Morning, Chris. OK, it's time. I guess we're running upstairs. Is the mics on? OK, it's working. OK, good. Alrighty everyone, call to order. While others are coming in, let me just say some of you I know have told me you haven't had any formal study in philosophy and you've really enjoyed this and I did hear from one of you who had taken some classes in philosophy and found it rather difficult. So don't feel bad if you find the material difficult. This isn't something that we usually talk about in church much. I believe that's unfortunate. And I think if you look at the grand scheme of church history, you will find that is unusual. Because again, metaphysics is something that the church was well versed in until after the Enlightenment, generally speaking. But well, these things are the foundation. These truths that we're looking at are foundational to a biblical worldview, and so I believe they're important, and I hope we will venture forth with all the courage and diligence we can muster. Let's pray. Almighty God, we thank you for allowing us to see another morning, and we adore you for your matchless power, your holiness, your awesomeness. All we see and all we don't see is the works of your hands, and you are an awesome amazing God and I pray that this morning that you would once again grip us with that reality as we consider the things that you have made and we pray that you would increase our appreciation for the grandeur of this universe you've created and help us now to understand. I pray that you would help me to be as clear as possible in Jesus' name. Amen. And Kevin I printed some extras just in case so because I can't obviously go back upstairs and do it in between so if you need to Thank you. Please open your Bibles to Genesis Chapter 1. And this morning we're going to be studying our second element to be found in any world view. And that is cosmology. There is some overlap here with metaphysics that we discussed last week. Just waiting for this to get going here. OK, hopefully this catches up to us. There's some overlap with metaphysics, but cosmology deserves its own treatment because different world views have very different ways of viewing the universe. And so cosmology is the study of the universe. the Greek word cosmos, which generally referred to a orderly system of arrangement. And it was often used to describe the world or the universe. Now, many today might use the term cosmology to refer to a branch, a specific branch of astrophysics that deals with how the world came about and all that. But when people hear the term cosmology, they might assume that we're talking about a hard science But classically, cosmology has been more broadly understood as playing a major role in philosophy and religion. And this is because, as we will see, many of the questions cosmology seeks to answer fall outside the boundaries of science. In their book, The Large-Scale Structure of Space and Time, Stephen Hawking and George Ellis admit, we are not able to make cosmological models without some admixture of ideology. In other words, we can't imagine any model of how the universe began, how it's come to its present state, without drawing on our own worldview. We can only do cosmology through a pair of worldview spectacles. As far as the world's concerned, then, cosmology is the study of, as far as worldview is concerned, cosmology is the study of the universe, its origin, its purpose, its form and its structure. And because this is not a course on Genesis or on cosmology itself or creation science, we're going to deal with the more basic issues here. So I know some of you might be all about creation science and intelligent design and all that, but we're going to try to keep to the bigger picture here. So here's the bigger picture of what I'm calling the biblical position on cosmology. The universe is God's creation ex nihilo regulated by uniform cause and effect in an open system? Ex nihilo means from nothing, right? Or more simply put, we might say the universe is God's creation from nothing regulated by his laws. I believe this could summarize somewhat the biblical position on cosmology. So let's take a moment now to examine what is the biblical account of creation. We're in Genesis chapter 1 and here's the Bible's account of how the universe began. Genesis 1, I'll read the first five verses. In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. The earth was formless and void and darkness was over the surface of the deep. And the spirit of God was moving over the surface of the waters. Then God said, let there be light. And there was light. God saw that the light was good and God separated the light from the darkness. God called the light day and the darkness he called night. And there was evening and there was morning one day. Now we won't debate the meaning of days and the days formula in Genesis 1 or whether verse 2 allows for a long gap of time. We can't fully exposit these verses, but you can still get a feel for the sophistication of this creation account as we do this brief overview. For instance, in Genesis 1, verse 1, we read something that is loaded. with cosmic significance. The Bible's opening statement is loaded with cosmic significance. The English polymath Herbert Spencer was a devout advocate of Darwinism during the Victorian era, and he insightfully observed in his time that all scientific data is derived from five phenomena, time, force, action, space, and matter. And so it's neat that in Genesis 1-1 we read, in the beginning, that is time, God, that is force, created, that is action, the heavens, that is space, and the earth, that is matter. every word of the Bible's opening statement resonates with cosmology and it rings true when examined against the way things are. And I think that most everyone would agree that the words heavens and earth here in the Bible's opening statement represent what's called a literary