When my oldest daughter married and moved to West Texas, I worried about how a young lady born and raised in Indiana would fare in an area that was essentially a desert. Leaving a state full of lakes, streams, trees, and fruit and vegetable crops for a world of cactus and yucca seemed to be quite an adjustment. When my daughter and her husband showed us a lot they were buying high on a butte, I worried even more. They were miles from town and surrounded by nothing but thorn-covered plants, mesquite trees, and bare rock and dirt.
Our first visit after they built their new house was during a time when they had been blessed with a great deal of rain. I was amazed at the transformation that had taken place in the landscape. Everything was green, and most things were blooming. Even the obnoxious cactus I always managed to get scratched by was covered with beautiful flowers.
One of the more beautiful areas of the United States is Bryce Canyon. There is no other place quite like it, so the processes and conditions there must be unique. Anyone who visits the area with its rugged landscape would be motivated to ask how it got to be the way it is.
It is interesting that we frequently see atheist authors and creationist authors giving the same answer to this question. Both say that you either believe that all of these geological phenomena–as well as everything else in the creation–was either created that way by God or it has come about as a product of blind chance. In both camps, there is a prevalent view that all things are either God-designed or chance-designed and that there is no other alternative. It is understandable why atheists would want to make such a narrow choice available. Not only does it push forward their religious view that there is no God, but it also makes belief in God seem to be a shallow and inconsistent view of reality. The problem of human suffering and disaster is a much more difficult area for believers to deal with if God is pulling all the strings and making it all happen. This viewpoint places belief in God in an illogical box.
It would seem that Bryce Canyon is the ideal place to show the foolishness of forcing only these two choices. Did God sit down and carve each pillar as an artist would carve a statue? If not, does this mean that chance formation of the environment that produced the columns is the only other option? How about the option that God designed the system and let it run its course?
Geologists believe there are a wide variety of factors that contributed to the production of Bryce Canyon. When the rocks that make up the Canyon were laid down, they were deposited in a flat area near sea level. The sand and the iron oxide that colors it were deposited in beds that were flat. After many beds had been laid down, a new material was deposited with complex minerals making it very hard. After the area had been covered with several more layers of material, the whole region was lifted up to 8000 feet by forces deep within the earth. Water eroding this uplifted area found it difficult to cut through the hard material on top. Once that hard layer was cut through, the water cut deeper and deeper instead of flattening the area. The hard cap rock remained as the softer rock layers were eroded. Does this process preclude God having any role in the carving of Bryce?
Many times we have emphasized that the Bible tells us that God brings about His will in two ways. One way is the performance of a miracle that only God can do. The Hebrew word bara (create) denotes this kind of process and is only used when referring to God’s activity–never human activity. The second way is that God makes things happen in a natural way with no miraculous action. The Hebrew word asah (make) indicates this and is often applied to things that even humans can do. At the end of the Genesis account, the author tells us that God used both processes in bringing about the Creation. Genesis 2:3 says that God rested from all the work he had “created” (bara) and “made” (asah).
A failure to understand both processes that God uses in bringing things into existence leaves us with many problems in a variety of areas. God’s capacity to heal is not only seen in miracles that defy acts of doctors, but also in the design of the human body, in our mental outlook, in plants and animals that provide us with drugs, and in environmental factors. The bad things that happen to us do not happen because “God does it to us.” They come as a logical result of the struggle between good and evil and as a consequence of what we have individually and collectively done to the environment. War, starvation, poverty, and the spread of disease are not God-caused, but the result of our refusal to live as God commanded.
“How many gallons of gas does one dinosaur make?” Marilyn vos Savant has a column in Parade magazine. In the February 5, 2017, issue (page 8), that was the title of her column, taken from a reader’s question. We get this same question in one form or another, usually from an adult, not a child. Many people believe the gasoline that drives our cars and all of our fossil fuels came from the bodies of dinosaurs that were smushed into crude oil. The fact that the Sinclair Oil Company had a green brontosaurus as their mascot for a long time probably contributed to this misunderstanding.
The real answer has much to do with our view of how God has provided for advanced human civilization. Ask yourself what you would answer if a young person asked where crude oil originated. In a Bible class context, the question might be, “How did God make crude oil?”
The answer to this question comes from our view of how God does things. Do we view God as a magician who zaps things into existence? Did God zap petroleum products deep underground so that we could find them and use them to drive the industrial age and our infatuation with gasoline-powered cars? We have tried to suggest over the years that God has used natural processes for most of what He has done. In Genesis 1, the Hebrew word for “create,” indicating a process that only God can do, is only used three times–verses 1, 21, and 27. These are all major items–space/time in verse 1, life in verse 21, and the human soul in verse 27. All the other verses in Genesis 1 use a word for “make” or “formed,” which implies a natural process. The bottom line is that most of what Genesis 1 describes were things formed by natural processes, not miraculous acts of God. Genesis 2:3 uses both words to describe the methods God used: “…he had rested from all his work which God (elohim) created (bara) and made (asah).” (Hebrew words in parentheses.)
So where did the gasoline for your car come from? The answer is that it came from an ecology that God created and shaped to produce it. That ecology was warm, had a particular chemical balance, and was full of single-celled animals called foraminifera and diatoms. They formed a tiny drop of crude oil in their bodies during their life processes. When the organisms died, their hard shells became diatomaceous earth, and the drop of oil united with millions of other drops to make a pool of crude oil. The dinosaurs were the agents that served as the gardeners to provide nutrients, prune, spread seeds, and generally control the ecology. Because God used this method, scientists can locate oil deposits miles below the earth’s surface. If God had formed the petroleum with a magic trick, humans would be unable to locate these resources. Because we know how the oil was formed, we know where to find it.
God used an incredible group of animals to prepare the things that humans would need. Not only was oil produced in this way, but coal, iron, and a plethora of other resources. God employed engineering skills and ecological genius to give us the standard of living we enjoy today. That is much more exciting than smushed dinosaurs.
Chances are you have seen the movie The Martian or the National Geographic TV series on Mars, with the hypothetical first colonization of the red planet. Politicians have jumped into the popular hysteria by making proposals about establishing human occupation of the planet. Some wealthy private companies are proposing to offer trips to Mars. But should we go to Mars?
There is nothing in the Bible that would attempt to restrict humans from leaving Earth. By the same token, there is no encouragement to do so. What the general public does not seem to understand is that God incorporated an incredible number of design features into the Earth for us to be able to live here. We have discussed those features over and over in our printed publications, in our Dandy Designs series, and also on our Facebook page. When you don’t have those design features available, human life becomes very tentative.
NASA has recently discovered that astronauts who flew to the moon were four times more likely to die from heart disease than those who had even the minimal protection of the International Space Station. Astronauts are also showing signs of what has been nicknamed “Space Brain.” This involves dementia and cognitive impairment. The effect of weightlessness is still being studied, but the loss of bone and muscle mass is known to be a consequence of living without gravity.
The cost of resolving all these issues is huge. Even though we will probably be able to overcome these problems in the distant future, we need to understand that God’s design of Earth is highly complex. Should we go to Mars? We may want to make sure we use our resources to solve the hunger, homelessness, and ecological issues before we venture to other worlds.
