General Questions and Information

Sites and articles of interest:

• The Report of the Creation Study Committee of the Presbyterian Church of America describes several different interpretations of Genesis 1 and discusses the strengths and weaknesses of each

How could plants be created before the sun?

See Day 4 of Creation.

But God wouldn't do it that way!

This argument is made by people on all sides of the issue, including atheists. Creationists and some atheists argue that a good God would not use the brutal, wasteful method of thousands of years of natural selection to produce humans and life as we know it. Creationists argue further that God would not demean the humans he created in his own image by evolving them from animals. Theistic evolutionists respond that creationism means God deliberately created viruses, parasites, creatures designed to be carnivores and other things we think of as evil.

It seems to me that one of the surest ways to fall into theological error is to make an argument about what God would or would not do based on our own fallible conceptions of what a good God ought to do. After all, this is the same reasoning that leads atheists to reject God (because a good God wouldn't permit evil) and universalists and annihilationists to reject the notion of hell (because a good God wouldn't punish people eternally). Clearly, God has deliberately created creatures that we consider to be evil, for he created Satan and the other angels who fell. Clearly, God allows animals to kill other animals and allows all his creatures to feel pain. Yet this does not prevent Christians from realizing that God is good. (See How can a good God allow evil?) We would all do things differently if we were God -- and we would do a lot worse than he does. Therefore a theory that contradicts our preferences is not always a theory that contradicts God.