The Joshua Victor Theory

·          What we see in creation: beauty or suffering? The positive: the case for design/creation; beauty, engineering, puzzle. The negative: the thorns, the parasites, diseases, COVID, natural disasters, death? Led many evolutionists to doubt and reject God. ·          Rom 8—creation groaning—subjected to futility. Futile: ineffective; failure; lack of purpose or success. God subjected the world to this b/c of sin—Adam’s first sin opened the world to futility and subjugation. Sin is an ongoing, thorough devastation of the whole creation, not just humans: entire physical universe. The Christian understands this from God’s Word, that sin has infected everything, and that the world is not as it was or should be, but that what we see now is the corrupted world. But others may look at the defects, diseases, and death in the world and think God didn’t know what He was doing, or that He wasn’t a good designer....

As summer marches on we’ve continued our Creation and Evolution Adult Bible Class. The videos have stimulated much good thought and discussion. So far we’ve surveyed how the influence of evolutionary thinking has affected morals and societal institutions like the family. We’ve looked at the creation of the universe and the grandeur of outer space, considered questions of time and the age of the universe, and how that relates to questions about when Adam was created and how sin and death came into the world. We’ve also looked at objections to the existence of God, and understanding the difference between macroevolution (the universal common descent of all living things) and microevolution (the horizontal, small-scale, observable changes within animal and plant kinds). I’ve continually emphasized that creationists and evolutionists live in the same world and have the same facts and evidence to view, but that your starting point or worldview has huge consequences for what conclusions you ...

We are the product of intelligent design. - or - We are not the product of intelligent design. ** ** ** ** One of the above statements must be true. - and - Truth is not changed by your theory or mine. Re-read and consider these statements carefully. These brief deductive statements open the book I’m currently reading, titled The Cave Painting: A Parable of Science, by Roddy M. Bullock. The first part of the book is a dramatic novel about a scientist who discovers a remarkable underground cave painting, and promotes it as an example of how unguided natural processes can give rise to beautiful and complex features, in the absence of any human role. The book follows the story of a young girl who remains unconvinced that this “apparent painting” has no painter—and sets out to prove that it was no mere accident. Of course the story is a parable for the modern debate over evolution and intelligent design. The latter half of the book give...