Sarfati on the flat-earth movement

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8iK5QILwahE&feature=youtu.be

The Wild West

A couple of years ago, Jonathan Sarfati wrote a provocative critique of Omphalism and the apparent age theory:

http://creation.com/is-apparent-age-biblical

From my perspective, his position is somewhat ironic because I find myself on both sides of Sarfati. On the one hand, he's hostile to old-earth creationism while I'm sympathetic to old-earth creationism. On the other hand, he's hostile to Omphalism while I'm sympathetic to Omphalism. So I'm both to his right and to his left (so to speak) on the alternatives. 

1. Before commenting directly on his critique of Omphalism and apparent age theory, I'd like to take a step back. There's a certain tension in Sarfati's epistemology. For instance:

It also documents how evangelicals who disagree with 24-hour creation days acknowledge that the text teaches this, but disagree primarily because they are intimidated by so-called ‘science,’ which they believe teaches differently. Science should not be dismissed, but it must be kept in its proper ministerial role as a servant to the Bible, and never placed in a magisterial role over and above the Bible. 

http://creation.com/refuting-compromise-refutation-of-hugh-ross-introductory-chapter-and-reviews

The problem with this statement is that Sarfati has devoted his entire professional life to defending his interpretation of Scripture on scientific grounds. So he seems to think it's necessary to harmonize his interpretation of the creation account and the flood account with science. In that respect, his position isn't fundamentally different from old-earth creationists like Gleason Archer and Hugh Ross or theistic evolutionists like Alister McGrath, Bruce Waltke, and Dennis Venema. 

No doubt he'd bristle at the comparison. He'd probably say the difference is that he takes Scripture as his starting-point whereas they take science as their starting-point. I doubt some of them would agree with that characterization, but even if it were correct, the fact remains that both he and they are using science as a benchmark. It's unclear why he'd devote his life to science and the scientific defense of Scripture unless he believes the young-earth interpretation must take science seriously, unless he believes the young-earth interpretation requires scientific legitimation. If he doesn't think that, why spend so much time reconciling the "true" interpretation of the Bible with the "true" interpretation of the scientific evidence?  

In that regard, his position may differ from a young-earth creationist like John Byl. Both Byl and Sarfati are scientists, but Byl is an instrumentalist, so he doesn't think Scripture, or exegesis, requires scientific warrant. 

2. Now let's move on to the next article:

In contrast, there is an errant concept of ‘creation with apparent age’. One obvious flaw is that age has no appearance! Rather, we infer an age from appearance, after making certain assumptions about processes changing over time, and about the starting conditions.

I agree with that. I've been saying the same thing for years. 

3. Moving along:

One striking feature of the record of God’s creative acts in Genesis 1 is that the created things are fully ready to perform their appointed tasks. On Day 3, God created the plants mature, already bearing seeds. Later on, on Days 5 and 6, He created animals as adults ready to multiply, and finally Adam and Eve, likewise as adults, able to speak and multiply. For inanimate objects, on Day 4, God created the sun and stars already shining. All this is creation with functional maturity.

Functional mature creation is a legitimate distinction. The question, though, is whether functionality is the only justification. 

Most modern readers actually misunderstood what Gosse proposed. Gosse’s failure was unfortunately to propose the unbiblical idea that time moved in a circle, which God interrupted when He created. Gosse called this time of real history since creation, ‘diachronic’; while ‘before’ creation, the cycling time was unreal, ‘virtual’ time he called ‘prochronic’. Thus Adam and Eve would have been created with a navel to reflect a prochronic history of growing from a mother’s womb, even though there was no real ‘diachronic’ history of such a thing. Indeed, no evidence in the present could differentiate features produced in diachronic or prochronic time:

… we cannot avoid the conclusion that each organism was from the first marked with the records of a previous being. But since creation and previous history are inconsistent with each other; as the very idea of the creation of an organism excludes the idea of pre-existence of that organism, or any part of it; it follows, that such records are false, so far as they testify to time; that the developments and processes thus recorded have been produced without time, or are what I call ‘prochronic’.

