"God did thus and such".
Instantly there will be numerous responses which are some form of (if not the exact words) "I don't believe in fairy tales. Keep your superstition off science sites."
It is an interesting claim. Most often these threads are on astronomy, biology, chemistry, environmental discussion, or something to do with evolution. The inference is that science has proven whatever point and God is a made up thing from a book of made up stories (dismissed as myth most often), that the claim being made for science is iron clad and backed up by facts whereas any and all claims about God are of course made up and devoid of evidentiary backing.
Is that true? A lot of it comes down to one question; is evolution true or is creation true? At this point it is important to define both terms.
1a : descent with modification from preexisting species : cumulative inherited change in a population of organisms through time leading to the appearance of new forms : the process by which new species or populations of living things develop from preexisting forms through successive generations Evolution is a process of continuous branching and diversification from common trunks. This pattern of irreversible separation gives life's history its basic directionality.— Stephen Jay Gouldalso : the scientific theory explaining the appearance of new species and varieties through the action of various biological mechanisms (such as natural selection, genetic mutation or drift, and hybridization) Since 1950, developments in molecular biology have had a growing influence on the theory of evolution. — Nature In Darwinian evolution, the basic mechanism is genetic mutation, followed by selection of the organisms most likely to survive.
Creation is defined as
"In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth." Genesis 1:1, NASB
A couple of things to note. In the definition of evolution, I went with Merriam Webster dictionary. I had to choose one of the hundreds of choices out there. They reference Stephen Jay Gould but could have referenced numerous others, there are competing ideas of what evolution is, how it was accomplished, and they are often mutually exclusive. We will look at that more as we go along.
In the definition of creation, this is not all the Bible claims on behalf of God. Hebrews 11:3 discusses a key creation principle, several Scriptures discuss Him stretching out the Heavens, Proverbs 8:28 discusses the springs of the deep which the submarine Alvin discovered in 1977...several thousand years after the Bible writers claimed they were there. But that is getting ahead of the story.
Lets take a look at some evidence and see if we can figure out who believes in fairy tales.
The Truth Claim
1) How things came into being
God claims to have created the Heavens and the earth.
It is hard to source this as chasing this claim to its source is impossible. Again and again you find statements along the lines of "most scientists believe" or "reputable scientists know" or something along that line. The claim is approximately 13.8 billion years ago nothing exploded into something via the Big Ban and everything in existence came from that event.
Most of these scientist hold to Naturalism; only observable, reproducible events that can be tested and falsified are genuinely scientific.
2) The means of things coming into being
This one is a tricksy Hobbit.
God claims to have neither beginning nor end. He is self-existent, outside time, space and matter. This is untestable and unknowable. Seemingly the only way of gauging this claim is to take the provable claims we see and verify their truth or falsehood. Knowing His accuracy on knowable claims can offer insight into the credibility or lack thereof of claims we cannot examine.
Science claims nothing created something. Nothing existed (or alternatively, everything that exists was compressed into the space of, depending on who you believe, the size of a pin or a peach are the two I come across most commonly; in both cases you have the same problem; where did the something come from? we can grant the same self-existent to it I would think except there is no way for it to claim that for itself) and then suddenly exploded outward in the Big Bang.
3) The means of development
God claims things were created as they are.
Gen 1:11 Then God said, "Let the earth sprout vegetation, plants yielding seed, and fruit trees on the earth bearing fruit after their kind, and trees bearing fruit with seed in them...vs 12 bearing fruit with seed in them after their kind...
The whole of Genesis 1 is a claim for how things developed. God created them in finished form. The sun and moon, the stars governing day, night, signs for seasons, days and years. This is also a claim for God inventing time.
Verses 20-21 are animals being created to reproduce after their kind. Vs 24 is more of the same. Vs 26-28 say man and woman were created as humans.
Evolution claims as the universe cooled stuff started sticking together and became planets and stars.
As the universe developed planets, on earth a primordial soup came into being, there is still debate of where, chemicals interacted and somehow started life. Random events caused that life to become carrots and dinosaurs and man and bacteria and lettuce and everything we see and everything that has gone extinct. These happened by random chance with no guiding force other than the oft made claim of natural selection wherein the things most fit to survive did so.
