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This is the book of the genealogy of Adam. In the day that God created man, He made him in the likeness of God.
Genesis 5:1

...and be renewed in the spirit of your mind, and that you put on the new man which was created according to God, in righteousness and true holiness.
Ephesians 4:23, 24

Our chief concern in The Creation Explanation has been to discover in the natural world evidence for intelligent, purposeful design. Such evidence, as we have seen, is to be found at every level of the universe, from the nucleus of the atom to the most distant galaxy. This evidence accords with the concept of the creation of all things in the beginning by a Creator. The Bible affirms the origin of all things the source and ground of all being, all reality to be the infinite-personal Spirit, God the Creator. And the Bible claims some three thousand times to be the Word of God to man.

We wish to draw The Creation Explanation to a close with a consideration of three vital questions: First, is there conclusive evidence outside of the Bible which supports the scriptural revelation that the Creator really exists and is the infinite-personal Spirit, not merely a force that moves or a substance that composes all things? Second, is it reasonable to believe that the Creator has something to say to man whom He has created? Third, is it reasonable to believe that the Bible is, indeed, the Word of God to man?

Ultimate Evidence of the Designer

Our search for evidence will now be closed with an examination of what has for thousands of years been considered by many scholars to be the most persuasive evidence of all. This evidence is to be found in the attributes of personal human nature. We call the sum of these attributes "the ultimate design." This, we assert, is the ultimate evidence for the real existence of the divine Designer, God the Creator who is revealed in the Bible.

Let us begin by analyzing human nature. The essential attributes are: (1) intellect the capacity to know, reason, remember, and use symbols, as for example, in spoken and written language; (2) affectional nature the capacity to have feelings such as love, fear, compassion, anger, and hate which are of a higher quality and actually different in kind from the instinctive passions of animals; (3) moral nature the sense of personal responsibility to exercise moral judgment, to do that which is right and eschew doing that which is wrong; and (4) will the power to decide and to act in accord with personal decisions. Thus the intellect, affections, and moral nature of man influence his will as he decides and acts.

This is the personal being, man, the highest being in the natural world. Personal human nature, in fact, makes man transcendent over the natural world. Our personal nature, so marvelous in its complexities and capacities, makes the life of human society infinitely superior, infinitely more meaningful than the life, say, of an anthill or a beehive, as wonderful as these may be.

Is it possible, then is it reasonable to believe that this essential human nature could have its origin in impersonal atoms and physical laws? Can all that man is, his personality and character, his attainments in philosophy, linguistics, literature, art, science, technology and social organization, his inspirations, religious faith and worship all this be nothing more than the natural effects of material atoms in motion, chemical reactions, and electrical currents. This what the evolutionary dogmatists would have us believe. Is the self, consciousness, the awareness of self, merely an epiphenomenon (an associated incidental effect) of the physical brain? In other words, is our self only an illusion having no existence independent of the chemistry and electrical currents of our physical brain? Or is personal human nature as well as the human body a creation of the infinite-personal Spirit, God the Creator. There are two competing explanations of consciousness, of the self the secular and the biblical. Which is correct? Let us compare these two explanations for the source and the essence of personal human nature.

The two explanations are in agreement that man came from dust, that his physical body is composed of the chemical elements found in the dust of the earth. The secular explanation, chemical and biological evolution, proposes that the atoms found in dust, together with water under the right conditions and a suitable flow energy , reacted chemically for millions of years to synthesize the first living cells and then, after several billion years of evolution, the human species. In this view the atoms have in themselves the capability of producing personal human nature. The biblical explanation, creation by God the Creator, proposes that only an act of special creation could form a living human body from impersonal, inanimate atoms, and that it was necessary for personal nature to be imparted to man's physical body by a higher personal Source. Consider, now, which one of these two mutually contradictory explanations is better in accord with the data of science.

First, is there any scientific evidence that atoms possess the attributes of personal nature? Do the atoms possess intellect? Affections? Moral capacity? Will? Is there any evidence that atoms reason or have feelings such as love, fear, or compassion? Is there any evidence that atoms have a sense of moral right and wrong? Or do they have a will to do or not to do? The answer to each of these questions is NO! Absolutely no scientific evidence whatsoever exists that atoms possess any of the essential attributes of personal human nature.

Second, is there any evidence that chemical reactions of atoms and molecules can give to the atoms and molecules either unconscious life or the attributes of personal, conscious human nature? NO, there is no such evidence. The major burden of our previous chapters is to document the pertinent scientific facts and from them reason logically to this scientific conclusion.

Which explanation, then, for the origin of personal human nature is more reasonable in the light of the available scientific evidence the view that impersonal atoms created man, or the view that a higher Personal Source had to impart personal nature to the human body composed of impersonal atoms? It seems clear that the creation explanation provides the logically more satisfying answer to this question.

In view of the above facts and conclusions, is it not basically an act of faith to believe that random interactions of atoms produced personal human nature? Yes, it is faith just as belief in the divine special creation of man is a matter of faith. We do conclude, however, that the biblical created man of faith is more consistent with the scientific evidence than is the secular uncreated man of unbelief.