I am glad that you are searching. Following are some thoughts for you to consider.
Why am I a Christian
I am a Christian because I have trusted Jesus as my Lord and Savior for the forgiveness of my sin and for eternal life. But I think your question goes further, “Why do you believe the Bible is true, and can be relied upon for questions of history?” I doubt I would be satisfied if I started my quest with the answers in this forum. So let me give you mine, much different from most of what is written here.
I believe that the Bible is true and accurate, even in the question of history and where it touches on science, from Genesis 1:1 to the end of Revelation. It gives an accurate history of the universe. God created the universe several thousands of years ago, not billions. And he created everything in the universe. He is the creator, and everything else is his creation, including time, matter, energy and space.
Evidence from nature—two worldviews
We all have the same evidence from nature. Adherents of naturalism see and interpret the evidence through their naturalistic worldview lenses; adherents of theism find the evidence from nature to fit well into their theistic worldview.
Briefly, naturalism holds that everything came from nothing, order arose from chaos, life emerged from non life, more complex life (there is no such category as “simple life”) arose from less complex life, and sentient or self aware life came from non sentient life, and the current apex of biological evolution is humans. I find this all incredible, and frankly, irrational. I don’t have enough faith to be an evolutionist.
Genesis chapters one and two, in a natural reading, state that God created the universe and all that is in it in six normal 24 hour days, and utilizing the historical chrono-genealogies given later in the Bible, this occurred a few thousand years ago. The geological sedimentary layers and the fossils in them were laid down primarily during the worldwide flood recorded in Genesis chapters 6 though 8. Despite the expected protestations, the geological evidence is better explained by rapid deposition during a worldwide flood. The ice age following the flood was triggered by post flood environmental conditions and did further significant geological work.
Theistic evolution
Biologos among other groups promotes theisitic evolution, or as they call it, evolutionary creationism. Over the past several years, theistic evolutionists have loudly and publically asserted their view as the only intellectually credible position that thinking Christians can hold. Moreover, they often dismiss anyone who challenges their claim as being out of touch with the latest scientific research as if the evidence for macroevolution and human origins is so unassailable that it cannot be questioned. And what are the philosophical and theological concerns if one accepts the evolutionary explanation for human origins? I think that this is an important part of the question you are asking.
Biologos is a somewhat strange entity, in that it embraces some of the facets of the theistic worldview, and others of the naturalistic worldview. For example, it accepts that God is the creator, and that he was involved in the beginning of the universe and life. In other words, there were at least two miracles, the beginning of the universe and the beginning of life. That satisfies two dilemmas of naturalism that it has no answers for; how did the universe begin, or if you understand the big bang to be the beginning, what caused the big bang? And how did life arise? But from there, everything else developed by purely natural processes with at least no evidence of God’s intervention.
The “evidence” for this is all in the distant past, all inaccessible to most people, so we must rely on “experts” to explain all of this to the rest of us. For BioLogians, this spills over into their biblical hermeneutics or Bible interpretation. Understanding much of the Bible, particularly Genesis chapters 1 through 11, depends on “experts” as well, this time through an understanding of ancient near east culture. But again, ANE culture and history is in practice inaccessible to most of us except through these experts’ scholarship. And these experts find the first chapters of Genesis to be mytho-history, to best be understood through a framework hypothesis or as a cosmic temple inauguration.
There are several such explanations, and you must choose which you think is more likely. One author, John Walton who has adherents on BioLogos, has written several books on the Lost World of . . . In other words, he believes he has recovered knowledge of past history that has been lost for thousands of years, but which he has been able to uncover and elucidate to us. This is, of course, history that is in the distant past, and in practice inaccessible to most people, as no one can be an expert in more than a few areas. So we must rely on his expertise. In his view, we cannot take a natural reading of Genesis, because although it was written for us, it was not written to us. We must look at Genesis through the lens of a person living in the ancient near east, or we will come to the wrong conclusions, as have many biblical scholars for thousands of years prior to the current enlightenment.
I believe contrary, that the Genesis creation account is an apologetic (argument) against the pagan creation accounts. And lest I be misunderstood, I also appreciate scholarship, but find it variously helpful and also unhelpful at times. It needs to be considered critically.
So to you who identifies cryptically as “I think, therefore I sigh (did I get that right?),” I understand your concerns. Many Christians teach what I also find difficult to accept. And I find Christian evolutionists to promote both weak science and weak hermeneutics. How do I see this?
What is evolution?
You brought up evolution. Briefly defined, biological evolution is one kind of organism changing into another fundamentally different kind of organism through natural selection working on random variation. I expect that several in this forum will object that evolution is much more than this, but I think this is an adequate and accurate brief definition from which to work, and a definition that many evolutionists would accept when talking to one another.
What are the biblical problems with evolution?
In Genesis 1, we find that as originally created, everything God created was good and very good. But then sin and evil came into the world when Adam and Eve rebelled against God. Because of that, death came upon all people (Genesis 3:3; Romans 5:12) and the entire natural world came under a curse (Genesis 3:14-19; Romans 8:20-24.) For evolutionists, the geological record is a history of destruction, disease and death, all before Adam and Eve and their rebellion against God. In this narrative, contrary to scripture, the link between sin and death is broken, because death and disease come before sin. It also brings up the question of a need for a Savior for those who sin—who break God’s moral law. In secular evolutionism, how is there even a God and his moral law?
Identifying poor arguments and radiometric dating
I also observe some arguments on this forum, and even on this specific thread, to be illogical. But to my dismay, others fail to call this out. Identifying bad arguments in a forum like this should be imperative, regardless of who made it. Here are two examples:
We were discussing radiometric dating in a previous forum. How can we tell if it really works rather than just accepting it as accurate a priori? In other words, if we use radiometric dating to determine millions and billions of years in the earth’s geological records, is there a way to check the accuracy of this method.
