One of my greatest passions is for people to know why they believe what they believe. As a society that is always in a hurry, when people hear something that sounds right to them they are quick to believe it is factual. They typically do not question or research the truth of the statement; they just seem to believe it.
When I hear someone’s thoughts on a subject I like to compare their thoughts to what I currently believe. If I listen to someone speaking about a concept, before I agree with them, I always run the thought through my “filter”. What do I already believe about this subject? Does this statement agree with my current perception of the topic or does it challenge what I currently believe? If it challenges me, I need to research the thought, ponder the possibilities and decide if the facts change my mind and reset my understanding of the topic.
Sometimes that process is easy. For example, systems built on logic, like math, are easily proven and understood. Other thoughts however are not as easy to prove. The one thing that is true with me is if I cannot prove the new thought is correct I cannot accept it. I may continue to search the thought for a better understanding of the concept, but will not change my core belief without facts that convince me to do so.
I was raised in the 1950’s and early 1960’s. The belief that there is a Creator God was a basic belief to everyone I knew. That set a core “filter” in my belief system. My studies of the Bible and many other things that have happened in my life since then have strengthened that core belief.
Over the years, as I pondered the debate between Creationists and Evolutionists, I have come to see many areas of the debate that evolutionists seem to make great “leaps of faith” that simply do not work for me. The only faith I need to believe Creation is true is to believe that God created everything. After that everything falls into place. I don’t have to continually skip over missing facts like Evolutionists do.
My core belief starts with the first five words in the Bible; “In the beginning, God created”. My life has proven the validity of Scripture to me over and over again. I find the Bible to be the source of truth and therefore stand on those five words. It is from this vantage point that I share my problem with the Theory of Evolution.
Looking at those five words, the first thing that jumps out at me is the word “beginning”. Being a person that seeks facts and clear definition of concepts, I ask myself “in the beginning” of what? The answer seems to be time as we work through the rest of Genesis. Adam was created on the sixth day and his timeline, and the timelines of those that followed him, are clearly defined in Genesis.
In this life we live, everything we know is measured in beginnings and endings. So, if God created something “in the beginning” He had to have been there before the “beginning”. That leads to a second question; when did God begin? However logically He could not have had a beginning or there would have to have been something before Him. This is a concept our minds struggle to understand, but as song writer/ author Michael Card wrote “Sometimes the questions bring us better answers than our answers ever will”. If there was no beginning to God how much greater that makes Him than our imaginations can grasp.
So how does an evolutionist describe the “beginning”? I have heard the Big Bang Theory but ask… really? Out of nothing something created a Big Bang? I can’t believe any logical person can believe that. My mind asks what was here before the beginning. If I asked a Creationist they would probably say empty space. I then would ask them where did the empty space come from. Even if is empty it is there. The other question about space I struggle with is where does it end? Can it logically go on forever? A better question is can it logically end? If it did end, what is on the other side of where it ends? “Sometimes the questions bring us better answers than our answers ever will”. Space is a mystery that is beyond our understanding, but not beyond the Creator of space.
I find the step by step concept of evolution full of those huge questions. The evolutionist explains it by saying we just haven’t figured that out yet or we have not found the missing link. I guess that is why it is called the Theory of Evolution. But if evolution is a theory with many yet unexplained transitions from one step to another, why is it taught in schools like it is a fact? Scientifically shouldn’t all apposing theories be studied and debated? Why do we sweep creation under the rug and teach evolution like it is fact? “Sometimes the questions bring us better answers than our answers ever will”. If people do not want to believe in a Creator God they must deny the possibility that God created.
In my business career, I have seen many problem-solving methods. The one that fits this question the best for me is the method of “proving the null hypothesis”. This method is used if you are not sure how to prove something is true. Therefore, you try to prove it is not true by forming a hypothesis that opposes the original thought and then prove it is true. If the opposing thought is proven true then the original thought is proven false. If you cannot prove the null hypothesis is true then the original hypothesis cannot be proven false.
