Creation Is Not Superfluous

Many discussions I’ve had with atheists at some point reference the beginning of all things—the big bang and evolution or creation. Yet there are some Christians who would rather not discuss the subject. They believe what they believe and don’t see any need to answer the questions presented by people who believe differently.

I understand this to a point. I mean, atheists have formed their theories based on the rejection of God as the first cause. Rather, they look at the heavens (astronomy and physics) and at the earth (geology, biology, and genetics) and speculate how all we see could have come into being.

In contrast Christians have historically read the Bible and incorporated its truth into the study of all the disciplines of science. Hence the first cause of all that exists has been recognized as God, the Creator.

With these two contrasting starting places, it’s unlikely that a theist is going to accept the evolutionary views of an atheist, or an atheist, the Creation views of a Christian, so why bother with the discussion?

Sadly, because of certain Supreme Court rulings, the discussion of first cause in schools has been relegated to the purview of science, as if this is a knowable, observable fact which experts have proved instead of a theory under debate.

Add to this the fact that the hard and fast belief in a six-day creation which Genesis seems to describe has been exposed as not quite as definitive as scholars once taught. There are, for example, things we don’t understand about the creation story. For example, Genesis 1:2 says God moved over the surface of the waters before the six-day process began. What else might be included in the first verse, then, which says God created the heavens and the earth? Were angelic beings created at this point? And how long did all of what God created exist before He started what we know as the six-day process?

Then there’s the fact that Scripture refers to God accomplishing various things on the first day, second day, third day, before He created the sun by which we measure time. So were these “days” simply a mark of completed activity, not to be taken literally as lasting 24 hours?

Then there’s the matter of Scripture stating that to God a day is as a thousand years. In other words, He’s beyond time. Could His creative day have been a thousand or a billion years?

These are questions we can speculate about, but there’s no place where we have the answers recorded for us.

Which, in the minds of some, opens up the whole creation process to the possibility of evolution. Some have opted for “theistic evolution” which suggests that God initiated the evolutionary chain of events. Few, it would seem, go so far as to believe in the common descent theory that says all of life evolved from one original source. One such idea is “the belief that God created a set of ‘kinds’ of plants and animals at the beginning of Creation” (Wikipedia) Most retain the uniqueness of man. The problem with this theory is a big one: evolution requires death and according to Scripture, death came into the world because of Man’s sin.

Of course, evolution has problems of its own, the greatest being the existence of anything before anything came into being! Then there is the mathematical improbability of random matter and energy coming together to create a “last universal ancestor”—or that first life. In addition there’s the problem of entropy—the thermodynamic law that suggests that order does not come from disorder. So the random convergence of matter and energy, even if possible, would not order itself into more and more complex forms with the intricate patterns we now know DNA to have.

Unless there were a Designer, a Creator, a guiding hand ordering what would not other wise be ordered.

Finally there’s the absence of “transitional forms between species”–fossil findings of evolving creatures who were in the process of changing from one species to another.

So here’s the summation of all this. None of us was present at creation. We either have to believe what atheists say about the random beginning of everything (trusting in theories based on some scientific observation while ignoring other known facts) or we have to believe the Biblical account with all its lack of clarity. Either way there are unanswerable questions.

I suspect at this point, some will say, Hey, better to be the guy who keeps his ideas to himself and doesn’t get caught up talking about something we can’t ever actually know (until Glory). But I’ll tell you, I think that’s why we are in the situation we’re in today, with public schools passing off evolutionary theory as if it is proven fact when it is not.

Yes, we know a species can evolve. It’s called micro-evolution. Take the honey bee here in the US, for example. When the more virulent African bee was accidentally introduced into the Americas, the honey bee population began to diminish and the African variety to become more dominant.

However, there still is no concrete proof of cross-species evolution. Some say the universal genetic code is such proof, but it isn’t. Because God created all, since we all come from the same mind, why should we think there wouldn’t be a commonality all share?

In fact, I think we’re approaching a crisis point. We have young men who have been steeped in evolutionary theory during their school years becoming pastors and youth ministers. What will they teach their congregation, their youth groups?

Here’s what we know about creation and it is sure: God created. We can dither about the way He chose to do so, but we must not question that He is the First Cause, the only One capable of bringing all life and existence into being because He is the I AM, the pre-existent One. The Bible makes no equivocation about this fact and neither should Christians.

Do you not know? Have you not heard?
The Everlasting God, the LORD, the Creator of the ends of the earth
Does not become weary or tired.
His understanding is inscrutable. (Isaiah 40:28)

That, my friends, is the truth about origins. It makes the discussion of Creation vital, not superfluous theological gobbledygook.