Google

Old Patriot's Pen

Personal pontifications of an old geezer born 200 years too late.

NOTE The views I express on this site are mine and mine alone. Nothing I say should be construed as being "official" or the views of any group, whether I've been a member of that group or not. The advertisings on this page are from Google, and do not constitute an endorsement on my part.

My Photo
Name:
Location: Colorado Springs, Colorado, United States

I've been everywhere That was the title of a hit country-and-western song from the late 1950's, originally sung by Hank Snow, and made famous by Johnny Cash. I resemble that! My 26-year career in the Air Force took me to more than sixty nations on five continents - sometimes only for a few minutes, other times for as long as four years at a time. In all that travel, I also managed to find the perfect partner, help rear three children, earn more than 200 hours of college credit, write more than 3000 reports, papers, documents, pamphlets, and even a handful of novels, take about 10,000 photographs, and met a huge crowd of interesting people. I use this weblog and my personal website here to document my life, and discuss my views on subjects I find interesting.

Monday, August 15, 2005

God and Creation

A Scientific, Analytical Approach



I just finished reading the note by John Derbeyshire on The Corner about an article in The New Republic (registration required) that once again has me shaking my head with the illogical conclusions some otherwise well-educated, intelligent people can come to.

I believe in God. I've had a personal relationship with Him for more than 45 years. God has answered my prayers, not once or twice, but hundreds of times. He's also guided and protected me through a life that should have ended when I was less than a year old. I KNOW He's real, that He cares, and that He fulfills His promises to us, because He's done so with me, time and time again. That's the ONLY proof that can truly convince anyone that He is real - to experience Him on their own.

I also have a very firm foundation in the sciences, ranging from geology and geophysics to astronomy to chemistry to zoology and paleontology. I spent a lot of time in conflict over the account in Genesis and what I see in the real world around me. Apparently, UNLIKE most people, I prayed about it, earnestly. I also listened, and heard God's words to me.

Right there, most people will write me off as a religious nut, or a delusioned fool. I am neither. The explanation I received from God is truth. Science, too is truth. The problem arises with how people approach simplistically the most complex chapter in the Bible.

When God created the "heavens and the earth", in effect He created the entire known universe - and perhaps even some unknown parts that mankind hasn't discovered yet. God is orderly, not chaotic - His "six days" are metaphor, but establishes a firm reference to deduce this (Argument about the "six days" and fundamentalist interpretation is available - write me). When He created the universe, He also created all the "natural" laws that govern how it works, from the weak binding force of the atom to the gravitational forces between bodies that affect the entire universe. Therefore, the study of science is the study of God's laws that control and bring order to the universe we live in. There can be no separation - if God created the universe, and the laws that govern it, studying how those laws work is studying how God created them.

Using that framework, there can be no conflict between "science" and "creationism", because they're both talking about the same thing: the natural laws that govern how the universe works, from the macro to the micro. The only difference is between accepting that those natural laws come from God, or whether they're the product of "random chaotic behavior".

Accepting that God created the universe, that He established the "natural laws" that we're so fond of, also explains many other things both within the Bible and in everyday life. "Evolution" isn't the be-all of species "creation", but a process that allows God's creatures to adapt to the changes God Himself set in motion for our world - a simple, effective feedback loop. Jesus' miracles are understandable, because the Creator knows His creation better than anyone else, and can certainly do a simple molecular transformation to turn water into wine, clense a body of disease, turn five loaves and two fishes into a feast to feed a multitude, or even reverse entropy and bring the dead back to life. WE can't do it, but God can, because He created the rules that govern the universe, and knows how to use those rules to do things we cannot.

The entire argument over "creationism", "intelligent design", or "science" is nothing but a battle of semantics. In all three cases, we're talking about the same thing. Only the stubbornness of people who refuse to accept the TRUE magesty and power of God keeps us arguing.

1 Comments:

Blogger eLarson said...

Very well said. Once again I can set aside an essay-I'd-been-meaning-to-write and refer people to one written, and written well.

7:24 AM  

Post a Comment

<< Home