Beginnings Revisited: Man

The whole Evolution vs Intelligent Design issue has got me on edge. The non-intelligent design folks are in the "if you don't see it my way, you MUST take the radical opposite of my view" camp. They accuse the other side of wanting to teach the Bible in science classes at public schools. It is the classic straw man argument and it grows weary.

Here is the debate: The Evolutionists believe that man evolved from lower animals over millions of years. Ultimately, we are the ancestors of wet rocks. The extremists on this side think that it should be taught as fact in our schools - period.

The intelligent design folks say that the world and life is too complex for it to unfold by chance, so logic demands that there is/was an intelligent designer. The extremists want the Genesis account being taught in school.

If one cuts off the extremists on both ends, the mainstream view is still pretty extreme in the pro-evolution camp. Here is why:

Conventional thinking believes that there is no place in the "science" classroom for intelligent design. As a matter of fact, there is no room for bringing up the problems in science that Evolution has. They don't want the students to be confused into thinking that Evolution is anything but fact, despite some evidence to the contrary.

Basically, the mainstream intelligent design people want is the leeway to talk about the problems in Evolution and "mention" that there is an alternate theory of "Intelligent Design" in which some people adhere. They are not interested in advancing a particular religious ideology, just a small portion of the class to state this view. How is that destructive?

My view:

Science should be about discovering the truth. However, the scientific method procludes the possibility of certain truths even before the investigation gets started.

This method looks only for naturalistic reasons and causes which makes sense to a degree. After all, one can't follow scientific rules or laws to explain the system of things if one can merely chalk it all up to magic or God. However, scientists go as far as to discount anything that is not naturalistic, they run incredibly dangerous to doing the thing they claim to despise - creating myth.

For instance, no one as of yet can scientifically prove the existance of God. However, no one can prove that God does not exist, either. It follows then, that if God does exist and is responsible for ANYTHING, then science missed it from jump. Each day that passes with science chasing the white rabbit farther down the path, is one more day farther from the truth. If science is truly interested in the truth, they should leave this door open. Science could get so far away from truth that even intelligent people could believe that we came from wet rocks and those rocks came from nothing.

The Key, Part II.

Previously, I discussed how Jesus was the key to discovering God. I will continue from there. I am not going to spend time re-hashing WHY Jesus is key. If you want to explore that more, then visit my original post here. I will now investigate Jesus being the key at another level. He is central in discovering what God has to say to mankind OUTSIDE of the words of Christ, Himself.

Showing previously the reliability of the New Testament, I will now explore the Old Testament from the credible standpoint OF the New Testament. First of all, there are only five Old Testament books not mentioned in the New Testament: Ezra, Ecclesiastes, Ester, Nehemiah, and Song of Solomon. The rest of the 39 books are accounted for there.

The Gospel writers have Jesus referring to Noah, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob - all of which are historical figures found in the book of Genesis. The Gospel of Luke even traces Jesus' lineage all the way back to Adam.

Jesus talks about Moses as the lawgiver on a number of occasions. Moreover, Matthew, Mark, and Luke all described the transfiguratation (represented at the left from a painting by Carl Bloch) where Moses and Elijah came to commune with Jesus on a mountain. Jesus often mentions Moses and the prophets in his teachings.

We can conclude here that if Jesus was/is the Son of God, He would know whether or not these Old Testament stories were false. Instead of discrediting them, He affirms the Old Testament as Truth. This is ironic when one considers the beliefs of the Jews. The Jews do not recognize Jesus as Messiah, yet Jesus provided the most credible evidence to date that the Jewish scriptures are legitimate.

I don't spend too much time here hammering out evidence after evidence. If there is any reason to disagree with me, I welcome it in the "comments" section. Other than that, I will explore how the Old and New Testaments tie together as an overall love letter from God to man; the ultimate Good News to the human race.

The Search

Prerequisite: Beginnings

Somewhere around high school, I drifted from my belief in God. I wasn't the flaming atheist, but everything I thought about as it related to my life was absent of God or a god. School filled me up with Evolution which replaced Creation as fact in my life. There was also plenty of situational ethics and no absolutes. I lived a godless life without even thinking about it.

Slowly over time, I started considering the issues of God. I knew I had to make a decision in some way. I wanted God to prove Himself to me, but He wouldn't. You can't come to know God on your own terms but only on His. I took a leap of faith and believed. "Now will you show me, God?"

With "Pascal's Wager" in mind and beholding all the wonders of the world, I set out to allow God to confirm Himself to me. I found interesting tidbits such as the moon is exactly the right size and distance from the Earth to allow the Earth to sustain life. By chance? I don't think so. Shoot just believing that life came from nonlife takes more faith than to just believe in a Creator.

Getting to the point where it was becoming obvious that there is a God. How can we know who or what god is correct? An answer for another time.

Battle Over Origins

In my church this week, they launched a new series that they like to call "Star Wars". It is a discussion of evolution and creation - I guess a battle over who created the stars. This first week, the discussion was confined to "old Earth" vs. "new Earth".

Of course, the atheists believe it is an old earth that some how miraculously appeared from nothing (with a big bang, etc.) I don't have enough faith in that to give it much press here. That is for another post. For today, I am just thinking in terms of God.

The Old Earth theory dictates that the Book of Genesis can easily be interpreted in a way that allows for each of the "days" of Creation could be something other than 24-hour periods. Some of the terminology in Hebrew (the language of the Old Testament) provides for this possibility. Therefore, depending on the amount of time for each day, the Earth could be billions of years old which would satisfy the contemporary scientific age estimates of rocks, fossils and the expanding Universe.

On the other hand, the New Earth theory states that the Bible states it took six days to create the Earth. The new Earthers reason that if God said it, then by golly, it took six days to create (and one day to rest). God understood that we (in this case contemporary Americans) know that a day is a 24-hour period and that was the word He chose to use in this account. Therefore, why should we try to put words in God's mouth in order to pacify the pagan scientists anyway? After establishing that one can conclude that since the creation of man was at the end of the first week, one can figure out the age of the Earth by tracking each generation up to Jesus through out the genealogy that the Bible provides. It even gives the age of death of each ancestor (or most) of Christ. Add all that together and calculate the new era dates and you can figure out that the Earth is only 6000 to 8000 years old.

One attached theory to the OET, is that God created the Earth in six days, but made it appear to be mature and old (millions of years old) just as He did the first man (Adam) by creating him to "appear" to be about 16-18 years old - even though his actual age was one day old. I will let that theory just stand alone as an FYI for this entry.

At any rate, it would appear that the "Old Earth Theory" is the most reasonable of the two original theories presented here. First blushes are often deceiving, though. Since one supporting piece of evidence suggests that the plants and animals took care of multiplying themselves with God's direct action in Genesis 1:12 "And the earth brought forth grass, and herb yielding seed after his kind, and the tree yielding fruit, whose seed was in itself, after his kind: and God saw that it was good (KJV)."

However, on further examination, all this happened on Day 3 - according to Genesis. But on Day 4, God created the sun and the moon. The problem is that the plants and grasses couldn't multiply on their own without the sun. So, it would be logical to assume that everything had to be in place before life could spontaneously replenish itself.

In addition, there is evidence that some things that appeared to happen over millions of years actually could have happened in a matter of days if certain dramatic events were present (i.e. a world wide flood, earthquakes, etc.) The Grand Canyon is one example.

I am not going to come to a conclusion here. I think both scenarios are possible. The Bible states that all things are possible with God. I guess the lesson is to not get married to any explanation. There is just too much still to examine and learn.