To Babel and Beyond: A Brief Early History of Man, Biblical Version

Intro: Alternative Histories

A lot of modern Christians exist in a weird sort of parallel universe, historically speaking. We basically take for granted accounts of modern history provided by secular historians, going back until perhaps the medieval era where we find some divergence. (Were the Dark Ages really a benighted era for Europe, or a tumultuous but progressive time of rapid growth for the Church and repelling of jihad, unfairly characterized by post-enlightenment scholars trying to emphasize the achievements of earlier and/or later eras?)

Beyond that, Roman history is pretty much agreed upon, with some A.D. quibbles about whether this or that persecution was accurately described by the church. Go back as far as the Bronze Age, however, and periods of history described in Scripture, and controversies erupt. Go back still farther, and completely alternate histories emerge, until eventually you have two entirely divergent explanations for the existence of humanity and human civilization, which are both rooted in and provide a basis for a deeply divided worldview which can be seen in every level of society today. (either God made us good and we went bad, and all that that entails, or we evolved from apes and are still progressing towards something greater, and all that that entails)

In this post, I want to lay out an example of what a history of early mankind might look like from a Biblical perspective, based on the authority of scripture and linked with the discoveries of modern archeology/anthropology. (There have been a number of serious attempts to match up Biblical history and chronology with the Bronze Age history and dates determined by scholars. I'm just broadly focusing on an earlier time frame than that, mainly to show how you can start from the Biblical account and find that much of the data lines up automatically with it)

Bear in mind, "antiquity" for people like the Romans was
as far back in history as the Romans are for us.

Early History of Man: Bible Version

With the supposedly overwhelming authority of "Science" preached at us every day, we can find it hard to give the events described in the Bible the same weight as we do the pronouncements of archeology or anthropology, even when they construct entire eras of proto-civilization from surprisingly scant pieces of evidence, evidence which sometimes itself was even faked. I'm not saying there is no real science taking place, but often the real artifacts, discovered and catalogued according to (actual) science, the method, are described using almost entirely imaginary scenarios according to Science, the secular humanist belief system for which many faithful atheists profess their love and devotion. These stories can be drastically revised with the discovery of a single new piece of evidence, and frequently are (or aren't, despite the contradicting evidence) but somehow we are expected to consider them as authoritative and the Bible as a book of myths. Lacking an authoritative scriptural narrative, that might be all we could expect, but it's both amusing and frustrating that we're expected to toss out the Bible which is continually found to be more reliable, historically, and instead bow to a secular narrative which changes with the wind and trends.

Scholarship being what it is, and theologians being who they are, my dream of one day seeing a solid attempt by the Church to put forward a coherent timeline of the early history of man (in keeping with the evidence and data we see around us, just separated from their surmised alternative secular explanations) is probably inherently impossible. It would collapse in heated arguments, mostly about minor details.

But here I'd like to at least lay out what we do know, from the Genesis accounts, and then flesh in some details based on things we've discovered, to paint a brief picture of the road from Adam to Babel and beyond.

1. Earliest history

I will begin with Adam and Eve having to leave the garden. (Despite the popularity of attempting it, there's not much point in trying to guess where it was; the great flood would certainly have altered the landscape and course of rivers too much to go by what we see now) After they were forced out, their descendents formed two rival camps; the descendents of Seth, and those of Cain. That we do know from Scripture. We have no reliable knowledge of what this period of history looked like, since nothing survived the flood and if it did we'd have trouble knowing whether it was pre or post flood. We have Scripture's account, however, that it was violent, lawless, and increasingly evil.

Humans had become very numerous before the flood (based on the numbers in Genesis, there were almost certainly hundreds of millions of people and possibly many more) and that global catastrophe had not yet restarted everyone around Ararat and then the plain of Shinar in Sumeria. Since everyone apparently spoke the same language up until Babel, and had hundreds of years of life to explore the world, it's probable some of the remnants of remote and ancient cities for which modern science has little explanation were from this time. (There's evidence to suggest Phoenicians got across the Atlantic, and we still don't know how the Egyptians and Romans managed some of their construction feats, so there's no reason to assume pre-flood people were less capable, especially if they had hundreds of years to master their craft.)

