Biblical creation has the answers!
Editorial
We are certainly living in tumultuous times. Probably no-one born in the West after World War 2 remembers such problems. But the Bible always has the answer, while the secular world founders (Psalm 19:7–14, 2 Timothy 3:15–17).
Why coronaviruses?
For example, why is a new coronavirus (SARS-CoV-2) causing lots of disease (COVID-19 or C19) and death around the world? The answer: God created all things “very good” (Genesis 1:31). Death and disease entered the world only after the Fall, when our ancestor Adam sinned (Genesis 3:17–19, Romans 8:20–22). Therefore, God must have created viruses very good too!
Even today, most viruses are beneficial (see creation.com/wuhan-coronavirus). A healthy human body probably has about 10 times more viral cells than human cells! One epidemiologist said that if all viruses in the world disappeared, it would be nice for about 36 hours, then we would all die!1 But after the Fall, some viruses became harmful and even deadly—usually after escaping from the creature it was designed for. E.g. both the C19 and Ebola viruses had a useful role in bats.
But evolution just tells us that human death is irrelevant in the universe. The virus is merely making copies of itself, and those it happens to kill in the process are just the unfit losers of natural selection. The Apostle of Atheopathy, Richard Dawkins, asserts that the evolutionary universe has “at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil, no good, nothing but pitiless indifference.”2
Where do races come from?
The other major problem today concerns ‘races’. But the Bible is clear: there is only one race: the descendants of Adam (Acts 17:26). The Bible says nothing about skin shade (we all have the same ‘colour’, melanin, just different amounts of it). All people were made in God’s image (Genesis 1:26–28). And all can be saved by Jesus Christ, our Kinsman-Redeemer (Isaiah 59:20). This is possible only because all people are blood relatives of Jesus, because we are like Him descended from Adam (Luke 3:23–38).
But our ‘educational’ system pushes the evolutionary ‘science’ of Darwin. Yet he and his 19th- and early 20th-century followers explicitly taught that the lighter-skinned ‘races’ were more evolved than the darker-skinned ‘races’, contra Scripture. Evolutionist and anti-racist Stephen Jay Gould (1941–2002) admitted:
Biological arguments for racism may have been common before 1859, but they increased by orders of magnitude following the acceptance of evolutionary theory. … In fact, they [Darwinian racists] often argued that their inegalitarian conclusions proved that hard science had triumphed over liberal or Christian sentimentalism.3
Restoring the foundations (Psalm 11:3)
Creation magazine for over 40 years has been presenting the vital truth of creation, and destroying the harmful conjecture of evolution.
This issue has a timely article about an even more dangerous disease than C19— smallpox (p. 48). We also interview a former cancer researcher (p. 16). Both diseases are examples of the perfect creation going wrong. But developing cures is following the example of Christ, who alleviated effects of the Curse.
Many doubt the Bible because of indoctrination into billions of years. But DNA in dinosaur bones could not have lasted millions of years (p. 15). And stalactites couldn’t have taken millions of years to form, when they were inside a cellar (p. 12)!
From the biblical Creation-Fall model, we would expect creatures to have a perfect concept of design, even if now they are marred by the Fall. This time, we showcase flight (p. 36), teeth (p. 51), and design ideas from spiders and ants (p. 55).
Finally, at the beginning we talked about the misery resulting from the sin of the “first man Adam”. But the Good News is that Jesus, “the last Adam” (1 Corinthians 15:45) was victorious over sin in His Resurrection (p. 20). Help share this Good News, and equip people to proclaim it, by passing this magazine along!
Related Articles
Further Reading
References and notes
- Goldberg, T., cited in: Why the world needs viruses to function, Nuwer, R., bbc.com, 17 Jun 2020. Return to text.
- Dawkins, C.R., River out of Eden, Chapter 4, 1995. Return to text.
- Gould, S.J., Ontogeny and Phylogeny, pp. 127, 133, 1977. (See creation.com/onehumanfamily) Return to text.
Readers’ comments
Thus, the West is still under the delusion that we’re but hairless apes, gender is but a more or less fluctuating feeling, and you must choose from your feelings not your body. Unborn children are only lumps of cells—its all a balance of elements (we Humanity are really going to control it, control it all—trust progression!). We decide (now) who will live, die, who’ll be born, who won’t be born, who’ll get what—because there only one ruling class in town: Humanity. Only one category of existence in town: nature, only one hidden -ism to rule them all: naturalism.
And where does naturalism place categories such as ‘sacred’, ‘holy’, ‘spiritual’, or even a general reverence for ‘whatever Heaven or the Hereafter may contain’? If we’re all just nothing more than a certain constellation of atoms and molecules in motion, then wherein that, is the value of the human individual to be found? And who will be a guarantor for such unique value?
Average global daily deaths 2020:
Covid: ~ 3800
Chopping up babies ~ 125 000
Worldwide deaths ~ 150 000
(Not including abortion due to twisted definition of when humanness occurs—there are accounts for 2016 that Abortion deaths have been greater than all other deaths)
I obviously have a real hard time buying the one death is too many and we can “fix” this Covid pandemic if we all just “do the right thing” thing
A little to blind to see are those who do not bend the knee,
to the One who died on a tree
So that we could see
And be free
Jesus
In the days of the exile God repeatedly warned Israel that once He unsheathed his sword he would not put it back until He was done: Because they were killing their own children! (Ezekiel 23:39, 21:5)
So it would not be out of sorts that Covid is a response to baby killing
You are a great encouragement to me Dr Sarfati, have been for years
I delight in your concise and accurate writings
Thank you
It is interesting to note, in considering that [the viruses which cause] Ebola and Covid-19 have beneficial roles in bats, that Leviticus 11:13–19 expressly forbade the consumption of bats among the Israelites.
It seems to me that when people ask this question, they're really looking for a deeper answer, as in “why was it allowed to happen?”, given so many other times when things have been generally ok.
The above is similar to someone asking “Why did my family die in a plane crash?” and someone triumphantly proclaiming “I have the answer! It was gravity that pulled it down!”
Sure, while that might technically be correct, it doesn’t really answer much, especially in light of the fact that so many other planes fly just fine without killing people’s families all the time.
It can easily come across as tone deaf, which extremely rare for you.
I hope that makes sense.
There is a limit to what I can say in a short editorial. So this one was providing outlines of a framework that is the only one that can handle the question coherently. If you want more than that, it would be a much longer article. Fortunately, such a thing exists—my article Why would a loving God allow death and suffering? This even has a section What about specific cases of ‘senseless suffering’?
Now if someone was asking me one-to-one, then my answer would depend on the person’s circumstances. If it was an atheist raising this as an argument against God, I would provide the overall framework or ‘big picture’. But if it were someone suffering loss, then my answer would be different, and I might recommend pastoral care to follow. I have experience of both.
The secular world is both foundering and floundering in different areas.
Only understanding the Bible plainly provides a foundation for liberty.
And for the gospel to make sense.
And there are thousands of articles on creation.com showing just that.
Thank you all for the fantastic work you do to point people to God's word, and showing that science not only doesn't contradict the obvious teaching of scripture, but fits far better than any other view.
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