th
and 21st century viewpoint that there is this vast gulf between
scientific fact and Biblical truth is actually a relatively new
viewpoint to this earth and it’s a viewpoint that only began to take
hold as man began to distance himself from the sovereign oversight
of his divine Creator.
The reality is…and here comes
another one of my super strong statements in this series:
3) If Jesus had never been
born…science (definition)
would very possibly have never come into being!
Are you trying to suggest that if
Jesus had never been born we might be sitting right now in a room
with candles on wooden seats. This video technology might not exist,
this audio technology might not exist……
Yes….yes I am!
The unbelieving scientist today
would say that Christianity and science are antithetical …they are
opposites they have nothing to do with each other. A person has to
choose between believing in the superstitious acceptance of the
unseen or in the provable acceptance of what is seen.
We Christians, on the other hand,
would believe that science, which comes from the Latin term
Scientia- knowledge, has a direct link to the attribute of our
God called, in Latin, omni-science; all
knowledge.
4) If God is all knowing and
science is the accumulation of knowledge doesn’t that suggest that
the study of science is an extension of the study of God?
Doesn’t that mean that instead of
science and theology being opposites; that science is, in fact, an
extension of theology? Yes….unless of course, somewhere along the
way in discovering our world, we lost the sense of a divine Creator
who fashioned everything we are seeking to understand. The Bible
says:
(Job 28:24) God… views the ends of the earth
and sees everything under the heavens. (NIV)
(Psalms
147:4-5) He determines the number of the
stars and calls them each by name. Great is
our Lord and mighty in power; his
understanding has no limit. (NIV)
(Proverbs 3:19-20) The LORD by
wisdom founded the earth; By understanding He established the
heavens; By His knowledge the depths were broken up, And clouds drop
down the dew. (NKJV)
(Romans 11:33) Oh, the depth of
the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God! How
un-searchable are His judgments and His ways past finding out! (NKJV)
(Hebrews 4:13) Nothing in all
creation is hidden from God's sight Everything is uncovered and laid
bare before the eyes of him to whom we must give account. (NIV)
If you
believe all of those Scriptures, you start
out with the assumption that all of science
is directly linked to God himself, all truth
is God’s truth! If you reject all of those
Scriptures then your free to say that all
truth is derived from the discoveries of
science.
Let’s figure it out:
B) Where did science really come
from?
Let me just toss out here for you
inquiring minds…. That before the flood, when man was still strongly
affected by the directness to God creating his image into Adam and
Eve, there may have been a very high level of scientific knowledge.
Scientist Ken Ham actually shows ancient drawings, in his
presentation, of machines that look suspiciously like our airplanes:
that predate the Tower of Babel and the Flood…. Whatever high level
of understanding mankind had in the years right after creation, it
was lost after the flood.
About 600 years before Jesus was
born the Greeks began to show an interest in the world around
them. Up until that time people kind of said; I’m hungry, there’s an
animal, let’s eat!… or… There’s a big ball of fire in the sky, I
don’t understand it…let’s make it something we worship!
If you studied Greek
philosophy from Aristotle and Socrates and others, you know that
they became very inquisitive about their world and they wanted to
apply this new found “reason” to the world around them. It did not,
however, lead them to want to experiment to find out how the
universe worked. The didn’t progress from reason on to science…
It’s also true that science did
not start with the Hebrews of Bible times. The Hebrews saw the
awesomeness of God’s creation as a reason to worship their Creator.
They weren’t so interested in figuring out why or how the universe
worked; they were content to praise God that the universe did
work.
That is
why the Bible is
often not considered a book of science. The
writers had no built-in curiosity about how
the universe was constructed. They were far
more interested in finding out more about
Who constructed it!
So neither the Greeks nor the
Hebrews led us to try to better understand our world…who did?
The Arabians didn’t…the Muslims
and their forefathers believe/d that everything is fatalistically
determined. There is no point in trying to change the natural world
since most everything is predetermined and unchangeable.
The Animist of Africa and other
places sure didn’t lead the was into experimentation of the natural
world…they believed that the spirits of various God’s lived in the
trees and rocks. They sure weren’t going to delve into that.
The Hindus and the Buddhist teach
that the greatest thing any one can learn in this live is that the
world around them is not real…that reality is found the world’s
soul. There would be no point in spending one’s life experimenting
on something that has no reality in the first place.
It was
(drum roll) Christianity, in
the 16th century that produced the foundations of what we now know
as modern science!
The fact that the Bible teaches
that there is a rational God, who is the source of all truth gave
rise to the possibility that there may be fixed “Laws of Nature”
Science is based on the fact that
if water boils at 212 degrees today, it will boil at 212 degrees
tomorrow and the next day, and the next day…..
Until Christianity came along
there was no basis for anyone in the world to accept absolutes. In a
world of relativism, where everything is whatever you imagine it to
be… there can be no scientific thought or discovery.
In order for there to be
something for science to study, there has to be something stable and
unchanging enough, that it will produce the same exact results over
and over and over.
Until the news reached the world of a
unchanging God who had created and
established every aspect of the universe,
there was no basis whatsoever for any
culture to look into what made the universe
tick.
You may
remember the flap that took place in the
early 1600’s when Copernicus and Galileo
began to suggest theories about the universe
that did not fit with the status quo. The
Catholic Church literally brought a trial to
stop the heresy, but that was the beginning
of the Reformation period and the Lutherans,
the first Protestants were the one’s who
distributed Copernicus’ book that paved the
way for scientific development.
