Sunday, December 7, 2008

How God Convinced Me Evolution Is True

This post addresses the #1 issue that convinced me evolution is true. In the next post, I'll address what I think is the #1 reason that you, as a born-again, deeply-devoted, Bible-believing servant of God should believe in evolution.

I love reading early church history. I am thoroughly impressed with the bravery, confidence, faith, and commitment of the 2nd century church. I am also greatly impressed by the freedom they lived in. Most Christians, not familiar with early church history, think they were already either almost or completely Roman Catholic and bound by tradition and liturgicalism (is that a word?).

The early church had, in a sense, two Bibles they paid attention to. Don't panic about that, your Bible recommends the other one in glowing terms. The second Bible is nature, and your Bible says in Psalm 19 that nature declares God's glory and shows his handiwork. It says nature's words go to the end of the earth, and the apostle Paul said in Romans 1 that nature reveals the invisible things of God, even his eternal power and divinity. Later in Romans, he says that nature is eagerly awaiting the revelation of the sons of God.

The early Christians are right. Nature is not to be ignored.

Have you ever heard of a supernova? A supernova is when a giant star blows up. They're really fascinating. Not all stars eventually explode. Only the very large ones do. They begin life as a star as a big cloud of hydrogen. As the cloud condenses on its own gravity, it heats up. When it reaches 10,000 degrees, fusion begins in the center of the star, and the hydrogen begins to be converted to helium. If the star is big enough, then when the hydrogen runs low, the star will begin making carbon from helium. If it's a huge star, then when the helium runs low, it will begin making larger elements from carbon.

Making helium from hydrogen and carbon from helium produces great amounts of energy. Our own sun heats the whole solar system by producing helium from hydrogen. Interestingly enough, though, once a large star begins producing really large elements, primarily iron, no energy is produced. In fact, energy is needed to produce iron. So when that giant star begins to produce iron, a vacuum begins to be created in the midst of the star.

This vacuum causes the start to rapidly condense upon itself. This compression causes a lot of heat, and suddenly it's not just the core of the star which is in nuclear fusion. The whole star goes into fusion, and at that point it doesn't act like a nice star; it acts like a bomb.

When that huge bomb goes off, it spews the atoms it's been creating across a huge area of space. Since the only stars that supernova are stars that are currently creating larger atoms from carbon, the dust of a supernova is primarily carbon-based molecules.

Do you know what we call carbon-based molecules? We call them organic molecules because they are the molecules that all life is made from.

Do you want to know what dust God used to make man? He used that dust. Carbon-based molecules. Now, you can deny that he made us from stardust if you want, but you do have to admit that after we were made, we're made from the exact same molecules that are in stardust.

Do you think that's an accident? I simply cannot. I cannot imagine God creating this amazing process that produces the molecules of life, and then not using it; especially when he's already told us that he made us from dust. Imagine that, stardust! Doesn't that thrill you?

Oh, that's right. It doesn't thrill you. You're not allowed to believe the obvious.

Rats. The obvious will make you love God more than ever and find things in the Scriptures that will delight and thrill your spirit because they're true, and your spirit is able to recognize truth. Nature, the creation of God, has a lot to say to you about how it was created, and when you learn it, those things will have a lot to say to you about God's eternal nature and divinity, just as Romans 1 says it will.

In the next post, I'll try to help you be a little more open to the obvious. Don't worry, I'm not picking on you. It was hard for me, too. If God hadn't shown me previously that nature testifies about all sorts of things from resurrection to hard work to the growth of the Christian, I might never have been open to its testimony about creation. However, it does testify about those things, and its testimony about creation and the universe ought not to belong to atheistic scientists. They miss the whole point. Nature's testimony about God is that he is much more majestic, much more incomprehensible, and much more loving than we ever could have imagined.

Okay, I'll quit. Like I said, I'll get you help in believing nature, God's second Bible, in the next post.

1 comment:

  1. Great article, it's nice to see someone of faith as open-minded as yourself.

    You have a great take on the issue at hand but, when it comes right down to it there are always people who will refuse to accept evolution not from any factual position but, from an idealistic one. I have heard moral arguments against evolution as if the process itself were against God.

    ReplyDelete

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