I see evolution as an attempt to prove the null hypothesis of “In the beginning, God created”. Darwin believed creation was wrong and created the Theory of Evolution as the null hypothesis, even if he didn’t call it that. My problem is he, and subsequent evolutionists, have never proven his theory to be true. Therefore, when you cannot prove the null hypothesis to be true, the original thought, creation in this case, cannot be proven false.
Here are just a few leaps of faith that evolutionists take “in the beginning” that I just can’t buy into.
- The “Big Bang” or other unexplained beginnings from nothing
- Plant life came from energy or something else
- Living things like amoebas, one celled animals, came from plant life
- Amoebas randomly started to reproduce by splitting into two separate amoebas
- Some amoebas randomly started creating additional cells and changed into a multi-cell creature
- Some of those randomly created cells then randomly became cells for different organs in the body
This list goes on and on. Things “just happened” for no explainable scientific reason. The only thing that I know that can change a species is some change in their DNA. Accidents or birth defects don’t change the next generation. I had polio when I was five. My kids do not have a deformed right arm. The sickness did not change the DNA that was passed to my children. Species don’t just randomly change into something else.
I saw a TV program on evolution years ago that actually made me laugh. They were explaining what caused creatures to leave their life in the water and become land animals. There was this cartoon showing a small fish swimming wildly to get away from a bigger fish that was trying to eat it. While the small fish was swimming as fast as it could it grew four legs and crawled out of the water to safety. There was no conversation about how this creature happened to grow legs or was able to breathe out of the water. As I watched this I thought how could anyone believe this? Legs don’t just suddenly grow on a fish. It was one of the most preposterous things I have ever seen, but it was presented as fact.
The scary thought to me is people just seem to believe things like that as fact. If someone with “credentials” makes a statement people simply believe it. People seem to think that the person knows more than they do so it must be right. I cannot do that. When things don’t make sense to me I either research the thought deeper or reject the thought. Evolutionists can’t bridge the gaps so I just can’t blindly follow their thoughts and take their leaps of faith.
Probably the greatest challenge to evolution I have ever heard came from an evolutionist himself. Again, I was watching the TV show a few years ago about evolution. As I said earlier, I like to listen to people with differing thoughts. They either teach me something or deepen my conviction on the topic. The speaker had just finished giving a half hour talk on evolution and after his speech, almost like an afterthought he was struggling with, with his mic unknowingly still on he said under his breath while picking up his papers, “We never have figured out how male and female happened”. The statement shocked me. He was teaching a theory like it was fact with that huge gaping hole in his understanding. How can intelligent people do that?
As I have pondered that statement over and over again it became the “nail in the coffin” for me with the Theory of Evolution. I simply cannot believe that the intricacies of a male and a female have simply happened by accident. Not only that but all that intricacy happened in close enough geographic proximity and at the exact same moment in history that the male and female were able to find each other, be driven by an instinct to mate (wherever that came from) and a new way of conceiving life was started; all by some random set of occurrences in two beings at the same time. It would take a creature turning into a female by randomly growing all the many necessary female reproductive parts. And at the exact same time and in the same location another creature grew all the needed male reproductive parts. Do you get my point? How can anyone truly believe that?
All that being said, I simply cannot believe this happened; an ameba that came from a plant that before that had come from nothing in some kind of a big bang, somehow evolved into males and females at the perfect time to create new life in a new way. To me that is simply unbelievable. The evolutionists can’t even explain it themselves. Evolution does not prove the null hypothesis and therefore Creation is the only plausible answer. In the beginning God created. A Creator amazingly beyond our comprehension who was able to create the intricacies of all we know by simply thinking them into existence.
So, what do you believe; “In the beginning God created” or “The Theory of Evolution”? I challenge you to think deeply about the question and know why you believe what you believe. If you come to the same conclusion I have, run the rest of your beliefs through the filter of Scripture. You will be glad you did.
If there is that much depth in five words imagine the depth of understanding we can glean from the rest of Scripture about relationships with others, how to handle day-to-day decisions and conflicts, how to deal with people that think different than we do, what is truly important in our time here on earth, etc. The list is as long as all the questions in the world, but the answers are all there. Even when we cannot find the answer, “Sometimes the questions bring us better answers than our answers ever will”. God is beyond our comprehension, but He is the only logical answer.
Christian Life Coach 