young earth or old earth?
young earth or old earth: do answers exist?
young earth or old earth: answers do exist
young earth or old earth revealed
young earth or old earth revealed, part two
young earth or old earth: the testimony of theology
young earth or old earth: the testimony of theology, part two
young earth or old earth: theistic evolution
young earth or old earth: the gap theory
young earth or old earth: the gap theory, part two
young earth or old earth: day age theory
young earth or old earth: underlying assumptions
young earth or old earth: underlying assumptions, part two
We were talking about the assumptions behind the reasoning of the day age theory: that Scripture is consistent with an old age of the earth; for, science has proved age beyond doubt, therefore theology must be made to support science, in order to remain viable as truth. We discussed the first three assumptions behind that reasoning already.
4. The fourth assumption is that theology will lose its value as truth unless it is made to support that science which seems to disprove it. Truth, by its nature, cannot be denied, disproved, destroyed, or otherwise marred. While our understanding of it can be off, truth will always reassert itself. If one avenue of truth is shut down, other avenues will open. It cannot be stopped, any more than God can be defeated.
Theology does not need science to retain its value as truth; its value is permanent and intrinsic. Rather, science can only seem to disprove theology because of an incomplete understanding of either science or theology. In reality, true science cannot disprove true theology; they instead uphold each other.
Discrepancies have not now and never have been between science and theology; if seeming discrepancies exist, then they only do so in us, who are looking on them both and trying to describe what we see. It is our imperfect and incomplete description of them which clash, not them themselves.
Every human being that looks at them both, does so through a lens, a filter. For some that lens is naturalism, the belief that nature is all there is; therefore what he sees will be filtered through that unproven and unproveable ideology, and distorted by it. Other lenses also exist, which distort in other ways. There is only one lens which provides a clear picture, and that is the lens of biblical inerrancy. For we are, after all, speaking of revealed truth.
So I claim the day age theory does violence to theology, therefore the science upon which it relies — the old age of the earth — is suspect; day agers claim an old earth does no violence to theology. That is what we will examine next.
Continued in young earth or old earth: special creation continuing?