Wesley Coleman

Paul Garner’s The New Creationism (2009) is, in its own right, a competent book. Coming to it from within a young-earth creationist framework, I don’t think it’s dishonest or lazy. Garner sets out a defined and modest goal: to demonstrate that plausible scientific models exist which map on to the conclusions entailed by a creationist reading of Genesis. He is not attempting philosophy; there’s no questioning the assumptions of modern science. He is not interrogating his own interpretive assumptions about Scripture; he doesn’t do an explicit run-down justifying his exegetical framework. He takes a run-of-the-mill YEC hermeneutical framework as is and asks, simply, whether science and it can be made to wed. On those terms, he largely succeeds at least for the models available to him in the late nineties and early two-thousands.

And yet the book is, for my purposes, radically unhelpful. This is not entirely Garner’s fault. On one hand, the evidence and models are out-of-date and the rhetorical style is too summary-driven to build genuine conviction in the reader. On the other hand, he is immersed in a cultural environment which takes many things for granted. But the deeper problem is one the book never acknowledges and, in certain ways, actively compounds. Garner operates within an essentially naturalistic and objectivist model of inquiry. He tacitly embraces the notion that knowledge is an enterprise of neutral evidence-gathering and model-fitting. This makes him hardly different from any other creationists doing science. It’s extraordinarily rare to see anyone asking whether their framework is coherent (or whether they’re uncritically taking on their opponents framework). 

And within the model he operates, Garner provides data but sidesteps important issues. For example he dismisses radiometric dating on grounds of evidence which could easily be construed as anomalous (at best). He presents plausible stories but gives the reader no tools for weighing them. And finally, his seeming implicit suspicion of those who would question his conclusions, a kind of shy posture of his presentation, makes it very difficult for any genuine skeptic, non-YEC christians included, to engage without feeling pre-judged.

This points to the real problem, which is not the book’s particular arguments but the epistemological framework it silently assumes and shares with many of its critics.

Providing good data or a good alternative story is insufficient if the underlying theory of knowledge is broken. Garner’s models, even the best of them, cannot move a reader whose priors are organized differently and he does nothing to address those priors. This is the Bayesian heart of the matter. If I am a committed naturalist, the prior probability I assign to any divine act in history is, by stipulation, effectively zero. No amount of geological evidence for a global flood will alter my conclusions, because the flood’s supernatural cause is ruled out before the first piece of evidence is evaluated. Conversely, if I accept the flood on theological grounds, the rock record opens up in ways that compress geological time dramatically, and evolutionary timescales collapse accordingly. These are not just disagreements about data. Granted there is data involved, but we are using essentially different models to parse it. If it was just data, we could all go do some field work and resolve it relatively simply.

The trouble is that neither party is typically honest (to themselves) about this. The naturalist often presents their epistemology as though it were simply “ the science.” That is, a neutral view-from-nowhere method that anyone reasonable would adopt. But naturalism is itself a prior, not a conclusion. It is a decision, made before the evidence is examined, about what kinds of causes are admissible. And all our beliefs are this way—they are decisions we commit to prior to evidence or reason. The creationist who dismisses radiometric dating on theological grounds is doing something structurally similar, but at least is usually more explicit about it. They follow “what the Bible says” and filter evidence that way. These are both problematic, of course.

But what’s more pernicious is the skeptical posture that is invisible to itself. You see, if one assumes that one’s own epistemic tools are simply “rational inquiry” while the opponent’s (the rest of the world) are “faith” or “bias.” The skeptic’s lens changes what they see, but the lens itself goes unexamined. This is the foundational error, and it is not unique to any one side of this debate. In fact, we all do this. I am guilty of this too, no question.

This epistemological failure has a name when it becomes habitual: suspicion. And suspicion, when it hardens into a hermeneutic, destroys not just arguments but people.

The suspicious mind does not engage with what its opponent actually says. It looks for what the opponent must really mean. It asks: what’s the hidden motive, the tribal allegiance, the bad faith lurking beneath the surface of the stated position? When someone challenges a cherished belief, the suspicious interpreter does not ask: what is the most charitable reading of this challenge? Instead, they identify the person as either part of their group or not, and use that as a basis for ascribing their reasons and motivations. And having psychoanalyzed the questioner, they feel free to dismiss the question without answering it. This is often called well-poisoning and it comes from the suspicious mind.

This is a type of hermeneutic of suspicion in its most socially destructive form. It does not show up only in academia, where it has a respectable pedigree. It shows up at the dinner table. It shows up in the conversation between a parent and a child who has started to doubt.

