Evolutionists are lying about nothing

Genesis 1:1, In the beginning, God created the heaven and the earth.

Genesis 1:1 is perhaps the most terse statement ever made on the issue of origins.  Here we see that “in the beginning” (time), God created heaven (space) and the earth (matter).  Time, matter, and space all came into existence suddenly and simultaneously at the command of God.  The full extent of this act is reiterated in other passages.  Psalm 146:6 proclaims that God, “made heaven, and earth, the sea and all that therein is.”  In other words, everything that exists was created by God.  John 1:3 explicitly says, “All things were made by him; and without him was not any thing made that was made.”  Are you picking up what I’m putting down?  God made literally everything.  We might rearrange things into new ways, like building a castle out of sand, but God made the things.  

But what was there before anything?  What existed before God made all the things?  Creationists sometimes use the fancy, Latin term, Creatio ex nihilo.  When translated, this simply means, “Creation out of nothing.”  God has always existed, of course, but before He made anything, there was nothing.  

The term “nothing” is self explanatory - “no thing.”  Not only was there no matter, there was no space and no time.  There was nothing!  It’s a concept that is hard to grasp, I admit.  How can there be no space?  It sort of makes my head hurt just thinking about it.  Aristotle is alleged to have said, “nothing is what rocks dream about.”  That’s about as succinct a definition as I’ve ever heard.  However, even this very clever definition doesn’t quite work because it starts by saying, “nothing is….”  Philosophers have struggled defining nothing because when you attempt to describe nothing, you start making it sound like it’s something.  

Now, I would never claim to be in the same league as Aristotle, Plato, or even Vizzini, so I’m not going to claim to have THE definition of what nothing is (er,... isn’t?).  I’m just going to say that we all sort of have an idea of what nothing means.  Right?  Maybe not.

In the debate on origins, evolutionists consistently lie about what they mean when they say the universe came from nothing.  Let me give you an example used by the late Stephen Hawking:

Because gravity shapes space and time, it allows space time to be locally stable but globally unstable. On the scale of the entire universe, the positive energy of the matter can be balanced by the negative gravitational energy, and so there is no restriction on the creation of whole universes. Because there is a law like gravity, the universe can and will create itself from nothing.  

Do you see what I mean?  He said, “Because there is a law like gravity…”  Am I wrong but isn’t gravity something?  How can the universe create itself from nothing if there is already something like gravity?!  

But Hawking isn’t alone when he redefines nothing to include something.  It is the normal practice of virtually every evolutionist.  When they say “nothing,” they always mean “something.”  Always!  It’s yet another example of evolutionists redefining words in the same way they redefine “evolution,” “science,” “theory,” or even “faith.” (I’ve written about this before, here).  It’s equivocation at its worst.

King Crocoduck is a militant evolutionist that I’ve written about before.  Some years back, he made a video series on YouTube explaining how he believed creationists were arrogant.  Nevermind the irony in his premise, in his first video, he attempted to address the problem of the universe coming from nothing.  Here’s how he described it:

It is useful to define what “nothing” is.  While the philosophical definition might be easy to come up with, we’re dealing with the physical world.  So our definition of nothing has to be concordant with physical reality.  If you have a system to remove all the matter and all the energy, you’ve essentially removed everything that physically exists….  What you’re left with is a vacuum, which is as close to the philosophical definition of nothing as you can get.

King Crocoduck is cheating.  He isn’t starting with nothing; he’s starting with a vacuum.  Time still exists in a vacuum.  Space, physical laws, and even energy still exist in a vacuum.  The only thing really missing from a vacuum is matter so there’s a whole lot of things in KC’s definition of nothing!  But he doesn’t stop there.  He rattles on for about 3 minutes describing the supposed events surrounding the alleged Big Bang, and how energy became hydrogen atoms, which became stars, blah, blah, blah.  Then he concludes his fanciful story with this very telling admission:

“So, in summary, all matter comes from energy and energy – in accordance with the first law of thermodynamics – is eternal.”

Think about what KC has said.  According to him, “nothing” includes space, time, physical laws, and all the energy in the universe!!  It isn’t at all what you, I, or any sane person would consider nothing.  It reminds me of the comedian, Steve Martin's, investment strategy: “OK, you start with $1,000,000....”

