Blaise Pascal (1623–1662)

It is nearly always possible to find someone who is more “expert” who will not accept the Christian world view.

Should we therefore wait until we are the oldest person on earth or the most educated person on earth to make up our mind whether we should be a creationist or an evolutionist? The obvious answer is no. God has created the world and our minds so that we use thought systems for interpreting the world around us. Each person, regardless of how old or how educated, stands equal before God. Each person is responsible for the world view he holds. Each person is responsible for interpreting the data. No one else has a right to do that for him. Each person adopts a world view based on faith. If he accepts creation, he does so by faith. If he rejects creation, he does so by faith.

Creation has not been scientifically or logically disproved. It is only disbelieved. Arlie Hoover writes, “When I recently read a passage from Pascal it lunged dramatically into the center of my thinking. Pascal reasoned that if God had wished to overcome the stubbornness of the most hardened of unbelievers he could have done it by revealing himself so openly that the truth of His existence would be inescapable. But, Pascal continued:

It is not in this manner that he chose to appear in the gentleness of his coming; because since so many men had become unworthy of his clemency, he wished them to suffer the privation of the good that they did not want. It would not have been right therefore for him to appear in a way that was plainly divine and absolutely bound to convince all mankind; but it was not right either that he should come in a manner so hidden that he could not be recognized by those who sought him sincerely. He chose to make himself perfectly knowable to them; and thus, wishing to appear openly to those who seek him with all their heart, he tempered the knowledge of himself, with the result that he has given signs of himself which are visible to those who seek him, and not to those who do not seek him (Pensees, #309).

Thus a young student needs to remember that he has as much right to believe as the oldest man on earth. Even though those around him may be applying tremendous pressure for a different interpretation, and even though the student may not yet be an expert, he can still be a good student while he remembers that ultimate truth does not come from “experts.” Ultimate truth comes from The Expert.

The Controversy: Roots of the Creation-Evolution Conflict, Donald E. Chittick, pp. 44, 45

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