Fossilized Faith - Part 1

At ET Church we are in the middle of a summer sermon series called "You Asked For It!". As part of this series I was asked to tackled the issue of evolution. For some reason, a number of people have asked me for a copy of the manuscript for the talk I gave on July 22, 2007. I thought I could just post it here on my much neglected blog. It starts here, and then goes down through the next 3 posts (reverse blog fashion.)

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Did you see the headlines in the news last week? “Baby Mammoth Carcass found in Siberia”[1] It was found by a Russian reindeer breeder and hunter sticking out of the permafrost. It is about the size of a large dog, 110 lbs., and remarkably well preserved. It “looked as though it had recently died”. She is estimated to be 40,000 years old.

The question that this message evolved from is this: “Is it possible to reconcile the differences in historical dating in biblical and scientific timelines?”

If I correctly understand the intent of the question, the issue is this: science says the universe 15 billion years old, the is earth is 4.56 billion years old, and baby mammoths are 40,000 years old. The Bible says God created the heavens and the earth. Can you believe both?

I have to admit I was initially uncomfortable with tackling this subject. I’m not a scientist or a philosopher, and I don’t want to look like an idiot. Also, the scope of the issue is overwhelming. But I think this is a very important question because it can be huge sticking point for people in their faith journey! If you are interested in science, you may wonder if being a Christian means checking your brain at the door. Are the beliefs of Christianity and science compatable? Secondly, if you’ve been raise in the church, evolution and dinosaurs can be the first real crisis or challenge to your faith. You went to Sunday School when you were a kid and heard the cool story about Adam and Eve and then you got to high school or university and suddenly you are overwhelmed with plethora of scientific information taught by some really smart people that at best calls into question everything that you’ve been taught and at worst threatens to destroy the very foundation of your faith.

I. What exactly is the issue?

There are many origin stories in the world, but in our western culture there are 2 main ideas about how we got here: evolution and creation. The creation story is based on Bible and found in Genesis. Genesis 1:1, the first verse of the Bible says “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.” The creation story goes on to say that everything that exists was created by God in 6 days:
Day 1: light = vrs. 3-5
Day 2: sky = vrs. 6-8
Day 3: land / vegetation = vrs. 9-13
Day 4: sun / moon / stars = vrs. 14-19
Day 5: sea creatures / birds = vrs. 20-23
Day 6: animals / man = vrs. 24-30

The account concludes with this summary: Genesis 1:31-2:2 31“God saw all that he had made, and it was very good. And there was evening, and there was morning—the sixth day. 1 Thus the heavens and the earth were completed in all their vast array. 2 By the seventh day God had finished the work he had been doing; so on the seventh day he rested from all his work.”

That is the creation story. If you believe this, you are a creationist. If you believe that this happened in space of seven 24-hour days, you are a literal creationist. If you believe that the dates and genealogies found in Genesis and rest of Bible indicate that all this happened about 6000 years ago, then you are a “young earth” creationist

The other idea how we got here, is a theory called evolution. This is a big complex theory that is difficult to adequately and accurately summarize, but I’ll try.

In this theory, the universe begins as a singularity. All the matter, energy, time, and space of the universe is squashed into a single point of infinite temperature and density. Then somewhere about 15 billion years ago, something unknown happened that caused an enormous explosion. The resulting fireball produced an expanding cloud of mostly hydrogen gas. This gas condensed into stars and galaxies, generations of which came and went, each exploding to eventually produce the elements heavier than helium.[2]

About 5 billion years ago our was sun formed by the gravitational collapse of a huge cloud of gas and dust. The leftover gas / dust formed the planets. The planet we now call Earth cooled and eventually something very unique happened. The elements formed complex amino acids and proteins that eventually formed a very simple single-cell creature. This creature is simple only when compared to the complex organisms in the world today, but actually it was very complex!

Then over billions of years, this single cell, through mutation and natural selection evolved into the vast array of plant and animal life that we see around us today[3]. You and I – homo sapiens –are part of that process.

If you believe what I have just stated, you are an evolutionist. Another term is “scientific naturalist”

Now I want to be as straight up as possible with this, so if I have misconstrued or misinterpreted or put any spin on this that in any way distorts what science says, I apologize. I am trying to be as objective as I know how, but I have to state my bias – I’m a creationist!

So we have these two big ideas how the world began: Creation and evolution. There are issues with each. Naturalist evolution denies the existence of God, which is a problem if you are a Christian. The creation story seems to contradict modern science.

