"Creative" Teaching

Wednesday night I remembered how greatly I enjoy teaching.

I had the opportunity to teach the youth class at church, and will get to teach again next week. The youth pastor Aaron Wills and I were chatting about Creationism one night a few weeks back, he had asked me to come and teach about on the subject in his stead while he is out of town.

It was tough for me to decide what exactly to teach. Not because I have so little to teach on, but because there is too much to choose from. The subject matter of Creation, especially in contrast with Naturalism, encompasses every subject there is. From geology, biology, philosophy, and physics, to dinosaurs, world-views, political systems, and ethics, Naturalism is an all encompassing world-view. A big word I learned recently which describes the naturalistic world-view of evolution is "meta-narrative." A meta-narrative is a story to explain all other stories. Naturalism is philosophically committed to trying to explain everything there is in terms of natural causes, completely excluding the possibility of an outside cause such as God. The Evolution model and the Big Bang model are the stories that underpin and try to explain how Naturalism would work. (I say model, because theories can be tested and observed. Evolution and the Big Bang cannot be tested or observed. They are not theories, but models with predictions about how the world should look.)

The Bible is also a meta-narrative in that Scripture can explains all other stories, or to say it another way, can explain how everything came to be, why things exist the way they are now, and where everything is headed in history. I believe the Bible better answers these questions than any other world view, and does so accurately, meaningfully, and without contradiction. Now that is a lot to talk about, a lot more than can fit in a couple hours!

But I gave it my best shot with the time allowed. I finally decided a good place to start is on the Bible's claims about the age of the earth as compared with the Naturalistic/Evolutionary view of billions of years, and various ways you can show that the earth is no more than six to ten thousand years old. I also talked about some of the consequences of the two differing views of the world. The credibility of Jesus, and the entire rest of the Bible, are at stake since Jesus claims that man was made in the beginning, on the sixth day of creation. But as things go, I ran out of time before I could talk about some of my favorite issues. So, I issued a challenge for when the group returns next Wednesday night. The challenge for them is to bring the top 'proofs' offered in their science textbooks for Evolution and/or questions they may have about the Bible's claims for us to discuss. I’m fairly certain my favorite topics will come up from that, but I also want to try and answer what most challenges them. It should prove to be even more exciting than this class was.

What do I hope for them to gain out of all of this? Primarily I want the students’ faith in God’s word to increase and I want them to always be prepared to give an answer for the faith which they have. I also want them to have the same wonder and amazement that I have when I look at the world, to see that the creation proclaims the glory of its Maker.

For your reading and viewing pleasure, here are some recommended websites:
http://www.answersingenesis.org/
--has great articles on a large array of subjects.
http://www.creationscience.com/
--has a free online book which is especially strong in its explanations of geology and the physical sciences, written be an engineer. The book is also available for purchase in a hard back version (which I have), suitable for middle school and up.
http://www.nwcreation.net/videos/index.html
Free videos on a wide variety of subjects

Some good books to read:
Scientific Creationism Edited by Henry M. Morris, 1974 .Creation-Life Publishers. ISBN 0-89051-003-2
In The Beginning: Compelling Evidence for Creation and the Flood - by Dr. Walt Brown
Darwin's Black Box: The Biochemical Challenge to Evolution by Michael J. Behe. 1998. Touchstone Books (Simon & Schuster), 320 pages. ISBN # 0-684-82754-9
Bones of Contention: A Creationist Assessment of Human Fossils - Marvin L. Lubenow: 1992 Baker Books. ISBN 0-8010-5677-2
Darwin on Trial - Phillip E. Johnson. 1993 InterVarsity Press, 195 pages.
Icons of Evolution: Science or Myth? - by Jonathan Wells. 2002. Regnery Publishing. 338 pages.

No chance in Hell...or anywhere else for that matter.

At times we use a coin toss to make a decision, such as a football game, leaving the toss to "chance". Provided that the coin doesn't land on its side, what is the probability that a coin will land on tails? Given enough coin tosses averaged together, fifty percent. But for a single throw, it is impossible to predict the results. But is there really any chance involved? Supposing we had a vacuum sealed room with no air, hence no air friction, and a device that would launch a coin in to the air at the exact same speed, height, and angle, with the coin in the exact same position on the launcher. If we could so duplicate the initial starting conditions of the coin toss, with nothing to interfere, the odds that the coin would land on the same side every single time would be 100%. The problem with predicting a coin toss is that we cannot duplicate/know the initial starting conditions exactly, so we leave the results to "chance". There really is no "chance" -in the sense of actually being random- involved at all. Chance is simply a word we use to describe our ignorance, that we cannot know all of the complexities involved, nor are we able to control what we know to a high enough degree as to allow us to make accurate predictions.

This is why we cannot predict the weather far into the future. With all of our powerful radars and other equipment, it is impossible to know exactly the weather conditions at any given moment, nor to understand all of the minute events occurring throughout our galaxy that could impact our planet. Such small differences between what we measure and what the real conditions are, cause our weather predictions to drastically differ from reality over a long enough period of time. Unpredictable systems, like the weather, are called chaotic, perhaps even random, because they don't follow any of our models/predictions, but they are not really. We simply do not know everything, hence they appear random. But there is nothing random. There is no chance.

The last century spawned a new field of science called Quantum Physics/Quantum Mechanics which (simplified) deals with the study of atoms and their subatomic particles. Unfortunately for such study, it is impossible to know both the exact momentum and location of a particle at the same instant. This is known as Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle. We cannot explain what causes certain phenomena to happen at the atomic level, because it is impossible to know exactly what is happening at any given moment. This impossibility is built into the system, so let me state it again: we don't know what causes some effects. Some have made a leap of logic to say that since we don't know what is causing some effect, that NOTHING is causing the effect. This is illogical and irrational. The Law of Cause and Effect is that all effects must have a cause. It is true simply by definition. (Aside: Someone might object, saying I'm not a quantum physicist, which I'm not. Though I've taken a few classes, I am in no position to argue the results of their work. But I can evaluate the truth claims they make about those results.)

But when a teacher stands in front of a class and tells the students that 18-20 Billion years ago "nothing" exploded it is accepted as fact. Yet this is just as illogical and irrational. All effects must have a cause. So, the scientist says, it was caused by chance, a probability. But chance does not have any power (let alone ultimate power), nor does it have any being; it is simply a description of systems we do not understand. If nothing existed, there is no system to predict. "Ex nilhilo nihil fit" - Nothing comes from nothing. For something to create itself it would have to exist before it exists. Might as well stick the side of your finger to your lips and flail it up and down. This is nonsense, irrational, and it is not science.

And if at this point you find yourself believing that nothing exploded and produced everything, and that you don't believe in cause and effect, please tell the world. You will save us all the time from having to convince the world you are being irrational by telling them this yourself. :)