An Interesting Discussion

I was at jazz band practice tonight. When we got done, somehow we started talking about evolution. The general consensus was that it takes far more faith to believe that all of the things that we see came from one great pot of primordial stew.

I recently engaged a debate about evolution on a friend's blog. Unfortunately, I didn't get to finish my thoughts in the conflict. I had pondered my responses, but was distracted from posting them due to all of the drama surrounding the holidays. Others had joined the fray before I got back to my opponent's comments, and I have never gotten back to have my final say.

One thing did come of having others say many of the things that I could have said. My suspicions were confirmed. It is sadly predictable the responses that you get in such a discussion. And it is clear that my opponent wasn't interested in changing his mind. The odd thing to me is that he had invested so much energy into reading articles that refuted his position. Why bother reading the opposition's notes if you aren't interested in changing your mind?

Evolutionists always have to try to set the table to their benefit. They want peer reviewed articles to back up intelligent design claims when the scientific community has made such an animal nearly impossible to acquire. Scientific method cannot prove or disprove the existence of God - a non-corporal being. The hypothesis, "God created everything that we see," cannot be tested. There are no videos of the event and no one knows the way to God's house - if it exists. (It does, by the way.)

They also want to mock at the scientific problems, or, as my opponent called them "Intelligent design talking points," associated with evolution, such as the problem posed by Newton's 4th law of thermodynamics. Mockery does not resolve the problem or show how the "talking point" is flawed. If the law of entropy states that a system moves towards greater disorder instead of greater order, then how can evolution - which asserts that from a big disordered puddle of cosmic goo organized life spontaneously emerged - be true? Do we then opt to believe a scientific theory over a scientific law? Certainly not! Evolutionists are the ones who want science on their side - put up or shut up! Evolutionists also cannot answer some of the problems with the fossil record. They cannot, for example explain how some fossils have been found spanning several strata of the record.

I am sure that a discussion of the statistical improbability of the simultaneous, spontaneous eruption of the complexity of life and matter that we have just on planet earth would win no concession either. Yet to me the very complexity of even the simplest virus is astounding. Everything in all of creation is infinitely detailed and complex. We continually discover more and more complexities on both a micro and a macro scale. New technologies are revealing deeper and deeper layers that have never been discovered before.

Statistically speaking, for such complexity to have spontaneously developed in even one species would have been so infinitesimally probable as to be deemed impossible. How much more so for the diversity of species that we find on planet Earth? Shouldn't there be a gradual filling of the fossil record for each kingdom? Yet how is it that the record shows an instantaneous diversity of plants and animals? And for it to have occurred so many times on one planet would seem to indicate that it should have happened on the other planets in our solar system. Certainly at least one life form would have evolved on each of these planets if it happened so readily here!

I also know that it would be of absolutely no benefit to point to the Bible as proof of Intelligent Design. For someone who doesn't believe in a Creator, the Creator's Book will carry no authority - at least not for now. The Bible makes some claims about how life came about on this planet. It also makes claims about how all of the other things that we observe around us came into being. The Bible tells us that God created all of it for His pleasure and that it was good.

I have known Christians who are avowed evolutionists, and I have known Christians on the other end of the spectrum who take the Bible at face value regarding the Creation account and literally believe its claims about the creation. I am pretty firmly established with the latter view. (I know you are all shocked.) Most of the Christians I know fit somewhere along that spectrum. But I have never known any Christians who would claim that evolution occurred without any Divine involvement.

It seems to me that most of the folks who buy into evolution lock, stock, and barrel are the folks who really hope there isn't a God. They don't want to believe in God, so they have to erect an anti-theology to support that hope. I find it interesting to note that many of the same people who promote evolution and its partner, secular humanism, are distressed when the sinful actions endorsed by these philosophies lead to negative consequences. I am even more perplexed by their stubborn insistence that they will not believe in God or endorse any exercise that purports the existence of God - even in the face of overwhelming evidence.

The Bible tells us in Romans 1:

But God shows his anger from heaven against all sinful, wicked people who suppress the truth by their wickedness. They know the truth about God because he has made it obvious to them. For ever since the world was created, people have seen the earth and sky. Through everything God made, they can clearly see his invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature. So they have no excuse for not knowing God.

Yes, they knew God, but they wouldn’t worship him as God or even give him thanks. And they began to think up foolish ideas of what God was like. As a result, their minds became dark and confused. Claiming to be wise, they instead became utter fools. And instead of worshiping the glorious, ever-living God, they worshiped idols made to look like mere people and birds and animals and reptiles.

The Bible says that the evidence of the Creator is hardwired into the creation. How sad that some refuse to see it. Isn't it telling that "Global Warming" and the famines, drought, pestilence, severe weather, and earthquakes supposedly brought on by it are being blamed on man's use of carbon-based fuels and incandescent light bulbs (which our Congress has scheduled to be outlawed in 7 years) instead of man's sin? Funny how "primitive" people seem to know when God is mad and how "sophisticated" people don't.

As I have been reading in Genesis lately I have noticed something that I never did before: when Adam and Eve sinned they weren't afraid because they had broken their covenant with God. They were afraid because they were naked. They totally didn't get the point. It is pretty clear that we're no different today - we're blaming ourselves for "Global Warming" when what we're really guilty of is worshiping something other than the one, true God. In the religion of secular humanism, that god is man.

Another thing that I have learned in my recent reading is that sin has a predictable life cycle in a society. From the time that sin takes root in the society to the point that it bears its full fruit of death can take hundreds of years, but, just as surely as a dropped object will fall earthward, sin will bear that fruit if repentance does not come. I frankly believe that all of this talk about "Global Warming" is hogwash designed to line the pockets of a few well-placed liars and extortionists. However, if any of their data proves true, I believe that we are merely witnessing the ripening of the fruit of our sin - not the result of driving to work.

It is likely that in the debate between evolution and creation that someone is wrong. If he is wrong, the person who believes in creation suffers little loss other than the loss of a little pride. However, if when God shows up one day to prove the creationist right, the evolutionist may pay dearly for his miscalculation.