It’s very important for us as Christians to know that SCIENCE will never solve the origins debate.
Why?
Because we all have ONE body of evidence but TWO different conclusions: Creation or evolution, Common Designer or common ancestor, God or no God.
What is the inconsistent variable? It’s MAN.
EVIDENCE doesn’t say anything without an interpreter and so it’s the interpreter of the evidence we need to look at – his WORLDVIEW. Everybody has one.
ORIGINS is a PHILOSOPHICAL issue. Science came from philosophy. Where would science be if no one ever had a deep thought about something? Behind bad science is bad philosophy and believing that life comes from non-life or that everything came from nothing is bad philosophy [Psalm 139:13; Genesis 1; 4:1].
It’s a LOGICAL issue. Time, space and matter were created at the Big Bang. Therefore, the Cause of time has to reside outside of time, space and matter [Hebrews 11:3]. There can never be a natural explanation.
Most importantly, it’s a MORAL issue. People don’t want to be accountable to their Creator. They reject Him from the start [Romans 1:18-25]. We all did.
It is within this framework that we can engage in more fruitful outreach and discussion and it’s up to you to bring them here. And who will they discover? The Creator and Savior, Jesus!
…
We all have the same body of evidence but our presupposed worldviews bring us to different conclusions [Romans 1:18-25]. There’s nothing wrong with discussing science but science will never solve the origins debate. Evidence always needs an interpreter. Therefore, we need to examine the worldview of the interpreter who is interpreting the evidence. We need to bring them face-to-face with their own worldview [Proverbs 26:4-5].
This is why origins science is not objective and is historical at best.
~ Applies to both Creation and evolution:
Worldview – the overall perspective from which one sees and interprets the world; a collection of beliefs about life and the universe held by an individual or a group
Presupposition – a belief that is accepted as true and is foundational to one’s worldview
Faith – belief in things that cannot be directly known or observed
Religion – a cause, principle or belief system held to with zeal and conviction
One of the most helpful and important things you can remember when talking with someone is that both God and human evolution lie outside the realm of science because both are beyond human observation and, therefore, cannot be proved by science. Don’t let your conversations get sucked down into a microscope while missing the bigger picture.
Jon
P2ALM 
5 responses to “SCIENCE will never solve the origins debate… why?”
i have a friend who came to know Jesus by pondering the question, “Why is there something instead of nothing?”
Jon — two things: about your website in general, and about your comments of the Origins debate being unresolveable:
First, I’m reveling in the sheer amount of solid, Biblical and relevant information found at P2ALM, and even more so, how easy it is to go from one thing to the other. I’ve been spending many days reading the results of your blessed writings, and the collations you’ve put together from many godly sources, or prophetically newsworthy items. A thousand thanks.
Secondly, how profoundly I agree with you that the sheer weight of facts will not convince the evoluntionary believer! In the late 1970’s, I was teaching a teen Sunday School class. The curriculum was about hard issues, and there were a couple lessons on evolution. I was buffaloed by the geologic column, and hardly knew how to address the class. Thus started a painstaking year of going to the library, reading evolutionary texts, taking voluminous notes.
Along the way, I discovered Institute of Creation Research materials. How thrilled I was. IF ONLY the teachers could hear about all this wonderful data, they would embrace the facts — bless their little scientific hearts. Along the way a gracious soul (I guess, hoping I’d stop rattling cages) allowed me to address one of the workshops Baltimore County Schools holds for their science chairmen of high schools.
After earnest presentation, much discussion, and many tears later, I felt like a walking volcano, crammed with all these exciting revelations, waiting to burst forth — and who cared?!!!
I was full of consternation. How to make sense of the case, that a mountain of data couldn’t sway the evolutionary believer! I even wrote two published articles (CSSHS Archives – The Sociology of Scientific Reception in the Creation-Evolution Debate. And also —
Establishing Scientific Guidelines for Origins Instruction in Public Education). The latter article especially gives me a full blush at my own naive zeal, thinking that educators could take a vote on how to handle their own life presuppositions before evaluating the creation-evolution debate!
Thank you for your analysis of origins beliefs. It cuts to the quick of the matter.
I’m struck by the simiplicity of Scripture. One’s salvation is of grace, and doesn’t depend on how he or she might get to hear a real good convincer, giving the best rational arguments. About man’s predispositions to truth or error, Jesus’ words come to mind:
“And this is the condemnation: that light is come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds are evil.” –John 3:19
that’s fascinating, Judy. i know how you feel. when i was introduced to Genesis and began studying Creation, i was so refreshed and didn’t realize how depressing evolutionary theories of our existence really made me until then. it was like i was freed. i was freed, actually. i wouldn’t say you were naive for wanting to share truth but that the others are naive to believe a lie. also stubborn. just think! we have the entire world as evidence and people still don’t believe. i am often so full of excitement about Creation i don’t know where to begin. and i thank you for your kind compliments. praise God He has allowed people to see these kinds of things for the benefit of others.
An article written decades ago, “The Sociology of Scientific Reception in the Creation-Evolution Debate,” quotes a Chinese philosopher attesting to the depths of evil to which evolutionary “theory” was applied in WWII and China’s upheaval. IDEAS HAVE CONSEQUENCES:
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“…. History gives abundant evidence that evolutionary theory has social, political, and religious uses and/or abuses; yet creationism from a scientific-data approach, not without its own philosophical qualities. must be rejected. That any theory explaining the nature of the world spills over into non-scientific areas is obvious. Chinese philosopher Liang Ch’i-ch’ao attested to the great influence Darwinism had on his own country and culture. It furnished a major intellectual stimulus for China’s great upheaval beginning in 1911: 20
Since Darwin’s discovery of the principle of the evolution of species, a great revolution has occurred in intellectual circles over the whole world. His service to learning must be acknowledged. But afterwards his theory of the struggle for existence and survival of the fittest was applied to the study of human society and became the core of thought, with many evil consequences. This great European War has nearly wiped out human civilization; although its causes were very many, it must be said that the Darwinian theory had a very great influence. Even in China in recent years, where throughout a whole country men struggle for power, grasp for gain, and seem to have gone crazy, although they understand nothing of scholarship, yet the things they say to shield themselves from condemnation are regularly drawn from Yen Fu’s translation of T. H. Huxley’s Principles of Evolution. One can see that the influence of theory on man’s minds is enormous.21
The claim of “strictly scientific” for any hypothesis that is unfalsifiable, which has been used socially, politically, and religiously, deserves the following indictment:
… every scientific worker operates with value-judgments, yet persuades himself that these lie ‘outside’ his discipline. That is how the danger arises of a science which makes evaluations without actually being aware of it and for that very reason assumes a dogmatic philosophical standpoint of an involuntary kind.22
The creationist is in the peculiar predicament of not being allowed to present the scientific arguments he has built for his case, because the hypothesis for which he has amassed evidence (“design”) does not fit the conceptual scheme of the scientific establishment. His dilemma parallels the experience of an early believer in the scientific method, who suggested opening up a cow to find out whether certain speculations about the creature’s insides were true. His colleagues laughed at the ridiculous methodology proposed, since their logic had already ruled the hypothesis unsuitable.”
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The preceding quote’s documentation:
21 Liang Ch’ i-ch’ao, as quoted from Tsuen-Hsuin Tsien, “Western Impact on China through Translation,” Far Eastern Quarterly, XIII (1954), 321, as quoted by Veith (see reference at bottom after “Also consulted:”)