Creation Facts of Life (2 page)
Once in a while Christian students would say something like, "You don't have to be that hard on the Bible or the Christian faith. After all, you can believe in the Bible and evolution at the same time." Thinking I had them in a trap, I would respond something like this: "Who wants to pray to a god that used millions of years of struggle and death to create things? Aren't time and chance the logical opposites of plan and purpose? What kind of god would wipe out 99 percent of all the species he/she/it created, and bury the mistakes in fossil graveyards? Besides that, don't you Christians believe God sent His Son, Jesus, to conquer death and give us new life? If God had been using millions of years of struggle and death to create things, Jesus would be opposing God's plan! You don't really understand evolution or the Bible either one!"
Although I thought I was "open-minded" and didn't mean to be mean, my remarks must have been offensive to many Christian students. Since Christians, Jews, and Muslims share the same basic account of creation and the earth's early history, my evolutionist exuberance would have been offensive to Jewish and Islamic students as well. Actually, I was more than willing to let students believe in whatever God they wanted to — so long as their religious belief did not dispute the "scientific fact of evolution."
Then I got invited to a Bible study. How silly, I thought, that educated people in this age of science would still study a dusty old outmoded book like the Bible, but the Bible study was led by the chemistry professor where I was teaching. More importantly, I was promised free coffee and donuts for coming. Now those are three of my favorite words: free …coffee …donuts! So, for less than honorable motives, my wife, Mary, and I set off for that Bible study. Besides, I thought, by pointing out all the obvious errors in the Bible, maybe I could convince them to study something more relevant, like evolution, for instance!
Most of the errors I tried to point out turned out to be my errors. The chemistry professor, Dr. Charles Signorino, was a superb Bible teacher, and that got to be irritating, but the free coffee and donuts kept us coming back anyway. I soon learned, much to my amazement at first, that the Bible describes the origin and history of life on earth in a way dramatically different from evolution's story:
In the beginning was God. With plan, purpose, and special acts of creation, God stretched out the heavens and clothed the earth with plants both "pleasant to the sight and good for food." He created our first parents (Adam and Eve) in His own "image," mandated that they care for and cultivate the earth as a "garden of delight" (Eden), and asked only for their love and trust.
Unfortunately, our first parents sinned — rejected God's love and put their trust in their own opinions rather than God's Word. That self-centered arrogance ruined the world God had created "all very good," and brought death, disease, and disaster to the earth — a "bondage to decay."
The early earth became so filled with violence and corruption that God destroyed it in a global flood to give the world a fresh start with Noah and those with him on the ark. Sadly, human evil has again polluted God's world, and the present world is destined for cleansing by fire. We might summarize the sad history of our planet so far as 3 Cs: creation, corruption, and catastrophe.
We're not without hope. There is a fourth "C." The same God who created us, the same God who daily cares for us, is the same God who sent His Son, Jesus Christ, to conquer sin and death and to raise us to new life, rich and abundant, now and forever. As "new creations in Christ," we wait for a "new heaven and new earth," where "the wolf and the lamb will lie down together," there will be no more pain, tears, or death, and peace and paradise will be perfectly restored.
The evolutionary world view can be abbreviated TCSD for time, chance, struggle, and death. The biblical view can be represented as 7 Cs (say "Seven Seas"), but I'll focus on just 4 Cs: God's perfect world (creation), ruined by man (corruption), destroyed by Noah's flood (catastrophe), restored to a new life in Christ —
creation, corruption, catastrophe, Christ.
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What a difference!
In evolutionary thinking, time, chance, struggle, and death produce "new and improved" forms of life. In biblical thinking, chance and struggle produce disease, decline, and death. Evolution begins with dead things; living things — including us — are temporary intruders in the universe, and when the sun burns out, death wins at last. The Bible begins with the life of God; death is a temporary intruder, and eternal life wins at Christ's return.
Most people agree that it's the Bible that has the happy ending: life triumphs over death. During an interview, a famous evolutionist and anti-creationist admitted that it would be nice to believe that we were especially created by a loving God who put us here to superintend the earth. Then he quickly added that it isn't right. During a television program in which I also appeared, another leading evolutionist told how he had grown up in a religious household and had heard the "wonderful story" of a beautiful creation, ruined by man's sin, restored by Christ's love. Then he went on to say that the whole of his scientific training, indeed the whole development of science during the last 200 years, had convinced him the "wonderful story" was wrong.
That's the way I looked at it, too; the Bible was just a story with a happy ending — like all those other fairy tales. My strong belief in evolution was a huge stumbling block to my accepting the good news of new life in Christ. I thought evolution had proved the Bible was wrong, and that there was no God out there to keep all its wonderful promises.
Dr. Signorino, an excellent Bible teacher, was also a top-notch scientist. He challenged me to look again at the scientific evidence I thought I knew so well. Then Allen Davis, a biologist newly hired at the college, began to share creationist evidences and resources with me, including the famous (or infamous) book by John C. Whitcomb and Henry M. Morris,
The Genesis Flood
. For three years we argued creation/evolution. For three years I used all the evolutionary arguments I knew so well. For three years I lost every scientific argument. Reluctant and surprised, I finally concluded that what we read in God's Word is the surest guide to understanding what we see in God's world.
