opening discussion question · Pasachoff, J. & Flippenko, A. (2003) The Cosmos: Astronomy in the New Millennium. age of the earth. astronomy. Ring Galaxy AM 0644 -741 (Hubble Space

opening discussion question

1. Have there been times in your life that you have had to struggle or deal with your faith being at odds with

something in science? How have you explained your views? Describe the tension that it has caused.

discussion question

You go to the museum and see rock collections that are said to be millions of

years old. How would you discuss this with your children?

discussion question

What are common methods that Christians use in these “debates?” Are there problems that arise from these?

Scripture & reasonLutheran theologians

Martin Luther (1529) by Lucas Cranach

“Where will you find a man who would have believed this story of the creation of Eve, if it had not been so clearly handed down to us?”

WA 42,91

Reference guideWeimarer Ausgabe (Weimar edition of Luther's works)Schriften / Werke (writings / works) (WA)Tischreden (table talk), (TR)


Siegbert Becker (1914-1984)Professor of Theology, Wisconsin Lutheran Seminary

The Foolishness of God (1982)

“Man, with his reason, can only deal with phenomena, and he ought be conscious of the limitations which this places on all his investigations.”

Becker, S.W. (1982) The Foolishness of God (p. 62)

Martin Luther (1529) by Lucas Cranach

“For although the gospel is a higher gift and wisdom than human reason, yet it does not alter or tear to pieces the understanding which God has implanted in human reason.”

WA 22, 108

“[Faith] follows nothing but the bare Word, even if it is contrary to all sense and contends against all human reason, yes, against its own senses and everything that it sees, feels, and hears.”

WA 16, 354


Scripture & reason

Saint Paul of Tarsus (5-67) by Theophanes Kris

“Faith is confidence in what we hope for and assurance about what we do not see. This is what the ancients were commended for. By faith we understand that the universe was formed at God’s command, so that what is seen was not made out of what was visible.”

Hebrews 11 NIV

“So absurdity is one of the principal reasons why we do not simply accept the words of Moses and Paul!...With that same argument you will deny all the articles of faith”

WA 42, 139

“You could say that God deceived us in creation—except that he told us what he did!”

Kerry Kuehn, 2010

“Ask all reason, and it will be forced to confess and to say, “if this is true that God is almighty, then one can posit nothing that would be impossible for him. Therefore here all objections of clever reason are silenced, and the doctrine of the resurrection follows strongly and mightily from the doctrine of creation.”

WA 49,400

Scripture & reasonLutheran “theologians”

discussion question

What Biblical doctrines don’t work well with human reason?

Doctrine: Application of reason to WordChristian doctrine clashes with rationalism

Incarnation (finite and infinite?)

Trinity (3 in 1?)

Real Presence (no scientific evidence—feeding countless people)

Baptism (in general, and infant baptism)

ResurrectionConversion (synergism)

Election (double predestination)

Law and Gospel

"For Jews demand signs and Greeks desire wisdom, but we proclaim Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles, but to those who are the called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. For God's foolishness is wiser than human wisdom, and God's weakness is stronger than human strength."

1 Corinthians 1:22-25

Part 2: Apparent Science and Bible Conflicts

Part 2: Apparent Science and Bible ConflictsIntroduction to the Issues: God reveals himself to us

Book of God’s word: Bible Book of God’s works: nature

Lava Lake, near Bozeman MT

discussion questionIs there a straw man argument set up in this

debate? Secular or atheistic scientists can easily show that Bible believing people are bad

scientists… all they need to do is show an example from nature that requires long

periods of time. Can they easily poke holes in young earth arguments? When they do, that is used to discount the message of the

Bible.

Part 2: Apparent Science and Bible ConflictsIntroduction to the Issues: Age of the Earth (deep time)

• Isotopic dating• Astronomy• Geologic layers• Ice cores• Tree ring

age of the earthisotopic (radiometric) dating

Lewin, H. (2005) The Earth Through Time (8th Ed.)

“There are well over forty different radiometric dating methods . . . Vast amounts of data overwhelmingly favor an old earth. Several hundred

laboratories around the world are active in radiometric dating. Their results consistently agree with an old earth. Over a thousand papers on radiometric

dating were published in scientifically recognized journals in the last year, and hundreds of thousands of dates have been published in the last 50 years.

