Creation on Trial

All of us inherit a worldview from our family and culture. Most of us will, at some point, begin to critically examine what we've been taught and decide whether those beliefs are our own or just on loan from our parents. Some parents feel they must keep their children in an ideological vacuum to guarantee a desired outcome. What is seldom acknowledged is that those who have critically examined their worldview are least likely to forsake that belief system.

In our age, a literal understanding of Scripture, especially a six-day supernatural beginning, is seen as a sign of ignorance. It seems few Anabaptists want to critically examine this topic, to their own detriment. If God's truth is transcendent, it will not be harmed by critical examination, and if we have errors in our theology, we will be better for having discovered them. In this spirit, let's examine the three most common explanations for the universe's existence.

Naturalism

The predominate explanation for our existence is Darwinian evolution. A naturalistic explanation for the universe was not original to Darwin, but he was the one to popularize the idea that natural selection over great periods of time could give rise to new life forms. Others built on his ideas and proposed that genetic mutations were the specific channel through which natural selection worked.

This explanation begins with an explosion of infinitely dense matter over thirteen billion years ago. As gases traveled away from that explosion some began to circle and condense to form stars. When the first stars exploded their elements combined to form new elements. This process repeated until all the right elements were present on a planet circling the star that is our sun. Lightning strikes added just the right ingredients to a warm little pond for the first single-celled life to emerge.¹ Through mutations and the power of natural selection, that first life gave rise to bacteria, then fungi, then on to ever higher forms of life.

Between twenty and one hundred thousand years ago, this process produced its most sophisticated form of life: hominids. According to this theory, humanity and all the complexity we observe in the universe is simply the result of random mutations and dumb luck.

Intelligent Design

Before Darwin, most people believed in intelligent design. Most cultures had a narrative of extraterrestrial deities creating the various ingredients necessary for life. Abraham and his descendants held to monotheism as recorded in the Hebrew bible.

There is a small consort of secular individuals who believe that life came to earth from aliens or other extraterrestrial means, but most current believers in intelligent design are theists of some stripe. The theists can be separated into two main groups: theistic evolutionists (some might prefer being called Old-Earth Creationists) or Young-Earth Creationists.

1. Theistic Evolution

Theistic evolution comes in a few different forms, but the main idea is that God used the process of evolution for His creative purposes. It tries to bridge the gap between traditional Christianity and modern ideas. Its adherents see God as the solution for evolution's shortcomings. God made the matter for the big bang. God was there by the warm little pond to bring life from the muck. God was there to aid the jumps from one life form to another.

Two of the common theological maneuvers used to promote theistic evolution are the day/age theory and the gap theory.

The day/age theory's central pillar is 2 Peter 3:8 which says that one day is as a thousand years and a thousand years as one day. The premise is that God's time is not measured in twenty-four-hour days; therefore, the seven days of Creation described in Genesis 1 are only seven periods of time and not to be understood as literal twenty-four-hour days.

The gap theory proposes that there is an unknowable period of time between Genesis 1:1 and 1:2. God created the matter necessary for the big bang in verse one then allowed the process of evolution to unfold before the scriptural story picks up again in verse two.

2. YEC (Young Earth Creationism)

Young Earth Creation, as it is called in secular society, is the story of Creation most of us grew up with. This view begins with the belief that the Hebrew Scriptures are inspired by God Himself, have been accurately preserved to present day, and record literally the actions of God in seven, twenty-four-hour days at the beginning of time.

Beginning with nothing, God spoke water and light into existence on day one. The firmament, or expanse, came on the second day and divided the water into two parts. On the third day, the water under the firmament was gathered into one place, and all kinds of plants appeared on the dry land. On the fourth day, God filled the firmament with a multitude of lights and set them in motion to record the passage of time. The fifth day brought all kinds of creatures to fill the water and the air. The sixth day saw the dry land filled with everything from creepy crawlies to giant beasts and the crown jewel of the week, a man and woman created in the image of God. After looking over His work on the evening of the sixth day and appreciating the beauty of His creation, God took the next day off to rest and set a pattern for man's work/rest cycle.

Everything came about by God's spoken word, except for the man and woman. He formed man from the dust of the ground and brought him to life by breathing the breath of life into his nostrils. God saw it would not be good for the man to be companionless so he made a woman from a rib taken from the man’s body.

Problems With Each View

Contrary to what secularists would have us believe, science cannot prove the means of a beginning. True science is the study of the present and only useful to a degree when looking into the past. Current processes can be extrapolated into the past, but they cannot prove history actually happened in that manner.

Secularists would have us believe that Darwinian evolution is an airtight case. They claim to objectively follow science wherever it takes them. Let's look at seven basic assumptions of evolution.

