This week we’ll go over Creation and Evolution
We’re using the “Handbook of Apologetics” by Peter Kreeft and Ronald Tacelli to go over the arguments for the existence of God. Today, we will be covering an attribute of God in relation to the above title. Dr. Kreeft teaches logic in two major universities, so his arguments tend to be clear, concise and very helpful.
Creation and Evolution
There is much to be said about the issue of creation and evolution. However, here we only summarize the answers to five essential questions: (1) Is creation possible? (2) What difference does creation make? (3) Is evolution possible? (4) What difference does evolution make? (5) Does evolution contradict creation?
Is Creation Possible?
When Jewish and Christian theologians first talked to Greek philosophers, the Greeks thought the biblical notion that God created the world ex nihilo (“out of nothing”) was absurd and irrational, because it violated a law of nature that ex nihilo nihil fit (“out of nothing nothing comes”). The reply was (and is) that:
1. It is indeed a law of nature, but the laws of nature cannot be expected to bind the transcendent Creator of nature.
2. The reason for this is that all of nature and all powers in nature are finite, but God is infinite; no finite power can produce the infinite change from nonbeing to being, but infinite power can.
3. The idea of God creating out of nothing is not irrational because it does not claim that anything ever popped into existence without an adequate cause. God did not pop into existence, and nature did have an adequate cause: God.
(The question “If God made everything, who made God?” is like asking “Who made circles square?” It assumes a self-contradiction: that the uncreated Creator is a created creature. It extends the law about changing things—that every change needs a cause—beyond its limits, to the unchanging Source of change. God does not need a cause, or a maker, because he is not made or changed. He changes other things, but is not himself changed by anything. There is nothing that comes to be in him, nothing that needs a cause for its coming-into-being.)
Kreeft, P., & Tacelli, R. K. (1994). Handbook of Christian apologetics: hundreds of answers to crucial questions (pp. 104–105). Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press.