Category: Evangelism

Dear friends

Greetings to you all from Zimbabwe. We have been finding it difficult to communicate because of some LAN problems.

At least now we have the Government of national unity in place so we hope for the better but it is still unclear how the belligerents will work together. Things are still tough but products are beginning to be available but strictly in forex. All rates and bills are quoted in forex also. All school fees are also in forex. However, workers have not been paid in forex so its still a confusing situation.

We would like to send you some Family and Church photos but due to the less internet connection speed we might not be able to do that now, but when we get the slightest opportunity we’ll do so.

Vimbai and Rumbie cannot get into college because of the high fees required. The college is requiring $1500 for each of them before they can register. It is a mammoth task.

We hope you were spared from the global financial crisis. May the Lord shield you from its serious effects.

Greeting to all

Amos and the family

“The conscience is not to be healed, if it be not wounded. You must preach and press the law, condemnation, the judgment to come, with much earnestness and importunity. He which hears, if he be not terrified, if he be not troubled, is not to be comforted.”

– Augustine of Hippo

“Many of the most prominent neo-Darwinists have written at one time or another that natural selection is a tautology, a way of saying the same thing twice. In this formulation the theory predicts that the fittest organisms will produce the most offspring, and it defines the fittest organisms as the ones which produce the most offspring. It is important to document this point, because many Darwinists have convinced themselves that the tautology idea is a misunderstanding introduced into the literature by creationists and other uncomprehending faultfinders. But here are a few examples collected by Norman Macbeth:

J. B. S. Haldane (1935): ” … the phrase ‘survival of the fittest,’ is something of a tautology. So are the most mathematical theorems. There is no harm in saying the same truth in two different ways.

Ernst Mayr (1963): “… those individuals that have the most offspring are by definition … the fittest ones.”

George Gaylord Simpson (1964): “Natural selection favors fitness only if you define fitness as leaving more descendants. In fact geneticists do define it that way, which may be confusing to others. To a geneticists fitness has nothing to do with health, strength, good looks, or anything but effectiveness in breeding.”

The explanation by Simpson just quoted indicates why it is not easy to formulate the theory of natural selection other than as a tautology. It may seem obvious, for example, that it is advantageous for a wild stallion to be able to run faster, but in the Darwinian sense this will be true only to the extent that a faster stallion sires more offspring. If greater speed leads to more frequent falls, or if faster stallions tend to outdistance the mares and miss opportunities for reproduction, then the improvement may be disadvantageous.

Just about any characteristic can be either advantageous or disadvantageous, depending upon the surrounding environmental conditions. Does it seem that the ability to fly is obviously an advantage? Darwin hypothesized that natural selection might have caused beetles on Madeira to lose the ability to fly, because beetles capable of flight tended to be blown out to sea. The large human brain requires a skull which causes discomfort and danger to the mother in childbirth. We assume that our brain size is advantageous because civilized human dominate the planet, but it is far from obvious that the large brain was a net advantage in the circumstances in which it supposedly evolved. Among primates in general, those with the largest brains are not the ones least in danger of extinction.

In all such cases we can presume a characteristic to be advantageous because a species which has it seems to be thriving, but in most cases it is impossible to identify the advantage independently of the outcome. That is why Simpson was so insistent that ‘advantage’ has no inherent meaning others than actual success in reproduction. All we can say is that the individuals which produced the most offspring must have had the qualities required for producing the most offspring.

The famous philosopher of science Karl Popper at one time wrote that Darwinism is not really a scientific theory because natural selection is an all purpose explanation which can account for any thing, and which therefore explains nothing. Popper backed away from this position after he was besieged by indignant Darwinists protests, but he had plenty of justification for taking it. As he wrote in his own defense, ‘some of the greatest contemporary Darwinisits themselves formulated the theory in such a way that it amounts to the tautology that those organisms that leave most offspring leave most offspring,’ citing Fisher, Haldane, Simpson, ‘and others.’ One of the others was C. H. Waddington, whose attempt to make sense of the matter deserves to be preserved for posterity:

Darwin’s major contribution was, of course, the suggestion that evolution can be explained by the natural selection of random variations. Natural selection, which was at first considered as though it were a hypothesis that was in need of experimental or observational confirmation, turns out on closer inspection to be a tautology, a statement of an inevitable but previously unrecognized relation. It states that the fittest individuals in a population (defined as those which leave the most offspring) will leave the most offspring. This fact no way reduces the magnitude of Darwin’s achievement; only after it was clearly formulated, could biologists realize the enormous power of the principle as a weapon of explanation.

That was not an offhand statement, but a considered judgment published in a paper presented at the great convocation at the University of Chicago in 1959 celebrating the hundredth anniversary of the publication of the Origin Of Species. Apparently, none of the distinguished authorities present told Waddington that a tautology does not explain anything. When I want to know how a fish can become a man, I am not enlightened by being told that the organisms that leave the most offspring are the ones that leave the most offspring.

