Drifting Towards Darwin

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Solid Ground
A Fou n dation for Building Ambas s adors
March / April 2013
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t h i s m o n t h
• What’s in a Name?–”Evolution”
• Darwin’s Dangerous Idea
Greg’s video introduction to this Solid Ground’s topic
• What’s in a Name?–”Theistic”
• An Idle God?
• Stacking the Deck - 1
• Stacking the Deck - 2
• God in the Shadows
• WWJD
• Catching the Gingerbread Man
• STR Resources
• STR Speaker Calendar
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Enha n c e d S ol i d Gro un d
Drifting towards
Darwin
Some Christians believe theistic evolution is the solution
to the conflict of faith and science. Considering the
details, though, can Darwin be baptized this way? Or
can biblical Christianity be Darwinized? And why think
theistic evolution will cause atheists to reconsider
Christianity, when evolution is causing Christians to
reconsider atheism? These are the questions I tackle in
this month’s Solid Ground. It’s a challenging topic, but
I’ve worked hard to make it clear and concise. I hope
you find it helpful.
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Clear-thinking Christianity
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Clear-thinking Christianity
March 1, 2013
Dear Friend,
New Atheist Daniel Dennett called evolution “Darwin’s dangerous idea,” because like a “universal
acid” it eats through every traditional religious concept.
William Provine declared evolution “the greatest engine of atheism ever invented.”
Richard Dawkins said, “Darwin made it possible to be an intellectually fulfilled atheist.”
With atheists around the globe cheering evolution’s victory over God, why then are increasing
numbers of notable Christian leaders drifting towards Darwin?
Two reasons. One, they are theologically committed to the Bible and Christian orthodoxy. Two, they
are fully convinced the materialistic program of Neo-Darwinism is adequate to explain the biodiversity
of the planet.
And there’s a practical concern. The scientific establishment simply will not take seriously any
spiritual message that denies Darwin.
The result: theistic evolution. God “used” Darwinian mechanisms to “create” life in all its forms.
Sounds reasonable enough, at first blush: Stay scientifically mainstream and still hang on to classical
Christianity and the God of the Bible.
Considering the details, though, can Darwin be baptized this way? Or can biblical Christianity be
Darwinized? And why think theistic evolution will cause atheists to reconsider Christianity, when
evolution is causing Christians to reconsider atheism?
These are the questions I tackle in this month’s Solid Ground. It’s a challenging topic, but I’ve
worked hard to make it clear and concise. I hope you find it helpful.
Issues like these are not easy for most people to thread through, but at STR we are trained to
untangle difficult topics for you in a way you can follow and pass on to others. Our goal is to provide
you with resources on relevant issues.
If what STR does is helpful to you, please let us know. Drop us a note or an email. You might even
consider a gift. Your generous support would be a great help to us. Gifts from friends like you are
the only way STR continues working hard to make the hard issues more simple and understandable
for you.
By His grace,
Greg Koukl
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By Greg Koukl
It seems like every time I turn around I hear of
another prominent Christian thinker or theologian
who has embraced Darwinism.
the Gospel to be credible. The goal: make peace
with the reigning paradigm and still maintain a
meaningful hold on orthodox Christian religion.
It’s deeply disconcerting. In light of the stature
of these Evangelical leaders, some people are going
to ask,“What do they know that I don’t know? I
thought this was a done deal. It’s either Darwin or
God.”1
Indeed, a host of committed evolutionists see
the equation that way, incorporating the notion of
randomness into the very definition of Darwinism.2
Others are convinced of just the opposite: Evolution
and God are not at odds, and they’re making an
issue of it.
A full court press led by Francis Collins3—the
driving force of the Human Genome Project—and
his colleagues at BioLogos—an advocacy group
attempting to broker peace between science and
religion—pressures Christian stragglers to wake
up and join the 21st century, all for the sake of the
Gospel. On their view, a spiritual message out of
step with scientific facts holds no appeal for the
scientific establishment.
Evangelicals like Tremper Longman of Westmont
College, and Peter Enns, formerly of Westminster,
have endorsed some form of theistic evolution.
And the discussion is heating up. Indeed, the
situation has gotten so tense that Dr. Craig Hazen of
Biola University has asked whether it’s still safe in
Evangelical circles to doubt Darwin at all.
