Unbelievable "Creation"

I'm a regular listener to the podcasts of "Unbelievable?" which is a show on Premier Christian Radio based in the U.K. It generally consists of a "Christian and a non-Christian" discussing some social or theological issue and I find it usually entertaining, sometimes infuriating, and often thought provoking. It's point of view is, obviously, Christian, but not just Christian but CHRISTIAN if you know what I mean. I don't know if I would go quite as far as to say that its point of Christian view is a strictly fundamentalist Christianity, but it is at least a conservative form of orthodox Christianity. Paul Tillich, Gordon Kaufman and Marcus Borg would probably not make the cut to be the "Christian" in the show. The host of the show, Justin Brierley, seems like a fairly conservative Christian, but he is also always very polite to his non-Christian guests and seems genuinely interested in getting to hear their point of view.

Anyway, this week they featured a show about the movie "Creation" (you can listen to it or download it from the Unbelievable? website). The movie sounds interesting - it is about Charles Darwin's life and his writing of The Origin of Species. It apparently talks about the the relationship between he and his Christian wife and how his theories affected it, as well as the rest of the world. Sadly enough it seemed like it was having trouble getting a distributor in the U.S. for a while, but now apparently has found one.

The episode of Unbelievable? was a bit different than the norm in that it was not so much a discussion between a Christian and a non-Christian but an interview with the author of the book the movie was based on and a discussion between Christian leaders about the movie after a preview showing. The author is Randall Keynes, a great-great grandson of Darwin, and the interview is good. I won't spoil it too much, but Mr. Keynes found some papers from his ancestor's family that shed some light on Darwin's life and wrote the book Annie's Box upon which the movie is based. Sounds like a book worth checking out.

The panel discussion was something else. It consisted of a Nicolas Beale (a "theological evolutionist" who believes evolution and Christianity are not incompatible), Steve Lloyd, of Biblical Creation Ministry - a young earth Creationist group, and an author named Charles Foster. I was a bit taken aback by Mr. Lloyd who really was a young earth creationist. He wasn't allowed to try to present his "scientific" argument for young earth creationism (Mr. Brierley noted that would be a whole different show) but he did present his theological reasons for believing in a young earth and creation - mainly that Adam's sin brought death into the world, necessitating the death and resurrection of Jesus to atone for it and conquer death, and if death and suffering had been around for billions of years previously his view of Christian theology wouldn't make sense. Mr. Foster didn't make much sense to me. I am not really sure what he thinks about evolution and theology - he just seemed to sort of ramble on for a while and I'm not sure even Mr. Brierley could figure him out.

Mr. Beale was the biggest surprise to me. He is pro-evolution, in the sense that he believes that it happened, but he really seemed to struggle to answer questions put to him about what the Genesis story means to him and his theology. He seemed to want to turn the story about the death caused by original sin to be some sort of spiritual death but never seemed to articulate what that really meant and how one would squeeze that out of the story as presented in the Bible. Maybe there just wasn't enough time for him to develop what he wanted to say, but there was all this talk about how time was not the same for God as it is for us, that it was referring to spiritual death and not physical death and so on and not much discussion of the obvious point that it is a myth and should not be taken so literally. Yes, he did say that the Bible was not a science textbook and should not be attempted to be used as such, but there was still a sense in which he seemed to need to have the story explain something about the outside world (this "spiritual death" or whatever) rather than just being able to say that the story as mythology can be valuable as a poetic work of fiction which can be used to enrich our internal lives in much the same way other great myths and literature can.