Miniminuteman VS Creationism | What He Got Wrong - RESPONSE
Metatron | 14 July 2025
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AIzrH55E1_M
5:46 You are aware what options are available as per Catholic authors between 1830 and 1919 (I used to say 1920, but Institut Catholique de Paris was preceded by one year by École biblique in the Holy Land)?
1) Young Earth Creationism
2) Gap Theory
3) Day Age theory
All three converging in the idea that from the creation of Adam on, basically one can follow Biblical chronology. Or some version of it.
Day Age got a Pontifical Biblical Commission OK, 1909, but this did not include the right to meddle radically with post-Adam chronology.
And in 1920, Institut Catholique de Paris made a logically faulty refutation of YEC, but very cogent ones of the other two, from Scientific Evidence.
"Why the [ _ ] did he made us eat and 12:33 breathe through the same tube?"
In order to talk, we breathe out, with or without vibrating vocal chords. In order to talk, we also form both vowels and consonants with lips, tongue, and for consonants we can add the teeth.
16:19 Day-age is theologically, if not fine, at least "not banned" and free for discussion.
Note this 1909 permission did mention discussion both ways, i e it is equally fine to conclude that day-age is incompatible with the Bible.
However, the real crux is science.
My hobby horse is carbon dating, and if day age were true, whenever Neanderthals were living at Gibraltar, the atmosphere was already old. This means, the carbon 14 content would have been so high that it would be impossible for a carbon date of 47 k years ago (a genuine dated Neanderthal, not in Gorham Cave, which still has no skeleta, but in a nearby one) to reduce to more recent than Adam's creation in 5200 BC.
On the other hand, if the atmosphere was created four days back from Adam's creation, so 96 hours earlier, a Flood 2242 (or 2262) years later could be just c 5000 years ago, and still date to 39 000 years ago.
Other item, the Ark. With Day Age, you can't have a global flood, since this presumes that most fossils come from the Flood, and Day Age presumes they come from very different time periods.
However, if you check Wyoming, a wooden vessel this long would be highly at risk in shallow waters. Wyoming had no problem surviving travels in deep waters 1909 (!) to 1924. But in 1924, they got into Nantucket Sound, to ride out a storm. The problem is, Nantucket Sound is on average 9 meters deep. This means, waves get way edgier.
16:45 You are basically comparing God to a watchmaker.
Paley did.
St. Thomas didn't. In modern terms, think of God as a Stradivarius and a Paganini in one. So, we have day and night, summer and winter, full moon and new moon and so on because God and angels are not just leaving nature to run "on its programme" ...
18:08 "quite literally undeniable"
Pepper moths or man descending from crossopterygian fish ?
The latter very obviously is deniable, as it is being denied.
Btw, I hope your views on Theistic Evolution don't involve Adam having biological ancestry.
Imagine Adam's not yet image of God progenitors (a non extant item, but for argument's sake). Did they have Adam's psychology, roughly, or didn't they?
If they did, they could be his parents, but functionally he's no longer the first man ... except as image of God is a kind of undetectable theological extra.
If they didn't, they could not functionally be parents to him, while he was already an image of God. This was by the way the only Evolutionist view allowed under Pius XII to be defended, and I argue that view implies God committed severe child mistreatment of Adam ... meaning, that view is the adoration of another God. Quite a few of those who held it (and this was fortunately not in Italy so much) went on to act in ways incompatible with Catholic clerical duties.
18:40 It can be mentioned, if you take Geological column from lithology and to palaeontology of land biota, you don't have a column.
In aquatic biota, it makes sense for ammonites to be another level than trilobites, perhaps, and certainly for trilobites to be below whales or plesiosaurs.
You do not find whales above plesiosaurs. You just find either above trilobites, if involved in different layers (as can happen in drill holes).
However, in land biota, you find one level of fossils. Yes, even in Karoo. A Moschops capensis is from the Middle Permian (Capitanian). An Eucnemesaurus fortis is from the Upper Triassic. But the Eucnemosaurus is not found in a layer that's locally higher than the layer of the Moschops. You find, instead the Moschops in one "assemblage zone" and Eucnemosaurus in another one.
This is perfectly compatible with each and every fossil or with relatively few exceptions being rapidly buried during one mega-event, a roughly speaking year long global Flood.
19:26 Science is not a pilgrim and its changes are not a Camino.
Don't say "science progresses" but "scientists innovate" ... sometimes for bona fide discoveries, like electro-magnetism, sometimes for fake theories, like once upon a time Phlogiston, and more accepted still, Evolution and Heliocentrism.
20:45 "completely differently"
Like a global Flood, attested in the Bible?
"in the not too distant past"
Flood being c. 5000 years ago (2958 BC), check.
21:14 In chapters 5 and 11, there are genealogies.
Give me one reasonable interpretation other than the YEC one.
Between chapters 1 and 2, one could squeeze in two origins of man, one of man in general, one of Adamic men ... the latter being basically the first white or the first Jews or whatever, but the problem is, Isaac Peyrère tried this, and this is condemned by the Catholic Church. His book was on the latest edition of the Index librorum in 1948 I think it was.
If we hold that between Adam and Abraham there are c. 2000 to 3000 + years (depending on text version) and that Adam was the first man, you are basically stuck with YEC as soon as carbon dates and dated human fossils in general come into the picture.
