SPIRITUAL  CENTER

Creation vs Evolution
By
Ron Lagerquist

"The microscopic marvels of bioflavonoids, antioxidants and phytochemicals are either the result of careful design or cosmic chance."

Article Contents
Design vs Accident
Prime Mover vs Big Bang
Inherent Need for God vs Secular Humanism
Intelligent Faith vs Lazy Trust
Creation vs Evolution - Learning Points at a Glance
Dangerous Apologist vs Insecure Faith

Is the universe a masterpiece of thoughtful design or rubble from a cosmic explosion?  Is the vitamin C in your glass of orange juice a work of genius or accident?  More importantly, does the morning mirror reflect creation or catastrophe?  Created vs. evolved, how important is the debate?  Answering this is fundamental to self awareness.  And the way we see ourselves is at the very root of how we grind out everyday life.

Current psychology appears not to understand this, yet ask an adult orphan why they seek insight into their parentage.  It is a simple desire to answer the deeper questions about themselves.  The discussion of created vs. evolved has far greater reach than our biological ancestry.  It is humanity’s first question, excavating down into the very foundation of personal identity and world view.  It frames how we see the relationship between nutrition and human health, even how to approach biology and sociology.

On a personal note, the 16 years hard work that has been poured into Freedomyou finds its inspiration in creation’s story.  In fact it is the very basis of all we do here, without which I have wasted my days on self-dilution and should be pitied as a fool.  

Nutrition and the workings of the human body read as clearly as the Word of God to me, revealing “God's invisible qualities, his eternal power and divine nature”, Romans 1:20.  Ironically, even though the source of my research is derived from those who do not have my faith, their findings fit perfectly with the Genesis story.  The evidence points to one conclusion.

Design vs Accident
When I hear of a new health wonder uncovered in fruit, seed or vegetable I am saddened to think that there is a high probability the larger message was lost by the very one who discovered it.  Sure, all the biological information is methodically laid out but the simple story is lost.  

Listen to the message written in a tiny red berry.   Aside from being a colorful and tasty garnish to Thanksgiving dinner, the cranberry conveniently produces a powerful antioxidant called Proanthocyanidins.  These antioxidants scavenge damaging particles in the human body known as free radicals. (Free radicals can alter cell membranes, tamper with DNA, and even cause cell death.)  Proanthocyanidins are also able to prevent microorganisms from causing infections in the body.  Understand; these are perfectly shaped microscopic keys that fit a very specific human health need.  Why would a cranberry evolve a powerful antioxidant that benefits human beings?  The evolutionist is forced to ask, “How does protecting human health further the survival of the cranberry?”  Of course it does not.  Therefore the precise biological relationship between the cranberry and the human body is not an evolutionary survival mechanism, it must be something else.

 If this precise key produced within the cranberry is simply accidental then why not apply that same argument to something far less complex like Stonehenge?  We could say Stonehenge was just a strange geological accident resulting in an interesting circle of rock aberrations.   But of course geologists do not believe that because Stonehenge exhibits design and not a geological accident.  

There are countless examples like the cranberry all over nature and are being discovered almost daily and yet the simple question of why is not being asked, therefore the larger message is being lost. 

Ironically, the larger message was written by a Creator who knew that in these last days, when hearts grew cold with unbelief, surly the message could not be misread.  That tiny antioxidant in your cranberry sauce is there because I am a loving Creator; I am the God of Health and Order.   Little love letters hidden all over creation uncovered in these last days so we cannot get it wrong in spite of intellectual pride.     

Prime Mover vs Big Bang
Creation is a metaphor for love.
                                              Bruce Cockburn

When was the last time you heard of an explosion resulting in order?  Biology takes the word “order” to another level.  The order in nature and relationship between nutrients and human health is so complex and interdependent that one component out of place and the whole thing falls apart.   

The intellectual will say, what an unqualified, typically mindless Christian riposte to a complex science.  However, I have been in the education system for 21 years and have watched the very first introduction little children have to understanding the magical world around them defined by their teachers in terms of theories taught as fact.   Evolution and the Big Bang are theories, and when they are being taught to North American children in full color animation as scientific fact, then who is unqualified, who is mindless?

