I am a builder. I’m going to build a house. When my house is finished, or rather a day after my house is finished; logically my house is one day old. Now, in order to build my one day old house, I used the following materials. There were bricks, timber, slates, plasters, sand and cements, various metals (steel, lead, copper), and plastics.

Bricks are manufactured; usually by firing raw clay. The brick manufacturer probably makes bricks about two years in advance of them being delivered to my site. The clay was probably delivered to the brick manufacturer 3 months in advance of him firing his bricks. The clay on the other hand, has been laid underground probably since the beginning of time.

Now bearing all this in mind, my house is one day old. Or is it? Can you see where we are going? My one day old house, because it was made of bricks, suddenly becomes as old as the planet.

God to, is a builder. Instead of building houses though, He builds universes, galaxies etc. To build said universes, He too uses materials. So which builder’s merchant does he go to? As a creator, God cuts out the middle man. He cannot buy his materials like I would; He is responsible for sourcing, manufacture and delivery of all the materials He requires.

By counting back through the Bible, a fair assessment of the age of the earth would be a meagre 8,000 years (stay with me here). Yet modern day scientists would have us believe that through the science of carbon 14 dating, using the known decay rate (half-life) of radio-active isotopes of carbon (carbon 14), the earth would more realistically be aged at 60,000,000,000 years of age. Here we have a huge quandary. Do we believe the Bible, a book that has some degree of proof to it (More to come on that one later). Or, do we believe the scientist: Thus rendering the Bible to be incorrect. If so, then we must ask ourselves; why is it correct only some of the time?

Perhaps like my day old house built of ancient materials, the planet earth was made of materials previously known to God. The human race is historically a very self centred, even arrogant race. We assume that everything revolves around us. Where we are told that the earth was created in seven days, we wrongly assume that God was created along with it, even though no where are we actually told that this was so. God could well have been around 60,000,000,000 years ago, creating the materials, the very components He required to create our earth. The fact that it took a mere seven days to cobble them all together now seems somewhat irrelevant.

Science, a means of proving theories by measurement, calculation, observation or experiment has gone a long way towards disproving the doctrines of the Bible. (Carbon dating being one example). Darwin’s theory of evolution is another point in view. Here, Charles Darwin, following his father, relates a theory that all life forms have evolved from one main species. In a course of natural selection, the survival of the fittest, he tells us that species have evolved to best suit their environs. From this theory, science tells us that man has evolved from the apes. Using the horse as an example, we have been shown that from a creature with the stature of a medium sized dog, the horse has evolved to its more recent size. We are given a long array of similar skeletons charting the horse’s evolutionary history.

Can we apply the same train of thought to mankind though? After all, there are still to this very day, some very large gaps in our skeletal history and most importantly we are still missing proof of the initial transition from apes to humans. The Bible tells us we were made in the image of God. We should therefore have already been perfect. Why then would we need to evolve? Humans, unlike any other creatures we know of, are capable of thought. We don’t need to evolve. If we cannot stand the cold, we develop a means of harnessing heat. If we are hungry, we learn to farm or hunt. we develop tools to help ourselves in our quests. Instead of evolution, the deployment of learning and teaching what we have previously learnt to our offspring is a better way of depicting the way that man, Homo-Sapiens Sapiens, has developed. Something which modern manufacturing has termed research and development - R & D for short.

Another problem with evolution is that of the time scales that are involved. By selective breeding, it can take centuries to make any real impact. Of course these days, things can be speeded up by means of genetic engineering. But who was there around to carry out such fantastic feats as these if we hadn’t by then even evolved? When God had finished creating the earth and all that is on it, He looked at his work and said that it was good. Why then the need for change? Does this not suggest that “Good” was somehow not good enough and who are we to judge anyway? Maybe the provision of evolution was always a part of God’s master plan. After all the Bible tells us He was ‘the beginning and the end’. With his foresight, he would have known in advance that things would have to meet planetary changes. Things would have to develop. This being the case, why replace creation with evolution? Why can the two not go hand in hand?

