John Sanford's declining genes

A creationist friend recently lent me a John Sanford DVD entitled 'The Mystery of Our Declining Genes', which I finally got round to watching this week.

Genetic Entropy

Sanford's main premise is that our genes are degenerating at an alarming rate

Sanford is the latest great hope for creationists; he is a pleasant and reasonable man and apparently a well-respected Cornell geneticist with sound academic credentials, who has moved from atheism through theistic evolution all the way to Young Earth Creationism. 'Declining Genes' is filmed from a 45-min lecture given to the unsurprisingly creationist Creation Ministries, in which he claims to be able to refute the evolutionary Neo-Darwinian synthesis completely by his theory of Genetic Entropy.

I must confess I didn't fully understand (or attend to) all of the talk. His main premise is that our genes are degenerating at an alarming rate, and that 'bad' or harmful mutations are so much more frequent than 'good' or beneficial ones that natural selection is like baling water out of a sinking ship. His view is that selection is God's method of slowing down the inevitable degradation and extinction of species rather than being capable of producing any actual positive developments. He's also put together a computer simulation called Mendel's Accountant (freely available to download) which he claims conclusively backs up Biblical timescales (and the ages of people in Genesis), and supposedly refutes standard evolutionary accounts.

Unfortunately as a layman I can't really interrogate Sanford's biology or his maths, so I'll have to leave that to others. However, so far my search of the web hasn't turned up any good refutations of - or indeed any proper engagement with - his ideas. My initial impression is that his arguments seem, at least on the surface, fairly plausible. However, I remember being equally impressed with Michael Behe's 'irreducible complexity' when I first came across it, and that concept has now been very effectively refuted.

A note of caution

I would just sound a note of caution to excited creationists that a single idea in one field, however impressive, is unlikely to be able to overturn all the overwhelming evidence for an old earth and for evolution across numerous other fields. If there is any weight in Sanford's findings, then they will stand out as a puzzling anomaly to address, but not as the paradigm-shifting argument-clincher that he seems to imagine.

I'm also slightly unsure about Sanford's assumptions - given that most creationists eschew the principle of uniformity, his calculations seem heavily reliant on being able to extrapolate back several thousand years from today's genetic decay rate. I'm not entirely convinced either that 'bad' mutations are necessarily as detrimental as he claims, but I'll need to leave that to more qualified people to clear up.

The second law of thermodynamics

Sanford seems to slightly misunderstand entropy, which is clearly crucial to his theory

Finally, I think that, along with many creationists, Sanford - not a chemist or physicist - does slightly misunderstand the second law of thermodynamics and the principle of entropy, which is clearly crucial to Sanford's theory. Entropy, they argue, must always increase according to the 2nd law; your house doesn't simply tidy itself (cue appreciative chuckles from audience). So the idea of natural selection being able to increase order is clearly laughable and evolution is disproved.

What they don't seem aware of, or are ignoring, is that within any specific system entropy can be decreased - at the expense of increased entropy in its environment. In biochemist Albert Lehningher's words:

"living organisms preserve their internal order by taking from their surroundings free energy, in the form of nutrients or sunlight, and returning to their surroundings an equal amount of energy as heat and entropy".

A useful related idea is Ectropy (the reverse of entropy), "a measure of the tendency of a dynamical system to do useful work and grow more organized" (Wikipedia). The Earth's ectropy is increased (entropy decreased) by the Sun's energy, and a living organism's ectropy is increased by taking in food.

So life could almost be defined as a system designed to decrease or reverse entropy internally while increasing it in the external environment.

Disquieting fundamentalism

Overall, I found watching 'Declining Genes' a strangely disquieting experience - not so much because of its challenge to my theistic evolutionary worldview, but because of its underlying fundamentalism and dogmatism. Sanford is a very pleasant, reasonable and mild-mannered man, and clearly far from unintelligent. But his wholesale adoption of fundamentalist beliefs, principles and jargon struck what seemed to me a jarring note.

He started by remarking on the 'sweet spirit' in the room, which to me sounded like an over-spiritual way of saying that the atmosphere was - unsurprisingly - friendly. He paid tribute to all the members of Creation Ministries who had faithfully been fighting for God's truth while he had been compromising with the world in espousing theistic evolution. And his whole talk was based on refuting the dangerous deception of the Neo-Darwinian synthesis with the unfailing truth of God's Word. There was no room for disagreement, middle ground or uncertainty. God's Word says, and of course the science has to back that up - how could it be otherwise? This kind of thinking scares me, especially in a man of science.

