Charlie Kirk, co-founder of Turning Point USA, was a thought leader among politically conservative Americans until last Wednesday afternoon. Why did a black-clad man take up an elevated position and a high-powered rifle to fire a lethal round into Kirk from two hundred yards?

Kirk was a highly skilled debater, because he was well-informed and a keen, quick thinker. He always had an answer to every argument put forward against what Charlie believed to be true. He was also highly controversial, since he so boldly and forcefully pushed back against cultural and political views popular with his generation.

As of Thursday, September 11, the shooter at Utah Valley University remains unidentified. So, no one yet knows the answer to the “why” question. Yet, many have not hesitated to project their own moral framework onto the available facts.

A reporter with a Fox network affiliate in Orem, UT interviewed witnesses immediately after Kirk was shot. A few of them believed they had witnessed a coordinated attack by a cabal of Kirk's enemies.

On MSNBC, as news was unfolding, Matthew Dowd blamed Kirk for the shooter’s action: “Hateful thoughts lead to hateful words, which then lead to hateful actions,” Dowd said.

It may be that as you read this the shooter has been identified, and an official explanation of his motives has been given. That will help us all to understand that terrible, collective trauma last Wednesday.

Whether or not we ever learn the identity and motivation of Wednesday’s shooter, Jesus has already given us wisdom to understand the big picture.

In Revelation 11, the Apostle John recorded a vision he was given regarding “two witnesses.” These were two prophets whom God empowered for a short time to speak God’s word and to oppose God’s enemies. They could not be defeated until their short time was completed. Then, God allowed his enemies to succeed in killing them. The world then celebrated in the streets.

The assassination of Charlie Kirk was not the historical event foreseen by John in that vision. Yet, we should recognize that Kirk’s martyrdom fits the pattern revealed in that vision. For a short time, Kirk could not be silenced from speaking according to the word of God, as he understood it. Many Americans heard him and let hatred grow in their hearts. In enemy circles, Kirk was compared to Hitler. He was accused of “hating” people because of their politics or different moral views.

Charlie’s “hateful words” plainly confessed the lordship of Jesus Christ. In fact, whatever topic Charlie was debating--from abortion to socialism--his reasoning rested upon his understanding of Truth revealed by and through Jesus. Those who knew him testify that Charlie’s work was motivated by his genuine love for those who opposed him.

On Wednesday, a shooter accomplished what no debater could. Many celebrated that violence in the “streets” of social media and network news.

But as some time has now passed since tempers flared on the political Right and Left regarding Charlie Kirk, can we find a way to come together?

Perhaps we can all agree that Charlie Kirk’s assassination was an act of evil, and it represents a terrible state of division in the USA at this moment. It should be neither an accomplishment to be celebrated nor a call to arms. We must at least agree that such violence resolves nothing.

Perhaps Christians across the land can lead the way by coming together in spite of our politics being either "Left" or "Right." We must at least remember that the ground on which we stand as one rests high above the political debates. That ground is Jesus Christ and the hope that he will ultimately make this broken world better than it was when it was created.

That hope is evident in John’s vision, which concludes with God's enemies seeing the resurrection of the two witnesses. Accordingly, we remember that the enemies of Truth do not get the last word or the ultimate victory. Charlie Kirk trusted in the promise of resurrection when Jesus returns someday. Let every Christian agree with Kirk on this point and see beyond the present darkness to the light of that resurrection morning.

We have been told now for some time by those with loud voices that a true understanding of Christianity will result in greater justice in the Church. By “justice” it is meant that distinctions between women and men will be erased. Also, “justice” is alleged to mean that all kinds of ideas about gender and sexuality will be celebrated as another instance of diversity among God’s creatures. As a result, Christian traditions that refuse to go along with such “justice” objectives are deemed to stand against the real spirit of the faith.

It is true that Christians are to discern truth from error by understanding the core values taught through the teachings of the apostles. However, it seems that “justice” as so many understand it today is not among them.

