Why Beliefs Matter

“For the only piece of real wisdom is to know that idea, which by itself will govern everything on every occasion.”1—Heraclitus (540-480 B.C.)

Why did an old sick philosopher named Heraclitus bury himself in manure before dying around 480 B.C.? He believed that if treated with excrement, his dropsy (edema) would be cured. What a person believes can play out in some very interesting ways; sometimes sad, sometimes magnificent. I’m hopeful that my own beliefs won’t lead to the same fate Heraclitus suffered.

As a Christian making an imperfect attempt at being a Bible believer, I know that my beliefs not only impact my actions, but impact my entire perception of the world. And, being trained as a Darwinist—all secularly trained biologists are—I understand the belief that struggle for survival and excess reproductive capacity, combined through the miracle of natural selection, make everything from fragrant orange blossoms to noble elephants and uncounted single-celled marine organisms, not to mention myself. This belief system views organisms, or their components, as selfish; dedicated only to their own survival. But is that really borne out when we look at life and the rest of creation? Is life even possible given such a premise? Struggle and competition is what Darwinists are required to see; they may even think, as Darwin did, that “there is grandeur in this view of life.”2

I disagree. There is no grandeur in believing that billions of organisms suffered, struggled, and died to bring me into existence. It is horrifying, and there is a much more beautiful and obviously true alternative. A Bible believer observes the creation and is free to see the work of the infinite Creator God in the empirical evidence. The Bible presents multiple eyewitness accounts of the infinite Creator God whose actions can be observed and who ultimately came into His creation as one of us. Darwinists, like the Epicureans of old, appeal to infinite time and space that put observation or witness accounts beyond possibility. But there isn’t infinite time or space to work with. If there were infinities that explained everything, science couldn’t be a productive tool for understanding reality, because everything could just as well be a product of pure chance as anything else.

The biblical record of life’s actual origin reveals that interdependence and cooperation is the plan that originated in the mind of God.

Cooperation, Not Competition

The Bible presents Christians as part of an integrated body, the church, made up of diverse individuals working together in the same way the parts of our created bodies cooperate (see 1 Cor. 12:12-27). If God’s church is that way, why not the rest of creation? In fact, when you look at life, starting from the molecular components of cellular machines all the way up to entire ecosystems, everything does work as an integrated whole. Bees are not struggling against flowers any more than flowers are struggling against bees when the one comes to pollinate the other. They are interdependent, with each benefiting from their shared relationship. The biblical record of life’s actual origin reveals that interdependence and cooperation is the plan that originated in the mind of God.

Understanding that life was created as part of a robust and integrated system, rather than via a process of endless struggle for survival by autonomous organisms in a fight to the death with the rest of creation, has led me to see so much more in nature than I would have otherwise discovered. Entire ecological cycles are the result of a gloriously beautiful mutual interdependence. A personal favorite has been the exquisite global nitrogen cycle mediated by numerous microscopic interdependent organisms that make the existence of all other life not just possible but a living, breathing, and abundant reality.3

Cooperation and interdependence really are the principles that underlie life, allowing it to exist and thrive. In other words, the principle that Heraclitus was searching for that governs everything on every occasion is ultimately the central characteristic of the Creator Himself, love. Understanding this central principle of life, and thus the exquisite beauty that exists for us to discover, requires, first, belief in the Creator. Anselm of Canterbury put it this way:

“I do not seek to understand in order that I may believe, but rather, I believe in order that I may understand.”4

1 Diogenes Laërtius, The Life of Heraclitus II, Book IX, pp. 376-382, inC. D. Yonge, trans., The Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers (London: George Bell and Sons, 1901), p. 376.

2 Charles R. Darwin, On the Origin of Species (London: John Murray, 1859), p. 490.

3 H. A. Zuill and T. G. Standish, “Irreducible Interdependence: An IC-like Ecological Property Potentially Illustrated by the Nitrogen Cycle,” Origins 60 (2007): 6-40.

4 “Neque enim quaero intelligere ut credam, sed credo ut intelligam.”