Creationists accused of Nazism by fellow Christian

One of the leading Christian radio stations in the UK is Premier Radio. In May, I was invited to take part in a discussion program, which was broadcast on Saturday, May 12, 2007. The program is called Unbelievable and is hosted by Justin Brierley.1 Taking part was a “skeptical Christian” named John Thomas—it turned out that he was skeptical about evolution, but had not fully taken the plunge to become creationist. A theistic evolutionist named Michael Weekes also took part.

Most of the debate was fairly straightforward. The host did a good job of remaining neutral and allowing the speakers time to present their cases. Weekes’ tortuous and illogical theology was exposed at every turn, as much by Thomas as by me. Two unfortunate incidents rather soured the event, however.

The whole experience begs the question as to why theistic evolutionists feel that they can describe their fellow Christians by such insulting language.

As the recording closed, Brierley allowed Weekes to have the last word. He used this opportunity to call for the removal of creationist theology from churches. He said, “If we want to win our society for Christ, then we’ve got to get rid of the Nazi idea of creationism.” My objection in the studio was very loud, but does not come across so loud in the editing. Several emailers to the program also voiced their objection to the Nazi comment, as well as to the weakness of Weekes’ theology.

Weekes insisted that the sin referred to in Genesis can only be spiritual and that it is important to separate the spiritual from the secular. This erroneous idea is based not on biblical teaching, but on the ideas of Thomas Aquinas.2 Weekes’ failure to follow even theistic evolutionary theologians like John Stott, who believes in a literal Adam, meant that his view of what Jesus’ death and resurrection were for was very insubstantial.

This leads to the point that not only is the theology of theistic evolutionists lacking, their science is also lacking. One question that I asked Weekes was edited out of the broadcast. At the end of the third segment, I concluded my remarks by asking Weekes to give an example of a mutation which causes a spontaneous increase in genetic information. As the music for the adverts began, he complained that he was not qualified to answer the question, in view of the fact that he is an engineer not a biologist. He said the question was unfair. In the interests of harmony, I gave permission for the question to be removed but would have liked it put back in after the concluding “Nazi” jibe.

The whole experience begs the question as to why theistic evolutionists feel that they can describe their fellow Christians by such insulting language. Weekes’ theology was clearly lacking, as was his knowledge of science relevant to the issue. Yet despite these two obvious shortcomings, he felt justified in referring to a fellow believer as a “Nazi” and his ideas as “nuts.” I’ll trust the listeners to judge for themselves who is most believable.