merism. That is two words that are being used to represent the whole, all things that were ever created. Everything that's not in the category of God is here mentioned in a roundabout way in Genesis 1. But the rest of the creation account after verse 1 is much more controversial and we don't have time to fully get into it all. I will say that the Bible's creation account has raised much controversy among Christians and even among those of us who affirm to the Bible's inerrancy. Some will interpret this more or less literally. So I'll give you three views just in general. View number one, some will say that this account is true, it is inerrant, but I can't take it literally. They will say, I can't take it literally, this is largely poetic or meant to be metaphorical. And these would be those that would by and large tend to hold an old earth creation view. So that's pretty basic there. I don't know that I need to say much more about that. View number two is that others will say we should understand this creation account in light of other ancient cosmologies of the time. And it is true that the Bible uses much of the same language as the surrounding nations of the earth at that time. For instance, the Bible mentions the vault of heaven or the pillars of the earth. And this is language that is pretty much found in all ancient cosmologies. And I believe these are instances where God accommodates the language of scripture to the ancient mind. We could say that much at least. This is not to say that God ever accommodates to human error. That would be a totally different thing. This is a matter of context and communication, not scientific precision. For instance, if you say to your child, look at that beautiful sunrise. Are you really suggesting that the sun is rising, it's moving around the Earth, it's orbiting around the Earth? Of course not. And even just to ask you that very question is sort of silly, isn't it? Because we're not intending our language to be astronomically precise. Rather, we're using these expressions that are phenomenological. That is, it's language of appearance. We're simply describing the way things appear. And more basically, not only does sun appear to rise from our vantage point on earth but more basically this is a colloquial expression in our language and you know it remains grounded in our culture so that nobody looks at you sideways when you say you know look at the sunrise. It's just the way we talk. Sadly some have gone so far as to claim that the Bible intends for us to believe the earth is flat, that the Bible presents to us a cosmology much like the ancient world like this vault, this flat earth situation and And that God intends for you to believe that. And so that NASA and all the astronomers and all that we know about modern science, that's all co-conspirators working in this great conspiracy of evil. I actually met somebody of this persuasion a few years ago. And I came to the conclusion that it's more a matter of illiteracy. more than anything, people who haven't read poetry believe there's only one way that you could possibly understand expressions like the vault of heaven or the pillars of the earth. To be fair, the Bible does say in Job 26.7, God stretches out the north over empty space and hangs the earth on nothing. And of course, science would indicate to us that we can take this, of course, very literally. Now, there is a third approach, view number three, of other Christians who hold to an inerrant view of the Bible and they would say we take these verses literally while attempting to reconcile them with modern science. And so this is language that is literal and precise in that sense. And I'll just give you the gist of it. In verse 2 we read that the earth was formless and void. And God, the spirit, or there was a darkness over the surface of the deep and the spirit of God was moving over the surface of the waters. And so in the beginning, from this understanding, God creates what is literally a massive ball of water that is called the deep. And you see, they're called the deep. Later we're told the spirit of God is moving. He's hovering over the surface of this giant sphere of water. And on day two of creation, then we would interpret this as we have the earth created. God separates, he creates this expanse, this space separating the waters of the earth from the waters above. And so that we now have the earth and we have this expanse surrounding the earth and this water above or this heaven that this expanse would be called heaven or interstellar space in this view. So this is not just the atmosphere where the birds are flying. But this would include that and everything beyond that that stretches out into the boundaries of space. And then you would have beyond space what are called the waters above. Here would be the edge of the universe somewhere out there. And then on day three, we have God forming dry land on the Earth. Now day four, this is interesting. On day four, someone interpret this as God stretching out the expanse of interstellar space. If you watch here, God is stretching out the heavens and he puts in those heavens, in that expanse we're told, the stars, the sun, the moon, all the galaxies, everything, everything that you can see for billions of light years distance. would be placed into this expanse that is stretched out and these theories generally rely on interpreting the expanse then, this Hebrew word rakia that keeps appearing in Genesis 1 as not just our atmosphere but everything stretching far beyond into interstellar space. If that's true then your cosmology is going to look very different than say the cosmologies of the ancient world. And this interpretation would yield us, I thought, three facts that are very interesting. The universe, number one, would have an edge, so it has a finite boundary. Number two, our galaxy is located near the center of our finite