Glad you checked out his work. I heard him at a seminar at our church and thoroughly enjoyed the "update" of my scientific knowledge with all the new scientific discoveries since my school years. He also came at the Bible from a scientific point of view trying to list the inconsistencies - but, the first time through, did not find any to write in his notebook. He tried again, and the same thing - no inconsistencies.
Check out the probability of earth being created by "accident" or the "big bang". He picked 10 items required for earth to exist (out of the 100's in reality). Then he noted the probability of each building on the probability of the prior item (using the standard scientific probability ratio). It turned out the probability of all 10 being in existence at earth's creation was in the 000,000,000,000,000. (Some extremely high number I don't have available now).
Confused about your question but have two comments.....
- I was not meaning to indicate that death started because of the fall of Adam and Eve. I don't know that that was indicated as a result of their sin.
Eternal life is given "after" death in the next realm and was never meant to be given for life here on earth. This is not heaven - this is earth. On earth all life has death but only man is subject to our view of eternal life - because only man has the soul and was made in the image of God.
And, of course, death is required on earth because of the food chain. All animals provide a source of food for another level in the food chain and, therefore, they are killed when eaten. Look, we have no refrigerators in the wild and therefore, for fresh meat, each on the food chain is the living fresh meat for another level in the food chain. How else would there be a supply of food without spoilage?
- We can investigate, deduce and analyze forever about the beginnings of earth, and all workings of the universe. But, it is not necessary because we are "men" and have only our understanding. God is not required to reveal all to man in order to make him believe. You believe or you don't.
Look at it this way - if you were God and wanted to offer "man" a plan of salvation so that man could dwell eternally with God as His, how would you do it?
It has to be simple - because not all men are extremely intelligent and no man has the vast comprehension of God's realm. Some cannot even read - so how do you get the message to "all" men?
3 Ways
1 - you speak to your prophets and send your Son to speak to man during His life on earth and to sacrifice Himself to die for man's sins. You give the apostles the ability to prove you are God by the miracles and teachings.
2 - You do it by the Bible giving enough information for man to find salvation and leave the incomprehensible out. Man cannot understand it - especially, if man cannot comprehend the simple confess that you believe that Jesus is the Son of God, be baptised for the remission of your prior sins, and arise and walk with Jesus through your time on earth serving Him.
3 - you tell man to "go into all the world and teach the gospel". This spreads the written word found in the Bible to those not running across a Bible.
This should be sufficient. And, yet, no matter how much is done to offer God's plan of salvation, man often "chooses" to find an excuse to ignore the message, man turns to false gods rather than the true God begging them to follow Him, and often man will set about to rewrite what God requires for salvation and tell God that man's way is what is the truth and the Bible (God's written word) is untrue.
This is why we are told many will call on God but few will
be saved. Man forgets that he is man and God is God and is calling the shots.
Eternal life is given "after" death in the next realm and was never meant to be given for life here on earth. This is not heaven - this is earth.
You say that eternal life is not "given" in this life but comes after the death of our natural bodies. I John 5:13 says,
"These things have I written unto you that believe on the name of the Son of God; that ye may know that ye have eternal life... "
The Greek term translated "have" means possess, have in one's hand, own, or to find oneself in such a condition, all of which definitely implies that we who believe on the name of the Son of God now, presently, currently, possess the subject of the sentence which is eternal ("aionios", without beginning or ending) life. And no, I don't know Greek. I use an online Strong's Exhaustive Concordance to supplement my 8 lb cloth bound copy.
You said;
God is not required to reveal all to man in order to make him believe. You believe or you don't.
Of course God is not obligated to reveal anything to his created beings, he is sovereign and we are not. But he has chosen to give us enough information to form an educated opinion regarding the sequence of events attending the time at which sin and death entered the universe by Adam's fall from innocence.
Rom 5:12 "Wherefore, as by one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin;"
That verse clearly states that death (thanatos, = death of the physical body) entered the world at the time Adam sinned. Of course Adam lived for centuries after he sinned, but physical death was supernaturally programmed into his genes at the moment he sinned, and physical death has been passed on genetically to Adam's progeny throughout all of the human race.
