Justin Taylor posted an article from Christianity Today magazine by Darrell Bock, research professor at Dallas Theological Seminary. Professor Bock gave some great guidelines for Christians responding to the media’s reporting of current events in Christendom. Lately, the media has been reporting on the many books and movies coming out with unorthodox views of the history of Christ and His church:

Topics like the James ossuary and the Gospel of Judas have hit Times Square, not only pricking the attention of seminary students, but also garnering coverage from journalists and culture-watchers, from CBS News’s traditional news team to 360 Degrees’s Anderson Cooper.

The typical response by Christians (and this includes myself) is to call out these articles as attacks on the faith and just dismiss them as being slanderous. In the article Bock addresses what he thinks the response from pastors, seminaries, and Christians in general should resemble. When he lays out some principles for individuals, I took this to heart because I often write about this type of reporting here. Bock says:

Rather than seeing new media reports as conspiracies to rail against, why not see them as opportunities to discuss faith with friends and neighbors who will find them intriguing? Only we mustn’t do so with an angry or dismissive tone. Rather, we ought to respectfully explain the historic Christian view. Becoming equipped for such discussions may require seminars organized by local churches. Imagine churches working together to help believers contend for the truth in their communities.

So I am asking you for your assistance in keeping me accountable when I post on these types of things. Call me out if I am dismissive or arrogant. I think a good test would be this: would you be ashamed to send these posts to those who don’t call themselves Christians? Thanks for your help!

I found an article Reuters has posted on current research into human evolution traits over time. John Hawks out of the University of Wisconsin has been looking into what specific physical traits have evolved in humans over the past few millions of years. I think the article can be summed up as quoted below

The central finding is that human evolution is happening very fast — faster than any of us thought

and, from the article

In fact, people today are genetically more different from people living 5,000 years ago than those humans were different from the Neanderthals who vanished 30,000 years ago

The traits this research focused on were not the physical traits (big forehead, lots of hair, big noses) that we typically think of when we think of the pictures of Neanderthals that saturate our museums and elementary school text books, but rather the less visible ones (ear wax, ability to digest milk, disease resistance, etc.). Therefore, this is not a case against the micro-evolution that most evolutionists hold to today since we are not talking about sweeping changes in human-body structure. But it is interesting to point out that this research seems to imply that the humans we are today came about very rapidly in the past 5,000 years; which is about the age of the earth if you ask someone who believes in a literal interpretation of the book of Genesis.

But There Are Still 30,000 Year Old Bones

The question still remains though, if we have human bones from 30,000 years ago we would have to throw out the literal Genesis account of creation, so how do we reconcile this? Let’s look at the method used to date these human remains.

Carbon Dating

Carbon dating will calculate the age of carbon in a specimen based on how much carbon is left when you find it. Since carbon decays at a known rate, you can calculate an age given the current amount found in a specimen. The rate at which carbon decays is based on the amount of C14 in the atmosphere during a specimen’s lifetime. This is where carbon dating breaks down. The amount of C14 in the atmosphere has not been constant over time. For instance, the amount of C14 doubled for a little while during the 1950’s and 1960’s (when atomic weapons testing was done above ground anywhere there was available space). Natural conditions affect the amount of C14 as well; climate changes, solar storms, amount of organic matter existing, etc.

Scientists have attempted to fix this issue by looking at items with known ages and measuring their amount of carbon and then calibrating based on these values. So, as an example, we can take a tree and count its number of rings and determine its age (1 ring = 1 year of life) and measure its carbon quantity and match up the age of the tree and the age of the bone. But again this method relies on a constant ecological environment during the tree’s lifetime. For example, during periods of rapidly changing climates, trees may grow faster or slower and hence would not gain 1 ring per year. Apart from the non-constant growth cycle, you have the bigger problem of taking two objects that did not begin their life-cycle together and attempting to base one’s age on the other’s. Let’s say I date a tree at 20,000 years old and then use that tree’s age to calibrate for a 10,000 year old bone, I cannot just assume that a tree’s previous 10,000 years would not have any effect on it’s aging characteristics for the next 10,000 years. I would have to calibrate using a specimen that began its life at the same time the bone (and whoever it was attached to) did. And even if I could do that, I would only be basing the bone’s age on the tree’s age, but the tree’s age is based on the bone’s age because I had to use a tree that was the same age as the bone’s. And so you have an iterative calculation method without a lot of specimens to choose from (we have about 270 samples which are older than 5,000 years).

The Variable Truth

In the end, what we have is methods which rely on assumptions to determine their results. What if the world flooded 4,000 years ago? Certainly something this massive in scale would throw off a formula which is based on things remaining fairly constant through-out their life-span.

I was going through the book of Job today, honestly one of my favorite books of the Bible, and stopped on a particular passage (Job 12:7-11):

7″But now ask the beasts, and let them teach you;
And the birds of the heavens, and let them tell you.
8″Or speak to the earth, and let it teach you;
And let the fish of the sea declare to you.
9″Who among all these does not know
That the hand of the LORD has done this,
10In whose hand is the life of every living thing,
And the breath of all mankind?
11″Does not the ear test words,
As the palate tastes its food?

What caused me to stop here was Job’s apologetic, arguing for the sovereignty of God, which can be used to argue for the existence of God. Job goes about this by looking at nature and seeing God through it. This is commonly referred to as the argument from nature or creation and usually is meant to appeal to an unbeliever’s recognition that things in nature appear to have been created due to their commonality, beauty, and intricate inner-workings.

Beginning with verses 7 and 8, Job says that we should ask the beasts, birds, fish, and the earth itself who has done all of these things, who holds the very breath of life? Obviously Job isn’t telling his friends to go and speak to the animals or the physical earth. Job is saying that they should observe, question, and investigate nature and, using human reasoning, figure out where things came from. He is saying, “look around, everything you see has clearly been created.”

Then in verse 9, Job says, “Who among all these does not know that the hand of the LORD has done this,” and from these we are left with some interesting questions. Job is saying that there isn’t anything we see that doesn’t lead us to a knowledge of a creator, but certainly some things today are difficult for the Christian community to explain. I have heard some good theories on dinosaurs, stars that have the appearance of exploding millions of years ago, carbon-dating, etc. but none are really nailed-down yet and this is a major hang-up for a lot of the more scientific unbelieving community. Job is saying that there is nothing created that will not testify of its creator.

Do we believe this? Do we believe, as verse 10 says, that God holds the lives of every living thing in His hand and that if He so chooses He can remove the very breath of life that was given? In other words, do we believe that God did create the dinosaurs within the timespan given in Genesis? Do we believe that He gave them life or possibly that He gave them life and removed their breath instantly as I’ve heard some apologists explain it? Verse 11 says that our ears should test every word they hear just as the mouth tastes all of the food it eats. Have you ever tried to not taste your food? We should be testing the words we hear from the scientific community as well as from the philosophic community and stacking up our case against those words. I don’t think these difficult questions will go away, they will continue to come up as we speak with those who do not believe in a creator.