Now I'd like to invite you to consider some of the evidences that suggest the "wonderful story" is true after all! And it's not just me. Thousands of scientists are sharing the scientific evidences in God's world that encourage us to believe all the wonderful promises and principles in God's Word, the Bible.
How can that be? How can
scientists — all using the same evidence —
come up with such different ideas about what that evidence means? Hasn't "science" proved the Bible wrong? Don't we "know" that man created "God" in his image when he reached the stage of abstract thought in evolution? Wouldn't going back to believing God created man in His image bring back other superstitions and destroy the very fabric of society in our scientific age? Isn't it unconscionable (and unconstitutional) to mix religion, like the Bible, with science, like evolution?
People do get "fired up" about creation/evolution. There really are important issues at stake here, both personal and social. That's all the more reason to hold our emotions in check and to examine our beliefs calmly and thoughtfully. After all, it's important to know not only what we believe but
why we believe it.
Being comfortable and confident with our beliefs means that we have honestly considered the merits of beliefs different from ours, and understanding another's beliefs helps to generate
respect
and
compassion
, even if the disagreement is deep, profound, and absolute.
I love science. This book is especially for those who love and/or respect science. In it I'd like to share with you some of the
scientific
evidence that helped to change me, as a biology professor, from an enthusiastic (even "evangelical") belief in evolution to a belief instead that the Bible is the best guide to understanding God's world and our place in His plan. The Bible contains no
explicit
references to DNA, mutations, fossils, or the Grand Canyon, so my scientific
applications
of biblical truths are no better than the evidence I use to support them.
I also want you to understand evolution clearly and thoroughly, so I'll also be going over with you — as I still do with my students — all the standard textbook arguments used in favor of evolution.
Take your time. Be critical. Think it through. It took me three years of re-examining the evidence before I gave up my deep-seated belief in evolution and concluded, like thousands of other scientists in recent times, that the 4 C biblical outline of earth history is the more logical inference from our scientific observations.
Tools for Inquiry: Logic and Observation
Science is both a fabulous body of knowledge and a fantastic method of investigation. Most people just assume evolution can be studied scientifically — but not creation. According to a slogan popular these days, "Evolution is science, and creation is religion," and that's supposed to stop the discussion even before it starts. Let's start, then, with the most basic question of all: Is it really possible to talk honestly and fairly about
scientific
evidence of
creation??
For many people, that question is a major stumbling block. Some even use it as an excuse to throw creation out of the courtroom or classroom without even hearing the evidence, but nothing is really easier for scientists and just "ordinary people" than finding and recognizing evidence of creation.
To illustrate, let me borrow your imagination for a moment. Imagine that you are walking along a creek on a lazy summer afternoon, idly kicking at the pebbles along the bank. Occasionally you reach down to pick up a pebble that has an unusual shape. One pebble reminds you of a cowboy boot (Figure 1). As you roll the pebble around in your hand, you notice that the softer parts of the rock are more worn away than the harder parts, and that lines of wear follow lines of weakness in the rock. Despite some appearance of design, the boot shape of the tumbled pebble is clearly the result of time, chance, and the processes of weathering and erosion.
But then your eye spots an arrowhead lying among the pebbles (Figure 1). Immediately it stands out as different. In the arrowhead, chip marks cut through the hard and soft parts of the rock equally, and the chip lines go both with and across lines of weakness in the rock. In the arrowhead, we see matter shaped and molded according to a plan that gives the rocky material a special purpose.
You have just done what many people dismiss as impossible. In comparing the pebble and arrowhead, you were easily able to recognize evidence of creation. I am speaking here only of human creation, of course. The arrowhead might have been carved by one of my ancestors (a Cherokee), for example, but the same approach can be used even when we don't know who or what the creative agent might have been.
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What does it take to recognize evidence of creation? Just the ordinary tools of science: logic and observation.
Using your knowledge of erosional processes and your observations of hard and soft rock, you were able to distinguish a result of time and chance (the tumbled pebble) from an object created with plan and purpose (the arrowhead). If we had found such objects as arrowheads on Mars, all scientists would have recognized them immediately as the products of creation, even though in that case we would have no idea who made them or how. The late Carl Sagan, the evolutionist of
Cosmos
television fame, spent millions of dollars listening for signals from outer space, because he knew full well that we can tell the difference between wave patterns produced by time and chance and those sent with design and purpose.
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Figure 1. |
I was in a friendly mini-debate at a California college when the evolutionist interrupted me: "But creation can't be scientific. Science deals only with things you can see and touch. Take energy, for example…." Then he stopped. "Whoops! Made a mistake, didn't I?" I hastened to agree. He, his students, and I all knew that there are forms of energy, like gravity, that you can't see or touch or put in a bottle. Yet you know "gravity" is there (whatever it is!) because you can see the effects it has on matter. Similarly, God is a Spirit and can't be seen — but you can see His effects on matter. Even the Bible tells us that "the invisible things of God are clearly seen in all the things that have been made" (Rom. 1:20).