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Did Darwin Kill God

A recent television charade promotes theistic evolution.
by Russell Grigg

Published: 15 December 2009(GMT+10)

The very first temptation by Satan of anyone at all was his suggestion to Eve that she should doubt
the word of God: “Did God say … ?” (Genesis 3:1), and this was followed by his direct denial of what
God had said: “You shall not surely die” (Genesis 3:4). A recent BBC program entitled Did Darwin Kill
God?, shown in Australia on ABC Compass in November 2009 and in the UK in March 2009, repeats
this process of casting doubt on, and denying the truth of, the Word of God, the Bible.
1, 2

The BBC program is authored and narrated by Dr Conor Cunningham (hereinafter C.C.), a lecturer in
theology and religious studies at the University of Nottingham. He begins by saying, “I believe that
Christ was God incarnate and that He was resurrected from the dead. But I also believe creationists
are wrong to read Genesis literally.”

Well, the significance of Christ’s death and resurrection is that His death paid the penalty for our sin,
and in the New Testament, God commands us not only to believe, but also to repent, e.g. Acts 17:30
–31, “God commands all men everywhere to repent … ” We have never said that a person has to
believe in creation to be a Christian. What we do say is, “There is a slippery slope into unbelief that
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accompanies disbelieving any part of the Word of God. Notables who have descended this slope into
unbelief have included Charles Darwin in the 19 century, and former American evangelist turned
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apostate, Charles Templeton, in the mid-20 century.

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C.C. states that “creationists are wrong to read Genesis literally”. However, by any normal rules of
Image Wikipedia.org
exegesis, Genesis was intended to be taken as straightforward history. Prof. James Barr, Hebrew scholar
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and Oriel Professor of Interpretation of Holy Scripture at Oxford University, has written,

“[S]o far as I know, there is no professor of Hebrew or Old Testament at any world-class university who
does not believe that the writer(s) of Gen. 1–11 intended to convey to their readers the ideas that

(a) creation took place in a series of six days which were the same as the days of 24 hours we now
experience;

(b) the figures contained in the Genesis genealogies provided by simple addition a chronology from the
beginning of the world up to later stages in the biblical story;

(c) Noah’s flood was understood to be world-wide and extinguish all human and animal life except for
those in the ark.”
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Charles Darwin

Concerning the publication of Darwin’s Origin of Species in 1859, C.C.

says, “Science was about to launch its most deadly weapon in its war against religion.” Not so. Science is
not at war with religion, least of all Christianity. (See for example The biblical roots of modern science: A

There is no conflict
between faith and science
on the data or the facts.
Any clash is on the
interpretation and the
theorizing.
the land animals and man on the sixth day! However, let’s examine what Genesis actually says and compare it with what evolutionary
theory says happened.
Christian world view, and in particular a plain understanding of Scripture and Adam’s Fall, was essential
for the rise of modern science.) The laws by which science “works” were written into the framework of
everything in the heavens and the earth by God when God created them on Days 1–6 of Creation Week.
There is no conflict between faith and science on the data or the facts. Any clash is on the interpretation
and the theorizing.
What does the Bible actually say?
C.C. says, “We need to look closely at what [the Bible] actually tells us” and then continues, “ … on the
sixth day, God makes all the creatures, including humans—who are made in His image.” It must be a
long while since he has read Genesis. God says He made the fish and the birds on the fifth day, and only

God’s record in Genesis 1:1-31 Evolutionary long-age theory

Earth before sun, moon and stars Sun, moon and stars before Earth

Earth covered with water at first Earth a molten blob at first

Oceans before dry land Dry land before oceans

Life created as plants on land Life started in the ocean/water

Plants created before the sun Plants formed after the sun

Fish and birds created together Fish formed long before birds

Birds created before land animals Land animals formed before birds

Whales created before land animals Land animals formed before whales

Man and dinosaurs lived together Dinosaurs died out long before man

Creation completed in six days Evolution going on into the future

When Christians propose theistic evolution, they bring the biblical God into the equation. But this God is omniscient (i.e. He knows
everything), and He is truthful (He is the truth, John 14:6), and surely He is capable of communicating the true facts to us, not of telling us
something which is the exact opposite of what happened in every detail.