When you look at these ideas at face value, it is obvious that if one is right, the other is wrong. But what if things are not so clear cut? What if it’s not an either / or proposition? What if there is some truth in both ideas? What if God created, but used evolution as the process, and Genesis account is an allegory or a metaphor? Well, that’s already been thought of. It’s called theistic evolution. What if Genesis is true, but the literal 6 day interpretation is wrong and there is room for thousands or millions or even billions of years to be tucked into the story some where? That is called progressive creationism.

So it was my job to try and sort all this out and “reconcile the differences in historical dating in biblical and scientific timelines” as our original question asks. Pastor Les kept asking me “So…have you got it figured out?”

[1] from Canada.com, accessed July 16, 2007
[2] Williams and Hartnett; Dismantling the Big Bang, p.115
[3] Strobel, The Case for Faith; p.127

Fossilized Faith - Part 2: Science is a Friend, Not the Enemy

As I have wrestled with these issues over the past few weeks, I have come up with some things I think we need to keep in mind as we wrestle with these ideas.

1. Science is a friend, not the enemy.

Christians have had a shaky relationship with science ever since Copernicus[1]. Copernicus was a Polish Priest by day and an astronomer by night. In early 1543 Copernicus, published a book with the shocking idea that the earth was not the center of the solar system.

This really ticked the church off, both Catholic and Protestant! Even Martin Luther was upset about this. He said “Joshua commanded the Sun to stand stil, not the earth!”[2]

Fifty years later Galileo picked up this same thought and in 1663 got into even bigger trouble for it. He was told he would be excommunicated if he didn’t recant, and spent the last 8 years of his life under house arrest. In fact, it was just in 1993 that Pope John Paul II admitted that the Catholic church made a mistake when they condemned Galileo for believing and teaching that Copernicus was right![3].

So science and religion haven’t always gotten along. But the truth is that virtually every branch of modern science was pioneered by Christians who embraced a creationist world view[4]. In fact, their scientific studies were often inspired by their biblical faith. They believed that because the world was created by intelligent, purposeful designer, it would display evidence of that design. King Solomon, one of the earliest recorded scientists said in Proverbs 25:2 “It is the glory of God to conceal a matter; to search out a matter is the glory of kings.”

As I mentioned, Copernicus was a priest from Poland. Galileo saw nature and the Bible as “two books from God” He said “God is known by Nature in his works, and by doctrine in his revealed word.”[5]. Sir Isaac Newton was born the year that Galileo died and was possibly the greatest mathematician and physical scientist of all time. He discovered the law of gravity and invented calculus, but considered his writing on theology most important. He also looked like a rock star.

We could talk about other scientists like Micheal Faraday, James Maxwell, and Loui Pasteur, or we could talk about contemporary scientists like biochemist Michael Behe who has looked at what he calls the 'irreducible complexity of life' and says that the odds of this happening by chance as evolution says are so minuscule there has got to be a better explanation!

We live in an incredibly complex world. It doesn’t matter if you look with a telescope or microscope. Before invention of telescope, astronomer couldn’t count stars. but it was estimated that there were about 10,000 of them. With today’s telescopes we still cannot count the stars. There are too many – estimate 10 million billion billion (10 to the 25th power)[6], and they exist in billions if not trillions of galaxies.

If you just look in one small part of the universe, you will find a galaxy called the Milky Way. It has only 200 billion stars, though some say 400 billion and others up to a trillion. If you look in one far-flung spiral arm of the Milky Way, you find our solar system. If you look in that solor system you will find a planet that seems to be unique in the universe. It has life on it. It is called ‘Earth.’

As scientists have examine our galaxy and solar system, they have identified hundreds of characteristics that require exquisite fine-tuning for life to exist[7]. There are complex issues of quantum physics and astral physics. I would love to talke about these things, but I’m just not smart enough!

But lets talk about something we can get our head around - our closest star, the Sun, and just some of the issues involved with getting the earth the right temperature for us to live. As humans we live in a very limited temperature range. Last week we were cooking in the heat. This week we’ve been complaining that it is too cool. What is the difference? Only 20 degrees Celcius!

If the earth was any different distance from the sun, or if the earth didn’t rotate on it’s axis or orbit around the sun and the precise speed it does, or if the earth didn’t have an atmosphere that diffuses the sun’s energy and protects us from cosmic radiation, we would either bake or freeze and human life would cease to exist. I think the psalmist had it right when he sang in Psalm 19:1 “The heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of his hands.

