The Evolutionary Accident

Wednesday, October 4, 2023

O Lord, our Lord, your majestic name fills the earth!  Your glory is higher than the heavens.  You have taught children and infants to tell of your strength, silencing your enemies and all who oppose you.  When I look at the night sky and see the work of your fingers—the moon and the stars you set in place— what are mere mortals that you should think about them, human beings that you should care for them?  Yet you made them only a little lower than God and crowned them with glory and honor.  You gave them charge of everything you made, putting all things under their authority—the flocks and the herds and all the wild animals, the birds in the sky, the fish in the sea, and everything that swims the ocean currents.  O Lord, our Lord, your majestic name fills the earth!  Psalm 8:1-9

In an Advent sermon (Advent - Facing God in the Face of Nothingness), Dr. Stanley Hauerwas[1] shared a message so desperately needed today in our world, stuffed-full of nihilism, emptiness, vanity, the sense of zero purpose and meaning.  Here is an excerpt from that message:

Christian humanism is not based on the presumption that our humanity is self-justifying.  Rather Christians are humanists because God showed up in Mary’s belly.  We are not an evolutionary accident.  We are not bubbles on the foam that coats a stormy sea.  We are God’s chosen people.  We have been given good work to do in a time when many no longer think there is good work.  What an extraordinary claim.  What extraordinary good news.

The Psalmist shares Dr. Hauerwas’ point, that God’s presence fills the earth, stretching even further than the heavens, to that unknown “above”.  The Psalmist also touches the nerve every human experiences:  WHY…why am I here; is there any purpose to my existence, or am I an extraordinary, albeit meaningless accident, produced by the chance collision of matter with a black hole?  Indeed, we all ask:  What are we…who, and what am I?

The opening remarks of Hauerwas’ sermon quotes William James, a late 19^th century Harvard professor and philosopher, who called the earth and its universe a local accident in an appalling wilderness of worlds where no life can exist.  Let there be no question about James; as an atheist, he would have us believe that God is simply the figment of imagination…we create Him because we need something to cling to in all the emptiness we inhabit, devoid of any sense of hope.

For William James the age of (so-called) enlightenment proclaims the light of the heavens is merely a scientific reflection of man’s glory, an ode to the human ability of observation.  According to divinely-revealed truth, the heavens and earth are God’s invitation to explore the wonder and majesty of God’s glory, not a reflection of man’s genius, produced by a clumsy-collision of atoms and anti-matter.  All of life, the very existence of humankind, and the deepest question of the ages calls to the deepest part of that unanswered question, who am I, and what am I doing here.  In Christ alone we find the truth:  you are my beloved, and in me you will know your worth and purpose.

For You Today 

Questions call for either hypothetical guesses, or reasoned evidence.  Both take a measure of faith.  So, did we make God in our own image to stifle an uneasiness with an unsatisfactory answer, or are we created in God’s image to be His glory?

You chew on that as you hit the Rocky Road; have a blessed day!

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There are about 2,600 devotional posts and 400 sermons in the Rocky Road library.

Title Image(s) courtesy of Marci Joines Macha on Facebook                   

Images without citation are in public domain.  Unless noted, Scripture quoted from NLT^©  

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[1] Stanley Hauerwas is the Gilbert T. Rowe Professor Emeritus of Divinity and Law at Duke Divinity School and Duke Law School. 

How to Cure a Cosmic Headache

 

Thursday, June 4, 2020

Psalm 8:1-9

O Lord, our Lord, your majestic name fills the earth!  Your glory is higher than the heavens.  You have taught children and infants to tell of your strength, silencing your enemies and all who oppose you.  When I look at the night sky and see the work of your fingers—the moon and the stars you set in place—what are mere mortals that you should think about them, human beings that you should care for them?  Yet you made them only a little lower than God and crowned them with glory and honor.  You gave them charge of everything you made, putting all things under their authority—the flocks and the herds and all the wild animals, the birds in the sky, the fish in the sea, and everything that swims the ocean currents.  O Lord, our Lord, your majestic name fills the earth!

Your head can hurt (a lot) when you start thinking of eternity and the vastness of creation.  How can you wrap your mere mortal mind around a universe which, from the moment it was created, has been expanding at a blinding rate of about 4 million miles a day.  What’s interesting to me is how much impartial, non-agenda-driven science corroborates Scripture, as opposed to stilted pseudo-science, which attempts to disprove God’s presence.  Sometimes the connections are amazing.  In the case of the Big Bang, scientists of integrity have opined that the universe appeared all at once.  In the following scientific explanation it not only says that, but also tacitly affirms the wording of Scripture, that God created ex-nihilo; meaning there wasn’t anything in existance until God spoke it into being:

The universe did not expand into space, as space did not exist before the universe, according to NASA.  Instead, it is better to think of the Big Bang as the simultaneous appearance of space everywhere in the universe.  The universe has not expanded from any one spot since the Big Bang — rather, space itself has been stretching, and carrying matter with it.[1]

Nothing existed; God spoke; everything existed and is growing.  How majestic, and consistent with let there be…and there was…and is…and ever shall be!

If there is any empirical evidence to cure the kind of cosmic headache you get when you try to expain-away God, this is it; believe Scripture, and watch the day’s events, not through the eyes and ears of CNN and 21^st century full of itself culture, but the eyes of one who has the balcony seat and sees more than just the big picture, but also Who sees the beginning from the end!

