Competing Worldviews: Part 1

We've now established a timeline that is based on scripture.  But this is in stark disagreement with the timeline for the history of man that is generally accepted today.   Man's attempts to explain his experience on earth can be classified under two broad headings...naturalism and creationism.

• Naturalism believes that all evidence is the result of unexpalained substances that have the properties required for evolution.
• Creationism believes that all evidence is the result of design by an unexplained intelligence, that has the capability to put its designs into operation.

I might even say that there is a third choice, one I might call "new-age-ism" that puts the origin of man farther in the past and in a different place.  This is the "alien" view.  It exists.

In the worldview of naturalism, the universe began in a big bang 13.7 BYA (billion years ago), earth formed 4.5 BYA, earliest signs of life 3 BYA.  The earliest fossils, of simple life, are 600 MYA (million years ago), the earliest precursors to man 4.4 MYA, and the earliest homo sapiens or modern man are 100,000 YA (years ago).  Man entered the western hemisphere across the Bering Strait land bridge near the end of the last ice age 15,000 years ago, and the first cities were built after the ice age between 10,000 and 4,000 years ago.

To a believer in naturalism, there have been 5 major periods of ice ages, the last beginning 2.5 MYA and ending 10-11,000 years ago.  Man began as a primitive being, and gradually became more advanced.  He was a brutish cave man who became more civilized.  He was a hunter-gatherer who learned agriculture.  He had to develop tool use and language.  He had to discover fire.  And he learned by trial and error.

Life followed the geologic timeline...goo to simple life to sea life to land animals to man.

As Ken Ham might say, "From goo to you, by way of the zoo."

This story of life is based on EVIDENCE.  There's all kinds of evidence to be found.  We have towns and tools and pottery and inscriptions.  There's old trees and fossils.  There's geologic features like sedimentary rock layers and river and ice erosion. 

As a believer in Creationism we see the same evidence.  But we have a totally different story of life.  Our timeframe is different than that of a naturalist.  Why?

We all base our interpretation of the evidence on what we believe is true.

As a creationist we believe that God exists, that the Bible is God's word and is true in its entirety.  God created everything, He is transcendent, He is rational, and has a plan for every person.  Man can think and reason because God created him that way.  And time is short.

A naturalist does not believe in God.  He believes the Bible creation story is a myth derived from other myths, and that evolution is the method that accounts for all life.  The big bang created the universe as we see it, which means matter existed eternally, and thus matter can create.  Man is essentially good; it is society that is evil.  And time is very long.

It is the belief system that a person already has determined that they will trust to be true that determines how they see the evidence.