Feedback AIG: The Creator of Plants (and everything else) vs. Zombies by Tim Chaffey, AiG–U.S.

You guys are crazy. I understand that your belief in a cosmic Jewish zombie who was his own father who wants you to symbolically eat his flesh and telepathically accept him as your master will remove an evil in your soul placed there by a rib-woman who was convinced by a talking snake to eat from a magic tree is clouding your perception of scientific evidence, but all your doing is confusing Christians who can’t afford to go to college or are uninterested in REAL science. You should be ashamed of your selves and I hope this is a spoof website.

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Greetings.

Since so much of your email is completely unoriginal and copied from another source, I was tempted to cut and paste someone else’s rebuttal of the same bogus claims. Not only did you copy someone else’s quote, but you copied one that is full of straw man arguments. Let’s take a point-by-point look at your email.

You guys are crazy.

Looking at the Webster’s dictionary definition of “crazy,” I’m guessing you don’t mean that we are crooked or askew. It seems that your insult is meant to convey that we are mad or insane. If you truly believed we were crazy, why would you bother to write to us? Do you think you can reason with madmen? Let’s see if you have adequately supported your claim.

If you are really interested in debating this subject, then perhaps you shouldn’t launch the discussion with an ad hominem attack. It should also be noted that your entire email is an example of the logical fallacy known as elephant hurling. You threw out a bunch of arguments that allegedly support your position by supposedly refuting ours, yet you provide no support for your claims. Let’s compare your statements to what the Bible actually teaches.

I understand that your belief in a cosmic Jewish zombie

Jesus did come in the flesh as a Jew, so you got part of this correct. As for the zombie line, you clearly have not taken the time to look at the vast differences between a zombie and the resurrected Christ. Zombies are considered to be part of the undead (not alive), often will-less and speechless bodies that have been reanimated by spirits. The resurrected Christ is not undead, but alive (Revelation 1:18). After His Resurrection, He spoke with His followers and taught them (Luke 24:25–27), reassured them (Luke 24:36–39), and commanded them (Matthew 28:18–20). He ate food with them (Luke 24:43; John 21:15) and urged them to touch Him to see that He was not a ghost but truly risen from the dead bodily (Luke 24:39). He also had a will (John 21:22–23) and performed miracles (Luke 24:31; John 21:6).

who was his own father

Clearly you do not understand the Christian doctrine of the Trinity, since we do not believe Jesus was His own Father. Admittedly, the doctrine is difficult to comprehend since we are finite and God is infinite. A god that we could fully comprehend really wouldn’t be much of a god, would he? We believe there is one triune God. The Father is God; the Son is God; and the Holy Spirit is God. However, the Father is not the Son; the Son is not the Holy Spirit; and the Holy Spirit is not the Father. The doctrine of the Trinity has been thoroughly explained many times before by others, and we have several articles dealing with the subject. (See Is the Trinity Three Different Gods? and The Trinity—A Non-negotiable Doctrine.)

who wants you to symbolically eat his flesh

What does it mean to symbolically eat His flesh? Do you even know the context in which Jesus discussed the eating of His flesh (John 6:54; cf. 1 Corinthians 11:24)? He had just miraculously fed over 5,000 people with bread and fish, reminding the people of the manna in the wilderness God had repeatedly provided for their ancestors. These people wanted Jesus to do something more incredible than what had been done for their predecessors. But Jesus explained that satisfying their spiritual hunger was far more important than meeting their physical needs. He said, “I am the bread of life. He who comes to Me shall never hunger, and he who believes in Me shall never thirst” (John 6:35). Later in the discussion, He stated, “I am the living bread which came down from heaven. If anyone eats of this bread, he will live forever; and the bread that I shall give is My flesh, which I shall give for the life of the world” (John 6:51). Not only did Jesus predict His sacrificial death on the Cross for our sins, but He had also explained what it meant to eat His flesh. He was telling them in a symbolic way that they needed to come to Him and believe in Him.