4) The source of the claim
Moses is the claimed author of the first 5 books of the Bible. This is important to note; he was not an eyewitness. To believe Moses wrote is the believe the Biblical flood occurred. There is one obscure claim that the Book of Jashur predates the flood and was claimed to be on the ark and Moses somehow to have used it for reference. I bring this up because this is almost assuredly a fraudulent claim made by someone so desperate to prove God true they had to invent something.
Moses lived approximately 2260 years after the claimed date of creation. In his writings, it is repeatedly claimed he spoke with God face to face. Exodus relates this repeatedly. It would seem fair to claim that God guided his writing. If God created, He would have the power to do so and it would seem He would want to guide His people in truth and did so by relating to and/or guiding Moses in his writing of how creation happened. However, this claim is, to the best of my knowledge,, nowhere made in Scripture and is something arrived at by logic.
Evolution has a much older source than you might think. Ancient philosophers in Egypt, Greece, and Phoenicia to name three, discussed forms of it as potential sources for the meaning of life. To be fair, they also had the world on the back of a turtle, or Atlas or similar devices.
More recently it was highly popularized and became part of scientific inquiry following the 1859 publication of Darwin's Origin of the Species. This claim would come 13.8 billion years into the claimed development, a hair longer than the 2260ish years between origin and claim of Scripture.
5 The credibility Question
Pierre -Simon Laplace, a French polymath who had a huge impact on the development of science, famously said, "The weight of evidence for an extraordinary claim must be proportioned to its strangeness." You have heard a modern version of this. Carl Sagan popularized it as "extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence."
For example, if I tell you that this morning for breakfast I consumed 4 pieces of French toast, 2 scrambled eggs, a glass of orange juice and 2 pieces of bacon, you might nod and say "There is a reason your stomach exceeds your hips."
Conversely, if I claim for breakfast I ate 400 pounds of steak, 6 gallons of milk, 4 dozen eggs...you might want to see pictures or video of the deed and even then would likely not believe it. If you saw multiple unedited videos of me performing this epic task and heard from 200 hundred people who had gathered in an auditorium and actually watched me do it, then you might believe it.
So lets check some credibility of both claims. For years people have claimed the Bible is a book of fables and myths. The flood is claimed false, Sodom and Gomorra being destroyed an example of Biblical falsehood, the walls of Jericho falling outward, and many more. To this day people claim Jesus never existed.
Here are some other things the Bible has been accused of getting wrong that we now know it was right about (I held this to the Old Testament and just a few because if I covered them all there would be no room for anything else)
When Abraham has dealings with camels that was a demonstrable error in the Bible as camels were not known in his time. Except...they then discovered camels actually were there prior to Abraham and after him as well. There is a figurine dated to 3000 bc of a man by a kneeling camel and another dated to 2600 bc that was found at Lagash among other evidence.
It was long claimed Moses could not have written the first five books of the Bible as he lived in pre-literate times. Then it was discovered not only had writing existed long before Moses came round but being educated in the court of the Pharaohs he would have been among the best educated people alive.
It was long claimed the Hittites did not exist. This would be a major problem as they play a massive role in the Old Testament. Then we found their library in Turkey. Not only did they exist, they were a major power.
It was long claimed David did not exist. David was a key player in the line of Christ, the source of His claim to kingship. No David, all of the New Testament falls apart. In 1994 at Tel Dan they found pottery with inscription referencing the House of David, one of several references since discovered.
We could talk about Jericho, Lions in Ninevah and Babylon, the existence of Belshazzar, Moses writing law code, the paths of the sea, the fountains of the deep, the prophecies of Daniel (including stories of Darius the Mede being shown the prophecy of himself, called by name) but to what point.
The Bible has often been accused of being false but been proven true. This has not caused a reconsideration of its accuracy by those who were wrong. Stunningly, despite the Bible showing true and them being shown in error, they use this as proof they are right about the Bible being wrong elsewhere. "See, our inquiry led us to the truth, it works, therefore we are right". Uh...the Bible was right all along.
