Well, I've never seen this. Good morning, everybody. It's good to be back. It seems like it's been about a month since the last time I was in your midst, but it's good to be back. What kind of teacher are you anyway, if you don't come through the front? Chicken. That's what kind. Roasted chicken. We felt a little bit cut off from civilization there for a while, but all is well, so I'm glad everybody down here fared well. What we're going to do today and also next week, I was thinking of a wildfire analogy here because my intention was just to do one session on naturalism and it got out of control. I think I've got full containment at this point but it did expand to two weeks instead of one. because there's quite a bit here that we want to try to cover in a foundational kind of way. I feel like this is a particularly important aspect of apologetics because of the particular emphasis that many people place on science and particularly the kind of authority that tends to be assigned to science as a source of truth. So I want to thoroughly demolish those kinds of pretenses. So let's begin with prayer. Father, as we come to your presence today, I'm grateful that all of us came safely through the fire. We thank you for your protection and care during this time. Thank you that you brought us back together again today and help us as we look into this topic of science and naturalism to help us discern what we hear and see, and to be able to know what is the true source of truth and authority. I pray these things in Christ's name. Amen. So I'll start out with a little bit of a disclaimer. There's a big difference between being anti-science and being anti-naturalism. There's a big difference between being anti-science and anti-naturalism. Now when I refer to science, most of the time I'm going to be referring to it as naturalism, because that's generally how it appears to us today. That's the form that it tends to take. But science in and of itself is a legitimate enterprise. What's happened is that science and naturalism have become almost indistinguishable. In other words, naturalism has come in and taken the place of what we might call true science or well-grounded science. So it's become the default setting and that's what we want to spend some time looking at today as well as next week. So as a starting point, let's ask what is science? We just start with a little etymology. The word science just means knowledge. So, for example, when we refer to God as being omniscient, that refers to what? What are the two parts of that word? Omni meaning everything, and science meaning knowledge, all-knowing. So, in its purest form, science is just a tool for us to help understand certain aspects of reality. It's not comprehensive in terms of being able to answer every possible question that we could raise. But it does answer certain kinds of questions. But here's the thing, science always requires a philosophical foundation. It always requires a philosophical foundation. Or if you like, it requires a religious foundation. And the reason is because it cannot prove its underlying assumptions. Science relies on a number of metaphysical assumptions, and by metaphysical we just mean something that is not part of the physical world. We have the physical world and we have the metaphysical world. Science tries to concern itself strictly with the physical world and says, oh, we're not going to worry about the metaphysical stuff. But you really can't do that. So what we'll look at is why you can't do that. So to start with, I've listed several critical assumptions that the scientific enterprise depends upon. First one there is the laws of logic. The laws of logic. And if you like, you can also think of mathematics as a symbolic expression of logic. So if it's more difficult for you to make the connection of how does science depend upon logic, it shouldn't be too difficult to figure out how science depends upon mathematics, because scientists use mathematics to express something about the physical world. The second one there is the uniformity of nature. The uniformity of nature. And that basically means that the world operates today like it did yesterday and it's going to operate tomorrow like it does today. And from that we can come up with this idea of natural laws. That the laws that we observe here in this part of the universe are going to apply in every other part of the universe. The third one there is the law of causality. or cause and effect. That for every effect there has to be an antecedent cause. And then the fourth one is the reliability of sense perception. Because if you stop and think about it, the only way we know anything about the world that's outside of our mind is through our senses. and we're trusting that those senses are giving us a true picture of what's going on in the real world. What's an example of that particular one? Sense perception? I see something. I'm running an experiment. I'm observing an experiment. Or I'm observing something in nature. I want to study grizzly bears. So I go find a grizzly bear and I watch what he does. Well how do I know I'm looking at a grizzly bear? Maybe it's a mountain lion. Maybe my eyes are deceiving me. So I'm trusting my eyes and my other senses to give me a true picture of what's going on in the world around me. Again, these are the kinds of things that we take for granted. We don't even really think about these most of the time. And I want to point out some of these things because this is the kind of stuff that science has to take for granted in order to do science at all. So those are four critical assumptions right there. Let me add a couple more. And here I've given you a