Christian Comment with Graham Hobbs of Minchinhampton Baptist Church

NOT long to the school holidays now.

As a child, I regularly spent them with family on the Dorset coast.

Evan at that age, the geology fascinated me.

More than half a century later, rocks and fossils still do.

I enjoyed fossil hunting with my kids and these days I still scrabble amongst the rocks with my grandchildren.

We still come away with our clothes needing a washing machine and our bodies needing a bath but we’re happy.

The odd thing is that I am one of the minority of people who don’t believe in evolution.

Before you think I am a mindless, unscientific fossil myself, I didn’t always think this way.

I have a BSc in the subject and even taught it but, with honest analysis, things didn’t add up.

I could argue against evolution scientifically but it would take a book, not a short article.

Similarly I could argue theologically but, again, there isn’t the space.

I’ll just take one point.

It’s this.

Evolution depends on “the survival of the fittest”.

It works to some extent but it’s a blunt tool and its application regularly leads to places like Auschwitz or genocide of the sort we’ve seen in Rwanda or more recently the atrocities in Iraq and Syria.

The most successful person to have walked this earth didn’t live that way.

Instead, Jesus was on the side of the weak, rejected, marginalised and least attractive people, usually life’s failures, not its successes.

Unlike scientific theories, here is a truth that doesn’t change.

In God’s eyes, our value doesn’t depend on our success, however we measure that concept.

Look at the stories in this or any newspaper.

Who are the successes?

Who are the failures?

While evolution favours the successful, and writes off the unsuccessful, God values us whoever we are or whatever we have done.

Can any of us be more of successful than that?

What are your views on the evolution versus creationism debate? Share your opinion below.