Faith or Credulity?

I often hear folks attending my workshops at the Creation Museum comment that “it takes more faith to believe in evolution than it does to believe in creation.” But “faith” may not be the right word for belief in either evolution or creation. Perhaps it would be better to say that “it takes more credulity to believe in evolution than creation.” The Merriam-Webster online dictionary defines credulity as “readiness or willingness to believe especially on slight or uncertain evidence.” The word credulity seems to perfectly fit belief in bacteria-to-man evolution. Faith, on the other hand, generally involves belief or trust in something or someone who has proven faithful.

The Bible defines faith as “the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen” (Hebrews 11:1). It is surprising to see nouns like “substance” and “evidence” used for things “hoped for” and “not seen.” But it requires just such a confident faith to believe that “God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life” (John 3:16). The Bible tells us how we gain a saving faith in this marvelous Gospel: “faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the word of God” (Romans 10:17).

But is faith required to believe in creation? For example, does it require faith for me to believe that the human eye is a product of intelligent design and that the designer is God? The only two candidates for this designer is God or man—and I know man didn’t do it. Indeed, man’s best effort so far at designing a total eyeball replacement is known as a “glass eye.”

The Bible tells us that the evidence for God’s handiwork in creation has been made so obvious to everyone that it can only be denied by suppressing what we know to be true:

For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who suppress the truth in unrighteousness, because what may be known of God is manifest in them, for God has shown it to them. 20 For since the creation of the world His invisible attributes are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even His eternal power and Godhead, so that they are without excuse. (Romans 1:18–20)

The hummingbirds that hover around the feeder outside my bedroom window every morning are all the physical evidence I need to know for a certainty the eternal power of God. Yet on my clock radio, the Ninety-Second Naturalist confidently assures me that the hummingbird is the smallest dinosaur ever to have evolved on earth—now to believe that takes credulity.