Hi Everyone

Thank you Merlene for initiating this stimulating discussion. I have read the replies so far and can only say that I agree with them all. Several things have always intrigued me about the debate on creation.

Creatio ex nihilo has been debunked by scientists for many years based on Darwinism but I note that many leading scientists now have discounted evolution as a credible theory. I say theory because it has never been proven to be scientific truth but was an assumption that was almost universally accepted without question until science became more rigorous in its investigational method. The main proof of any scientific research is that any researcher, starting with the same hypothesis and methodology, should be able to replicate the findings exactly. This did not happen with evolution. As Peter suggests, science can’t start with nothing and produce something. If something ?must first exist, where does that something come from?

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That’s why I have trouble understanding the ‘big bang’ theory. If nothing existed, what exploded? If there were elements to facilitate an ?explosion, where did they come from? Was there another prior explosion, and another before that ad infinitum? We still come back to the same hypothesis, still unproven. For me the only explanation is that the only reasonable answer is that the biblical account of creation is correct. I have been encouraged by the words of ?2 Maccabees 7:28 in the Apocrypha: “ So I urge you my child, to look at the sky and the earth . Consider everything you see there, and realize that God made it from nothing, just as He made the human race”. (Good News Bible, emphasis mine). This statement is echoed in Ps 19 : 1; Ps 33: 6-9; Ps 102: 25; Isa 42:5; ?Isa 45:7-9. John 1: 1-4 is clear that God existed before the creation of the world and that all things were made by Him.

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I suppose it is not so unusual that people hold on desperately to cherished beliefs long after they have been proved incorrect. I can remember many years ago when Erik von Daniken wrote “Chariots of the Gods” when people absolutely accepted his contention that our biblical forefathers were in fact aliens. They even made a movie about his book and treated it as fact. I know people who still accept it as fact. Similarly, when Dan Brown wrote “The Da Vinci Code” people (including at Least one member of my wider family) accepted that as absolute fact, despite the fact that Brown himself published a disclaimer in the book saying that it was just a story. People still believe that the Holy Grail was in fact Mary Magdalene who had married Jesus, had children with him and they lived out their life in Spain.

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In my last church we had a man who was Head of the Science Department at a local high school. He could see no conflict between science and creation. He believed the biblical account as a fact that could not be disputed by science. I agree with him!

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Peter Lonsdale

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