SRS Response to Dr. Eppinga

Dear Dr. Eppinga,

Sorry that I have caused you grief.  My statement that you were promoting the books of John Walton and teaching theistic evolution was based on several lines of evidence.  If the following evidence is false, I will gladly correct it.

  1. Evidence that you recommend the reading of Walton’s books, and that you appreciate his “insights”.
    A. Two of Walton’s books are  recommended books to read in your study guides to “faith and science integration” which you and your team created during the past summer and put on line at the following site //digitalcollections.dordt.edu/faith_science/,

At the end of the study called Did Adam and Eve exist, the guide recommended just one book,  The Lost World of Adam and Eve by John Walton, found at the site  digitalcollections.dordt.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1004&context=faith_science

At the end of the study called How do Christians view the creation of the World the guide recommended  The lost world of Genesis One:  Ancient Cosmology and the Origins Debate, by John Walton  found at the site: digitalcollections.dordt.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1001&context=faith_science

  1. The 6 science teachers including yourself who met with students at the “Doubt Night” held in the evening of Oct 30 at Dordt to discuss the Oct. 26 debate between the creationist Todd Wood and the theistic evolutionist Darrell Falk, did not raise objections to Falk’s recommendation that Walton’s book gave great answers to how to put Genesis and evolution together.  That at least was the testimony to me of one of the students who attended Oct 26 and Oct 30.
  2. On Oct. 29 you sent a letter to Fictorie who in turn sent it to a couple dozen students in the Kuyper scholarship program which invited the students to go to NW college on Nov. 6 to hear John Walton in person.  You claim Walton has “new insights”   Here is a copy of your letter:

From: Robbin Eppinga
Sent: Monday, October 29, 2018 1:43 PM
Subject: John Walton @ NWC on Nov 6

Hi all,

I might have mentioned to you that John Walton will be speaking at NWC in the “Science as a Faithful Witness” series next week.

Here is the NWC information about the talks at 11am and 7:30pm: https://www.nwciowa.edu/news/4410/old-testament-scholar-to-speak-at-northwestern-college

“During his presentations, Walton will discuss the early chapters of Genesis not as an account of scientific origins, but as an account of identity. Through his morning lecture, “Immanuel Theology: What God Has Always Wanted,” and evening presentation, “The Lost World of Adam and Eve,” Walton will share his wisdom about biblical texts and the ancient Near Eastern world to guide audience members through an interpretation of Genesis 2 that yields new insights.”

Blessings, Robbin Eppinga, Ph.D.  Biology Professor  Dordt

  1. Evidence that points to your advocacy of theistic evolution.
  2. The first evidence is in the study you wrote called Is the Theory of Evolution Compatible with the Christian Faith,  based on the book by Lamoureau, Evolution  Scripture and Nature say Yes!   The content of this study is found at:

digitalcollections.dordt.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1011&context=faith_science

I invite the readers of this article to look at the questions for study in the above link and decide for themselves if there is a bias towards theistic evolution or a strong apology against it.

Yes, it is the job of the teacher to prepare students for the attacks on the faith that will come at grad school or elsewhere,  and unfortunately more and more  in Christian colleges,  and so they should read some materials of those who eisegete the Scriptures in order to defend evolution.   Lamoureau is an excellent example of such a writer.

In my opinion Lamoureau attacks God’s Word on several levels even though he is a theologian and scientist.    In the following link one can read about his attacks on the historical truth of Genesis 1-11.  https://answersingenesis.org/reviews/books/evolution-scripture-and-nature-say-no/

Now I do not know if in your classes which will examine your faith and science questions related to Lamoureau’s book, you follow the student’s answers with your refutation of Lamoureau’s position as found above.   But there are hints that you don’t.  That’s because questions can be stated with a direction toward the answer you are looking for.  It appears that your questions are leading to a favorable view of Lamoureau.

Let me give you examples of this way of asking  questions.  If I were to have written the questions in your study of the compatibility of evolution and the Bible, they would have been more like the following.   You will see how my faith in how God made the world comes out immediately in how I write these questions.

  1. How do you respond to the young earth verses of Jesus?
  2. a) He was speaking as a human and didn’t really know he was just repeating the  statements of Genesis 1-3 which were misunderstood by him and the whole church until around 1800.

or b) As human he did not empty himself of the omniscience and omnipotence of his eternal divine nature by which he had created all things, so he would not be mixed up about origins. For while on earth he was omniscient and “knew what was in man  and did not need anyone to bear witness concerning man for He Himself knew what was in man.”   John 2: 24,25.