universe, our bounded universe. And number three, this is probably most interesting, there would be water at the far boundaries of the universe. What is fascinating is that some Christians have speculated, they've talked about how this water then would account for what's called a cosmic microwave background radiation that reaches us in all directions and that would come from radiating from this water that's out there. That's very interesting, all very interesting, but again good men have disagreed over the details here and so let me leave you with a hermeneutical spectrum to illustrate the danger of what are foolish extremes. On the one end of the spectrum you'll see we've got the naturalist and this is the person that would conclude scripture is a fairy tale. You're not to take any of it seriously. On the other end of the spectrum you would have the person that we might label conspiracy theorist. This would be the person that would say science is a fairy tale. Everything's just a big conspiracy against the Bible or against Christians. If we believe the Bible is the inerrant word of God, we must believe that the Bible is never in conflict with the actual facts of science. So let's be clear on that. However, scientists may contradict the Bible. There's a difference there. Scientists may contradict the Bible, but we would understand that when all the facts are discovered, science itself will always only confirm what God has said. in his word. And at the same time, just because the Bible itself is inerrant, that doesn't mean everybody who comes to the Bible and offers you an interpretation for it is going to be an accurate interpretation. So we can be mistaken. We could possibly misinterpret the Bible. So we need to be careful. I just want you to think about that. I'm just laying out for you a very general way what are some of the tensions we deal with here when we come to a study of biblical cosmology. Now to help us understand what the Bible teaches about the universe, I want to leave you with five maxims that I believe make up a biblical view of cosmology. First off, when we looked at metaphysics, we considered how the Bible teaches that God is there, and he is distinct from creation. And so it's worth stating the converse, which is also true. Maxim number one, the universe is real. and is not God. Is this really necessary to say this? Well, yes. Because not everyone will agree with the Bible that the universe is real. Some would say that the external world with its physical forms is merely an illusion. You just think you're sitting there right now. You just think you're listening to me and we're having this sort of conversation, but we're really not. It's all in your head. It's all just something you're imagining It's not really there. And this can be a very convenient way that sinners could lie to themselves. I'm not really responsible to God. I'm not really responsible the way I live. Everything in life is just a dream. But as we've seen even last week God is there and so we can be sure that everything God has created is really there. It's just as real as God himself. When the Bible says in Genesis 1-2 that the spirit of God was moving over the surface of the waters God is said to be interacting with something that is actually there. It's just as really there as he is really there. Genesis 1.3, then God said, let there be light. And there was light. You know, you might understand this verse to be saying, then God said, let light be real. And light was real. And there's a real emphasis in this creation account, if you'll just take the time to look at it. You can see verse chapter one, verse seven, God made and it was so. Verse nine, then God said, End of the verse, and it was so. Verse 11, then God said, and it was so. Verse 15, let them be, and it was so. Verse 24, then God said, and it was so. Verse 30, God gives to man, and it was so. There's really something there. Something is really there because God is really there. And when God says, let it be, it is so. All right. So as a Christian, there's of course no place for doubting the reality of the universe. We don't have to worry about those kind of things if something is really there because God is there. Now the other thing we notice though is that the universe isn't God. There's a distinction. Nature isn't God. It's not infinite. You must consider that time had a beginning. In Genesis 1.1, the beginning is the beginning of all beginnings as far as time is concerned. God is timeless. Now it's funny or interesting that even science, modern science, is sort of catching up to this now. We can say time at some point had a beginning. But as Christians we look at that and we say, well of course time had a beginning. because God created it. But God is timeless. He's not bound by time. All creation is finite when it comes to time, not God. We know the clock's literally winding down. It was wound up at some point. It started. And even big Bain theorists who don't believe in God, they will tell you that the earth is headed toward this eventual heat death or toward the big crunch, they call it. where the universe will collapse back in on itself. But the Bible teaches that the universe will undergo a cataclysmic renovation in the future when Christ returns. So there is going to be something of extraordinary significance, something on a cataclysmic scale that the universe has never seen before. But that is to come when Christ returns. And we'll mark a new epoch in history, of course. So yes, time had a beginning according to the Bible, but also the Bible would teach us that space has a boundary. We said that the heavens and the earth, the words heavens and earth in verse 1 of Genesis 1, are a merism. That is, they represent the scope of all things. The word earth in verse one would more generally describe all matter that God has created. And the word Shemayim, this word translated heavens, would