Creation Science Book Review
Frozen In Time
Chapter 5: The Extinction Wars
Review by Greg Neyman
© Old Earth Ministries
First Published 7 September 2005
The purpose of this chapter is to show that scientists are divided over what caused the great extinction event at the end of the Ice Age. By portraying them in this way, he is setting himself up as having the solution that these scientists have been ignoring.
Extinction by Climate Change (Page 54)
Oard does a good job of presenting the problems with
this theory. I agree that there are many unanswered questions about
the extinction event, and no one theory presents the best possible
answer. However, just because a theory has problems, does not mean
that it is wrong.
He does give a faulty argument when he claims that the
animals examined were in good health when they died. We don’t know
the time of death of this particular animal (the Columbian mammoth),
and one animal cannot be used to characterize the species as a
whole. Just because one was healthy, does not mean all were healthy.
Extinction by Man (Page 55)
The extinction by man theory does sound better than the climatic cause, although it has problems as well.
Can Both Be Correct (Page 58)
Some people merge both, saying the combination of climate change and man’s hunting led to the extinctions.
What is the final answer? Science still debates this topic, and there is no definitive answer. Of course, Oard will provide his answer later on in the book.
Interestingly, he mentions a third theory, that of disease, but he fails to address it or criticize it. Could it be he had no defense for it?
He also fails to mention a fourth theory. I don’t know if anyone else has ever thought of this one…I’ve never heard of it from anyone else, and I’ve never mentioned it to anyone else before. Throughout the earth’s history, there have been several mass extinction events. If you step back and look at the big picture, it may provide an answer to the reason for the extinctions…but it will not provide the “how” of the extinctions. For instance, take the dinosaurs. It is clear that early man and dinosaurs together would be a problem. T-rex, raptors, allosaurs, etc., would all wreak havoc upon early man. Clearly, if there was a God overseeing the creation of these animals, (or evolution of them, if you like), He would recognize this. Realizing that the world was created for man, God decided the dinosaurs had to go. We may not know the reasons which caused the extinction, as this is still debated, but the “why” of the extinction is apparently solved.
The same may be true of each extinction event, including the one that killed the mammoths. Whether it was done by a meteorite, by local floods, by disease, by climate changes, or whether God just said “You’re dead” and they fell over…we don’t know.
You may be asking, “Why then did God create dinosaurs in the first place?” A good question! For theistic evolutionists, God started the evolutionary process and let it run…occasionally, He had to step in and “tweak” it a little bit. For Progressive Creationists, which I am, it is a bigger problem. If God is all-knowing, He would have known before creating them that He would have to kill them off before He created man. I agree that God is all-knowing, therefore the reasons for God creating them are unclear. I cannot fathom the depths of God’s motives, so this one will have to remain a mystery. That does not mean that this line of reasoning is incorrect…it merely means we don’t know all the answers. If we knew all the answers, we would all be Gods…and we know that's not true!
If you are not a Christian, and you have been holding out on making a decision for Christ because the Church always preached a message that was contrary to what you saw in the scientific world, then rest assured that the Bible is the inerrant Word of God, and you can believe in Christ and receive salvation, while still believing in an old earth. Click here for more.
Are you a Christian who believes in young earth creationism? Now that we have shown the many difficulties of the young earth creation science model in this and many other articles, how does this impact your Christian life? If you are a young earth creationism believer, click here.
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