When Are Young Earth Creationists Like Star Wars Fans?

In an article first published two years ago, Answers in Genesis founder Ken Ham asked whether creationists change. “If creationists are unwilling to change their basic beliefs, does that mean they’re not true scientists?” Ham begins. Ham, of course, disagrees, but his meandering explanations and justifications reveal something about the way he views the world—and science. It’s all about presuppositions.

Ham begins as follows:

When I quote secular articles claiming some new evidence that “rewrites” certain parts of the evolutionary story, evolutionists claim this is a good thing because change is part of the self-correcting mechanism of science. In contrast, such evolutionists usually claim that creationists aren’t prepared to change, and because they don’t allow for any such “self-correction,” they aren’t scientific.

This summary seems fairly accurate.

Ham goes on:

At the same time, I’ve had to deal with creationists who don’t want to change some long-held, cherished idea from outside the Bible. Even though new evidence points in a different direction, they cling to old ideas because they have used them to answer some difficult questions in the past.

It is true that creationists sometimes disagree among themselves, and it is also true that creationists sometimes change specific teachings in order to make their beliefs fit better with findings in modern science. After it was understood that the continents were once one giant land mass, for example, creationists began to argue that an obscure verse in Genesis (“Two sons were born to Eber: One was named Peleg, because in his time the earth was divided) referred to this phenomenon.

Ham goes on as follows:

Both views overlook an important distinction between models and presuppositions. The best way to explain this is a real-life situation I experienced that sums up the confusion.

When the Creation Museum opened in 2007, I was interviewed by a well-known evolutionist whom the BBC had contracted for a radio program. As we sat together, the conversation, as I recall it to the best of my ability, went something like this:

Evolutionist: So you admit that your views about creation are based on the Bible and are set, so you are not prepared to change.

Ken Ham: I’m not prepared to change anything the Bible clearly states.

Evolutionist: Your views about six literal days of creation and a global Flood are set—you are not prepared to change those?

Ken Ham: I’m not prepared to change anything that is stated in the Bible.

Evolutionist: See, that’s religion. Your views are set. Evolutionists are real scientists because we are prepared to change our views. As we discover more evidence, our views will change—that’s what science does. But your views are set, because you are not about science but religion. Real scientists are prepared to change their ideas.

Ken Ham: Now, you don’t believe the Bible’s account of creation. You won’t even consider the possibility of creation in six days, that death came after sin, that God created man from dust and woman from his side, or that there was a worldwide Flood, will you?

Evolutionist: No, of course not.

Ken Ham: Are you prepared to change that?

Evolutionist: You are not prepared to change.

Ken Ham: I’m not prepared to change what the Bible states, but creationists are prepared to change their models built upon the Bible. On the other hand, you are not prepared to change your belief in evolution by natural processes.

I went on to explain to this evolutionist that she, like me, had certain basic views she was not prepared to change. The same is true of every famous evolutionist, such as Bill Nye “the Science Guy.” All evolutionists believe the universe and all life came about by natural processes. That’s a foundational belief they are not prepared to change, no matter what the evidence.

I find that many people (whether creationists or evolutionists) don’t seem to understand the difference between presuppositions (foundational beliefs on which we build our worldview) and the models built on those presuppositions.

How nice that Ham gets to have his name but the “well-known evolutionist” he debated with does not. I can only imagine that this is because Ham does not want us looking up the episode to see what the exchange actually looked like.

Regardless, there is something missing from the picture Ham paints.

Ham argues that both creationists and “evolutionists” base their models on presuppositions that they are not willing to question. The trouble is that creationists’ “presuppositions,” to use Ham’s term, are substantively different from those used by scientists in a way Ham does not acknowledge. Creationists “presuppose” that a divine being told a human thousands of years ago the story of how the world came into being. “Evolutionists” presuppose that we can trust our senses.

These two presuppositions are very, very different. That we can trust our senses is an assumption that virtually everyone makes. It is in some sense the most basic human presupposition. If we can’t trust our senses, well, we are all in a boatload of trouble. (The Matrix, anyone?) But presupposing that a creation story written down thousands of years ago as part of a specific culture’s mythology is a true scientific description of the origins of the world—that is something else entirely.

Ham goes on:

Now for Christians who build their thinking on the Bible, the presupposition that the Bible is the infallible Word of God and the foundation for our worldview is not subject to change. (This should be the stance of all Christians.) However, models built on God’s Word are man-made, so they’re subject to change.