One of the first organizations
that propelled scientific study forward was the:
Royal Society of London for
Improving Natural Knowledge- founded in
Gresham Christian College in 1660. Seven of the ten scientist at the
center of the program were Puritans, the same batch that helped
settle the USA.
One of the great Christian
scientists who helped get the ball rolling in the early 1600’s was a
man named Johannes Kepler. He’s the one who coined the
phrase:
Science is “Thinking God’s
thoughts after Him! -Johannes Kepler
Kepler- “Since we astronomers are
priests of the highest God in regard to the book of nature, it
befits us to be thoughtful, not of the glory of our minds, but
rather above all else of the glory of God.”
Sound a lot like our scientists of
today??/
Blaise Pascal: (mathematics,
probability science, first barometer) (1623- 1662)- “Faith tells us
what the senses cannot, but it is not contrary to their findings. It
simply transcends, without contradicting them.”- “Jesus Christ is
the only proof of the living God, we only know God through Jesus
Christ!
Isaac Newton
(Father of Calculus and Dynamics) (1642-1727)-=
“This most beautiful system of the sun, planets, and comets, could
only proceed from the counsel and dominion of an intelligent and
powerful being.”
Isaac Newton - “Atheism is so
senseless. When I look at the solar system, I see the earth at the
right distance from the sun to receive proper amounts of heat and
light…this did not happen by chance.”
Yes Pastor…how long did it take to
dig through all the early scientist and find three who believed in
God and were in fact committed Christians???
Not very long…..
These
Christian scientists founded their branch of
science:
Antiseptic surgery: Joseph Lister
Bacteriology: Louis Pasteur
Calculus: Isaac Newton
Celestial Mechanics: Johannes
Kepler
Chemistry: Robert Boyle
Comparative Anatomy Georges Cuvier
Computer Science Charles Babbage
Dimensional Analysis Lord Rayleigh
Electronics John Fleming
Electrodynamics James Maxwell
Electro-magnetics Michael Faraday
Energetics Lord Kelvin
Entomology of Living Insects Henri
Fabre
That takes us clear through the
5th letter of the alphabet…..
Anybody who tries to tell you that
the basis of science is anything other than us simply finding out
what God already knows are themselves living in a world of
confusion.
(Isaiah 29:15-16) Woe to those
who seek deep to hide their counsel far from the LORD, And their
works are in the dark; They say, "Who sees us?" and, "Who knows us?"
Surely you have things turned around! Shall the potter be esteemed
as the clay; For shall the thing made say of him who made it, "He
did not make me"? Or shall the thing formed say of him who formed
it, "He has no understanding"? (NKJV)
John Calvin said that the Bible is
the spectacles that we must put on to rightly understand the
book of nature. In fact God has given us a perfect three-fold
pathway to truth:
1) Theology - Special
Revelation
2) History - History of God’s
dealings with mankind
3) Science -General Revelation
The Bible gives us a lot of
revelation about God, then we are left to form theology. It gives us
a lot of the history of God‘s dealing‘s with mankind but we are left
to fit that into the balance of human history and draw conclusions.
Then the Bible a lays the complete groundwork for us understanding
the third, (science) but we are left to explore our universe and, in
awe, discover “God’s thoughts after Him.”
If we try to pursue any of these
three without using the infallible word of God as our source, the
results of our study will go awry. Those who study theology apart
from the Bible as their foundation end up in heresy. Those who look
at history apart from the unfolding plan of God can end us like
Saddam Hussein. Those who look at science as anything other than
God’s truth end up, like Charles Darwin with a theory that brings
spiritual chaos to the entire world.
(Romans
1:18-22) For the wrath of God is revealed
from heaven against all ungodliness and
unrighteousness of men, who suppress the
truth in unrighteousness, because what may
be known of God is manifest in them, for God
has shown it to them. For since the creation
of the world His invisible attributes are
clearly seen, being understood by the things
that are made, even His eternal power and
Godhead, so that they are without excuse,
because, although they knew God, they did
not glorify Him as God, nor were thankful,
but became futile in their thoughts, and
their foolish hearts were darkened.
Professing to be wise, they became fools, (NKJV)
To show you how screwy a Godless
focus to science is:
Scientific method is based on the assumption
that all truth must be observable, testable,
repeatable, and falsifiable. Science rejects
the truth of God creating the universe
because that is not observable, testable,
repeatable, and falsifiable. Their answer is
to replace the doctrine of Creation with the
Theory of Evolution…. Is the theory of
evolution observable?… testable?…
repeatable?…. and falsifiable?
Conclusion: All Truth is
God’s Truth!
(Psalms
33:4) For the word of the LORD is right, And
all His work is done in truth. (NKJV)
(Psalms 85:10-11) Mercy and truth
have met together; Righteousness and peace have kissed. Truth shall
spring out of the earth, And Righteousness shall look down from
heaven. (NKJV)
(John 1:14) And the Word 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. (NKJV)
(John 14:6) Jesus said to him, "I
am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father
except through Me. (NKJV)
(John 8:31-32) Then Jesus said to
those Jews who believed Him, "If you abide in My word, you are My
disciples indeed. "And you shall know the truth, and the truth shall
make you free." (NKJV)