and telepathically accept him as your master

Christians don’t have to “telepathically accept” Jesus as master; we must actually trust in Him as Lord and Savior. Words, whether vocalized or unspoken thoughts directed to God, can be empty. It takes sincere repentance from our sins and faith in God to be reconciled with Him—to be saved from our sins and eventually live eternally with Him in heaven. God’s Word describes faith as “the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen” (Hebrews 11:1, NASB). We cannot save ourselves by living good lives because “all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God” (Romans 3:23). Jesus Christ came to accomplish what we could not. We are saved by grace alone, received through faith alone in Christ alone (Romans 10:9; Acts 16:31).

will remove an evil in your soul

First, the “evil” is not removed until death, when we depart to be with Christ. The Apostle Paul expressed the daily struggle we have with our sinful desires (Romans 7:13–25), and although our evil desires are not removed, Christians have been forgiven of their sins as a result of Christ’s substitutionary death on the Cross.

Moreover, Christians have the Holy Spirit dwelling within them (Romans 8:9). “The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, kindness, goodness, faithfulness” (Galatians 5:22), so we now have new passions and desires, yet Christians still struggle with evil desires. Paul states that “the flesh lusts against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh; and these are contrary to one another, so that you do not do the things that you wish” (Galatians 5:17), but he encourages believers to “walk in the Spirit, and you shall not fulfill the lust of the flesh” (Galatians 5:16).

Also, the Bible doesn’t say that the evil is only in our “soul.” Paul makes it clear that we are to “cleanse ourselves from all filthiness of the flesh and spirit” (2 Corinthians 7:1) and that the sinful nature is a part of our bodies (flesh in Romans 7:18 and body in Romans 7:24). In the Holy Spirit, God has given us the ability to overcome our sinful desires.

placed there by a rib-woman

God did create the first woman, Eve, from Adam’s rib. However, evil was not placed in us by the first woman. The Bible consistently refers to the first man’s sin as the reason for our fallen state (Romans 5:12–21; 1 Corinthians 15:21–22) and for the Curse, which brought death and suffering to our world (Genesis 3:17–19).

who was convinced by a talking snake

Perhaps this is splitting hairs, but she was actually deceived by the serpent. There was a real serpent in the garden, and we learn from other passages of Scripture that Satan used or possessed this serpent to deceive the woman.

to eat from a magic tree

Where does the Bible say that the tree of the knowledge of good and evil had magical properties? It doesn’t. God gave our first parents the opportunity to obey or disobey Him by placing this tree in the garden. Adam was free to eat from any tree except for this one (Genesis 2:16–17). When He disobeyed God, it was not any magical property of the tree that brought about the Curse. Adam’s punishment was a result of his disobedience. If I told my daughter not to take the car for a spin, but she did it anyway, the resulting discipline would be for her disobedience, not because of any supposed magical properties of my car (flux capacitor notwithstanding—sarcasm intended).

is clouding your perception of scientific evidence,

This is about as close to the truth as you’ve come in your entire email. You’re correct that we all have perceptions (or more accurately, interpretations) of scientific data (i.e., evidence). The real disagreement between creationists and evolutionists on this subject resides in our starting points—our presuppositions. Biblical creationists believe an all-powerful, all-knowing Creator made this universe in all of its dazzling complexity, while evolutionists generally believe the entire universe ultimately sprang from nothingness.¹ Those who deny a creator must also believe that intelligence came from non-intelligence, life from non-life, and information from non-information. Evolution is basically the atheists’ way of attempting to explain life without God, so when I refer to evolution in this feedback, I am really referring to atheistic evolution.

Our belief in God and trust in His Word does not cloud our perception of scientific evidence. Instead, it provides the basis for properly understanding our world. God created the world and built into it certain physical laws, and then He created man with a rational mind that can understand the world. Therefore, we can explain the necessary preconditions for doing science, such as the regularity of nature, the laws of logic, and the basic reliability of our senses (sight, hearing, touch, and so on). On the other hand, the evolutionists cannot account for these preconditions, and thus fail to provide a rational basis for “doing” science or knowing anything with certainty—so you do not even have a basis for calling us crazy. The evolutionary worldview falls apart once you realize it has no foundation for rational thought.

but all your doing is confusing Christians who can’t afford to go to college or are uninterested in REAL science.

