Sermon Illustrations on Creation — page 2

Music And Spiders

Even spiders respond to music, showing God’s design in creation’s sensitivity to sound.

While a gentleman was watching some spiders it occurred to him to try what effect a tuning-fork would have on the insects. He suspected that they would regard the sound just as they were in the habit of regarding the sound made by a fly. And sure enough they did. He selected a large, ugly spider that had been feasting on flies for two months. The spider was at one edge of its web. Sounding the fork, he touched a thread at the other side of the web and watched the result. Mr. Spider had the buzzing sound conveyed to him over his telephone wires, but how was he to know on which particular wire the sound was traveling? He ran to the center of the web very quickly, and felt all around until he touched the thread against the other end of which the fork was sounding; and taking another thread along, just as a man would take an extra piece of rope, he ran out to the fork and sprang upon it. Then he retreated a little way and looked at the fork. He was puzzled. He had expected to find a buzzing fly. He got on the fork again and danced with delight. He had caught the sound of the fly and it was music to him. It is said that spiders are so fond of music that they will stop their spinning to listen, and a man once said that when he retired to his room for quiet before dinner and played the flute, large spiders would come onto the table and remain quite still, “running away as fast as their legs could carry them” directly he had finished--_Electrical Review._

Music Of Nature

Nature's phenomena like the aurora borealis are believed to produce mysterious sounds.

The Innuits, or Eskimos, of Smith Sound, Greenland, the most northerly people in the world, believe that the aurora borealis has a singing noise; and the inhabitants of the Orkneys, of Finmarken, and those in the region of Hudson Bay believe, with many competent observers, that a peculiar sound like the rustling of silk always accompanies it. The Lapps liken this sound to the cracking in the joints of moving reindeer. (Text.)

Pain In Animals

Animals' pain responses differ from humans, showing less sensitivity and different survival reactions.

In dealing with animals it is necessary to consider carefully what signs may be depended upon as proofs of their suffering. Certainly their struggles and cries are not always true indications. All wild animals struggle under restraint. With many, cries indicate fear rather than pain. A hare when shot rarely cries; when closely pursued by dogs it often does. Animals when trapped rarely cry until some one approaches the trap. Frogs will cry out loudly on the appearance of anything at all resembling a snake; when injured with stones or cut by the scythe in mowing they rarely do so. Every gamekeeper knows that it is a common thing for a rat or rabbit, when caught by the leg in one of the ordinary steel-traps, to gnaw off its limb and so escape, while other animals when kept short of food will readily eat their own tails. Another proof that animals are less sensitive to pain than man is their comparative freedom from shock after severe injuries. When a man meets with a severe injury of any kind, a train of symptoms follow which are collectively known by the name of shock. A striking pallor takes the place of the natural color, the skin becomes covered with a clammy moisture, the eye loses its natural luster, and the extremities become deadly cold, and while the ear may detect the fluttering action of the heart, the pulse at the wrist is often quite imperceptible. All these symptoms point to a great disturbance of the nervous system, whereas the lower animals often sustain the severest injuries without exhibiting any of the symptoms of shock.--W. COLLIER, _Nineteenth Century_.

Pedigree

Even humble creatures have ancient, noble origins showing God's creative design.

Shells keeping their form and delicate color and delicate wings of insects are preserved in stone, embedded there ages ago, “Trees waved, butterflies flitted on brilliant wings and hosts of creatures basked in the sunlight long before human foot trod the earth,” says Edith Carrington in “Ages Ago.” Some pique themselves in being able to trace descent through a few centuries. But there is a humble creature haunting our back-yards counting his pedigree by millions of years. The common wood-louse, tho shy and modest, might boast if he liked--the scion of an ancient and noble family, the trilobites, once the monarchs of the world and the most numerous and highly organized creatures in it. (Text.)

Permanency

Some creatures survive through ages, others vanish, illustrating life's transience.

“The first lizard possest the snout of a dolphin, the head of a lizard, the teeth and jaws of a crocodile, the backbone of a fish, paddles like those of a whale and the trunk and tail of a quadruped--a very monarch of the early seas. Kill or be killed must have been the rule of his life,” says the great French novelist Currie. But it would seem the coat of mail worn by the tortoises and turtles was a better protection than the powerful claws and jaws of the fish-lizard, which was short-lived. The former are alive and flourishing to this day--the latter have altogether vanished. On the grave of John Keats are the words, “Here lies one whose name was writ in water.” (Text.)

Prehistoric Woman

God’s design is evident even in the earliest human beings' physical and mental traits.

In the museum of the Royal College of Surgeons lies a famous skull. Discovered at Gibraltar many years ago, it has been agreed to be that of a human being of prehistoric times. Professor A. Keith, curator of the museum, has compared the skull minutely with those of the people of all nations to-day, and has set it side by side with all other available prehistoric relics. “The skull, I have little doubt, is that of a woman,” he said. “From the size of her brain she must have been shrewd--probably a woman, too, of considerable spirit. One can reckon pretty accurately also the time at which she lived. It must have been at least 600,000 years ago. From the jaws and the fact that the muscles of mastication were remarkably strong it is possible to deduce what this prehistoric woman ate. Nuts and roots probably entered very largely into her diet. She was in the habit of eating things which required a great amount of mastication before much nourishment could be derived from them, hence the unusual development of the jaw muscles.”

Reasoning Power In Animals

Animals show reasoning and memory beyond instinct, as seen in a rat’s behavior.

As throwing light upon the question of the intelligence of the animal creation, in the exhibition of memory and reasoning power, beyond the mere pale of recognized instinct, I wish to give a brief account of an interesting incident of which I was the witness. On a very warm day in early summer I happened to be standing near a chicken-coop in a back yard when I noticed the head of a very gray and grizzled rat thrust from a neighboring rat-hole, and concluded to watch the movements of the veteran. After a careful survey of the surroundings, our old rodent seemed to be satisfied that all was right, and made a cautious exit from the home retreat. A fresh pan of water had been recently placed before the chicken-coop for the use of Mother “Chick” and her interesting brood. These all seemed to have satisfied their thirst, and the water looked a friendly invitation to the thirsty old rat, which immediately started toward it. The rat had not reached the pan before five half-grown young ones rushed ahead and tried to be first at the water. The old rat thereupon immediately made a leap like a kangaroo, and was at the edge of the dish in advance of the foremost of her litter. Then ensued a most remarkable occurrence. The mother rat raised herself on her haunches and bit and scratched her offspring so severely, whenever they attempted to reach the water, that they all finally scudded away, evidently very much astonished and also frightened at the strange and unaccountable behavior of their mother. I was as much astonished as they, and waited with renewed interest the outcome of this remarkable performance. When the little ones were at a safe distance, the reason for her extraordinary behavior began to be revealed at once in the intelligent actions of the old mother rat. She first wet her whiskers in the water, looked suspiciously about her, then very cautiously and carefully took a dainty little sip of the liquid. She tasted it as tentatively and critically as a professional tea-taster, and when she was satisfied that it contained no poisonous or other deleterious matter, she gave a couple of squeaks, which quickly brought her young and thirsty brood to her side, and all fearlessly drank to their fill. Now, this old mother rat was experienced, had evidently learned her lesson in that school thoroughly, and so she would not allow her young and untaught litter to taste water which might have contained rat-poison, or what not, until she had satisfied herself that the liquid was harmless. As I witnessed this little scene in lowly animal life the thought would keep coming, does not this look very like reason?--F. CROLL BAUM, _American Naturalist_.

Science, Improvements By

Scientific instruments reveal God's creation far beyond human senses' natural limits.