But more to my point, a careful analysis of scriptures referring to the matter shows that the curse of death which resulted from Adam's sin was also decreed on all the world's living creatures at that same time. The earth itself was also cursed so that man must now labor to eat bread by the sweat of his face, whereas before the fall Adam and Eve ate freely of the garden's no doubt plentiful and luxurious produce. Paul states;
Ro 8:21 "....the creature (ktisis, = creation) itself also shall be delivered from the bondage of corruption (phthora, = death, destruction, or perishing)..........
Paul's statement definitely implies that creation, a term which according to it's Hebrew meaning included all of nature's physical life forms, came under the same curse of physical death as Adam when God cursed his creation and it's living creatures with death as the result of Adam's original sin.
All the above may seem tedious and without much relevance to the subject of the timeline of creation. But I think that if you will follow my line of reasoning (not an easy task I know) you will see my scriptural reasons for not accepting the theory of evolutionary creation. To wit, if death was decreed upon all living creatures at the time it was decreed for Adam's race, which the quoted scriptures definitely imply, then there could not have been millions or billions of years of animal life dying and leaving fossilized remains on earth before the creation of man. There must be another explanation, but it may not be revealed to us while we live on this earth in these mortal bodies equipped only with limited mortal minds and logic. What is logical to our mortal minds now may be revealed to be utter nonsense when our transformed bodies and minds are introduced to God's unlimited intelligence and divine logic in our eternal home.
That point I tried to make regarding the relatively recent introduction of death to animal life and the resulting fossils created by their deaths is made much more clearly and convincingly by Dr. Morris in his book "Creation Science" than by my poorly done efforts at the same task. Until someone can explain the apparent contradictions between inerrant holy scripture and the theory of evolutionary creation, I must remain in the camp of those who are willing to allow for a relatively modest period of time after the creation of the universe before man was created and then lived an unspecified length of time in innocence before he fell into sin and was cursed with death for himself and his progeny, along with the same curse on the entire spectrum of living creatures who shared earth with him at that time.
The evolutionary creation theory seems quite reasonable at first reading, but any theory or supposition that does not conform to the clear word of God falls on deaf ears AFAIC. I would believe the most fantastic proposition imaginable concerning creation or any other matter over the most profound example of human reasoning and logic if that fantastic proposition was clearly presented as truth in the Word of the living God, whose absolutely impeccable, divinely holy character will not allow him to lie or deceive his created beings. I believe in the absolute, unquestionable veracity of the holy scriptures in the original autographs, and the copies which are now extant are so accurately copied from an ancient series of accurate copies of the autographs that the Dead Sea scrolls, copied almost 2 millennia ago from even more ancient texts, are virtually word for word identical to the modern Hebrew language texts that were published before the discovery of those scrolls.
OK it's much later now on this busy Sunday, and I have just remembered another creation theory which the late Dr. J. Vernon McGee proposed concerning the same matter one or two generations ago. He gave considerable credibility to a modified version of the well known gap theory which acknowledges that the period of time that passed between the events of Genesis 1:1 and 1:2 is unspecified and could have been of any length required to account for the events that are proposed to have occurred during that "gap" period. It is pointed out that the Hebrew term translated "was" in 1:2 can just as easily be translated as "became", which could reasonably be taken to indicate a radical change in the planet's composition and ecological makeup from the condition in which it was first created in 1:1 until it became waste, void, and dark in 1:2. During that indeterminate time period the fossil record and the geological "evidence" for evolution which the evolutionists cite as their proof could have been created by whatever processes the creator chose to accomplish his intended purposes for that pre-Adamic world system. The theory proposes the existence of a completely different and unique world on planet earth which bore little or no relation or resemblance to the Adamic world which was re-created from the older one in Genesis 1:3 when God said "Let there be light" and thereby ended the original world's predetermined period of time and began all over again with what amounted to a brand new creation in every aspect other than the animal and plant fossils and the geological formations of the original creation which remained in place.
I may not have accurately described the theory since it has been many years since I gave it much thought. At the time I heard the gap theory I saw no reason to alter my traditional Judeo/Christian belief regarding the Genesis creation account, and I am not saying that I do now. However, I will admit that if my understanding of that theory is in line with that of it's proponents I can't reject it out of hand without more study and more prayer for wisdom that I don't have naturally.