An important factor to remember is that while Scripture says that all human life on earth perished in the flood, and that the "fountains of the deep" opened, clearly a destructive event and probably related to this discovery, it doesn't say that every inch of the earth's surface was thoroughly pulverized. It's possible that in some places, the water would have simply risen rapidly and covered everything, leaving behind what had originally been there. Devoid of life, almost certainly heavily damaged, but not necessarily destroyed. (if a shipwreck can survive at the bottom of the sea for centuries, and a huge tsunami ravages but doesn't "disappear" a modern city, then an ancient city of stone would not vanish after about a year underwater or suddenly be reduced to pebbles when hit by incoming water either, though it might be buried under mud or rubble, as indeed people have discovered some were. It would be interesting if advances in technology reveal more deeply sunken cities around the world)

The picture of early human history currently presented by secular anthropology doesn't really fit what we see around the world, but a pre-ancient world full of cities of people who suddenly vanish, and civilizations emerging abruptly in the Middle East and then soon elsewhere around the world, each with stories of a great flood, does fit the picture rather well.

2. Post-flood

The flood narrowed the total human gene pool down considerably, to Noah and his three sons and their wives. Currently, genetic science claims human genetic diversity reflects the mixture of three "pre-human" contributing sets of DNA; I can't help but wonder if we're actually seeing the genetic legacy of the three sons of Noah. Or their wives, if you want to get mitochondrial. Conversely, since all of current human diversity is from those three sons and their wives, 6 people out of however many were alive at the time (probably a huge population, as mentioned above), it's not surprising we occasionally find some prehistoric (in the literal sense: before recorded history) human remains that look quite different than anyone on earth does today. The "hobbit" bones found in Indonesia, and all the "primitive" skulls (some with bigger brain cases than the average modern human) found in various places, make sense if you imagine the incredible human diversity that must have existed before the flood. What are now explained as pre-human ancestors probably are remains from those other humans.

In terms of the flood event itself, from Noah on there is much evidence of man's expansion from a new beginning. Fascinatingly, despite all the attention given to Sumer, there is quite a bit of evidence that much of "modern" human civilization started right near where the ark is thought to have come to rest in Southeastern Turkey; horses were first domesticated around there, and wheat and corn strains can be traced back to their ancestral cultivars around the same area. (For example, from Wikipedia: "Genetic analysis of wild einkorn wheat suggests that it was first grown in the Karacadag Mountains in southeastern Turkey.") That only makes sense, if humans got off the ark and started rebuilding what was lost in the flood, and planting crops and vineyards. There's also an amazing, very ancient ruin, described as possibly the world's oldest temple, less than 300 miles from the Mountains of Ararat, which features massive stone slabs covered with lifelike relief carvings of animals. Scholars are confused because they date it to a time supposedly before the existence of metal tools or even pottery. (Right.. that's the description of someone clinging to a false timeline)

Later, the account of Babel suggests that humans didn't spread out after the ark, but stayed together. (it would make sense; the task of rebuilding civilization would require everyone) Since God had told them to spread out and fill the earth, however, the idea of a pan-human civilization that clustered in one place and built a tower to the heavens was not in the plans. We don't know exactly what method God used to confuse and divide the languages (as a linguist I'm quite curious). I've seen creative theories on neurolinguistic viruses, given that the world's population were all concentrated in one place. It's impossible to know of course, but fun to think about, and it will be interesting to see if advances in neuroscience and linguistics don't provide explanations for how it could have occurred. Either way, we can see the division of Babel is still there today. You can observe language fragmentation happening naturally anywhere (to an extreme degree in places like Papua/New Guinea or the Caucasus Mountains), and the trend has only recently been overcome in the developed world by national education policies (China has an uncountable number of local dialects, Mandarin is just the artificially-enforced national language), and the prevalence of TV and the internet.


