If I had an audience, I would probably alienate them with this hot take. It matters, though, as where we believe we came from has far reaching implications into how we view rights and perceive the world around us.
Natural curiosity seems to arise when we talk about if life ever had a beginning, or if it did, how it started. The predominant view among naturalists is that life began through some mechanism of chance, and then evolved to what we observe today. Another view is that of theistic evolution, popularized for its simultaneous embrace of modern evolutionary concepts and filling in current gaps in our knowledge with a creator or a designer. This is mildly different from a growing intelligent design movement which looks at the observed life and makes the claim that it required a designer, however, admitted by intelligent design proponents is that they do not believe in gaps, only that the design may have been so perfect that it set up the events and environments needed at the right times and in the right sequence so as to help life evolve.
There is another subset, mostly a minority even among religious zealots, that believe in a creator. These creationists are split among the old and young Earth variety. The young Earth are mostly biblical literalists. They find that the days outlined in the bible were literal days, whereas the old Earth creationists are more willing to except older dating methods by interpreting millions and billions of years into the days in the creation account.
In all of the accounts there is a palpable awe of trying to understand where we came from and to embrace our role in the world.
If you spend any time reading the material where the experts from each of these views defend their views and levy attacks on the views of their opponents, you will get a sense that they are all very intelligent, and they all think the others are missing some very obvious pieces. Some, like Richard Dawkins, even accuse their opponents of intentional malfeasance, as he cannot grasp the idea that anyone in the science community can not see the world the way he does.
Origins arguments played a role in my coming to faith in Christ. It seems odd, but I was raised around the church. I attended Awana and later youth groups. I am pretty sure I even committed to being a Christian around 6 or 7 years old. It didn’t take, though. My parents got divorced when I was 10 and an awkwardly oppressive relationship with my step-dad made me seriously question the idea that there was a god. At 14 I moved to live with my dad and church became a thing of the past. Graduating high school, I went to college and struggled to find a purpose. I always loved debates, though. A house member in my dorms and I were playing games and got to discussing origins. He was taking a biology class and it was the topic of that week. The debate got heated. I had not really put much time into trying to understand the issue, but something inherently seemed offensive about being told I was nothing more than a descendant of some ape-like ancestor.
I couldn’t shake the idea that this was the first time in over a year after going to college that I felt like I had a passion. I suddenly had an urge to learn that I hadn’t had in years. I wanted to argue about this and develop some other idea of what happened. A couple months later, it became clear that I would have to withdraw from classes. I had spent most of that time going to the library, but not to do homework or study for my next test. I had come to the understanding that perspectives about origins of the world were inherently religious. I was just reading about religions of the world. I wanted to understand this sentiment for faith at a much deeper level.
The beauty is that they all make truth claims.
It didn’t take long to realize that some of them may have decent teachings, but that their claims were clearly at odds with reality. The pagan mythologies were in that group along with Buddhism. Hindu belief in elephants holding up the land while standing on the back of a tortoise quickly fell into the dust bin of religious ideas. Eventually, it began to come down to the major three monotheistic religions, and the alternative that there was no god at all. After looking at the claims of Islam, it was clearly superior to the religious views I had discarded, but fell far short of the Judeo-Christian God. I could not shake the impact that Jesus had on the world. I was down to Christianity, or atheism. There seemed no alternative available.
So I prayed.
I’m not sure I actually believed anyone was listening. It really came down to the idea, in my mind, that there was no god, but if there was, it was that of Christianity and He would listen to my prayer. I had decided that Christianity was the most true religion, and that evolution was inherently at odds with it. It was an earnest prayer, and I meant what I said. If I could see a way to understand the world that would explain the evidence of evolution, challenge it, and open the door for what seemed like an absurdity in creation, that I would give my life to Jesus.
I didn’t tell anyone about my prayer. I withdrew from college and made plans to leave for the military. I went back to live with my dad and decided I should at least make amends with my mom before leaving for training. I went to visit for a weekend, and talked to my mom about the conflict I had discovered in my own walk. She almost looked surprised and mentioned she had some videos I might enjoy.
That night, I didn’t sleep. I watched the whole series of videos which described a way of viewing the information that essentially embraced every known fact of the natural views, but challenged the frame in which they placed the evidence. This organization identified the difference between origins and physical sciences. Nobody had ever made these arguments for me before. I had never heard them.
