Although I empathise with this view, I think you will find it disputed by the scientific and academic communities here.
Absolute truth is a very slippery fish that may not even exist in reality, while blanket assertions tend to be oversimplistic.
Richard
In high school and Bible college, everything I could beg, borrow, or steal - Acts and Facts from ICR, apologetics from Francis Schaeffer - this is back in the 70’s. I’m pretty up to date now what AiG, CMI, and DI have to say.
I cannot speak for others, but sincerely this was not my experience at all. K to 12 had zero class time devoted to evolution, even in biology, although there were a couple of books in the library. The college biology text introduction presented evolution as a unifying theme and there was a chapter that was skipped, class time was all spent on cell structure, biochemical cycles, anatomic systems, genetics, the exciting world of plant reproduction, and that’s all I recall of 101. My biggest ah moment was lab dissection, which had nothing to do with evolution. Suddenly, it just all made sense.
It was a slow build that culminated in a personal crisis, but not from studying evolution directly. Evolution is just biology over time, biology is just science, and science is just rigorous observation. As I broadened my observations, it became obvious to me that my prior perspective could not sustain and I could not be confident of the integrity of creationist writings across the board.
That would take the topic off track. Feel free to check out some of my other threads and posts.
My experience was very similar to yours. I really had two “Aha” moments in the midst of it. One was when we drilled an irrigation well on our farm on the the High Plains of Texas near Lubbock. The landscape was of course flat as a pancake, at a 3000 foot elevation. I knew near nothing of geology, but when we started pumping water from 400 feet below the surface, we also pumped up little mollusk fossils. It was obvious a whole ecosystem existed, only to be covered with 400 feet of sediment with no visible source of that sediment around. My father expressed his wonder at what that might mean, and I shared his sentiments. The other moment was also when in comparative anatomy class and lab, when I realized that either the Bible was wrong about origins of life and such, or I was interpreting it wrongly. I elected to believe the latter.
Thank you for sharing your background and perspective. I would like to offer a few thoughts in return:
First, while skipping a specific chapter in a biology course may have been your individual experience, my intention was to highlight the broader, systemic environment we are immersed in. Beyond just textbooks, our educators, professors, peers, mass media, and the entire institutional system operate on evolutionary premises, which continuously shapes one’s overall educational background.
Second, you mentioned that your perspective shifted through “rigorous observation” and science. I would be very interested to know which specific scientific fields or empirical observations were most influential in your journey, as concrete examples would help me better understand your conclusion.
Third, understanding the pivotal turning points behind your shift seems very relevant to our topic, especially considering your decades of reflection since the 1970s. While I respect your desire to keep the thread focused, hearing a few key reasons would bring valuable context to this discussion.
Finally, regarding your suggestion to read your other writings, I would be grateful if you could share a title or link. Digging through a full posting history without a direct reference can be quite difficult, so a specific link would make it much easier to follow up on your work.
I appreciate your time and look forward to hearing your thoughts.
Under the summary page, the discourse software provides a nice listing of topics initiated by that forum member, as given here:
One thing I would emphasize is that faith is a journey, and you have not reached the final destination. Over the coming decades, you will change your mind about many things. Your current views are also being shaped by your environment, and when that environment changes, so too may your thinking.
Please keep an open mind. There are intelligent people on both sides of the debate, and neither side has an airtight case.
One person I would suggest you and your Dad read together is Richard Buggs. Professor Buggs is currently Senior Research Leader (Plant Health & Adaptation) at Royal Botanic Gardens Kew, and Professor of Evolutionary Genomics at Queen Mary, University of London.
He is a Christian, and often writes about evolutionary topics that should be of interest to both of you.
After carefully reviewing your posts and topic list, I found it somewhat regretful that it was difficult to identify the precise point and moment that led you to deny Biblical truth. As you have concluded that mainstream scientific hypotheses are robust enough to replace Biblical creation, I would like to respectfully ask a few questions and share some thoughts regarding your process of critical verification.
1. Request for Personal Research and Reflections
2. A Respectful Invitation to Self-Reflection
3. Variable Human Observations vs. Unchanging Scripture
4. The Precedence of Creation and Personal Responsibility
While I appreciate your perspective on faith being a journey, Bill, I would like to respectfully address the framework you suggested regarding faith, reason, and science using the explicit teachings of Scripture.
1. Faith Requires Wholehearted Commitment, Not Lukewarm Relativism
In Matthew 10:37 (NIV), Jesus states: “Anyone who loves their father or mother more than me is not worthy of me; anyone who loves their son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me.” Placing anything above Him makes us unworthy of Him, and Scripture explicitly defines putting worldly priorities or human intellect before God as idolatry (Exodus 20:3, Colossians 3:5).
