History of the modern young-earth movement:

Despite how it is sometimes portrayed, young-earth creationism is
----not the common interpretation throughout church history;
----not the common interpretation in all branches of the church and around the world.

Young Earth Creationism:

Theological arguments:
--The young-earth interpretation of Genesis is the best (or only valid) one.
It is a valid interpretation, but not the only valid one for Christians. Whether it is the best interpretation is debatable.
--God could have made the world with some appearance of age/maturity.
Yes, but astronomy shows not just maturity, but a detailed history over billions of years. In what sense does creation speak truthfully?
--Confront evolutionism by attacking macroevolution and the age of the earth.
We agree that evolutionism is wrong and must be confronted. We disagree that an old earth and macroevolution necessarily imply evolutionism.

Theological arguments:
--Confront evolutionism by attacking macroevolution.
We agree that evolutionism is wrong. We disagree that macroevolution necessarily implies evolutionism.
--Claim that evaluation of the scientific evidence is biased by pervasive philosophical naturalism and secular humanism within academia.
There are scientists who believe Naturalism, but there are also scientists of other religious worldviews. Be very cautious of claiming to understand "biased motives" in another person's decisions.

Further reading: books by Phillip Johnson, Darwin's Black Box by Michael Behe.

Evolutionary Creationism

Theological arguments:
--"Fully gifted creation" principle: God, as an expression of his creativity and generosity, generously gave creation every capability it would need to actualize, over the course of time, every structure which God intended. macroevolution is not a sign of God's absence. Rather, it is a sign of God's creativity, generosity to his creatures, and ongoing providential oversight. (Note that progressive creationists, especially the "intelligent design" movement, believes this is false for biological (but not necessarily physical) history, and is trying to prove that biological life is too complex to have evolved by natural mechanism.)
Valid possibility, but not clearly better than other possibilities.
--Confront evolutionism by attacking the philosophical connections some people draw between macroevolution and evolutionism.
All creationists should do this, not just evolutionary creationists.
--What about miracles? Evolutionary creationists agree that God might have intervened and could have intervened if He wanted to. However, they consider the current scientific evidence to support macroevolution and find little evidence for miraculous intervention in natural history.
More scientific work is needed in some parts of macroevolution (origins of life, origins of complexity and novelty). God can work through natural processes as well as miracles, so God is sovereign either way.
--Evolutionary creationism (and to some extent Progressive Creationism) raises some thorny theological problems that we'll deal with next week: natural evil and death before humans, the origin of the human soul, and the Fall of humans in Genesis 3.
Discussed next week.

Further reading: Howard Van Till et al. Portraits of Creation; Keith Miller et al., Perspectives on an Evolving Creation

Summary of positions:

Spectrum of views on origins

1a. Ancient Near East Cosmology. A literal reading Genesis 1-2, and other Old Testmament passages, describes a flat earth with a solid-dome "firmament" above the sky holding back the "waters above the earth." This is how the Old-Testament-era Hebrews and surrounding cultures pictured the world.
1b. "Modern" Flat Earth. Genesis 1-2 and other scriptures are interpreted as requiring belief in a flat earth fixed in place, but words refering to the solid firmament and waters above the earth are interpreted differently than in Ancienct Near East cosmology.
1c. Geocentrism The earth is spherical, but Genesis 1-2 and other scriptures are interpreted as requiring the belief that the earth is fixed and doesn't move. The sun, moon, planets, and stars all move around the earth.

2a. Young Earth Creation: Appearance of Youth. The modern scientific (sun-centered) picture of the solar system is accepted, but the scientific picture of geological and biological history is disputed. Genesis 1-2 is interpreted as recent literal history; the earth and the universe are a few tens of thousands of years old. (References to the firmament and waters above the earth are interpreted in a variety of ways.) Although some "appearance of age" may have been included in creation (e.g. active stars, light from the stars "on its way" to earth), proper scientific measurements would yield ample evidence that the earth and life were recently created.
2b. Young Earth Creation: Created with Apparent Age. Genesis 1-2 is interpreted as recent literal history; the earth and the universe are a few tens of thousands of years old. However, the universe and the earth were made to "appear" several billion years old, so scientific measurements measure only apparent age, not actual age.
2c. Young Earth Creation: Apparent Age Due to the Fall. Genesis 1-2 is interpreted as recent literal history; the earth and the universe are a few tens of thousands of years old. However, due either to the fall of man or the fall of Satan, the earth was made to appear "old."

3a. Progressive Creation with Special Creation of Each Lifeform. The earth and the universe are several billion years old. At various times during the creation period, God performed a distinctive miraculous creation to produce each new lifeform. (De novo creation or supernatural transformation of an existing lifeform.)
3b. Progressive Creation. The earth and the universe are several billion years old. At various times during the creation period, God performed distinctive miraculous acts to produce lifeforms with certain new features or increased complexity. (Microevolution can produce some amount of species diversity, but novel biological or biochemical structures were specially and miraculously created at the appropriate times. (e.g. perhaps through miraculous genetic transformations in zygotes.))
3c. Progressive Creation through "Miraculous" Evolution. Creation occurred through evolution, but the success of evolution is "surprising;" that is, one would not have expected the evolutionary process to be as successful as it has been. Thus God must have been "directing" the evolutionary process, perhaps arranging (or pre- arranging) for the process to travel along preordained paths, leading to much better-than-expected outcomes.

4a. Evolutionary Creation with Special Creation of First Life. Creation occurred through evolution and there is nothing surprising about its success -- we would expect evolution to produce something like what we see. Nevertheless, creation occurred at God's hand and evolution was the tool. However, the fact that biological evolution got started in the first place is surprising, and that suggests a miraculous creation of first life.
4b. Evolutionary Creation. Creation occurred through evolution and there is nothing surprising about its success; nor is it surprising that life got started in the first place. We should expect abiogenesis and evolution to produce something like what we see. God designed the natural laws of the universe to be just right for successful abiogenesis and biological evolutionary. God's governance of those natural processes is pictured in a variety of ways:
4b1. Evolutionary Creation with Programmed Outcome. The laws which govern biochemistry and biological evolution are designed to ensure that life will "self-organize" into certain kinds of lifeforms. God ordained and intended our existence, and designed the process to achieve it.
4b2. Evolutionary Creation with Chosen Outcome. Biological evolution could, in theory, have followed many different paths with divergent outcomes. However, the exact path which evolution took on earth, and the final outcome we see today, were entirely ordained by God, since every event which appears to be "chance" to us is actually determined by God.
4b3. Evolutionary Creation with Flexible Outcome. The exact path which evolution took on earth, and the final outcome we see today, were not entirely predetermined by God; rather, God gave his creation a certain degree of "freedom." God also knew that this process would eventually produce intelligent, personal creatures to whom he could reveal Himself.
4c. Evolutionary Creation Known only via Special Revelation. The fact that "the natural laws of the universe gave rise to a successful evolutionary process" is not really surprising, and this is not by itself very good evidence for God's design. Nevertheless, we believe that creation occurred through God's hand because of God's special revelation.

5. Deistic Evolution. God created the universe and the laws of nature, "set them in motion," and let them "do their thing" without any intervention or meaningful governance.

6. Atheistic Evolution. The universe is self-existing; there is no creator. (There are, of course, many philosophically different varieties of atheistic evolution. They would require yet another "spectrum" to differentiate.)