(All scripture quotations are from the NIV unless otherwise indicated.)

In part one we took note of the ongoing debate regarding whether the first eleven chapters of Genesis, and particularly the accounts of the creation and the flood, were meant to be taken as history. We noted that much of the Christian Church has long felt compelled, due to the claims of science that the earth is old, to embrace various views that seek to reconcile science's long ages with the straightforward Genesis account of creation by God in six days.

I believe it is obvious that such re-interpretations of Genesis would never occur to anyone apart from such claims, claims which come from outside the Bible. Effectively, the Word of God is being made subject to the supposed "higher light" of modern science. Yes, you read that right! Millions of Christians have essentially considered modern science to be a greater, more reliable source of light and truth regarding the history of the world than is the Word of God, who created it all!

I was a product of that sort of compromise and so I shared my own testimony regarding the issue. As a result of such compromises I went for years as a sort of agnostic concerning the creation account: I believed that God had created everything but didn't know exactly how or when--and didn't really care! Surely such issues were secondary at best to the preaching of the cross and the coming of Christ.

I briefly recounted the process by which the Lord gradually changed my mind. He made me aware of the biblical issues involved and also of the growing body of science that was emerging to challenge secular science, the work of fully qualified scientists who saw no conflict between the Genesis account and true science.

And so I set out to answer two basic questions: why does this matter? and what about the claims of science? Part one centered on the first question.

In summary: atheistic evolution with its claims of an old earth has risen as a direct challenge, not so much to the cross itself, but to the foundational truths that establish the very reason for the cross. We noted three particular aspects of truth that are affected simply by compromising the Genesis account, let alone by embracing evolution itself.

One of these concerns the very character of God who claims to have created everything and then called it all "very good." Every compromise involves believing that there were at least hundreds of millions of years of suffering and death of morally innocent animals long before Adam arrived, let alone sinned. Suffering and death are not, therefore, due to sin's corruption of a perfect creation but are rather a "design feature" of creation. In other words, God meant it to be that way. Such an idea has serious implications for our understanding of the Bible, our Creator, and our world.

We also noted the intimate connection between the cross and Adam's sin. That sin resulted in a spiritual separation from God but also in his own physical death and a curse upon the creation that had been given into his charge. As a result he fathered a race of sinners who need a Savior. That leads to the cross where Christ, the last Adam, not only cried out, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" but also died physically. Salvation is consequently available to Adam's children who repent of their sin and put their trust in Jesus and what he accomplished for them through his death and resurrection.

The other issue concerns the reliability of God's Word. We noted that everywhere in the scriptures themselves the inspired writers invariably regarded the creation account as history. Were they wrong? No less than Jesus himself referred to the institution of marriage as being at the beginning of creation. Mark 10:6-8. Who was he? Only the Creator, that's all! Hebrews 1:1-2, 10, Colossians 1:16-17. If Jesus was either mistaken or lying about creation why should we trust anything he said?

And in the ten commandments, written on stone tablets with the finger of God, we read that he created everything in six days! Exodus 20:11. If Genesis isn't true, what else isn't true? Is the whole Bible to be made subject to man's intellect and re-interpretation or is it the Word of God?

If we look only at the scriptures themselves there is an unbroken line of truth extending from Genesis 1:1 through Revelation 22:21. We learn our history, God's purpose, our need, God's provision for that need, and how we can share in His loving eternal plans expressed in a new creation free from every ill of the present one. As Revelation 22:3 says, "No longer will there be any curse." What the Bible says about these things is abundantly clear.

But once again, all of this begs the question: what do we do with the claims of science?

Science is simply the field of study that seeks to understand how things work in the physical world and universe in which we live. There are many categories of study that fall under the general heading of science. Examples are Biology, Geology, Astronomy, Chemistry, Physics, and so forth. For present purposes, however, it is important to understand two very different classes of science: one is operational; the other is historical or forensic.

Operational science is concerned with understanding physical processes by watching them as they happen. For example: what happens when you mix two chemicals together and then heat them? It operates under the assumption that things happen in accordance with consistent and predictable laws. This is, or course, exactly what a Bible-believer would expect based on an all-powerful Creator who established those laws.

