"Either half my colleagues are enormously stupid, or else the science of Darwinism is fully compatible with conventional religious beliefs—and equally compatible with atheism" Stephen Jay Gould, former Alexander Agassiz Professor of Zoology at Harvard University and world-renown Paleontologist.
"The four absolutes we all have in our minds: love, justice, evil, and forgiveness.” Ravi Zacharias
As interesting as the question is (and it is) exactly how did the universe get to be how it is perceived by us today, eventually the more important question emerges in any thinking man's head. Does it really matter whether primordial soup and random mutations led to human beings living in a physical world? Or whether some other, better, more scientifically sound and provable origin theory emerges five hundred years from now? Well, to be frank, no. While the fields of origins, evolutionary biology and cosmology are really interesting, it doesn't get us to the most interesting and important question.
That is, we move from the how to why. While many theists would view Stephen Jay Gould's opinion (as summarized above) as assertion, I would not disagree with the likeable, entertaining and enormously bright agnostic. But Zacharias detects the great four echoes of the "why", while Gould tragically remained stuck at the "how" throughout his life. When discussing why the Christian worldview offers by far the most explanatory power of the Universe as we know it today, I like to preface my thoughts with "it would be an unreasonable coincidence". For example, it is an unreasonable coincidence that man, the crown jewel of evolutionary processes, is completely and utterly devoted to understanding why they are here, and, since recorded history, has always been, unless, there really is a reason as to why we are here.
So, humor me for a second and let's use my method of thinking to examine Ravi's four echoes:
1) Love. It, friend, would be an unreasonable coincidence if love was a meaningless feeling, yet throughout the recorded history of man, was the constant and ultimate search for any human with a normally and abnormally developed brain (see art, music, life, for examples). And more than that, it would be an unreasonable coincidence if love wasn't the central attribute of our Creator, if, in fact, we were at all created, nevermind, as Christians claim, endowed in His image. And even more than that, it would be an unreasonable coincidence if love wasn't God. And, as the Beloved Apostle writes, "God is Love". So here we have Christianity, which out of all the historical Theist worldviews, is the only worldview that consistently insists on a God of Love. And -- as such -- a God that delights in His Creation, because it was borne out of Love, for Love, to Love. And, less us forget, redeemed through the greatest act of Love of human history -- Calvary.
2) Justice. It would be an unreasonable coincidence if we struggle with the ability to suppress the feeling to act justly, yet we were not created by a God that demands absolute justice. It is only the Christian worldview that offers the best explanation for our sense of justice. Calvary, after all, is at the intersection of Love and Justice.
3) Evil. There has been no more frequently used argument against the Christian worldview than the problem of evil. But, most don't understand that in fact, the very presence of evil is what invokes us to a sense of justice and love. Selfishness is the greatest evil, and love is the opposite of selfishness. Justice is the declaration that selfishness exists -- and needs to be exacted. The Christian God has allowed evil to be Created, so we can respond in love and act justly. Thus, it would be an unreasonable coincidence if evil existed yet there wasn't a source of selflessness fully opposed to evil. Again, the Christian worldview best explains the origins of both.
4) Forgiveness. I saw a wonderful, even great, movie the other day. Without ruining the story with great details (in case anybody wants to see it), in the movie "Small Town Murder Songs", a sheriff (Peter Storemare) nearly beats a man to death, consumed with human feelings of jealousy, bitterness, anger. Then he enters the Jordan River (or whatever rivers are in the Ontario area where this film takes place), and comes up a man whom has placed His faith in Jesus Christ -- and has been forgiven for past, present and future sins. As the movie progresses, he finds himself in the near identical situation as he was years ago, yet with significantly more true rights to beat a man. Yet, in a moment of strength and clarity, he rises above his Darwinian roots, and, instead, allows the man to beat him. Wholly blown away by what her (his ex-love interest) has just witnessed, she does something that she would have never done if she had not witnessed what was nothing short of a man finding redemption of his soul by trading in the role of the beater to the beaten. And a thousand levels of meaning should sink in to the thoughtful movie-goer. This man, in every sense, forgave himself at that moment. Forgiveness is all around us, person to person, self to self, self to soul. Perhaps the contemporary story of forgiveness most well known is Victor Hugo's Les Miserables. The hardened criminal, Jean Velijean, stole from the one man that would have mercy on him, an elder Bishop. When the Bishop was presented with Veiljean with certain proof that He had stolen from Him, the Bishop told the police officer that he had actually given Velijean the items as a gift, so he could not have stolen them. Touched by this anti-Darwinian response, Velijean emerged a wholly new man, transformed by the Bishop's forgiveness. These two stories sum up the power of forgiveness in the human culture. There isn't a more outwardly accessible act of love than forgiveness. As human beings who constantly hurt each other, forgiveness is the fuel for the fire of love, and there is not a more powerful act of love, minus self-sacrifice for a friend or enemy, than the act of forgiveness without residual resentment. Need more proof? There remains no more touching a love story, sans the Cross, then the story of the Prodigal Son. The Christian God Forgave us, so we can forgive others. There is perhaps no less comprehensible plea in the Lord's prayer than "Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those that trespass against us". Yes, it would be an unreasonable coincidence that forgiveness can have unrivaled transforming effects for people, yet deny that we were created by a God whose entire relationship with human beings has been a cycle of transforming forgiveness, culminating in the unrivaled transforming forgiveness found for those who look upon Jesus Christ at Calvary.