Shinar, where the tower of Babel was located, is in the Fertile Crescent (sometimes referred to as the "Cradle of Civilization"). Archeologists/anthropologists describe two basic centers of culture, one around what is now Eastern Turkey, and one down in modern day Iraq, between the Tigris and the Euphrates rivers. The latter contains what some consider the oldest city in the world, Eridu, which is a very probable site for the Tower of Babel itself, with a very old, huge, and incomplete ziggurat. (Sumerian mythology even claims it to be one of the first 5 cities built -before- the Flood. Perhaps that simply a boast, or perhaps the name was remembered and used again)

One of the ancient mounds at Eridu

Another fascinating site, Çatalhöyük, is about 500 miles west of the "Mountains of Ararat" where the ark landed. It is one of the most ancient settlements ever discovered, has unique architectural properties, and is quite unusual in that there are no streets; houses are clustered together, honeycomb-style, and the roofs are used for travel. In the linked article, they comment that, unusually, the dozens of bodies buried under the floor of each house are unrelated to each other. Also the houses had white plaster walls, some covered in elaborate artwork. It makes you think... might those wandering out in the years after the flood have formed at least one memorial city for the countless lost lives? The corpses would not vanish into thin air, remember. If it's true that there were hundreds of millions to billions of people alive before the flood (as the Genesis numbers suggest), not to mention all the animals, you'd doubtless find corpses all around, left by the receding waters (or collected into drifts here and there, mixed with debris). The roof-walking habit might have been an adaptation to the post-flood period, to avoid the rotting vegetation and corpse-ridden ground as much as possible, or even be based on an ark-like idea of a common deck surface with hatches leading below to the various compartments, as there were only a few people alive at the beginning and Noah had spent a very long time building the ark and would have been the most experienced person around and in charge while he was alive (and sober).

See, it's easy to form plausible-sounding conjectures from the evidence available, going from what you believe the conditions of the time and context to have been. I have no idea if that's even close to the reality of that ancient city, but what I just did is no different from what secular anthropologists do, except I am basing my theory on a scriptural context. (Basically I have more reason to be confident in my hypothetical interpretation of the data than I do theirs)

But is it a coincidence that the "world's oldest temple" and "world's most ancient settlement" are located within a few hundred miles of the ark's resting place (and even closer to each other), and the "world's oldest city" is in Shinar with a huge, unfinished ziggurat nearby a natural supply of pitch? It's unreasonable to insist it must be, when it conforms so closely to the pre-existing Biblical narrative. (Unless you are like an atheist I once argued with, who said a certain thing couldn't possibly be true, because if so that means God did it.)

3. Post-Babel

With regards to the Flood and Babel, Sumerian mythology has such obvious references to these events that many scholars believe the Bible borrowed its accounts from them. (Since the content of what existed of the Old Testament was oral at that point, and there are some similarities of style between the two, it's just as reasonable to conclude that everyone knew these events had occurred in fairly recent history and had their own versions of the account. The Sumerian account is "aggrandized," however, and mixed with stories of their gods; the Biblical record reads like a very sober and straightforward account of the event by comparison. Entirely aside from faith in scripture, it very much reads like the Biblical account is the original, and the Sumerian account is the flowery, mythologized version)

The genealogies in Genesis 10 provide a tantalizing picture of humans spreading out after the Flood/Babel, though unfortunately we don't have enough information to put all the pieces together. Some people are specifically pointed out as the ancestors of certain peoples, mostly those relevant to the Hebrews, being in their vicinity. One clear example occurs for Greece, where one grandson of Noah (Javan) is used consistently in Hebrew scripture as the word for Greece. One of Javan's sons is named Tarshish, the name of a location referenced repeatedly in scripture (notably as the place to where Jonah tried to flee). It is not known for certain whether this is the city of Tarsus in modern Turkey (where the Apostle Paul was from) but it's likely, and the city is ancient enough for this to be the case. There is also a grandson named Cush, which is the ancient civilization of Ethiopia, also Ashur - Assyrians, and Aram - Arameans, whose language, Aramaic, was the common local language during Jesus' life.