This kind of science seeks to establish scientific principles as fact through careful experimentation and observation. The key is that these facts are established by observing something happening in the present. When such experiments are properly carried out, the resulting principles can be consistently demonstrated by scientists anywhere. They can then be used reliably to build better computers, more efficient cars, fly rockets to the moon, and the like.

Operational science is the same whether one is a Christian or an atheist. It deals with observable events, the interpretations of which can be proven to be either true or false and therefore have nothing to do with the beliefs of the scientist involved. For the Christian, the mere fact that such science is even possible testifies to the divine Creator and the order he has established. If the world has arisen through randomness and by chance as the evolutionists contend, why should it be orderly?

The other class of science is historical, or forensic, science. Those who have seen murder mysteries on TV will know what the word "forensic" means. It is the kind of science that is applied to the evidence found at a murder scene in an attempt to figure out what happened. Obviously the detective cannot witness the murder because it has happened in the past and so he must rely upon clues that are left behind. In this type of situation sometimes forensic science can establish the facts of what happened with virtual certainty but at other times the conclusions are less sure. Of course, reliable eyewitness testimony is the most desirable kind of evidence but the detectives and scientists themselves are not, in such cases, eyewitnesses. Where operational science asks, "How do things work?" forensic science asks, "What happened to cause this?"

All historical science is essentially "detective work" and not based on the kind of observation and repeatability of operational science. How many times have we seen detective shows where someone has such a strong belief about what they think happened that it warps their judgment and they reach a wrong conclusion? Their belief causes them to refuse to believe a witness, for example -- and the witness turns out to be telling the truth. They confront physical evidence that can be interpreted in more than one way and they insist that it "proves" their belief, refusing to face other possibilities. Here we see just one example of belief playing a big role in determining so-called "facts."

It is, in fact, virtually impossible to reach any conclusion about the past without beliefs playing a determining role. The evidence exists only in the present. And, in the view of scientists in general, there are no eyewitnesses to the world and the universe of the past. In particular, they weren't there and so they are reduced to interpreting the evidence left behind in an attempt to determine what they think happened to cause that evidence.

But interpretations, which change all the time, by the way, are not facts. Yet how many times have we heard people talk about the fact of evolution as though it has been proven. Evolution is nothing more than an unproven and unprovable belief about the past. The evolutionary scientist may point to evidence that he sees as support for his belief but it is still belief and not fact.

He observes changes in living things, for example, and claims that fact as proof of his theory. BUT the kinds of change observed in the present are NOT the kinds of change necessary for evolution from single-celled creatures to man, not to mention the impossible leap from non-life to life before all that. Dogs may change into different breeds of dogs, BUT they are still dogs and always will be. This is entirely consistent with God's order that animals be created in "kinds." Those kinds determine the limits of change--and the changes themselves involve genetic information already there, or in some cases, the loss of genetic information through mutations. New information is not created as would be necessary for evolutionary theory to be true.

As we said earlier, in operational science it doesn't matter whether you are an atheist or a Bible believer. You are dealing with things in the present that can be observed and proven. But when it comes to the past it starts to make a very great difference. I mentioned that operational science assumes that things work according to consistent laws and principles that can be understood. Fine. But modern secular science has made a huge and unwarranted leap. That leap is from the observation that there are natural laws to full-blown naturalism.

Naturalism is simply the belief that nature is all there is, or to put it another way, there is no God, or at least not one that has caused anything in the natural world. The leap is from an operating principle to a world-view, a belief system, in a word, a religion. Science has, in our day, simply defined God right out of the picture. The minute you mention God, they immediately say, "That's not science." Before examining any evidence, God is ruled out.

That is hardly an unbiased approach! The scriptures proclaim, "The heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of his hands. Day after day they pour forth speech; night after night they display knowledge. There is no speech or language where their voice is not heard. Their voice goes out into all the earth, their words to the ends of the world." Psalm 19:1-4.

But as they look at the heavens they block their ears to those words and look instead for totally natural explanations for their origin. Modern science has become, in effect, the search for an atheistic explanation for everything! Answering the question, "How do things work?" is one thing. But answering the question, "Where do things come from?" is something else again. Just because things work according to natural laws does not mean they originated only from natural causes. That is belief, not science.

