I do not often write on the intersection between science and religion (though I do try to educate myself on the topic) because I do not feel I have enough qualification in the realm of science.1 Because of this interest I follow a number of Christians on different social media platforms and over the last year I have become frustrated with two organizations and several individuals connected with them because of the deceit and outright lies they use in the name of promoting their ideas. These organizations are Answers in Genesis (AiG) and Creation Ministries international (CMI), two very prominent Young Earth Creationist (YEC)2 organizations. This bothers me greatly because these organizations claim to be trying to defend Christianity; though the truth is you cannot defend Christianity with lies and so they are not defending Christianity but merely attempting to defend their Creationism. It can be difficult for many is that these lies because they are often subtle or require some additional research to detect and most people do not want to think poorly of such Christian ministries and so do not question the narratives they are telling. Let me be completely clear, I am not speaking about the science of YEC beliefs (I am not qualified for that though I do find Joel Duff’s work interesting). I am not saying YEC ideas are wrong, though in full disclosure I think their reading of Genesis is flawed and creates real difficulties which they do not address, but if you want to ascribe to their reading that’s fine. What I am discussing here are the falsehoods these organizations use to build their case and perpetuate their ideas. These organizations (especially AiG) take in millions each year and I find that distressing considering how often they use deception. So in this post and my next I am going to break down some of the deceptive claims they make to demonstrate how these organizations fail to live up to the Christian standard of honesty.
Augustine and the Church Fathers
Deceptive claim– The early church apart from a few unimportant outliers read Genesis literally and YEC advocates today are simply following in the universal tradition of the past.
Of the issues I am going to raise I understand people having the most trouble understanding the harm of this fabrication. AiG, CMI and others have numerous articles that claim Church Fathers (especially Augustine) were YEC.3 At the outset many early Christians did read Genesis literally, but several– including Augustine– did not. They claim YEC organizations are making is that prior to modernity everyone read the Bible the way they do and modern scholars who disagree with their readings are doing so not because they want to read the Bible well but because they are giving in to modern worldviews. Though there are conservative scholars of Genesis (like John Walton) who endorse the theory of evolution, it is a lie to say that they are trying to reinterpret Genesis to fit that theory. These scholars are working hard to read Genesis well, their scientific beliefs are not influencing their beliefs of the text.4 The goal for these organizations is to establish that with the exception of a few fringe writers the Church has always interpreted Genesis 1 exactly as they do and so we can dismiss these fringe thinkers as out-of-step with orthodoxy and see the modern scholars as nothing more than liberals trying to undermine God’s word. The truth is the Church has had a variety of ways of interpreting Genesis throughout its history and we need to acknowledge that. And famously two of the best exegetes of the early Church– Augustine and Origen– came to read Genesis 1 as allegorical because as Origen put it in On First Principles:
“What man of intelligence, will consider it a reasonable statement that the first and the second and the third day, in which there are said to be both morning and evening, existed without sun and moon and stars…?”.
And though these two by no means represent the majority view in Christian history, their ideas have been engaged with continuously throughout the centuries and other very intelligent scholars have taken them serious. Particularly the allegorical reading of Genesis that led to the belief that that the world was 6,000 years old at the time of Jesus. Many early Christians read the six day sequence in Genesis 1 as allegorical and combined it with Psalm 90:4 “A thousand years in your sight are like a day that has just gone by, or like a watch in the night.”. The idea was that with Jesus God was giving the world its true Sabbath and so the days of creation were an allegory for the age of the earth, which was 6,000 years old at the time Jesus came. (They did not count the generations in genealogies as some have tried to do because they recognized the inconsistencies in those texts.) Now, it is important to recognize that none of us read the Bible exactly as the early Church did, and while their approaches can be helpful for it is anachronistic and wrong to equate their readings with ours and this is what YEC organizations are doing. I frequently point to exegetes like Augustine and Origen, not because I agree with their allegorical approach to Scripture, I do not, but to establish that Christians have had a variety of readings of Genesis throughout the centuries and in case of Augustine his reading did not prohibit the Church from recognizing him as one of the preeminent Christian thinkers of all time.
