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A New Look at an Old Earth; Resolving the Conflict Between the Bible and Science

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Don Stoner earned a B.S. in physics, was involved with the development of the optical disc, and holds two U.S. patents. His grandfather, Peter W. Stoner, was the author of Science Speaks (Van Kampen Press, 1952; Moody Press, 1963 and 1969). It is relevant to compare Don's book with his grandfather's. The elder Stoner apologized to fellow Christians on behalf of scientists. He acknowledged that the Bible had been under attack from the natural sciences, but he showed that more recent findings (especially in astronomy) tended to agree with biblical teachings about the universe. Therefore, science was not the enemy of faith, as many had suspected. In contrast, the younger Stoner is calling his fellow Christians to apologize to scientists. Since science properly understood cannot conflict with the Bible rightly interpreted, religious people must stop treating scientists as enemies.

In the foreword, Hugh Ross emphasizes both the reality of a science-religion conflict and the need to end it. Young-earth creationism, says Ross, has been a stumbling block for believers and nonbelievers. It has brought divisions among Christians; it has made secular society more skeptical of the church; and it has provided ammunition for those who seek to delete all biblical references from public education.

I appreciate Stoner's call to humility in Chapter 1, which is entitled "Judging Ourselves First." He reminds us that we often remember biblical details incorrectly. Worse, we cannot always be sure what Bible words meant in the original languages. For example, the Hebrew terms rendered "day" and "die" in Genesis 2:16-17 could each be taken several different ways. The most literal interpretation, that Eve would drop dead the day she ate the fruit, is contradicted by subsequent verses. Stoner would resolve this dilemma by translating yom as "era" (thus, Eve's sin ushered in an era of human mortality). I do not share his interpretation of Genesis 2; nevertheless, I admire his apt illustration of the difficulties of translating Hebrew and the potential pitfalls of strict literalism. Stoner concludes that young-earth adherents need to reevaluate their interpretation of Scripture. He urges them to get rid of faulty assumptions and wrong attitudes:

"...it is difficult for those who are not scientifically educated to tell the difference between scientific truth and error ... Juicy claims about how some Ph.D. has misread the facts are circulated from Christian to Christian just like gossip ... Unfortunately, we might never bother to find out if any of these stories are true ... we have been mocking educated men and, what is worse, we have done it from a position of ignorance."

I recommend A New Look at an Old Earth for anyone who takes the Bible seriously and wants to understand what it says about the cosmos. Perhaps you do not need to be convinced that the earth is old, but all of us need to hear Stoner's plea for humility. Buy a copy for your church's library; discuss it in your adult Sunday school class. Please share this book gently in Christian love with any brothers and sisters who still adhere to young-earth views.

The reviewer is Professor of Chemistry at Mount Vernon Nazarene College in Mount Vernon, OH 43050. This review was originally published in Perspectives on Science and the Christian Faith, 52: 66-67 (March 2000). Copyrighted 2000 by the American Scientific Affiliation. Posted with permission of ASA.

Don Stoner is pretty much damned if he does and damned if he doesn't, advocate an Old Earth Creationist position. On the one hand, he faces empirical data that demonstrates clearly the age of the universe. He actually focuses on the scientific evidence and shows quite clearly using the data obtained from quasars and pulsars and the resultant red-shifting demonstrated in the light spectrums that unless one accepts the implausable possibility that the speed of light has not always been constant, the universe is Billions of years old. He then makes a compelling argument that if Scripture is to be taken as true it cannot be at odds with the truth of the creation itself.

Here's where Stoner (and all Old Earth Creationists) finds himself in the cross-hairs. The vast majority of scientists would find his arguments as basic foundational information and accept his science without necessarily seeing the need to accept his theology. At the opposite end the Young Earth Creationists, whom Stoner appears to be targeting, are so committed to their interpretation of Scripture they will reject his arguments de facto without the benefit of a great deal of thought going in to their rejection because their position is based in faith and they cannot accept anything that is counter to their espoused presuppositions. Witness other critiques of this book which pretty much deal with Scripture and ignore the strongest physical facts presented.

All this aside Stoner does a commendable job keeping the tone and tenor of his argument on the high road. He attempts to demonstrate to Young Earth Creationists how their positions in fact drive scientists and independent thinkers away because they see Christianity itself tied to what in effect is intellectual suicide. Stoner goes to great lengths to argue that the issue isn't Scripture itself; the issue is one's interpretation of that Scripture. There's room, even in Christianity for saying to some issues, "I don't know." "This is how understand it, but it is possible I am wrong." By making Young Earth Creationism tantamount to the Scripture itself, Young Earth Creationists repeat the mistakes of their intellectual ancestors who impuned Gallileo and espoused a flat earth based on much the same arguments.

