Creation Vs Evolution Part 4 (Last Part)
This is my personal summary of the preaching of Rev.Dr.Stephen Tong on his apologetics series on Creation vs Evolution Part 4 on 23 July 2006
Some fossil discoveries are used as evidence to close the missing links between man and ape. To accept this is not a statement of science but a statement of faith. These fossils have no voice cord which is a very essential part of human body. Language expresses meaning. Meaning is related to the truth and truth is rooted in the Word.
Without Spencer and Huxley, Darwin's theory of evolution would not have become so widespread. Yet these two men believed that people of all races must come from a single couple (the same parents). This is also a summary from the field of psychology and social study. They both also believe that conscience and reason are not the product of evolution. So there is no answer as to how human beings evolve from having no reason to having reason.
Aristotle said that reason segregates human beings from animals. This becomes the mark of western civilization. As for the east, conscience is the segregating point between humans and animals (Meng Zi). Both human reason and human conscience then post great difficulties to the validity of the theory of evolution.
For Christians, this is not an issue because Christianity holds that man is made in the image of God. Strictly speaking, there are a lot more difficulties in accepting evolution than creation. Fossils can at best tell us that there were once creatures like that, but one would need a lot of faith to believe that they are our ancestors. This is close to superstition. Christianity is a reasonable faith although it cannot be proven by science. In fact, science is not worthy to prove it because science cannot prove things beyond matter.
Darwin would never have expected that communists would use his theory of evolution as a basis of atheism. The side effect of his theory is very great. Even Lenin also admitted that about his reign in Russia. He said that there is no future unless there are 50 saints who would rebuild the ethics of Soviet.
At the height of western civilization, imperialism and colonialism prevailed. A lot of this came due to the influence of evolution theory as imperialists used it as a basis for whatever they did. As nationalism emerged in the 20th century at the end of World War I many countries declared independence and the harm of evolution theory were stopped temporarily.
Adolf Hitler also accepted the theory of evolution and considered Germans to be the superior race. Hitler based his action on the principle of evolution that the strongest survive. Very few people understand the tight link between the theory of evolution and events of history. There are a lot of grave political, social and interpersonal consequences of this theory.
Only when we return to the Bible and understand that humans are made in the image of God will we find our restoration.
Christians have to be clear and not just get trapped in one concept but learn to base their thinking on God's revelation. And those taking on the culture mandate must not take narrow-minded approach in bringing people back to the truth. We must do it with gentleness and respect, not in defensiveness and self-righteous attitude. This will bring shame and makes it harder to preach.
But when humanity truly discovers that there have been too many loopholes in the theory they have held so dearly, would they be courageous enough to throw it away? The past 150 years there have been in fact great difficulties in the theory of evolution. The way people determine the age of an object has also come into question. The original method of Carbon-14 gives a much older date than the new method. The sediments of the earth suggest that human history is not that long after all.
Ernest Hackel attempts to use the foetus development in the womb as a demonstration of evolution. However there is no strong basis for his theory and most people cannot accept it. He also claims that 95 organs in human body are redundant and this is an evidence of the residue of evolution. One example is the appendix. But it is later discovered that appendix has its use when a baby is still in the mother's womb. Hence, many theories supporting evolution are discovered wrong and become a joke of history.
Christianity is not a religion to fool the ignorant and Christians should never be content just giving simplistic solutions to superficial problems, like instant healing without seeing the doctor. Christianity is a religion that can critique problems in politics, philosophies, economics, culture and all important aspects of life.
Based on geological study, the earth is billions of years old. But can God create it in 6 days? Absolutely. We can see that in our generation we can produce a lot of things within a much shorter time than generations in the past using the advancement of technology and our creativity, which we have because we are made in the image of God. Why can't God do it then? Creation is the manifestation of God's power and is part of the accomplishment of His will. But do we have to accept theistic evolution where God simply initiated creation and let it evolve billions of years? Not necessarily.
Asher believed that the world is 6000 years old based on his speculation that the millennium years is from year 6000 to 7000. He calculated that it is 4000 years from Adam to Jesus and from Jesus to present is another 2000 years.
But the numbering in the Scriptures often cannot be taken literally. In genealogy account, the Scriptures often skipped a few generations. Sometimes the father-in-law and elder cousin use the same word although they belong to different generations. In many other passages, numbers have some representative meaning.
Even Christians can be wrong in their interpretation of the Scriptures. There is a gap between the Truth and the understanding of the Truth. There is another gap between the understanding of the Truth and the deliverance of the Truth. Then there is yet a gap between the deliverance and the reception of the Truth. So communication of the Truth is not easy.
In one of the latest calculations, John Urugrahat in his book How Old is Man, calculated the time from Adam to Jesus to be 8167 with the consideration of the generation skips. So the earth could be about 10,000 years.