As proof (something the scientist really gets off on) of how conceited we are, once upon a time the earth was the centre of the universe. We knew it too. After all, we are the be all and end all aren’t we? Now along comes some smart Alec with a telescope (scientifically developed of course) and changes the whole structure of the universe. All of a sudden, we are not the centre of attraction, we are just another planet, one of nine, orbiting a new centre of attraction – the sun. To make things even worse, our sun was just one of many other suns rotating around a galaxy, not even in the centre of that galaxy. And worse still, that galaxy is one of many others, not even at the centre of the universe. The poor men who discovered this lot went against the church by implying that God’s master plan was flawed. But where were we actually told what God’s master plan really was? All we had to begin with was a theory that somebody put forward, that the church leaders of the day chose to accept and then guarded it as if it were their own personal crown jewels. Their problem now lies within the bounds of infallibility. For them to change course they would be seen to be fallible. How could they let that happen when working for God? This is really where all the problems regarding religion stem from.

The trouble with religion is, which religion do you follow? Time for a quick history lesson. In the beginning, the Bible tells us of the Jews and the Gentiles (Atheists). When Jesus was crucified, he took with him all the ceremonial laws of the Jewish faith but the Jews rejected Him. So a new religion was formed – Christianity. The problem now of course is that there is an awful lot of Christianity to choose from, each group, church or sect purporting to be ‘the one’. But which which is which? How can all these Christians be so different and yet still claim to be Christians? Why so many denominations?

When I was ten, my father bought a computer; in its heart it had a chip. This chip was a 286 processor. He had a 286 computer, at the time the only real computer. Then, came the 386 processor. Then the 486 and the 586 (Pentium). So what have we got? Now we have four different chips, four different processors, but at the end of the day we still only have a computer on our desk. The only difference is the level of spec with the inclusion of progress. As with computers, Christianity can be defined in the same way. This is quite an over simplification, but let’s see how it unfolds.

In an ideal world, the scriptures would have remained intact, as pure as the first day they were written. The early Christian church was charged with all religious matters and did quite well up until the day they were adopted by the Romans. Through this marriage, the church became apostate. They adopted all forms of pagan doctrines and rituals, removing their parishioners further and further away from the truth. These were the Roman Catholics.

It was not until the onset of the Protestant reformation that people started to re-affirm the basic principles of ‘Sola Scriptura’ (the Bible only), past truths were slowly being rediscovered, and one by one, corrections were being made. Now when people form a certain set of beliefs, they tend to sit on their laurels, happy with what they have discovered; their ‘new light’, their quest for truth inevitably ends. This is where we are with Christianity.

When God sent his son to the people of Israel, they REJECTED new light and truth. The Jews refused to change from the religion they were brought up with, hence Christianity was born. The Church of Rome (Catholic) took charge of Christianity, watering it down and burdening its faith with rituals, traditions and ceremonies, changing fundamentals like the Sabbath and adding mystery with transubstantiation, Holy Water, confession, purgatory, penance and indulgences. The Bible was removed from the public, ignored and forgotten. It was in the dark ages.

Then came the Protestant Reformation. After the Church of Rome had turned cruel and apostate to God’s truth, new light was given by Martin Luther, the Catholics REJECTED it so was born the Lutheran Church. When God further gave new light through Conrad Grebel about Baptism, the Lutherans REJECTED it, so the Baptist Church emerged. Then came the Calvinists with more light and when further truth came through John Wesley, the Calvinists REJECTED it so now we have the Methodists. Then came the Sabbath truth and along came the Adventists. This story goes on and on and on with so many more and more denominations being added to the list. That is why the Christian Movement carries such a wide spectrum of differing creeds all trying to sell the same story. Like the computers mentioned earlier, each one a Christian, but with a different level of spec. Each denomination  not moving forward through fear of losing their infallibility. This is why the argument for Christianity so often fails.

So let’s look towards science then. Science, a practice in its relative infancy has had many great successes. Something which it can genuinely be congratulated for. There are two problems arising though. The first problem arises, when, because of its past successes, it gets carried away with itself, proclaiming truths of its own – even when they remain unproven (e.g. Ape to man). It too can be fallible. Take for instance the drugs industry not too long ago, where supposed wonder drugs did more harm than good (Thalidomide for example). Although science does have a habit of taking over, who is it that tests the testers? Wherein lies probably the greatest flaw of science.

Science comes at a cost and in this day and age the bearers of said costs are usually only interested in pushing science toward their own goals and objectives. Science can and often does carry a bias for the paymaster, so is our science as infallible as it likes us all to believe? And how can we be really so sure, in our relative infancy of modern science, as to challenge the true creator of all things, GOD?