See, its not the how, its the why that really matters. The how is fun. The why is determinant for your soul. We could find that all four of these attributes were borne out of Darwinian processes. But, really, who cares? The reality is they are here, part of our culture, dominating who we are, what we think about, how we process decisions. The Bible is incredible. Incredible. Written by dozens of authors over thousands of years, yet, somehow, it gets it right.
It would be an unreasonable coincidence if there was a God, or marshmallow man for that matter, that was consistently over thousands of years by dozens of authors portrayed as never polytheistic (be informed, don't rely on one or two articles in popular magazines or one or two books by secular authors), never tribalistic, never anything but monotheistic. A God that lives outside space and time (never a trace of pantheism in Christianity), and created the world at one real moment in actual time (Big Bang Theory). A God who tells a story from the Garden to Calvary about Jesus Christ, the only satisfaction of man's soul (I've never read about, heard about, or have known a man who had a peaceful soul who did not know and trust the Lord... have you?). Indeed, the Ancient Bible makes the contemporary field of psychology simultaneously derivative and incompetent. A God that was always Almighty, yet incredibly vulnerable. That was omnipresent, yet never anything but, less a few exploratory years with the wandering Jews, incredibly and consistently behind-the-scenes. And this last point is an important point. This God that the Bible has purportedly described has always allowed humans to choose Him or Not Him freely... I wish, wish, more thoughtful agnostics and atheists would understand that point. I think they would correct a lot of their thinking if they could comprehend that (and make our jobs easier as evangelicals). If you can grasp that, then you can understand why the Christain God allows all things He allows to happen, doesn't cure amputees, allows bad things to happen to Christians, allows Auschwitz to happen, allows you to freely read this blog and freely form your own opinion, and, most importantly, carries alongside by far the most explanatory power than any other God man has made up, including himself, the religion we call atheism.
I implore you to look around and think about the why, and forget the how. The why has immediate urgency. The Bible has given the Christian worldview incredible explanatory power thousands of years after much of it was written. Jesus Christ came and answered our longing hearts questions. Indeed, if human beings were going to make up a believable religion today, Christianity would be it. So, are we looking back at a self-fulfilling prophecy? I don't think that is a satisfying explanation.
Instead, I postulate this. I think Jesus Christ was precisely whom He said He was, and those hundreds of eye witnesses who died horrific deaths for not recanting their testimony about Jesus being God Incarnate were probably not all mistaken. I think the hundreds of thousands of people who have laid down their lives in some meaningful if not literal way because they believe Jesus Christ transformed their lives as the living, powerful Son of God, physically, tangibly, probably weren't all mistaken. I think the missing Body, the empty Tomb, Easter... would have to be the most complex and well-performed conspiracy theory of recorded human history, fully equipped with wholly devoted, to the death, characters whom left small children and wives to die gruesomely for a hoax with no long-term benefit to their DNA, just short-term horror. I think it is an unreasonable coincidence that I am pondering a Creator unless He was the Creator. I think Jesus Christ finishes the story of God and humans with a storybook ending that no human author could concoct. I think the Trinity best explains God's attribute of relationship in a way that no human thinker could concoct. I think the process of Darwinian Evolution is the most fitting way I could think of for the God that the Bible describes to create the universe and humans, as a "behind-the-scenes" God that He is consistently described as throughout Scripture. Moreover, I think living as Christ taught us to -- in every way anti-darwinian, is an ah-hah moment for the heart, the mind, the soul and the ages. I think there is no reasonable explanation for The Dead Sea Scrolls describing the actions of Jesus Christ, including things totally out of His control like place of birth and birth circumstances, other than that Jesus Christ is the Son of God described in a supernatural way hundreds of years prior to His birth. I think the breathtaking intelligence that underscores life, that the resolution of contemporary technology allows us to now see and understand, and the organized laws of physics that govern life, can only be reasonably explained if an intelligent agent in fact created it -- and beyond this, that we can comprehend the "big picture" -- or as the mathematician Mark Steiner would refer it to as, the anthropocentric picture of the universe as remarkably "user friendly" to human cognition. I think the fine-tuning of the universe and the astronomical probability of life emerging is most reasonably explained by the existence of an Intelligent Creator. I think the fact that we can even study our origins is a deafening echo of His existence. I think explaining the evolution of life by saying that nature and organisms just want to survive is totally void of explanatory power. I think there are miracles in nature that cannot be reasonably explained outside of a Sovereign Creator. I think the wants and fears of every man -- every man -- whom escaped the sin of the world to develop with a normal brain -- yearns for the same basic things that only Jesus Christ can provide. I think Jesus Christ being born in a manger as an eating, crying, pooping infant says more about God than most people will learn about God in their entire lives. I think every person I know that does not know Jesus has a hole in their heart and a palpable fear to their soul, like a small child who can't find their mother, no matter the facade. I think the echoes of our Creator are too loud, too constant, too consuming, not to be actual echoes from Him. And I think there is a very differentiated afterlife, one in which there is no crossing over, where time is no longer a dimension, and where Love, Justice, Evil and Forgiveness meet.
Peter warns us: "Draw near to Him, while He is still close."