But if you think physics is complicated, you should do some biology! Richard Dawkins, a British ethologist and leading evolutionary biologist from Oxford University puts it like this. The objects and phenomena that physics describes are simpler than a single cell in the human body, and you have one hundred trillion cells in your body. Many of them different from each other, but all are organized with intricate architecture and precision engineering to make your body work.[8]

Every cell in your body has a nucleus that contains a digitally coded database that has more information than all 30 volumes of the Encyclopedia Britannica put together. It is called DNA (deoxyribonucleic acid)[9]. DNA contains the unique information that determines what you look like, much of your personality, and how every cell in your body is to function throughout your life.

If the DNA segments in one of your cells were uncoiled, connected, and stretched out, it would be about seven feet long. If all the DNA in your body were placed end-to-end, it would stretch from here to Moon more than 500,000 times! Yet if one set of DNA (one cell’s worth) from every person who ever lived were placed in a pile, the final pile would weigh less than an aspirin!
Understanding DNA is just one small reason for believing we are “fearfully and wonderfully made.” (Ps 139:14) The telescope and the microscope proclaim the greatness of God!

[1] Cindy Dyson: Father’s, Faith, and Fossils, New Man Magazine, July / August 1996, p.54
[2] http://www.astronomy.ohio-state.edu/~pogge/Ast161/Unit3/response.html
[3] Charles E. Hummel; Making Friends with Galileo, Christianity Today, January 11, 1993, p.14-15
[4] Williams and Hartnett, p.34
[5] Hummel, p.14
[6] Williams and Hartnett, p.247
[7] Scientists are Getting Warmer: An Interview with Dr. Hugh Ross, New Man Magazine, September / October 1999, p.32-36
[8] Phillip E. Johnson; Defeating Darwinism, p. 77
[9] http://www.creationscience.com/onlinebook/PartI3.html accessed July 19, 2007

Fossilized Faith - Part 3: Evolution is a Philosophy, Not Just a Science

2. Evolution is a philosophy, not just a science.

The second thing we need to keep in mind when we thing about these things is that while science is a friend, evolution is not just science, it is a philosophy. Evolution is the dominant creation story in our culture and is one of the most successful scientific theories ever taught[1]. The scientific case for evolution is considered closed and assumed as fact. If you dare to contradict or deny it, you are called a fool or fanatic, thanks to the powerful indoctrination of the “intellectual elite”[2] in the media, government, and education systems.

What we need to understand is that evolutionary theory is as much philosophy as it is science, a philosophy that is founded on certain basic assumptions. These assumptions are primary in shaping the interpretation of the scientific data. If you start with long-age evolutionary assumptions and look at the scientific data, you are going to draw long-age evolutionary conclusions.[3] If you start with biblical assumptions and look at the scientific data, what kind of conclusions will you draw?

The number one assumption of evolution is that there is no God. We got here without God and don’t need God. God is a creation of man.

Phillip Johnson, who wrote a great book called Darwin on Trial said in an article in Christianity Today: “The contemporary academic world takes for granted a philosophy called scientific naturalism. According to this philosophy, nature is “all there is,” which is to say the cosmos is a closed system of material causes and effects that can never be influenced by anything outside nature – like God – for instance.”[4]

So what happens when you believe this? What happens when you are a scientist and believe this? It means that no matter what the scientific evidence says, the answer cannot be God or the Bible…it has to be something else!

In my research this week I stumbled across an article by Ann Gibbons that illustrates this bias and also speaks to the issue of scientific and biblical timelines. Ann Gibbons is a correspondent for Science magazine, where she has specialized in writing about evolution and is the author of The First Human: The Race to Discover Our Earliest Ancestors.

In a recent article she tells an interesting story. In 1991, the Russian authorities exhumed a Siberian grave that was thought to contain the skeletons of the last Russian tsar, Nicholas II, and his family. They had been shot by firing squad in 1918 during the Communist revolution. but two bodies were missing from the grave, so no one could be absolutely certain of identity of remains.

So in 1992 they did DNA testing.What they found in that DNA test “raised another puzzle that first troubled forensics experts and is now worrying evolutionists.” The mitochondrial DNA from the Nicholas II didn't quite match that of his living relatives. Forensic experts thought that most people carry only one type of mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA), but the tsar had two. His relatives had only one, so this fueled controversy over the authenticity of skeletons.

So to identify the body they decided to dig up the remains of his brother Georgij, Grand Duke of Russia. Tthey knew who he was, and where he was buried, so if the DNA matched the body thought to be the tsar, the mystery would be solved. So George was exhumed, and it was found that he had also inherited the same two sequences of mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) from their mother.