little more space because this next one's a big word. Two more assumptions that specifically underlie naturalistic science are uniformitarianism and long ages. And just because it's a big word doesn't mean it's that difficult to understand. Can somebody give me a thumbnail definition of uniformitarianism? Everything is the same as it always has been. Basically, things happen very slowly, very gradually. In other words, the processes that we observe today we project back into the past based on how fast we see things changing. So if we go out here and we take geological measurements to figure out how fast Pikes Peak is growing, maybe it's two millimeters a year, then we say, oh, okay, well, how long did it take Pikes Peak to form based on this rate of change? We're assuming that that is what has happened in the past based on what we observed today, that things happen very slowly and gradually. And so that's obviously tied into the idea of long ages, because if stuff happens very slowly, we need a long time for it to happen. So those two have to go together. Now these assumptions are in direct opposition to the biblical premises, another big word, of catastrophism. which in contrast to uniformitarianism means stuff can happen really quickly, like the fire, like a flood, like the formation of a mountain or the formation of a continent. An eruption of a volcano can change things very quickly, for example. So that could be a very big event that makes big changes in a very short period of time. So catastrophism, Next is a young universe. And then the third one is a future apocalypse. And part of the reason I included that is we have an understanding from a biblical worldview that this world is not going to last forever. But when scientists wring their hands over questions of population growth and resource consumption and natural resources and things like that, what's part of the assumption that's behind that? How are we going to make this last for another 4 billion years? We're not looking at it from that standpoint and we don't know how much longer we have but if God created the earth for us to use it's probably reasonable to assume that he gave us what we would need to last for the duration. So we get a very different view of the world and how we think of natural resources and how we would use natural resources based on which way we're looking at it. Now I want to point you How can the naturalistic people believe, they don't believe totally in uniformitarianism, do they? Because they see volcanoes, they see floods, they see things happening in a catastrophe situation that changes things very, very quickly. Yes, so there's an element. And this is part of what we look for when we look at different worldviews, is the inconsistencies in those beliefs. So we can look at the world around us and we can see there are events that occur that are catastrophic events. But someone who is a uniformitarian would deny the global flood, for example. But they see what happens with a local flood and how quickly it changes things. Correct. But a global flood does not fit in their world view. So that would be something... And that's what it boils down to. If the data does not fit the world view, then we have to find a way around it. They call it an outlier. It's an outside, it's an exception, something like that. Yeah, we'll just treat it as an unusual event, but it's not something that is sufficient for overturning the prevailing theory. It should be, but it's not necessarily. And that's just an example of how, when you're committed to a particular worldview, you tend to be selective in how you look at the data. Is that simply an anti-supernatural bias? We're going there. We're getting there. It is. Okay, so let me look at this passage in 2 Peter 3. And I'll start at the beginning of the chapter and just read down through verse 13. That gives us a little bit of context for what we're looking at here. So specifically notice what we're looking at. Peter is contrasting the belief that things just kind of happen slowly over long periods of time and no big events occur versus what? The biblical view. And notice he refers to the flood. First of all he refers to creation. He refers to the flood, and then he refers to what? What does he tie that into? The apocalypse. So let's look at this passage. This is now the second letter that I am writing to you, beloved. In both of them I am stirring up your sincere mind by way of reminder that you should remember the predictions of the holy prophets and commandment of the Lord and Savior through your apostles, knowing this first of all, that scoffers will come in the last days with scoffing, following their own sinful desires. They will say, Where is the promise of his coming? For ever since the fathers fell asleep, all things are continuing as they were from the beginning of creation. For they deliberately overlook this fact, that the heavens existed long ago, and the earth was formed out of water and through water by the word of God, and that by means of these the world that then existed was deluged with water and perished. But by the same word, the heavens and earth that now exist are stored up for fire, being kept until the day of judgment and destruction of the ungodly. But do not overlook this one fact, beloved, that with the Lord one day is as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day. The Lord is not slow to fulfill his promises, some count slowness, but is patient towards you, not wishing that any should perish, but that all should reach repentance. But the day of the Lord will come like a thief, And then the heavens will pass away with a great roar, and the heavenly bodies will be