However, he won not a single convert to his views at the time, precisely because Christians thought that it would make God a deceiver. As shown, this was not Gosse’s intention, but this is what everyone inferred. Also, scientists didn’t like it because it was ad hoc, and making no practical difference was also thus untestable. 

However, although Gosse was trying to defend the Bible, the Bible teaches a real linear history. Indeed, this was one feature that led to the blossoming of modern science in Christianized Europe.13 Conversely, a cyclical view of history goes back to the pagan Greek philosophers and is still followed by eastern religions. Gosse’s view also contradicts 2 Peter 3:3–6.

4. I don't wish to get bogged down in exegeting Gosse, but I'd like to make a preliminary point in his defense:

As I understand him, Gosse doesn't think time is moving in circles. Rather, he thinks physical processes are cyclical. In that respect, creation ex nihilo must commence at some point in what would be an ongoing cycle. It must break into the circle. 

5. Now to the main point. Like other critics of Omphalism or mature creation, Sarfati charges it with "deception". One problem is that, in my experience, critics never bother to define the concept of deception. They seem to think that's self-evident. I think it's necessary to distinguish between two kinds of "deception":

i) Intentional deception

ii) Incidental deception

I don't think (ii) is truly deceptive, but for convenience, I'll use the same term for both ideas. 

Years ago, in the house where I was then living, I once heard something banging on the side of the house. I went into the living room and saw a bird repeatedly flying into the window. The bird didn't know the difference between a window and thin air. Because it could see through the window to open space behind the window, it kept flying into the window. It was too dumb to know what a window is, and too dumb to learn from its mistake. 

Now, I didn't buy a house with windows to confuse birds. And that eventuality hadn't occurred to me when I bought the house.

But suppose I built my own house. Suppose I installed windows in the foreknowledge that some birds will be confused by windows. Am I guilty of deceiving birds? No, because I didn't install windows for that purpose, even though it has that effect. I install windows because I like a house with natural daylight, and I like to see outside. The fact that some birds are confused by windows is just a side-effect of why I install windows. I'm sorry that some birds find that disorienting, but I'm not going to live in a windowless house just to spare the birds. 

It's a dangerous principle for Sarfati to suggest that God is a deceiver if humans are confused by some features of the natural world. After all, it's easy for people without scientific knowledge to misinterpret some natural phenomena. 

6. Let's revisit the issue of functionality. Because Sarfati is a scientist, it's natural for him to have a utilitarian bias regarding explanations. Scientists like to find out how things work. But is functionality the only justification for why God made the world the way he did?

That depends in part on how we view the creative process. Not only is God creative, but God has endowed humans with creativity. We create for a variety of reasons. Some of our creations are utilitarian, but some of our creations are recreational. Take fiction:

7. Suppose a director produces a TV drama about the Wild West. Historical fiction. There are several timeframes in play:

i) The plot could take place anywhere between the 1830s and the 1890s, give or take. So that's the timeframe of the story or the plot. Everything happens within that timeline. 

Let's say the pilot episode is set in Deadwood, on January 1, 1870. Within the world of the fictional story, that's when time begins. That's when things start to happen. Nothing really happened before then. The very first scene takes place on January 1, 1870. Time begins when the story begins. That's the first moment of creation. Unless there are flashbacks, no character can go back in time to a date before the earliest plotted event. 

ii) However, the story could just as well begin at an earlier point. Sometime in the 1860s or 1850s or 1840s or 1830s. So when it begins is somewhat arbitrary. There's a distinction between the actual timeline of the historical plot, and the ideal timeline, of which the plot is just a segment. 

iii) Then there's the timeframe of the screenwriter. Say he wrote the script in 2010. The screenwriter exists outside the timeframe of the plot. There's no correlation between his timeframe and the timeframe of the plot.

iv) Then there's when the director begins to shoot the script. Say that starts in 2017. Once again, there's no correlation between the timeframe of the plot, which is set in the 1870s, and the timeframe for making the series. 