Commitment to theistic evolution is driven by
two impulses. The first is fidelity to Scripture and
Christian orthodoxy. The second is a growing
conviction that evidence for Darwinism is so
overwhelming, Christians must accommodate it for
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Enha n c e d S ol i d Gro un d
Can that be done? The answer depends entirely
upon the meaning of two words:“theistic” and
“evolution.”
What’s in a Name?—“Evolution”
Before Darwin, conventional wisdom held that
God was responsible for designing the biological
world. Darwin argued for an alternative: Nature was
capable of accomplishing this on its own. Changes
in organisms happened “naturally” through an
unguided process, and an equally unguided process
(natural selection) safeguarded whatever novel traits
aided survival and reproduction.
Refinements of Darwin’s ideas followed, notably
the addition of genetic mutation as the agent of
change that, coupled with natural selection, is
called Neo-Darwinism. Thus, life descended with
modification from simple beginnings, branching out
with increasing complexity and diversity to form
Darwin’s evolutionary tree of life.
Though the word “evolution” has itself evolved
over time into a variety of permutations (limited
common descent, punctuated equilibrium, etc.),
what I’ve described above is bare-bones Darwinism,
Clear-thinking Christianity
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at least according to current assessment.4
Two details are central. One, the neo-Darwinian
synthesis necessarily entails a particular
mechanism— natural selection—that determines
(an important word) what biological novelty gets
passed on to future generations. Without it there
is no evolution in the Darwinian sense. Two,
the creative capabilities of the mutation/natural
selection duo make God superfluous to the process.
Darwin’s Dangerous Idea
Natural selection is the “blind watchmaker”—a
term Richard Dawkins coined in his now-famous
book of that title.This was “Darwin’s dangerous
idea.” It seized the day not because of
scientific data. The fossil record was
virtually untouched in 1859 when
Darwin published The Origin of
Species. Living cells were just “black
boxes” of protoplasm and nothing
was known about genetics. Darwin
shook the world because he offered
a plausible, non-theistic explanation
for the existence and development
of life.
Darwinism is a Designer
substitute. Note evolutionary
biologist Francisco Ayala:
It was Darwin’s greatest
accomplishment to show that the
directive organization of living
beings can be explained as the
result of a natural process, natural
selection, without any need to resort to
a Creator.5
Lest the significance of these two
points escape you—that the evolution
we’re enjoined to embrace 1) entails the
blind watchmaker thesis, and 2) makes God
superfluous—listen carefully to these pillars of
Darwinism:
• Ernst Mayr: “Natural selection …is so
important for the Darwinian because it
permits the explanation of adaptation…
by natural means instead of by divine
intervention.”6
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Enha n c e d S ol i d Gro un d
• Douglas Futuyma:“Some shrink from the
conclusion that the human species was not
designed, has no purpose, and is the product
of mere mechanical mechanisms--but this
seems to be the message of evolution.”7
• Harvard’s Stephen Jay Gould:“No ‘vital forces’
propel evolutionary change, and whatever we
think of God, His existence is not manifest in
the products of nature.”8
• George Gaylord Simpson:“All the objective
phenomena of the history of life can
be explained by purely naturalistic or
materialistic factors....Therefore, mankind is
the result of a purposeless and natural process
that did not have him in mind.”9
Clearly, if these notables are taken
seriously (and quotes like these are
legion—even Darwin understood
his theory this way), then Darwinism
cannot easily be baptized. Indeed,
the world’s foremost popular
apologist for evolution, Richard
Dawkins, famously remarked,
“Darwin made it possible to be an
intellectually fulfilled atheist.” “Evolution,”William
Provine cheers,“is the greatest engine of atheism
ever invented.”10
“Evolution is the greatest engine of
atheism ever invented.”
These are no idle words. If evolution in the sense
that is meaningful to the scientific establishment
can coherently co-exist with Christian theism, why
are Darwinists so buoyed by atheism’s prospects
because of it?