  Most children’s stories have some kind of moral or purpose.  This one has neither; it only fills a young mind with frightful feelings of meaninglessness well before undeveloped emotions understand what meaninglessness is.  They find out quickly though.  What happens when the very first thing most of us learn is that the inexplicability, vibrant world around us is simply the result of a huge explosion?  Talk about striping a child of any uniqueness, meaningfulness or objective right and wrong.  The result is a lost generation marked by depression, record suicides, drugs, teen pregnancy and abortion. 

I really wonder if our intellectuals, our shepherds of thought, contemplate how their grand assumptions and theories have impacted our little children, weaker minds and ultimately influenced social behavior.  I think organized religion with all its foibles will be proven to be the lesser of two evils.

At a young age, Genesis spoke to the dreamer, writer and outdoorsman within me.  As I grew, public education, with its roots in secular humanism, and three years of liberal Bible College, whispered to the addict within, feeding a profound emptiness until nothing mattered, not even my own life.   It has taken years to understand this, years to battle through layers of skepticism and unbelief, reeducating myself back into glorious child-like faith.  Joy and simple curiosity has returned with more purpose than I know what to do with.  Each day is a new discovery and deeper understanding of my Father in Whom I love and adore.

The flower, star, tiny cell and huge whale are either an act of God or a byproduct of chaos.  Prime Mover or chaos, both lead to a transversely opposed self awareness.  This is worth a second look; after all, self awareness is at the core of all human behavior.

Although science has tried hard to disprove Genesis, God has made it  difficult for us to reject the first sentence of the  Bible.  He has gone out of His way to create a universe that is astoundingly ordered, a universe that forces us to ask the question, how did it all get hear?  God’s complex creation begs the question of a Creator.

Inherent Need for God vs Secular Humanism
“He has also set eternity in the hearts of men”.
                                                                      Ecclesiastes 3:11

Secular humanism has forged powerful inroads into modern thinking and all levels of education, yet in spite of this 95% of all Americans still say they believe in God.  It only goes to show that if an ideology fails to reflect the inherent nature of man it will eventually crumble like the ruins of a bygone civilization.  The greatest advocates of secular humanism include educators and the science community, yet ironically, today many of the most prestigious universities are undertaking considerable scientific research toward understanding the connection between religious practice, prayer and human health.   I picture a cluster of white lab coats surrounding a holy man kneeling on the floor while minute changes in brain chemistry are monitored.  We should not mock, after all, we Christians dissect scripture and teach profound messages on the power of prayer, yet pray little.   

Every culture, even isolated peoples all reveal a deep need inherent within man, even more imperative to health than food and water, and that is a faith in God.  Some say religion is a crutch for the weak of mind but the need to believe in God is far deeper than just being a crutch.  And if faith in God is a human weakness, then so to is the need for food and water.

Evolutionists not only believe man evolved from apes, but looking farther down the timeline, they say we evolved from rocks.  Rocks have no need to worship or pray nor does any other living creature except man.   Why rise above the primordial soup of unconsciousness into awareness, evolve a hunger for something beyond ourselves, just so we can be profoundly disappointed when flesh and bone gives way to death.  What a sad state of affairs.  It would have been better to remain an unfeeling rock or simple minded apes.  What is this life for, if seeking a deeper purpose only ends in futility?

If the need to believe in God is so inherent within man, how did such a need evolve?   Truly if man is only a tiny aberrational blip along the endless flux of matter and energy, here for just a moment, then melting back into timeless change, where did such powerful spiritual consciousness come from?  Those deep desires of survival, compassion, hope, joy and faith are the invisible driving forces of what gives man the will to breathe his next breath.

The joy of childbirth, or baby at breast, the pleasure of a warn kiss or kind word, a refreshing breeze, fine wine or quality music, all evolutionally mechanics to further our species?  Is this nothing more than brain chemistry, producing allusions of meaningfulness for the purpose of directing survival behaviors? 

Although Secular Humanism has had its day in the sun, it is presently declining in popularity.  There is a groundswell of interest in all things spiritual.  This should not surprise us, the book of Revelations does not describe the last days as marked by atheism and humanism.  Quite the opposite, all mankind will be desperately seeking spiritual direction.   When the popularity of Secular Humanism has waned, it will have fulfilled its purpose, leaving in its wake a fatal spiritual emptiness, setting the table for an energetic spiritual leader who will promise to fill such a sociological vacuum, appealing to the politically correct wide road of enlightenment and moral tolerance, a brand of spirituality the intellectual will happily endorse.  The “One Way, narrow road” message of the uncompromising Christian will not be able to compete with the new fashion spirituality and will be viewed as intolerant trouble makers and old school legalists.  All the more reason for Christians to do the hard work of being well grounded so as to protect their faith and to become effective apologists in a world full of muddled myths and ambiguous theories.      

