Phill Sacre

Category: Christian

Anything I write about the Christian faith.

  • Creation / Evolution 3: Why evolution?

    This is the third instalment of my mini-series, “Creation, Evolution and Evangelicalism”. In this post, I intend to explain some of the evidence for us believing in evolution.

    Now, this will probably be the second most contentious post in the series (the most contentious one being the theological post I intend to follow up with): I appreciate that many Creationists see the evidence I will present differently. After I posted up the first part of this series, someone on Twitter sent me a link to a book called “Should Christians Embrace Evolution?”, which is a response to the Denis Alexander book I mentioned I was reading. If you want a Creationist response to the arguments I have presented thus far, and here, I suggest reading that book. (Note that I haven’t read it as yet, I am planning to, but from the reviews I’ve read it seems that is a fair assessment.)

    Part of the problem with scientific data is that I don’t have the expertise needed to evaluate it fairly. If on the one hand many scientists are saying “evolution is true because…” and on the other hand Creationists are saying “evolution is not true because…”, arguing over the science, because I don’t have the knowledge of biology I can’t determine which are necessarily true. All I can do is present some of the arguments, as explained by Denis Alexander, and claim this is the current ‘scientific consensus’.

    Why look at the evidence?

    Now I’m sure some people may be wondering why do we need to even look at the evidence for evolution? Surely the most important thing is the Bible: if the Bible says that we were created in six literal days, several thousand years ago, surely that’s enough for us! Why would we even need to look at the evidence?

    Well, I believe it’s right to look at the evidence for evolution for a number of reasons:

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  • Creation / Evolution 2: The problems with Creationism

    This is the second part of my series “Creation, Evolution, and Evangelicalism“. To be honest, it’s not the most snappy title I’ve ever come up with, but it will do for now.

    In this post I will be exploring the reasons I believe that Creationism is wrong. Creationism is the belief that Genesis 1-2 describe literal events, i.e. that the world was created in six literal 24-hour periods. You can find out more information about it than you’d probably ever want to know on the Answers in Genesis website. Now, I should point out before we start that the Answers in Genesis beliefs were my own up until relatively recently (well, 2003, which I will admit is not all that recent.) In my teenage years I used to get magazines which set out the standard Creationist arguments about flood geology and the like. I probably still have some of the magazines at my parents’ house, I should look them out at Christmas!

    Anyway, my contention is that there are problems with Creationism which aren’t just to do with believing in evolution per se. Let me try and explain a few objections which I have. Note that I’m not arguing here for evolution, I’m just arguing against a literal 6-day Creationism.

    What is a ‘Plain Understanding’ of the text?

    If you read through the Answers in Genesis section on the Bible, you will often find that they appeal to a straight or plain reading of the text. In general, if you believe that the ‘day’ of Genesis 1 is not a 24-hour, literal day then you are being influenced by external factors and not accepting the text as it is speaking to you.

    Now I think this is a wrong way of looking at it for several reasons:

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  • Creation / Evolution 1: Why it matters

    This is the first part on my mini-series Creation, Evolution and Evangelicalism.

    I thought I’d start off by answering the question, “Why does it matter?” Why should we bother discussing issues of evolution – is there any difference in whether you believe in a literal 6-day creation or evolution? Well, in some ways I think the answer is “no”, in that – I don’t think it’s a salvation issue. On the other hand, I do believe it is a huge apologetic issue.

    If people’s perception of Christianity is that it is at odds with science – that’s going to work as a huge barrier to many people from entering into the faith. My science / faith view is that the book of God’s word and the book of God’s works are never in conflict: God created or wrote both the Bible and nature. This is how science originally started – the early ‘natural philosophers’ believed that by doing experiments and finding out how the world worked, they were finding out about the mind of God, so to speak: a Christian worldview underpins the modern scientific endeavour.

    So, I believe primarily the issue with creation and evolution is one of evangelism: it is not our job to make the gospel more offensive. If the Bible is not in conflict with science, we shouldn’t teach that it is. I could be overstating the case here, but it is my belief that people only hear “science has disproved religion” in the media so often because the creationist movement has set it up that way.

    Of course, it’s not just a matter of apologetics, it’s a matter of truth. Perhaps I should have put this first, but still! 6-day creationism and evolution cannot both be true. If we’re getting the teaching of the Bible’s creation narratives a bit wrong, then it’s actually our duty as Christians to fix that and get it right.

    So I hope this lays out why I believe it’s an important debate to have, and why it matters what we believe. In my next post (a teaser? On this blog? Surely not!) I will examine the reasons why I believe 6-day creationism to be false. Stay tuned. (Or, subscribe to this blog. Or, check back soon. Staying ‘tuned’ to a blog probably isn’t really a good metaphor.)

  • Creation, Evolution, and Evangelicalism

    If you’re a long-time reader of this blog, you will know that I don’t shy away from the Big Questions: what I had for tea last night (pasta and chicken), what I think of the latest Coldplay album (at the time of writing Mylo Xyloto – I’m not a fan of it at the moment…), and the colour of the jumper I’m wearing (blue. No, gree – aaaaaaaahhhhh!!!! *ahem* apologies for the Monty Python reference).

    However, I thought I’d break the mould this time by writing about creation and evolution: a subject I’ve talked about before on this blog several times. In fact, I have changed my mind since I started writing this blog – when I started this blog back in 2003 I was a 6-day creationist; however after reading a book called “Rebuilding the Matrix” by Denis Alexander I became convinced in the truth of evolution (unfortunately the link in that post to the Crossring forum post doesn’t work anymore as the forums have disappeared into the ether, but still).

