Science and religion aren't friends?

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Jerry Coyne author of Why Evolution Is True? in a USA Today Editorial writes:

Rather than being enemies, or even competitors, the argument goes, science and religion are completely compatible friends, each devoted to finding its own species of truth while yearning for a mutually improving dialogue...(But) Science and faith are fundamentally incompatible, and for precisely the same reason that irrationality and rationality are incompatible. They are different forms of inquiry, with only one, science, equipped to find real truth. And while they may have a dialogue, it's not a constructive one. Science helps religion only by disproving its claims, while religion has nothing to add to science...Science operates by using evidence and reason. Doubt is prized, authority rejected. No finding is deemed "true" — a notion that's always provisional — unless it's repeated and verified by others. But rather than relying on reason and evidence to support them, faith relies on revelation, dogma and authority.

http://www.usatoday.com/news/opinion/forum/2010-10-11-column11_ST_N.htm?loc=interstitialskip

Discuss.

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Evolution: Science or Faith?

Evolution: Science or Faith?




John MacArthur

Thanks to the theory of evolution, naturalism is now the dominant religion of modern society. Less than a century and a half ago, Charles Darwin popularized the credo for this secular religion with his book The Origin of Species. Although most of Darwin's theories about the mechanisms of evolution were discarded long ago, the doctrine of evolution itself has managed to achieve the status of a fundamental article of faith in the popular modern mind. Naturalism has now replaced Christianity as the main religion of the Western world, and evolution has become naturalism's principal dogma.


Naturalism is the view that every law and every force operating in the universe is natural rather than moral, spiritual, or supernatural. Naturalism is inherently anti-theistic, rejecting the very concept of a personal God. Many assume naturalism therefore has nothing to do with religion. In fact, it is a common misconception that naturalism embodies the very essence of scientific objectivity. Naturalists themselves like to portray their system as a philosophy that stands in opposition to all faith-based world-views, pretending that it is scientifically and intellectually superior precisely because of its supposed non-religious character.

Not so. Religion is exactly the right word to describe naturalism. The entire philosophy is built on a faith-based premise. Its basic presupposition--an a priori rejection of everything supernatural--requires a giant leap of faith. And nearly all its supporting theories must be taken by faith as well. (See below.)

Consider the dogma of evolution, for example. The notion that natural evolutionary processes can account for the origin of all living species has never been and never will be established as fact. Nor is it "scientific" in any true sense of the word. Science deals with what can be observed and reproduced by experimentation. The origin of life can be neither observed nor reproduced in any laboratory. By definition, then, true science can give us no knowledge whatsoever about where we came from or how we got here. Belief in evolutionary theory is a matter of sheer faith. And dogmatic belief in any naturalistic theory is no more "scientific" than any other kind of religious faith.

Michael Ruse is an evolutionist who testified in the 1980s at the infamous Arkansas creationism trial (McLean v. Arkansas). During the trial, he claimed that creationism is a religion because it is grounded in unproven philosophical assumptions. But Darwinism is a science, he said, because it requires no philosophical or religious presuppositions. Ruse has since admitted that he was wrong, and he now acknowledges that evolution "is metaphysically based"--grounded in unproven beliefs that are no more "scientific" than the set of beliefs on which creationism is based. See Tom Woodward, "Ruse Gives Away the Store: Admits Evolution Is a Philosophy" on the "Origins" Web site.

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Science and Scripture

Science and Scripture
Selected Scriptures




Tonight, we continue in our series on "Is the Bible Believable?" and we come to the study of science and the Scripture; and I think this is such an exciting thing, because science is discovering what the Bible has been saying for centuries. One of the great proofs, one of the great products of Biblical inspiration is the fact that it is scientifically accurate.

Aldous Huxley made this statement. He said, "Modern science makes it impossible to believe in a personal God." Bertrand Russell, who was in the habit of making irresponsible statements said, quote, "That man is the product of causes which had no prevision of the end they were achieving. That his origin, his growth, his hopes, his fears, his loves and beliefs are but the outcome of accidental collocation of atoms. That all the labors of the ages are destined to extinction in the vast death of the solar system, if not quite beyond dispute, are yet so certain that no philosophy which rejects them can hope to stand." End quote. Christianity rejects all of that and has stood a lot longer than Bertrand Russell.

Others have said that as science finds explanations of natural phenomena, God becomes smaller and smaller. As science advances, and we realize that everything can be verified in a test tube and ultimately resolved to scientific fact, the necessity of God is eliminated; and once God was the Almighty, and now science is the almighty. You know, as Christians, I think we are constantly whipped this point. Believers are faced with a supposed conflict between science and the Scripture. We are told that Christianity is scientifically unrespected, that it doesn't gain the respect of a scientific world, because it makes nonscientific statements and scientific blunders; and the worldlings say that you have to choose either science or religion. You can't have both. Either the facts of science or the fantasy of Scripture, but not both; and, really, the clash goes on; and it's based on the fact that both science and the Scripture claim total authority. There's no question in our mind that the Bible claims that it is right, that it claims total authority, totalitarian authority; but science does too. G. H. Clark says, "The scientific method is the sole gateway to truth."

The scientists demand that science have absolute authority, and faith comes along and demands that revelation have absolute authority. Science says, "You can only know truth as you discover it," and the Christian says, "You can't really discover ultimate truth on your own." Romans 11:33, "How unsearchable are His judgments. His ways are past finding out." And so we say, "No man by empiricism can discover ultimate truth." It only comes when ultimate truth is revealed by God Himself. You can't trust experience. You can't trust experiment. "You can only really trust the Word of God," says the Christian; and so there's a basic dichotomy. Science says, "If it isn't in the test tube, and if it can't be done in experiment, and if it isn't an empirical, proven thing, I can't buy it. Only that which is observable to me, only that which is scientific can be acceptable." The Christian says, "Only that which is revelatory can be acceptable," because even your senses can fool you, right?

Now, there are some scientific facts that we accept, but not in contra-distinction to the Scriptures. Lemme hasten to add this thought. Science does not necessitate God. Science has figured out that everything came from a one-celled thing floating in a pond. Nobody knows where the pond came from or where the one-celled thing came from, but that's how it all started; and that thing began to change. It divided. It split again. It split again and continuously, continuously until here we are. You don't need God in that kind of system. Christianity postulates a creator God. Both of them claim to be right; and, in that, the supposed conflict lies. Lemme hasten to add this. There is no real conflict between science and Scripture. There is none.

R. N. Williams says, I quote, "A great difference exists between science and what may be called scientism, by which we mean the theories of a scientist who is wearing spectacles with philosophically-tinted lenses." End quote. There's really no real conflict between the Bible and science. You can be a Christian and still be very, very capable as a scientist. For example, you have such Christians as Galileo, Kepler, Descartes, Liedmitz, Newton, Pascal, and on and on. It is true that the Bible doesn't use scientific jargon, but that doesn't make it nonscientific. The Bible talks in everyday language. We do not disparage the Word of God and say it's nonscientific because it doesn't use current scientific terminology. The fact is, there is no contradiction, there is no real conflict between science and Scripture. The conflict comes when science stops being science and starts being religion. You see, science, by its very definition, can only deal with that which is observable, that which is reproducible; and whenever it gets outside of reproducible, experimental fact and starts trying to talk about origins and destinies, it becomes religion, because it can't be observed; and there the conflict lies.

You know, all this whole movement known as neo-orthodoxy, they've already bowed to this concept. The Bible's full of scientific error. They've already given up. So the typical neo-orthodox statement is this, "The Bible is only authoritative when it speaks on spiritual matters. When it speaks on science matters, we have to handle it allegorically and spiritually, because it's prone to error." Which means the God who wrote the Bible knew a lot about spiritual things. Didn't know anything about science, which is a very interesting thing if you believe the God who wrote the Bible also made everything.

You see, to say that the parts of the Bible that talk about spiritual things are true, and the parts that talk about science are false is ridiculous for two reasons. No. 1, it denies the inspiration of God in the Scripture. If God is God, then He knows as much about science as He does about spiritual things, right? The second thing it denies is the inerrancy of Scripture. That is, that it's properly recorded. If God wrote this book, and if God wrote it correctly, that's inspiration and inerrancy, then it'll be just as right scientifically as it is spiritually. Right? Has to be. For God can only speak truth. The New Testament says, "God who cannot lie." He knows equally the truth of salvation and the truth of science. There is no thing that He does not know.

When science sets itself against God's revelation, it ceases to be science. It becomes ignorance. It becomes an ignorant religion, and there's the conflict. You see, the scientist isn't content to just observe what's going on now. He's gotta extrapolate everything into the past and everything into the future and discuss origins and destinies, but he can't do that, because it isn't science, because he can't put it in a test tube. It isn't reproducible.

Now, watch. Science can only observe the present. That's all. The observable activity of a microscope or a telescope or a test tube, now is all he can deal with; and, of course, he's got some past records of tests and experiments and so forth that he can lean on; but when you get into pre-history, when the scientist starts going back behind recorded history and starts telling us, "You got this think happening and that thing happening in evolutionary cycles, and such and such is happening, and such and such is happening," that is not observable. There is no record of it ever written. It is not reproducible; therefore, it cannot be made a scientific test. Consequently, it becomes a matter of faith. So the scientist speculates about prehistoric origin, and he speculates about eschatological futures; but neither of those things have any record of observation. Neither of those things are test tube items. Now, if you're gonna know anything about prehistoric fact and eschatological fact in the future, the only way you're gonna know is if somebody told it to us; and somebody did; and here it is; and if you deny this, you've got nothing else but just imagination.

The word science is simply the word knowledge, that's all. It's synonymous with the word knowledge. That's how it's used in Scripture. It can only deal with present things, natural present processes. When it attempts to interpret the past, prehistory, when it attempts to interpret the future, it can't. It has to be faith.

Lemme tell you how science works. Science basically has postulated a theory that we call uniformity. Now, the theory of uniformity says that everything going on in the present at the present rate has always gone on at the same rate and will always continue to go on at the same rate. In other words, from the origins to the absolution, everything is an absolute, uniform constant. That's the theory of uniformity, so the scientist goes through his little experiment of natural processes today, and he says, "It takes so-and-so long to do this, to do this. Therefore, if we go backwards, and it took the same and the same and the same," and he extrapolates his uniformity way, way back; and, consequently, he's gotten man millions of years ago. He's got the earth billions of years ago, because he has postulated a theory called uniformity that everything goes on at the same pace in the past and the future that it's going on now.

Does he know that? No, he doesn't know that, because he has no information about it. He has absolutely zero information about it. There isn't even anything written very much further back than the Old Testament period, and people were people then, not hanging in trees by their tails or not in process of becoming people. There is nothing back there. There is no record. Man just takes the natural process of sequence today and extrapolates it into the past and then keeps pushing it back and back and back at the same constant level that he observes it today.

Well, that's fine if he wants to believe that. That's defined in 2 Peter chapter 3 verse 4. Here is the typical theory of uniformity. The false teachers taught it in Peter's day, and they're teaching it today. They say, "Where is the promise of His coming? You keep talking about Jesus is coming. Where is He? For since the fathers fell asleep, all things continue as they were from the beginning of the creation." Now that is a statement of the theory of uniformity. Why, they're extrapolating the present processes back from the beginning of creation. Everything's always gone along the same way...

Now, if a scientist wants to hold that theory, that's fine. He can do that. He can actually hold that, and he can defend it. He can say, "You see? When I go back and I see the processes today, and I go back and I find a bunch of rocks, and I know how fast the changes take place, and I see the changes in the strata of the rock, I figure they've gotta take this many million of years, and this many million more years, and this many million more years to make those changes when I calculate it off the basis of change that takes place in my observations today." And so he fits everything into this limitless past and limitless future. He's figuring everything will always go like it's going now. Everything always has gone like it's going now. That's uniformity; and he puts everything into that - the evolution of life, the evolution of galaxies, the evolution of chemical elements, the evolution of everything; and you can't really prove he's wrong. I mean you can't go up to the guy and say, "You're wrong, fella. I wanna prove to you you're wrong." The reason you can't is because those events are not reproducible. You can't reproduce those things. There's no way. They're not subject to scientific checking. He only believes in uniformity because he's got the faith that that's right, not because he can ever defend it. No way. It is simply a matter of faith that uniformity has been constantly true.

You say, "What's the scriptural view?" Well, look at it here. "Ohhhhh," they say in verse 4, "all things continue as they were from the beginning of the creation...Oh, really?...For this they are willingly are ignorant of it: by the Word of God the heavens were of old, and the earth standing out of the water and in the water...Now watch...By which the world that then was was overflowed with water and perished. The heavens and earth, which are now, by the same Word, are kept in store, reserved unto fire against the Day of Judgment and perdition of ungodly men."

He says, "Those people who are saying all things continue as they were have forgotten that that's not true. Have they forgotten the Flood?" And those people that think that all things are gonna continue as they were at the same pace. Have they forgotten the fiery Day of Judgment? You see what the Bible says? The Bible says you better believe in catastrophism. You could explain all the strata. You can explain all the scientific facts and data and fit it beautifully into the system that God has set forth in His Word, so it boils down, folks, really to whether you wanna believe in a uniformity theory that you can't prove, or whether you wanna believe in catastrophism, which the Bible defends.