Essentially all of these strongly favor an old earth.”-Weins, R. (2002) Radiometric Dating (See also Renne et al (1997) Science 277: 1279-80).

“Stars estimated to be thousands to billions of light years away using parallax measurements, variable star blink rates, and Hubble redshift calculations.”

Pasachoff, J. & Flippenko, A. (2003) The Cosmos: Astronomy in the New Millennium

age of the earthastronomy

Ring Galaxy AM 0644-741 (Hubble Space Telescope - NASA)

“The basis of this method lies with looking for items that vary with the seasons in a consistent manner. Effects of solar irradiance and temperature are used to find the find the number of years over which the ice-core accumulated.”

C. Lorius et al. (1985) Nature 316:591-596.

age of the earthice core data

Paolo Gabrielli (Ohio State Polar Research Center)

7,484 year overlapping dendrochronology of the bristlecone pine (Pinus aristata) confirmed by radiocarbon dating.

Ferguson, C. (1970) Radiocarbon Variations and Absolute Chronology 237:59.

11,700 year old Mojave desert creosote bush (Larrea tridentata) ring >20m in diameter.

Vasek, F. (1980) Amer J Bot 67:246-55.

age of the earthtree ring data: dendrochronology

Part 2: Apparent Science and Bible ConflictsIntroduction to the Issues: Evolution (origin of life)

Origin of Species(Charles Darwin)

NOTE: theory of natural selection discovered concurrently with another

scientist – Alfred Russel Wallace

What do you think – how did God carry out his work of creation?

discussion question

Part 3: One Reasonable (?) Approach

Philip Henry Gosse, 1855 (public domain)

Part 3: One Reasonable (?) ApproachOmphalos and the courtroom

excerpts from Omphalos:

http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/39910

http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/39910


example: Cow

embryo—fœtus—calf—heifer—cow—ovum—germ. vesicle—embr. vesicle


example: Plant


Gosse, P.H. (1857) Omphalos

‘I wish it to be distinctly understood, that I am not proving the exact or approximate antiquity of the globe we inhabit. I am not attempting to show that it has existed for no more than six thousand years. I wish this to be distinctly stated, because I am sure I shall meet with many opponents unfair enough, or illogical enough, to misrepresent or misunderstand my argument, and sound the trumpet of victory, because I cannot demonstrate that.

pgs. 340-341

Part 3: One Reasonable (?) ApproachOmphalos: Gosse’s conclusion


‘It may be objected, that, to assume the world to have been created with fossil skeletons in its crust,—skeletons of animals that never really existed,—is to charge the Creator with forming objects whose sole purpose was to deceive us. The reply is obvious. Were the concentric timber-rings of a created tree formed merely to deceive? Were the growth lines of a created shell intended to deceive? Was the navel of the created Man intended to deceive him into the persuasion that he had had a parent?

pgs. 348-349



Part 3: One Reasonable (?) ApproachGosse’s approach: accepted or rejected?

• “Never was a book cast upon the waters with greater anticipation of success than was this curious, this obstinate, this fanatical volume... He offered it with a glowing gesture to atheists and Christians alike. This was to be a universal panacea; this the system of intellectual therapeutics which could not but heal all the maladies of the age. But alas, atheists and Christians alike looked at it and laughed, and threw it away”

Edmund Gosse, in Father and Son (1907) pg. 116

• he could not “give up the painful and slow conclusion of five and twenty years’ study of geology, and believe that God has written in the rocks one enormous and superfluous lie”

Rev. Charles Kingsley, as recorded by Edmund Gosse in Father and Son (1907) pg. 117

• “the most incomprehensible cover-up operation ever attributed to divinity by man.”John Fowles, 20th century English novelist

• “But what is so desperately wrong about Omphalos? Only this really (and perhaps paradoxically): that we can devise no way to find out whether it is wrong — or for that matter, right. Omphalos is the classical example of an utterly untestable notion, for the world will look exactly the same in all its intricate detail whether fossils and strata are prochronic or products of an extended history.” Stephen Jay Gould, in Adam’s Navel (1995)

• “Gosse's argument is, in fact, quite flawless. Not a single truth of geology need be abandoned, yet the harmony with Genesis is complete. As Gosse pointed out, we might even suppose that God created the earth a few minutes ago, complete with all its cities and records, and memories in the minds of men, and there is no logical way to refute this as a possible theory.” Martin Gardner, in Fads and Fallacies in the Name of Science (1952)

Part 3: One Reasonable (?) ApproachGosse’s approach: accepted or rejected?

