VIEWS OF CREATION
EXISTENCE
WARNING: Please don't get off ended (offended) -- Some of the points are just possible explanations. I will discuss/clarify misunderstandings after church if necessary.
New explanations sometimes cause misunderstandings, fears, etc. Ex: Galileo -- Roman Catholic Church believed in the Geocentric model which puts Earth at the center of the universe with everything revolving around it. Aristotle and Ptolemy had supported this idea and it had been accepted for centuries. The church used the Scripture Joshua 10:13 that the "sun stood still" when Joshua battled with the Amorites.
Galileo invented the telescope and made observations of the sky which supported the idea of Nicholas Copernicus that stated that the Earth revolved around the sun, not the sun around the Earth. Galileo believed the Heliocentric model which states that the Earth revolves around the Sun. Church forbade Galileo from teaching this idea. He renounced the Copernican idea of the Heliocentric model in 1616 before the Inquisition of the Church. He continued however in his Copernican beliefs and argued against the Geocentric model. He wrote a book which was published in 1632 supported the Copernican idea of the Heliocentric model. He went before the Church again and was placed under a form of house arrest until he died because he would not renounce the idea. (See articles from internet on Galileo.)
Analysis and Significance:
(1) Galileo was wrong.
(2) Or the Bible was wrong.
(3) Or the church was wrong.
(4) Or the church's interpretation of the Bible was wrong.
I for one am not going to argue that:
(1) The earth is flat vs. round.
(2) Or that men have never gone to the moon
(3) Or that men have never sent satellites and exploratory vehicles to other planets.
(4) Or that dinosaurs are a hoax.
However, we must be careful how we interpret Scriptures and how we try to compare it to science.
Then, two things to think about:
(1) We must be careful when the Bible and Science cross paths. The Bible is accepted by and based on faith which can be supported by fact, whereas, science is supposed to be based on fact alone.
(2) New things can often be strange things. We must examine new ideas critically to see whether they be so. Study to show thyself approved.
With that said, we now enter a very controversial topic concerning the views of creation. We are here, yet humans can not agree as to how we got here. I would like to take this time to examine the different answers to the question, "Did humans evolve, or were they created.?"
Should we avoid the topic due to the arguments, fears, and tensions that it stimulates? What impact does this topic have on our lives? Is it significant enough to consider? Why use so much time and energy when there seems to be no end to the argument?
JUSTIFICATION FOR TEACHING: Creation or Evolution -- Atheism ?
Johnny starts school believing God created everything because of the stories he heard in Sunday School. However, the church fails to supply Johnny with more in depth theology as he grows up. We suspect the Bible stories will be sufficient.
John graduates high school -- "I believe in God but there is a lot of scientific evidence that may prove God uses evolution in creation." If John goes on to college at this point without help to understand creation, the humanism taught in learning institutions may be fatal to John's faith.
Ex: Earth age, Fossils, Stars (children of), Miller-Urey experiment, Dinosaurs -- not in the Bible
"But we taught Johnny about God all of his life. Where did we go wrong?" -- "In the beginning."
REAL-LIFE SITUATION
E.O. Wilson Evolutionary Entomoligist and Sociobiologist said,
"As were many persons from Alabama, I was a born-again Christian. When I was fifteen, I entered the Southern Baptist Church with great fervor and interest in the fundamental religion; I left at seventeen when I got to the University of Alabama and heard about evolutionary theory." pg 19-20 Refuting Evolution
I. GOD CREATED
A. Absolutely & Directly
1. Young Earth -- less than 10,000 yrs. old -- created 6,000 yrs ago -- 4000 B.C.
Based on genealogies from Adam to all the begats recorded in the Bible.
Accepts a literal 7 day original creation.
Groups that defend this position are:
Answers In Genesis (AiG) and Institute for Creation Research (ICR)
2. Old Earth -- millions to billions of yrs old
a. Day-Age Theory -- Each creative day was an age of time
Based on:
Psalms 90:4 "For a thousand years in thy sight are but as yesterday when it is past, and as a watch in the night."
II Peter 3:8 "But, beloved, be not ignorant of this one thing, that one day is with the Lord as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day."
b. Gap Theory Gen. 1:1-2
States that the Earth and its inhabitants, called pre-Adam man, existed for an unknown period of time until a cataclysmic event, brought on by the fall of Lucifer, destroyed the earth and all of the inhabitants thereof. Fossils and other remains belong to this period and were formed by the destruction.
God then, in verse 3, took what is known as the chaotic pre-Adamite earth, restored ordered and created Adam and Eve on the 6th day, telling them to "replenish the earth". And then God rested on the 7th day.
B. Indirectly
Theistic Evolution-- God used processes described as evolution -- combining religion & science
"Pope John Paul II, perhaps the most influential theistic evolution, had this to say on April 16, 1986, on the subject of evolution:
It can be therefore said that, from the viewpoint of the doctrine of faith, there are no difficulties in explaining the origin of man, in regard to the body, by means of the theory of evolution." wchat.on.ca/humanist/creation.htm John Paul II April 16, 1986
“Man in the image of God is a spiritual and corporeal being General Audience" no.
According to the National Center for Science Education (www.natcenscied.org/continuum.htm), theistic evolution in some form is taught at mainline Protestant seminaries. They also report that in 1996, Pope John Paul II reiterated the Catholic position in which God created, evolution happened, humans may indeed be descended from more primitive forms, but the hand of God was needed for the creation of the human soul.
While attending college, professors of science suggested to me that I could reconcile the two thoughts of evolution and creation without any problems.