“The inferiority of the human sense organ to the instruments of science is pointed out by Dr. Carl Snyder,” says _The American Inventor_. “He says that whereas the human eye can see but little more than 3,000 stars in the heaven on the clearest of nights, the photographic plate and the telescope can discover countless millions. It is difficult for the eye to distinguish divisions of the inch if smaller than 1-200 of that unit of measure, yet a powerful microscope will make an object 1-1,000 of an inch in diameter look comparatively large. It would be a delicate ear which could hear the tramp of a fly, yet the microphone magnifies this sound until it sounds like the tramp of cavalry. The most sensitive skin can not detect a change in temperature less than 1-5 of a degree, but the bolometer will register on a scale an increase or decrease of temperature of 1-1,000,000 of a degree and can easily note the difference in temperature caused in a room when a match is lighted one mile away.”

Science Trains To See

Science reveals beauty and order in what appears as dirt or chaos to the untrained eye.

Where the untrained eye will see nothing but mire and dirt (says Sir John Lubbock), science will often reveal exquisite possibilities. The mud we tread under our feet in the street is a grimy mixture of clay and sand, soot and water. Separate the sand, however, as Ruskin observes--let the atoms arrange themselves in peace according to their nature--and you have the opal. Separate the clay and it becomes a white earth, for the finest porcelain; or if it still further purifies itself you have a sapphire. Take the soot, and if properly treated it will give you a diamond. While, lastly, the water purified and distilled, will become a dew-drop or crystallize into a lovely star. Or, again, you may see in a shallow pool either the mud lying at the bottom or the image of the sky above.--_Public Opinion._

Sky, The

The sky sets the tone and life for nature’s beauty and perspective.

In landscape-painting the sky, it is said, is the keynote, the standard of scale, and the chief organ of sentiment; just as the sky is the source of light in nature, and governs everything. This led John Constable to say that “the landscape-painter who does not make his skies a very material part of his composition neglects to avail himself of one of his greatest aids.” He says he was advised to consider his sky as “a white sheet thrown behind the objects.” He claims that the skies have what he calls a natural history in the changes that they show. As West once told him: “Always remember, sir, that light and shade never stand still,” adding: “In your skies always aim at brightness ... even the darkest effects there should be brightness. Your darks should look like the darks of silver, not of lead or of slate.” It was the fault in the skies that led to the rejection of Constable’s picture, “Flatford Mill,” by the Royal Academy.

How much life depends upon its skies.

Soot

Air pollution deposits large amounts of soot, impacting health in urban environments.

The Chicago public laboratories recently made tests to determine the amount of soot and dust deposited from the air in that city. The acreage deposit, as estimated from samples collected at eight different heights during a period of four weeks, was, approximately, at the rate of 8.5 tons per acre per year. On the Board of Trade Building, 110 feet above the street level, the estimated annual deposit was 10.5 tons. On the county building, 160 feet above street level, the amount was 7.8 tons, and on the Reaper Block, 120 feet above street level, 12.6 tons. The situation in Chicago is different only in degree from that prevailing in every large city. It would be interesting (and no doubt appalling) to know how many tons of soot enter the lungs of the inhabitants of our large cities.--_Good Health._

Soul And Nature

The soul perceives and lives harmoniously within God's created natural order.

The daisy brightening in the shadow of the hedgerow, or strewing the fields as with golden flakes; the trees spreading their whispering roof of tremulous foliage, or holding against the blast their rugged arms, inlocked with a trunk deep-set and rooted; brooks, lapsing or leaping from their summit springs; the ocean, which takes these to itself, without an added ripple on its bays, or an increase of its tides; all sounds, of mirth, or suffering, or fear; the drowsy hum of multitudinous insects; the arrowy song of birds, swifter than wings, aspiring to the skies; all forms and tones of human life; the immeasurable azure which is over us everywhere, brilliant with stars, or flecked with clouds, or made the blue and boundless realm of the victorious sun--all these, and all the visible system which these but partly represent, the soul perceives. It goes out to them, in its observant, inspecting glance. It meets and hears them, if they are vocal, with its attent sense. It apprehends them all, arranges them in their natural and obvious order, assigns to each its place and service, and lives amid them as in a home reared for it and furnitured at the commencement of its being.

— RICHARD S. STORRS

Space Not Vacant

Space is filled with countless tiny bodies, showing God’s intricate creation.

The idea that the vast spaces between the sun and the various planets are void and untenanted now belongs only to the history of science. To-day it is known that these spaces are filled with vast swarms of minute, dust-like bodies, each and every one revolving about the sun in vast ellipses, each one being, in fact, a microscopic planet. These bodies make their presence known not only as meteors or shooting-stars, but also by their power to reflect sunlight, and thus produce the peculiar evening glow of the zodiacal light.--CHARLES LANE POOR, “The Solar System.”

Speed, The Secret Of

Design in nature shows that speed is achieved by a larger front and slender rear form.

In attacking some evils the best way to sweep them down, is often to use our greatest bulk and energy at the outset; as a ship, according to M. C. L. Meyher, moves fastest when the bow is made larger than the stern.

It should be noted in passing that all creatures that are called upon to move rapidly through a fluid are much slenderer behind than before, and it should be added that forms that are too slender in front are quite unsuited for great speeds. This may easily be demonstrated, but would take us too far from our subject for the moment. We should only say that it is difficult to understand why designers so often persist in giving to vessels forms that are more slender in the bow than in the stern, when the contrary should be the case.--_Revue Generale des Sciences._

Swiftness Of Birds

Birds' swift flight illustrates God's creative power and design in nature.

The inexperienced gunner will declare emphatically that any old bird can fly at least a mile a second, but science is of the opinion that the swift, the most speedy bird of all, can make but 250 miles an hour. The swallow can cover ninety-two miles in an hour and the eider-duck ninety miles. All birds of prey are necessarily rapid in their flight; the eagle can attain a speed of 140 miles per hour and the hawk 150 miles. The flight of most migratory birds does not exceed fifty miles an hour, and the crow can accomplish but twenty-five.

A falcon belonging to Henry IV of France escaped from Fontainebleau and was found at Malta twenty-four hours later, having covered a distance of at least 1,530 miles. Sir John Ross, on October 6, 1850, dispatched from Assistance Bay two young carrier-pigeons, one of which reached its dove-cote in Ayrshire, Scotland, on the 13th. This was comparatively slow time for the distance, two thousand miles. It is probable that flights which have occasioned astonishment by greatly exceeding the average have been materially assisted by aerial currents moving in the same direction.--_Harper’s Weekly._

Transient, The

Even animals transmit learned behavior, illustrating God's providential order in creation.

See PERISHABLENESS.

TRANSMISSION

Even among the lower orders of creation, a law of transmission obtains.

A writer in an Australian quarterly for April, 1906, tells of a magpie near Melbourne, which while a captive had been taught to whistle “Merrily danced the Quaker’s wife, merrily danced the Quaker,” and passed the song on to its young, through whom, in a more or less fragmentary way, it was transmitted to subsequent generations, so that there are “many now in the forest who still conclude their beautiful wild notes with the ascending notes which terminate the old air.” (Text.)

Unity Fundamental In Nature

All living things share one fundamental structural unit, reflecting God’s unity.

As the glass reflects the face, so the creation reflects the qualities of Him who made it. Among other attributes, It speaks of His unity.

