I Believe In Creation Series

Call Me Crazy – I Believe God Created

11/15/15

Genesis 1

Sunday AM

For 2 weeks we’ve been in a series entitled, Call Me Crazy – where we’ve been talking about why we believe in the reliability of the Bible and the existence for God. Today, we’re going to look at why I believe in Creation.

Contrary to what some believe, I think many of the modern findings of contemporary science help to establish the reality that science and faith are not at war – but that science, when done right, points powerfully toward the existence of God and His creative genius as described in the Bible.

There are many who’d disagree w/ me. Prominent Darwinian evolutionist William Provine of Cornell University offers (5) inescapable conclusions if Darwin’s claims were true.

1. There’s no evidence for God

2. There’s no life after death

3. There’s no foundation for right/wrong

4. There’s no ultimate meaning for life

5. People don’t really have free will

Problem for Dr. Provine is recent scientific and astrological findings have so discredited Darwin’s theory that leading scientists from all over the world are jumping ship to believe in an intelligent designer.

Paleontologically speaking, such an angle leads to a bone of contention. Yet the truth of the matter is the two ideas are not really that hard to grasp.

I A Fundamental AXIOM

Science is an attempt to interpret the facts of nature to understand our origin and way of life

Theology is an attempt to interpret the reality of God through the words of the Bible

Now the Bible says God created the universe and gave us the Bible as a means of revelation to understand who He is. This tells is that if the Bible is God’s Word, then it shouldn’t be in contradiction to God’s creation.

Any conflict b/w science and the Bible either must be attributed to man’s misunderstanding and misinterpretation of either the Bible, or science – or both Bible and science.

II The Big QUESTION

Did God make man or did man make up God? Was man created in God’s image or is God in the imagination of man? Is man just a clever creature who somehow, some way, accidentally and spontaneously emerged from prehistoric slime?

When all the theories are boiled down to the basics, we have but (2) options for belief regarding our existence – either God created or we have evolved from nothing. Genesis 1

The basic idea of creation is simple. In the beginning God created – that is, an intelligent, capable designer spoke life into existence w/ the intent of giving life meaning/purpose.

If we were being honest, Gen. 1 is a simplistic way of how life began – WHY? I think it is b/c the intent of Genesis 1 isn’t to give us a detailed accounting of how God created but to give us an appreciation for the God who created. Meaning Genesis 1 is more about God than it is about creation. This doesn’t mean Genesis 1 is ambivalent and irrelevant on the topic of creation, but that it was never intended to conclusive, literal description either.

So whether you hold to a young or old earth theory, it might make for great dialogue/debate – but no one can know w/ great certainty how this all came to be. And b/c the Bible is about God and His plan of redemption, to get caught in the weeds of 2 of the 1189 chapters would be a grave mistake.

B/c of this and mankind’s thirst to understand and explain everything, man has come up w/ all kinds of theories – and the most commonly accepted theory today is the theory of evolution.

When I speak of the big idea of evolution – I’m referring of the amoeba to man theory.

This theory was adequately described in a Time Magazine article in 1993 entitled How Life Began – New Discovers Provide Surprising Answers to Age Old Questions. The article described how scientists believe how life on earth began some 4.5 bil. yrs. ago when the earth/moon were formed. Now scientist have no idea how this happened, but assumes that somehow something happened to form our earth/moon. Once formed, the article talked about how the earth/moon were bombarded by meteors likely destroying any semblance of life several times before life finally got a grip in the form of simple, single cell creatures. These single celled creatures began to show up some 2 bil. yrs. ago and began to evolve ultimately becoming vertebrates that evolved to become became amphibians, then reptiles, to birds, to mammals and eventually homo sapiens. And that is the basic theory of macroevolution.

Chances are if you’ve been through the educational system you’ve been taught this theory in some form or another and more often than not this theory was credited to a man named Darwin. But the theory of evolution has been around much longer than Darwin. A selection-ist theory can be traced as far back as 550 b.c. to a man named Alexander of Miletus who taught that life was generated from slime that grew in pools of stagnant water.