Position
Positioning
by Brian Forbes
© 2012 Brian Forbes
My book has been published for a little over a year now. I’ve informed, discussed, debated, and argued nearly every point I try to make in it. Some people listen to my points with quiet awe; others put on a smirk and figure out how they’re going to abuse me with their retort. With all the various responses, the vast majority of those I talk to do not change their positions. Although I allow that it may be for the quality of my arguments, I don’t think that’s what is causing the stasis. If it was only my arguments, I don’t think I would have been convinced by them. Others who have promoted the arguments to me wouldn’t have either. There’s something deeper going on here.
There’s a word to describe a position that many, if not most Young Earth Creationists hold to, but it is rarely explained. It is presuppositional apologetics. It is claiming that the Bible is true before you try to convince anyone that YEC is true. The fatal flaw of this position is not that it’s false; it’s that it’s seen as “blind faith” by the opposition. I don’t hold to scripture only because I’ve chosen to. I have chosen to, but that came after I tested the claims of scripture. The Bible is true, but not because I believe it. It’s true because it’s true. It’s the pedestrian bridge that I’ve examined, watched others use, and come to realize is solid before I ever laid foot on it. But it’s impossible not to have a functioning belief about the bridge. If you truly doubt it, you won’t walk it. If you don’t have a position on the bridge, the lack of trust is doubt. You need to know your position before looking at the supporting evidence, because new arguments are going to be accepted or rejected based on your present inclination. Blind faith works in both directions. Deciding to doubt (or not deciding) will preclude you walking across it. You may need to examine scripture on other topics and watch people standing on it with their whole lives before you ever look at the science. I will state it here: I have never seen a direct, irreconcilable contradiction in scripture. I have never seen anything there that was not true. All the scientific and historical evidence, once explained, supports YEC. I trust it with my life. It’s not a blind trust. It’s tested.
Last night I invited someone to go with me to a Creation Science meeting. He said that Creation isn’t science. I responded that he was being like my son, who doesn’t like cooked carrots when he hasn’t ever even tasted them. He said that he tried it. It didn’t seem to matter that my evidence is old, yet new to him, and the chances that he ever heard the speaker or the topic were very low, indeed. Now, I will admit that there are parts of Creation that are not scientific. You can’t apply science to a historical account. If you recreate the situation, you can’t then conclude that your experimental result is the way it happened. You can’t even always conclude that it might have been the way it happened, because the details of the situation will change. There are faith aspects to history. The guy said that ICR takes the presupposition that the Bible is true, and with that kind of assumption, you can’t do origins science. On the other hand, there are faith aspects of the naturalistic scientific position too. You have to accept the present as the key to the past. Nobody has time to do the experiments, so you have to trust the conclusions of those who did them. Most importantly to this point, you have to reject the automatic acceptance of the truth of the Bible. You already have a position before you take your position.
There are some pretty amazing proofs to support my position. There are genealogies that take kings of Europe back through to a guy named Noah (or some variation). Now, if this is real evidence, it’s solid proof that macroevolution is false. People will either accept it as true, or they will deny it as forgeries of overzealous monks. Read After the Flood by Bill Cooper. What determines your position? Your position determines your position. There are nations across Europe, Africa, and Asia that can trace their descent down from names that are remarkably similar to those found in Genesis 10 (the table of nations). I don’t know how people reject this evidence, but it probably has to do with projecting wishful thinking onto the researchers. Read Noah’s Three Sons by Arthur Custance. What determines your position? Your position determines your position. The premise of my book is that ancient historians claimed that we descend from one man and one woman, and that they deified their kings and ancestors, resulting in pagan religion. There’s lots of evidence for this, and the arguments against it don’t seem to use any evidence at all. Read From Noah to Hercules by me. What determines your position? Your position determines your position. There are tons of individual scientific methods that can be used by people who believe any of various positions that can show that the earth is old (e.g. “annual” layers in ice cores and tree rings, radiometric dating, etc.) and that the earth is young (e.g. human and dinosaur footprints, C14 equilibrium, salt in oceans, genetic load of mutations, etc.), and you can find reasons to accept or reject any of these various scientific methods of dating (see chapter 2 of my book for more information on these issues). What determines your position? Your position determines your position.
Is there scientific evidence to support an old earth? Absolutely! Is there scientific evidence to support a young earth? Absolutely!! Is there a way to know which evidence is true and which is false? Absolutely!!! The trouble is, most of us aren’t going to go and look for it. We’re only going to take so much of our lives to determine our positions before we give up the fight and settle in. After we have our position, we will start to accept the evidence that supports what we believe to be true, and we will reject the evidence that doesn’t. What determines your position? Your position determines your position. This, to me, is the clear reason why people who are born Hindu will regularly remain Hindu.
Is there anything that we can do about this? Can we keep an open mind? Well, knowing about it is the first step. If you want, you can try taking on the opposite perspective for a while. This isn’t a thing for the weak of heart to do. In fact, I don’t even recommend doing it. I did it. It hurts. It’s accepting the claims of the “serpent” on faith. You could read all the evidence on both sides and accept what you accept and reject what you reject, but then you’re not really checking your bias at all. What I recommend doing is this. Pick your position. Be presuppositional. If you want to trust to atheistic naturalism and reject anything that doesn’t support it, go for it. You will have a lot of benefits to this position. Morality will not be a factor; you can do what you want with freedom. You won’t have to feel guilty anymore. Or you can position your position for the eternal outcome. Trust to the best religion you can find. Find evidence to support it. You will find joy in life if you follow Jesus. Jesus is the truth.
I think this was the point of life from the beginning. We have a choice. We either accept the truth of God’s words, or we reject them. Since the choice was designed by God, you can assume it will be pretty even for everyone. We can try some kind of hybrid, but who really likes a compromiser? If you think through the logic of hell, it makes sense of that too. People really do pick their destiny. Be a good boy or girl and reject the rejection of God. It really is the best position you can position for yourself.
Plus, the evidence is on the side of Young Earth Creationism anyway, if you can accept it.