Fortieth Anniversary of Earth Day

A USA Today newspaper profile of the event includes the usual coverage of environmentalist events, attitudes toward the environment, and the like. But Earth Day was “also bringing controversy” this year, they report. Now, just who could find fault with such a benign, positive event as Earth Day?

Answers in Genesis, that’s who! Or, at least, that’s the implication of the USA Today article, which gave us two paragraphs:

Critics of Earth Day include Jason Lisle and Ken Ham of Answers in Genesis, a ministry of creationists. They say some events are a doorway to paganism and New Age mysticism.

“People are taking it to an unbiblical extreme,” says Lisle, a research scientist. “They’re worshiping the creation, not the creator,” he says, and using global warming as a “scare tactic” to get people to support climate-change legislation.

“They’re worshiping the creation, not the creator.”

The average reader’s perception, no doubt, is that creationists (or those of us at Answers in Genesis, at least) are dismissive of any “environmentalism” and don’t think we should care for the earth at all. On the contrary, we’ve argued that the true basis for environmental stewardship is believing that the earth is part of God’s creation—not a cosmic accident—and that God has commissioned us to be stewards of the earth (Genesis 1:28). As for global warming, we’ve pointed out that one’s view on the age of the earth has a lot to do with the validity of “climate change” claims. As for whether Earth Day opens the doorway to unbiblical views, we ask only this: in all the coverage of Earth Day, which is emphasized—or even worshipped: what was created or who created it?