In Depth:  JHJP

Duane Gish passed into the presence of his Lord on March 5, at the age of 91.

Dr. Gish will be unknown to many of today’s young Christians, but those a little older may well have come across his writings on biblical creation. He was better known in America, but had a worldwide ministry. He was nicknamed ‘Creation’s Bulldog’ by some.

In May, the media had one of their regular hypes and used huge fonts to announce that a scientist had created artificial life.

Of course, often the subsequent article gives away the truth of the situation, but the uninformed public has gone away with the false headline. The Times scientific editor began his article by declaring: ‘Synthetic life has been created in the laboratory in a feat of ingenuity…’ He pointed out that this ‘could yield microbes that make vaccines and algae that turn carbon dioxide into hydrocarbon biofuels’.

We have looked at a number of Darwin’s comments in his book and correspondence during this series of articles.

It is clear, of course, that he was a strong advocate of evolution through natural selection, but he did highlight some of the difficulties he saw with his theory, though he imagined that forthcoming research would clarify the problems. In fact, we believe that the subsequent research has raised the level of these problems.

It is probable that we have all been brought up to recognise the interdependence of life on this planet.

This is one factor that underlies the continual concern expressed by naturalists about the extinction of species. It is not just that it reduces the variety of life that we appreciate so much, but threatens the balance in nature. Undoubtedly some of the claims are exaggerated, but we can understand the principle and, as Christians with a ‘creation mandate’ (Genesis 1.28), we treat the concern with respect.

It is well known that Darwin rejected Christianity and the biblical account of creation because of his view of evil. He lost his mother when he was eight years old and his beloved daughter, Annie, when she was only ten. He could not correlate these events with the God of love.

As he developed his ideas on natural selection as a mechanism for evolutionary change, he became aware that this was built on a bitter struggle for survival. Then he was confronted with seemingly awful activities in nature. He mentions the parasitic ichneumon fly that lays its eggs in a caterpillar and, when they hatch, they eat the host.