    In fact, so great an effect did “Rebuilding the Matrix” have on me that I mentioned it in fellowship group a couple of weeks ago – we each had to talk about a book that changed our lives, and I chose that one. And it was that meeting which has spurred me to thinking about creation again: I had previously thought that evolution was widely accepted in evangelical circles, but it seems that this isn’t always the case. I’m not sure how representative the group of people I was with actually were, but there seemed to be a number of questions to do with the theological significance of evolution: can we trust in the Bible still, if evolution is true?

    Anyway, Denis Alexander has written another work more recently entitled “Creation or Evolution: Do we have to choose?“. I’m half way through reading it at the moment, but he has made some very interesting points already which I’d like to come to in my next post.

  • The Dawkins/Lane Craig non-debate

    Richard Dawkins is stirring things up again. (Surely not! – sorry, I’d better not be sarcastic). In an article on The Guardian ‘Comment is Free’ section, he explains why he isn’t going to debate William Lane Craig. In case you don’t want to read the article, what Prof. Dawkins’ comments come down to is that William Lane Craig defends the God who commanded horrific genocide in the Old Testament. So, in the article, Dawkins quotes Deuteronomy 20 and says: “You might say that such a call to genocide could never have come from a good and loving God. Any decent bishop, priest, vicar or rabbi would agree.”

    Now, I will leave aside Richard’s ‘arguments’ in the article itself (he doesn’t really make any, but still.) The whole thrust of the argument is basically: genocide is bad, I cannot debate with anyone who defends it. (I’d be interested to see what other people Dawkins has debated think about the Old Testament… William Lane Craig is by no means on his own with the view he holds).

    However, in the quote I mentioned above, Dawkins does touch on one thing which I feel hasn’t really been explored, namely: “such a call to genocide could never have come from a good and loving God.” Now, this is an interesting one. How does Dawkins know that genocide is good or bad? Is he drawing on Biblical evidence? If so, what he has ‘proved’ is that the Bible is internally inconsistent.

    However, I don’t think that’s what he’s saying. What he seems to think is that the God of the Bible is actually immoral. What I’d love to find out is, on what basis does Dawkins say that God is immoral? Or, to put it more specifically, on what basis does he say that genocide is immoral? Now, don’t get me wrong here, I’m not saying anything about the morality of genocide – I’m not questioning whether it’s OK! I’m just saying, how can Dawkins, as an atheist, claim that something is immoral? Or at least objectively immoral?

    As William Lane Craig often says, 1. Without God, objective morals do not exist; 2. Objective morals do exist; 3. Therefore, God exists. What Dawkins seems to be doing in the article is making an appeal to objective morals. If he is, then I believe he is undermining his own position.

    I’d love to hear him actually answer this issue properly, or at least be more precise in his language, but I fear that is simply a pipe dream.

  • What I’m studying

    I said a while back that I’d post up a little bit about what I’m studying. It might be useful for anyone who’s considering studying at Oak Hill, or it might just be interesting if you’re wondering what an ordinand (i.e., someone studying Theological and Pastoral Studies) actually does!

    Here’s a rough guide to the courses we’re doing:

    • New Testament Greek. Every TPS student at Oak Hill studies Greek, at least, they do if they come in in the first year. I don’t think you have to do it the whole time, but you do at least have to do it some of the time. I’m really enjoying it so far – although I don’t think I’m a natural languages person, I feel like I’m beginning to gradually get the hang of NT Greek after a few weeks. It’s hard work, but I think Greek isn’t too bad in that you get a much quicker payoff than with Hebrew!
    • Cultural Exegesis. This is a really interesting module: what is culture? How do we understand what’s going on – and, more importantly, how do we interpret it from a Christian perspective? Of all the modules we’re doing this year, this is probably the one I’m finding most interesting. We have to write an essay for this on a cultural artefact, which is pretty much licence to write an essay on virtually anything in the modern world: as long as it is the product of culture in some respects, you can analyse it. I’ve been thinking about writing an essay on smartphones, or something a bit more specific (i.e. smartphones and relationships).
    • Pastoral Leadership. This is about the practicalities of actually leading a church. I’m finding this another very interesting course, partly because I’ve not done anything like that before! We had a seminar this week on how pastoring works in different sized churches, which was fascinating.
    • Biblical Theology. This is a course which is trying to put the Bible into its proper theological perspective – how it relates to systematic theology, how we need to see the Bible as a coherent whole. Similar to some studying I’ve done with the Moore Course before, but worthwhile nonetheless!
    • Creation and the Doctrine of Humanity. I must admit, I found this module a bit hard to grasp to start with, but as of today it has really started to click. I can see the relevance that it has to us, and I’m looking forward to doing the rest of the course.
    • The Word of God. This is a module where various lecturers from different areas tell us about their particular specialities regarding the Word of God. We started with Mike Ovey giving a sort of Bible overview, and we’ve spent the last couple of weeks with someone else looking at the Old Testament – specifically, about archaeological evidence and various criticisms of it such as the Documentary Hypothesis.

    Also, all students are doing a course on “Theological Reflection”, but I will talk about that some other time.

    So… that’s a whistlestop tour of where I’m at in terms of my course! Let me know if you’d like me to go into anything further and I’ll do my best to explain some of it. Explaining things I think would definitely help me to get my head around the material at least!