And on the Billionth Day

Recently, one of my daughters asked me a question about fingernails. As is typical for her, it was a question that required some thought in answering. After our conversation had concluded, I returned to my computer and resumed a reading of John Donne's Death, Be Not Proud. As I read it, I wondered (again, no doubt) what G. K. Chesterton's thoughts had been on the great English divine and poet, for whenever Chesterton happened to put his thoughts to paper, as it were, for any person, good humour and perspicacity are sure to be found. In so doing, I came across a delightful essay entitled A Visit from G.K. Chesterton. Within that essay is an excerpt from one of Donne's sermons which I'm almost positive I have read before, but which had theretofore failed to pique my interest sufficiently. It was that excerpt which brought to mind something written by David Hume, and which gave rise to the following...

Just over a hundred years or so years before Charles Darwin set the passions of the atheist godless types ablaze with The Origin of Species, the renowned Scottish philosopher David Hume, known for his skepticism and empiricism, who averred that there can be no knowledge apart from experience, wrote in his polemic against miracles, the following:

More than one hundred years prior to Hume's thoughts on the miraculous, John Donne, in contrasting human experience with miracles, wrote:

A miracle is a phenomenon for which experimentation can neither account nor duplicate. An event which is belied by our everyday experience, and is in fact belied by the experience of every person save those who state that they have experienced one. Even for something so seemingly innocuous and trivial as the presence of fingernails at the ends of our fingers, it fits the definition of miraculous from both the Christian and atheist godless type perspective: for there is no accounting that can be verified by experiment as to how it occurred, over which span of time, which 'random mutations' occurred in which sequence, how many such mutations occurred, in which gene or genes they occurred, and which intermediate or aberrant steps occurred along the way which can account for its seeming perfection to its task. All that the evolutionary hypothecist can proffer is conjecture and speculation.

Hence, in order to account for the wonders of nature, we have two approaches which vary in number but not in kind:

• The Christian believes in a miracle of creation.
• The honest evolutionist must confess a belief in a never-ending stream of miracles.

The atheist godless types posture themselves as above 'faith.' The reality is that their world view requires a profoundly blind faith which offers less than nothing to the pursuit of legitimate science: for not only is there no legitimate scientific result that requires the presupposition of evolution for it to be validated, believed, or put into practice, but in point of fact, their world view actually undermines the very pursuit of science itself, for it robs it of enduring purpose and motive. For without God, there can be neither lasting meaning nor purpose: all is ephemeral and tied to the accident of what has been termed the 'wet computer,' i.e., the brain.

It is therefore no coincidence that all of the foundational sciences were promulgated in the crucible of Christendom, largely by professing believers in Christ, for it was they who proceeded most carefully according to the dictates of a reasoned faith in establishing and refining the great and foundational schools of thought. As has occurred throughout the history of civilization, the atheist godless types only come along later after the foundations have been laid, and as they relax under the palm tree of civilization, munching the fruits of the trees that they had no part in planting or growing, endeavour to ridicule the beliefs and practices of the very people who provided them with their shade and sustenance.