HOW OLD IS THIS EARTH, ANYWAY?
How old is the ground your standing on? It matters a great deal to the scientific community. Should it matter to Christians?
We all know at least something of Darwin’s trip to the Galapagos Islands and his corresponding theory of evolution. This man’s speculations have caused a great deal of confusion about the existence of God and His involvement with mankind.
This article is far too short to do an exhaustive study on this subject, but big enough for a few thoughts.
New advances in science have brought a great deal of pressure to bear on Darwin’s theory and those who espouse other forms of the “God didn’t do it - it all happened by - you guessed it - dumb luck”. There are many brilliant and dedicated individuals studying the origins of the universe and life (both Christian and non-Christian), but all have one overwhelming human disadvantage, brains that are too small and biases that are too big.
Exploring the complexities of life is certainly honorable but it my be a bit far-fetched and perhaps even dim-witted to state, at the top of one’s voice, that humans can, and will figure it all out. True, inerrant understanding of the truths of our existence may be a field for the Divine, only. So where does the Christian come in?
Without doubt, it is imperative that the Christian’s faith be underpinned by the fact that God is the great Creator of everything. Also, since He has created us, He knows the path of life that will benefit us most. If we listen to Him and search out His purposes for us, we will profit immensely.
In Matt 22:37 an expert in the Law asked Christ what the greatest commandment was. Christ’s answer was startling and profound as He emphasized that loving the Lord our God with all our heart and with all our soul and with all our mind, and loving our neighbor as our self, fulfills all the Law and the Prophets, that is, it is the whole duty of mankind.
Christ was implying that these two commandments should be the central focus of our Christian walk and that if we attend to these with all our hearts we will walk with God and be pleasing to Him. Of course, books have been written on what it means to love God supremely and our neighbor as ourself, but we should be able to conclude that: (1) to love God first we must place God’s point-of-view over our own and yield to His Spirit each day, (2) to love our neighbor as ourself we must treat others in a way that shows respect and a regard for their feelings and value with the goal of helping them to develop a more loving, intimate relationship with the Lord.
So where does the creational work of the Lord fit into these two great commandments? I believe that any theories or speculations of how God created things is a secondary focus of the Christian. Not everyone has to study and understand this subject to the same depth. The study of God’s creation is worthwhile, but not primary. I would caution you not to place too much emphasis on this issue and take the spotlight off the very things that God commanded us to observe. Don’t demand of others that they must believe a certain theory of creation to be thuroughly Christian. Don’t negate the great law of love.
Editorial: Embryos, Tricorders and Morality
It has been said that we live in a culture where technology is moving faster than morality, that scientific advances are forcing us to define what is right as we go, a sort of technological relativism.
Technology moves at an incredible pace. Think about all of the wonderful whiz-bangs, tricorders and doo-hickeys that Captain Kirk and the Star Trek gang had at their disposal. So many of those “far out” tech items are now technologically passé as science has re-invented them in real life.
Another great science fiction movie was Invasion of the Body Snatchers. Aliens grew people to replace the real things and the movie ends with the threat, “YOU ARE NEXT” (for replacement I would presume.)
With that in mind, I noticed that on March 29th, the Indianapolis Star reported there are over 400,000 embryos which genetically belong to someone (more appropriately someones), but there is no one to claim them. At the same time, the DNA donors do not want to give these cellular offspring to science or destroy them, so 400,000 unborn sit quietly in a deep freeze, a pre-life, Frigidaire coffin. What do we do with these “children”? I cannot open my Bible to the book of Technologicans and have morality defined for me; I have to find my own way on this one. So here is my thinking.
A salient case has been made for why abortion is the ultimate form of discrimination, denying life to someone, regardless of there social status, black / white, gay / straight, married / unmarried, viable / unviable, on life support / auto-respiration capable, is the ultimate form of segregation. These unborn citizens should have every right and protection guaranteed us by our constitution.
At the same time, if all 400,000 of these embryos were allowed to mature to viability, who would take care of them? Who would be their family?
Community Health Network has begun working with parents to adopt and carry the children to term. According to the Star:
“As of July 2006, the center had matched 71 "donor" families with 61 "adoptive" families. So far, 41 babies have been born or are awaiting birth. The center started two years ago at Knoxville's Baptist Hospital for Women.”
What do we do with the rest of them? As Christians, I look to my Bible and read Jeremiah 1:5: Before I formed you in the womb, I knew you. We believe that all life is sacred and intrinsically valuable.
Yet there are those that would say, throw the embryos away, that the embryo is not aware nor is it actually life / alive. Still others would argue for the instrumental value of the bodies, being grown for their parts in order to preserve those of those of us that are the walking viable. Again, what was once science fiction is a reality for those that have lab grown organs?
