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Topic: Creation: Believe It Or Not
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Carol Swenson
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Have you ever wondered why the universe is so huge, and why there are so many galaxies? The universe is currently tens of billions of light years across and is expanding rapidly. There are an estimated 100 billion galaxies, each one composed of 300 billion stars and untold numbers of planets.
I wondered why God created so many galaxies, so I did a little research. On the godandscience website I found this answer:
God's main purpose for the universe is to allow a large number of spiritual beings (both angels and humans) to choose to spend eternity with Him. The requirement of the allowance of choice for free will beings puts constraints on the laws of physics and how the universe operates.
What does a universe look like that requires free will choice? First, there is a requirement for cause and effect. Since we live in such a universe, we tend to assume that cause and effect is a given. However, time, a necessary component of cause and effect, is a construct of this universe, and began at the initiation of the Big bang. In addition to time, it must be clear that choices exist, and that there are differences between those choices. The Bible says that we must choose between good and evil (which is why evil must exist), and accept God's solution (Jesus Christ) to the problem of evil. How do we know that choices are to made while living on earth? There are two forms of revelation (general and special) that God has used to inform mankind of their choices. General revelation comes from nature itself. This is one reason why the universe is as big as what it is. If God had created one star and one planet, we might think about how it came to be, but we would have no way of studying those two objects to make any kind of inference about their origin. However, the Bible says that God spreads out the stars, and that we can study the universe to see how great God is, so that we are without excuse in rejecting Him. So, the immense size of the universe demonstrates God's power and authority.
Besides spiritual reasons, there are also physical constraints on the minimum (and maximum) mass of the universe. The universe could not have been much smaller than it is in order for nuclear fusion to have occurred during the first minutes after the Big Bang. Without this brief period of nucleosynthesis, the early universe would have consisted entirely of hydrogen. Without helium (comprising ~24% of the matter in the universe), heavy element production in stars is not possible, so that no rocky planets would have ever existed in the entire history of the universe.
Likewise, the universe could not have been a much more massive than it is, or life would not have been possible. If the universe were just one part in 10 to the 59th more massive, the universe would have collapsed before life was possible. Since there are only 10 to the 80th baryons in the universe, this means that an addition of just 10 to the 21st baryons (at 1.67x10−27 kg/baryon equals 1.7 mg of matter - equal to a grain of sand) would have made life impossible! The universe is exactly the size it must be for life to exist at all.
http://www.godandscience.org/apologetics/universe_too_large.html
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Carol Swenson
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PART III - Proofs Of Creation From Apologetics
Creation and Evolution
There is much to be said about the issue of creation and evolution. However, here we only summarize the answers to five essential questions: (1) Is creation possible? (2) What difference does creation make? (3) Is evolution possible? (4) What difference does evolution make? (5) Does evolution contradict creation?
Is Creation Possible?
When Jewish and Christian theologians first talked to Greek philosophers, the Greeks thought the biblical notion that God created the world ex nihilo ("out of nothing") was absurd and irrational, because it violated a law of nature that ex nihilo nihil fit ("out of nothing nothing comes"). The reply was (and is) that:
1. It is indeed a law of nature, but the laws of nature cannot be expected to bind the transcendent Creator of nature.
2. The reason for this is that all of nature and all powers in nature are finite, but God is infinite; no finite power can produce the infinite change from nonbeing to being, but infinite power can.
3. The idea of God creating out of nothing is not irrational because it does not claim that anything ever popped into existence without an adequate cause. God did not pop into existence, and nature did have an adequate cause: God.
(The question "If God made everything, who made God?" is like asking "Who made circles square?" It assumes a self-contradiction: that the uncreated Creator is a created creature. It extends the law about changing things—that every change needs a cause—beyond its limits, to the unchanging Source of change. God does not need a cause, or a maker, because He is not made or changed. He changes other things, but is not Himself changed by anything. There is nothing that comes to be in Him, nothing that needs a cause for its coming-into-being.)
What Difference Does the Doctrine of Creation Make?
It makes a difference to our concept of God. If God is the Creator, He must be: (1) infinitely powerful; (2) immeasurably wise (to create this whole universe and all its parts, including its design, laws and structures); (3) a great artist ("Poems are made by fools like me, but only God can make a tree"); and (4) totally generous, since the all-sufficient, perfect Being couldn't have created out of need (e.g., boredom or loneliness).
It also makes a difference to our concept of nature. If nature is created by God, it is (1) intelligible (it is no accident that science arose in the theistic West, not the pantheistic East); (2) good (thus Christianity has always condemned all forms of Manichaeism and gnosticism as heresy); and (3) real (the East often sees nature as an unreal illusion projected by unenlightened consciousness).
Finally, the doctrine of creation affects our concept of ourselves. If we owe our very existence to God, then (1) we have no rights over against God. This startling conclusion necessarily follows from the doctrine of Creation. Shakespeare has rights over against Marlowe, and Hamlet has rights over against Laertes, but how could Hamlet have rights over against Shakespeare? (2) Our existence is meaningful if we are in a play, a divine design deliberately created rather than blindly evolved. (3) And if we owe God our very existence, we owe Him everything. Nothing is our own—no part of our time, or our money, or even our thoughts.
No idea in the history of human thought has ever made more difference than the idea of Creation.
Is Evolution Possible?
If it were impossible, that impossibility would have to come either from the creature or from the Creator.
