Creation Blessings in Church

Woe is me for my children are more concerned about timelines
Than the system with which I established my creation.

I made the rain to fall for free
Upon the mountain to capture it
For the tree upon the crag
For the rock to cup it
For the goat to drink it
For the human to milk it
For the cat to drink it.
For the bladder to piss it
For the heat to evaporate it
For the sky to gather it.

I gave creation for all to give for all to receive.

But the church is a churning machine.
Take the tithes
Take the volunteers
Take the hopes
Take the land
Take the tax exemptions
And churn, and churn and churn
And regurgitate into something lacking divinity.

Into salaries
Into empty buildings
Into bureaucracies,
Into doctrines
Into death
Where grace is a paltry thing:
A spirit without substance;
A hope never realized.

Purpose of Creation

Then God said, "Let the earth sprout vegetation: plants yielding seed, and fruit trees on the earth bearing fruit after their kind with seed in them"; and it was so. The earth brought forth vegetation, plants yielding seed after their kind, and trees bearing fruit with seed in them, after their kind; and God saw that it was good.  Genesis 1:11-12

When my son was very young, my parents bought him a Brio table.  It was about two feet high, four by three feet in area, and it had a four inch lip around it so the Brio train pieces wouldn’t fall off.  The center of it had a river, a road and other designs painted on it.  It was nice, but not especially pretty.  When it was clean, it looked decidedly empty. 

Almost the instant the table reached home, it was filled with Brio pieces, some connected, some strewn about, awaiting their turn to be a part of play.  And this is the state the table was for years, until at last it was replaced by a computer and it was no longer needed.   It was cleared, the pieces packed away and given to another child who would spend his young years building and rebuilding train tracks.

Recently, someone “donated” (e.g. abandoned) a Brio table at our church facility.  There were no tracks or bridges or trains, just the table, all made and set up.  It looked so lonely, so empty.  Having seen this kind of table filled for so many years it seemed strange for it to sit there, without purpose, without life.

I wonder if this is how God saw the world.  He had separated light and darkness, established the sun moon and stars, the sea and land were in their proper places.  I wonder if he looked out at this creation and said, “It’s so empty.  I mean, it’s pretty enough but without movement, without stuff to play with there’s really nothing there. “

So God filled the land and filled the sea and filled the sky so that the world wouldn’t seem so bland.  Because what is a whole world if you don’t have anything to play with?

He waters the mountains from His upper chambers; The earth is satisfied with the fruit of His works.

He causes the grass to grow for the cattle, And vegetation for the labor of man, So that he may bring forth food from the earth,

And wine which makes man's heart glad, So that he may make his face glisten with oil, And food which sustains man's heart.

The trees of the LORD drink their fill, The cedars of Lebanon which He planted,

Where the birds build their nests, And the stork, whose home is the fir trees.

The high mountains are for the wild goats; The cliffs are a refuge for the shephanim.

Psalm 104:13-18 

Now I have to make a confession that my previous portrayal of God is inadequate.  Yes, he certainly wanted to fill the earth with life, but it wasn’t spontaneous.  Certainly he wanted moving parts in his world to play with, but it was much better planned than I presented above.

To a certain degree, the battle between science and religion in terms of creation has less to do with whether God was involved in creation, and more with the timing of the planning.  Did God, in one fell swoop, create all things, great and small and that one great plan established all things for all time?  Or was creation done by the seat of God’s pants, one piece at a time, and the process of creation is still going on, even now?  Theologians and fundamentalists have argued over this, but there is not real clear answer in the Bible. 

What is clear, however, is that in the planning God established the world and life to work together.  It wasn’t just that God woke up one day and decided to create the world.  Poof!  There it is!  And the next day he woke up and said, “Hmm.  Something’s missing,” as if he were a cook figuring out a missing ingredient for a soup and determining that Life was the missing ingredient.  Life and the world were made to work together.  Whether they were made at the same time is insignificant.  But the world was made to sustain life and life was made to live in the world.

There are basic ingredients to sustaining life.  The Bible mentions food, water and shelter.  Of course, most life also needs oxygen and carbon dioxide, a certain temperature range and protection from the rays and objects in space.  God made the world specifically in order to sustain the life he desired.  This world was created with life in mind.