mean three-dimensional space. And while we wouldn't conceive of anything, we certainly can't conceive of anything beyond time or space, we can be certain that as God's creation, space is finite. It did not always exist, nor is it infinitely extended, as strange as that might seem to our minds. But God has no beginning or boundary. He is eternal and omnipresent. And actually, I will just put in there again, because we talked about metaphysics last week, but it's interesting that every single view of, every single atheist that you will meet that will deny the existence of God, you'll find they're always on some level dealing with a straw man. It's not our God. It's not this kind of a God that is boundless and is timeless, has no beginning, no boundary. But therefore, because God has no beginning or boundary, the universe is not God, nor is it part of God. It's distinct from God and his handiwork. And so any form of nature worship is really idolatry. Alright, the universe is real and is not God. A second maxim of biblical cosmology would be that the universe has a divine purpose. Consider a universe without any purpose. This is the worldview called nihilism. from the idea of nothingness. In Douglas Adams' fictional sci-fi novels, beginning with The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Universe, Adams tells the story of four time travelers who hitchhike back and forth across the intergalactic time and space, from the Big Bang to the final destruction of the universe. And during this time, a race of hyper-intelligent, pan-dimensional beings, who are actually mice, build a computer the size of a small city to answer the ultimate question of life, the universe, and everything. And they call this computer Deep Thought. Adams writes, for seven and a half million years, Deep Thought computed and calculated, and in the end announced that the answer was, in fact, 42. And so another, even bigger, computer had to be built to find out what the actual question was. And this computer was called the Earth. And it was so large that it was frequently mistaken for a planet, especially by the strange ape-like beings who roamed its surface totally unaware that they were simply a part of a gigantic computer program. Well, okay, so that end quote. The long short of it is that Adams goes on claiming that nothing on Earth makes sense, and just before the critical moment of readout, the Earth is destroyed. In the second novel, the time travelers discover that the ultimate question of life in the universe is really, what is six times nine? And so, as James Sires observes, not only is 42 a meaningless answer to the question on a human level, the level of purpose and meaning, it is bad mathematics. The most rational discipline in the universe, or in the university, has been reduced to absurdity. By the end of the third novel, we're told why the question and answer do not fit each other. The question and answer are mutually exclusive, Adams writes. Knowledge of one logically precludes knowledge of the other. It is impossible that both can ever be known about in the same universe. So at the fundamental core reality, operating in cosmology is this uncertainty principle. And this is what you call nihilism, really. It's the belief that Life and the universe is ultimately meaningless. It's not supposed to make sense, nor are we supposed to expect it to. And this follows if you believe that the universe is without any real purpose. But the biblical worldview is far more optimistic. The Bible reveals that our universe is saturated with divine purpose. The Bible says in Colossians 1.16, For by Him, in Christ, all things were created, both in heavens and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities. All things have been created through Him and for Him. 1 Corinthians 8.6, Yet for us there is but one God, the Father, from whom are all things, and we exist for Him. Revelation 4.11, Worthy are you, our Lord and our God, to receive glory and honor and power, for you created all things, and because of your will they existed and were created. That little phrase, for Him, because of Him, because of your will, indicates the universe does have a purpose. It's a purpose that lies with the all-intelligent God. The universe, we also see, had a purpose in the creation account. The Bible's creation account also indicates that God brings all things into being with a purpose. Look at verses 1, chapter 1, verses 14 and 15. Then God said let there be lights in the expanse of the heavens to separate the day from the night and let them be for signs and for seasons and for days and years and let them be for lights in the expanse of the heavens to give light on the earth and it was so. Astronomers tell us that earth is far and away the best place to see a solar eclipse anywhere in our solar system. That's pretty astounding when you think about it. With our sun and our moon just the right dimensions, positioned at just the right distances from each other and from the earth. That's amazing. And the Bible explains why this all is. That our God created everything and he created it with a special purpose. And he even created it with humankind in mind. Fascinating. This is what we call teleology from the Greek word teleos meaning goal or purpose. Maybe you've heard of the teleological argument for God's existence. This is any argument that reasons from design to the designer. Now you might wake up any morning and feel that life has absolutely zero meaning. So I think this is important. You might feel your life is lacking purpose right now, but maybe because of some difficulty you're going through. But the Bible tells you that life in the universe do have meaning, has intrinsic meaning, because God created all things for a purpose. That is a wonderful, comforting truth as a Christian. It's very optimistic. Your real concern ought to be, am I in line with? Am I submitted to the