The young earth verses are Mark 10:6.  “From the beginning of the creation He made them male and female”( Adam and Eve). Thus Adam and Eve  were created at the beginning of Creation, not  13.5 years after the beginning.    And Luke 11:50 &51 “  The blood of all the prophets, shed since the foundation of the world…. from the blood of Abel….”   Here Jesus puts Abel at the foundation of the world, not billions of years after.

  1. What is the correct view of the Bible being an accommodation to our being finite and God being holy and infinite? Did John Calvin who speaks of this accommodation intend this to include a simple thing easy to understand like the days of creation and the age of the earth?   See Calvin’s Commentary on Gen. 1:5, p 34,  and on Gen. 1:3  p. 33.  See also his Institutes  Book 3,  Chap.XXI/  para. 4    and  Book I   Chapter XIV  , para. 1,2
  2. Give 3 reasons from the nature of Hebrew historical writing to show why the text of Genesis 1 is not poetry, not a poetic framework, but is just as historical as Genesis 12 through 50.
  3. How does Exodus 20: 11 help us understand the length of the days of Genesis one?
  4. What is the content of general revelation according to Romans 1:19-22, Romans 2:14-16, and Acts 14:17, and Psalm 19?   What knowledge does it give that leaves man without excuse?  Is the big bang, or the theory of evolution, or the claim that man comes from 10,000 hominids (not from Adam and Eve) really truly general revelation?  If it is, then would you claim that we are “without excuse” and liable to damnation if we reject these three ideas,  since “without excuse”  is connected to  the definition of the content of general revelation?  (Romans 1:20)
  5. Since Charles Lyell, 150 years ago, some theologians have claimed that “all” means “some” in the words of Gen. 7: 19 “ the water prevailed … so that all the high mountains under all the heavens were covered” based on places like Gen 41:56, and therefore  we can explain the geologic column apart from a universal flood.  Since the meaning of words must be determined by the context, give 5 contextual and common sense reasons about the nature of water why  in Gen. 7:9 “all” does indeed mean all. If only the mountains in the Tigris and Euphrates valley were covered including Mt Ararat, how high was the water?  Look up on line how high Mt. Ararat is ( the bottom is 6000 feet above sea level.)
  6. Do you think Charles Lyell’s uniformitarian geology was influenced by his world view when he wrote a letter to his friend that his three volumes of geology were written to “free geology from Moses”?
  7. Give 3 other theories for the red shift besides the theory of the expanding universe.
  8. Why did Jack Horner the head of the dinosaur museum in Montana refuse to accept a $20,000.00 gift to submit to a carbon 14 dating lab, the soft tissue found by Mary Schweitzer in 2005 in a Tyrannosaurus Rex leg bone?  Do you think he was afraid that the claim that dinosaurs went extinct 65 million years ago would be demolished, and even tumble the whole theory of an old earth?http://kgov.s3.amazonaws.com/bel/2009/20090814-BEL162.mp3 (starting at minute 18)
  9. Why did the American Geophysical Union refuse to publish the research of the Catholic newgeology researchers, showing that soft tissue of 8 different dinosaurs carbon dated at from 22 to 39 thousand years?  http://newgeology.us/presentation48.html
  10. In 2005 Francis Collins, head of the genome project said that 80% of human DNA was junk, remnants of evolution, but 10 years later he changed his mind and said 20% or less is and maybe someday, none of it will be perceived as junk. What does this teach us about the idea that general revelation (as wrongly defined)  and the Bible have equal authority?
  11. At the Scopes trial of 1925, Clarence Darrow, the atheist, claimed that Bryan was denying science and fact because 2 fossils, the Piltdown man discovered in England in 1912 and Nebraska man found in 1922 conclusively proved a missing link between monkey and man. Both were proven false:  The Piltdown man was discovered in 1953 to be a concoction of a 500 year old human skull and a recent ape jaw with teeth filed and acid put on teeth to make them look old.  500 papers were written about it (the plaster casts of it) before the fraud was exposed. Nebraska man was a single tooth around which an artist created a half man-half ape.  A few years later a similar tooth was found with the entire animal. It was an extinct pig.  A few years later the pig was found alive in So America.  What does this tell us about calling “evolution science” general revelation?
  12. After Mt. St. Helens exploded in 1980, a lava dome 1000 feet high grew out of the crater. Radioactive material from the dome was sent to a lab and came back dated at 600,000 to 2.6 million years old.  Yet it was only around 10 years old.  Theistic evolutionists will say this is an anomaly, even though many other recent volcanoes have been dated with the same error.   Would you call the dating at Mt St. Helens an anomaly to protect the evolutionary dating system?
  13. Recently John Sanford of Cornell U. wrote Genetic Entropy,  showing  from his colleagues and from his own research that mutations only go downwards, making evolution impossible.  Thus he agrees with the devolution taught in the Bible in Gen chapters 5 and 11 to Psalm 90(written by Moses) showing that man went from 969 years gradually down to 70 or 80,   God allow sisters to marry brothers for the first 2500 years but forbade it in Leviticus 18:8-18 and 20:11-21.  Do you think this Mosaic law was added because of genetic entropy?  Some  have tried to refute Sanford’s research.      Which would you take as your final source on this:  The Bible’s devolution claims,  or man’s evolution speculations and why?
