A friend sent me a list of questions from the end of a chapter from a book called Already Gone by Ken Ham. I answered them for her, and I figured I might as well post them here. Of course many books have been written on each of these questions, but here’s my quick answers.
1. Why am I here?
To glorify God.
2. Who is God?
The Creator. One God in 3 persons. The Father is God. Jesus is God. The Holy Spirit is God.
3. Who is Jesus and why is He the only path to salvation?
Jesus is God in the flesh. We have broken God’s law, and God isn’t obligated to forgive us. He made only one way for us to be forgiven–through the blood of Christ.
4. Why the Bible and not other holy books?
It’s impossible for the Bible not to be true. The God of the Bible is the only explanation for the existence of truth. If the Bible were false, there would be no such thing as true and false.
5. Why should the Bible be the authority in my life when making decisions and moral choices?
It is God’s message to us, and God’s law is the only basis for saying anything is good or evil–moral absolutes.
6. Why set boundaries on sexuality and marriage?
Because God set the boundaries in His law. If I want to know what kind of oil to put in my car, I look in the owner’s manual to see what the car’s manufacturer says. As the Creator of humans, He knows the optimal conditions for our operation.
7. If we are the descendants of one man and one woman where did all the different races come from?
Microevolution. Certain characteristics lend themselves to survival in a certain place, and those characteristics are passed on to the next generation. Microevolution is a loss of genetic information whereas macroevolution is a gain of genetic information, which is impossible. Poodles had a forced evolution by breeders from wolves, but they’re still dogs. They could never breed a flying dog.
8. How does one determine the value of a human life?
The only possible way to answer this would be Scripture. We are worth the price Jesus paid for us on the cross.
9. Dinosaurs and the Bible – how does that work?
There is a lot of interesting things about this. I believe it is a dinosaur mentioned in Job 40:15-19. Alexander the great talked about encountering dragons and there are carvings of dinosaurs in temples in Cambodia.
10. What is wrong with the world (suffering and death) when God supposedly made everything perfect?
Sin. I contribute to what is wrong with the world when I sin. One time this kid asked me why God allowed his bike to be stolen, and then he admitted that he stole the bike he was riding.
11. How can “what is wrong with the world” be made right?
There will be sin in the world until Jesus returns. We can contribute to the improvement of the world by taking dominion– having many godly children, evangelism, doing a good job at work, making money–good deeds in general.
12. Does science disprove or confirm history in the Bible.
In order to do science, you must presuppose that the laws of nature will be the same in the future as they’ve been in the past. That principle is called the uniformity of nature. Christianity is the only worldview that explains why we can presuppose uniformity. This is a huge problem for atheism especially. Science is impossible apart from the God of the Bible.
For a specific example of how biblical young-earth predictions have been proven true, they recently sent a satellite to Pluto. If Pluto was billions of years old, it would be a cold, dead rock with many craters. But they found that it has few craters. This indicates that there is recent volcanic activity. Also, it has a nitrogen atmosphere, which would be impossible if it were billions of years old.
13. Why does the age of the earth really matter to me and my life today?
If there was death before the sin of Adam, that would be a problem for Scripture. Jesus also talked about a recent creation in Mark 10, and the six-day creation is mentioned in the 4th commandment.
14. Why is it important that I believe in a literal 6-day, 24-hour creation?
Same as #13.
15. Did we evolve from ape-like creatures?
Evolution is one of the dumbest things I’ve ever heard. What are the incremental steps between a shrew that can’t fly and a bat that can? Half a wing is an impediment. And there are a million examples of things like that from a cellular level to things like animal evolution.
The simplest way to think about it is that DNA code contains information. Information only comes from intelligence. Mutations and natural selection only decrease information. You can’t have humans evolving from another species if it requires an increase of information. It’s impossible.