Scientists and philosophers do not all agree about whether evolution is possible, whether the nature of species makes evolution impossible or not. The jury is still out, though many people on both sides feel absolutely and totally convinced.
There is no impossibility on the side of the Creator. If God wanted to arrange for species to evolve from each other by natural means, He certainly could have created such a world.
So as far as either scientists or theologians know, evolution is possible. Whether it is actual, whether it actually happened, is undecided. The theory is indeed in scientific trouble. Perhaps it can be salvaged. That is for science to decide.
What Difference Does Evolution Make?
What makes a great difference is not evolution as such but two other ideas that are often identified with it: natural selection and materialism.
Natural selection basically means "the survival of the fittest". According to Darwin, it is the mechanism by which species evolved. Now this could be one of two things. It could be the means God used, the force He implanted in nature from the beginning—in which case natural selection is a part of divine design. Or it could mean a way of eliminating divine design. For Darwin and most of his followers right down to the present, it has usually meant the second.
The elimination of divine design does indeed make a difference. If it is true that we evolved simply by blind chance, not divine design, then our lives have no overarching meaning, no preset divine plan, no script. The only meaning, purpose or values that exist are the ones we invent for ourselves. These can never be right or wrong, justified or not justified by a higher standard than our own desires, which created them. Thus there is no real reason to prefer Christian ethics to Stalinist ethics, for instance, except one's own desires themselves. Desire becomes its own reason, its own justification.
Does evolution involve materialism? Not necessarily. The evolution of the body seems to make no difference if the soul is distinguished from the body. But if there is no soul, or if the soul is something that naturally emerged from the body and naturally evolves, then there is no essential difference between humans and apes. Our bodies are essentially the same kind of thing as ape bodies. If we have no souls or if our souls are also essentially the same as ape souls, then there is no reason to expect anyone to act essentially different from apes. (This may explain much current social history!) What makes a difference is not where the body came from but whether there is a soul, and where it came from.
Does Evolution Contradict Creation?
What we have said above, and elsewhere in this book, seems to show clearly that the answer is no. God created the universe at the beginning of time; the universe could not possibly have evolved because there was nothing for it to have evolved from, and not even any time for it to have evolved in. But what about life evolving? God may have created organic life directly or He may have evolved it from inorganic life by natural processes; nothing we know for sure in either theology or science, God or nature, makes us absolutely certain of either answer.
Now the human body is one form of organic life. If organic life-forms evolved by natural selection, the human body may have done so too. Or God may have created it directly. Certainly, a God who creates a whole universe from nothing can perform miracles within that universe, including creating that comparatively little thing called a human body, if that is what He wished to do. Nothing we know about either nature or God seems to make it impossible for our bodies either to have evolved, or to have been created directly.
The soul, however, cannot evolve. Spirit cannot evolve from matter: it would be easier to get blood from a stone. No matter how many atoms you line up, or how complicated their lineup, you cannot get a wholly different thing—thought, consciousness, reason, self-awareness—from mere bits of matter. Awareness of the material universe is not one more part of that universe. The knowledge of a thing is not one of the thing's parts, it is transcendent to the thing, an addition from without. Science can say absolutely nothing about where souls come from, for souls simply are not the sort of thing you can see or measure.
(Handbook of Christian Apologetics)
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Carol Swenson
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PART II - Proofs Of Creation From Science
We cannot see eternity past or eternity future, and we cannot prove an eternal God. With all our knowledge and the best scientific equipment, we are not all knowing and we cannot prove the omniscience of God. We cannot be everywhere at once even with countless cameras and monitors, and we cannot prove the omnipresence of God. We are limited in everyway, and we cannot prove the omnipotence of God. It is as impossible for us to prove God as it would be for a week old kitten to drive a semi-tractor trailer. But the very fact that we contemplate such matters proves an intelligence that did not evolve in nature.
Although we cannot prove God, we can and have proven some of what only God could have created. In fact, there are so many proofs of creation by an intelligent Creator that it requires more blind faith to believe in evolution than to believe in Him.
Here are just a few brief examples of the extensive and advanced studies on this subject.
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Darwin’s Dilemma explores one of the great mysteries in the history of life: The geologically-sudden appearance of dozens of major complex animal types in the fossil record without any trace of the gradual transitional steps Charles Darwin had predicted. Frequently described as “the Cambrian Explosion,” the development of these new animal types required a massive increase in genetic information. “The big question that the Cambrian Explosion poses is where does all that new information come from?”
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The Privileged Planet. Many scientists and philosophers have claimed that Earth is an ordinary speck of dust adrift, without purpose or significance, in a vast cosmic sea. Yet current astronomical evidence seems to suggest just the opposite. We now know that a rare and finely-tuned array of factors makes Earth suitable for complex life.
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Genetics and evolution have been enemies from the beginning of both concepts. Gregor Mendel, the father of genetics, and Charles Darwin, the father of modern evolution, were contemporaries. At the same time that Darwin was claiming that creatures could change into other creatures, Mendel was showing that even individual characteristics remain constant. While Darwin's ideas were based on erroneous and untested ideas about inheritance, Mendel's conclusions were based on careful experimentation. Only by ignoring the total implications of modern genetics has it been possible to maintain the fiction of evolution.
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Proteins are so hard to make that in all of nature, they never form except in already living cells. Never! This scientific fact stands in stark contrast to what was taught.
