I was alone in the house during a stormy evening of Spring, 1973. Lightning flashed, thunder rolled outside. I sat on the sofa with a King James Bible in my hand and I was curious to find in it how it had all started. As an avid believer in Evolution, I thought of no other alternative, as this was taught at school, along with stories of a six-day Creation and a family saving themselves in a boat shared with animals all confined to a fanciful myth.
Before that evening, I have read books on Darwin's theory. This was true especially during schooldays, when the weekly Look and Learn magazine-type periodical appeared in the newsagent's shelf alongside other magazines - TV Times, fashion magazines, cooking magazines, periodicals on domestics, Women's Own, as well as DIY and car magazines. I recall having Look and Learn delivered through the front door with the daily newspaper. For several weeks, it had a big, central feature on Evolution with colour illustrations spanning two whole pages, covering several weeks.
The artist based his pictures on the same site, with a large rock protruding from the ground at one side. The first set of pictures were based under the sea, with sponges, ammonites, trilobites, and primitive-looking fish, all flourishing around the submerged rock. In the next picture came fishes, including large, shark-like predators. After this the rock was on a beach crawling with amphibians. The following week, the boulder was located in thick jungle where a Brontosaur reached its long neck towards a nearby tree. After this, a carniverous Tyrannosaur crashes through the foliage, followed by mammals grazing in grasslands, and eventually Stone Age Neanderthals having set up home near the same rock, still on the same site surrounded by treeless ground which is covered with snow, and woolly mammoths can be seen sauntering in the background. Surely, by now the permanently fixed lump of stone can be referred to as the Rock of Ages as well as having a very long story to tell!
Although the huge colourful illustrations and accompanying text were both informational and delightful to look at, the periodical was published with an authoritative, schoolmaster's format of communicating. The very front page title, Look and Learn was blazoned across the page with the intention of driving home some useful knowledge into the brains of us apathetic, out-of-school, leisure-minded teenagers of the mid-sixties. Yet I was fascinated by such a presentation of prehistoric life. The very illustrations were inspiring enough for me to have separated these pages from the rest of the magazine and tape them on the wall above my bed headboard, where they stayed on display for months to come. Never for a moment had it ever crossed my mind that any typical Uniformitarian Geologist would have disagreed with those pictures from the moment he would have set eyes on them. The constant presence of the exposed rock would have caused dissension.
Because the whole theory of Evolution has always been based on fossils found in stratified rock layers. So how was it that the rock protruding from the seabed throughout the whole of the Cambrian Period was not buried by layers of sedimentary rock by the time good old Brontosaur was grazing in the jungle during the Jurassic Period, let alone during the time the Neanderthal was lighting bonfires in the blizzard during the Quaternary, some 500,000,000 years later?* Going by what historical geologists would have insisted, this particular rock should have been buried underneath tens, maybe hundred of feet of sedimentary rock layers by the time the Neanderthals were walking around. Never mind. I was enthralled with primeval life on our planet. It gave me something to believe in, to be committed to, and even comparing and sharing my knowledge and interest with another pupil in our classroom. However, one thing that I instinctively knew: that favouring Darwinism was incompatible with religion. Without knowing why, somehow I could not mix evolution with anything to do with religion, especially Christianity. Not surprisingly, I had already declared myself to be a teenage atheist. In truth, deep in my heart there was no genuine questioning of God's existence. Rather, I hated him due to my Roman Catholic upbringing with the constant threat of Hell.
And so I should not be too surprised that the other, more intelligent classmate David, who also had a greater knowledge of Dinosaurs than I had, especially the carnivorous species, was also an atheist who debunked religion. And therefore, my youthful fascination with palaeontology walked hand-in-hand with my teenage rejection of religion, which I believe to be a setting to be looked back upon which is to be the underlying bedrock, so to speak, for the near-universal rejection of God in our country at present.
