Our Problem

The Truth about the situation we're in

This is an effort to present a fair comparison of a summary of two views of why we are here. Science is one of them because it has so much credibility from all it can do. The other is Christianity because it has so much to say about how we got here, where many other religions don't. If you are a believer in any other view, please do think of what your responses would be for each historical event below. 

This four Historical Event view of our existence is about as simple as it can be fairly represented. Many more items could be added to the table as additional issues that need an explanation, but this is a good place to start.

We're just doing some detective work here. For each response provided by the Scientific, Christian, or Other view of the world, we ask three simple questions:

1. Explanation - What is the explanation or claim being made in response to the Historical Event
2. Evidence - What is the evidence offered for the Explanation?
3. Is this Reasonable? - That is; Does the Evidence do a Reasonable job of supporting the Explanation?

Conclusion

What we're doing here is asking if these different views of the world match the way we actually observe the world to be. What we would love to see is a view that has "Yes" for every "Is this Reasonable?" in all its rows. None do though, which is why this isn't easy. Christianity is close to that in that it has a "Yes, if God exists" in each row. So, if God exists, then it has a good explanation for each Historical Event and therefore a good explanation for why we are here.

Science comes through this with one Yes and three No responses to "Is this Reasonable?". The most positive view you can take of this is to insist on a Yes for "Diversity of Life" if you believe that Neo-Darwinian Evolution is true. That leaves two Yes and two No answers which makes this a very incomplete explanation of how we got here. It simply isn't good enough to not even have any good theories for half of the major events responsible for getting us here. The "Before the Universe" (What caused the Big Bang) event and the "The First Life" events are too big to consider them details for science to fill in someday. 

Some in Science boast of Neo-Darwinian Evolution being a proven fact for how we got here. It is nowhere close to being a proven fact. In fact, advances in Science have revealed so many problems with it, that it isn't even a very good looking theory anymore. That isn't Science's real problem though. The bigger problem is that Neo-Darwinian Evolution only addresses the one Diversity of Life step in how we got here. Science doesn't even have a clue about two of the other steps. In other words, Science cannot explain why we are here. Not because it hasn't filled in a theory with the rest of the details yet; but because it is missing half of the theories and most of the details. 

Are you thinking neither Science nor Christianity wins this contest? Maybe some other religion would do better against Science you say. Feel free to make that comparison with your favorite explanation. But it will still at least have the same requirement that Christianity does of; Is there a god? So we will end up comparing Science, which has a very incomplete explanation of how we got here, to a religion which requires the hard to imagine existence of a god. If we will humble ourselves for a moment, it can seem obvious that the answer is beyond us. We can't be certain about why we're here. We really only have a choice to go with (Trust) the World View we're most convinced by or shrug our shoulders and say; We don't know.

Go to the A PLAN tab for steps you can use to answer the question of what happens when you die.

3/23/13