Beyond the grandsons, whose nations can be identified, many further descendents can be as well.
(There is also much conjecture... for example some think the Sinites are the ancestors of China)

Based on the grandsons of Noah, one can basically populate the ancient world from SE Russia to the Arabian peninsula and Ethiopia, and from Greece and southeastern Europe to Persia, in other words the entire Near East stretched farther north and south. Every grandson corresponds to a known location. (Observe how different this is from the imaginary and mythical lands of other ancient religious accounts)

Of those groups that wandered off to further points of the globe, we don't know the account of their travels, but interestingly in the secular account of history you suddenly have the roots of the great world civilizations all popping up in different places in the same era. It works out that from Babel in the Fertile Crescent, the meeting place of Europe, Asia, and Africa, descendents spread out and traveled until they found good places to settle down and start working on a minor version of what everyone had been attempting in Sumeria, such as the Indus and Yellow River valleys. (There is a Great Flood story in ancient Hindu scriptures, and in Chinese legend as well)

Egypt, one of the oldest civilizations of all, was around basically from the beginning...

"Egypt is called Mestraim by the Hebrews; and Mestraim lived not long after the flood. For after the flood, Cham (or Ham), son of Noah, begat Aeguptos or Mestraim, who was the first to set out to establish himself in Egypt, at the time when the tribes began to disperse this way and that…" Eusebius, 4th AD historian.

(Of course Eusebius is writing many centuries after the event. As I mentioned at the beginning, antiquity has its own antiquity... the Greeks and Romans idealized the distant past as we sometimes idealize their time)

4. A word about Old Testament chronology

On the topic of Egypt, a problem arises: there is not enough time in apparent Biblical history for well-chronicled Egyptian history to have occurred. For a good treatment of that subject which basically assumes Ussher's dates (a very young earth), go here. That article acknowledges there is no way to get from Ussher's early date of the flood/creation to a reconciliation with Egyptian history, even as it holds to the very young earth theory, and suggests the minimum required missing years might be found here and there throughout the chronology.

However, the problem is resolved if we acknowledge the practice of "telescoping" in Hebrew genealogies, as described here in pretty good detail. Some have difficulty stomaching the idea that the Bible could be inerrant if the genealogies are constructed differently from their own ideas about them, but I think it's important to remember that the Bible is inerrant in the original texts, and those texts written not by modern people but by ancients who had some different literary habits than we do; being carried along by the Spirit to write inerrantly does not mean the end product would look exactly as it would look were they to be written in English today, and that is nothing that should make us nervous. Also, note that telescoping the genealogies only moves the date of creation back by a few thousand years, as compared to the trillions of years that evolution demands. It is not an attempt to accommodate secular creation theories, merely an acknowledgement of Hebrew chronological practices.

As a creationist who has studied linguistics and biblical languages, I have no problem with the idea that the Hebrew writers of the Old Testament followed their usual practice of 'arranging' genealogies, just as the gospel writers sometimes rearranged the chronology of Jesus' ministry to emphasize certain points. Putting back in the unselected generations adds in a satisfactory amount of time to allow for the development of modern civilization from antiquity -in accordance with the Biblical account, not springing from alternative, evolution-based secular theories- which means we don't have to pretend in faith not to see the pyramids, but also aren't conforming our biblical interpretation to secular chronologies, which see a 10,000 year earth as identically ridiculous to a 6,000 year earth, considering the vast depths of time needed for non-life to become life (no amount of time is enough) in their Creator-less models.

