1st vs 6th Grade Art (Old post #8)

There are two paintings hanging in my dinning room. I am very proud of them both, but there is something distinctly different about them. It is not the fact that one of them is an owl in a tree and the other is a fox in the snow. It is not the size, or color that I am talking about. What distinguishes the two paintings can be summed up as 1st grade art (the fox) versus 6th grade art (the owl).

Now for those who perhaps do not know what I am talking about, I will explain. The 1st grade art is very good for a first grader. You can tell that there is a red and white fox sitting on the snow with snow flakes falling all around. The painting is far from perfect due to the splotches of paint where an over zealous 1st grader got a little too much paint on her brush. That is not even mentioning the sloppy overlap of paint on the lines, outside of the lines, and sometimes just not near the lines. In comparison the sixth grader painting is of a purple and pink owl sitting in a tree with a pink song bird sitting on the branch above the owl. While there are no splotches of paint, and the painting inside the lines is much better, it can be easily discerned that the painting was the creation of a student of art vice a master of art.

So what's my point you ask? First is that when you walk into the dinning room, there is not a person in this world that imagines those paintings are self created. When you look at these two paintings you think, "I wonder who painted these?" Interestingly enough, we ask this same type of question about everything we see. "Who made that car?", "Who made that watch?", "Who made that outfit?", "What type of plant makes that fruit?", and "Who or what made that?" I realize this is perhaps the pontification of a man that has spent too much time pontificating, but I have to ask the question, "why it is hard to believe something created the universe?" It is a natural conclusion everywhere else in life.

The second thing you will notice when evaluating the paintings is the difference in skill level. It will lead you to make assumptions perhaps about the ages or other overall aptitude of the artist. This same kind of evaluation happens every time we see an impressive building, vehicle, aircraft, ship, watch, or piece of technology. We make assumptions about the creator of these things based on the complexity of the creation. Once again, I am left wondering, "why it is hard to believe that something with a great deal of skill, perhaps supernatural skill, created the universe?"

I realize that this example seemingly oversimplifies what is to some a very complex question, but I would love to understand the difference. Someone would probably think I had lost my mind if I told them those two paintings just up and one day happened. So during my first discussion we will cover Origin, and I will try to cover the different worldviews on where it all came from.

​Science would have you believe that it came from nothing (infinite energy and zero mass), the eastern thought would have you believe it has always been, and the Christian worldview would tell you that an eternal God created it all. The philosophical principal that I gave an example of with the two paintings is stated by Norman Geisler as, "Only being can cause being. Nothing does not exist, and only what exists can cause existence, since the very concept of 'cause' implies an existing thing that has the poser to effect another. From absolutely nothing comes absolutely nothing." I hope in the first discussion to both shed some light on the fact that something from nothing is not logical and that there is more room for faith in science and vice versa than we are typically taught to believe.