Pastor Zach's Blog

Back To The Beginning

September 19, 2016 at 5:15 am Leave a comment

A couple of weeks ago, a scientific discovery significant enough to merit coverage in The New York Times was revealed.  Geologists have discovered the world’s oldest fossils in Greenland.  According to these researchers, the fossils are around 3.7 billion years old and are thought to be stromatolites, which are formed by the growth of layers of cyanobacteria, a single-celled microbe that lives in shallow water.  But the discovery has posed a problem for scientists.  Nicholas Wade explains:

The great age of the fossils complicates the task of reconstructing the evolution of life from the chemicals naturally present on the early Earth. It leaves comparatively little time for evolution to have occurred and puts the process close to a time when Earth was being bombarded by destructive asteroids.[1]

For years, scientists have struggled to date the age of and construct a prehistory of the earth.  Just when a consensus about the earth’s age seems to emerge, new evidence surfaces that forces scientists to rethink the prevailing wisdom.  Theories of the earth’s origins and the origins of life are constantly being modified.

Part of the trouble with the discovery of this fossil is that it forces the origins of life, from an evolutionary perspective, back to more than 4 billion years ago. This timeframe coincides with cataclysmic meteor events on the earth, including a hit by a meteor so big that it tore out a chunk of our planet that spun into orbit and become our moon.  As Mr. Wade notes in his article, “It is difficult to see how life could have begun under such circumstances.”  It is difficult, indeed.  That is, unless there’s more to life than evolutionary chance.

Whenever a discovery like this is made, it points not only to the wonder of the earth, but to the problems that emerge with what appears to be a designer planet when one denies any sort of a Designer.  This is why the Bible opens its pages with a declaration of one Designer: “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth” (Genesis 1:1).  Whatever one might think of fossils that are purported to be billions of years old, this much the Bible says we can know:  the fossils, and the life they represent, did not happen by accident.  Someone formed life and, through whatever this planet has endured, has sustained life.  This is why some researchers struggle so mightily to reconstruct earth’s origins.  They work out of a worldview that will simply not allow an author and sustainer of life.  They may study fossils to date them, but they do not take the time to marvel at the very existence of them.

The question each of us must answer is this:  am I wedded – philosophically and academically – to a universe that is constrained by naturalism?  Do I believe that there is no cause of anything save what we can see and measure?  Or, as Christianity claims, am I open – philosophically and academically – to a universe that bears the marks of supernaturalism?  Do I believe that what we see is simply too fantastic to be described in merely mechanical terms?  Do I believe that things can also be described in theological terms?

Christians should by no means be closed off to scientific study and discovery.  Curiosity, after all, is hardwired into the human spirit.  But scientists also should not close themselves off to God. For if one is subscribes to sheer naturalism, he may be able to accumulate lots of information about what he sees, but he will still be left with little meaning as to why it’s all here.

Christianity tells us that everything is here because, “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.”  He is why everything exists.  He is why we exist.  And that means He is worth at least considering in any theory of origins.

The fossils got here somehow.

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[1] Nicholas Wade, “World’s Oldest Fossils Found in Greenland,” The New York Times (8.31.2016).

Entry filed under: Current Trends. Tags: Creation, Evolution, Fossils, Greenland, Origins, Science, Stromatolites, Universe.