(i) is analogous to world history. (ii) is analogous to the plot as it subsists in the timeless mind of God, while (iii) is analogous to God instantiating his idea in real space and real time. 

v) The Western will have a stage set of a frontier town. We've seen variations on the stock layout in countless movies and TV dramas, viz. saloon, jail, livery stable, bank, barber shop, general store, hotel, telegraph office, train station–along with Indians, horses, buggies, cattle, cowboys, covered wagons, ladies in bonnets.

This exists, not for functionality, but authenticity or verisimilitude. Everything needs to belong to the right historical period. Nothing can be later than the date of any particular episode. Likewise, you can't mix and match different times and places. If the series is set in the black hills of South Dakota, c. 1870, the director can't cut to scenes from the Middle Ages or shots of Tuscany. 

vi) Suppose the pilot episode shows a character reading a newspaper. Suppose the camera shows the viewer what the character is reading. On the one hand, the paper can't have any stories later than January 1, 1870. On the other hand, the paper will have stories from December 31, 1869 or earlier. The paper will report local stories from a yesterday, and national stories from last week. 

Yet those are stories about a past that, in a sense, never happened in the timeframe of the drama. They predate the plot. 

By the same token, suppose one of the characters is a preacher. Suppose the camera takes you into his study. You see him pull a King James Bible off the shelf. That was originally published in 1611. Yet that falls outside the timeframe of the plot.

But for the plot to be historically accurate, it's necessary for the plot to have that background material, because, in a cause/effect universe, the present is the result of the past. Because the plot is part of a historical continuum, it must grow out of the past, as if that past is real, whether or not that actually happened. Historical authenticity requires historical continuity. 

8. Suppose God made a world the way we make a TV series about the Wild West. Would that be deceptive? Here I'd evoke my distinction between intentional and incidental deception (see #5). I don't think there's anything unethical about a universe in which the first inhabitants find themselves in a present-day world with an ideal past, just like characters in a TV series. 

Suppose these are artificially intelligent virtual characters in a computer simulation. The "present" will be whenever the plot kicks off. That's what makes it the present, in relation to past and future. If the plot began a century earlier, that would be the present–in relation to its past. You can push it backwards and forwards. The past defines the present, and vice versa. The first moment is the present. To begin at all, it must begin at some point. Yet that's inherently relative.

I'm not saying that's how God did it. But if we take God seriously, we need to take that possibility seriously. I don't think there's a particular presumption for or against it. 

Were there rainbows before the flood?

In his "commentary" on Gen 1-11, Jonathan Sarfati has an interesting take on the rainbow. On p529, one objection he raises to the local flood interpretation is that:

God would have repeatedly broken his promise (Gen 9:11-16) never to send such a flood again, because there have been many local floods since them. The Genesis Account.

That's not unusual. That's a standard young-earth creationist argument. 

I'd add that, as it stands, it's an inadequate objection. God's promise is more specific: "never again shall all flesh be cut off by the waters of the flood, and never again shall there be a flood to destroy the earth" (v11).

That's consistent with less destructive local floods. 

But that's not my main point. What's interesting is that on pp612-14, Sarfati contends, contrary to some young-earth creationists, that there were probably rainbows before the flood. He bases that on the science of rainbows (dispersion), the continuity of natural laws before and after the flood, as well as examples of God designating symbolic significance or new significance to preexisting phenomena (e.g. bread and wine).

Like Sarfati, Andrew Snelling is noncommittal on whether rainbows antedated the flood (Earth's Catastrophic History, 1:283). Although he's less detailed. 

That stands in contrast to old-guard creationists like Whitcomb, Morris, and Dillow, who argue that the rainbow is a novel postdiluvial phenomenon. 

On the face of it, Sarfati's argument is rather odd because a creationist could agree with him on the science of rainbows and continuity of natural laws, but still deny prediluvial rainbows on the grounds that there was no precipitation before the flood. Dispersion and the laws of nature need something to work with to produce rainbows. 