Furthermore, regarding a compromised or lukewarm middle ground, Jesus explicitly warns in Revelation 3:15–16 (NIV): “I know your deeds, that you are neither cold nor hot. I wish you were one or the other! So, because you are lukewarm—neither hot nor cold—I am about to spit you out of my mouth.” Genuine faith is an absolute commitment to God’s revelation, not a passive compromise between divine truth and shifting human theories.
2. Proper Hierarchy, Not Isolation from the World (Paul’s Principle)
In 1 Corinthians 5:9–10 (NIV), the Apostle Paul clarifies our relationship with secular society: “I wrote to you in my letter not to associate with sexually immoral people—not at all meaning the people of this world who are immoral, or the greedy and swindlers, or idolaters. In that case you would have to leave this world.”
Paul makes it clear that Christians are not called to abandon or isolate themselves from the secular world. The objective is not to reject science, but to establish the proper hierarchy: Scripture is our supreme, unchanging authority, while science is merely a secondary, limited tool for observing the created order. Science must serve under the authority of God’s Word, not redefine it.
3. Unchanging Scripture vs. Variable Human Observation
All human scientific observation occurs strictly after Creation. Empirical measurements, theories, and scientific paradigms are continuously rewritten as tools evolve.
In contrast, the Word of God remains entirely unchanged. True spiritual balance does not mean treating divine truth and variable human theories as equally inconclusive; it means anchoring our faith in the unchanging Creator while utilizing science strictly in its proper, subordinate place.
4. A Corporate Mandate for the Body of Christ: Investing to Overcome Slothfulness
We must explicitly confront the history of compromise and passive acceptance, as well as the intellectual slothfulness that has plagued the Christian community. By accommodating secular scholarship rather than engaging in rigorous inquiry, believers allowed evolutionary hypotheses to gradually infiltrate and dominate modern education and research.
If we continue to passively yield to mainstream secular paradigms, faith will inevitably retreat. Establishing Biblical Creation as scientific truth requires an urgent, substantial commitment—a massive investment of time, effort, and capital.
Crucially, this is not a goal to be achieved on an individual level or by isolated local congregations. It is a corporate mandate that must be carried by the entire community of believers—the global Church as the Body of Christ.
Initiatives like Creation Science represent early steps in this direction. As one unified Body, we must pool resources, cultivate top talent, and conduct rigorous research to demonstrate the absolute truth of God’s Creation.
That’s a human tradition.
That’s also a human tradition, indeed one that goes against the evidence of the scriptures themselves. See Michael Heiser’s explanations of how the scriptures show that they have been edited.
Right – so don’t cling to those human traditions I pointed out.
That’s something the Bible contains little of. Most of it, often by its own indication, is the words of human authors – inspired, but human.
The created world is not a “secular paradigm”, it is the work of God. Science is merely studying how God works.
“Creation Science” is the bastard offspring of forcing the scriptures to fit a modern scientific worldview by adopting its idea that to be true a piece of writing has to be 100% scientifically and historically true. That is not from scripture, and IMO it is blasphemous.
Sorry, but I’m not interested in pursuing this further.
Done.
I do not engage with argument from sanctimony or platitudes, but would point out that most of what passes for creation science, such as accelerated nuclear decay and baraminology, is not in scripture.
Please note that Biologos discussion guidelines include
- Assume legitimate Christian faith on the part of other people, unless they identify otherwise. The purpose of discussions here is not to judge the legitimacy or efficacy of anyone’s faith or lack of faith.
To me, this is a terrible contrast.
Yes, it’s true that human science has a provisional dimension. We think and study and draw conclusions, and we should be open to new information and ideas.
But it’s exactly the same with the Bible. I believe the Bible is God’s inspired word. But as a sincere and fallible person I need to interpret that word. The real comparison is my understanding of the Bible alongside my understanding of the world around me.
In my early Christian journey I had major problems with evolution. But even then I had equally big problems with a “6-day, 6,000 year” origin story. I never believed that the Bible taught this. The storyline and themes of Genesis have always resonated with me in a different way. Of course, I may be wrong, but then that’s the whole point. Holding both confidence and humility in balance. (I add this personal note to provide one example of a person whose views are not the result of some godless evolutionary philosophy).
I basically agree with everything you say, but for most, it is a journey to get to the mature faith you are talking about. To expect a young teenager or even a young adult to have this faith is unrealistic, especially in our culture.
What I am trying to convey is that the important thing is to keep an open mind, and this needs to be on both sides of the fence. Examining the Bible in the light of scientific discovery forces us to reexamine our beliefs. This is important, as many times our beliefs are based upon tradition, and not Scripture. A good example of this is the condemnation of Galileo and Copernicus because of their view that the Earth revolved around the Sun, and not the other way around.
At the same time, we must examine what science teaches, because, as you said, it is ever changing, and in the origin debate, it has proven especially untrustworthy. (Haeckel, Piltdown man, 99% identical DNA with chimps, etc.)