Now do you see what I'm saying? There's no conflict between science and the Bible. There's only a conflict on a moral basis between a man and God. You can't argue either case. You can't argue catastrophism, 'cause you can't reproduce it, but you can argue that a man is really fighting against God. I'll tell ya, the guy who is the uniformitarian, who's got all that constant going, in my mind, he's got greater faith than the man who believes the Bible, 'cause he hasn't got anything to believe. At least we have the Bible. The conflict, then, is not science and the Scripture, but scientism, philosophical science. Science as religion and the Word of God. One scientist said on the science newsletter that I read, he said, "I reject the idea of a transcendent God, so what other option do I have? That's why I believe in it."

The final decision is moral. Henry Morris says, and I quote, "The Bible does provide a perfectly sound basis for understanding physical processes. It serves well as a textbook on science within which we can satisfactorily explain all the data of science and history. The issue is not - the issue is not between science and the Scripture. The issue is whether a man wants to submit to the Word of God or does not, and it boils down to Romans 1:28, which defines man in these terms: "They did not like to retain God in their knowledge." And so having dumped God, they had to come up with some explanation. Having rejected His revelation, they came up with the only other option. If God didn't make it, then it just happened...

You say, "Well, then there really is no conflict? What about all of the scientific things that we've learned? Does the Bible say those things? Aren't there scientific errors in the Bible?" Lemme show you some things in the Bible on the subject of science. Now, get in mind that the Bible's ancient, and we're gonna be dealing in the Book of Job, which goes way back; and we're gonna be dealing with some things that were spoken in the Word of God that are just astounding when you think about how late in man's history man discovered them scientifically.

Now, let's look at several things. First of all, the basic principles of science. Now, all scientists agree, and I say that somewhat hesitatingly, the majority of them do, that several things are necessary as basics. First of all, science must deal with things, and that is matter. Science secondly must deal with happenings. That is energy, and, thirdly, science must deal with a matrix in which those things happen. That is space-time, hyphenated. So the basics of science are matter, energy, and space-time. That's a fairly simple catalogue. Any respectable scientist would agree to that. The universe, in essence, then, now mark this, must be a continuum of space-time, matter, and energy. Science tells us that one of those cannot exist without the other. You cannot have matter existing without energy and existing without a place for it to exist. Do you see what I'm saying? All three have to be together. The continuum must have existed simultaneously from the beginning of life, says science.

You know something remarkable? In Genesis 1:1, you have it all right there. "In the beginning, God created the heaven and the earth," includes all those things. It includes the space-time matrix, energy, and matter. The very first verse in the Bible has God creating the three basic dimensions of science simultaneously, and all scientists of respectable quality would agree that those three things are basically necessary. Once the universe had been created, its processes, say scientists, were designed to operate in an orderly fashion. All the different phenomena of nature was ordered by and sustained by these forces, and science says the forces continue and continue and continue and continue. No further creation was needed, and, you know, that's what the Bible says, too? You know, there is a block of matter and energy that is created, and it continues and continues and continues and continues and continues. It takes different form, but it continues. Energy is never totally lost. Matter is never totally lost. The same continuum goes on and on and on. There's no need for later creations, and that's exactly what it says in Genesis 2:2, "God ended His work which He had made." God, in the right simultaneous beginning, put all the right things together; and when He put it together, He stopped and creation ended right there; and science agrees that there was the initial beginning of these things; and then, out of that, came the cycle of reproduction; but energy and matter have continued.

The complete cessation of creative activity has been inadvertently recognized by modern science as the first law of thermal dynamics. It's the law of the conservation of mass and energy, that the universe converses mass and energy. It is the most universal and the most certain of all scientific principles. Science has shown that there is nothing being created in the known universe now. There are things changing and energy affecting matter and matter affecting energy and so forth and so on, but nothing is being created now, and the Bible says that when God ended His work, He ended it, and it fits the scientific fact...

Lemme show you a couple of interesting verses. Isaiah 40:26, "Lift up your eyes on high, and behold who hath created these things, who bringeth out their host by number. He calleth them all by names by the greatness of His might, for He's strong in power...listen to this...not one faileth." There is the law of the conservation of mass and energy. When God made it, He said, "It will not cease to exist. It will not cease to exist." Conservation, the first law of thermodynamics; and Nehemiah 9:6, "Thou, even Thou, art Lord alone; Thou hast made heaven, the heaven of heavens, with all their host, the earth, all things that are in it, the seas and all that is in them...now watch...and Thou preservest them all." You see again the statement that the continuation of the existence of mass and energy is part and parcel of God's creative work. Scientists, as I said, inadvertently thought they discovered the first law of thermodynamics. They really just discovered Isaiah 40 verse 26.

Lemme give you another one. Back in the Old Testament in Ecclesiastes 1 verse 9, listen to this. "The thing that hath been, it is that which shall be." You get that? "The thing that hath been, it is that which shall be; and that which is done, is that which shall be done; and there is no new thing under the sun." Did you get it? There again is the continuation of all of this. "Is there anything whereof it may be said, 'See, this is new?' It hath been already of old time which was before us." That's right. When God created the totality of mass and energy, and science says it was in a unit. Of course, they it occurred evolutionary cycle as a unit. We say God made it, but notice the agreement at that point. Ecclesiastes 3:14, "I know that whatsoever God does, it shall be forever; nothing can be put to it, nor anything taken from it. That which hath been is now, and that which is to be hath already been." Isn't that amazing? The Word of God is absolutely accurate in defending and defining the first law of thermodynamics, the conservation of mass and energy. Spontaneous generation can't happen. It never has. It never will.

Then there's the second law of thermodynamics, and this is the law of increasing disorder. It says that, though there is never the loss of mass and energy, its ability to produce and to make productive contribution breaks down and breaks down and breaks down, and finally becomes random. Disorder instead of order. All processes finally will cease, and the universe will be dead, science tells us. You say, "Does that fit Scripture?" Sure does. Do you know God didn't make the world with the second law of thermodynamics operating? God made the world, and He look at it and said, "It is...what?...it is good." But when man sinned, the second law of thermodynamics came into being. Science has never been able to figure out how that law works or where it came from. We know where it came from. It came from the fall of man. When man sinned and fell, Genesis 3:17, God said, "Cursed is the ground," and that was simply the symbol of the curse that stretched everywhere. The heavens have even been cursed, and you know who runs around up there with all of His angels. Safe.

Lemme show you something in Romans chapter 8 if you want a good explanation of where the second law of thermodynamics came from. It's Romans 8:20. "The creation was made subject to vanity, not willing, but by reason of Him who hath subjected the same in hope, because the creation itself also shall be delivered from the bondage of corruption into the glorious liberty of the children of God. For we know the whole creation groans and travails in pain together until now."

There we have basically that law, that the whole creation is in disorder - that it is breaking down. This is the law known as entropy, the breaking down of the productivity ability or capacity of matter and energy. I hasten to add, however, folks, that, because of that passage right there, it says the breakdown's only temporary. Say, "What do you mean by that?" Well, the Lord's gonna come and create a new heaven and a new earth with no curse. Are you ready for that? No more curse. No more death. No more tears. No more sorrow. No more crying. No more pain. No more regrets. No more exile. No more trouble. No more hurting. No more destruction. No more decay. No more unrighteousness. No more sea. No more temple. No more night. No more sinners...A lotta no mores.

God's gonna end the breaking down random disorderly character of the universe and recreate a new heaven and new earth just like the one He made the first time before the fall, and it'll have not operating in it the second law. But notice, the second law of thermodynamics is completely explained by the curse that came upon man; and from the very beginning, the fact of earth's disorder and random and breaking down is clearly outlined in the 3rd chapter of Genesis. Amazing.

Lemme give you another interesting area, and those were just generalities. Have you ever studied the area of hydrology? Well, I hadn't until I got out all the encyclopedias and started studying it, 'cause there were some interesting Bible verses that I knew must be related to it. Hydrology is basically the science that deals with the waters of the earth. Water is evaporated up into the atmosphere, collected in the clouds, and then redeposited on the earth in the form of rain and snow, and then certain amount of it evaporates again, and goes through the same cycle. Other of it flows into the runoff, into the lakes and the streams, winds up in the ocean, evaporates from the ocean, and the cycle just keeps going on and on and on. Part of the rain and show that falls seeps into the ground and, therefore, we have the water table that's in the ground which provides water, as well.

So this whole cycle of hydrology and the hydrological cycle of water being carried up and dropped back down and so forth and so on really puzzled the world until the 17th century. In fact, until the 17th century, people believed in subterranean reservoirs - that in the middle of the earth, there were huge inexhaustible reservoirs of water. That that's where springs came from, just kept bubbling and bubbling out of these reservoirs. They didn't believe that water could seep through soil and create those reservoirs. They didn't believe there was any way to replenish them, so they figured they must be mammoth things. Men like Mariotte and Perrault and Halley from England came along in the 17th century and opened up the modern concept of hydrology where water is taken up into the clouds, redeposited, seeps into the earth, creates the reservoirs of water in the ground, as well as runs off and fills the seas, etc., etc. Science had discovered and studied this. Evaporation, transportation, and precipitation, etc.

Well, you know, if they'd just read Isaiah 55, they'd had the whole thing. They didn't need to wait till 17th century. Listen to Isaiah 55:10. "For as the rain and the snow come down from heaven and do not return there without watering the earth." Now wait a minute. It says, "They do not return there." There's the cycle, isn't it? They don't return there until they've done their job. God deposits the rain. It saturates the earth. It's recollected, evaporated, and brought up from the seas and from the dry land and cycled back to the clouds again. So he says, "As the rain and the snow come down from heaven and they don't return without watering the earth and making it bear and sprout and furnish seed to the sower and bread to the eater, so shall My Word be which goes forth from My mouth: It shall not return to Me void, without accomplishing what I desire, and without succeeding in the matter for which I sent it." He says, "The Word is gonna have the same kind of seed-bearing cycle that rain does before it's talked back up into the clouds." Scientifically accurate.

Ecclesiastes 1 verse 6, "The wind goes toward the south, turns about unto the north; it whirls continually, and the wind returns again according to its circuits; and all the rivers run into the sea, yet the sea is not full." Isn't that amazing? You know why all the rivers keep running into the sea, and the sea isn't full? 'Cause it's the same water, just keeps going around and around and around. It's the same water. There's really no loss, ultimately, of the mass or the energy. The same cycle is going on. Ecclesiastes, Solomon said it. Nobody picked up on Solomon for a long time. In Job, the first book ever written in Scripture, Job 36:27-28 says this. "For He draws up the drops of water; they distill rain from the mist, which the clouds pour down, and the drip upon man abundantly." The oldest book in the Bible described the process of evaporation and precipitation, percipitation.

Psalm 135 verse 7, "He causes the vapors to ascend from the ends of the earth. He makes lightnings for the rain." Vapor goes up and rain comes down. So the Scripture gives the hydrological cycle and the features of evaporation. You can read Job 26:8 and find about condensation. You can read Job 28:10 and find about runoff. You could read Psalm 33:7 and find about the ocean reservoirs. Job 38:22 says, "Have you entered the storehouses of the snow, or have you seen the storehouses of the hail?" Clouds store those things, said Job. Something that man in his own day really never understood. You see, God made the whole hydrological cycle. He could explain it, couldn't He? There's no conflict with science there. Absolute accuracy.

Lemme give you another one - astronomy. Astronomy's fascinating. I guess because we can all look at it. We all see the wonder of it. It's just staggering; but modern astronomy, which is the study of the solar systems, didn't even begin to replace the old ideas until the 17th century or so. You remember the old idea that the earth was a flat disk like a record? It was a flat thing, and it was surrounded by the world river called Oceanus, and they used to say, "That if you're dumb enough to sail through the gates of Pericles...which is the Rock of Gibraltar...you'll fall off into nothingness." And then some people sailed around the Cape of Good Hope on South Africa, and all the way up the coast of Africa, and that theory was on shaky ground.

Well, you know, that idea of a flat disk-shaped earth just sitting there and the whole solar system, stellar, Heaven's going around and around and around while this flat disk just watched it go, that particular view lasted a long time. In the Ptolemaic view, which, of course, was the famous view until the Copernican theory came along, the Ptolemaic view as that the Greek philosopher said that the earth is a flat thing, and it's in a hollow globe. It's like the inside of a big bubble, a big ball. Of course, they never got into the question of what's outside the bubble, which is a tough question. But, anyway, they had this hollow globe, and the stars were stuck in the inside of the globe like little jewels; and the globe just kept going around, and the flat earth just watched it go around. That was the whole ballgame right there. The sky was supported, you see, because there was a stick, a big one...that was stuck clear through the big ball sky and right through the little flat disk, earth. Like that, and the whole sky was able to revolve on this stick. Boy, don't think about that too long.