Even in the days of the Apostle Paul, it was already the case that people were experimenting with the belief system of the Christian faith. Rather than being content with the doctrine established by Jesus through his apostles, some who wished to be teachers added not a few of their own notions. The result is “swerv[ing] from the truth” like Hymenaeus and Philetus (2 Tim 2:17-18).

Paul’s answer for this was for Timothy, the appointed teacher among the disciples in that place at that time, to “[f]ollow the pattern of sound words that you have heard from me,” (2 Tim 1:13). Timothy’s work was not to innovate or freshen up those teachings. Rather his work was to hold fast to them; to consistently remind his own hearers of them.

Notice, too, that Paul does not mention a book or list of correct doctrinal statements. He calls upon Timothy to conform his teaching to Paul’s pattern of teaching. Timothy may need to say things in different ways, depending upon the occasion. Yet, Timothy’s teachings should always bear a familiar shape.

This shape is evident in a number of New Testament passages that summarize the Christian faith. Passages such as 1 Corinthians 15:1-5 and Philippians 2:5-11 are very probably examples of creeds widely circulated throughout the early church. (A “creed” in this sense is just the sort of doctrinal summary of the Christian faith that Paul refers to as a “pattern of sound teaching.”)

Another is 1 Timothy 3:16:
“Great indeed, we confess, is the mystery of godliness: He was manifested in the flesh, vindicated by the Spirit, seen by angels, proclaimed among the nations, believed on in the world, taken up in glory.”

This way of responding to faith crises within the Church has continued ever since. Someone begins teaching what is foreign to the apostolic doctrines. Responsible and faithful teachers rise to the occasion by calling on the brethren at the time to recall the basic confessions of our faith.

Irenaeus was a Christian leader in Lyons (France) in the second century. He is famous for responding to heresies very much like many “New Age” false teachings today. In the AD 180s, Irenaeus encouraged the Christians under his influence with this:

“The church, though scattered throughout the whole world to the ends of the earth, has received from the apostles and their disciples this faith: in one God, the Father almighty, maker of heaven and earth and the sea and all things in them; and in one Christ Jesus, the Son of God, who was made flesh for one salvation; and in the Holy Spirit, who through the prophets proclaimed God’s saving dealings with man and the coming, virgin birth, passion, resurrection from the dead and bodily ascension into heaven of our beloved Lord Jesus Christ and his second coming from heaven in the glory of the Father to sum up all things and to raise up all human flesh so that...he should execute just judgment upon all people.”
(Against Heresies, 1.10.1; quoted in Tony Lane, ed., Timeless Witness).

This and similar plain and simple summaries of what every genuine Christian believes came to be known as “the rule of faith.” It was easily remembered, and it equipped everyday Christians to discern truth from error in the many claims being made by those who stood up to teach others.

And so it can do for us still today. Paul urged Timothy to follow Paul’s “pattern of sound words” because Timothy must be able to “rightly handl[e] the word of truth,” (2 Tim 2:15). You and I need to be able to read the Bible in the light of truth. Not just any interpretation is correct. Let the brief summaries by the apostles and by faithful Christians ever since guide our faithfulness as we grow in our knowledge of God’s will.

Imagine you are enjoying an afternoon picnic in a high mountain meadow. Lush grasses stretch out from under your feet. Wildflowers add brilliant splashes of color to the scene. The distant mountain peaks still hold some snow. Most of last winter’s snowfall still works its way out of the mountain springs and lakes into rivers flowing down to water the valleys.

While strolling through that meadow pondering such things, imagine looking down and there, in the midst of a clump of green grass, is a wristwatch. It has a numbered, twelve-hour face with windows revealing the inner mechanisms of the watch. The first thought you would have in such a situation is, “Someone has lost their watch in this meadow.” Another thought also would come to mind, “Someone very carefully and skillfully made this timepiece.”

