Home School Kids Carnival @ Alice's Bunny Blog

As I mentioned a few days ago Bunny is hosting a home schooled kids carnival at her blog. I think she did a great job! Make sure you check it out.

Creation vs.Evolution

Monday nights are Awana nights at church. I have been taking a creation vs. evolution class at church that meets at the same times the kids are at Awana. Monday's are a pretty long day for me. I tend to be on the go go go from 7:30 a.m to 9:00 p.m. So by the time I get to class, I am not always in the best place for knowledge input.

Today for example, they were talking about astronomy and the big bang. They turned off the lights so we could better see slides of galaxies and stars. I was struggling to stay awake before the lights went out. When they did, they might as well have handed out pillows.

Pillow talk not withstanding, here are a few thoughts about things I have learned or have had reaffirmed during the class:

I was brought up that evolution is fact. I shocked my mom at Thanksgiving when I told her I did not believe in it. I learned it as a theory, but it is a theory that is taught as fact. I saw a youtube video a few months ago where Matt Damon was on a talk show calling, then vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin, an idiot because she did not believe in millions of years. He went on to say that he couldn't believe anyone would think of giving her nuclear codes because of it. The implication is simple: anyone who doesn't believe in this theory (aka evolution) as fact is not playing with a full deck.

What I was reminded of during this class is, that evolution is a theory in crisis. It is a theory that people believe even when the facts dispute it. I am 100% convinced that it takes much more faith to believe in evolution than it does to believe in a literal biblical interpretation of creation. I read so many statements written by evolutionists that dispute evolution. Last week I read a report on the age of the earth. It basically said that the study they did showed the age of the earth was approximately 10,000 years old. They went on to say that the study could not be write because we "know" the earth is millions of years old.

My creationist views have, for lack of a better word, evolved, over the last 20 years. I used to find the idea of a young earth ludicrous. I believed in what is called, "theistic evolution." Now that seems like a have your cake, and eat it too, mish mash of theories. For the past 15 years or so, I have believed in a young earth (less than 10,000 years old.) Over the past 5 years, I have learned some science that has made that faith more fact based.

So that's where I stand on beginnings. What do you think?

A Poem from a Train

I lived in Russia from late 1992 to 1994. I lived in a city in Far Eastern Russia called Khabarovsk. For about a year of the time I was there I would regularly travel by train to a neighbroing city about 3 hours away called Birobidjan. Here is a poem I wrote on the train in March of 2004.

The Melting Snow of the Infinte Plain

Written on a train from Birobidjan to Khabarovsk

Dusk inserts contrast to the endless white before me

Small patchs of forest punctuate the crystalline desolation

Brush and barren soil testify

That the Herculean winter is mortal after all

A days journey nears completion

A circuitous route

Ends like it began

Thoughts of far and near

Of important and trivial

speed through the minds eye

Occasionally stopping.

At the stops

The view becomes clear and definite

Then slowly

Movement begins again

The everyday life becomes a blur.

Night has come to the winter plain.

Morning and Spring inch closer.

And the train rolls on.