FLASH DAVE & HIS MUTATION RAY GUN

My dear old friend Matt, who is about the same age as I (50 this spring), reckons he has an idea or two about how it’s done. He swears by this as an intellectual way around the problem that has plagued Christendom ever since Charles Darwin first proved that we came from pond scum. The problem for Christians was of course, if it all looks like one long naturalistic process, where can we slip God in so as to keep God, God, and which will simultaneously intelligently and spiritually equip ourselves to speak the Gospel in order to maintain the rage against those silly atheists, like Richard Dawkins, who want to claim evolution for themselves? I don’t know why I didn’t see Matt’s solution long before. He reckons, once a year, God’s spirit enters every 10th or so person’s chimney and surreptitiously alters their genetic alphabet. He also, on a number of different days of the year, inserts himself down burrows, into nests, hives and the like, to cut and paste other life forms’ DNA with extra bits of information.

Of course, I don’t wholly subscribe to Matt’s theory – I’m merely positing it for consideration, demonstrating that one can solve this problem without resorting to the demonic and parasitic solutions expressed by us creationists.

OK, I know Matt’s theory sounds a bit way out there but don’t prematurely judge it. At least give him a chance by putting the latest Anglo solution beside it and see how his fairs.

Dave Lankshear (You do recall him on this site? He’s the guy who ducks and weaves, avoids all the important questions, slags off creationists with more earned scientific postgraduate degrees than he could obtain in 20 lifetimes, and who considers he’s grasped this whole creationist thing by reading just 2 books, one a biography and the other a rather outdated outline of the ideas) has now decided to take his football home with him to his mummy and hide behind her skirt. However, previous to his tantrum, for our intellectual consideration no less, he had tossed into the ring his dear old medical doctor and missionary father-in-law’s solution. Dave’s relative (he can console himself that it’s by marriage only!) likes to ruminate that God periodically uses cosmic rays projected from a far-flung star(s) to target every life form, these non-randomly hitting specific bases on their DNA rung, which will then transform that form into another, pushing it further along the evolutionary journey toward man, possibly even, and finally to, the Omega Man. To quote him exactly,

“See, the God I believe in is powerful enough to co-ordinate one star going supernova 300 million years ago to send out a cosmic ray that streams all the way to earth to hit a genetic marker just so, and then another genetic mutation to occur for other reasons just so, and for this to add up to new information.”

Dave then goes onto to give a “credible” 2 bob each-way support for his rel’s just so story:

“My point is not that we can see this happening in the small timeframes since we’ve started studying whether or not this process can even happen, my point is that Christian evolutionists don’t believe any of it is by accident. OK?”

No, Dave, it isn’t OK. Far from it, pal.

Come on Dave, man, ‘fess up, son: you’ve been smokin’ some of that whacky weed, sneakin’ in a few baker’s dozen midnight tokes of Mullumbimby Madness or was it that really rare (at least nowadays) stash, the almost mythical sticky, black Afghani hash, haven’t you boy?

I know their apologetics and understanding of God’s revelation seem topsy-turvy to us: there was no water above our firmament as Genesis 1 describes; a universal flood is an impossibility because ‘all land’ does not mean ‘all land but only ‘some land’; a short creation period is out of the question because a day is never a day and the real time frame is just so huuuuuuuge and those Jews were so uneducated that God had to use metaphorical language because their primitive minds would never comprehend this huuuuuuuuuuuge passage of time; and the first 11 chapters of Genesis lacks historicity, despite the inclusion of extended genealogical sequences that connect up the father-son dots in both Torah and Luke’s Gospel; but now, what could truly cement the whole biblical story together, is that God was not a master craftsman but a celebrated cosmic ray-gun wielder from star Zarkon.

And this is the problem with unseen cosmic rays and the like causing mutations to create life and usher forth newer and more complex life forms: it belies Paul’s words that the “whole” creation points to God’s handiwork. If undetected and/or undetectable (i.e. a process that can be mistaken for no process or a random, material, naturalistic process) then men have an intellectual excuse for disbelieving in God.

Furthermore, Dave’s father-in-law’s idea is unbiblical for other reasons:

1. It must argue that God continues to work and has not rested. In other words Genesis 1 is wrong when it states that God’s creation WAS finished and WAS perfect at the end of the 6th day.
2. That God is the author of death
3. That death-causing mutations are a very good thing
4. It reeks of ad hockery and ignores the demands of Ockham’s Razor
5. It’s spooky and should have instead formed an episode of The Twilight Zone rather than pretend to serve as the potential object of scientific investigation

But arguably the most vacuous thing about Dave’s idea is that he actually thinks he’s put God back in the driver’s seat by merely saying, “Look, you asinine creationists, if God directs cosmic rays from Zarkon, it can’t be construed as an accident. So there!” That’s just bloody word magic, pal. As someone once called it, voodoo formulas.

It’s odd that Dave and his hopeless gang of theistic evolutionists deny God the power to speak the whole creation into existence quickly, but is quick to delegate power to himself by saying he can make God do anything.

He now says that God wilfully brought genetic illness to His perfect creation. What blasphemous ravings of blind men. There’s no denying it: heretics you are! Your God is far too small for Christianity. You are an embarrassment to the Gospel, the very Gospel that says our Lord came to cure the whole creation of these ills. And worst of all, your mysticism offers zero solace to people who are suffering.

Without unnecessarily multiplying causes and effects as such highly preposterous explanations do, it is far better to understand mutations from a biblical perspective. Notwithstanding the small number of environmentally advantageous mutations, the existence of this evil can actually evince the creationist argument, prove a lot about God and the biblical explanation for origins, and goes a long way to foster a perfect theodicy. It not only is a clear reminder of a real Fall, but forms the backbone for the very reasonable arguments suggested by the orthodox Jew and now retired John Hopkins University scientist, Lee Spetner, and the revived Haldane’s Dilemma as proposed by Walter Remine. Both these men, in different ways, have shown that,

(i) there is no evidence of mutations actually adding novel information that moves life forms along an evolutionary path
(ii) there is insufficient time for evolution to occur
(iii) if genetic mutations are sped up, then genetic death will occur

In a nutshell, the existence of mutations and their relatively small number actually demonstrate a young earth, not the anti-God old age worldview that the Anglos love to get into bed with. Dave’s proposal furthermore increasingly resembles a ‘god-of-the-gaps’ remedy and is incommensurate with the scientific endeavour.

Of course, all of this will probably be wasted on Dave and his theistic evolutionary coterie. Since Dave and co. are unpersuaded by our pleas to let God speak for himself rather than forcing their bias onto Scripture, being tied down by formal rules of logic is merely an inconvenience to be sidestepped.

One last thing.

Dave’s dishonesty knows no limits. In a recent posting he has proffered up “geology, ice core samples, cosmology, the age of light reaching the earth, continental drift, and a dozen other scientific disciplines” as evidence for an old age earth. If Dave were actually seeking wisdom, swallowed his pride, and bothered to check out what the scientific arguments and evidence are against these, he would demonstrate a sense of Christian humility by really understanding his imagined enemy’s case. But instead, he refuses to examine the other, stronger proof for a young earth and has decided to run with the atheist philosophy that says if we replace God with lots of time then we have no need of that hypothesis.