If this scenario sounds familiar, you are right. It is the basic story famously told by Christian apologist William Paley in his book Natural Theology in 1802. Paley applied the Watchmaker Parable to the natural world. He described many things, such as the human eye, that he believed must have been purposely designed and made by God.

At the same time, many people are not persuaded by the Watchmaker Parable. When they look at  the human eye they believe they are seeing a wonderful example of something that has come into existence all by itself. The famous atheist, Richard Dawkins, articulated the classic case against the Watchmaker Parable in his influential book The Blind Watchmaker. Dawkins’ claim is that according to evolution, such as Charles Darwin theorized, what looks like evidence of design in nature is only an illusion.

Dawkins agrees that it can seem obvious that such things are designed. They function only if all their parts are in place and working properly. Since humans are accustomed to making things, we are conditioned to see natural phenomena as also designed and made.

Still, Dawkins insists that in nature we only see the results of an enduring series of accidental, gradual changes. Dawkins appeals to Darwin’s idea of natural selection. That is, over a long period, many generations occurred before the human eye as we know it finally existed. In these many generations, accidental changes occurred. Some of these were helpful for eyesight. Many were not. The pre-eyes with unhelpful changes did not survive, because they were not useful. The pre-eyes with helpful changes remained, becoming the inheritance of future generations. By the time the human eye arrived in full functioning power for sight, it only consisted of parts “fit” for the purpose of sight. Looking at it now, after evolution accomplished the eye, it seems to have been designed. Yet, as a product of evolutionary accidents, design in the human eye is an illusion.

Using this as evidence, it is then claimed that the entire universe is the result of the same processes. As an example, take the earth’s moon. It happens that the moon is precisely the right distance from the earth to helpfully effect ocean tides among other benefits to our planet. According to natural selection, after many unhelpful accidents the moon happened to fall into its current earth orbit.

So, Dawkins proposes to change the Watchmaker Parable. The watch Paley imagines finding during a meadow stroll can represent natural things like eyes and moons if we think in terms of a watchmaker that is blind. The idea being that, over long periods of time, a series of fortunate and unfortunate accidents caused a watch to happen. That is why the watch was in the field one day for Paley to find and wonder about.

But there’s a problem with Dawkins’ story. Natural selection cannot explain nonliving systems like the moon’s relation to the earth. A Darwinian evolution of species depends upon many generations of variations through the process of reproduction. Stars and planets and water cycles do not reproduce like this. They cannot have the benefit of multitudes of generations of accidental trial-and-error.

Another problem is that a blind watchmaker is still a watchmaker. This is an intelligent person purposely trying to accomplish something. Dawkins wants his image to represent a universe without God. However, if there is a “watchmaker” at work in the universe then there is design after all. Within the framework of Dawkins’ story, there is still a designer taking advantage of accidents to accomplish the purpose.

Instead of a blind watchmaker, Dawkins should have described a watch formation. Perhaps, the revised story would be that after some period of earth history it happened that conditions emerged for the formation of a variety of timekeeping machines. In some number of places on the earth there came to be a diversity of minerals gathered together. Over another period of history, gradually, watches began to grow, like crystals, in these places.

Now, imagine again your afternoon stroll in the high mountain meadow. You are wondering at the many colors surrounding you in that summer season. You consider the grand mountains formed by awesome, accidental forces of the cosmos. It astounds you that such diversity and beauty could evolve from an explosion far away in the universe and in time.

Imagine topping a rise. Out before you, glistening in the light of the sun, is a field of wristwatches. One catches your eye. You see that it has a knob to wind the springs. You can see the gears arranged just so, meshing perfectly as they move in the rhythm of time. First, you would think that someone made a big mess, dumping a shipment of watches all over the place. Next, you would be impressed by the ingenuity, creativity, and skill of whoever made all of these timepieces.

Now, imagine that that watch, still ticking, informs you that it is 5:45 pm. You’d better hurry home for the supper that someone else has carefully and skillfully made.