As I said above, if these organizations can convince readers that they are the true inheritors of the early Church’s interpretation of the Bible then it lends weight to their legitimacy. And so they are willing to deceive people into thinking the early Church was far more unified on this issue than it was. For more on the history of interpretation of Genesis, I really enjoyed Derrick Peterson’s Flat Earths and Fake Footnotes.
Quote Mining
Claim– This one is specific to AIG, that quote mining (the practice of taking a quote out of context in such a way that it does not reflect the author’s usage and strengthens the opponent’s argument) is lying.
This claim is accurate and I applaud AiG for repeatedly making this claim in their social media posts. The issue is that they repeatedly employ quote mining in their articles, videos, and social media posts. Further, they lie and say they do not. The article linked in footnote 3 below is full of quote mines from Old Testament scholars. In that article AiG is trying make the claim that Old Testament scholars come to their conclusions about the Bible to placate the theory of evolution and what the quotes are saying is that these scholars– based on their reading of Genesis– see no conflict with evolution, which is completely different. They also often use this same tactic when talking about evolutionary biologists trying to establish the biologists have less confidence than they do. (Click for example) And AiG Is not the only organization to use this tactic (though they are the only ones I have seen call it out), I frequently see YEC organizations quote mine the caveats or qualifications in scientists claims in a way that completely misleads the audience only to trace the source and find out the scientist was saying something different.
AiG’s lie does twofold damage, one obviously are the lies themselves, relying on quote mining to make one’s case is deception and should not be entertained. But the second lie is more insidious, that is they tell people they are not using this practice when they clearly are. By telling their audience that quote mining is lying and that they do not need to practice it, they are covering for all the times they are reliant on quote mining. They repeatedly make the claim quote mining is lying and their supporters will suppose a Christian organization will not sink to lying to defend itself and so be less inclined to fact check the source (AiG, CMI, etc). The result is these organizations become de-facto authorities which are never questioned by their supporters because there is no way such an organization would resort to falsehoods.
Both of these deceptions revolve around these YEC organizations establishing themselves as unquestioned authorities on the Bible, history, and science. However, the reality is that most scholars in each of these fields disagree with with the methods and findings of these groups. Does this inherently make YEC claims wrong, no, but their frequent use of misrepresentation and deception to support their ideas does make me question the truth of their claims. How am I to trust organizations that cannot easily admit Christians have had a variety of approaches to Genesis from our earliest writers, or resort to quote mining others to make them look bad?
- Here are all of the posts I have written tagged science https://squintinginthelight.org/category/science/
And here are additional ones on Genesis https://squintinginthelight.org/tag/genesis/ ↩︎ - Young Earth Creationists define themselves by their literal reading of Genesis and hold to the premises
1. The structure of Genesis 1 is literal and God created as described there in six literal days
2. Creation happened no more than 12,000 years ago (though in practice many date this event using the genealogies in the Bible and so arrive at a precise date some 6,000 years ago0).
3. Noah’s Flood happened as described in Genesis and was a global event happening approximately 4,000 years ago.
Beyond these three points there are variations but this seems to be the general consensus ( ↩︎ - This is a sample article from Creation Ministries International, notice point 1 is that Augustine took the Bibles seriously therefore he took Genesis 1 literally- this is absolutely false. From that point the author walks back the statement. Notice how little time the author spends in expounding Augustine’s views and how much time attacking the opponents, the reason is Augustine’s views don’t allign well with YEC ideas. https://creation.com/augustine-young-earth-creationist ↩︎
- This article demonstrates that AiG often misrepresents and quote mines authors to mislead their readers who will not read the scholarly literature about the nature of scholarship. https://answersingenesis.org/genesis/why-dont-many-christian-leaders-and-scholars-believe-genesis/
And in this video they intentionally quote mine Richard Dawkins and then when they repeat his quote to challenge it they edit it to align with their argument but fundamentally misrepresent what he said. https://www.facebook.com/watch/?mibextid=wwXIfr&v=607441961892263&rdid=9N4qHtTEZg4xibYW ↩︎
Squinting in the Light 