Cedarville Magazine, Spring 2017

At Cedarville University, we believe that God exists, and we hold to the “inerrant, infallible, and reliable” Word of God as authoritative “over the Church and the Christian’s life and thought.” To borrow from Francis Schaeffer, God “is there, and He is not silent.” His Word explains the origins of the universe, including the earth and all that inhabits it. We hold to a “literal and historical account of God’s creation of all things,” and that radically impacts the way we teach in every academic program. Below are just a few examples of how all Cedarville programs incorporate a creation perspective into their curriculum. SCIENCE At Cedarville, our science professors start with the foundation that God created the universe and all life on planet earth. The earth was not a piece of debris produced by a “big bang”; life did not evolve from a primordial soup of chemicals. In the field of biology, Darwinian evolution has become accepted fact. It is believed with a fervor rivaling religion. This is because Darwin asserted that “conflict facilitated natural selection,” and, as such, presupposed “a teleology, an end or goal in mind.” Teleology has to do with the way circumstances will work out, but it assumes a designer. Darwin assumed a teleology based on the strongest and best winning out, or survival of the fittest. Nature would determine the outcome of species based on their ability to survive and thrive. But in taking this position, Darwin substituted the creation for the Creator, making nature the grand designer, not God. Cedarville professors recognize the limitations of science to prove the origins of man. While science can corroborate the truth of Scripture, how the universe began will never be proven by scientific method. At Cedarville, we start with the foundation of Scripture as God’s truth and critique the theory of evolution on two fronts: epistemically (pertaining to the process by which knowledge is obtained) and methodologically (pertaining to an orderly process of investigation). Epistemically, we start with Proverbs 1:7, which IN THE CURRICULUM CREATION by Thomas Mach ’88 16 | Cedarville Magazine