3. A Question of Paradigms

Part of the Explore the Film series.

“We have a witness to those events, and that witness is telling us ‘this is what happened,’ and we have to take that into consideration when we evaluate the data.” – Paul Nelson, Philosopher of Science at Computer History Museum

There are two paradigms, or interpretive frameworks, used to interpret the world around us: the conventional paradigm and the historical Genesis paradigm.

Each has a different view of how long the earth has been here, including the origin of the rocks, animals, and stars. Each sees the same data, but interprets it according to different historical assumptions.

The Genesis paradigm interprets everything in light of the timeline and events recorded in the first chapters of Genesis; the conventional paradigm interprets everything according to the timeline and events constructed over the past 200 years as a replacement for that Biblical history.

The conflict is ultimately between these two competing histories of the world.