But, believe me, that was popular till 1472 to 1543 when Copernicus lived. He came along and presented the fact that the earth was in motion. They thought he was out of his mind. Then came men like Brahe, Tycho, Kepler, and Galileo in the 17th century, and they really gave birth to modern astronomy. The most amazing fact of modern astronomy is the essentially infinite size and variety of the physical universe. The thing that they discovered was that there's no end to it. That it isn't a little ball with a bunch of things stuck on the inside of it. That it is endless. This is the staggering thing about modern astronomy.

Well, you know, Isaiah 55:9 said that? Do you know Job 22:12, the oldest book in the Bible, Job says, "Is not God in the height of Heaven look also to the distant stars, how high they are?" The recognition that it's far off. Jeremiah made such allusions himself to the fact that the solar system was a vast and distant thing. In Jeremiah, let's see, I think it's 31:37, "Thus saith the Lord, 'If Heaven above can be measured and the foundation of the earth searched out beneath, I will also cast off all the seed of Israel for all that they have done,' saith the Lord." Ooh, I like that verse for two reasons. It tells me that Heaven can't be measured. It also tells me that Israel can't be cast off.

When somebody comes along and says, "You know, I'm not too sure about Israel. I...I believe it's sort of a covenant position, and I think Israel's been set aside permanently." I say, "Oh, really? Well, then tell me how big the heavens are." Because the day you measure the heavens is the day God sets aside Israel." Oh, really? That's what it says. Jeremiah 33:22, interesting to deal with that. "As the host of heaven cannot be numbered, neither the sand or the sea measured, so will I multiply the seed of David, My servant." And, again, you have the idea that there's no way to number the stars. There's no way. It's vast. It's innumerable.

But, you know, before...before the telescope was invented in the 17th century, Departa said there are a 1,022 stars. Final. Ptolemy said, "You're wrong. There are a 1,056." Today our scientists tell us there are over 100 billion in our galaxy, and how many billion galaxies are there? The Bible knew all that. You can't measure 'em. They're innumerable. They're more innumerable than the sands of the sea. Imagine how many sands you could gather from all the seas of all the globe and you don't have the number of how many stars there are. It's a long way out there. Can't be measured. Can't be measured. The Bible said it couldn't be measured, couldn't be counted. And, you know, science has recently discovered that stars are all different, too. There are tremendous varieties of them, that they're not all the same. The early scientists believed they were all the same thing. Whatever they were, it was the same thing. They found today that there are infinite numbers of varieties and sizes, and scientists are busy today cataloging these sizes and varieties. You realize 1 Corinthians 15:41 said that? First Corinthians 15:41 says, "There's one glory of the sun, another glory of the moon, another glory of the stars...listen to this...for star differs from star."...

Now, all the Bible had to do was one time say, "All stars are the same," and you could throw it away, right? It would've been wrong. It doesn't say that. It never makes a mistake. See, God knows as much about stars as he does about salvation. Yeah. Another thing that's interesting is orbits. It always fascinated me. I remember I was a little kid in classes, teacher had some big ball with a bunch of little balls going around it, you know, and, boy, I used to think that's amazing stuff. And then when you stop and realize that everything is in orbit around something, and everything is in orbit in the whole universe and the whole thing is going around in a mad panicky thing, it's staggering. Everything in the universe is going somewhere. Amazing.

Science has charted that these orbits are so absolute that they can predict them to the very hour. You know that? They can predict an eclipse, can't they, to the very hour? You know why they can do that? Because the orbits of those planets are absolutely constant...Science was staggered when it realized this. Oh, it shouldn't be. Jeremiah 31:35 and 36, "Thus says the Lord, who gives the sun or light by day, and the fixed order of the moon and stars for light by night...Listen...if this fixed order departs from Me, then the offspring of Israel shall cease from being a nation before Me." The fixed order of the stars, and God says it won't change...

I'm telling you, folks, you can measure that stuff, because God is upholding all of those things at an absolutely perfect pace so that they can be charted mathematically. Staggering. It's all there in Jeremiah. They should've known there was a fixed orbit for everything...

You say, "Did Jeremiah understand what he was saying?" Of course, he didn't know all that he was saying. Boy, what a vindication of Scripture. Hum. Here's an interesting one. Just comes to mind. Psalm 19:6. Scientists used to have kind of a little fun with this one, laughing. It's talking about the sun. Regarding the sun, it says in verse 6, "His going forth is from the end of the heaven and his circuit unto the ends of it. There's nothing hidden from the heat thereof." The old view, of course, the old, false view was that the sun revolved around the earth. Remember that? That was the old view. The sun was going around the earth; and they say, "See, look at this Bible statement. His going forth from the end of heaven, his circuit to the ends of it, nothing." They've got the sun going in a circuit around the globe, and they used to laugh, "Ha-ha, isn't it funny? The sun's going around the earth."

But the Psalmist word took on some new meaning, because you know what science has discovered in recent years? They have discovered that the sun, watch this, with our entire solar system actually does move through space in orbit. It says there that it's going forth is from one end of heaven to the other. Science has calculated that our entire solar system dragged along by the sun is going at 72,000 miles an hour in a gigantic orbit that takes 2 million centuries to complete. Folks, we are moving from one end of Heaven to the other at 72,000 miles an hour, as well as spinning on the way and rotating around the sun.

You know, not many years ago, scientists believed that the moon was a great luminous body. They actually thought that the moon was a luminous body. Centuries ago, Job said in Job 25:5, "Look to the moon. It shineth not." Years ago, Job knew the moon wasn't a luminous body. So, you see, the Bible is right in its general principles. It's right in it's astronomy. It's right in its hydrology.

Lemme give you another one. Geology. When the Bible talks about scientific things regarding geology - incidentally, geology is the science of the earth, and I can talk a lot about this. There's all different kinds of things - geophysics, geochemistry, and everything else; but just to pinpoint a couple of things. I got an interesting study. I was reading Encyclopedia Britannica. I got into the study of something called isostacy, and this is the study of the balance of the earth, and this whole study really never came into full understanding till 1959. But it deals with the fact that the earth is perfectly balanced, that there is equal weight to support land mass and mountains and valleys and water, that the whole thing is perfectly balanced, that its equilibrium is astounding, and they came up with this as the foundation of geophysics. Do you know that the...the water in the oceans exerts a pressure against the shore that keeps the mountains up? It's a staggering thing, and the...the earth has different weights of rocks at different places to balance it out. Amazing.

Listen, what's amazing? Isaiah 40 verse 12. "Behold the Lord God who has measured the waters in the hollow of His hand, marked off the heavens with the span...that's half a cubit...and...listen...calculated the dust of the earth by the measure, weighed the mountains in a balance and the hills with a pair of scales." Now listen to Psalm 104. "He established the earth on its foundation so that it will not totter." Isn't that fantastic? "He established the earth on its foundation so it will not totter. The mountains rose. The valleys sank down to the place which Thou didst establish for them." God said in the Old Testament that, "I've made the earth so that it's balanced."

I'm telling you, folks, the Bible doesn't make mistakes scientifically. There's no contradiction between science and the Bible. The same God who wrote the Bible is the God who made the world and all the worlds in the universe. Geology has a sub-science called geodesy, and this is the study of the shape of the earth, and it is clear that the earth is spherical, that it is basically round. Now the ancients taught that it was what? Flat. They said, as I told you, if you sail far enough, you'll plunk off into nothingness. That was really dumb, because Isaiah told 'em what it was. Isaiah 40:22, I just love it. It says, "It is He that sits on the circle of the earth." Can you believe it? Chug, C H U G, translated is a Hebrew word. Means sphere, and Job 38, the oldest book in verse 14 says, "The earth is turned as clay to the seal." What does that mean? It refers to small clay cylinders the ancients used to write. While they were still soft, they ran a stick through them, and they would roll them across the impression like that. Job said, "It rotates on an axis." Isaiah said, "It's a sphere." Everybody thought it was flat.

You take, for example, gravity, dealing...dealing again with geology. Take gravity. Wasn't till Newton in the 17th century that the gravitational laws were really finalized, and Job said in Job 26:7, "He hangeth the earth on nothing." There's gravity. Well, there are other things we could talk about, but, you see, that generally the area of specifics like hydrology and astronomy and geology, the Bible is accurate.

Lemme give you another thought. Meteorology. This is amazing. The basic principle of meteorology is the circulation of the atmosphere. Galileo discovered in the 17th century that wind had circuits. He discovered that winds go in a circuitous pattern. If he'd have read Ecclesiastes 1:6, he'd have read this, "The wind goes toward the south, turns about to the north, whirls about continually, and the wind returns again according to its circuits." You see, the Bible knew what it took meteorologists a long time to find out. Do you realize that before Galileo, no scientist ever knew that air had weight? That wasn't until Galileo that it was determined that air had weight. Job 28:25 says, "He imparted weight to the air." Again, accuracy.

Lemme give you one other thought. Physiology, and you could really go on and on about this, but just take the science of physiology. The Bible is so accurate on that. It wasn't until William Harvey, 1628, discovered the circulatory system as the key to life, that man really understood that blood was recognized as the thing that kept you alive. Before that, whenever you got sick, they took your blood out. Remember? They bleed you. Now, when somebody gets sick, we give 'em blood. We know that makes for life. It took till 1628 for William Harvey to get it straight. Leviticus 17:11 says, "The life of the flesh is in the blood." You say, "Oh, that's a spiritual saying." You're right. "It's a sacrificial saying." You're right. It's also scientifically correct, isn't it? Bible doesn't make mistakes.

In 1953, a medical book came out entitled Personality Manifestations in Psychosomatic Illness. It really became an important book, and today we know a lot about psychosomatic illness, and this book discussed how emotions can cause debilitating and even fatal illness. The book had diagrams in it of the emotional center of the brain from which nerve fibers descend to every area of the body, and because of these intricate connections with that emotional center of the brain sending out all those nervous impulses through that system, it is understandable that any emotional trauma, any emotional stress, any turmoil in that emotional center can send out impulses through the fibers of the nervous system, can cause anything from headaches to foot itch and on into serious things. The book recorded, and it's, of course, a recognized accurate book, that the emotional center produces illness in three ways. No. 1, changes the amount of blood flow. You can get a good illustration of it by somebody who gets mad. Automatically, the blood rushes to his face. In many cases, he gets red or he gets embarrassed, and he gets red. Emotional stress can increase the amount or decrease the amount of blood flow and, consequently, cause disease.

Secondly, emotional stress at the center of the nervous system can affect secretions of certain glands. Have you ever been very nervous before you giving a speech and have your mouth dry up? The very emotional thing that's going on in your brain sends certain impulses through your nervous system that dries up the glands that provide the fluid in your mouth. Now, when it...what happens is, for example, when you get an excess pressure on the emotional stress, for example, excess thyroxin is produced by emotion. It is poured into the bloodstream. It produces goiter and even fatal heart disease, all as a matter of emotion.

Not only that, the third way that emotion changes physical health is by creating muscle tension. The nerves affect the muscles, and the muscles tighten up and become tense. You say, "Well, that's...that's nice that they discovered all that. What does it have to do with what you're talking about?" Well, I want you to know the Bible anticipated all of that. The Bible knew that your emotions were very, very important in terms of your health. Listen to Proverbs 16:24. "Pleasant words are like a honeycomb...now, listen, beautiful...sweet to the soul...are you ready?...health to the bones." You see, God knew that emotional stress, that anger, that criticism, that whatever it is that were the sour words, could affect physical health, and that's right there. There's no way those people could've clinically discovered that. God revealed it. Proverbs 17:22, "A merry heart doeth good like a medicine, but a broken spirit dries the bones." Now, a happy person is a healthy person, right? An unhappy one is an unhealthy one.

I'll tell ya, lemme add something just in conclusion. The little book that McMillan has written called None of These Diseases had some interesting things. I'm just gonna read you a thought or two here. Listen. "For many hundreds of years, the dreaded disease leprosy had killed countless millions of people in Europe. The extent of the horrible malady among Europeans is given by Dr. George Rosen, Columbia University Professor of Public Health. Quote, 'Leprosy cast the greatest blight that threw its shadow on the daily life of medieval humanity.' Fear of all other diseases taken together can hardly be compared to the terror spread by leprosy. Not even the Black Death in the 14th century or the appearance of syphilis toward the end of the 15th century produced a similar state of fright. Early in the Middle Ages, during the 6th and 7th centuries, it began to spread more widely, and Europe became a serious social and health problem. It was endemic, particularly among the poor, and reached a terrifying peak in the 13th and 14th centuries. What did the physicians offer to stop the ever-increasing ravages of leprosy? Some taught that it was brought on by eating hot food, pepper, garlic, and the meat of diseased hogs. Other physicians said it was caused by malign conjunction of the planets. Naturally, their suggestions for prevention were utterly worthless.

