Step 6:

Step 6: Choose to Believe the Intelligence Beyond Nature is the God of the Bible.

We stand on Step 6 having reasonably concluded that the material evidence on earth leads to a logical inference of an intelligence beyond nature. We now examine reasons to take the final step: reasonably concluding that this intelligence is the creator God of the Bible.

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By choosing to believe that the intelligence beyond nature is the God of the Bible you will come to know the truth that can set your mind and heart free. Free from the tyranny of a meaningless existence. Free from thoughts of insignificance and worth. And free to explore creation through the eyes of one specially created for loving relationships on earth.

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If God is your creator, then evolution is in league with the greatest thief in the universe, the one said to come "only to steal and kill and destroy." Evolution, if you choose to believe it, steals your worth, kills your dignity, and destroys your purpose for living. Thus, we must choose wisely.

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Step 6 will be presented in 3 parts:

• Part A: Scaling the Wall of Impossible Truth

• Part B: The Law of the Third Human Being

• Part C: The Fact of Life

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Part A: Scaling the Wall of Impossible Truth

The God of the Bible is said to have many scientifically non-rational (but not irrational) attributes, one of which is his self-existence. That is, God had no beginning; he is eternally existing. He was never created and he has no beginning and no end.

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No cause acted to cause God to exist; he is uncaused. In scripture God gives his name as "I AM" meaning, at least in part, that he exists in an eternal "is-ness" of being. There was never a time when God "was not" and there will be no future state when God "will not be." He simply is.

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Many people have a hard time getting past this non-rational attribute of eternal, uncreated, existence: How can something that exists be uncaused to exist? Where did it come from?

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How can anything in the cosmos have existed eternally, even before the cosmos came into being? What does it even mean for something to exist "before" time even existed?

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An uncaused cause that exists despite not being caused to exist is, indeed, a problem scientifically. We know of no scientifically sound reason to believe that anything that exists was not caused to exist by something else. As some have expressed, we understand in simple terms that “nothing comes from nothing.”

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Surely, if nothing ever existed, nothing would exist now. – C.S. Lewis

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Our human reason agrees that "nothing comes from nothing" and this seemingly iron-clad fact makes it difficult to imagine an equally iron-clad corrolary: Logically, there must have always been something because something exists now.

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What are we to make of this mind-teasing truth?

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For one thing, we need to recognize that the truth that something must always have existed stands regardless of whether God exists or not. This fact derives not from the Bible or religion, but from logical reasoning. Ancient philosophers with no knowledge of the Bible or God, and no inclination toward religion, came to this same conclusion.

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If we soberly ponder the issue, as the ancient philosophers and many others have done before us, we find there is no rationally satisfying answer to what is called an "infinite regress" of prior causes in nature. Every cause must have had a prior cause, which had a prior cause, which had a prior cause ... and on and on to infinity.

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But we can also agree with Bible-less intellectuals like Aristotle and Plato that the only reasonable, logical conclusion remaining to us is that there can be no infinite regress of causes into the past. Superthinkers throughout the ages all agree that the regress of causes must, without question, end with an uncomfortable but uncontroversial fact: the logical necessity of an uncaused cause in the universe.

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Think about this for a moment: Regardless of one's knowledge of, or views on, the Bible's God, the logical, inescapable fact of our universe demands the necessity of something that exists without cause and is the cause of all else that exists.

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God or no God, something must have existed eternally uncaused to cause all that exists today.

Seeking to rationally pin down the particulars of an uncaused cause that is ultimately the cause of human beings now looms imposingly in our path to truth as the Wall of Impossible Truth.

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We have no categories of thought to even imagine an uncaused thing in the universe. To correctly imagine such a thing seems impossible, and trying to do so fatigues the mind. It appears that a rational way forward is blocked by this seemingly impenetrable wall blocking our way.

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We can resolve the impossible truth we face by reasonably linking the necessity for an intelligence beyond nature with what we now know must be logically true about an uncaused cause. We can survey the landscape of knowledge available to our senses, both in nature and in writing, and consider the competing interests for a creative uncaused cause.

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It does not take long to notice that the mindful God of the Bible is disclosed as one who necessarily exists eternally without cause. And this God is also disclosed as omniscient: He knows everything as an intelligent being. And he is described as omnipotent: He created everything that exists.

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The God of the Bible meets the requirements of being a creative uncaused cause.

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It seems very reasonable, logical, and probable that the God of the Bible is the "intelligence beyond nature" we are seeking. And because his self-disclosing revelation to humans matches with what we know must be logically and rationally true, we can reasonably believe him to be the creator of the universe and all that is in it. In this course of action, we agree with Aristotle’s dictum that one should always prefer the probable impossible to the improbable possible.

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Many will wince at this thought, calling this belief in God “a leap of faith” into the unknown. But we must not minimize faith; it is the only way to scale the Wall of Impossible Truth. And we are not leaping into the unknown. We are, in fact, leaping into the known!

