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When Dave awoke, it was daylight. The others were already busy repairing their torn packs, washing, or hunting for food. Dave took some time to wash in the creek in the cave mouth. The water was surprisingly warm. When he had rearranged his pack and properly stowed the ropes that he had put away hastily the previous night, Hanomer returned with a brace of trout from the lake.
“The fish were biting, friend Dave,” said Hanomer cheerily. Hanomer finished cleaning and fileting the fish and soon, the delicious smell of fresh, pan-fried trout wafted over their little encampment. Dave realized how hungry he was.
They sat in a circle, eating together, naturally taking up positions that let them watch for danger from all directions. We have unconsciously become a veteran fighting force, thought Dave. I can’t think of a better set of friends with whom to take on a dangerous quest like this.
With the sun in the southwest and the cliff wall just behind them, this terrace would be in shadow for most of the year except possibly in high summer. It was definitely a land of shadows. Dave’s attention was attracted by Linder’s voice suddenly rising in vehemence.
“Al, the only reason you’re unwilling to admit that all the unusual flora in these isolated ecosystems is another striking example of evolution at work, is because you’re so damn committed to your Christian worldview you can’t even accept this obvious evidence to the contrary.”
Those two! thought Dave. Here we are fighting to stay alive and they still have time to get into one of their interminable evolution debates!
“So, Floyd, are you claiming that evolution is a defeater for a belief in Christianity?”
“Not only do I say it, but Christians say it tacitly by fighting against it so much when the evidence for evolution is so overwhelming.”
“I think you’re dead wrong, Floyd. Let me show you why with a thought experiment. Let’s say that you had an application on your cell phone that let you scan back in time and actually see what happened in the past rather than speculating about it from circumstantial evidence.”
“Ah this is new. Where are you going with this?”
“Bear with me. There is a point to this thought experiment. Let’s say your phone was able to verify every one of the claims made by Darwinism and our current theory of the origin of our solar system and planet: the earth is about five billion years old. The moon was formed by a massive collision with the proto-Earth, and then water from comets formed Earth’s oceans.
“From this hostile environment then, the incredibly complex, stereospecific molecules of life formed, and self-assembled to give rise to life on earth. In other words, my hypothetical app supported Darwinism on every point.”
“I’m listening,” said Linder.
“Now let me use our little time machine for one more point. Let’s say we went to Palestine about two thousand years ago and followed the life of a carpenter’s son who claimed he was Yahweh, the God of the Israelites come in the flesh. And our cell phone application showed that this carpenter had indeed died by crucifixion and then rose from the dead followed by his inexplicable disappearance. Then, using our app, we confirmed, as we read in the book of Acts, this risen carpenter was not dead, but continued to interact with his followers. What do you think, given those two verifications by our app, has Christianity been defeated?”
“You tell me,” said Linder.
“I think that if Christ had not risen from the dead as the Apostles and all the first-generation Christians testified, then that is definitely a defeater for Christianity and our confidence in the truth of our beliefs is null and void. But being wrong about Darwinism is not a defeater.”
“But doesn’t that mean the Bible is wrong and misleading when it talks about creation in seven days and an earth without a sun or moon?”
“Not necessarily. The Bible can always be right, but our interpretation of it can be wrong. Look, from my understanding, God is always reaching down to communicate with us. That means He steps into time and talks to us using our words and our world view. When he spoke to the Hebrews, he constrained Himself to their language and their understanding of the world in order to communicate. After all, if God is using the Hebrew language to communicate, then He can’t very well speak in quantum mechanical terms or relativistic terms since the Hebrews at that time knew nothing about such things and had no words capable of communicating those concepts.”
“So, if that’s true, why do you guys fight against evolution so much?”
“Because many of us simply don’t believe that the evidence supports it. I don’t believe that one can grow these complex living organisms by chance, no matter how long one waits—and we don’t have to believe it because we don’t need evolution to explain the world. If one believes in God, one doesn’t need a timeline that is so long that the patently impossible apparently becomes possible. We recognize that no practical experiment can be carried out that verifies this evolutionary assertion. You see Floyd, loss of Darwinism is a defeater for your world view of Materialism, but real substantiation of Darwinism is not a defeater of my theistic world view. That’s why you and others in the atheistic camp have to go to such enormous lengths to defend Darwinism. That’s why many people in your persuasion spend so much time taking anyone to court who even criticizes Darwinism in the school system. You can’t just say ‘since we all agree to search for the truth, let’s put all the data on the table and talk about it.’ You cannot even have a reasonable conversation about evolution with us. It’s your camp that has to shut down the opposition. You have things exactly backwards.”