"Another plague that made the Dark Ages really dark was the Black Death. In the 14th century alone, this killer took the lives of one out of every four persons, an estimated total of 60 million. It was the greatest disaster ever recorded in human history. Sweeping everything before it, this plague brought panic and confusion in its train. The dead were hurled pell-mell into huge pits hastily dug for the purpose of putrefying. Bodies lay about everywhere in the houses and streets. The sexton and the physician were cast into the same deep and wide grave. The testator and his heirs and executors were hurled into the same cart, into the same hold together. What brought the major plagues of the Dark Ages under control?" George Rosen gives the answer.

"Leadership was taken by the church, as the physicians had nothing to offer. The church took as its guiding principle the concept of contagion as embodied in the Old Testament. This idea and its practical consequences are defined with great clarity in the Book of Leviticus. Once the condition of leprosy had been established, the patient was segregated and excluded from the community. Following the precepts laid down in Leviticus, the church undertook the task of combating leprosy. It accomplished the great feat in methodical eradication of disease. The procedure came from Leviticus 13:46...quote...'All the days wherein the plague shall be in him. He shall be defiled. He is unclean. He shall dwell alone. Without the camp shall his habitation be.' Other historians credit the Bible for the dawning of a new era in the effective control of disease. The laws against leprosy in Leviticus 13 be regarded as the first model of a sanitary legislation." That's a quote from Arturo Castiglioni, who has written The History of Medicine. You see, the Bible knew the solution to those problems.

There are other problems, physiologically, that the Bible solves. If you're to read that little book, None of These Diseases, you can read more and more of them. Just some samples for tonight. We could add biology, archeology, anthropology, etc., and, again, we would find that every time the Bible touches on these things, it is absolutely accurate. Friends, there is only one way this truth could have been known, and that is the God who made the world revealed it. Is the Bible believable? My friends, science tells me that it is. Science has never yet refuted the Scripture, but rather confirmed it. In the final analysis, I submit the truth is won and Jesus said this, "Thy Word is truth." It's true on any subject it ever touches. Therein lies the product of its inspiration.

Our Father, we are thankful tonight for just the joy and the privilege of being able to share and just have our hearts lifted to...to a new and a fresh confidence in Your Word. Oh, Father, how grateful we are for the fact that the more science discovers fact, the more that it charts the present processes, the more the Word of God is vindicated. This Book is Your truth. God, give us a fresh new confidence, a fresh new boldness to stand for the Book. Praise You in Jesus' name. Amen.

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Biblical Inspiration Validated By Science, Part 1

Biblical Inspiration Validated By Science, Part 1
Selected Scriptures




We continue in our look at the Word of God tonight and the subject of the doctrine of inspiration. In 2 Timothy chapter 3 we read, "That all Scripture is inspired by God." All Scripture is God-breathed. All Scripture proceeds from God. He is the author of Scripture. And therefore, when we study the Word of God, it reflects the divine mind. And since the mind of God is all knowing, everything in the Bible is true. It is a true representation not only of what God said but what God determined is true. Whatever the Bible says on whatever subject it speaks, it is true. Whether it is talking about past history, present reality or future prophecy, it is absolutely accurate and inerrant and without flaw. Whether the Bible is talking about temporal history or heavenly reality, it is true. Whether it is talking about events on the earth or events in heaven, it is true. Whether it is talking about the spiritual realm or the physical realm, it is true. Everything in the Scripture is true because all Scripture is God-breathed. It does not come to us from any human origin, but rather holy men are moved by the Spirit of God to write down that which God has said.

So when we study the Bible, we expect it what it affirms and what it declares and what it says is consistent with reality and with truth. It is God who wrote the Scripture and it is God who created reality, therefore you have the same author of what is and what is said about what is. And there is therefore a perfect consistency in both.



When you think about that with regard to the natural world in which we live, it sort of breaks down to a very simple way to understand it and it would go like this. "Whoever designed and created and sustains the universe also understands it. Whoever made the earth understands the earth. Whoever created the animal life, the plant life and the human life on this earth understands it perfectly as its designer and its creator and its sustainer. He knows the earth and He knows it well because He made it. Whoever made this earth understands that is spherical and not flat. He understands that it rotates on an axis, not that it is stationary with heaven rotating around it. Whoever it was that created this earth knows that it is suspended in space on nothing. Whoever created this earth knows that it sweeps through the universe, being dragged along in a solar system around the sun as the sun moves in an orbit from one end of infinite space to the other. Whoever created this universe knows that there are innumerable stars. Whoever created this world knows that the cycles of air and the cycles of water move in systems that are consistent. Whoever created this world understand the facts of chemistry and understands the facts of biology. And so whoever wrote a book in which any of this is discussed would get it right. So if we find a book that gets it right, we know who wrote it.

If God the Creator writes a book about His creation, we expect it to be a true reflection of the reality of that creation as much as is observable to us, consistent with scientific reality. And to take that argument a little further, whoever is intelligent enough to create the entire universe with all of its complexity is certainly intelligent enough to write a book in which He declares the reality consistently with actual fact. We would expect one who is intelligent enough to create the universe to be up to the task of writing an accurate book that is rational and logically consistent and true to fact.

And we might add another element to our argument. It would be of great assistance to the Creator in convincing us that He actually wrote this book since there are so many other books that have been written that claim to be divine, it would be very helpful to the Creator if He wrote this book wanting us to know that He actually wrote it if He said some things in that book which we can verify as true and yet which no one knew at the time He wrote. It would be, in fact, a monumental thing for God to write in His book things that we know now to be true which no one else at the time of writing knew or could know. That would give us evidence of transcendent divine authorship by the Creator. Whoever created reality knows reality. Whoever can create reality and knows reality can reveal Himself to us accurately about that reality.

So, whey then does Science and Healthand Key to the Scriptures, the authoritative divine book of the Christian Science movement, say "Man is not matter, he is not made up of brain, blood, bones and other material elements and man is incapable of sin, sickness and death?" Well so much for that religion. Whoever made man didn't write that. Whoever created man and made him brain, blood, bones and material elements didn't write that book. And whoever wrote that man is incapable of sin, sickness and death did not know the truth, for we are all subject to sin, sickness and death. Why does the Book of Mormonin 2 Nephi chapter 2 say, "Adam fell that men might be and they are that they might have joy?" Why does the Book of Mormonsay that if men had not fallen, they would not be what they are and therefore they would not have joy? Whoever wrote that the result of the Fall was human joy doesn't know the facts...doesn't know the facts. By the way, the Book of Mormonalso says in Alma chapter 7 verse 10 that Jesus was born in Jerusalem. Whoever wrote that book doesn't know the facts.



Why does the Koran describe the earth, the Moslem Koran, describe the earth as flat with the sky suspended over it being held up by Allah so that it doesn't fall on top of the flat earth? Whoever wrote that didn't know reality. Why does the Hindu Upanishad say that the sun is the source of all energy in the universe? That's not true. So far none of these books pass simple tests.

And then there is Taoism, that very vast oriental religion, why does the Taoist holy book say, "There are only thirteen members through which death can come." We now know that there are far more than that in the human anatomy through which death can come. That is an inaccurate statement, and there are many others. Why does the sacred Buddhist book say that earthquakes are caused by the wind moving the water and the water moving the land? That's not true either.

All these and many more supposedly holy books written by gods, all these and more are historically inaccurate, scientifically wrong, morally inferior and spiritually muddled. The Bible never is. It doesn't matter what subject it speaks on, it gets it right. It is accurate because it is written by God. It is a reflection of His Word that men wrote down under the power of the Holy Spirit so that what was written was a true record of God's Word.

The veracity of the Bible and accuracy of the Bible can be sustained and has been sustained wonderfully under THE most long-lasting and intense examination. And although it is not a text book on science, it is not a text book on technical things, whenever it intersects with science and whenever it intersects with scientific reality, it is completely true and accurate. True science has no argument with Scripture. I'll say that again. True science has no argument with Scripture. The word science simply means knowledge. That's why we say when we say God is omniscient, we put the word science with omni, all knowing. True knowledge, true science has no argument with Scripture because the Creator is the author of Scripture and He is the one who determined the way things are and He knows the way things are because He made them the way they are. Never has science, never has science disproven one jot or tittle in the Bible, and, believe me, they have tried those unbelieving scientists. They're still working at it. The Word of God stands the test of all the poundings that it has taken from so-called science and pseudo-science.

The fact of the matter is that the Bible will not only stand up under the assaults of so-called science, and it will stand fast when compared with true science, but it is also true the Bible, the Word of God, is far ahead of science. It is far ahead of scientific discovery in revealing the reality of the observable matters in this material universe. That is to say the Bible says things that are true long before man ever discovers them to be so. There's absolutely no contradiction between true science and the Bible, only between pseudo-science and the Bible.

So no matter where we go in the Bible, we're going to find the Bible scientifically accurate. And, of course, the first thing people are going to say, "Well what about creation? Don't we know that evolution has been proven?" Answer...of course not. Evolution is a theory, it is not fact. There is no present or never...and there never has been an observable, repeatable scientifically honest illustration of macro-evolution. There's never been one to observe, it is pure theory and nothing else.



When you read the Genesis account in Genesis 1 through 3, it is absolutely consistent with all true science. There are no conflicts and we're not surprised by that because God is the author. Biblical inerrancy extends to every word of Scripture and it starts with the first word "in" the beginning. Scripture, not science, is the ultimate test of all truth. In fact, the Bible warns us, 1 Timothy 6:20, against science falsely so called, or false knowledge that opposes the truth of Scripture. And though the biblical account, particularly thinking of the creation account in Genesis 1 through 3, strongly conflicts with nat...natural...naturalistic evolutionary theory, it never conflicts with true scientific fact. All geological, astronomical biological physiological true scientific data fits the Bible. Genesis 1 to 3 tells us exactly the truth about creation. Modern science, going back to Darwin, has developed a very unscientific theory called evolution. It is very unscientific, it is totally irrational because the basic premise of evolution is nobody times nothing equals everything...that's intellectual idiocy...nobody times nothing equals everything? The Creator in an evolutionary system is chance, but chance is not a force and chance is not a power, it is only a probability. And so they have turned chance into a creator and the theory of evolution, natural selection and natural origination out of nothing, is based on a series of accidents, coincidences, random events and blind luck that has no cause whatsoever. All this comes out of nothing, producing the intricate eco-systems and complex organisms and macrocosm of the universe, out of absolutely nothing by sheer random coincidence. This is total absurdity by any normal scientific evaluation.

There's a new veil out for the bizarre irrationality of evolution now that's come along called ID, have you been reading about it...Intelligent Design? This is the new scientific approach to this theory of evolution that says, "Wait a minute, there's just too much intelligence here, it's just way too complex to come out of non-intelligence. There has to be some intelligence behind this. It's just too complicated." And so they came up with this ID, Intelligent Design. And there are many scientists who are admitting that there is intelligence behind this, there must therefore be some intelligence somewhere in the universe, but they stopped short of saying that that intelligence is the God of the Bible. In fact, they stopped far short of the God of the Bible.



The fact of the matter is, they're all right with some other god. They're all right with some cosmic force. Even Einstein said, "Of course there's a cosmic force out there, but we could never know it." Even he realized you can't have all these effects without a cause, you can't have all this complexity without intelligence. They're happy to have any god and every god except the true and living one. Marvin Lubinow(??) has written an interesting book called Bones of Contention. And in that book he tells us why, I think, listen to this paragraph. "The real issue in the creation/evolution debate is not the existence of God. The real issue is the nature of God. To think of evolution as basically atheistic is to misunderstand the uniqueness of evolution. Evolution was not designed as a general attack against theism, or against the idea of God, it was designed as a specific attack against the God of the Bible and the God of the Bible is clearly revealed through the doctrine of creation. Obviously...he writes...if a person is an atheist, it would be normal for him to also be an evolutionist. But evolution is as comfortable with theism as it is with atheism. An evolutionist is perfectly free to choose any God he wishes as long as it is not the God of the Bible. The gods allowed by evolution are private, subjective and artificial. They bother no one. They make no absolute ethical demands. However, the God of the Bible is creator, sustainer, Savior and judge. All are responsible to Him. He has an agenda that conflicts with that of sinful humans. For man to be created in the image of God is very awesome. For God to be created in the image of man is very comfortable," end quote. So they're comfortable with intelligent design as long as we don't say it's the God of the Bible who is not only a creator, but who is a judge, a law giver and a Redeemer.

This is really what is behind the scientific resentment of Scripture. It's not that the Bible is scientifically inaccurate. It's not that the creation account is not a right and verifiable and sensible and reasonable and logical explanation of the way things are. It is that if you accept the Creator God of the Bible, then you have the Law-Giver of the Bible and the judge of the Bible. And in order to get rid of Him, you get rid of creation.

Now in the first place, science cannot know anything about creation anyway because it's not repeatable and it wasn't observable. Nobody was there. Not until the sixth day did God even create man and woman, and by then He had created everything else. There were no eyewitnesses to creation, with the exception of the angels who were there singing together, as the Scripture tells us, when God was creating, and God Himself. Therefore any view of creation, any view of the origin of the world as we know it is a matter of religion. It's a matter of faith. It's a matter of deciding what you want to believe. Science can observe the present. It can observe phenomena in a microscope or a test tube or some kind of telescope. But it can only speculate about prehistoric reality and about origin. There's only one who knows how it all came to exist, and that's the one who brought it into existence, and that's God the Creator.

