The Proceedings of the Eighth International Conference on Creationism (2018)

individual claims as truth claims— i.e. , data. Just as descriptions of the physical world are considered data in secular science, the truth claims of Scripture are considered data as well. In fact, since the physical world makes no claims of objective truth at all (these must be deduced by humans), and Scripture does, Scripture is the first place we should go for data. Devotional Biology takes this approach, and in this sense it can be said to have a biblical worldview. Devotional Biology begins its study of biology with the Bible and its claims about biology, and consults with Scripture all along the way. Christian traditions that put less truth value in Scriptural claims will not be comfortable with Devotional Biology . Most biology texts will never mention the presuppositions of science. It is the biblical worldview of Devotional Biology that explains why it discusses the presuppositions of science. It is only the Christian God Who would create the world in such a way that humans could know Him. And for that to happen, the world and humans had to be specially designed so that humans could study and learn from that world. Those special designs (order, unchanging laws and processes, comprehensible design and sufficiently complex human brain, correspondence of universe design and human language, etc. ) turn out to be the presuppositions of science—the very things that make science (and biology) possible. Thus, it is creation by the Christian God that explains why science exists, why science works, and why we should study it. B. God-Centered As mentioned above, Devotional Biology starts with Scripture. Scripture starts with God (Gen. 1:1). In fact, Scripture starts and ends with God, and centers on God. God preceded the biological world. The biological world came into existence because of God and the biological world continues to exist only because of God. In fact, Romans 1:18-19 indicates that God created the physical world in such a way that it contains physical illustrations of the invisible attributes of God so that humans could ‘see’ those invisible attributes. Therefore, one reason the biological world was created, was to illustrate the invisible nature of God. Based on this, Wise (2005) suggested that the nature of God we learn from Scripture could be used to better understand the created world, and also to organize the study of that world. This becomes one of the primary organizational themes of Devotional Biology —the middle thirteen of the fifteen chapters begin with an attribute of God derived from Scripture, and then turn to the biological world to determine how biology illustrates that attribute (biological life illustrating God’s life, biological discontinuity illustrating God’s distinctness, biological mutualism illustrating God’s goodness, animal behavior illustrating God’s personhood, the anthropic principle illustrating God’s love in provision, biogeochemical cycles illustrating God’s love in sustenance, monomers and biological systems illustrating God’s unity, biological diversity and disparity illustrating the Trinity, netted hierarchy [Wise 1998] illustrating God’s unified hierarchy, communication and DNA illustrating God’s word, and reproduction and diversification and biogeography illustrating God’s fullness). It is for this reason that these thirteen chapters are titled with attributes or descriptions of God (‘The Living God’, ‘The Glory of God’, ‘God is Distinct’, ‘God is Good’, ‘God is Person’, ‘Provider God’, ‘The Sustaining God’, ‘God is One’, ‘God is Three’, ‘God of Hierarchy’, ‘The Almighty God’, ‘God the Word’, ‘Fullness of God’). Since the first chapter explains how biology can be used by the believer to better know and serve God, and the last chapter shows how the history of the biological world mirrors the history of God’s interaction with humans, Devotional Biology begins and ends with God and focuses on God throughout. Most biology texts focus on organisms and/or people who study them, and this is reasonable, given that organisms are spectacular and there have been a host of biologists worth learning about. However, Devotional Biology focuses on Someone even greater— the One Who created both man and organisms. Besides providing physical illustrations of God’s invisible nature, Wise (2015, pp. 38-40) also introduced the ‘spectrum of perfection’ concept. God’s invisible attributes are in some sense or another infinite. If God desired us to understand his invisible attributes, it seems reasonable to assume He also wanted us to understand their infinitude. Wise (2015, pp. 38-40) suggests that for each of these infinite attributes, God did not just create physical illustrations, He created many physical illustrations. And, God had each unique illustration picture a distinct degree of perfection of that attribute, so that the collage of illustrations produces a ‘spectrum of perfection’ of that attribute. At the same time, God created humans with the natural tendency to notice that spectrum of perfection and arrange the illustrations in a linear fashion from illustrations with no amount of that attribute to illustrations that contain the greatest perfection of that attribute. Simultaneously, God created humans with a natural tendency to extrapolate beyond the observed spectrum of perfection toward something with an infinite measure of that attribute— i.e. , towards God Himself. Thus, not only do most chapters of Devotional Biology refer to physical illustrations of God’s invisible attributes, but most chapters also refer to biological spectra of perfection illustrating the infinite character of God ( e.g. the spectrum of perfection of biological beauty illustrating God’s infinite glory, the spectrum of perfection of biological mutualism illustrating God’s infinite goodness, the spectrum of perfection of biological communication illustrating God as the infinite Word, etc. ). The divine illustration perspective of Devotional Biology leads to markedly different interpretations of several areas of biology than seen in traditional biology textbooks. For example, whereas most biology texts fail to address the question of the nature of life itself, creation by a non-material God of life permits discussion in Devotional Biology of the likely non-physical nature of life. Secondly, whereas most biology texts fail to address the question of biological evil, creation by a good God almost demands discussion of the post-creation origin of natural evil. Thus, Devotional Biology discusses the origin of biological evil and the curse of Genesis 3. Fourth, whereas most biology texts may mention some of the ‘fortuitous’ niceties of this universe for life, they will not discuss the possibility that they actually are designs. Devotional Biology , on the other hand, is free to discuss the anthropic principle and its most obvious explanation (that the universe did not just look like it was created for man, it really was created with humans in mind). Finally, whereas most biology texts discuss the structure and function of DNA and those associated phenomena with communication-related names ( e.g. , genetic code, transcription, Wise et al. ◀ Devotional Biology ▶ 2018 ICC 257