burned up and dissolved, and the earth and the works that are done on it will be exposed. Since all these things are thus to be dissolved, what sort of people ought you to be in lives of holiness and godliness, waiting for and hastening the coming of the day of God, because of which the heavens will be set on fire and dissolved, and the heavenly bodies will melt as they burn? But according to his promise, we are waiting for new heavens and a new earth in which righteousness dwells. So there's a warning here. But notice, let me point you to this specifically in verse 5, where he says, they deliberately overlook this fact. What does that sound a little bit like? It's not in their worldview so they jettison it. In Romans 1 what does Paul say? They willfully, they have the knowledge of God but they willfully suppress the knowledge of God. So there is no excuse for not knowing. The data is there but we deliberately suppress it or deny it. And that again is part of consequence of our fallen nature. We are looking for a way around God and his requirements and the implications of biblical worldview. Now referring back to your notes, naturalism must rely on theistic presuppositions in order to do science. and this is the huge inconsistency. The naturalism denies anything supernatural or metaphysical and yet it can't do anything without those presuppositions. So in order to do science we have to understand that there is a God who created the universe, that it obeys his laws of nature, and furthermore, and we'll talk about this more next week, But that gives us the basis for meaning and morality. If we start from the standpoint of naturalism, where we deny God, then what do we have in terms of meaning and morality? Anything goes. Yeah, it's all meaningless, isn't it? There's no right, there's no wrong, there are no categories as those. There's no accountability for your behavior, just whatever you can get away with. Now let's tie science into the scripture. The pursuit of knowledge through scientific study is firmly rooted in the Dominion Mandate. And the inference that I'm making here is that we have to know something about the world in order to be able to subdue it. Simple enough. So a couple of verses for you to look at there in Genesis 1. In verse 28. For a little context, I'll look at verse 27. So God created man in His own image, in the image of God He created him, male and female He created them, and God blessed them. And God said to them, Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth. So God placed man on earth to rule the earth. Another verse we can pick up is in chapter 2, verse 15, where it says, The Lord God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to work it and keep it. Okay, what do you need to know in order to be a gardener? You need to know something about how to grow and keep plants, right? And then what is another verse that we can point to here in chapter 2 that we can see kind of the beginnings of scientific study? In verse 20 what do we see? The man gave names to all livestock and to the birds of the heavens and to every beast of the field. So if we want to study the world around us, one of the first things that we do is what? We assign names to things so that we can identify and we can differentiate between things. So we've got the roots of science. Yes, Don? I was just going to ask, would you consider Matthew 6, consider the birds of the air, consider the part of scientific study 2, they neither toil nor do they... I mean, is that another... Is that kind of tangential to where you're going here? No, I would agree with that. You know, when the writer of the Proverbs says, consider the ant, Well, what does that mean? Well, look at him. Look at what he does. What's he doing? He's industrious. He's working all the time. He's got purpose. He's preparing for the future. He's building his house. He's part of a vital community, storing up food and so on. So we have something to learn from studying nature. And the scientific enterprise is firmly grounded in Scripture. We refer to Scripture as being our sole authority and Scripture is the standard for measuring truth claims, but that doesn't mean that we're not supposed to know anything that's outside the pages of Scripture, does it? God doesn't reveal everything in the Scripture. He reveals what's necessary for salvation, what He wants us to know about Himself and ourselves and our relationship to Him and so forth, but that doesn't preclude being engaged in the study of the world around us, because that's all part of God's creation. And we can also point to natural revelation. The scripture says that we can learn something about God through natural revelation. We can look at the stars. We can look at the plants. We can look at the mountains. And while we don't worship those things, the creation points back to the Creator, doesn't it? So, there's a very strong tie-in then between our belief, our religious belief, as well as our scientific study of the world around us. I don't want to sound like those are mutually exclusive. Again, I don't want to make it sound like I am anti-science, because I'm not. I'm anti-naturalism. Well, you could say anti-scientism. Science becomes the religion. And again, as I pointed out when we went through our study of Genesis in the early stages when we were looking at the creation account, it's important for us to understand that science depends upon scripture and not the other way around. The question has to come back to what is the ultimate authority? The Bible is not a science textbook. But to the extent that the Bible touches upon scientific topics, it's authoritative. And the Bible, most importantly, gives