So what we have in the Bible in Genesis 1 through 3 is the Creator's account of His creation. And why would He give us a faulty account? If He wanted to reveal Himself, He would tell us the truth about His creation so that when we studied the creation carefully we find that it matches perfectly with the creation account when we measure true science against that account and therefore it verifies to us that this in fact is a book written by the creator. And if we can trust Him for His record of creation, we can trust Him for everything else as well.

Turn to 2 Peter chapter 3 for a moment, because if we're going to talk about science and the Bible, we're going to find a good starting point here. And we discussed this a week ago in our Sunday-morning series on the Second Coming, so it will be a little bit familiar to those of you who are here. But in 2 Peter chapter 3 and verse 3, we are told that in the last days, in these days in which we live, the day since the Lord has come and particularly in the days since evolutionary theory was developed over a hundred years ago, "In the last days, mockers will come with their mocking, following after their own lust and saying, 'Where's the promise of His coming?'" They mocked the idea of a cataclysmic event called the Second Coming of Jesus Christ. They mocked the idea that the Lord is going to come and bring destruction, massive destruction upon the earth and upon the ungodly. And their mockery is basically framed around a theory called uniformity, or uniformitarianism. That is, verse 4, they say, "For ever since the fathers fell asleep, all continues just as it was from the beginning of creation." They say there's never going to be a cataclysmic event in the future such as described in the Bible as the Second Coming of Jesus Christ, no such cataclysmic event can happen because none ever has. That's their theory. All things have always continued at the same pace. This is a scientific view that observes current processes, current scientific reality, scientific data. And it extrapolates observing present processes, extrapolates them indefinitely into the past and indefinitely into the future so that as things are changing at the current pace, they must have always changed in the past at that same pace and they will all change in the future at that very same pace.


And so, it's always been that way. You extrapolate the processes back and you go back millions and you go back billions of years. You've extrapolated into the future and you go forward millions and billions of years. There are no great cataclysmic events in the future because there haven't any...been any such things in the past. It's always been the same through all history since the fathers way back died, everything continues just as it was from the beginning of creation.

Now if a scientist wants to hold that view, he can. He can determine the age of rocks, the age of the sun, and the age of the human race by projecting present rates of change into the limitless past and into the limitless future. He can develop theories about the evolution of life, assuming that everything continues at the same speed, extrapolating it all the way back billions and billions of years. He can do the same thing with galaxies in space. He can do the same thing with chemical elements in the universe if he wishes. But he cannot know that it is true. He cannot know that it is accurate. He cannot know that it is right because he can't reproduce those years in the past, he can't reproduce those realities and those forces. The original events and sequences are not observable so he doesn't know if it's always going at the same rate in the past, nor can he know that will always go at the same rate in the future. That he cannot reproduce. Therefore, the viewpoint is not subject to scientific affirmation and verification, it is purely a theory, it is an idea one holds by faith. That is the idea of uniformity. And that's exactly what this text is saying. Their view in the world is that there's not going to be a future cataclysm because that's not how the universe works, it just keeps going along in the same way. The argument then of the heretics goes something like this, the universe is a closed naturalistic system of cause and effect. It moves along in this naturalistic system of cause and effect, closed to any divine intervention at the beginning, in the middle or at the end. There are no catastrophes. They call it uniformity, or uniformitarianism and it denies divine intervention in history.

This became very formalized in the nineteenth century under the influence of a British lawyer and geologist named Charles Lyle. Charles Lyle wrote a book called The Principles of Geology, this was a book that really influenced Darwin. In fact, when Darwin went to the Galapagos Islands, took a copy of Lyle's book and was studying this idea of uniformitarianism.



The reality, however, is...the reality is, in modern times it is apparent that there is far too much evidence for catastrophism to really, honestly hold to a theory of uniformitarianism. There is just too much evidence for catastrophism, too much evidence such as finding mastodons on the north edge of Siberia buried in the ice pack with their stomachs full of tropical vegetation. How does that happen? Unless there is a catastrophe on the earth that freezes them instantly with their stomach contents in place as a result of some massive innundation and change in the earth so that what now is Arctic Circle ice is a dramatic change from what once was tropical vegetation. That argues for massive catastrophe. And, in fact, the catastrophe, the Bible explains, as the universal Flood which then issues in the changing of the continents of the earth, the repositioning of mountain ranges, the redevelopment of seas leading to massive ice floes moving across the world and changing its face. How do you explain if you go down the road here on Highway 14 and go toward Lancaster and wander in the mountains, you're finding seashells all over everywhere? How do you get the ocean in a aqua dulce? That's just a...I have a shell on my desk from Aqua Dulce, an ocean shell that carried an ocean creature. There's just too much overwhelming evidence for catastrophism to hold on to this.

And so, honest uniformitarians are saying, "Well, there...there have been a few small catastrophes, like the Ice Age." They love the Ice Age. It doesn't explain everything by any means. It's better to view the reality as God created everything the way it is, creation was the first massive catastrophe...that is to say He created a fully mature creation, both in the universe and on the earth, all that exists, He created it all in six twenty-four-hour days by a series of miraculous catastrophic divine evasions. And it's not billions of years ago, it's only thousands of years ago that the whole creation is probably somewhere around ten thousand years old.

True science will support that. There are reams of books available for that particular study. The evidence is on the side of biblical creation. That is why...let's go back, verse 5..."When they maintained this..." I'm not real thrilled with the New American Standard translation of the next phrase, "When they maintained this..." it really says, "They are willfully ignorant...they are purposely ignorant," thelontos(?), the verb thelo, to will in its participial form. They are willfully ignorant. That is they purposely reject what is true. You can't have everything from nothing. You can't have a complex universe that is fully intelligent and personality among humans from non-intelligent non-personality. You can't have everything from nothing. But they are willfully ignorant of that. They are purposely ignorant of that. They choose to reject that. They refuse to believe that because if they believe that, then they're stuck with the God of the Bible. So they refuse to believe what is obvious intellectually, what is observable scientifically because they love their sin and they do not want to have to give an account for their sin to a creator who is also a law-giver and a judge. So self-induced blindness leads them to reject the truth that they should understand.

What is so strange to me is Christians that come along and join the evolutionary bandwagon and deny creation. Very popular stuff...theistic evolution, progressive creationism as they've called it for years at Wheaton College. The idea that evolution is true, or the writings of Hugh Ross who has written much on this subject and with whom I interact, by the way, in my book The Battle for the Beginning.Why do Christians need to reject Genesis 1, 2 and 3? And I asked the question...okay, you say you're a Christian and you believe the Bible, what chapter do you come in? When do you start believing? Do you believe in chapter 4? Do you think you can buy in to the Cain and Abel story? How about chapter 5? Can you take that genealogy? How about chapter 6? Can you buy in to the Flood? At what point do you start believing?

And if God didn't tell us the truth in Genesis 1, 2 and 3, then why would we believe Him anywhere else? And if He didn't get that part right, then what part did He get right? And what other parts did He get wrong? And we are left with great chaos.



Hugh Ross and others like him wanted to protect God from being wrong, come up with the idea that Genesis 1 through 3 is poetry, not history. It is poetry not history. It is...it is God talking in poetic language, taking poetic license. That, of course, is contrived since there is nothing in the Hebrew text to indicate that this is poetry. And Hebrew poetry is easily recognizable. One of our noble professors at the Master's College, Dr. Stephen Boyd who is a doctor at...has a doctorate in Old Testament and who is a Hebrew scholar, recently did a very fascinating study which has established an unanswerable argument. And what he did was, he quantified Hebrew poetry so that it could be graphed and put into a computer. He quantified Hebrew historical narrative so then it could be graphed and put into a computer and statistically could then demonstrate whether this Genesis 1 to 3 narrative had the properties of poetry or history. The result of his study is published in a book called Thousands Not Billions, a wonderful book. There's a whole chapter in there, this study is available...it rocks, believe me...(laughter)...it rocks. It is a...it is a formidable argument and the end result is that it is something like 99.9 percent of what is in Genesis 1 through 3 can only be historical narrative, it has zilch properties of Hebrew poetry when measured in an honest way. That is an illegitimate approach. What you have is historical narrative. And so, I go back to the fact that you can trust Genesis 1 to 3 because every word of God is true and because God knows what is and because the only one who is there at the creation is God, and God can be trusted to tell us what is true. It is so foolish to deny what is true. And there's no reason to deny it because, as I said, true science compared with the Genesis account matches up perfectly.

And, in fact, we get help in 2 Peter 3. You study creation and then you study the great second cataclysm, the Flood. Verse 5, "When they maintained this, when they willfully are ignorant of this, they forget conveniently that by the Word of God the heavens existed long ago and the earth was formed out of water and by water." They forget the great catastrophic, cataclysmic events that made up the original creation. First God created the earth, and then He created water over the surface of the earth and then He in cataclysmic fashion reshaped the earth and went on to create everything else and populate the earth, creates light first, then attaches that light to heavenly bodies as well. They forget the cataclysm of creation. And verse 6, they forget the cataclysm by which the world in ancient times was destroyed, being flooded with water. And they forget that the Bible promises the present heavens, verse 7, and earth are going to be reserved for a future fire on a day of judgment and destruction of godly men. Uniformity doesn't work. That is not how it came into a being, that is not how it goes out of being. It comes in in the cataclysm of creation, is reshaped in the second cataclysm of the Flood, Genesis 6, 7 and 8, and it will be destroyed in the cataclysm of fire in the future. And there is nothing scientific that can disprove that. Peter says, "In fact...giving us further detail about the future destruction in verse 10...that the heaven will pass away with a roar, the elements will be destroyed with intense heat and the earth and its work will be burned up." That is a very simple description of the destruction of the atomic structure of the universe. And verse 12 adds to it, "The heavens then destroyed by burning the elements melt with intense heat." That is very reasonable as to its description of an atomic implosion of the created material universe.



The Bible then when examined scientifically holds up as to creation account, Flood account, and future destruction. But as one evolutionist says, "I reject the idea of a transcendent God, so what other alternative but evolution do I have?" Well you could come up with a god of your own making that you like better than the God of the Bible. And that's what the ID men are doing, those scientists who want to come to the recognition of intelligent design but stop short of the God of the Bible. The problem goes back to Romans 1:28, "They did not like to retain God in their knowledge. They did not want to hold on to the God of Scripture."

Now having said that, let me talk a little bit...I want to talk about a few things in terms of science. We'll do it tonight and we'll do it then next Sunday night. Let's talk, first of all, about the basic principles of science since we're dealing with foundational things. Science deals with a matrix when we're talking about natural science. We're talking about the way things are in a material universe, there is a matrix of things. You have to have matter, you have to have force, you have to have energy, you have to have space and you have to have time. That is...that is Herbert Spencer's great achievement, he died in 1903, he said, "Everything in the universe can be deposited in one of these categories...time, force, action, space and matter." Force and action comprising energy. There has to be time, there has to be energy which is force and action, there has to be space, and there has to be matter. And by the way, those five things which he defined in that order are all in Genesis 1, "In the beginning...that's time...God...that's force...created...that's action...the heavens...that's space...and the earth...that's matter." The matrix is in Genesis 1:1, that is a profound scientific statement. The universe in essence is a...is a matrix of space, time, matter, and energy. And all of it has to be existing at the same conflux. It all has to come together or none of it exists. One cannot exist without the other. The entire continuum must have existed simultaneously from the beginning. That is why you find it all in Genesis 1:1, it all had to be there. Science says it has to be there and Scripture says it is there.

Now once the matrix comes into instantaneous simultaneous existence, its processes then are designed to operate in an orderly fashion, going forward. All the different phenomena within the matrix of nature and life are sustained by the forces that exist in that matrix. Time goes on, space goes on, energy goes on, matter goes on. It is all instantaneously and simultaneously coming into existence, it is then not only brought into existence by some external force and source, but it is then kept in prefect balance and function by that same power. It is sustained by the same force that brought it into existence. But everything that God made was made in six days. And it says in Genesis 2:2, "God ended His work which He had made." God stopped making anything. If you know science, you understand that that is scientifically accurate, nothing is being created, nothing is coming into existence, nothing has since creation, day six, and God's cessation of His work. The complete cessation of creative activity has been, by the way, in advertently recognized by modern science and they call it the law, the first law of thermodynamics and the first law of thermodynamics is called the conservation of mass and energy...the conservation of mass and energy. This is THE most and universal and certain of all scientific principles. Science has shown and verified that there is nothing being created in the known universe today. Things are doing what they do but not coming into existence newly. There is nothing new in the universe. In fact, the Bible tells us this in the most unaffected, the most simple, the most direct ways without ever defending itself as if its made some statement contrary to fact.



