Look at that Genesis 9. We are continuing in our contemporary issues study. Over the last few of these we have been looking at essentially modern attacks or objections to the Bible and we'll have another one here this evening. So this is study number nine entitled Blinded with Science. We're gonna start with Genesis chapter nine and let's read verses five and six. And surely your blood of your lives will I require at the hand of every beast will I require it in the hand of man. At the hand of every man's brother will I require the life of man. Whoso sheddeth man's blood, by man shall his blood be shed. For in the image of God made he man." Abraham Wald was a Hungarian Jew born in 1902. He was a genius. He earned a PhD in mathematics from the University of Vienna in 1931. He was denied many positions because he was in fact Jewish, and he ended up gaining a mathematics position with the Austrian Institute for Economics Research in 1933. Now, when Nazi Germany annexed Austria in 1938, the persecution against the Jews there obviously intensified greatly. leading to Wald immigrating to the United States. He eventually landed at Columbia University in New York, and he was a member of the Statistical Research Group, the SRG. The SRG was a collection of the best and brightest mathematicians and statisticians that were gathered together during World War II. And these included the future founder of Harvard's statistics department, the pioneer of what came to be known as Bayesian statistics, the creator of cybernetics, a future Nobel Prize winner in economics named Milton Friedman, and the Hungarian Jew, Abraham Wald. And in the midst of all that intellectual firepower, Wald was the smartest person in the room most of the time. Now the purpose of the SRG was to study and to analyze various wartime data to solve particular military problems. And the group's recommendations, for instance, affected the way that machine guns on fighter planes were loaded. They affected the propellant that was used in the rockets launched from the Navy's planes and so on. So one of the problems that the military brought to the SRG during World War II was the problem of armoring aircraft, aircraft that were engaged in activity over Europe in particular. So the military had collected data on the bullet holes in the American planes that returned from engagements over Europe. And they found that there wasn't an even distribution of bullet holes from the nose to the tail of the planes, but rather there were concentrated areas where there were bullet holes in these planes. And when they calculated it up, it was determined that in the fuselage of the planes was where the most bullet holes were and the engine compartments actually had the least bullet holes in these planes. Now, the military wanted to armor these planes in order to protect them, obviously, from the bullets that were hitting them and limit the losses that they experienced in these engagements. So the conclusion that the military came to was to put armor in the places of the greatest need. In other words, the fuselages of these planes were sustaining the most damage, according to their study. And they wanted to put armor in these places where these planes were sustaining the most damage. Now the problem is, is that armor is heavy. And so if they armored these planes, the more armor that they used, that meant the more fuel that the planes would use to fly. And it also meant that they would have a decrease in maneuverability because of the extra weight. So this was the problem that the military presented to the SRG. They wanted to maximize the amount of protection for these planes while minimizing the amount of armoring needed and thereby using the least amount of weight. So they got to that point and then they came to the SRG with their data. And they wanted to have the mathematicians there to find that optimal balance between maximum protection and minimum weight added. And yes, to all of you who are still in school, you do use mathematics in life. In this case, in order to save a lot of lives during fights over Europe in World War II. So this was the job for the mathematicians. We want to add armor. where these planes are getting the most damage so that we can most protect them, but we also want to use the least amount of armor possible and put it in the best spots so that we can limit fuel consumption and maintain maneuverability." Well, that's what they were expecting to hear from the SRG, where and how much armor to add to the fuselage of these planes in order to achieve this. However, that wasn't what they heard. Abraham Wald, told them that they needed to add armor to the engine compartments. And he explained, armor doesn't go where the bullet holes are, but where they are not. In other words, he recognized that all of the planes with the higher concentration of holes in the fuselage were all planes that returned home. But what of the planes that were shot down? You see the planes could tolerate more damage in the fuselage than they could to the engines. So the planes with more holes in the engines had not returned but those were not accounted for in the data that the military had studied by reaching their conclusions. So what was the problem with the military's conclusions? Studied all these planes, they'd assembled all this data. What was the problem with their conclusion? They committed a logical error known as survival bias. And what that means is that they focused on the planes that had returned home. They did not focus or even account for the planes that did not return home, those that were shot down. So