My husband purchased Refuting Evolution quite some time ago. Sadly it has been sitting unread, collecting dust on our bookshelf. However, my 13 year old son picked it up the other day and is now reading it. I have seen some of your comments on Bill’s site and I have also just noticed the book’s author – so I’ve recently made the connection.

My son is interested in purchasing One Small Speck to Man. In your opinion is it worth getting the latest version? Both are on special at CMI right now. The new one is $49, the older version is $34. Are you able to advise on this?

Annette Nestor

Although this thread is fairly old now, the debate rages still, so I thought I’d add something from a rather perplexed view of the debate.

I think it is high time that we ‘rendered unto science that which belongs to science and render unto God that which belongs to God’

In all the countless words of debate, noone has clearly explained why the two need to be in conflict. So let’s take a few theories and very basically apply the above principle.

The ‘Big Bang’ (originally a derogatory term but we’ll stick with it). “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth”. In the beginning, there was a rapid expansion from nothing into the matter & energy that comprises the universe. Can anyone explain the contradiction here?

As to science, the BB theory (or hypothesis) when originally proposed, predicted a number of things, such as the Cosmic Background Radiation. The CBR was subsequently discovered, quite by accident, by radio-astronomers looking for the source of static in their receivers, not (as far as I can tell) by someone trying to find facts to fit an atheistic worldview.

Theory of Evolution. Forget about Darwin & Darwinism or Social Darwinism or anything else starting with Darwin. It’s a furphy. The T of E is simply about changes in living things over time. How long a time? The Bible says 6 days. Observations such as the fossil record clearly say otherwise. So what to do. Here are 3 possibilities:

The word used for day is Yom. If we accept that Yom is used in several contexts not necessarily meaning 24 hours, the days of creation could be any period of time at all. Easy.

Or they could be days of decree rather than the days of the process, given that when God says something will be done, it is surely as good as done.

Or the 144 hours could be from a timeframe not of this earth, as per Gerald Schroeder’s theory in “The Science of God”.

Interesting sideline here: Comment by Roger Birch “a naturalistic ‘comic book’ written by someone called Einstein showed that time is relative, a concept even many atheists find very difficult to comprehend.” Well they find God difficult to comprehend too!! So what. Fact is that time is relative depending on speed & gravity. The satelites controlling the Global Positioning System have to take this into account, otherwise our GPS receivers positions would wander by kilometers every day.

(What an arrogant insult to one of the finest minds of all time.)

As to the question of ‘random’ evolution, I like
Dean Ransevycz’s observation that “I am intrigued by the number of times the theistic side uses the word “random” to describe natural processes — my understanding is that natural processes are anything but random & statisically they are actually quite deterministic!”

Indeed. Throw a dice often enough & you are likely to get to an even number of ones, twos, threes, fours etc. A desired outcome from random events. What looks random to us might be quite orderly and logical to a mind such as God’s.

Summing up (I’m getting hungry), if science gives us theories that stand the test of time, explain countless observations and/or survive numerous experiments, but don’t at first appear to be in tune with a your (fallible) interpretation of the Bible, consider that your interpretation might be at fault. That seems to me to be at least as likely as thousands of scientists all being wrong.

David Williams

Thanks for the fuller Huxley remarks. I’ve not read Vitz’s book, but would sure like to. I’d heard him being interviewed about it, but had forgotten the title. On another note, I’ll second your endorsement of Phillip Johnson’s work–a delightful combination of subtle humor and very keen analysis. I once heard him lecture in person, back in the mid-’90′s, discussing his then-newly-released “Reason In the Balance.” I recognized immediately that his thinking represented a serious critique of naturalism and evolution and was likely to spawn an intellectual revolution that the secular university world would be unable to ignore. At any rate, he was as delightful and self-depracatingly humble in person as in print.
Lamar Boll, Bolivar, NY

Yes you are quite right in all that you say. Yes, Johnson’s book (1988) is terrific, and so too is the Vitz volume on similar themes (Faith of the Fatherless, 2000). I have reviewed the latter volume here: www.billmuehlenberg.com/2002/03/16/a-review-of-faith-of-the-fatherless-by-paul-vitz/

And yes, the Huxley quote is most telling. Here is a fuller version of his thoughts: “I had motives for not wanting the world to have meaning; consequently I assumed that it had none, and was able without any difficulty to find satisfying reasons for this assumption. . . . For myself, as, no doubt, for most of my contemporaries, the philosophy of meaningless was essentially an instrument of liberation. The liberation we desired was simultaneously liberation from a certain political and economic system and liberation from a certain system of morality. We objected to the morality because it interfered with our sexual freedom; we objected to the political and economic system because it was unjust. The supporters of these systems claimed that in some way they embodied the meaning (a Christian meaning, they insisted) of the world. There was one admirably simple method of confuting these people and at the same time justifying ourselves in our political and erotical revolt: we could deny that the world had any meaning whatsoever.”

Bill Muehlenberg, CultureWatch

As a brief postscript to the point about psychological motivations for unbelief, and, in particular, in the area of evolution, Sir Julian Huxley might serve as a specific example. He was once asked in a TV intewrview in the 1950′s why “The Origin of Species” met with the success that it did upon its publication. His replied as follows: ‘I suppose that the reason we leapt at ‘The Origin’ is that the idea of God interfered with our sexual mores.’ So the reality of this as a factor to be considered is not to be lightly dismissed as merely theoretical or argumentative fodder.