purpose of this God? Now, since the universe has a divine purpose, this third maxim should not surprise us. We've seen the universe is real and is not God. The universe has a divine purpose. But thirdly, the universe was created good and orderly. The universe was created good seven times in the single chapter in Genesis. Do we read this fact? What God made, everything God made we're told was good and this culminates in this summary statement that God saw all that he had made and behold it was very good, Genesis 131. Surely one way in which the universe is good is evident in what we call the anthropic principle. That is a principle that recognizes that our planet has been custom tailored for human life. Our universe is so finely tuned for life on Earth that if you change any one of the physical constants, something so minuscule as the size of a proton, if you just change that ratio of the proton to the electron, just the tiniest bit, we don't have the possibility of life. We don't have the possibility of life on earth. The astronomer Carl Sagan assumed that the vastness of our universe proves we are insignificant in the grand scheme of things. But the Bible would have you know that your planet has been uniquely fine-tuned for life. God created all that he did with you in mind. That's amazing. There is though a dark side to our universe and we see this in the Bible as well as we We look at nature. We see something is wrong. Something is, we feel, not the way it should be. And I believe this is one reason God emphasizes so strongly that he made all things good. Because everywhere we look, we are tempted to believe the universe is not good. Or we are certainly given evidence of a world that is lacking in what is good. Charles Templeton. was a popular evangelist among the youth of America. He was a friend of Billy Graham, but he eventually slid into unbelief and rejected anything to do with Christianity. What was his explanation? Like Charles Darwin, Templeton could not reconcile an earth full of death, disease, and suffering with a good God who created a good universe. Templeton writes in his book Farewell to God, why does God's grand scheme, or sorry, why does God's grand design require creatures with teeth designed to crush spines or rend flesh? Claws fashioned to seize and tear, venom to paralyze, mouths to suck blood, quills to constrict and smother, even expandable jaws so that the prey may be swallowed whole and alive. Nature is in Tennyson's vivid phrase, red in tooth and claw, and life is a carnival of blood. So Templeton concludes, how could a loving God and omnipotent God create such horrors as we have been contemplating? Well, every Bible-believing Christian will agree nature is insanely cruel. But Christians go on, they go beyond saying that nature is simply cruel to saying that nature is cursed. It's not within the scope of cosmology for us to explain why this is right now, but we'll get to that in coming weeks, so please come back. But as we consider our universe, consider that the Bible says in Romans 8 that all creation is subjected to futility. It's subjected to sin's curse. And so in Romans 8 22 the Bible says, for we know that the whole creation groans and suffers the pains of childbirth together until now. there is pain, there is suffering, there's something wrong in the universe but as we're told in the Bible that suffering, what is wrong is headed towards some kind of reconciliation, some kind of restoration and so again you'll have to come back to the end of our worldview study for us to examine that in the Bible and what it says about it. But I'm very thankful, I hope you are, that the Bible teaches God is not pleased with the current state of affairs. The Bible indicates that death itself is an enemy which will one day be abolished. First Corinthians 15.26. And the Bible indicates that one day the lion will lie down with the lamb. They will one day happily coexist. Isaiah... Somebody got a phone there? That's fine. That's fine. Isaiah 65 25 says, the wolf and the lamb will graze together. And the lion will eat straw like the ox, and dust will be the serpent's food. They will do no evil or harm in all my holy mountains, says the Lord." And so what's ever wrong with the world will one day be made right according to the Bible. The universe that God creates is a good creation. It's intrinsically good. It's not this platonic approach to matter or the physical world that matters intrinsically evil. That's far from it. It's good. God says everything he made was very good and the universe was created rational and orderly. And this means that we can make sense of it. This is how we can send rockets into space with incredible precision or how we can predict the exact moment of a solar eclipse centuries in advance for any given location. That's amazing. We can do so only because we recognize our universe operates according to certain uniform laws of cause and effect. And the Christian has a rich answer for this regularity found in nature, because God is rational and orderly, so is our universe. In other words, science is only thinking God's thoughts after him. The many commands in Genesis 1 show us God subjecting creation to his law. And these laws of uniform cause and effect are to govern the course of nature. For instance, we have the law of biogenesis that is stated in the creation of all organic plant life. The law of biogenesis is where life begets life. You don't get life from non-life. You don't get organic matter from inorganic matter. Life only comes from life. kind creates or reproduces according to its own kind. In Genesis 1, 11, and 12, we see God establishing a law where all organic plant matter produces after its kind. And the same law of biogenesis is restated in the, excuse me, in the creation of all animal life and human life. And God's law establishes a clear uniformity of cause and effect. It remains to