Answers in Genesis and the “Spreading of Ignorance”

Leicester is home to the European headquarters of the sister ministry of Answers in Genesis-US, a fact that presumably irritates evolutionist Simon Perry. “Indoctrinate your children with [Answers in Genesis-UK] teaching materials and you’ll be able to eliminate vast swathes of knowledge in geology, biology, astronomy, physics, and chemistry,” he writes.

Sometimes what appears to be “bad design” is later discovered to have a rationale we couldn’t grasp originally.

As is usually the case in anti-creation screeds, Perry’s piece compiles a series of half-truths about creationists while dogmatically accepting the old-earth, evolutionary view as scientifically “proven.” For example, Perry brings up a claim we feel we have answered thousands of times (which, considering all our varied resources, is probably quite literally true!):

It’s equally easy to disprove creationism; the favoured idea of Answers in Genesis that we were all made by a perfect, benevolent, omnipotent, and intelligent god in our present form about 6,000 years ago.

To disprove this idea, all you need to do is to find one feature of an animal—yes, just one, that, if designed, could only have been designed by a complete idiot. Here we have thousands of examples.

Perry’s point, and his examples, miss two very obvious and plain facts: first, that the sin-caused Curse in Genesis 3 corrupted the originally perfect creation (introducing disease, death, and more), and, second, that sometimes what appears to be “bad design” is later discovered to have a rationale we couldn’t grasp originally.

He also claims that evolution would be disproved if we were to “find one fossil—yes, just one, that is clearly out of sequence with evolution.” This challenge misses several points. First, creationists, too, have several explanations for why the worldwide Flood would have resulted in order inside the fossil record—order that evolutionists interpret quite differently. Second, Perry ignores (or is unaware of) the fact that the “sequence” of evolution is largely shaped by paleontological interpretations of fossils, while genetic and paleontological studies often disagree over the exact timeline of evolution. Third, the many “living fossils” are perfect examples of fossils found out of sequence (e.g., the Coelacanth).

Further, the author laments that without an understanding (read: acceptance) of evolution, our “knowledge” of old-earth physics and geology as well as big bang theory is “undermined.” Of course, “understanding” and agreeing with something are two entirely different concepts! As for our presuppositional approach to epistemology and apologetics—taking God’s Word as our starting point—Perry claims evolutionists have no such worldview, writing that “[the] falsity [of Genesis] wasn’t Darwin’s starting point for developing [evolutionary] theory.” To the contrary, we would argue that Darwin’s abandonment of God and his society’s general abandonment of a literal Genesis (even before Darwin) paved the way for his views on origins.