Correspondence: Virtual History

February 13, 2007

Dear Dr. Aardsma,

Your website is looking very good. It is also very easy to use. I spent some time reading some things on it last night, after having to endure an Answers in Genesis speaker all day yesterday in church. I tried to endure with as much grace as possible. =)

...

Most of the topics were about dinosaurs, Cain's wife, false ape-men, the flood, and the biblical creation account. However, in the very first session, in only 45 minutes, he "proved" "evolution" to be false and the Bible true! Not to mention, it only took about 5 minutes to scratch radiocarbon dating off the list. No problem. It's laughable really. Ha Ha Ha. The overall impression left is that "evolutionists" are just pretty dumb. And creationists are smart. Aren't we glad we are part of the "smart" group? All those people who don't believe the Bible are just too prideful and just WON'T believe anything else. Man, if it were that simple, Christianity ought to be spreading like wildfire!

Anyhow, like I said, I tried to exercise as much grace as possible. Maybe some of it was helpful to some people. ... I just have to comfort myself with the knowledge that God knows and sees all and one day all truth and error will be made plain.

I did get my nerve up to ask 3 questions in the Q&A session, based on some things he had said earlier in the day. First I asked -- are there any Biblical references to a 700 year ice age following the flood? (He had said earlier we should always start with Scripture. I just wondered where the starting point was for the ice age.) He said he was not aware of any biblical references to the ice age.

Second, I asked -- is it possible that God created some fossils/dinosaur skeletons, etc, in place as an interesting part of His creation? He seemed to feel that every fossil was once a true living thing. Otherwise he said God would have tricked us.

Thirdly -- Why do you think all the animal life is so completely different in the Australian part of the world? If they all came off the ark at Ararat shouldn't they be living in that region still today? (Earlier in the day he had said that kangaroos once lived in the middle east, since Noah took 2 of every kind of animal on the ark.) He said he did not have a good answer for that question, except to say that the animals must have migrated to the climates best suited to them.

Here's some things that I'm curious to find out your thoughts on:

-Do you believe there was ever an ice age? (I searched this on your site but nothing came up.)

-Why do you think the science textbooks are so set on teaching biological evolution when it is so obviously impossible? And there is no evidence for it? (I did see an article you have on molecules to man evolution so I will read that.)

-How do you think things like the Grand Canyon came to be? Did God create it like that?

Anyhow, I thought you would be interested in all this, although it's nothing new I'm sure. Usually I'm just happily oblivious to such things.

I'm also going to get your articles on virtual history.

Jennifer

Hello Jennifer,

Yes, I believe there was an "ice-age". Actually, there were several ice-ages. They were all in virtual history. The last one ended about 10,000 years ago. So it doesn't enter into real history, since Creation happened just over 7,000 years ago. Since my work is designed to defend the historical truth of the Bible against charges that what it reports as history is in fact fiction, I have not had much cause to talk about the ice-ages so far. (In my understanding of virtual history and the past, one can just accept what the scientists specializing in these fields are telling everyone is their best understanding/reconstruction of these past events. These reconstructions do not attack the historical integrity of the Bible in any way once one understands the concept of virtual history.)

Actually, I think there is enormous evidence of biological evolution (meaning extensive changes to flaura and fauna)---again, in virtual history. Note that the Bible does not say that biological evolution CAN NOT happen; it says that biological evolution DID NOT happen. That is, the Bible clearly teaches that we got here by CREATION, not by EVOLUTION. "In the beginning God CREATED the heavens and the earth", not "In the beginning God EVOLVED the heavens and the earth." But none of this excludes the possibility of biological evolution in virtual history. In fact, the teaching in Romans 8:20, that the creation was subjected to futility at the time of the Fall, meshes rather well with evolution being the thing seen in the virtual history data, for the hallmark of evolution is not purpose, but random chance and meaninglessness.

The Grand Canyon should also be understood just as the standard scientists describe its formation. It too is a virtual history phenomenon.

Virtual history is not a hard idea. Just think about what it means to actually CREATE something. Creating a story is a helpful analogy. Take "The Hobbit" as an example of a created entity. Now step into the book with Bilbo on page one and begin to examine the world around you. Everything you see and examine around you has already, on page one, an extensive built-in virtual history. Bilbo is in his 50's as I recall. So he has a virtual history. His house has been dug back into the hill, implying someone did some digging. If you examine the tunnels you can no doubt find tool marks left by the workmen. His front door is made of wood, implying trees grown, sawn into planks, planed, and fastened together by craftsmen, all before the story begins. And on and on it goes...Bilbo's clothing with all those stitches, and the soil in his yard and garden with humus from long-dead leaves, ...

We are living in a CREATION. The creation we are living in is a story of God's making. It opens on page one 5176+/-26 B.C. (by my best reckoning so far). The story moves from Creation to Fall to Flood to Exodus to Birth of Christ to Crucifixion to Redemption to ultimate Restoration of all things. This story is our reality, but it is not ultimate reality. (God is ultimate reality---He transcends the story just as any author transcends their created story.) And like any story, it has, necessarily, a virtual history built in from page one onward.

The big take-home point is that evidence of virtual history---of even millions or billions of years of this or that process operating in the past---does not and cannot falsify the fact of creation in a created entity. So we can let the virtual history data about the Grand Canyon or the ice ages or whatever else speak for itself and say whatever it seems to say. We do not have to resort to foolishness (e.g., denying the validity of tree-ring calibrated radiocarbon dates) to try to wipe out every trace of any natural process prior to the biblical date of Creation. We understand virtual history to be part and parcel of any created thing, so evidences of such processes do not threaten our faith or falsify the Bible's claim that we got here by supernatural creation just over 7000 years ago.

Sincerely,
Dr. Aardsma