In considering the meaning of any passage of the Bible there are two vital factors to consider:

1. What was the intention of the author to convey?

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(In the case of Genesis, the author was God via the papyrus of Moses.)

If God had wanted to tell us that He used some evolutionary process, over an immense time period, there are several ways He could have
done this. There are various Hebrew words for ongoing action that He could have used, but He chose not to do so.

Likewise there are various ways in Hebrew to express long time. The very simplest would have been for Him to have used the Hebrew plural
word yamin = days, as in “and there were days of evening and morning”. However, God chose not to do this, Instead, God used the singular
word yôm = day, with a number, as in “day one, second day … sixth day”, together with “evening and morning”, which construction in the
Bible always refers to one Earth-rotation day. So the intention of the divine Author of Genesis is clear.
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2. What do other passages of Scripture say on the same subject?

The rest of the Bible treats Genesis as a true and correct historical record. For example, the six days of creation followed by the seventh day
of rest in Genesis is the basis for the Fourth Commandment in Exodus 20:11; 31:17. And there are over 100 quotations from or allusions to
Genesis chapters 1 to 11 in the New Testament, with Adam and Eve, Abel, Noah and the Flood and other details being referred to in both
the Gospels and the Epistles of the New Testament. In particular, the genealogy of the Lord Jesus Christ in Luke chapter 3 goes all the way
back (via real people not via metaphors) to Adam, “the son of God”, not the son of an ape.
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Furthermore everything in the Bible is inseparably bound up with its first book, Genesis. This is because Genesis gives us the origin and
initial explanation of all major biblical doctrines.
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We conclude that it was God’s intention to tell us that creation took place in the way and time He says it did in Genesis 1. Not surprisingly,
C.C. does not address either of these issues. Instead, to uphold his belief that “it is a huge mistake” to think that the Bible gives “a factual
account of the actual creation”, he trots out the tired old furphy that chapter 2 of Genesis contradicts chapter 1. Presumably he does not
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see his role as “a Christian” to defend the Bible, but to attack it.

The answer to C.C.’s problem is that Genesis 1 is a chronological summary, while Genesis 2 gives the details of one specific aspect—how
God made Adam and Eve. NASB footnote to v. 5 says, “The kind of plants referred to here are those requiring cultivation, which (though
green plants appeared the third day, 1:11–12) did not grow until after there was a man to take care of them.”

When Jesus was asked a question about divorce by the Pharisees, He replied by quoting both Genesis 1:27 and Genesis 2:24, thereby giving
His divine approval to both chapters, saying, “‘Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two
shall become one flesh’? So they are no longer two but one flesh. What therefore God has joined together, let not man separate.”(Matthew
19:5–6). There is no contradiction between Genesis 1 and 2, despite C.C.’s claims and his enlisting the following three authorities to
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support his view.

Philo, Tatum and Augustine

C.C. quotes a 1 -century Jewish philosopher (not a Christian) named Philo (born c. 25 BC), for whom, C.C.
st
Image wikipedia.org
says, chapters 1 and 2 of Genesis were myths. Well, Andrew Kulikovsky writes,

“Philo was a Hellenistic [i.e. Greek] Jew … he resorted to ‘an extensive allegorical interpretation of
Scripture that made Jewish Law consonant with the ideals of Stoic, Pythagorean and especially Platonic
thought.’ [ref.: Harper’s Bible Dictionary]. Philo was clearly more concerned with harmonizing the Old
Testament with Greek philosophy, rather than with careful exegesis. … Thus to appeal to Philo as a
representative of all Jewish readers is particularly problematic.”
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C.C. introduces Father Gregory Tatum, a professor at the Ecole Biblique in Jerusalem, who says that it’s not
traditional to interpret Genesis literally. And C.C. then says, “Reading Genesis as myth and metaphor is not
a modern trend. This has always been the mainstream view, this is orthodoxy.” In support he introduces St
Augustine (354–430) and his book The Literal Meaning of Genesis, about which he says, “Augustine even
warns Christians against treating Genesis, or the Bible, as science or treating it literally, saying they’d be
ridiculed for talking nonsense.” In the background, on the TV screen are a few words of a quote from
Augustine. So let’s look at this quote a little more closely.