5. Is this approach helpful? Critique this theory.

6. Why was there so much ridicule for him? How does it differ from your views? Is it the degree to which God created with age? Are there any absolute lines that are crossed?

discussion question

Why is it wrong to accept evolution as the origin of man?

discussion question

Logical break point

What do you think – would God create the world with fossils?

discussion question

Does it really matter what you believe about creation?

discussion question

“The role of the Christian in science is not to pick and choose bits of science with which to defend Scripture. We dare not confound Scripture with human science.”

P. Boehlke, 2004. “The Christian as Biologist.” in Reading God’s World: The Scientific Vocation. Angus Menuge (Ed.), Concordia Publishing House, St. Louis. pg. 228

Part 4: What are the implications?

“The laws of science are continually changing. In such a changing climate we dare never hold to a hope of harmonizing changing laws of men with the changeless Word of God.”

M. Sponholz, 1982. “Two Towers: the relationship between science and the Bible.” Minnesota District Pastoral Conference, Minneapolis, MN. pg. 4.


“We need to move from the human scientific arguments at the edge of our faith and focus on the center of Scripture: Jesus.”********************************!

P. Boehlke, 2004. “The Christian as Biologist.” in Reading God’s World: The Scientific Vocation. Angus Menuge (Ed.), Concordia Publishing House, St. Louis. pg. 228


Job 42:2-3Then Job replied to the LORD:I know that you can do all things;

no purpose of yours can be thwarted.You asked, ‘Who is this that obscures my plans without knowledge?’

Surely I spoke of things I did not understand,things too wonderful for me to know.

1 Corinthians 13:12For now we see only a reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known.

References/Sources• Boehlke, P. 1991. “Dinsosaurs: God’s Creatures.” The Lutheran Educator 31(3):2. • Brug, J. n.d. “Why confessional Lutherans believe that Genesis 1-3 describes real

history.” Wisconsin Lutheran Seminary Essay Files. • Gosse, E. 1919. Father and Son: A Study of two temperaments, 8th ed., Charles

Schribner and Sons, New York.• Gosse, P.H. 1857. Omphalos. J. Van Voorst, London.• MacPherson, R.C. 1999a. “Troubled by Evolutionism? Isaiah offers comfort from God

the Creator.” Lightsource (WELS Campus Ministry Newsletter). 23(1):1, 4.• MacPherson, R.C. 1999b. “Antiquity of the Earth: Episodes in the history of science

that have shaped people’s perceptions of the earth’s age.” (presentation). Tenth Annual Theological Symposium, Concordia Seminary, St. Louis, September 22, 1999 (with minor revisions and corrections, May 19th, 2000). 1-12.

• Menuge, A.J.L. (ed.) 2004. Reading God’s World: The Scientific Vocation. Concordia Publishing House, St. Louis.

• Sponholz, M.P. 1982. “Two Towers: the relationship between science and the Bible.” for Minnesota District Pastoral Conference, St. John’s Ev. Lutheran Church, Minneapolis, MN.

• Stott, R. 2012. Darwin’s Ghosts: The Secret History of Evolution. Spiegel and Grau, New York.

• Weimarer Ausgabe (Weimar edition of Luther's works-WA) including Luther's Table Talk (TR), Letters and Bible Translation.

‘We have passed, in review before us the whole organic world: and the result is uniform; that no example can be selected from the vast vegetable kingdom, none from the vast animal kingdom, which did not at the instant of its creation present indubitable evidences of a previous history. This is not put forth as a hypothesis, but as a necessity; I do not say that it was probably so, but that it was certainly so; not that it may have been thus, but that it could not have been otherwise.’ pg. 336



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Documents

opening discussion question · Pasachoff, J. & Flippenko, A. (2003) The Cosmos: Astronomy in the New Millennium. age of the earth. astronomy. Ring Galaxy AM 0644 -741 (Hubble Space