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1. 1

   I wish to respectfully take issue with Trevor C Carter ( Letters, March 2014) who, in his legitimate attempt to discredit the theory of evolution and defend the gospel, takes, as the basis of his defence, the assertion that “the Bible clearly teaches death only came about because of man’s sin”.

   Yes, the apostle Paul unequivocally states that death entered the world through sin (Rom 5:12), but an honest reading of Genesis and the gospels presents some challenges to Mr Carter’s implied assumption that Paul’s reference equates to physical death.

   The existence of physical death before the Fall is inferred in God’s instruction to the man and woman to “increase in number” and “fill the earth” (Gen 1:28) (a catastrophic prospect if not for death’s intervention), and in his allocation of seed-bearing plants for their food (Gen 1:29) (a finite food source were it not for plants’ death at the point of consumption and re-production).

   Ken Ham, the creation scientist referred to by Mr Carter, attempts to resolve the food issue by differentiating between the “death” of plant life and death as experienced by blooded creatures.  Jesus Christ, however, the one by whom and for whom all things were created (Col 1:16), makes no such distinction.  In acknowledging the necessity of a seed to die in order to produce fruit, Jesus uses the same term for the death of a seed as he does for the death of a human being (Jn 12:24, cf Jn 11:14).
   There is also linguistic evidence for the existence of death in the world prior to the Fall. That there existed a term “to die”, which both God and the serpent knew would be understood by the man and the woman, presupposes an antecedent (cf Gen 2:17, 3:4).  If death did not already exist, God’s warning to Adam and Eve about the consequences of eating from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil would have been meaningless, and the serpent would have had nothing to refute so vehemently.

   This being the case, Mr. Carter can be reassured that the gospel is in no way undermined.  Adam did indeed usher in death through his disobedience;  a severing of that intimate relationship with God which he and his wife had freely enjoyed up to the that point – an excommunication which rendered them dead to God.  Christ’s death on the cross was the great act of reconciliation (2 Cor 5:19), bringing us back from death to life.  The resurrection was God’s final stamp of authority on a complete victory.

   Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on 01/22 at 09:33 AM

2. 2

   (Published in July 2014 ACCatalyst)

   Since Trevor C Carter (Catalyst March 2014) finds my letter published in September 2013 ‘confusing’, I feel compelled to state my position more clearly.

   I believe that those who argue that an acceptance of the likelihood of evolution is utterly incompatible with Biblical Christianity are mistaken. Furthermore, I believe that their insistence on this, based on a literal reading of the early chapters of Genesis, may be compared with the Roman Catholic Church’s denunciation of Galileo and its rejection of the heliocentric understanding of the solar system in the seventeenth century on the basis of a literal reading of the descriptions of the movement of the sun in the Psalms. And has the same potential to undermine our proclamation of the Gospel.

   Unlike him, I regard the debate about the debate as being an issue, because I see the conflict between science and Christianity as being an artificial construct created by those hostile to the Gospel. Thus I am alarmed when Christians uncritically submit to the science vs. religion paradigm, and seek to howl down the huge body of evidence supporting the Theory of Evolution, much of which has been accumulated by scientists who were also Christians.

   It has two evil effects. The first and most important is that it makes people less willing to consider the truth about the Lord Jesus and his death and resurrection which we proclaim, because they perceive themselves as being asked to throw reason out of the window and ascribe to myth and superstition. The second is that it makes many Christians less willing to accept scientific research on other matters, climate change being an obvious case in point.

