The book, The Fourth Day, has captured some public attention because it is the most forthright and outspoken effort we have seen on the part of one of Calvin College’s professors to defend and promote the theory he and others hold of the evolutionary origin and development of the universe. What is most significant about this matter is not this book, but the facts which it highlights, that this way of thinking has long been promoted in a number of courses and that, as a letter from a reader in the June Outlook pointed out, a student who attempts to resist this kind of promotion may be ridiculed. Calvin’s student publication, Dialogue, last January contained a little 3–page article by Dr. Howard Van Till clearly illustrating this technique of squelching opposition. It was entitled “The Dialogue of the Wooden Shoe.” A student in the crowded “Wooden Shoe” restaurant, finding himself seated with the professor who has authored a controversial book, is soon trying to argue that one must accept either creation or a “big bang” origin and history of the universe. The professor replies that these are no more alternatives than our listening to the morning scientific weather broadcast is an alternative to believing in creation. Why can’t we have both in our understanding of the universe. as we do in reckoning with its weather?
Neat, isn’t it? I guess our professor showed that bumpkin!
But how shall we evaluate this argument, which seems to neatly dispose of student objections (as well as those of many others who are no longer in college)?
Before we let Dr. Van Till get away with this argument, let’s consider that there is a significant difference between believing this morning’s weather report, compiled from broadcasts about and satellite pictures of that weather, and accepting as more reliable than gospel truth what some scientists guess may have happened 16 billion years ago! (Incidentally, local weatherman Craig James, to whose daily reports Dr. Van Till aludes in his “Dialogue” argument, happens to be a very eloquent opponent and lecturer against those unproved and unprovable theories of origins which Dr. Van Till advocates. In Dialogue, Issue #6 he answers Van Till showing the inconsistency of claiming to be a Christian while contradicting what Christ said about creation.) Accepting evident facts about the weather are no excuse for accepting evolutionists’ groundless guesses about origins. The weather pictures don’t contradict the Bible as the evolutionists’ guesses do. Even though we make grateful use of somewhat more reliable weather reports than we could get 50 years ago, we all know that the conjectures of able local weathermen may be mistaken as often as they are correct.
Some recent news has been highlighting to an unusual degree just how undependable much astronomical theory really is. A sensation was created among astronomers when last February 23 an astronomer in Chile sighted a new “supernova,” an exploding star, “the closest to Earth since 1604,” and the specialists began to predict on the basis of their present theory what it might be expected to do. Van Till devotes a central part of his book to outlining the way in which, according to the theory, stars must develop from one stage to another, and makes it a foundation for his argument (see pages 139–190). “The computation of stellar history represents one of the major accomplishments of twentieth century astronomy. It is a fascinating story the evidence for which is sufficiently compelling and coherent that it clearly ought to find a place in any valid world view” (p. 159). “Does observational evidence give support to the processes of stellar evolution that I’ve presented? My answer is an unequivocal Yes. The technical and popular literature is filled with reliable reports concerning the observational evidence for stellar evolution. In fact, the computational models are continuously being tested by comparison with observations” (p. 160).
After all of the confident predictions about what the newly observed supernova might be expected to do, a Grand Rapids Press article on April 9 pointed out that the supernova was refusing in a number of ways to behave according to the scientists’ predictions. Experts were “befuddled by its fluctuating brightness.” “It’s going to provide a lot of work for theoreticians, who will have to do a lot of revising,” was one expert’s comment. Whereas scientists had defined two types of supernovas, this actually observable supernova, the first so relatively accessible in centuries, didn’t seem to be fitting into either category, so that fascinated astronomers were saying that “their theories will have to be rewritten.”
An astronomy professor recently observed in a letter that “astronomy is such a fast-moving and such a fickle discipline that both the ‘facts’ and the theories are continually changing.” Thus the new discoveries and tumbling theories in this area instead of leading us to accept them as Divine revelation, as we have been told that we must do, compel us to consider again the questions the Lord addressed to a critical Job, “Who is this who darkens counsel by words without knowledge?” “Where were you when I made these things, and can you manage them” (Job 38:2, 4, 31–33)?
PDJ
