Where are we?

Comment on a creation web article about theologians who de-reify Genesis 1 etc.:

If theologians want to cut God's creating out of real communicable history, then where do we go to find the framing of relationship between God and humanity that occurs in real history? If the creation account in Genesis doesn't tell us what did happen in space and time, and therefore what really is, we have to ask then, what is 'really' there? What tells us how reality works? Plato, Aristotle, Darwin? If these people define what really is; then reality is other than the scriptures tell us and we have a faith not planted in this world that we experience, but some other world that we don't know...the world of platonic fantasy, of nature red in tooth and claw?

Catholics and creationism

An old press clipping from years ago:

Walking the dog

While my nephew and I were walking my dog, I noticed a small statue in a neigbour's front garden. A piece of paper with "Penelope" written on it along with an apple and other fruit were lying in front of the statue, which was decorated with feathers where the head would have been.

A woman and childwere in the garden and the woman noticed me looking at the scene.

She came over, asking, 'lovely, isn't it?" I asked what it was. She told me that it was 'Maisy's offering to peace'. I asked about the statue. She said that it was an Indian god [it looked like a headless Buddha to me] that would bring peace.

I replied, nicely, that it wasn't a god, it was a piece of shaped stone. She smiled, and said, we like to say it’s a god because it’s a nice story, and peace is something I want to teach Maisy.

A story and a piece of stone can bring peace, really?

If we regard Genesis 1 as just another story, we are at the level of the latter day heathen who think that a made up story about a piece of stone can have some real connection with actual lived lives. But it can't. It's a fantasy.

Despite all the fuss about 'genre', asserted 'compatibility with science', which I first heard from a friend in year 4 of primary school, and symbolism displacing realism, if this is all Genesis 1 is, just a story, then we make God no more than a piece of stone: an invention in our minds and not related to us in the real world where we grow apples and limes.

We back ourselves into a corner where a story about God's action in some 'story world', becomes the basis for our worship of God here in the real world. But, there can be no real connection, if it is merely a story.

Broughton Knox on origins

The doctrine of God the Creator is vivid throughout the pages of Scripture. The gods of the nations are not creator gods and, as the interesting little Aramaic insertion in Jeremiah puts it, the gods that did not create the world will perish, as indeed they have (Jeremiah 10:11). In our own times idolatry, which was a universal substitute for the Creator God, has been replaced by the widely held theory of evolution. Both the ancients and the heathen today deified and worshipped the creature as the creator, modelling images of man, or birds or animals or reptiles and worshipping these, so for Western secular people the modern theory of evolution deifies nature and acknowledges it as creator of all we see around us. All the beauty and intricacy and all the marvellous arrangements of the natural world are supposed to have been evolved by a thoughtless, purposeless mechanical operation of nature, and in this way the God who made the world is as effectively shutout of the minds of those who are enjoying the blessings of his creation as he was by the false religious of idolatry. Just as the idolaters could not see the foolishness, indeed the stupidity, of worshipping gods of wood and stone, which have no life nor purpose nor mind, so modern believers in the theory of evolution cannot see the foolishness of that theory, which not only lacks evidence to support it, but also runs counter to such evidence of origins as is available.

(Knox, The Everlasting God, p. 32, MatthiasMedia 2009)

 Creation implies purpose. In contrast, impersonal evolution is purposeless—things happening by accident without plan. But creation is a personal activity of an almighty, supreme God. Personal action implies purpose, and this in turn implies assessment. The doctrine of judgement is closely related to that of creation. The Scripture are full of the truth of the judgement of God. One of the oldest passages of the Old Testament, the song of Deborah, proclaims how turning away from the true God brought inevitable judgement: “New gods were chosen; then war was in the gates” (Judges 5:8).

(Knox, The Everlasting God, p. 36, MatthiasMedia 2009)

Knox was principal of Moore Theological College in Sydney, Australia 1959-85. The book these quotes come from is based on a series of lectures he gave at Moore College in 1979.

Darwin on theistic evolution

Evolution?

No!

No mechanism, no time and no evidence.

Simple.

Could God have used Evolution? #2

Evolution supposes, no, relies upon onward and upward: progress, because it was produced by the late Victorian idea of 'progress' (along with its late Victorian gross morphology phantasies).

Now, what does the Bible tell us about 'progress' in the created world (or 'nature' as materialists call it)?

For the creation was subjected to futility, not willingly, but because of Him who subjected it, ^[a]in hope ²¹ that the creation itself also will be set free from its slavery to corruption into the freedom of the glory of the children of God. ²² For we know that the whole creation groans and suffers the pains of childbirth together until now. ²³ And not only this, but also we ourselves, having the first fruits of the Spirit, even we ourselves groan within ourselves, waiting eagerly for our adoption as sons, the redemption of our body. ²⁴ For in hope we have been saved, but hope that is seen is not hope; for who hopes for what he already sees?

 [Romans 8:20-24]


Or, in the Amplified version:

For the creation was subjected to frustration and futility, not willingly [because of some intentional fault on its part], but by the will of Him who subjected it, in hope ²¹ that the creation itself will also be freed from its bondage to decay [and gain entrance] into the glorious freedom of the children of God. ²² For we know that the whole creation has been moaning together as in the pains of childbirth until now. ²³ And not only this, but we too, who have the first fruits of the Spirit [a joyful indication of the blessings to come], even we groan inwardly, as we wait eagerly for [the sign of] our adoption as sons—the redemption and transformation of our body [at the resurrection]. ²⁴ For in this hope we were saved [by faith]. But hope [the object of] which is seen is not hope. For who hopes for what he already sees?

From the fall, the creation has been going down hill: falling apart, collapsing, decaying, deteriorating...evolution would claim that it is going the other way.

The TE has to explain how this is possible in the unitary world that God created...even a Deist has to explain how all we see is falling apart, but on a longer time scale, it is not.

God could have used evolution!

No! The creation was finished and declared by its author to be 'very good'. Evolution is not finished and never will be (in terms of the hypothetical construction that it is).