The words on the TV screen do not show the whole text, so here it is (with the few words on the TV screen Augustine always believed in a
young Earth. Painting by Sandro
in bold): Botticelli, c. 1480. Wikipedia

“Usually, even a non-Christian knows something about the earth, the heavens, and the other elements of
this world, about the motion and orbit of the stars and even their size and relative positions, about the predictable eclipses of the sun
and moon, the cycles of the years and the seasons, about the kinds of animals, shrubs, stones, and so forth, and this knowledge he
hold to as being certain from reason and experience. Now, it is a disgraceful and dangerous thing for an infidel to hear a
Christian, presumably giving the meaning of Holy Scripture, talking nonsense on these topics; and we should take all means
to prevent such an embarrassing situation, in which people show up vast ignorance in a Christian and laugh it to scorn. The shame is
not so much that an ignorant individual is derided, but that people outside the household of faith think our sacred writers held such
opinions, and, to the great loss of those for whose salvation we toil, the writers of our Scripture are criticized and rejected as unlearned
men.”
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In this, the real expanded quote, Augustine makes no mention of “treating the Bible as science or treating it literally”. This is a charade by
C.C. In fact, Augustine was a young-earth creationist. He believed in instant creation by God, and actually wanted a creation period that was
shorter than six earth days, i.e. his allegorization was for instant creation, not eternal. So the “nonsense” that Augustine warned Christians
not to talk about was actually C.C.’s own position of long-age evolutionism!
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Furthermore, Augustine reckoned a date for creation of around 5,600 BC (using the inflated Septuagint chronology), and one of the chapters
in his book City of God is titled, “On the mistaken view of history that ascribes many thousands of years to the age of the earth”.

C.C. then says that Augustine “tells us that, over time, life evolves”. Unfortunately C.C. fails to give us
any reference to check for this extraordinary statement. Augustine was not an evolutionist. He did not
teach a process of one kind changing into another. He was not editing the Bible with evolution!
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Augustine did not teach a

Archbishop Ussher
process of one kind
The next Bible believer to come under C.C.’s fire is Archbishop James Ussher (1581–1656), who counted changing into another. He
up the time periods of the genealogies given in the Bible and arrived at the date of 4004 for the
BC
was not editing the Bible
creation. Contrary to C.C., Ussher did represent traditional Christianity.
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with evolution!
As Prof. Benno Zuidam says, “Early Church leaders like Origen, Augustine and Basil were young earth
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creationists. This view was commonly held within the Church until the 19 century (including Aquinas,
th

Bede, the fourth Lateran council in AD 1215 and Pius X). The Church of all times and places embraced
the traditional doctrine of Creation from the day of Pentecost until the Enlightenment.”
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And it is a well-kept secret that some great scientists also calculated creation dates very close to Ussher’s. For example, Johannes Kepler
(1571–1630), who formulated the laws of planetary motion, calculated a creation date of 3992 BC. Also, Sir Isaac Newton (1643–1727) is
widely regarded as the greatest scientist of all time, but he wrote more on biblical history, and vigorously defended a creation about 4,000
BC.
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Fossils and dinosaurs

C.C. now introduces fossils and dinosaurs, both of which he says “clearly contradict the biblical age of the earth”. However, his claim that,
“Advances in the understanding of fossils and the formation of rocks led geologists to propose that the earth was formed over a series of
millions of years” is not correct. This was largely due to a book Principles of Geology written by the lawyer, Charles Lyell, which greatly
influenced the thinking of Charles Darwin.
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The idea that dinosaurs lived and died millions of years ago is an assumption by evolutionists, an assumption that is now under huge threat,
not from creationists but from their fellow evolutionists who have repeatedly found remarkably well preserved soft tissue, such as blood
vessels, proteins, blood cells, etc. in fossil remains, including dinosaurs.
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C.C. then says that the Church “could hardly oppose it, as the geologists who were proposing these ideas were Anglican clergymen”. In fact,
in the 19 century there was a spectrum of beliefs about the age of the earth from young-age to old-age. Those who opposed long ages at
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that time have been called the scriptural geologists.

