The atheist evolutionist finds no difficulty in accounting for pain, hatred and evil. These are woven into the fabric of evolutionary theory. His problem is: where did love, altruism and good originate? And to this he has no satisfactory reply. The Christian, on the other hand, whether he believes in creation or evolution, can easily account for goodness, love and beauty. Jesus said: “Why do you call me good? There is none good but God.” (Matthew 19:17). “Jesus of Nazareth … went about doing good.” (Acts 10:38). “God is love.” (1 John 4:8). “He (God) has made the world beautiful in its time.” (Ecclesiastes 3:11) The whole Bible is full of such themes. So when we read that “God saw everything that he had made, and behold it was very good” (Genesis 1:31), the goodness He saw is essentially linked with goodness of His character as revealed through Scripture. (e.g. Exodus 34:6,7) (Even the word ‘good’ in English is derived from the word ‘God’.) But, the Christian has to come to terms with the question: Why is such a ‘good’ world also full of evil, hatred and ugliness? But if death did not enter the world with sin, there was no need for the Saviour to die. Here the Christian who believes in evolution has a problem; if even atheists believe evolution to be cruel (though some try to deny it); if there is even the remotest possibility this might be so; ‘if it might even be necessary to exculpate God from responsibility for evil’,2 then this, I suggest, denies the very character of God. The good God turns out to be a fraud. It is just not conceivable that the God whose name is love could, without reason, perpetrate the cruelty demanded by evolutionary theory. You may argue that God ordered acts of violence and death to be carried out by the children of Israel (e.g. 1 Kings 18:40; Exodus 32:27). That is true. But these acts were after the sin of Adam had brought death into the world. Also, they were always in punishment for blatant wrongdoing. This is very different from gratuitous violence performed in the establishment of the peaceful earth which God described as ‘very good’. . .Only by accepting as a rational act of faith (Hebrews 11:3) the historicity of the Genesis narrative as revealed by God can we answer the questions, why evil and good? Why ugliness and beauty? Why selfishness and altruism? creation/origin-of-goodness
Posted on: Fri, 16 Jan 2015 23:35:01 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015