Which viewpoint is best supported by the evidence? Did life begin without a Creator or did God create it? Evidence that life never comes from non-living materials is so abundant that it is a basic principle of science called the Principle of Biogenesis (living things come only from living things). Atheists and many agnostics have faith that contrary to this basic principle of science, life did evolve spontaneously from chemicals at least once. They now call their theory “abiogenesis” which comes from roots that mean “not Biogenesis.” They no longer use the term “spontaneous generation.”
Is abiogenesis possible? Not only are proteins never formed in nature outside of living cells, the amino acids from which they are built are of two kinds: Half are called left-handed and half right-handed. Only proteins containing all left handed amino acids will work in living things because proteins which contain any right-handed amino acids have the wrong shape and will not connect properly to the proteins around them. It is a bit like when you take a piece out of a puzzle, turn it upside down and try to put it back in where you took it out. It is the same size and shape, but it won’t fit. In nature, all left handed amino acids are only formed by living cells. Amino acids formed in experiments like Miller’s, are half left, and half right-handed so they will not work in the proteins of living things. This is more scientific evidence that life could not form without a Creator. Add it to the fact that in nature, no proteins at all will form outside of cells.
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If life began spontaneously in a pond of primordial soup, then that mindless soup was more intelligent than all the scientists in all their laboratories with all their equipment have ever proven to be.
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Cells can make proteins because:
•Think of DNA as the cell’s library, and RNA as a book that can be checked out of the library. A kind of RNA checks out information from the DNA to line up left handed amino acids in the exact order required for each individual protein.
•Next the correctly ordered left-handed amino acids are linked together by a “molecular machine.” This machine is made up of another kind of RNA working together with several specialized proteins. The machine links the properly ordered left-handed amino acids one to another to make proteins.
The molecular machines that make proteins are a good example of the cell’s many complex machines. Because no machine exists that did not have an intelligent inventor, each of the cell’s machines is another evidence for an intelligent Creator.
After having taught for 40 or 50 years that amino acids first concentrated, then linked together to form proteins, atheists are abandoning this claim. Why?
•Amino acids do not concentrate in the ocean; they disperse and break down.
•Amino acids will not link together in nature to form proteins; not even when scientists help them by buying all left-handed amino acids from a chemical supply house to make the perfect “organic soup.”
•If proteins could form, they could not get together with DNA because DNA does not form outside of living cells either. Scientists can’t even make DNA in the laboratory.
The argument that was used to convince two generations that life had come about without a Creator was false in each of these steps.
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Many atheists understand, but purposely side step the really difficult question which is, “Where does the information in cells come from?” They substitute made up stories about where one of the materials that caries information might have come from. But there is no way that chance, clay, “organic soup,” or natural selection could invent the chemical code of a first cell, and use it to write information instructing the cell to make just the right proteins, fold them properly, and send each one to the only place in the cell where it will fit.
Professor Werner Gitt, who works in the field of information science writes: “There is no known natural law through which matter can give rise to information, neither is there any physical process or material phenomenon known that can do this.”{Werner Gitt, In the Beginning Was Information, 1997, p. 79} This statement, if true, destroys the whole basis of the idea that no intelligent mind was involved in the formation of the first life. Is his statement true? All languages, alphabets, and codes that we know of, as well as the information spoken or written in them, originated in minds. The blind faith of the atheist that the first life was an exception is contrary to all known evidence.
De Duve, a Nobel Prize winning scientist writes:
“{In all modern organisms, DNA contains in encrypted form the instructions for the manufacture of proteins. More specifically, encoded within DNA is the exact order in which amino acids, selected at each step from 20 distinct varieties should be strung together to form all of the organism’s proteins.”{Christian de Duve, “The Beginning of Life on Earth,” American Scientist, Vol. 83, Sept-Oct. 1995, p. 430} Information never happens apart from intelligence, yet cells contain huge amounts of information. I believe this is the most important single evidence that life came from the mind of an intelligent Creator rather than from dumb chemicals.
http://www.creationism.org/heinze/SciEvidGodLife.htm
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Etched within Earth's foundation rocks — the granites — are beautiful microspheres of coloration, halos, produced by the radioactive decay of primordial polonium, which is known to have only a fleeting existence.
The following simple analogy will show how these polonium microspheres — or halos — contradict the evolutionary belief that granites formed as hot magma slowly cooled over millions of years. To the contrary, this analogy demonstrates how these halos provide unambiguous evidence of both an almost instantaneous creation of granites and the young age of the earth.
A speck of polonium in molten rock can be compared to an Alka-Seltzer dropped into a glass of water. The beginning of effervescence is equated to the moment that polonium atoms began to emit radiactive particles. In molten rock the traces of those radioactive particles would disappear as quickly as the Alka-Seltzer bubbles in water. But if the water were instantly frozen, the bubbles would be preserved. Likewise, polonium halos could have formed only if the rapidly "effervescing" specks of polonium had been instantly encased in solid rock.
An exceedingly large number of polonium halos are embedded in granites around the world. Just as frozen Alka-Seltzer bubbles would be clear evidence of the quick-freezing of the water, so are these many polonium halos undeniable evidence that a sea of primordial matter quickly "froze" into solid granite. The occurrence of these polonium halos, then, distinctly implies that our earth was formed in a very short time, in complete harmony with the biblical record of creation.
http://www.halos.com/
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For since the creation of the world His invisible attributes, His eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly seen, being understood through what has been made, so that they are without excuse. For even though they knew God, they did not honor Him as God or give thanks, but they became futile in their speculations, and their foolish heart was darkened. Professing to be wise, they became fools, (Romans 1:20-22)
PART I - Creation: Believe it or Not
Genesis 1:1
IT’S HARD TO IMAGINE anything more absurd than the naturalist’s formula for the origin of the universe: Nobody times nothing equals everything. There is no Creator; there is no design or purpose. Everything we see simply emerged and evolved by pure chance from a total void.
