several have been suggested.

A more popular view of the Creation account is as allegory. That view is held by many Christians in broad and not well defined terms. To understand that, we must separate allegory from myth; they are not the same. An allegory expresses truth, one might say it universalizes a truth. We seldom think of them as such, but the parables of Jesus are allegories: the prodigal son, the good Samaritan, the lost sheep, the sower and the four types of soil. These are all stories expressing truths, put in a form people can understand.

Then too, there is the fact that only God was present at the Creation, and if God is outside time, the whole creation was, from God’s perspective, (for lack of better terminology) instantaneous and simultaneous. In which case, the time periods would be artificial constructs to explain the creation in simple, human terms.

I cannot conceive of the acts of these ‘days’ being fully independent and consecutive, as a literal reading seems to make them, so ‘simultaneous’ seems to me to be a key ingredient, perhaps with the completion or milestone of some act being memorialized in each ‘day’.

Making the proper distinction between literal, allegorical, and…well, simply not understood is a challenge, but we must take the things we are sure of, and not let our journey be stymied by what we don’t understand.

7. Are there any arguments for an old earth within the Genesis account? Yes, I think so, one that comports perfectly with the geological record. I will delve briefly into that now.

The first command given to mankind (Gn. 2:28) is “Be fruitful and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it”. It is God’s stated purpose to create a people for himself. So how did He go about it? Did He create six billion humans instantly? Well, no… and then again, yes, depending upon one’s perspective. To God, it was an instantaneous creation; to mankind, no. But the point is this, God accomplished his will through a process; natural procreation. The same can be said for “every living creature” (before the creation of man); “God blessed them, saying, Be fruitful, and multiply, and fill the waters in the seas, and let fowl multiply in the earth.” Genesis 1:22. Any process takes time, some more than others.

So what other processes might God have set in motion that would give some hint of time? God knew the needs of his creation, and supplied us abundantly with balanced gravitational and centrifugal forces, sunshine, air, water; all of which required process. But there are other needs more in my line as an old geologist.

God knew that mankind, and the rest of the animal creation would need food. Genesis 2:5 reveals that there were plants before there was man “to till the ground”. So God had provided soil for his creation also. Very little grows on dry land without soil. But soil is the result of a geologic process. We can truthfully declare that God can instantly create soil out of nothing because God can do anything. But does that negate the necessity of a time consuming process? Surely we can balance that apparent discrepancy with the understanding that to God it was instantaneous, and man was not there to time it.

God knew that mankind would need energy resources beyond that supplied by the Sun. He also knew that the forests and fields would eventually be destroyed by the rising demand for fuel. So He has used time to provide us with vast forests, or at least their carbonized energy resources, stacked up, awaiting man’s need, and intelligence and ingenuity to develop. I think God is proud of his creation as they discover and use his bounteous provision to ‘subdue’ the earth. But the provision of coal resources required process, and process requires time.

Likewise with tools. Man was designed with the intelligence, ingenuity, and curiosity to need evermore, and ever more complex tools. His first simple tools were made of flint, or chert. Flint, at least the most widely used type, requires a lengthy process of weathering rock, concentration of silica in seabed sediments, crystallization into a mineral/rock, uplift and erosion so it would be available to primitive man. It is the same with iron ore, and the other metals and industrial minerals up to and including the ‘rare earth’ metals in such demand by the advanced technology required to supply the needs of billions of people; they all needed process and time.

Just a brief mention here about the origin of man. I believe in the special creation of mankind as God’s highest creation, but I see no substantive difference in special creation and the directed evolution of the human genome. As I said earlier, evolution by natural selection of random mutations is nonsense suitable only to hide from the truth of God’s legitimate authority as creator. If we concede that God uses time consuming processes to accomplish His will, then I can imagine the development of the human genome as a logical process of building upon, by divine intervention, the developing genetic code according His design. I am not wedded to that idea, but until some better explanation comes along is suits the purpose of satisfying my intellectual curiosity.

So here we have, at least to my mind, a Biblical justification for an old earth; time was needed for the accomplishment of God’s purpose. I don’t know how old earth is, but certainly much older than a few thousand years. I doubt the precise accuracy of some of the old earth models, including the ones accepted by most Old Earth Creationists. The Young Earthers have pointed out many problems with the models, and many of the “constants” I was taught, like atomic decay rates, and the speed of light in a vacuum, are being found not to be so constant after all. So I will remain an agnostic on the age of the earth, and I find that no problem at all either in my faith or my life.