in other words, they came to incorrect conclusions because of bias from incomplete data. So, human beings with great minds still have biases and they can come to incorrect conclusions because of their assumptions, because of their perspectives, because of their questions, whether or not they're asking the right questions or the wrong questions. and because of the data and how complete and what all it takes into account. So that brings us now to this next objection to the Bible. And that is that the Bible is anti-science. And this has become a very common objection today. Oh, we don't believe in the Bible because we believe in science or we follow science or we do science, so we don't need the Bible. So the Bible is dismissed today, particularly in many schools and institutions of higher learning and so on, as being anti-science. In other words, somehow, They have sort of won the PR campaign to seem that science on the one hand and the Bible on the other hand are things that are antithetical. They're mutually exclusive. They are contrary one to another. And there are many great minds today that say the Bible is unnecessary because we have science. We follow the science. Now, they will say, well, the Bible and religion may have sufficed when mankind was in primitive ignorance of the universe and had no way of knowing how things worked. Stephen Hawking said that heaven was a fairy tale for people who are afraid of the dark. In other words, it's useless, it's unnecessary. I've heard many times the Bible be referred to just as a crutch for weak-minded people that don't understand how the universe and life works. Richard Dawkins, of course, said there's no intelligence behind the universe, only that pitiless indifference we talked about last time. In an interview with Bill Nye when he was critiquing creationism, So his major premise was that evolution is the fundamental idea in all of life science, in all of biology. So in his estimation, evolution is what enables people to live consistently with everything that we observe in the universe. And without it, you cannot do science. He said, you're just not going to get the right answer. He also thought that evolution was necessary for developing a stable society with scientifically literate voters and taxpayers and engineers that can build stuff and solve problems. So from that point, Bill Nydrew in that interview a moral imperative that children should not be taught the biblical account of creation, but rather they should be taught evolution as truth and fact in opposition to the Bible. In other words, to Bill Nye, the Bible and science are mutually exclusive. But what is science exactly? Well, this is just from dictionary.com. Science is systematic knowledge of the physical or material world gained through observation and experimentation. You might refine that by saying empirical science, Pretty good, pretty good definition. Science is just the systematic knowledge of the physical or material universe gained through observation and experimentation. Again, that's just dictionary.com and that's a good definition. So what's it saying? So science is the way that we observe. It's the way that we analyze. It's the way that we test. It's the way that we deduce from what we are observing and analyzing and testing. It's the way that we conclude facts concerning the order and reality of the universe, whether it is discovering the laws of thermodynamics or the law of gravity, for that matter, or how to tell time by the position of the sun and so on. So we do science on a certain basis. We do it on the basis of order, cause, and effect. And that refers to uniformity. So through observation and experimentation and logical reasoning, that presupposes the order and uniformity of natural laws. That's the way that we do science. Again, gravity, aerodynamics, and so on. So strictly speaking then, evolution in fact is not science. It cannot be observed, it cannot be experimented on, it cannot be reproduced. So therefore, evolution is not part of the empirical process, and it is certainly not the way to get the right answer. So is the Bible opposed to science? So here again, I'm going to say we need to observe the foundations, just like Abraham Walled. The military comes to him with all this data and their conclusions. Listen, we just need you to do the calculations. We know that this is where we need to put the armor. We just need you to do the calculations to tell us how much and exactly in what position that's going to get that optimal effect for us. That's all we need. And he said, no. Put the armor in the engine compartments. Why? because he saw the bias. He saw that the assumptions that they were using to come to their conclusions was incorrect. Abraham Wald did not have any different data than what the military had. He wasn't analyzing any different evidence, any different piece of knowledge or any different facts than what the military had already analyzed, but he came to a different conclusion. Why? Because they had not accounted for all the facts. They operated on that bias. So, that's what we need to do. We need to question those foundations. Are we or are they taking everything into account that should be taken into account to come to these conclusions? First of all, the Bible is not opposed to science as the Bible presents an accurate observation of the universe as it is. So Genesis chapter 8 verse 22, where God said to Noah, while the earth remaineth, seed time and harvest and cold and heat and summer and winter and day and night shall not cease. This refers to the stability of the earth. And what we