What I Have Against the Creation Science Movement - Glenn Conjurske

What I Have Against the Creation Science Movement

Abstract of a Sermon Preached on January 9, 2000

by Glenn Conjurske

You won’t need your Bibles for this sermon, for I intend to speak this morning on an unscriptural and unspiritual subject. We had a brief discussion last night at the love feast about Creation Science, and I aim to tell you what I have against it.

For thirty years I have been generally opposed to what is called “apologetics,” and I see no reason to alter my stance now, but quite the contrary. It is not that I see no good at all in it. It may have some little use in some cases. In order to come to God, a man must first “believe that he is,” and if apologetics can secure that, well. But I do not believe that apologetics can secure it in most cases, for atheism and infidelity are not usually intellectual things, but expressions of the enmity of the heart to God. No apologetics will ever cure an ill-disposed heart. Yet it may be that here and there we might find some soul who is “not far from the kingdom of God”—-not far from faith—-some “honest atheist,” whose infidelity is purely the offspring of ignorance, and a little of apologetics may possibly do him some good.

Not that the same good could not be performed by a much shorter and better route. Perhaps thirty-five years ago, shortly after I was converted, I heard from the lips of Lou (or Lew?) Finney the following testimony. He had been an atheist, and loved to speak against the Bible. He was doing so at his work-place one day, when a Christian asked him if he had ever read the Bible. He was obliged to answer that he had not. The Christian told him he had better keep his mouth shut till he knew what he was talking about. He therefore determined to read the Bible—-so that he could speak against it intelligently. He was converted in the eleventh chapter of Genesis. And this though there is nothing whatever in those chapters to prove the existence of God, nor to prove creation over evolution. The Bible only affirms, but does not prove. Ah! but the Bible is living and powerful. It is the nature of the book to bring God to the soul, and to bring the soul to God. Apologetics cannot do this.

For thirty years, then, I have stood generally against apologetics, for these two reasons: it is unnecessary to faith, and ineffectual to unbelief.

Unnecessary, ineffectual, and unspiritual too. Alas, precisely because it is unspiritual, it exactly suits the unspiritual intellectualism of the modern church. I believe it owes its present popularity to nothing more than to the unspiritual intellectualism which now prevails in the church. The content of Creation Science is almost wholly unspiritual. It feeds the mind, but not the soul, and constitutes generally a great misuse of the precious book of Genesis. The book of Genesis is overflowing with deep and precious spiritual truth—-such as you might find rehearsed in my articles on Leah and Rachel and Joseph, wrestling Jacob, and Moses in the back side of the desert—-but all this is missed by these unspiritual intellectuals. Some study this precious book, and find little more in it than a chart of the dispensations. Others study it, and find only ethnology. Others find no more than an occasion for Creation Science. They walk on acres of diamonds, and see only dull, brown stones. Such is modern intellectualism.

This much we may say even of what is true in Creation Science. But the fact is, the present movement has mixed this truth with a great load of unproved and improbable theories, and all this mass of theory is held as sacred as the truth which the system contains. In all this I can see no appreciable difference between the Creation Scientists and the Evolutionists. They each have their own catch-all, by means of which they wiggle out of every difficulty. With the Evolutionists it is hundreds of millions of years—-not that they ever explain how hundreds of millions of years can work miracles, or do the impossible. With the Creationists it is always the Genesis flood—-not that they can ever satisfactorily explain how the flood could cut the Grand Canyon. I would rather profess my ignorance on such points, though in truth I am no more ignorant than they are. It is a great mistake, too, to suppose that we must understand all the physical phenomena of the universe in order to believe the Bible, or in order to defend it. We don’t understand everything, and we don’t need to.

But this “flood theology,” as I call it, is a regular passion with many, with very little of reason in it. Many foolish things are postulated on these theories, such as that wine did not ferment before the flood. By this means they think to exonerate Noah in his drunkenness. He did not know the wine was fermented, did not know it would make him drunk. But such theories require a creative energy at the flood, which changed the nature of the creation which already existed—-changed the nature of either the grape juice or the organisms which ferment it—-and we know no such thing. We do believe there was a creative operation at the fall of man, which supernaturally altered the existing creation. Scripture requires us to believe this, but to affirm the same of the time of the flood may amount to too much conjecture with too little reason. The earth was “canopied” with water vapor before the flood, they tell us, as if that had anything to do with the matter. It no doubt was so canopied, and it still is. Wine ferments on cloudy days as well as sunny, in the dark as well as the light, and we suppose it would ferment on the moon or Mars, if the temperature were right. If the earth was any otherwise canopied then than it is now, there must have been some creative alteration in the air, the water, the force of gravity, or all three. Perhaps there was, but this is a theory—-a deduction—-and not a whit more probable than the “gap theory.” They might both be true—-and they might not. We know that “when there was not a man to till the ground,” “the Lord God had not caused it to rain upon the earth,” but we do not know that such a state of things prevailed until the flood, or after the fall of man. Perhaps—-but we would rather profess our ignorance, than dogmatically insist upon what may not be true.