For example, in the words that come to us in the ninth chapter of Nehemiah, "In praise to God, in blessing to God," we read in Nehemiah 9:6, "Thou alone art the Lord, Thou hast made the heavens, the heaven of heavens with all their hosts, the earth and all that is in them, the seas and all that is in them. Thou dost give life to all of them." You made it all, everything that exists in the heaven and the earth and the seas, everything that lives, you made it all. That is an affirmation of God's completed and ended creation. Everything that is You made, and You made it all in those six days of creation.

I think it's in Isaiah, there are a lot of Scriptures that we could look up but there is another one, I think it's in Isaiah...yes, chapter 40 verse 26, "Lift up your eyes and see who has created these stars, the one who leads forth their host by number, He calls them all by name, not one of them is missing." Nothing comes into existence and nothing goes out of existence. This is the law, the first law of thermodynamics, the law of the conservation of mass and energy. Nothing is being created, nothing is going out of existence. And this is exactly what the Bible says in the most unaffected way and without any scientific pretension. For example, Ecclesiastes 1:9, "That which has been is that which will be and that which has been done is that which will be done and there is nothing new under the sun." In the third chapter of Ecclesiastes, verse 14, "I know that everything God does will remain forever." There is nothing to add to it, there is nothing to take from it. It is God so...it is God who has so worked it, that which is has been already, that which will be has already been, for God seeks what has passed by. This is the continuum of the creative reality, spontaneous generation, new creation doesn't happen. What perpetuates the creation is the conservation of mass and energy. And every organism that is a living organism has the seed of life within itself to reproduce itself.

Now there's a second law of thermodynamics and science has labeled this law, and the second law of thermodynamics is this...nothing new is being created, nothing is being destroyed, that is in the sense the first law. The second law is, however, all things are tending toward increasing disorder. This is the second law of thermodynamics. Energy is running down. It is losing its capacity to perform its work. There is increasing disorder. That means that slowly but observably the processes that God set in motion are winding down. We're heading toward the death of this creation. Now they don't have an explanation for that and it's a very hard thing to come up with an evolutionary view that everything is getting more complex, more intelligent and better while at the same time they can show scientifically that energy is dissipating and everything is tending toward chaos and disorder. All energy is running down and heading toward being incapable of performing its function.



Now God didn't make the world that way. God did not make the world that way. In fact, when God finished His creation, Genesis 1:31, He looked at it all and said, "It's...what?...it's very good." How do we explain what's happened? The Bible is the only place you can go for an explanation. Science has no explanation for the second law of thermodynamics. It has no explanation for the first law. Why is it that everything came into existence in a matrix at one time and continues in that same matrix? Why is it that if this is all a matter of chance, coincidence and randomness that that's not happening again and again and again and again? Why is it that it has come into existence in such a matrix of complexity and sustained itself in that matrix of complexity? That, in fact, is what drove Einstein crazy, if you would call him crazy, because he couldn't figure out the power was that held everything together. And how then do you explain this slow death? What is the reason for that? Only the Bible explains the matrix, the power of God is the invisible power that holds it all together and sustains it. And only the Bible explains why it's all tending toward disorder and death and the explanation comes in Genesis 3, it is the Fall and God curses creation. God curses creation. You read Genesis 3, man is cursed, woman is cursed. Sin enters into the world, the land is cursed, the ground is cursed. You have to till and work by the sweat of your brow to get something out of the land and fight all the cursed elements, the thorns, the weeds. And man has to fight against the weakness of his own body and his weariness and illness and disease because death enters the world and women have pain in childbearing. The ground is cursed. The whole creation is cursed. Read Romans 8:20 to 22. In Romans 8:20 to 22 the whole creation groans under the weight of the curse.

Science has no explanation for the first law of thermodynamics which they are glad to label but cannot explain how the complex matrix can come into existence in a moment, which all of which is required for anything to exist out of nothing. They cannot explain that nor can they explain how it holds itself together because there's no way to find the power that holds it together scientifically, nor can they explain the principle of disintegration and disorder in the second law of thermodynamics. The Bible explains both perfectly.

The Bible also explains that the second law of thermodynamics without calling it that is working its way down to an end, and the end must come and it will come, only it won't die a slow death, it will die an immediate death, as I just read you, when the Lord Jesus destroys this cursed universe and establishes a new heaven and a new earth. And in the new heaven and the new earth, there will be a different matrix. There will be a different matrix. There will be no time, there will be no space, there will be the energy of eternal life. It will be a completely different matrix and there will be no second law of thermodynamics. There will be no death, no sickness, no sorrow, no dying, no decay, no unrighteousness, no trouble, to pain, no destruction, and so forth and so forth.

So, you see, when you talk about science at the very basic level, it is only the Bible that gives you any sensible understanding for the way things really are. And we would expect that the one who made things the way they are, knows the way they are, and tells us the truth about the way they are. I stand so firmly before you as somebody who is not a scientist, by any stretch of the imagination, to say to you that I have read as extensively as I can read in science, particularly in those many, many months when I was going through Genesis chapters 1, 2 and 3, trying to understand science, true science, comparison to Scripture, and I have yet to find and I am supported by Christian scientists all over the country and all over the world who study far more in depth and more diligently than I who back up the fact that there has never ben any...any scientific discovery that is in true fact the way it really is that contradicts the biblical record...never...never.

Now, I want to go from the basic principles of science to talk to you about hydrology. That's sounds like fun, the science of water, astronomy, that is marvelous and thrilling, geology. I want to talk to you about meteorology, I want to be sort of a biblical weatherman and a little bit about physiology and what the Bible says about all those ologies. But that won't be tonight. We'll save that for next time. Okay? Let's pray together.




We are in awe, O God, of Your Word. And we're so grateful for its purity, its clarity, its integrity, its inerrancy, its inspiration. Truly it has stood the test of close intense hostile angry aggressive scrutiny and its weathered all the storms. We thank You for the great strength of scientists who uphold Your truth. How encouraged we are. So many of them even since the seventeenth century when the truth began to really come out about the way the world really is, how many were Christians, how many had their biblical confidence strengthened and upheld in the discoveries of science that have come to the modern world. We thank You for all of those who work in the field of science today and work so diligently and uphold the Word of God because it can stand every attack. This is Your Word, it's true whatever it says. We rejoice in that. And our confidence in its spiritual testimony is strengthened when we know it's testimony about that which we can see and know is absolutely true. Thank You for giving us a true Word. You are the true and living God. Christ is the truth and we trust perfectly and completely in You. We thank You in the name of the Savior. Amen.

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Biblical Inspiration Validated By Science, Pt 2

Biblical Inspiration Validated By Science, Part 2
Selected Scriptures




We are examining the great doctrine of biblical inspiration. We are looking at the reality that God wrote the Bible and the question always comes up...How do we know God wrote the Bible? There are a number of ways to answer that question. One way to answer it is to look at what the Bible says about the scientific world. To put it simply, whoever designed the universe understands it. Whoever created everything understands His creation, from the microcosm of the minute world of atomic energy, to the macrocosm of limitless space. Whoever created it all understands it because He conceived it and he made it and He sustains it. And whoever is intelligent enough to create this universe with its astonishing and immeasurable complexity is certainly capable of writing a book explaining the way things really are in a simple enough fashion so as to leave His stamp on that book as the divine author. And the fact of the matter is, communication is not something difficult for the creator, He is a communication genius beyond all comprehension. God is the source of all the information that exists and He has appropriately spread it throughout His universe as He deemed necessary to accomplish His purpose.

Post-modernists philosopher Richard Roarty(?) admits that the idea of truth is coherent only in the context of a Christian world view. He said this, "The suggestion that truth is out there, objective and universal, is a legacy of an age in which the world was seen as the creation of a being who had a language of his own, a non-human language which he wrote into the cosmos." Now he depreciates that view but that is precisely the biblical view and that is precisely what Christians believe, that God is there...as Francis Schaeffer says...and He is not silent. He has spoken, He has spoken throughout His creation sometimes in the written Word of God and sometimes with a language of His own that is non-human. But the Creator speaks and science is more and more month by month year by year discovering what He has said.


For example, the discovery of DNA, the coded instruction that is in every cell of every living thing means that at the heart of all life is language, a message, information. In other words, the organic world is really a book, it is a repository of complex biological information. And not only the organic world, information has become the key for interpreting the physical universe as well. Everything in creation operates on information that has been transmitted to it in a language from the creator. Scientific American journal said recently, "Ask anybody what the physical world is made of and you are likely to be told matter and energy. Yet if we have learned anything from engineering, biology and physics, information is just as crucial an ingredient. Indeed, some physicists now regard the physical world as made of information with energy and matter as incidentals." And where does information come from? "In all human experience." I'll say that again, "In all human experience, information comes from an intelligent source." Never is it generated by blind material forces, chance or coincidence. In all human experience information comes only by an intelligent agent, an intelligent agent who can assemble that information and communicate effectively that information to another intelligent agent or to an another receptor of that information that then can function on the basis of that information.

If you look at the microcosm of the world, it is loaded with information. Think of the genetic code. Scientists have now discovered that the genetic code is digital, it's not analogous to a digital code, it is digital. It is exactly as a digitized computer code. It is not like it, it is in reality a digital code of information. More than a hundred years ago when Darwin came up with his theory, his idea was that a cell was extremely simple, just a bubble of protoplasm, a bubble of jelly. Over the past few decades, however, new technology like electron microscopes have produced a revolution in molecular biology, we now know that the cell is not just simple jelly, simple protoplasm, it is a high-tech molecular machine far more complex than any machine ever built by a human being, and I'm talking about every single cell. Scientists tell us now that every cell is like a miniature factory town. Every single cell hums with power plants, automated factories and recycling centers. In the nucleus is a cellular library of every cell, housing blueprints and plans that are copied and transported to the factories in the cell, each of which is filled with molecular machines that function like computerized motors. These manufacture the immense array of products needed within the cell with the processes all regulated by enzymes that function as stop watches to ensure that everything is perfectly timed. And all things are assembled, gathered, transported and delivered in exactly the required moment. It was Francis Crick(?) of DNA fame who said, "The cell is thus a minute factory bristling with rapid organized chemical activity." Even the outside of the cell, the surface, the membrane is studded with censors, gates, pumps and identification markers to regulate traffic coming in and out of that cell. Today biologists can not even describe the cell without using the language of machines and engineering.



It was Michael Behee(?) who wrote the blockbuster Darwin's Black Boxin which he posited the obvious truth of intelligent design behind creation, rather than random chance. And Behee describes a cell like this. "Each cell has an automated rapid transit system in which certain molecules function as tiny monorail trains running along tracks to whisk cargo around from one part of the cell to the other. Other molecules act as loading machines, filling up the train cars and attaching address labels. When the train reaches the right address in another part of the cell, it is met by other molecules that act as docking machines, opening them up and removing the supplies. To frame a mental image of the cell, picture it as a large and complex model train layout with tracks crisscrossing everywhere. Its switches and signals perfectly timed so that no trains collide and the cargo reaches its destination precisely when needed." And Behee goes on to say, and here's his main point, "This is a level of complexity that Darwin never dreamed of and his theory utterly fails to account for. Why? Because a system of coordinated interlocking parts like this can only operate after all the pieces are in place, which means they must all appear simultaneously, not by any gradual piece by piece process." Therefore, Behee coined the term "Irreducible complexity." "To refer to the minimum level of complexity, it must be present before such a highly integrated system can function at all. It cannot evolve piece by piece, it must appear simultaneously in the very same moment. Irreducibly complex systems don't have any function without this minimum number of parts in place, which means they can't occur by natural selection."

As another illustration of this, consider the tiny string-like flagellum attached like a tail to some bacteria. Have you ever seen in a microscope a bacteria with a little tail? As the bacterium swims around in its environment, the flagellum whips around like a propellor and from a diagram if you were to see it, you would consider it to be a kind of motorized machine like you would have in an outboard motor. It is a microscopic rotary motor that comes equipped, scientists tell us, with a hook joint, a drive shaft, o rings, a starter and a bidirectional acid power motor that can hum along at up to...are you ready for this?...one hundred thousand revolutions per minute. Structures like these require dozens of precisely tailored, intricately interacting parts which could not emerge by any gradual process. Instead the coordinated parts must somehow appear on the scene all at the same time, combined and perfectly coordinated in the right patterns for the molecular machine to function at all. And all of this is dependent upon information, operational manuals in every part of the organic world.

This has to come from intelligence. It has to come from the Creator who is communicating this information to His creation. If you go from the micro world to the macro world, it's the same thing. In fact, I am fascinated, and always have been, by the macro world...stars, space. And science is continuing to discover the complexity of our cosmology. This universe, as we know it, is intricately balanced as if on an edge of a knife. Take, for example, just the force of gravity. If it were only slightly weaker, all stars would be red dwarfs, too cold to support life in the universe. If it were only slightly stronger, all stars would be blue giants burning too briefly for life to develop. The margin of error in the universe expansion rate is only one part in ten to the sixtieth power. Cosmologists speaks of cosmic coincidences, meaning that the fundamental forces of the universe just happen to have the exact numerical value required to make life possible. The slightest change would yield a universe inhospitable to life.



