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When Professing Christians Attack Biblical Creationists

Sometimes Christians who have a view of apologetics and an old earth attack Christians who believe in recent creation and presuppositional apologetics, sometimes reasoning like atheists. Such things need to be addressed.
by Cowboy Bob Sorensen

One of the most difficult things about being a Christian is: other Christians. Believers can have their faith adversely affected or even set it aside and unbelievers use our treatment of each other as an excuse to ridicule the faith and justify their rebellion against God. Those verses on how believers are supposed to treat each other seem to have been excised from Bibles nowadays. It gets discouraging.

It gets mighty frustrating when we are working on helping the church with apologetics and biblical creation, then some tinhorn from a different camp comes along with his or her own ideas and flings horse apples at us in the guise of "reason" while pretending to do Jesus a big favor. We expect viperine tactics from atheists and other unbelievers, but it gets mighty smelly coming from professing Christians.

Southern Evangelical Seminary and Bible College has a doctrinal statement that seems reasonable to me, but some things are missing that people like me would like to know about. Adam Tucker and others make it clear that they are none too keen on biblical creation science. It may be from loyalty to one of the founders, Dr. Norman Geisler, who believed in an old earth. SES people think creation science and the age of the earth are not all that important, but they have had more than their share of attacking biblical creationists. It reminds me of atheopaths who exclaim, "I don't hate God because he doesn't exist!", then seek their identity in their professed unbelief and act like drunken outlaws shooting up the town at sunset.

Tucker has had Ken Ham in his sights more than once. Like Bill Nye, he acts like creation beliefs are unique to Ham despite the numerous like-minded organizations and individuals. Let me rein in a minute here and say that I have some disagreements with Ken Ham as well as other creationists (thinking people do that), but there is no reason to tear down individuals and the ministries they represent.


 
I was getting "prepped" for presuppositional apologetics through several creationist organizations, and it was brought home to me by Dr. Jason Lisle's The Ultimate Proof of Creation. From my observations and experiences, people hate presuppositional apologetics because they have been misinformed about the apologetic, and also because we have a high view of Scripture; the ever-changing whims of man-made science philosophies are not above the Word of God. 

Learning and promoting this apologetic has been very beneficial for me, but it is frustrating to see division in the church over not only apologetic methods (Norman Geisler supported classical apologetics and I understand that he was no friend of presuppositional apologetics), but which flavor of presup (bringing to my mind 1 Cor. 1:12-13). It is indeed unfortunate that Adam Tucker's attack on Ken Ham was two-pronged, going after presup and biblical creation.

Listen up, pilgrims. If you're going to saddle up and ride the Criticism Trail, don't be acting like an atheist, you savvy? Tucker's article reminded me of an atheist who said, "There is something wrong with all religions. Therefore, Christianity is also wrong and there is no God". Like atheists, Tucker used personal attacks, argued from ignorance, used straw man arguments, brought in a heapin' helpin' of prejudicial conjecture, and more.

Worse, he attacked a Christian personally while damning him with faint praise. Tucker does not believe biblical creation (young earth), nor does he understand presuppositional apologetics. Those difficulties do not stop him from writing uninformed polemics. He called Ken Ham's views "dangerous", but what is truly dangerous (and disgusting) is Tucker's malignant reasoning. Ironically, Tucker's logic was self-refuting — if he was consistent, he could not believe the Bible himself!

Here is an article that I learned about through The Domain for Truth. It contains an examination of  Adam Tucker's complaints and arguments that I hope you will find very useful.
It’s an article written by my past internet foil, Adam Tucker. He has provided us with a helpful treatise expaining the methodology behind how SES teaches apologetic engagement. He excellently contrasts a classical/Thomist approach to apologetics from a presuppositional/Bible-based one that I believe lends us insight for sharpening our apologetic focus.
To read it all, click on "Ken Ham vs. the SES Apologetic".