Faith, reason, and the educated Christian Creationism - College and ...

Profiles
Ruy Vieira
Dialogue with an Adventist creationist in Brazil.
His parents had little or no interest in religion, and they hardly cared
about passing Christian beliefs to their children. His teachers all the
way through high school were agnostics and evolutionists. Fed on a
steady diet of these twin systems, Ruy Carlos de Camargo Vieira was ready to
face university education as an intellectual, untainted by Christian claims. But
the road to Damascus passes by each individual, and when Ruy entered the
university, he found himself on that dangerous road. He was confronted by One
he did not yet know. The philosophic tent of agnosticism and evolution that
sheltered him thus far was blown over by another set of beliefs that had its origin
not in human reason but in divine revelation. For the first time, he read in
the Bible about origins, about God’s love, grace, peace, and freedom from sin
that He gives so freely. The new discovery made sense to Ruy, and he pursued
the study of the Bible with great vigor and speed. Soon he became a Seventh-day
Adventist. From agnosticism to faith, from evolution to creation—it was not
simply a discovery, but the dawn of a divine perspective on life.
That turned Ruy’s life around. Eventually he became one of the most active
and prominent scientists who have promoted and defended Creationism in Brazil.
The new road was not easy. For a scientist to openly confess creation is to
invite professional ridicule. But Ruy persisted in his discovery. In 1972 he
founded the Brazilian Creationist Society, and published the first volume of the
Folha Criacionista (Creationist Journal, in Portuguese), which now has more
than 60 issues. He continues to be the president of the society, in addition to his
university teaching and writing on creation. He also serves as a consultant for
the Brazilian Government at the Education Ministry and as the treasurer of the
Brazilian Bible Society.
■ How did your interest in Creationism begin?
It began after I became an Adventist.
As I began to keep the Sabbath, I found
that it was necessary for me to know
more about the issue of origins, especially
that of creation as it stood in opposition
to evolution, which has become
the “academically correct” view.
■ Why did you choose to be a creationist?
Becoming a creationist is a logical
consequence of becoming a Christian.
To be a Christian is to accept Christ as
Saviour and His revealed Word as divine
and normative. The Bible speaks of God
creating a perfect world, and then of the
temptation and the entrance of sin with
all its degenerative consequences. Just
before I graduated from the engineering
course, I came in touch with Christianity,
and that changed all my perspective.
I discovered that the claims of evolution
cannot be squared with the Christian
claim of creation. From the Bible, I discovered
that behind all life there is a
creation brought about by God who has
instilled in the universe a purpose and a
design. God helped me overcome the
difficulties on my journey from evolu-
tion to creation. I praise God for this!
Today, I can relate through basic scientific
principles the image of a perfect
world created by God and its degeneration
due to sin. Moreover, I can integrate
this newfound discovery with the
subjects I taught as a university teacher,
subjects such as the First and Second
Laws of Thermodynamics involving
philosophical considerations about the
concept of entropy, order and disorder,
directionality, decadence, and degradation.
I can see in all the fields of human
knowledge a perfect coherence between
the creation paradigm and a genuine
scientific perspective.
■ Tell us something about the Brazilian Creationist
Society of which you are the president.
As a teacher and as a parent, I helped
my sons in their secondary school work,
and I noticed how evolutionistic ideas
were presented in almost all the textbooks.
As a creationist, I was concerned
how subtly these evolutionist ideas became
the sole perspective from which
social, political, economical, scientific,
and technological courses were taught.
Thirty years ago, by God’s providence, I
learned of creationist societies outside
of Brazil that were trying to counter
evolution and provide an alternate view
of origins. I found out how these societies
work and went through the basic approaches
by which they deal with the
controversies between creation and evolution.
Then I decided that it was time
Brazil, too, had a similar society. So in
1972, the Brazilian Creationist Society
was founded, with the first issue of its
Creationist journal.
22 Dialogue 15:3 2003