this day. We can count on it. This is very unlike what you find in other ancient cosmologies like the Enuma Elish where the Babylonian hero Marduk slays Tiamat, the goddess of disorder, and cuts up her body to form the earth. You see, in ancient cosmologies you have this order being brought out of disorder. It's that the earth is formed out of chaos but the Bible tells us the opposite. That the earth is formed according to the intelligent plan of the intelligent God and by his sovereign decree. And so our universe is not essentially chaotic but essentially orderly. Though as we've just said there is chaos that God will allow. He allows it to enter into the cosmos for some purpose again that we'll have to explore in the biblical worldview. and this is a result of sin's curse. I'll just say that. Now I want to revisit the uniformity of nature in a moment but first let's move to the fourth maxim concerning the Bible's view of our universe. The universe is real and is not God. It has a divine purpose. It was created good and orderly but fourthly the universe is an open system. By open system we mean that the universe remains open to God. Many people in our culture believe that we are living in a closed system. That is a universe that is shut in to nature, shut out to God. And even if God is somewhere out there, you know, he can't have anything to do with us. But according to the Bible, the universe is only a box and it's an open box. As much as that might scare you, God can invade at any time he pleases. And practically speaking, this means that miracles are possible. Miracles can happen. What is a miracle? A miracle is any supernatural occurrence that cannot be possibly explained by natural laws. In his essay, his first essay on miracles, David Hume wrote, a miracle is a violation of the laws of nature. Hume saw no difference between the miracles of any mythology and the miracles recorded in the Bible. But there is a fundamental difference. As C.S. Lewis explains, The fitness of Christian miracles and their difference from these mythological miracles lies in the fact that they show invasion by a power which is not alien. They are what might be expected to happen when she is invaded, not simply by a God, but by the God, capital G, of nature. Read the Bible and you'll discover that miracles are not random violations of nature, but miracles are signs. Isn't that even the expression in Hebrew and Greek? Their words for sign are synonymous with the term miracle. Miracles are signs that mark a focal point in God's redemptive plan. Now the other thing to note that follows from the fact that the universe is an open system is that miracles don't nullify signs. We must keep that this truth also in mind. Miracles are possible in the biblical world view, this open system, but they don't nullify science. Miracles do break the uniformity of nature, that's true, but since all of nature's laws come to us from God, it would not be proper to describe miracles as violations of natural law, but rather suspensions. A miracle is a higher law counteracting a less powerful law. Like Jesus raising a man from the dead because he wants to prove to humanity that he is God over nature. That he has power over the dead. That he has power to give life. He is God in the flesh. So the Bible gives us a universe that is an open system It's an open system to God's intervention because he is God after all. And yet everything is still regulated by uniform laws of cause and effect. And these laws are established by God. Back to David Hume, who attacked miracles in his inquiry concerning human understanding. Hume attacks miracles as these violations of the laws of nature. It's too incredible to believe, but he creates this greater problem. For us, Hume believed there's really no rational basis for expecting anything in the future will come about as the past. And if you've seen the sun rise 1,000 times, a million times already, that doesn't guarantee it will rise tomorrow. If you run every electron, you could test every electron in the universe. You could find, well, you can't do that possibly. But you could test many of them, right? You could spend your whole life doing that. But that's not to say that every electron is going to behave the same way. In Hume's worldview, there is no uniformity. There's no higher law. It's only what we see. So for Hume, there's no rational basis for any uniform laws of cause and effect that actually make science possible. And every naturalist has the same problem. A naturalist is someone who believes there's only nature, and so everything that happens can only be explained naturally. But then the naturalist has the same dilemma as Hume. On what basis is it possible to say that there is any regularity to nature at all. How can we do science at all? A naturalist will tell you, well, one day we will figure out. Science will one day show us what the grand principle is. But until then, they choose to continue acting as if the universe were bound to some uniform laws of cause and effect. And even then, they must behave as though these laws were somehow intelligible. So they want to assume intelligence in the universe. The Christian, on the other hand, can do science because he or she knows the universe reflects the intelligence of God. And it operates uniformly according to the laws he established. All right, real quick. One final maxim for a Christian view of our universe, a biblical view of our universe. We've seen the universe is real and is not God. The universe has a divine purpose. The universe was created good and orderly. The universe is an open system. But it's also worth mentioning the universe is given to humanity. And this is a profoundly important maxim to the Christian view of the universe. It's also unique in the grand scheme of worldview thought. At the close of the 18th century, The economist Thomas Malthus published an essay arguing that