So although I am open to any valid evidence that does not go against the authority of scripture, as of right now, the creationist + expanded genealogy timeline is the opinion I hold and feel best interprets scripture in the light of what we know while holding it as inerrant. It also allows for the Great Flood being a global event, as scripture clearly attests, and not localized. If the flood was only local, then ancient civilizations like the Maya can be getting their start right alongside Hindu and Chinese civilizations, people already being over there, without needing extra time to populate Central America. If it was global, as the Bible attests, and humanity had to start over from Ararat, you need time after Babel for people to migrate all the way to the New World and build up enough population to begin thousands of years of Mayan city-building and civilization. The best dates for those civilizations in fact reflect the latter situation, with Near East civilizations being the oldest, followed by other Asian civilizations, followed by ancient New World cultures and others.

On the other hand, maybe they just sailed straight over... (Kon-Tiki)

5. In Closing

For more on the grandsons of Noah and their descendents and where they went/who they became, there are lots of different theories that can be found by googling, but not much of real value; many of the theories are pretty tenuous, based on guesses about names and place/people group names they sound like. The truth is that, beyond the grandsons in the genealogy, which can mostly be strongly identified with places within the ancient near eastern world, we can't say how the rest of the globe was peopled by their descendents. We do know that nothing took as much time as is usually demanded by secular scholars, who with long ages to fill, have people spending thousands of years without upgrading their flint points. (The Darwinian "long, slow, steady" evolution idea and its roots in gradualism, has influenced all of secular academia. A look at the real world reveals things are more like grains of sand falling on a pile, where steady change actually produces sudden avalanches and snowball effects on a regular basis.)

One good thing is that as we are increasingly able to catalog sources of ancient material and written documents (if the neo-caliphate doesn't blow them up first), and communicate those findings over the internet, we are able to uncover knowledge about the ancient world perhaps unknown since deep in antiquity. As we learn more, the Biblical account is proven more and not less reliable. It may be that in the coming days, even the mystery of people movements away from Babel and to the ends of the earth may begin to be solved.


I hope that was interesting. Feel free to leave a comment if you think I'm missing something or you know of additional info that would be helpful to throw into the mix.

Triple Peanut Teleology

1. A Perfectly-timed Triple Peanut - Miracle or Statistical Inevitability?

The other night, I was eating some peanuts as a late night snack. They were the kind that comes in the shell, and I was enjoying the process of popping them open one by one as I worked on the computer. I have frequent sleep issues and that night I was starting to worry that my brain wanted to pull an all-nighter, when I realized the little bag of peanuts was empty except for the last one. I got it out, popped it open, and lo and behold it was a triple peanut. Not especially uncommon, but the only one in that bag.

For reasons that are more or less impossible to explain but some of you will immediately understand, the fact that the very last peanut in the bag was a triple peanut, and the only triple peanut in the bag, meant that I wouldn't have insomnia that night. It was that mysterious and elusive sense of conclusion my brain demands to feel before it will sleep, unexpectedly encountered in peanut form. One thought immediately came into my mind: "Thanks, God." The incident had very much the feeling of a little favor you do for someone that you love, a little thing that yet means a lot because it's something only someone who truly understands the recipient would know to give them.

This is one of the uncountable number of incidents, big and small, pebbles and boulders, that provide anchors for my faith in God. Sometimes it's not the big dramatic things, it's the times when something you need is provided in such a random but chronologically charitable way that you know it's not an accident. 
 Now, at this point, your average internet atheist is raising an eyebrow or possibly even formulating a response hee* fancies clever, that involves the flying spaghetti monster and/or invisible unicorns. 

(*- he and only he, if you don't get it see iff)

You fool, he will explain, the peanut was at the bottom because having three nuts inside made it heavier than the other peanuts, and it gradually shifted to the bottom during packing or transit. Since triple peanuts are less common than the other types, and given the variety of sorting and packing machinery out there, there is some reasonable chance that only one would be in the bag, and a very high chance that it would then end up at the bottom. That's why, he will summarize, there was just one triple peanut at the end, and not because of some kind of divine intervention. If he's had some schooling he may invoke Occam's Razor* to suggest this is a much simpler explanation than "coming up with a deity," as if you are the first to propose God exists and are boldly attempting to shoehorn Him into the universe.