Stoner does an admirable job. Unfortunately for him (or more to the point, unfortunately for many Christians) he is going to be met with indifference and unpopularity from both sides. Hang on though. Time showed Galileo right. Time may well just demonstrated Stoner's position to be right, or at least closer to right than the popular Young Earth Creationist movement, once they get past their unwillingness to accept that their position while scripturally based, is not the equivilent of Scripture itself.

Take a look objectively at both the facts AND the scripture with a willingness to listen and learn. Whether either side changes their mind, Stoner has done an admirable job, with a difficult subject and handled it with intellectual and Scriptural integrity and graciousness.

We all can learn a lot from that.

For years, I held on to the YE position. I read Gish, Morris, Ian Taylor and a few others. As a YE, I equated an OE with evolution. An OE was a compromise in my mind. With that view in mind, I decided to read the book with much skepticism.

Upon completion of the book, I walked away a believer of an OE!! Don uses an illustration that I feel needs mentioning. He demonstrates that God's Creation and His Word are revelations of Himself to us. Theology is the interpretation of God's Word. Science is the interpretation of God's Creation. Since both of them, Creation and the Bible, are created by Him a contradiction CANNOT occur. If there is one, we need to re-evaluate our interpretation, whether it is theological or scientific. As a Christian, I believe I had to re-evaluate my interpretation of the Bible. Just as Christians had to re-evaluate their stance about geocentricism, we must do the same with the age of the universe.

There is too much evidence pointing towards an OE. I argued YE tooth and nail with my secular friends. In retrospect, I am embarassed I even used them. Don sheds light on YE arguments and explains how they are deficient. As a YE at the time, I stood in amazement that all of the scientists, geologists, anthropologists, astronomers, and etc. could be wrong about the earth (ie rock dating and fossils) and the universe. The earth, according to the Bible (my interpretation), was created in six 24 hour days. Don gives an alternative explanation for creation which I found enlightening (He does NOT support theistic evolution!!). He also explains how science uses carbon dating, potassium argon, and other methods of dating for rocks and bones in a way anybody can understand.

This book is a must read for every Christian. As Christians we are to make disciples of every tongue and tribe. I sincerely believe that God was patient during His creation just as He is patient and long suffering with us. Let us not make the age of rocks the stumbling block for future disciples, but the Eternal ROCK we love to worship named Jesus Christ.

This is an excellent read for both the scientific expert, and layman alike.

As other fellow Christians have expressed here, I am absolutely heartbroken at the level of damage which the fraud purveying "Young Earth" cult has done within the Christian church. Not only damage to the Christian witness and affirmation of absolute truth, but the creation of absurd and unecessary "stumbling blocks" which YEC'ers insist on placing in the way to faith in the Christian Gospel. All while using fraud, deception, anti science, phony credentials, untested and/or fully discredited arguments, false information, and an embrace of virtual gnosticism in their total denial of empirical reality.

If the Christian community could somehow come together on this creation issue and focus on the battle against Atheistic Darwinism (which truly has a huge number of discrediting scientific problems)...instead of arguing over the age of the Earth and the Universe (which are simply not in dispute per any rational approach to the incontravertible mountain of undisputed evidence), then the Christian voice would have credible access to the "creation" debate. Within science, academia, the media, the educated unbeleiver mission field, etc etc etc.

It is inexcuseable, that a book like this even needs to be written, but, nonetheless it certainly did need to be. Couple this book with Hugh Ross's "Genesis and Time" among many others, and you can rest once again on the firm foundation of reasoned faith, matching transcendant truth and matching physical reality. And put aside the absurd and discredited claims of the YEC cult.

I don't understand how this book can be out of print now, considering the demand. Have to check with the publisher. I need several more copies to loan out and give away.

This is the single and only topic area, where certain small elements of the Christian church have fully embraced the abomination of absolute deception, instead of embracing the light of general revelatory truth. As such, this battle needs to be fought, and fought well, (with the truth in the spirit of love).

This YEC business is simpy a repeat of inquisition era Geocentrist type thought, which has no place in the arena of God's revealed truth. Come together brethren and let's unite around God's revelation, instead of ruining our collective witness by coupling it to pseudo scientific!

Many Christians blindly subscribe to young-earthism, never looking at old-earth creationism. The YEarthers continue to confuse Christians and turn away skeptics. "The world is only 5000 years old!" they so, no wonder they turn people away and confuse others! Read this book and remove this stumbling block from Christianity. Also check out Ross' "a matter of days" & "the genesis question" Stop the YECs and you will stop the skeptics!