have in Genesis 8.22 are actually the fundamental assumptions of all empirical science. And that is that there is uniformity and cause and effect and natural laws that do not change in this universe. Now of course if we go back to the time before the flood, there wasn't cold and heat and summer and winter. Those things, the earth did not operate that way. So we recently studied this passage and we noted how that after the flood God is here stabilizing the creation and he is establishing this order that we recognize again as uniformity. And groups like Answers in Genesis, Institute of Creation Research, and some others, they have scientists or access to scientists who have shown things like the fossil record to be consistent with a global flood. Now, their examination of the fossil record, they're looking at the same fossil record that the evolutionist is looking at. They're looking at all of the same evidence and all the same data that they're looking at, but they're coming to these different conclusions. Why? Well, one of the reasons that we see these dating of earth elements as dating so old, so many millions of years ago and things like that is because there's an underlying assumption of uniformity for millions and even billions of years. A uniformity that the Bible tells us and again, the fossil record confirms that did not exist for millions and billions of years but a uniformity that was established only after the flood. So the flood brought about a radical change, and uniformity established after the flood cannot be assumed before it, because conditions were different prior to the flood than what they were after, according to the Bible. And again, evidence can be interpreted entirely consistently with that. And whatever we think of before the flood or what have you, Genesis 8.22 certainly speaks to the uniformity of the creation that in all of our observable history has remained the same and is still the same today and will be as long as this earth remains in its current condition. So what I'm saying is that the Bible is not opposed to science and in fact rather the Bible has been quite foundational to modern science. Many pioneers of modern science were Christians. Or at the very least, they were theists who believed that God created the universe if they were not outright professing Christianity. People like Francis Bacon, William of Ockham, Nicholas Copernicus, Johannes Kepler, Galileo, Pascal, Isaac Newton, Mendel, Boyle, Leibniz, Michael Faraday. and many, many more. There are even many scientists today who are professing Christians who have made important contributions in their fields, like Francis Collins, who is the head of the Human Genome Project. John Lennox, which is a mathematics professor at Oxford, who pointed out that over 60% of Nobel Prize winners in the 20th century were professed Christians. Well, Abraham Wald was Jewish. And in fact, the book where I first read about Abraham Wald barely mentioned this fact. You would hardly know. You had to be paying very close attention to figure out that Abraham Wald was a Jew from this book that had all this about him in it. But he was Jewish. His grandfather, in fact, was a rabbi. His father was a kosher baker. His family were Torah observant Jews. And in fact, Abraham Wald was homeschooled all the way up until university. I thought that was interesting. And then I learned why. Because the Hungarian schools at that time required Saturday attendance at classes. And his family would not violate the Sabbath. And so they homeschooled. Abraham Wald, all the way up to university. So he wasn't a Christian, and I'm not saying he was a Christian, but he was monotheistic. He did believe that the one God created the universe. And he certainly got the right answer when a whole lot of very smart people missed it because of their biases. So, I do want to make an important, what I think is an important distinction here when we're talking about science and the Bible and we're talking about Christians throughout history and even today who have made important contributions in various scientific fields. So, Bill Nye in that interview said that creationists wouldn't get the right answer because evolution was necessarily what he called the fundamental idea in all of life science. In other words, belief in evolution is the necessary assumption in order to get the right answer in all of these scientific questions according to Bill Nye. Well, I've certainly given enough of a list already to show that he's just completely wrong in that assertion. because it would mean that Christians who do believe in the God who created the universe would get the wrong answers. And according to Bill Nye's theory, evolutionists would get the right answers and solve the problems, cure the diseases, invent machines, and build infrastructure. Well, Nye is obviously wrong, but I'm not suggesting that the reverse is true. And I think that's important for us to understand. I'm not saying that only Christians get right answers when it comes to scientific investigation and discovery and experimentation and deduction and all of that. I'm not saying that only Christians get right answers and evolutionists always get wrong answers. I'm not saying that. That would be completely untenable. Evolutionists solve equations. conduct experiments and derive proper conclusions in different settings. So do Christians and evolutionists make mistakes and evolutionists get things wrong and so do Christians in the scientific endeavor and people all between. So my point is that Christians have in the past and will in the future do science correctly