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Next is historian Pietro Corsi, who tells us that “people who believe that the Bible had a precise description of the earth, by that time, [i.e.
the time of Darwin’s Origin—1859] belong almost to the lunatic fringe.” We are reminded of the fact that whenever evolutionists have no
real evidence to present against creationists they frequently resort to personal abuse.

Paley and that watch

From now on the spin accelerates, as C.C. steps up his claim that the traditional Christian view was not
to believe Genesis. He mentions Paley’s celebrated “watch” argument and dismisses it by saying that
Darwin’s evidence blew this idea out of the water. For the benefit of readers who may not have read
Paley, here is his celebrated piece, from chapter 1 of his book Natural Theology, published in 1802.

“In crossing a heath, suppose I pitched my foot against a stone, and were asked how the stone came
to be there: I might possibly answer, that for any thing I know to the contrary, it had lain there for
ever: nor would it perhaps be very easy to show the absurdity of this answer. But suppose I had
found a watch upon the ground, and it should be inquired how the watch happened to be in that
place; I should hardly think of the answer which I had before given, that for any thing I knew, the
watch might have always been there. Yet why should not this answer serve for the watch, as well as Photo stock.xchng

for the stone? why is it not as admissable in the second case as in the first? For this reason, and for
no other, viz., that when we come to inspect the watch, we perceive (what we could not discover in the stone) that its several parts are
framed and put together for a purpose … This mechanism being observed … the inference, we think, is inevitable, that the watch must
have had a maker; that there must have existed, at some time, and at some place or other, an artificer or artificers, who formed it for
the purpose which we find it actually to answer; who comprehended its construction, and designed its use.”
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Later in the same book Paley applies this argument to “the necessity, in each particular case, of an intelligent designing mind for the
contriving and determining of the forms which organized bodies bear.”

C.C. instances the Rev. Charles Kingsley as a believer in Darwinism. This is true, and Darwin even included Kingsley’s endorsement of his
Origin in his second edition. Clergymen betraying the faith they profess is not new, and perhaps none was as destructive as Kingsley, who
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gave Darwin clerical “sponsorship”. However, Kingsley does not represent the Anglican hierarchy, as C.C. claims. This is not what traditional
Chriristianity is all about.

Some truth about Darwin

C.C. now gives us his views about Charles Darwin, telling us that Darwin “was born a Christian, and lost
his faith, but not because of evolution”. Well, the biblical description of how one becomes a Christian is
not through physical birth, but birth of another sort. Cf. the words of Jesus, “You must be born again”
(John 3:7). Then C.C. tells us concerning Darwin and his daughter, Annie, “the suffering he sees in The more Darwin convinced
Annie’s death and the sense of injustice and futility is the thing that really finishes once and for all his
himself that species had
Christian faith.”
originated by chance, the
It is true that Darwin professed to believe in God in his youth, and even studied theology at Cambridge less he could accept the
University with a view to becoming an Anglican clergyman, however, as mentioned above, his loss of
Genesis account of
faith can best be described as a long slippery slide into unbelief. This began when he first started to
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creation.
doubt the truth of the first chapters of Genesis, following his reading of Lyell’s Principles of Geology,
which subtly ridiculed belief in recent creation in favour of an old Earth, and denied that Noah’s Flood
was worldwide.

