In today's world there are so many things fighting against the Christian faith. Statistics seem to scream at us about how youth are leaving the church in droves, once they're old enough to go out on their own.
My desire, in teaching creation science, is to break down barriers that sometimes make God and His Word confusing. For example, we are taught about Evolution in all walks of life: school, entertainment, history and more. It's just understood by everyone that evolution is a fact. We're told that in the beginning there was a big bang of energy that somehow created everything. We're told that life thrived for endless amounts of time (millions of years.) But then some volcano exploded, or a meteor crashed, or both things happened at the same time. It was a world changing event that destroyed much of the life on this Earth. (You know, dinosaurs, mastodons, and our ancestor named Lucy.)
The way I understand it, this kind of science cannot be proven. It can only be studied and theorized. Still, it's promoted from school teachers' desks all across the United States.
This creates a big problem. How does the science of evolution plug into the Bible? If the universe is millions of years old, how does that cooperate with a God creating the world in six days?
I was raised in the Catholic church, I even went to a private Catholic grade school. I obviously learned about God, but even I believed some interesting things. Somehow I put God and Evolution together. I could imagine God spoke and there was a big bang, but it didn't make sense that he did it millions of years ago. The Bible says it was only about six-thousand years ago.
Here are more examples: I could buy what scientists say about everything evolving from goo, but the Bible says man was created from dirt. I could believe that a missing link existed between ape and man, but God told us he created man directly, to rule over the animals of the earth. I know there's a verse in the Bible that says "a day to God is like a thousand years". So perhaps it took longer than six days to create the Earth. But science says it took millions of years, not just six thousand-year days.
There are a lot of potential questions when you merge the Bible with the science of evolution. Perhaps that's part of the reason why so many of the nation's youth are leaving the church in droves. Our kids have these questions, even if they're not asking them.
Why don't we help? Why don't we answer the questions before they come up? Let's point out stumbling blocks and explain why they don't make sense. Let's explain other options for evolution, like creation by a loving God. Let's discover science and history that point to a young earth, one that could have been created in the last six-thousand years. Let's show evidence that man could have lived with dinosaurs! Let's show historical coincidences about how the oldest civilization is only about six to seven thousand years old. Let's talk about how topography around the world seems to show signs of a massive world-wide flood!
Why? Because if God created the earth, six to seven thousand years ago, the universe and the earth should look young. You know what? It does! For example, a comet is a block of ice that should only last about 10,000 years. It will melt after that amount of time. How then do comets still soar across the solar system today? I thought the universe was millions of years old, right?
Did you know that there are problems with an old-earth model? There are things we can prove with scientific observation that do not work with an older earth. For example, consider the fact that the moon steadily moves away from the earth about an inch and a half every year. If the earth were millions of years old, then one million years ago the moon would have been TWENTY-THREE MILES CLOSER! Tack on science's magical theory of time and at some point millions and millions of years ago the moon would have been touching the earth. Hey, maybe that's what killed the dinosaurs. We could theorize that the moon smashed into the earth, causing a cataclysmic volcanic cloud to cover the entire planet. The real secret is that when nobody was looking the dinosaurs jumped onto the moon before it left. That's why they disappeared! Okay, maybe not.
Seriously though, science like that doesn't make sense when you put the math to it. Imagine what the earth would be like a million years ago if the moon was twenty-three miles closer? How would it affect the tides in the ocean? New York City would be wiped off the map every night!
These interesting points on science and history were not taught to me when I was in school as a child. I learned about them when I grew older. Wouldn't it be great to know them when you're younger? I think it would, especially if it builds your faith in a loving God. It could make a dramatic difference in your life! That's why I write what I do! I hope to introduce to you science that helps your relationship with a loving God. I want to help you grow in faith, and I pray it's a blessing to you and your family!
Ben Russell is author of "Noah Drake And The Dragon Killer". He writes Juvenile/Middle Grade Fiction Adventures. He's not a scientist or a doctor of history; he's just a guy that's interested in those subjects. He's very interested in creation. His inner child gets excited about dinosaurs and the idea that they're not millions of years old. He despises the theory of evolution, believing it's a stumbling block to the Christian faith. Ben is a family man. He and his lovely wife have four happy kids and they make their home among the roaming hills of the Missouri Ozarks.