Ask the typical naturalist what he believes about the beginning of all things, and you are likely to hear about the big bang theory—the notion that the universe is the product of an immense explosion. As if an utterly violent and chaotic beginning could result in all the synergy and order we observe in the cosmos around us. But what was the catalyst that touched off that big bang in the first place? (And what, in turn, was the catalyst for that?) Something incredibly large had to fuel the original explosion. Where did that “something” originate? A big bang out of nowhere quite simply could not have been the beginning of all things.
Is the material universe itself eternal, as some claim? And if it is, why hasn’t it wound down? For that matter, what set it in motion to begin with? What is the source of the energy that keeps it going? Why hasn’t entropy caused it to devolve into a state of inertia and chaos, rather than (as the evolutionist must hypothesize) apparently developing into a more orderly and increasingly sophisticated system as the big bang expands?
The vast array of insurmountable problems for the naturalist begins at the most basic level. What was the first cause that caused everything else? Where did matter come from? Where did energy come from? What holds everything together and what keeps everything going? How could life, self–consciousness, and rationality evolve from inanimate, inorganic matter? Who designed the many complex and interdependent organisms and sophisticated ecosystems we observe? Where did intelligence originate? Are we to think of the universe as a massive perpetual–motion apparatus with some sort of impersonal “intelligence” of its own? Or is there, after all, a personal, intelligent Designer who created everything and set it all in motion?
Those are vital metaphysical questions that must be answered if we are to understand the meaning and value of life itself. Philosophical naturalism, because of its materialistic and antisupernatural presuppositions, is utterly incapable of offering any answers to those questions. In fact, the most basic dogma of naturalism is that everything happens by natural processes; nothing is supernatural; and therefore there can be no personal Creator. That means there can be no design and no purpose for anything. Naturalism therefore can provide no philosophical basis for believing that human life is particularly valuable or in any way significant.
On the contrary, the naturalist, if he is true to his principles, must ultimately conclude that humanity is a freak accident without any purpose or real importance. Naturalism is therefore a formula for futility and meaninglessness, erasing the image of God from our race’s collective self–image, depreciating the value of human life, undermining human dignity, and subverting morality.
EVOLUTION IS DEGRADING TO HUMANITY
The drift of modern society proves the point. We are witnessing the abandonment of moral standards and the loss of humanity’s sense of destiny. Rampant crime, drug abuse, sexual perversion, rising suicide rates, and the abortion epidemic are all symptoms that human life is being systematically devalued and that an utter sense of futility is sweeping over society. These trends are directly traceable to the ascent of evolutionary theory.
And why not? If evolution is true, humans are just one of many species that evolved from common ancestors. We’re no better than animals, and we ought not to think that we are. If we evolved from sheer matter, why should we esteem what is spiritual? In fact, if everything evolved from matter, nothing “spiritual” is real. We ourselves are ultimately no better than or different from any other living species. We are nothing more than protoplasm waiting to become manure.
As a matter of fact, that is precisely the rationale behind the modern animal–rights movement, a movement whose raison d’People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) is well known for its stance that animal rights are equal to (or more important than) human rights. They maintain that killing any animal for food is the moral equivalent of murder; eating meat is virtually cannibalism; and man is a tyrant species, detrimental to his environment.
PETA opposes the keeping of pets and “companion animals”—including guide dogs for the blind. A 1988 statement distributed by the organization includes this: “As John Bryant has written in his book Fettered Kingdoms, [companion animals] are like slaves, even if well–kept slaves.”
Ingrid Newkirk, PETA’s controversial founder, says, “There is no rational basis for saying that a human being has special rights…. A rat is a pig is a dog is a boy.” Newkirk told a Washington Post reporter that the atrocities of Nazi Germany pale by comparison to the killing animals for food: “Six million Jews died in concentration camps, but six billion broiler chickens will die this year in slaughterhouses.”
Clearly, Ms. Newkirk is more outraged by the killing of chickens for food than she is by the wholesale slaughter of human beings. One gets the impression she would not necessarily consider the extinction of humanity an undesirable thing. In fact, she and other animal–rights advocates often sound downright misanthropic. She told a reporter, “I don’t have any reverence for life, only for the entities themselves. I would rather see a blank space where I am. This will sound like fruitcake stuff again but at least I wouldn’t be harming anything.”
The summer issue of Wild Earth magazine, a journal promoting radical environmentalism, included a manifesto for the extinction of the human race, written under the pseudonym “Les U. Knight.” The article said, “If you haven’t given voluntary human extinction much thought before, the idea of a world with no people in it may seem strange. But, if you give it a chance, I think you might agree that the extinction of Homo sapiens would mean survival for millions, if not billions, of Earth–dwelling species…. Phasing out the human race will solve every problem on earth, social and environmental.”
That is worse than merely inane, irrational, immoral, or humiliating; it is deadly.