us those presuppositions that we need in order to do science, to be able to study the world around us, and to make sense of it. I mean, if we don't have a biblical worldview, how do we make sense out of any of it? Nothing means anything. If you really think about the consequences of rejecting God and trying to invent another philosophy, The only logical place for you to end up with is with the barrel of a gun in your mouth. Because it's nothing but despair. There's nothing there. Well, they make up happy stories though, that aliens came. You know, I mean, seriously. There are lots of stories like that, isn't there? That is actually one of the so-called mainstream theories about how life began on Earth, that the planet Earth was seeded by life from some aliens from some other solar system. And where did they come from? It makes a happy story for them. It gives them a date to sign us. You see a lot of that. If you really start looking at what passes for science today, you see a lot of stories. And especially in the second lesson, we'll talk more about specifically how to refute science and more specifically what to watch out for. So you read an article and the article says, scientists say such and such. So what? I can say anything. Right? Any of us can say anything. Saying something doesn't make it so. But there's an amazing amount of that sort of thing that goes on today. It's speculation. It's not science. Well, the latest thing about holding the atoms together, the thing that they found. Oh my. And then they say, it's it, they're celebrating, and then they say, we think. Yeah, we think. It might be. It might be. It might be the Higgs boson. It might be what? They've been looking for a particle called the Higgs boson, which is colloquially referred to as the God particle. And they have found evidence for a new boson, and the question is, is this the one they've been looking for? They saw shadows. That's what they saw. That's right, that's what they saw, shadows. You can't see it, you can only see where it was. Yeah, part of the difficulty of trying to study subatomic particles is that How do you detect them? You know, science at the macro level, we use things like light, right? I can use light to see this table. But when I start trying to look at the atoms that put the table together, how do I see the particles inside the atom? I'm using light to see the table, but what do I use to see the smaller and smaller particles that make up matter? It becomes a big challenge. scientifically. So yeah, we have to look for shadows or evidence of those things. It's the kind of thing that we can't necessarily detect directly by scientific investigation. Okay, next one gets into what Jim raised a moment ago. Nationalism is a philosophy that is rooted in atheism. It's rooted in atheism. Its starting assumption is that there are no supernatural causes. And notice the weight of the next clause in the sentence. Everything must be explained in terms of natural laws. Everything must be explained in terms of natural laws. That is the starting assumption. And I've included in your notes here, we'll look at it a little bit later, But there's a quote here that encapsulates all the stuff that we're going to be talking about here today. And it shows that the basis for science is not based on something that's a necessity of science, it's based on a commitment to a naturalistic cause for things. So the idea is that something called natural laws explain everything. There are no miracles in naturalism. If we see something that's unusual, we don't say it's a miracle, we just say, well, we haven't discovered what the law is that governs that kind of thing yet. There's an assumption that at some point we will figure that out. And then in parentheses there, to point out the inconsistency, You know, after saying everything must be explained in terms of natural laws, then the apologist might be inclined to ask the question, well, what about natural laws? How do we explain those? What's the natural law that governs natural laws? What is the physical or empirical test that we can do to show that there is such a thing as natural laws? And the inconsistency is that there isn't any. We have to assume that. Now I've got a couple of more isms to add to the discussion here. Naturalism is kind of our default discussion point. But I also want to mention materialism. Materialism is a close cousin of naturalism. Its starting assumption is that physical matter is the only reality. I'm still on accepting natural laws. Couldn't they say these are self-evident? They could, but they don't have any basis for saying that. They could say, well, these are natural laws because everywhere we look this is what happens. But there is no basis for assuming that that becomes a law. Just because we observe that, at our particular point in time, in our particular location, how do we project that to every corner of the universe and say that applies everywhere for all time? That's the leap. And there's no basis for taking that leap if we live in a random universe. Is there another way to explain it? A scientist or chemist decides he's going to randomly put things together and see if order just happens. And they know that they can't do that. It never works, does it? Order doesn't naturally occur. Order does not come out of chaos, would be another way to put it. And we can point to the second law of thermodynamics as a mathematical expression of that idea. The simple way of looking at the second law is to say that the universe is wearing out, it's winding down. Things tend toward chaos. Yeah. The tendency is for things to go towards disorder and not towards order. Yeah, Murphy had a