the Earth's resources could not possibly keep up with current population growth. And he warned that a catastrophe would strike as soon as the population passed up productivity. And if you haven't noticed that now pop culture is infested with this sort of thinking. It's all over. It's in the literature, it's in the media, the movies. Celebrities talk about this kind of thing. And this metanarrative that the Earth is unable to sustain the current population growth is so powerful that many people are willing to do just about anything to thwart population growth. And this would include, but is not limited to, sterilization, abortion, infanticide, euthanasia, and assisted suicide. Or as the British royalty Prince Philip said, in the event that I am reincarnated, I would like to return as a deadly virus to contribute something to solving overpopulation. Wow. People have said all sorts of things on that level. And if they didn't say it, they were thinking it. Many would be thankful that coronavirus happens because they think that it's too many people was threatening their existence on planet Earth and they're controlled by this kind of fear. Well what says the scriptures? What does the Bible have to say, if anything, about this? And how does cosmology play into it? Well the Bible teaches us that after creating the first humans in Genesis 1.8, God says, or we're told, God blessed them and God said to them, Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it and rule over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the sky and over every living thing that moves on the earth. You go on and you see that every plant is given to humanity as food. And yes there's going to be some additional instruction by the time we get to Genesis 9 with the eating of meat. But for now understand that the Bible shows us in the very first chapter humankind is appointed as stewards. Humanity is appointed as stewards over the cosmos. God gave the earth to humanity and blesses humanity and sanctions humanity to reproduce and to use the earth's resources. This is not to say that we may do whatever we may like with the earth's resources we are merely stewards over what God has entrusted to us so you must seek to use what God has given us on the earth not abuse it and there is a difference and we have seen a lot of people abusing this kind of thing even just we could give different examples but it's interesting that some will look at human life and productivity as if we are violating nature and this should not be the case and don't get me wrong I think we should have parks and I think it's great to have national reserves and it's preserve life or preserve different forms of life on the earth and I think we should be sensitive. Christians of all people should be leading in ecology and we should have a view of the planet that treasures it because we recognize it comes to us from God and so we should have a superior regard for ecology for the health of our planet and we should not pollute or do anything like that. So we want to be responsible but at the same time We recognize that there's a reason Earth is there and the resources are there. Christian God knew what he was doing when he created the universe. And Jesus said, do not be worried about your life as to what you will eat or what you will drink, nor for your body as to what you will put on. Is not life more than food and the body more than clothing? Look at the birds of the air. that they do not sow, nor reap, nor gather into barns. And yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not worth much more than they?" So Jesus says, your heavenly Father knows what you need. And he says, seek first God, right? There's a priority of things that believers should be concerned about. Christians of all people on the planet should be trusting Jesus, not Malthus, all right? Trust Jesus, put your trust in him be carried away with pop culture and its controlling fears. If we had time we could look at many statistics that show the earth's amazing resourcefulness over against the population growth. The earth is resourceful. It's marvelously resourceful enough. It's certainly far more resourceful enough, marvelously resourceful enough that killing babies and all forms of murder are never justifiable. Those are never viable options. In a biblical worldview we recognize there's always ways of being more innovative, being more diligent, getting people to be productive, and recognizing that the productivity for life on earth is something that goes back to the very design of the cosmos. So this is all very important. It should be for the Christian. I've summarized the position of cosmology as the universe is God's creation from nothing, regulated by his laws. We've considered five maxims for the biblical view of the universe. I hope they've been helpful. We've seen those here. Next week we will examine what the Bible teaches about anthropology. So let's pray. Father, I thank you for this time and I trust that you will continue to just enlarge our understanding, give us a greater comprehension and even interest, Father, and for some this just be a beginning. Maybe this is a first. Maybe some are hearing some of these things for the first time. We pray, Father, that this would be the beginning to making us more equipped and better versed in understanding the foundations upon which you set the gospel and even understanding these truths that many in our culture are completely clueless about. We pray that as Christians we would not just be equipped to understand these things then but also to engage our culture about them. We pray this in Jesus' name. Amen. Amen. On the handout that I gave you on the back there are questions there you will see to maybe jog some of your thinking and also there's a little assignment if you would take some time to do that I think you will be the better for it. Alright, God bless you. Dismissed.