  14. There are three sources of knowledge about creation: 1) the Bible,  2)  our study of God’s works, and   3) and what Paul in I Tim 6:20 calls a certain kind of science (see the Latin Vulgate word “scientia” used in this verse)  Which one are you most interested in following?
  15. The full title of Darwin’s book was On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life. He thought Europeans were more evolved than Africans and Aborigines.  As a result many cities had aborigines or Africans put in zoos next to apes and were labeled “missing links”. In 1906 evolutionists put the Congolese pygmy Ota Benga on display in a cage in the Bronx Zoo.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_zoo    Would you agree that the basic premise of Darwinism,  “the survival of the fittest” logically leads to such racism?
  16. In Barbara W. Tuchman’s story of World War I  called “The Guns of August”, page 13, she quotes German generals of 1910 writing that  war is “a biological necessity”, “a natural law”, “the law of the struggle for existence”, and  that “conquest is a law of necessity,” and on this basis German generals planned for 15 years how to invade France, whom they considered the less evolved people, and reach Paris in 60 days because of German superiority.  Stalin went from being a student of theology in Georgia to being a murdering monster after reading Darwin’s Origin of Species.  Hitler wrote Mein Kampf  meaning my struggle, Darwin’s language, and he thought Africans, Poles and Jews were “untermensch”, lower than man in the evolutionary struggle.   Do these thoughts and actions seem to be a logical outcome of Darwin’s ideas?
  17. Stephen Gould, professor at Harvard, who was America’s leading student of fossils, near the end of his life after seeing next to no missing links in the fossil record explained this absence by his theory of “punctuated Equilibrium”. He wrote “ The extreme rarity of transitional forms in the fossil record persist as the trade secret of paleontology. The evolutionary trees that adorn our textbooks have data only at the tips and nodes of their branches; the rest is inference, however reasonable, not the evidence of fossils ….We fancy ourselves as the only true students of life’s history, yet to preserve our favored account of evolution by natural selection we view our data as so bad that we never see the very process we profess to study.” – Stephen J. Gould – “Evolution’s Erratic Pace,” Natural History, vol. 86 (May 1987), p. 14.  He did not give up believing the theory of evolution. An illustration of punctuated equilibrium would go like this:  for thousands of years dinosaurs remain dinosaurs (equilibrium), then one day a dinosaur lays an egg and out comes a complete bird (the meaning of punctuated).  What does this teach us about the relation of  presuppositions and facts?
  18. Hurun Yahya of Turkey produced 3 volumes called Atlas of Creation, containing more than 3000 colored pages of stasis (plants and animals remaining the same). On each page fossils from hundreds of museums around the world are pictured on the same page as the present living form with no changes, no evolution.  Why don’t theistic evolutionists show you these facts?
  19. When Francis Collins finished the genome project around 2005, he claimed that 80% of the human genome was junk DNA, remnants of evolution. 5-10 years later he admitted that after further study only 20% is junk, and many believe that as further study is made, all will be seen to have a function. What does this tell us about the changing “truth” of evolution science vs the unchanging truth of the Word of the Lord?
  20. Around 2005, researchers into human and chimpanzee DNA said they are 98% alike and as a result many theistic evolutionists like Daniel Harlow of Calvin College became even more convinced that man evolved from an ape like creature. In 2013, after a lot more study was made of the chimpanzee DNA, the figure went to 70% similarity.  https://answersingenesis.org/answers/research-journal/v6/comprehensive-analysis-of-chimpanzee-and-human-chromosomes/   Based on this and so many other such things, if a teacher told you that general revelation (defined as science) has equal authority to the Bible (the two book theory), how would you answer them?
  21. Evidence for whale evolution can be seen pictured at the U of Michigan at Ann Arbor going from Sinonyx… to Ambuloceus … to Rodhocetus…  to Dorudon  a…to Basilosaurus…with all the dates in millions of years.  Dr.Carl Werner in his captivating book called “Evolution, the Grand Experiment Vol 1” spoke to Dr. Gingerich who works at the U of Mich.  This is what this specialist in whale evolution now says after false claims and false pictures were discovered:   “sinonyx will have to be put on a side branch… I doubt that they have any special relationship to whales…. Ambulocetus is not on the main line of whale evolution.   Rodhocetus would have had a fluked tail.  Rodhocetus doesn’t have the kind of arms that can be spread out like flippers…. Basilosaurus was not on the line to modern whales.”    Oct 26, Darrell Falk claimed whale evolution as  a sure proof of missing links.  Why do you think he believes this?
  22. There are many places where rock formations have fossils the opposite order (that is, more complex creatures on the bottom layer) of what the evolutionists claim. 5 or more examples are given in The Genesis Flood , pages 180-200.  Evolutionists answer that overthrusts are the cause.  When you read this section examining the overthrust theory, do you agree?
    24.  Ray Comfort, (a Jew from Australia, who became a Christian and is now an active evangelist to the USA) put together a DVD called God and Evolution  in which he interviews four leading atheist evolution professors in the USA.