1. Nonliving things gave rise to living things, that is, spontaneous generation.

2. Spontaneous generation occurred only once.

3. Viruses, bacteria, plants, and animals are all interrelated.

4. Protozoa gave rise to metazoa.

5. The various invertebrate phyla are interrelated.

6. Invertebrates gave rise to vertebrates.

7. The vertebrates and fish gave rise to the amphibia, amphibia to   reptiles, reptiles to birds and mammals.²

These seven assumptions are key tenets of evolutionary theory yet cannot be experimentally verified. Even if this process could be replicated in a lab, it would still not prove that it happened in that manner in the past. Evolutionists blindly accept these assumptions as scientific dogma.

Purely naturalistic reasoning cannot explain the “why” of the universe either. Naturalism tries to string together the natural laws of the universe in a linear narrative, but it cannot explain why those laws exist.

By sitting in the middle, theistic evolution gets attacked from every side. Appealing to a deity for the unsolved problems with their theory draws the ire of secularism, and minimizing the creative ability of God draws the ire of fundamental Christianity. Theistic evolutionists try to marry two opposing ideas, which is a logical impossibility. Two opposing ideas cannot both be true, and mashing them together only breeds incoherence.

Obviously, a supernatural, intelligent being apart from our universe could bring us into existence however it chose. It could have happened over eons of time if the Creator chose to do so, but if our existence requires supernatural intervention, it could equally as likely have been instantaneous. Naturalism by intent, tries to explain our existence without supernatural aid, so why try to be bed fellows with it if preexisting intelligence is necessary for our existence?

Two common scientific arguments against YEC are the light/time problem and radiometric dating. The two-way speed of light has been verified to be 186,000 miles per second. Distances in the universe are stated in light years, which is the distance light would travel in one year. Therefore, it stands to reason, if we can see the light from a star four billion light years away, the universe must be at least that old. The most common method of radiometric dating is measuring the proportion of uranium and one of its daughter elements in an object. Over time uranium changes into daughter elements, so measuring the proportions gives one a time value. Again, it stands to reason that a measurement yielding more than 8,000 years is a solid case against YEC.

Conclusion

In our age anything that cannot be explained by scientific processes is portrayed to be blind religious dogma. Higher criticism, a form of Bible textual criticism, has been successfully used to undermine many Christians’ confidence in the accuracy of our current Bibles. Believing the Bible literally is portrayed as the realm for grandparents and the uneducated. Due to these pressures, many Christians who were raised with a literal understanding of Scripture begin to compromise those teachings to better fit in with secular views.

What has been lost is the understanding that science is only possible because we live in an orderly universe. Many of the early pioneers in science were Christians who noticed this order and understood that it was so designed by God. They reasoned that by studying our surroundings we could think God's thoughts after Him. In the latter part of the nineteenth century, scientific study was almost completely hijacked by adherents of Darwin's ideas. Aided by fundamental Christian's skepticism of scientific study, science and Christianity came to be seen as enemies by most on both sides.

Many Anabaptists still tread softly around science because of the influence of naturalistic evolution. Most would hesitate to make a critical comparison between what the Bible teaches and alternative ideas. Unfortunately, there is no way to shield our children forever from secular ideas so we would do well to be proactive in providing the tools they need to resist secularization. There are multiple organizations actively providing the information needed to avoid the dead end of Darwin.

For example, the light/time and radiometric dating challenges need not be a stumbling block for Christians. We believe God created the universe supernaturally, so He would have no problem bringing distant light to the earth. Space doesn't allow further explanation here but there are also possible non supernatural answers to the issue.³ Space also doesn't allow an exposition on the dating challenge. Suffice it to say if the radiometric dating method were a simple measurement of isotope ratios it might be a legitimate challenge, but it isn't. It involves circular reasoning that assures a desired outcome.⁴

Recently an Anabaptist writer put out the challenge for us to move beyond the wooden, literal doctrine of Young Earth Creationism. It struck a sensitive nerve because in my late teens and early twenties, I went down that road. It was a long winding journey that led to the precipice of unbelief. Thankfully, God did not take away my desire for truth and helped me see the evidence of His hand in the great outdoors that I love and gave me the reasons to believe His written Word.

^{1. Lightening striking a warm little pond is my own creation. Darwin mused about life coming from a warm little pond and this article explores the potential contribution of lightning strikes to the conditions necessary for life. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-021-21849-2 Evolutionists hypothesize about the conditions in a primordial soup that gave rise to life, but abiogenesis is their Achilles' heel. They have no solution for the original information underpinning life.}

^{2. Paul E. Little, Know Why You Believe (Downers Grove, IL: 2000) p. 129.}

^{3. www.answersingenesis.org/arj/v8/creationist-cosmogony.pdf}

^{4. www.answersingenesis.org/arj/v10/238U-235U_U-Pb_Pb-Pb_radioisotope_dating_methodologies.pdf}

^{Henry M. Morris, Ph.D., Scientific Creationism (El Cajon, California: Master Books, 1974) p. 139-149.}