My father opened many of his speeches, including his 1993 EKU Commencement address, with a version of the following, which he entitled "Bedrock." (copies of these and other speeches are found in the portion of this site devoted to Dad's writings).

"Each Sunday morning I stand in the pew at my church, as I have done for more than 25 years and, along with other members of the congregation, recite the Apostle's Creed.  It is an affirmation of faith....it rekindles in our minds, to the extent that rekindling may be necessary, our basic beliefs.  It is not bound to time, to place, to age, to economic conditions good or bad, to times of turbulence or times of tranquility.  It is not remolded, like a piece of clay, to accommodate the bent of whatever political party may be in control in a given year.  Rather, it provides an unshakable foundation for those of who are members of this church basic beliefs from which we are not about to depart."

This served as a preamble to stating that we must all be aware of what we believe; we must stay true to some core of beliefs if we are to have credibility.  Some beliefs and positions may be malleable, but underneath, there must be bedrock--those beliefs on which everything else is built upon.  This was/is true for institutions and for individuals.  If one of the purposes of this blog is to express my     thoughts and opinions, it is reasonable that I must first define my personal bedrock.  With deference to my father, as I celebrate this July 4th, I will begin to define my personal "Bedrock."

So where to begin such a process...defining the core foundations of ones beliefs...the principles upon which the majority of my thoughts and decisions should exemplify.  Certainly it isn't reasonable to think that anyone will have 100% compliance between stated beliefs and words/actions...but there should be some fundamentals that define us..if not, we leave it simply to others to define us.  So let's begin at the beginning...where do I believe I came from?

Simple enough place to start as there is no doubt in my mind.  I was created by our Father and given life by my parents.  In other words, I believe in God, the God of Abraham and the Old Testament.  We will get to my belief in His Son later, for now, let's just be clear.  God created me.  But let's back it up a bit--God created EVERYTHING.  How?  I have absolutely no idea, nor do I care.  Is the Big Bang theory correct?  Again, I have no idea, but some pretty smart people think so; and I'm perfectly fine not knowing.  Basically there are only two options.  Option 1.  God created everything, and he didn't tell us how he did it (like we would understand).  Option 2.  The world somehow came into existence without God; if this is the case, then what I think /do really doesn't matter, and it based on "spontaneous" matter/energy...which oh by the way, the scientists tell us that energy cannot be created or destroyed, so when you chase this back to the "Big Bang," we are left with the unanswered question of "where did the energy/matter come from?"   I choose to believe the opening words of the Bible:  "In the beginning, God created the heavens and earth."  No one can know the truth.  God did not give the blueprints to anyone.  I do not believe that the world was literally created from start to finish in 144 hours; the physical evidence is far too convincing otherwise.  Nor do I believe that all life came from Adam and Eve; the creation story is unimportant if you don't believe in God; if you (as do I) do, then what really matters is that we WERE created.  I can imagine no celestial scorecard where my solving the origin of my existence, were it not from God, matters.

A bit on Natural Selection.  I remember vividly reading in my 9th grade biology text the theories around evolution...the studies that disproved "spontaneous generation" (though I would like to know where the fruit flies are BEFORE I leave a banana peel in my truck) and then the great dissertation on the "origin of life."  Some 40 years later, here's what I remember was told to us....in the ocean there were all these different chemicals, and somehow, the chemicals, when combined with energy (like electricity from lightning), could form amino acids...from there the amino acids could form proteins which as we all "know" are the "building blocks" of life.  Problem is, you can buy a jar of amino acids and I assure you it won't morph into a one cell organism.  What no scientist has ever been able to demonstrate is that from non-living substances (not DNA), that life can be created...Never done, never will be.  Despite all of our technology, knowledge, and labs, no lab has every been able to create ANYTHING that was alive using only "chemicals"...DNA splicing into microbes (living) doesn't count.  Yet we are asked to believe that this "simply" happened.  Okay...let's suppose it did.  Then we are supposed to believe that from that one celled whatever, over time, we evolved into present man.  Without a doubt, there have been many variations of man...the anthropologists have demonstrated this clearly..again, I don't have any doubt about this...just don't think it means that God wasn't behind the whole thing.  As for Darwin and "natural selection"---it's eloquent and all that, and there may be some parts of it that are applicable, but I cannot believe that something as magical as the human brain evolved from a one celled something-or-other, simply by selection pressure.  Doesn't make sense.  And the more we learn of the human body and the miracles of our making, the less we understand and the less probable, in my mind, that the eloquent physiologic orchestra is random...because experience, both real life and science, tells us otherwise.  If we accept that the world is to some degree ordered, doesn't it follow that there is an "orderer" (God)?  I have read some of the "Intelligent Design" literature and find it interesting.  The reality is that we simply can not know from whence we came....was it from that "primordial soup?"  If so, I believe God was and still is in the kitchen.  The longer I live, the more I experience, including in my field of emergency medicine, the more I am convinced that our existence is much more than "natural selection"....it is HIS selection.  So, as I explore my thoughts and beliefs, we begin with my father's bedrock...the Apostle's Creed....."I believe in God the Father Almighty, Maker of Heaven and Earth, and in Jesus Christ his only Son our Lord."