But this passion for explaining everything by the flood is no new thing. Whitcomb and Morris may have popularized it—-may have popularized the whole Creation Science movement—-but it was no new thing with them. Harry Rimmer was up to his ears in this three generations ago. He wrote several books on it, and he and W. B. Riley carried on sundry debates on the subject. Rimmer calls Riley “the father of Fundamentalism,” which is saying too much, but he was certainly one of its most prominent leaders in his day. Just this morning I was reading Riley’s book entitled My Bible, and quite providentially came across a statement (on pages 93-94) which well illustrates whither this passion for “flood theology” will carry men. After the manner of a cheer leader, he was making point after point against the critics of the Bible. His fourth point is this:

“Pennsylvania has been justly proud of Dr. Woolley. As an archeologist, he has few equals and no superiors. His work of uncovering Ur of the Chaldees is known to all the scholars of the world. While he was about it, he reached one day, perfectly clean clay, uniform, and his workmen announced they had come to the bottom of everything—-to the river silt. But Woolley said, ‘Dig on.” They went down through this clean clay for more than eight feet, when suddenly they struck a layer of rubbish full of stone implements and pottery. To their amazement Woolley, when they took it up, said, ‘There is no doubt this was laid down by the flood of the Sumerian history‘—-the flood of Noah’s story. Point four!

“Most unfortunate for the critics!”

Most unfortunate, I rather think, for the reputation of W. B. Riley. The foolishness of this is transparent on its face. Do men never think? By this theory, when God spoke to Abram in Ur of the Chaldees, and said to him, “Get thee out,” Abram must have said, “This is just what I wanted to hear. I have wanted to get out of this place for a long time!”—-and so proceeded to dig his way up through the eight feet of clay under which Noah’s flood had buried “Ur of the Chaldees.” For it is beyond all doubt that Abram lived in Ur of the Chaldees long after Noah’s flood—-and it is equally evident that there was no Ur, and no Chaldees, before the flood.

Now we suggest that if Mr. Riley had been as intent upon the knowledge of the truth, as he was on making “Point four!” against the critics, he would not have fallen into so egregious an error, and we suggest the same thing concerning the improbable theories of the modern adherents of this “flood theology.” We believe, of course, in the flood, but we decline to believe in every far-fetched theory which modern Creationists tack on to it. We believe, moreover, that the cause of truth is much weakened by such tactics. The Creationists cheer, while the Evolutionists laugh. If they would stick to essentials, and content themselves with what is infallibly true, there might be some little use in their efforts, but when they cumber the truth with a load of unproved and improbable theories, they only weaken the cause for which they stand. We do not need to believe in “the young earth” to believe the Bible. We do not need to reconcile the difficulties in the Bible itself, much less the difficulties between the Bible and what calls itself science. Either the universe is very old, or God created it on purpose to appear very old. Why would he do this? To deceive? Was he a Simonides, writing new manuscripts, and making them appear ancient? These “young earth” theories tax my faith far more than the alternative, but I leave the matter just where the Bible leaves it—-I speak advisedly—-among the secret things which belong to the Lord our God. God at any rate needs no defense from me.

But this movement weakens the cause in another manner also. Whatever may be said of the substance of this teaching, its spirit is certainly harmful. I am content to question its theories, and to profess my ignorance, but its spirit I must vigorously oppose. I shall have more to say of that by and by. I believe the spirit of the movement positively harmful, but for the moment I only insist that it is as ineffectual as it is unspiritual.

We vastly prefer the spiritual method of Harry Ironside. He was preaching, in his early days, in the streets in California, when an infidel approached him and challenged him to a debate. Ironside accepted the challenge, but only on one condition. He told the infidel that he must bring to the debate one drunkard, one bum, one immoral man, who had been reformed by the principles of infidelity, while he, on his part, would bring a hundred of such, who had been reclaimed by the gospel. He heard no more about the debate with the infidel.

