Transcript Special to God - Leeds Vineyard

Human origins
David Wallace MEng
Tom Cameron PhD
Creation
Human orgins
Creation
What’s your question?
Why are dinosaurs not mentioned in the Bible? How do dinosaurs fit
in?
How come science says it took millions of years for the earth to
form, and Genesis talks of 6 days?
How could the world be made in 7 days – is it something to do with
different perspectives on time?
Could God have used the Big Bang?
What about people who say God can’t be real because everything
has been explained by science?
If we are evolved from monkeys, how come we are still not
evolving?
Where do you draw the line in believing the “descended from
monkeys” story?
Does it matter if man came from monkeys?
Why did God want to make us anyway?
Why did God make Adam first?
Why do women get such a hard time – periods, pain in childbirth.
Creation
God and science
No God God
Minority
science
Majority
science
Science
rejected
Atheistic evolution
Theistic evolution
Evolutionary creationism
Old earth creationism
Intelligent design
Progressive creationism
Day-age creationism
Gap creationism
Young earth creationism
Geocentrists
Flat earthers
Increasingly literal interpretation of Bible
More “special creation” interventions by God
This session: human origins
Evidence for and against evolution
Randomness or design
Genesis 3 – Adam and Eve
What makes us special as humans
Creation
Top Ten Reasons Eve Was
Created
10. God was worried that Adam would frequently become lost in the
garden because he would not ask for directions.
9. God knew that one day Adam would require someone to locate
and hand him the remote.
8. God knew Adam would never go out and buy himself a new fig
leaf when his wore out and would therefore need Eve to buy one for
him.
7. God knew Adam would never be able to make a doctor's, dentist,
or haircut appointment for himself.
6. God knew Adam would never remember which night to put the
bins on the street.
5. God knew if the world was to be populated, men would never be
able to handle the pain and discomfort of childbearing.
4. As the Keeper of the Garden, Adam would never remember where
he left his tools.
3. Apparently, Adam needed someone to blame his troubles on when
God caught him hiding in the garden.
2. As the Bible says, It is not good for man to be alone!
1. When God finished the creation of Adam, He stepped back,
scratched his head, and said, "I can do better than that!"
Creation
Aims
Read the Bible properly:
– interpret positively passages of scripture
that have been abused to force conflict
between science and faith.
Think about God and science together
Spot the bias: don’t be a sponge
Do science at school
Avoid the creationist caricature
Worship God: inspired by science
Creation
Tensions between
scientific and Bible
accounts of human origins
100,000 years
Random chance
Purposeless
Natural selection
An evolved ape
Gradual change
Nothing special
Creation
On the sixth day
Orderly
Purposeful
By God’s hand
Formed from dust
Adam and Eve
Special to God
Tensions between
scientific and Bible
accounts of human origins
100,000 years
Random chance
Purposeless
Natural selection
An evolved ape
Gradual change
Nothing special
Creation
On the sixth day
Orderly
Purposeful
By God’s hand
Life into dust
Adam and Eve
Special to God
Agreement of
the sciences
Earth 4.5 billion yrs
old
Universe 14 billion
yrs old
Geology
Geography
Biology
Astronomy
Physics
Creation
Tom
Apparent conflict
with the Bible
6 days of creation
4004 BC (Ussher’s
calculation)
Layers of meaning in Genesis 1
What does it
communicate?
Relationship
Principles
What happened
Sequence of events
How long it took
Creation
Irrelevant
story
Myth
Literary Day-age Young earth
framework theory
creation
Tensions between
scientific and Bible
accounts of human origins
100,000 years
Random chance
Purposeless
Natural selection
An evolved ape
Gradual change
Nothing special
Creation
On the sixth day
Orderly
Purposeful
By God’s hand
Life into dust
Adam and Eve
Special to God
Random mutation
In evolution, the mutations that result in change are
described as random. But note that selection is not
random – it has a direction.
We use the word “random” in all sorts of ways, we say
in the lingo “That was completely random” usually just
to mean “something curious” but with a hint of it being
puzzling or meaningless.
In science “random” means that a particular event
cannot be predicted, but the pattern of lots of events
has a statistical distribution.
It is a confession of ignorance.
Creation
Random ≠ purposeless
Call centre calls
arrive with a
random
distribution
Yet every call has
a purpose
Creation
Genesis: Human purpose
Stewards of the earth
Relationship with God
Creation
Tensions between
scientific and Bible
accounts of human origins
100,000 years
Random chance
Purposeless
Natural selection
An evolved ape
Gradual change
Nothing special
Creation
On the sixth day
Orderly
Purposeful
By God’s hand
Life into dust
Adam and Eve
Special to God
Evolution by selection
Sexual
Natural
selection  species change over time
Artificial
Tom
Creation
The origin of species
Sexual
Natural
selection  species change over time
Artificial
Is this how new species came about? Tom
Or was it God’s special creation?
Is this how humans came about?
