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In this episode of Veritas Vox, Eric Hovind from Creation Today discusses the intersection of faith and science. He provides a thorough exploration of creation science and addresses common questions about the age of the Earth, the impact of evolution on biblical interpretation, and the ongoing debate between young Earth and old Earth creationism.

Eric also discusses his approach to apologetics, blending evidential and presuppositional methods to effectively communicate and defend the Christian faith.

For more information about Creation Today and its resources, visit https://creationtoday.org/

Episode Transcription

Note: This transcription may vary from the words used in the original episode for better readability.

Marlin Detweiler:
Hello again and welcome to another episode of Veritas Vox the voice of classical Christian education. Today we have with us Eric Hovind, who is the key person in a ministry called Creation Today. Eric, welcome.

Eric Hovind:
Hey, thank you so much for having me Mr. Detweiler, I appreciate it.

Marlin Detweiler:
You said you can call me Marlin and now you called me Mr. Detweiler. I told you I’d say “That’s my dad” if you said that.

Eric Hovind:
Okay, I'm in the South buddy.

Marlin Detweiler:
Yeah, I know. So we like to start by having our guests introduce themselves a little bit. Tell us a little about your family and your education and then the career that you've had.

Eric Hovind:
Well, I am blessed beyond measure. Obviously, we deserve nothing that we have. And I look around and I go, God thank you. I was privileged to be brought up in a strong Christian home where my parents didn't just profess Christianity. They practiced it and practiced it vigorously. My mom was a piano teacher and piano player in the church an organ player in the church.

My dad started churches was a high school principal and then began traveling and speaking doing creation science and evangelism using the science and the scripture and bringing those together and helping people understand that the creator of this world not only designed it he gave us brains to understand how it works. And every major branch of science was started by people going, I want to understand the mind of God, who is this God that created the world and how did he do it?

So incredibly privileged. We would go soul-winning all the time. Invite people to church, just always really genuinely living out the Christian faith. My problem is I was the product of a church environment rather than a disciple of Jesus Christ. It was in my 20s that I watched Hell's Best Kept Secret.

Marlin Detweiler:
What area?

Eric Hovind:
Well, all over. Born in Illinois then moved to Texas then California then Florida. My parents moved 12, I think 12 times I was growing up and I found them 11 of those times.

Marlin Detweiler:
I’d think it was a military family, but in your case, that wasn't the reason for the move.

Eric Hovind:
Yeah, I was people ask me all the time you in the military? You know discounts at stores. I say God's army. Does that count? So yeah, God's army was what brought all of our moves around. But I was blessed to be brought up. I mean my dad taught science so we were always doing experiments and learning and growing and it was just.

I had a blast as a child growing up learning about God's Word and God's world and how they tie together. And it was in my 20s that I watch Hell's Best Kept Secret by Ray Comfort. And that sermon. I listened to it probably four times in a row in one night. And it's what God use to bring the conviction that I've been sorry for my sins but I've been sorry to my sister a lot my brother a lot my parents a lot. My youth pastor a lot my pastor my school teachers. And this sermon made me realize man my sin is against God and God alone. And I'm telling you Marlin that's when the Holy Spirit went, “Eric look inside. You really desire yourself. You don't desire me and God said to me, come. So praise God. Double thumbs up. I finally got saved in my 20s.”

…

But I finally got saved in my 20s and it just meant everything was new. Everything. I mean what the. When the Bible describes a new creature in Christ Jesus having a desire for righteousness that really happens. Well when he said old things are passed away all things are become new. That really happens.

And so here I was involved in ministry now just being saved. And I'm like wow God I just I can think of nothing that I'd rather do than share your word and your truth with other people. So I started traveling and speaking I went to see Jackson Hole Bible College out in Jackson Hole Wyoming and then Tennessee Temple University in Chattanooga Tennessee a school that no longer exists.