(*- With some historical irony, as Saint William of Occam/Ockham would consider this an invalid application of the principle -which he did not call a "razor" but frequently used, so that later it became identified with him- and would himself certainly not be on the atheist side of this kind of argument.)

There are various possible arguments in response to this attempt to explain away the event, for example recalling the fact that when I got down to the last several peanuts I could easily have grabbed that one at any time, or that it's not so much that there was one triple peanut as the fact that it came at exactly the right time to negate my insomnia, or that I bought the peanuts rather randomly that night and hadn't done so in a very long time, so however you look at it, it was a pretty exceptional event, and in the context of a world where we already believe there are no pure coincidences, I could argue that the evidence suggests this wasn't one.

But all that would be missing the point, because 1) likelihood isn't a good argument regarding something that already happened*, and 2) it fails to recognize the deeper difference is one of teleology.


(*- This is why scientists laugh when people invoke the "tornado through a junkyard" analogies popularly used by Christians to cite the improbability of evolution occurring. For most scientists, evolution is taken totally for granted as what did in fact happen and continues to happen, so discussing its improbability is irrelevant as far as they are concerned. It's like arguing the odds are against your tire being popped by a particular piece of metal on the interstate as you are getting the spare out of the trunk. Also in reality the odds of a tornado assembling a [whatever the version you heard is] from a random junkyard are incomputable, as Spock might say. I imagine it was originally meant just as a picturesque analogy of something extremely unlikely, and either way is not suitable for an actual debate or serious discussion about probabilities)

2. Teleology and Causes

Teleology is not a word you hear every day, but it's one of those helpful terms that captures an important and profound concept, so it's helpful to know it. Put simply, teleology is what people are invoking when they ask "why did this happen to me?" It is the "why" that is furthest from "how"; a question about the significance or role events play in the bigger picture. It is also a question of faith: one cannot ask "why did this happen" in the teleological sense without believing there is a(n Extrinsic -I won't really go into that here) Purpose that transcends the meaning you yourself might assign to it, which directly implies the existence of God in some form.

When asking Why in general, one is asking for the cause of something. Invoking Aristotle, we can say there are 4 types of causes. The 2 most relevant for our discussion today are the Efficient Cause and Final Cause.

I was not the efficient cause of this helpful image; thank you to whomever was.

The Efficient Cause would include things like the Laws of Physics, and is typically the only cause a modern materialist would recognize. This is a "why" that draws near to a "how." For example, one sometimes encounters questions like "why do things always fall down?" where the answer might be "because of gravity."

A Christian would (typically, and hopefully) have no problem with this answer, because gravity is indeed an observable part of Creation. Yet recognizing the presence and activity of God, we recognize there are answers on another level as well. So the stereotypically mocked answer of "because God made it fall," is actually no less correct an answer than gravity, the difference is in which kind or level of Cause is being invoked.

But while various debates rage in the Church regarding the extent to which God is the efficient cause, most Christians could certainly agree God is the agent of the Final Cause, (The telos, from whence "teleology"). Why the rock fell is, in light of the Final Cause, connected to the question of why the rock exists in the first place. For Christians, this question has an answer, though one to which our limited knowledge does not extend. "There is a reason for everything," we believe, because the God of scripture is a reasonable God. Even when He is doing things in the Old Testament that distress His own prophets, I can't think of a scriptural example when He does not also explain why the thing is happening; every specific action of God we see in Scripture has a Purpose.

So we believe that the Efficient Cause of the rock falling is gravity, and the Final Cause is known to God as part of His hidden will. Even without going into questions of to what extent God's sovereignty controls what occurs, I think more or less all Christians would agree, and could agree that scripture observably teaches, that a rock does not ever fall for reasons that escape God.