Evolution, fall and morality

Our evolutionary heritage | Adam and Eve | Talking Beasts

Were humans created perfect and then fell, or did we already bear the baggage of our evolutionary heritage?

Uncle Den, Irenaeus and the evolution of conscience

I'm rather proud to be related by marriage to Dr Denis Alexander, founder of the Faraday Institute and author of Rebuilding the Matrix and Creation or Evolution: do we have to choose? (Read my review) 'Uncle Den' is a bit of an expert in the field of evolutionary biology and is also a strongly evangelical Christian in the Reformed tradition. I have great respect for both his scientific views and for his faith, though my own theology is rather different.

After hearing him speak on Darwin and evolution at a conference at Spurgeon's College last year, I asked him what he thought about the role evolution may have played in the development of human conscience and moral sense, and also whether our evolutionary heritage had predisposed us to sin. I can't remember his answer in full but he seemed inclined to believe that we were originally fully able to obey God and had chosen not to - very much the standard evangelical line.

Irenaeus believed that humans were created immature

However, he did mention the 2nd-century theologian Irenaeus who believed that humans were created immature/imperfect and we were intended to reach maturity through a lengthy process of change, growth and development. Denis doesn't agree with this view but to me it makes a lot of sense, particularly in light of evolutionary theory.

Our evolutionary heritage

humans share millions of years of evolutionary history and heritage with other animals

If Darwinian evolution is broadly true, as I believe it is, then we humans share millions of years of evolutionary history and heritage with other animals, including all the instinctive mechanisms of lust, greed, aggression and selfishness that have always been vital for survival in a competitive world of limited resources. We know that nature is at best amoral, and we may not like it but we do not blame lions for killing zebras, frigate birds for robbing terns, robins for being aggressively territorial, cuckoos for laying eggs in other birds' nests, or ducks for having multiple partners. Our closest living relatives, chimpanzees and bonobos, are frequently violent and sexually promiscuous.

This leads me to two major questions:

1) If we do indeed owe much of our own evolutionary history and DNA to creatures like these, how on earth could humans have escaped bearing the marks of this in our own instincts and behaviour? Why wouldn't our earliest human ancestors have been every bit as aggressive and lustful - as amoral - as all these other creatures?

2) But in that case, how come humans do - apparently unlike all other creatures - have an inbuilt moral sense, a deep belief that so many of these 'natural' behaviours are in fact morally repugnant? As I say, we don't hold animals morally responsible for their behaviour, nor do we expect them to feel guilty for doing what comes naturally. But we ourselves have set up complex ethical, moral and legal systems to discourage indulgence in many evolutionarily-encoded activities. Why?

Adam and Eve

I've said before that I don't hold the Genesis chapter 2 'fall' story to be factual history, but nor do I believe it to be merely fictional. I see it as mythicised history, with elements of fact set in a highly symbolised myth to convey spiritual, psychological and theological truth.

'Adam and Eve' were already evolutionarily predisposed to sin

If my hypothesis is in any way correct, then 'Adam and Eve' were already evolutionarily predisposed to sin (qu 1 above). However, God somehow set them spiritually or morally apart from other creatures, giving them (whether by divine act or by natural means) a unique moral sense of right and wrong which enabled them to rise above the legacy of their brutish evolutionary past (qu 2 above). Their inability to do so in the long run is not only their story but the story of all their descendants - of you and me.

To me, this account seems the obvious way to marry classic Christian theology with current biological theory. However, I realise that it will please neither evangelicals nor evolutionary scientists. It pleases me though, and maybe Iranaeus too. :-)

Talking Beasts

"Do not go back to their ways lest you cease to be Talking Beasts"

As usual, C.S. Lewis and Narnia come to my aid at this point. In The Magician's Nephew, when Aslan has brought forth the animals from the earth he goes among them and touches a male and female of each kind to set them apart. Then he breathes on them, there is a flash of fire and he speaks words of power over them: 'Narnia, Narnia, Narnia, awake. Love. Think. Speak. Be walking trees. Be talking beasts. Be divine waters.' The Talking beasts reply: 'Hail, Aslan. We hear and obey. We are awake. We love. We think. We speak. We know.' Then he instructs them:

'Creatures, I give you yourselves... I give to you forever this land of Narnia. I give you the woods, the fruits, the rivers... I give you myself. The Dumb Beasts whom I have not chosen are yours also. Treat them gently and cherish them but do not go back to their ways lest you cease to be Talking Beasts. For out of them you were taken and into them you can return. Do not so.'

