Which history?

David P. Barash believes that the different views of creationism and evolutionism are irreconcilable. He is correct; however he is backing the wrong horse. These two world views have very different views of history. Creationism is founded on the view of history revealed in the bible, and evidenced by scientific study of biology and geology. Evolutionism is founded on an a commitment to atheism with evidence drawn from biology and geology in support. I place Professor Barash’s comments indented below, with my notes following.

It’s irresponsible to teach biology without evolution

The evolution Barash is talking about is how the biological machinery we can see today came about. This is his view of history, or his creation myth.

Many Americans don’t grasp the fact that evolution is not merely a “theory,” but the underpinning of all biological science

Thank God many Americans are not so foolish as Professor Barash.

Teaching biology without evolution would be like teaching chemistry without molecules, or physics without mass and energy

Not really. Cells, behavior, molecules, mass and energy are well within the reach of scientists to observe today. Molecules to men evolution is a speculative theory of HISTORY, that cannot be observed today.

Everything that we know about biology and geology proclaims that the Earth was not made in a day

Barash is waxing lyrical from the pulpit here. There is no presentation of evidence, just bold rhetoric. Strangely the secular creation myth would have us believe that nothing created everything instantly in the big bang. Actual history from the creator states that everything was created by God over a six day period.

Evolutionary science … has demolished two previously potent pillars of religious faith and undermined belief in an omnipotent and omni-benevolent God

1. Argument from complexity,  we have come to understand that an entirely natural and undirected process, namely random variation plus natural selection, contains all that is needed to generate extraordinary levels of non-randomness.

2. Illusion of centrality,  we are perfectly good animals, natural as can be and indistinguishable from the rest of the living world at the level of structure as well as physiological mechanism.

3. The problem of pain, just a smidgen of biological insight makes it clear that, although the natural world can be marvelous, it is also filled with ethical horrors: predation, parasitism, fratricide, infanticide, disease, pain, old age and death — and that suffering (like joy) is built into the nature of things.

The pillars of belief in a creator remain potent.

1. Argument from complexity, see biochemist Michael Behe’s book “Darwin’s black box” for one revelation of the biological complexity that is unattainable to evolutionary processes.
2. Reality of centrality, the creator states: “Let us make mankind in our image, in our likeness, so that they may rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky, over the livestock and all the wild animals, and over all the creatures that move along the ground”. Centrality is not an illusion. The primary place of man evident by his rule over the ecosystem today is reality.
3. The problem of pain, “I consider that our present sufferings are not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed in us. For the creation waits in eager expectation for the children of God to be revealed. For the creation was subjected to frustration, not by its own choice, but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the freedom and glory of the children of God.”

The more we know of evolution, the more unavoidable is the conclusion that living things, including human beings, are produced by a natural, totally amoral process, with no indication of a benevolent, controlling creator.

There are none so blind as those who will not see. Barash states that the natural world is “marvelous” and “wonderfully complex” but he cannot see that this itself is a clarion call of our benevolent, controlling creator. Wake up David P. Barash.

“For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that people are without excuse.”

“What then shall we say to these things? If God is for us, who can be against us? He who did not spare His own Son, but delivered Him up for us all, how shall He not with Him also freely give us all things? Who shall bring a charge against God’s elect? It is God who justifies. Who is he who condemns? It is Christ who died, and furthermore is also risen, who is even at the right hand of God, who also makes intercession for us. Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? As it is written:

“For Your sake we are killed all day long;
We are accounted as sheep for the slaughter.”

Yet in all these things we are more than conquerors through Him who loved us. For I am persuaded that neither death nor life, nor angels nor principalities nor powers, nor things present nor things to come, nor height nor depth, nor any other created thing, shall be able to separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.“

Marriage

What is marriage? That seems to be the question of the day. My particular view is informed by my understanding of the Bible’s revelation. This is not an experimentally or statistically or democratically derived view; I would call it a historically informed Christian view. Marriage is: a creation of God, a picture of God himself, a means of multiplying children for God, and a prophecy of humanity’s final destiny.