There are other ideas of what life might be like.  Perhaps there is a kind of intelligent life that could be gaseous.  Certainly most life found in the ocean are of a very different type than us mammals (dolphins, whales and their kin excepted).  A wider array of potential life could be found.  But life was made to be sustained in this particular world.

When God created the world, he created it to be sustainable.  When God said that creation was “good” he was, at the very least, speaking of a world and life that could sustain each other, and they would. 

It is fascinating that humanity has sometimes forsaken this basic model of sustainability, not only for the world at large, but for others in their own species.  If someone is hungry or thirsty or without shelter, a large portion of humanity says, “It’s not my problem,” as if mutual sustainability wasn’t something in our very nature.

Not only is mutual sustainability part of our nature, it is in the very DNA of the earth itself.  Life supports the world and the world supports life.  The mountains provide homes for the goats and bones from dead creatures create limestone, which builds the world.  And it is the responsibility of humanity to sustain creation, even as creation sustains humanity.  It is, if possible even more, the responsibility for humanity to sustain humanity.  Because if we do not, we do not even have ourselves.  To ignore our sister in need is to vote against our own existence.

O LORD, how many are Your works! In wisdom You have made them all; The earth is full of Your possessions.

There is the sea, great and broad, In which are swarms without number, Animals both small and great.

There the ships move along, And Leviathan, which You have formed to sport in it.

Psalm 104:24-26

The great and powerful sea is the work of God.  But the greatest of the creatures in the sea is Leviathan.

Mind you, few of humanity has ever seen Leviathan, yet we are told some of this creature in the Bible.  It is a creature that lives, not in the oceans that remain on the earth, but in the waters above, in the spirit world, where it lives with other sea dragons, powerful and wise and terrible.

In Job 41, we have a poetic but detailed description of this creature:

Around his teeth there is terror.

Better not to get too close to the mouth, then.

 ¹⁵ "His strong scales are his pride, Shut up as with a tight seal.

 ¹⁶ "One is so near to another That no air can come between them.         

Very well made.  Like a tortoise shell, or a Tupperware bowl.

  ¹⁸ "His sneezes flash forth light…

That must be some pretty bad cold.

 ¹⁹ "Out of his mouth go burning torches; Sparks of fire leap forth.

 ²⁰ "Out of his nostrils smoke goes forth As from a boiling pot and burning rushes.

 ²¹ "His breath kindles coals, And a flame goes forth from his mouth.

Wow, that’s what I call morning breath.  I’ve had some horrible gingivitis in my time, but I’ve never had it dark and flaming out of my mouth.  This is not the kind of creature I think I want to be near. 

²⁵ "When he raises himself up, the mighty fear; Because of the crashing they are bewildered.

 ²⁶ "The sword that reaches him cannot avail, Nor the spear, the dart or the javelin.

 ²⁷ "He regards iron as straw, Bronze as rotten wood.

He’s scary because no one can defeat him.  Call out St. George or Bard, because they’re the only ones who could face up to this character.

³¹ "He makes the depths boil like a pot;

You know, I’m not really interested in approaching a sea creature that makes the sea boil.  I don’t care whether it’s hot or not, a monster that makes his own rapids is someone to keep away from.

Leviathan is a scary dude.  He is used as a symbol of the greatest enemies of God and humanity.  In Canaanite myths, all creation was scared to death of this serpent, and it required Baal, the greatest of all warrior gods in Canaanite mythology to take him on, and after one epic (literally) battle, Leviathan was finally defeated.  In Revelation the description of many-headed Leviathan is used to describe Satan, the enemy of Jesus and all humanity.

For YHWH God, creator of heaven and earth, his perspective on Leviathan is quite different.  It says that the archnemesis of Baal, the fear of humanity was created by God for “his sport.”  Leviathan was made to splash around the water, for God’s entertainment.

Wow.

Yes, this monster, this terror, who breathes flame and destroys all that comes near him was God’s plaything, his bathtub toy. 

Not only that, but this was his purpose of creation.  He wasn’t created to protect the sea, or to destroy or to cause havoc or to destroy.  He was created to play with, to have fun.  God perhaps has an odd idea of fun, and I’m glad he doesn’t make toys for children, but that was Leviathan’s purpose.

It seems that Leviathan might have strayed from his purpose of creation.  He was made to be good, to be a part of the creation that sustains and enjoys and is enjoyed, but now he is the byword for terror, and no one would want to come near him. 

