The Truth, the Whole Truth, and Nothing But the Creation Truth

Our buddy, Johnny Kaje, got us going yesterday with ‘Day One-ish of the Big Silly Jesus Circus: Lies About Dinosaurs‘. This is a perceptive article by someone whose viewpoint is ‘reality-based’. Start there, and then come back here (ya gotta promise to come back!).

Dr. G. Thomas Sharp, founder of the Creation Truth Foundation, does presentations regarding what he considers to be the greatest threat to Christian families: secular thinking, especially “Darwinian evolutionism” (sic). Today, I attended a session ‘Mount St. Helens’ of his 3-day seminar.

Sharp {it is difficult for me to repeatedly use the appellation of “Dr.” for a title bestowed by a Bible College – yes, I know of some fine institutions – but I’d have to see some bona fides first} is not the sort of Intelligent Design Luddite that we usually encounter. He offers a sort of Creationist antithesis to I.D.. He makes no attempt to establish scientific validity for his beliefs: “If this were a scientific issue, it would already be solved … but, it’s religious” and “Creation and Evolution are 100% biases”. He asserts that his viewpoint and that of science are both exclusively religious.

His homogeneous tactic, spread like smooth peanut butter to the very edges of a world-view sandwich, is to show that science is defective, even stupid (a word which he never used, offering instead the equivalents of condescension and derision). The logic sequence which he re-iterates is: Since ‘science’and religion are really both religious, and since science is defective, then, ipso facto, his religious view is correct. He made zero effort to establish any credibility for (his) religion. Such an effort would probably have been superfluous for most of the audience.

It is difficult in this space to analyse the deficiencies paraded before us in an hour. Smart’s comment at 50 minutes is exemplary: he said that since the talk was to be about Mount St. Helens (not yet discussed), he had “10 minutes to talk about the good stuff”. It felt like I had been confronted by a burglar who, instead of taking my valuables, devoted much time to sticking me with a knife before saying “oh, yeah – I came here to get valuables”.

How does a person receive a Ph.D. (with an ’emphasis’ in the philosophy of religion and science) and yet exhibit such an utter lack of organization? Also, his intellectual rigor was, at best, mortised. This is why I do not grant Bible Colleges the same assumed respect that I apply to my hometown state university.

There were many (many, many) other deficiencies in simple content. Try these:

“Mount St. Helens was the smallest known volcano in the history of record keeping.”

But it formed the “biggest land debris slide in the history of record keeping.” {He insisted upon repeating the strange phrase “land debris slide” subsequently.}

“Fossils are not made by dying.” But this “probably includes dying.” {I think that this might have been an example of profundity.}

“The Heavens are where the birds fly.” {His Biblical exegesis is as poor as his science.}

Regarding a geological process: “how long it would take based on observable reality.” {“Observable reality” being incorrect, in his view.}

We “can’t put creation / evolution predictions in a test tube and test them.” {Which would be pointless, regardless – “observable reality” being bogus.}

“Geological uniformitarianism is the result of the lusts of men.” {I heard of another guy who says that rape is the result of the lusts of women. These statements leave the stork as the best explanation for pregnancy.}

“I’m not a scientist.” {This one is ok by him, by the majority of his audience, and by me.}