Three Stumbles

The debate over Darwinism is frequently lost by persons taking an opposing view right at the outset because of some fundamental mistakes in perception about the terms of the debate. Philip Johnson has identified three critical errors we must learn to avoid.

1. We're only arguing about length of time. Emphatically, no. While it is true that there is a debate within the Christian community regarding old versus young earth creationism, to characterize the difficulty with evolution as merely a matter of the age of the earth is highly misleading. Instead, the concept of Darwinism seeks to do away with God altogether. Witness this 1995 statement by the National Association of Biology Teachers: "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." Note well the emphasis on unsupervised and impersonal--there is to be no allowance for God at all. And do not neglect the imprecise use of "chance" in that statement either, assigning creative power to a non-entity (chance has no being and it is not a thing; it is a useful but abstract mathematical concept related to probabilities). Here is an another definition, this one put forward by George Gaylord Simpson: "Man is the result of a purposeless and natural process that did not have him in mind." No purpose (there's that blasted teleology again) and no mind. The entire approach of modern biology is founded on naturalism, the philosophy that the material universe is all there is. God is automatically excluded from the start. The theist of whatever stripe who enters the debate has been given three strikes before he even opens his mouth.

2. God made the laws and then retired. Allowing momentarily for the disqualified idea of God, this argument permits God as the starter or creator of the natural process, which is then left to function on its own. The analogy of the clockmaker is often invoked, which is a stand-in for deism. But this is not the God of Christianity, who remains active and involved with his creation. Practically speaking, what is the difference between a God who goes away after initiating creation and no God at all?

3. Erect a wall of separation between faith and reason. Cannot faith and reason simply be two different ways of looking at the same reality? No, primarily because there is assumed here a wrong definition of faith, that of belief divorced or apart from, despite, or contrary to the evidence. Biblical faith is trust based upon the established and demonstrated character of the God who keeps his promises. But if faith is used in the former, erroneous sense, it is no wonder that scientists consider this irrational. It allows them to lump Christianity together with astrology and the Tooth Fairy. A Christian who accepts a false dichotomy between faith and reason abandons the field of rational debate at the start and has already lost.