But isn’t that like all of us.  God has created each one of us for a certain purpose, for a cause, a reason… but how many of us have fulfilled the purpose of our creation.  Perhaps few of us have made such a drastic departure as Leviathan, but some of us have come close.  Some of us have drifted such a distance from who we were supposed to be that we don’t even recognize ourselves. 

But with God, there is always another opportunity.  God made us for a certain purpose, and He has not forgotten that purpose, nor can we drift away to such a degree from that purpose that we can never fulfill it.  God, and God alone, can lead us back to our original path.  If we would but allow Him to do so.

“I want to be all that You dreamed of
When You saw my frame.”  -Isa

The Pattern of Creation

In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.

Before this, there was nothing.  Then, poof!  (or Bang!) there were heavens and earth.  The two basics of all life. Sky and ground.  Ceiling and floor.  Up and down.  These are the two basics of many cosmos origin stories.  Some say that life was created from the union of these two basic elements.  Of all the ancient cosmos origins, only the Hebrew one declares that all that we know was created by an outside entity: God, who is both outside and greater than earth or heaven, and they are both submitted to him for He is the maker of both.

And we know in the Bible that when God creates, his creation is Good.  Yahweh, Elohim, the Creator, is neither evil nor is he the originator of evil.  Nor is He the originator of chaos, of empty utility.  When God finishes his creation, whatever it may be, he looks at it and says, “It is good.”

This does not mean that creation is perfect.  There is still growth to be made, things to be named, enemies to subdue, difficulties to overcome and tests to either pass or fail.  God’s creation is never a perfect creation.  It is sufficient to grow in, it is sufficient for peace, it is sufficient for sustenance.  But it can also fail, it can falter, it can become inadequate, it can potentially be destroyed.   However, when everything begins, it is enough to be called “good”. 

Thus, when the heavens and the earth were created, God looked at it and said, “it is good.”  But at the beginning of God’s six-day creation, all was not good.

The earth was formless and void, darkness was over the face of the deep, and the breath of God was over the waters.

The earth was not as God had made it in the beginning.  It was empty, vanity, chaotic, purposeless: a wasteland.  It had changes drastically away from the good that God had created.  He created a good heavens and a good earth, but there is the earth being the very antithesis of the peace that God had intended in creation. 

We will discuss how it got this way in another episode, but for now, let us look deeper at this inversion of creation, this chaos out of order, this void out of substance,  this evil out of good.   First, there is darkness.  Darkness is not of God, but of the enemy of God, in fact, darkness can be seen as the opposite of God.  God is light, in him there is no darkness at all.  But on the earth, God’s creation, is no light whatsoever.  It is completely dark.

Second, the earth is full of the deep.   The deep is the Sea, the Ocean, full of darkness, chaos and insanity.  The deep is the enemy of earthly creation, a horror story in and of itself, in opposition to God’s creation.  Even though the Sea itself is a creation of God, yet the deep pits itself against all other forms of God’s creation, leaving only destruction in its wake.  No one can determine the motivations of the sea, no one can understand it.  None except God travels into the deep, and only God dares to move His wind, his breath, his power over the top of it.

In the first verse God created all the cosmos in good and strength.  By the second verse, all is darkness and chaos and waste and horror and monstrosity. 

And God said, “Let there be light.” And there was light and God saw that it was good.  And God separated the light from the darkness.  God called the light day and the darkness night.

So God creates again.  He creates something like Himself, something good, some light to be put in the darkness, some hope to be put into despair, some order put into the chaos, some mercy in the midst of hatred.  God creates because it is in His nature to create.  In the beginning God created out of nothing, out of emptiness.  After that first creation, God’s creation only builds, re-forms, but never out of nothing again.  God will never again wipe the slate completely clean.  Something must be built out of something, even if that something is ruined, turned into evil.

Because evil is never purely evil.  There is no such thing as pure evil.  God created all things and he created them good.  So evil is simply an attempt to be better than good, which is the same impulse God has.  God also wants to see good improved.  It is just that evil uses the means of destruction.  Evil believes that weakness should be wiped away and then only the perfect will be left.