For the atheist/materialist, there is no Final Cause. In fact, there cannot be, or else God. In the words of an atheist on Reddit (Yes random, but he put it well and succinctly): "Final causes are an incoherent concept, and if we accept them, them we accept teleology, and if we accept teleology, then we accept either an infinite regress or a first cause. Not sure how [one] avoids deism with that." (Here deism means admitting the universe implies an initiator God of some kind without going into what that God's attributes might be, so nowhere near Christianity but taking the first step towards Romans 1 and making atheism untenable in the process)

Some subsequent commenters brought up some objections to his claim that final causes are incoherent, and he retorted that purposes are not inherent but must be assigned by a mind. Since he denied God, he considered this a rebuttal (no mind to do it, except humans), but for us it's the other way around; God possesses a mind external to the universe, therefore its purpose can be assigned by Him. The argument requires the assumption of no God to be evidence against God. (This is yet another demonstration of how atheist arguments are ultimately always circular: No God, because No God)

Now to return to my blessing in peanut form, the important thing here is that the atheist's "rebuttal" and my claim are actually distinct; he is trying to impossibly attack my final cause with an efficient cause, like claiming a car does not exist to be driven but because a factory built it. This is an extremely common mistake atheists fall into, and Christians tend to feel instinctively that something is wrong about the argument but aren't sure how to articulate it. (I hope this post is helpful along those lines)


In fact, I can agree with everything my hypothetical antagonist says regarding how I ended up with that particular peanut at that particular time, because I acknowledge both efficient cause and final cause. He is forced to deny the possibility of the final cause, or else God. (Yet, poor soul, he will probably insist that my "religious" mind is the narrow and shackled one.) In any case, the efficient cause is doubtless similar to what he has described. I'm not suggesting there was a flash of glorious light and the peanut was created ex nihilo in the bottom of the bag. God can do that if He wants, and there are mountains of evidence even beyond scriptural accounts (which by faith are enough) that miracles do happen. So sometimes the efficient cause is a testimony to God as well, since it's inexplicable. I think of miraculous healings, for example. In those situations, skeptics will simply speak from their standpoint of unbelief and say they're sure there must be a natural explanation. (Of course... because if there isn't, even once, then God. Do you begin to see where the burden of proof lies now? I believe this is one reason Paul can say they are "without excuse." All roads lead to admitting God's existence except the one whose primary objective is not to lead there. That is called "willing unbelief")

So, although I don't see any evidence for divine intervention in the efficient cause of my peanut blessing, my faith can still be strengthened. How? In that the final cause in this context was the rectification of my insomnia on a particular night, and because none of the humans involved in the process of the peanut reaching me had the knowledge to extrinsically cause this, and it goes without saying that a peanut cannot seriously be argued to have the intrinsic cause of insomnia prevention, therefore God is the only possible agent. An event occurred in which the means were ordinary but conspired to produce a result which could have only been from God. Distinguishing between Causes allows us to articulate more clearly how this can be the case.

I have found that Christians often fight to attribute the efficient cause to Divine intervention when the case is sometimes a little shaky, opening themselves to sometimes (not always) valid criticism from skeptics who demonstrate persuasively the natural means by which the event could have occurred, and feel confirmed in their unbelief. I think that's because the Christians in those situations know, deeply, that something is of God, and want to demonstrate that, but aren't familiar with this tool for seeing that the supernatural element is still there, but is better expressed in terms of teleology.

Teleology is the basis of the Intelligent Design argument,
often introduced rhetorically via the Watchmaker analogy

3. Practical Applications of Final Cause/Teleology for Christians

Some of you may find your eyes glazing over when things turn philosophical, some may not even have made it this far. But I want to point out a few extremely important and relevant issues which stem from this concept.

