Truth

The other day my roommate and I went on a looooonnnnnggg trip. We left on a Saturday, ended up in in eastern half of North Dakota, and got back on Wednesday. I suppose that we averaged about 4 hours of driving a day. Which isn't bad compared to some people, but I, for one, was very tired of being in the car. To pass the time in the car we listened to a couple books on tape, both of which, through some odd coincidence, turned out to be by Agatha Christie.

For those who have never read a book by Christie, allow me to sum up the basic plot of many of her books (and of one of the ones we happened to listen to):

1. Crime is committed
2. Crime is discovered (generally in the form of a dead body)
3. Detective arrives on the scene, too late to prevent the tragedy but determined to find the perpetrator.
4. Through physical evidence and interviews with the suspects the detective complies a list of eclectic and nonsensical clues and questions that don't seem to fit together at all, such as:
1. The clue of the open door
2. The clue of no foot prints in the flower garden
3. The clue of the duplicate daggers
4. The clue of the girl with anxious eyes
   
5. The clue of where the body was
6. The clue of the chauffeur being sent away when guests were expected
7. The clue of the South American cigarette
   
5. The brilliant detective manages to fit all the bizarre clues into their proper places and arrives at the correct conclusion of who is guilty.
   

Then, by another strange "coincidence" my roommate and I had the opportunity to look at the Creation museum under construction in Glendive, and the two in conjunction started me thinking.

In a crime, no one would argue that there really is one person who is guilty of the crime, and the others are not, not matter how the evidence looks. In a novel, the detective always seems to be able to find that guilty person by correctly arranging the facts of the case. For example, the South American cigarette found by the body makes it look like someone from Chile is the criminal, until it is realized that the cigarettes were planted to confuse investigators. There are almost always at least two ways to look at any piece of evidence. The lack of foot prints in the garden may be because no one has walked in the garden for a long time, or it may be that someone recently smoothed it to erase their foot prints. The same fact, two interpretations. There's no lack of possible interpretations. The problem is to find one that fits ALL the facts of the crime.

In my mind, the debate between Creation and Evolution is much the same. They have, for the most part, the same evidence (though, unfortunately, both sides sometimes ignore evidence that they don't like). Both see "billions of dead things buried in rock layers laid down by water all over the earth" as Ken Ham says. One side says the animals lived and were buried slowly, over billions of years. The other side claims that most of this happened in one catastrophic event. Both have certain lines of evidence that they favor to support their side. The second side sites fossils that clearly were formed in times of catastrophe while the first side asks, "If it all happened at once, why do we never find fossils of dinosaurs with humans or even other more highly evolved mammals?" I admit that I believe one side over the other, but in all honesty, I must say that to this point, neither side has done a good job of putting all the evidence together in a way that makes sense and is consistent with all known facts.

Is their truth that can be known in this area? Undoubtedly. Indeed, perhaps some already know the truth, as detectives sometimes do, even before they can prove it. All that remains, then, is to collect and compile the evidence in a way so that the judge and jury can see what the detective sees and will convict the proper criminal.

We need a Hercule Poirot in the study of origins.