Then, inevitably, the more Darwin convinced himself that species had originated by chance and developed by a long course of gradual
modification, the less he could accept not only the Genesis account of creation, but also the rest of the Old Testament as the divinely
inspired Word of God. Having abandoned the Old Testament, Darwin then renounced the Gospels, based on several factors, including his
rejection of miracles.
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On one occasion Darwin said, “I never gave up Christianity until I was forty years of age.” He turned 40
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in 1849. Annie died in 1851. So, contrary to the claims of C.C., Darwin did lose his faith because of
evolution. And the immediate effect of Darwin’s rejection of the Bible was his loss of all comfort from it,

Darwin said, ‘I never gave especially in the matter of his daughter’s death.

up Christianity until I was
forty years of age.’ He
turned 40 in 1849. Annie
died in 1851. So, contrary
to the claims of Conor
Cunningham, Darwin did
lose his faith because of
evolution.
C.C. comments, “The existence of suffering in the world is a constant challenge to people of faith. The
arrival of evolution made this no harder, or easier, to bear.” Sadly this illustrates the bankruptcy of the
liberal view of the Bible, as shown by Darwin’s experience. The account of the Fall and subsequent Curse
on the earth by God because of Adam’s sin, detailed in Genesis chapter 3, gives us the reason why there
is suffering and death in this world. And Genesis 3:15, with the promise of the Saviour who would come,
gives us the first mention of what God has done about it. For those whose faith in the Bible has been
destroyed by evolution, life’s problems are much harder to bear, as Darwin found.
Concerning Darwin’s Origin of Species, C.C. says, “Darwin talked about the impossibility of this
wonderful universe being conceived by blind chance, believing that there must be an intelligent mind
behind it all. He presented his work as beginning and ending with God.”

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This is a charade. Darwin’s whole aim was to explain the design he saw in nature, without the need of a divine designer—without the need
for an intelligent mind behind it. He did not present his work as beginning with God. And in the closing paragraph of the first edition of his
Origin he wrote,

“Thus, from the war of nature, from famine and death, the most exalted object which we are capable of conceiving, namely, the
production of the higher animals, directly follows. There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally
breathed into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so
simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being evolved.”

In the Origin, second edition, he changed “originally breathed” into “originally breathed by the Creator” to
soften the impact of his materialistic theory and to make his book more palatable to the Christian public.
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However, in 1863, in a letter to his friend Joseph Hooker, he wrote, “But I have long regretted that I
truckled to public opinion, and used the Pentateuchal term of creation, by which I really meant ‘appeared’
by some wholly unknown process. It is mere rubbish, thinking at present of the origin of life; one might as
well think of the origin of matter.”
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The film now moves on to the 20 century. The transcript of the film has an account of the 1925 Scopes
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Trial, but this scene was apparently edited out of the Australian showing of the film, so we will content
ourselves with one quote from it. Clarence Darrow, the lawyer defending Scopes and the theory of
evolution, is reported as saying, “If today you can make it a crime to teach evolution in schools, tomorrow
you may ban books and newspapers.” Well, today it is a crime to teach creation in many schools in the
USA, and several lecturers and other people have lost their jobs for writing or accepting articles with a
creation perspective for publication in professional journals.
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The creationist view of Genesis The movie Expelled exposes

persecution of non-Darwinists today.
The film moves on to show C.C. (to his credit) interviewing creationist historian (of geology) Dr Terry
Mortenson (hereinafter T.M.), who states the creationist position on Genesis, as follows:

T.M.: “The basic premise is that the biblical account of Noah’s flood in Genesis
6 to 8 is a historically accurate account of a global catastrophic flood. We
believe that the Bible is the word of the Creator and He was the eyewitness.
Noah was also an eyewitness to the Flood. The Bible tells us Adam was created
on the sixth day, and we believe that there are good biblical reasons for taking
those as literal days, just like our days. And then the Bible, in Genesis 5 and
Genesis 11, gives us the genealogies from Adam to Noah, and Noah to
Abraham, and if there are no gaps in those genealogies, the age of the earth
and the whole universe is only about 6000 years.”

C.C.: So how does the book explain fossils?

