Belfast columnist believes creationists are deluded people who have abandoned reason.
Belfast Telegraph columnist Fionola Meredith attended one of Ken Ham’s Answers in Genesis talks during his recent speaking tour in Northern Ireland and definitely saw red. Her half-page column in the August 15 issue of the paper consists of a massive military metaphor railing against—and misrepresenting—Ken’s message and Answers in Genesis’ position. She accuses Ken of delivering a “blood-red battle-cry” in “a rapid-fire hectoring machine-gun rattle which . . . gave listeners no time to think for themselves.” However, a reading of her column would suggest Ms. Meredith is the one sounding the clarion call-to-arms. She warns readers against being “dangerously complacent” by dismissing what she calls “Ham’s one-dimensional, apocalyptic vision as the rantings of a misguided man.”
Columnist Meredith is offended that Ken Ham and Answers in Genesis have an uncompromising view of Scripture and consider God’s Word true from the very first verse. She is confused, however, about the relationship between science and the Bible. Ms. Meredith thinks Answers in Genesis claims that the Bible is “provable by science.” Answers in Genesis maintains that what we see in God’s world confirms what we read in God’s Word. Confirming and proving are not synonymous.
Experimental science can provide data about processes observable in the present, but in order to draw conclusions concerning our origins—events of the unobservable untestable past—scientists must interpret data in light of their own worldviews. Evolutionary scientists believe that molecules-to-man evolution occurred, that all things came to be by random natural processes. Even though they cannot test or confirm those beliefs, they accept those beliefs as unarguable facts. Creation scientists accept the authority of the only Eyewitness present at the time of our origins and interpret facts in light of God’s truth, knowing that only those interpretations have any possibility of being true.
Ms. Meredith accuses biblical creationists of targeting children in schools and indoctrinating them. We would have to ask just what schools she is speaking of—certainly not those in the U.K. or the U.S.! Not only does Answers in Genesis not suggest that creation science teaching be mandated in public schools, the laws would prevent it. Admission that controversy exists and encouraging children to think critically is not indoctrination. On the contrary, deceiving children by telling them no controversy exists and demanding they accept evolutionary ideas as axiomatic unquestioned facts is indoctrination. Answers in Genesis encourages schools to allow critical thinking and academic freedom in the open discussion of the scientific claims of evolutionists. And we encourage parents and churches to equip their children and all Christians to enable them to understand the claims of those who would indoctrinate them by demanding they deny and distrust God’s Word. 9
Ms. Meredith warns her readers not to let Ken Ham shape their view of the world, believing that those so influenced are deluded, are unable to think for themselves, and have abandoned reason. Sadly, she makes the same error many do—believing that by rejecting God’s Word they are free of bias. Yet evolutionists themselves have a pre-existing bias: they “must not allow a divine foot in the door.”10 That position is not one of “thinking for oneself” but a decision to reject authoritative information from the Creator God who made all things.
The pastor of one of the churches that hosted Ken Ham wrote a reply to the Belfast Telegraphcondemning Ms. Meredith’s unfair caricature of Ken Ham. In it, he defends the good sense, intelligence, and integrity of his congregation and his community. Pastor Trevor Ramsey of Newtownbreda Baptist Church Belfast writes:
As the pastor of a large Belfast church, who was unashamedly willing to invite Ken Ham to address our intelligent, clear thinking, literate community, I simply ask: Might there be a possibility that the Creationist viewpoint is the correct one? People like Ham and right-thinking Christians are indeed dangerous - to the uncritical mass of people who blindly accept the evolutionist position as unquestioning “fact.”11
Creationists from Answers in Genesis are not exhorting Christians to rise up in a militant frenzy but to obey the biblical exhortation (1 Peter 3:15) to be able with a good attitude to explain the hope that we have. We trust the living Christ with our present lives and our eternal futures, and we base that trust on the Word of God which answers, among other things, how sin and death came to afflict humanity and why we need to be saved. That understanding comes from accepting what God says from the very first verse.
For more information:
Read Ken’s blog “You Compare” and watch the video presentation at www.metropolitan-tabernacle.org of one of his Northern Ireland messages, like the one Ms. Meredith heard. Judge for yourself. Do you hear a militant brutal battle-cry or a message calling people back to the loving God who created them and wants them to trust His Word and His Son Jesus Christ?
Also see Feedback: Evolutionary Call to Arms.
And Don’t Miss . . .
Outspoken atheist and physicist Lawrence Krauss recently wrote an essay about the Higgs boson (aka “the god particle”) for the July 9 Newsweek. While raging about the colloquial nickname, Krauss asserts we don’t need to believe in a God who can create everything from nothing so long as we have quantum physics. Krauss wrote, “Humans, with their remarkable tools and their remarkable brains, may have just taken a giant step towards replacing metaphysical speculation with empirically verifiable knowledge. The Higgs particle is now arguably more relevant than God.” Responding to Krauss, Oxford apologist John Lennox12 has written a thoughtful analysis published August 18 in The Times of London and republished on the Christian Post. In his essay, “Not the God of the Gaps, But the Whole Show,” Lennox makes clear that discovery of a scientific or natural explanation does not write God out of the picture—He’s the one that created the picture in the first place. God created all things—including the laws of physics. And if he chooses to sustain His creation through the physical laws He has created, that does not mean He does not exist or even that He is uninvolved in our lives, individually and collectively, spiritually and historically. Be sure to read Lennox’s analysis, which reminds us of the truly great physicists who honored the God whose creation they studied (though AiG disagrees with Lennox on some matters related to the book of Genesis). For more information, see News to Note, July 7, 2012, News to Note, August 6, 2011, News to Note, December 24, 2011, In Search of God, Beams Collide Today in Expensive Hadron Collider, Chapter 10: Does the Big Bang Fit with the Bible?, A Miniature Big Bang or More Hot Air?
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