4 Reasons Why Teaching Creation at a Christian College Is Important

When it comes to their science departments, most Christian universities and colleges either ignore the issue of creation and Genesis altogether, or they promote theistic evolution or some other harmonization of Genesis. There are only a handful of schools that believe that Genesis is historically accurate and forms a foundation for science, the Bible, and Christian education. In today's post, Dr. John Whitmore, Senior Professor of Geology at Cedarville University, shares four reasons why Cedarville holds true to a biblical, literal six-day Creation, and why we always will.

At Cedarville, we incorporate Scripture into every academic program; it is the foundation for everything we do here. Nowhere is that more true than how we teach Creation. 

So, why is it important for a Christian college to teach Creation? Consider the following:

1. It forms a foundation for the rest of Scripture. Because of Genesis, the world makes sense. There we learn why we have sin, death, disease, and suffering. We learn why the world is not the perfect place that we know a good God would have designed. We learn that man is specially created in God’s image and commanded to be a steward over the creation, but he is fallen. As scientists, we learn the origin of the time-space-matter universe: “In the beginning (time), God created the heavens (space) and the earth (matter).” 
2. It is consistently taught throughout the Word of God. Not only is the concept of Creation taught in Genesis, it is referenced throughout the Bible. Consider Exodus 20:11: “For in six days the LORD made the heavens and the earth, the sea, and all that is in them.” This is part of the fourth commandment and clearly says that God made all things in six days (not over thousands or millions of years). In Matthew 19:4, Jesus said that He made Adam and Eve at the beginning of Creation (not millions of years after the beginning). Throughout Scripture we can find many references back to Genesis, all of which consider events like Creation and Noah’s Flood to be actual, historical events that took place only thousands of years ago. 
3. It develops critical thinking within students. When students are presented with alternatives or competing views about something, it causes them to think critically about the strengths and weaknesses of various positions. Along with Creation, I regularly teach evolution, young earth, old earth, uniformitarianism, catastrophism, and many other views that will challenge my students to think.
4. It helps us develop hypotheses that can be tested. The book of Genesis has some interesting stories that can be restated as hypotheses and then tested with science. These are hypotheses that might not otherwise be considered if you approached science from an evolutionary perspective. For example, Creation implies an Intelligent Designer. We should be able to find examples of intelligent design throughout the physical and biological worlds. The account of Noah’s Flood suggests we should find evidence of marine inundation of all the continents. The genealogies in Scripture suggest we should find evidence of an earth that is just thousands of years old.

John H. Whitmore is a Senior Professor of Geology in Cedarville University's School of Science and Mathematics. He earned his PhD in biology with a paleontology emphasis from Loma Linda University. He speaks internationally on the topics of Creation, geology, and Noah’s Flood.