The first asserts that a Supreme Intelligence created intelligences
i.e. earth now holds about 6 billion people, each is an intelligence.
The second holds that non-living specs of dust eventually bounded
themselves into a living awareness of their own existence to produce
such things as pizza parlors, bowling alleys and art museums.

In a very real sense Theism holds that life came from life, whereas
materialism asserts that life derived from dead dust, that man's
ultimate origin is slime-- and that when humans physically die, they
cease to exist.

Thus the question of origins leads us to the question of destiny. If
all that exists is matter and its motion then we have no destiny.
Conversely if we are the creation of a loving, personal God, then our
life has purpose and our destiny can be eternity.

The writings that describe this God and His Creation are embodied in
66 Books collectively known as the holy Bible-- writings affirmed as
such by Jesus Christ, and authenticated when He bodily rose from the
dead three days after being publicly put to death. Historical accounts
that survived internal, external and bibliographic tests document at
least 3 eye witnesses and 6 independent testimonies.

Perhaps the simplest way to illustrate how the Bible relates to the
physical world is through the following example: If I design a
television set, and then write the repair manual, then both must
agree. In the same way, if the same Intelligence authored the Bible
and created our world, then both must likewise agree. In other words,
the Bible's description of our world must align with what we see and
measure.

In this sense the Bible is like a jigsaw puzzle cover. It shows what
the entire picture will be when each puzzle piece is put in its proper
place.

In reality each of us go through life collecting puzzle pieces in the
form of observations and communication. Materialism can be viewed as a
scene of the ocean, whereas Theism can be likened to a scene of the
sky. When we pick up, say, a blue puzzle piece we need to make it fit
somewhere in the puzzle. Materialists view it as a piece of the ocean
scene, whereas Theists understand it to be part of the sky scene.

For example, consider the lever arm of a bat, frog and man.
Materialism explains these as descending from a common ancestor who
had a lever arm (the ocean scene), whereas Theists understand these as
an optimum design i.e. three paintings from one Artist.

The Bible reveals that our world was created by God for a purpose. In
this sense the Bible tells us what was done, who did it, and why.
Differences among Christians arise in the questions: How and When.

With respect to when, some Christians believe that all that we see and
are is only 6000 years old. Other Christians believe that Scripture
does not reveal the time of Creation or the age of the flood. The
latter believe that the Bible is silent on the age of things prior to
the time of Abraham.

A second difference arises with regard to "how" God Created. Some Some
CHristians believe God created everything instantaneously with the
appearance of age. If so, then all time measurements are meaningless.
Other Christians believe the Bible does not reveal how God created,
and that God could have used processes that unfold through time.

It has been asked: Since God is all knowing and wise, why did he leave
us with writings that he foreknew would leave room for Christians to
differ? Some have suggested that is was to test our love for each
other, without which everything else would be meaningless.

However these things not withstanding, the vastly more important
questions are who did the creating and why, rather than how and when.
The reason is that the "who and why" address the very foundations of
human existence.

Do we exist as a result of the random motion of matter? Or do we exist
as the Creation of a loving, personal God? In attempting to answer
this question we will appeal to science-- because science is an
empirically based system of logic, and logic is that virtue by which
true prevails. To that end it may prove helpful to understand what
science is (and what it is not).

Science is a process yielding provisional knowledge about our world.
It's conclusions are never known with certainty. They are only known
to a certain degree of confidence. Scientific progress is showing next
year that what we believe today to be true is, in point of fact,
false. And we spend billions of dollars on it.

Scientific knowledge is not only provisional-- it is also synthetic.
This means that science only describes events in space and time. Our
experience shows that only three (3) kinds of events exist: those that
are reproducible, unpredictable, and Singular.

Reproducible events lend themselves to scientific inquiry.
Unpredictable events lend themselves to statistical inquiry. But
singular events lend themselves to legal inquiry.

Questions of origins e.g., the origin of the world, the origin of life
and the origin of man are one time events. They lend themselves to
legal inquiry.

Science has no proper jurisdiction in questions of origins or
questions of destiny. Science operates in the present-- not the past
or the future. But where then does science come in? And what role does
it play with regard to origins?

Science gathers evidence to accept or reject the hypothesis of a
particular theory. It does this is through a "P H D". The "P" is for
Predictions, the "H" for Hypothesis, and the "D" is for Data. However
the predictions must be rational, the hypothesis refutable, and the
data reproducible.

The predictions are rational when they satisfy the pattern of logical
relations in our mind. The hypothesis is refutable when it fails any
prediction whose assumptions cannot be satisfactorily altered to make
it true. The data is reproducible when other workers at other
locations and at other times replicate the data under the same
empirical circumstances.

The paper "Origin of World" is available on "www.genesisfoundation.org"
and discusses widely accepted peer reviewed scientific evidence that
bears on the question of the origin of our world. Another paper on the
topic: "Is Big Bang Biblical?" also available for download from this
website also offers much evidence on the subject of our world's origin.

Theism understands our world in terms of design by Intelligence.
Materialism view the world as the happenstance of random outcomes. The
first offers us eternity beyond the stars. The second lures us back to
the scum of a mud hole. The question before us is, what does the
empirical data found in peer reviewed, scientific source literature
published in the professional journals teach?