In one sense, it’s encouraging that they do this.  It tells me that - deep down - they really know that you can’t start with nothing and get everything.  As a matter of fact, you can’t start with nothing and get anything - not even a single electron.  So, instead, the “scientific” atheists invent exotic theories to explain to the lay public how everything can come from nothing, knowing all along that they don’t really mean “nothing.”  

But I expect unbelievers to lie.  To me, what is more sad, is that people who claim to be Christians, will still believe in evolution.  These compromisers willingly believe the lies spoken by people who proudly admit they exclude God from their theories.  It doesn’t make any sense.

In a previous series on my blog, I addressed 10 points made in a video by a Christian YouTuber called, Inspiring Philosophy.  It was attempting to use Scriptures to claim there were biblical problems for young earth creationists.  One criticism was over the use of the Hebrew word, bara (בָּרָא, Strong's word 1254).  Read this transcript excerpted from the video:

Number 2 is not so much a passage but the use of a Hebrew word, bara. Many young earth creationists believe this word refers to God creating out of nothing and it is used frequently throughout Genesis 1. But looking at how the word is used outside of Genesis 1, implies bara doesn't necessarily mean creation out of nothing. It might not even refer to material creation at all. John Walton has done a full semantic analysis on the word and he points out the word never necessarily means creation out of nothing and there are several times it cannot mean that at all.

Inspiring Philosophy wants to give the impression that God didn't speak everything into existence but, rather, that He shaped and formed an already existing earth. This begs the question: where did the formless, shapeless earth come from? Unless IP is invoking an infinite regress, then at some point in the past, there had to be a creation out of nothing.  The video seems to leave open the possibility that Elohim is not the Creator of the universe. IP only portrays God as continuously shaping already existing matter but never seems to definitively attribute the creation of matter to God.  This is one of the reasons I think theistic evolution borders on heresy!

For whatever reason, evolutionists think it’s more “scientific” to believe nothing created everything than to believe God created everything.  I say it’s foolishness.  To make me believe their theory, they would first have to show me how nothing could create anything.  Next they would have to convince me that nothing creating everything is more reasonable than believing God made everything.  Good luck with that.

Natural laws are properties of the universe. We use them to describe how the universe behaves.  But, if natural laws are properties of the universe, we can't really use them to explain the origin of the universe. Logically speaking, it’s impossible for something to create itself; rather, everything that begins to exist is caused by something outside of itself. To invoke natural laws as some natural explanation for the universe, is like saying nature created nature, which is absurd. So the cause of the universe must be something outside of the universe, something “supernatural” by definition.

Unbelievers are in denial about the religious nature of their beliefs about origins. They are trying to posit a creator with similar attributes that we normally associate with God - like King Crocoduck saying energy is eternal. In other words, they want us to believe there is a supernatural, eternal, uncaused cause for the universe – but it's still not God!  They call this cause, “nothing” but they really mean something.  Evolutionists are lying about nothing!!

We know what a day is!

One tactic employed by old earth compromisers who try to reconcile their bankrupt theories with the clear words of Scripture is to haggle over the meaning of the word, “day.”  It’s weird, too, because the meaning of that simple word is not debated anywhere it appears in Scripture except for Genesis 1.  When Joshua marched around Jericho for 7 days, how long did he march around Jericho?  When Jonah was in the belly of the whale for 3 days, how long was he in the belly of the whale?  These sound like trick questions because the answers seem so obvious.  Yet when you ask a theistic evolutionist or old earth creationist how long it took God to create the heavens and the earth, suddenly they don’t know what a day is.  Excuse me while I roll my eyes.

Now, I’m the first to admit that words can have a range of meanings.  Even the word “day” can have multiple meanings.  If I were to say, “I have trouble seeing at night so I only drive during the day,” would you know what I mean?  Of course you would.

What if I were to say something like, “Back in my day, kids walked to school”?  Yes, I don’t think you’d have any trouble understanding that either.

If someone said I might win a Nobel Prize for my blog, I would probably answer, “That’ll be the day.”  In this case, “day” means a time that’s never going to happen - yet even then, no one struggles to understand the word.  

When God commanded His people to work six days and rest on the seventh (Exodus 20:11), do you think any of them stopped to ask, “I wonder what God means by six days?”  Hardly!  It seems like the word is easily understood everywhere it is used - in or out of the Bible - except in Genesis 1.  How strange!