This is the Darwinism Christians are being asked
to make peace with. And make no mistake, this
is the only kind of “evolution” that will purchase
the respect of the scientific nobility. Never forget
the candid admission of Harvard geneticist Richard
Lewontin: “We cannot allow a Divine Foot in the
door.”11
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And this is precisely how some theistic
evolutionists understand it. Anglican John
Polkinghorne writes, “An evolutionary universe is
theologically understood as a creation allowed to
make itself.” Biologist Kenneth Miller insists that
“mankind’s appearance on this planet was not
preordained….We are here…as an afterthought,
a minor detail, a happenstance in a history.”12
[emphasis added]
John West points out,“According to many new
theistic evolutionists, God chose to ‘create’ the world
by setting up an undirected process over which
he had no specific control and about which he
did not even have foreknowledge of its particular
outcomes.”13
In what sense can an undirected process be
considered “theistic”? Again, the answer depends on
definitions.
What’s in a Name?—“Theistic”
The Christian account starts this way: “In the
beginning, God created the heavens and the earth”
(Gen. 1:1). What follows in the next three chapters is
a characterization, of some sort, of the details.
Genesis is the book of beginnings: the beginning
of the world, the beginning of mankind, and the
beginning of a problem. Adam and Eve acted
in a way that caused a problem for all mankind
descending from them. The rest of the story records
what God has done to repair the breech.
However one understands the beginning chapters
of the narrative—as a straightforward chronological
description of events or something else14 (Genesis
1), with an historical chronology following (Genesis
2-3)—some details seem theologically inescapable.
First, God made everything. Second, God
deliberately organized everything in a very
particular way. He made the raw materials, then
He (somehow) made particular things from the
raw materials—Adam, for instance. Third, though
humans are biologically diverse, certain nonbiological things remained the same for all.
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Enha n c e d S ol i d Gro un d
Humans are distinct from every other kind of
creature in that they bear the image of their Creator
passed on from that first pair. They also share
equally in the guilt resulting from the couple’s
freely-chosen rebellion against their Sovereign (“…
by nature, children of wrath” Eph. 2:3), an act of
sedition that corrupted their original moral purity.
?
f
o
e
g
a
m
I
Standard Christian theology dictates that all
human beings are both transcendently valuable and
morally culpable before God as a group in virtue of
their common descent from their first parents.
This summary strikes me as absolute, bare
minimum, initial Christian theology. If these claims
are not to be understood as facts of history, it’s
hard to imagine how anything in the narrative that
follows from Genesis to Revelation makes any sense.
So, in what way are both theism and evolution
true? My question at this point is not whether the
Darwinian model as commonly characterized is
true (I don’t think so, but that is a separate matter).
Rather, is the model Christians are being asked to
embrace as scientifically certain consistent with
classical Christianity? Can that kind of evolution be
squared with this kind of theism?
An Idle God?
Darwinism offers a description of how biological
diversity came about. If “theistic evolution” is
a meaningful phrase, it’s appropriate to ask the
question,“What did God do?” It’s clear what
Darwinists think evolution did (pretty much
everything). But for theistic evolutionists, what was
God’s role?
Clear-thinking Christianity
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What would you say?
Our new biweekly challenge on the blog is a chance for you to practice using
what you learn from STR. Every other week on the STR Blog, we offer a challenge to
readers: Tuesday we post an objection to Christianity that you might hear from friends or
family, then it’s your turn to try your best to answer that question in the comment section.
Check back on Thursday to see how Brett, Alan, or Greg answer it.
Stand to Reason Resources...Be Prepared
God and Evolution
Jay Richards, Ed., 388 pages (BK373) $24.95
What does it mean to say that God “used evolution” to create the world? Is Darwin’s theory of evolution compatible with
belief in God? And even if Darwin’s theory could be reconciled with religious belief, do we need to do so? Is the theory well
established scientifically? Is it true?
In the century and a half since Charles Darwin first proposed his theory of evolution, some religious believers have rejected it
outright; others, often called “theistic evolutionists,” have sought to reconcile Darwin’s theory with their religious beliefs, but
often at the cost of clarity, orthodoxy, or both. With contributions from Jay Richards, Stephen Meyer, William Dembski, and
more, this timely anthology of essays will carefully tease out the various scientific, philosophical, and theological claims at
stake, and separate the chaff from the wheat.
