we all intuitively know (and even those who are not CHRISTians, who are on the other side of the issue of creation, know) that we’re not just talking about science facts. we’re talking about our view of ourselves and our view of this world.
g. richard bozar said in american atheist magazine, “CHRISTianity has fought and still fights and will fight science to the desperate end over evolution because evolution destroys utterly and finally the very reason JESUS’ life was supposedly made necessary. destroy adam and eve and original sin and in the rubble you find the sorry remains of the SON of GOD. if JESUS was not the REDEEMER that died for our sins and this is what evolution means [this is not a CHRISTian talking but an atheistic scientist but he sees the truth.] then CHRISTianity is nothing.”
it’s more than just a discussion about what happened. there’s a real battle for what i believe. they are competing philosophies. if evolution and creation are not competing philosophies, why is it that when CHRISTians have a fish on their car there are people who decide to put a “darwin” on their car? it’s a little fish with amphibian legs that says “darwin”. it’s saying they’re two different philosophies of life.
JESUS is alive and darwin was a man who had a theory who is dead. it’s a theory that depersonalizes GOD.
now when we’re talking to unbelievers they might think, “when you talk about sin and stuff like that, you’ve got me. i know that’s true. but when you talk about genesis, i’ve got you! genesis doesn’t make sense.
we know that evolution is a scientific fact.” no, it’s not. it’s not provable and it has to be provable again and again to be a scientific fact. it’s a scientific theory.
a scientific theory can be influenced by fact but it can also be influenced by my philosophy. scientists are just people too. if i’ve got a philosophy that GOD’s not real, that says i don’t want to believe in a GOD, that philosophy is going to dramatically impact this theory. when you and i talk about this with our kids, when we see what’s happening in schools and share about this, we need to realize the difference between those things.
i encourage you to fight for this truth but not to make it a battleground with people. make it a battle for the truth. far too many times people turn this into a point of argument with an unbeliever or even an argument with a new believer rather than a point of truth. some of you love to argue but instead of arguing why not just tell the truth. we need to stand for this very important truth.
just a thought from the front porch…
2 comments:
Thank you for an extremely honest and thoughtful post Bill, and for the most part, I agree with you about the science. Yes, it does very much go against a particular view of mankind manifest in much of current Christianity, and a certain view of Original Sin. But now let's talk about the bible.
This is how God concludes his curse to Adam: "for dust you are/
and to dust you will return." (Genesis 3: 19c, NIV) Tell me sir, is that not EXACTLY what the Darwinists have said? Also, in the Book of Job, after many arguments and feuds between Job and his friends and one philosophy after another torn apart by newer and newer lines of reasoning, God tells them they're all wrong. "Where were you when I laid the earth's foundation?/ Tell me, if you understand." (Job 38: 4, NIV) God tells Job, at the end, that he's been seeing it the wrong way all along, and that to understand it fully, you would have to first understand where THE WORLD came from, which Ancient Isreal did not. That's why they found fit to put two creation stories side by side (Genesis 1 and Genesis 2) even though they are sufficiently contradictory that only one can be accurate (Genesis 3 is shared however between both.)
You are right about personal philosophy, but your personal philosophy needs to follow the truth, not what you want the truth to be. That's what Christ meant when he said: "This is the verdict: Light has come into the world, but men loved darkness instead of light because their deeds were evil." (John 3: 19, NIV) Christ IS the way, the truth and the life, and he who denies what he sees and what the Spirit has led humanity to discover, for he does not want to be dust, is not following Christ in this particular regard. It is of no good credit to followers of "the Way, the Truth, and the Life" to deny way, truth and life.
Now as for original sin, what IS original sin? Is it something that someone along time ago did that God dishonestly attributed to you, or is it having in your genes, your blood, your very heart, mind, soul and body, all your flesh the inheritance of that man, so that his weaknesses are your weaknesses. This is known, by science, as DNA, a chemical passed from parent to child that guides its chemical development from the smallest particles of dust to a human being.
It is not what Adam did that condemns man, but what Adam is, and how much like Adam you are. We are like him, we have the same weaknesses, passions, lusts, and bigotries. That is why the Kingdom of Heaven is inside of us (Luke 17: 20-21) and we must be reborn of water and spirit (John 3) for what is guided by flesh leads to flesh, and what is guided by Spirit leads to Spirit. We would be judged the same otherwise, for we are the same, and God judges people (the most important message of both Exodus and Acts, and mentioned in Revelations 21:8 more directly). We are the same until we make the choice to take the hand of Christ and turn our lives in a way that nature and nurture and all the things that people traditionally attribute to our development would not lead. That, my friend is Original Sin, and Darwinism lays no hand against it.
So as you can see, Christ and Darwinism fit far better then most people realize. In fact, they do not interfere at all.
thanks jeremy for adding to the discussion.
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