Of course this is a myth, and unlike the Eden story it is entirely fictional, but it is nonetheless powerful and instructive. Aslan - okay, God - has chosen beings from among the dumb beasts to think, love, speak and know. But they share a common origin and heritage with the dumb animals and can return to their un-talking state if they follow their unthinking, unloving ways. This is far closer to the Irenaean view as I understand it, and to mine, than the classic evangelical reading of Genesis.

Related posts:

• It's only natural (but it still sucks)
• Addressing Creationist concerns

It's only natural (but it still sucks)

Death of a duckling | Rage against who? | Nature, good and bad

What does the death of a duckling have to say about the nature of the universe and God?

Death of a duckling

I even chose my secondary school partly on the basis of a brood of ducklings

I've always been tremendously fond of ducklings (I don't mean crispy fried). I even unwisely chose my secondary school partly on the basis that there was a brood of ducklings in the quad pond when I went for the open evening. And this year my 4-year-old son has been asking for daily report-backs on how many ducklings I've seen in Greenwich Park. For the past week I'd sadly had to report dwindling numbers - 9 down to 5, down to 4, down to 2... but then on Tuesday lunchtime to my delighted amazement I came upon 17 ducklings in the main wildfowl lake. I happily watched the antics of the little swimming fluff-balls for some time and was about to turn away when I noticed a Canada Goose treading on a duckling that was sitting on the concrete sloping down into the water. The goose then picked up the duckling in its beak, shook it and dropped it. It lay still.

Angry and upset, I stood wondering whether I should transgress the park boundaries, step over the fence and pick up the duckling, although I was sure that it was already dead. Then a crow flew down and snatched up the little body in its beak, but a mother duck flew at it and it dropped the dead duckling into the water where it floated with its head underwater. The saddest sight for me was the mother duck swimming up behind it and repeatedly nudging the little floating body with her beak as though she could coax it back to life. At the risk of being written off as pathetically sentimental, it brought tears to my eyes and an intense feeling of loss and grief.

Rage against - who?

suddenly that dead duckling represented all the injustice of the world

I know it's all perfectly natural and normal, and that only a few ducklings - and other young animals - survive to adolescence, let alone adulthood. But suddenly that small bedraggled floating bundle of dead duckling became for me the representative of all the injustice and wrong and cruelty of the world, and my heart just wanted to shout out abuse and rage against whatever it was that made things be this way.

The obvious thought is that it's God who made things this way, and against him that my anger should be directed. But I can't shake the feeling that the God I've seen in Jesus Christ was grieving every bit as much for that duckling as I was. In some ways the duckling was like Christ - the very symbol of innocent suffering at the hands of the cruelty and injustice in the universe. I felt that my anger must be directed at all the evil in the world, and at the corresponding evil in myself.

Nature, good and bad

Is the universe fundamentally benevolent or hostile?

Nature is so full of beauty and loveliness, and simultaneously so full of suffering and death. Is the one necessary for the other, or are death and cruelty alien and unnatural evils that have found their way into a good creation?

What about lust, greed, anger and violence - these things feel entirely natural; are they just natural in-built parts of our evolved survival package, or are they a corruption of good instincts and impulses?

Is the universe fundamentally benevolent or hostile, kind or cruel? Is it more truly natural to be compassionate and caring or to compete and kill?

I have no easy answers to these questions. All I know is that I have chosen to base my life on the reality and goodness of God, to believe in the beauty and grace despite the very real pain and injustice. This present world, this nature, is good but it is not perfect, is not how it is ultimately meant to be. Perhaps the pain is part of the process of becoming perfect - or perhaps it is an evil to be fought and overcome.

Related posts:

• Evolution, fall and morality
• Earthquakes and God - why does God allow natural disasters?

Why I believe Creationists get it wrong part 2 - Scripture

Creationists generally fit into the fundamentalist wing of evangelical Christianity, viewing the Bible as God's perfect, inerrant, timeless Word and so to be read as literal, historical and scientific fact wherever possible. Wherever the Bible's account of origins appears to differ from that of modern science, science must therefore give way. They argue that God is perfectly capable of saying plainly what he means, and he knows far better than modern scientists what happened at the beginning.