But there’s even an organization called The Church of Euthanasia. Their Web page advocates suicide, abortion, cannibalism, and sodomy as the main ways to decrease the human population. Although the Web page contains elements of parody deliberately designed for shock value, the people behind it are deadly serious in their opposition to the continuance of the human race. They include detailed instructions for committing suicide. The one commandment church members are required to obey is “Thou shalt not procreate.” By deliberately making their views sound as outrageous as possible, they have received widespread coverage on talk shows and tabloid–style news programs. They take advantage of such publicity to recruit members for their cause. Despite their shocking message, they have evidently been able to persuade numerous people that the one species on earth that ought to be made extinct is humanity. Their Web site boasts that people in the thousands have paid the ten dollar membership fee to become church members.
That sort of lunacy is rooted in the belief that humanity is simply the product of evolution—a mere animal with no purpose, no destiny, and no likeness to the Creator. After all, if we got where we are by a natural evolutionary process, there can be no validity whatsoever to the notion that our race bears the image of God. We ultimately have no more dignity than an amoeba. And we certainly have no mandate from the Almighty to subdue the rest of creation.
And if a human being is nothing more than an animal in the process of evolving, who can argue against the animal–rights movement? Even the most radical animal–rights position is justified in a naturalistic and evolutionary world–view. If we really evolved from animals, we are in fact just animals ourselves. And if evolution is correct, it is a sheer accident that man evolved a superior intellect. If random mutations had occurred differently, apes might be running the planet and humans would be in the zoo. What right do we have to exercise dominion over other species that have not yet had the opportunity to evolve to a more advanced state?
Indeed, if man is merely a product of natural evolutionary processes, then he is ultimately nothing more than the accidental byproduct of thousands of haphazard genetic mutations. He is just one more animal that evolved from amoeba, and he is probably not even the highest life–form that will eventually evolve. So what is special about him? Where is his meaning? Where is his dignity? Where is his value? What is his purpose? Obviously he has none.
It is only a matter of time before a society steeped in naturalistic belief fully embraces such thinking and casts off all moral and spiritual restraint. In fact, that process has begun already. If you doubt that, consider some of the televised debauchery aimed at the MTV/Jerry Springer generation.
EVOLUTION IS HOSTILE TO REASON
Evolution is as irrational as it is amoral. In place of God as Creator, the evolutionist has substituted chance—sheer fortune, accident, happenstance, serendipity, coincidence, random events, and blind luck. Chance is the engine most evolutionists believe drives the evolutionary process.
Naturalism essentially teaches that over time and out of sheer chaos, matter evolved into everything we see today by pure chance. And this all happened without any particular design. Given enough time and enough random events, the evolutionist says, anything is possible. And the evolution of our world with all its intricate ecosystems and complex organisms is therefore simply the in–advertent result of a very large number of indiscriminate but extremely fortuitous accidents of nature. Everything is the way it is simply by the luck of the draw. And thus chance itself has been elevated to the role of creator.
John Ankerberg and John Weldon point out that matter, time, and chance constitute the evolutionists’ holy trinity. Indeed, these three things are all that is eternal and omnipotent in the evolutionary scheme: matter, time, and chance. Together they have formed the cosmos as we know it. And they have usurped God in the evolutionist’s mind. Ankerberg and Weldon quote Jacques Monod, 1965 Nobel Prize–winner for his work in biochemistry. In his book Chance and Necessity, Monod wrote, “[Man] is alone in the universe’s unfeeling immensity, out of which he emerged by chance…. Chance alone is at the source of every innovation, of all creation in the biosphere. Pure chance, absolutely free but blind, [is] at the very root of the stupendous edifice of evolution.”
Obviously, that is a far cry from being created in the image of God. It is also utterly irrational. The evolutionary idea not only strips man of his dignity and his value, but it also eliminates the ground of his rationality. If everything happens by chance, then in the ultimate sense, nothing can possibly have any real purpose or meaning. And it’s hard to think of any philosophical starting point that is more irrational than that.
But a moment’s reflection will reveal that chance simply cannot be the cause of anything (much less the cause of everything). Chance is not a force. The only legitimate sense of the word chance has to do with mathematical probability. If you flip a coin again and again, quotients of mathematical probability suggest that it will land tails up about fifty times out of a hundred. Thus we say that when you flip a coin, there’s a fifty–fifty “chance” it will come up tails.
But “chance” is not a force that can actually flip the coin. Chance is not an intellect that designs the pattern of mathematical probabilities. Chance determines nothing. Mathematical probability is merely a way of measuring what actually does happen.
Yet in naturalistic and evolutionary parlance, “chance” becomes something that determines what happens in the absence of any other cause or design. Consider Jacques Monod’s remark again: “Chance …is at the source of every innovation, of all creation.” In effect, naturalists have imputed to chance the ability to cause and determine what occurs. And that is an irrational concept.
There are no uncaused events. Every effect is determined by some cause. Even the flip of a coin simply cannot occur without a definite cause. And common sense tells us that whether the coin comes up heads or tails is also determined by something. A number of factors (including the precise amount of force with which the coin is flipped and the distance it must fall before hitting the ground) determine the number of revolutions and bounces it makes before landing on one side or the other. Although the forces that determine the flip of a coin may be impossible for us to control precisely, those forces, not “chance,” determine whether we get heads or tails. What may appear totally random and undetermined to us is nonetheless definitively determined by something. It is not caused by mere chance, because chance simply does not exist as a force or a cause. Chance is nothing.
Fortune was a goddess in the Greek pantheon. Evolutionists have enshrined chance in a similar way. They have taken the myth of chance and made it responsible for all that happens. Chance has been transformed into a force of causal power, so that nothing is the cause of everything. What could be more irrational than that? It turns all of reality into sheer chaos. It therefore makes everything irrational and incoherent.
