Naive “Creationist”

What I would describe as a very naively written guest column appeared in yesterday’s Cincinnati Enquirer (our local newspaper). I believe it deserves some comment and can serve as a teaching tool for those of you reading this blog.

The opinion piece was titled “Definition of ‘Creationist’ Must Evolve” by By James R. Delp, described as a “former high school history teacher.”

See my comments interspersed below:

If there were a presidential election and 37 percent of the American public felt a certain way about something, you'd think that the media would at least acknowledge their existence. You know - give the group its own name and that sort of thing. According to the most recent poll I could find (Harris, July 2007), 37 percent of the American public believes in both God and in evolution, while 39 percent believes in God but not evolution. The remainders are atheists who believe in evolution. There is a fairly sizable philosophical difference between believing in both God and evolution and believing in God but not evolution. Somebody ought to make the distinction.

COMMENT: Actually, that distinction has been made basically since Darwin popularized his ideas in the 19th century. There is a label that is used for such a position for those who believe in both God and evolution—it is called “Theistic Evolution.” This term has been around certainly since the beginning of the 20th century.

So why is it that whenever the evolution topic comes up, the official media way of referring to the opponents of evolution is to say that they are creationists? I am a creationist and do believe in evolution.

COMMENT: The point the writer needs to understand is that as far as the secular academic world is concerned, secularists love to see people claiming to be Christians compromising their beliefs with secular ideas like evolution—but at the same time, the secular world really has little respect for such people, as they increasingly mock those who believe in God, regardless of whether they believe in evolution or not. This mocking has been clearly seen in the issues surrounding the Intelligent Design Movement and its arguments. Atheists, like Richard Dawkins et al., are against any intelligence behind the universe. People who compromise the Bible with evolution think they are placating the secularists. In actuality they are playing into their hands, as anti-Christians try to eliminate Christianity from the culture.

Atheists got their testosterone pumped up in 1962 with the U.S. Supreme Court's school-prayer decision and its subsequent evolution decisions, especially the case in 1982 where the court struck down all state laws that said that if evolution were taught in the classroom it had to be balanced with creationism. The court said that only evolution could be taught.

COMMENT: First, the Supreme Court decision came in 1987, not 1982. (There was a 1982 creation/evolution decision made in a district court in Arkansas, but Mr. Delp is instead referring to a S.C. decision, but that occurred in 1987.) Actually, that is not what the Supreme Court ruled—it is about time people actually read the court documents and correctly represented what was said. The Court decided that states could not mandate that creation be taught in the science classes of public schools, but it did not tell teachers that only evolution could be taught and that they could not teach creation if they wanted—it was that instructors could not be forced to bring up creation in class.

But those decisions were based entirely on the principle of the separation of church and state. It's not like the court has ever decided that the Bible was backward and unscientific. Today's atheists now feel at the liberty to try and silence all public creationist expression as though it were officially deemed to be incorrect by the U.S. Supreme Court.

A good case in point is the recent tiff in which some religious bigots on the atheist side of the fence pressured the Cincinnati Zoo to cancel its joint Christmas promotion with the Creation Museum. Since there is only one general term to refer to people who believe that God created the universe (be it in six days 4,000 years ago or with the big bang billions of years ago), all creationists were deemed to be naïve, anti-intellectual, pseudo-scientific, and so on by the atheists.

COMMENT: The author of this article himself is being naive. If he had read the actual blog site of the atheist who led this charge against the Zoo, he would see that this person mocks anyone who believes in God, regardless of whether or not they believe in evolution. That is the key point that people need to understand. Compromising the Word of God with evolution—and that is what it is, compromise—undermines the authority of God’s Word, but it does NOT placate the atheists like the atheist professor who attacked the Zoo over a business relationship with the Creation Museum.

I propose that from now on the media break creationists into two distinct groups: Creationists who believe in evolution and those who do not. We each deserve our own names. We could be “six-day creationists” and “evolutionary creationists.”

COMMENT: Well, as I said earlier, what this author calls “evolutionary creationists” is really the position of “Theistic Evolution.” But, the media isn’t going to do this anyway, because since when is the secular media interested in such points? The secular media by and large wants to lump everyone who believes in God together, and many writers mock them accordingly. Most of the secular media is controlled by people with humanistic (and often atheistic) views after all.

When atheists make the overbroad statement that creationists are naïve, what this technically would mean is that six-day creationists were naïve; they would merely be saying that it was naïve to take a literal interpretation of the Bible when more scientifically sound interpretations were available.

COMMENT: Actually, the position of theistic evolution is biblically unsound and scientifically unsound. (For example, read the article by Dr. David DeWitt, who will be speaking with me next February in Virginia at a major national conference on Darwin, at “Why I Rejected Theistic Evolution.”)

It is this author who is being naive, by thinking that the secularists respect this compromised view!!

This leaves me and 37 percent of the American public un-offended and out of the controversy.

COMMENT: As we have said so many times, compromising evolution with the Bible can only be done if one changes the obvious meaning of the language in the book of Genesis! One cannot reconcile evolution in any way with the Bible if one takes Genesis as it is meant to be taken—as a historical narrative!

Thousands Visit Creation Museum

Over 4,000 visited the Creation Museum this past Friday and Saturday! Praise the Lord.

Thanks for stopping by and thanks for praying,
Ken