Notwithstanding the wide diversity that presents itself to our view in the countless varieties of living beings, it yet is true that all vegetable and animal tissues without exception, from that of the brightly colored lichen on the rock, to that of the painter who admires or of the botanist who dissects it, are essentially one in composition and in structure. The microscopic fungi clustering by millions within the body of a single fly, the giant pine of California towering to the height of a cathedral-spire, the Indian fig-tree covering acres with its profound shadow, animalcules minute enough to dance in myriads on the point of a needle, and the huge leviathan of the deep, the flower that a girl wears in her hair, and the blood that courses through her veins, are, each and all, smaller or larger multiples or aggregates of one and the same structural unit, and all therefore ultimately resolvable into the same identical elements. That unit is a corpuscle composed of oxygen, hydrogen, nitrogen, and carbon. Hydrogen, with oxygen, forms water; carbon, with oxygen, carbonic acid; and hydrogen, with nitrogen, ammonia. These three compounds--water, carbonic acid, and ammonia--in like manner, when combined form protoplasm. (Text.)

Unity Of Matter

Scientific discoveries show diverse phenomena are one, supporting theism and unity.

Theism is gradually being reenforced by the discovery that apparently diverse phenomena are really one.

The division of bodies into gaseous, liquid, and solid, and the distinction established for the same substance between the three states, retain a great importance for the applications and usages of daily life, but have long since lost their absolute value from the scientific point of view.

As far as concerns the liquid and gaseous states particularly, the already antiquated researches of Andrews confirmed the ideas of Cagniard de la Tour and established the continuity of the two states.--LUCIEN POINCARE, “The New Physics and Its Evolution.”

View-Point

Different minds perceive the same mountain in vastly different ways, reflecting their focus.

In a poem, “The Mountain,” Edwin Markham shows how differently a mountain affects different minds:

Each builds his world forever, dark or bright, And sits within his separate universe. The shepherd sees in this green mountain top Place where his sheep may wander and grow fat. What to the drover is this lilied pool? A hollow for his swine to wallow in. Gold-hunters find upon this rocky peak Nothing but ledges for their ringing picks. But to the poet all this soaring height Smokes with the footsteps of the passing God!

Wonders Unseen By Man

Microscopic creatures perceive a vast world of wonders invisible to humans.

The insect must see a whole world of wonders of which we know little or nothing. True, we have microscopes, with which we can see one thing at a time if carefully laid upon the stage; but what is the finest instrument that can be produced compared to that with twenty-five thousand object-glasses, all of them probably achromatic, and each one a living instrument, with its own nerve-branch supplying a separate sensation. To creatures thus endowed with microscopic vision, a cloud of sandy dust must appear like an avalanche of massive rock fragments, and everything else proportionally monstrous.--W. MATTIEU WILLIAMS, “Science in Short Chapters.”

Working Together

All creation is interconnected, each part benefiting others by God’s design.

Faraday, the distinguished chemist, says:

The change produced by respiration so injurious to us (for we can not breathe the air twice over) is the very life and support of plants and vegetables growing on the surface of the ground. These latter absorb carbon--the leaves taking up the carbon of the air to which we have given it in the form of carbonic acid, and grow and prosper. Give them a fine air like ours, and they could not live in it, but carbon and other matters make them grow. All trees and plants get their carbon from the air, which carries off what is bad for us and at the same time good for them--disease to the one is health to the other. So we are made dependents not only on our fellow creatures but on our fellow existers as well, all nature being tied together by the law that makes one part conduce to the good of another. (Text.)

There Is No God

Job 37:14

Several years ago Our Daily Bread carried a devotional piece entitled "There Is No God." I want to read it to you:

"All the wonders around you are accidental. No Almighty hand made a thousand billion stars. They made themselves. The surface of our land just happened to have topsoil, without which we would have no vegetables to eat, and no grass for the animals whose meat is our food. The inexhaustible envelope of air, only 50 miles deep and of exactly the right density to support human life, is just another law of physics. Water expands when it freezes, while other substances contract. This makes ice lighter than water and keeps it floating on the surface. Otherwise lakes would be solid ice down to the bottom, and no fish could survive. We have day and night because the earth spins at a given speed without slowing down.

Who made this arrangement? Who tilts it so that we get seasons? The sun's fire does not generate too much heat so that we fry, but just enough so that we do not freeze. Who keeps this fire constant? The human heart will beat for 70 or 80 years without faltering. How does it get sufficient rest between beats? A kidney will filter poison from the blood and leave the good things alone. How does it know one from the other? Who gave the human tongue flexibility to form words, and who made a brain to understand them? Is it all accidental? Is there really not a God?"

Many College Students Still Believe In Garden of Eden

Job 40

According to a study, many college students (38%) still believe human life started in Garden of Eden and not from evolution. Many also believe dinosaurs and humans co-existed. Blame is put on creationists who have watered down textbook discussion of evolution and origins.

Traces of What He Created

"He [man] has what no other animal possesses, a jig-saw of faculties which alone ... make him creative. Every animal leaves traces of what it was; man alone leaves traces of what he created."

#537

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Life In the Underworld

Job 40

Researchers have discovered 3,000 species of microorganisms living as deep as 1,800 feet below the surface of the earth in South Carolina. Most breathe oxygen given off by underground water, others are anerobic. Most have very slow metabolisms. Speculation is that they trickled down with groundwater or have lived there all along and the soil built up on top of them, which means they have been there 70 million years.

A New Story of Creation

A new theology of ecology is being developed that sees the universe as our womb. The creation mandate in Genesis is seen as harmful. Father Thomas Berry is a key leader, and says the creation is God’s “primary revelation,” not the Bible. He sees evolution as a spiritual as well as material process. He feels Christians err in over-emphasizing personal redemption.

“The crucial issue, however, is not tolerance of other faiths. Where the Bible enjoins man to live in covenant with a transcendent God, Berry emphasizes a new covenant with his creation. Moreover, unlike the Book of Genesis, which is designed to desacralize nature, Berry’s new cosmology resacralizes the natural world and imposes certain values on its human offspring.

“It is one thing to rediscover the goodness of creation, quite another to regard the process of evolution as God’s primary word to man. To derive moral standards from the cosmos is to suppose that whatever has evolved is good - or would be, if humankind behaved itself toward other species. But Berry’s theory of the self-regulating universe does not take into account the existence of moral evil, despite the evidence in the world around him. The human species has no doubt sinned against the environment, but it has also sinned against itself - and God - which is why stories of redemption still possess power, even in an ecological age.”

Fossil Placement

Argues that the depth of fossils is related to how far a creature could flee from the Flood. Men could climb trees so are on the highest levels.

Men, Women & Biblical Equality

An ad that promotes the equality of men and women under God. "Traditional" view of relationship is cultural, not biblical. A point-by-point argument is made and supported with Scriptures.

The First Seven Days

Examines historicity and problems of interpreting seven days of creation in Genesis. Goes over day theories and concludes the literary style overrides any chronology, though it is still "true."

#1176

How It All Began

Job 40

Examines variety of viewpoints of Evangelical scientists and theologians regarding creation. Young-earth advocates are analyzed, as well as those who correlate the best results of science with Christian faith.

The Mirror of God

John 17:23

In Eden, Adam and Eve had God's perfect image and reflected Him. This "mirror" was shattered in the Fall. The duty of the church is to reconstruct the image by building a united and caring body of Christ out of diverse people. 1 Corinthians 12 talks about making a diverse group into a unified

body of Christ.

Three problems confront us:

1. Our natural tendency to define belonging as sameness.

2. We tend to measure ourselves according to waht the majority promotes as

the standard of what makes one truly Christian.

3. The majority does not sense any needs among itself, so concludes the rest

of the body has no needs, either.

Why I Believe In God

Acts 16:34

"Why I Believe" series. Belief in God's existence.

1. Existence of God is critical for Christianity.

2. Evidence for God's existence.

a. Universal human belief across cultures and ages.

b. Order and design of the universe.

3. What God is like.

a. Communicates his love by becoming one of us. (Ants)

4. Evidence of God's presence in changed lives. [1422]

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Reclaiming the Biblical Doctrine of Work

Human-divine collaboration characterizes all honorable work.

