In Depth:  Geoff Chapman

Dear Editor,

Eric Barger’s article ‘Churches in Jeopardy’ (en December 2017) was timely and important. We certainly need to be aware of some of the unscriptural ideas seeping into the church, and be warned about their potential detrimental impact. However, I don’t share Eric’s pessimistic view of the future of the church, where ‘error will be the norm … and orthodoxy will be the oddity.’ I don’t buy into the scenario of inevitable decline, which can easily discourage faithful people.

I was disappointed by Professor Keith Fox’s negative assessment (en May 2017) of Douglas Axe’s book Undeniable. Even though ‘almost all practising scientists affirm the basic facts of evolution’, the number of qualified scientists who reject evolution is growing. I commend the book Evolution’s Achilles’ Heels, which features nine PhD scientists qualified in disciplines such as biology, cosmology and genetics. They have not ‘stopped asking questions’ but would disagree with the claim that the evidence ‘overwhelmingly supports the evolutionary paradigm.’

In 1985, agnostic Dr Michael Denton published Evolution: a Theory in Crisis, which highlighted the major flaws in Darwinism. He has now published a sequel – Evolution: Still a Theory in Crisis – in which he explains that the problems facing evolution are as real as ever, particularly the discontinuities in the natural world and the fossil record. This is consistent with the Genesis record of the special creation of distinct ‘kinds’.

Dear Editor,

Jonathan Castro (en letters, January 2017) claimed that, in responding to the deficiencies of ‘the evolutionary narrative’, it would be wrong to retreat ‘into the cocoon of Young Earth Creationism’, because ‘the evidence against a recent creation is simply overwhelming’. By this, he is implying that Young Earth Creationists (YECs) are closing their eyes to scientific facts.

Dear Editor,

I found Chris Sinkinson’s article ‘Growing a rural church’ (February EN) very interesting and helpful.