The Wrath of Pat

kw: evolutionary debate, false prophets

It's much in the news today that Pat Robertson threatened Dover, PA with God's wrath because they voted out eight school board members who'd been in favor of introducing "intelligent design" into the curriculum.

Just so you know. I am a Christian. I beleve in God's creation. I also believe that my senses and my mind give me somewhat accurate information about the world around. All, and I mean ALL, the physical evidence we have supports the view that living creatures—bacteria, fungi, protozoa, plants, and animals—were produced by evolutionary processes over spans of time measured in billions of years. Concerning what the Bible says, I see that it leaves plenty of room for all that time and process.

Furthermore, a few verses in Isaiah explicitly state that the condition of the earth in Gen 1:2 was not a result of the initial creation, and this prophet calls God "The One who hideth himself." Isaiah, like many of us, would have preferred God to intervene in a more direct way, rather than "one word then another, a line here and another there, here a little, there a little." God left it to Bill Cosby to tell us the essence of it: when his comic Noah tells God, about an extra male hippo, "You change one of 'em!", God replies, "You know I don't work like that." Indeed.

Jesus said, "God causes the rain to fall on the just and the unjust." And when Jonah got angry when God changed his mind and didn't destroy Nineveh, God chided him for his lack of mercy, and indeed lack of logic.

I sadly charge my brother with two errors. Firstly, he denies that God left room in the universe for evolution to do its work. Secondly, he misunderstands the work of a prophet, who knows what God plans (because God told him) and reports it; Robertson presumes that God cannot glorify himself without bringing cataclysm on a rural town, mostly composed of Christians.

I guess he'd rather have God kill a bunch of Christians who disagree with his narrow (and I claim, incorrect) view of Creation, than show mercy as the God who says, "Let us reason together." None of the ardent "scientific creationists" or advocates of "intelligent design" that I have met is capable of reason.