Finally, I want to return briefly to the serious implications of those issues entangled with the age of the earth, and the veracity of the Biblical creation account. What are we as human beings? I have thought a great deal about that and written about it in other venues. The following quote is from my website warcomestogodshouse.com. It recounts the opinion of a supposedly great scientist and certain enemy of Christianity:

I want to take just a brief look at what a new edition hails as

“THE SEMINAL WORK OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY ON ITS 75^TH ANNIVERSARY…” (Sigmund Freud, Civilization and Its Discontents, frontispiece). I am sad to say there is some truth to that boast, such ideals precede Freud however. Let us pick out only two parts of this remarkable work.

First, Freud’s rejection of the traditional family relationship, which I will pass over with the brief quote: “Only the weaklings have submitted to such an extensive encroachment upon their sexual freedom…” (Freud p-95). That hardly needs explanation, but perhaps a moment of reflection might be in order on what that philosophy means to the principal building block of society – the family.

Of the second, we will take only a somewhat longer look. This is Freud’s judgment on the Biblical injunction, “Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself”. Freud did a lengthy introspective discussion of this concept and found it to be an impossible demand, as impossible as “Love thy enemy” – for it was ultimately the same thing. Man’s only possible relationship, by nature, is enemy. To men, as Freud saw it, “…their neighbor is for them not only a potential helper or sex object, but also someone who tempts them to satisfy their aggressiveness on him, to exploit his capacity for work without compensation, to use him sexually without his consent, to seize his possessions, to humiliate him, to cause him pain, to torture and kill him. Homo homino lupus” (i.e. Man is a wolf to man). (Freud, p-104)

This description of the nature of man could have been penned by an old-time Lutheran preacher. But with them, such a nature is the result of the fall, not biological determinism, and men are redeemable and able through spiritual renewal to overcome their depraved natures. Not so in Freud’s view. It was, in Freud’s opinion, the attempt to follow such biologically absurd precepts as ‘Love thy neighbor’ that lead men to the mental anguish, psychoses, and insanity modern man suffers. Furthermore, “…anyone who follows such a precept in present-day civilization only puts himself at a disadvantage vis-à-vis the person who disregards it.” (Freud, p-151)

Freud is right, of course, in his analysis of “natural man”. The ability to love your fellow man, even your enemy, comes from the old time religion. When one believes, really believes in the power and promises of God, then the envy, lust, fear and anger that breed hatred fade into insignificance. Faith, hope, and love (“charity” in the KJV) are the important things St. Paul advises us, and the greatest of these is love. I would add, the culmination of these is love. Faith gives us hope of joy beyond our wildest imagination. That hope frees us for love. Freud never discovered that.

Freud is much more complicated than pictured here, but this is an accurate tally of his bottom line on the nature (the biologically determined character) of man. What constraints are placed upon this nature are for the practical necessity of forming a community only, not for the sake of following some received moral code.

Are we simply biologically determined, or is there more to us? Thomas Jefferson and his revolutionary friends thought more of us when he penned:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.―That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed …

Jefferson returned to that theme a half century later in a letter to Thomas Weightman on the 50th Anniversary of the Declaration of Independence with this assertion that the time was at hand when it would be universally accepted that:

…the mass of mankind has not been born with saddles on their backs, nor a favored few booted and spurred, ready to ride them legitimately…”.

Unfortunately his hope was betrayed; even now the world, including America, is caught up in a counter-revolution. Many are the governments that hold to the first set of principles, “Man is a wolf to man”. America itself is sliding farther and faster in that direction, to the “Left”, the anti-God ‘Left’. The opposite of socialism, communism, progressivism and other ‘isms’ that can be grouped as ‘Left’ is Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. The truth, as opposed to the illusion of all these, let’s just say ‘Socialist’ systems, is total control of the masses by government, and total control of government by an elite few. You may be certain that these ‘booted and spurred’ few hate the Biblical view of mankind, and they even hate the provisions God made for the growth of humanity, fossil fuels for instance. For this reason, as well as deeper spiritual reasons, the concept of Biblical Creation is worth fighting for, but, as I said before, six literal creation days is ‘not the hill to die on’.

Bill

PS, There is a lot of good information about this controversy but I highly recommend the works of Dr. James Tour, Dr. John Lennox, and Dr. Michael Behe; both in books and on youtube. Don’t be put off by what wikipedia and the cohorts of the Left say about them, recognize them as simply enemies of God desperately hiding behind a phantasm.