Are People Created by God or Evolved by Nature?

15 Jan Are People Created by God or Evolved by Nature?

Creation Part 2 (Day 6)

• Good parents knowing the child is coming prepares the environment
• Days 1-6 prepare for Adam/Eve. Earth not our Mother, God our Father.

4 Preliminary Points

1. There is no conflict between Christianity and experimental science = “natural laws”.

Hugh Ross – PhD Astronomy, @ 17 youngest dir of observations @ Vancouver’s Royal Astronomical Society. God saved studying creation.

Francis Collins – led int’l team mapped the human genome, dir. Nat’l Inst. Health saved studying creation, testimony book “The Language of God”

• 1 human DNA molecule holds roughly the same amount of info as the 1 volume encyclopedia

“When you look from the perspective of a scientist at the universe, it looks as if it knew we humans were coming. There are 15 constants—the gravitational constant, various constants about the strong and weak nuclear forces, etc.—that have precise values. If any one of those constants was off by even one part in a million, or in some cases, by one part in a million, the universe could not have actually come to the point where we see it. The matter would not have been able to coalesce, there would have been no galaxy, stars, planets, or people.”

2. There is a conflict between Christianity and atheistic naturalism since the 16^th century.
3. Bible is mainly a theological history book about God & man, not mainly a scientific textbook.

Galileo “The Holy Ghost intended to teach us how to go to heaven, not how the heavens go.”

4. Genesis is selective history, not exhaustive history = many questions left unanswered.

 

God Made Us 

Genesis 1:²⁶ Then God said, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. And let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.”

1. 1. God is our Creator “us” & “our” – Trinity/Relational God made us for relationship

-Job 38:4, 7 “Where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth?…when the morning stars sang together and all the sons of God shouted for joy?

2. We did not create “god” – ATHEISTS

• Ludwig Feuerbach (19^th century) – atheist says we made God concept
• Karl Marx – politically we made God for the state to control people
• Sigmund Freud – psychologically we created God because of deep brokenness
• Friedrich Nietzsche – philosophically we created God as a crutch

3. God created us

• Anthropology – under God’s dominion, over plants/animals
• The English word for “human” is the same root as “humility” = know your place

-Error 1 – up like gods (New Age, Mormonism, under no authority)

-Error 2 – down as animals (evolution, radical environmentalism, pantheism/panentheism)

=Daniel 3 is counterfeit.

3. Imago Dei = Identity – self image/esteem/love vs God (fixed & unchanging) VS ROLES

-2 Cor 4:4 Christ…is the image of God.

-Col 1:15 He is the image of the invisible God

-John 14:9 Jesus said…Whoever has seen me has seen the Father.

=VS MIRROR EFFECT

Male and Female

Genesis 1:²⁷ So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them.

The Word                                                                    The World

Sex: Fixed Binary Male/Female                                      Sex: Fluid on an Intersex Spectrum

Gender: Fixed Binary Masculine/Feminine                      Gender: Fluid on an Unfixed Spectrum

Sexuality: Fixed 1 man and 1 woman in marriage            Sexuality: Fluid on an Unfixed Spectrum

• I am an Irish male. I cannot decide to be an Asian female.
• = God sinned against us. We will atone for his sin by shedding our blood in surgery
• Confusion happens because of 1. Trauma/abuse 2. Brainwashing 3. Porn
• Bible = speaks to men/women; husbands/wives; sons/daughters
• Bible = Gender 1. equality (Aritotle women inferior) 2. distinction 3. interdependence

Bruce/Caitlyn Jenner says trans men in women’s sports are unfair. MMA fight = broken skull

My Bronco came with an owner’s manual & lots of warnings (offense/victim?)

God is Good and Blesses Us

Genesis 1:28-30 And God blessed them. And God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it, and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth.” And God said, “Behold, I have given you every plant yielding seed that is on the face of all the earth, and every tree with seed in its fruit. You shall have them for food.  And to every beast of the earth and to every bird of the heavens and to everything that creeps on the earth, everything that has the breath of life, I have given every green plant for food.” And it was so.  And God saw everything that he had made, and behold, it was very good. And there was evening and there was morning, the sixth day.

Blessing

• God speaks blessing – “God said” & “God blessed them”
• 400X in Bible. Over 80X in Genesis. #1 book Bible = “live-giving power”
• His presence, children, possessions, long life, friends, ability to persevere & prevail.
• BLESSING when we obey what God says.         CURSE when we disobey what God says
• Children are a blessing (not a command)

Family

• First governance is the family & foundation of all governments (singular head, plural leader)
• Ideal – husband, wife, children obeying God’s Word & blessed
• Cultural mandate – civilization needs marriage & children
• Everything previous “good” now “very good”             = POPULATION

 

The Seven Day Week

Genesis  2:2-4 Thus the heavens and the earth were finished, and all the host of them.  And on the seventh day God finished his work that he had done, and he rested on the seventh day from all the work that he had done. So God blessed the seventh day and made it holy because on it God rested from all the work that he had done in creation. These are the generations of the heavens and the earth when they were created, in the day that the Lord God made the earth and the heavens.

• The conclusion of God’s work on Friday
• 7 Day Week – God establishes. 6 work. 1 rest.

Sabbath

• Blessing to – land, animals, poor
• Act of faith in God
• Holy – 1^st time
• God breathed out 6 days. God-breathed in 1 day.
• Sabbath = a grace, not a law (what is different & replenishes energy?
• USA adopted Jewish & XN Sabbath.

Atheists Failed          1793-1805 French Revolution                     1929-1940 Russians

 

What Are Some of the Problems with Atheistic Evolution?

1. Promotes Racism – Charles Darwin 1859  “The Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life.” (XN’s Crazy)
2. Did nothing make everything?
3. Did chaos make order?
4. The world is designed but there is no Designer?
5. Impersonal made personal?
6. Unintelligent made intelligence?
7. Faith-based

Astronomer Fred Hoyle claimed that “the probability of life arising on earth (by purely natural means, without special divine aid) is less than the probability that a flight-worthy Boeing 747 should be assembled by a hurricane roaring through a junkyard.”

8. Biased

Dr. George Wald, Professor of Biology/Harvard University, Recipient of the 1971 Nobel Prize in Biology, Scientific American, August 1954) “When it comes to the origin of life, we have only two possibilities as to how life arose.  One is spontaneous generation arising from evolution; the other is a supernatural creative act of God.  There is no third possibility…Spontaneous generation was scientifically disproved one hundred years ago by Louis Pasteur, Spellanzani, Reddy, and others. That leads us scientifically to only one possible conclusion — that life arose as a supernatural creative act of God…I will not accept that philosophically because I do not want to believe in God.  Therefore, I choose to believe in that which I know is scientifically impossible, spontaneous generation arising to evolution.”

9. Atheism is Unlivable – from no one, here for nothing, going nowhere – depression & death

Bertrand Russell: “only on the firm foundation of the unyielding despair, can the soul’s habitation henceforth be safely built.” (Russell, Mysticism and Logic, p. 47).

Richard Dawkins when was asked if his view of reality made him depressed replied, “I don’t feel depressed about it. But if somebody does, that’s their problem. Maybe the logic is deeply pessimistic, the universe is bleak, cold, and empty. But so what?”

 

CLOSE:

God made this planet as a gift for you

God made you fearfully & wonderfully made from your mother’s womb

God loves to bless, and we have brought the curse

God came into this cursed world & gives us life & purpose

You come from God. You are here for God. You are returning to God.