I. Work is good.

A. God is a worker (Creation).

1) Humans, made in God's image, are meant to work.

2) Adam worked while in the Garden of Eden. Gen 2:15

B. Work produces benefits. (John Stott)

1) Work is intended for fulfillment of the worker.

Gen 1:26, Eccl 2:24; 3:22

a) Spiritual work has eternal rewards.

2) Work is intended for provision of the family.

3) Work is intended for the benefit of the community. Eph 4:28

C. All work should be done as unto the Lord.

1) The Puritans declared the sanctity of all honorable work.

a) No separation between sacred and secular.

2) All of life was God's.

Science and Religion's Views of Creation

Analysis of science and religion’s views of creation. Polls given on what Americans believe (47% are strict creationists) and how battle is being fought in the schools. “Day-Age” and other religious theories are outlined. The metaphysical view of scientists is also explored.

Stephen Hawking: [used 12/12/93]

“If we do discover a complete theory (of everything) … we shall all, philosophers, scientists and just ordinary people, be able to take part in the discussion of why it is that we and the universe exist. If we find the answer to that, it would be the ultimate triumph of human reason … for then we would truly know the mind of God.”

Charles Darwin:

“I look at everything as resulting from designed laws, with the details left to the working out of what we may call chance. Not that this notion at all satisfies me. I feel most deeply that the whole subject is too profound for the human intellect.”

Paul Davies:

“My feelings about God and the universe have come about entirely through my science. I hesitate to use the word “God,” but in my studies of the universe I have come to the conclusion that there is some purpose to it. The universe has organized itself in such a way as to become aware of itself. As conscious beings, we are part of the purpose.”

A Handful of Mud

Discusses concern for the planet Earth with a special emphasis on care for the soil. A side article gives Scriptural glimpses of nature, including the "moral" land, checks and balances, concern for animals, and the joy of Creation.

Dear God, What Religion Were the Dinosaurs?

Letter from a young person to God:

Dear God,

How long did it really take you to make the first people? Do you feel you rushed too much?

Keith, age 10

Pace of Scientific Discovery Described As Evidence of God

Job 9:1

Scientific discoveries seem to be rolling out like cars off an assembly line this year, and Christian observers say the phenomenon offers mounting proof of God’s creative handiwork.

“The last six to 12 months we have seen powerful evidence,” said Southern California astronomer Hugh Ross. “I have never seen such a pace of discoveries proving that God created the earth.”

Ross is president of Reasons to Believe, a Pasadena-based ministry whose network of scientists come from physics, geology, mathematics and other disciplines. The ministry is gathering news of five to 10 discoveries per month that support creation belief, he said, compared to four a year during the mid-1980s.

Engineer James Odom, who managed the Hubble Space Telescope program for three years in the 1980s, believes these advances are uncovering the orderly pattern of the heavens.

“As we learn more about physics, earth, gravity and chemical reactions - the finite laws that apply to everything - we see the orderliness God has put in place,” said Odom, senior vice president of a major aerospace firm in Huntsville, Ala., and a deacon at First Baptist Church in nearby Decatur.

While such breakthroughs as a new life form and speculation over life on Mars have generated considerable news coverage, pastor Emmitte Cornelius of Jackson, Miss., said he is more excited about recent findings from the depths of the oceans.

Undersea expeditions have uncovered brightly colored creatures where no sunlight penetrates and new, unnamed species of aquatic life, said Cornelius, a former biology and physics teacher who is writing a scientifically based book on God and creation.

“That is more demonstrative of the awesomeness of God,” said the pastor of Grace Baptist Bible Church. “New life forms expand the vistas of God’s glory.

“All that has been hidden from man ... God looked at it and delighted in it and enjoyed it first,” Cornelius said. “I tell my church we live in a sea of glory. The glory of God evidences itself.”

Among the range of scientific developments attracting attention this year:

- speculation of life on Mars, based on certain minerals in a meteorite that fell to earth - the finding that generated the most publicity nationally. After the announcement by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, the White House announced Vice President Al Gore would convene a “space summit” to consider the future of the space program in light of the possibility of life on Mars.

- the discovery of a third life form, confirmed after nearly two decades of study of volcanic organisms. Known as “archaea,” its genetic code was recently reported in Science magazine. One scientist told USA Today, “Our understanding of this organism significantly increases the likelihood that life exists on other planets.”

- pictures taken through Hubble uncovering some 50 billion galaxies in the universe, much higher than previously estimated, according to media reports in January. An astronomer at the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore said there are as many galaxies in the sky as stars in our own galaxy.

- the Human Genome Project, which is running ahead of schedule in its efforts to identify the 50,000-plus genes of the body as one way of curing genetic diseases. Among this year’s reported discoveries are nine genes behind important inherited diseases, including Huntington’s disease and a form of colon cancer.

- strong evidence the earth’s inner core is spinning freely and faster than the rest of the planet, reported by scientists at Columbia University. The implications raise such questions as whether this produces fluctuations in gravity at the earth’s surface, according to media reports last July.

- a new species of early human reportedly discovered in the African desert of Chad last spring, challenging conventional thinking about the place of origin of humankind.

However, Ross said other advances are causing a bigger stir within the scientific community, such as new measurements of the mass density of the universe and the structure of cosmic background radiation.

Two other revelations he mentioned, which have received little media notice, are:

- recognition by anthropologists that humans are a distinct species and appeared very recently, less than 49,000 years ago. Research has eliminated any biological link between Neanderthals and the human species, Ross said, proving that humans can’t be the product of evolutionary processes.

- new evidence that life has been on earth for 3.9 billion years, but that all of the Kerogen tars (byproducts of experiments with RNA, DNA and proteins) have organic origins. This means that life could not have evolved from inorganic matter, Ross said.

In addition, evidence that the conditions necessary for our planet to support life must arise from intelligent design is 1 trillion times stronger than it appeared just a year ago, said Ross, author of four scientifically based books on creation.

Ross has identified 50 characteristics of a planetary system that must be “fine tuned” for life to exist. In mathematical terms, this is a probability of one part in ten to the 65th power, he said, and physics considers anything with a probability of less than one in ten to the 50th power an impossibility. [used 8/23/98]

“The new studies about life give evidence that God and only God is behind life,” Ross said. “This means that God must have some reason for creating us.”

Odom agreed, stating God has opened a small window into the universe during the 20th century and he expects humans to develop that knowledge.

“God put us here on earth to understand it,” Odom said. “The emerging knowledge of the human body, cells and the environment ... are things he has challenged us to learn about. He says knowledge will make us free and has given us the ability to expand our knowledge. However, he expects us to utilize these discoveries and technologies properly.”

________

Walker is a freelance writer in Louisville, Kentucky.

The God Factor

Job 42

Philip Stahl was giving a lecture on the Big Bang and a young girl asked him, “Do you believe in God?” This was one question he had not anticipated, and she pointed out that he had not referred to God in the whole lecture even though it dealt with creation issues.

He explained that science is founded on principles, concepts, and hypotheses that are verifiable or at least measurable. God, as a supernatural entity, did not fall into these categories. Indeed the success of science has stemmed largely from a judicious selectivity in the problems it investigates. This selectivity excludes problems for which no practical way of inquiry exists. He pointed out that so far as is known, physical inquiry can only be applied to physical phenomena. Consequently, no supernatural entity is a fitting subject for scientific investigation.

His second point to the young lady was that even if all agreed some ultimate power started it all, there would still be no agreement on that power’s nature. Some see it as impersonal, others as a wholly personal being. Neither can convince the other of their God-concept’s validity. Since no human mind is 100 percent perfect, no human mind is capable of knowing an absolute. Hence, all God-concepts emerge as relative and none can be upheld logically as true if it excludes all others. [Holwick: is this a valid conclusion?]