“Al, you’re saying this two-thousand-year-old carpenter is still alive and presumably is still talking to you? Do you realize how crackers that sounds? If you weren’t my friend and I didn’t know you as I do, I’d figure you were an escapee from a mental institution.”
Dave could hear Al chuckle. “Yeah, I know Floyd, I get that a lot. Yes, my relationship with Jesus is very real to me, but I can see how it looks to someone with different beliefs.”
Dave couldn’t help smiling. Arlana came over to him, sat down, and nestled up to him. “Why are you smiling? I haven’t seen you smile for days, my love.”
“Why? I guess just listening to Linder and Al go at it with their verbal jousting made me realize that some things never change no matter the circumstances. Their passionate arguing brings back a little bit of home. It tells me things are not as hopeless as I’d imagined. I know it doesn’t make a lot of sense, but these little throwbacks to our earlier history seem really important to me now.”
Arlana hugged his arm. “You have told me, husband, that there is nothing we can do and nowhere we can go where we are separated from the Creator and His love. You sometimes talk as if you don’t believe that.”
“I do believe it, but belief happens at two levels. On one hand, I believe it with my mind, but I don’t always believe it with my gut. It’s like swimming across a lake. My mind may rationally tell me I can easily make it, but when I step into the water, my gut still tells me I can’t. I guess hearing Linder and Al arguing has made my gut trust that we will get through this.”
Dave saw Larsen stir. It was the signal he had been waiting for. Everyone had had a chance to sleep and now was they must not dally. “Honey, it’s time to get moving. We want to get off this terrace as soon as possible before the dragons return and find us.”
Dave and Arlana rose and shouldered their packs. Horatio also jumped up on a rock and nuzzled Dave. Dave could have sworn that the lup had already grown larger in the short time he had had him.
Linder and Al also busied themselves closing their packs, having set their discussion aside for another day. Dave led the group along the fringe of the lake. It was more than a kilometer wide but must have been about twenty-five kilometers in length. The trees were sparse on their side of the lake and undergrowth was minimal. Walking on the green sward was a delight after all of the rock work.
Dave saw a globe conifer ahead. It smelled faintly of cinnamon. The air was calm so Dave could hear birds chirping in the trees, and the rustle of one of the jack-rabbit-sized rodents in the long grass. The turf was springy and made walking easy.
They crossed two more streams that descended from the escarpment and emptied into the lake. After about three hours, Dave, leading the group, rounded the end of a small bay and saw the end of the lake about two hundred meters ahead. They rested there for the night.
The next day brought them to a point where the cliff wall formed a large bay like the letter U. The terraces followed the indentation. Looking across the arms of the U, at a distance of about eight kilometers, Dave could see the many layers of terraces bending back to follow the contours of the rock bay or canyon. Over this section, the edge of the next terrace did not block a view of the terraces below.
Linder stopped beside him and cursed quietly. “Because of this bend, we can see all the terraces across this gap down to the cloud cover. That means if Bigelow has scouts anywhere above us, they’ll see us as we round this bend and tell him exactly where we are.”
“The forest is pretty dense,” said Dave. “If we stay in the trees and push it, maybe we’ll get by.”
“That’s what we’ll do,” said Linder. “I won’t chance walking at night. We’ll rest again and leave at dawn, and move as fast as we can until we round that rock promontory on the far side of this canyon. With luck, there will be some fog or rain to give us a bit of cover.”
The next morning, the cloud cover was well below them. Linder took to the forest and pushed them hard all day. Finally, by mid-afternoon, they left the rock bay and were out of sight of prying eyes from the higher terraces. Linder called a halt.
After a short rest, they resumed their journey. Linder led them at the fringe of the forest next to a rock fall from the escarpment on their left. The trees had huge leaves and were criss-crossed by vines resembling lianas. Dave could hear bird calls as the treetops teemed with life. They had travelled for about a kilometer when Dave was startled by a loud roar, which was quickly followed by a second roar.
Everyone stopped and looked at one another in fear. Linder whispered, “No talking, let’s move at double quick time along the fringe of the forest. I don’t like the sound of that at all.” Hanomer ran up and joined Linder, paralleling his course inside the forest.
After another kilometer, Dave heard a sound high in the trees and saw a large brown ape peering at them. A moment later, it raced through the trees, deftly using the lianas to jump from tree to tree. It was heading into the forest.
I wonder if that thing was responsible for the roar, wondered Dave.
After twenty minutes, Linder stopped. The trees ahead of them were filled with dozens of apes. The largest roared a challenge.
Linder led them up into the broken rock to their left to put some distance between them and the apes. However, the apes kept pace, racing from tree to tree. Finally, the big ape roared again, and the apes climbed down and charged.