I do not mean to suggest that this is an adequate explanation, by any means, of all cases of skepticism. Some people have legitimate intellectual questions and struggles, but I do think it is naive to suppose that the realm of the intellect (yes, even the intellect of the scientist and the intellectual!) operates antiseptically in a vaccuum, completely divorced from existential situations and concerns. Influences can be very subtle.

(The comment from Huxley was as reported in the midst of a sermon by the late Dr. D. James Kennedy, former pastor of Coral Ridge Presbyterian Church, Fort Lauderdale, FL, on cassette tape in the series “Something From Nothing” which I have in my personal library. The series is very old, but the sermons and speeches may still be available from the Coral Ridge Min. website. Kennedy stated that he personally watched the interview on TV and was astounded by Huxley’s candor. The quote may not be quite verbatim, but is very close. It’s been awhile since I listened to the tapes.)

Lamar Boll, Bolivar, NY

I know your blog was about science and creation, so, naturally, your list of books was dealing with those areas. In the broader field of apologetics, however, many of your readers may be interested in the the British historian Paul Johnson’s book “Intellectuals.” Perhaps you have heard of it or read it? As books go, it is fairly old (possibly pub. back in the late ’80′s or the ’90′s), but still worth the read. It’s a series of thumbnail biographical sketches of many of history’s most famous skeptics (e.g. Nietzsche, Sartre, Russell, etc.) that demonstrates the immorality and incoherence of their personal lives. I do not actually own it myself, although I’ve read several chapters on specific people and would like to purchase a copy. For me, its relevance to some of these other discussions lies in the fact that it provides a counterpoint to the well-worn skeptic’s charge that belief in God is an artifact of psychological need (a la Freud) and raises the possibility (perhaps in many cases, the actuality) of other kinds of psychological needs that would motivate disbelief or unbelief in God. In particular, our buddy Steve Angelino might profit by asking himself some of those kinds of questions and broadening his education along these lines. I don’t know that it was necessarily Johnson’s purpose in writing the book to raise the issue of psychological reasons for unbelief, but he was at any rate questioning the moral right of many of history’s skeptical intellectuals and people who were instrumental in molding modern Western culture to give advice to mankind. Dr. Paul Vitz of New York University has done some fascinating studies in the area of the psychology of unbelief. Rom. 1, of course, has some pertinent things to say in that regard as well.
Lamar Boll, Bolivar, NY

Hey I’m with you in everything you said!

Bill Muehlenberg, CultureWatch

It does seem to me in looking at the whole subject of ‘creation-evolution’, or (more broadly) ‘Bible-science’, or (more broadly still) ‘religion-science’ debate or dialogue (I hope it’s a dialogue, I fear it’s often a debate), that a few general statements can be made, at least these are some of my large impressions:

1. While uninformed and uneducated people have misinterpreted and (at times) abused the Bible due to faulty hermeneutics, and misinterpreted and abused science due to faulty understanding of it, it is also true that this fact has been used by many practicing scientists (who themselves are often ignorant of Biblical studies, theology, and the philosophy of science) to claim an exclusive sovereignty of their domain over the field of origins, thus barring theologians and philosophers from participation in the discussion in an a priori fashion. I find comments from practicing scientists about the naivete or arrogance of theologians and philosophers and their supposed irrelevance to the discussion to be laughingly simplistic or at times arrogant in their own right. Both sides have at times made embarrassing mistakes.

2. Origins issues are incredibly complex, as you stated, and require a carefully reasoned interdisciplinary approach. Anyone who thinks that ‘science’ by itself can resolve the issues hasn’t done their homework. In reality, many of the large questions, while being ones in which science has an interest and to which it can make relevant contributions, are in their deepest nature philosophical, metaphysical or ‘religious’ (depending on how broadly that term is defined). In the end, it’s impossible to answer these questions without the use of faith, which raises these siginificant questions: a.) What is the nature and ground of faith?, b.) How do we test faith? What are the proper modes or methods for testing truth claims (verification), c.) What are standards of ‘proof’ are required for one’s faith commitments to be considered rational? What is applicable and attainable?

3. While the creation scientists have at times made mistakes in the way they have presented their position and argued their case, this is not in itself evidence that their position is false. All sides have been guilty of their share of errors, but it seems to me the creation scientists have often been unfairly singled out for such criticism.

I believe in principle that it’s possible to relate religion and science (and, more narrowly, the Bible and science) in a meaningful, non-contradictory fashion, though I have yet to find a thoroughly satisfactory model for doing so that doesn’t have nagging questions and ragged edges.

Lamar Boll, Bolivar, NY

In series called “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Bible”, John Walton gave a talk titled “Why Didn’t God call light, light?” The following site provides a paraphrase of his talk, which is very thought provoking.

www.minorthoughts.com/on-creation/

What do you think, Steve?

Colossians 1:17 and Hebrews 1:3 mention that God holds the universe together, keeping it in existence. Perhaps we Christians do not think enough about God’s continuing position over the cosmos.

Bill Roundy, USA

Anne Morrow