So if the word “day” can mean so many different things, how can we know what it means in Genesis 1?  If only there were a definition given in the text //RKBentley stares off in the distance in deep thought//.  Oh wait - there is!!  

Genesis 1:1-5, In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth. And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters. And God said, Let there be light: and there was light. And God saw the light, that it was good: and God divided the light from the darkness. And God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And the evening and the morning were the first day.

Oh, I see it now.  When God made the world, it was dark.  Then He made the light.  He called the light day, and the dark and light periods together (evening and morning) were also a day.  Duh!

“Day” can mean many things, but it can also mean a single rotation of the earth - the day/light cycle - of about 24 hours.  In fact, it usually means a 24-hour period.  So when the Bible provides a definition right in the text, why do people grope around for some other meaning?  

A while back, I wrote a series (here) rebutting a video by Inspiring Philosophy who claimed 10 scriptural problems with young earth creationism.  In the introduction to the video, the narrator said the following:

If you haven't heard, there are millions of people today who believe the earth is only about 6,000 years old and, about 4,000 years ago, there was a worldwide flood that destroyed all life on land except for a few people and two of every animal that survived in an ark. The basis of this theory comes from many who say that we ought to take a literal or a plain reading of the Bible, the Holy Book of Christianity.

The rational behind this young earth view, is that they are just taking the plain reading of the text and that Christians, who believe the earth is old, have to misconstrue or reinterpret passages to make the Bible fit with an ancient earth and the theory of evolution. 

Um… yes.  In order to make the Bible fit with an old earth and the theory of evolution, evolutionists have to make the clear words of the Bible mean something other than what the words ordinarily mean.  That’s exactly what Inspiring Philosophy does.  It’s what every evolutionist who claims to believe the Bible does.  The word day, to them, can’t mean “evening and morning” so they muddy the waters with a bunch of gobbledygook about how day could mean a bunch of other things too.  Meanwhile, they ignore the most ordinary meaning.

2 Peter 1:20 says, “no prophecy of the scripture is of any private interpretation.”  Yet in the case of Genesis 1, the word day means an undefined period of time that includes millions or even billions of years.  Exactly how does that fit the definition of “evening and morning” given in the text?  It’s the epitome of a private interpretation.  I can only think of 2 reasons they do this: they either are intentionally twisting the meaning of the word day in order to make the Bible fit their godless theory (which they deny) or they can't read.  

I think we all know which it is.

What can Monty Python teach us about the Bible?

Maybe I’m showing my age but I think Monty Python is one of the funniest comedy groups ever.  If you can look past their bad language, innuendo, and irreverent humor, their comedic genius sets them apart from most comedians.  Their gags are sort of off-the-wall but it’s not slap stick.  It’s certainly not low brow.  Some of their scenes are high IQ and work on many levels to poke fun at social norms.

Arguably, their 2 best movies are Monty Python’s Life of Brian and Monty Python and the Holy Grail.  Both have an overtly religious (albeit irreverent) theme with lots of political humor thrown in for good measure.  In The Holy Grail, the guard scene is one of my favorites.  It’s only a couple of minutes long but take a moment to watch it.  I promise you’ll be amused.

Isn’t that hilarious?  Anyway, I’m going somewhere with this.  You noticed that I asked in the title of this post if there was something we could learn about the Bible from Monty Python?  Normally, I wouldn’t recommend getting theological pointers from comedians but, in this case, we can use it as a sort of “what not to do” when reading the Bible.

Do these guards remind you of anyone?  Think hard.  Don’t feel bad if you can’t think of anyone because I didn’t notice it for a long time.  Eventually, though, it sort of clicked.  These guards remind me of Christians who claim to believe the Bible but still believe in evolution!

Let me explain.  The guards in this skit were given very clear instructions: stay here and make sure the prince doesn’t leave the room.  Yet as simple as that sounds, the guards just didn’t seem to get it.  The king kept repeating the commands very slowly and even asked them to repeat them back to him - correcting them every time they strayed from the directive.  And just when he thought they understood everything, the guards started to follow the king out of the room proving they didn’t understand anything at all!  //RKBentley chuckles//

Genesis is a very straightforward and plainly written account of the creation. Even a simpleton could read it and plainly see that it says God created the world in six days and then rested on the seventh. The creation event was a week long. It wasn't millions or billions of years. It wasn't a long progression of creation events over countless generations. There isn't a catastrophe and reconstruction wedged in between verses one and two. It's a simple account of a miraculous event. It's hard to misunderstand.

