I've heard it said, "I don't have enough faith to be an atheist." What's that about? Well, Scripture says, "For since the creation of the world His invisible attributes, His eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly seen, being understood through what has been made, so that they are without excuse" (Rom 1:20). That is, if you take the time to look around, you can't miss it. Everywhere you look, God's character is on display. And I can't ignore it.
I see a flower, its delicate beauty coupled to its functional nature. It keeps the plants going, propagating. Isn't that amazing? A complex, interconnected system that adds to itself. Take cellular regeneration. Living organisms are constructed of cells. Cells live and die. But the organism doesn't die when the cells do. The cells duplicate themselves. They continue for a long time. We can make machines -- even very complex machines -- but they can't regenerate. They can't reproduce. Or consider the bird. Birds have so many unique aspects. Hollow bones for flight. Feathers for flight surfaces. Interlaced feathers for smooth surfaces. Some birds wear goggles, nictating membranes that cover their eyes but don't block their vision. Engineers copied the cones in a falcon's nostrils to solve the problem of airflow in jet planes. Who made the originals? How about the systems in the human body? The circulatory system alone boggles the mind. I read that there are some 60,000 miles of blood vessels in the human body. These vessels transport life-giving blood to all the parts. The heart pumps blood through the lungs to collect oxygen to distribute to the body parts then back through to the lungs. Remove one part, and you have no system ... no life. And we've barely scratched the surface.
There is, in fact, so much we don't know. How does the body work? How does the brain work? How does nature work? Why are there so interconnected systems in the world? How did we end up in such a fine-tuned existence? Scripture says, "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth" (Gen 1:1). Scripture says, "All things came into being through Him, and apart from Him nothing came into being that has come into being" (John 1:3). Scripture says, "He is before all things, and in Him all things hold together" (Col 1:17). That seems reasonable. Skeptics would like you to believe it "just happened." Chance. Random. They can keep their explanation. I just don't have enough faith to believe something so outrageous, so irrational.
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I look at the universe and can't fathom that it "just happened". I even watched one today about how cows get their protein that screams to me that random chance and progression just doesn't make sense. How do symbiotic relationships come about, to the point that both die without the other? Fearfully and wonderfully created is the only logical option I can see. It doesn't answer all questions, but it certainly answers more than the alternative.
Extolling the “wonders of creation” is a pet topic of mine (as you know). I read and view so much material about nature that I am continuously awed and amazed. I wish I had enough time and brain power to master all the branches of natural science. (Up to now, mainly anatomy, botany, geography, and zoology have gotten my attention.) As you say, we’ve barely scratched the surface, and what we do know is only the tip of the iceberg (I even wish I knew more about icebergs :).
Personally, I don’t believe it takes “faith” to be an atheist (or an evolutionist) as much as base naïveté (although I understand the point being made when asserting that). To my mind, apart from the spiritual reasons (i.e. blindness, rebellion, pride, etc.), the explanations for people embracing atheism or evolution run the gamut from ignorance and poor observational/evaluation skills to dishonesty and denial--all aspects of man’s fallen intellectual state. As you term it, it’s simply irrational.
I'm amazed in the nature documentaries I watch how many times they use the (obvious) word, "designed," but ignore the obvious implication (requirement) of "designer."
Good point, David. Those “symbiotic relationships” are usually explained as “coevolution,” which as you point out is illogical, i.e. if each species needs the other to survive, then the survival of either or both of them before that coevolution was achieved was not likely. (And if each party was surviving OK while they waited the long, long time for the other one to finally evolve, then that adaptation obviously was not actually essential.) When you extend this reality beyond a pair of individuals to the full variety of ecosystems supporting a host of living entities, as we see across the globe--and the sustenance of those systems over millennia--the likelihood of random chance explaining the complexity of life we see is nil. When you think it through, symbiotic relationships (like many other aspects of cohabitation in the natural world) make sense only in the Creation model and lend no support to the theory of evolution.
Yes, that is commonly--and vexingly--done, and design is impossible to miss!