The entire concept is so fraught with problems from a rational and philosophical viewpoint that one hardly knows where to begin. But let’s begin at the beginning. Where did matter come from in the first place? The naturalist would have to say either that all matter is eternal, or that everything appeared by chance out of nothing. The latter option is clearly irrational.
But suppose the naturalist opts to believe that matter is eternal. An obvious question arises: What caused the first event that originally set the evolutionary process in motion? The only answer available to the naturalist is that chance made it happen. It literally came out of nowhere. No one and nothing made it happen. That, too, is clearly irrational.
So in order to avoid that dilemma, some naturalists assume an eternal chain of random events that operate on the material universe. They end up with an eternal but constantly changing material universe governed by an endless chain of purely random events—all culminating in magnificent design without a designer, and everything happening without any ultimate cause. At the end of the day, it is still irrational. It eliminates purpose, destiny, and meaning from everything in the universe. And therefore it leaves no ground for anything rational.
In other words, nihilism—a belief that everything is entirely without meaning, without logic, and without reason—is the only philosophy that works with naturalism. The universe itself is incoherent and irrational. Reason has been deposed by pure chance.
And such a view of chance is the polar opposite of reason. Common–sense logic suggests that every watch has a watchmaker. Every building has a builder. Every structure has an architect. Every arrangement has a plan. Every plan has a designer. And every design has a purpose. We see the universe, infinitely more complex than any watch and infinitely greater than any man–made structure, and it is natural to conclude that Someone infinitely powerful and infinitely intelligent made it. “For since the creation of the world His invisible attributes, His eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly seen, being understood through what has been made” (Romans 1:20 NASB).
But naturalists look at the universe, and despite all the intricate marvels it holds, they conclude no one made it. Chance brought it about. It happened by accident. That is not logical. It is absurd.
Abandon logic and you are left with pure nonsense. In many ways the naturalists’ deification of chance is worse than all the various myths of other false religions, because it obliterates all meaning and sense from everything. But it is, once again, pure religion of the most pagan variety, requiring a spiritually fatal leap of faith into an abyss of utter irrationality. It is the age–old religion of fools (Psalm 14:1)—but in modern “scientific” dress.
What could prompt anyone to embrace such a system? Why would someone opt for a world–view that eliminates all that is rational? It boils down to the sheer love of sin. People want to be comfortable in their sin, and there is no way to do that without eliminating God. Get rid of God and you erase all fear of the consequences of sin. So even though sheer irrationality is ultimately the only viable alternative to the God of Scripture, multitudes have opted for irrationality just so they could live guilt–free and shamelessly with their own sin. It is as simple as that.
Either there is a God who created the universe and sovereignly rules His creation, or everything was caused by blind chance. The two ideas are mutually exclusive. If God rules, there’s no room for chance. Make chance the cause of the universe, and you have effectively done away with God.
As a matter of fact, if chance as a determinative force or a cause exists even in the frailest form, God has been dethroned. The sovereignty of God and chance are inherently incompatible. If chance causes or determines anything, God is not truly God.
But again, chance is not a force. Chance cannot make anything happen. Chance is nothing. It simply does not exist. And therefore it has no power to do anything. It cannot be the cause of any effect. It is an imaginary hocus–pocus. It is contrary to every law of science, every principle of logic, and every intuition of sheer common sense. Even the most basic principles of thermodynamics, physics, and biology suggest that chance simply cannot be the determinative force that has brought about the order and interdependence we see in our universe—much less the diversity of life we find on our own planet. Ultimately, chance simply cannot account for the origin of life and intelligence.
One of the oldest principles of rational philosophy is ex nihilo nihil fit. Out of nothing, nothing comes. And chance is nothing. Naturalism is rational suicide.
When scientists attribute instrumental power to chance they have left the realm of reason, they have left the domain of science. They have turned to pulling rabbits out of hats. They have turned to fantasy. Insert the idea of chance, and all scientific investigation ultimately becomes chaotic and absurd. That is precisely why evolution does not deserve to be deemed true science; it is nothing more than an irrational religion—the religion of those who want to sin without guilt.
Someone once estimated that the number of random genetic factors involved in the evolution of a tapeworm from an amoeba would be comparable to placing a monkey in a room with a typewriter and allowing him to strike the keys at random until he accidentally produced a perfectly spelled and perfectly punctuated typescript of Hamlet’s soliloquy. And the odds of getting all the mutations necessary to evolve a starfish from a one–celled creature are comparable to asking a hundred blind people to make ten random moves each with five Rubik’s Cubes, and finding all five cubes perfectly solved at the end of the process. The odds against all earth’s life forms evolving from a single cell are, in a word, impossible.
Nonetheless, the absurdity of naturalism goes largely unchallenged today in universities and colleges. Turn on the Discovery Channel or pick up an issue of National Geographic and you are likely to be exposed to the assumption that chance exists as a force—as if mere chance spontaneously generated everything in the universe.
One Nobel laureate, Harvard professor George Wald, acknowledged the utter absurdity of this. Pondering the vast array of factors both real and hypothetical that would have to arise spontaneously all at once in order for in–animate matter to evolve into even the most primitive one–celled form of life, he wrote, “One has only to contemplate the magnitude of this task to concede that the spontaneous generation of a living organism is impossible.” Then he added, “Yet here we are—as a result, I believe, of spontaneous generation.” How did Wald believe this impossibility came about? He answered: “Time is in fact the hero of the plot. The time with which we have to deal is of the order of two billion years. What we regard as impossible on the basis of human experience is meaningless here. Given so much time, the ‘impossible’ becomes possible, the possible probable, and the probable virtually certain. One has only to wait: time itself performs the miracles.” Given enough time, that which is impossible becomes “virtually certain.” That is sheer double–talk. And it perfectly illustrates the blind faith that underlies naturalistic religion.