In the Beginning… We Misunderstood: Interpreting Genesis 1
in Its Original Context *NEW*
Johnny V. Miller & John M. Soden, 224 pages with companion audio CD
(BK374) $13.99 Includes free CD interview with author John Soden
For years, the evangelical church and its members have debated whether the Bible should be interpreted literally or
symbolically in regards to the age of the earth. In their groundbreaking new book, In the Beginning… We Misunderstood,
authors Johnny Miller and John Soden say these arguments have missed the point. Rather, what Christians really need
to know is how to interpret the Bible in its original context. Exposing the fallacies of trying to make the biblical text fit
a specific scientific presupposition, Miller and Soden offer a new approach to interpreting Genesis 1 that explores the
creation account based on how the original audience would have understood its teaching.
Answering the Challenge of Evolution
Gregory Koukl and Phillip Johnson, Four Audio CDs with PDF Study Notes
(CD250) $16.95 Also available as an MP3 download
Science and Faith: Are They Compatible? – Gregory Koukl (2 CDs): Greg reveals that, rather than being hostile to science,
biblical Christianity was the seedbed that gave modern science its start. He also shows that the present controversy is
not about the facts of science vs. the faith of religion; it’s about two competing definitions of science.
Why I’m Not an Evolutionist – Gregory Koukl: The weakness of the two essential pillars of Darwinism is exposed in a way
anyone can follow. Greg also gives three empirical reasons to take Intelligent Design seriously.
The Grand Metaphysical Story of Science – Phillip Johnson: In this vigorous, lucid, and captivating address, the author of
Darwin on Trial carefully shows that the evolution story has prevailed not because of facts, but because of philosophy.
6
Enha n c e d S ol i d Gro un d
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Imagine I was untutored in culinary basics and
asked for directions on boiling water. You tell me
to heat water to 212º, add a leprechaun, and water
will boil. I ask if water will boil at 212º without the
leprechaun.Yes, you say, it will. Heat can do the job
all on its own. I decide to leave the leprechaun out;
he’s superfluous.
Either God designs the details, or nature
shuffles the deck and natural selection
chooses the winning hand.
When theists affirm the standard Darwinian
model, then try to insert God, it sounds like invoking
a leprechaun to boil water—maybe out of religious
habit or theological necessity, but not to make a
difference in the outcome. God, like the leprechaun,
seems superfluous.
How do theistic evolutionists escape this
problem? If Darwinism is true, in what specific way
did God use it? “If you tell an attentive child that
evolution is just God’s way of creating,” Jay Richards
observes,“she’s going to ask you what you mean.”15
That’s my question. I’ve been offered three possible
answers.
Stacking the Deck - 1
First, if biological development is a result of
genetic mutations sifted
out by natural selection,
God might have
directly manipulated
those mutations in
just the right way at
just the right time to
accomplish His goal.
This is certainly a plausible option. The problem
is, when DNA no longer randomly mutates and
natural selection no longer blindly selects, then
the process is no longer Darwinian. It’s intelligent
design, hardly the kind of “evolution” to satisfy the
critics.
Suppose I wanted a straight
flush for a hand of poker. I
could either use sleight of
INTERVIEW
hand to stack the deck while
Greg talks with Stephen
I deal, or I could shuffle the
Meyer on theistic
cards randomly and see if the
evolution
flush is dealt me. It wouldn’t
make any sense, though, to
“design” the hand by shuffling the deck and dealing.
There’s no way to ensure the results. There’s no
telos; no ultimate goal I’m shooting for.
LIVE
In the same way, either God designs the details,
or nature shuffles the deck and natural selection
chooses the winning hand. The mechanism is either
conscious and intentional (design), or unconscious
and unintentional (natural selection). Creation
is teleological; it has a purpose, a goal, an end.
Evolution is accidental, like a straight flush dealt to a
poker rookie.
Stacking the Deck - 2
There’s a second option. Maybe the deck was
“stacked” from the beginning with God either frontloading all the information in the initial conditions
or endowing nature with a self-organizing principle
that could manufacture information along the way.16
One version, called “fully gifted creation,” was
formerly advanced by Calvin College’s Howard
Van Till (I say “formerly” because Professor Van Till
apparently is no longer a Christian). According to
Van Till, God “generously gifted the creation with the
capabilities for self-organization and transformation”
resulting in “an unbroken line of evolutionary
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Clear-thinking Christianity
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development from non-living
matter to…existing life-forms.”17
While a possibility, strictly speaking, Collins’s
alternative strikes me as worse than God of the gaps;
here God is filling gaps no one even knows about.