(Click image to enlarge.) T.M.: “OK, well, fossils are the lithified remains of former living creatures. You
can’t produce a fossil unless you bury the creature rapidly, because—take, for
example, the dinosaur— if it falls over, dies of old age and lies on the ground, it won’t be fossilised because scavengers and decay
processes—the sun beating on the bones, and the rain … is gonna just destroy all the evidence. So the Flood gives us an explanation for
why we have these massive sedimentary layers with billions of fossils in them.”

C.C.: Do you think dinosaurs and humans shared the earth at the same time?

T.M.: “Yes, because dinosaurs are land animals and Genesis says that on Day Six God made the land animals, so He would have made the
dinosaurs. He had to make them some time, unless we accept evolution, which we don’t.”

The Genesis Flood and the Intelligent Design Movement

C.C. now gives the Henry Morris book The Genesis Flood a blast, claiming that it “undid 100 years of
scientific discovery, and 2000 years of Christian theology”. However, Morris was not “turning Genesis into a
science textbook”, nor yet “calling us to worship science”, despite what C.C. says. We strongly suspect that
C.C. has not read Morris’ book any more than he has read what Genesis 1 actually says.

Then comes the attack on Intelligent Design (ID). C.C. says, “Scientists the world over reject it.” Many do,
yes, but there are also many other scientists the world over who accept it. And he goes on to say, “[F]or
me, the biggest problem is what it says about God.” Oh dear, C.C. hasn’t read much of what ID proponents
have written, either. You see, most ID-ers studiously refrain from saying who or what they believe the
“designer” to be. Most do not call him or it the biblical God.
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Ultra-Darwinism
C.C. now has to deal with the major problem for his thesis that God used evolution. This is those
philosophers and scientists who truly understand the total atheistic nihilism of evolution, people C.C. calls
ultra-Darwinists. The first is Prof. Daniel Dennett who says,

“I think anybody who understands the theory of evolution by natural selection recognises that there’s no role to play by a creative God,
an intelligent God, a benign God of any sort. It takes no intelligence. It takes no purpose. It just happens, you might say,
automatically. This is Darwin’s great inversion. … Until Darwin came along, everywhere we saw a purpose. And Darwin showed us that
we can turn that right upside down, we can have a process which isn’t smart, isn’t intelligent, isn’t trying to do anything. It’s just the
unrolling of the mechanical laws of nature. … The theory of natural selection—it’s all or nothing. There are no exceptions. There is not a
single magnificent feature of anything alive in the universe that it doesn’t apply to.”

C.C. deals with this by interviewing two more people. The first is Francis Collins, leader of the Human Genome Project, for whom “Evolution
is the answer to how; God is the answer to why.” The second is Prof. Michael Ruse, whom C.C. describes as “a staunch Darwinist, a
philosopher, and also an atheist”. Prof. Ruse says, “I think that people make commitments about religion, or non-religion, for other reasons,
and then what’s going to happen is you’re going to try to make sense of science within the context of your belief, or your non-belief.” Yes,
we have often said that people interpret scientific evidence according to their worldview—whether this is biblical or evolutionary.
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Prof. Ruse also says, “I don’t think science proves the existence of God, I don’t think science proves the non existence of God. I think
science is science is science.” Well said. Cf. “Without faith it is impossible to please God, for he who comes to Him must believe that He
exists, and that He rewards those who diligently seek Him” (Hebrews 11:6).

The film ends with C.C. reiterating his view that “the mainstream view of God was never at odds with Darwin … ” (not so) and a plea to “let
Darwin rest in peace”.