People often ask how Christians could explain their faith when geology study believes the world to be a few billions years old while they believe it to be only a few thousand years old. However, the onus is on the people who believe the world to be a few billion years old to explain how they can substantiate their claim.
If the world has indeed existed for billions of years, why then culture only develops the past few thousand years and from the early civilizations there were already brilliant achievements? Can we really say the world has been a few billion years?
Can engineers and architects today construct what the ancients did like the pyramid in Egypt? In the past 4000 years, there has not been much qualitative progression. If evolution is true, doesn't that mean that modern thinkers should be much better than the ancient thinkers?
But how many great artists have there been in human history? Other than Greek sculptors and someone like Michelangelo, how many more have emerged in recent history? Ancient Greeks in fact had greater understanding of the content of gold than the people today. Why? If evolution is true, why has history not produced moralists greater than Socrates and Confucius? And there will never be anyone of greater ethics than Jesus Christ. We may push away our responsibility by agnosticism but the logical conclusion is that God walked on earth at one time in history and we were created by Him.
For the past 10,000 years, the achievements of mankind have been very great from the start. Although technology has improved, humankind has not improved much qualitatively. We have only piled up more and more things in our generation but the essence of our accomplishments might not have been greater. Only in material success are we greater than the past history.
So why was there no civilization over so many millions of years and once it appeared it became so great immediately? Evolution could not explain this.
But creation can explain this. It is God's intervention in history that brings civilization into beings. We do not need millions of years to make it happen. Even in the law of justice, the same principles in one of the oldest civilization Hammurabi is still used by our civilization today. However, the greatest standard has been God's Revelation. The last 6 commandments of the 10 commandments become the basis of the law of the society we live in today. For example, the last law becomes the basis for the protection of private property. The sixth law becomes the basis for interpersonal relationship. The fifth law becomes the basis for family preservation.
God made us in His image and likeness and has given us His wisdom to walk out our lives as His creation. His creation, salvation and revelation surpass our thinking.
Some fossil discoveries are used as evidence to close the missing links between man and ape. To accept this is not a statement of science but a statement of faith. These fossils have no voice cord which is a very essential part of human body. Language expresses meaning. Meaning is related to the truth and truth is rooted in the Word.
Without Spencer and Huxley, Darwin's theory of evolution would not have become so widespread. Yet these two men believed that people of all races must come from a single couple (the same parents). This is also a summary from the field of psychology and social study. They both also believe that conscience and reason are not the product of evolution. So there is no answer as to how human beings evolve from having no reason to having reason.
Aristotle said that reason segregates human beings from animals. This becomes the mark of western civilization. As for the east, conscience is the segregating point between humans and animals (Meng Zi). Both human reason and human conscience then post great difficulties to the validity of the theory of evolution.
For Christians, this is not an issue because Christianity holds that man is made in the image of God. Strictly speaking, there are a lot more difficulties in accepting evolution than creation. Fossils can at best tell us that there were once creatures like that, but one would need a lot of faith to believe that they are our ancestors. This is close to superstition. Christianity is a reasonable faith although it cannot be proven by science. In fact, science is not worthy to prove it because science cannot prove things beyond matter.
Darwin would never have expected that communists would use his theory of evolution as a basis of atheism. The side effect of his theory is very great. Even Lenin also admitted that about his reign in Russia. He said that there is no future unless there are 50 saints who would rebuild the ethics of Soviet.
At the height of western civilization, imperialism and colonialism prevailed. A lot of this came due to the influence of evolution theory as imperialists used it as a basis for whatever they did. As nationalism emerged in the 20th century at the end of World War I many countries declared independence and the harm of evolution theory were stopped temporarily.
Adolf Hitler also accepted the theory of evolution and considered Germans to be the superior race. Hitler based his action on the principle of evolution that the strongest survive. Very few people understand the tight link between the theory of evolution and events of history. There are a lot of grave political, social and interpersonal consequences of this theory.
Only when we return to the Bible and understand that humans are made in the image of God will we find our restoration.
Christians have to be clear and not just get trapped in one concept but learn to base their thinking on God's revelation. And those taking on the culture mandate must not take narrow-minded approach in bringing people back to the truth. We must do it with gentleness and respect, not in defensiveness and self-righteous attitude. This will bring shame and makes it harder to preach.
But when humanity truly discovers that there have been too many loopholes in the theory they have held so dearly, would they be courageous enough to throw it away? The past 150 years there have been in fact great difficulties in the theory of evolution. The way people determine the age of an object has also come into question. The original method of Carbon-14 gives a much older date than the new method. The sediments of the earth suggest that human history is not that long after all.
Ernest Hackel attempts to use the foetus development in the womb as a demonstration of evolution. However there is no strong basis for his theory and most people cannot accept it. He also claims that 95 organs in human body are redundant and this is an evidence of the residue of evolution. One example is the appendix. But it is later discovered that appendix has its use when a baby is still in the mother's womb. Hence, many theories supporting evolution are discovered wrong and become a joke of history.