There is no viable explanation of the universe without God. So many immense and intricate wonders could not exist without a Designer. There’s only one possible explanation for it all, and that is the creative power of an all–wise God. He created and sustains the universe, and He gives meaning to it. And without Him, there is ultimately no meaning in anything. Without Him, we are left with only the notion that everything emerged from nothing without a cause and without any reason. Without Him, we are stuck with that absurd formula of the evolutionist: Nothing times nobody equals everything.
EVOLUTION IS ANTITHETICAL
TO THE TRUTH GOD HAS REVEALED
By contrast, the actual record of creation is found in Genesis 1:1: “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.” It would be hard to state an answer to the great cosmic question any more simply or directly than that.
The words of Genesis 1:1 are precise and concise beyond mere human composition. They account for everything evolution cannot explain. Evolutionary philosopher Herbert Spencer, one of Darwin’s earliest and most enthusiastic advocates, outlined five “ultimate scientific ideas”: time, force, action, space, and matter. These are categories that (according to Spencer) comprise everything that is susceptible to scientific examination. That simple taxonomy, Spencer believed, encompasses all that truly exists in the universe. Everything that can be known or observed by science fits into one of those categories, Spencer claimed, and nothing can be truly said to “exist” outside of them.
Spencer’s materialistic world–view is immediately evident in the fact that his categories leave room for nothing spiritual. But set aside for a moment the rather obvious fact that something as obvious as human intellect and emotion do not quite fit into any of Spencer’s categories. A moment’s reflection will reveal that evolutionary principles still cannot account for the actual origin of any of Spencer’s categories. The evolutionist must practically assume the eternality of time, force, action, space, and matter (or at least one of these—and then he or she proceeds from there to hypothesize about) how things have developed out of an originally chaotic state.
But Genesis 1:1 accounts for all of Spencer’s categories. “In the beginning”—that’s time. “God”—that’s force. “Created”—that’s action. “The heavens”—that’s space. “And the earth”—that’s matter. In the first verse of the Bible God laid out plainly what no scientist or philosopher cataloged until the nineteenth century. Moreover, what evolution still cannot possibly explain—the actual origin of everything that science can observe—the Bible explains in a few succinct words in the very first verse of Genesis.
About the uniqueness of the Bible’s approach to creation, Henry Morris writes:
Genesis 1:1 is unique in all literature, science, and philosophy. Every other system of cosmogony, whether in ancient religious myths or modern scientific models, starts with eternal matter or energy in some form, from which other entities were supposedly gradually derived by some process. Only the Book of Genesis even attempts to account for the ultimate origin of matter, space, and time; and it does so uniquely in terms of special creation.
And thus in that very first verse of Scripture, each reader is faced with a simple choice: Either you believe God did create the heavens and the earth, or you believe He did not. If He did not, He does not exist at all, nothing has any purpose and nothing makes any sense. If on the other hand there is a creative intelligence—if there is a God—then creation is understandable. It is possible. It is plausible. It is rational.
Ultimately, those are the options every reader of Genesis is faced with. Either the vast array of complex organisms and intelligence we observe reflect the wisdom and power of a personal Creator (and specifically, the God who has revealed Himself in Scripture), or all these marvels somehow evolved spontaneously from inanimate matter, and no real sense can be made of anything.
Even among the best scientists who have left their mark on the scientific world, those who think honestly and make honest confessions about origins will admit that there must be a creative intelligence. (Einstein himself firmly believed that a cosmic intelligence must have designed the universe, though like many others today who accept the notion of intelligent design, he avoided the obvious conclusion that if there’s a “Cosmic Intelligence” powerful enough to design and create the universe, that “Intelligence” is by definition Lord and God over all.) And although the scientific and academic communities often mercilessly attempt to silence such opinions, there are nonetheless many men of integrity in the scientific community who embrace the God of Scripture and the biblical creation account.
God did create the heavens and the earth. And there is only one document that credibly claims to be a divinely revealed record of that creation: the Book of Genesis. Unless we have a creator who left us with no information about where we came from or what our purpose is, the text of Genesis 1–2 stands for all practical purposes unchallenged as the only divinely revealed description of creation. In other words, if there is a God who created the heavens and the earth, and if He revealed to humanity any record of that creation, Genesis is that record. If the God of Scripture did not create the heavens and the earth, then we have no real answers to anything that is truly important. Everything boils down to those two simple options.
So whether we believe the Genesis record or not makes all the difference in the world. Douglas F. Kelly, professor of systematic theology at Reformed Theological Seminary, has written on this subject with great insight. He says, “Essentially, mankind has only two choices. Either we have evolved out of the slime and can be explained only in a materialistic sense, meaning that we are made of nothing but the material, or we have been made on a heavenly pattern.”
He’s right. Those are ultimately the only two options. We can either believe what Genesis says, or not. If Genesis 1:1 is true, then the universe and everything in it was created by a loving and personal God and His purposes are clearly revealed to us in Scripture. Further, if the Genesis account is true, then we bear the stamp of God and are loved by Him—and because we are made in His image, human beings have a dignity, value, and obligation that transcends that of all other creatures. Moreover, if Genesis is true, then we not only have God’s own answers to the questions of what we are here for and how we got where we are, but we also have the promise of salvation from our sin.