God believes that everything has its place, and that creation must be filled with weakness in order to firmly establish strength.  So when God re-created, when He took back the earth from darkness and the deep, the enemies of God, he didn’t wipe darkness out.  Instead, he gave darkness its proper place.  To wipe out one’s enemies, that is the path of evil.  God isn’t like that.  Rather, he sets boundaries, and says, “Darkness, this is your place.  But you can’t cross the border to this place.  Stay there.”

God says to the Sea, “I am giving you a place on earth, but you may not have it all.  You have a border, a limit.  You stay in this place, you may not cross over.”  Mind you, darkness and the Sea are forces of chaos.  They will test these borders, they will attempt to cross over and wield destruction.  But God always puts them back and says to them like a rebellious child, “No.  This is your place.  You may not cross over.  Stay there.”  And, like a rebellious child, they stay in their place until the next time they escape.

Our lives are God’s creation.  We were started by God in the midst of this world.  And quickly after our lives became chaotic, ugly, even horrific.  We think we can fix it, but we find that fixing our lives is like placing darkness in a box, pushing the sea back with a bulldozer.  It can’t be done.  We don’t have the capacity for it.

Our only hope is to  have God fix the darkness and chaos of our lives.  To have Him re-create our world.  But when He does that, he doesn’t get rid of the chaos or the destruction.  Rather, he forms our lives so that the chaos remains in its place, it has a limit, it becomes manageable.  Yes, sometimes the destruction escapes and gets out of our control.  That’s when we need to call God, the Father, and ask him to put the rebellious child back in its place.  The evil in our lives is still there.  It is just limited.  With God at our side, perhaps that is enough.

Why Christians are Wrong about Creation

My name is Steve and I am a Christian.  Join me in my recovery as I share why Christians are wrong and how they could be right.

Today’s topic: Creation.

It was calculated by Archbishop James Ussher that the world was created on October 23, 4004 Before Christ.  This seems excessively particular, and Ussher was more specific as he determined the world was created at 6pm.  James Lightfoot did his own specific calculations and determined that Ussher was wrong—it was actually 3929BC.  Sir Isaac Newton, yes the scientist that helped build our modern world, calculated that creation occurred in the very even year of 4000BC. Many conservative Christians, although debating the precise date, agree that the earth is young and goes to the Bible to prove this.

This calculation is determined through careful reading of the genealogies of Genesis 5, which gives the length of ancestor’s lives and the time of the birth of each later ancestor.  One can follow closely the Bible timeline and come with an early date of the Genesis 1 creation.  In fact, some, like the Bible students at Answers in Genesis, insist upon it. 

When I was in Bible school, I had a professor who said, “I don’t have enough knowledge to object to Creationists’ science, but I wish they were better Bible scholars.”  I have to agree.

First of all, we have to look carefully at Genesis 1 to see the chronology there.  We all know that creation happens in six days in that chapter.  So when does the six days start?  Let’s read the first few verses:

In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.  (Some think of this as a summary of all that comes after, and some say that heavens and earth happened before.)

 2 The earth was formless and void, and darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was moving over the surface of the waters.  (This is clearly a description of the world before God started creating, for all was chaos, and God’s spirit or breath is just hanging out)

 3 Then God said, "Let there be light"; and there was light.

Now the beginning of God’s creation.  Before this, all was darkness, and God made light happen.

 4 God saw that the light was good; and God separated the light from the darkness.

 5 God called the light day, and the darkness He called night. And there was evening and there was morning, one day.

So we have “Day One”.  What did God make on “Day One”?  He made light and divided light from darkness.  That’s it.  He didn’t make the sun, because that happens on day three.  Well, still, that’s a good day’s work.

Coulda gone sailing before the first day.  But no sunset.

But what DIDN’T God create on the first day?  He didn’t create the earth or the water.  They were already there, according to verse 2.  Before He started his six day creation there was already earth and already water.    We know that God created the earth, because it says so in verse 1.  But the word “creation” can mean either a initial creation, or a remodel.  Erasing the blackboard and starting over.  Since we already have an earth and water here, actually God isn’t creating the earth in these six days from scratch.  Rather, the place is a mess and he is remodeling the place. 

So when was the earth created?  We don’t know.  The Bible just doesn’t say.  The earth could be hundreds or thousands or millions or billions of years older than the six day creation according to a literal reading of the text, because it simply doesn’t say.  And there might have already been animals and plants and all kinds of things on the earth before it was covered with water and darkness.  We don’t know, because we have few clues as to what happened before Genesis 1.  One thing we do know: if anyone says that the Bible says that everything begins at the six day creation needs to go back and read their Bibles.