CS Lewis famously told an audience at Oxford University, "I believe in Christianity as I believe that the sun has risen; not only because I see it, but because by it I see everything else."

Lewis here points to the power of Christianity to explain things in our experience. What is this world we live in? Where did it come from? Why are physics and astronomy so precisely suited to the existence of human life? Why did a handful of social nothings in first century Judea spend their lives proclaiming a crucified Nazarene as savior? Many philosophies and religious systems of the world offer ways of explaining such things. CS Lewis affirmed that it is Christianity that offers the best explanations of these things.

Isn't this a way of saying that he knows Christianity is true because of how livable it is? That is, Christianity doesn't just provide strong, clear explanations for much that we experience in life. Christianity provides a way to live this life that makes for a truly satisfying, purposeful life. This is true even when following the Christian way leads to great suffering.

This is what Jesus meant when he taught, "If you abide in my word, then you are truly my disciples, and you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free," (The Bible, John 8:31, 32, English Standard Version).

On another occasion Jesus made a similar promise. On a mountain in Galilee a large crowd gathered to hear Jesus teach about how to live God's way. He taught them many things about having the right habits of character (peacemaking, humility, gentleness, mercy, and especially a hunger for righteousness). He taught them how to pray. He taught them how to be faithful to their spouses and how to get along with enemies. He taught many things of practical value to daily life.

He concluded this teaching session with a parable to show how important it is to take his teachings seriously and to actually practice them. He said that practicing his teachings is like building a house on the firm foundation of bedrock. Storms will not be able to destroy it. On the other hand, disregarding Jesus's teachings is like building your house right on the sand. Storms will have no trouble tearing it down.

So, following the teachings of Jesus is like respecting the laws of nature. Airplanes can fly because engineers respect laws of gravity and aerodynamics.

That is to say, in many ways, Jesus's teachings prove that they are true. They help us to know and to live according to what is real about being human and living in this world.

Of course, in order to live by them we must learn them. That means we need to study the Bible to know these truths. See our Know the Truth page for help and resources to study the Bible. 

While Charles Darwin held a basic belief in the biblical Creator of the heavens and the earth, he did not believe in the Bible's account of the Creator's work.1

Darwin's fundamental claim is that the vast diversity of forms of plant and animal life are the result of purely natural processes involving accidental changes that happen to "catch on" in the reproduced forms of species. Given millions of years of such evolution, the theory holds, from some single celled form of life in the beginning, fish became reptiles became birds became apes became modern humans. Of course, the official version is not so simple regarding the transitions from one species to another.

Importantly, such creative natural processes require no supernatural power. Whatever personal beliefs Darwin held about the Bible's God, those who zealously seized upon his theory from the first edition of Origin of Species were glad to find that Darwinian evolution provided an alternative to biblical creationism.

A century after that first edition, Wilbert H. Rusch of Concordia Teachers College wrote,

"[A]t the precise time when fear and dislike of God was on the increase [Darwin] happened to synthesize the previous evolution theories into a single presentation, clothing it in a hypothesis that seemed adequate to explain the marvelous adaptation of living things, by the mere action of natural forces, without the necessity of bringing in divine intervention."2

Modern science gladly continues to tell this story without reference to any powers or intentions beyond pure chance interactions among atoms in the universe. In Darwin's name, then, today's scientists and teachers of natural science perpetuate the disbelief in the Bible's story of how God created everything in--not since--the beginning.

The foundation of the biblical story is found in Genesis 1:27, "So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them," (ESV). When Moses3 wrote "created," he used a word that he used in verse twenty-one regarding the beginning of all kinds of creatures that fill the waters and the skies. There, he wrote, "So God created the great sea creatures and every living creature that moves, with which the waters swarm, according to their kinds, and every winged bird according to its kind. And God saw that it was good," (ESV). This refers to verse twenty, where "God said, 'Let the waters swarm with swarms of living creatures, and let birds fly above the earth across the expanse of the heavens,'" (ESV).