And I go back to the old stomping grounds and I think, “Wow God am I building up something here? Or am I building up something that's going to last forever?” Just a thought that goes through my mind. What am I doing? Married with three children. My wife and I just celebrated 25 years of marriage.

Marlin Detweiler:
Wow. What a milestone to hit that and go 25 years.

Eric Hovind:
And you know right. It's that's like yesterday man that everything happened so fast.

Marlin Detweiler:
Yeah. I'm about to celebrate 43. Wow.

Eric Hovind:
And that's what I pray for all the time. God help Tanya and I be faithful all the way to the end. I don't care you know if you give us a lot or a little or a medium amount I want faithfulness. Same with ministry. God I don't care if I have a big minister or small ministry. Help us to be faithful here in proclaiming your truth as the creator. So yeah, I fell in love with what you do with classical education probably about ten years ago when I was really exposed to a new school. Maybe it's older than that now, I'm getting old. So you can relate.

Marlin Detweiler:
You're thinking probably Trinitas.

Eric Hovind:
Trinitas. Yeah. Trinitas it started and I got exposed to that and I thought, wow. When they taught me about the memorization and then how we want to learn the rhetoric and the logic and then the rhetoric. And I thought boy this is good. You're getting back to some good practical stuff. So love what classical education does for students in preparing them not just for life but also I feel like for theology I feel like it does a great job of preparing them for the big areas of life that we're going to have to encounter.

Marlin Detweiler:
Well you started and see you've been married 25 years so that means you were married in 99. But you started Creation Today in 2006. What were you doing before Creation Today was started?

Eric Hovind:
So before creation today, I was working with my dad his ministry of Creation Science Evangelism.

Marlin Detweiler:
Creation Today was a natural outworking then of what you were doing.

Eric Hovind:
It really is.

Marlin Detweiler:
What does Creation Today do?

Eric Hovind:
Well, I know what our desire is and why we exist. We exist to exalt the holiness of God and proclaim the glory of God as the creator and the Redeemer of mankind. That is our sole purpose. We do that any way we can short of sin to try to get people to understand that truth. So I go on the street witnessing. I go to the Department of Motor Vehicles in the mornings and share the gospel with the line waiting out there and we give away free coffee. I travel and preach around the world. We run lots of different websites. We produce movies. Night at the Creation Museum, Night at the Ark encounter. This one comes out comes out pretty soon.

Night at the Discovery Center comes out on September 6th. So not sure when this will air but that's going to come out real soon. Night at the Discovery Center. So love trying to network and partner with and grow all the creation ministries. And it's just the simple thought, a rising tide lifts all ships. So how do I help lift all of us up?

There's so many ministries doing so many things. We started the Creation Network: https://searchcreation.org/ , https://visitcreation.org/ , https://creationtoday.org/. So anything I can do to help people learn their faith and share their faith is exactly what Creation Today wants to do.

Marlin Detweiler:
Yeah. So it is a ministry around creation science that focuses on apologetics.

Eric Hovind:
That's exactly– I'm going to write that down. And I'm going to say that next time I'm asked that question. I think that's a great way to answer that question.

Marlin Detweiler:
It's worth what you paid for it anyway. Here's a question that is a question among Christians today. How old is the earth?

Eric Hovind:
50% of Christians. Well, 40% will disagree with this statement, but this comes straight from Scripture. You can go to Genesis chapter five, Genesis chapter ten, or the Old Testament. The dates are in here from Scripture, from Adam to Abraham. You get about 2000 years. From Abraham to Christ, you get about 2000 years. From Christ to today, you get about 2000 years.

So if I go according to Scripture which is our authority even if I go according to Jesus who said that Scripture was his authority and said Adam was at the very beginning you get up about somewhere around 6000 to 7000 years for the age of the earth. I would easily say less than 10,000 years for the age of the Earth according to Scripture. I would also say that according to science, the earth is only a few thousand years old. Look at human population. We're at 8 billion people on the planet today. If you look at a chart it'll go backwards and it should stop somewhere around 44 to 100 years ago to 5000 years ago. But they just keep going back.