simpler way of looking. He was not a physicist, but he had the right idea. Stuff goes wrong. And at the most possible moment. Well, there actually was a formula that came up with that. The odds that the butter and jelly side of the toast will land face down on the carpet is directly proportional to the cost of the carpet. That's a scientific fact, yes. That's one of those natural laws. It improves gravity too. So that's the key and R.Y. mentioned gravity, but why should we expect that if I throw an object up in the air that it's going to come back down? How do I know if I do that today that it's going to do that again tomorrow? In a universe that's governed by just random events, We don't have any way of knowing that it will. We can do that a hundred times and it may happen a hundred times, but that doesn't mean the next time we do it, it's going to do it. Or if we go to someplace else in the universe, that it's going to have the same kind of behavior. So that's where the stretch occurs. It's one thing to observe something happening, but it's another thing to project that out and say, this is a law that applies everywhere. And if you think in terms of what scientists believe about the age of the universe, somewhere around 15 billion years, and how long we've been here, which is just a microscopic slice of that timeline, and the portion of the universe we occupy, which is just an invisible dot in the great expanse of the universe. How is it that we can say, based on our very limited perspective of the universe and time, that what we're observing can be regarded as a law? That it's always been this way or that it will always be this way? That's a big leap. And science does not have a basis for making that leap. On the other hand, we do have a scriptural basis for making that leap, don't we? Let me point you to Genesis 8. I didn't have this one in your notes, but it will just take a second to take a look at it. What's one of the things that God says to Noah after the flood? Look at verse 22. While the earth remains, sea time and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night shall not cease. There is a biblical basis for us to assume the uniformity of nature. Because God governs the universe and he does it in an orderly way and he has given us a promise that it will continue to operate in an orderly way until we reach the end of the age. So scientists do not have a basis for making that kind of claim and I want you to understand that. Okay, so back to the point of materialism. The assumption is that physical matter is the only reality, and then we can view the universe as merely a collection of molecules in motion. So if it's just molecules bumping into each other, why should we expect any kind of order to come out of that process? Didn't Sproul talk about the maverick molecule? Yes, R.C. Sproul, in his When he describes the omnipotence of God, he says, if there is even one molecule anywhere in the universe that is running off on its own, then God is not omnipotent. Every molecule in the universe has to be under his immediate control. So if the universe is just molecules in motion, molecules bumping into each other, how do we explain any of the stuff that we see. How has it become anything besides chaos? If we start with chaos, how do we get to order and structure? Next, and this is the mechanism of science, empiricism. The assumption of empiricism is that our knowledge comes through experience. Knowledge is gained through experience. We experience the world around us either in terms of observing it or in terms of doing some kind of experiment and we gain knowledge through that process. I will give you a couple of Latin terms here. A priori refers to knowledge beforehand, and a posteriori refers to knowledge afterward. So empiricism is concerned with knowledge that comes after experience. And again, here is part of the contradiction. I don't have any way of getting knowledge a posteriori unless I assume something I'll prioritize. I have to assume something beforehand before I can gather knowledge to experience. Give me an example, I'm not following you. It's the same thing we've already been saying. In other words, I can't do science, I can't go study the environment unless I assume beforehand that I can trust my senses. If I can't trust my senses then I have no reason to believe anything that my senses may be telling me. So again, the idea is that I have to have some kind of metaphysical ground for what I'm doing. I can't just go out and say, well I'm just doing science, I'm just studying nature, or studying the environment. Next I want to spend a little time talking in very general terms about the scientific method. How does science operate? One of the things I pointed out earlier on was whenever we counted that ISM on the end of a word that means we are dealing with a philosophy or a worldview. You can't get away from that. There's no way to get away from that. So you can't claim to be a pure scientist and say, well, I just look at the facts. Well, you still have to have a philosophical ground for your looking at the facts. Okay, so the scientific method operates in the following simplified way. First is hypothesis. Followed by observation. and leading to a conclusion. We could put more detail in this, and some of the scientific methodologies generally have somewhere to six, eight steps, something like that, but this is just a simple framework. We have a hypothesis, we make observations, we draw conclusions. Now, hypothesis represents a guess or a belief. And here's one of the ironies. If you're a scientist, you get away with believing something by calling it a theory. You call it a theory and you can