Sadly, some people have performed fraud trying to prove the Bible true. Catholicism is a fountain of this. During the Crusades so many slivers of "the true cross" were dispensed you could build a cathedral from them. The Shroud of Turin. Oded Golan and his awfully suspicious looking things like the Joash Tablet and the James Ossuary.
Here is an important distinction. The Bible itself has zero frauds and forgeries in its pages. People looking to profit from people seeking to prove the Bible true have many.
Evolution on the other hand has a massive credibility problem. Consider Ernst Haeckel. Famously known as "Darwins Bulldog on the Continent" (also as "the Huxley of Germany" he was an early and important force in the spread of belief in evolution. His fraudulent recapitulation drawings have been in textbooks as recently as Donald Protheros Bringing Fossils to Life; An Intorduction to Paleobilogy (Columbia University Press, 2013) despite having been known to be frauds almost since their inception. This is not an outlier, this was a major figure.
I emphasize that because when looking at these things, we don't want to look at the people who are of limited knowledge. As an example Ken Ham, a noted Creationist, debated Bill Nye, a noted clown. This debate lessens seriously the credibility of Ham. If you want to engage in a scientific debate, debate a Neil De Grasse Tyson or a Kevin Leland, a Gerd B Muller, someone reputable. To debate a pop culture figure indicates A) he is credible and B) you cannot debate a serious scientist.
Contrast that with someone like astrophysics scientist Jason Lisle who debates astronomer Hugh Ross. Ross believes in evolution guided by God. He is a strong and reputable opponent who acquitted himself well for what he believes. If we are to seek truth, we don't want the softballs, we want the best each side has to offer.
Evolution meanwhile has often been claimed true only to be shown false.
Lamarckism was long thought true until in the 1930s it was shown false by new discoveries. Yeah, I know, seems weird to lead with something 90 years out of date. But you will detect a trend.
Recapitulation.
Preformationism.
Telegony.
Some guy named Darwin and pangenesis. (Gemmules)
Darwins Tree of Life.
Furthermore, in trying to figure out how life began a dizzying array of things have been suggested.
RNA first
DNA first
formed on land
formed near hot springs in the ocean
struck by rock
struck by meteors and/or comets
struck by lightning
various atmospheres
note the sheer number of guesses, assumptions, and other violations of their claim that science is only that which is observed and reproducible.
Most if not all have been discarded or should be due to insurmountable problems. Yet I still see people discussing the RNA first or DNA first paradox.
Perhaps the most famous is the Miller-Urey experiment which purports to have created life. Now, remember a few things; 1, they are trying to recreate what happened by chance by 2, carefully designed and refined experiments they continually adjusted to get the results they wanted.
They decided what they thought was in the atmosphere during the formation of life. It could not be the current atmosphere. The presence of oxygen would prevent the chains of amino acids to hold together. (Also notable is his mix of methane and ammonia are no longer believed...not many think it was a mix of carbon dioxide and nitrogen...in other words, they keep guessing what was there and claiming it as fact). However, to survive it would require oxygen...which didn't exist.
Regardless, in an impressive bit of science, they did in fact create amino acids. Amino Acids combine to produce proteins, the so-called building blocks of life.
Ah, but wait; the amino acids this carefully designed experiment produced could not, in fact, produce life. See, amino acids are "handed". They are either right handed or left handed. The original experiment produced almost 50% of each. Yet to form proteins requires only left handed amino acids. So Miller tweaked his tubes and contents and did manage to get to about 60% left handed. Not nearly enough.
Look very long and you will see Miller's experiment referenced as proof of life being able to develop by chance. It is off by orders of magnitude. There are fascinating mathematical models showing the probability of forming even the smallest chain of proteins by chance.
This has led to a hilarious counter. Let me sum up; the smallest known modern life sequence is 400 proteins which leads to the chance of it forming by chance to be a staggering 10 to the 164th power. That would be 10 with 164 zeroes after it. So the reply is to make up "well, there were simpler organisms (that we have zero proof for) that could have needed only 256 or even fewer".