I'd add that all by itself, a rainbow wouldn't signify anything regarding God's providential promise. You have to know the story of the flood to to appreciate the contextual significance of the rainbow. Without that background information, it's just a rainbow rather than a divine sign. When a Christian sees a rainbow, that reminds him of God's covenant with Noah. Considered in isolation, a rainbow says nothing about the extent of Noah's flood or future flooding. 

Is Genesis history?

A sympathetic review of a new YEC documentary:

http://creation.com/is-genesis-history-doco-review

Reviewing The Genesis Account

http://www.angelfire.com/falcon/ddd_chc82/articles/TheGenesisAccount_review.pdf

The Genesis Account

Looks like this will be the new go-to book on the interpretation of Gen 1-11 from a YEC perspective:

http://creation.com/books/the-genesis-account/

On the one hand, I think scientists generally make poor commentators on Genesis. 

On the other hand, scientists have a how-to mentality which inclines them to look for realistic interpretations. They try to visualize the text at a very concrete level. That can be much better than scholars trained in ancient languages, comparative literature, and hermeneutics, who minimize or deny the referential aspect of the text. 

Also, I think he does know Hebrew. 

Sarfati on animal mortality

Jonathan Sarfati recently graced the combox at Tblog:

http://triablogue.blogspot.com/2013/09/young-earth-theistic-evolutionists.html?showComment=1401642845456#c7737243049008488066

I'm flattered that he'd take notice:

Jonathan Sarfati, Ph.D.6/01/2014 1:14 PM 

Hairsplitting distinctives? Not when the Bible makes those distinctions. There is no indication that insects count as nephesh chayyah. 

i) In Gen 1, the basic distinction is between fauna and flora. Within fauna, Gen 1 draws further distinctions based on habitat (aquatic/marine animals, land animals, aerial animals). And it distinguishes between wild animals and livestock. 

ii) If these categories cover the origin of all the basic kinds of fauna and flora, then insects belong to one of those categories. What reason is there to think Gen 1 classifies insects as plants rather than animals? What reason is there to think Gen 1 classifies a lizard or tadpole as "breath of life" (nephesh chayyah), but classifies a scorpion or camel spider as a type of plant? 

iii) Likewise, in Lev 11, insects are grouped with other animals–rather than plants. Same with with Deut 14:1-21. 

See for example The Fall: a cosmic catastrophe: Hugh Ross’s blunders on plant death in the Bible. 

Let's consider that:

Romans 5:12–19 and 1 Corinthians 15:21–22 clearly teach that human death came because of the Fall. 

Correct. Human morality. Not animal mortality.

God gave Adam dominion over creation, so when he fell, the whole creation suffered—see The (second) greatest catastrophe of all time. This is taught in Romans 8:18–25, where the ‘whole creation’ is said to be groaning in pain, because it was ‘subjected to futility’.

That passage doesn't ascribe animal mortality or predation to the Fall. And it's conspicuous that the commentators Sarfati quotes in support of his position don't construe the passage that way. 

But fossils are the remains of dead creatures—therefore, millions of years entails that death predates sin, which in turn entails that death is not the result of sin. This makes God the author of gratuitous death and suffering instead of the righteous Judge who justly enacted punishment for sin.

i) This assumes that predation is gratuitous. Yet the predator/prey cycle clearly contributes to the natural balance. So it serves a purpose.

ii) Ironically, Sarfati is making the same mistake that atheists (e.g. William Rowe, Andrea Weisberger) and evolutionary animal-rights activists (e.g. Peter Singer) commit, by failing to draw a categorical distinction between humans and animals. But Gen 1-2 accentuates the difference between humans and animals. Man is made in God's image. 

And more recently, Chuck Colson and Nancy Pearcey gave a good account of the biblical teaching of the origin of death and suffering in their book How Now Shall We Live?

God is good, and the original creation was good [Genesis 1:31 actually says ‘very good’]. God is not the author of evil.

That simply begs the question of whether predation is "evil" as Gen 1 defines "good." 

Yet the Bible clearly teaches that animals were not always being destroyed by cataclysms, and were not always tearing each other to pieces.

It does? To the contrary, I'd say Gen 2-3 differentiates conditions inside the garden from conditions outside the garden. 