Intelligent Faith vs Lazy Trust
The Intellectual does not take popular Christianity very seriously, and for good reason.  Pastors and evangelists, in the froth of the moment, misquote, misunderstand and make ridiculous assertions that have not been well researched or thought out.  It would be better to say nothing at all than proclaim inaccurate information.   There are many respected Creation Scientists in all fields of study, but unfortunately when it comes to media, oratorical talent wins over educational excellence.  This has not furthered our Christian voice among the intellectual community. 

Jimmy Swaggert falsely claimed that on Darwin’s death bed, he had a change of heart and denounced evolution proclaiming: "How I wish I had not expressed my theory of evolution as I have done!"  Untrue, and of course the press was all over it.  Today in Kenya the Pentecostal fundamentalists are pressuring Kenya's national museum to backstage its world-famous collection of hominid bones that apparently point to man's evolution from ape to human.  Again, the church looks foolish and insecure, as if we have something to hide.   If creation is true there is no need to hide a fossil or muzzle science, which is the lazy response.

Very few Christians are willing to invest the time necessary to properly “be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have”, 1 Peter 3:15, or even have enough accurate information to answer honest inner doubts and therefore protect their own faith.   Most people I talk to have derived the sum total of their evolutionary information from nature shows or the bits they remember taught in school, which for the most part had more to do with propaganda than hard science.  “Being prepared to give an answer,” in the 21 Century means turning off the TV and exercising the brain.  Satan cannot take away the capacity for great thought but he can dummy us down through empty, addictive media.

One may say, you never win a soul by wining an argument.  That is simply not true.  There are genuine stumbling blocks people have, real questions that with a little afford, can be easily answered.   Paul did this in Athens with the Greeks, and argued effectively with Jewish teachers of the law.  Stumbling blocks were removed and those who were honestly seeking God came to faith.

A fantastic resource for deeper study is, www.answersingenesis.org.  They have a library of free articles and reasonably priced books to help you become dangerous for God’s Kingdom.  Here are a few facts that I hope wet your appetite to study further.

Creation vs Evolution - Learning Points at a Glance

Science began with Christianity Most historians, including the atheistic variety, agree that modern science sprang from Christian Europe.   It is easy to see why.  Christianity is based on monotheism, which asserts that the natural world was created by a single God of order.  All the sciences are completely dependant upon the rational that there is order in the Universe.  Without order there can be no predictable results to any laboratory test.  All things being equal, what happens in a test tub today will precisely happen tomorrow because of an orderly universe.   Therefore, monotheism (one Creator God) is a favorable ideology for promoting the birth of science.  Conversely, the many fighting gods of the Greeks or millions of gods of the Hindus would not produce the proper intellectual bases where the sciences could geminate and flourish. Read More: Creation Scientists and other Biographies of Interest  

Theories of finite minds As defined by The American Heritage Dictionary, Theory means “An assumption based on limited information or knowledge; a conjecture.”  In other words, an opinion or educated guess.  Even though evolution is touted via dummied down nature shows and science documentaries as fact, real scientists will tell you evolution is a theory.  It cannot be proven in a laboratory, in fact quite the opposite.  Try as they may, no laboratory has been able to produce life from non-life.  No scientist has ever observed an adaptation. 

There is little consensus among Evolutionists We think scientists as objective thinkers, above the influences of petty human emotion that bias their research.  Again, not true.  The theory of evolution involves an array of sciences including geology, anthropology, biology, and astronomy, to mention a few.  Even among those who hold the evolutionary view, many of the crucial features and finer points of evolution are under dispute.  Moreover, scientists are not above human desires of fame and fortune.  Often, published research has had to be retracted as a result of fervent haste or doctored findings.   The sensational claim is front page news; the less than sensational retraction receives little play. 

Remember the headline news, “Conclusive evidence of Martian life”.  The apparent evidence was uncovered in the now famous meteorite ALH84001 that had supposedly come from Mars.  Under closer investigation, it did not take long before the claim was shown to be unfounded.  Nonetheless, when I asked a number of elementary teachers whether there was life on Mars, they only remembered the stunning headline news and not the third page retraction.  These are the educators of the most trusting minds, our children.  Read More: Conclusive evidence for life from Mars?