The title gives away Stoner's agenda. He enters the debate with the belief that the earth is old and his whole line of argument is aimed at demonstrating this. His presentation of young earth arguments is at best incomplete; at worst, a total misrepresentation, so the only young earth arguments he destroys are his own pathetic "straw man" ones. Also, his presentation of the Green River Formation data is overly simplistic giving the reader the impression that this is a "sure-thing" proof for an old earth, when in fact this is not the case at all. Stoner's biblical exegesis is even worse. He gives the reader the impression that he knows some Hebrew, but anyone who actually does know Hebrew will see right through his tendentious and sometimes absurd reasoning. There are also a number of factual errors regarding the beliefs of the early church which are more or less copied (errors and all) from Hugh Ross's book "Creation and Time." On the whole, a thorough disappointment and not at all worth the time and effort to read. For a much more balanced, well researched and far superior book on the subject, I recommend "Creation and Change" by Douglas F Kelly which is also available from Amazon.

The basic thesis of Stoner and his mentor Hugh Ross (who wrote the foreword) is that Scripture must be subservient to 'science', meaning the naturalistic/uniformitarian *interpretations* of the data rather than the data themselves. So while the Reformation catch-cry was _Sola Scriptura_, Stoner's is (in effect) _Scriptura sub scientia_.

Because of the authority of 'science', Stoner must try to fit billions of years into Scripture, with corollaries of a local flood and pre-Adamite soulless man-like creatures, and disease and suffering in God's 'very good' (Gen. 1:13) creation before the earth was cursed because of Adam's sin (Gen. 3:17-19) and subjected to futility (Rom. 8:20-22).

This involves contorted eisegesis trying to explain away the plain meaning of the Bible. Stoner's usual tactic is the exegetical fallacy that Dr Don Carson called '_Unwarranted expansion of an expanded semantic field._ The fallacy in this instance lies in the supposition that the meaning of the word in a specific context is much broader than the context itself allows and may bring with it the word's entire semantic range'. For example, Stoner demonstrates that the word 'day' (Hebrew yôm) in some contexts can have a non-literal meaning, so he feels justified in assuming that a non-literal meaning is acceptable in the particular context of Gen. 1. This chapter seems to go out of its way to teach six literal days, e.g. by using the words 'morning and evening' and numbers together.

To attack biblical ('young earth') creationists, Stoner sets up 'straw man' arguments, mainly attacking 20-year-old creationist arguments, and virtually ignoring modern creationist research. For example, there is no mention of Guy Berthault's work, some of it published in secular journals, demonstrating that multiple layers of sediment can form very rapidly. Not surprising, because this completely invalidates an 'old earth' argument Stoner expounded at length. Some of those older creationist arguments are still valid despite his claims, while others have been overturned *by creationists themselves*. E.g. even some prominent atheistic sceptics have said that the refutation of the 'moon dust argument' in _Creation Ex Nihilo Technical Journal_ 7(1):2-42, 1993 is the best rebuttal around. Yet Stoner fails to mention this, instead implying that creationists still hold this argument.

Stoner, like Ross, also copies the ploy of the apostate Ron Numbers, attributing biblical creationism and flood geology to Ellen White via George McCready Price. A number of papers by Dr Terry Mortenson in CENTJ (originally from his doctoral dissertation at Coventry University, UK) show that the early 19th century Scriptural Geologists presented such ideas well before Price. Ken Ham pointed out ages ago that he had never even heard of Price at the time he founded Answers in Genesis (Creation Science Foundation), and that he adopted creationism because of the biblical teaching. Even if Stoner were right about Price, he is wrong to think that discrediting Price is enough to refute creationism - this is a classic case of the genetic fallacy.

It really is rich to see people like Stoner and Ross lament the alleged divisiveness of the 'age of the earth' issue, when they spend much energy in inflammatory attacks on 'young earth' creationists!

As shown above, a literal six-day creation is a watershed issue for our time, because it determines whether one accepts Scripture or 'science' as authoritative.

Note that no Christian exegete thought of 'long-age' interpretations until such views became popular in 'science', showing that such views were not gleaned from Scripture. Stoner 'answers' the point by claiming that God sometimes hides the truth. A logical implication of Stoner's argument, and probably the most disturbing teaching of his book, is that God deliberately hid the alleged 'truth' of long ages from the most devout and knowledgeable exegetes in Christian history, and instead revealed it to deists, agnostics and atheists who used this 'truth' to mock the Bible.

Unfortunately, Mr. Stoner's interpretations raise far more problems than they attempt to solve (as will be documented below).