because the Bible and Christianity are not anti Science. So Christians and evolutionists are all working with the same natural laws and all working with the same data. Even as Jesus talked about the sun rising on the just and the unjust, the rain coming on the evil and on the good. All working with the same data, all working with the same natural laws. Laws of thermodynamics do not change because a person believes in evolution or a person believes in creation. They are what they are. Gravity doesn't change, so on. These natural laws and the uniformity of the universe that God established does not change. but conclusions are going to be affected by those assumptions. So when a teacher says, we are observing this or we are observing that in life because of evolution, that doesn't mean the observations are wrong. So what I mean by that is an evolutionary biologist professor may talk about the eye and different parts of the eye and the different functions of the eye and they function in this particular way and may say, because of evolution. Well, that doesn't mean that their observations about the eye are wrong. The eye really does function this way. The eye really does consist of these parts. And evolution, you have to recognize evolution didn't get them to that conclusion. Evolution was a pre-commitment. Evolution was an assumption. Evolution did not provide them that answer. They got to that answer through doing empirical science based on uniformity that the Bible testifies to. So it is the foundation that they're standing on and that's the way that we need to think when we encounter these kind of objections to the Bible, which we will encounter. And again, our young people, as they are growing up, they will encounter these things even more than I did, even more than those older than me have. They will encounter these things more and more, whether it's in going into higher education, whether it's going into work or whatever that it is as you grow, they're going to encounter these kind of objections. And again, I'm saying we need to step back and evaluate those assumptions. What are the foundations that they're standing on? What are the biases that are being employed? And the Bible is not anti-science because for one thing, the Bible's not a science textbook. It's not the reason that it was given. When the Bible does speak of things such as the uniformity of the natural laws, it does so correctly. Again, we see here in Genesis 8, 22. It is entirely consistent with the uniformity that has been observed all throughout human history. So for instance, the Bible does not tell you how to perform brain surgery to remove a malignant tumor in a cancer patient. The Bible doesn't tell you how to do that. It doesn't tell you where to begin. Doesn't tell you what to do in the middle of that procedure or at the end. Doesn't tell you anything about how to do that procedure. But the Bible's not given for that purpose. That doesn't mean that the Bible is anti-science. In fact, it's quite the reverse. Let me show you why. The Bible, though not telling us how to perform brain surgery or how to treat various ailments or what have you, The Bible doesn't tell us how to do those things, but you know what the Bible does do? It tells us why you should operate on that malignant tumor. It tells us why we should treat sickness, why we should endeavor to cure disease, and so on. And we get that here where we started in Genesis chapter nine. In verse 6 he said, Whoso shedeth man's blood, by man shall his blood be shed, for in the image of God made he man. This is something that did not change from before the flood to after the flood. We talked about when we studied this passage how God is speaking of human life and how he will require the blood of human life that is shed, the unjust blood that is spilled, that he will require that and he is obviously here also we see the establishment making ready for the civil government of the nations that follow. But the point is God says here that because man is created in the image of God, now just a few verses earlier at the end of chapter 8, he acknowledged once again that the imagination of man's hearts are just evil continually. So this is stated even with that knowledge that men are depraved and sinful beings but nevertheless he says man's created in the image of God. What does that mean? That means that his life, the life of every human being is invested with an inherent dignity because being made in the image of God. And so for that reason, just as Jesus said that it was lawful to save life rather than to destroy it, when he healed a man on the Sabbath day, Luke chapter 6 verse 9, then said, Jesus unto them, I will ask you one thing, is it lawful on the Sabbath days to do good or to do evil, to save life or to destroy it? Well, the Bible does teach us that it is lawful, it is good to save life and not to destroy it. So again, the Bible doesn't tell us how to perform brain surgery, it wasn't given for that purpose, but the Bible does tell us why we should perform brain surgery, why we should treat diseases and so on. And then on the other hand, The truth also is evolution doesn't tell you how to do that either. Evolution doesn't tell you how to do brain surgery. Evolution certainly doesn't tell you why. The science of evolution only gives us time and chance acting on matter with pitiless indifference and simply no reason, no purpose, no foundation for saving life rather than destroying it. And we could talk about some of the eugenicists that have been famously evolutionists but So once again, the Bible is not anti-science.