It is interesting that some great ancient Bible scholars like Augustine didn’t think that Genesis one was meant to be taken literally, but metaphorically.  In fact, if John Calvin and John Wesley could have a discussion, they might argue about many things, but they would agree that Genesis 1 is allegorical.  And they have good reason to think this. 

The book of Genesis is a collection of many different ancient documents or oral sources, put together into a single book.  The separation between texts are usually divided by a phrase, “This is the generations of”, which we can see in chapter 5, chapter 6, chapter 10 and so on. 

The same phrase is used in Genesis 2:4, “This is the account of the heavens and the earth” which separates one text from another in the book, offering two separate but related creation accounts.  Genesis 1 has the organized six day account, while after 2:4, there is more of a narrative account.  We could put many details together, if we want, but there are a couple details that simply don’t match.  For instance, in Genesis 1, plants are created before humanity (day three and day six, respectively), while in Genesis 2, the human being was created before the plants. 

Many Christians and Jews believe that Moses edited the book of Genesis.  So Moses, out of all the creation stories he could have chosen, and he could have re-written, he chose two that differed in one particular matter—the chronology.  It seems that if there was one thing that didn’t matter about the creation story is WHEN things happened. 

What was the point of the creation stories that Moses chose?  He chose a couple that were based on ancient myths of the time, that showed God’s power and authority over all the other gods of his time.  That’s the main point of the stories of creation, not precisely when or how things happened.  The six day creation is poetic and supposed to be understood as mythic.  Not untrue, just fitting a literary standard of the time.

What’s the point?  If you believe in a young earth, then you are not reading the Bible literally, but putting your guesswork into a text that you didn’t really understand.

If you want to read more about Genesis 1 and creation, I highly recommend the JPS Torah Commentary on Genesis. 

Was Creation Perfect?

Tough Questions for Christians #29—The Fallen World
Watch It Here

AZ speaks on a common point of Christian theology, that God created the world without violence, including the animal world, and that all the wrongs in the world occurred after Adam’s fall. That, basically, humanity caused the downfall of animals as well as that of humans. AZ then points out that humanity can’t change the genetic structure of animals and never could. Perhaps we will in a little bit, but we haven’t. So how can anyone say that humanity caused carnivorous creatures or violence?

AZ makes a good point. Christian theology goes too far in their assumption of a peaceful creation. Creation worked, but it wasn’t perfect. There was a snake in the garden trying to kill humanity off, after all. The fossil records show that as far back as there were creatures there has been violence.

Rather, Scripture says in Genesis 1 that humanity was created violent in order to violently take over creation. God says “fill the earth and subdue it” in verse 28. The term “subdue” (in Hebrew, kabash) means “take by force” or “enslave”. It is an inherently violent word. If creation is peaceful, why should God command violence right at the beginning?

Because creation wasn’t perfect. Our future is not to take the earth back to it’s created glory. God created humanity to help the earth be BETTER than the creation. And the fact is, we have already done part of this.

Because AZ is wrong. Humans have been genetic manipulators for a long time. We have taken wild grass and turned it into wheat, corn and lawns. We have turned small lions into housecats and wolves into lap dogs. We have tamed and even eradicated diseases. This is genetic manipulation. We’ve been doing it for millennia. In this way we have been enslaving the earth, forcing the land to do what we want, turning mountains into valleys and valleys into mountains. We have been gods on the earth. And we have been doing it for our own benefit.

The real problem is not the manipulation of genetics, but how we’ve been doing it. We’ve been working for personal benefit and not for the benefit of humanity or the earth, as any just rulers would have done. The fact is, we SHOULD have eradicated violence. We could have. But we are so busy with our own violence that we can’t make the world a better place. We are so self-focused that we can’t see how we can use what knowledge we have to benefit all. As a unit, humanity is certainly god-like. If only we were as merciful and just as God, changing creation for the benefit of all.

Warning: Speculative Theology Ahead!