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Summary and Conclusion

1. C.C. has one argument which he repeats about a dozen times, namely that the traditional
Image wikipedia.org
Church/Christian belief about Genesis is that it was intended to be non-factual. This is false, and
C.C.’s repetition of it does not change this. See the articles under Did the early Church leaders and
reformers believe the literal creation account given in Genesis?.
2. C.C. does not address the fact that everything God says in Genesis 1 is contrary to the theory of
evolution; nor does he tells us what he thinks the non-literal meanings of each Day’s happenings in
Genesis 1 are.
3. Theistic evolutionists such as C.C. have a hard row to hoe. The Bible does not support their belief
system, and atheists despise their ambivalence. Few people have had more contempt for liberal
Christians than Darwin’s Bulldog, Thomas Huxley, who wrote:
“I am fairly at a loss to comprehend how any one, for a moment, can doubt that Christian theology
must stand or fall with the historical trustworthiness of the Jewish Scriptures. The very conception
of the Messiah, or Christ, is inextricably interwoven with Jewish history; the identification of Jesus
of Nazareth with that Messiah rests upon the interpretation of passages of the Hebrew Scriptures
which have no evidential value unless they possess the historical character assigned to them. … if Thomas H. Huxley
the story of the Deluge [is] a fiction; that of the Fall a legend; and that of the creation the dream of
a seer; if all these definite and detailed narratives of apparently real events have no more value as history than have the stories
of the regal period of Rome—what is to be said about the Messianic doctrine, which is so much less clearly enunciated? And what
about the authority of the writers of the books of the New Testament, who, on this theory, have not merely accepted flimsy
fictions for solid truths, but have built the very foundations of Christian dogma upon legendary quicksands?”
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And concerning 1 Corinthians 15:21-22 [“For since by man came death, by man came also the resurrection of the dead. For as in
Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive.”], Huxley wrote:

“If Adam may be held to be no more real a personage than Prometheus, and if the story of the Fall is merely an instructive
“type,” comparable to the profound Promethean mythus, what value has Paul’s dialectic?” Summing up the position of theologians
who compromised the words of the Bible, Huxley observed that “the position they have taken up is hopelessly untenable”.

4. Viewers and readers may well wonder why the BBC, which produces so many anti-Bible, anti-creation, anti-Christian films, would
produce one that promotes theistic evolution. We think the situation is best explained by a remark from the militant American
campaigner for atheism, Eugenie Scott, who said, “I have found that the most effective allies for evolution are people of the faith
community. One clergyman with a backward collar is worth two biologists at a school board meeting any day!”
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Related Articles
The BBC TV series Darwin’s Dangerous Idea
Spin from the BBC about Darwin
Spot the Spin
Experiments that actually don’t prove evolution
Natural selection and change, yes; Evolution, no

References
1. Did Darwin kill God?, BBC Two, http://www.bbc.co.uk/darwin/?tab=20 , last accessed 7 December 2009. Return to text.
2. Australian Broadcasting Commission, http://www.abc.net.au/compass/s2730920.htm , last accessed 7 December 2009. Return to text.
3. See Grigg, R., http://creation.com/do-i-have-to-believe-in-a-literal-creation-to-be-a-christian, Creation 23(3):20–22, August 2001. Return to text.
4. See Grigg, R., Darwin’s slippery slide into unbelief, http://creation.com/charles-darwins-slippery-slide-into-unbelief, Creation 18(1):34–37, Dec. 1995. Return
to text.
5. Wieland, C., Death of an apostate, http://creation.com/death-of-an-apostate, Creation 25(1):6, Dec. 2002. Return to text.
6. See Batten, D., and Sarfati, J., 15 Reasons to take Genesis as History. Return to text.
7. Prof. Barr is not saying (and we are not claiming) that he believes Genesis; he is only pointing out, as an expert in Hebrew, what the correct meaning of the
Hebrew wording is. Return to text.
8. See Grigg, R., Should Genesis be taken literally? http://creation.com/should-genesis-be-taken-literally, Creation 16(1):38–41, Dec. 1993. Return to text.
9. See Grigg, R., How long were the days of Genesis 1?: What did God intend us to understand from the words He used? http://creation.com/how-long-were-
the-days-of-genesis-1, Creation 19(1):23–25, Dec. 1996. Return to text.
10. See McIntosh, A., Aren’t Adam, Eve and Noah just legends? http://creation.com/adam-eve-noah-legends Creation 12(3):24, June 1990. Return to text.
11. See Grigg, R., Genesis—the seedbed of all major Christian doctrine http://creation.com/genesis-the-seedbed-of-all-christian-doctrine. Return to text.
12. A “furphy” is a commonly-used expression in Australia that in essence is a polite way of saying “lie” or “falsehood”. Return to text.
13. See Kruger, M., An Understanding of Genesis 2:5 Journal of Creation 11(1):106–110, 1997. http://creation.com/images/pdfs/tj/j11_1/j11_1_106-110.pdf.
Return to text.
14. Kulikovsky. A., Fostering fallacy, http://creation.com/images/pdfs/tj/tjv16v2_forster.pdf, Journal of Creation, 18(2):31, 2002. Return to text.
15. http://www.pibburns.com/augustin.htm. Translation by J. H. Taylor in Ancient Christian Writers, Newman Press, 1982, volume 41. Return to text.
16. See Zuiddam, B., Augustine: young earth creationist—theistic evolutionists take Church Father out of context, http://creation.com/augustine-young-earth-
creationist. Return to text.
17. See Pierce, L., The Forgotten Archbishop, http://creation.com/appendix-b-the-forgotten-archbishop, Creation 20(2):42–43, March 1998. Return to text.
18. Benno Zuiddam is research professor (extraordinary associate) for New Testament Studies, Greek and Church History at the faculty of Divinity at North West
University, Potchefstroom, South Africa. Return to text.
19. Sarfati, J., Archbishop’s achievement: James Ussher’s great work Annals of the World is now available in English.http://creation.com/archbishops-
achievement, Creation 26(1):24–27, Dec. 2003. Return to text.
20. Mortenson, T., The origin of old-earth geology and its ramifications for life in the 21 century, http://creation.com/the-origin-of-old-earth-geology-and-its-
st