He asks each one the same question,  “Can you give me one scientific proof of a change of kinds?”  One says “The Galopagos finches.”  Ray: “What did they become?”   Answer:” finches.”  Ray:  “That is not a change of kind, that is the same kind. “   Another says,  “Bacteria.”  Ray, “What did they become?”  Answer:  “They evolved  into antibiotic resisting bacteria.”   Ray:  “That is not a change of kind.”  And so it went.   Ray asks them how they can call evolution science when it does not meet the criteria of direct evidence.  No one since Adam has seen a monkey begin to turn into  a man,  or a cat kind evolving into a dog kind,    That leads to this question:  If even atheists cannot give a scientific proof of evolution, why do some Christians espouse it and baptize this unscientific  speculation into theistic evolution?????  I recently heard a science teacher say:  “Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence”.  Is that the way science works now?   You don’t need proof but it is still true.  That statement is not even true of the resurrection, for we have the evidence of Christ’s resurrection in the witness of God and the Holy Spirit in the Word,  plus the evidence of the Apostles, of Paul, of 500 witnesses (I Cor 15), and of thousands of martyrs willing to die for it.   Do you agree?

From these few questions of the many one could offer, you can see the obvious differences in how questions can be asked.   They can give away your presuppositions.
There is another reason why I am convinced from the book list and questions in your new program on science and faith that you are leaning away from the Biblical  teaching on origins such as stated by amillenialists like Calvin, Luther,  Doug Kelly, John Murray,  Louis Berkhof , or dozens of post mils  like James Jordan, Gregg Bahnsen.

And that is by the almost absence of books from a young earth perspective.  I see a few references to books on the global flood from Answers in Genesis, but immediately followed by writings of sceptics who teach a local flood.    What I am wishing were on your list were books like  Theistic Evolution, a Scientific,Philosophical, and Theological Critique  a 1000 pages by experts in this field, and   Searching for Adam, Genesis and the Truth about Man’s Origin  500 pages by 6 superior thinkers in this field, and  Darwin’s Black Box, by the Catholic biochemist by Lehigh, a classic,  and Darwin on Trial, by Phillip Johnson, the book that launched the intelligent design movement,  or Icons of Evolution , by Jonathan Wells,  and Evolution, a Theory still in Crisis, by an agnostic Michael Denton, and my favorite Creation and change by Douglas Kelly, one of the sharpest minds in the PCA, whose book caused R.C. Sproul to teach a literal 24 hour day creation.    One cannot be informed about the history of this debate without reading the book that helped the church return to its 1800 year course of believing Genesis as God intended, the book that finally removed all my questions about evolution, and launched a world wide creation movement, a book I hold as my 3rd or 4th most precious book:  The Genesis Flood,    by the hydrologist Morris and the theologian Whitcomb.

So my supposition that you believe in theistic evolution is based on the kind of books you recommended and the books you ignored.