Yet despite the fact that it is so clearly written, there are millions of people out there that don't seem to be able to understand the clear meaning of the words. “How long is a day?,” I've heard them ask. Next they will say, “The Bible only tells us that God did it and science tells us how.” Excuse me? Are they reading the same text as me? The Bible says that God spoke and it happened. He created light on the first day, the sky on the second day, the dry land on the third day, etc. Each day is punctuated with the phrase “evening and morning” and marked with an ordinal number (“first day”, “second day”, etc). Could it really be more clear?

2 Peter 1:20 says, Knowing this first, that no prophecy of the scripture is of any private interpretation.  In other words, the Bible generally means what it says and there’s no need to look for some hidden meaning or tortured interpretation.  To say that “six days” could somehow mean “billions of years” is the epitome of a private interpretation!

If you believe that the Genesis account of creation really means God created via something like evolution, then let me ask you a question: if God had meant to write that He created everything in six days, how might He have said it any more plainly? Why is it that the word “day” is easily understood the other few hundred times it is used but suddenly is “vague” when we read it in Genesis? Why should we even look for a different meaning other than the plain one? To me, people who read the Bible and then claim Genesis means something other than what it clearly means sound about as silly as the guards in the video.

The sad part is that the guards in the movie are trying to be funny.

Numbers 31: But all the women children keep alive for yourselves

Critics of the Bible sometimes try to attack the Bible by claiming it condones things that are morally objectionable.  I’ve always thought it was a strange tactic because atheism lacks the foundation to make any moral claim at all.  To say something is wrong means it ought not to be that way.  Christians believe God created the universe the way it ought to be and any time we disobey God’s will, it’s wrong.  However, without any god, who is to say how things ought to be?  Certainly, the universe doesn’t care what happens.  Apart from any transcendent Law Giver, the atheist can only say what he thinks people ought to do.  Without God, what is right or wrong changes on the subjective whim of opinion.  For an atheist to claim anything is wrong makes about as much sense as me saying people who like orange Starbursts are evil!  After all, my opinion would be just as valid as anyone else’s.

Alex O’Connor (also known as the Cosmic Skeptic) is one such atheist who claims the Bible condones things that are objectively wrong.  In a debate he had with Christian biologist, Jonathan McLatchie, (found on YouTube here) O’Connor made the following argument:

What about Numbers 31?...  I’ll just quote it.  Moses instructs the following to… they’re attacking the Midianites - essentially committing a genocide against the Medianites - and Moses instructs his combatants.  “Now kill all the boys and kill every woman who has slept with a man but save for yourselves every girl who has never slept with a man” [Numbers 31:17-18 NIV]. Now, I’m not entirely sure what a bunch of aggressive males would want with a bunch of virgin girls.  I’ll leave that up to the imagination of the audience.  But to me this seems not just slavery in terms of, like, a voluntary service contract.  This seems like a grotesque form of sexual slavery being advocated here.  Even in the course of war, I don’t think that’s acceptable.

McLatchie struggled to try to answer and after some hemming and hawing, finally admitted, “I confess I do struggle with this text so I don’t… uh… I don’t know the answer to that question.”  

I’m sure it’s sometimes difficult, in the pressure of a debate and being faced with a question you’d never really considered, to articulate a response.  I don’t fault McLatchie for not being able to answer.  However, the Bible says we should always be ready to give an answer (1 Peter 3:15); that’s not just answers to the easy questions but to the difficult ones as well.  So, with the benefit of having time to think, time to review the passages, and time to write and edit a response, I’m going to attempt to answer O’Connor here.  

I admit that, according to modern societal norms, events like the ones described in Numbers are very foreign to our Western ideals.  I don’t want to pretend I understand completely what was in the minds of the people who lived during those times.  I can say that God is good, He is just, and He is perfect in every way.  He has given us the Bible for our benefit so I can only trust that a correct understanding of the passages can be found within the pages of Scripture itself.  That is what I’m going to try to do here.  I pray that God will guide my thoughts.  Amen.

