Comparing the Biblical worldview with evolution worldview
I will be comparing the two worldviews. In my attempt, I have tried to group the comparison into a number of sections. Unfortunately, even after doing so, to explain each worldview apparently I will need more than a few paragraphs each. For fairness sake, please send comments so that I could make the article more holistic in every section of comparison.
Before we go deeper into comparing other parts of the biblical account of creation and the theory of evolution, I would like to raise the most fundamental issue that may often is overlooked.
Belief factor: presupposition and worldview assumption
The creation account proposed in the Holy Bible happened before mankind was created. This whole universe was created by God, the invisible and eternal creator. Thus, no man would have been there to witness it. As a creation, no man could come and see God unless God reveals Himself to His creation. And since the Bible itself is the revelation from God, it holds the ultimate authority for truth. The Bible reveals things about God the author, about creation, about our beginning and even about the end of this world. It reveals the objective reality to us. And it judges our thoughts, our actions, and even our worldview.
Now, it is written in the scripture, without faith it is impossible to please God, because anyone who comes to him must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who earnestly seek him (Hebrew 11:6). The scripture also says that faith cometh by hearing, and hearing by the word of God. (Romans 10:17). And also there are clear contrasts between those who have faith by the word of God and those who don’t believe in God: “The fool says in his heart: There is no God. They are corrupt, their deeds are vile; there is no one who does good” (Psalm 14:1).
Because of this Christianity is often perceived as a closed-loop belief-system. You can only believe Christianity if you believe the Christian God. And because you believe in God thus you have to believe the Holy bible. And the Bible itself convinces Christians to believe that the Christian God exists. Therefore, the relativists consider Christianity simply as a valid truth for Christians just as other beliefs are true for their believers. In this pluralistic world, Christianity often is seen as simply one of the reality that a person may choose to believe. And while trying to convince people of the subjectivity of religion, the atheists, with their materialistic and evolutionistic worldview, often introduce themselves as the one with objective and scientific approach.
It is very interesting how easy we are blinded by the fact that the atheistic and evolutionistic worldview is also a closed loop belief system as well. It’s amazing how easy we forgot how our science book needs to be corrected and updated every year, while each version claims to be telling the truth. The subjectivity of science and human ratio as the judge of all comes from an underlying assumption that there is no God to begin with. If there is a God, then human ratio is not the measure of truth. And because some people assume that there is no God, then they establish that science and human ratio is the judge of all things. And because they believe that science is the judge of all and because they cannot measure and prove God under science, they come to a conclusion of an atheistic worldview.
Evolution theory does not only sit on this presupposition that there is no God; it further requires a second belief loop. The evolution theory proposed by Charles Darwin, suggests that the evolution happened way before the animals evolved to become human. And all this evolution happens in a matter of billions of years or so. As a result, there are two reasons why no man could be able to see evolution and a creation of a new species family with his own eye. Firstly, we cannot see evolution because many of them happen in pre-historic age. And secondly, we cannot see any macro evolution happening at the moment because it would happen really slowly. Before we notice any new birth of a new animal family, we would have died.
So, if we cannot see any animal evolving into another animal, what is the foundation of evolution? Evolutionists claim that the fossils, genetics and other attributes’ similarities fit well with the theory of evolution. But here, in this claim itself, lies the belief loop that evolutionist often don’t realize. When we see similarities over things, is it scientifically logical to deduce evolution and/or common ancestor? What I mean is, if there is a red mushroom with white dots, and there is a photo of that mushroom, and there is a carving of that mushroom, and there is the similar mushroom from “Mario Bros” game, do we say that these mushroom evolves from one to another and they share the common ancestor? In normal situation, similarities can neither assume evolution nor common ancestor. For the evolutionists, however, these similarities are considered as strong “evidence” because they believe on the evolution presupposition in the first place. We have to be more cautious to such irresponsible deductive reasoning and logical fallacy that scientist often made. Example:
And so, we see here that both theistic worldview and atheistic worldview requires some degree of faith, belief, and presupposition. Can we get rid of our presupposition and claim to be totally objective? Unfortunately, it will not be that easy to be totally objective and assess things without any assumption.
In fact, in our day to day lives, more often than not, we have to live with our assumption and we believe that things are just the way they are. We probably never question whether our father is truly our father. Well, we could actually test the DNA and such, but we don’t. We just believe. We believe on what our father claims, and we believe the testimony of our mother as well as everybody around us. Even if we want to test our blood and DNA, we still have to assume that the nurses and doctors are not part of the conspiracy. (This somewhat reminds me of “The Truman Show” movie - ^^;).
The truth is we can’t live at all if we need proof for everything. However as we grow, we also learn to discern truth from false claims. And so we learn about the concept of epistemology. For simple things, we learn to filter out information based on which claim has more truth-probability. For example, if after agreeing on $5 bets for every right guess, your friend throw away a dice 100 times, and guess the number correctly every time before the throw. We would learn that it is more plausible that your friend was probably cheating, rather than simply believing that it was just her luck that day.
For more complex cases, we also learn to judge the truth based on how holistic the claim is. When comparing between various claims, the more plausible truth should carry most holistic truth. What I mean is, even though we have different fields of study, such as biology, physics, geology, history, art, archaeology, theology and so many other –logy(s), the claim of truth from a field of study, if it’s really true, will not contradict with other truths even if its outside the field of study. I could dismiss quickly any scientific claim, if ever happens in the future, that claims, for example, that American continent had actually just risen from beneath the sea and become a continent 50 years ago. No matter how futuristic it sounds and no matter how advance the methods being used, it cannot be true since it contradicts with another claim that is more holistic, which is the truth from American history.
And so on my next article, my plan is to compare next in the article will be the evidences that supports creation as well as evolution :)
No comments:
Post a Comment