In his 1961 book THE NATURE OF THE UNIVERSE, Fred Hoyle dismissed believers by presenting a case to show why God was redundant and unnecessary. Unfortunately, he based his argument on the steady-state theory. By 1983 Hoyle had become a believer of sorts. In his book THE INTELLIGENT UNIVERSE, he attacked Spencer’s version of Darwinian evolution, in which life evolves from organic chemicals through improbable, random events over a long time. Hoyle concluded that a “superior intelligence” is guiding life in a computerized sort of way. He wrote, “The religious side is wrong because it wants to see too much too soon. The scientific side is wrong because it lacks the imagination to see what might be possible.”

Physicist Paul Davies has thought about what might be possible. In an 1983 NEW SCIENTIST article, he noted that “the new physics projects God outside matter, space, and time into the abstract world of logic, mathematics, and physical law. It has no need of a Creator in the traditional sense, but seems to demand some guiding influence located, as it were, above nature.” Astronomer Alan Batten said in 1984 that the question of how the universe came to be cannot be separated from questions of whether it has a purpose and what our relationship to it might be. Batten also claims our secular scientific society may have “called forth Creationism as a corrective to itself.” “My impression is that many of the biologists who write about evolution for the ordinary public are committed in their minds to the belief that the questions ‘Why?’ has no answer. [They believe] evolution is purposeless, and life and Man have arisen only by chance.” Of course, he noted, “this is a legitimate belief for a person to hold, but that it is required by the scientific evidence is highly questionable. To hold it is as much an act of faith as to maintain the opposite.” Batten admits that science has limitations and creationists are raising legitimate questions.

Stephen Hawking, in his bestseller A BRIEF HISTORY OF TIME, outlines his own theory of an unbounded universe with neither beginning nor end, and asks, “What place then for a creator?” He thereby places a scientific understanding of physical reality on a higher plane than the religious. You may feel this is true, but as physicist Bernard d’Espagnat cautions in his book IN SEARCH OF REALITY, “Every kind of understanding need not necessarily be intellectual. Our intelligence is not transcendent. It has been formed by evolution in the same way as our muscles or our skeleton.”

In the end, Stahl suspects a “God factor” of some kind enters the mind of each person when they regard the immensity of the universe and ponder its relation to humanity. Those involved in scientific pursuits should not let the objective cloaks they wear blind them to subjective concerns. It may well be that the entire scientific enterprise represents a faith of another sort, a faith that the methods we use actually bring us closer to objective truth, whatever that is. And maybe, just maybe, this objective truth and the believers’ God are one and the same thing.

Can A Christian Be Green?

Job 38

Being a Christian and caring about the environment don't have to be mutually exclusive.

1. I can care because God cares.

2. I can be involved because of our task.

3. I can show concern because I am an heir.

4. The freedom of a plan.

a. Background environment.

b. Habitat.

c. Education.

d. Stewardship.

e. Privileges.

The Holy Spirit In the Old Testament

Job 27:3

The ancient Hebrews did not see God as a Trinity but they had a profound

awareness of God's Spirit, or "ruach." He was associated with wind and

breath and is considered holy.

The Spirit is active in two central aspects of the divine program:

1. Active in Creation.

He originated life, and sustains it. Without Spirit there is no life.

2. Active in special ways.

The Spirit gives enhanced skills, leadership abilities, physical

strength, and prophetic inspiration.

Israel's experience of the Spirit was ultimately unsatisfying. His presence

remained transient and few had direct access to him. They anticipated the day

when all Israel would have the Spirit.

#3499

*

Letting the Heavens Declare the Glory of God

Job 9:1

Johann Kepler (1571-1630) was the first scientist to accept Copernicus’ theories that the earth rotated about the sun, and he was an important forerunner of Isaac Newton in systematizing science. A devout Lutheran, Kepler was studying theology and planning to become a minister when he was called to teach mathematics in Graz, Austria. Kepler realized he could glorify God through his mathematical and astronomical studies, and his scientific notes were often mixed with prayers and praise to his Lord.

Kepler believed that there was an art and orderliness in God’s creation and that the more Christians recognized the greatness of creation, the deeper their worship would be. Didn’t God himself encourage the heathen to look carefully at creation so that they might come to know God? God created man in His image, and He wants us to recognize and know His design for the universe: “The chief aim of all investigations of the external world should be to discover the rational order and harmony which has been imposed on it by God and which He revealed to us in the language of mathematics.”

In his astronomical research, Kepler only wanted to, as he put it, “think God’s thoughts after Him.” Kepler believed that there was a mathematical precision and orderliness in the universe; the scientist’s duty was to discover what mathematical formula God had used. In Kepler’s day, scientists believed the orbits of the planets were perfectly circular, but that theory did not fit the empirical data. Kepler persisted until he could show that the orbits were ellipses, with the sun as one of the epicenters. His calculations proved Copernicus’ theory to be fact.

Through further observation, Kepler established laws for planetary velocity and for the relationship between orbital periods and the distances of planets from the sun. Kepler’s three laws for planetary motion are the basis for our understanding of the solar system today.

Throughout his scientific work, Kepler never sought any glory for himself, but always sought to bring glory to God. At the end of his life his prayer was: “I give you thanks, Creator and God, that you have given me this joy in thy creation, and I rejoice in the works of your hands. See I have now completed the work to which I was called. In it I have used all the talents you have lent to my spirit.”

Clockwork Origins?

Job 40

Philosophical foes Richard Dawkins and Phillip Johnson both miss the point of the argument from design.

Richard Dawkins is absolutely confident that science will finally accomplish what philosophy has been unable to do in more than 2,000 years -- make theism intellectually indefensible.

Dawkins, a fellow of New College at Oxford University and the author of several best-selling expositions of Darwinism, acknowledges that prior to Darwin, philosophers who rejected belief in a divine creator had no good explanation for the order and complexity of living organisms. An atheist like David Hume could only say to a theist: "I have no explanation for complex biological design. All I know is that God isn't a good explanation, so we must wait and hope that somebody comes up with a better one." According to Dawkins, Darwin supplied that better explanation and "made it possible to be an intellectually fulfilled atheist."

Dawkins is quite explicit that Darwinism is more than simply a scientific theory. In the preface to his most recent book, "River Out of Eden: A Darwinian View of Life" (the title is taken from Genesis 2:10), Dawkins writes,

Not only does the Darwinian theory command superabundant power to explain. Its economy in doing so has a sinewy elegance, a poetic beauty that outclasses even the most haunting of the world's origin myths. One of my purposes in writing this book has been to accord due recognition to the inspirational quality of our modern understanding of Darwinian life. There is more poetry in Mitochondrial Eve than in her mythological namesake.

Indeed, Dawkins is a forceful and persuasive advocate of Darwinism precisely because he does not belittle the order and complexity of the natural world that theists point to as evidence of a creator. In "The Blind Watchmaker: Why the Evidence of Evolution Reveals a Universe Without Design," Dawkins attempts to better William Paley's description of the marvelous complexity of the human eye by describing the incredible engineering wonders that make it possible for bats to "see" with their ears. Dawkins insists, however, that the "good design" seemingly apparent in human eyes and bat ears is, in fact, the product of cumulative selection working on random errors in the genetic code.

The notion of cumulative selection is at the heart of Dawkins's argument. He agrees with many theists who argue that the odds against atoms bouncing around in the void and by chance arranging themselves into a human eye or a bat's ear are too astronomical to be taken seriously. Of course, pre- Darwinian atheists like Hume argued that in an infinite amount of time anything is possible. But while this argument might satisfy a philosopher, Dawkins does not think such a response will ever satisfy one who has spent much time examining the amazing complexities of nature.