The pattern is familiar to anyone who has spent time in strongly evangelical or young-earth creationist communities, though it is by no means limited to them (as I have heard of the direct reverse of this example too). A child raises a question. Perhaps about evolution, or about a passage of Scripture that doesn’t sit right, or about the age of the universe. And the question is not answered. It is adjudicated. The parent decides, often unconsciously, that the question is not a genuine inquiry but a symptom of bad influences, of pride, of the first steps away from faith. The question is treated as a threat rather than an invitation. And the child, sensing that their intellectual honesty is being read as betrayal, learns either to stop asking or to stop sharing. Or worse than that, sometimes the child is ostracized, losing that relationship permanently.

This is a catastrophic failure, and it cannot be fixed by better arguments. The problem is not that the parent lacks a good answer to the question about radiometric dating or archaeological records. The problem is that they have pre-judged the questioner’s intent and, in doing so, have abdicated the most basic responsibility of love: to understand the other person on their own terms before responding.

And yet, and this needs to be said plainly, the skeptical child is not innocent either. Questions can be genuine, or they can be rhetorical. It is entirely possible to ask a question you already believe you know the answer to, not because you seek understanding but because you want to establish your own position without exposing it to scrutiny. It is possible to use doubt as a crutch, i.e., a way of staying comfortable in uncertainty without doing the hard work of actually following the argument wherever it leads. It is possible to use questions as a tool to demonstrate intellectual superiority, because of the same genus of suspicion the parents may have held. Therefore, neither party in these conversations is automatically the victim. Yet, clearly a parent’s role is quite different, based on their natural responsibilities.

Moving to another political question in the US, the Governor Spencer Cox situation is a useful illustration of how quickly this breaks down in public life. In the aftermath of Charlie Kirk’s assassination, Cox made a statement that he had prayed the killer would not be a Utah resident. Several media outlets and commentators interpreted this as an expression of xenophobia. They took it as a wish to scapegoat a foreigner. One framing put it that Cox had “hoped to blame the killing on an immigrant.”

It is perfectly plausible—in fact, considerably more plausible—that Cox simply meant what he said: he had hoped the shooter wasn’t from his own state. No xenophobia or racism needed. But when a person has been categorized as part of an ill-intending elite, suddenly charitable exegesis cannot even be considered. The suspicious reader does not offer the generous interpretation to then reject it. They usually never consider it at all. The conclusion comes first, and the reading is constructed to confirm it. 

This is the same error the excommunicating parent makes, and the same error the dismissive skeptic makes. It is a one-and-the-same error of deciding, in advance, that the person you disagree with is not rational enough, or honest enough, or good-faith enough, to be taken at their word.

There is no logic or facts-based fix for this. You cannot reason someone out of a posture they did not reason themselves into. But there is a solution, and it begins with a simple commitment: empathy.

This means resisting the first interpretation that comes to mind when someone challenges your worldview, and asking whether there is a more generous reading. It means treating the person across from you as someone who arrived at their position through some combination of experience, reasoning, and honest conviction—how would you be able to tell otherwise, anyway? It means being willing to say “I don’t know” without treating that admission as a defeat and being willing to accept that some will treat it as victory. It means recognizing that your own epistemic tools are not neutral, that your priors are not simply reason, and that the discomfort of examining them is the price of intellectual honesty.

For Christians and creationists in particular, though again, this applies broadly, there is something theologically incoherent about treating people who ask hard questions as enemies. If you believe that truth is not threatened by honest inquiry, then honest inquiry should not threaten you. If you believe that love is the first obligation, then the person asking the question is the first obligation—not the question.

Ken Ham has no difficulty identifying who is wrong and explaining why. That is easy. What is harder, and what matters infinitely more, is how you treat the person who is wrong (or who you believe is wrong). How you treat people in the moment of their doubt is not a secondary concern, it is the real work. The only work that can actually open a conversation rather than close one.

So how do we have an open conversation? How do we have an empathetic mind? We need to be able to step back and ask: “Why are you asking that question? What’s behind it?” Asking that first protects you from falling into the trap of holding suspicion. The alternative is a world of building walls. We need to step back from the approach to conversation-as-war. It’s not. So many of us act like it is, and the damage matters here. It makes the cost of even asking questions too high a barrier for entry.

Openness is, as it happens, the only epistemic strategy that can actually get you to the truth. Not the indifferent agnostic openness, but active, deliberate, uncomfortable practice of checking your own worst interpretations against the most generous alternative. When you catch yourself saying that someone is lying, stop. When you find yourself assuming that what a person plainly says must really mean something more sinister, stop. These are not signs of rigor or a critical mind. They are signs that you have prioritized the security of your own position and a suspicious mind over the person standing in front of you. Therefore, we should trade our suspicious mind with an empathetic mind which strives for humility, generosity, and grace in interpretation.

Citations:

Balta, Hugo. “Governor Cox’s Prayer Wasn’t Just Misguided—It Was Dangerous.” The Fulcrum, 14 Sept. 2025.

Garner, Paul. The New Creationism. EP BOOKS, 2009.