Do we accept God's inscripturated Word, or do we accept the word of science about the ultimate origin of man, the world and the cosmos? That is the basic dilemma we face as Christians in the secular world. We have to make a clear, well-thought­-through choice regarding which way to go. We have come to a fork in the road and we cannot travel both roads that lie before us. One road is that of supernaturalism, which says that God created the world and man supernaturally by the Word of His power. The other road is that of naturalism, which says that the universe and man developed by natural means, without God's special intervention. It is obvious that these two cannot be reconciled. Scripture does not allow for a mechanistic development of the universe, and secular scientists do not allow for any supernatural events. That the two cannot be reconciled, Abraham Kuyper saw clearly, and in his Evolu­tion Address of 1898 he strongly denounced any attempt to create a synthesis of biblical teaching and evolutionist dogma.

Some people think that "when science says so it must be true." That sounds good, of course. But what does it mean when we say that "science says so"? First of all, science does not say anything at all. Science is an activity which some people engage in. So it is the scien­tists who do the saying. And it is only some scientists that say certain things about particular subjects. Who are these scientists? Sometimes they are atheists and sometimes they are Christians. Therefore, a better ques­tion to ask would be whether a cer­tain thing is truly scientific: not whether some or most scientists believe it, but whether it can be demonstrated to be correct and true. If it is truly scientific, i.e., true to what is actually in the world around us, there can be no conflict with what God says in Scripture. Truly scien­tific theories, therefore, are never in conflict with God's Word and we never have to worry about those.

When we look at the currently popular secular theory of the origin of the universe, called the "Big Bang" theory, are we dealing with something truly "scientific"? Can the Big Bang theory be demonstrated to be in accord with what we actually know about our universe? And the answer is NO. It is not scientific, even though it is held by many scien­tists, even some in our Reformed circles. This theory could be true only if the assumptions were correct. But certainly the assumption is false that the slogan "the present is the key to the past" would also hold for ultimate origins. It surely does not agree with the scriptural teachings which indicate that God super­naturally and discontinuously called certain things into being. The con­cept that God would initiate the universe by means of the Big Bang and then let it develop mechanistical­ly, strictly according to the laws of nature, is totally foreign to and in­compatible with the scriptural con­cept of the divine Creator calling things into being. Only if the develop­ment of the universe were strictly mechanistic could the Big Bang theory be correct, since it is by the knowledge of the laws of nature that the possibility of the Big Bang event is calculated. Anything supernatural at all in the development of the universe would throw off your cal­culations and prove your reasoning faulty.

Is there not an element of ar­rogance in pretending that throughout the centuries nobody has been able to understand what God was trying to get across to people, until just recently when at last "science" (i.e., secular scientists and those Christians who jumped on the bandwagon) had got it all straight through scientific studies? Would our modern scientists be able to do what they think God could not do, i.e., to explain adequately how this universe came into being? No way! Just remember what God answered Job!

I do not think that the classical way of interpreting the early Genesis chapters creates any necessary con­flict with the real facts that we see in the created structures around us. When God speaks of creating this world in six days, the Hebrews at Mount Sinai understood days as we understand them today. The all-knowing and all-wise Jehovah God surely knows how to communicate with His people. I have difficulty thinking that God would lead us into thinking of 24-hour days if they really had been long periods of millions and billions of years. God is a God of truth and He does not mislead.

While God's testimony is fully reli­able, we cannot say the same for the testimony of men, not even if they are scientists. As scientists we try to be objective and truthful, but often we do not succeed.

A major problem arises when we do not start our theorizing with Scrip­ture as our basis. Only God's Word can give us the true picture of what happened at the very beginning. No human being was present during the creation week until Adam appeared. So we can know something about the creation week only on the basis of what God has revealed. Then we put our data of science into that biblical context and develop our scientific disciplines. But if we start with the secular framework and its supposi­tions, and build our theories and science on them, then we will have difficulty squaring what God says about the universe and its begin­nings. The question then is whether God's infallible Word will be our final authority or whether it will be the words of secular scientists. Remember that "science" does not say anything. It is the scientist who is making the claims. The data do speak, and we have to accept those data, those things that are truly facts. But men's words we have to weigh very carefully, lest we forget whose authority is supreme.

We can apply this to a question which is becoming more current among us. Not everyone in our Reformed circles believes that Adam was created supernaturally by God as described in Genesis. Some enter­tain doubts and play with theoretic possibilities of man evolving from the big apes, supposing "dust" could mean some form of animal life. But as a Biologist I find not a shred of scientific evidence to support such an hypothesis. In fact, the evidence seems to be strictly against it. And it appears that such an approach is poor theology as well, since Scrip­ture gives no hint at such ideas. In order to make it sound acceptable at all, you would have to twist Scripture considerably and go through some impressive mental gymnastics. But above all such travesty denies the authority and superiority of Scrip­ture. We believe in the perspicuity of Scripture. Believers can understand what God is saying to them. We do not need the scientific elite to understand God's Word, whether they are theologians, geologists, or any other kind of scientists.

On whose Word will we rely? We have to make the basic choice be­tween God's Word and men's words. There is no middle way. You cannot have it both ways. There is only one right choice. It has to be God's Word.