A Creator or An Eternal Mass of Nothing

The topic of evolution vs. the concept of a creator is one that is much too complicated for me to take up here. The emphasis in that sentence is not on the here but on the me- i.e. I am not smart enough to debate the fine points of intelligent design, nor am I detailed enough to be able to pick apart the problems that are supposedly apparent in evolution. This is not to say that I have not had discussions about evolution, nor does it mean that I am totally uninformed of this debate. My expertise, undoubtedly, is very scant, as I have probably read about five books about the subject of evolution in my life time. I have also taken a class about the subject of creationism (albeit not a very good one), and I have attended a debate in the Atlanta area between William Dembski (Intelligent Design proponent) and Michael Ruse (Evolutionary Agnostic who is a professor at Florida State).I have grown up in this culture, of course, and have been educated through our public school systems (which is why I write so poorly). As you can see, I am not qualified to give a dissertation on the details of science, but I have been given by God (or natural selection, if you don’t want to blame God for my stupidity) a brain to discern some logical conclusions about science and the bible, and that is basically what I would like to write about.

Premiere to this discussion, I would like to say that my belief is that God created everything. My belief in this, once all of the debates of the books have cleared, comes down to just a few things that I would like to share:
(1) I believe that God created everything, because I believe in the truth of Scripture.
This statement is very subjective in that my belief is based on my personal faith in the bible. This is not the only thing, but it certainly is the main reason why I believe in God’s creation. The bible has never been disproved or shown to be inconsistent in what it has declared. It could also be argued by those who disagree that it has never been proved to be indisputably correct, either, and this is a truth I concede. However, the possibility of its veracity must, at least, be considered.

(2) I believe that God created everything, because I am able to observe intelligent design in his creation.
I look at the sky and I see a painter; I look at the mountains and I see an architect; I look at the ocean and I see a chemist; I look at the animals and I see an engineer; and I look at humanity and I see God. This is what I observe when I look at the world in which we live. It tells a story about the one who created it. This is why the Psalmist says “the heavens declare your glory and the skies the work of your hands; day unto day they utter speech and night unto night, they give knowledge.” The great Apostle Paul accentuates this fact when he declares to the Roman Christians that the creation is enough to tell humanity that there is a God, and that because of this, they “are without excuse.”

(3) I believe that God created everything, because I see no conflict between Scripture and science.
Does this mean that evolution and a creating God can coexist, so that God started things, but used the process of evolution to bring this about? I personally do not believe that this is what happened, but I do believe that it is possible for the two to co-exist. There have been many Theistic Evolutionists who believed both in God and the theory of evolution. While I do not agree with their conclusions, I am able to see how they might have come to those conclusions. Francis Schaeffer wrote a book called No Final Conflict, in which he talked about some puzzling questions regarding the creation of the universe. His point was that there can be disagreement between Christians who value both the truthfulness of Scripture, as well as the discoveries of science. An excerpt from that book, I think, will aid in this discussion, as it is a list of things of which there is room for disagreement concerning the reconciliation of science and scripture:

1. There is a possibility that God created a “grown-up” universe.
2. There is a possibility of a break between Genesis 1:1 and 1:2 or between 1:2 and 1:3.
3. There is a possibility of a long day in Genesis 1.
4. There is a possibility that the flood affected the geological data.
5. The use of the word “kinds” in Genesis 1 may be quite broad.
6. There is a possibility of the death of animals before the fall.
7. Where the Hebrew word “bara” is not used there is the possibility of sequence from previously existing things.

Schaeffer does not necessarily agree with any of these conclusions, but he says that they are theoretically possible and should be allowed in the area of Christian liberty. I am thankful for Schaeffer’s clarity about this, because this issue, to me, is not “a hill worth dying on.” As I seek to reach the culture, I will continue to hold out God as Creator, but I will not get bogged down in the quagmire of literary debates about the literalness of the Genesis details, and I will attempt not to become a distraction by infecting them with my narrow-mindedness. If I seek to build these bridges, while holding to the integrity of Scripture, I have hopefully pointed them to God, and not to a mass of argumentative nothingness.