I recently preached on this subject and in that message used a simple prop: blue-tinted sunglasses. To illustrate the effect of beliefs I declared, "I believe that the world is blue! And since I believe that the world is blue, I believe that the correct way to view and understand the world is to use these blue-tinted sunglasses." I then put them on to the amusement of my audience and began to examine things around me. Sure enough, the microphone was blue, the pulpit was blue, my Bible was blue, and even the audience was blue! "I've proved it," I declared, "the world is indeed blue!"

The fallacy in my illustration, is, of course, obvious. But not so obvious is the fact that a belief in naturalism colors the conclusions about the past for those who hold that belief. In actual fact, those conclusions are predetermined by the starting point: atheistic naturalism. That belief acts just like the tinted sunglasses to color the way scientists see the world.

And, as we pointed out in part one, it is a belief that is strongly prejudiced by the desire NOT to believe in a God to whom we are responsible. Does this make a difference? Listen to the oft quoted words of Richard Lewontin, written in The New York Review in January of 1997:

"We take the side of science in spite of the patent absurdity of some of its constructs, in spite of its failure to fulfill many of its extravagant promises of health and life, in spite of the tolerance of the scientific community for unsubstantiated just-so stories, because we have a prior commitment, a commitment to materialism. It is not that the methods and institutions of science somehow compel us to accept a material explanation of the phenomenal world, but, on the contrary, that we are forced by our a priori adherence to material causes to create an apparatus of investigation and a set of concepts that produce material explanations, no matter how counter-intuitive, no matter how mystifying to the uninitiated. Moreover, that materialism is an absolute, for we cannot allow a Divine Foot in the door."

I salute the man's honesty but what an amazing confession! His quest is for material explanations based on belief alone, a belief that is NOT compelled by science! The starting point of secular science is simply a belief, and worse, a belief that rejects God. When so-called science is founded on that sort of belief there is no "evidence" alone that will ever turn up to change the conclusions. If a scientist met a dinosaur he would simply come up with some sort of explanation harmonizing with his beliefs! Only a supernatural work of God to confront the will can avail. This is a clear example of the kind of willful ignorance of which Peter writes in 2 Peter 3:5. The real conflict here is not science vs. religion but rather antichrist vs. Christ, the Creator and Judge of all men.

The issue that has most affected the professing Christian church is the claim by science that the earth and universe are billions of years old. But upon what basis do they make these claims? Does the evidence compel such a belief? I make no claim to being a scientist although I find science fascinating but I would like to offer a number of examples which were consistently taught to me as I grew up as proof that the earth is old. Let's see how the evidence holds up.

Perhaps the most common proof offered for an old earth is the dating of rocks. Simply put, there are radioactive substances in some kinds of rocks. These radioactive substances decay over time and turn into other substances. For example, most people who have been exposed to much science have learned that uranium changes over time into lead. There are other such examples that are more commonly used to date rocks but since so many have heard of the uranium-lead combination I'll use it as an example.

Operational science has determined that uranium changes into lead at a certain rate. Radioactive elements like uranium have what is known as a half life. That simply means that over a certain period of time one half of it will become lead. The half life for uranium has been determined to be in the range of billions of years. Based on that knowledge scientists carefully measure the amount of uranium and lead in a given rock sample and calculate its age based on that known rate of decay. Sounds "rock" solid, doesn't it! But is it?

When such a conclusion is drawn there are, in fact, at least six things that are assumed to be true. That is, they are believed to be true yet cannot be proven. What are they? Well, in the first place how do they know how much uranium and lead there was to begin with? No one was there to measure it! How can they read a "clock" and determine how much time has gone by if they don't know what time it was to start with?! The type of measurement described above assumes that whatever lead there is in a rock was all uranium to begin with. Exactly how do they know that?

They are also assuming that no uranium somehow left the rock along the way. They are also assuming that no uranium entered the sample. They are assuming the same two things about the lead they find. On top of that they are assuming that the rate of decay has never changed. That makes six assumptions that their conclusion rests upon! And those assumptions don't all have to be false for the conclusion to be meaningless. It only takes one!