Christianity is not a religion to fool the ignorant and Christians should never be content just giving simplistic solutions to superficial problems, like instant healing without seeing the doctor. Christianity is a religion that can critique problems in politics, philosophies, economics, culture and all important aspects of life.
Based on geological study, the earth is billions of years old. But can God create it in 6 days? Absolutely. We can see that in our generation we can produce a lot of things within a much shorter time than generations in the past using the advancement of technology and our creativity, which we have because we are made in the image of God. Why can't God do it then? Creation is the manifestation of God's power and is part of the accomplishment of His will. But do we have to accept theistic evolution where God simply initiated creation and let it evolve billions of years? Not necessarily.
Asher believed that the world is 6000 years old based on his speculation that the millennium years is from year 6000 to 7000. He calculated that it is 4000 years from Adam to Jesus and from Jesus to present is another 2000 years.
But the numbering in the Scriptures often cannot be taken literally. In genealogy account, the Scriptures often skipped a few generations. Sometimes the father-in-law and elder cousin use the same word although they belong to different generations. In many other passages, numbers have some representative meaning.
Even Christians can be wrong in their interpretation of the Scriptures. There is a gap between the Truth and the understanding of the Truth. There is another gap between the understanding of the Truth and the deliverance of the Truth. Then there is yet a gap between the deliverance and the reception of the Truth. So communication of the Truth is not easy.
In one of the latest calculations, John Urugrahat in his book How Old is Man, calculated the time from Adam to Jesus to be 8167 with the consideration of the generation skips. So the earth could be about 10,000 years.
People often ask how Christians could explain their faith when geology study believes the world to be a few billions years old while they believe it to be only a few thousand years old. However, the onus is on the people who believe the world to be a few billion years old to explain how they can substantiate their claim.
If the world has indeed existed for billions of years, why then culture only develops the past few thousand years and from the early civilizations there were already brilliant achievements? Can we really say the world has been a few billion years?
Can engineers and architects today construct what the ancients did like the pyramid in Egypt? In the past 4000 years, there has not been much qualitative progression. If evolution is true, doesn't that mean that modern thinkers should be much better than the ancient thinkers?
But how many great artists have there been in human history? Other than Greek sculptors and someone like Michelangelo, how many more have emerged in recent history? Ancient Greeks in fact had greater understanding of the content of gold than the people today. Why? If evolution is true, why has history not produced moralists greater than Socrates and Confucius? And there will never be anyone of greater ethics than Jesus Christ. We may push away our responsibility by agnosticism but the logical conclusion is that God walked on earth at one time in history and we were created by Him.
For the past 10,000 years, the achievements of mankind have been very great from the start. Although technology has improved, humankind has not improved much qualitatively. We have only piled up more and more things in our generation but the essence of our accomplishments might not have been greater. Only in material success are we greater than the past history.
So why was there no civilization over so many millions of years and once it appeared it became so great immediately? Evolution could not explain this.
But creation can explain this. It is God's intervention in history that brings civilization into beings. We do not need millions of years to make it happen. Even in the law of justice, the same principles in one of the oldest civilization Hammurabi is still used by our civilization today. However, the greatest standard has been God's Revelation. The last 6 commandments of the 10 commandments become the basis of the law of the society we live in today. For example, the last law becomes the basis for the protection of private property. The sixth law becomes the basis for interpersonal relationship. The fifth law becomes the basis for family preservation.
God made us in His image and likeness and has given us His wisdom to walk out our lives as His creation. His creation, salvation and revelation surpass our thinking.
posted by Mejlina Tjoa @ 1:59 PM
4 comments
4 Comments:
There is generally no problem accepting the fact that human culture was advanced since 10,000 years...however, critics would negate the creation of man and say that it was only then that human recording was done.
Hence, another assumption.
The difference of science and religion (in this case, Christianity) is that when science comes up with a new theory that is better proven or logically accepted, the (good) older ones are not usually put away, but considered as a basis for the newer, the more acceptable. That is why we still respect the founders of biology, the theory that Charles Darwin proposed based on his CAREFUL observations, even in this era of molecular biology, when we can manipulate organisms in the lab, accelerating evolution. It is true that science is not fully developed to answer all the question of natural existence, but we scientists acknowledge it and are open to new, provable theories. Religion fanatics and preachers believe that god is the ultimate source of knowledge and would say that he/she will ask god when they meet to a question that he/she cannot appropriately answer.
Christians and other religious part of the society should restrict themselves in moral teaching instead of messing up in finding the truth of natural existence with the proof-thirsty science.
That is only if you assume that Christianity has nothing to do with the truth.
1. Listening to God the creator of all vs ONLY making educated guesses.
2. Responsibility towards God vs the Whatever come what may attitude
3. Discerning a phony Christian vs a crackpot scientist
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