4 of My Most Controversial Opinions

“Ybarra, give me 4 opinions you hold that if and when you express them in a sizeable group, you feel everyone is against you?”

Ok, I’ll give you 4. I hold these but I realize it is open for debate …. Kind of. I realize I’m no expert in any of these fields and so I will likely allow any one a free space to simply disagree and “refute” me without a response from myself.

(1) I think space exploration for the purpose of finding ways for human habitation off the planet earth touches the same sin that was involved in the builders of the Tower of Babel. God’s mission begins and consummates in this planet. As Christ went up, so he will come down. By the revelation of God’s angels, we read: “Ye men of Galilee, why stand you looking up to heaven? This Jesus who is taken up from you into heaven, shall so come, as you have seen him going into heaven.” (The Acts‬ ‭1‬:‭11‬ ‭DRC1752‬). The whole panorama of the Bible storyline is for God to return to this earth and finally catholicize His presence, making it the Temple is was made for. Nature also shows us that God created barriers for humans to know their limits. If we can’t naturally travel outside our atmosphere, then it’s not meant for normative habitation.

(2) I don’t believe we have any reason to believe that there is intelligent life off of our planet unless it is an instance of angelic visitation to those planets (or other forms of destination) or ours. Think about it this way. As smart as human beings have become in the year of our Lord 2025, we have yet to be able to transport a human past our own tiny solar system, we have yet to be capable of doing so. Therefore, if there were intelligent life on some other planet from some other part of our galaxy or from another galaxy, then their capacity to travel through space into our solar system and make it to planet earth would entail that they are much smarter than us, by a thousand at least. If they were that smart to traverse that far through space, they would be smart enough to know how to avoid crash landings on earth , ultimately failing whatever sensible mission that might have had for exploration. So I don’t think any of the evidence for alien visitation is likely a match to reality (at least of some real sentient life that is intelligent from some other planet or galaxy). A crash and burn on earth seems like a really hard failure to make once you’ve become smart enough to travel from one galaxy to another, or from one sun of the Milky Way to another (there are billions of suns in our galaxy). “Oh but Erick they didn’t fail. The crashes were on purpose to deceive us. And they also have other invisible plans. And if you read …. .” Fine, you might have some valid points but I have no reasons to think this is likely, or even plausible.

(3) I am a young earth creationist. No, I am not a scientist. Yea, I think the studies we’ve done to try and use rational, empirical, and scientific analyses of the planet and all its life are credibly reasonable and even compelling…. If there was not a stronger competitor in the race to compare it to. I think God’s word trumps the fallibility of science. Granted, I do believe natural revelation is, per se, infallible. But our various studies of it are not infallible. Yes, I do teach my kids the method of reconstructing origins via evolution, and I explain why it is both reasonable and compelling, given a purely neutral observation of matter. However, I also explain why, despite the good faith effort of most of contemporary scientific research, I am convinced of another explanation.

(4) I think the theistic evolution is most sensible when the adherents uphold to the Christian Scriptures (OT/NT) as errant. The Bible story only makes sense in a worldview that sees human beings, as God’s image bearers, being created about 6,000-10,000 years ago with a single pair as Parents. And this bears out in the scholarship as well. I am often labeled stupid or dumb because of my preference for a young earth, even by conservative and traditional Christians (this is a new phenomenon in history, by the standards of an oriental clock) because they are so compelled by the empirical calculations of the age of the earth and/or of the universe. And yet, very often, these same trads will slam the table bull-dogmatically that Adam and Eve are our first and only parents. However, upholding monogenism is just as absurd and silly to the watching world of experts in biology, anthropology, and genetics. And so if the trad were trying to comport with science on the age of the earth/universe, so as to not appear like a clown in front of modern science, they should also simply admit to polygenism. Otherwise their plan fails . “Oh but Erick, Dr Swamidass broke the tension by his theory of […].” It is not well received. Secondly, to be fair to Swamidass, he is simply giving a theoretical explanation for how it might be plausible for evolutionary genetics and anthropology to still be true while Adam and Eve (monogenism) being the progenitors of the current human population. He isn’t, in his book “The Geneological Adam and Eve” necessarily sharing his belief on how things went down. Third, his theory requires a massive population of humanity outside the Garden before Adam and Eve, to which Adam and Eve’s children procreated with, in order to produce our current genetic complex. And so the theory is still hard to buy, in the end.