What do you think of his scientific points here?
Which ones in particular? Craig emphatically asserts that young earth creationism is crank science, which I completely agree with, but it’s not that he really details the scientific evidence against young earth creationism in any appreciable detail. He states a number of scientific findings and conclusions that conflict with young earth creationist interpretations, but as they are presented in that talk they’re really just a list of assertions. I doubt that any hardline young earth creationist finds that kind of mere listing and stating of conclusions persuasive. Perhaps, coming from Craig, they’re more likely to.
One of the young earth creationists in the audience who gets to ask him a question, states something to the effect that nobody was around to see what happened in these models and they’re so long ago, and the models “aren’t repeatable and testable like things are in science”, so why not just believe the Bible? Craig responds that at least for more recent stuff, though still older than anything in young earth creationism, there were people alive to see these things.
And I was thinking all throughout that the most obvious retort is to point out that the questioner was not there to witness the events described in the Bible either, and they can’t be repeated or tested. But Craig of course essentially agrees with the questioner that one can unproblematically just decide to believe the Bible on faith. He just wants to give it a different interpretation in light scientific evidence.
So we have one guy saying “the Bible is right the scientific evidence be damned”, and another guy saying “the Bible is right, so is the scientific evidence, so the words in the Bible mean something else”. Either way, the Bible is just right.
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I haven’t heard WLC in some time, this was very interesting. Maybe if you’re WLC you can get away with anything but I’m frankly surprised with his forthrightness about a mytho-historical interpretation of Genesis 1-11 and with his shooting down of YEC the way he does.
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If you are WLC, you can get away with anything, and frankly it doesn’t matter if you can’t. He has a massive media operation around him, with over 2 million engagements per month. There is no institution he needs right now to support him, and he brings too much to the table for institutions to go after him.
What I appreciate about him, right now, is that he is wanting to use his platform to study deeply, honestly understand and represent science, all in service of the Church. I hope I have this sort of integrity in my work in the coming years. I think I have thus far.
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