First we need to consider the history of Israel’s interactions with the Midianites.  In Numbers 25, we see that, when the fledgling nation of Israel was dwelling in the land of Shittim, the people of Israel were being seduced by the women of Moab.  They were sacrificing to other gods, eating the meat offered to these false gods, and bowing down to their idols.  The Lord became angry with the children of Israel and sent a plague among the people.  

Moses commanded the judges to kill all of the Israelites who worshipped Baalpeor.  The people began to repent and verse 6 describes how people were weeping before the door of the Tabernacle.  But even in their repentance, one of the children of Israel unashamedly brought a Midianite woman, the daughter of a Midian chief, past the front of the Temple in the view of Moses and all the people.  At that point, Phinehas, the grandson of Aaron the priest, followed the man and woman to his tent where he ran them both through with a spear.  Because of Phinehas’ actions, God’s wrath was turned away from the people and He relented from the plague He had sent on them.

The Bible says the wages of sin is death (Romans 6:23).  I’ve written about this before (here).  All have sinned and so all die (Romans 5:12).  Some die old and some die young.  Some die violently and some die peacefully.  God alone is the Author of life and it is His right to decide when we must die.  Because of their idolatry, 24,000 Israelites had died from the plague.  But God’s wrath was not against Israel alone.  He also would judge the nation of Midia:

Numbers 25:16-18, And the Lord spake unto Moses, saying, Vex the Midianites, and smite them: For they vex you with their wiles, wherewith they have beguiled you in the matter of Peor, and in the matter of Cozbi, the daughter of a prince of Midian, their sister, which was slain in the day of the plague for Peor's sake.

Having now read the back story, let us look to Numbers 31 and the verses in question.  After the battle, when Midia had been defeated, the Jewish army returned with their spoils of war - including the women and children that had been captured.  Moses was angry and went out to confront the captains of the host:

Numbers 31:15-18, And Moses said unto them, Have ye saved all the women alive? Behold, these caused the children of Israel, through the counsel of Balaam, to commit trespass against the Lord in the matter of Peor, and there was a plague among the congregation of the Lord. Now therefore kill every male among the little ones, and kill every woman that hath known man by lying with him. But all the women children, that have not known a man by lying with him, keep alive for yourselves.

So we can see that God’s judgment on Midia wasn’t arbitrary.  The Midianites received the just recompense for their role in leading the people of Israel away from God into the worship of idols.  The men and boys who warred against Israel were killed.  The women who seduced the men of Israel were killed.  However, the young women - those who had not been with any man - were spared!  It was an act of mercy God had shown to the innocent girls who had not participated in the wicked acts of the older women.

O’Connor’s implication that God was allowing these young women to be kept as some type of “səx sl@ves” is unfounded.  I’ve talked before (here) about the use of the term “slavery” in the Bible and how being a slave in those times was essentially a type of job in most instances.  When the Bible talks about “slaves,” it is primarily talking about 2 groups of people: prisoners of war and the chronically poor. It is the first group that we are discussing here.  

War was a grim reality at the time of the Old Testament and conquered kingdoms meant defeated populations that needed to be dealt with. If you defeat an enemy, you can't simply pack up and go home or else you'll be fighting the same enemy again sometime later. Therefore, the Law gave instructions in dealing with enemy prisoners.  These were allowances God made for a fallen world and did not necessarily represent God’s perfect will - similar to how Jesus described the Laws surrounding divorce in Matthew 19:8.

Slavery in the Bible is nothing like the slavery we think of in the Antebellum South.  In the Bible, God commanded His people to treat their slaves/servants fairly and justly.  No where in the Bible are female servants allowed to be “səx sl@ves.”  Exodus 7 talks about how women maidservants must be treated as a wife if married to the master or treated like a daughter if married to the master’s son.

In spite of O’Connor’s innuendo, the young Midianite girls were not going to be abused.  They were going to be taken care of, treated fairly, and would probably go on to live productive lives.  I suspect that many of them would even come to love the Jewish families they served, to marry Jewish men, to learn about the God of Abraham, and to become believers themselves. What O'Connor attempts to portray as "unacceptable" and immoral, is actually a picture of God's wrath, judgment, and mercy.