Living, as I do, in the birthplace of Charles Darwin you get a lot of news about our famous son and therefore a lot about evolution too. Next year is the bicentenary of Darwin’s birth, so we’ll hear an awful lot more. Darwin even has his own festival.

Anyway, today on BBC news was this article on the rise of creationism in the UK.

It’s a debate I’ve tried to avoid. I’m not a scientist – I just about scraped a C in biology and physics at GCSE and about all I can remember is photosynthesis. So for me any discussion on the science is about choosing which experts to listen to.

From a theological point of view, I’ve also tried to avoid it. Some years ago, the church I went to hear young earth creationism’s leading defender Ken Ham speak. I didn’t quite know what to make of it. I don’t buy the arguments that if you don’t accept a literal reading of Genesis and therefore by default a young earth perspective that you’ll end up morally debased and have no basis for defending the historical resurrection. I’ve also never seen it as significant, why debate an event no one was around to witness, why not just get on with living the Gospel of Jesus Christ? It wasn’t therefore, for me, a Gospel issue. We could agree to disagree and still think of the other side as Christians. The important point is that God created. The issue in Genesis, it seemed to me, was not when or how but who.

But I think with the bicentenary approaching, I can’t sit on the fence for much longer or avoid the debate forever. So, first stop is Denis Alexander’s new book Creation or Evolution. I’ll let you know how I get on.