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For the intellectually schizophrenic

From Charles Rosenberg, USA, who gave permission for his full name to be published.

His letter is posted below with point-by-point responses (in dark red) by Dr Jonathan Sarfati, interspersed as per normal e-mail fashion.



I noticed the following in the CRITICS section of your web site:

‘People seem to think that Christianity and evolution do or can go together. But I suggest this is only possible for the intellectually schizophrenic. Biological theory does not require or allow any sort of divine guidance for the evolutionary process.’

David Oldroyd, The (Australian) Weekend Review, March 20­21, 1993, p.5. (David Oldroyd is associate professor in the School of Science and Technology Studies at the University of New South Wales, Australia.)

This is an odd statement, and I do not comprehend why any Christian, secure in their faith, would give it any consideration.

I find it hard to comprehend how any believer in Christ could consistently accept evolution, since Christ affirmed the historicity of Genesis 1 and 2 in Matthew 19:3–6.

Biological theory is indeed the realm of the intellect, but faith does not derive from the intellect.

Now is this an intellectual assertion about faith? It doesn’t seem anything like Biblical faith, which is ‘evidence of things not seen’ (Hebrews 11:1), and Jesus said that the greatest commandment included loving God with all our minds. Christian faith is not some sort of irrational leap in the dark.

Therefore, no schizophrenia is imposed by a simultaneous belief in God. Science itself was made possible only when belief in a capricious pantheon of gods, with all too human characteristics, was replaced by understanding of a transcendent God who existed ‘all by myself’ outside of, before and after Creation: the Alpha and Omega.

To be precise, the God of the Bible. The founders of modern science were creationists.

Such a God could set the universe to run according to inspired laws of motion, rather than according to the mood of whichever God was looking your way today.

I’m not interested in what anyone thinks God could or couldn’t do. What matters is what He did, and we know this only by what He said He did in His Word, the Bible.

No, biological theory does not require or reveal a divinity. That is because the processes of biology were set in motion by a divinity who stood outside of those processes.

If that were the case, how would you know that there is a God Who stood outside these processes? Were you there? You could only know this through revelation (the Bible), but if you don’t accept the revelation about how and when God created, why should you choose to accept the revelation about His existence? This is perhaps the ‘intellectual schizophrenia’ referred to in the quote above. You are concocting your own religion; it is not Christianity. And you also contradict the revelation of God Who said that the heavens declare His glory and that the realities of the Creator can be clearly seen through His creation (Rom. 1:20). In the evolutionary view God is invisible, not revealed in any sense.

The same is true of Creation, which we now know occurred some 13 to 15 billion years ago.

Again, were you there?

What we cannot discern through scientific observation is how it began, or why. That is available only through revelation, because the inspiration came from outside what our human powers of observation can observe, or even imagine.

Exactly! That’s our whole point. Actually, we cannot observe anything about the creation of anything, animate or living — evolution, the atheists’ creation myth, is a conjecture about the past; it is not testable experimental science. Why not believe the Creator’s revelation?

(Dr) Jonathan Sarfati

 
Published: 3 February 2006