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Creation 35(1):6, January 2012

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Fragile Faith

Four keys to avoiding the evidentialist roller coaster

Editorial

by

(This was published as a preview of the editorial from the January 2013 Creation magazine, so the page numbers of the articles mentioned refer to this. Subscribe and be delighted.)

©iStockPhoto.com/April30 Dandelion

When the latest evolutionary story hits the media, we often get desperate pleas for us to answer this ‘proof’ of evolution, almost as if, should we not answer it, their faith will come crumbling down.

It reminds me of those whom the Bible talks about, being like “children, tossed to and fro by the waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by human cunning, by craftiness in deceitful schemes” (Ephesians 4:14).

We are to become mature “to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ” (v. 13) by getting equipped (v. 12). Creation magazine provides one avenue for getting equipped. Some things we should understand to be effective at answering objections include:

  1. Understand the Bible’s true history. This is God’s Word, inspired by the only eye-witness to the events of Creation. When we understand this, we will quickly see that ideas of millions of years of death and suffering before people arrived (evolution) just don’t stack up, ever; see “Understanding death” (p. 42) and “How does the Bible teach 6,000 years?” (p. 54). There is also plenty of evidence that things are much younger than usually claimed; see “Original animal protein in fossils” (p. 14), “Titan” (p. 20) and “Parícutin” (p. 32).
  2. Evolution is a story-telling exercise about the past where experiments are not possible. When it comes to such history, the historical method should be used. So, ask the question, “Who witnessed this?” No-one? Then it is story-telling. Nowhere do we see more fanciful story-telling than with claimed transitional fossils; fossils said to show one creature on the way to becoming a quite different creature. For yet another example of a failed alleged intermediate creature, see “Another major ‘link’ fails” (p. 51).
  3. The agenda of the story-teller. The person is either for or against God and His Word; there is no fence to sit on, no ‘neutral turf’. Those who oppose God attempt to establish a story about how everything came to be without God. It is not about ‘following the facts wherever they lead’, but interpreting things to make them fit their preconceived notion that God had nothing to do with it. For example, even facts that clearly contradict the evolutionary story are ‘spun’ to make it sound like they support it—see “Telling tales” (p. 46).
  4. Are they playing tricks with terminology? Natural selection is often demonstrated and then it is claimed that this ‘proves evolution’. Natural selection might help explain why crickets without a ‘chirp’ survive, but it does not explain where the chirping mechanism, let alone crickets, came from. See: “Kauai’s silent nights” (p. 12). And mutations aren’t up to the job of creating quite different living things either; see “Teenage mutant Ninja people” (p. 48). We observe organisms reproducing according to their created kind, like the silky anteater (p. 28). And we see lots of evidence for sophisticated design that speaks loudly of a super-intelligent Creator; such as box jellyfish eyes (p. 22).

I pray that this issue of Creation magazine will be effective in equipping readers with the thinking skills needed to avoid being unsettled by ‘human cunning’—to avoid what CMI’s Andrew Lamb calls the “evidentialist roller-coaster” (see creation.com/presupp). May we have a robust faith, not a fragile faith.

Posted on homepage: 12 November 2012

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