I know I have said negative things about speculative theology. But I am only opposed to speculative theology as orthodoxy. I think it can be helpful for presenting an alternative, biblical concept, as long as people don't accept it as God's own truth. -SK

But what about God’s participation in a process that took millions of years? This requires a little speculation, but it is possible to reconcile theology and science in this regard as well. It is clear in the biblical text that God had “helpers” in creation. Some of these helpers are metaphorical, such as “wisdom” in Proverbs 7, but some are considered to be literal, such as the Word in John 1 and Jesus in Colossians 1. And Elohim in Genesis 1 calls himself “we”, which is rare in the Bible text.

My speculation is this: that God created the earth much in the way that a CEO of Microsoft creates programs. The CEO orders the programs made, but the actual creation is done by underlings. This is not that the CEO cannot do the programs himself, but that he is teaching his underlings to create. Thus, there is a progression in creation, and it happens over time, while an all powerful, all knowing creator would do it all at once.

My speculation goes further: A computer program is not actually made by a single person, but later programmers actually borrow pieces of earlier programs in order to quickly develop their programs, without having to re-invent the wheel. Thus, if one looks at computer programs over the whole of the invention of them, it looks as if they “evolved”, that is, developed in a natural progression. This is because a single program develops a useful set of text, which is then found after in many other programs. However, we understand that there were many designers involved that made that progression possible.

Again, this is speculation, but it is this sort of speculation that might help there be a new kind of creationism that, like the intelligent design philosophy, would take a fair look at both the biblical text and the fossil record and try to determine God’s plan from that.

From the fossil record, and from looking at other creatures, we can determine that the parts of humanity were compiled from other creature’s collections of cells. However, the whole of humanity remains unique. Humanity truly is a special creation.

Putting Them Together

What exactly is the source of the conflict between evolutionists and creationists?

Well, the evolutionists look at their evidence and see the interpreters of biblical text ignoring what seems clear to them: a long progression from simple life to more complex. And the biblical interpreters see the secularists ignoring what is obvious from their evidence: God’s creation and a special human creation.

And these two evidences ARE difficult to reconcile. After all, if one believes in a single creator, all knowing and all powerful, then it makes no sense that there would be a progression of creation over time. And if one believes in a natural progression, when why should human creation not be a part of the same progression, and if the process can be seen as natural, why claim that God is involved in the process at all—it simply is not necessary to determine the facts.

Is there a way to pull together these claims? Yes, if one looks at both sets of evidence, but doing so requires some release of favorite interpretations. It means that we, as theologians, must look at the fossil record fairly for what it says. That the earth truly is old, and that there is a progression. Is there any hint of this in the biblical text? And, in fact, there is a hint, although not easy to find.

Psalm 74 says:
God is my king from of old, Who works deeds of deliverance in the midst of the earth.
13 You divided the sea by Your strength; You broke the heads of the sea monsters in the waters.
14 You crushed the heads of Leviathan; You gave him as food for the creatures of the wilderness.
15 You broke open springs and torrents; You dried up ever-flowing streams.
16 Yours is the day, Yours also is the night; You have prepared the light and the sun.
17 You have established all the boundaries of the earth; You have made summer and winter.

This is an ancient interpretation of Genesis 1. It describes the creation event as being an act of war against Leviathan and sea monsters, which the earth had to be delivered from. This indicates not only that the earth already existed, but that some kind of creatures already existed on it. That there may have been a creation before the Genesis 1 account.

And this makes sense. After all, the Genesis 1 creation begins with the earth already existing and it being covered with ocean. Interestingly enough, this is the same state of affairs in Genesis 8, after the flood in which God “delivers” the earth from the mass of humanity who had become too violent. Thus, a creation event could very well be a wiping of a previous creation and the creating of a new one. The biblical record, then speaks of two of these events.

It just so happens, that the fossil record also speaks of a “wiping out” of species. In fact, there are indications of five mass extinctions in the fossil record, followed by a heightened period of new species being developed. The complexification of species does not exclusively in this period, but it certainly increases. Thus it is possible that both science and theology can agree upon various periods of destruction and re-creation.

What the Bible Doesn't Say About Creation

As to the biblical facts, these come from what the text of scripture actually says. It says that God created all things, and that a creation took place in six days. It says that God created humanity in a special creation, not naturally, for his own purposes. It also says that all the earth’s creation was handed over to humanity to be under humanity’s rule.