I do not believe that those who adhere to some form of theistic evolution (God used evolution to create everything) or progressive creation (God intervened at various points in the process of evolution) fully realize that their position violates clear concepts revealed in the Bible--indeed much that is foundational to the very Gospel itself.

For instance..

Concept violated: the goodness of God

The Bible says 'God is good' and in Genesis 1:31 God described his just finished creation as 'very good'. How do you understand the goodness of God if He used evolution, 'nature red in tooth and claw', to 'create' everything?

Concept violated: Adam's sin brought death and decay, the basis of the Gospel

According to the evolutionist's (and progressive creationist's) understanding, fossils (which show death, disease and bloodshed) were formed before people appeared on earth. Doesn't that mean that you can't believe the Bible when it says that everything is in 'bondage to decay' because of Adam's sin (Romans 8)? In the evolutionary view, hasn't the 'bondage to decay' always been there? And if death and suffering did not arise with Adam's sin and the resulting curse, how can Jesus' suffering and physical death pay the penalty for sin and give us eternal life, as the Bible clearly says (e.g. 1 Corinthians 15:22, "For as in Adam all die, so in Christ all shall be made alive")?

Concept violated: the divine inspiration of the whole Bible

If the Genesis accounts of Creation, the Fall, the origin of nations, the Flood and the Tower of Babel - the first 11 chapters - are not historical, although they are written as historical narrative and understood by Jesus to be so, what other unfashionable parts of the Bible do you discard? The biblical account of creation in Genesis seems very specific with six days of creative activity, each having an evening and a morning. According to the evolutionary sequence, the biblical order of creation is all wrong. Do you think God should have inspired an account more in keeping with the evolutionary order, the truth as you see it, if indeed He did use evolution or followed the evolutionary pattern in creating everything?

Concept violated: the straightforward understanding of the Word of God

If the Genesis account does not mean what it plainly says, but must be 'interpreted' to fit an evolutionary world, how are we to understand the rest of the Bible? How are we to know that the historical accounts of Jesus' life, death and resurrection should not also be 'reinterpreted'? Indeed, can we know anything for sure if the Bible can be so flexible?

Concept violated: the creation is supposed to show the hand of God clearly

Dr Niles Eldredge, well-known evolutionist, said:

'Darwin . . . taught us that we can understand life's history in purely naturalistic terms, without recourse to the supernatural or divine.' [Niles Eldredge, "Time Frames - the Rethinking of Darwinian Evolution and the Theory of Punctuated Equilibrium", 1986, Heinemann, London, p. 13.]

Is it not philosophically inconsistent to marry God (theism) with evolution (naturalism)? If God 'created' using evolution which makes Him unnecessary, how can God's 'eternal power and divine nature' be 'clearly seen' in creation, as Romans 1:20 says? Evolution has no purpose, no direction, no goal. The God of the Bible is all about purpose. How do you reconcile the purposelessness of evolution with the purposes of God? What does God have to do in an evolutionary world? Is not God an 'unnecessary hypothesis'?

Concept violated: the need of restoration for the creation

If God created over millions of years involving death, the existing earth is not ruined by sin, but is as it always has been - as God supposedly intended it to be. So why then should He want to destroy it and create a new heavens and earth (2 Peter 3 and other places)?

Starting to get the picture of where Mr. Stoner's compromising theology leads?

See the Answers in Genesis website for volumnes of eye-opening information.

Books I would strongly encourage one to read instead: "Icons of Evolution" by Jonathan Wells, "Bones of Contention" by Marvin Lubenow, "Evolution: The Fossils Still Say No!" by Duane Gish, "In Six Days: Why Fifty Scientists Choose to Believe in Creation" by John F. Aston, "Evolution: A Theory in Crisis" by Michael Denton, "Astronomy and the Bible" by Donald B. DeYoung, "Refuting Evolution" by Jonathan Sarfati, "The Answers Book" by Ham/Snelling/Wieland, and "The Young Earth" by John Morris.

Why is it that people insist on giving the Bible the plainest reading but not the physical world around them? If there is any flexibility in the original language of Genesis then the floodgates open for fidelity to truth as seen in the world outside and the world from God's perspective. Stoner shows the lengths young earth creationists go to deny the age of the rocks, shows how those ages are difficult to avoid, and how the Bible does not have to be read as dogmatically as young earthers insist.

As a six-day young-earth creationist, the book challenges me to seriously consider my beliefs in the context of the data presented. Mr Stoners' book is necessary in that all of us need to challenge ourselves to evaluate what we believe and not just accept beliefs without any thinking about their validity. One main conclusion in the book is validating the concept of God as Creator no matter what was the timeframe.