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We must not minimize faith; it is the only way to scale the Wall of Impossible Truth.

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Materialists, faced with the same wall of impossible truth, scale it by adopting the equally non-rational belief that matter alone is the “something” that exists eternally without cause. There is, of course, no scientific reason to believe that matter could have eternally existed uncaused, much less that this matter would be a creator of all that exists today.

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So, the belief in eternally existing matter is no less a faith belief than a belief in the God of the Bible as the “something” that necessarily exists eternally without a cause.

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We find in examining the necessity of an uncaused cause in the universe an interesting truth: Everyone believes something unbelievable.

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Everyone believes something unbelievable. Everyone must make a leap of faith! Self-existing, eternal, uncaused matter and a self-existing, uncaused God are both unbelievable in their own ways.

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But, importantly, scaling the Wall of Impossible Truth with a faith belief in eternal matter does not get us to Step 7. We are still left on Step 5, seeking for an intelligence beyond nature.

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If God really is the “something,” the uncaused cause, then our “faith” in him becomes not only a correct reasonable belief, but it conforms with our prior evidence-based conclusion: the need for an intelligent cause. Just as Aristotle reasoned that this necessary first cause must be an “unmoved mover,” we can reasonably assert that the first cause can be God. For example, consider the argument formulated by Thomas Aquinas in his Summa Theologica:

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Nothing is caused by itself. Every effect has a prior cause. This leads to a regress. This has to be terminated by a first cause, which we call God.

Consider that everyone believes something unbelievable. Everyone must scale a wall of impossible truth that ends the impossible infinite regress of causal agents in the universe. The choice between competing explanations for impossible truths becomes a choice based on all the material evidence we hold being illuminated by the light of unbounded reason.

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We conclude that it is reasonable to choose the impossible truth that the God of the Bible has existed eternally uncaused as the intelligence beyond nature. And one reason we propose the choice of this belief is because we can—our open philosophy permits unbounded reason to prevail.

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Materialists, atheists, and naturalists and all those unwilling to choose as we did at Step 1 cannot; their chosen worldview forces them to only one impossible truth. Their closed philosophy does not permit choices among competing alternative impossible truths; their "choice" is not even a choice.

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So, we submit that at least on this basis it is reasonable to believe the “intelligence beyond nature” is, in fact, the God of the Bible. Certainly, it is just as reasonable as any other explanation, and more so considering, as we will see, that the recorded works of the God of the Bible conform with the necessary natural conditions we observe for human life on Earth.

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Part B: The Law of the Third Human Being

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Where did the third human being on earth come from?

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Think about that question for a moment. The answer, while simple on one level, carries profound implications for the origin of human beings on another.

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Recall our discussion in Step 4 about random mutations as the sole source of new life forms and features. We reasonably concluded in Step 4 that random mutations alone (or, for arguments sake, in combination with natural selection) could not be believed capable of building the new DNA hardware and re-programming the new software necessary to create a human being from a sea sponge.

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Now consider another fact of nature: The new life forms created by random mutations must, at some time, result in something we call a new "species." Definitions of species can vary, but one primary definitional requirement for designation as a "species" is that two members of the same species can mate to make a third fertile offspring of the species.

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Consider the reasonableness of believing that random mutations in the genome of hermaphroditic sea sponges—replicating over billions of generations—resulted in billions and billions of random genetic mutations fortuitously and aimlessly changed into two, parallel re-programming paths to create at the same time and place two very different but perfectly compatible genomes, one each inside of an interbreeding male and female human being.

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Evolutionists often characterize such arguments as ours as “arguments from incredulity.” It is true that if a state of affairs is impossible to imagine, it doesn't follow that it is necessarily impossible.

But if a state of affairs is impossible to rationally imagine based on reasoned consideration and understanding, we have every reason to be incredulous. So let us move on to rationally explore with more reasoned consideration to understand the answer to our opening question regarding the origin of the third human being on Earth.

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According to everyone--creationists and evolutionists--there was a time in the history of the Earth when the species Homo sapiens did not exist. And, of course, we know that Homo sapiens exist today. Logically, then, both creationists and evolutionists agree that sometime in the past the first Homo sapiens appeared on Earth. This first Homo sapiens must have been either male or female. If male, of course, this first Homo sapiens had all the unique-to-male DNA codes to build unique-to-male male components for reproduction which included complex unique-to-male anatomy, unique-to-male bodily fluids and fluid transport systems, and unique-to-male hormones responsible for maintaining the unique-to-male male reproduction system.

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Our third Homo sapiens could have been reproduced only by interbreeding our first Homo sapiens male and the second Homo sapiens on Earth, which must have been a female. This second Homo sapiens had all the unique-to-female DNA codes to build unique-to-female female components for reproduction which included complex unique-to-female anatomy, unique-to-female bodily fluids and fluid transport systems, and unique-to-female hormones responsible for maintaining the unique-to-female female reproduction system.

