How Can I Make Sense of it All?

How Can I Make Sense of It All?

By Stephen M. Golden

You’ve been told contradictory information. You've been given incomplete answers and answers that just don't make sense. You've probably been told Science refutes the Bible and that believing in God is irrational. How can you trust what the Bible says? How can you know the entire Bible is true? How can you make sense of it all?

The first thing to understand is that your whole outlook on everything will be directed by your primary premise.[1] That will determine your worldview. No one is bias free. Your primary premise is that ultimate concept you believe to be true. It is a premise that does not rely on any other premise in order to be true.

In other words, if you take statement ‘D’ and say, "I believe 'D' because of 'C'; I believe 'C' because of 'B'; I believe 'B' because of 'A'", and so on, eventually you would come to a logical statement that is the source of all your other reasoning. Very few people ever actually do this, but whether you do it or not, and whether you realize it or not, you still view everything through your worldview which is based on your primary premise. This primary premise must be accepted on faith.

For most people, virtually everyone, whether they know it or not, this premise is their belief about whether the Creator God exists. There are two possible positions: He exists, or He does not exist.

You may have assumed or even adopted a worldview without realizing it. Nevertheless, every belief or conclusion based on facts and evidence will be interpreted according to your worldview.

You've probably heard the phrase, "The facts speak for themselves." That is simply false. The facts never speak for themselves.[2] All facts must be interpreted. All facts will be interpreted according to your worldview.

Regarding the ultimate premise, whether God exists, without going too deeply into the logic of it in this article, from a strict logical perspective, only the belief in God of the Bible is rational—that is, having a reason to believe it. The belief that God of the Bible does not exist is logically irrational because you are reduced to a premise that has no rational basis.

A rational worldview must account for the

• Reliability of Memory - How do you know your memory is reliable?

• Reliability of the Senses – How do you know what you perceive is correct?

• Laws of Logic – How do you know there are laws of logic? You would first have to assume them in order to prove them

The rationality of the existence of the God of the Bible comes down to this: "The Bible must be the Word of God because it says it is, AND if you reject this claim, you have no basis for the Laws of Logic or knowledge itself." If you want all the details on this, I suggest you read The Ultimate Proof of Creation by Dr. Jason Lisle.

So, coming from the perspective that God exists, God gave His testimony to reliable men, and they wrote it down for us. For more information on this, I recommend The Case for Christ by Lee Strobel.

Regarding Genesis and origins, you have likely been inundated with the idea of millions of years most your life. It simply isn't true. The entire universe, from the perspective of the Earth, is a little more than six thousand years old.

A reality that has been kept from you is that most methods used to determine the age of the earth, the moon, and even the planets reveal a young age. The only dating methods that consistently yield really old ages are "radiometric dating methods." But radiometric dating has serious issues. There are a minimum of three assumptions made when estimating the age of something using a radiometric dating method:

1. The quantities of the initial materials,

2. That the decay rates were constant, and

3. That there was no contamination of the sample.

At least these three assumptions must be made; none of these assumptions can be proven.

Even given those assumptions, the problem is, radiometric dating methods yield dates of millions and billions of years for rocks that are known to be less than 100 years old. If the methods aren't accurate for rocks of known age, why would one presume them to be accurate for rocks of unknown age?

Regarding the Earth, geology, fossils, and such, I highly recommend Dr. Walter Brown's Web site www.creationscience.com, which presents his book, "In the Beginning…." You can read the entire book online.

I have several Videos and PowerPoint presentations regarding much of this information on my own Web site, https://www.smgolden.com/videos and regarding humans,

https://www.smgolden.com/where-are-all-the-people.php These, and more, are found in the Creation section under the “Videos” menu.

I also have some documents under the Theology menu that relate to making sense of it all: "Red Sea Crossing", "Science is a Game", and "Searching for Moses".

There are other articles you might find interesting and useful as well.

I hope this gives you a starting point in your search for truth. May God direct your path. (Proverbs 3:5-6)