Good Thing He Didn’t Debate with an Obstetrician

debateDon’t go by this post because I don’t know how or where to look on the internet for accurate information on such things.  But my take is that in the great debate between Hamm and cheesy Bill Nye the Science Guy, the evolutionist are trumpeting victory and the creationists are hanging their harps on the willows (Ps. 137:2) and doing a little weeping. All I can say is good thing Hamm didn’t debate an obstetrician about the Virgin Birth….

a MD about the resurrection of the body, a mathematician about the Trinity, or a physicist with an electron microscope about the Real Presence.  Evolutionist concluding there is no God in creation reminds me of the propaganda the Soviet Union put out in poster form.  It showed a cosmonaut saying something like, “I’ve been up there and I saw no God.” (It now seems that the cosmonaut in question was in fact a Christian and never said that cf. https://www.reddit.com/r/space/comments/go0w2/i_see_no_god_up_here_yuri_gagarin_1961/.)

Worse still are Christians who want to take both sides in the debate.  Theistic evolutionists claim to be able to fit what modern science knows into what the Bible says.  In truth what the Bible speaks of is mainly about what science can not know, could never discover.  The Sacraments, particularly the Lord’s Supper, are called mysteries by Scripture because there is no way you could reason your way or scientifically test your way to the fact that your God gives His Body for Bread and His Blood for Wine for Christians to eat and drink.

We have been prepared for this disparity about what man can know by reason and/or science, falsely so called or not, by Hebrews 11:3 “By faith we understand that the universe was created by the word of God, so that what is seen was not made out of things that are visible.”  This means you are not going to be able to reason your way back from what you see to how things were created.  This is precisely what Darwin did in his book.  But this was nothing new even then. The Introduction to my edition of The Origin of Species published in 1909 says, “The idea of the evolution of organisms, so far from originating with Darwin is a very old one. Glimpses of it appear in the ancient Greek philosophers…” (6).

Furthermore, Jesus warns us that if we don’t believe Him when He speaks of earthly things, like how the earth was created, how will we believe Him when He speaks of heavenly things, like how sinners can go to a holy heaven (John 3:12).  And He prepares us for the rejection of Moses’ writings as well. Many defenders of evolution that I have spoken with will admit that at face value Genesis plainly teaches a six day creation and some will admit that it implies a young earth as well.

(Footnote here: The sainted Dr. Raymond Surburg always said that because the Bible itself leaves gaps in chronology, the Lord made it so we could not calculate an exact date. Once you can date the beginning of something you are irresistibly drawn to dating the end of it. The hoping church becomes the calculating church.  Surburg said the gaps would not allow for even hundreds of thousands of years let alone millions or billions but at the most 10,000 or so.)

Back to Moses. Jesus said that if you don’t believe what Moses said how will you believe what He says? If you don’t believe that in the beginning God created the heavens and the earth in six days, how will you believe that on the Last Day God will raise you and all the dead and give to you and all believers in Christ eternal life?  We could throw in here two things Luther said:  If a person doesn’t believe in the forgiveness of their sins, it doesn’t matter if he believes God created the earth or not. And, if you can’t understand how God could create all things in six days, give the Holy Spirit the honor of knowing more than you do.

Do I think then that Hamm shouldn’t have debated cheese? Nope. But keep in mind it was a debate between what science thinks it can see and what faith confesses it knows.  And what faith confesses from the Virgin Birth, to the Real Presence, to the resurrection of the dead can never be seen by science, but that doesn’t mean they’re not true. Science does not have the tools to see how God could become Man, how Bread can be Body or the dead can rise. I do, however, think science can see that all things temporal had to come from something outside of time and from an intelligence greater than man. Science can see that life doesn’t come from the inanimate. And science should see that if it can’t get its head around what it can see, i.e. the size of the universe, the number of stars, the complexity of the human genome, etc. it ought to be humble or at least circumspect about it’s pronouncements.

Finally, one of Jesus’ claims to authority is that He knows where He came from and where He is going (John 8:14). No man can know this unless he is told from outside of himself. God tells us we came from Him and He wills that we come back to Him. Evolution says we came from dust and are only going to dust.  That’s God’s judgment on fallen man too, and evolution can get no higher than that. All we are ultimately to evolutionists is as Kansas sang, “dust in the wind”. Cheese is content with being just that. Hamm is not, and isn’t.

 

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