What makes the question so puzzling is that there is no physical cause explaining this fine tuned complexity. George Greenstein(?), writes, "Nothing in all of physics explains why its fundamental principles should conform themselves so precisely to life's requirement." In other words, there is no physical explanation for why the universe is the way it is. To make it even more clear, perhaps, imagine that you found a huge universe-creating machine, okay? And it had thousands of dials on this machine representing the gravitational constant and the strong nuclear force and the weak nuclear force and the electromagnetic force and the ratio of the mass of the protein and the electron and all the rest of the complexity of matter, and imagine that each dial has hundreds of possible settings and you can spin them and twirl them around at your will. Nothing is preset to any particular value. What you discover is, however, that the infinite number of dials just happen to be set exactly at the right value everywhere in the entire complexity of the universe so that it all operates perfectly when even the slightest tweak of one of the cosmic knobs would produce a universe where life was impossible. As a science reporter puts it, "They are like the knobs on God's console counsel and they seem almost miraculously tuned to allow life." And so they are. They are not constrained by any natural law, that's what Einstein couldn't find, that's what scientists can't find today. And yet scientists are reluctant to acknowledge a creator. Astronomer Heinz Overhummer(?) says, "I am not a religious person, but I could say this universe is designed very well." Well you ought to be a religious person if you can say that. How about astronomer Fred Hoyle(?), he said this, it's a famous quote, "A common sense interpretation of the facts suggests that a super-intellect has monkeyed with the physics." Who is that super-intellect? Hoyle says, "An alien mind from another universe," which just moves his problem somewhere else.

All of that to say that the Creator is the master of information, the master of information in the microcosm, the master of information in the macrocosm. So the Creator knows His creation and the Creator knows the complexity of His creation and He knows the simplicity of His creation and He knows what scientists are going to find out. And He has to write a book that when time goes on and centuries go on and millennia goes on and science digs deeper and deeper and deeper into the matter and the organic life of the universe, nothing that He has said is going to be wrong. And so He speaks in His Word and since He is the Creator, what He says in His Word is absolutely accurate, absolutely right. His Word does not speak about the complexity of the atomic world or the world of cellular structure in the organic realm and the world of complex atomic structure in the inorganic world. It doesn't speak about that which is only observable to a high-tech far-advanced society. It speaks to those things which are observable by everyone and have always been observable to one degree or another, but it speaks also of things that were not discovered at the time that they were basically written in the Word of God. In fact, they were contrary to common belief at that time. And yet as time has gone on, they have proven to be exactly accurate.

Let's take some simple categories and look at them. First of all, hydrology...hydrology. This deals with the subject of water...of water, the waters of the earth. You can get all the way in to the seventeenth century, the sixteen hundreds, and you will find scientists puzzled about the source of water, talking about subterranean reservoirs where water is held down in the belly of the earth and comes up from there. But in the seventeenth century, scientists such as Mario, Pereau(?) and Halley(?), all three in the seventeenth century, opened up the modern understanding of hydrological motion, or the hydrological cycle, how there is only an original mass of water. It is always the same, it always has been the same, it always will be the same. This is the first law of thermodynamics. This same mass of water, this same cycle of the combination of H2O moves continually through a process of evaporation, transportation, precipitation and irrigation, and then run off back to start the process all over again. The Bible is absolutely accurate in the way it presents the hydrological cycle.



Listen to the language of Isaiah 55 and verse 10. "For as the rain and snow come down from heaven and do not return there without watering the earth and making it bear and sprout and furnish seed to the sower and bread to the eater, so shall My Word be which goes forth from My mouth. It shall not return to Me empty without accomplishing what I desire and without succeeding in the matter for which I said it." Now the point of that statement by the prophet is to show that the Word of God always accomplishes its purposes as God sends it forth. But the analogy, and the Bible isn't a book trying to teach you science, but when it uses a scientific analogy it is an accurate one. It's as the rain comes down from heaven and returns there but only after its watered the earth that you see the hydrological cycle.

If you turn with me for a moment to Ecclesiastes chapter 1, you find again a reference to this. In verse 6 it talks about how the sun rises, the sun sets, hastening to its place. It rises there again, blowing toward the south and turning toward the north. The wind continues swirling along. Talks about wind currents as well. And on its circular courses the wind returns, the wind runs in circles. This is before they knew the earth was a circle. But the wind is running the circle of the earth. You have in verse 7 hydrology, all the rivers flow into the sea yet the sea is not full, or the sea does not overflow. Why? Because when all the water flows into the sea, it evaporates back out of the sea up to the heavens where it is retained in the clouds and then deposited again on the earth and runs the same cycle again and again.

In Job, perhaps the first book ever written, talking about the same time as the Pentateuch would be written, you have this in Job 36 verses 27 and 28, "For He draws up the drops of water, He draws them up, they distill rain from the midst which the clouds pour down. They drip upon man abundantly." Now it's starting to put together the rain and the snow come out of the sky, they come down, they irrigate the earth, they go into the rivers and the streams, they flow into the sea, the sea never overflows because the water is drawn up and distilled in the clouds. The clouds move over the land and they drip upon man abundantly and the cycle goes on. Psalm 135:7, "He causes the vapors to ascend to the ends of the earth. He makes lightnings for the rain." There you have all of those elements of evaporation, transportation, precipitation, irrigation and run off and the cycle goes on again.

And Scripture speaks about this not infrequently, but quite frequently. Just a couple of other passages that show this. The twenty-sixth chapter of Job verse 8, "He wraps up the waters in His clouds and the cloud does not burst under them." God collects the evaporated water in the clouds and the clouds as...as thin as they are, as seemingly weak as they are...hold the water. They hold massive, massive amounts of water as we well know who have lived through severe storms when those clouds bring that water, collecting it off the sea as they go and bursting upon the land even to the degree of hurricanes and their horrific deluges.

There is in Psalm 33:7, and I don't want to go to every passage, I'll skip a few. Psalm 33:7, "He gathers the waters of the sea together as a heap." This pictures the great ocean reservoir. "He lays up the deeps in storehouses." God's storehouse for the water is the deep, is the ocean.



In Job 38:22 it says, "Have you entered the storehouses of the snow? Or have you seen the storehouses of the hail?" That is to say, have you ever ascended into heaven and gone into a cloud?

Water is an amazing thing. I was reading this week about a mole...m-o-l-e.... It is a collection of molecules and in one mole of water which is 18 grams of water, you have six-hundred-billion-trillion molecules. It is a staggering amount of material in one mole of water. And this massive amount of water moves in this continual cycle that God has designed and simply explained in Scripture not as a scientific explanation but almost in each case either to show the ignorance of man and the inability of man to ascend into the place where God dwells, or to use as an illustration of some spiritual truth.

Going beyond that, let's talk about astronomy. The most amazing fact of modern astronomy is the essentially infinite size of the universe and the infinite variety of the physical components of that universe, including the stars. And after years and years, there's universal agreement on the nature of space and all that occupies it.

To show you something of the Scripture's understanding of this, go to Psalm 103...Psalm 103. Remember now, whoever wrote this book understood this perfectly at a time when no one else did because He is the Creator. In Psalm 103 and verse 11 we read this, "For as high as the heavens are above the earth, so great is His loving kindness toward those who fear Him." Now again we find God making statements that are a true indication of cosmology, a true indication true science and a true understanding of the universe, but not for the sake of the science but for the sake of the illustration. And he is trying to express the infinite nature of His loving kindness and he parallels it to the height of the heavens, as high as the heavens are above the earth, that is how great is the loving kindness of God toward those who fear Him. And just how great is it? It is equal to the distance between the east and the west. Now try to figure that out. How far is east from west? It's impossible because it's an infinite line...it's an infinite line. And there is that point being made. That's how far He's removed our transgressions from us. He has removed them infinitely from us as far as east is from west because His loving kindness is infinite, it is as far up as this universe will go. And so we find that God speaks of His infinite loving kindness and His infinite forgiveness by describing the infinity of what we now know is an infinite universe.

In Job 22:12 we read, "Is not God in the height of heaven? Look also at the distant stars, how high they are."

And Jeremiah 31 verses 35 to 37 is another very straightforward and accurate statement with regard to astronomy. Jeremiah 31:35, "Thus says the Lord who gives the sun for light by day and the fixed order of the moon and the stars for light by night." We now know that they all move in a fixed order in orbits, in motions that are fixed and permanently controlled and varying. This is our God and this is His creation and He knows how it operates.

Go down to verse 37, "Thus says the Lord, if the heavens above can be measured and the foundations of the earth searched out below, then I will also cast off all the offspring of Israel." Meaning, you cannot measure the height of the heavens and you cannot discern what holds the earth in its place, anymore than I will cast off the offspring of Israel. Pretty important statement eschatologically, too, isn't it?

In the third chapter of Jeremiah and verse 22, a very interesting statement. "As the host of heaven cannot be counted and the sand of the sea cannot be measured, so I will multiply the descendants of David." Here the Bible says you can't count the stars and you can't count the sand on the seashores of the world. That we would agree would be utterly impossible.

However, before the seventeenth century, Hipparchus said there one-thousand and twenty-two stars. Ptolemy said there are one-thousand-fifty-six. Kepler said there are one-thousand and fifty-five. And today scientists tell us there are over one-hundred-billion in our galaxy and billions and billions of uncounted galaxies. Scientists have also discovered in recent centuries that stars are different sizes, different temperatures, various kinds of stars, different varieties. And they are busy cataloging the numerous types of stars. Listen to 1 Corinthians 15:41, "There is one glory of the sun and another glory of the moon." The moon is not like the sun. "Another glory of the stars, for star differs from star in glory." This is to illustrate that in the resurrection we will have a different kind of body. And the Bible is right. There are all kinds of stars and they differ one from another. Science has also charted the absolute patterns of orbits which do not vary. The consistency of these bodies in motion, the great astronomer Kepler had predicted mathematically that on December 6, 1631 the planet Venus would pass in front of the sun. He predicted that based upon the fixed orbit of the planet Venus. He didn't live to see it but a Frenchman, Pierre Gasendy(?) prepared to see it occur and it did so as predicted. According to Kepler, a transit again would occur over a hundred years later. But there was an English school boy who calculated orbits and found it should occur frankly in two years...to years after the original one calculated by Kepler, it should happen on December 4 in 1639 and it did.

How can you predict that? Because the orbits are fixed and unwavering. And that's exactly what we've just read. The Lord sets things in their place in fixed orbits. Listen to Jeremiah 31:35 and 36, "Thus says the Lord who gives the sun for light by day and the fixed order of the moon and the stars for light by night. If this fixed order departs from before Me, then the offspring of Israel shall also cease from being a nation before Me forever."



Look at Psalm 19 for just a moment, in the sixth verse of Psalm 19 a statement is made that science used to laugh at and use it to debunk the accuracy of the Bible. It says in verse 6, speaking of the sun, that the sun is like a bridegroom coming out of his chamber, rejoices as a strong man to run his course, its rising is from one end of the heavens and its circuit to the other end of them and there is nothing hidden from its heat." And here the psalmist says that the sun moves from one end of heaven to the other. There were people up until the seventeenth century who thought the sun didn't move at all. But the psalmist tells us it does move, we now know that the sun is in constant motion, it is in orbit dragging our entire solar system with it and the sun is moving through space at 72 thousand miles per hour in a gigantic orbit that takes two million centuries to complete, based upon that speed. Not many years ago scientists taught that the moon was a great luminous globe like the sun even though 25 centuries ago Job said, "Look to the moon, it does not shine," Job 25:5. It has no light of its own, it is merely a reflector of the sun.

When you look at the Bible and you look for hydrology and you look for astronomy, the scientific facts are correct. How about geology, the science of the earth? There are a lot of geological things that we could talk about, and I confess that I am not a scientist, but I can read like anybody else and find the things that science is interested in and compare them with the Word of God which is basically what I've endeavored to do. But in the realm of geology there is a science called isostasy...isostasy. It is the study of the balance of the earth. It really didn't come into prominence until around 1959 and it deals with the landmass the mountains, the seas, and how those things all effect the weight of the earth. That is the foundation of what are called geo...what is called geophysics. And the Bible acknowledges this whole matter of isostasy..weight. Isaiah 40 and verse 12, "Behold the Lord God who has measured the waters in the hallow of His hand and marked off the heavens by a span and calculated the dust of the earth by the measure and weighed the mountains in a balance and the hills in a pair of scales."

God knows who much everything weight...weighs. It is in perfect harmony. You have all taken a basketball that was not round and have rolled it, right? And seen it go like that....and that's what we would be doing every so often, bouncing a little if the earth did not move in a balanced fashion. Psalm 104 verses 5 through 8, "He established the earth upon its foundations so that it will not totter. The mountains rose, the valleys sank down to the place which Thou didst establish for them." The right height of the mountains, the right depth of the valleys, the right weight of the water, the right weight of the dirt and the dust and it all is in perfect balance.

