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Health & Fitness

Origins of Life - Four Major Views

Four major views of life's origin and their worldviews are reviewed along with the implications for the coming presidential election.

There are four major views of the origins of life, but only the minority view, atheistic evolution, is taught in our schools. Anyone with an opposing view is shouted down and disparaged as being anti-science. Ben Stein showed it can be dangerous to university career advancement in his documentary Expelled. About 95% of Americans believe in God, with 4% atheist or agnostic, but it dominates by force of power, not of reason. Even if you count the extra 12% unaffiliated people, atheistic evolution is very much a minority view.

A second view is theistic evolution, which is the natural outcome if you combine belief in God with the Darwinian evolution taught in schools. The major problem with this view is it contradicts the creation, fall, redemption story taught in the Bible. Did God create a good world fallen from its original intent? Did He create us (men and women) in His image?

Like many, I used to think Genesis didn’t matter, that who created us and why were more important than when and how. Whether or not you believe that Adam and Eve were real people or care about how long it took, the important questions are the same: was the world created good? Are we accountable to a Creator? Are we made in the image of God or no better than the animals? Is survival of the fittest how we should live as people? These are vital questions that affect how we view the world and how we live.

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The third view is old-earth creation, championed by Hugh Ross and others. This view, also called Intelligent Design, accepts that the universe is as old as the evolutionary Big-bang theory would say. It is acceptable to many Bible-believing Christians, Jews and Muslims, because it does not contradict the good creation gone wrong narrative that begins in Genesis 3. The redemption story begins with the first prediction of a redeemer who would come from the woman’s seed to crush the serpent’s head (Genesis 3:15) and continues with an animal sacrifice to cover the rebellion of the man and the woman (Genesis 3:24).

The fourth and most controversial view is young-earth creation, which has a surprising amount of scientific evidence supporting it. People like Ken Ham and local syndicated talk show host Bob Dutko hold this view. Some of the more interesting arguments for a young earth are the low amount of dust on the moon and the small amount of silt at the mouth of the Mississippi River.

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It holds that the earth is around 6000 years old and the fossil record was laid down quickly by a worldwide flood recorded in Genesis 6-9. Skeptics can look at the trees stripped of branches floating vertically in layers of mud at the bottom of Silver Lake caused by the 1980 Mt. St. Helens eruption. There are thousands of branchless, fossilized trees standing upright through layers of the geologic column all over the earth representing hundreds of millions of years, according to evolutionists.

Contrary to the way they are portrayed by their opponents, scientists who believe in creation believe in micro-evolution, that is, changes within a species over time due to environmental or other factors. Dogs can be bred for certain characteristics, but they’re all still dogs. When you cross species within a family (horse with burro to get the sure-footed mule) the offspring are often sterile.

Creation scientists do not believe in macro-evolution: that given enough time single-cell life can change into fish, then reptiles and birds, and certainly not monkeys into people. This also contradicts the second Law of Thermodynamics and the increasing entropy from every combustion event, which implies that unless some outside force acts, things get less complex, not more complex.

Ironically, since Darwin’s day, we have developed microscopes and even an understanding of the human genome. One would think this would draw people closer to God and marvel at the complexity of His creation. It has only made some people more entrenched in their atheistic views and disdain for those with different ideas.

If God can suspend the normal laws of physics for miracles like the virgin birth and bodily resurrection of Christ, why couldn’t He suspend the cosmic speed limit to strew the stars over the vast expanse of the universe when He created it? That would explain stars that are millions of light-years away.

Why is it controversial when a presidential candidate proposed including Intelligent Design in school curriculum as a theory alongside atheistic evolution? Why is Rick Santorum accused of being a theocrat when he accepted the votes of other representatives refusing it? Of any of the candidates for president, Santorum has the most respect for our constitution and its limitations on individuals holding public office.

We already have a theocrat in the White House who is advancing his humanistic agenda, trampling people’s constitutional rights in the process. With recent rulings like the HHS mandate on Obamacare and ending the debate when people complained, he is behaving like a king, not a president. I shudder to think what will happen if he is reelected and no longer needs to curry favor with the voters.

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