The Bible is the claim, not the evidence

[Mister Agenda]

Biblical Christians believe the Bible to be truth. So when asked what the truth is, as you have stated, we use scripture. The other reason (speaking for myself) I do this is because when I quote the Bible I am speaking upon the authority of His Word. If I were to give you my own thoughts and perspectives I come upon my own authority. If you are looking for something outside of scripture to prove the inherrancy of scripture (or a proof that God exists) one still has to look to scripture to discuss it. That being said from a non-biblical theist perspective (and not using scripture) I would say that creation (namely the earth and all the plants, animals, people, etc) is my evidence for the existence of God. I realize atheists reject creation because it speaks to a creator and they don't believe in one.

I can't speak for everyone, but I reject 'creation' as evidence for a Creator because it affirms the consequent, which is a fallacy. When an argument is based on a fallacy, its conclusion doesn't follow from its premises.

If God, then the universe.
The universe, therefore God.

suffers from the same problem as

If I am Ken Ham, I am a felon.
I am a felon, therefore I am Ken Ham.

So the natural question then arises: Where did we come from? If we were created then we believe in a creator. If we don't believe in a creator we look for another explanation.

Or, if we're honest, we don't hold any proposed explanation as true until there is good reason to believe it is, in fact, the true one.

I will only discuss evolution here because it seems to be the most widely held argument in opposition to creation and thus God. I will define evolution as chance through time.

Do you really think you're qualified to define evoluion?

Evolution seeks to prove that through time (millions of years), and chance (things just happened to come together in just the right manner) life was created and then evolved and humans are the most recent of that evolution.

You left out natural selection, the filter that takes the chance out of the process. It's a bit more complicated than that, yet infinitely closer than your description.

My evidence through creation is that God has given the creation as an evidence/witness for Himself. As an analogy: you look through a telescope at the moon. You see the American Flag on a pole stuck into the moon's surface. What is the more likely scenario; that the flag got there by chance through time, that it just happed (evolution) or that someone put it there (creation). Similarly the empire state building. I didn't physically observe anyone design and build this building. Yet I believe it was created and built by an intelligent designer (creation), and the building itself bears witness to it's designer/creator. (much like the mayan ruins and Egyptian Pyramids bear witness to previous civilizations). I do not believe that the building got there by chance through time (evolution).

If I misunderstood evolution as badly as you do, I wouldn't accept it either.

So scripture aside, there are and have been people who have held to the view of creation that reject the Biblical account of it. And as such they believe in a creator but not the one spoken of in the Bible.

That's nice. I like chocolate ice cream.

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Perhaps I was oversimplifiying evolution. But the concept of chance through time is how I was taught.

Ever think maybe you were taught it that way for a reason?

Your quote is "The theory of evolution says that life originated, and evolution proceeds, by random chance." No where in your quote are the words "natural selection". It does say that: "evolution proceeds by random chance" (and it "proceeds" through time). I think we can all agree that evolution is said to have taken time and that it happened through chance. Would "chance through time and natural selection" be a better definition? I think either way to respond to the op my "outside of scripture" evidence is creation.

Natural selection is to chance as a coin separator is to a random pile of coins. It imparts order. It removes variations that are less reproductively fit, and among the less reproductively fit are those less well adapted to their environment. The phrase 'randomness through dumping coins into a sorter doesn't make sense'. The phrase 'removing randomness through dumping coins into a sorter' does make sense. So does 'reducing chance through time through natural selection', or, better phrased, 'the elimination of variations less fit to reproduce over time through natural selection.'