A large part of the problem we are having today in settling out the overwhelming evidence for evolution with the belief that God made the heavens and the earth is caused by the widespread belief of people before the 19th century that the reason we knew that God existed was that he created all the plants and animals. There was no other way plants and animals could have gotten here, so God had to be real. Thinking this was a big mistake, because when someone found out the mechanism by which we got all these animals and plants, who needed God? If your God is a “God of the gaps” you will resist learning any facts that might fill the gaps in scientific knowledge, and when you are finally forced to accept them, you will lose your God. Sad. The animals die, the flowers fade, but the word of God stands forever. Forever.
Now let’s try not to do this again. We don’t know how life first came to be. If it takes eons for inert material to turn into self reproducing protoplasm, then life did not first appear on earth: there are no eons between the formation of the earth and the first evidence of life on the planet. Scientists accept this and many are looking to see how life could have been brought here from some extraterrestrial place. That just puts the problem off, and adds all sorts of other questions. But that doesn’t mean that we will never find out how life might have arisen out of matter. The invisible hand of God is certainly the creator, but for scientists, the only thing they can study will be the chemical reactions. If you believe God to be real because he is necessary to create life, then you will lose him in the event that science discovers a likely mechanism for that event. God is not real because there is no other way that life could have been created. God is real because he is real. You will believe he is real when he chooses to prove that to you. You should not decide to belief this on your own, or because it is more convenient, or because everyone else believes it, or because he had to miraculously create life. All those things change; God cannot depend on anything but himself. When the time is right he will prove his reality to you. Until he does, don’t try to set up structures of proof for yourself; they will fall. That is why the YECers are so desperate. The God they believed in, who created each and every species as an individual miraculous act, has been proved totally unnecessary.
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