I honestly look up human population chart and the secular charts. So go back to 3000, 4000, 5000, 6000. And then they just kind of trail off you know 2 to 5 million years. And it's like hold it. You can't you cannot do that scientifically. You can't do that mathematically. You can't do that genetically. It's impossible. So scientifically, we can look at many different scientific ways scientifically and biblically. The Earth is less than 10,000 years old.

Marlin Detweiler:
Okay. Now you and I both know a lot of godly folks that, at least in recent years and some from a long time ago, well-known names like Augustine, but well –

Eric Hovind:
He was confused. He changed his mind several times throughout his life.

Marlin Detweiler:
That happens, no doubt, but there is a group of Christians who believe the Earth is considerably older than that. I understand what you believe. How do you interact with them? How do you view what we might call the old earthers, the old earthers, and the young earthers? Neither of them are pejorative names; they are descriptive names, and I'm happy to use them.

Eric Hovind:
Yeah. Here's what I here's what they say. In my talks I do a talk called Old Earth Creation on Trial. And when I bring them up and I name them I don't mind talking about who they are because a lot of my friends Frank Turk would be an old Earth creationist. I just interviewed him recently. I think he does incredible apologetics in so many areas. Sean McDowell was a friend of mine. Doesn't really take a stand on it but would lean old earth creation. I say, listen I do not question their love for God their love for Scripture. They're holding Scripture in high esteem and in high regard. I don't question their salvation. I don't question their sincerity. I question their interpretations of science.

Marlin Detweiler:
I didn’t think you were going to go there. I thought you were going to say their interpretations of Scripture but you said well that's that's a fascinating point that I don't want us to miss.

Eric Hovind:
Well and it's because the majority of older thinking came about just in the last couple hundred years. Yes. There have been ideas back with the Greeks and with others ideas of older ideas certainly not billions. But there was there was, maybe it's eternal which now we know it cannot be. There's no scientific way for it to be eternal.

But the idea of the billions of years that we have today– that's a new idea. And I did another show you would love. You would love this concept to put it into your classical education model. Did you know that James Hutton invented old Earth thinking in order to try to destroy the Bible?

Marlin Detweiler:
I'm not surprised.

Eric Hovind:

He was sexually promiscuous. So 1795 he writes a book called Theory of the Earth, and if you read his private letters, which we have you read his private letters to his friends. He was all about all the women he had been with the sizes the kinds the ages. And he hated God and hated the Bible. So did the guy who builds on his work Charles Lyell. Lyell a Scottish lawyer hated God and hated the Bible said we needed to rescue science from Moses and he built on Hutton's work. Hutton 1795. Theory of the Earth, said it was old and really popularized older ideas. Hutton comes along or Hutton in 1795. Lyell comes along in 1830 and develops the geologic column. And it's the first time people started thinking or hearing oh maybe those layers aren't from the flood. Maybe those are from long periods of time. Now they're not from long periods of time. You cannot get fossils to form inside of layers. You can't get fossils to hardly form today unless it's very specific conditions. An animal has to get buried by mud.

So the whole old earth thinking idea was developed to try to destroy the Bible. And now we've got people trying to merge old earth ideas with the Bible. While today I think there's a lot of them that are sincere. They've been fooled. I question their interpretations of science because science doesn't say anything. Scientists say things, and then I would question their interpretation–I would question. I would definitely question how they try to add time to the Bible because now you have theological problems Marlin, you got to have death before Adam sinned. Now you have to have death and disease and decay. And God has to say all of that is very good.

Marlin Detweiler:

That leads to another topic as we talked about in preparation for this recorded time there really now are three categories of Christians who I would say that in some sense two of them fall within Orthodox or reasonable right Christian thinking. And those are the ones that we've talked about so far. The New Earth young Earth and the old Earth.