So hurray for history. We now know for certain where the bones of Nicholas are. But why is this a big deal to people like Ann Gibbons and other evolutionary scientists? Because they have used mitochondrial DNA to propose a date for the appearance of the first human by comparing human mitochondrial DNA to chimpanzee. This dating is based on how fast this DNA mutates or changes. Mitochondrial DNA was thought to mutate very slowly, so researchers calculated that the first woman, "mitochondrial Eve", (as they call her, tongue in cheek) lived 100,000 to 200,000 years ago.

But what the case of Nicholas II showed was that mtDNA mutates much faster than expected. Ann Gibbons concludes: “Using the new clock, [Eve] would be a mere 6000 years old.” In the very next sentence she says “No one thinks that's the case…”[5]

When does the Genesis account indicate that Eve was created? About 6000 years ago.

What most of us don’t understand and science refuses to admit is how slim the evidence for evolution really is. We keep hearing about the ‘missing link’. A more accurate summary would be they have a few links, but they are missing the chain!

The more research is done, instead of solving the problems, the more layers and layers of complexity are uncovered that create more and more complex problems that in turn demand more and more complex answers. But if you start with certain assumptions, you will draw certain conclusions – despite the scientific data!
[1] Strobel, p.124
[2] Johnson, p.22
[3] William and Hartnett, p.165-167
[4] Phillip E. Johnson; Shouting Heresy in the Tempole of Darwin, Christianity Today, October 24, 1994, p.22-26
[5] Calibrating the Mitochondrial Clock; Ann Gibbons accessed July 17, 2007,
http://0-www.sciencemag.org.library.vu.edu.au/cgi/content/full/279/5347/28

Fossilized Faith - Part 4: Stay focused on the core values of faith

3. Stay focused on the core values.

So what is the final thing I think we need to keep in mind when we think about this issue? We always need to keep our eyes on the the core values of our faith.

There are interesting questions out there, especially when you talk about time and dates. Is that little mammoth really 40,000 years old? When did dinosaurs roam the earth? What is the age of the universe and stars?

There are interesting hypothesis out there when it comes to dinosaurs and geology. Some creation scientists would argue that the earth is the way it is today due to three profound events: creation, the fall of man, and the great flood. They say that all geology and paleontology issues can be explained in that framework. In fact, Alex Williams and Dr. John Hartnett say “The only reason that people today want to insert billions of years into [the creation] narrative is because they erroneously believe that the scientific evidence demands it.”[1]

I was also fascinated to read some more about time and Einstien’s Theory of Relativity, and how it has been scientifically proven that time is not constant. Tim can speed up and slow down due to the influence of enormous gravity or velocity. Time in different parts of the universe can progress at different rates. All scientists accept this. It can help explain big bang, but it also offers increadible explanation for creationists trying to understand the age of universe. But the reality is that all these explanations are just hypothesis. Even scientists who are Christian are deeply divided on issues. Both sides accuse other of either sloppy theology or sloppy science.[2]

What are we going to do? Do we stick our head in the sand, ignore the issues, and hope the questions go away? I was talking with someone in the congregation earlier this week, and he said that when he was about eleven years old he asked his Sunday School Teacher “What happened to the dinosaurs” She replied “That’s not important!” But it is important to the person asking the question!

Don’t be afraid to ask the questions. Don’t be afraid to look for answers, explore issues, be curious! God gave you your brain for a reason, so go ahead and use it. There is a plethora of material available. Google “creation science” or “irreducible complexity” and you’ll get all kinds of stuff on all sides of the issue.

But in the end, don’t be afraid to say “I don’t know…and that’s alright”, because there are just some things we are not going to know, and that’s alright, because these questions are not the core of what we believe. At best they are just interpretations, deductions, and opinions.

“Is it possible to reconcile the differences in historical dating in biblical and scientific timelines?” Very smart people disagree on the answer to that question. Some say yes, some say no!

But let me tell you one thing I do believe that will inform and influence and help me weigh all the evidence I look at: God exists, and God created. That is an essential, an ‘absolute’!

The first 4 words of the Bible say Genesis 1:1 “In the beginning God…” And if you can believe that – and to be a Christian you must believe that because Hebrew 11:6 says ”And without faith it is impossible to please God, because anyone who comes to him must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who earnestly seek him.” – then you won’t have any trouble with the 5th word of Gensis 1:1 – “created”.

Colossians 1:16-17 puts it like this, and for me this is good enough: “For by him all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities; all things were created by him and for him. He is before all things, and in him all things hold together.”

[1] Williams and Hartnett, p.227-228
[2] Dyson, p.54