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Feedback archive → Feedback 2002, 2008 A very tired Christian16 December 2002; reposted and updated 4 October 2008 This letter is printed first in its entirety. The letter is printed again, indented with point-by-point responses by Dr Don Batten, interspersed as per normal e-mail fashion. Ellipses (…) at the end of one of the paragraphs signal that a mid-sentence comment follows, not an omission. (This is a follow-up to previous correspondence).
That’s it in a nutshell. New information requires intelligence and evolution is an intelligence-free process (that’s the whole point of it: it’s 100% materialistic where intelligence itself arose from matter).
I guess we all get tired of it at times, but if the evolutionary worldview is a major (the major?) thing that sets itself against God, then as a servant of the Most High it is my duty, whether I am weary of it or not, to oppose it. As the Apostle Paul said, ‘We are destroying speculations and every lofty thing raised up against the knowledge of God…’ (2 Corinthians 10:5)
I do too. I spent 17 years doing full-time research. But I would always say ‘I love God and I love science’, because God comes before everything else. And what God says takes precedence over anything that any man says, no matter how many degrees in theology or science the person has.
Yes, and in the mean time many people will have embarked on a destructive life of atheism (in practice if not always in theory) because they thought they could not trust the Bible. We have many testimonies of people who have done just that because of the evolutionary lie, but been later rescued through the creation-Gospel message. See, for example these testimonies:
By ‘it’ I take it to mean the evolutionary worldview—that everything made itself over billions of years; God has absolutely nothing to do with it; in fact even the idea of ‘god’ evolved. But this cannot be true because it contradicts the clear teaching of the Bible, which is the Word of God. The atheist William Provine, biology professor at Cornell, said, ‘…belief in modern evolution makes atheists of people. One can have a religious view that is compatible with evolution only if the religious view is indistinguishable from atheism.’ That’s why atheists are at the forefront of every effort to force the unfettered indoctrination of evolution in American schools. That’s why evolution is in the Humanist (i.e. atheist) Manifesto. See the Q&A section on Religion (humanism, etc.).
Christians should be concerned about poverty, injustice, etc. But on what basis are we concerned? If I believe that I am just an evolved animal, re-arranged pond-scum, a chance accident from the ‘big bang’ (this is the evolutionary doctrine), then where do concepts of justice come from? Why should a chance assemblage of chemicals be concerned about justice? If someone dies of hunger, what does it matter? It is only as we submit ourselves to our Creator and what He has told us, that we have any firm basis for a concern for issues of social justice. See also:
It is no accident that it is has been Bible-believing Christians who have been at the vanguard of efforts to abolish the slave trade, to stop child exploitation in factories, to help the sick, to look after orphans and widows. It is also no accident that as Biblical Christianity has declined in the USA, Australia, Canada, the U.K., etc., (in parallel with evolutionary indoctrination in schools) drug abuse, violent crime, child abuse, theft, divorce, suicide, etc., have risen dramatically. For example, in my country, Australia, reported property crime has risen 17-fold since the 1950s (evolution started to be taught seriously in schools in the 1960s). The best thing you can do to overcome the social problems you are concerned about is to introduce people to the Lord Jesus Christ and the salvation available through Him. When a person comes to faith in Christ, the Holy Spirit writes the Law of God on the ‘heart’ of that person such that they are ‘a new creation’ (2 Corinthians 5:17); drugs and crime will no longer be options. See also:
The ‘Great Awakening’ in the USA brought massive social change for good—the good legacy of this is still being felt today. If people get right with God, everything else tends to get fixed up too. Putting someone into a drug rehabilitation centre will not do much for them unless they have their need for drugs removed. Poverty is a consequence of sin (lack of the rule of law and property rights, greed, exploitation, abuse of alcohol / drugs, gambling, etc.). If you are going to overcome poverty, you have to do something about sin. That’s one reason that the creation/evolution issue is fundamentally important—it respectively provides or removes the basis for the Gospel, which deals with the sin problem. Also, if we don’t believe Jesus about Creation and the Flood, why should we believe Him about alleviating poverty (cf. John 3:12)?
It is not a question of either / or. This is a false dichotomy. Jesus taught and he did good deeds. The Gospels are full of Jesus’ teaching. I don’t know how anyone could get the impression that he ‘spent very little time preaching about theology’. Jesus frequently appealed to the authority of Scripture to back up His serving—including many of the parts that skeptics most love to mock. Even his miraculous deeds were used as points for teaching. Jesus is the one who said, ‘I am the way, the truth, and the life, no one comes to the Father but by me.’ (John 14:6). He also said, ‘The truth shall set you free’ (John 8:32). Truth issues are of vital interest to our Righteous Creator-God.
A graduate student in molecular biology whom I met in Melbourne (studying for a PhD) told me how he was mystified as to how his colleagues could be evolutionists when they were studying such incredible evidence for divine design! He found their spiritual blindness hard to understand, so illogical. I agreed with him. I know quite a bit about cellular biology and I say that anyone who studies this and thinks that evolution has legs needs to take off their evolutionary blinkers and open their eyes! Some years ago I engaged some Jehovah’s Witnesses in a debate (over a number of weeks). They brought out their big guns. Initially I fell under a severe sense of oppression. What they were saying in their literature seemed reasonable, on the surface. I could not get to sleep it troubled me so much. Doubts flooded over me. Then I prayed about it and I picked up my Bible and started checking what they were saying, in context. Suddenly the oppression lifted because in the light of God’s inspired word, their errors were exposed. From then on, I had no problem with their attempts to unsettle me. In the end they refused to speak to me because they had no answer to the Word of God, with its clear teaching on the deity of Christ. Matt, I sense that you are under a similar oppression. That oppression does not come from ‘facts’; it comes from Satan. When Satan tempted Eve it was to doubt what God had said (Genesis 3:1). You need to trust the Word of God. It is not a matter of comparing what we say about the science with what the evolutionist says and giving a tick to the winner. It is a matter of where you put your trust: in the reasoning of fallen man or God. When the Psalmist felt overwhelmed by the oppression of the enemies of God, he found refuge in the Word of God. Read the Psalms and see what I mean. Just a few other thoughts:
I pray that you will come out from this oppression you feel and get involved in helping people to see that they cannot logically live life as if God does not exist (that is what evolution is all about). And that you will see people get right with God and become agents of light and good in society. Jesus compared his followers to a light on a hill (Matthew 5:14-16). I pray that you might be one of those. Yours sincerely, Don Batten |