My Father's World Series

Anchor Points

"My Father’s World"

Genesis 1:1-25

February 6, 2000

Anchor Point #2:

God has created all that is...

Introduction

¡§Inherit the Wind¡¨ ¡V A Cinematic Travesty

¡§I was postmodern, when postmodern wasn¡¦t cool!¡¨

Jerome Lawrence and Robert Lee were men ahead of their time! They wrote the script for the 1960 film ¡§Inherit the Wind¡¨, for which Spencer Tracy received an Academy Award nomination for best actor. So popular was the film that it was reprised in a made-for-TV movie in 1988 starring Kirk Douglas and Jason Robards. Based upon the 1925 Scopes Monkey trial regarding the teaching of evolution in Tennessee public schools, the cinematic version contains breathtaking historical revisionism. For writers Lawrence and Lee, the truth about the historical events mattered little; certainly not enough to get in the way of a good story. Toward end of the story, defense attorney Henry Drummond (film counterpart of Clarence Darrow, the real-life attorney) is left alone onstage in the courtroom with his reflections. He picks up a copy of Darwin¡¦s Origin of Species and a copy of the Bible, ¡§balancing them thoughtfully, as if his hands were scales. He half-smiles, half-shrugs¡¨, then jams the two books together into his briefcase. The intended symbolism is that the Bible and Darwinism can co-exist.

Central point: ¡§The Bible and Darwin can balance each other, if we allow (evolutionists) to do the balancing.¡¨ ¡V from Defeating Darwinism by Phillip Johnson

Darwinism vs. Christianity: What are the stakes?

3 Possibilities:

1. The ¡§Grape Nuts¡¨ Solution ¡V Theistic Evolution

A Convoluted Attempt at Synthesis

¡§I am still a creationist and now I am also an evolutionist!¡KEvolution is the science that studies how God created the species.¡¨ --posted on the Internet by a European college student

Problem is that it doesn¡¦t square with Scripture¡Xwe have to take a diminished view of Scripture in order to believe this. Nor can the committed Darwinist buy into this approach. Like GRAPE NUTS: No grapes, no nuts!

2. The ¡§98-Lb. Weakling God¡¨ Solution ¡V ¡§Different planes of truth¡¨

A Condescending Attempt at Appeasement

¡§(It is) false¡Kto think that the theory of evolution represents an irreconcilable conflict between religion and science¡KA great many religious leaders accept evolution on scientific grounds without relinquishing their belief in religious principles. As stated in a resolution by the Council of the National Academy of Sciences in 1981, however, ¡§Religion and science are separate and mutually exclusive realms of human thought whose presentation in the same context leads to misunderstanding of both scientific theory and religious belief.¡¨

--Frank Press, President of the National Academy of Sciences, in

Science and Creationism: A View from the National Academy of Sciences

¡§I take it as now self-evident, requiring no further special discussion, that evolution and true religion are compatible.¡¨ --George Gaylord Simpson

¡§Stephen Jay Gould condescendingly offers to allow religious people to express their

subjective opinions about morals, provided they don¡¦t interfere with the authority of scientists to determine the ¡¥facts¡¦¡Xone of the facts being that God is merely a comforting myth.¡¨

-- Phillip Johnson, in The Church of Darwin, published in Wall Street Journal, 8/16/99

This is the ¡§Inherit the Wind¡¨ approach: you can take the Bible together with Darwinism, as long as we all understand that the Bible is just myth as opposed to fact. You can talk about God if you like, says Darwinist, so long as you don¡¦t assign Him any meaningful function¡Xa 98-lb. weakling God is acceptable! There may be no contradiction between some forms of religion and Darwinism¡Xbut that religion is BOGUS religion!

3. The ¡§To the Death¡¨ Solution ¡V Winner takes All!

Two Mutually-Exclusive Approaches

¡§The diversity of life on earth is the outcome of evolution: an unsupervised,

impersonal, unpredictable and natural process of temporal descent with genetic modification that is affected by natural selection, chance, historical contingencies and changing environments.¡¨

--1995 Position Statement of the American National Association of Biology Teachers

¡§Man is the result of a purposeless and natural process that did not have him in mind.¡¨

-- George Gaylord Simpson

¡§In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.¡¨

-- Genesis 1:1

This is what is at stake; nothing less. The entire system of Christianity collapses if Darwinism is true. The entire Darwinist apparatus is bogus if ¡§in the beginning, God created.¡¨ No ground can be given by either side on the basic question of origins; there is truly a mutual exclusivity to the 2 positions!

The Darwinist Approach (Underlies both Modernism and Post-Modernism)

1. Darwinism involves more of a philosophical commitment than an evidential commitment!

¡§Oops, your prejudice is showing!¡¨

Writing that scientists must stick to philosophical materialism regardless of the evidence, one writer justifies this on the grounds that ¡§we cannot allow a Divine Foot in the door.¡¨

-- Richard Lewontin

Darwin ¡§made it possible to be an intellectually fulfilled atheist.¡¨