Ham wrote an interesting essay for the newsletter on "What is 'Evolution?'"
In it, he made the surprising claim that:
"Ultimately, THIS IS WHAT EVOLUTION IS ALL ABOUT: Man setting
himself up as the authority and being the judge of God's Word.
Thus, *any* view that ultimately starts independently of the
revealed Word of God is really "evolutionary thinking." What
I'm saying is this: evolution is not just molecules to life, or
ape-like creatures to man. "Evolution," when it comes down to it,
is really a whole philosophy of life that teaches that man by
himself can determine "truth."
I just wanted to make three comments about this...
First, I found the statement a bit bizarre. I can't help wondering about
knowledge of things which aren't found in Scripture. Is all calculus, a
man-made system of knowledge not found (as far as I know!) in Scripture,
"evolutionary thinking" and thus evil? There is an awful lot of science
which isn't even hinted at in Scripture -- is it all "evolutionary thinking"
and thus evil?
Second, the odd idea that Scripture doesn't need to be interpreted in any
way. We all know that even the most literal creationist accepts some verses
of Scripture as poetry, metaphor, analogy, etc. All Scripture is interpreted
and judged in some way and Ham is being disingenuous in suggesting that
young-earth creationists don't judge Scripture.
Finally, when discussing issues with young-earth creationists, it would be
a good idea to discuss terminology first. Many creationists use words (like
"evolution") in far, far different ways than do non-creationists. These
types of issues are addressed very well in a book I just read by Del Ratzsch
"The Battle of Beginnings: Why Neither Side is Winning the Creation/Evolution
Debate" (1996, InterVarsity).
Anyone on the list want to defend Ham's views?
- Steve.
-- Steven H. Schimmrich KB9LCG s-schim@uiuc.edu Department of Geology, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign 245 Natural History Building, Urbana, IL 61801 (217) 244-1246 http://www.uiuc.edu/ph/www/s-schim Fides quaerens intellectum