I’m always impressed when something is impossible from “a chemical, physical, and statistical view” (Allan Taylor, NZ Baptist, April). So there isn’t a debate – at least, not a scientific one. Perhaps there is some comfort from C. S. Lewis, whose insight I pinch from Reflections on the Psalms, chapter 12:

“What we see when we think we are looking into the depths of Scripture may sometimes be only the reflection of our own silly faces. Many allegorical interpretations which were once popular seem to me, as perhaps to most moderns, to be strained, arbitrary, and ridiculous. ... [We] may be sure that some of them really are; we ought to be much less sure that we know which.”

Scientists do not conspire like trolls with the Devil to lure Captain Faithful off the True Bridge into the Slough of Errance. Science is a method, a set of tools to test the bridge. Scientists, too, know wonder and reverence; the more so as each hypothesis blossoms. Let each work for the Kingdom according to their talent, I say, not their ambition.

– Ken McAllister
Christchurch