Engaging Creationists and Critics in the Infinite Game

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…
Lest Anyone Cheat You

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…
Clarity on the Methodology

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…
Scientific Paradigms and Theological Necessity

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…
Creation Speaks

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…
Creationism Embattled yet Resilient: A Redirect

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,…
Placing Assumptions in the Dock

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…
Finite Games, Infinite Games, and Creation

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…
The Evidence of Science and Scripture

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…
Dealing with Deep Time

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…
Young Earth Creationism Is Not Young

Yes, it is tenable to be a young earth creationist in the face of scientific evidence against it. I believe there are three lines of overlapping evidence to support the validity of young earth creationism in the face of evidence against it: 1) it is based on inerrant scriptural truth, 2) it has survived centuries…
Creationism Embattled yet Resilient: An Introduction

The multi-year Creation Project at the Henry Center is part of a broader conversation that has been underway for a long time. The relationship between science and theology has been at the heart of a dialogue unfolding for centuries—or millennia, if you count the early rumblings in patristic and medieval Christendom. Ian Barbour reignited the…