Well Hans, you’re opening the door for others to listen in on the types of challenging discussions my colleagues and I often have at society meetings, retreats, and with students in our classes. I for one am glad for it, and welcome others to enjoy the repartee. I’m also glad that you enjoyed the finite…

Echoing Paul’s words before King Agrippa, I consider myself fortunate to stand before you today as I make my defense of young earth creation despite the “overwhelming evidence” embraced by old-earthers. Thank you for your amicable yet pointed questions. The Stones Cry Out You noted that most geologists would sharply disagree that Noah’s flood has…

I am delighted, Hans, that your questions about the biblical evidence focus on the atonement. If this was routinely seen as the central issue in the origins debate (rather than say, the genre of Genesis 1), then it would change the nature of the engagement, and I suspect, the outcome. At the very least, it…

I appreciate Hans’s redirect and thoughtful questions to my contribution. With regard to my qualification of Mayr’s third principle, he asks, “Do you mean that we can only understand origins using divine revelation, not science?” If this is really what I mean, he states “This conclusion seems counterintuitive, if not controversial.” I will own the…

Thanks, Hans, for your challenging questions. With respect to Dr. Damadian and astronaut Colonel Jeffrey Williams, and their contribution to origins research from a creationist view, I believe that they have contributed to origins research. Before I get into that, however, my main task in the essay was to address the question, is it tenable…

Remarking on the natural human propensities toward both pride and ease, Francis Bacon observed “A man will become attached to one particular science and field of investigation either because he thinks he was its author and inventor or because he has worked hard on it and become habituated to it.” This strikes most of us…

At the outset, I should confess that I am a young earth creationist. For biblical and theological reasons primarily, I accept a young earth as the creation position on the side of the angels. Many of my good friends are either evolutionary or old earth creationists and I respect insightful defenses of those positions; however,…

First, I would like to take issue with the second part of the question which is akin to the question, “have you stopped beating your wife?” To answer the wife beating question without qualification is to concede that you were beating your wife. To answer this YEC question as stated is to concede that I…

In 1986, Finite and Infinite Games was published by religious studies professor James P. Carse. In it, he classified voluntary human activities into two kinds of “games.” Finite games, argued Carse, have a definite beginning and end, fixed numbers of players during play, and agreed-upon rules. Scores and rankings result in a winner declared when…

I was challenged with this objection during a debate on national television in the UK. In contemporary Western culture, the evidence for an ancient earth and universe is understood to be so crushing that to be labelled as a ‘young earth creationist’ is to become an intellectual outcast. Even more than rank stupidity, it is…

Although this is an important question, its tone implies that science is a foe to the young earth creationist. This couldn’t be further from the truth. Science is a useful tool to test the validity of knowledge and the models that describe the present, reconstruct the past, and predict the future. However, care must be…

The value and authority of human reason was a point of significant tension between Protestants and Catholics during the sixteenth century, and Protestants were particularly skeptical of its power to illuminate spiritual truths. As Johannes Bugenhagen (1485-1558) shows, however, Protestants did not dismiss the value of reason altogether. Instead, it was viewed as useful and…