Like John Wisdom’s “invisible gardener,”21 this is a
classic leap-of-faith move that is impossible to verify
or falsify. It simply saves the paradigm. Plus, even
Dawkins admits biology doesn’t “appear driven by
chance” at all, but just the opposite: It gives “the
appearance of having been designed for a purpose.”22
There are two problems
with this approach that seem
insurmountable. First, there
is no empirical reason to
believe that colossal amounts
of information were
“deposited” at the beginning
of the universe, then
unwrapped at just the right
moments by mechanistic
means to propel the
progress of living organisms.
Second, no such inherent
“self-organizing principle”
(i.e.,“chemical necessity”) is
evident in chemistry.18 Stephen Meyer has shown
conclusively that no mechanistic process can ever
produce information, since a law-like process can
only generate rigidly ordered redundancy that is
biologically meaningless.19 The results will be
more like mantras than intelligible “sentences” of
information (compare BABBA BABBA BABBA to “I do
not like green eggs and ham”).
If there is no evidence the information necessary
for life was bundled up in the initial conditions of
the Big Bang, and no self-organizing principle in
chemistry that can produce that information “on the
fly,” then this option is off the table, too.
3. God in the Shadows
There remains one alternative for God “using”
evolution: All appearances to the contrary, God
is working behind the scenes in ways we cannot
detect. Collins writes:
Evolution could appear to us to be driven
by chance, but from God’s perspective the
outcome would be entirely specified. Thus,
God could be completely and intimately
involved in the creation of all species, while
from our perspective, limited as it is by the
tyranny of linear time this would appear a
random and undirected process. 20
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Enha n c e d S ol i d Gro un d
[
One might invoke God as the primary cause of
all things, using secondary causes to accomplish
His aims—a completely legitimate option in
principle. However, secondary physical causes leave
trails leading back to their initial causes. Today’s
rainfall can, theoretically, be traced back through a
multitude of secondary causes to a primary cause at
the big beginning.
Yet that is precisely the trail missing here. Do not
forget what problem needs solving: the infusion of
enormous amounts of information at various stages
of biological history. As we’ve seen, no naturalistic
secondary cause is capable of explaining that. It
seems ad hoc to appeal to God as primary cause of a
physical process when there is no trail of secondary
causes that lead to the final result.
I guess theistic
A Piece of My Mind
evolutionists could just
Listen to Greg talk
shrug and say, as an article
about this edition
of faith, though materialistic
of Solid Ground.
processes are completely
or subscribe for later
adequate for evolution, God
somehow did it all since “the Bible tells me so.” But
that same Bible has a lot to say about details that are
not at all friendly to Darwinism.
WWJD
For many, the largest obstacle to theistic evolution
is theological. Certain features of Christian
orthodoxy seem impossible to reconcile with the
Darwinian model. Is it true, for example, that Adam
and Eve might not have been our first parents,
as some suggest?23 If so, it’s hard to see how the
redemptive story in the Bible holds together.
If the human race has multiple evolutionary
origins, then mankind is not related physically in
]
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one fallen family. In what sense is Jesus “made like
His brethren in all things” (Heb. 2:17) if we’re not all
brethren? If Adam or the Fall are figures of some sort,
when did the moral wound occur in history that would
actually be healed in history at Golgotha? If the first
Adam is a fiction, why need a second Adam to repair the
breech? Read Rom. 5:12-19 carefully and ask if anything
Paul says there about salvation makes sense if Adam
wasn’t our first father.24
Gingerbread Man.
For Peter Enns, Paul was a first-century man employing
the limited (and ultimately inaccurate) conventions of
his day (like a literal Adam).25 Could the same be said
of Jesus? In Matt. 19:4-6, Jesus grounds an argument
against divorce in God’s natural order established “from
the beginning” with the first human beings. It’s hard to
see how His point has any force were there no historical
Adam and Eve actually united by God.
Every concession brings us closer to
the fox’s mouth.
Luke declares Jesus “…the son of David…the son
of Abraham…the son of Adam, the son of God” (Luke
3:23-38). At what juncture does this record cease
to be actual history and fade into myth? And how
far does this go? How is Genesis an account of any
historical beginnings? Was there no Satan? No original
temptation? No primeval lie? No original sin? No
proto-evangel promising the seed of woman would
crush the serpent’s head?