In other words, the biblical story gives the impression that at one moment the seas and the skies are empty of any form of life. The next moment they are full of every kind of animal that could still be identified in Moses's day. Likewise, in the case of the human kind, at one moment there are no humans, then in another moment there are two humans: male and female.

This understanding of the biblical story appears to be confirmed by Jesus and his apostle Paul in documents of the New Testament. In Mark 10:6 Jesus quotes Genesis 1:27 as a statement of historical fact. That is, that humankind was "male and female" "from the beginning." There is no sense of vast periods of evolution in which trial-and-error processes blindly stumbled upon the complementary way in which one human kind is composed of male and female genders of the species.

In a similar way, the apostle Paul affirms the Genesis record with regard to Adam and Eve. Paul points back to Genesis in such a way that affirms Adam and Eve as historical figures and as the first human beings. Further, Paul affirms Moses's testimony that Adam and Eve were created by God to be male and female. (See, for example, 1 Corinthians 11:8, 9; 15:45; 1 Timothy 2:13, 14.)

This biblical story of human origins has been perpetuated in the mainstream of Christian tradition ever since. For example, the Presbyterian tradition includes the Westminster Confession of Faith, produced in the mid-seventeenth century in England. While the Confession includes a number of things particular to the Presbyterian understanding of Christianity, it also includes a confession of a doctrine of creation consistent with Moses, Jesus, and Paul in the Bible. That Confession includes the following:

"It pleased God the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, for the manifestation of the glory of His eternal power, wisdom, and goodness, in the beginning, to create, or make of nothing, the world, and all things therein, whether visible or invisible, in the space of six days, and all very good. After God had made all other creatures, He created man, male and female,"  (WCF 4:1-2).

We can see, then, that the traditional Christian teaching about human origins is that God made rather directly both male and female genders of humankind in that, in a very brief period, God made the first humans, whom we know as Adam and Eve. There is no suggestion that "created" or "made" involves long periods of accidental, trial-and-error processes merely superintended by God. What is represented in the Bible and affirmed by thousands of years of orthodox confession is that God determined from the first the various kinds of life there would be, and God made them from the very beginning in those kinds. This includes a kind of creature called "human," gendered male and female, and substantially the same as humans continue to be today.

This exposes the battle line between modern science and the Bible. Evolutionary theory offers an explanation for the entire observable universe that allegedly requires no supernatural power. The Bible, in contrast, gives no indication of any such thing as evolution by natural selection.

In other words, Darwinism does not believe in God, and the Bible does not believe in Darwinism.

Notes
1 Wilibert H. Rusch, "Darwinism, Science, and the Bible," in Paul A. Zimmerman, ed., Darwin, Evolution, and Creation (Concordia Publishing House: Saint Louis, Missouri, 1959), 33.
2 Ibid., 22.
3 Moses is here credited as the author of Genesis, according to the main stream of Christian tradition historically. This does not ignore some indications that material originally written by Moses was to some extent edited so that the book of Genesis has the form we know of today.

We human beings are always curious to understand the objects we experience. We see a sky full of beautiful stars at night and we want to know why they are there. We witness the birth of a new human being and we wonder how our bodies know how to make other human bodies.

There are different proposed ways to explain such things. In our time, explanations of the universe use one of two different models. Either everything we experience has somehow evolved to its present state over vast historical epochs, or what see and feel in the world around us was created, in substantially the way we find it, by a supernatural creator not so long ago. In American culture, the dominant forms of these models are Darwinian evolutionary theory and "special creation" according to a traditional Christian understanding of the Bible.

At this point it is important to notice something from that very simplified account of the face-off between modern science and the Bible. There is a crucial distinction between the facts we seek to understand and the possible theories proposed to explain those facts. For example, it is a fact that many kinds of fossils are scattered across some number of layers of different kinds of rock. This can be observed all over the earth.

But what do the facts of fossils in rock layers mean? What is the truth of how those fossils happened to form in those layers of rock? These are questions of what theory might best account for the facts. In other words, what is the best interpretation of the facts?