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Pondering the above evolutionary scenario for the origin of human beings—which must have happened if evolution is true—certainly does leave one incredulously skeptical of evolution.

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The necessity of the first two contemporaneous—in time and place—male and female of a species to produce the third person of the species is therefore necessarily a prerequisite for the existence of the human race. To embrace as an explanation the evolutionary process—that innumerable generations of error-laden DNA replication from a sea sponge could ever produce even one of a human species—is, it seems, unreasonable. Complicating such a belief is the requirement that the evolutionary process produced at the same time and place both the first human male and female of the species.

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As free thinkers, we can consider a different creation scenario because we already know that the evidence on earth points to an intelligence beyond nature. Thus, we are free seek other accounts of a creation scenario in which male and female are created at the same time and place. We find such a creation account, of course, in the Bible. In Genesis 1:27 we read:

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So God created man in his own image; he created him in the image of God; he created them male and female.

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This does not make the Bible’s explanation of creation true, but the striking emphasis in the Bible’s account of the coincident making of male and female at the same time and place weighs in its favor as correlating with what we observe in nature and what we know must be true for the creation and propagation of the human species.

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For this reason, we take the necessary facts of nature required for the creation of the third human being on earth to be highly indicative of the truth of the Bible's creation story in Genesis. And by extension, we can reasonably conclude that the necessary "intelligence beyond nature" is, in fact, the God of the Bible.

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Part C: The Fact of Life​

We move now from the facts of life to the fact of life.

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We carefully consider a topic which cannot be ignored: the idea of life itself. We have not explored this topic to this point because evolutionary theory assumes a living organism as pre-existing. That is, Darwin was concerned with the origin of species, not the origin of life.

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Why is there life? and what is it?

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Consider this question: What is the difference between a dead cat and a live cat?

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All humor aside, think carefully about what, exactly, differs between a healthy live cat and a recently deceased cat, say a young healthy cat just moments after being deprived of oxygen. Each cat possesses exactly the same material composition with all the right parts in all the right places. But even though both have exactly the same incredibly complex material “stuff” built by their respective virtually identical DNA encoded instructions, both have the complete myriad of components and systems connected up and ready to go, and each may be separated in their respective states by mere milliseconds, one has something the other has irretrievably, permanently lost. What is it?

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“It,” of course, is “life,” that elusively certain quality that divides all of nature into “living” and “not-living.”

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The distinction between “living” and “not-living” should be artificial to naturalists—after all, to them the living are just another form of otherwise dead matter in the not-living material universe. But using our senses and observing nature, we reasonably suspect that “life” is more than just a result of the right recipe whipped up with ingredients from the periodic table of elements.

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Occasionally a news article will pop up about this lab or that “creating life from scratch.” We have to wonder why a true scientist genuinely interested in creating life does not ask, “Why do it the hard way?” Why not try to create life in an already existing, fully equipped, perfectly suitable material housing, such as the body of our unfortunate dead cat?

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Asking the question forces the answer that everyone knows but few evolutionists consider seriously: there is no amount of “scratch” in the material universe that can be combined with just enough of this and enough of that, heated up, pressed down, and zapped with lightning to result in “life.”

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The likely truth of the matter, necessarily denied by naturalists, is that the essence of life is more than matter alone and more than the result of natural causes. Life, we know from every sense within us, is something that invisibly animates matter right up until the moment it departs, leaving the exact same material composition in a condition commonly referred to as death.

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Despite any news stories, sensational announcements, or miraculous claims, everyone knows deep in their own minds, hearts, and souls, that life is different—itis more than matter.

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Life, whatever it is, remains something that cannot be explained by the random banging about of atoms flung out by the Big Bang.

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In addition, then, to the need for a creation scenario in which the complete bodily forms of male and female are created at the same time and place, we also need to account for the life that animates them. In the Bible we find such an accounting of life animating the first male and female physical bodies. In Genesis 2:7 we read:

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The Lord God formed the man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being.

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Again, this does not make the Bible’s explanation for life true. But the strikingly intentional description of a life-infused human provided in the Bible’s account of the creation of the first humans correlates with what we know must be true for the origin of the human species.

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Conclusion​

There are, of course, many, many more arguments that can be used to show that the God of the Bible is the creator of the universe, including human beings.

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But in the interest of keeping our steps simple, we submit that the three reasons above are sufficient for open minds to agree: The God of the Bible is reasonably believed to be the creator of human beings.

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We have now arrived at the knowledge of twin truths to inform our choice of creation beliefs.. First, we have seen the failure of evolutionary theory. Second, we have seen the success of the Biblical account in conforming to the evidence on Earth. These twin truths should inform the minds and hearts of all people of good will everywhere to believe in the God of the Bible as their creator.

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