I remember awhile back hearing the testimony of a college Biology professor who was converted from atheism and evolutionism to Christ and a strong belief in the Genesis account of creation. This transformation took something like three years as one by one, different issues were confronted. The last issue was faced in a graduate course in geology that among other things dealt with radiometric dating (what we described above). This scientist testified to his fear upon entering the course that he would find solid evidence refuting the Genesis account. However, as the course progressed, he discovered just how flawed these dating methods are and in the end his confidence in the Genesis account was actually strengthened by his exposure to the course!

I should point out some of the "dirty secrets" of this dating method. Labs have been known to ask a scientist submitting a sample, "What sort of date are you expecting?" The same test run on different samples from the same source often gives widely varying results. Different types of tests run on samples from the same source also can give even more widely varying results. When scientists obtain unexpected results they will often simply throw those results out as unreliable. When they get the result they want and are expecting they declare the date "proven."

Even so it is difficult for a layman hearing the claims of science to gainsay them. What do we know? Wouldn't it be nice if some fully qualified scientists were to run tests on some rocks where the age is definitely known? That would be great, wouldn't it! Well, guess what! Such tests have been done and the results are enlightening.

Here are some examples of such tests. I will first list the place, followed by the date the rock was formed from volcanic lava flows, followed by the age determined through radiometric dating by the same labs used by evolutionary scientists.

Mt. St. Helens, Washington -- 1980-1986 --tests run on samples collected in the early 1990s produced ages ranging from 350,000 years to 2.8 million years!

Mt. Edna, Sicily--122 BC--170,000 - 350,000 years old.

Mt. Edna, Sicily--1972--210,000 -- 490,000 years old. (How come the more recent lava flow is older?!)

Hualalai, Hawaii--1800-1801--1.44 -1.76 million years old.

Mt. Ngauruhoe, New Zealand--1954--3.3 - 3.7 million years old.

Mt. Kilauea, Hawaii--1959--1.7 - 15.3 million years old.

Sounds reliable, doesn't it! Not only are the laboratory ages amazingly off but the results themselves vary widely. And there are a number of other issues with standard dating methods that have been turned up by scientists examining the reliability of those methods. Nevertheless examples like those above should be enough for the Christian layman to realize that he doesn't have to tremble before the pronouncements of science regarding the ages of rocks. Quite obviously, some assumptions made by secular scientists are simply wrong and the results are therefore, meaningless.

Think with me for a moment just why it is that those scientists make such assumptions. Why, for example, when confronted with a rock sample containing uranium and lead do they assume it was all uranium to begin with? Such a conclusion is not an illogical one, but that logic begins with a prior belief in naturalism. That belief is the starting point for looking at the world and interpreting its past.

They observe a natural process happening at a known rate and assume, therefore, that this process can be projected back in time to a beginning point when there was no lead and the uranium in a newly-formed rock began the long process of changing into lead. But no matter how logical this seems it is still basically a belief and not a fact. And not only is this belief not proven, the examples listed above contradict it. If rocks of known age cannot be dated accurately then how can dates derived from rocks of unknown age be trusted?

Here is a sobering thought: when Christians simply accept at face value the pronouncements of science about the age of the earth, etc., what they are actually doing is agreeing with the idea that atheism is the correct starting point for understanding earth's history! Think about it. Instead of attempting to fit their millions of years into God's Word what we should be doing is rigorously examining and questioning science. If we do not, are we not setting the beliefs of men above the Word of God? It's a scary thought.

What about fossils? If you were taught as I was, you learned that fossils take millions of years to form. But there is plenty of evidence to the contrary. One method of fossilization, or petrification, is readily observable and involves mineral-rich water. In Knaresborough, Yorkshire, England, there is a famous Petrifying Well where objects suspended in its flowing water are turned to stone in a matter of months. One common type of object petrified at this well is a Teddy Bear! Many other kinds of items have likewise been petrified.

A similar example can be found in the famous miner's hat from Tasmania. A miner dropped his felt hat into mineral-rich water in the mine. Some 50 years later it was found and it had turned completely to stone and is currently displayed in a mining museum.

However, most fossils are not of that type but rather found encased in rock. What about them? The fact is that it takes very special conditions for fossils to form. Most animals die and their carcasses quickly fall prey to scavengers or decay. Nothing is left to fossilize. In order to fossilize something it is necessary for some sort of deep and very rapid burial to occur -- the kind of burial that occurs during flood conditions. When animals of virtually any type are suddenly buried in just the right type of flood sediment they, or their body shape, will be preserved as stone over time.