What is remarkable is what the textual record does not say. Not only does it not indicate that the earth was created at approximately the same time as humanity, but it says that the earth, heavens and oceans already existed before the six day creation began. Thus, there is actually biblical evidence that counters a young earth theory along with all the interpretations that go with it. Also, the order of creation is not clear in Scripture, for while Genesis 1 is clear, the parallel creation account in Genesis 2 discusses a different order. Thus, the order must not be significant. There is little biblical evidence for a canopy of ice, dinosaurs existing at the same time as humans or other creation speculations. Certainly there is no evidence of this in the fossil record, and in fact the fossil record clearly speaks against a young earth, the Genesis 1 order of creation (in which day and vegetation exist before the sun), and dinosaurs and humans existing at the same time.

Facts Don't Help Us Live

The earth revolves around the sun, but this does not explain what we should focus on.
There are hundreds of kinds of penguins, but this does not help us to love as we should love.
Multnomah County Library system has more than a million and a half materials, but this does not lead us closer to wisdom.
Yellowstone National Park has – acres, but that does not tell us who we are.
The Catholic Church used to determine saints through an adversarial system, but that does not teach us the lifestyle we should live
We kill bacteria with each breath, but this does not show us the way to love.
It takes money to make money, but that doesn’t drive us one inch closer to success.

Just because we know some truths, they won’t necessarily set us free.

A Dialogue on Materialism

Josh: Science is the king of current metaphysical thought. If it is proven by science, then it is true. And if something is true, that something becomes the basis of all other truth, whether proven or opined. We may disregard this study or that, but the method of science is honored above all truth. And it has its significant place. The scientific method is a way of discerning between truths by careful observation. It is the finest of all human philosophies, and the main discoverer of the world around us.
What is science? What is the methodology which we honor above all? It is the proving of truth through repeatable experimentation. The scientist—no matter what age or social class or economic backing—performs an experiment with an expected outcome. Perhaps the outcome occurs, or something unexpected occurs, so either truth is affirmed or it is discovered. Even if there is a variety of outcomes, then a chart is made, indicating probability. You can’t lose with science.
The problem, however, with having science as the center of our metaphysics, is that all that is significant, the basis of all truth, is the observable and the experienced. And we tell ourselves, then, that all that is really important in our lives is that which we can experience, and that which is material. Only the sensible is sensible and the non-material is immaterial.
This limits the scope of significant reality to that which our eyes can see and to what our hands can touch. This is unfortunate. For we forget how much we, as humans, cannot know and can never experience. We, in our pride, neglect our limitations. Since that which we can experience is all important, then that which is beyond our understanding is insignificant.
But if that is the case, then it is unimportant that Ken’s mother died of unknown causes, because it is outside our sphere of knowledge. And Ken’s grief and love for his mother is insignificant, for we cannot open Ken up and observe his emotions with a microscope. Yes, it is within Ken’s experience, but since his experience is not material and not within our scope of experience, it is insignificant for the rest of us. Perhaps our observation of his experience can be significant to us because that becomes our experience, but the initial experience of it is significant to no one but Ken. Thus Ken is isolated, alone. Unloved. All because we believe in the experienced rather than the unseen.
The problem of science as the metaphysic of the age is not that of minimizing the unsensory, but also that of signifying the material. In our lives, that which is important is the material we can experience, the experience we can repeat. We have all become scientists of our own lives, experimenting with that which gives us experience. That which gives us a positive experience we tend to repeat, while that which we find negative we set aside. Then we base our actions on this personal utilitarianism—measuring our pleasure and diminishing our pain, creating repeatable actions that give us the best life.
However, we fail in our experimentation, mostly because we have neglected the unknown, unseen forces in our lives—our connection with others. We have an unseen relationship with every person we meet. We experience their experience—to a lesser degree, but it is still real. The emotion they feel, we feel. The joy another experience is, to a degree, experienced by us as well. The sorrow another has is sucked into our hearts, and we have no choice but to experience that sorrow. It is unseen, undiscovered, yet as real a force in our lives as the sun that shines and the air we breathe.
To focus on the material in our lives to grant us joy or sorrow is to deny the much more powerful force that is around us—the ebb and flow of human emotion around us. If we think that we can obtain happiness through a computer screen, the isolation we have becomes a more powerful reality and we go insane trying to push it aside. If we think that we can obtain happiness through a drug, we do so only by hiding ourselves from the human experience, by clouding the reality. And if we try to close the door to this ocean of emotion by politeness and social conventions, we soon find the edges of our door becoming damp, and the cracks widening by the pressure of the tide and soon the door bursts open and the emotions overwhelm us, dragging us down to the bottom.
We cannot fight or control the sea. All we can do is learn to ride it.