You’re implying that those who go to college and are interested in “real science” would never believe the Bible. What about the thousands of scientists and doctors who do real science and are Bible-believing Christians? See our creation scientists page for examples.

Let me guess—by “real science” you mean evolution and billions of years. It seems you do not understand the many differences between operational science and historical science? Operational science involves doing experiments that are observable, testable, and repeatable, which is where our advances in technology come from (e.g., computers, cell phones, and airplanes). However, both creation and evolution fall in the category of historical science—using the data we see today to determine what happened in the past. But no scientists were around to observe our origins, so when it comes to historical (origins) science, they must make numerous assumptions to interpret the data they see. If those assumptions are faulty, then in all likelihood they will reach the wrong conclusion. While historical science, such as forensic science, can be helpful in efforts to learn what happened in the past, the best way to know what really happened is to learn from a trustworthy eyewitness. In the Bible, we have the infallible record of the Creator. And since He cannot lie, we take His Word over the ever-changing, opinions of fallible evolutionary scientists who start with wrong assumptions. (See What Is Science? and Historical and Observational Science for more information on operational science vs. historical science.)

You should be ashamed of your selves

Why should we be ashamed for telling the people the truth? We are “not ashamed of the gospel of Christ” (Romans 1:16), nor are we ashamed of our Savior and Creator, Jesus Christ. However, consider what Jesus said about those who are ashamed of Him. “For whoever is ashamed of Me and My words, of him the Son of Man [Jesus] will be ashamed when He comes in His own glory, and in His Father’s, and of the holy angels” (Luke 9:26).

By telling us we should be ashamed, you are appealing to an absolute moral standard, which in your worldview cannot exist. In fact, the Bible tells us that man did not experience shame before he sinned against his Creator (Genesis 2:25). Man’s rebellion against God’s commands, as recorded in Genesis, accurately explains the basis for the concept of shame—a negative emotion caused by violating commands we know we are obligated to obey. Ultimately, the atheist has no legitimate basis for shame, since he denies the Creator and His moral law. So why would you bring up shame? You should stop stealing from our worldview in a futile effort to build your own. By the way, stealing is wrong from a biblical worldview (Exodus 20:15), but once again, evolutionists have no warrant for morality.

and I hope this is a spoof website.

I am pleased to tell you that this is not a spoof website—it is a serious website that is well-trafficked, with approximately one million hits per month.

Your mockery and use of fallacious arguments reveals several things. Although you claim to understand our beliefs, you actually display ignorance of what the Bible really teaches and what Christians believe, demonstrating that you have not carefully researched the beliefs you want to criticize. If it isn’t ignorance, then perhaps you are simply afraid of dealing with the truth. Also, you must not have strong reasons for your own beliefs if you resort to mockery and lies to persuade someone to your way of thinking.

Did you realize that the Bible tells Christians they will be mocked for their beliefs? In fact, in 2 Peter 3 we are told that mockers would scoff at us because they walk according to their own sinful desires and hold to a philosophy that sounds a lot like uniformitarianism (i.e., believing “the present is the key to the past”). Peter specifically said these scoffers would reject the biblical teachings on Creation, the Flood, and Christ’s return. Sound familiar?

Someday the Lord Jesus Christ will return. Will you continue to mock your Creator who died on the Cross in our place? Or will you humble yourself and admit to Him what you already know to be true: that God exists and is holy, that you are sinful, and that Jesus Christ is your Judge. The only way to escape His wrath is to turn from your sins and call on Him to save you.

You may have sent your email thinking that it would rile us up. Instead, it actually saddens us that someone would spend time railing against the Creator—a Being that you allegedly don’t believe exists. Why would it even concern you if you truly believed God didn’t exist? But you know the truth and are suppressing it in unrighteousness (Romans 1:18–21). We will pray that you will humble yourself, turn from your sins, and call out to the Savior to save you from the eternal punishment we all deserve (John 3:16; Romans 10:9–13).

Sincerely,
Tim Chaffey