   Yours sincerely,
   Gary Ireland

   Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on 01/23 at 02:20 AM

3. 3

   I can agree with Gary Ireland {July 2014 Catalyst}  that the battle is not between “Science” and Christianity; it is indeed a battle for Truth. We do need to define “Science”. The word of course originally meant “knowledge”, from Latin “scientia”, coming to mean in time the systematic collection and classification of knowledge. In practical terms what is now called “science” could be briefly divided into three categories. First “practical mechanics”, second “useful generalisations” and thirdly “philosophical speculation”.
   No one is going to argue about the “practical mechanics” bit; this is something we can verify for ourselves in everyday experience, and is where science gets its prestige, by inventing motorcars, T V, computers etc. The “useful generalisations” are often called “natural laws”, and can be expressed mathematically and again verified by experiment. The third category, “philosophical speculation”, is where we strike trouble. Philosophical speculation can be useful, at times, as an incentive for experiment and investigation, that may sometimes yield new “useful generalisations” or more sophisticated “practical mechanics”. Its dire weakness is that it is often elevated to the status of proven truth when it is, in fact, nothing of the sort.
   “Evolution”, so called, is very definitely in the realm of “philosophical speculation”. Far from having “a huge body of evidence” to support it, it has, in fact merely become a “paradigm” (useful word), an article of faith which must be defended by its devotees at all costs, often by mere slogan shouting and screams of abuse. All the so called “evidence” for evolution, when carefully (scientifically) examined, is in fact overwhelmingly against evolution. This is especially true in the case of molecular biology where Francis Collins ( mentioned by Gary in his Sept. 2013 letter) made his name. Francis Collins was head of the Human Genome project, which came in ahead of schedule and under budget, proving that F.C. was a good leader and administrator, but not necessarily that he was, or is, a good interpreter of evidence, let alone a good theologian.
   Collins, according to his partly autobiographical book “The Language of God” (Free Press, New York 2006), accepts the redemptive sacrifice of Christ, and that the Moral Law is God given and does not merely arise out of “Nature”. However, his theological position is that of “theistic evolution”, which he has called “BioLogos”. Like all theistic evolutionary scenarios this merely tacks some faith in Jesus onto a full-blooded endorsement of evolutionary orthodoxy, an atheistic humanist construct with ultimately one purpose- to do away with the idea of a transcendent Creator God.
   First Corinthians 3: 10-15 is very instructive in this context-“No other foundation can anyone lay than that which is laid, which is Jesus Christ”. On this one foundation we build, often, alas, with all kinds of rubbish (hay and straw). This will be “tested by fire”. The rubbish will be burned up and we will suffer loss. We ourselves will be saved, but only as through fire. So the convinced evolutionist will be saved, if he has indeed that only true foundation of Jesus Christ, but the evolutionary rubbish which has become so dear to him will be turned to ashes.
   It has been apparent to anyone but the most brain-washed evolutionist for many years that the complexity of living things, even the most simple, could NEVER, in how ever many billions of years, arrive by undirected chance. The revelation of the incredible layers of obviously DESIGNED complexity in DNA, revealed in recent years, has made the whole idea even more absurd. The clinching proof, which reveals the whole evolutionary argument as utter nonsense, is the revelation of genome decay. What we have is not the evolutionary scenario of simple things getting more complex as years go by, but an original PERFECT ,COMPLEX and RECENT Creation rapidly decaying. Biblically note Romans 8:21 and “bondage to decay” or “slavery to corruption”, a succinct definition of the Second Law of Thermodynamics. This problem has been around for a long time. First noted by J.B.S. Haldane in 1957, and labelled Haldane’s Dilemma, it has never been answered only swept under the carpet. It has later been elaborated by Muller(1964), Kimura (1968), Kondrashov(1995),  and other geneticists.
   For anyone interested in the problem, I suggest as a healthy dose of reality, a careful reading of Dr J.C. Sanford’s book Genetic Entropy (F M S Publications, Waterloo, New York, 3rd edition, 2008). WARNING: For those “true believers”, whose real religion is “Evolution”, this will probably bring on a furious rage. “When a mantra is mouthed often enough it takes on the appearance of unassailable truth.”
   R Pym, Queensland

   Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on 01/23 at 02:23 AM

4. 4

   Can I offer some thoughts on the ongoing debate about evolution as appears in recent editions of Catalyst that may help some people.  We believe God created the world ‘very good’ - which we usually equate with a ‘perfect’ world.  In Greek thought perfection is very much seen as a static state. A plant is ‘perfect’ when it is fully in bloom. A human is ‘perfect’ in their physical prime. Thus you can see the Greek obsession with those ‘perfect’ naked statues.  Meanwhile the Hebrew idea of perfection is not a static state at all, it is rather being the right thing at the right time.  In Hebrew thought a plant is ‘perfect’ at germination, growing, blooming, and dying - because that is what a plant is supposed to do. If the sunflower does not shrivel up and die, there is no future life.  An 88 year old woman can still be ‘perfect’ in Hebrew thought, even though she is wrinkled, because that is precisely what an 88 grandmother is supposed to be like! Her ‘perfection’ is more related to other things - being who she is supposed to be - than appearance.
   When you apply Greek ‘perfection’ you get twisted ideas. You get a world obsessed with image and plastic surgery and idolisation of youth. When you apply ‘Greek’ perfection to Eden, you get a garden where every plant is perpetually in bloom. A static place of artificial perfection that makes no sense. If Adam and Eve ate plants, there was ‘death’ that would seem to conflict with ‘perfection’.  But if you think ‘Hebrew perfection’ Eden becomes a dynamic place where all life cycles of plants and animals are perfectly consistent with a ‘very good’ world.  I’m not sure whether humans would have experienced a physical death, but it’s not inconceivable that they could and come straight to Heaven, having never experienced separation from God.  I don’t sweat the details, but understanding ‘perfection’ in it’s original Hebrew way is revolutionary for a whole lot of theology and life!

   Paul Clark
   Chief of Sinners
   Redcliffe Uniting, Queensland

   Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on 01/23 at 02:24 AM