Let’s Pray Together:

Father, You are majestic, all-seeing, all-knowing, and all-powerful.  How excellent is Your name!  And though Your glory overspreads and oversees the entirety of Your expanding universe, you have chosen to be mindful of us.  As the heavens declare Your glory, Your Son, Jesus declares Your mercy and grace.

For You Today

It’s my prayer that, having intentionally drawn your attention to the infinite Lord, creator of a universe none of us can begin to comprehend, I will have messed with your comfort zone in which you imagine you have possessions, property, power, or whatever you consider your treasure.  I pray I’ve meddled enough, so as to plant in your soul the thought of letting go of all of it, in favor of praising Eternal God, the one who can cure a cosmic headache!

You chew on that as you hit the Rocky Road today.  Have a blessed day!

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Title Image:  Space.com  Unless noted, Scripture quoted from The New Living Translation©

For other posts on Psalm 8 see Wondering About the Big Stuff Part 1 and Part 2 and Part 3  and  We Mortals

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[1] Our Expanding Universe: Age, History & Other Facts

God Who is Known

[i]

Thursday, November 10, 2016

But God shows his anger from heaven against all sinful, wicked people who suppress the truth by their wickedness.  They know the truth about God because he has made it obvious to them.  For ever since the world was created, people have seen the earth and sky.  Through everything God made, they can clearly see his invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature.  So they have no excuse for not knowing God.  Romans 1:18-20^(NLT)

It is obvious, for anyone who will put aside personal pride for three seconds, that God is not only real; God is the only rational explanation for everything that exists.  But that does not stop many from attempting to rationalize God out of the equation with either flawed logic, or outright, blatant dismissal.  

In the flawed logic department, there is the story of a Christian apologist who gave a lecture on creation.  At the end of the lecture an atheist posed an alternative view of the earth as being a giant ball, sitting on the back of a huge turtle in space.  The apologist asked, well, then upon what is the turtle standing.  The atheist declared, why, another turtle, underneath, of course.  The Christian pursued:  If that’s the case, how many turtles are standing on each other, in empty space, holding up the earth?  The atheist smiled and wagged his finger, ah, you can’t trip me up; it’s turtles all the way down!

Down to what?  Sooner or later you have to come to the base of any argument.  Where is the start?  If there is a big bang, who, or what set it off?  For every effect, so says science, there is a cause.  The cause, the big banger is God, Who is known.  And He is known primarily by His fingerprint on His creation. 

In the blatant dismissal of God department there are many who follow the primary example of the fallen one, Lucifer.  There is little doubt that God exists, it’s just that they don’t like it that God exists, and they simply refuse to either think about God’s prior claim on even their very existence, or they think so much about it they work themselves into a first class fit of anger and defiance.

And therein is the rub – it makes no difference how or why a person dismisses God, we are without excuse. 

The very acts of creation require a Creator and the created.  jThat presupposes and preconditions the response of the created towards the Creator.  In short, we are made by Him, and therefore we are made for His pleasure.  Any denial of that is a denial of reality.

And so, the choices are, as ever, serve Him or reject Him, because there is no such thing as ignoring Him. 

For You Today

It is a wise person who makes certain that his or her “serving” God isn’t just religious ritual that is really ignoring Him.

You chew on that as you hit the Rocky Road…have a blessed day!

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NOTES

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[i] Title image: By User:BardFuse, via Wikimedia Commons

God's Creation - Part 1

Wednesday, January 8, 2014

Christ is the visible image of the invisible God.  He existed before anything was created and is supreme over all creation, for through him God created everything in the heavenly realms and on earth.  He made the things we can see and the things we can’t see— Colossians 1:15-16a (NLT)

For the rest of this week we will look at some of the “moving parts” of the Christian doctrine of creation.

Jesus created every bit of this world.  It was "by him" (his power).  When an artist paints we say he created.  Actually he has used his imagination and talents to re-create (re-shape, re-form) what already existed.  The same with a building or an automobile; we have taken raw materials which existed, and rearranged them to produce something that suits us. 

Every time the Scripture refers to man making something it is a re-creation of God's creation. 

But the word ascribed only to God's activity is the creation "ex-nihilo" [to make something out of nothing].  Jesus started with nothing.  As the old-time preacher put it, "They wasn't nuthin', an' Jesus reached-out an'kotched him a bit o' that nuthin' an' made him a-somthin' outa that nuthin'!"

By comparison with evolution, God’s Creation by Jesus Christ is the most reasonable of explanations concerning our existence.  Someone once offered that the theory of the "big bang" of evolution being the origination of the universe has about as much chance of historical fact as if you were to open 70,000 cans of Campbell's Alphabet Soup, toss them in the air, and have the letters fall to the earth perfectly arranged in the collected works of William Shakespeare. 

But, using simple logic, we understand that things left to chance tend to decay and disintegrate, rather than move upward in complexity or order (have you ever left a teenager’s room to complete chance and later notice how neat and orderly it is?).  

Therefore, just as hunger presupposes there is food to satisfy, and thirst presupposes there is water to quench a thirst,

·        Order suggests an "Orderer". 

·        Life presupposes a "Life-giver". 

Science and philosophy cannot deal with the “ultimates” in life; it is only so much guesswork. 

But in Jesus, the guesswork ceases. 

Today

Do you have questions about your universe and its origin…and where you came from?  Good!  God loves to know you’re thinking about Him.

Take time to thank Him for this beautiful world in which we live (regardless of how He made it).

And keep wondering in your prayers – God loves to reveal wonderful things to our minds during such times.