Today, February 4, 2015, marks the one-year anniversary of the Ken Ham vs. Bill Nye “Is creation a viable model of origins?” debate. After the debate, I wrote a post-debate analysis, in which I pointed out that both speakers made some valid points, and both speakers made some blunders.

Ken Ham believes that the Bible requires us to hold to a young Earth, and so he goes about looking for scientific evidence to back up his interpretation. Bill Nye also believes that the Bible teaches a young Earth, and he rejects Christianity.

Both speakers acknowledged that there are Christians and other religious people who hold to some sort of middle ground. I am in that middle ground: I am a Christian who believes the Bible does not set a date for the original creation, and I believe God may have used processes (e.g. biological evolution) to some degree to accomplish his creation objectives.

But what if there were only two choices? What if our only two options really were “young Earth creationism” or “naturalistic cosmological and biological evolution?” Which way would I go?

For me, the choice would be fairly straight-forward. My readers all know that I think young Earth creationism is a complete failure scientifically. Neither its arguments for a young Earth, nor its arguments for Noah’s flood being responsible for most of Earth’s geological features, hold any credibility.

So if given only two choices–young Earth creationism, or atheistic naturalism–I would unhesitatingly pick…

Young Earth creationism.

Why?

Because what I would have to believe in order to be an atheist is even more out of touch with reality than is young Earth creationism.

The statement

“In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth,”

is much more credible than

“The Cosmos is all that is or was or ever will be,”

or

“In the beginning nothing created everything.”

I find the classic arguments for the existence of God, such as the cosmological argument and the moral argument, to be compelling. Young-Earth creationism functions within a universe that could really exist. Atheism does not. This universe runs by laws–natural and moral–that came from somewhere. Atheism functions in a universe that is run by laws, but has no explanation for where the universe/multiverse, along with its laws, came from.

Fortunately, I don’t have to choose either Ken Ham’s way, or Bill Nye’s way. The Bible does not require a young Earth. Science does not demand naturalism.

Grace and Peace

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Notes:

“In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.” — Genesis 1:1

“The Cosmos is all that is or was or ever will be.” — Carl Sagan

“In the beginning nothing created everything.” — Not a quote from an atheist that I know of, but a good summary of one of the very few options open to atheists. The only other option I can think of is that the universe/multiverse is itself eternal, which doesn’t answer the basic question of “Why is there something rather than nothing?”