Later
Or did God do something special?
Creation
How much special
creation did God do?
Were humans created as an event
or a process?
If a process, how much did God
guide the process?
Creation
God and science
No God God
Minority
science
Majority
science
Science
rejected
Atheistic evolution
Creation was a series of
events over 6 days.
Evidence of process we
might find is in fact
remnants of the flood.
Theistic evolution
Evolutionary creationism
Old earth creationism
Intelligent design
Progressive creationism
Day-age creationism
Gap creationism
Young earth creationism
Geocentrists
Flat earthers
Increasingly literal interpretation of Bible
More “special creation” interventions by God
God and science
No God God
Minority
science
Majority
science
Science
rejected
Atheistic evolution
Creation was a series of
events but the 6 days
were spread out. The
gaps were millions of
years.
Theistic evolution
Evolutionary creationism
Old earth creationism
Intelligent design
Progressive creationism
Day-age creationism
Gap creationism
Young earth creationism
Geocentrists
Flat earthers
Increasingly literal interpretation of Bible
More “special creation” interventions by God
God and science
No God God
Minority
science
Majority
science
Science
rejected
Atheistic evolution
Each “day” of creation
involved processes that
took millions of years,
guided by God.
Theistic evolution
Evolutionary creationism
Old earth creationism
Intelligent design
Progressive creationism
Day-age creationism
Gap creationism
Young earth creationism
Geocentrists
Flat earthers
Increasingly literal interpretation of Bible
More “special creation” interventions by God
God and science
No God God
Minority
science
Majority
science
Science
rejected
Atheistic evolution
God intervened at key
critical moments in the
process to bring about
various “leaps in
complexity”.
Theistic evolution
Evolutionary creationism
Old earth creationism
Intelligent design
Progressive creationism
Day-age creationism
Gap creationism
Young earth creationism
Geocentrists
Flat earthers
Increasingly literal interpretation of Bible
More “special creation” interventions by God
God and science
No God God
Minority
science
Majority
science
Science
rejected
Atheistic evolution
There is evidence of
irreducible complexity in
the way biological things
work which proves there
must be a God
Theistic evolution
Evolutionary creationism
Old earth creationism
Intelligent design
Progressive creationism
Day-age creationism
Gap creationism
Young earth creationism
Geocentrists
Flat earthers
Increasingly literal interpretation of Bible
More “special creation” interventions by God
Intelligent Design
Since
Therefore
the universe
the evolution process
humankind
a given animal
species
a particular organ like
the eye
a capability like
language in humans
is too
complex
orderly
adaptive
apparently
purposeful
beautiful
must have been
specially created
by a being who is
to have occurred
randomly or
accidentally
sentient
intelligent
wise
purposeful
The universe is improbably
suitable for carbon based life
Space capsule story
Universe appears fine-tuned to allow the
existence of life
Creation
Universe
If expansion was any stronger,
stars would not exist.
If expansion was any weaker,
universe would have imploded
in a big crunch
Forces of
expansion
Forces of
contraction
(gravity)
Expansion is very
slightly stronger
than contraction, by
1
60
10
Precision of the Big Bang energy is
equivalent to aiming from earth and
hitting a one-inch target at the edge of
the observable universe.
Creation
The universe is improbably
suitable for carbon based life
Space capsule story
Universe appears fine-tuned to allow the
existence of life (the anthropic principle)
– Universe expansion vs contraction forces
– Energy state of the electron
– Exact level of the weak nuclear force
Creation
The universe is improbably
suitable for carbon based life
Space capsule story
Universe appears fine-tuned to allow the
existence of life (the anthropic principle)
Possible conclusions
–
–
–
–
Creation
It was chance
It was by design
There is a multiverse
There is an undiscovered Grand Unified Theory
Unexplained marvels
New Scientist 9 April 2005
Multi-cellular life
The eye
The brain
Language
Photosynthesis
Irreducible complexity?
Sex
Death
Parasitism
Social organisms
Symbiosis
Purposeful design?
The trouble with “God of the gaps”…
Random?
Creation
Guided?
Both?
Intelligent Design and biology
Tom
Creation
God and science
No God God
Minority
science
Majority
science
Science
rejected
Atheistic evolution
Evolution was God’s
idea. He did intervene
at times to create helpful
mutations.
Theistic evolution
Evolutionary creationism
Old earth creationism
Intelligent design
Progressive creationism
Day-age creationism
Gap creationism
Young earth creationism
Geocentrists
Flat earthers
Increasingly literal interpretation of Bible
More “special creation” interventions by God
God and science
No God God
Minority
science
Majority
science
Science
rejected
Atheistic evolution
Evolution was God’s
idea. He has gently
tended the process.