I committed my life to faith that night, and ultimately went down a very zealous path. I became a passionate creationist. I helped found the Creation Museum with a fairly sizable donation for my meager enlisted earnings. I read every book on the subject, and the books of opponents, and would debate the topic with anyone willing to listen, and sometimes those who weren’t willing. Needless to say, I probably could have stood beside Dawkins and argued the science well, but I was a college dropout. I would never grace a stage with him.
It was years later when I saw that Ken Ham was going to debate Bill Nye on the subject. I felt certain that Ham would obliterate him. Instead, he took a position during the debate that left me bewildered. He rarely challenged the evidence directly or offered counter evidence. It was there! I had already read it and knew myself how to respond. Ken Ham, instead opted to continue repeating the same argument, that we see the same evidence through a different set of perspectives, or worldviews. In other words, both sides of this argument approach the evidence with a set of assumptions, and neither side was being truly objective.
Still frustrated with the debate and Mr. Ham’s seemingly embarrassing performance, I went back to my daily activities and stewed over it for a few days. It hit me then….he was right.
It isn’t that the evolutionist is stupid or unwilling to see the evidence, but that they have approached the evidence as if there was no god, and they have interpreted the evidence according to that view. Creationists aren’t stupid either, and for the same reason. Whether theistic evolutionist or pure naturalists, they all approach the evidence as if there is no god and the evidence fits their models. When it doesn’t, they merely change their way of interpreting it into an updated model which still precludes the existence of any god. Intelligent designers walk the tight rope in between. They seem to mostly approach the evidence with a naturalist mindset, but since the evidence seems to show design in nature, they have opted to walk a path in between, assuming mostly godless theories for the evidence, but allowing for a god where the evidence seems most incapable of explaining a part of the macroevolutionary theory. Creationists start from the presumption that there is a God, and that His account is correct. Any evidence that seems to contradict this model represents something we don’t fully understand or a poor study. The evidence that is repeatable and observable fits beautifully within their models.
That brings us back to the idea of what science is. It was Ken Ham that ultimately served as the conduit to bridge a spiritual gap for me. He addressed the topic of origins science, and how it was different from other sciences like physics, chemistry and others. When you are trying to recreate what already happened, you are limited. In origins science, the mechanisms which they hypothesize provide means to allow for the addition of information and organization into more complex life forms are not repeatable or observable. The conditions which they believe were present at the beginning of life are unknown and unobserved. They have based their views on assumptions, and those assumptions are ultimately from a position of faith.
In fact, origins science is more akin to forensics. In forensics, you approach a crime scene with a result, and try to recreate the events leading up to the result to determine how the crime happened. It is only possible if you start with good first assumptions and additional assumptions which you are willing to challenge with evidence. The primary group of assumptions have to hold true, though, for events to be accurately recreated. Origins science is much the same way, with creationists starting with a primary assumption that there is a God who gave them an account in scripture, and the naturalists who dispose of this concept of a god intervening and believe that everything can be explained through natural explanations, some of which we may not know or understand yet.
Those that hold those views will disagree. Perhaps not all of them, but there is an intellectual arrogance which they often defy their own position with when they scoff at the idea of faith. They can’t explain how matter derived from anti-matter. They cannot explain how life came from non-life. They cannot explain how life became more complex without appealing to unproven hypotheses. They extrapolate observed adaptations within animal types, and assume those same adaptations can explain wholly different types, like fish into amphibians, and amphibians into reptiles. The only thing we actually observe, is that all of these general types coexist, and as Ken Ham liked to point out, a dog begets a dog, begets a dog, begets a dog. We can selectively breed them, and we still end up with a dog. Although the most selectively and purely bred, tend to also be the most genetically deficient and the most congenitally diseased.
The model requires an assumption of naturalism, and that assumption is taken on faith. It doesn’t matter what they called it, I now had firm ground to stand on.
The thing is, that realization also humbled me. I was arrogant in my own defense of creationism. When I realized that these well-meaning people honestly held a bias, and one they probably didn’t even know they held, I could no longer think them fools. I still think they are wrong, but some of them are incredibly intelligent, albeit emotionally unaware of their own internal bias. I also held a bias.
I still firmly stand on creationism. I’m not sure where I stand when it comes to young Earth or an old universe, but I recognize my bias, and embrace the conversation.
Hoping you will as well, I do recommend reading more on the topic if you are interested. This would be a good basis for understanding the philosophical foundation for my views.
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