Galileo revisionism and ‘God could have used evolution’

From Dave Lloyd of Ann Arbor, MI, USA, who gave permission for his full name to be used. This letter repeats a common myth about Galileo, which could have been avoided had Mr Lloyd checked our site first (as per the feedback rules). There are also assertions about what God could do, but what matters is what He did, and we can only know that from what He said He did—in His written Word, the Bible. His letter is printed first in its entirety. A response by Dr Jonathan Sarfati, of Creation Ministries International–Australia, immediately follows his letter with point-by-point responses interspersed as per normal email fashion.

To think that God couldn’t have designed evolution is the same small minded thinking that almost murdered Galileo.

A creator who made a universe this complex, surely could have created a point in space which contained all the necessary blueprints for structure and life in the universe that would unfold without anymore intervention in the ‘physical realm’.

In case you haven’t heard, the earth is round.

Dave Lloyd
Ann Arbor
MI

To think that God couldn’t have designed evolution is the same small minded thinking that almost murdered Galileo.

As we have pointed out in Q&A: Galileo, this is based on a faulty view of the history of Galileo (who was never in the slightest danger of being murdered). You have it 100% reversed—the Church in Galileo’s time had wedded the Bible to the pagan Ptolemaic cosmology, and now you are making the same mistake by wanting to wed the Bible to the anti-God evolutionary worldview.

A creator who made a universe this complex, surely could have created a point in space which contained all the necessary blueprints for structure and life in the universe that would unfold without anymore intervention in the ‘physical realm’.

OK, let’s grant that He could do this—all the same, what matters is what He did, and what He said He did, as recorded in Scripture. So, then, do we trust in man’s speculation, or God’s eyewitness account? A reliable eyewitness account always overrules circumstantial evidence. God reveals in the same Scriptures that He cannot sin, that He made all things ‘very good’ (Gen. 1:31) and that death is ‘the last enemy’ (1 Cor. 15:26) and is the result of Adam’s sin (Gen. 3:17–19, Rom. 5:12 ff., 1 Cor. 15:21–22). The Bible further reinforces the teaching of no death of humans or nephesh animals (probably the vertebrates) by teaching that the original diet of both humans and animals was vegetarian (Gen. 1:29–30), and that this will be true in the future restoration of all things (Isaiah 11:6–9, 65:25).

But according to the late atheist Carl Sagan, the secrets of evolution are ‘time and death’. From these premises, it follows that God actually could not have used evolution to create things, because that would entail that He used ‘the last enemy’ as His means to produce a ‘very good’ creation.

It is also important to distinguish God’s creative activity which finished after Day 6 and His ongoing sustaining activity—He did not simply wind up the universe and let it run as deists believe (see Who’s really pushing ‘bad science’?).

You would benefit from answering Some questions for theistic evolutionists.

In case you haven’t heard, the earth is round.

Of course we have, and it’s taught in the Bible. Isaiah 40:22 refers to ‘the circle of the earth’, or in the Italian translation globo. The Hebrew is khug, which means sphericity or roundness. Even if the translation ‘circle’ is adhered to, think about Neil Armstrong in space—to him, the spherical Earth would have appeared circular regardless of which direction he viewed it from. Job 26:7 teaches that the Earth ‘hangs upon nothing’. See Does the Bible really teach a flat earth?