Further, a frequent claim is that "well, that would be sequential but this was happening all over the place with billions of things bumping into each other so the chance is much higher."
Ah, okay. So lets examine that claim briefly. Lets say that, against all odds, of the 20 necessary amino acids needed for life (of the 300 different types), did actually assemble and not only that, assemble in the correct order to create a protein. That protein has to survive and reproduce. Multiple times. Then the corruptions of that have to turn into everything from a carrot to you. All these steps surviving and reproducing.
Really? that does not strain credibility, that a harsh atmosphere (required for a comet or meteor or lightning strike to move some combination of chemicals to beat fantastic odds to form the first protein) is gentle enough for it to survive, reproduce and change?
We then have to have mutations occur. We know overwhelming numbers of mutations are harmful. Yet we are to believe a single cell bacteria, surviving in a primordial soup that could not support life as we know it, reproducing, experiencing primarily negative mutations, somehow have enough beneficial mutations to become fish and fowl, plants and people. Where are the numbers of these amazing survivalists coming from? How, after surviving that, did they manage to die out without leaving some record of their existence? (See the fossil record)
Knowing there is no explanation for the beginning of life, many evolutionists then claim "we don't know how life started, but it doesn't matter because what we know is evolution happened, how it started is not important." This nonsense strains credibility, but we will give a look at that under point 8.
6) Could the claimed methodology have happened?
The God created claim relies on a couple of assumptions and likely numerous others we will not; first, that what we have been told is accurate, and that He has the power He claims. These two are intertwined.
The question of whether what we have been told is vital. Claim after claim in Scripture references the act of Creation as the source of its validity. Spiritual authority, historical accuracy, the meaning of Christianity itself hinge on the truth claim that God created.
Does He have the power? He certainly has demonstrated supernatural knowledge. Things such as man being of one blood, the uncountable stars, the circle of the earth, the earth hanging on nothing, the paths of the sea, the fountains of the deep, the life is in the blood, the hydrologic cycle, the idea of quarantining (check out Leviticus 13:46 and surrounding).
Essentially the question of His power comes down to how we view the evidence in front of us.
Evolution relies on guesses and assumptions for how the universe started, how life began, how it developed far enough to survive and differentiate. Like the creation claim by God, change between species has never been observed even with careful experimentation (check out the fruit fly experiment). Mathematically it is impossible, logically it makes no sense. Its strongest argument is that if evolution did not happen then God created, a thought that cannot be allowed.
The second strongest claim for evolution is something along the lines of "God does not exist, we are here, therefore evolution happened, it is just a matter of figuring out how."
7) The Logic Question
Richard Dawkins wrote the The Blind Watchmaker in 1996. On the very first page he stated, "Biology is the study of complicated things that give the appearance of having been designed for a purpose."
In fact, we see a lot of evidence that if things were not exactly as it is life on earth could not exist. This ranges from the distance of the earth from the sun to the proportional difference in difference of the earth to the moon in relation of the sun. Gravitational pull.
We also see a lot of evidence that there are actual laws of nature. Mathematics works because it always works. If you have 2 apples and someone gives you 2 more, you will always have 4 apples at that point in time. I saw an argument not long ago that this is not true.
Essentially it went like this: you have a rock in a bag. Someone drops another rock in, it breaks the first into 5 pieces. You now have 6 rocks."
Nice sleight of hand. they changed the unit of measure. one in the bag, a second enters the bag. There are two rocks in the bag. Then, they collide and split. You have now changed the circumstances. Splitting 1 into 5 will always result in having 5. Those five added to the one not split will always be 6.
Why am I pointing this out? If the universe generated by chance...where did rigid, reproducible, incontrovertible laws of math come from? Why does 2+2 not sometimes equal green? Why would we not believe them subject to change at any moment? There is nothing holding the laws we rely on together and no reason to believe they will continue to exist.
If things arose by chance they should change by chance. If a single celled organism became all that we see today why do we never see change between species today? we see change WITHIN species. In fact, there is some beautiful work being done showing how fast we can get from a Chihuahua to an English Mastiff. But if chance guides, why would we not see two chihuahuas mate and a tanrantula come out?