ramifications-for-life-in-the-21st-century>, Journal of Creation, 18(1):22–26, April 2004. Return to text.

21. See Wieland, C., Best ever find of soft tissue (muscle and blood) in a fossil http://creation.com/muscle-and-blood-in-fossil Return to text.
22. Mortenson, T., The 19th century scriptural geologists historical background, http://creation.com/the-19th-century-scriptural-geologists-historical-background.
Return to text.
23. See also Bergman, J., Paley still relevant, http://creation.com/images/pdfs/tj/j20_1/j20_1_28-30.pdf, Journal of Creation 20(1):28–30, 2006. Return to text.
24. See Grigg, R., Darwin’s Quisling, http://creation.com/charles-darwins-quisling-charles-kingsley, Creation 22(1):50–51, Dec. 1999. Return to text.
25. Desmond, A., and Moore, J., Darwin, Penguin Books, London 1992, p. 658. Return to text.
26. See Wieland, C., Darwin’s real message: have you missed it? http://creation.com/charles-darwins-real-message-have-you-missed-it.. Creation 14(4):16–19,
Sept. 1992. Return to text.
27. C.D. to J.D. Hooker, March 29, 1863, Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Vol. 2, pp. 202-203, Appleton, New York, 1913. Return to text.
28. See Expelled: New movie exposes persecution of anti-Darwinists, http://creation.com/expelled-new-movie-exposes-persecution-of-anti-darwinists. Return to
text.
29. See Wieland, C., CMI’s views on the Intelligent Design Movement, http://creation.com/cmis-views-on-the-intelligent-design-movement. Return to text.
30. See Grigg, R., Mission not impossible: Changing the worldview of Eastern mystics http://creation.com/mission-not-impossible, Creation 29(3):38–42, June
2007. Return to text.
31. Huxley, T., Science and Hebrew Tradition, Vol. 4 of Huxley’s Collected Essays, “The Lights of the Church and the Light of Science”, (1890), pp. 207–208,
available in Grigg, R., Darwin’s Bulldog, Thomas H. Huxley, http://creation.com/darwins-bulldog-thomas-h-huxley, Creation 31(3):39–43, August, 2009.
Return to text.
32. T.J. Oord and E. Stark, A conversation with Eugenie Scott, Science and Theology News, 1 April 2002, quoted in J. Wells, The Politically Incorrect Guide to
Darwinism and Intelligent Design (Regnery Publishing: Washington, DC, 2006), p. 175. Return to text.

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