> 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."
and:
> Anyone on the list want to defend Ham's views?
Ken Ham is a populariser - and popularisers do not always articulate
their position with the precision warranted by the seriousness of
their subject. In this case, I think Ham is confusing cause and
effect - but I'll expand this by reference to Steve's comments below.
> 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?
There has been a long tradition in Christian circles of adopting the
"Two Book" approach. This has treated God's revelation in the
Scriptures as a separate and autonomous category of knowledge,
distinct from God's revelation in the book of nature. This has been
the justification for an essentially "autonomous" science among large
sections of the Christian community. Ham is popularising the serious
objections made against the Two-Book approach. The alternative is to
present all knowledge as a harmonious whole, with God as the source.
This is not to say that the Bible speaks about everything, but that
the foundations of knowledge are to be found in Scripture.
> 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.
I would be surprised if Ken Ham had not written on this point. I
think he would accept the diversity of literary forms in the Bible.
It may well be that his popularising style tramples underfoot many
sincerely-held views by categorising them as "compromising".
However, there is little doubt in my mind that this is an area where
many biblical expositors have worked with tunnel vision - leaving
"difficult" and "technical" areas to those more appropriately
qualified than themselves. Unfortunately, the technical experts do
the same with the biblical exposition - so a genuine harmony is never
found. Rather than use the word "literal", I would suggest that the
focus is ion the word "historical". That seems to me to be the
crunch issue: how much of Genesis is historical? and what are the
implications?
> 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).
I'm about half-way through Del's book, and greatly appreciate what he
has done. It would be good for all popularisers (on all sides!) to
read this book. It will make them think: what exactly am I
popularising?!
A concluding comment, going back to the thought that Ham is confusing
cause and effect. I think Ham is right to identify autonomy of human
thought as a fundamental spiritual problem in human scholarship. If
this is so, naturalism will provide the infrastructure for scholarly
activity. Naturalism has many fruits in all disciplines. There
are those who see (macro)evolution as a fruit of naturalism.
Naturalistic presuppositions will result in theories like neo-
Darwinism. It seems to me that Ham is using the term "evolution" to
refer to "naturalism" - an underlying philosophy which is alienated
from God. Thus, instead of "evolution" being an effect of
naturalistic philosophy, it becomes a cause of man-centred thinking.
This confusion must be extraordinarily frustrating to theistic
advocates of evolutionary theory - and the polarisation of views into
separate "camps" is likely to continue. Perhaps Del's book is the
one to push hard - as it clarifies many of these issues.
Best wishes,
*** From David J. Tyler, CDT Department, Hollings Faculty,
Manchester Metropolitan University, UK.
Telephone: 0161-247-2636 ***