Ken Ham

This evening I enjoyed a book written by Ken Ham back in the 1980s. Ken Ham is amusing, to say the least. For those who are not familiar with him, he is an Australian Young-earth creationist who founded Answers in Genesis and the Creation Museum in Kentucky. He is a blast to watch on dvd. Nothing is more fun than him telling us there are no missing links in the fossil record (not true by the way) when he looks like one, himself thanks to a pair of large, red mutton chops running down the side of his face.

Reading him, however, discourages me. The reason it discourages me, is because Christians everywhere are buying his book which claim the earth is only 6000 years old, there is no evidence for evolution, and if you interpret Genesis any other way than he does, you are going to become a godless liberal. He claims evolution is the reason for the acceptance of homosexuality, abortion, pornography, world war II, and a host of other evil crimes we see today. If you accept evolution, you cannot be a Christian.

This is ridiculous. Thousands of Bible believing Christians all over the world accept evolution as the mechanism by which God created life on earth. In fact, the Catholic church publicly endorsed the theory of evolution under Pope John Paul II, and they are just as outspoken, if not more so, against homosexuality, abortion, pornography, eugenics, and racism than even Ken Ham himself.

Ken Ham claims the church has commonly accepted the idea that the days in Genesis were literal 24-hour periods. Sadly, this is just not so. Origen and Augustine were two early church fathers who warned against taking the days literally. At some periods of church history, it was believed everything was created in an instant. Only in the last hundred and fifty years has this even become an issue. This was made an issue by a small group of churches who felt that the evidence for an old earth and evolution was incompatible with scripture. They gave rise to the modern fundamentalist movement, while most mainline, orthodox theologians had no problem accepting it. Even Benjamin Warfield, a theologian admired by many evangelicals today said there was no conflict between evolution and Genesis. Why? Because Genesis is not trying to give us a scientific paradigm. Its trying to combat common near eastern myths floating around and establish the structure of the way the universe is. That is why you have two creation stories that are seemingly in conflict with each other if both is taken completely literally.

This should not be a big deal within the church. Just like in Galileo's time, the church persecuted him for making claims about the universe many felt were in contradiction with scripture. Evolution is not only compatible with scripture, it is also supported by scientific evidence. The way God created the universe has no bearing on the facts that we are all sinners in need of a savior, that Christ was divine, and that he died and rose again to save us from our sins. Below I've made a list of some well-known Christians I know who accept evolution as God's creative method.

Benjamin Warfield, Presbyterian Reformed theologian
C.S. Lewis, Anglican writer
Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Lutheran pastor and theologian
Karl Barth, Swiss Reformed theologian
Alister McGrath, Anglican theologian and scientist
Timothy Keller, Presbyterian pastor and theologian
Dinesh D'Souza, Roman Catholic political and apologetic writer
John Lennox, Anglican Mathematician
Francis Collins, Evangelical geneticist and head of Human Genome project
Kenneth Miller, Roman Catholic biologist
Theodosius Dobhanzky, Russian Orthodox scientist