Columnist Believes Creationists Have Abandoned Reason

Belfast Telegraph columnist Fionola Meredith attended one of Ken Ham’s Answers in Genesis talks during his recent speaking tour in Northern Ireland and definitely saw red. Her half-page column in the August 15 issue of the paper consists of a massive military metaphor railing against—and misrepresenting—Ken’s message and Answers in Genesis’ position. She accuses Ken of delivering a “blood-red battle-cry” in “a rapid-fire hectoring machine-gun rattle which . . . gave listeners no time to think for themselves.” However, a reading of her column would suggest Ms. Meredith is the one sounding the clarion call-to-arms. She warns readers against being “dangerously complacent” by dismissing what she calls “Ham’s one-dimensional, apocalyptic vision as the rantings of a misguided man.”

Columnist Meredith is offended that Ken Ham and Answers in Genesis have an uncompromising view of Scripture and consider God’s Word true from the very first verse. She is confused, however, about the relationship between science and the Bible. Ms. Meredith thinks Answers in Genesis claims that the Bible is “provable by science.” Answers in Genesis maintains that what we see in God’s world confirms what we read in God’s Word. Confirming and proving are not synonymous.

Experimental science can provide data about processes observable in the present, but in order to draw conclusions concerning our origins—events of the unobservable untestable past—scientists must interpret data in light of their own worldviews. Evolutionary scientists believe that molecules-to-man evolution occurred, that all things came to be by random natural processes. Even though they cannot test or confirm those beliefs, they accept those beliefs as unarguable facts. Creation scientists accept the authority of the only Eyewitness present at the time of our origins and interpret facts in light of God’s truth, knowing that only those interpretations have any possibility of being true.

Ms. Meredith accuses biblical creationists of targeting children in schools and indoctrinating them.

Ms. Meredith accuses biblical creationists of targeting children in schools and indoctrinating them. We would have to ask just what schools she is speaking of—certainly not those in the U.K. or the U.S.! Not only does Answers in Genesis not suggest that creation science teaching be mandated in public schools, the laws would prevent it. Admission that controversy exists and encouraging children to think critically is not indoctrination. On the contrary, deceiving children by telling them no controversy exists and demanding they accept evolutionary ideas as axiomatic unquestioned facts is indoctrination. Answers in Genesis encourages schools to allow critical thinking and academic freedom in the open discussion of the scientific claims of evolutionists. And we encourage parents and churches to equip their children and all Christians to enable them to understand the claims of those who would indoctrinate them by demanding they deny and distrust God’s Word. 1

Ms. Meredith warns her readers not to let Ken Ham shape their view of the world, believing that those so influenced are deluded, are unable to think for themselves, and have abandoned reason. Sadly, she makes the same error many do—believing that by rejecting God’s Word they are free of bias. Yet evolutionists themselves have a pre-existing bias: they “must not allow a divine foot in the door.”2 That position is not one of “thinking for oneself” but a decision to reject authoritative information from the Creator God who made all things.

The pastor of one of the churches that hosted Ken Ham wrote a reply to the Belfast Telegraph condemning Ms. Meredith’s unfair caricature of Ken Ham. In it, he defends the good sense, intelligence, and integrity of his congregation and his community. Pastor Trevor Ramsey of Newtownbreda Baptist Church Belfast writes:

As the pastor of a large Belfast church, who was unashamedly willing to invite Ken Ham to address our intelligent, clear thinking, literate community, I simply ask: Might there be a possibility that the Creationist viewpoint is the correct one? People like Ham and right-thinking Christians are indeed dangerous - to the uncritical mass of people who blindly accept the evolutionist position as unquestioning “fact.”3

Creationists from Answers in Genesis are not exhorting Christians to rise up in a militant frenzy but to obey the biblical exhortation (1 Peter 3:15) to be able with a good attitude to explain the hope that we have. We trust the living Christ with our present lives and our eternal futures, and we base that trust on the Word of God which answers, among other things, how sin and death came to afflict humanity and why we need to be saved. That understanding comes from accepting what God says from the very first verse.