This is a necessary question, but one that cannot be settled with certainty. Facts do not provide their own interpretation. Yet, in our experience, we tend to have some sense of how to explain right away what we see. It might feel as though our explanation is obvious--as though our understanding is somehow given by the facts themselves. This is a psychological illusion, however.

What kind of horse is shown in the picture below?

Horse?! Don't I mean what kind of toad is in the picture? It is obviously a toad, right?

Look again. Rotate the picture (or your head!) ninety degrees, and you will see what is clearly a horse! The toad's eyes are the nostrils of the horse. The toad's front leg is the horse's lower jaw. Etc.

In fairness, this picture was created in an ambiguous way. Whether you see it as a horse or a toad, some of the features--while suggestive--do seem a little "off." But you get the point. The facts of the natural world are still more ambiguous. They are simply there without any labels or commentary to explain why or how.

When it comes to explanatory models of the facts of nature, we must admit that evolutionism and creationism are two possible theories that individual observers bring to the data. Either we are conditioned by our education and experience to see the toad or the horse, so that is what is obviously "there." We are conditioned to see either evolution or special creation, so that is what is "there" in facts such as fossils scattered through layers of rock.

Therefore, we must also admit that whatever interpretation we prefer is a matter of personal faith. We believe that an evolutionist or a creationist view is the best way to think about it. But neither option is itself a fact of the natural world.

In other words, creationism is obviously a religious view, based on faith in a supernatural Creator. It is a matter of faith, because normally we do not have clear, direct experience of God in the natural world. Or, God is not a natural fact.

But evolutionism also requires faith. No one today can have clear, direct experience of the Big Bang. No one today can have clear, direct experience of a vertebrate fish species changing into a reptile species. Evolutionism, then, is also a religious view. It relies upon powers and processes that cannot be observed today.¹

So, it is a question of which religious view one will prefer.

Most today prefer the religious view of modern science. Scientific accounts of the origins of things are complex and, at times, brilliant. In the end, though, they remain complicated guesses.

On the other hand, the ancient documents represented in the Bible offer a different view. For thousands of years, Bible believers have understood the Bible as the Creator's testimony regarding the miraculous origins of the universe and everything in it.

To conclude, then, it is not true that "the facts speak for themselves." There is always a voice directing the interpreter how to understand the facts before them. The dominant voice in the cultural institutions of the modern Western world is the human voice, guessing how everything might have evolved accidentally from nothing. But in the Bible, the Creator has lent his own voice to teach us how to understand the immense body of natural facts we observe. Christians must heed that voice and interpret scientific facts according to the Creator of those facts.

Notes
¹ Someone will now object that scientists do observe evolutionary change in the stars and planets and in species of living things. They observe gradual changes implying vast periods of history. But I would respond that this is simply a form of transcendence. It is a claim that given enough time the processes we observe will and do amount to great evolutionary advances. This is the same kind of response the creationist makes. Given a powerful enough being everything we see could easily and instantaneously been created out of nothing. One is an argument based on a presumed transcendence in time. The other is an argument based on a presumed transcendence in power. In neither case can the actual making of things be directly observed. Both views require religious faith.

Darwin is defeating Moses in American culture today.

For the purposes of this post, "Darwin" is shorthand for the basic theory that all species of life originated and developed through natural processes involving chance, "selection," and vast periods of history. Many today endeavor to tell this story as somehow involving the God revealed in the Bible. However, from its beginning in the mid-nineteenth century, Darwien's evolutionary theory has been championed as requiring no appeal to any supernatural power.

In contrast, "Moses" is shorthand for the ancient Christian doctrine of "special creation." This is the view that the way the origins of all things living and inanimate in the universe were directly created by God at the beginning of the universe. In other words, all things began as miracles worked by God. As miracles, then, "creation" is by definition a supernatural account of the beginning of the universe and everything in it, including human beings. Further, the traditional biblical view of miraculous creation requires no time at all, much less vast eons of millions or billions of years.