Theistic evolution
Evolutionary creationism
Old earth creationism
Intelligent design
Progressive creationism
Day-age creationism
Gap creationism
Young earth creationism
Geocentrists
Flat earthers
Increasingly literal interpretation of Bible
More “special creation” interventions by God
God and science
No God God
Minority
science
Majority
science
Science
rejected
Atheistic evolution
Evolution will eventually
explain everything. God
is an unnecessary notion
to fill the gaps we can’t
explain yet
Theistic evolution
Evolutionary creationism
Old earth creationism
Intelligent design
Progressive creationism
Day-age creationism
Gap creationism
Young earth creationism
Geocentrists
Flat earthers
Increasingly literal interpretation of Bible
More “special creation” interventions by God
Weaknesses in evidence
for evolution
Tom
Creation
Tensions between
scientific and Bible
accounts of human origins
100,000 years
Random chance
Purposeless
Natural selection
An evolved ape
Gradual change
Nothing special
Creation
On the sixth day
Orderly
Purposeful
By God’s hand
Life into dust
Adam and Eve
Special to God
An evolved ape
Tom
Creation
Nothing buttery
“Nothing but” an evolved ape
Behaving like animals is OK
Ruthless competition is simply
“survival of the fittest”
Not guilty: his genes made him do
it
Animals have as many rights as
humans
Creation
Mechanism ≠ The reason why
The fallacy in reductionism
Why is the kettle
boiling?
Creation
God breathes life into dust
Then God said, "Let us make man in our image, in our
likeness, and let them rule over the fish of the sea and
the birds of the air, over the livestock, over all the
earth, and over all the creatures that move along the
ground.”
So God created man in his own image,
in the image of God he created him;
male and female he created them. Gen 1:26-27
The LORD God formed the man from the dust of the
ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life,
and the man became a living being Gen 2:7
Creation
Dust
Same chemistry as the rest of the
earth
– Enough iron for one small nail (etc)
Creation
What makes humans
distinct from animals?
Self-conscious in a radical new way
Language
Rational skills
Separate from other
Creative powers
hominids because of
God’s inbreathing
Moral beings
God’s image
God-consciousness
Sin
Creation
Tensions between
scientific and Bible
accounts of human origins
100,000 years
Random chance
Purposeless
Natural selection
An evolved ape
Gradual change
Nothing special
Creation
On the sixth day
Orderly
Purposeful
By God’s hand
Life into dust
Adam and Eve
Special to God
Dating Adam & Eve
Counting genealogies: 4004BC
Urbanisation and metalworking:
– Cain built a city Gen 4:17
– Tubal-Cain made bronze & iron tools
– Did God breathe on the whole race
10-20,000 years ago?
Single pair of ancestors
100-200,000 years ago?
– Eve hypothesis/mitochondrial DNA?
Creation
Gen 4:22
Adam and Eve
Radically positive view of women
– From the side  equality
– In the image of God, male and
female he created them
Pattern for marriage union
Concrete illustration of the fact of
sin: rebellion
Creation
Tensions between
scientific and Bible
accounts of human origins
100,000 years
Random chance
Purposeless
Natural selection
An evolved ape
Gradual change
Nothing special
Creation
On the sixth day
Orderly
Purposeful
By God’s hand
Life into dust
Adam and Eve
Special to God
Psalm 139: Special to God
1 O LORD, you have searched me
and you know me.
2 You know when I sit and when I rise;
you perceive my thoughts from afar.
3 You discern my going out and my lying down;
you are familiar with all my ways.
4 Before a word is on my tongue
you know it completely, O LORD.
5 You hem me in—behind and before;
you have laid your hand upon me.
6 Such knowledge is too wonderful for me,
too lofty for me to attain.
7 Where can I go from your Spirit?
Where can I flee from your presence?
8 If I go up to the heavens, you are there;
if I make my bed in the depths, [a] you are there.
9 If I rise on the wings of the dawn,
if I settle on the far side of the sea,
10 even there your hand will guide me,
your right hand will hold me fast.
11 If I say, "Surely the darkness will hide me
and the light become night around me,"
12 even the darkness will not be dark to you;
the night will shine like the day,
for darkness is as light to you.
13 For you created my inmost being;
you knit me together in my mother's womb.
Creation
14 I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made;
your works are wonderful,
I know that full well.
15 My frame was not hidden from you
when I was made in the secret place.
When I was woven together in the depths of the earth,
16 your eyes saw my unformed body.
All the days ordained for me
were written in your book
before one of them came to be.
17 How precious to me are your thoughts, O God!
How vast is the sum of them!
18 Were I to count them,
they would outnumber the grains of sand.
When I awake,
I am still with you.
19 If only you would slay the wicked, O God!
Away from me, you bloodthirsty men!
20 They speak of you with evil intent;
your adversaries misuse your name.
21 Do I not hate those who hate you, O LORD,
and abhor those who rise up against you?
22 I have nothing but hatred for them;
I count them my enemies.
23 Search me, O God, and know my heart;
test me and know my anxious thoughts.
24 See if there is any offensive way in me,
and lead me in the way everlasting.