It is not difficult to understand how leading Darwinists were led to formulate natural selection as a tautology. The contemporary neo-Darwinian synthesis grew out of population genetics, a field anchored in mathematics and concerned with demonstrating how rapidly very small mutational advantages could spread in a population. The advantages in question were assumptions in a theorem, not qualities observed in nature, and the mathematicians naturally tended to think of them as ‘whatever it was that caused the organism and its descendants to produce more offspring than other members of the species.’ This way of thinking spread to the zoologists and paleontologists, who found it convenient to asume that their guiding theory was simply true by definition. As long as outside critics were not paying attention, the absurdity of the tautology formulation was in no danger of exposure.

What happened to change this situation is that Popper’s comment received a great deal of publicity, and creationists and other unfriendly critics began citing it to support their contention that Darwinism is not really a scientific theory. The Darwinists themselves became aware of a dangerous situation, thereafter critics raising the tautology claim wer firmly told that they were simply demonstrating their inability to understand Darwinism….In practice natural selection continues to be employed in its tautological formulation.

… Although natural selection can be formulated as a tautology, and often has been, it can also be formulated in other ways that are not so easily dismissed.

Phillip Johnson
Darwin On Trial — pp. 20-23

Recently, Christian Reformed Church flagship magazine, “The Banner” ran a three-page article on evolution arguing that theistic evolution (now called Evolutionary Creationists) is a viable alternative for Christians to embrace. The article was written by a couple who teaches at Calvin College and who work in the Physics and Astronomy departments. The article was excruciatingly basic and it was plugging a recent book that the Professor have recently written. I want to take a few minutes to examine some of the quotes in the article.

http://www.thebanner.org/magazine/article.cfm?article_id=1935

“For example, modern species of dogs and wolves and coyotes descended from some ancestral wolf-like species that no longer exists. Similarly, all dogs, cats, and other mammals descended from a common ancestor even longer ago.

Evolutionary Creationists combat evolutionism by attacking the first premise. They argue that God could work through biological evolution to create the species, just as God works through natural processes like evaporation and condensation to govern rainfall.”

From a Christian perspective of anthropology the statements of the Haarsma’s is fraught with grave danger. Indeed, the danger is so grave in these statements that the whole Christian faith could conceivably be overturned.

The Haarsma’s are telling us that it is acceptable to believe that all mammals (and keep in mind that man is a mammal) descended from (and so necessarily evolved from) a common ancestor. If this is true then the act of God in creating man as the piece de resistance of His creation is overturned. Likewise, any idea of man as uniquely bearing the image of God seems likewise overturned. The Haarsma’s are required to answer, if their supposition as evolutionary creationists is true that man has descended and evolved from a common ancestor, where in the evolutionary process man was stamped with the Imago Dei. When and where did God, in the evolutionary creationist myth, breathe into man the breath of life?

Also the Haarsma’s must answer in their evolutionary creationist paradigm when, where and how sin entered into the world.

Another problem in the Haarsma’s evolutionary creationism worldview is the presumption that all is evolutionary process. This presumption requires the belief that nature is going from something inferior to something superior (hence the term “evolution”). The problem though is that in Scripture the assumption is just the reverse. The assumption in scripture is not that everything is going from inferior to superior but rather that in creation we had the superior (the creation that was declared “good” and “very good”) which gave way to an inferior state (we might should call it devolution) called “The Fall.” The Christian story is Creation, Fall, Redemption, Glorification. For the Haarsma’s the Christian story seems to be Creation, evolution, Glorification.

Another problem in the Haarsma’s article is that in the Scriptures we clearly see man being distinct from the animals. Man is charged to name the animals thus showing his un-relatedness to the animals. And yet the Haarsma’s would have us believe that Man, having a common descendant with all animals has a basic relatedness to the animals.

Now, I’ve raised some questions here and to be fair to the Haarsma’s they did say in the article that there book attempts to answer questions that the article did not have space to address. But I will go out on a limb here and say, without reading their book, that evolutionary creationism can’t be harmonized with Scripture without doing serious damage to scripture.

The primary message to the ancient Hebrews was about the who and why of creation—that Israel’s God is the sovereign creator of all and humans are God’s image bearers—not the when and how of creation.

This is a HUGE assumption. Where in and from Scripture does Scripture teach that Scripture isn’t concerned with the when and how of creation? One just can’t assume these things without proving them so.

One could appeal to Jesus words in Matthew 19:4-5 that Jesus Himself believed that the when and how of the immediate and direct (hence non-evolutionary) creation of Adam and Eve was important. (We might also want to ask here if Jesus’ human nature was descended and evolved from a common ancestor.)