If the Darwinian model advanced by theistic
evolutionists like those at BioLogos is sound, it becomes
very difficult to imagine how core elements of
redemptive history have any meaning at all. Genesis 2-3,
Francis Schaeffer observes, ceases then to explain either
man’s wonder or his flaw.26
Catching the Gingerbread Man
Problems like these are precisely why Daniel Dennett
declared Darwinism a “universal acid” cutting right
through traditional religion—why, as Casey Luskin laments,
“Many atheists believe Neo-Darwinian science guts theism
to its core.”27 Ironically, rather than making Christianity
more credible, Darwinism undermines the Gospel,
negating everything that makes the Good News good.
Adopting Darwinism “for the sake of the Gospel” is
counterproductive. The only evolution acceptable to
the scientific establishment is not the kind that makes
the Gospel more attractive. Rather, it undermines it.
Therefore, it is unlikely theistic evolution will have any
persuasive effect on those we’re trying to reach.
The fabled Gingerbread Man thought himself safe
crossing the river first on the fox’s tail, then on his
back, and finally on his snout. In an instant, though, he
was eaten with one big gulp. That was the end of the
9
Enha n c e d S ol i d Gro un d
In the final analysis, Christian theism contains
necessary elements that Darwinism renders
meaningless. If one is convinced the second is true, the
first will be overhauled. Adjusting our theology
to accommodate Darwinism, however,
adjusts Christian theism right out of
existence.
Putting This
Solid Ground into Action
•
Keep in mind that instead of making
Christianity more credible, Darwinism
undermines the Gospel. If the first Adam is
a fiction, why do we need a second Adam
(Jesus) to repair the breech?
•
Remember the leprechaun in the boiling
water – if evolution is true, God is
superfluous.
•
If the Darwinian model is sound, it is
difficult to imagine how core elements of
redemptive history have any meaning at all.
•
“Theistic evolution” requires redefining either
“theistic” or “evolution” in significant ways to
make them compatible.
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• 15 Chinese Evangelical Free Church, Monterey Park, CA Time:
7:45 - 9:45 p.m. Topic: “Making Abortion Unthinkable” Contact: www.cefc.org
• 24-26 Oregon Right to Life, Salem, OR Time:8:00 a.m. - 5:00 p.m.
Topic: ”Making Abortion Unthinkable” & “Stem Cell Research &
Cloning” Contact: www.ortl.org
April
• 20 Oregon Right to Life, Portland, OR Time: 9:00 a.m. - 5:00 p.m.
Topics: “Pro-life Training”, “Tactics in Defending the Faith” Contact:
Gayle Atteberry, www.ortl.org
• 26-28 Chinese Church in Christ, Milpitas, CA Topics: “Tactics in
Defending the Faith”, “Making Sense of Bioethics” Contact: Eugene Chu, www.ccicnv.org
March
• 17 Desert Springs Community Church, Goodyear, AZ Time: 9:30 a.m. - 3:00 p.m. Topic: “Why I Am a Christian?”, “Does
God Exist?”, “Why Should I Trust the Bible?”, “Tactics in Defending
the Faith” Contact: www.desertspringscommunity.com
April
• 1-6 Upland Christian Academy, Salt Lake City, UT Topics: Utah
Mission Trip Contact: www.uplandchristianacademy.org
• 14 Ecclesia Hollywood, Hollywood, CA Time: 9:30 a.m. & 11:30 a.m. Topics: “The Problem of Evil” Contact: www.churchinhollywood.com
• 19 Village Baptist Church, Fayetteville, NC Topics: “Doubting Your
Doubts: How to Deal with Doubt?”, “Do Christians Know Anything?” Contact: www.villagebc.org J. Warner Wallace
March
• 2 Apologetics Canada Conference, Abbotsford, Canada Time: 2:00 pm Topic: “Cold Case Christianity” Contact: www.apologeticscanada.com
• 17 Grace Community Church, Clarksville, TN Time: 9:00 a.m. - 1:00 p.m. Topic: “Cold Case Christianity” Contact: www.gcomchurch.com
• 22 Calvary Community Church, Brea, CA Time: 7 - 9 p.m. Topic:
“Evidence for the Resurrection” Contact: www.calvarycomm.org
• 27 University of Kentucky Ratio Christi, Lexington, KY Time: 12 p.m. - 10 p.m. Topic: “Cold Case Christianity” Contact: www.ratiochristi.org/uk
April
• 8-9 Sam Houston University Ratio Christi, Huntsville, TX Time: TBD
Topic: “Cold Case Christianity” Contact: www.ratiochristi.org/shsu
• 11 Emmanuel Faith Community Church, Escondido, CA Time: 7:00
- 8:30 p.m. Topic: “Cold Case Christianity” Contact: www.efcc.org
• 14 Church of the Living Christ, Ojai, CA Time: 8:30 a.m., 10:30 a.m.