Bits of Bones I am sure you are familiar with those great artist renderings of monkey evolving into human.  I remember them as a child, very compelling.  How do you argue with such clear evidence?  Later, with a little research I discovered the only thing that is clear is man has been endowed with a great imagination.  There is no evidence to support such artistic renderings. Even leading evolutionist scientists find these renderings distasteful and wholly unscientific, and for good reason.   Unless you are predisposed to artistic flare, all we have is a few tables with bits of bones and partial skulls.  Such fossils could have a variety of speculative explanations other than the evolution model when looked at objectively.  Read More:  Are there apemen in your ancestry

Dating the World   There is fact, and then there is speculation.  Nature TV shows and documentaries declare with absolute certainty the age of selected fossils, rocks, mountain ranges and finally the earth itself.  Dates in millions and billions of years are spoken as indisputable fact, like the sky is blue and the earth is round.  So how do scientists date bones and rock?  Radioactivity dating is the trusted methodology used to assign dates, so you would think there would be no doubt of its accuracy.  Think again.   Read More: The Fallacies of Radioactive Dating of Rocks

Respected Creation Scientists It is not the tastiest hamburger that wins the open mouths of millions but the one with the most effective advertising.  And the loudest voice is rarely the most reliable. Today a secular humanistic media has the loudest voice on earth, and a populous that has neither the time nor inclination to research their claims, with open minds, languidly eat it up without question.  It is said if we hear something enough it becomes a truth whether true or not.  This has played out in history time and time again. 

Many people I talk to are under the impression that evolution is a science and creation is a faith.  The fact is there are many respected scientists in every field of study that, from an intellectual base, have great trouble with the theory of evolution and the big bang.   And there are many creationist scientists who believe there is enough physical evidence that point to the Biblical account of creation.  Their voices are not being heard, not because they are not without academic credibly, but they do not fit into status quo.  Movies and TV shows have gone to great length stereotyping Christians as, close minded, backward thinking bigots.  Some of this many be deserved, but it is quickly changing.  There are highly respected creation scientists in every field of study, and they have something to say worth listening to, both to the insecure believer, and honest seeker.  Read More: Creation Scientists and other Biographies of Interest  

Dangerous Apologist vs Insecure Faith
Although born a thinker, when I first came to faith I felt a great insecurity delving into the study of man’s origins.  Christ rescued me from a chaos of drug addiction and self destruction, if it was all a lie, I had everything to lose. He came in like a lover and swept me off my feet.  I felt everyone in my life had failed me, Jesus promised to never fail and I bought it unconditionally.  I feared to risk an unbiased look at scientific fact, petrified that I might find that, that which saved my life was only a well contrived shared dilution created by those who were too weak to face their own mortality.  I decided to cash in my brain and surround myself with frothy rhetoric, safe generalizations and Christian cliché.  I created a disconnect between science and faith, the brain and the heart.  I withdrew from talking about my faith with nonbelievers, hid in the Church and edited my reading and watching to only those things which agreed with my belief system.  My faith become fragile, the outside world was dark and threatening.  Of course this kind of disconnect can never endure the riggers of daily living.  An unshared, unchallenged faith mutates into subjectivity like mold growing in the dark. 

It took years of battling insecurity before I had the courage to venture out into hostel territory and look hard at contradictory teachings, and now I am the better for it.  God created the heavens and the earth!  It is true.  If you look at the evidence, it all bows to Creation.  Although I have a lifetime of glorious learning ahead of me I now feel well muscled to match wits with any who would dare challenge the scientific truthfulness of the Genesis story.

How would you like to be dangerous, confident and strong in your faith?  When Freedomyou first went live, most health and fasting websites were owned by the New Age.  That made me angry.  God is being robed of His glory. Who created the microscopic marvels of the bioflavonoid, antioxidant and phytochemical?  It became our passion that Freedomyou would develop into the largest free information website on fasting, health and nutrition, all proudly pointing to the God of Health as Creator.  When someone Google’s Juice fasting, compulsive eating, bioflavonoids, flax oil, quinoa recipes, antioxidants, inner healing, etc, they arrive here and discover not a silly New Age spiritual potpourri pointing in all directions, or cold lifeless humanism pointing to despair.  Instead they will be introduced to the God of Creation.    

It’s time to work hard and take back what belongs to God!  With a little study, the Christian seeker will quickly discover there is no need to be insecure about faith in the Genesis story.