Finally they believe that the whole Bible stands or falls as a unit, so if you question the historicity of Genesis 1-2 you also by implication query the historicity of the gospels.

Inspiration and inerrancy

It's probably no surprise that I disagree with this view of Scripture at almost all points. I do accept that the Bible is divinely inspired ('God-breathed', 2 Tim 3:16) but I have a very different understanding from the Creationists of how that operates and what that means. For a start, I do not believe that divine inspiration must imply 'inerrancy' as they understand it, still less complete historical or scientific accuracy at all points. In my view this is to fall into the same Modernist-paradigm trap as Dawkins that there is only one kind of truth and knowing which is the Factual, ultimately the Scientific. This is certainly not how the original Hebrew authors would have approached Truth, nor does it in fact provide the best or fullest description of Reality. Scientific and historical truth are both important, but truth can also be personal, relational, philosophical, paradoxical, poetic, symbolic or mythopoeic.

To read Genesis 1-2 as teaching history and science is, I believe, to do serious violence to the texts, to the type of literature, its cultural context, and the intentions and understandings of the original authors. Gen 1 is essentially a poetic polemic for monotheism in a polytheistic cultural context, and Gen 2 can best be read as a mythological and theological account of the origins of evil, sin, pain and death. This does not mean that it contains no history, still less that it is untrue - indeed, it makes it more deeply and timelessly true.

The Gospels and Genesis

But if you believe this, how can you say whether any of the Bible is historically true? Most importantly, what of the Gospels, the accounts of the birth, life, death and resurrection of Christ? If these events were not historical, then the entire basis of our Christian faith is gone (1 Corinthians 15:14). But in the Gospels we have a very different kind of writing and literature to the early chapters of Genesis. The gospel writers, particularly in the Synoptics and Luke most of all, are explicitly setting out to record eyewitness accounts of events that took place within their own lifetimes, whose actuality or otherwise would in most cases be fairly easily disprovable were it not true. Here we have the beginnings of recognisable modern historical writing - theologically-interpreted history to be sure, but history nonetheless. C.S. Lewis wrote that, to a scholar of mythology, the resurrection accounts bore none of the hallmarks of myth but stood out very clearly as historical accounts. The Garden of Eden, by contrast, with its talking snake and Trees of Life and of the Knowledge of Good and Evil - quite clearly not standard horticultural varieties - bears all the marks of a mythological-symbolic story of origins, written primarily to convey theological rather than historical truths.

Can God not speak plainly?

Finally, let's deal with the point of whether God is incapable of speaking plainly. Of course he's capable, but that does not mean he always chooses to - look at Jesus' many parables and highly symbolical sayings. And sometimes plain factual statement is not actually the best way to convey what you are trying to say - particularly if you are conveying spiritual truths which are beyond the capabilities of normal human language and experience.

Can a leopard change its spots?

Of course, I need to always be open to the possibility that I may be wrong about all this. I sometimes wonder what it would take to make a dyed-in-the-wool Creationist or Evolutionist change their views - so much has often been invested emotionally in their position that to change would almost be a religious conversion (to a Creationist it would probably feel like apostasy, and might even involve a loss of faith). And I also wonder if Creationists and Evolutionists have such fundamentally, structurally incompatible worldviews that it's often not even possible for them to speak comprehensibly to each other.

Nonetheless, I fervently wish that Christians didn't have to divide and fight over this issue, one on which I believe no-one's salvation need depend. I also wish that in their legitimate concerns over some of the implications of evolution, Creationists did not have to set themselves up - and Christianity by implication - as such easy targets for scornful atheists.

Why I believe Creationists get it wrong part 1 - Science

In the last post I looked at the main non-scientific Creationist objections to evolution - non-scientific because I don't believe the primary reasons most Creationists reject evolution are scientific. Now on to why in my view Creationism is founded on a misunderstanding of Science and (next post) Scripture.

Creationists seem to me to show a fundamental misconception of science, particularly its remit and limits, when they seek to bring God into science to explain the origins of the universe and of life. God can never be invoked as a scientific explanation, mechanism or cause for the simple reason that science deals solely with the natural, and God is super-natural: he stands outside or beyond or above nature, and is not a part of it nor physically discernible within it. Science can of course study God's works within nature, but in so doing it can only focus on their physical aspects and causes; supernatural causes must be excluded. (NB this does not mean that God is not a cause or explanation on a different level and of a different kind to the scientific and natural.)

