Until my senior year of high school, I had always planned to become an astronomer. That obviously didn’t happen, but I have always been fascinated with the created world. Homeschooling two boys who had all of the usual fascination with animals, bugs, dirt, fire and anything gross and/or big has further heightened my appreciation for natural science. Having been raised Catholic, I was thankfully spared the ridiculous idea that one couldn’t been both a faithful Christian and accept reality. I believe that this issue is so destructive to our faith and witness that it goes well over the edge from “one of the weird but fairly harmless things some Christians believe” to “evidence that Satan is trying to bring the church down from the inside”. But you know, jmo.
I Love Evolution! – A Christian’s Perspective:
Interestingly, the set of details which religious people are most likely to insist aren’t there – evolution – points us to those spiritual truths which are pretty much completely lacking in most people’s theology as well. Like growth. Like getting down to tiny details. Like knowing that survival relies on adapability and that life is moved forward by mutations, not preseved by purity.
Why Creationism Does Not Honor God
Many Christians have bought into the idea that if evolution is true, it discredits God as creator and our special place in the universe. Which is absurd. If evolution is true, it is because God made it true. Who are we to tell God how he may and may not create his own universe and the creatures who bear his image? Who are we to deny the evidence of God’s own creation by insisting, “well, I read your book and as I understood it, it says you did it this way – not the way that your creation points to you making it.” Doesn’t that just sound ridiculous? It’s our understanding of scripture that is flawed, not the testimony of creation!
Teaching Creation Science or ID? A Formula for Putting Your Child’s Christian Faith at Risk:
Even if you are absolutely certain that biblical creationism is scientific fact, I think it would be foolish not to consider for a moment what would happen if your child, presented with the evidence which has been uniformly accepted by mainstream science, begins to question the veracity of creationist science. Are you setting your child up to experience a crisis, not only of trust in a particular set of beliefs about how God created the world, but in his or her faith in Christianity, the bible and God altogether? If you are educating your child to think that biblical creationism is the only acceptable opinion for a Christian to hold, then odds are pretty good that you are sowing the seeds of their spiritual destruction.
In Which I Call Creationism Demonic
My opinions about the theological viability of creationist interpretations aren’t something I’m shy about. I truly believe that it’s demonic. Whether you understand that to be a metaphor for our ability to create and perpetuate evil or as satan whispering in your ear, the answer is the same; it is demonic. It feeds on lies. It depends on (and obviously encourages) fear. It is driven by profit posing as prophet. These organizations (and just like corporations aren’t actually people, neither are organizations) are shrieking banshees in the marketplace sent by our enemies to deform and discredit us.
Raising Christian Evolutionists:
The first thing I tell my kids is that God is always willing to meet us where we are. He doesn’t wait for us to get it all together or have a good grasp of life to reach out and reveal himself to us.
Much of the thinking which underpins today’s objections to evolution would not have made any sense at all to the ancient Hebrews. Their understanding of their text hardly allowed, much less required what we in our modern thought process view as a literal understanding of the creation story.
Scientists Disproving ID by Unlocking Cell Secrets
The insistence of IDer’s that some cells are just too complex to have come about through natural processes has always reminded me of the false, but funny story of the guy at the patent office who wanted to close shop in the mid 1800′s because there was nothing more to invent. Just as the man in the story was doomed by his short-sightedness to be proven wrong by the next invention to come along, IDer’s are doomed to be disproven by scientific discoveries. It’s just never a good idea to base an idea on what we don’t know rather than on what we do know.
One of the things which people often do not realize is that evolution is not nearly as random or unintelligent as it is sometimes portrayed. For example, we know that there are genetic sequences which can cause similar but different outcomes in different animals, depending on how it is tweaked.
Romans 5:12 says, “Therefore, just as through one man sin entered the world, and death through sin, and thus death spread to all men, because all sinned.”
Since there was no death before sin, there couldn’t have been millions of years of evolution before sin either.
And then there is “irreducible complexity,” the fact that organisms need ALL their compatible parts functioning fully and simultaneously in order to survive and reproduce. Where are the fossils of transitional forms? There are none that haven’t been proven hoaxes.
Geological data points to a young earth and a worldwide flood, IF you are willing to consider that possibility.
Sorry, but not only is that not true, an insistance on reading the bible as a history book has born nothing but BAD fruit. It and not Christ has become a stumbling block for many, many people. Trying to make creation say things that it clearly does not (young earth, the god of the light switch, etc) and ignore what it clearly does say (evolution, big bang, etc) is blasphemy. Scriptures tell us that creation is part of the testimony of God. When it appears that creation and scripture have come into conflict, we need to be humble enough to consider that that it could be our understanding of scripture that is flawed. Right now hundreds of thousands of people are dedicating their lives to the study of God’s hands. And we drive them away from the very maker whose work they are studying with our stubborn insistance that protecting our own understanding and interpretation of scripture is somehow faithful. It’s not. It is a blasphemous denial of the work of God’s own hand which the church needs to repent of. Jesus told us to judge a thing by its fruit and the fruit of creationism has been division, anger, distortion – no good thing has been born by that tree. To continue to cling to it is to cling to something which by the standards of Christ have shown themselves to have their roots in our enemy’s work, not in the hand of God Almighty, creator of heaven and earth.