And so, according to a video I watched recently on Creation.com website, one answer was given for why such a large contingent of mainly younger people leave their churches every year. For example, according to a faith survey website, the numbers who regularly attend church here in the UK has declined significantly between the years 1980 to 2016. The Roman Catholic Church number of attendees declined from 2,064,000 in 1980 to a mere 608,000 by 2016. That is a loss of 1,456,000 in 36 years. Likewise, the Anglican Church numbers declined from 1,370,400 to 660,000 - a fall of 710,400 in the same time period, and looks to be totally nonexistent by the year 2033. Our denomination, the Baptists, had an attendance number totalling 286,900 in 1980. Thirty six years later it had fallen to 226,000 - a drop of just 60,900. This is small compared to the others, but still in the wrong direction. Likewise, the Methodists suffered a fall from 606,400 attendees in 1980 to 200,000 in 2016 - a fall of 406,400. On the positive side, however, it is the Pentecostals who has enjoyed an increase in the past 36 years, from 221,000 in 1980 to 298,000 in 2016, which is an increase by 77,000. To total up, the total loss of church attendance among the four listed denominations is 2,633,700 in 36 years, or averaging 73,158 annually. And all these statistics apply to the UK only.
A video on Creation.com had listed the belief in Darwinism as one of the main reasons for the decline. And if going by my own experience is of any value, then the belief in evolution over divine creation can destroy the faith of one who grew up in a Christian household. I can see the connection. With secular websites such as Wikipedia calling Young-Earth Creationism a pseudoscience, I can't help how adult believers at work in an office would feel if he was to admit his belief in such Biblical revelation. Among all the suited colleagues, he would be regarded something of an idiosyncratic, or a nutcase, and he would not be taken seriously. There is a possibility of even losing his job. If the office employee can feel rather foolish in believing in Young-Earth Creationism, along with a universal Flood with a family and all land animals confined in a large barge, then such embarrassment can be justified in an environment populated with secular graduates. This could be the backbone behind the thinking of young Christian graduates I have associated with in the last four decades.
Their "Halfway House" belief in Theistic Evolution looks to me to be an escape, or at least a partial escape, from office embarrassment. In regard to his Christian faith, if he was asked his opinion on what he perceives to be the dawn of history, he would answer with some confidence that he does believe in Evolution, albeit theistic. Saves a lot of embarrassment that way! Just about every graduate I have crossed paths with inside the church building believed in theistic evolution, which is essentially Darwinism under the control and supervision of God, as opposed to pure chance. Ironically, it is atheists such as Richard Dawkins who has greater respect for the literal Young-Earth Creationist than for one believing in Theistic Evolution. Furthermore, I have been around long enough to realise that the graduate's belief in Theistic Evolution has robbed him of any spiritual vitality, which was meant to set him apart from the secularist, and to live out his life as a citizen of Heaven.
Therefore I have found it difficult to tell the difference between a Christian graduate from a non-believing academic. Both are well-educated, both are in respectable professions, both are patriotic, both are conscious of social class, which leads to both being cliquey and having an in-group/out-group subconscious need to mix with and fellowship among those of the same characteristic model. Or in other words, I never felt that I truly belonged, but kept to the fringes of the fellowship, with any opinion or contribution offered not taken with any higher degree of seriousness.
I'm convinced that rejection of literal Divine Creation for Theistic Evolution, or even straightforward Darwinism can have devastating repercussions. Belief in Evolution, theistic or otherwise, undercuts faith in Jesus Christ who was Crucified, Buried, and Resurrected for the Atonement of our sins gotten through the Fall of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. This is a major foundation for the faith which can only be borne from Divine Creation. Many offspring of Christian parents, who grew up believing in Evolution, having been taught this at school and endorsed at home, more likely tend to have hearts resembling rocky ground. The word of God from the pulpit may fall on such ground, and lacking proper soil for the shoots to take root properly, when social pressure builds, they quit, leaving the church and renouncing their faith (Matthew 13). And believe me, I have seen it.
The acceptance of Young Earth supernatural Creation is what makes a believer a true Christian. Such a believer in Divine Creation will know that every person he sees and relates with is a creation of God and the one whom Jesus died for. This changes all perception of fellow human beings. Just by reading Psalm 139 should be enough to eradicate any thoughts of inequality, whether it'll be racial, cultural, or national. Also believing in Divine Creation will eliminate any thoughts of Eugenics, an offshoot of Darwinism, as discussed last week. This is serious stuff, so much so that God himself had to challenge me.