John: Is science truth?

Josh: It is an aspect of truth. But not all truth is significant.

John: So are you saying that science is insignificant?

Josh: Not at all. It is important for a smoker to know that cigarettes can cause lung cancer. But how important is it for us to know the names of the internal organs of the jellyfish? For some that might be important, but it is not important for the majority of people.

John: So some studies are important, while others are not.

Josh: Correct. We must determine not only what is true, but what is importantly true.

Pete: How can we know the difference between that which is important and that which isn’t? After all, all we have is a huge accumulation of knowledge, that which is fed to us or that which is discovered on our own, but how are we to sift through all that to determine the significant?

Josh: First you must know who you are in your community. Significance can only be found in context.

John: So you are saying that what is true is only found in context?

Josh: No. That which is real remains real. But if reality shifts, then the significance of one reality lessens and another becomes greater.

Nate: So, Josh, are you saying that the most significant truth is the immaterial, undiscovered truth?

Josh: Again, we must remember the vastness of that which we do not know. There is an infinitude of potential knowledge, yet both our knowledge and our potential knowledge is finite—a thimbleful of understanding amidst an ocean of reality. Much of that reality is insignificant to us. Much of the thimbleful is significant. But doesn’t it stand to reason that we are actually missing the majority of truth that is important for us to know? So if we limit important truth to that which is observable or experienced, then we are dismissing so much that is actually significant.

Thomas: But how can we know that one aspect of unproven truth is more important than another? Like you said, not all truth is significant for us, and a vast majority of truth is unseen, unproven. This means that the majority of unproven truth either is insignificant or it is actually misleading—not a truth at all. Is not all unproven truth like pulling out jellybeans from a bag—some are good and some are bad, but you don’t know until you prove it by experience?

Josh: Unless you have someone who has been in the bag and can hand you the best candy of all. (Hands him a chocolate kiss). After all, there are those around you—unseen, unknown—who have already seen and experienced that which you have longed for all your life, but have never known. If you find the true master of reality, you will find the significant truth.

Thomas: What do you mean, “master of reality”?

Josh: Remember, dear students, the path of peace, and you will be on your way to truth.

Evidence and Interpretation of Evolution

Let’s talk about the evidence for evolution. Evolution has been seen by human eyes, and recorded. It is shown that birds, who have a variety of colors, will tend toward colors that keep them camouflaged in the environment that they live in. This only makes sense, for predators will capture the birds that are not camouflaged well. And this means that within that species, there will be changes over time. No problem, for any breeder or horticulturalist well knows that you can remarkably change the appearance of an animal or plant to suit one’s purposes—whether on purpose or by accident. Changes happen.

For evolution there is also the fossil record. The fossil record shows that over a long period of time, species have changed remarkably, and that most species that existed in the early times of earth no longer exist. And that humanity is a young species compared to the many varieties of species over time. The fossil record also shows, in general, that species develop in complexity over time. Species with fewer cells consistently exist earlier in the fossil record, and systems develop and then are included consistently later on in the fossil record. This indicates development over time.

However, the mechanism of that development is not clearly seen. To understand that, there must be interpretation of the evidence. Darwin was a marvelous interpreter, but many seculars who honor his findings, also find that his interpretation has need of exam and re-interpretation, not least of which is Stephan Gould. Thus, “survival of the fittest” is simply a principle which could interpret the findings, but not the only one. In fact, scientific interpreters find, the facts are much more complex than “fittest” could explain.

Bodies of Evidence

The current debate between evolution and creation philosophies are based on a couple different bodies of evidence.

First, on the evolution side, we have the fossil record. And then we have various philosophies that popped up from an interpretation of the fossil record.

On the creation side, we have the biblical text. But we also have various theologies that developed from interpretations of the biblical text.

And most of the arguments between the evolutionists and the creationists have occurred from the philosophies, not the evidence. It comes down to the interpretation we want to believe just as before we read the evidence and what conclusions we come to after. It also depends on what community we belong to, as to what kinds of interpretation we will allow ourselves to have.