“If God’s purposes in Genesis 1 did not include teaching scientific information to the Israelites, then we should not look there for scientific information about the age of the earth or the formation of species. Instead, we can look at what God has revealed in nature itself to understand the when and how.”

The problem here is the assumption that general revelation can’t be read and interpreted properly apart from presupposing special revelation. It is true that God has given us two books wherein we can read His revelation but it is not true that we can read the book of nature correctly if we presuppose a theology other than Christianity.

Apart from presupposing what is taught in Scripture — that the Universe has order because of God’s providence — there is no consistent reason for the Scientist to believe that the Sun will rise regularly. The irrationality for believing that the sun will rise regularly is something David Hume pointed out. A science that begins without special revelation is a science that is autonomous and so can come up with everything from punctuated equilibrium to man being descended from animals.

It should be emphasized that evolution is only a theory. Embracing evolution is a blind leap of faith. There is no science that does or can prove it. Any evidence that is brought forth to support it is evidence that only proves evolution because it presupposes the truth of evolution. That is hardly a scientific approach. Therefore to appeal to nature as interpreted by science, as the way to determine the formation of species is a thin reed on which to rely.

The most significant problem I see with the Haarsma’s article is that it doesn’t take into account how theology informs science. Those who start with the theology of Hinduism, or Islam, or Communism (let us never forget Lysenkoism) or Humanism, or Christianity are going to develop significantly different sciences. Because that is so science can not be used to prove or disprove any metaphysical or theological construct since science depends upon those constructs for its existence.

Another significant problem I see with the Haarsma’s position is its implied Deism. It seems that for evolutionary creationists God starts the evolutionary / creation process and then kind of fades away to let the evolutionary process roll on.

I will continue to be mystified by those who desire to take a paradigm that was created and defended as a means of explaining this world without taking into consideration the God of the Bible and try to combine it with the God of the Bible.

The Haarsma’s article is fraught with severe difficulties. I trust people will not take their word on the issue.

Some people have commented on my predilection to write on things on government, state, politics. I do not do this because I think those subjects are be all end all of discussion but I do it because that is the way many moderns think about those subjects.

Try to think of it this way. Before the Reformation changed the European theology, Church, social order, and culture everything was under the umbrella of the Church. If you wanted to change European theology, Church life, social order, and culture you had to give a virus to the thought life of Medieval Europe in order to make their contemporary understandings of the Church unacceptable. The Church was the behemoth driving everything in Medieval culture.

Today the behemoth driving everything is the state, and if you want to change our current Western theology, Church, social order and culture you have to find a way to give a virus to the thought life of the West in order to make our contemporary understanding of the state unacceptable. In Medieval Europe they believed that in the Church they lived and moved and had their being. In the modern West we believe that in the state we live and move and have our being. Just as the Reformers brought down the Medieval Church by attacking its core theology so those who would desire to see Reformation today must bring down the Modern State by attacking its core theology.

There are some other interesting parallels here as well. Just as the Reformers appealed to the text (the Scripture in its original intent and meaning) to bring down the Church, thus freeing the other God ordained institutions to find their proper place as ministerial institutions before God, so Reformers today must appeal to the text (the Constitution in its original intent and meaning) in order to bring down the state, in order to once again free up the other god ordained institutions to find their proper place as ministerial institutions before God. During the Reformation the problem is that the interpretive tradition of the Church had replaced the plain meaning of Scripture. The Magisterial Reformers gave the Medieval Church a belly ache by returning to the Scripture. The same thing needs to happen again today in the realm that is playing behemoth. The state has stolen the Constitution away from the people — just as the Medieval Church had stolen the Scriptures away from the people — and determined meaning by reading it according to a tradition that emphasizes more the horizon of meaning in the Constitution. This horizon of meaning is created by logical positivists Judges who use the idea of evolutionary growth of the meaning of the Constitution. This evolutionary process reading is done by making case law determine the meaning of the Constitution as opposed to making the Constitution determine the meaning of case law. The point that needs to be grasped is that Reformation will be achieved by winning on the text just as Reformation was won by winning on the text in the 16th century.

Pressing this issue a little further we must note that since the state is the behemoth of our age wherein everything finds its meaning we must realize that this means that the must of the modern church finds its meaning in relation to the state. This means that the state has an official theology. If we want to change the behemoth that is defining everything we must give its corrupt official theology a virus. Just as the Magisterial Reformers attacked the anthropocentric theology that was the official theology of the Medieval Church so aspiring Reformers today must find a way to effectively attack the anthropocentric theology that is the official theology of the state.

It is because the state today is the behemoth idol that we must think of ways to challenge the state with sound theology. This is what the Reformers did in the 16th century with the Medieval Church which was their behemoth idol.

When I write on issues of government, politics, culture, social order and the state I am trying to figure out a way to give the beast a belly ache that will cause the idol to topple.

The Reformers found the Idols and attacked them. We must do the same.