Referring back to that stormy evening back in 1973. I was alone in the house. The thunder rolled outside. I opened the Bible I had on me, and turned to its beginning, and read the first three chapters of Genesis. I reeled back in wonder. It was then when I felt the Lord as if confronting me with a stark choice. What am I to believe? Divine Creation or Darwin's Evolution? One or the other, there was no halfway house. No option for Theistic Evolution. Immediately and without hesitation, I chose the Divine Creation revelation, and completely repudiated Evolution. Just like that. But there was no other option. God would not allow it. But once the decision was made, I knew that I had to stick with it. This meant being fully open about it among work colleagues. According to experience, I have found factory shop floor workers to be more tolerating of my Creation conviction than had I worked in an office among clerical employees. From time to time I had serious discussions with work colleagues on the shop floor. At worst, they may have poked fun at me, which is not as bad as having a feeling of ostracism and being ignored - even by fellow church-going graduates.
And so with the new revelation about supernatural creation, I had to accept the truth about the universal, earth destroying Deluge. And so I had no quibbles in my acceptance of such a revelation. From 1973 onward I entered into studies for geological and biological evidence of Creation and the Flood, alongside for the tangible proof for the veracity of the Bible by visiting the Holy Land, particularly Jerusalem. But even if I had never set foot in Israel, being sure about the truthfulness of the Bible would have still make me stand my stead among mocking unbelievers.
And to round up, when it comes to browsing Google Maps on the laptop, or better still, browsing at Google Earth, I was astonished at the sight of a dendroid image of undersea river courses flowing across the edge of the continental shelf exactly southwest of the Irish Republic. If you were to switch to Google Earth, and pan the satellite version of the map to an area of the Atlantic Ocean directly southwest of Cork, you will come across a valley, now partly filled in with silt, but with river courses forming underwater canyons emptying out into the abyss. In the past there were many of them, even up to 300 km 185 miles long, all eventually joining to empty at the one mouth. But over the course of time, silt has filled in the majority of these canyons, with only a couple still visible south of the valley. The depth of the valley is from 1,400 feet to 10,200 feet 430-3,110 metres approx below the surface, which strongly suggest that that part of the Continental Shelf was once above sea level. Is this now submerged valley an echo of the later stages of Noah's Flood, when the floodwaters gushed into the oceans as "the mountains rose and the valleys sunk down" of Psalm 104:6-9?
Maybe so, maybe not. But whatever the case might have been, this has stronger correlations with the truthfulness of Holy Scripture than Charles Darwin could have ever come up with.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
*John C. Whitcomb Jr. and Henry M. Morris, The Genesis Flood, Baker Book House, 1975, page 133.
The artist based his pictures on the same site, with a large rock protruding from the ground at one side. The first set of pictures were based under the sea, with sponges, ammonites, trilobites, and primitive-looking fish, all flourishing around the submerged rock. In the next picture came fishes, including large, shark-like predators. After this the rock was on a beach crawling with amphibians. The following week, the boulder was located in thick jungle where a Brontosaur reached its long neck towards a nearby tree. After this, a carniverous Tyrannosaur crashes through the foliage, followed by mammals grazing in grasslands, and eventually Stone Age Neanderthals having set up home near the same rock, still on the same site surrounded by treeless ground which is covered with snow, and woolly mammoths can be seen sauntering in the background. Surely, by now the permanently fixed lump of stone can be referred to as the Rock of Ages as well as having a very long story to tell!
Although the huge colourful illustrations and accompanying text were both informational and delightful to look at, the periodical was published with an authoritative, schoolmaster's format of communicating. The very front page title, Look and Learn was blazoned across the page with the intention of driving home some useful knowledge into the brains of us apathetic, out-of-school, leisure-minded teenagers of the mid-sixties. Yet I was fascinated by such a presentation of prehistoric life. The very illustrations were inspiring enough for me to have separated these pages from the rest of the magazine and tape them on the wall above my bed headboard, where they stayed on display for months to come. Never for a moment had it ever crossed my mind that any typical Uniformitarian Geologist would have disagreed with those pictures from the moment he would have set eyes on them. The constant presence of the exposed rock would have caused dissension.