Science fiction long ago began propounding the perpetuation of the mind by transplanting it from the old, diseased body and placing it in the new, healthy body. Just think, 400,000 harvestable life perpetuation pods just waiting for those of us to afford the procedure.
These are all issues raised by advancing technology that must be addressed by morality. Do we hold out until a family exists that will raise that life in love? If life begins at conception, which I believe, we cannot destroy that life without being guilty of murder. Exodus 20: 13 is specific about this. However, the current climate of regulation has created an environment of moral relativism where each individual is asked to do what they think is best, or right. Is morality relative, does technology exist in an amoral vacuum, moving forward without a moral framework?
Sadly, I do not have an answer. Because of the issues and arguments of life and alive connected to conception, some have gone as far as refusing to embrace in vitro fertilization. As a Christian, I am committed to the fact that all human life is sacred. There are countless couples awaiting adoption, many more that would adopt if they could afford it. In that may lie the solution but it seems calloused to make birth and adoption into a commodities market, awarding life to the highest bidder where supply forces the prices down. Furthermore, how is the child carried to term? This introduces other technology / morality dilemmas that must be considered.
In looking to the future, there will be many more issues of technology that require a framework of morality to be created. As Christians, we must never abandon the fact that we have a creator God that loves each of us, long before in fact we are formed in our mother’s womb. The great abolitionist William Wilberforce said:
“Let everyone regulate his conduct . . . by the golden rule of doing to others as in similar circumstances we would have them do to us, and the path of duty will be clear before him.”
If we allow the golden rule to be our guide, we will never stray far from knowing how these very basic lives should be treated, it simply becomes a matter of when will they be treated, to the fullness and grandeur of life. It is immoral to suggest anything else.
From the Bible: TRUTH AND SCRIPTURE
16 We did not follow cleverly invented stories when we told you about the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, but we were eyewitnesses of his majesty. 2 Peter 1:16 (New International Version)
How do we reconstruct history? We cannot measure it. We cannot sense it. How can we know anything from the past if there is no way to recreate it? Answer, eye witnesses. All of history is based on the idea that eye witnesses recorded their accounts truthfully.
Say I was interested in learning about Napoleon. I can open many history books; I can find many biographies and learn from those that have studied Napoleon. Napoleon recorded much of what he did; his and other eye witness accounts connect us today with that time.
What about text from antiquity, what about the New Testament of the Bible? Can we trust that what is recorded is accurate and that the events we are reading are true?
Josh McDowell, Christian author and lawyer has written significantly on the reliability of scripture and he has suggested three tests to determine the authenticity of any text from antiquity.
The bibliographical test – a test of source documentation
The internal evidence test - claims are valid until proven false
The external evidence test – what do sources apart say
The bibliographical test is simple, the more manuscripts that I have, the easier it is to recreate the original and check for discrepancies. From More Evidence that Demands a Verdict, by Josh McDowell, scholars have accounted for 24,633 first generation manuscripts (one removed from the original) of just the New Testament. These manuscripts build a strong case for the reliability of the events recorded.
No one doubts the veracity of Caesar and there are far less manuscripts connected to him. The document with the second most manuscripts is the Iliad with 643.
While I will not take the time to go into great depth on the various tests, many have tried to prove the Gospels false, but with little success.
In 1874, Dr. Simon Greenleaf, an antagonist of Christianity and professor of law at Harvard determined to show the Gospels as false. In the end not only did he convince himself that the four narratives would stand as valid, he became saved in the process. His work, The Testimony of the Evangelists Examined by the Rules of Evidence Administrated in Courts of Justice can be found online at: http://www.hti.umich.edu/cgi/t/text/textidx?c=moa;idno=AGA1251.0001.001.
Dr. Greenleaf determined that the Gospels were different enough to prove that they were not written in concert but that each contained the accounts of the same great event as it had occurred.
McDowell and Greenleaf, neither an eye witness, but both determined that the witnesses that exist and the documents as written are worthy of consideration because they do stand up to scholarly critique.
I enjoy triathlons, the discipline of exercise is good for me and I enjoy competing against my friends and the clock. While I am not a competitive triathlete, I am deep enough in it to understand aspects of the challenge. I have also experienced the changes that it has made in my body, direct evidence of the effort.
The same is true of Biblical apologetics. While I am not a brilliant student of ancient literature, I do enjoy studying what is available and have come to appreciate (much like an admiration for a great bicyclist like Lance Armstrong) the works of men like McDowell, Greenleaf and Dr. John Warrick Montgomery among many others.
I have also seen the changes that the truth of scripture has made in my life and the lives of many others. So the question remains, are the claims accurate and can I trust that it can make a difference in my life? I pray that your studies lead you to truth.
Henry