So the proper subject of science is physical nature, and that nature is a seamless whole; it is not littered with parts that God left behind like an untidy mechanic, nor with unaccountable gaps that require a non-scientific explanation.

It's important to understand that God works invisibly within nature; his actions are not discernible from within nature except by spiritual (i.e. non-scientific) means. So for example we may perfectly validly believe that God 'knits together' babies in their mothers' wombs (Psalm 139:13), but an ultrasound scan will not reveal God tinkering away inside - his knitting-together utilises entirely natural biological processes. Similarly, the Genesis 2:7 description of God forming Adam from the dust of the ground is a powerful metaphor containing a deep truth, but it doesn't mean that if we could go back to the beginning we would be able to see God literally sculpting a human figure out of mud. The Creation accounts in Genesis simply are not, nor could they be, a scientific description of what happened; they are a God's-eye view, or a theologically-illuminated view, not a scientific one.

But what of miracles?

If God's acts are generally natural acts (or performed through natural agency), where does that leave miracle? Well, it partly depends what you mean by 'miracle'. Is it something scientifically impossible, against the laws of nature, or is it something wonderful, unusual, significant - an act of power and perfect timing?

The words the Bible uses tend to fall into the latter category. However, it's clear that many of them - walking on water, turning water into wine, raising the dead etc - do not comply with the normal workings of any current laws of nature as we understand them. These can perhaps best be seen as foretastes - or temporary in-breakings - of God's Kingdom, the renewed heavens and earth, which will have a new nature and new laws, and so presumably (if such pursuits are still relevant) a new science. They are the signs of another world and of a power beyond nature.

In one sense all of God's acts are miraculous; in another, they are all 'natural', or mediated through natural laws, processes and matter. So the Creation of the universe and of life were, in this sense, miraculous acts; in another, they involved entirely natural and scientifically-studiable processes.

Flaws, gaps and anomalies

Creationists and ID-ers can and do usefully contribute to science by pointing out potential flaws, gaps and anomalies in current evolutionary theory and in the evidence for it. But it seems to me that almost their whole case is built on on these gaps and anomalies, which they desperately hope can sustain proof of a young earth and undermine the science of evolution. Mary Schweitzer's discovery of soft tissue in a T. Rex bone; fossils apparently out of sequence in the geological strata - these kinds of examples seem to be the primary materials of 'Creation science'.

But it is a false hope to imagine that these flaws cannot be ironed out, the gaps cannot be filled or the anomalies not be explained without reference to God; that they will somehow topple the vast edifice of evolution. Rather, they provide fruitful areas for new research which time after time leads to new findings which strengthen evolutionary theory (such as with Michael Behe's well-refuted examples of 'irreducible complexity').

Creationists remind me irresistibly of conspiracy theorists, clinging to their minority beliefs not because the evidence justifies it but simply because their worldview demands it.

Speaking of which and going off on a tangent, did you know that there really still is a genuine flat-earth society? Check out http://theflatearthsociety.org. You couldn't make this stuff up.

Now on to part 2 of this post - Scripture...

Addressing Creationist concerns

This post came out of an email conversation with a Creationist friend. He is a good, kind, patient, thoughtful and intelligent man of faith, as far from Dawkins' stereotype of Creationists as moronic anti-scientific flat-earthers as you could get. I consider his beliefs on evolution/creation to be mistaken, but he raises valid concerns for those like me who seek to reconcile their Christian faith with their acceptance of current evolutionary science. In this and following posts I want to look at these concerns and also why I believe Creationism is fundamentally flawed.

Christians who reject Darwinism usually do so because of a set of theological and philosophical concerns. These concerns are so serious for them that they are unable to brook evolution on any terms, however strong the evidence may be. (I'm not convinced that most Creationists reject evolution initially on the basis of the science - rather,  I suspect they generally construct their science and marshal their evidence after having already philosophically rejected evolution.)

