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Secular creation?

by Ken Ham

First published in
Answers Update–US
June 2004

How could there be such a thing as ‘secular creation’?

I was watching a medical doctor on TV news explaining how prayer has been found to have a healing effect on people. Now, he wasn’t talking about prayer in the way Christians would understand it—but more in the sense of a meditation technique that can result in some sort of psychosomatic effect.

I thought to myself, ‘How things have changed! Generations ago in this nation, if anyone talked about prayer, it would be taken for granted that the prayer was to the God of creation—the God of the Bible.’

As this doctor went on to say how everyone should pray because it’s good for health, relaxation and so on, I thought of a new term, ‘secular prayer.’ In other words, this ‘prayer’ had nothing to do with the God of the Bible; it just meant praying or meditating, but not to the real God.

I then saw a news item about a man who is trying to get the words ‘under God’ deleted from the Pledge of Allegiance. Maybe we could call this the ‘secular pledge.’ His argument was that with the words ‘under God’ being deleted, the pledge would then be neutral. However, there’s no such thing as neutrality. One is either for Christ or against Him (Luke 11:23).

Of course, America has a public school system that offers a ‘secular education.’ But it has almost deleted Christianity (prayer, Bible, creation, etc.) from government-run schools. Well, we now see what I believe is ‘secular creation.’

Certain scholars and others who oppose ‘naturalism’ as a basis for explaining the origin of life have attempted to introduce the concept of an unspecified Intelligent Designer as a teaching tool in education. Some of these people have even written articles distancing themselves from any group … that stands upon the authority of God’s Word—the Bible.

Although some leaders in the Intelligent Design (ID) movement promote a Designer behind life and the universe, and do challenge a naturalistic evolutionary concept of origins, the problem is that in reality, evolutionary ideas are also embraced as long as some intelligence is behind them.

Is the intelligence a Muslim god? A Hindu god? Perhaps even a space alien? Or some New Age god?

Because the true God of the Bible has basically been eliminated from public education (along with prayer to Him), and because the emphasis is on an unknown intelligence behind the universe, ID followers could certainly direct people toward many religions—but not likely Christianity. Already, the ‘secular’ thrust in education (e.g. the idea of millions of years of history, supported by most ‘secular creationists’) has actively worked to discredit the Bible’s history, and thus the Bible itself.

‘Secular prayer,’ ‘secular education,’ ‘secular marriage’ (e.g. ‘gay’ marriage) and now ‘secular creation’ are all steps towards increasingly rejecting the Bible in this culture, and eliminating the teaching of the truth of the Creator.

Education, prayer, marriage and the teaching of creation/design are ultimately meaningless if they aren’t based on God’s written revelation—the Bible. ‘So then faith [comes] by hearing, and hearing by the word of God’ (Romans 10:17).

The more the church has compromised with man’s secular theories, the more the culture has been secularized. Now people even use Christian terms (like ‘prayer,’ ‘creation,’ ‘marriage,’ etc.)—and as long as these terms are not associated with the Bible (but are used in a ‘secular’ sense), then they are okay. As long as man isn’t confronted by his sin and isn’t held accountable to his Creator (and doesn’t see a need for salvation), then it’s perfectly all right to talk about ‘prayer’ and ‘creation.’

Romans 1 offers a description of where this culture is heading. Ironically, ‘secular creation’ (ID), touted by some as a solution to problems in education, is really a part of the same old problem—unwillingness to accept the Bible’s authority.

Published: 8 February 2006