Ham on Nye and John H. Walton

Just wanted to post a quick update for everyone. Last week, Ken Ham and Bill Nye debated the young-earth creation model of Answers in Genesis.


As an Old Earth Creationist, I hold to neither debater's view, and was able to give a somewhat neutral review of the debate on the Hebrew Nation Morning Show.

I also wanted to vent about the Old Testament scholar John. H. Walton, who is famous for writing The Lost World of Genesis One, the NIV Application Commentary, and a bunch of books on Ancient Near Eastern culture and its relationship to the Bible. Walton represents the worst that BioLogos has to offer.

Masquerading as a theologically conservative scholar, Walton proceeds to attack the traditional understanding of every important teaching in the Pentateuch. It is one thing to argue that the consensus view of traditionalist Catholic, Orthodox, Protestant, Karaite, and Rabbinic understanding of certain points in the Pentateuch is wrong in some areas. It is quite another to say that every single major point, such as Adam and Eve literally eating a fruit, the Ten Commandments being a set of real laws, and God literally interacting with the world when he created the things in Genesis 1 and 2, is mistaken. Something smells wrong here.

Here is an example: Walton argues that the word for create, bara, means to declare or to establish, the way that you can declare a store open, without physically interacting with it. He forms light and creates darkness. He also establishes the luminaries to mark the signs and seasons. He is right to say that this word includes this declaration of functionality, but wrong in believing that the meaning is limited to this. Let's take some verses that use bara and substitute "assign function" for "create."

These are the generations
of the heavens and the earth when they were assigned function,
in the day that the LORD God made the earth and the heavens.
-Genesis 2:4

So the LORD said, “I will blot out man whom I have assigned function from the face of the land, man and animals and creeping things and birds of the heavens, for I am sorry that I have made them.” -Genesis 6:7 And he said, “Behold, I am making a covenant. Before all your people I will do marvels, such as have not been assigned function in all the earth or in any nation. And all the people among whom you are shall see the work of the LORD, for it is an awesome thing that I will do with you. -Exodus 34:10 Assign function in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me. -Psalm 51:10 Let this be recorded for a generation to come, so that a people yet to be created may praise the LORD: -Psalm 102:10

Then the LORD will assign function over the whole site of Mount Zion and over her assemblies a cloud by day, and smoke and the shining of a flaming fire by night; for over all the glory there will be a canopy.
-Isaiah 4:5

But now thus says the LORD,
he who assigned function to you, O Jacob,
he who formed you, O Israel:
“Fear not, for I have redeemed you;
I have called you by name, you are mine.
-Isaiah 43:1

everyone who is called by my name,
whom I assigned function for my glory,
whom I formed and made.”
-Isaiah 43:7

In some cases "assign function" simply breaks down the parallel to God's act of forming, which is more than mere assignment of function. In some cases, it makes absolutely no sense. God produced the cloud and fire. It's hard to imagine that God would simply assign function to already existing fire over Israel at night.

The fallacy is that Walton assumes that if God does not create something out of nothing, then he isn't interacting with the material world, but is instead declaring something functional. In other words, it is a false dilemma. Think of a sculptor. Sculptors do not create the stuff out of which something is made, but do stand in a cause-effect relationship with their material. They interact with existing things. They do not merely declare something to be a sculpture. They physically shape the stuff to make it something different.



 It's the same kind of trickery that people use, even on issues like mathematics. See if you can spot the error in this video:
Looks so official, and so credible, but as professional mathematicians have noted, physicists can be very naive about mathematics.

Too frequently these days smart people are taken in by the "Malcolm Gladwell" effect: a desire to explain something outside of their field of interest with a simple counter-intuitive solution.

For a more detailed criticism of John Walton, see William Lane Craig's lecture.