Creationists' main problems with evolution are that, in their view, it:

1. denies the accuracy of Genesis 1-2 and therefore undermines the whole Bible, which they see as God's perfect and literal Word
   
   
2. denies the historicity of Adam and Eve and the Fall, and so undermines the gospel and our need for salvation
   
   
3. relegates humans from the pinnacle of creation, made in God's image, to technologically-advanced monkeys
   
   
4. replaces God's good and purposive actions with random, meaningless chance and cruel, selfishness-driven processes
   
   
5. renders a divine creator unnecessary and so gives atheism an intellectual backing it would otherwise lack, leading many to stop believing in God
   
   
6. leads inevitably to 'might is right' philosophies, fascism, eugenics etc.

I do not deny the seriousness of these concerns for Christians, but I read them very differently. In my view:

1. Evolution does not deny the accuracy of Genesis unless you are committed to a particular modernist and literalist way of reading the text (more about this when we get to why I think Creationists are wrong). In my view, Genesis 1-2 was never meant to be read in this way and has not generally been read this way throughout history. I see evolution as quite compatible with the original intentions of the Genesis account, and indeed as quite an obvious reading of it in places.
   
   
2. Similarly, I don't believe that the precise historicity of Adam and Eve was ever the point of Gen 2, or that the eating of a literal forbidden fruit is in any way necessary to the Christian gospel. The language and forms of Gen 2 are, in my view, clearly symbolic and mythopoeic, and the point is to convey a deep spiritual truth about our alienation from God and one another. The need of redemption is in no way removed by a different understanding of the Adam and Eve story. I personally see little need to read Gen 2 as literal history at all, but it's certainly possible to see a genuine neolithic couple behind it, chosen by God as the first 'spiritual' humans.
   
   
3. It does indeed seem that evolution relegates us biologically to the position of upright-walking monkeys. But it all depends on how you understand 'the image of God'. What makes us valuable to God - as I see it - is that he has specially chosen humans and put his spirit in us, his consciousness, the ability to think and choose and to know him in ways that (as far as we can tell) no other animal has, however intelligent. We mirror his image in far deeper and more important ways than our biological natures.
   
   
4. Perhaps the greatest difficulty is to see how the Christian God of love could be behind the violent, selfish competitive processes we see at work in natural selection. However, denial doesn't help - the evidence of prehistoric animal suffering is clearly written into the fossil record. There are a range of possible answers to the dilemma, including downplaying the horror of animal suffering and saying that it's the only way to let morally free beings develop in the universe, and it's all worth it in the end. However, some are starting to suggest that genuine altruism may play a larger part in the mechanics of evolution than has previously been realised, and that primal evil/chaos might be behind most of the selfishness and suffering inherent in natural selection. If evil has been present within creation pretty much from the outset, it simply means that God's redemptive work must also have started then. I admit these are deep and murky waters though (see my post on Why does God allow evil?).
   
   The other objection is that instead of God's purposive action we have 'blind chance'. But that Darwinian evolution relies on blind chance is a fallacy. Evolution is on the whole a tightly-constrained process of tiny adaptations and incremental accruals, not a series of blind leaps. And I'll look at why this doesn't push God out in the next point.
   
   
5. Evolution is not inherently atheistic, nor does it inherently relegate God to irrelevance. Whatever processes, whatever 'chance' may be involved on the natural side of the equation has nothing to say about what's going on on the supernatural side. Seemingly random events and even purposefully evil creaturely acts can be woven by the supernatural God into his greater purposes (as Joseph says to his brothers who had sold him into slavery, 'You intended to harm me but God intended it for good, to accomplish... the saving of many lives', Gen 50:20).
   
   Similarly, there's nothing in evolution that denies God if you rightly understand the relations of God, nature and science - something I believe neither the Creationists nor the New Atheists do, which I'll deal with in following posts. Unfortunately evolution has been co-opted by both these extreme positions on the spectrum, but it is this co-option and conflict that damages Christianity, not evolution itself. Sadly I believe well-meaning Creationists have often done more to put people off Christ than evolution itself could ever have done.
   
   
6. Finally, the biological theory of evolution merely describes what happens in nature - it does not provide an imperative or mandate for how we are to behave. The obvious fact that there is competition for survival in nature and that the best-adapted generally do survive to bear offspring has no bearing on how we should live our lives. 

Nonetheless, I am on the whole glad that Creationists raise these concerns which certainly need grappling with.

Next time - why I believe Creationism is based on a set of fundamental misunderstandings of Science and Scripture. Apologies to all my Creationist friends, most of whom are much better people than I am. :-)