THE NECESSITY OF GOD IN CREATION – PART 1
“In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.” (Genesis 1:1)
“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” (John 1:1)
In our previous discussion, The Death of God, we saw the effects of the philosophy of “naturalism” (the belief that everything in the world should be explained in the absence of the supernatural). This philosophy has led to the science of Darwin and others, but the practical ramifications have been death and destruction. In simple terms, in the absence of God: (1) life is devalued, (2) truth is relegated to relativity, and (3) new is always better.
At the heart of the naturalist’s philosophy is the argument for creation without God. If man could in some way prove that God was not involved in the creation of the world, if the creation were explainable through a natural process, then man could be free once and for all from his “God problem.” Over the next four weeks, I will offer up to you the arguments for the Necessity of God in Creation. These are not intended to be scientific arguments, though a few will be. Rather, the next four arguments are from a philosophical perspective, asking the question, “What happens if we remove God from the creation?” The first problem – If God is removed from creation, moral freedom is lost.
Man’s greatest desire is to be the master of his own domain. We do not like to take orders, to have bosses, or to be told that we are not in control. In fact, from a sociology standpoint, such premises are debilitating and discriminating. We want to be free.
We expect that if we make good choices, good rewards should follow. If I work a hard 40 hours at work this week, then I should be rewarded equally for that work. On the other hand, if I make poor choices, then there is an assumed punishment. We reject any control over our lives. We believe in absolute, libertarian freedom. We are not robots that are acting out a determined plan and any suggestion that there is a plan that might intrude in some way upon my freedom is whole heartedly dismissed and accursed.
In an effort to give itself freedom, mankind came to the conclusion that God must die – at least in the heart and the mind. But what if God was dead? What if God was not a reality? What if God did not create the world? What if man is just the result of a process of evolution (only one part of that process) and “survival of the fittest”?
There is a bit of irony here, for everything that man wanted to achieve he lost in the process. If God is not in creation, the end result is absolute determinism with no moral freedom. Here’s what I mean:
- If man is the product of an evolutionary process in the absence of God (though some would argue for what is called “theistic evolution”), then who you are today is nothing more than the product of the survival of certain characteristics and attributes. – In other words, brown hair is more prominent in the world because it is the strongest characteristic or most desirable. Certain attitudes and demeanors are more prevalent, because they are most desirable. In the absence of God, you are the result of what has been considered most desirable or strongest.
- If this is true, then you are not free to determine your own personality, opinions, or persuasions; they are the product of a determined set of characteristics that have been selected through the process of natural selection.
- If personality, opinions, and persuasions (along with the physical characteristics) are determined through natural processes, then morality is also determined as reflection of this process. – Mankind’s morality is selected through the personalities, opinions, and persuasions that are most dominant and survive.
- If morality is determined, then man is not free. – In other words, you act (and all of mankind for that matter) acts in accordance to the process that he has inherited a specific personality, opinion, and persuasion…man is now the evolutionary robot acting in accordance to what he has inherited from those before him.
Mankind thought that if God was eliminated in creation, man would be free. The actual affect was the opposite – man becomes a slave to his base desires inherited from every successive generation. Whoops!!
Only in a system where God creates man, uniquely and individually, is man truly free and responsible for his actions. If God creates man, uniquely and individually, then man is not the product of his inheritance, rather he is an individual.
In the most simple of terms, if mankind’s desire is to be free and morally responsible, he must accept God as creator!…And that, my friends, is what Darwin forgot to tell you.