Ultimate truth: Creation science abuses the biblical worldview

I have dreaded writing this but am convinced that someone must stand up for the Bible. You see, creation science is not only bad science but it is also bad Bible.

Creation science claims to champion a biblical worldview. In reality it assumes a mythic scientific metanarrative that even science does not advance, as Allen Gathman has shown so well in his recent op-ed column.

What is the biblical worldview? Genesis 1:2 shows God hovering over the tehom, the primordial waters, the primordial chaos. God creates by bringing order out of this chaos. In Genesis 1:6 God separates the waters above from the waters below by creating a raqia or firmament, that is, something firm, as per the King James Version, or a dome, as both the New American Bible and the New Revised Standard Version translate it.

Clearly we have here the three-tier universe as we find it in Exodus 20:4 which speaks of "in heaven (shamayim, the name that God gave the raqia or dome in Genesis 1:8 above), or that is on the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth."

Any attempt to reconcile these passages with the world as we know it today is to reject the biblical worldview and impose our own worldview. It is to shape the word of God in our own image rather than allowing the word of God to shape us. The Bible is not only written in the language of its day, it is written in the science of its day as well. This is the word of the Lord. Thanks be to God.

The Bible itself does not take the creation account in Genesis 1 literally. Genesis 1 says that God made the animals prior to the making of humanity and that God made man and woman simultaneously. Genesis 2 says that God made man first, then the animals, and then woman. Each Hebrew phrase in these passages begins with a "vav consecutive" which indicates consecutive events. Any attempt at grammatical gymnastics that try to harmonize these two variant orders of creations is to impose our conclusions upon the text rather than to take authoritative Scripture as it stands.

Ultimately the Bible is concerned with the "who" and not the "how" of creation. These are the concerns of Scripture. It has no concern for our "scientific" issues. This is the word of the Lord. Thanks be to God.

Now, intelligent design addresses the need for a "who" without a "how." It does not advance a six-day creation. However, as Gathman has shown, it is bad science. It is also bad theology. To proclaim the works of God without God is to deny God. We cannot know God's works apart from God, nor can we know God apart from God's works. We cannot secularize the works of God and honor God. Gathman has shown us that these issues are beyond the limits of what science can know. Why must we continually try to limit God by subjecting God to a thought process God transcends?

Creation science allows what science has taught us to define truth. It abuses the Bible by forcing it into the mold of the world as we know it. It does not allow the Bible to define what is ultimate truth for us. Its concerns are not the concerns of the Bible. A truly biblical worldview will be free of such modernist concerns. Intelligent design will deny the person of God in order to dissect God's acts under a microscope.

It is time to let science deal with the facts within the limits of the scientific method and to allow the Bible to define what we know to be ultimate Truth by faith.

Kerry H. Wynn teaches biblical literature in the Department of Political Science, Philosophy and Religion at Southeast Missouri State University in Cape Girardeau.