Because the whole theory of Evolution has always been based on fossils found in stratified rock layers. So how was it that the rock protruding from the seabed throughout the whole of the Cambrian Period was not buried by layers of sedimentary rock by the time good old Brontosaur was grazing in the jungle during the Jurassic Period, let alone during the time the Neanderthal was lighting bonfires in the blizzard during the Quaternary, some 500,000,000 years later?* Going by what historical geologists would have insisted, this particular rock should have been buried underneath tens, maybe hundred of feet of sedimentary rock layers by the time the Neanderthals were walking around. Never mind. I was enthralled with primeval life on our planet. It gave me something to believe in, to be committed to, and even comparing and sharing my knowledge and interest with another pupil in our classroom. However, one thing that I instinctively knew: that favouring Darwinism was incompatible with religion. Without knowing why, somehow I could not mix evolution with anything to do with religion, especially Christianity. Not surprisingly, I had already declared myself to be a teenage atheist. In truth, deep in my heart there was no genuine questioning of God's existence. Rather, I hated him due to my Roman Catholic upbringing with the constant threat of Hell.
And so I should not be too surprised that the other, more intelligent classmate David, who also had a greater knowledge of Dinosaurs than I had, especially the carnivorous species, was also an atheist who debunked religion. And therefore, my youthful fascination with palaeontology walked hand-in-hand with my teenage rejection of religion, which I believe to be a setting to be looked back upon which is to be the underlying bedrock, so to speak, for the near-universal rejection of God in our country at present.
 |
| The Grand Canyon is an example of sedimentary rock strata. |
And so, according to a video I watched recently on Creation.com website, one answer was given for why such a large contingent of mainly younger people leave their churches every year. For example, according to a faith survey website, the numbers who regularly attend church here in the UK has declined significantly between the years 1980 to 2016. The Roman Catholic Church number of attendees declined from 2,064,000 in 1980 to a mere 608,000 by 2016. That is a loss of 1,456,000 in 36 years. Likewise, the Anglican Church numbers declined from 1,370,400 to 660,000 - a fall of 710,400 in the same time period, and looks to be totally nonexistent by the year 2033. Our denomination, the Baptists, had an attendance number totalling 286,900 in 1980. Thirty six years later it had fallen to 226,000 - a drop of just 60,900. This is small compared to the others, but still in the wrong direction. Likewise, the Methodists suffered a fall from 606,400 attendees in 1980 to 200,000 in 2016 - a fall of 406,400. On the positive side, however, it is the Pentecostals who has enjoyed an increase in the past 36 years, from 221,000 in 1980 to 298,000 in 2016, which is an increase by 77,000. To total up, the total loss of church attendance among the four listed denominations is 2,633,700 in 36 years, or averaging 73,158 annually. And all these statistics apply to the UK only.
A video on Creation.com had listed the belief in Darwinism as one of the main reasons for the decline. And if going by my own experience is of any value, then the belief in evolution over divine creation can destroy the faith of one who grew up in a Christian household. I can see the connection. With secular websites such as Wikipedia calling Young-Earth Creationism a pseudoscience, I can't help how adult believers at work in an office would feel if he was to admit his belief in such Biblical revelation. Among all the suited colleagues, he would be regarded something of an idiosyncratic, or a nutcase, and he would not be taken seriously. There is a possibility of even losing his job. If the office employee can feel rather foolish in believing in Young-Earth Creationism, along with a universal Flood with a family and all land animals confined in a large barge, then such embarrassment can be justified in an environment populated with secular graduates. This could be the backbone behind the thinking of young Christian graduates I have associated with in the last four decades.
Their "Halfway House" belief in Theistic Evolution looks to me to be an escape, or at least a partial escape, from office embarrassment. In regard to his Christian faith, if he was asked his opinion on what he perceives to be the dawn of history, he would answer with some confidence that he does believe in Evolution, albeit theistic. Saves a lot of embarrassment that way! Just about every graduate I have crossed paths with inside the church building believed in theistic evolution, which is essentially Darwinism under the control and supervision of God, as opposed to pure chance. Ironically, it is atheists such as Richard Dawkins who has greater respect for the literal Young-Earth Creationist than for one believing in Theistic Evolution. Furthermore, I have been around long enough to realise that the graduate's belief in Theistic Evolution has robbed him of any spiritual vitality, which was meant to set him apart from the secularist, and to live out his life as a citizen of Heaven.
