What Are The Issues? What is Creationism? What is Evolutionism? What does the Bible actually say?...

What Are The Issues?What Are The Issues?

• What is Creationism?• What is Evolutionism?• What does the Bible actually

say?• Are there any ideas that are

Biblical in the middle?

IMPORTANT CONCEPTIMPORTANT CONCEPT

What a person believes about the beginning, affects everything else that they believe.

Toronto Star HeadlineToronto Star Headline

• “Bible vs. Science”• “War rages in Classroom”

Dallas Morning NewsDallas Morning News

• “Religious Right fights science for the heart of America”

Science WeeklyScience Weekly

• “Creationism vs. Sanity”

There is one constant in all secular Creation/Evolution reporting, they present it as religion vs. science.

Hebrews 11:3Hebrews 11:3

By faith we understand that the universe was formed at God’s command, so that what is seen was not made out of what was visible.

NASB

Hebrews 11:1Hebrews 11:1

Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.

Scientific MethodScientific Method

• Recognize Phenomenon• Formulate a hypothesis• Test the hypothesis• Observe the results • Prove or disprove the hypothesis• Formulate theory

What happens with the Scientific Method when you

cannot see or experiment on it?

What happens with the Scientific Method when you

cannot see or experiment on it?

Like History

Things with a historyThings with a history

• Where do fossils come from? • How come there are so called races of

people? • Why are there so many types of dogs? • Where did all the stars come from?• Different animals Koalas, Wombats,

Wolverines• How do we understand Dinosaurs?

Things with a HistoryThings with a History

• Why do we see both death and life in the same world?

• Why do we see both love and hate in the same world?

• Where did all the layers in the Grand Canyon come from?

• Where did the Canyon itself come from?

Job 38:4Job 38:4

Where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth? Tell Me, if you have understanding,

• We believe in Creation because we have a book that claims to be the Word of God and it is reporting the real history of the earth and universe.

Evolutionists’ “Hebrews 11:3”Evolutionists’ “Hebrews 11:3”

By faith we understand that the worlds were not framed by any sort of deity but what is seen was made by previously existing simpler forms through endless ages of time by chance.

Richard LewontinRichard Lewontin

• ‘We take the side of science in spite of the patent absurdity of some of its constructs, in spite of its failure to fulfill many of its extravagant promises of health and life, in spite of the tolerance of the scientific community for unsubstantiated just-so stories, because we have a prior commitment, a commitment to materialism.

Richard LewontinRichard Lewontin

It is not that the methods and institutions of science somehow compel us to accept a material explanation of the phenomenal world, but, on the contrary, that we are forced by our a priori adherence to material causes to create an apparatus of investigation and a set of concepts that produce material explanations, no matter how counter-intuitive, no matter how mystifying to the uninitiated. Moreover, that materialism is an absolute, for we cannot allow a Divine Foot in the door.’

AxiomAxiom

1. Generally Accepted Truth

A statement or idea that people accept as self-evidently true

2. Basic presupposition assumed to be true

Mathematics, Logic – a basic proposition of a system that, although unproven is used to prove the other propositions in the system

• Creation - About 6,000 to no more than 10,000 years ago God created the world out of nothing in 6 consecutive, literal 24 hour days.

Martin LutherMartin Luther

How long did the work of Creation take? When Moses writes that God created heaven and earth and whatever is in them in six days, then let this period continue to have been six days, and do not venture to devise any comment according to which six days were one day. But, if you cannot understand how this could have been done in six days, then grant the Holy Spirit the honor of being more learned than you are. For you are to deal with Scripture in such a way that you bear in mind that God Himself says what is written. But since God is speaking, it is not fitting for you wantonly to turn His Word in the direction you wish to go.

Some people want to say that God used evolution as His means of creation.

Jacques MonodMicro-Biologist & AtheistJacques MonodMicro-Biologist & Atheist

If you want to assume that, then I have no dispute with it, except one (which is not a scientific dispute, but a moral one). Namely, selection is the blindest, and most cruel way of evolving new species, and more and more complex and refined organisms … .

Jacques Monod Jacques Monod

The more cruel because it is a process of elimination, of destruction. The struggle for life and elimination of the weakest is a horrible process, against which our whole modern ethics revolts. An ideal society is a non-selective society, is one where the weak is protected; which is exactly the reverse of the so-called natural law. I am surprised that a Christian would defend the idea that this is the process which God more or less set up in order to have evolution (emphasis added).

Romans 5:12Romans 5:12

Therefore, just as through one man sin entered into the world, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men, because all sinned