Why Evolution is More Absurd than TV Evangelism

I had a couple of minutes to kill today after stuffing myself at the local Mexican restaurant. I saw this article on Yahoo! and thought it might be fun to read. For the most part, it was. Until I got to this quote:

Genuine smiles and fake smiles are governed by two separate neural pathways. We know this is true because people with damage to a certain part of the brain can still break into a spontaneous grin even though they're unable to smile at will. Scientists speculate that our ancestors evolved the neural circuitry to force smiles because it was evolutionarily advantageous to mask their fear and fury.

According to this theory, some cave man somewhere thought, "Heeeey...I'm really ticked at the tribal chief right now. I really, really wish I could fake a smile so he wouldn't see my inner fury." Hearing this desperate plea, Evolution stepped in, and after hundreds of generations of progeny, granted his request. And people claim that evolutionists aren't a people of faith!

Do people really find this easier to believe than a con-artist TV evangelist's forehead slapping ministry?

Evolutionary Conundrum

I am no evolutionist because I believe it to be silly. I know that my believing this leads some to think that I am very silly because I think this way. To those who think so, let them be consoled in the knowledge that I evolved this silly, stubborn mindset and that I am merely trapped inside my own DNA. This way, I will merely be a slight evolutionary throw-back instead of something to be despised.

Since I am on the subject of my own silliness, I have a thought that I would like to interject for study. It is a real dilemma for me in my backwardness, and no doubt my unsophisticated thoughts here will be a delight for the more evolutionarily enlightened. But I have noticed that mankind seems to be going backward on the evolutionary climb and not forward. If I believed in evolution, this would greatly worry me

I have noticed that we seem to regard ourselves, and other species, as making "progress" in evolution. First of all, I am not certain as to how this is measured. Perhaps this is my mistake. But if the point of evolution is to make certain that the species remains viable, prolific, and avoid extinction, then I believe we have taken a bad turn in our march upwards on the evolutionary chart.

It seems to me that insects are doing better than we are. After watching the Discovery Channel, I realized that bugs and creeping things far outnumber our species. The ants alone are a marvel of the random process of evolution. They defeat human beings in every conceivable category. They are more numerous, they breed faster, and they cooperate within the hive with one another far better than humans. Yes, it is true that we can step on any ant as we please, but they are in no real danger for all our stomping. We could not get rid of them all even if we tried.

If we go back even further "down" the evolutionary chain, I find that bacteria are even more successful than the bugs. Bacteria are everywhere, virtually countless in number, and are able to invade human colonies and wipe them out. Visit any hospital and you will see that I am telling the truth. This is why they have hand sanitizer virtually everywhere in the place. Bacteria are everywhere, and they cannot be stopped. We can only hope to contain them.

So I conclude that if evolution is true, humans have been cheated by chance. We should have remained bacteria. We would be more numerous, more viable, and much harder to ultimately get rid of. I can't help but wonder why we didn't remain contented with the evolutionary marvels that we were. Why did we, by chance, become so big and easy to wipe out?

In the end, I must conclude that evolution is a cruel mistress. It must be that Evolution chanced us to become what we are out of a cruel sense of humor. You see, Evolution evolved us with a brain so that we could reason in order that we might realize, "Oh drat, we should have remained bacteria."

Maybe, if we are lucky, we can go back to being ooze.

The Philosophy of a Young Earth

I want to be clear that I do not think someone who believes in an "old earth" is a heretic deserving of anathemas. I do, however, think that science has hi-jacked the plain reading of Genesis chapter one, and more importantly, science has sneaked into the mind to play the part of philosopher instead of fact finder. Science is an awesome explorer and discoverer, she is a lousy theologian and philosopher.

Most people who hold to an extremely old universe do so because it looks old. We have stars that are billions of light years away. If the universe is young, then we should not be seeing them yet. There are many examples such as this in the natural world that would indicate the ancientness of the universe. Yet, stubborn man that I am, I still believe that this place may be fairly new. I do not believe it because of science. I believe it first because of the Bible, and secondly because the idea of a young earth and universe is as philosophically possible as an old one.

Let's deal today with philosophy and earth age. I want to contend that science cannot, no matter how hard she tries, she cannot tell us how old the universe is. To age something, we have to have a definite starting date. How, I wonder, will science provide this? When did the universe begin? Most scientists, I suspect, believe in a starting point in something like the Big Bang. There may be other competeing theories, but this is the most popular. Think about the Big Bang theory. The Big Bang theory presupposes the eternity of matter. That is, before the Big Bang, there was this massive, massive ball of everything that is that exploded into chunks of what we see now. That explosion starts the clock. That is a reasonable theory.

It is precisely at this point that I think many theologians and Christian philosophers go awry. After hearing the Big Bang theory, they then try to beat the scientist at his own game by exploring whether or not the Big Bang could work. I don't think that is the best way to go about it. I want to deal with the most glaring problem: how did that massive ball of everything begin to exist in the first place? What made it explode? Science cannot answer this for us. At best, science could tell us that it is possible that such a big ball of everything existed. Also, and let this sink in, when science tells us how "old" the universe is, it is really only telling us how long it has been since the Big Bang. The actual age of the universe would have to be infinite. It would have to be eternal. The universe, in this closed, miracleless system, has simply always been. This assertion boggles the mind theologically, philosophically, and yes, even scientifically.

Here is the second thing to think about in this debate: miracles. Do I believe that the universe is governed by unalterable natural laws? No, I do not. I allow for miracles, as do most people I imagine. Once you allow for that, and this is a big point, then there is no reason to reject a young universe creation. If I believe in wizardry, then it should not surprise me if a wizard can conjure a rabbit out of a hat, or a fireball from thin air, or a mouse from his hand. It would be silly of me to try and use science to figure out how old a newly conjured bird would be. It simply will not work. That does not mean that the wizard is being deceptive.

