Maltatoday.com
Dinosaurs? It?s all in the Bible
Sending evolution straight to hell: creationism in Malta Matthew Vella Enter a world where science comes straight out of Genesis, where dinosaurs are found in the Book of Job, and where 12-year-olds learn about scientific proof of the creation and Noah?s flood.
Creationism, and the use of scripture to learn physics and biology, is the unique domain of the Accelerated Christian Academy, a private independent school whose 35 students, aged up to 18, are recipients of an education which flies in the face of accepted scientific tenets.
?We worship according to the Bible, without adding or removing anything from it. If you have trust in Jesus you can do it,? pastor Vince Fenech says, the director of the school and the Full Gospel Praise centres in Bugibba and Mosta. Twenty-five years ago, he offered up himself to Jesus, ?right here in my shop,? where he passed the threshold of darkness and heard chants and praise for God from a group of neighbours. His conversion was imminent. ?I was nearly bankrupt, and the local priest claimed we had demons among us. But the Lord was so great, I was blessed with seven more outlets.?
All the answers to the natural phenomena of the world are found in the Bible ? this is the educational curriculum at the Accelerated Christian Academy. Take Noah?s flood: ?Noah?s flood of course did happen, some 6,000 years ago. We don?t believe the world is millions of years old,? Fenech says, true to the young earth creationism which says the world was created a few thousand years ago, literally as described in Genesis. One of the theories, such as that advanced by James Usher in 1650, is the source for modern creationists that the universe was created by God in 4004 BC.
But while today even Roman Catholic scholars accept that the events of creation are best understood in a naturalistic way, or that Genesis represents a poetic work, Fenech is quick to dispel such an interpretation. ?Adam and his wife were created by God. That is why we teach these things: we teach what we believe. And we can?t argue that man is the product of ?evolution?. Evolution is just another religion. It hasn?t been proved. It?s all about the missing link? missing. In God?s work, nothing is missing.?
Like that lay ?religion? of evolutionism, Vince Fenech says offers his own religion?s suspicion of the man behind evolution. ?Charles Darwin repented just before his death,? he says, ultimately referring to the so-called Lady Hope Story, published in 1915 which claimed Darwin converted on his sickbed. It?s a story many Christian groups have been too fond of, but historians claim it is just an urban legend.
But Fenech says he has studied the history. ?In order to be certain of my direction, I have studied my way through. We?re so badly instructed about the history of our religion.?
The history of the born-again Christians, Fenech says, starts 2,000 years ago: ?when the Apostle Paul came to Malta. The born-again Christians started then.? Historically the point of divergence comes with the emperor Constantine?s legalisation of the organised Catholic Church in 325AD.
He says persecution of Maltese born-again Christians only happened until the arrival of the Knights of St John in Malta ? ?freemasons?, he calls them ? where they ran underground only to reaffirm the faith some 33 years ago. ?A Norwegian born-again Christian and a couple of Maltese started working from there.?
Today the persecution has all but faded, ?but we?ve had a few problems? people interrupted our worship, cursing us in our own Church. I have been arrested for officiating a wedding. It?s all been forgiven, but cannot be forgotten. It?s history,? Fenech says.
?Creation is coming back into schools all over the world, and God?s word doesn?t change ever. As a Christian I have to apply these principles and I believe this is the truth that should be taught in schools. We teach evolution to our children according to the national curriculum. But we also teach them the word of God about creation.?
That means exploring the ?wonders and cycles of God?s Creation? and proofs of Creation and the Flood in grade 8 science; for biology, grade 9, students view ?the wonders of the Creator? through the structure and function of man?s skin, skeleton and muscles and the central nervous system; and for physics, grade 12, ?learning to apply Sciptural principles to everyday situations?.
The intertwining between religion and science is evident. ?Physics was created by God. Numbers have been invented by God,? Fenech says.
And what about dinosaurs then, where grade 5 students ?view dinosaurs and fossils from a Biblical perspective??
?There is evidence that dinosaurs used to help man build the pyramids and the other wonders of the earth, including Noah?s ark. Forget the idea that the Jews built the pyramids. Egyptians restored them with talented slaves, Jews. In the book of Job, the dinosaur is described as a hippopotamus with a tail resembling a cedar tree,? Fenech says.
The internet turns out to be full of interpretations of dinosaurs in the Book of Job, at 40:15-24 describing a ?behemoth? who eats grass like an ox and moves his tail like a cedar, ?the sinews of his stones are wrapped together? he drinketh up a river, and hasteth not: he trusteth that he can draw up Jordan into his mouth.?
Creationism has undoubtedly experienced an upturn in recent years. Unsurprisingly strong in America, where Gallup estimates some 45 per cent believe ?God created man pretty much in his present form at one time within the last 10,000 years?, the adherents of ?intelligent design? claim the creation of the universe cannot just be explained by the undirected process of natural selection. Proponents say the fine-tuned mechanisms of complex biological structures cannot be put down just to the workings of natural selection, but demand the work of an ?intelligent designer? ? namely God.
March of the Penguins, the nature documentary showing penguins as virtuous, monogamous family units, became the American religious right?s proof of intelligent design. It depicted female penguins laying a single egg, go into the ocean for food while the males take care of the eggs for two months without food, and then returning to feed the hatchling before the male starts his own quest for food. The film became an enduring epic about intelligent design and that at the heart of nature?s complexity can only be the work of God.
But critics have lambasted the concept as pseudoscience. Britain?s leading scientific academy, the Royal Society, says it is the work of fundamentalists who want to challenge evolution in schools. The US courts have denounced it as nothing other than religion.
In Malta, the National Minimum Curriculum (NMC) says that science has to be based upon an evolutionary model and on the idea of conceptual change. At every level one should establish the knowledge of concepts which should lead students to understand that the scientific process manifests itself in a web of different areas such as physical sciences, natural sciences, medicine.
The head of the NMC, Richard Camilleri, however says that among the attitudes that learners need to develop are changing the perception that science is a mass of clear truths, without any conflicts whatsoever which can provide clear answers for every problem that arises.
?If somebody is interpreting facts when these are not facts but just opinions then one would not be presenting science as a systematic means of asking and attempting to answer questions arising from observations,? Camilleri says.
Of course, whoever said that science has the answer to everything? But it seems that this is where the problem lies with creationists ? complexity, and the way science gets lost in the labyrinthine world of nature and the way it works, when the answer may well be inside one book.
So when Vince Fenech points out to the ludicrousness of theories such as the Big Bang?s creation of the world, it seems we have come round full circle on creationism, at least for now.
?The Big Bang is nothing but an explosion,? he says, attempting to demystify one of the as yet unsolved and complex mysterious of science. ?If I break your watch, it?s only going to remain broken. It?s like the 9-11 explosion: nothing was built from that.?
When I point out that the Big Bang is too complex to simplify it in such a manner, Fenech says, ?and why is it so complex, when life is so easy??
And maybe that?s where the divergence with rational science occurs: some of us still believe life is too complex to explain it through the contents of just one book. Even Darwin seems to come back with force at this point when he claimed ?ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge?.
Science may indeed have proof without ever being certain: creationists, certainty without proof.
mvella@mediatoday.com.mt
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