Last week we were eating breakfast at Sea Lodge, watching the Pacific for Gray Whales. Dolphins were heading up the coast. H and the waitress were watching K3 watch the dolphins through a spotting scope. The waitress addressed K3: “Isn’t it amazing that they used to be land animals like us?” K3 said nothing, focusing on the dolphins. H admitted feeling like she should have said something. i.e. by not saying anything she wasn’t giving glory to the Creator. But she didn’t want to be impolite. Or feel like a freak.
Yesterday we spent the day at Monterey Bay Aquarium, wandering around that gorgeous facility feasting our eyes on God’s creation. But, you couldn’t help feeling like the modern-day equivalent of a phrenologist or alchemist or flat-earther for seeing in all that variation the hand of an infinitely creative Designer while all the signage and volunteers were busy explaining how all this came about through time plus chance.
In the other camp are creationists like those at Answers in Genesis (http://www.answersingenesis.org). I have to admit these folks leave me feeling like a bit of a heretic. I’m with them for the first ten words of “The Book” but we differ a bit in how we interpret the facts beyond that. I found I could agree with most of what Carl Wieland was saying in his article ‘But the Bible’s not a science textbook, is it?’ (http://www.answersingenesis.org/creation/v22/i2/textbook.asp). But I think our conclusions on authorship, editing, dating, etc. should always be qualified since there is much that we know we can’t know for sure. Still, I don’t think the foundations of the faithful are any more tenuous than those of the evolutionists, form-critics and others. We all piece together bits of evidence from a massive world and come to conclusions that match our hopes. See “No Answers in Genesis” (http://home.austarnet.com.au/stear/default.htm) for an amusing example of an ex nihilo nihil fit (nothing comes from nothing) thinker who gets slightly worked up about the AiG way of seeing things.
When I hear some of the crazier assertions of the godless set I frequently say to myself, “I know you’re wrong, though I don’t know why.” That feeling is the flip-side of our faith. Jesus told Thomas, “Because you see you believe. Blessed are those who believe without seeing.” What we’re saying to the National Geographic crowd is, “Though I see it, I don’t believe it.” They would like to turn this into a battle on their turf between Science and Religion. But there are those of us who see the gospel as something transcending human systems of knowledge (Romans 1.14). We live by faith not as an alternative to science since many of us are scientists, but our science is based on different assumptions and so of course our results are different. Well I’ve started to sound like I’m issuing a manifesto. It’s awfully hard to talk about these things dispassionately.
