A LONG TIME AGO IN A GALAXY FAR FAR AWAY

 

By James Wilson

            One of my favorite memories is of a friend of mine who has a doctorate and believes in evolution.  It is one of his missions in life to convince me I am foolish to believe my God made everything.  One day exploring some buildings dating to colonial times he pounced.  “Do you believe there was ever such an animal as eohippus?” he asked.  I said I did; we have their fossils.  “Well,” he continued, “everybody knows eohippus is the first horse.  He evolved into the modern horse over millions of years.”

            “Have you conducted DNA testing?” I asked.  “Does eohippus have horse DNA?”  He was appalled at my unfairness; nobody can obtain DNA from fossilized prehistoric animals.  He repeated that everybody agrees eohippus evolved into horses.  “You tell me you can prove evolution through this forerunner of a horse, but without DNA you cannot prove this little guy is even related to the horse,” I said.  “Fact is, eohippus looks more like a fox than a horse; he has no hooves, and his legs are of such disparate lengths from front to back that he bounces like a pig instead of running like a horse.”  I ended with a question, “What have you got besides bones resembling tiny horse bones and speculations from generations of paleontologists?  What science have you got?”

            Reality is my bones resemble pig bones as much as eohippus bones resemble those of a horse.  Yet nobody imagines I evolved from a pig except people offended at my unbelief concerning evolution.  Reality is without DNA I cannot pass a paternity test for my children but wealthy and powerful people can demand we scratch the idea of a Creator without DNA evidence.

            Don’t get me wrong.  Science is a great gift; it is a double gift having content – things observed in patterns of activity and therefore known to (and how) existing – and structure.  The structure is called scientific method for learning by experimentation.  Praise God for the men and women who devote themselves to scientific disciplines – with discipline being the operant word.  When we discipline our minds to accept what can be proven, to hold in tension what has not yet been demonstrated, and to let go of what simply does not emerge from facts in evidence – no matter how much we want or need to believe them – we are practicing science.  When men and women with a lot of letters after their surname ask to be believed not for the evidence they present but for those letters following their name there is nothing scientific occurring.  Such people are simply the mullahs of materialism.

            The Wild Horse Nebula is about thirty million light years from earth, so distant it was only discovered after we orbited the Hubble Telescope.  Within the nebula is a black hole about four million miles across.  It is shaped like a cross.  Psalms 19:1 states, “The heavens declare the glory of God”.  These facts – astronomical and scriptural – are verified observations and thus science.  The laminem molecule is what we call an adhesion protein.  So tiny it can only be seen through an electron microscope, it literally binds the cells in our body together.  It is the catalyst that makes a body possible. Colossians 1:17 declares, “In Him (Jesus) all things hold together.”  The laminem molecule is shaped like a cross. Again these facts are observed – the molecule and its description and the corresponding Biblical declaration.  This is science.

            Where it gets dicey is in the conclusions.  Have I just proved beyond doubt that an all-powerful God designed the Wild Horse Nebula and the laminem molecule, planting those verses in the Bible so we get His point?  Actually, no.  There is evidence – it looks, quacks and walks like a duck – but nothing compelling about the connection between scripture and these phenomena.  I have no need to compel belief, nor to stifle debate.  (Unlike the evolutionists who go to court to ensure Creationist-believing teachers cannot speak to impressionable children on school campuses.)  But I would rather take my chances in honest and spirited debate than to rely on the arrogance of those who think themselves above scientific proof for their positions.  DNA anyone?

            Evolution offers what George Lucas presented in Star Wars, an impersonal and unloving force holding us and ours together.  God offers Himself, and His Son Who comes that we might have His life and love abundantly.  He is not afraid to take His chances in the marketplace of ideas.  The question becomes whether we want the really real, or a fantasy that begins, “A long time ago, in a galaxy far far away…”