Creation and Evolution
The recent revelation that an academically-successful school in England, Emmanuel College, Gateshead, has one creationist on the staff and even allows creation to be taught alongside evolution as an alternative view of the origin of the universe has led to howls of protest from scientists, educationalists and prominent Anglican clerics. It has also led to extensive public debate. Under the heading “There is no place for creationism in science”, one newspaper correspondent claims that Darwinism and creationism might both be wrong, but creationism is a matter of belief, a prejudice which puts it in religion not science, whereas Darwinism is not an article of faith but is the best account we have of the origin of species and has withstood constant assault and scientific testing. Another correspondent claims that “once we change the rules and say, ‘God designed it’, that’s the end of scientific enquiry. Since God can be invoked for everything we can’t explain, and since we have no idea of how He does it, we might as well pack up our test tubes and go home.”
We need to remind ourselves that no scientific experimentation can explain the origin of all things and that, when scientists exclude the idea of creation and put forward their own explanations of how things began, they are expressing their own beliefs – beliefs which are not accounted for by scientific evidence but by the enmity of the carnal mind to the concept of God and to the concept of divine revelation. When they speak on origins they are not speaking as scientists but as sinners, however accurate some of them may be in recording what they are actually capable of verifying scientifically in the world as it now exists. It is quite remarkable how unscientifically fundamentalist and passionate evolutionists are in their insistence that, whatever may be believed, it cannot possibly be accepted that “in the beginning God created the heaven and the earth” (Gen 1:1). That verse certainly cannot be verified scientifically! But whatever can be verified scientifically can be harmonised perfectly with the presupposition fundamental to Scripture, that there was a work of creation properly described as “God’s making all things of nothing, by the word of His power, in the space of six days, and all very good” (Shorter Catechism, 9). The fact that God designed and created the universe gives it all meaning and is the true stimulus to scientific enquiry and to the truly beneficial (and God-glorifying) application of the discoveries made.
Believers in the Word of God have nothing to fear from science which recognises its own province and limitations. They can certainly afford to avoid and give no place to “profane and vain babblings, and oppositions of science falsely so called” (1 Tim 6:20). The number of persons in our own small denomination who are able to combine a firm belief in the Biblical account of creation with a rigorous scientific career is testimony to this fact. Our young people in school and university have every reason to hold on unashamedly to the conviction that, when “through faith we understand that the worlds were framed by the word of God, so that things which are seen were not made of things which do appear” (Heb 11:3), we have the true basis for science that accords with reality. It is indeed the one fact that makes science possible even on the part of those who do not accept its truth.
HMC
Turmoil in the Middle East
It is noticeable that God’s ancient people – the Jews – never seem to be out of the headlines for any length of time. It is as if their identity and the Lord’s providence in regard to them are to be kept prominently before the minds of men the world over. At present it is the on-going Israeli-Palestinian conflict that makes them the centre of attention. It is clear that all the surrounding Arab nations desire the extinction of Israel, as if having taken “crafty counsel” against them, they then issue their communiqu