But I can accept your confusion. In fact, I would tend to agree with you. That's where I'm coming from. But I'm not a scientist with the background that you can apply to understanding the data. But now we have this third category that's a subcategory of old Earth, and it's called theistic evolution. For our listeners define that and then tell us what the problem is with that because that's an area that I don't think falls within any form of orthodox thinking. And some very notable Christians of the 20th and 21st century have adopted that thinking. Where did it come from and what's wrong with it?

Eric Hovind:

Well, let me put us on a big spectrum and hit the middle. So obviously for theistic evolution, theist means believing in God. Atheists. You put the letter A in front of a word. It means the opposite of the word, so atheists do not believe in God. So theistic God evolution used evolution. They would say well science has proven evolution. Science has proven beyond a shadow of a doubt that we evolved from an amoeba to a human.

We call it molecules to man evolution. So whether it was lightning strike in the soup or theistic evolution they can actually say there was an agent. God started the first life and let it evolve from the fish to the amphibians to the reptile to the mammal. Everything that the secular scientist would claim today happens in evolution.

They would say either God started or God allowed it or God put the processes involved at the very beginning the laws involved to help that happen for us to go from molecules to man evolution. Now that is not only anti-science because there is a lot of evidence against that. It is certainly anti-scripture. But if I put all these on a timeline or on a scale just so you're hearers can understand this thing of the far left we'll call the far left over here. That's like atheism. Well I won't do that because I don't know if the left are atheists okay? Because they are so far left atheism. We'll call the far right young earth creation right in the middle. You can go from atheist to the from the far left atheist. You can go to the right a little bit and say, “Oh I'm a theistic evolutionist so I'm not an atheist. I believe in God but I also believe in evolution.” Right after that you have several positions that would be called Old Earth creation. Okay I don't believe in the evolution but you got the day age theory the gap theory the ruin recreation theory the there's several progressive creation several old Earth creation interpretations or models and then at the far right you have young Earth creation.

So that's kind of the way I would describe those. Theistic evolution has a real problem. And this is interesting. I didn't address it very much until recently. I had a debate with a gentleman named Inspiring Philosophy on YouTube and he was a theistic evolutionist. I started researching how many Christians are holding to theistic evolution. Marlin, it is growing by leaps and bounds.

Marlin Detweiler:

Yeah and we have a science curriculum that we like. It's one of three science curriculums that we offer. Maybe two. I'm a little confused here, but we have to explain away that portion. Otherwise, it's pretty good. But that portion of it is problematic. And we have to explain it away. Tim Keller, as I understand, was the theistic evolutionist and I do not understand perspective. Tell us why it's wrong.

Eric Hovind:

Okay. From a biblical reason. This is now both evolutionist. Excuse me atheist and young earth creationist. Kind of beat up on the theistic evolutionists. Like they stand. No chance. Here's why. Now according to theistic evolution you have a God that did not create everything perfect. He used death as the means to bring about what he wanted. So the Bible describes death as an enemy.

And this is same for older the creation or theistic evolution. Death is an enemy. So how could God claim that death came to the world? Or scripture claimed that death came into the world because of sin, and yet death is the process by which we got here. And I say that because if you have a population of 100,000 individuals with this certain characteristic x let's call it x characteristic and one of them evolves or gets a new characteristic that we're going to call y.

Well what's it going to take for the y characteristics to take over the population? Well, it has to survive. And all the x characteristics have to die. It is a religion of death which, and I'll be bold here- that reminds me of what Satan tries to do. Look around at abortion and everything he's doing. Satan loves death.

The Bible says all the they that hate me love death. And I go wow the idea that God used death to bring about his creation or what he really wants it is the most exalted thing mankind that could worship him freely and choose. That is not what Scripture says. It's also against science in so many ways. How do you get one thing evolving to another thing when the Bible clearly says the animals are going to bring forth after their kind. The cattle is going to bring forth after the kind?