Imagine this, a wizard conjures a rabbit and brings it over to my house and he says, "Look what I made." I say, "OOooo...that is the oldest rabbit I've ever seen! Let me get my tools." So, I begin a scientific medical exam to check out the rabbit and age it. The wizard says, "What are you doing?" I say, "I'm trying to figure out how old this rabbit is." The wizard laughs and says, "Friend, I just conjured him on the way here." And I say, "Well, that is not what my findings are telling me. This rabbit is ten years old at least! Besides, if this rabbit isn't really old, then you deceive me by making it look so old! Why would you make an old rabbit?" I can only imagine that the wizard might respond, "Deceiving you? I just told you I made while on the way. And I made it old because I like rabbits that look like this one. What does old even mean, friend?"

Here are a couple of problems:

1) If you do not believe in wizardry, you will never take the wizard's word for it.
2) If you believe that science explains everything, you won't even bother looking at the wizard's explanation anyway.

So it is the modern presuppositions that get in the way of a young universe. We presuppose it to be old because it looks that way. We also believe that science can explain everything for us. It simply can't. Finally, we also have a hard time swallowing that a book, nearly as old as the world, could possibly be correct on the age of the earth. We don't believe much in miracles or wizards. Besides, those rubes didn't have science. How could they have possibly known how old the universe is? Or why it was made?

Unless, of course, the Maker told them.

On Being a Young Earther Luddite

I know that it is all the rage today to think that the universe is ancient beyond comprehension and that men are evolved from bacteria. It can hardly go unnoticed that the stars are really, really far off and that there are dinosaur bones scattered just about everywhere across the planet. When you add that together with Cro-magnon skull fragments, petrified wood, and carbon-14 steady rate decay, it appears as if the old age of the universe and earth is a slam dunk.

I confess that it is a slam dunk for a natural law type of person. By that, I mean the man who believes that all there is can be explained by the scientific method, by natural law, and if need be, genetics. This is the type of man who thinks that religion is a coping mechanism to keep us from realizing that when we die, we go into the void of nothingness. In order to avoid this inconvenient fact, our genes invented religion so we wouldn't turn into non-breeding gothic kids who put off marriage and procreation in favor of black attire and melancholy. In their universe, love is merely a swirling concoction of hormones and genetic pre-disposition for symmetrical faces. There is, in fact, nothing mystical about love, hate, or zealotry over our favorite college team. It's in the genes. And, most abhorrently, the true miracle of the "immaculate reception" is no miracle at all. It is a closed, cold universe headed to the void of nothingness without the faintest wisp of the comfort of metaphysics.

I am not that type of person. I do confess, however, that I have the appalling tendency to want to be liked by men. More specifically, I hate to be thought of as an idiot. So I know that my inclination that the world may be only 10,000 years old or so marks me immediately as bordering on being an imbecile. I have tried, very hard, to harmonize my young earth mentality with the ancient appearance of the universe. Toward this end, I moved back my original calculation all the way from 6,000 years to 10,000. This, for me, was a large compromise, but it will satisfy none of my critics I'm sure.

So how could it come to pass that a man with a liberal arts degree should be so foolish? Alas, I believe in magic. At least, I believe in an omnipotent Creator-God who can, with mere words, make something out of nothing. To use the words of the academy, I believe that everything we see was created ex nihilo. That is akin to Harry Potter conjuring a mouse from thin air, I suppose, to the naturalist. I came to the startling realization that if God Almighty spoke something out of nothing, it is simply absurd to then go and try to age it. Unless, of course, we surmise that when He made it, He made it look "new." This sounds altogether reasonable until we try to compare it to what an old universe might look like. Since there had never been a universe before, we must come to the only logical conclusion that this new universe God made looked just like a new universe, no matter how old we might think it looks. There is, actually, no other universe to compare it to. I guess this means that we are aging it through time as a man would age, by seconds and years back to a time when it was young.

Sometimes, people think I am old because my hair has turned gray. That is a reasonable assumption since gray hair belongs on old men. However, by a cruel twist of genetics, my hair turned gray at the tender age of thirty. If I were to color my hair more brown, and then allow these same fellows to watch me run a half-marathon next Tuesday, they might think I am doing better than one foot in the grave after all. So, just because my hair is gray does not mean I've gotten old. If you are scratching your head as to what this has to do with the age of the universe, just leave this point aside. I simply wanted to feel less old than I appear.

So, oddly, I find myself in the predicament of believing that God spoke in the Bible, that He spoke plainly, and that He has said that He made the world out of nothing. And, He has also said that He put a man on this planet, and that He made one woman out of that man's rib. I believe all of that patent nonsense. I also believe in talking snakes and damning fruit. To the naturalist, I am practically mad and particularly dangerous to a thinking society. If my philosophy were not so repulsive, I could be studied as an odd throw-back to a more primitive day. Instead, I think ridicule is the chosen attack against rubes like myself.

I am glad to have this off of my chest. I hold a sad set of presuppostions that put me at odds with the modern man. I believe in God, and miracles, and I believe in the Bible. Apparently, clinging to this sort of hocus-pocus entails the denial of medication and all scientific advancement. I believe this to be a merely childish insult. I like ibuprofen very much. I am also very fond of the idea that my son and daughter have powerful angels watching over them who obey the every whim of an omnipotent God.

So there you have it, dear reader. I am a young earther Luddite of the highest order. I am not even ashamed of it on good days. You can pray for me, if you like. Or at least, you can blame it on an unfortunate idea one of my ancestor's genes had to give me this wretched coping mechanism.