Should the YEC/OCC Factions Simply Call a Truce?

                Many Christians on each side of the aisle referenced above have cordial relationships with friends who differ from our OCC position on the relationship between scientific knowledge and the first chapters of Genesis.  And most of us wish to further these friendships as much as possible.  Indeed, Scripture too seems to affirm that goal by giving high priority to living in harmony with each other as brothers and sisters in Christ (John 17:20f, Philippians 2:1-2), instead of being needlessly divisive.  For these reasons it can be very uncomfortable to elevate such matters as are clearly controversial.  

                Nevertheless, it is the contention of this essay that, in one specific context (for which Scripture also assigns high priority—Luke 24:47), we who are old-cosmos creationists (OCC) must lay claim to the superiority of our position over young-earth creationism (YEC).  That context entails the employment of controversial truth-claims in our proclamation (Matthew 10:34).  To be specific, whenever we engage in the Great-Commission-task of urging secularists to embrace their faith[3] in our Redeemer Jesus Christ, who is also our Maker, it is urgent that we stand firm in our perspective on creation for the reason that doing so is the only means for employing that very body of evidence[4] which undergirds our position.  The solitary way to verify the truth[5] of our perspective is to name the specific ways by which scientific evidence (the witness of nature that St. Paul identified in Romans 1:18-20) confirms that the true God is the Creator of all existence in the manner that the Bible declares in Genesis 1.  Why must this be so?

1.       Limiting the case for the existence of the universe to abstract assertions by severing it from evidential support implies that (in contrast to Psalm 19:1-4) no such case can be made at all.  On the other hand, identifying supporting scientific evidence affirms the validity of Psalm 19.

2.       The neglect to appeal to factual evidence from nature as it pertains to creation illegitimately favors, by default, the YEC position over the OCC perspective.[6]

3.       The same failure (in contradiction to Romans 1:18-20) undermines St. Paul’s assertion that God’s “eternal power and deity [is] clearly perceived in the things that He has made.”[7]

4.       On the other hand the scientific evidence[8] points inescapably[9] to a beginning of the universe out of nothing in a manner that utterly refutes atheism.  At the same time, the Big Bang can easily and beautifully harmonize with Genesis 1:1, while YEC cannot be reconciled with this passage.[10]     

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[1] “Young Earth Creationist/Old Cosmos Creationist.”

[2] I do not employ this term in a pejorative sense, but in the acknowledgment that each party under consideration is clearly controversial.

[3] The classical understanding of saving faith entails three aspects which include not only assent (agreement), and trust (entrusting ourselves to the finished work of Christ for our sins), but also knowledge (which entails our intellect).

[4] Despite the fact that evidential apologetics has fallen out of favor in certain Christian circles in our day, the Bible clearly employs this strategy in both Testaments. See my two papers, “How Did the Early Church Grow?” and “The Pervasive Employment of Apologetics in the Bible,” both of which can be accessed, together with all my writings, at my website: www.christianityontheoffense.com.

[5] See both my essays, “Truth Can Never Be Less than One,” and “Truth is Falling Everywhere Except.”

[6] The YEC position doesn’t depend on scientific evidence to support its position while OCC, by contrast, does.

[7] See my paper, “Romans 1:18-20.”

[8] See my paper, “Was the Big Bang the Big Beginning?”

[9] I don’t deny that certain scientists who are committed to materialism seek to escape this reality.  Yet they can only do so be evading the hard scientific data in favor of abstract speculations that cannot be grounded in empirical knowledge. (Ibid).

[10] See my paper, “Only the Big Bang Reconciles Genesis 1:1 with the Rest of Genesis 1 (And Everything Else as Well!)”