To explain such wonders it is necessary, he says, that we understand the power of cumulative selection. Cumulative selection is simply the ability of living organisms to transmit to their progeny useful errors in the genetic code while weeding out those that are harmful to the organism. While the errors in the genetic code are wholly random, the selection of small but useful changes is not random. This is the all-important difference between Humean and Darwinian explanations of biological complexity. To illustrate this difference, Dawkins considers a single line from Shakespeare's Hamlet: "Methinks it is like a weasel." The odds against a monkey producing this sentence by randomly hitting keys on a typewriter, Dawkins calculates, are "about 1 in 10,000 million million million million million million. To put it mildly, the phrase we seek would be a long time coming, to say nothing of the complete works of Shakespeare." Since a single cell is vastly more complex than this line from Shakespeare, Dawkins says that it is simply not reasonable to believe that organic cells evolved by chance in a single step.

But suppose a computer starts with a random sequence of 28 letters (the number of letters in the sentence from Hamlet, counting each space between words as a "letter") and duplicates the sequence repeatedly, but with a certain chance of random error (or "mutation") in the copying. The computer examines the mutant nonsense phrases, the progeny of the original phrase, and chooses the one that, however slightly, most resembles the target phrase ("Methinks it is like a weasel"). Or, to use a familiar game analogy, consider the difference in the odds between rolling five dice in three tries so they all are sixes and rolling a Yahtzee -- five sixes in three tries but now allowing the player to select and keep any of the dice that serve his purpose and rethrowing the others. When Dawkins wrote a program to play computer Yahtzee with "Methinks it is like a weasel" as its goal, his computer came up with the winning combination in only 43 tries.

Now there is an obvious objection to this analogy that Dawkins anticipates. While the processes inside the computer may have been random, the target phrase was supplied by Dawkins himself, not random chance. Therefore, following the analogy, if evolution is to work, it must have a target or goal supplied by an intelligent being -- not a happy conclusion from Dawkins's point of view, since he says that evolution has no long-term goal and no controlling intelligence.

To circumvent this objection, Dawkins wrote a computer program in which extremely simple stick figures randomly evolve into complex figures. Using the principle of cumulative selection, within a period of only 30 to 40 generations, amazingly lifelike pictures evolve of everything from jumping spiders to a man wearing a hat. And in this case, there never was a preselected target. This illustrates in Dawkins's mind how evolution can proceed without any goal other than the survival of the individual organism.

But this leads to a second objection. To speak of an organism's survival presupposes the existence of creatures able to reproduce. "The theory of the blind watchmaker is extremely powerful," says Dawkins, "given that we are allowed to assume replication and hence cumulative selection." Dawkins realizes that this is a big assumption because he has already told us that the complexity necessary for even a single cell to replicate itself is much greater than the odds against the chance creation of a single hemoglobin molecule or "1 with 190 noughts after it!" To which he adds, "And a hemoglobin molecule has only a minute fraction of the complexity of a living body." In other words, cumulative selection can only provide a naturalistic explanation of the complexity if replicators exist. But cumulative selection cannot, without arguing in a circle, explain the existence of primitive replicators, which are themselves astronomically complex.

At this stage, Dawkins admits that "we cannot escape the need to postulate a single-step chance event in the origin of the cumulative selection itself." While Dawkins believes the number of planets in the universe is large enough to make this single-step chance event sufficiently probable so as to have happened on at least one planet (ours), he does not hide the speculative nature of his argument at this point. "This chapter has had," he writes, "the modest aim of explaining only the kind of way in which it [the origin of life] must have happened." In other words, when it comes to the origin of life1, even Dawkins relies on philosophical arguments: Well, I don't know how life originated, but I know God isn't a good explanation.

If Dawkins represents Darwinian orthodoxy, Phillip Johnson is the Darwin establishment's most prominent critic. Johnson, a professor of law at the University of California, Berkeley, entered the evolution debate with the bestseller "Darwin on Trial." He resembles Dawkins in his ability to present his views clearly and persuasively to a large audience.

Johnson says that he approaches "the creation-evolution dispute not as a scientist but as a professor of law, which means among other things that I know something about the ways that words are used in arguments." Now one of the first things lawyers learn is that the burden of proof falls on the prosecution, not the defense. Though the title "Darwin on Trial" is ambiguous, Johnson assumes the role of a defense attorney: he does not attempt to prove theism to be true; he only attempts to show that Darwin's case against theism is unproven. He objects that the National Academy of Science's "rule against negative argument automatically eliminates the possibility that science has not discovered how complex organisms could have developed. However wrong the current answer may be, it stands until a better answer arrives. It is as if a criminal defendant were not allowed to present an alibi unless he could also show who did commit the crime."

Further, the Academy of Science rules out a priori supernatural explanations as antithetical to the scientific method. Its position is "heads I win, tails you lose." If theists provide a supernatural explanation for biological complexity, naturalistic scientists rule such an explanation out of court. On the other hand, if creationists limit themselves to pointing out weaknesses in the evolutionists' arguments, evolutionists complain that creationists have no positive account to explain the evidence.

Johnson's frustration with the academy is understandable given his reliance on Karl Popper's philosophy of science. The last chapter of Darwin on Trial, "Science and Pseudoscience," begins by asserting that "Karl Popper provides the indispensable starting point for understanding the difference between science and pseudoscience." According to Popper, the mark of real science is that it makes risky predictions that open its theories to the possibility of falsification.Pseudoscientific theories, such as those of Marxists and Freudians, are formulated in such a way that no matter what occurs, they win. As Johnson wittily summarizes, "If wages fell this was because the capitalists were exploiting the workers, as Marx predicted they would, and if wages rose this was because the capitalists were trying to save a rotten system with bribery, which was also what Marxism predicted. A psychoanalyst could explain why a man would commit murder -- or, with equal facility, why the same man would sacrifice his own life to save another." Such "heads I win, tails you lose" arguments clearly deserve the label "pseudoscience."

So is the Academy of Science's defense of evolution itself a species of pseudoscience? The issues raised here go to the very heart of much-debated questions in the philosophy of science. One event in the history of science illustrates the problem.

By the late nineteenth century, Newtonian physics reigned without rivals. So much was this the case, that when slight irregularities (from the Newtonian point of view) in the orbit of Uranus were observed by astronomers, they refused to believe that Newton's theory was false, or even in need of correction. Instead, they calculated where and how big a heretofore unobserved planet would have to be in order to account for the irregularities of Uranus's orbit. Shortly thereafter, astronomers pointed their telescopes to the predicted location and were rewarded with the discovery of Neptune.

A short time later, similar irregularities in the orbit of Mercury were observed. Following the same procedures, theoretical astronomers calculated where the missing planet would have to be according to Newton. Given the previous successes of Newtonian physics, it did not seem to be an act of hubris when the missing planet was given a name, Vulcan, before it was ever observed.2

But this time, there was a difference. Observations never revealed another missing planet. However, this "negative evidence" was not considered either a reason to stop looking for Vulcan or proof that Newton's theories were imperfect until Einstein came up with an alternative naturalistic explanation for Mercury's irregularities.

It is events such as this in the history of science that have led to the negative-evidence rule and the requirement that naturalistic alternatives be provided. Philosophically speaking, it is not obvious that the Academy of Science has stacked the deck in its favor. After all, as physicist Owen Gingerich observes, "science's great success has been in the production of a remarkably coherent view of nature rather than in an intricately dovetailed set of proofs."3 Though followers of Popper had hoped to discover a clean demarcation between the sciences and philosophy, cases like this have led most scientists and philosophers to conclude that the division between cutting-edge science and difficult philosophical questions -- such as whether the universe is the result of chance or design -- is pretty fuzzy.