Versions of both stories--evolution and creation--have been told for thousands of years across various cultures. However, it happens that it was not until Darwin's Origin of Species (1859) that the evolutionary story gained the upper hand in Western culture.

For at least a century now, Darwin's theory of evolution has been taught in public schools as the scientific explanation for the beginning and development of humankind. Recent sociological research appears to show that this has produced a general preference for Darwin over Moses in American culture today.

According to a 2019 report by the Pew Research Forum, 98% of scientists associated with the American Association for the Advancement of Science affirm a Darwinian account of human origins and development.

That same year, Pew Research also reported that a vast majority of Americans agree with those scientists. Pew reported that 81% of Americans believe in the evolution of human beings in some sense the way Darwin proposed. Furthermore, 33% of Americans believe the natural processes of "selection" do not involve any supernatural power, Pew Research reported in 2019.

Perhaps some good news from the 2019 Pew Research data is that 48% of Americans credit God as somehow involved in the Darwinian process of evolution. In light of this, it would seem there might be some hope for the biblical story of human origins to continue to be heard in American culture.

But whatever hopes for traditional Christian teaching on human origins might be encouraged by that 48% statistic are dashed upon the growing number of testimonies like that of Thomas.

Thomas was at one point a resident in a Doctor of Medicine program in New York City. Timothy Keller reports Thomas saying, "My scientific training makes it difficult if not impossible to accept the teachings of Christianity...As a believer in evolution, I can't accept the Bible's prescientific accounts of the origin of life," (The Reason for God, p. 87).

Efforts continue that hope to discover a theory of natural origins in which modern science and the Bible can agree. Bible believers propose various forms of "theistic evolution." All such theories have in common that the plain sense of the biblical text must be explained away. "Days" in Genesis 1 cannot be in the normal sense of that word, but perhaps may be understood as epochal phases in the development of the cosmos. Yet, the biblical text repeatedly describes these days as one "evening and morning" cycle.

The root issue, then, is well represented by such sentiments as Thomas expressed: if eons of time and chance physical interactions have accidentally produced the orderly existence we find today ("evolution"), then the Bible doesn't know about it. In that case, Thomas and many others would have good reason to doubt many other things about which the Bible bears witness.

But the dominance of Darwinist understandings of the natural world is cultural more than factual. That is, American cultural institutions have presumed the truth of an evolutionary account in order to explain the universe as it is today. This is a story imagined by human beings observing features of the natural world and guessing what it all may mean.

However, the bias this creates in our culture is evident in a tendency to minimize or ignore problems in the evidence. There are natural facts that seem to suggest a very ancient universe that has evolved to include the forms of life we see today. Stars from billions of light years away from earth, complex rock layers, and apparent stages in the "fossil record" give examples of such evidence. Yet, it is also true that there is not a single, clear specimen documenting the evolution of one species into a different species (for ex., from apes to humans). If Darwinism were a true account of the origin and development of life, then the fossil record should have abundant specimens of such transitions.

On the other hand, the biblical account proposes to be information revealed by the Creator who is responsible for all that exists in the universe, including the universe itself. This is a Creator who, in this same body of writings, claims to work supernatural miracles: bringing dead people back to life, instantly calming a raging storm and the waters it was churning, and instantly creating physical and psychological capacities for a forty-year-old man--who had never been able to walk--to be able to not only walk but also to jump for joy (the Bible, Acts 3).

It makes sense why Darwinism has the upper hand in our culture. Our institutions are devoted to understanding our world and changing our world according to our own resources. Modern science does not allow any consideration of supernatural power when trying to explain natural facts. But, in the end, these can only ever be best guesses. Scientists can observe the world as it is today, but they cannot observe the world as it used to be.

Perhaps it makes better sense to believe the Creator's own testimony about how things were in the beginning. If we believe the Bible is the Creator's testimony, then we must do so.