"this between 6,000 to 10,000 years 21:44 number. Problem is, there are a lot of sections in the Bible that could be read as a possibility for a longer period of 21:51 time."
No. There are not.
There was a greenlight for Day-Age, about Genesis 1. From Rome, for no other passage. Not before 1958, at least.
If you want to correct me on that one, go through AAS (Acta Apostolicae Sedis) for the years. It goes into much well below encyclicals, like 1943, Ethiopian women applied to the Rota for annulment (probably wanted to marry Italian soldiers), and they got a no, bride rapture didn't prove forced marriage in the sense that is relevant for the canon law.
So, if Rome made a decision, you'd find it in AAS.
Some diocesan manuals, like not sure if pre-Conciliar or early post-Conciliar, have greenlighted, abusively, Archibald Sayce. A specialist in Assyriology, he commented on regal genealogies, where unimportant people were left out of the ancestry, as context from the surrounding culture that genealogies in Genesis 5 and 11 could have a hole in them.
Obviously wrong, since the Sethite genealogy is probably not regal or at least didn't remain so (Noah couldn't have built the Ark if he had had an Empire or even City alternative to Nod to take care of), and since it features people who died before their dad did, so couldn't have been regal genealogy, since featuring non-rulers. Furthermore, unlike the Cainite genealogy in Genesis 4, there is no actually indicated political entity or signs of political power attached to the Genesis 5 genealogy.
Furthermore, before you give Matthew 1 as an example of a "Swiss cheese genealogy", in order to accomodate a Neanderthal dated to 47 000 BP, you'd need, not a Swiss cheese genealogy, but one with more holes than cheese. Probably Matthew 1 left out exactly 4 ancestors of St. Joseph because of a damnatio memoriae. Like the three generations after Athaliah. So, with that kind of leaving out, if more were left out than recorded, there would have been no preservation of truth in that family line. Which preservation of truth was precisely the point why God chose Noah for a rebooting of mankind, and Abraham for a rebooting of the Church (the earliest version of it beginning with Abel, obviously).
From Abraham's birth, you have 75 years to his vocation, with a promise, 430 years before the Exodus of Moses and the Israelites. And that 480 years (or up to 530) before Solomon's Temple. Less than 1000 years BC. 1000 years + 530 + 430 + 75 = 2035, Roman Martyrology says 2016 BC.
Abraham was born 2000 to 3500 after Adam was created, depending on text versions of Genesis 5 and 11. 2035 + 2000 = 4035 (Ussher has 4004), 2035 + 3500 = 5535 (Roman Martyrology has 5200 BC, Syncellus 5500 to 5510 BC).
That's all the leeway there is after Adam was created, nothing comparable to the very theoretic and scientifically discardable Day Age.
"instead of looking back at the Bible and trying to address the 22:04 translation, trying to look at the original text, trying to find surrounding elements and cultures to see 22:10 if their interpretation was in fact correct. They try to modify science"
First, your attitude. Science isn't set in stone, because it can "progress" (i e collectively accepted paradigms can shift). But again, it is set in stone, sufficiently so to warrant desperate attempts at changing the interpretation of the Bible.
Second, they do look at the Bible, if you looked at their sites, instead of hopping on the bandwaggon of a "Catholic" rumour mill.
Dr Jonathan Sarfati is a Hebrew Christian. He knows Hebrew. Yet, in an article dated to 2018, titled "OT scholar: Genesis teaches a short timescale" he still goes to a scholar of the Old Testament, namely ...
Dr Travis Freeman serves as Professor of Old Testament at the Baptist College of Florida in Graceville. He is a graduate of Ouachita Baptist University (B.A.) and Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary (M.Div., Ph.D.).
Biassed, since he's a YEC. Let's go to someone else.
A similar article from 2014, "Hebrew professor: Genesis teaches six solar days!" he is dealing with Dr Andrew Steinmann but also citing one Barr.
And it’s not just ancient Hebraists who understood it this way; most modern Hebraists also understand that the author of Genesis intended to teach literal days. For example, James Barr (1924–2006), Regius Professor of Hebrew at Oxford University, said:
“[P]robably, so far as I know, there is no professor of Hebrew or Old Testament at any world-class university who does not believe that the writer(s) of Genesis 1–11 intended to convey to their readers the ideas that: creation took place in a series of six days which were the same as the days of 24 hours we now experience; the figures contained in the Genesis genealogies provided by simple addition a chronology from the beginning of the world up to later stages in the biblical story; Noah’s flood was understood to be world-wide and extinguish all human and animal life except for those in the ark.”1
Dr Barr was quite liberal theologically, so did not believe Genesis, but he understood what Genesis taught.
[Next portion of video]
"Mount St. Helens had erupted a million 22:22 years ago, the exact same thing would have happened to the ash that would happen right now. And geologists, get 22:28 this, would be able to apply what happens in front of us right now to understand that volcanic eruption a 22:34 million years ago."
If we find K-Ar dates dating to a million years ago from Mt. St. Helen's recent eruption, we can also apply that to sth happening much more recently and dating a million years ago.
23:46 "one event"
The year long Flood would have given room to several different deposition events. And perhaps even more events of rocks eroding and colonies of clams being swept away with them.
Hence the non-uniformity, like Ammonites over sth else, for instance (not sure if correct) trilobites.
"I won't mention the flood or comment on 23:57 it because I'm preparing a dedicated video. I'll put a link in the description once it's up."
Couldn't find that link, didn't it go your way?
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