God’s Creation and the Bible both tell the same story. There are committed Christians on all sides of this debate who are trying to figure this out. The key to discovering the true story of how the universe was created is to listen and consider all points of view, examining and debating with robust dialogue. It did not appear to me that this person was leaving the faith, but rather questioning certain aspects of it. My plea was that he not close his mind, but listen to others who have walked the same path.
Another thing to consider is the story of the prodigal son. I agree that the Bible has no place for luke warm Christians, But better to be honest about our doubts and questions than fake it. This story teaches me that God doesn’t abandon those who stray. He calls them back with love, not judgment, and I believe we should do the same.
I wouldn’t say those are good examples. Pilot down man was doubted by many scientist from the get-go, and proven to be a fake by scientists. Monkey and human DNA is said to be 93-95% similar, with chimpanzee DNA being 98.8% similar, but that number is entirely dependent on the definition of similar, as you can define it differently and get a lower number of around with 15% differences, Of course the article linked also says the difference between two different chimps is 9% when that same way of measurement is used. Which is a little weird if you consider the difference between two chimps is not a lot difference that a chimp and a human. But that small amount means a lot. Again, it is scientists doing this work, so it is not a measure of untrustworthiness, but rather a measure of science being largely self correcting and honoring exactness and truth, as opposed to some detractors who are intentionally being deceptive about such things.
Perhaps the lesson here is the deception of statistics as an argument. That 2% still represents 100s of actual differences which does not sound so close.
And, as Chimps are not on a direct ancestral line but an offshoot from the alleged jump off point, the statistics and the argument become less and less convincing.
Chimps themselves were evolving in parallel with humanity, but , as I have pointed out before, parallel evolution is not highlighted within evolutionary theory as it tends to give negative arguments against the linear progression intrinsic to evolutionary theory;
Richard
But nowhere near as untrustworthy as creationism (Darwin ‘recanted’, Bombardier beetle, supernova remnants, Paluxy tracks, Dima, cdesign proponentsists, moon recession rates, Burdick’s ‘footprint’, fake credentials, perjury at Dover, hiding cracks in rocks, shenanigans with ‘quotes’, omitting ‘inconvenient’ data, and of course lying about Piltdown, lying about Haeckel and lying about DNA comparisons, etc etc etc)
I would disagree with you that these are not good examples. The reason is that all three of these examples were published in university textbooks. Piltdown Man was not taken out until 1953, but because textbooks were reused back then, this was taught as fact by my university professor in 1980, as was Haeckel’s embryos. These fraudulent drawings were still in university textbooks in well into the 1990’s.
The 99% DNA difference was in the university textbooks a few years ago, and likely still is. But according to Minute Earth in their episode, “Are we really 99% chimp?”, it is based on wishful thinking, not fact.
“When researchers sat down to compare the human and chimp genomes, the single letter differences were easy to tally, but the big, mismatched sections weren’t. For example, if a genetic paragraph, thousands of letters long appears twice in a human scroll, but only once in a chimp counterpart, should that second copy be counted as a single change, or just one.”
“And what about identical paragraphs that appear in both genomes, but in different places, or in reverse order, or broken up into pieces. Rather than monkey around with this difficult questions, the researchers simply excluded all the mismatched sections, a whopping 1.3 billion letters in all, and performed a letter by letter comparison on the remaining 2.4 billion, which turned out to be 99.87% identical.”
When I first heard this, I assumed the information was not true. But as of yet, I can find no one that has rebutted it, and the episode is still up. So it seems the 99% number was not misleading, but actually fits the definition of propaganda.
It gets a bit technical, but this is a good summary of what those numbers mean and how they were derived. I know it will not change your mind, but if any reading are confused, may help with their understanding of the issues, as it did for me.
If you look at the link I just posted, it indeed does mention how chimps are less similar to each other due to their evolution over a longer time in parallel whereas humans are a relatively new species, and all members have more DNA in common, perhaps supporting your point of parallel evolution, yet showing that it supports, not detracts, from evolutionary theory.
Thank you for this thread Ben_Lee.
As an outsider it is easy to see this anti-evolution streak in Christianity as a kind of collusion to keep the faithful heaven obsessed and ignorant about the world. I believe that reading it would be beneficial to people like me who are outside the Christian faith to help us understand what it is going on and to respect the tolerance and love behind it.
That said it sure would be good to find a way to raise up a better appreciation for an understanding of empirical processes among believers who are or were not science majors. Ignorance is never preferable and a mindset trained not to see what is visible can extend to things like vaccination and climate change as well, to say nothing of keeping faith in malevolent public figures who make a point of showing public religiosity.
Thanks for sharing.
Would love to share this on another forums. Very helpful.
Could you let me know if that would be alright?
“Let your conversation be always full of grace, seasoned with salt, so that you may know how to answer everyone.” -Colossians 4:6
This is a place for gracious dialogue about science and faith. Please read our FAQ/Guidelines before posting.