Marriage began at the very start of creation, if not as the first work of God, it certainly was his crowning achievement. The first marriage came about in the creation of man, which happened in this way. On the sixth day of creation, God created a man named Adam from the dust of the earth. But although Adam was able to enjoy the rest of God’s creation, God saw that it was not good for him to be alone. So God took one of Adam’s ribs, and formed from it a woman, to be Adam’s helper. God brought Adam and the woman together, and Adam named her “woman”, because she was formed from his own flesh. From this we see that God’s answer to a lack of relationship for Adam was not the creation of another being the same as him, from the same dust, but a different being, yet from his own flesh. So, in the first marriage we have a coming together which is a kind of reunion where that which was removed from Adam is rejoined to him.

Man was created in the image of God. Moses tells us: “In the image of God he created him, male and female he created them”. Paul adds “Man is the image and glory of God, but woman is the glory of man”. Although it is true to say that it is Adam who pre-eminently bears that image, Eve both shares and completes that image. Firstly, woman was created from Adam’s flesh, and secondly in marriage Adam and Eve are joined together and become one flesh again. So the image of God in humanity is complete when man and woman are joined together in the relationship of marriage.

Adam also named his wife “Eve”, which means “the mother of the living”. Marriage is not a loose joining together of two equivalent partners, as in a friendship or contractual arrangement between peers. Instead, the marriage joins back together two different beings who share the same flesh for a God-given purpose that individually neither can achieve. For although God had a particular purpose in Eve for Adam, to meet his immediate need for relationship, he had a further purpose: to multiply the image of God through Eve’s children. So marriage is beautiful in that it knits two awesome creatures of God together in a unity which is a picture of God himself, and also in that it multiplies that image in sons and daughters.

Marriage has a further purpose in God’s design however. God’s creation is a picture of the whole scope of time from the beginning to its end. To summarize that picture, God works for a time building the world, and at the end we have a culmination where Adam and Eve are joined together in marriage to rule the world under God. This is the completed creation which is supremely beautiful and good. But we do not see this completed creation today, or in the previous thousands of years of history, as we are all painfully aware. However, God’s plans may seem slow, but they are never frustrated. The beautiful marriage at the end of creation is still coming! For the marriage of Adam the son of God to a woman created by God for him, is a pre-figure of the marriage of Jesus the Son of God, to his church at his second coming. Even to this day, Jesus waits while God prepares for him a beautiful bride, in the Christian church. This church is not made of stone, but it is a living church made up of all those, men and women, who accept the image of the son of God in their lives, who can call the Son of God their Lord.

I think the primary thing to take from the reality of what marriage is, is that it is God’s. He created it. He has a plan for it both in the microcosm of one man and one woman and in the macro of his only son Jesus and his bride. In whatever way we relate to marriage we must remember whose it is. As the Bible warns: “Let the marriage bed be held in honour by all, but the sexually immoral and adulterers God will judge”.

Full scale Noah’s ark in Hong Kong

That’s a pretty big boat. Check it out from satellite on google maps.

 

The Voyage That Shook the World

Coming soon.

Paleontologists discover missing link

Or at least one of King Julien’s ancestors… Darwin fossil Ida hype.

Anglicans sorry for upholding God’s word

Sob.  The Church of England apologizes to Darwin. Thank God for Dr Sarfati. Enjoy his viewpoint from the perspective of someone who takes the word of God seriously.

Albert Mohler also has some good words on the apology.

Dino with soft tissue?

65million years old? I don’t think so.

Scientists Get Rare Look at Dinosaur Soft Tissue

Give that man an award!

May I extend heartfelt gratitude to Rob Holding for his comments on Rhema this morning. It was very encouraging hearing Rob referring to the six days of creation and the recent creation of the stars. In a world where every man and his dog are tripping over themselves to dismiss Genesis as poetry, Rob’s straightforward understanding of the word of God is refreshing. May I extend to Rob the Exodus 20:11 award for upholding the word of God. Thanks!

The Watchmaker

A very nice flash rendition of Paley’s famous argument.

Recommended by Science Against Evolution.

Behe answers the critics

Michael Behe reviews the reviewers of his latest book The Edge of Evolution. Behe reportedly:

strongly asserts, to the likely chagrin of young earth creationists, that the earth is billions of years old and that the concept of common descent is correct.

I wonder what convinces him that common descent is correct?

But the conclusion of his book certainly won’t please the evolutionaries:

My new book presents evidence disproving random mutation as a major part of evolution and shows that life developed non-randomly from cells to animals.

There is an interesting Q&A session with Behe which gives some further insight into his views.