Don’t Be a Sir David Attenborough, Either

Dearest hijas and hijo,

Have you ever considered why there is so much pain and suffering around the world? Why so much evil, both natural and moral? Plague, famine, devastating earthquakes, hurricanes and tornadoes. Man killing man in senseless murders and mayhem. Genocide on massive levels around the world and throughout history. The sheer weight of it all, if you stop to think about it, is mind-numbing. Any sensitive person who truly ponders this question is left in deep despair, depressed, sullen, and wondering “Why can’t we all get along?”, and “Why does it have to be this way?’ “Isn’t there something better?” “Isn’t there a better world where everyone loves and treats each other with courtesy and respect and where moral and natural evil don’t exist?”

Sir David Attenborough of BBC fame, and ardent evolutionist must of asked these questions himself when asked why he doesn’t believe in God. His answer:

“It is something I get frequent letters about,” he says. “They always start with sweet reasonableness, you know, ‘We love your programs, isn’t nature marvellous’, and so on. But they always go on to say, ‘We do wonder why it is that you don’t give credit to the almighty God who created each one of these species individually.’

“My response,” he says, “is that when Creationists talk about God creating every individual species as a separate act, they always instance hummingbirds, or orchids, sunflowers and beautiful things. But I tend to think instead of a parasitic worm that is boring through the eye of a boy sitting on the bank of a river in West Africa, [a worm] that’s going to make him blind. And [I ask them], ‘Are you telling me that the God you believe in, who you also say is an all-merciful God, who cares for each one of us individually, are you saying that God created this worm that can live in no other way than in an innocent child’s eyeball? Because that doesn’t seem to me to coincide with a God who’s full of mercy’.”

_{https://www.smh.com.au/entertainment/tv-and-radio/wild-wild-life-20030325-gdghkj.html}

The first thing to notice about Attenborough’s answer is that God did not “create every individual species as a separate act.” He created “kinds” (Gen. 1:21, 24-25); the Hebrew word is min and it is more closely related to “family” or “order” on the taxonomic classification list. These “created kinds” (baramin, from bara, to create, and min, kind) were designed by God with engineered adaptability within their DNA to allow them to speciate as environmental conditions and factors change. Do you see the beauty in this? Our marvelous Creator imbued His creatures from the start, with God-designed engineered adaptability within their own ‘kind,’ i.e., the cat kind, the dog kind, the bear kind, etc. You have ligers, wholphins, zorses, beefaloes, and pizzlies for example.

Sir David Attenborough’s question, however, is logical and reasonable from within his own secularism; his own evolutionary worldview. When one denies God’s existence and His ownership of His created universe (an existence that all know to be true and will be held to account, see Rom. 1:19-20), then this question comes out naturally. When one denies the historical Biblical account of the rebellion of man, his fall, and the reality of God’s Curse on the entirety of His universe, then Attenborough’s question on its face seems reasonable. The problem Attenborough accentuates is called ‘The Problem of Evil’. In theological terms the response is called a ‘Theodicy’. What Attenborough conveniently forgets to mention is that his own evolutionary worldview, with its time-and-chance ‘god’ of billions and millions of years, produced the same predicament of parasitism he so woefully laments—and for no good reason. Why is he not upset with his time-and-chance ‘god’ and its millions of years of evolutionary suffering from parasitic organisms that have evolved along the way? He doesn’t seem to reflect on that.

The ‘worm’ Attenborough describes is actually a nematode. There are around 40,000 species of nematodes thriving all over the earth, and only 35 of them are parasitic to humans. They are amazing creatures and incredibly beneficial, feeding on the insides of bacteria and algae and decomposing organic matter. This in turn fertilizes the soil, allowing plants to thrive. Not really the bad guys after all, right? So why this particular parasitic nematode and African river blindness?

But the larger question then becomes ‘why’ parasitism, at all? And if you’re going to ask that question, then all the other ‘why’s’ mentioned at the beginning of this post come into play. Why cancer? Why famine? Why genocide? Why devastating earthquakes and hurricanes? Why senseless murder and the machinations of man’s evil heart for all kind of wickedness against his fellow man? You bring all the ‘why’ questions under the same heading or double headings of ‘Moral Evil’ and ‘Natural Evil’.

The evolutionary answer is that it “just is”. That’s the answer. It is what it is. Stop the whining about it and the moralizing tendency to call it bad or evil. Evolution is amoral, so the terms ‘bad’, or ‘evil’, make no sense in the evolutionary worldview. It’s just the way things evolved. You can’t do anything about it, so get used to it. Accept it. Embrace it even.

The Biblical answer is found in Genesis 3. It is a titanic answer. It is the only answer that makes sense of African river blindness and all the other ‘why’s’ of moral and natural evil. Read Genesis chapter 3. Read it several times if you have to. Man stepped outside of a proper relationship with and to God and rebelled against God. Man didn’t want to do it God’s way, he wanted to do it his own way. He felt his way was better. Because God is utterly and completely Holy and cannot countenance rebellion, He cursed man and the earth and the universe he lives in. Remember, this is God’s universe and man is His creature. God’s initial perfectly engineered creation of man and the place where man was to live (earth) was marred by man’s rebellion. We are now down the road some thousands of years and it’s still marred. God’s curse has not been removed. All the ‘why’s’ then are answered as result of this Curse. They are poignant reminders of our rebellion against God both individually and collectively.

But before you get too haughty and claim you’re not an evil person and you’re not in rebellion; that you’re actually pretty good if you say so yourself, look not at what your actions say about you but at what your thoughts say about you. No one can see your thoughts, can they? But what are you thinking up there in your head? The God who created this universe and made you man or woman can see your thoughts. He knows what you think. He will judge you by what you think; the secret things that swirl around up there in your cranium. Read Matthew 5, 6, and 7, and especially Matt. 5: 21-28 to see what God Incarnate Himself says about your thoughts. Pretty devastating. Start judging yourself in what you think, and you’ll have a more accurate picture of yourself.

So, like my post on Charles Templeton (see post Don’t Be a Charles Templeton), please don’t be a Sir David Attenborough either. Don’t make excuses for turning away from God because you can’t figure out why evil. The evolutionary time-and-chance answer puts you in a worse predicament—no answer at all. Shunning God because you can’t figure out why means you haven’t invested the time to really study His answer for yourself and ask questions of it. Follow the threads, pulling at each one until the puzzle and its answer is revealed. You’re ultimately responsible for acknowledging God’s existence and honoring Him for who He is and what He has done for you, so begin, start, initiate right here. God is not afraid of what you’ll find. He welcomes it. Then bend the knee to Christ who came down on your behalf and paid the blood price for the evil in your own heart. Take responsibility and account for that evil and then worry about the evil in others and the world around you.

THE HEART IS MORE DECEITFUL THAN ALL ELSE AND IS DESPERATELY SICK; WHO CAN UNDERSTAND IT (Jeremiah 17:9)?

AND WITHOUT FAITH IT IS IMPOSSIBLE TO PLEASE HIM, FOR HE WHO COMES TO GOD MUST BELIEVE THAT HE IS, AND THAT HE IS A REWARDER OF THOSE WHO SEEK HIM (Hebrews 11:6).

All my love,

Dad

Vaya con Dios!