& 6:00 p.m. Topic: TBD Contact: www.ojaiclc.org
• 20 Prepare the Way Apologetics Conference, Bend, OR Time: 9:30 a.m. - 12:00 p.m. Topic: “Cold Case Christianity” Contact: www.preparetheway.us
• 26 Chinese Bible Church, San Diego, CA Time: TBD Topic: TBD
Contact: www.cbcsd.com
To get information about inviting an STR speaker to your church, email
Dawnielle@str.org for Alan, Brett or Jim, or Melinda@str.org for Greg.
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Endnotes
1 Clearly, mere belief in God is not inconsistent with Darwinism.
Rather, people have assumed that only one explanation for
biodiversity can be true, either the Darwinian story (as currently
understood), or some version of the Christian account.
12 John Polkinghorne, Quarks, Chaos, and Christianity, 113;
Kenneth Miller, Finding Darwin’s God, 272; both cited in West,
Discovery Institute, 5/1/09.
2 By “randomness” I mean the process was unguided.
3 Collins is author of The Language of God and The Language of
Science and Faith.
14 Find alternative views in John Lennox’s Seven Days that
Divide the World, and Miller and Soden’s In the Beginning…We
Misunderstood.
4 Henceforth, this is my meaning of “Darwinism” and “evolution.”
15 Richards, 12.
5 Ayala, as quoted in William A. Dembski ed., Mere Creation
(Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1998), 113.
16 Proponents like Denis Lamoureux call this “teleological evolution”
or “evolutionary creation.”
6 Michael Ruse, Darwinism Defended (Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley,
1982), xi-xii, as cited in Jay Richards, ed., God and Evolution (Seattle:
Discovery Institute Press, 2010), 22.
17 Howard Van Till,“The Fully Gifted Creation,” in Three Views on
Creation and Evolution, ed. J.P. Moreland and John Mark Reynolds
(Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1999), 171.
7 Douglas Futuyma, Science on Trial: The Case for Evolution,
Sunderland, MA: Sinauer Associates, Inc., 1983), 12-13.
18 Stephen Meyer in Richards, 157-160.
13 Richards, 41.
19 Stephen Meyer, Signature in the Cell (San Francisco: HarperOne,
2009), chap. 11.
8 Stephen Jay Gould,“In Praise of Charles Darwin,” Discover, 2/82,
cited in Johnson’s “Response to Gould,”.
20 Francis Collins, Language of God (New York: Free Press, 2006),
205, as quoted in Richards, 44-45.
9 George Gaylord Simpson, The Meaning of Evolution (Yale
University Press: New Haven, CT, 1967), 344-345.
21 Invisible Gardener.
10 William Provine,“Evolution: Free Will and Punishment and
Meaning in Life,”.
22 Richard Dawkins, The Blind Watchmaker (New York: W.W. Norton
& Company, 1986), 1.
11 Richard Lewontin,“Billions and Billions of Demons,” The New
York Review of Books, 1/4/97.The full citation is stunning in its
clarity, candor, and hubris: A distinguished member of the scientific
aristocracy admitting that the apparatus of science is rigged to
produce philosophically acceptable answers. Find it here:
23 Note Longman.
24 The same can be said of 1 Cor. 11:8-9, 15:21-22, 15:45; 2 Cor. 11:3,
1 Tim. 2:13-14.
25 Enns.
26 Francis Schaeffer, The Complete Works, vol. II (Wheaton: Crossway,
1982), 3.
27 Richards, 68.
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