The common answer is that ironclad laws of nature have guided evolution...but logically, if things arose by chance, then ironclad laws make no sense. They should be chance.
Instead, everything we see shows evidence of a very careful design. Indeed, when the Scripture says in Psalm 139:14 "I am fearfully and wonderfully made" it is on my mind every time I take medicine. I love modern medicine. It can do some great things. I had high blood pressure. They tried various meds until they found one that works. And it does work. It also doesn't work. While it controls my blood pressure, it "breaks" other things. After being on it for a while, it caused some water problems, causing me to take a second pill to fix that. Which it did...but it dropped my potassium levels. So then I had to take potassium pills. The human body is put together in such intricate detail that everything is intricately connected and we are still learning more about things.
Note that I am unequivocally not a believer in intelligent design. That movement tries to straddle the line between evolution and millions of years and believing Gods claims. The aforementioned Hugh Ross is a prime example of this belief system.
But that is an aside. Logically, if we are put together by chance and random happenings mystically selected for advantage, all the body should not be so interdependent.
8_ Upstream or downstream
If God created, we can easily go either direction. God created Adam. We have near continuous records from that moment until now. We know how man was formed. We know how animals were formed. We know how plants were formed. We know how the universe itself was formed.
Conversely, we can work backwards. We can start today and go back to the beginning.
Contract this with evolution. It cannot start at the beginning. Indeed, I may do another of these showing the complete guesswork underpinning belief on how the stars and planets formed. Nor can it start at the present and work backwards, showing evidence each step of the way. The furthest they can go back are Neanderthals...a group that has the same appearance, structure, anatomy, habits, and dna as we have...in other words, humans. It is amazing when you see the claims that humans and Neanderthals co-existed and mated , recent discoveries show they had art, tools... they are indistinguishable from humans right down to skeletal structure falling within norms of humans. They are different because...we are told so.
You can neither work backwards nor forwards to see evolution in action.
This is hardly a comprehensive look at these issues. Indeed, this is a distillation of hundreds of hours of reading books by noted people on both sides of the issues, watching their videos. Thinking on it. Reading more. Finding objections, explanations, counter explanations, counter counter explanations.
I encourage you to look at these things but don't look at just anyone. I will leave you with the story of one video suggested to me by someone as a "powerful argument that Christianity is a hallucination". In it, this person starts by asking what notable doctrine is changed if only Paul and Peter saw Jesus after the resurrection. He posits none. He then goes on to say that if only two people saw Jesus after the resurrection, consider this; Peter "saw" him from a prison cell and Paul saw a great light. The takeaway is that all of Christianity might depend on nothing but two hallucinations.
Now, this grade school level error is pretty easy to pick apart; here are a few ways. One, John also claims to have seen Jesus. Two, Jesus appeared multiple times to the apostles, and over 500 hundred people in another appearance, to James and the apostles multiple times. So his argument is "if you ignore the claims to document multiple appearances, and the claims of two people who died for their belief, and all the time they spent with Jesus prior to Hs resurrection, and all the other elements of the Bible proven true, then this might be false."
A second would be a guy named Aron Ra who attempts to discredit the Bible with wisdom such as "bats aren't birds". Well played. First off, basic textual research tells us that the Bible never claims they are (Lev 11:13 and 19) where the word used was "owph" which means "owner of a wing". One need not even get into the artificiality of Linnean classification to see the flaw in this.
It is a waste of time to look at people like this; spend your time with the forefront.
A couple of resources I strongly recommend are Spike Psarris, former engineer in the US military space program, and Jason Lisle, an "astrophysicist with a PH.D in physics and astronomy (with a minor in Mathmatics) from Ohio Wesleyan University and masters and PhD in astrophysics from University of Colorado at Boulder.
You will find a lot of back and forth on things if you know where to look. I just encourage you to look at the best.
When I look at the body of evidence, on the one hand I find a claim that has been backed up with evidence numerous times and never contradicted.
On the other hand I find a patchwork of guesses, assumptions, errors, and constant need for adjustment. It is not a hard call.
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