Why They Think We Are Idiots

Its taken me a week to really focus my thoughts on a meeting I attended from a group that purports to train individuals on defending the creationist position. I have to say that I was less than impressed. Perhaps I caught them on an off night, perhaps not. My biggest frustration is that if this is the caliber of argument that a Christian is expected to present when confronted by an evolutionist, it is no wonder they think we are idiots (see cartoon )

The meeting started with what I am sure is a well meaning God fearing older gentleman sharing a testimony on an article he read in the paper the past week. This article talked about the orbits of certain planets and their location in comparison to the sun during a rare eclipse. His proof that the Big Bang was false could be found in the precision of the orbits of the planets. Why? Because the big bang was an explosion and something as orderly as the orbits could not come form an explosion. That's it....nothing about gravity and the attraction that large dense stars exert. This is anecdotal evidence at best. Now I am not saying that I believe in the Big Bang, but I am saying that if you are going to get into defending a biblical 7 day creation position, you can't use sentimentalism. You need to talk in facts and theory based on good assumptions. The proponents of the Big Bang would say that from a gravitational singularity there was a big bang that continues to expand the borders of the universe. They say this happened 13.7 billion years ago, and that over that time the gravity of larger objects have pulled smaller objects into orbits. From a scientific point of view this is compelling, but you can't defend against it by saying that order can't come from an explosion. If you take dynamite and stick it into a hill and detonate it you will get chaos....for a time. Then the dirt settles and you get structure, maybe different that before but order has been restored. I have no doubts the Big Bang is flawed, but this defense will never cut it if we want to actually compete in the realm of ideas.

The special guest speaker for the evening was a gentleman who was an associate pastor from the Philadelphia area. He wasn't an academic, and he wasn't a scientist. He was a theologically trained pastor. He had recently written a book on evolution and he was "exposing it for the fraud it was." I was hoping that this man would present the scientific approach that was needed to enter the intellectual discussion on the topic. I was disappointed. His presentation was an overview of his book, and it was again full of information where it was obvious that good research techniques were not done or the information that was presented was to evoke a emotional response. One example was a recent discovery of what looked like human skeletal remains of two hands. These remains were fossilized (a rare find). They were also found near some dinosaur fossils, another rare occurrence. Some scientist have theorized that they weren't human hands but large sea turtle fins. This pastor bragged about how he used a google picture search to find human skeletal hands. He then used this picture to convince us that they were human. What would have really pushed this point home was if he had shown us the a picture of actual sea turtle fins, but he didn't. Perhaps they were sea turtles, but because of the point he wanted to make, he only searched the evidence until he found what he wanted. He interspersed his talk with slides of school children and their learning evolution in public schools and a program to take these kids for an hour a day and teach them creationism and how they are coming to Christ as a result. That's great, but how does it expose evolution as false. His biggest argument spread throughout the presentation was that evolution was a natural promoter of racism, and because Hitler, and Stalin were racist, that evolution was barbaric....ergo false. His logic was impossible to flow on some of his points and it felt like he was trying every way to emotionally convince us that evolutions were completely evil. What really peeved me was the way he continually used scripture out of context to support whatever slide he was on. He was eisegetically preaching on creationism and doing the scripture a disservice.

It really shouldn't surprise me. Since the days of Finney the church has been using emotional arguments and sentimentalism to forward its agenda. Whats worse is that the only agenda the church should have is to declare the gospel. I can't help but feel that all these side issues are Satan's way of distracting us from that goal. We get so stuck on extending the general grace of the church to society that we forget to be the messengers of God's special grace to individuals. I know that their are intelligent men and women who are out there debating the position of creationism with fervor and intelligence, but people such as those I saw last week are hurting us more than they are helping.