Therefore I have found it difficult to tell the difference between a Christian graduate from a non-believing academic. Both are well-educated, both are in respectable professions, both are patriotic, both are conscious of social class, which leads to both being cliquey and having an in-group/out-group subconscious need to mix with and fellowship among those of the same characteristic model. Or in other words, I never felt that I truly belonged, but kept to the fringes of the fellowship, with any opinion or contribution offered not taken with any higher degree of seriousness.
I'm convinced that rejection of literal Divine Creation for Theistic Evolution, or even straightforward Darwinism can have devastating repercussions. Belief in Evolution, theistic or otherwise, undercuts faith in Jesus Christ who was Crucified, Buried, and Resurrected for the Atonement of our sins gotten through the Fall of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. This is a major foundation for the faith which can only be borne from Divine Creation. Many offspring of Christian parents, who grew up believing in Evolution, having been taught this at school and endorsed at home, more likely tend to have hearts resembling rocky ground. The word of God from the pulpit may fall on such ground, and lacking proper soil for the shoots to take root properly, when social pressure builds, they quit, leaving the church and renouncing their faith (Matthew 13). And believe me, I have seen it.
The acceptance of Young Earth supernatural Creation is what makes a believer a true Christian. Such a believer in Divine Creation will know that every person he sees and relates with is a creation of God and the one whom Jesus died for. This changes all perception of fellow human beings. Just by reading Psalm 139 should be enough to eradicate any thoughts of inequality, whether it'll be racial, cultural, or national. Also believing in Divine Creation will eliminate any thoughts of Eugenics, an offshoot of Darwinism, as discussed last week. This is serious stuff, so much so that God himself had to challenge me.
Referring back to that stormy evening back in 1973. I was alone in the house. The thunder rolled outside. I opened the Bible I had on me, and turned to its beginning, and read the first three chapters of Genesis. I reeled back in wonder. It was then when I felt the Lord as if confronting me with a stark choice. What am I to believe? Divine Creation or Darwin's Evolution? One or the other, there was no halfway house. No option for Theistic Evolution. Immediately and without hesitation, I chose the Divine Creation revelation, and completely repudiated Evolution. Just like that. But there was no other option. God would not allow it. But once the decision was made, I knew that I had to stick with it. This meant being fully open about it among work colleagues. According to experience, I have found factory shop floor workers to be more tolerating of my Creation conviction than had I worked in an office among clerical employees. From time to time I had serious discussions with work colleagues on the shop floor. At worst, they may have poked fun at me, which is not as bad as having a feeling of ostracism and being ignored - even by fellow church-going graduates.
And so with the new revelation about supernatural creation, I had to accept the truth about the universal, earth destroying Deluge. And so I had no quibbles in my acceptance of such a revelation. From 1973 onward I entered into studies for geological and biological evidence of Creation and the Flood, alongside for the tangible proof for the veracity of the Bible by visiting the Holy Land, particularly Jerusalem. But even if I had never set foot in Israel, being sure about the truthfulness of the Bible would have still make me stand my stead among mocking unbelievers.
And to round up, when it comes to browsing Google Maps on the laptop, or better still, browsing at Google Earth, I was astonished at the sight of a dendroid image of undersea river courses flowing across the edge of the continental shelf exactly southwest of the Irish Republic. If you were to switch to Google Earth, and pan the satellite version of the map to an area of the Atlantic Ocean directly southwest of Cork, you will come across a valley, now partly filled in with silt, but with river courses forming underwater canyons emptying out into the abyss. In the past there were many of them, even up to 300 km 185 miles long, all eventually joining to empty at the one mouth. But over the course of time, silt has filled in the majority of these canyons, with only a couple still visible south of the valley. The depth of the valley is from 1,400 feet to 10,200 feet 430-3,110 metres approx below the surface, which strongly suggest that that part of the Continental Shelf was once above sea level. Is this now submerged valley an echo of the later stages of Noah's Flood, when the floodwaters gushed into the oceans as "the mountains rose and the valleys sunk down" of Psalm 104:6-9?
Maybe so, maybe not. But whatever the case might have been, this has stronger correlations with the truthfulness of Holy Scripture than Charles Darwin could have ever come up with.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
*John C. Whitcomb Jr. and Henry M. Morris, The Genesis Flood, Baker Book House, 1975, page 133.
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