And that's all we see. You know you can get a horse to produce a variety of different horses but it ain't ever going to produce a giraffe that is not going to and it's not going to get a dog and it's certainly not going to get a Chihuahua. Okay. You don't get that. There's limits to how much you can vary in the genetics. And we know that that's what real science teaches. So, Marlin, I say a real science is a man's best friend. And we don't have to run away or be scared of anything in the sciences. We really can't know that people there and we don't need to. Marlin, don't you think it's basically a compromise? Just because a majority of people believe something doesn't make it right, but because a majority of scientists believe in evolution, people have thought okay, well, I don't want to look dumb. And honestly, this is I really genuinely believe that's where that's what's happened to William Lane Craig. I mean, brilliant philosopher. And now saying that Adam was that heidelbergensis man 700 it was 700,000 years ago. Heidelberg man, this man 700,000 years ago. And he evolved from an ape like ancestor. I go that is contrary to all of Scripture.

Yeah, that is not the creator who made everything right. And then sin came into the world and caused things to go wrong. And then Jesus came to make things right. And here's Marlin, here's the big deal. If death was always part of God's good creation, why did Christ die on the cross? Because when I read Scripture, isn't that to deliver us from the sting of death? So now you've got death is part of God's creation.

Marlin Detweiler:
The thing that was obvious to me as a layman, non-scientist, but somebody that's hopefully not stupid, was there was no explanation I could read anywhere that made any sense in theistic evolution. That helped me understand the historic event of a fall from grace.

Eric Hovind:
When and where did that happen? And then, what do you do with the Garden of Eden? What do you do with the Tree of Life? What do you do with God saying, speaking? I made it in seven days. What do you do with the Ten Commandments? When God wrote with his own finger on a rock the first time?

You know, four and six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea and all that in them is. That's Exodus 21 and Exodus 31. I mean, what do you do with Jesus Christ? Claiming that Adam and Eve were the beginning? What do you do with Jesus claiming that the martyrdom of Abel, the first martyr, where Cain killed Abel?

Jesus relates the killing of Abel as the first martyr to the foundation of the world. Well, and I don't know if your listeners understand this, that would be somewhere around 6000 years ago. But the beginning of the world for an older there or for a theistic evolution, or would be 13.8 billion years ago, well, 13.8 billion years ago for the universe, 4.6 billion years ago for the Earth, you got a huge gap of time that is unaccounted for in Scripture.

I've heard people say, well, you know, these are ancient people living in the desert. They weren't educated. I go, stop, stop, stop. Are you telling me people could not understand the idea? If God had told them I started you off as a molecule and as something that swims in the ocean and I evolved you into this?

And Moses. Moses was the one given these words. He was I'm sure highly educated as Pharaoh's daughter's son. I'm sure he wasn't some, he's not just this goat herder. That's what the atheist had put on us. Oh, you guys believe just a bunch of dusty old books written by goat herders thousands of years ago who didn't know anything?

These guys were brilliant. Are you kidding? They knew things that we still don't know today. I'm going off on my preaching tangent here, but I'm passionate about this because here's what it does. It undermines the authority of the Bible, of the scriptures. It takes away for us why this should be our authority. What it does is it exalts Scripture or excuse me, it exalts science above Scripture, and that should not be the case. Scripture should always trump science. This is the authority. It's God's word.

Marlin Detweiler:
Well, you're getting into an interesting topic. Would you, in terms of apologetics, would you describe yourself as an evidentialist or a presuppositionalist?

Eric Hovind:
Wow. If I'm allowed to split hairs and be right on the line, I am definitely a presuppositionalist. But I love presenting evidence when it's necessary. I say it like this. There's a difference between sharing your faith and defending your faith. When I'm sharing my faith, I love using evidence. When I'm defending my faith, I switch to presupposition. I go, wait a minute, wait a minute, wait a minute. Now I'm defending. Now I'm on the defense. I don't like to go on the offense, and the best defense is for when you're defending your faith is go up and say, well, hang on, hang on, hang on. How do you account for anything? What's your foundation? I've got a foundation for logic and science and math.