Whatever one thinks about the purely scientific case for evolution, few Christians would disagree with Johnson that evolution has become the idol of many moderns. As we noted earlier, when it comes to biogenesis, even Dawkins becomes openly philosophical: "The present lack of a definitely accepted account of the origin of life should certainly not be taken as a stumbling block for the whole Darwinian world view."

As Dawkins here admits, and as Johnson will not allow us to ignore, evolution is more than a purely scientific theory; it has become part and parcel of what might be called the "naturalistic popular culture." In "Scientific American," "The Sciences", and other leading magazines, in the steadily increasing output of science books for the general reader (by Dawkins, Stephen Jay Gould, and a host of other scientists who are also skillful writers), in television documentaries such as the Pbs-aired "The Human Quest" -- in these and many other forums (including countless classrooms), the compelling evidence for evolution and the dubious dogmas of naturalism are presented as a seamless whole, under the unchallengeable authority of Science.

In his new book, "Reason in the Balance: The Case Against Naturalism in Science, Law, and Education," Johnson clearly demonstrates this cultural connection between evolution and naturalism. He also addresses the difficult legal and political issues that such a connection raises. If evolution is more than a scientific explanation of the observed data, then how should evolution be taught in the public schools? And how should Christian scientists respond to dominance of their disciplines by naturalistic philosophy? Johnson's advice to Christians seems to be this: fight in the courts and actively resist in the academy.

While the general thrust of Johnson's position is clear, several of the particulars need further clarification. In the opening chapter of Reason in the Balance, Johnson reviews the 1987 Supreme Court decision Edwards v. Aguillard, in which the Court declared unconstitutional the Arkansas statute requiring that creation science be taught whenever evolution was taught. He writes, "suppose the basic claim of 'creationism' is that God created us, whether he did so suddenly a few thousand years ago or gradually over a much longer period of time. Suppose further that creationists claim that certain features of living organisms, such as the extreme complexity of even the simplest living organism, give support to their claim that a preexisting intelligence was necessary for biological creation" (emphasis added). Having clarified the essential issue, Johnson argues that it was the Court's naturalistic bias, not sound legal reasoning, that drove them to forbid the teaching of creationism in public schools.

The problem with Johnson's argument is that his two essential suppositions are quite different. The first supposition focuses on the fact that God created us, not on how he created us. It defines a position that theistic evolutionists such as Nancy Murphey, William Hasker, and Owen Gingerich could all endorse. As someone said of astronomy in Galileo's time, the Bible tells us how to go to heaven, not how the heavens go. The second supposition, on the other hand, is really a summation of Paley's teleological argument for the existence of God, a standard topic in Introduction to Philosophy courses taught to college freshmen around the nation.

Commenting on the Court's decision, Johnson writes, "the majority opinion in Edwards said that the state was not only permitted to exclude the creationist viewpoint but was required to do so -- and not because belief in a supernatural Creator is necessarily false or irrational, but precisely because it is religious. The logic implies that creationist arguments must be excluded regardless of the merits and that students may hear only the naturalistic viewpoint on the subject of origins." But what is "the creationist viewpoint": the first or the second supposition? It cannot be the first, because theistic evolutionists have no desire to restrict the current teaching of biological evolution. But if it is the second, then Johnson is implicitly requesting that standard issues in college philosophy courses be taught in high-school biology courses. And if the unbiased treatment of Paley's argument is to be maintained in the public schools, then philosophers will insist that it be balanced with something like David Hume's "Dialogue on Natural Religion."

The issue is further complicated when Johnson writes, "Science always has to fight the prevalent bias of the age if it is to be free to follow the evidence where it leads. In the past, geology had to free itself from religious bias so that it could consider possibilities like an old Earth or the occurrence of ice ages rather than a worldwide flood. That job was accomplished long ago, and now scientific thought is restricted by naturalistic bias." Comments such as this, repudiating the ten-thousand-year-old Earth and the flood geology of the Institute for Creation Research (ICR), have led scholars such as Mark Noll and Alvin Plantinga to speak of Johnson as a more reasonable critic of evolution than his young-Earth predecessors. But to say that the refutation of young-Earth creationism was accomplished long ago is itself problematic. Does Johnson simply mean to say that there is no credible scientific evidence in favor of a young Earth? Or does he mean that young-Earth creationists are as nonexistent as flat-earthers?

Either interpretation causes difficulties for Johnson. To say that almost no one believes in a young Earth is simply false. According to a 1991 Gallup poll, 47 percent of Americans believe that God made man -- as man is now -- in a single act of creation, and within the last ten thousand years.4 And, of course, this is the position taken by the ICR.

The other interpretation, however, causes even greater difficulties for Johnson's criticism of the Edwards decision. He writes, "If a high-school curriculum incorporates the subject of biological origins, and if supernatural creation is a rational alternative to naturalistic evolution within that subject, then it is bad educational policy as well as viewpoint discrimination to try to keep students ignorant of an alternative that may be true. Of course, this reasoning does not apply if the excluded alternative is irrational or demonstrably false. We do not give the view of the Flat Earth Society a respectful hearing in geography classes." The problem for Johnson is that the Arkansas case was about a law that defined creation science as including "the occurrence of a worldwide flood and a relatively recent inception of the Earth and living kinds."5 Now, Johnson cannot have it both ways: he cannot reject flood geology and a young Earth as refuted long ago and still find the Supreme Court guilty of bias in requiring that such positions not be taught in biology courses.

It seems that Johnson has at least three distinct understandings of what constitutes a creationist. The first (theistic evolution) is simply the belief that God created the Earth and everything on it irrespective of how or when he accomplished this.6 The second (Paley's argument) is the belief that the biological complexity exhibited on Earth can only be adequately accounted for by positing the existence of a supernatural creator. The third (icr's position, and the most common meaning of "creationist") entails belief in a universal flood and a relatively recent creation of the Earth.

While Johnson moves back and forth among these three definitions as the argument necessitates, it is only the second that he does not himself repudiate in other places. As we have just seen, he explicitly rejects flood geology and a young Earth. And concerning theistic evolution, he has said that this "manner of thinking is profoundly atheistic.... That is why I think the appropriate term for the accommodationist position is not 'theistic evolution' but rather theistic naturalism. Under either name, it is a disastrous error."7

Though Johnson's conclusion is, in one sense, diametrically opposed to Dawkins's viewpoint, in another sense he and Dawkins are not that far removed: both assume that a current biological theory will have substantial effect on a perennial philosophical issue. Dawkins explicitly sets out to refute Paley's explanation of biological complexity by replacing it with cumulative selection (biological evolution), while Johnson's defense of creationism is, in fact, no more than an attempt to save Paley's argument from the attack launched by Dawkins. Both assume (wrongly, I believe) that the argument from design as formulated by Paley is an essential element of Christianity.

Theistic evolution, Johnson argues, is fundamentally misguided in its willingness to accommodate Christianity to the course of modern science. In Johnson's mind, accommodation is but the first step to appeasement, and we all know what happens when we try to appease a tyrant. As William Jennings Bryan once said, theistic evolution is an anesthetic used to remove a Christian's faith without pain. Once it is assumed that evolution and Christianity are compatible, there is a slippery slope where the slide to atheism is unstoppable. The assumption of compatibility implies that one day science might incontestably prove that evolution is true. And if this occurs, then sooner or later Christianity will be viewed as merely the disposable belief of a few religious fanatics.8

The argument here is historical. Once people accept a scientific explanation for what was long held to be the result of divine agency, then, within a few generations or centuries, belief in God's power is seriously eroded. Early Christians prayed to God for healing. Now that we know about bacteria, we ask a doctor for penicillin.Prayer for healing seems natural to moderns only after doctors determine there is nothing more medicine can do.

