In today's blog we will begin to explore several creation worldviews or belief paradigms:
Intelligent Design
Theistic Evolution
Progressive Creationism
Gap Theory or Ruin-Restoration Theory
Biblical CreationismFirst, we will look at the basic questions of life. You can ignore these questions and just live your life the way you want, but you are traveling down a slippery slope toward destruction. Pr 14:12 There is a way which seems right unto a man, but the end thereof are the ways of death.
Who am I? An animal with higher intelligence evolved from the primordial soup? Am I made in the image and likeness of God? Am I fearfully and wonderfully made, or just a cosmic accident? Do you believe Gen 1:27, Ps 139:14 or your Biology teacher?
Why am I here? Does my existence have a purpose? Is there really a God and he loves me? Can I trust in the Bible verses John 3:16, Romans 5:8, Titus 3:4-7?
What is going to happen to me when I die? Is this all there is: struggle, suffering, maybe a few happy days, then you die? Is there any way I can know how to go to heaven? Do I need to believe in Jesus to be saved? Can I believe the Bible’s answer? Rom 3:23, Rom 6:23, John 3:3, John 14:6, 1 John 5:13
You basically have two worldview choices: creation or evolution. However many people try to mix these worldviews, but we shall see that these mixed worldviews are all compromises. The Bible says God formed man out of the dust of the earth; evolution says we evolved from apes. How can you believe in God and evolution at the same time? As we shall see, you must twist the Bible interpretation of days, add gaps, or have ape-creatures before Adam was created. Let's look at some creation worldviews. First Intelligent design:
Intelligent Design Points to Creation but not the Bible
Intelligent Design avoids bringing God or the Bible into consideration. Many intelligent design proponents do not believe in God. Most intelligent design proponents believe in some type of directed evolution.
The arguments for intelligent design are very compelling, for example the irreducible complexity of a bacterial flagellant. The complex cells could not have evolved by random chance; they must have been designed.
Scientists have trained multitudes of telescopes toward the heavens searching for signs of extraterrestrial life. If they receive a signal with a little information, for example a set of numbers in a geometric progression, 1,1,2,3,5,8,13,21 it would prove an intelligent being sent the message.
Meanwhile, in the genetics lab, scientists find an intelligent, non-random, reproducible code in our DNA and conclude there is no intelligent design in life and fight to keep this information out of the classroom.
I attended an Intelligent Design conference at Arizona State University and at the end of the conference a student asked, “Is the Intelligent Designer the God of the Bible?” The professor said, “Oh No, we do not want to offend anyone by bringing religion into the discussion.” So we see this is a compromised worldview. We must lead people to God or all this scientific discovery will be meaningless. We can however use a lot of information from Intelligent Design to refute evolution before we present the case for creation.
My next Blog will discuss Theistic Evolution.