If Genesis is not true, however, we have no reliable answer to anything. Throw out Genesis and the authority of all Scripture is fatally compromised. That would ultimately mean that the God of the Bible simply doesn’t exist. And if some other kind of creator–god does exist, he evidently doesn’t care enough about his creation to provide any revelation about himself, his plan for creation, or his will for his creatures.
There are, of course, several extrabiblical accounts of creation from pagan sacred writings. But they are all mythical, fanciful, and frivolous, featuring hideously ungodly gods. Those who imagine such deities exist would have to conclude that they have left us without any reason for hope, without any clear principles by which to live, without any accountability, without any answers to our most basic questions, and (most troubling of all) without any explanation or solution for the dilemma of evil.
Therefore if Genesis is untrue, we might as well assume that no God exists at all. That is precisely the assumption behind modern evolutionary theory. If true, it means that impersonal matter is the ultimate reality. Human personality and human intelligence are simply meaningless accidents produced at random by the natural processes of evolution. We have no moral accountability to any higher Being. All morality—indeed, all truth itself—is ultimately relative. In fact, truth, falsehood, goodness, and evil are all merely theoretical notions with no real meaning or significance. Nothing really matters in the vast immensity of an infinite, impersonal universe.
So if Genesis is false, nihilism is the next best option. Utter irrationality becomes the only “rational” choice.
Obviously, the ramifications of our views on these things are immense. Our view of creation is the necessary starting point for our entire world–view. In fact, so vital is the issue that Francis Schaeffer once remarked that if he had only an hour to spend with an unbeliever, he would spend the first fifty–five minutes talking about creation and what it means for humanity to bear the image of God—and then he would use the last five minutes to explain the way of salvation.
The starting point for Christianity is not Matthew 1:1, but Genesis 1:1. Tamper with the Book of Genesis and you undermine the very foundation of Christianity. You cannot treat Genesis 1 as a fable or a mere poetic saga without severe implications to the rest of Scripture. The creation account is where God starts His account of history. It is impossible to alter the beginning without impacting the rest of the story—not to mention the ending. If Genesis 1 is not accurate, then there’s no way to be certain that the rest of Scripture tells the truth. If the starting point is wrong, then the Bible itself is built on a foundation of falsehood.
In other words, if you reject the creation account in Genesis, you have no basis for believing the Bible at all. If you doubt or explain away the Bible’s account of the six days of creation, where do you put the reins on your skepticism? Do you start with Genesis 3, which explains the origin of sin, and believe everything from chapter 3 on? Or maybe you don’t sign on until sometime after chapter 6, because the Flood is invariably questioned by scientists, too. Or perhaps you find the Tower of Babel too hard to reconcile with the linguists’ theories about how languages originated and evolved. So maybe you start taking the Bible as literal history beginning with the life of Abraham. But when you get to Moses’ plagues against Egypt, will you deny those, too? What about the miracles of the New Testament? Is there any reason to regard any of the supernatural elements of biblical history as anything other than poetic symbolism?
After all, the notion that the universe is billions of years old is based on naturalistic presuppositions that (if held consistently) would rule out all miracles. If we’re worried about appearing “unscientific” in the eyes of naturalists, we’re going to have to reject a lot more than Genesis 1–3.
Once rationalism sets in and you start adapting the Word of God to fit scientific theories based on naturalistic beliefs, there is no end to the process. If you have qualms about the historicity of the creation account, you are on the road to utter Sadduceeism—skepticism and outright unbelief about all the supernatural elements of Scripture. Why should we doubt the literal sense of Genesis 1–3 unless we are also prepared to deny that Elisha made an ax–head float or that Peter walked on water or that Jesus raised Lazarus from the dead? And what about the greatest miracle of all—the resurrection of Christ? If we’re going to shape Scripture to fit the beliefs of naturalistic scientists, why stop at all? Why is one miracle any more difficult to accept than another?
And what are we going to believe about the end of history as it is foretold in Scripture? All of redemptive history ends, according to 2 Peter 3:10–12, when the Lord uncreates the universe. The elements melt with fervent heat, and everything that exists in the material realm will be dissolved at the atomic level, in some sort of unprecedented and unimaginable nuclear meltdown. Moreover, according to Revelation 21:1–5, God will immediately create a new heaven and a new earth (cf. Isaiah 65:17). Do we really believe He can do that, or will it take another umpteen billion years of evolutionary processes to get the new heaven and the new earth in working order? If we really believe He can destroy this universe in a split second and immediately create a whole new one, what’s the problem with believing the Genesis account of a six–day creation in the first place? If He can do it at the end of the age, why is it so hard to believe the biblical account of what happened in the beginning?
So the question of whether we interpret the Creation account as fact or fiction has huge implications for every aspect of our faith. These implications will become even more clear as we work our way through the text to the biblical account of Adam’s fall. But the place to hold the line firmly is here at Genesis 1:1.
And that is no oversimplification. Frankly, believing in a supernatural, creative God who made everything is the only possible rational explanation for the universe and for life itself. It is also the only basis for believing we have any purpose or destiny.
(John MacArthur - The battle for the beginning: The Bible on creation and the fall of Adam)
Posts: 6787 | From: Colorado | Registered: Dec 2007
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