This is a sad truth in the history of Christendom. As our knowledge of God's creation has increased, our trust in the Creator has decreased. But science itself is not the problem. Luke records the time Paul and Silas were praying and singing hymns to God while in prison, when all of a sudden the gates of the prison flew open. In his description (Acts 16:26), Luke makes no attempt to hide the fact that it was an earthquake that caused the gates to open. And why should he? If this event in Paul and Silas's missionary work is recorded in Scripture to increase our trust and confidence in God, there is no reason to hide, ignore, or explain away the efficient cause God used to do his will.

There are two compatible understandings of the events recorded in Acts: first, its efficient cause was the shifting of geological plates along fault lines; second, it was a display of God's providence and his sovereign control of creation. The second explanation adds to without subtracting from the first.Many theistic evolutionists defend an analogous understanding of God's creation of the universe and all that it contains.

When Asa Gray, a Harvard professor of botany, friend of Darwin, avowed Christian, and perhaps the first explicit theistic evolutionist, made similar arguments, his critics replied, "Professor Gray simply says that development [evolution] is harmonious with theism. But we want what will prove theism."9 Professor Johnson has the same desire. If human existence, he says in Christianity Today, is merely "a combination of chance events and impersonal natural laws ...[then] Christian theists would deserve their marginalized status in the academic world." He repeats this point in "Reason in the Balance." Theistic evolution (a position Johnson prefers to call "methodological naturalism") "seems to rely on 'faith' -- in the sense of belief without evidence," and that, he says, "is why theists are a marginalized minority in the academic world and always on the defensive."

While Dawkins and Johnson represent important positions in the ongoing debate over evolution, they do not exhaust the alternatives. There is, for example, a powerful alternative viewpoint from the Thomistic tradition.10 Thomistic Christians share Johnson's distaste for those who, out of timidity or ignorance, leave their faith at the laboratory or library door. But they would insist that there is no incompatibility between the best scientific account of the efficient causes operative in the natural world and the psalmist's assurance that "The heavens are telling the glory of God; and the firmament proclaims his handiwork" (Ps. 19:1). And when scientists leave their area of expertise to boast that biology will soon discover the answer to all our questions about where humans came from and where they are going, then they are engaged in philosophical speculation that Thomists are quick to critique.

In doing so, Thomistic Christians follow Aquinas's dictum that grace always completes nature, it never contradicts nature. Thus, they argue that evolution and theism are compatible, but that an evolutionary explanation itself requires a theistic foundation.11 Like all foundations, it is not on the same level as the house it supports.

Johnson's confusion, from the Thomistic point of view, is that he looks for evidence of theism in the house itself -- that is, the chain of efficient causes leading to the existence of life on Earth. Hence, he points to gaps in the fossil record and "the failure of molecular evidence to confirm either the reality of common ancestors or the adequacy of the Darwinist mechanism." Thomists, on the other hand, argue that the evidence of final causation is conceptual and is observed at a higher level of analysis. Final causes do not exist between efficient causes or at the beginning of a temporal series of efficient causes. Instead, they are the logically necessary foundation of efficient causes. Any attempt to make science self-sufficient is doomed to failure.

Whatever one thinks about the purely scientific case for evolution, few Christians would disagree with Johnson that evolution has become the idol of many moderns. As we noted earlier, when it comes to biogenesis, even Dawkins becomes openly philosophical: "The present lack of a definitely accepted account of the origin of life should certainly not be taken as a stumbling block for the whole Darwinian world view."

As Dawkins here admits, and as Johnson will not allow us to ignore, evolution is more than a purely scientific theory; it has become part and parcel of what might be called the "naturalistic popular culture." In "Scientific American," "The Sciences", and other leading magazines, in the steadily increasing output of science books for the general reader (by Dawkins, Stephen Jay Gould, and a host of other scientists who are also skillful writers), in television documentaries such as the Pbs-aired "The Human Quest" -- in these and many other forums (including countless classrooms), the compelling evidence for evolution and the dubious dogmas of naturalism are presented as a seamless whole, under the unchallengeable authority of Science.

In his new book, "Reason in the Balance: The Case Against Naturalism in Science, Law, and Education," Johnson clearly demonstrates this cultural connection between evolution and naturalism. He also addresses the difficult legal and political issues that such a connection raises. If evolution is more than a scientific explanation of the observed data, then how should evolution be taught in the public schools? And how should Christian scientists respond to dominance of their disciplines by naturalistic philosophy? Johnson's advice to Christians seems to be this: fight in the courts and actively resist in the academy.

While the general thrust of Johnson's position is clear, several of the particulars need further clarification. In the opening chapter of Reason in the Balance, Johnson reviews the 1987 Supreme Court decision Edwards v. Aguillard, in which the Court declared unconstitutional the Arkansas statute requiring that creation science be taught whenever evolution was taught. He writes, "suppose the basic claim of 'creationism' is that God created us, whether he did so suddenly a few thousand years ago or gradually over a much longer period of time. Suppose further that creationists claim that certain features of living organisms, such as the extreme complexity of even the simplest living organism, give support to their claim that a preexisting intelligence was necessary for biological creation" (emphasis added). Having clarified the essential issue, Johnson argues that it was the Court's naturalistic bias, not sound legal reasoning, that drove them to forbid the teaching of creationism in public schools.

The problem with Johnson's argument is that his two essential suppositions are quite different. The first supposition focuses on the fact that God created us, not on how he created us. It defines a position that theistic evolutionists such as Nancy Murphey, William Hasker, and Owen Gingerich could all endorse. As someone said of astronomy in Galileo's time, the Bible tells us how to go to heaven, not how the heavens go. The second supposition, on the other hand, is really a summation of Paley's teleological argument for the existence of God, a standard topic in Introduction to Philosophy courses taught to college freshmen around the nation.

Commenting on the Court's decision, Johnson writes, "the majority opinion in Edwards said that the state was not only permitted to exclude the creationist viewpoint but was required to do so -- and not because belief in a supernatural Creator is necessarily false or irrational, but precisely because it is religious. The logic implies that creationist arguments must be excluded regardless of the merits and that students may hear only the naturalistic viewpoint on the subject of origins." But what is "the creationist viewpoint": the first or the second supposition? It cannot be the first, because theistic evolutionists have no desire to restrict the current teaching of biological evolution. But if it is the second, then Johnson is implicitly requesting that standard issues in college philosophy courses be taught in high-school biology courses. And if the unbiased treatment of Paley's argument is to be maintained in the public schools, then philosophers will insist that it be balanced with something like David Hume's "Dialogue on Natural Religion."

The issue is further complicated when Johnson writes, "Science always has to fight the prevalent bias of the age if it is to be free to follow the evidence where it leads. In the past, geology had to free itself from religious bias so that it could consider possibilities like an old Earth or the occurrence of ice ages rather than a worldwide flood. That job was accomplished long ago, and now scientific thought is restricted by naturalistic bias" (emphasis added). Comments such as this, repudiating the ten-thousand-year-old Earth and the flood geology of the Institute for Creation Research (ICR), have led scholars such as Mark Noll and Alvin Plantinga to speak of Johnson as a more reasonable critic of evolution than his young-Earth predecessors. But to say that the refutation of young-Earth creationism was accomplished long ago is itself problematic. Does Johnson simply mean to say that there is no credible scientific evidence in favor of a young Earth? Or does he mean that young-Earth creationists are as nonexistent as flat-earthers?