Why there are different models for the origin of carnivory is very simple: the Bible doesn't say why. But it does unambiguously teach a vegetarian diet for both humans and animals before the Fall. Also, regardless of one's view of end times, commentators on Isaiah such as Alec Motyer agree that he was alluding to Edenic conditions in chs 11 and 65, as documented in The carnivorous nature and suffering of animals.

That fails to draw a Biblical distinction between the quality of life inside the garden and the quality of life outside the garden. Even before the Fall, the whole world wasn't Edenic. The Garden of Eden was a special place. God prepared that separately and specially for Adam and Eve. And part of what makes the banishment from Eden punitive is the contrast between life inside the garden and outside the garden. 

Refuting Evolution and “The Science Guy”

http://www.apologiaradio.com/?p=717

Jonathan Sarfati's double life

Jonathan Sarfati is best-know for his day job as a creation scientist. However, our undercover reporter found out that Sarfati moonlights as the King of Hell. The photographic evidence is incontrovertible:

http://creationwiki.org/File:Jonathan_Sarfati.jpg

http://static1.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20131123182647/supernatural/images/6/60/Crowleyseason9.jpg

The moral of the story is that it's hazardous to get on Sarfati's bad side. No wonder Dawkins will never debate him.

Rapid speciation

Jonathan Sarfati, Ph.D. says:

February 6, 2014 at 10:21 am

Pretty good review ^^^^.

CMI’s review is titled Clash over worldviews. Among other things, it documents that leading evolutionists E.O. Wilson and the late Ernst Mayr agreed with a distinction between observational and historical science. It also deals with Nye’s ‘evidences’ that Ham had no chance to rebut in the short time available.

It was an unconscionable bait-and-switch for Nye to compare the number of kinds on the Ark, only vertebrate animals, with the number of so-called species today. The vast majority of those species are non-vertebrate, and no creationist believes that they evolved from the Ark vertebrates. See for example Refuting Noah’s ark critics.

The Ark landed in the mountains of Ararat, and it’s well known that mountains are good for rapidly producing new varieties and even speciation. That’s because they readily provide the geographic barriers needed for allopatric speciation. With the small populations off the Ark, it’s even easier because of genetic drift.

Actually, even before Darwin, creationists understood that a wide variety of animals descended from a relatively small number of kinds on the Ark. Thus they realized that there was a lot of post-Flood variation, and even what we would now call speciation. For example, Anglican Bishop John Wilkins (1614–1672), the founder of the metric system and the first secretary of the Royal Society; and German Jesuit scholar Athanasius Kircher (1602–1680), renowned in his day as “master of a hundred arts”.

Even now, we could call it a creationist prediction that rapid speciation would be more common than evolutionists expect.

http://blog.drwile.com/?p=12141&cpage=2#comment-83683

Sarfati v. Craig

I think this is a mixed bag, but in general, Sarfati has the better of the argument against Craig:

http://creation.com/william-lane-craig-vs-creation

AP interviews

FWIW:

Interviews with Noel Weeks here and here.

Interviews with J.P. Moreland here and here.

Interviews with Paul Helm here, here, and here.

An interview with Paul Barnett here.

An interview with Peter O'Brien here.

An interview with Tom Schreiner here.

Interviews with D.A. Carson here and here.

An interview with John Lennox here and an article by the same here.

An interview with Jonathan Sarfati here.

An interview with William Lane Craig here.

I also noticed interviews with Carl Trueman, Al Mohler, Ligon Duncan, Gerald Bray, Jerry Bridges, Sinclair Ferguson, Iain Murray, David Powlison, Mark Dever, among others.

Sarfati contra Dawkins

Some readers may be interested in these videos featuring Dr. Jonathan Sarfati talking a bit about his book The Greatest Hoax on Earth? Refuting Dawkins on Evolution (among other things). FWIW, if anything, I think the interview starts off a bit slowly but picks up in the second half.

HT: Dusman.

Refuting Evolution

Jonathan Sarfati's Refuting Evolution is available online: part one and part two.