I’m sitting on my front porch watching the day begin. I’m surrounded by trees and flowers. The sky is a deep rich blue. There is a gentle breeze rustling the leaves. The birds are singing and raiding the bird feeder. It’s still just a little cool……but not uncomfortable. A hummingbird hovers in front of me. I am blessed to live in what amounts to a garden. So do you. I often think that this setting must be something like Eden once was.
And that brings me to a question……… the greatest question of my life…….yours too.
“How did this all come to be?”
And the implicit second half of the question:
“Is there a creator behind it all?”
There are only two possibilities: either it’s all a series of accidents………or it is the handiwork of an intelligent creator.
This question is the first step in a “logic tree”…….it is a fork in the road. The two choices are mutually exclusive. One of them is right and one of them is wrong. Going downstream from this fork, we will make millions of choices. But, they will all be pre-ordained by this first decision. And that is why it is so important that we get the first decision right.
So we decide. The accident fork leads to what we call secular humanism. The creation fork leads to what we call intelligent design.
Neither of these answers can be conclusively proven. Each fork requires us to make assumptions that we accept on faith. Each of these forks is in fact……..a religion.
So…….how do we decide?
Typically, we begin with some assumptions.
For example:
Modern science is essentially complete……it can explain it all.
There are parts of the cosmos that cannot be seen, measured, or even understood.
Mankind is the highest life form in the known universe.
There is an intelligent being superior to us.
We look around us. We measure. We assess the probabilities.
Then comes the dangerous part. We filter all of this through our desires…….our appetites. In particular…..do we want to be the final arbiter…..the top decision maker……..or do we submit to a higher power.
Do we assume command of the universe or are we subservient to a creator?
If we are honest with ourselves, we generally put our appetites ahead of the truth. The reality is that this last step is largely how most of us handle the decision…….this is how we choose the fork in the road. To get this right…….we must ask…….am I in charge of my life and my world……..or is God in charge?
So…….first of all……..what is the object of the exercise?
I think that it must be………to find the truth………accident or creation.
How do we do that?
We have to begin by stripping away all of the ideas that interfere with our search for the truth. We must set aside all of our assumptions. Especially the assumption that we understand everything…..that we are even capable of understanding everything…..because it is crystal clear that we encounter things every day that we cannot explain. Second…….and this step is much harder…….we must stop filtering our analysis through our desires and appetites. In today’s political climate this has become the norm. We sift through the facts on the web, we share the facts that agree with our needs, that agree with our desires, and we discard anything that we don’t like.
These two steps will prepare you for an honest searching assessment of the question. If you can do these two things……then you are ready to begin an honest quest……..for the truth. If you can do these two things…….then you are ready to choose the fork in the road.
Accident vs. Creation.
Accident:
We are actually talking about trillions of accidents. Each one improves the situation. Each one builds on the preceding accidents. Each one is permanent. But, here’s the rub…….each accident has a probability. The net probability that the accident explanation is true is the product of multiplying the trillions of individual probabilities. The human genome alone has about 100 billion “accidental” chemical bonds. And that is just one of trillions of genomes out there. The net probability that accidents could account for this amazingly complex universe is staggeringly small….even if you allow hundreds of billions of years…….so small that it is a good working definition for the term…… impossible.
Creation:
Creation is an almost magical explanation for the universe. It is very simple………God did it. As a theory, it is comprehensive. It is easy to understand. It has withstood the test of time……. it’s been around a lot longer than science. So…..what is the problem? There are several. First of all, creation flies in the face of modern science. It requires us to discard the thousands of assumptions that science is founded on……especially the assumption that science has it all correctly figured out. Second, and most important, it requires us to accept the idea that we are not in charge here……the idea that we were created…..put here…..by an entity who is in every way superior to us……..God. Even worse, we must sign on to the idea that our creator has expectations of us……. expectations that often run counter to our appetites……and we hate that most of all.
So our choice is between secular humanism, which is statistically impossible, and creation, which requires us to accept a realm that is beyond our ability to measure or even understand…….a realm that requires us to submit to a higher power…….a power who insists that we follow two foundational rules:
Love God and love our fellow man.
That’s it……….now choose.
In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters.
Moses, NIV
Where were you when I laid the earth’s foundation?
Tell me, if you understand.
Who marked off its dimensions? Surely you know!
Who stretched a measuring line across it?
God, NIV
then I saw all that God has done. No one can comprehend what goes on under the sun. Despite all their efforts to search it out, no one can discover its meaning. Even if the wise claim they know, they cannot really comprehend it.
Solomon, NIV