The previous posts in this series can be found here in Part I, Part II and Part III. I mentioned in my last post that not all of my logical journey to my rational Christian faith was built in the science lab. A portion of it took shape in philosophy classes in the humanities building. But the truth is much of it was formed by science. I was always a very impatient student and never more so than in my science classes (and also a bit ambitions and naïve, I suppose). In a biology lab course, I requested that we create some sort of life in a test tube. The professor laughed (much harder than did the teacher in 7th grade when I asked to create new matter from nothing), explaining to me what is called the Law of Biogenesis (that living organisms only come from existing living organisms). Now much more familiar with the opening chapters of Genesis, I remembered while the Bible speaks of life procreating itself once established, it very clearly proclaims that God initially created all biological life. Taken at face value, this would mean that men would never find life spontaneously erupting in nature nor would we ever be able to recreate it in the laboratory. With all hope squashed of being able to bring nonanimated matter to life, I inquired as to whether we could – following what I had been taught were the well-established rules of evolution – manipulate one type of biological species into becoming a different type altogether. Could we through engineered genetic conversions, transform, say, bacteria into something other than bacteria? The answer, again, was an emphatic no. Though there were myriad examples of bacteria changing resistance to antibiotics, moths adapting their wing colors across varying environments and dogs being bred of all different shapes and sizes, the bacteria were still bacteria, the moths still moths and the dogs still dogs. I came to learn that tens of millions of experiments had been conducted by tens of thousands of scientists over the course of more than a century of time and it turned out it is not possible for us to turn one type of animal into another type. Of course, as you flip through those early pages in Genesis, God states repeatedly that He created biological life to reproduce “according to their kind”. Had God stated from the earliest recordings of our religious writings that evolution had limits? Indeed, He had and science had backed up the biblical statements (again!). My empirical science experience and that of thousands of more gifted scholars than I had proven the Bible’s pronouncements were true – survival of the fittest through microevolutions could be scientifically proven through reproducible studies and experiments, while species change through macroevolution could not. God built for me a firm foundation of faith through my exposure to science and Bible, showing me the commonalities between the two as a journeyed along. Andy’s book, Clear Vision: How The Bible Teaches Us To View The World, can be purchased here.
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