1. Final Cause means There is a God, and vice versa

One can't logically derive our Triune God, that knowledge comes from the special revelation of scripture. But that the existence of a Final Cause necessitates Divinity in some reasonable and personal-ish form, as I mentioned above, even atheists recognize. They will respond rhetorically various ways to the accusation that they say people have no Purpose, recognizing that sounds bad, but in general they would challenge the very concept of Purpose, because to really admit Purpose is to admit God. (That's one of the various reasons there have never been all that many real atheists... the concept of Purpose is too obviously valid and real for normal people to seriously pretend it doesn't exist)

The flip side, that the existence of God allows a Final Cause, should be encouraging to us as believers. We don't get to know what it is, we may see things we don't understand, but we know that God is, and that He is good. If we see evil and suffering, we should recall that other sentient beings besides God exist and may possibly have played a role in the mess we see every time we take a look at the news. (Yes, this leads directly to arguments about sovereignty... and they are good and necessary arguments to have. It's a worthy topic to ponder and wrestle with, and as long as we're doing so in the love of Christ and not to divide up His body the Church into rival camps, God is glorified in our pursuit of understanding regarding Him. That He is beyond our understanding doesn't mean we can't seek to know Him better.)

2. Christians need to bear in mind that many people avoid Teleological thinking

Christians understand the language of Purpose and we very frequently invoke it and think in terms of teleology, even in the negative sense: after a major disaster, Christian often wonder why God allowed it to happen. "What good purpose could there possibly be in this," we ask ourselves conflictedly, and atheists ask mockingly, suggesting the answer is, "there isn't, because there is no God and nothing has a Purpose." They're attacking the very concept of a Final Cause. (As stated above, they have to, because otherwise, God)

In many cultures and subcultures, teleological concerns are simply perceived as less compelling than pragmatic ones. The ultimate purpose behind things happening is seen as unknowable, so the focus is on dealing with things as they come and their ramifications. In that context, Christians trying to get a conversation about God going through discussing the ultimate purpose behind this or that may not get far. Many people simply aren't interested in thinking teleologically, as subtly demonstrated by the fact that popular media often portrays it happening in conversations between people getting high ("Dude, like, what's it all mean?"), or Eastern-type advice from a guru figure ("Find your Purpose deep within yourself"), or negatively, as those unwelcome thoughts which come on sleepless nights ("What legacy will I leave behind?"). Rarely is it ever portrayed as a necessary aspect of life for ordinary people to consider and factor into their plans and actions. When a scriptural worldview is not actively maintained, that attitude can unconsciously creep into the Church as well.

3. Remembering Teleology prompts us to live according to our Purpose

If there is a Final Cause for all events in our lives, how much more is there a Purpose for each of us? And that purpose is not a trick question on the exam of existence, which we must figure out or be condemned to a fruitless life and God's displeasure, but neither is it a pleasant unspecific thought which can encourage us but carries no responsibility. Scripture does not teach us to be either anxious or agnostic about our purpose. You have one, and it's both a responsibility and a joy, but not a trap.

The Westminster Shorter Catechism famously asks "What is the Chief End of Man?"
The answer is "Man's chief end is to glorify God and to enjoy Him forever." 

One way of glorifying God in this life (not to mention obeying Him) is to actively seek to live in a way that reflects the Great Commission of Christ, the instructions He left the incipient Church, a command which we have inherited. That means, in the words of the Gospel of Matthew, making disciples, baptizing them, and teaching them to obey everything He commanded (which necessarily includes the Great Commission itself).

Believers, then, must think about what responsibility they have regarding this mission. No one outside of the Church can do it; the task was given to us. For many of you, that task may not be packing up and moving to another country and/or culture (Though maybe it is; it was for me), but it must be said, that also doesn't mean living each week considering that you've done your Christian duty by sacrificing a couple hours to attend church. If we have a Purpose, it comes from God. God is real, and that has real implications for your life; faith is attempting to live according to that fact, not merely intellectual assent to it.

If you believe that this God from whom springs forth your purpose for existing is real, you will live that out. Not living it out doesn't necessarily mean you don't believe, but it might mean that, or merely that you are being disobedient and should repent. And as James wrote, that's a dead sort of faith anyway; why should you remain in a situation of arguing that you have faith despite no obvious evidence of living it out? Show your faith by how you live it out. You'll find joy shows up in the process.