A. Overall Lesson Objective

B. Learning Competencies

C. Lesson

Unit 3 is primarily about observing the universe around us from a biblical creation view. The concept is simple but nearly non-existent in typical school textbooks, teacher practices, and student exercises. Unit 1 and 2 cover God’s record of creation and what happened in the first generations of mankind, but the Bible goes much further. God talks about details of His creation in hundreds of additional Scriptures. When they are viewed as a body of true information, not a myth or simply poetic literature, one realizes that the creation, even in its fallen condition, points to the Creator. It is an exciting prospect to discover and study things that God talks about. We will show that it is His purpose for us is to observe carefully.

For most people, however, who have been immersed in only one view of a naturalistic universe that evolves by itself, excitement about creation that has God’s signature on it is foreign. As a result, this first lesson introduces the grand differences of the world views before going to the verses where God speaks of His own work in a variety of the books of the Bible. This will give a person some background to see the world from a biblical view while keeping the other evolutionary or naturalistic view in mind.

The importance of the biblical world view of the universe is emphasized in Romans 1:19-20, which clearly states that the evidence of creation is enough to show God’s attributes, so that we are without excuse for not acknowledging Him. Therefore, how we interpret what we see, even as young students, is important. Likewise, how people or institutions forget, avoid or even disdain the hand of God in creation can have consequences. The trend of humankind is linked to how we see things around us as related to God or not.

God never intended the Bible to be a science textbook. Detailed treatment of subjects, equations, laws and experiments are not part of the text. However, we are not talking about a science teacher, we are talking about the Creator Himself, the One who made all things, including the grand ordinances of the heavens (Job 38:33). The behavior of things, because He established the ordinances that govern the universe, we ‘discover’ and codify or write as scientific laws. They show some of the predictability of the world around us; it is not a random universe with accidental consistency. As we will show, He encourages His created people to discover this for themselves. He did not create robots; He created inquisitive people. It does not matter if it is a working parent in a rice field or a professor in a laboratory, He means for each one to stand back and see a universe that speaks of His attributes. In a sense, God is on our shoulders saying, ‘Look at this!’ He invites observation, study, and measurement.

Whether or not the scientist or factory worker or farmer observes what He has made and sustains, He expects us to observe the world around us. He even has the answer for what is not good (or sin), because the creation is suffering the consequences of decisions by Adam and Eve. These broken things can be observed and studied as well, and He knows we see them. The naturalistic view of the universe has no answer for why things go wrong because the ‘chance’ or ‘random’ mechanism that yields the universe can as easily produce something good or bad. It might be helpful to know the biblical creation view has a reason for things not working correctly. Because of the nature of the Creator, as Overseer and Quality Control Manager, He can be sought by people to solve some of those problems we observe. So, what we observe becomes important in this respect as well.

Because the biblical creation view has these simple truths (He made all things and what is not working is because of the consequences of sin), controversy was immediate. It took a very short time for Adam and Eve to say they wanted knowledge without God, or to be like Him but without Him. People have been repeating this ever since. Hence, when someone says, ‘Let’s look at what God has made,’ it can cause a reaction and sometimes anger in the heart of a person who is convinced that God had nothing to do with it. However, many younger or questioning people, who have not decided about the issue, want to know, ‘Did He really do this?’ The biblical view has the answers, and careful observations help underline those answers.

By this time you understand the basics of biblical creation but may not, as yet, appreciate how God points to creation in many parts of the Bible. As we introduce some of these parts, keep the controversy of world views in mind. It continues to have a large impact on people, coloring how they see the world around them.

The clash may seem to be a religion vs. science issue but it is not. The fundamentals of both world views are not particularly complex. Neither can be proven, but they are used to interpret what we see and experience. World views are like that: they are systems of faith-based beliefs by which people interpret the world around them. This statement may be bothersome because most people are taught that the naturalistic world view is scientific with confirmed evidence. That is not quite the case. Who was there (18 billion years ago for the universe and about 4-5 billion years for the earth)? Who saw life first produced from some sort of extraordinary ‘soup’? Where are the links to get us from ‘soup,’ to cells, to fish, to reptiles, to apes, and finally to us? Who saw them? The conjecture of the naturalistic or evolutionary view is believed as a conclusion: we came from nothing (ultimately) by accident, and it took a long time. In contrast, if the biblical record from God is believed, then we were created; all things were created, and it happened a few thousand years ago. Either world view can be believed. Once the choice is made, the things that are seen are interpreted accordingly. The short table below illustrates the basic differences in the world views with respect to time elapsed.

There are good reasons why creation scientists and specialists believe that the evidence of what we see makes much more sense with God at the foundation of it all. But if a person refuses to accept God in this position of authority, then the evidence must be interpreted as showing that the universe came about by itself. This is the underlying difference in the views. More detail will be discussed in the next lesson.

IMPORTANT NOTE: There is a problem with millions of years and death before sin. An explanation follows:

Some might think that it doesn’t really matter when God created, but the issue goes far beyond that. The long-age viewpoint is not only essential for evolutionary naturalism, it also strikes at the heart of the Gospel. How? The Gospel is based upon an originally good world, sinless and deathless, ruined by sin, to be restored in the future through Christ to a sinless, deathless condition once more. Yet the concept of ‘millions of years’ comes from the belief that the fossil record was laid down millions of years ago (and thus not by the Flood of Noah). But the fossils obviously show death on a massive scale, and also violence (animals half-eaten inside other animals) and suffering, including diseases like cancer that still affect people and animals today.

So, if the fossils are millions of years old, then those ‘bad things’ must have been in the world long before sin. So, they must all be part of what God calls all “very good” at the end of creation. It puts the Curse before the Fall of Man (see Unit 2 Lesson 1 and 2, if a review is needed). It also means that death cannot be the ‘last enemy’ as 1 Corinthians 15:26 calls it, because it would have been part of God’s world for millions of years. Genesis also indicates that thorns came after the Fall. But fossil thorns are found, so if they are millions of years old, this again contradicts Scripture. Jesus clearly believed in a young world as shown in Mark 10:6, with people at the beginning of creation, not towards the end (after billions of years). [Research note: see Jesus age earth.]

D. Assignment

Take a small handful of coins and divide them into two groups. Take the first group and drop them at random in a small area. Take the second group and lay them out according to a pattern that you choose that is deliberate. Describe the differences in actions that you took and the results for each case. Last, use this as you describe the difference between a random process and a directed process. (Three paragraphs of text are the maximum length of the homework.)

E. Learning Activity

Form at least two teams. Teams can be divided as Creation Teams and Naturalism Teams. Each one plans a Grand Reunion to recognize ancient generations for each group. Each team presents its first and last generation representative with at least two other mid-way generations in between. The generation representatives can be described or acted out.

🦕 CT? Explain what each generation is like, how they differ in age, and how they differ in physical and mental terms.

🦕 CT? What are the major differences in the first ancient generations that illustrate the major differences in the two world views about those ancient generations?

F. Concluding Assessment

There is significant controversy between the biblical and naturalistic views because of the dramatic differences in origins: where we came from and whether we believe that God was involved.