I just completed two presentations in a local church on a biblical view of origins that stimulated some interest among families. As things quieted down after the second session, a teenage girl came to the resource table when most everyone had left. She was looking over the books and fossils. I could tell she was thinking.
I quietly asked, “What do you think about all this?”
She did not reply immediately, but I know what her schoolbooks tell her. I had also referenced the state museum that talked about her coming from something less than human, then some living primordial soup, and finally star dust. As I made eye contact with many parents and grandparents, I said, “What do you think your teenage daughter or son thinks, when they put the dots together to understand that the common belief system means they came from star dust, and that it all happened by itself? Then, what is there to live for, outside of doing your best to enjoy life, then die?”
Of course, the biblical world view is utterly different with a creation by the Creator as explained in Genesis 1 and 2.
The young girl is shy and did not reply but did not retreat. She is pondering her own questions. I have seen this so many times before. I gently say, “You know this biblical world view means you were specially created. Not only are you special, but, as I said, this biblical world view is about relationships, and He (the Creator) wants a relationship with you.”
Therein lies the heart of the matter. The two world views, which are both belief systems about how things began, are radically different. And, through these world views, everything is interpreted around us. The problem is that naturalism/evolution refuses any notion of a deity and adheres to a self-generating, random process that yields everything we see. It is a house of cards — a platform built on the assumption that this process works. It does not.
For example, consider these things: Genetics show things are going down-hill. Complexity does not self-develop. Life cannot be come about from a random non-directed universe. While not possible, it is the prevalent explanation for human origins in the whole world and taught as fact, or it is put in textbooks adjacent to fact. That is the way it is and has been for generations of educational textbooks. The assumptions are far-reaching, but never explained.
As I explain in these presentations, however, the biblical view is radically different, and it fits the evidence we see. The Bible, with historical information from the only eyewitness, the Creator Himself, shows what He did in Genesis 1. He puts us as observers in the scene in Genesis 2 as He forms Adam then the first woman (Genesis 2). But He also explains what went wrong that spoiled the creation (Genesis 3 and following). The corruption in mankind is rapid and is the reason for God’s ordered global Flood. We have widespread evidence of its devastation, an extensive fossil record from the highest mountains to the sea floor, over two thirds of the earth’s surface covered with sedimentary rock, and the myriad of other ramifications of that year-long event. Last, the evidence of written history is clear: we are not getting better, while evolution says we must be.
The biblical world view causes, as it should, a young person to question the common, naturalistic explanation of origins that they are taught year after year. Children are not a result of a random process operating over billions of years. God is quite clear, even outside those critical first chapters of Genesis. Here are a couple examples among dozens of others from the ESV translation of the Bible:
Isaiah 45:18 For thus says the Lord, who created the heavens (he is God), who formed the earth and made it (he established it); he did not create it to be empty, he formed it to be inhabited; and there is no other.
Acts 17:24, 26-27 The God who made the world and everything in it, being Lord of Heaven and earth, does not live in temples made by man…And he made from one man every nation of mankind to live on all the face of the earth, having determined allotted periods and the boundaries of their dwelling place, that they should seek God, and perhaps feel their way toward him and find him…
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For more information, read the Bible. We wrote a free cell phone application to help young people work through the biblical world view and compare it to naturalism and evolution. To get it. go to the Play Store (for Android phones) and the APP store on Apple. In the search window, type QUOTE creation study helps UNQUOTE. Look for the hand emblem (white on a blue circle). The App also has other pictures, handy resources, and it presented in both English and Spanish. For short videos relating to the resource, go to the CreationStudyHelps channel.
