Children have questions

on

Feb03

“A prudent question is one half of wisdom.” ~ Francis Bacon

Each morning, I drive my six year old to school, and we use it as “ask Papa questions” time.  My oldest is really smart (as most first-borns seem to be), and she is asking the hard questions.

Earlier this week, she asked me how God made humans, seeing that He has no body and is invisible (based on our previous conversations).  I explained to her the “God made man from the earth,” but she didn’t seem satisfied with that.  I then explained to her that some people believe that life started in a primordial puddle, then single-celled organisms formed, got more advanced, culminating up with humans.

I also told her that I don’t quite believe that version – I hated to introduce her to the fallacy of evolution, but I figure she might as well hear it from me first.  Partly, I want to teach her how to think, not just what to think, but partly because I don’t want her to think that I kept something from her.

In fact, that’s one of the reasons I came to DOUBT evolution.  When I first met Christians who doubted evolution, I thought that they were a little too fanatical, and besides, I had a science degree, so I knew better.  It wasn’t until I started looking into the counter-evidence that had been kept from me as a science student, that I formed a bit of a rebellious attitude towards evolution and it’s gatekeepers – I had not been told the whole story, and was kept from the counter-indications – told WHAT to think, not HOW. 

Further research proved to me that evolution has many problems, including statistical impossibility, lack of intermediates in the fossil record, lack of any real examples of macroevolution in the fossil record or in experiments (with fruit flies, for instance), no credible genetic evidence for the creation of novel information coding for new proteins, failure to explain the increasingly high level of information in the genetic code, and lack of explanation for regression towards the genetic mean, to name a few. Don’t get me started.

But I digress.  Today, my daughter and I talked about water towers, and how the pressure caused by elevating huge amounts of water pushes the water through our pipes, and into our house.  She was kind of amazed to think about that, so I’m sure she’ll ask to drive up close to see the big pipe coming down from the tank.

I love being the “answer man” every morning, teaching her how to think, giving her as much information as possible, and making her smart.  She’s gonna be a handful for her teachers later on – which, during middle school, might be her home-schooling Dad, I hope.