Creation or evolution?

Creation versus evolution has been much in the mainstream news lately, along with gotcha questions for political candidates. One mother is overheard telling her son to ask Governor Rick Perry “why he doesn’t believe in science.” A New York Times columnist says flatly that Republicans are “against science.” Frankly, I’m fed up! I’m tired of being called anti-science and anti-intellectual—just because I believe the Bible over evolutionary theory.

First of all, I am not against science, but I do recognize that scientific knowledge has limits and it is often wrong, even about this afternoon’s weather. One day, science finds that eggs (or salt or coffee or chocolate or whatever) are bad for us; but on the next, new studies declare them good. So enjoy that second cup. Scientists once believed that criminal behavior was genetically determined and that one could tell a person’s intelligence and character by measuring his skull. What would we call someone who believed that today but ignorant and racist? Yet it was cutting edge in the nineteenth century. Scientific “knowledge” changes over time. By contrast, God’s Word stands forever (Isaiah 40:8).

Evolutionary theory is not a workable scientific theory but a philosophical commitment: it cannot be recreated and so proven through testing, and the vital missing links between species are in fact still missing. Evolution, Ann Coulter says, is a “mystery religion from the Victorian era.” It is not more “intellectual” than believing the Bible. In fact, it is less so, for “the fool says in his heart, ‘There is no God’ ” (Psalm 53:1). When scientists omit God from the equation because of philosophical bias, they will never find true wisdom and understanding about the origins of the world (Proverbs 2:6; 9:10).

So my philosophical commitment is to God. I figure he knows more than even the most rigorous scientists. After all, he was actually there and they were not, something God pointed out to Job (chapters 38–41).