As it turns out, there is. We can check radiometric dating against rocks of known age. And we have. For one of many examples, fresh rocks from the recent eruption of Mount Saint Helens were dated a few years old, by qualified scientists using accepted protocols and qualified laboratories. The test results were that the rocks were hundreds of thousands and even millions of years old even though they were only about 10 years old. Other commenters, read the scientific papers that were written on how this process was done before you tell me that Austin, et al, didn’t know what they were doing.
How was that information received in that forum? One response was “It is unreasonable and irrational to weigh a toy truck on a scale that is designed to weigh 50,000 pound trucks. And it is also unreasonable to use a technology that measures millions of years to date something only a few years old.” Yes, I can understand that the dials on the truck scale or the radiometric testing machine might not even move. But that is the wrong analogy; here is the proper analogy: When a one pound truck is put on the scales and it weighs in at 500 pounds, then there is something wrong with the scale. It is not that radiometric dating didn’t find any time passage with the fresh rock; that I would understand. It was that it measured hundreds of thousands and millions of years.
Here is another example, in the context of intelligent design and the concept of a common designer in this current forum:
Q. “Just because two cars have the same basic components does that mean they are from the same manufacturer or are related?”
A. Of course not. I think the commenter is saying that the development of automobiles is a poor analogy for God as an intelligent designer. But is it? Think of the thousands if not millions of people—intelligent designers–have been involved in the development and design of automobiles. It starts with the development of the wheel and wheeled vehicles, metallurgy, the discovery of electricity and using it in generators, motors and wires and much, much more. It is almost mind boggling the collective engineering and intelligence behind the development of vehicles and automobiles. All manufacturers share many components and the design behind them in common.
But the vehicles are all intelligently designed. So was the universe and all that is in it. The only difference is that God is a singular intelligent designer, not one of many or a member of a design committee. The analogy of intelligently designed vehicles to an intelligently designed universe with life is helpful. As a matter of fact, the complexity of the universe and life is many magnitudes of order greater than that of an automobile.
If you spend much time on the BioLogos forum, you read a common thread: “Intelligent Design has been co-opted by creationists, so I distance myself from it.” That’s pretty weak. If the devil himself said that two plus two is four, would you judge that statement by its truth content or deny it because of its source?
Evolution’s magic words
Another problem with evolution talk is that they use magic words to fill in gaps of knowledge. The term “magic words” is used here as a concise idiom that describes the best words evolutionists use to explain “apparent” design. Here are some of those words and phrases: ancestral condition, common ancestor, evolved, elongated, became, took on, developed, and enlarged. These words convey imaginative speculation, not science. Here are more:
Evolutionists confidently insist that a complex biological feature simply appeared, emerged, arose, gave rise to, burst onto the scene, evolved itself, derived, was on the way to becoming, radiated into, modified itself, became a miracle of evolution, was making the transition to, manufactured itself, evolution’s way of dealing with, derived emergent properties, or was lucky.
Creation thinking does not need to resort to magic. A living and ingenious Creator expertly crafted each basic animal form with all the equipment needed to fit an ecological niche. Some creatures even have programs that alter their equipment in order to adapt to different environmental niches. (Thanks to ICR for their articles on this.)
Here is more from Daniel Witt in a recent article in Evolution News:
From: Will Evolution’s New Synthesis Be Hard or Soft Magic?
“These days, quite a few biologists are saying that the neo-Darwinian synthesis has failed as an explanation for life. The magic just isn’t working anymore. There’s a lot of talk about a new synthesis to replace it. Ideas like emergence, self-organization, self-construction, panpsychism, teleonomy, and more are being put forward.
The question is: Will this new synthesis be soft magic, or hard?”
More magic words and sciencey sounding phrases, but not evidence. Look up their definitions!
Where can you find additional resources and information?
There is much more to be said on these topics, and many books have been written on these to which you can refer. It will require reading, research and study on these issues if you wish to resolve this in your mind and relieve your sighing. My concerns were resolved early on. I myself have subsequently spent many years and thousands of hours on these topics because of my interest in these issues. You may be able to resolve your concerns more quickly depending on the depth of your skepticism.
You are already asking questions—that is a great start. So take off your evolutionary worldview lenses, and consider the alternatives openly and with intellectual integrity. Investigate what the Bible says. I would recommend that you read Genesis, the book of Job, the Gospel of John, and Romans for your investigations.
Where can you find resources to investigate biblical creationism, both from and biblical and scientific perspective? Here are three organizations’ websites that provide this information and which can direct you to even more resources and books:
https://www.icr.org/ (Institute for Creation Research—focusing on research)
We pray that you will come to know Jesus as your Creator, Lord, and Savior
My friend, we—and I include all those who have trusted Jesus as Savior including the evolutionary creationists in this forum—we hope and pray that you too will come to know Jesus as your Creator and Savior and Lord. We are all sinful, we have broken God’s moral law, and need to be forgiven and reconciled to God. God is a righteous judge, and we stand condemned before him. But Jesus paid the penalty—the righteous one dying for the unrighteous. We pray that you will ask for God’s forgiveness, as those who trust in Jesus have, and by this receive forgiveness of sins, a right relationship with God, and eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord. This is a decision that determines your eternal destiny. Romans 3: 23 explains, For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.*
And there is no excuse for not believing:
Here is my summary of Romans 1:20 For since the beginning of the world, God’s eternal power and divine nature can be clearly seen through what he has made, so they (everyone) are without excuse (for not believing in God.) My comments are in parentheses.
God bless you in your quest for truth.