But how much time? What about the Ediacara formation in Australia? It stretches some 300 miles and contains millions of fossils. There are, in this formation, large numbers of jellyfish, perfectly preserved. Have you ever noticed just how quickly jellyfish disintegrate when they die, and yet here are vast numbers perfectly preserved! The evolutionist who discovered these jellyfish said they must have been fossilized in less than 24 hours! When conditions are right it doesn't take long.

There's plenty of evidence that fossilized animals don't just die normal deaths and then become fossils. Many examples of virtually instantaneous catastrophic burial can be found. Some of these include one fish swallowing another, a lobster-like creature in the process of shedding its skin, a reptile in the process of swallowing another, enormous numbers of sea creatures such as shellfish suddenly swept in layers hundreds of square miles in size across continents and perfectly preserved. Kind of fits with Noah's flood, don't you think!

Most people don't know that neither fossils nor fossil-bearing rocks can be dated directly. The dates we so often hear claimed for some new fossil find don't come from a test performed on the fossil but from a chart of earth's supposed history. Certain rock layers and fossils have been assigned certain ages on paper, the "story" of the history of life on earth--as imagined according to evolutionary theory. All the scientist has to do is simply fit his find to this story, no test needed! And so the news headline confidently proclaims, "100-million-year-old Fossil Found."

How about coal? Hundreds of millions of years, right? Well, not exactly. Coal samples that are claimed to be hundreds of millions of years old have been found to contain carbon-14. What is the significance of that? Carbon-14 is an unstable element that can only be detected in the range of thousands of years, not millions. Any carbon-14 in the coal should have long since decayed into nitrogen if the claimed ages are true. Besides that, coal has been produced in the laboratory!

What about diamonds? I remember before my wife and I were married I once got her a humorous gift, a do-it-yourself diamond kit. It was simply a bag of charcoal with instructions to place it under millions of pounds of pressure for millions of years and then cut to size! Fortunately she still married me! But that gag gift illustrates what we were all taught when I grew up, that diamonds required enormous pressure over staggering amounts of time. But is it so?

Today there are at least two commercial companies using two completely different processes each manufacturing gem-quality diamonds in days. It takes very sophisticated equipment to tell the difference between them and regular diamonds from mines. In fact, in one case, the way to tell the difference is that the manufactured diamonds are more perfect! I'm not talking about synthetic diamonds but genuine man-made diamonds.

Besides that, mined diamonds have also been tested and found to have significant amounts of carbon-14 in them, something an evolutionary scientist would never think to look for as it would be impossible in their view of things. I guess the real gag in that gift was on me! It just doesn't take that kind of time, just the right conditions.

Another gemstone is the opal. How long does it take to form an opal? In Australia a "bush scientist" named Len Cram has a lab in his back yard and has learned to grow opals that are indistinguishable from the mined ones! It is evident that he has been allowed to discover one of the Lord's secrets and that opals don't take long ages of gradual processes to form. A good-sized opal actually takes about 3 months at room temperature with no pressure or special equipment!

Then there is oil. Surely that takes millions of years. Hardly! Oil can be created in a laboratory in a matter of hours from common organic materials like garbage and sewage sludge (about anything, really). If men can make oil in hours why should it require millions of years in nature? Oh yes, and carbon-14 has also been found in oil! Are you getting the picture?

How long does it take for caves to form? Jerry Trout, a cave specialist with the Forest Service, wrote in 1993, "From 1924 to 1988, there was a visitor's sign above the entrance to Carlsbad Caverns that said Carlsbad was at least 260 million years old. In 1988, the sign was changed to read 7 to 10 million years old. Then, for a little while, the sign read that it was 2 million years old. Now the sign is gone." It seems the more we learn, the more evident it is that things don't take as long as we once thought!

Have you seen the stalactites and stalagmites in caves? They are the mineral rock formations that grow down from cave roofs and up from their floors. I remember being told of the immense amounts of time it takes for them to form but the same Jerry Trout mentioned above has, through photo-monitoring, observed them to grow inches in just days. Numerous other examples of rapid growth in these formations have been observed and reported over the years. Again, the speed of formation just depends upon conditions. Nothing mysterious, and nothing that requires millions of years.

