It’s a Battle Between Worldviews!

A study conducted by a group of University of Alabama researchers has been making its way around the Internet, so I wanted to comment on it. This study highlights that the creation/evolution controversy is really a worldview-based battle.

This study was an attempt to discover the role of religious belief in the acceptance of evolution. According to the study’s results, religious persons are far less likely than those who claim to be non-religious to accept evolution, regardless of how much evolutionary education they have. One of the coauthors of the study commented, “Religion is much more important than all the other measured educational variables, combined, in influencing their views on evolution.” Religion has such an impact on belief in evolution that, after exposure to evolution in college classes, “The only group of students who improved in their acceptance of evolution was the group of students who were the least religious.”

Some of the wording used by the authors of the study suggests that their results represent science vs. religion. For example, “in areas of the country where the vast majority of residents believe in God and the literal truth of the Bible, students may be hampered as they enter and progress through college. These same states tend to have lower state science standards and lower levels of educational attainment.” But this is a false comparison. It’s really a matter of observational science vs. historical science. Observational science is repeatable, testable, and observable. It’s what builds our technology and furthers medical innovations. Historical science deals with the past and therefore cannot be directly observed, repeated, or tested. What you believe about the past is going to influence how you interpret the evidence and what conclusions you reach about historical science.

This study actually highlights that the battle is simply not a matter of helping people understand evolution or teaching people the supposed evidence for evolution. It’s a battle between two different worldviews. Students who are committed to the starting point that there is a Creator are going to interpret the evidence in a different manner than their evolutionary or atheistic professors. It’s not religion vs. science—it’s a battle between two different interpretations of the same evidence! So, of course, religion should make a bigger difference in one’s interpretation of the evidence than evolutionary education (or indoctrination). Actually, what these researchers are really showing is the difference between God’s historical science (the Bible) and man’s historical science!

As Christians, our thinking on evolution and its counterpart, billions of years, needs to start with God’s Word. It’s God’s Word—not man’s ideas—that contains a true history of the universe. God was an eyewitness to creation and He told us how and when He did it in Genesis. Since God was there and He never lies (Titus 1:2), we can trust the account of history found in the Bible.

Thanks for stopping by and thanks for praying,

Ken

This item was written with the assistance of AiG’s research team