Exploring the Creation/Evolution Debate
I posted this piece on the creation/evolution debate a few months ago. I want to re-post it as an intro to exploring the topic further over the next few posts. If you’re interested in the topic, please check this out because it will frame the approach in the future.
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Reasons Faith is Not a Stupid Idea #4: Faith is more Realistic
Since I am a “clergyman”, one of my duties is to officiate funerals. And, because of this duty, I have attended a whole lot more funerals than the average person. It’s part of the job.
If anything, funerals do one thing: They are a good, solid dose of reality. And, for those who are exploring faith, reality should be your passion and pursuit.
I think saying that goes against the grain of what people think. I think most people think of “religious” stuff like the question of life after death or heaven and hell is just the opposite – unrealistic.
I can almost feel that attitude in the air when I stand in front of the people gathered to mourn the loss of a loved one. It’s as if they are thinking in their minds: “he’s the religious guy coming to say religious words. Death, it’s a religious topic. Let’s get through this religious ceremony so we can go back to the ‘real’ world.”
Nonsense.
Life is actually the other way around.
When you really think about it, death is the ultimate “realistic” topic. There’s a very simple reason for this: everyone, with no exceptions whatsoever . . . will die. Anyone who doesn’t take a good, hard, serious look at the subject is the one living in the dream world.
Biblical faith is anything but a dream world. It challenges us with the reality of our own mortality, which is raw realism at its finest.
A passage I read at nearly every funeral I ever do is Ecclesiastes 7:2:
“It is better to go to a house of mourning
than to go to a house of feasting,
for death is the destiny of every man;
the living should take this to heart.”
Ecclesiastes 7:1-2
Granted, it’s not the most upbeat thing to say in the world but,
being upbeat is not the issue: reality is.
It’s human nature to live in a state of denial of death. Biblical faith is one of the few things in life that dares to keep bringing up the subject. It challenges our weak perceptions of life and keeps reminding us not to get too enamored by what looks bright and endless in this world.
This bible passage is classic:
“All men are like grass,
and all their glory is like the flowers of the field;
the grass withers and the flowers fall,
but the word of the Lord stands forever”1 Peter 1:24-25
At any given moment that statement looks out of touch with reality because all of the current celebrities and governments seem immovable. But, just wait a few years and it is as accurate a commentary on life as you will ever find.
Explorers: remember “death is the destiny of every man”.
Take it to heart.
Seriously explore with this in mind.
Faith Isn’t a Stupid Idea. Reason #2
Faith in God isn’t a stupid idea because the thought that there is no God creates more problems than in solves.
Faith in God certainly raises it’s share of head scratching thoughts. I would never deny that.
But, did you ever think that the “no God” theory has serious difficulties all its own?
The problem with the elimination of God it that it doesn’t stop with the elimination of God. It logically eliminates all we link to God (without even realizing it). Without God you don’t just lose a “man upstairs” who may get you out of a jam. You lose a purpose for life, a source for true morals and the idea that there is life beyond this life (i.e. hope), just to name a few.
This is not just a nice little weak Christian argument. Some of the bolder (and more honest) atheistic thinkers have admitted the difficulties.
Friedrich Nietzsche, one of Christianity’s most outspoken critics, said:
“ There are altogether no moral facts.” Indeed, morality “has truth only if God is the truth—it stands or falls with faith in God.”
Atheist philosopher, Jean-Paul Sartre admitted: “It [is] very distressing that God does not exist, because all possibility of finding values in a heaven of ideas disappears along with Him.
Then you have William Provine, Cornell University scholar who points out to college students in his lectures the true implications of Darwinism / atheism. He says it means:
“No life after death; no ultimate foundation for ethics; no ultimate meaning for life; no free will.”‘
Did you read that right? In other words. Joseph Stalin, murderer of countless millions, was swallowed up by nothingness; in the exact same way Mother Teresa, servant of the poorest of the poor was. Death made them equals. There was nothing and no one on the other side to affirm, deny or judge the good or the bad in their lives.
How about the idea that there is “no ultimate foundation for ethics”??!! Do we grasp what he’s saying? First, if atheism is true, he’s right. If there is no God, then our ethical ideas, no matter how strong we feel them or believe in them are, in the end, just human mental constructs and arbitrary social conventions. Pol Pot lived in a way that most of us do not “prefer” but, in the ultimate sense, what he did was not “wrong”.
I maintain that, no matter what a man says he believes, he will never live his life as if the implications of atheism are actually real. He can’t. It doesn’t make any sense. It is the ultimate in irrationality.
We know better than to imagine that evil and good are just figments of our imagination. Faith in God is far from stupid. It is the logical basis for the most important matters of life.