How about canyons? Eons of time for a river to patiently wear away solid rock, right? That's what I always heard, but the eruption of Mt. St. Helens in 1980 changed many minds. The blast from that eruption drove a large quantity of mud outwards in one direction at an enormous speed and pressure. One result was a canyon one-fortieth the size of the Grand Canyon cut in part through solid rock and formed in hours!

Is it a little bit of water over a long period of time or a lot of water over a little bit of time?! Consider this scenario: Noah's flood repeatedly washes up great layers of sediment containing billions of sea creatures over the southwestern United States. As the flood ends and the water begins draining off the continents into deepened sea beds a very large lake -- the size of several states -- is for a time formed. Then its containment is breached and all that water suddenly flows across and through those layers of sediment towards the Gulf of Mexico. A huge "drainage ditch" is formed by the rushing waters and then it finishes hardening as the river left behind flows through the bottom. This scenario for the formation of the Grand Canyon is consistent both with the Bible and with the physical evidence left behind.

Here's some food for thought: I wonder why most rivers that have been around for awhile don't carve canyons? Why just the Colorado and a few others--if the standard story is correct?

What about rock? How long does solid rock take to form? While it is obvious that lava flows can harden into rock in a short time the prevailing view, particularly when I grew up, was that soft sedimentary layers take millions of years to gradually harden into rock. Actually it just takes the right conditions and ingredients--concrete, for example. Bring the right materials and a cementing agent together and rocks can form very quickly.

The mudflows at Mt. St. Helens have quickly turned to rock. Scientists have observed rocks forming in months in a swamp in England. Spark plugs--probably from boat engines--have been found embedded in rock. On display at the Creation Museum at Answers in Genesis is a clock--once again, probably from a ship--that is half embedded in hard rock along with sea shells. Is the clock millions of years old? More and more scientists are discovering that rocks can form very quickly, certainly not requiring the timescale I was taught.

Do you remember hearing about the discovery of blood cells in dinosaur bones a few years ago? Not only were blood cells found but also soft stretchy tissue with blood vessels! Dr. Mary Schweitzer, an evolutionist, is the main figure in these discoveries. Did her discovery cause her to question the idea that dinosaurs died out 65 millions years ago? Not at all. Her comment was, "It was exactly like looking at a slice of modern bone. But of course, I couldn't believe it. I said to the lab technician: 'The bones, after all, are 65 millions years old. How could blood cells survive that long?'" The main interest of the scientists involved since has seemed to be to come up with an explanation for all this that doesn't contradict what they believe!

A finding like this shouldn't surprise someone who starts with the Bible's history. Although the name "dinosaur" is a modern one, not used before the 1800s, the Bible tells us exactly when dinosaurs were created. Are dinosaurs land animals? (Hint: the answer is "yes.") When were land animals created? How about day six? Then when were dinosaurs created? If you answered, "On day six," you get an "A." Now, what did they eat when they were first created (prior to the fall and the entrance of death into the world)? According to Genesis 1:29-30, they ate plants just like all the other animals. See how easy that was!

If you accept the speculations about the "age of dinosaurs" and what they think life was like, and the depictions in movies like "Jurassic Park" then the Bible's answer seems strange. But if you start with the Bible's history and then look at all the evidence it fits just fine. Just the other day a story was in the news from China. It seems that villagers in a remote area had, for some time, been digging up "dragon bones" and using them medicinally. Some they boiled and others were ground up and made into a paste. Apparently these bones had been dug up by the ton and sold in area markets for some two decades! Of course, scientists came along and informed the villagers that they were really 100-million-year-old dinosaur bones!

On more than one occasion fresh--not fossilized--dinosaur bones have been discovered in Alaska and other areas of the far north. No surprise to a Bible believer. It simply is an indicator the dinosaurs are much more recent AND perhaps that the climate in the far north was once much different, say, prior to Noah's flood.

This is a fascinating subject and I encourage anyone interested to pursue answers to the many questions that will arise at websites such as www.answersingenesis.org and www.icr.org. IF dinosaurs are truly extinct--and there are tantalizing hints from a number of remote areas that they may not be completely gone--then it really hasn't been all that long. Tales of encounters with dragons don't go back too many centuries.

