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Perhaps it will not come up in the meetings and perhaps Mr. Koukl will even change his position on further reflection. He is a scholarly and intelligent man. But we have a problem with one of his stated positions.

In an article on his website, dated 1998, Mr. Koukl states that the earth and universe must be old because of the events recorded in the light coming from distant stars, such as supernovas. (See his article at http://www.str.org/free/solid_ground/SG9807.htm) Unfortunately he does not discuss any of the other views on this subject, of which there are many and implies that this is the only area of evidence relevant to the age of the universe. See /articles.html#age for a selection of evidences for a young universe that he has left unexplained.

The universe may not be as large as thought. There are many assumptions in determining the distance to stars and, also, in many places the Scripture speaks of "stretching out the heavens." Dr. Russell Humphries has developed a scenario that produces a young earth and near space and an old distant universe, all created recently. (See http://www.icr.org/starlightandtime/starlightwars.html)

Mr. Koukl also speaks of geologic formations as looking like they were formed "one millimeter at a time" and claiming that God would have been deceptive if they were not ancient. He does not seem to be aware of the 100+ feet of finely layered deposits laid down by Mount St. Helens over a matter of minutes to hours. He states that it discredits Scripture if we claim the earth and Universe are young.

But if ancient age is accepted, rather than giving credit to Scripture as he claims, it leaves us with inaccurate genealogies in Genesis, which seem to be telling us that Adam and Eve were created about 6000 years ago and that the rest of the creation was very young when they appeared on the scene. Since Mr. Koukl opposes evolution (see his article condemning the Pope's endorsement of theistic evolution) it is not clear where those ages took place. According to Genesis, the stars were created on the fourth day. Does that have to be nearly 15 billion years ago so the light could get to earth by now? If so, it means that the plants, created on day three were created before that and even the evolutionists do not push them back that far because they claim the earth did not exist at that time.

In a long age scenario, the sedimentary rocks are the record of long ages of deposits and since they contain fossils, that means they are a record of death and struggle. Yet the Scripture tells us that death entered the world because of human sin and that Christ conquered death and sin on the cross by dying physically to take our penalty and break death's authority over us. Death is not part of God's original creation but is an intruder. God is not the author of evil!

Unfortunately, in attempting to make the Bible acceptable to modern cosmology in the one puzzling area of starlight, dozens of far more serious problems are produced. Sometimes we need to be patient. For many years archaeology claimed that there was no Jericho in the time of Joshua and the Bible just told an interesting story. But when the dating was corrected, Jericho was there with every detail of its fall just as the Bible stated. Those who held to the truth of the Biblical record, even when the scientific evidence SEEMED to go against it were not dishonest or intellectually inferior, they were RIGHT!

Ross Olson