In other words, Ham says, creationists presuppose that the cosmological narrative laid out in Genesis is fact. The smaller details creationists fit in around that narrative as they seek to make their beliefs look scientific, in contrast, constitute a “model” and are therefore subject to change.

As Ham explains:

For instance, when the famous book that started the modern creation movement—The Genesis Flood—was published in 1961, it promoted a model that became very popular among creationists. Based on the authors’ interpretation of Scripture regarding the second day of Creation, they proposed that the original earth was surrounded by a protective vapor canopy. This model seemed to explain many issues such as the amazing longevity of people in the pre-Flood world.

Now many in the next generation of biblical creationists rejected the canopy based on theological and scientific objections. What Scripture states concerning the second day of Creation (our presupposition) has not changed, but the model built on Scripture has changed or even been rejected by many modern creationists. (You can find out the details in “The Collapse of the Canopy Model” at AnswersInGenesis.org.)

This reads like an explanation of why fan theories about the size of Star Destroyers have changed over time. You know, well we thought this, but then someone else pointed out that the physics only work if it’s this other thing, and that’s how we realized it had to be that. The difference is that warsies recognize that the story they’re arguing over is fiction.

When I debated Bill Nye in February 2014, I publicly admitted my presupposition of building my worldview on the Bible. I challenged Bill Nye to admit publicly his presupposition of building his thinking on evolutionary naturalism.

However, as is usual for evolutionists, he would not admit his starting point of naturalism. He kept insisting his view was “science.” That’s why I kept emphasizing that there’s a big difference between historical science (our interpretations based on beliefs about the past, such as God’s revelation in the Bible concerning origins) and observational science (knowledge we can gain through direct observation, using one’s senses, and based on repeatable testing in the present).

I’m going to call curtains here, because the rest of the article becomes more and more repetitive. But I’ll address this claim first.

Nye’s “presuppositions” are the same presuppositions everyone else holds—that we can trust our senses. That isn’t something we have to justify, except perhaps at a sci-fi conference. True, Ham claims that Nye holds “evolutionary naturalism” as a presupposition—not just trust in one’s senses—but Ham also thinks that study of the earth’s geological past is not based on observation and one’s senses, so this equivocation is perhaps not surprising.

The underlying issue is this: Ham has predetermined his conclusion from the outset, and he presumes that his scientific opponents have done the same. There’s a very big difference between an individual trusting the validity of a theory based on observation, testing, and confirmation from every branch of science, on the one hand, and an individual that a Bronze Age creation story is scientific reality before even looking at the actual scientific evidence, on the other.

Ham concludes with this statement:

So the question then comes down to whose presuppositions are correct.

Unfortunately, that is where the argument will always end when arguing with a young earth creationist who also uses Ham’s presuppositional apologetics. The reason I changed my position—-and I was once a young earth creationist—is because a lot of the creationist literature I read was pre-Ham, and it claimed to be based not on presuppositions but on solid evidence. I believed that, and was willing to follow evidence and not dig in my heels on “presuppositions.”

Ham finishes by offering several examples of “major questions creationists are investigating” in the present. “As our understanding increases, these models are subject to change,” he writes. “But the truths of Scripture never change.”

How can starlight travel millions of light-years to earth if God created stars six thousand years ago?

Today light travels at a fixed speed (only one “light-year” per year). Creation astronomers have proposed several models to explain how light from distant stars traveled here. A recent view proposes that God caused space to expand quickly on Day Four like He caused plants to sprout (Hebrew dasha) on Day Three.

How could miles of ice pile up during the Ice Age?

Today’s ice sheets are mostly cold deserts, where little snow falls. Creationists propose that the warm oceans after the Flood produced the right conditions for heavy, sustained snowfall. Some believe the whole process took only a few centuries.

How did so many animal species arise after the Ark landed?

The earth has over two million species today. Creation biologists recognize that God placed within each created “kind” immense variability to produce all these species. If the “kinds” are roughly equivalent to modern scientific “families,” Noah needed only around 1,500 kinds of air-breathing land animals on the Ark.

How many fossil layers could have been deposited during the Flood?

Floods produce only a few feet of deposits today. Creation geologists are studying the fossil layers to find out how many were deposited during the Flood, and which came afterward. Some believe the topmost Flood layers are the ones with dinosaurs (Cretaceous), and the higher layers (Tertiary) were deposited later.

This is not how science works. It is, however, exactly how Star Wars forums work.

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