As I said earlier, if a scientist who believed in an old earth somehow met a dinosaur it wouldn't cause him to question his belief. He would just try to figure out an explanation for the dinosaur to fit his belief.

I love the story about the psychologist who was struggling to help a patient who insisted that he was dead. In vain the psychologist tried one argument after another including several kinds of medical evidence. Still, the patient wasn't convinced, countering that medical evidence can be misinterpreted.

Finally, the psychologist had an idea: he asked the patient, "Do dead men bleed?" The patient replied, "No, dead men don't bleed." At that the psychologist pricked the patient's finger, showed him the blood and said, "Now what do you think?" The patient looked at his finger, thought for a minute and said, "Well--I guess I was wrong. Dead men do bleed!"

That's a pretty good example of the kind of mentality Christians confront in the world today regarding questions of origin. Entrenched belief reigns supreme for most scientists and no amount of evidence to the contrary will convince them to seriously consider the history God has given us in his word.

Christians need to understand this. Much of modern science, particularly when it reaches conclusions about the past, is not engaged in an unbiased pursuit of truth, but rather the pursuit of evidence supporting a belief that rejects the Creator. Many individual scientists are simply swept along with the prevailing view of things but that is still a fair description of "mainstream" science in our day.

There are, of course, some scientists who on purely scientific grounds have concluded that the world, and particularly the complexity of life, show evidence of "intelligent design." Their honesty in this is to be commended but that is not the same thing as recognizing the God of the Bible as the designer.

I have included just a very few examples of areas of science that I was told proved millions of years. There are, of course, many other areas I haven't touched on and they are all fascinating. I would encourage those interested to pursue their areas of interest and learn more. You will be surprised by many things you will learn. What a wonderful opportunity for accessing information has been afforded by the internet. I know the devil uses the internet but I'm glad the Lord does too!

There are in our day a growing number of creation scientists investigating the many issues raised in the debate between secular science and a belief in the Genesis account. Is every question fully answered? No. But more and more answers are turning up every day and ongoing research is encouraging. Christians do not have to fear the pronouncements of secular scientists. In fact, the evidence fits the Bible's history much better than it does the story told by evolutionists.

Just think what the evolutionist has to defend: that something can come from nothing; that life can come from non-life; that complex genetic information can somehow invent itself; and that all of these things and the orderly universe we observe have arisen by blind chance! All of this is utterly contrary to every observed law of science. Imagine a computer that has somehow manufactured and programmed itself with no intelligence behind it! But that would be trivial beside the problem of accounting for the universe and life by pure chance.

But if we start by believing God's account of history, THEN look at the world around us, it makes sense. We know why the world is in a state of corruption and decay. We understand why there is death and suffering. We see the wisdom of God demonstrated in the created kinds in their built-in ability to adapt and change. We see in earth's geology and in the fossil record evidence of Noah's flood and we know that God judges sin. And as these things are true so is the Bible's message of salvation through Jesus Christ. Our Creator has become our Savior that he might become our eternal Elder Brother! I'm with him, how about you?

It is not that we need to "prove" the Bible. Not at all. Forensic science cannot "prove" any belief about the past in the sense in which science can prove things they observe in the present. Secular science starts with nothing more than a belief. Creation science begins with the record given us by God through his word. It is wonderful to see confirmations of the Bible through true science and to have answers to the questions of unbelievers but ultimately faith is the result of a personal encounter with the Living God. That is the critical need. Still, it is good to be able to remove obstacles to faith.

In view of the impact of modern scientific ideas on our culture we need to be able to stand on God's Word without compromise and proclaim its truth starting with Genesis 1:1. That verse begins earth's true history, the history of man's fall into sin and of God's plan of redemption from that fall and of a glorious door of hope into an eternal future. The first chapters of Genesis explain the "why" of death and suffering as well as the "why" of the cross. The account of Noah's flood demonstrates that God judges sin and models the final judgment of this present world that is surely coming.

We must be able to both defend and proclaim the whole message of the Bible and to answer honest questions, both from our young people, and from those outside the church. We need to recognize the subtlety of Satan's attack mounted against Genesis. He recognizes far more than most Christians just how foundational it is. God has convinced me that I was wrong in my compromise and the way I used to minimize the importance of all this. How about you?

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What About Genesis? Part One

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