“Creationism Is About . . . ” Well, the Bible!

According to a science and religion blogger with the not-so-reliable Huffington Post, the evolution/creation debate is not about science or even the Bible—it’s about gay marriage! Well, that’s certainly news to me!

Writer Paul Wallace claims that he could never understand why creationists reject the “tsunami of unambiguous evidence that forces us to believe in a 14-billion-year-old cosmos; in a 4.5-billion-year-old Earth; and in the long slow evolution of creatures.” Of course, he doesn’t provide any of the scientific evidence that supposedly makes up this “tsunami of unambiguous evidence,” he just merely expects his readers to accept that this evidence is there. He then goes on to say that he suddenly realized why biblical creationists reject all the supposed “evidence”—it’s because the real issue is not science, it’s gay marriage.

He claims that “because creationism is about gay marriage and not about science, science doesn't matter to creationists.” Now, I and the highly qualified full-time PhD scientists on staff at AiG (as well as the many other biblical creationist scientists scattered all across the world) would certainly disagree with the statement that “science doesn’t matter to creationists.” We love science! In fact, we even have our own technical, peer-reviewed journal to publish the latest in creation science research. But what Wallace does here is equivocate “evolution” with “science.” He fails to understand the difference between two different types of science—observational and historical. Observational science is the kind of science that is repeatable, testable, and observable—it uses the scientific method and builds our technological and medical innovations. Historical science is completely different. It deals with the past and is therefore not directly testable, observable, or repeatable. This kind of science is influenced by your worldview as you look at the evidence. Science certainly does matter to creationists, but we start with God’s inerrant Word as the basis for doing science, not man’s changing opinions.

Now, Wallace is right in understanding that there is a connection between the “gay marriage” issue and Genesis. Marriage is for one man and one woman because the God who created marriage designed it that way. And if God created us and marriage, then only God has the right to define what marriage is and is not. In fact, when Jesus was asked about marriage, He immediately pointed back to Genesis 1 and 2, “‘Have you not read that He who made them at the beginning ‘made them male and female,’ and said, ‘For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh’” (Matthew 19:4–5). The doctrine of marriage comes straight out of Genesis.

But is gay marriage the main issue? Of course not! The redefinition of marriage is simply the natural outcome of a culture that has rejected the Bible as its authority on matters of morality and ethics. Now, Scripture clearly teaches that homosexual behavior is a sin, so we boldly and unashamedly declare it to be wrong. But the real issue is the authority of God’s Word. We care about the creation/evolution debate because millions of years/evolution is a direct attack on the authority of the Word of God. If Genesis is open to reinterpretation, why isn’t the rest of the Bible? If God didn’t mean what He plainly said in Genesis, how can we trust that He meant what He said in the gospels? If you start compromising in one part of the Bible, where do you stop? Once you unlock the door to allow man’s fallible opinions to be in authority over God’s Word in Genesis, the more you will use man’s fallible opinions (e.g., about marriage) to reinterpret other passages of Scripture. This is the bottom line: Whose authority are you going to trust—man’s opinion or God’s Word?

As I’ve written over and over again on this blog and in other writings, compromising Genesis with evolution and/or millions of years is an authority issue and a gospel issue (compromise teaching undermines the foundation of the gospel message), and indirectly a salvation issue. I encourage you to read the article I wrote on this very subject. My bookThe Lie: Evolution/Millions of Yearsalso deals with these issues in detail.

Thanks for stopping by and thanks for praying,

Ken

This item was written with the assistance of AiG’s research team.