But I tell you, the Creation Science movement fills the hands of the saints with carnal weapons, which are as ineffectual as they are unnecessary. They are not “mighty through God, to the pulling down of strongholds.” The word of God is. It is none of my business to prove that the sword of the Spirit is a true sword, nor to prove by intellectual arguments that it is sharp. My business is to use it. In the right hands, it will prove itself. I recall a story I heard a third of a century ago, when I was a student at the Grand Rapids School of the Bible and Music. Mr. John Miles, the president of the school, told of his dealing with a girl in a bus station. She professed infidel principles, and made infidel objections to all that he said. He chose one apt verse of Scripture (and I cannot remember what it was), and simply quoted it to her. She came back with another infidel argument, and again he quoted his verse. She responded as before, and again he quoted his verse. This went on for some time, till at length she broke down, and submitted herself to the claims of Christ. If he had met her on her own ground, they would be arguing yet. And here lies the fundamental error of the Creation Science movement. It meets unbelief on its own ground. It fights with carnal weapons.

It loses the battle, too, for in fact it does not so much as know where or what the battle is. It fights the battle on the ground of reason, assuming that unbelief is an intellectual thing. But in fact, unbelief is a moral thing, a thing which exists in the will and the emotions, not merely in the intellect. The truth is, there is light enough all around men—-light enough within them—-to render every Evolutionist, every infidel, every pagan without excuse. They reject that light—-close their eyes to it—-and are they now likely to receive the light which these Creationists dig out of the earth, or the theories which they spin out of their own brains? And supposing they do receive it, to make an intellectual convert will not save a soul. We may convert the mind and leave the heart still devoted to its lusts. We may convert the intellect and leave the man still at war with his conscience, whereas if we move a man to submit to the claims of conscience, the intellect will be converted of course. Infidelity and every fundamental error, as Charles G. Finney testifies, give way before conviction of sin, but we do not convict a man of sin by proving a universal flood, and we can convict him of sin without proving it.

When we convert a man’s intellect, we leave him far short of even the faith of devils. They believe there is one God, and tremble. He believes there is one God, and does not tremble. If we so far move his mind as to cause him to believe in God, and so far move his emotions as to cause him to tremble, then we have given him the faith of devils. But if he has all this, and holds yet to his sins, he is no more converted than the devils. We want something more than this. We want the preaching of the offense of the cross, with the Holy Ghost sent down from heaven, and when we see a whole movement devoted to these things which are unspiritual and ineffectual, we say something is seriously amiss.

But I proceed to speak of the spirit of this movement. To convert a man’s intellect to the truth is one matter; to infuse into him a spirit of intellectualism is quite another. The former may be of some use. The latter is a great calamity. But I believe that the Creation Science movement will certainly do the latter long before it does the former. The Bible says in Matthew 18:3, “Verily I say unto you, Except ye be converted, and become as little children, ye shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven.” But the unspiritual intellectualism of the Creation Science movement does not make little children of men, but quite the reverse—-and if so, it must remove them farther from God, not bring them nearer to him. I open The Genesis Flood, by Whitcomb and Morris, and read on the first page (of my edition), “THE GENESIS FLOOD presents a new and powerful system for unifying and correlating scientific data bearing on the earth’s early history. Frankly recognizing the inadequacies of uniformitarianism and evolutionism as unifying principles, the authors propose a Biblically-based system of creationism and catastrophism. They stress the philosophic and scientific necessity of the doctrine of ‘creation of apparent age,’ as well as the importance in terrestrial history of geologic and hydrologic ‘catastrophes,’…”—-and I say, Enough! Enough! Can anyone conceive that 500 pages of this will leave a man with the spirit of a little child? Give me Sam Hadley. Give me Gipsy Smith. Give me Moses, but not this! And this “new and powerful system,” by the way, must in the nature of the case be totally unnecessary. If “new,” John Wesley and D. L. Moody knew nothing of it—-but what they did know was by all means more “powerful.”

And I believe there is another grave defect, a moral defect, at the very foundation of this movement. The offense of the cross is precisely what it does not want. It aims at respectability. It dislikes the reproach of Christ. It does not care to labor under the reproach of the apostles, that they were “unlearned and ignorant men.” It wants recognition in the intellectual world. Fundamentalists have long been the butt of the ridicule of the intellectual world, and they have gotten tired of it. But that reproach gave them a perfect opportunity to display the power of God, as the apostles did under the same reproach. But no, they must regain their intellectual respectability, and extricate themselves from the reproach which attaches to the profession of the truth of God. So they must have doctor’s degrees, and Creation Science. This is the real foundation of the whole Neo-evangelical movement, and I believe it plays a large part in the Creation Science movement also. Moses counted the reproach of Christ greater riches than the treasures in Egypt. This modern unspiritual intellectualism counts the reproach of Christ no riches at all, but seeks by all means to wipe it off, and secure the esteem of Egypt in its stead. We think if these folks had imbibed the spirit of Moses, instead of theorizing and digging in the earth to try to defend him, they would have another viewpoint, and be engaged in another business.

Glenn Conjurske