You know, having these certain properties that they are universal, they are immaterial and they are unchanging. And those cannot exist if you don't start with something universal, immaterial, unchanging, i.e. God. So I love going presuppositionalism, but it depends on the circumstances.

Marlin Detweiler:
Yeah, I love that answer. I have had the opportunity and privilege to be around leaders that would be considered evidentialists more than I have been around the leading presuppositionalists, although some very potent ones. I have to tell you, I think that they somewhat, without disclosing it, are very inclined to borrow from the other camp. I sometimes suggested that maybe we're dealing with a distinction without a difference. That depends on the context. I love your answer, you admitted it.

Eric Hovind:
Yeah, it's exactly what it is. So context matters. Who am I talking to? If somebody came to me as an atheist and they really wanted to know how Noah fit all the animals on the ark, I have no problem going. Well, let's look at the study of the created kind. Did you know it's only land-dwelling animals? You didn't take the fish, you didn't take the insects. So now we're down to a select few. Did you know when you study the bison, and the buffalo, and the water buffalo, they're all related. They're part of the cattle. When you trace all the animals back to the original kind, there's only I mean, there's less than 3000 kinds of land dwelling animals on the ark.

Average size, smaller than a sheep. Here's great evidence for you. I don't mind giving you that information. If you really want to know that. At that point, I wouldn't go. Well, hang on. How do you account for information? How do you account for evidence? Context and who I'm talking to determines how I go about that.

Marlin Detweiler:
This is wonderful. There are so many things that we could have talked about. I know when we did a little research online for you, we found some conversation about you talking about kids coming from Christian homes, going to colleges, losing their faith. We're not going to have time to get into that. I want to encourage our listener to Google your name and find those other things to really become familiar with some of these, because you've done some wonderful research and have really –

Eric Hovind:
You got to be careful when you Google my name. The atheists don't like me. So you will find all kinds of stuff out there!

Marlin Detweiler:
Yeah. Well, I appreciate that. You know, I have a pastor friend who grew a church from 200 to 20,000. And he got so familiar with the data that he knew what percentage of people he needed to have hate him or disagree with them or know he was properly placed and what he was doing.

Eric Hovind:
Wow. I would love to know that percentage. That's fascinating!

Marlin Detweiler:
I don't know what to tell you about it. Of course, but you've commented on colleges, and you know, we really need to make sure our kids are ready. And you've done so much to do that. Do you do conferences around the country? How do you carry out your work?

Eric Hovind:
I do, so I'll tell you, my favorite place to be is home. I hate leaving home. I hate leaving my wife and kids. But I love what I do because when I get to do a presentation, and kids just get to see the truth, it doesn't take a lot of truth to destroy a whole mountain of lies.

And that's what I see with the Christian Science message. That's why I love doing it. So yes, I travel to churches, and I go to college campuses. We'll be at a college campus, the largest college campus in the United States, University of Central Florida, for an entire week here this next month. So engaging college students, you know, going to churches, speaking at conferences, homeschool events, things like that.

So lots and lots of traveling and trying to tell the world the truth. And I love bringing my science experiments with me. I light kids on fire and they never forget that. I'm like, listen, you need to be set on fire for Christ more than anything. So let me give you an example of that.

And George Whitfield, I think it was said set yourself on fire for God and people will come for miles to watch you burn. And I'm like, boy, we need some more young people with passion like that.

Marlin Detweiler:
Absolutely. Eric, you are infectious! You're knowledgeable, and it's really a pleasure to spend this time with you. Thank you so much.

Eric Hovind:
Well, thanks for the opportunity to be with you guys, Marlin.

Marlin Detweiler:
Appreciate it. Thank you. And folks, thank you for joining us for another episode of Veritas Vox, The Voice of Classical Christian Education. We hope to see you next time.