Geology has another sub-science called geodesy, dealing with the shape of the earth. The shape of the earth, we know what it is, it is round. It is spherical. The ancients taught that it was flat, as you well know, and they thought even up to Columbus' time that if you just kept sailing, you'd fall off the edge. In fact, they used to think that if you sailed through the gates of Pericles, that was the ancient name of Gibralter, if you passed the land mass North Africa and Spain, that was the end and you would fall into nothingness.



But the Bible was crystal-clear about that. Long before that, Isaiah 40 verse 22. "It is He who sits on the circle of the earth." Circle is a Hebrew word meaning sphere, meaning sphere. The earth is a circle. The Bible says that. And it even goes further than that. In Job 22 verse 14 it talks about the circle of heaven. And in Proverbs 8 and verse 27, that might be a verse just to point to you, Proverbs 8:27, "When He established the heavens, I was there when He inscribed a circle on the face of the deep." What's that? That's the one place where you and I can see the circular character of the earth standing on the beach looking at the circle on the horizon across the edge of the deep. The Bible is crystal clear that this is a sphere, that it is a circle and that it is visible on the horizon.

Even more. Job 38, two verses in Job 38, verses 13 and 14. And again remember, these are usually in the context of making a spiritual point or indicating what it is that God knows that we don't know unless He reveals it to us. But in Job 38 verse 13 it talks about taking hold of the ends of the earth. What in the world does that mean, taking hold of the ends of the earth? If you go to verse 14 you find out. It is turned...the Hebrew says it is turned like clay under the seal, or clay to the seal. You will notice that under is added. It is rotated like clay to the seal. You take a hold of the ends of the earth and you rotate it like clay to the seal.

Here's what happened. When in ancient times you wanted to write something, you wrote it in clay before paper. In Job's time you would have written it in soft clay, like God wrote His Law. And then you would have sealed it so everyone had a seal with his name on it. And you took the soft clay and you rolled the seal of your name across the clay which imprinted your signature. That's how printing is done even today on a cylinder, it's rolled across. And Job...God is telling Job that the earth, you take the ends of it and you turn it like you turn that clay signature across soft clay to make an imprint. It is rotated on an axis, you take two ends and the earth rotates on the axis around those two ends, one at the north and one at the south. And we saw even in Job, the oldest book, the understanding that the earth is a sphere, that it is a circle and that it rotates on an axis.

It was the seventeenth century when Newton discovered gravity. That was big. Gravity had always been around, he just identified it for what it was. But it was Job chapter 26 verse 7, "He hangs the earth on nothing. He hangs the earth on nothing." And gravity is even indicated, go to Job 38 for a minute, verses 31 and 32...Job 38:31 and 32. The Lord's talking again and He's giving Job a very important lesson about Job's ignorance. And He says, "You must think you're something, Job, so let me give you a few things to think about," verse 31, "Can you bind the chains of the Pleiades, or loose the cords of Orion?" What's He talking about there? He's talking about gravity. All those stars that move in space in those constellations are held together by divine chains, by divine cords. Who do you think you are? "Do you think you can hold the constellations together? Can you lead forth a constellation in its season? Can you move it through space? Can you guide the bear with her satellites? Do you know the ordinances of the heavens and...or fix their rule over the earth?" Who do you think you are?

There is knowledge...if you go back to the fourteenth chapter of Job of another element of geology...in Job 14 and verse 18, "But the falling mountain crumbles away and the rock moves from its place, water wears away stones. Its torrents wash away the dust of the earth." This is erosion. This is rock erosion. People didn't live their life long enough to see it. Post-flood, they...they...they would never have known this. No one is around long enough to see that really take place.

In the thirty-eighth chapter, go back again to Job 38 verses 29 and 30, "From whose womb has come the ice and the frost of heaven? Who has given it birth?" Where does the frost come from? The dew. Where does the ice come from? Water becomes hard like stone and the surface of the deep is imprisoned. What's that? That's a glacier. You even have here an understanding of the hardness, the dense hardness of glaciers.

So whether you're talking about hydrology, whether you're talking about astronomy, whether you're talking about geology, the Bible shows the designer and the creator's understanding of all these things in simple enough expressions for everyone to understand. Let's talk about meteorology for a minute. This is the circulation of the atmosphere, and I already read you how the wind moves in cycles and in circles because it circles the circle of the earth. It wasn't until the seventeenth century that Galileo discovered that wind had circuits. We read that in Ecclesiastes 1:6. And no scientist before Galileo knew or believed that the air had weight...that it had weight. But Job 28:25 says God imparted weight to the wind...weight to the air. Let's talk about physiology briefly...physiology. It wasn't until 1628 and this was a huge change in the world, that William Harvey discovered the circulation of blood was the key to life. Prior to that, if you got sick, what did they do? Took your blood away. They bled you, stuck leeches on you, cut you open and let you bleed. Not until 1628 did they know what is in Leviticus 17:11, "For the life of the flesh is in the blood." That is scientifically correct. It was about the 1950's when medicine began to look in psychosomatic illnesses. And there was a book that came out called Personality Manifestations in Psycho...Psychosomatic Illnessand it began for the first time to understand how emotions cause changes in the body, they cause physiology to change. The Bible completely understood this. Psalm 32, David understood it so well, "How blessed," he starts in Psalm 32, "is he whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered. How blessed is the man whom the Lord does not impute iniquity and in whose spirit there is no deceit." It's wonderful...he says...to be forgiven, what a blessing it is to be delivered from guilt.



On the other hand, "When I kept silent about my sin, my body wasted away." It had physiological effects. "Through my groaning all day long." What he means is, I was weakened by my guilt, it affected my strength, it sapped me of my energy. He said, "For day and night thy hand was heavy upon me, my life juices...literally...my life juices...in the Hebrew...drained away as in the fever heat of summer." It was like...it was like having...being dehydrated, all my life's juices disappeared. What are life juices? Well the fluids in your body...blood, secretions of the glands, saliva. The emotional experience of this kind of guilt produced changing amount of blood flow. That's why when people get angry their face gets red...or when people get frightened their face gets white...or when people lie their mouth gets dry. Excess thyroxin produced by emotion and poured into the blood stream can produce all kinds of things, even fatal heart disease. Also changes muscle tension. In Proverbs 16:24 we read this, "Pleasant words are a honeycomb, sweet to the soul and healing to the bones." Pleasant words make you feel better, right? It's like Proverbs 17:22, "A merry heart does good like a medicine." Happiness produces a self of well-being, you feel better. The Bible is accurate about everything, even down to these physiological realities.

Well, that's only an introduction to the vastness of this wonderful subject. But let's close by looking at Proverbs 30...Proverbs 30. And this is a good place to bring our thoughts to a conclusion. "The words of Agur, the son of Jakeh, the oracle. The man declares to Ithiel, to Ithiel and Ucal." Listen to what he says. "Surely I am more stupid than any man and I do not have the understanding of a man, neither have I learned wisdom, nor do I have the knowledge of the Holy One." On my own I am stupid, I don't know anything. Verse 4, "Who has ascended into heaven and descended? Who has gathered the wind in His fists? Who has wrapped the waters in His garment? Who has established all the ends of the earth? What is His name, or His Son's name? Surely you know." We do? How do we know? Verse 5, "Because every word of God is...what?...is pure, proven, tested." You know the Holy One, you know that He came from heaven. You know He created the wind and the waters and the ends of the earth and you know His name, and by the way, you know His Son's name, through His revelation. "And you know that He's a shield to those who take refuge in Him and do not add to His words, lest He reprove you and you be proved a liar." What that is saying is simply this, God has spoken and what He said is here. Don't add to it. And whether it talks about spiritual things, or whether it talks about material things, it is the truth because it is written by the creator who knows. Pray with me.

Father, we are so stunned in one sense to look into the passages of Scripture from ancient books, way back at the beginning, millennia ago, long before man was ever able to develop the skill and the equipment to understand these things, but was all laid out accurately. And herein is the evidence that this book comes from the creator who knows. There is no way that the writers could have known. Moses who wrote the Pentateuch couldn't have known, apart from revelation all these things, nor could Isaiah the prophet, nor could the writer of Job, or the psalmist or even the Apostles of the New Testament who talked about the differing character of the sun, the moon and the variety of stars. It's all reflective of one single author who is himself the creator. And how wonderful it is that the one who made all this is none other than the one who came incarnate, for in the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God and all things were made by Him and without Him was not anything made that was made. But the Word also became flesh and dwelt among us and we beheld His glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth. And as many as received Him, to them He gave the right, the authority and the power to be called the sons of God. We thank You that we can know You, the true and living God. You are the One who made this universe, You are the One who came down to provide spiritual life, eternal life to all who would put their trust in You. And all that You desire to say to us spiritually and to confirm that You indeed are the Creator, you have placed in Your Word. Increase our confidence in it, our love for it, our devotion to it, to know it and thereby to know You, to proclaim it, to defend it to the glory that You deserve as its author and the final object of its purpose which is to redeem sinners for Your eternal glory. We thank You again for the power of the Word in Christ's name. Amen.

[f0rTyLeGz]

Re: Biblical Inspiration Validated By Science, Pt 2

<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Originally Posted By: evanovitch</div><div class="ubbcode-body">We are looking at the reality that God wrote the Bible and the question always comes up...How do we know God wrote the Bible? There are a number of ways to answer that question. One way to answer it is to look at what the Bible says about the scientific world. </div></div>
Lol! The height of logic!

But evo you know that you answer one small post with pages of ranting... science and religion have nothing in common.

<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Quote:</div><div class="ubbcode-body">But rather than relying on reason and evidence to support them, faith relies on revelation, dogma and authority. </div></div>
Your pages are &quot;appeals to authority.&quot; That is John Maxwell is your authority. If he says it then it is true. That's why it is irrational and unscientific.

[rudemonk]

Re: Evolution: Science or Faith?

<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Originally Posted By: evanovitch</div><div class="ubbcode-body">Evolution: Science or Faith?

Consider the dogma of evolution, for example. The notion that natural evolutionary processes can account for the origin of all living species has never been and never will be established as fact. Nor is it &quot;scientific&quot; in any true sense of the word. Science deals with what can be observed and reproduced by experimentation. The origin of life can be neither observed nor reproduced in any laboratory. By definition, then, true science can give us no knowledge whatsoever about where we came from or how we got here. Belief in evolutionary theory is a matter of sheer faith. And dogmatic belief in any naturalistic theory is no more &quot;scientific&quot; than any other kind of religious faith.
</div></div>

that's just patently false. there is no better explanation for the origin of species, and the only people who do not accept it generally do not understand it, do not understand the evidence, and seem to feel it is incompatible with preconceived or long held beliefs.

it's like saying you can't tell who someone's father is through a paternity test.

or that scientists can't turn on a regenerative gene that will solve a problem praying over won't help- restoration of limbs for example.

all of which is provable, factual- it's the same science which tells us that evolution is true.

science is only incompatible with religion when it roasts by fact some sacred cow held too dearly. one would think that religion would welcome science, because who wants to believe in something like a God who likes barbecue or having human hearts stuffed into a sculpture to keep the sun going.

[rudemonk]

Re: Biblical Inspiration Validated By Science, Pt 2

<span style="font-weight: bold">Biblical Inspiration Validated By Science, Part 2
Selected Scriptures
</span>

these kinds of essays crack me up.

why is god so needlessly obtuse. couldn't he have just given us a space book from the start.

[SmoothOperator]

Re: Science and Scripture

<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Originally Posted By: evanovitch</div><div class="ubbcode-body">Science and Scripture
If God wrote this book, and if God wrote it correctly, that's inspiration and inerrancy, then it'll be just as right scientifically as it is spiritually. Right? Has to be. For God can only speak truth. The New Testament says, &quot;God who cannot lie.&quot; He knows equally the truth of salvation and the truth of science. There is no thing that He does not know.
</div></div>

While it is true the bible is the most influential book this side of the hemisphere and while I enjoy reading and studying it the notion of biblical inerrancy is a fallacy. First of all the bible is not one book. It is a collection of different books written by different people at different times, emphasis on the fact that people wrote it. Some of its advice is pertinent and relevant and very much applicable to our lives and we would do well to heed it. But if the book is inerrant then by definition it most not contradict itself. The contradictions are ample enough. My 'favourite' is the account of what Judas supposedly did after betraying Jesus. Matthew 27 says Judas threw the money away and hung himself and the chief priests used the 30 pieces of silver to buy a plot of land. Luke in Acts 1:18 gives a very different account. Luke in Acts says Judas used the money to buy a plot of land where he subsequently fell head long and burst asunder. Luke's story cannot be reconciled with Matthew's story in an intellectually honest way. The inerrantists driven by a belief in biblical infallibility try mightily though, but it is what it is. My approach is to take what is useful for the journey and the rest of it you just leave alone.

[evanovitch]

Re: Biblical Inspiration Validated By Science, Pt 2

on the contrary ...i post copies of sermons that i read and find not ongle relevant to a current discussion but sermons that have been preached by a minister whose preaching i underscore...