`Always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for your hope!’ (1 Peter 3:15)
Why do we believe in God? Multiple reasons for our hope…
Our central reasons for hope are the reality of Christ, and the fact that he rose from the dead.
But God may well use some of the following to point us or our friends towards himself…
- God’s actions today – miracles, answered prayer – happening to you or someone you trust
- Something very different: God enabling endurance through deep suffering
- The Bible – so profound, so relevant, so coherent
- Remarkably accurate biblical prophecy
- What we love most: in childbirth, artistic beauty, nature
- The laws of the universe; and, it’s so `well-made`
- The sparrow, the panther, a mountain-range, a stallion……
- What we sense deeply in our hearts: people have absolute value, love is a reality, there is a right and wrong
- Universal intuitions of God throughout humankind
And above all, Jesus, and his resurrection…
Science and faith in Genesis: there are three Christian positions:
Theistic evolution: the position that God used macro-evolution as he created the world. See the website of Biologos biologos.org, and those of the main bodies for Christians who are professional scientists in Britain and America, Christians in Science www.cis.org.uk, and the American Scientific Affiliation www.asa3.org; also the Faraday Institute https://www.faraday.cam.ac.uk/ . A key book is Denis Alexander, Creation or Evolution: do we have to choose?
At the opposite end of the spectrum is young-earth creationism, which is strongly anti-evolution but also opposes itself to the generally-accepted scientific view of the age of the earth; see Biblical Creation Society http://www.biblicalcreation.org.uk/; Answers in Genesis http://www.answersingenesis.org/; Institute for Creation Research www.icr.org. Key figures are Ken Ham, John Peet.
A third position is old-earth creationism, also sceptical about evolution but not about the age of the earth: see Reasons to Believe www.reasons.org, Old Earth Ministries http://www.oldearth.org/, and the work of eg Hugh Ross.
Then also the highly significant `intelligent design` movement does not commit specifically to any of these positions! It is systematically misunderstood in the media, but explores the possibility that the universe’s origins etc point towards an intelligent designer. Several branches of science now have well-defined procedures for distinguishing designed activity from chance phenomena; for example, the study of artificial intelligence; forensic science; archaeology; and the search for extraterrestrial intelligence. All these fields need criteria for separating chance activity from what is intelligently designed. By the criteria of these sciences, ID theorists argue, various factors, particularly the issue of information-origin and the high level of `irreducible complexity’ in the universe, reveal clear signs of design. See Access Research Network www.arn.org, Discovery Institute www.discovery.org, and the books of William Dembski or John Lennox. (Lennox’s Seven Days that Divide the World may well be the key book on Genesis and origins for the next few years.)
See http://www.asa3.org/ASA/topics/Evolution/commission_on_creation.html#Commission%20on%20Creation for a detailed description of each position, and http://www.cis.org.uk/resources/articles-talks-and-links/creation/creationism-links/ for a helpful collection of links to each of them and their mutual debates.
Handling the questions – three simple conversation points:
- Evolution is an issue over which Christians feel free to think and free to differ. Many career scientists have no difficulties believing both evolution and the Bible; so it certainly hasn’t been proven that the two are irreconcilable, nor that learning from one prevents us learning from the other.
- Others rightly observe that evolutionary theory is far from finally ‘proven’ (scientific theories never are). Some huge and fascinating problems remain unsettled; see eg Phillip Johnson, Darwin on Trial, and John Lennox, God’s Undertaker. (It’s evident that a number of theorists affirm Darwinian orthodoxy consciously because they are determined not to believe in God; but if you don’t have a problem with God, the turmoil of these challenges becomes intriguing.)
- Yet others notice the possibility that evolutionary theory, to work, may even necessitate intelligent design underlying it! Some secular cosmologists have described the evolutionary process as so problematic that a higher intelligence from space must have watched over it to make it work (cf Evolution from Space by the non-Christian Sir Frederick Hoyle, Britain’s most respected cosmologist a while ago) – ie, if there’s evolution, there must be some sort of Creator!
Three hot potatoes:
`But doesn’t Genesis say the world was made 6000 years ago?’
`But doesn’t Genesis insist that the world was made in a week?’
`But surely you don’t believe in Adam and Eve?’
