Читать книгу IN THE BEGINNING - Welby Thomas Cox Jr. - Страница 30

Most creationists acknowledge the difficulties, such as those above, but simply hope that one by one they can be solved. Others, such as creationist Henry Morris, argue that God created the world with an "appearance of age," perhaps as a test of faith. Similarly, another creationist argues that Noah's flood may have been a "leave no trace" miracle of God, "in order to preserve mankind's all-important freedom to choose good or evil, belief or disbelief".

These writers are certainly entitled to their opinions. But the vast majority of scientists and theologians, representing a wide range of denominations, have rejected this approach, whether it be for Noah's flood or the larger issue of evolution. As biologist Kenneth Miller (a Roman Catholic) explains,

“What saddens me is the view of the Creator that [creationist] intellectual contortions force them to hold. In order to defend God against the challenge they see from evolution, they have to make him into a schemer, a trickster, even a charlatan. Their version of God is one who intentionally plants misleading clues beneath our feet and in the heavens themselves. Their version of God is one who has filled the universe with so much bogus evidence that the tools of science can give us nothing more than a phony version of reality. In other words, their God has negated science by rigging the universe with fiction and deception. To embrace that God, we must reject science and worship deception itself.”

Francis Collins, Director of the National Institutes of Health (an evangelical Christian), adds:

“The image of God as a cosmic trickster seems to be the ultimate admission of defeat for the Creationist perspective. Would God as the great deceiver be an entity one would want to worship? Is this consistent with everything else we know about God from the Bible, from the Moral Law, and from every other source -- namely, that he is loving, logical and consistent”?

This is from the writings of James E. Talmage, an early 20th century geologist and LDS theologian:

“Let us not try to wrest the scriptures in an attempt to explain away what we cannot explain. The opening chapters of Genesis, and scriptures related thereto, were never intended as a textbook of geology, archeology, earth-science or man-science. Holy Scripture will endure, while the conceptions of men change with new discoveries. We do not show reverence for the scriptures when we misapply them through faulty interpretation”.