But it is definitely based on what we know about one of the financial supporters who gave part of the $25,000.00 to the faith and science project, namely the Templeton Foundation.  John Templeton charged his son Jack (before John died) that his one billion dollar trust fund was never to be used to advance young earth creationism,  but only to advance evolution.  So far he has given 11 million dollars to be used to promote evolution in the churches.  A few years ago he sponsored such a conference in my daughter Amy’s church, the CRC “Church of the Servant” in Grand Rapids.  Templeton claims to be a Christian and his son is a PCA elder, according to the following article.  Since Templeton will not give money to a group that espouses young earth or even intelligent design,  they would not have given Dordt money unless they taught evolution in this faith science project.

https://world.wng.org/2010/11/honoring_his_father

https://evolutionnews.org/2014/11/world_magazine_

So what does all this matter since we all believe in Christ as the only hope of salvation?  And we trust the promises of the Bible.

This is why it matters to me:

  1. It attacks the character of God.

Old earth thinking makes God look evil.  Why?  Because of what the fossil record reveals, if viewed not as a result of events after Adam’s sin, but as events before Adam’s sin.  Fossils are formed primarily by sudden burial by water born sediments  or sudden volcanic eruptions.  Floods are evidence of judgments, and are called curses on the ground.  Some fossils reveal diseases like cancer and arthritis.  Diseases in the non-human part of creation (the non-human in v. 19-22, human in v 23) causing suffering and groaning are viewed in the Bible as following after Adam’s sin. (Romans 8: 19-23)  There are huge fossil graveyards such as in Agate Springs, Nebraska where 9000 animals such as rhinos, three toes horses, camels, giant boars, and birds are buried in a mass grave.   Evolutionists claim that 60% of animals went extinct in those millions of years.   Is this the way God wants us to view his way of creation?    He looks like a monster, angry, and irrational, and evil,  if  you view fossils as pre-fall,  which old earth thinking requires.   Unbelievers mock Christians who espouse theistic evolution, the combining of old earth thinking with the Bible.  For example, in the secular British journal Nature  we read  this critique:

               The problem that theistic evolution poses “is the sort of God that a Darwinian version of evolution implies: The evolutionary process is rife with happenstance, contingency, incredible waste, death, pain and horror. Whatever the God implied by the evolutionary theory and the data of natural history may be like, he is not the loving God who cares about his productions.  The God of the Galapagos is careless, wasteful, indifferent, almost diabolical.  He is certainly not the sort of God to whom anyone would be inclined to pray.”  Thus the song of theistic evolution is no longer  “How great thou art,”  in reference to creation but “How chaotic thou art.”

  1. A second reason why it matters is found by looking at the results in the lives of hundreds of people born into churches who abandoned the faith because of evolution:  Here is what Michael Denton, an agnostic wrote:   “Today it is the Darwinian view of nature more than any other that is responsible for the agnostic and skeptical outlook of the 20th century.”

But let me close on a positive note.  I wrote the following question hoping it would be used in the question answer session after the Todd Wood- Darrell Falk conversation hopefully to bring unity to us in a different direction.

In our discussion of the how and when(at what time and how long) of the first creation, shouldn’t we also look to what we all agree on about the how and when of the new creation?  We all  confess with the Apostle’s creed the resurrection of the dead.  And we all agree on how and when(how long) it will happen. For Scripture tells us how and when.  When ?  In the twinkling of an eye not over billions of years.  And how will it happen?  By God’s almighty Word.

We already have a clear understanding of the how and when in the resurrection of Lazarus.  How did it happen?  By the Word of Christ:  “Lazarus come forth.”  When did it happen?  Immediately, in a moment, just as water was turned to wine in a moment, just as the widow’s son was raised in a moment.

And we all believe this, even though science declares, “impossible.”  Paul to Festus in Acts 24:15 said it will be a resurrection of the just and the unjust. That’s a lot of people! Maybe 30 billion since Adam. All of them with their trillions of cells, and miles of DNA, many of them cremated with ashes scattered. Science says it’s too complex to happen in a moment.  Science based on experience says “We have never witnessed even one resurrection, nor water turned to wine.”  David Hume, the British philopher of the 1700’s taught,  “If you haven’t seen it, it can’t be true. Thus no miracles.”

As Christians we reject such scientism. Why do we believe it will happen in the twinkling of an eye?  Because God said it, and God cannot lie.

So my question is, shouldn’t we be just as happy and eager to believe the same about the how and when of the first creation, and reject any science which refuses to accept the clear Biblical record of the how and when. How? The same way he raised Lazarus.  He spoke.  He said: “Let there be light” and immediately there was light.  “He commanded and it stood fast.”  And when? Let Scripture interpret Genesis 1.  Let Exodus 20 interpret it: “for in 6 days.”  Let Mark 10:6  interpret it: Jesus says Adam and Eve were created “at the beginning of creation”, not 13.5 billions years after.