The thing that galls me the most is the abilities to influence their environments that these scripts attribute to animals and even things without brains, like plants or fungi. Just one example out of many I’ve encountered: Somehow, way back in its early, unadvanced and barely evolved form, a certain plant “knew” that it needed a pollinator with a certain shaped tongue or proboscis to reach its pollen and astutely exercised its ability to influence some animal to evolve to fulfil that need. This plant with no brain or knowledge of any sort of its environment someone figured out its reproduction system and made this happen--without dying off while it waited! Serendipitously, the animal “knew” the same thing about not only botany but its own nutritional needs and determined to redirect its evolution in order to suit this plant (rather than just moving on to find other food)--by somehow directing its prodigy to continue to evolve to make this happen. How would any of this have taken place? And, as I replied to David, how did either plant or animal survive, if these adaptations were essential to their survival (which clearly wasn’t even the case, since it apparently was surviving just fine)?
A basic question I want to ask evolutionists is this: “How did plants, animals, and fungi reproduce before they evolved the ability to reproduce?” Until they could reproduce, they would have died out right away…but they didn’t, so obviously reproduction didn’t evolve but was there from the start. It’s the old “which came first--the chicken or the egg?” dilemma. The evolutionist can’t make sense out of either answer! Only Creation of the world, in the manner described in Genesis 1, can explain it.
As you can tell, I could go on quite a bit about this topic! I really love the natural world and so wish we would all give glory where it belongs--to God the Creator!
I've never understood why, based on survival of the fittest, life would have ever evolved beyond single cells. The most efficient and reproducible creatures are single celled. The idea that "strength in numbers" some how led to specialized tasks seems ridiculous to me. There is an example of a creature that does this, where single cells group together and then become specialized, however when it comes time to reproduce, they regain the ability to do their non-specialized tasks. We look at how inefficient a human body is, and it leads me back to, why not stay single celled?
David, Your good example is just one of a billion such conundrums, spread across all branches of science. I am partway through a book (Creation Facts of Life: How Real Science Reveals the Hand of God by Gary Parker) that debunks the whole “survival of the fittest” theory you mention; there are in fact many unfit (i.e. far from perfect) species surviving just fine, while many seemingly more highly evolved species (i.e. saber-toothed cat, etc.) have not survived. Successful adaptation to one’s habitat seems to be the preeminent factor, not “fitness”--and we know that natural selection, speciation, and the ability to adapt are aspects of biblical Creation, not evolution.
I wish we were closer to this point, but someday, “There will be no final conflict between the Bible and science once all facts are known.”
I believe survival of the fittest is true, just not in the way Evolution claims. For me "fittest" simply means works best in it's environment, but is always a loss of genetic data, not a gain. I.E. the famous Galapagos finches. In the Creation view, finches made their way to those islands that had the genetic information for long beaks and short beaks. My view of survival of the fittest says that the birds we now find on one island with short beaks were more fit for their food supply than the long beaks, so eventually those with the long beaks simply were unable to breed, killing off that trait, and visa versa on the other island. The finches didn't adapt themselves to the environment in some sort of meta evolution way, but the environment fit them to it.
“Darwin’s finches” are an example of adaptation and natural selection. Yes, such adaptation would facilitate survival, but it represents only relative fitness (one shaped beak is not more “fit” in essence than another, only more suitable) (nor is it truly crucial, as birds can relocate to more favorable habitats if necessary).
In the nature materials I peruse (almost all of which are presented from a secular, evolutionist perspective), I am impressed with the clear manifestation of fitness the way I understand it: “the marvelous fit of living things to their environment” (a term from the book I mentioned above)--the perfect pairing of Adaptation and Ecology. Even evolutionists tout this observation of the natural world--that living creatures are well equipped for their habitats; that plants, animals (including humans), and fungi live in mutually beneficial relationships and are well provided for. Without even realizing it, they confirm clear and simple evidence of design by a creative, intelligent, omniscient, good, providential Creator!
Having worked in a university biology department, I've seen interesting things. Once I asked one of the biologists, "What is the fittest creature on the planet?" She told me the name of a single-celled amoeba. They are self-replicating, self-sustaining and self-contained. "I wonder why," I mused, "evolution kept going to less fit versions."
Apparently, those allegedly “simple” early creatures were quite complex afterall, while the supposedly more highly evolved creatures are admittedly far from perfect yet have purportedly survived millions of years without further advancement. The truth is that Someone is taking good care of all of it!
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