say anything. I can propose the theory that the moon is made out of green cheese. And it legitimizes my belief even if I have absolutely no data to support it or if in fact there's data that contravenes that idea. I can get away with it by calling it a theory and say, well, it's just a theory. So a theory or hypothesis represents a guess or a belief. Theory is just another word for belief without proof. I can propose any theory about anything. If that's true, then every theory requires faith. So the irony is that scientists try to look down their nose at believers and say, well, you've got your faith, but I've got science. I've got the facts and the data. You have a faith commitment whether you realize it or not. Now let me point out something else that's important to the scientific process. I didn't include it in your notes, but you may want to pencil it in there. And that is that a properly constructed hypothesis is falsifiable. Properly constructed hypothesis is falsifiable. The idea is that we develop a hypothesis, we go collect data, and then we determine whether or not the data falsifies the hypothesis or whether it does not falsify the hypothesis. So be on the lookout for so-called theories that are not proposed in a way that can be falsified. If it's not falsifiable, then is that science? You can't apply the scientific process to it if it can't be falsified. I had just read in a scientific journal that there's a theory of science coming out now that says that we're getting to the part, we're getting so deep into our understanding that we are now getting to areas that we cannot disprove. Can you think of an example? Well, they're talking about the Higgs boson and starting to get down to the subatomic particle alternate universe, you know, they have the theories but there's no way to prove or disprove. Yeah, here's an example, and I don't know if this is what they were thinking, because this is not related to quantum physics per se. But one of the explanations that has been offered for, you know, how is it that everything in this universe seems to be so finely tuned and all this clockwork and, you know, we have the perfect conditions for life and all those kind of things. Because that's a very unlikely thing to occur just by chance. Scientists will admit that. And then, to use Bonson's expression, the rescuing device that they come up with is a theory that says, oh, well, we have this multiverse theory. So there are millions and millions and millions of universes out there and the one that we occupy just happens to be the one where all the conditions are just right. That's an example of a theory that cannot be falsified. That's not a theory, that's just a story. You can't do any science to prove or disprove that idea. That's exactly what they were talking about. So, yeah, when you get into stuff like that, that really gets beyond the realm of science. Or at some point we get to a point where we recognize that science is going to run into a wall and cannot answer the kind of questions that it may be asking. Well, that's the critical part of Ben Stein's expel was when he got Dawkins to say, probably AMC, do you remember that part? postulated, whatever. There's another guy that they interviewed, and I don't remember who he was because he's not one of the ones that is kind of in the news, like Dawkins. He proposed the theory that life originated on the backs of crystals. You remember that one? And, you know, Ben was kind of probing that. Oh yeah, yeah, that's possible, yeah. Those are just made up stories. It goes way beyond science. And look at what I have here in the next portion of your notes. This is what science involves. Observation. Okay? And that can include direct observation in nature. We see it happen. You know, I'm curious to know about grizzly bears so I go follow a grizzly bear and I see what he eats. You. Me if I'm not careful. Poor choice. That would be one data point. But I won't be around to write the paper. So observation in nature, we're observing as it happens. We're not trying to manipulate the environment, we're just observing what's going on in nature. The second one is observation of a scientifically controlled experiment. And we do this kind of thing all the time. You know, for example, a new drug trial. We have one group over here that gets a placebo, we have a group over here that's the test group, and we look for the difference in the effects of those two groups, we test that statistically to see if it's significant and so forth, and then we draw conclusions about whether that particular drug has an effect that we're interested in. And then the third one is observation of forensic evidence. An example of that would be digging up a dinosaur bone. So we didn't see the dinosaur when it was alive, we didn't observe how it died, but based on some evidence that's left behind of something that occurred in the past, we try to take those clues and piece those together into a coherent story. So we take one bone and we construct this mammoth. You're only limited by your imagination, Rob. Like Nebraska Man. Nebraska Man was, they constructed this entire skull out of a jawbone. Turned out the jawbone was a jawbone pig. Well, yeah. And then you find out screw bats have sharp teeth. So they make a lot of assumptions. I've had this conversation with my sister when we're out hiking. Brown bears have these big canine teeth. Why do you need canine teeth to eat berries and ants? Panda bears, why do they have canine teeth of all these plants? So yeah, some of that stuff just doesn't... Those are examples that the data doesn't fit the model, does it? The third portion of the scientific enterprise is the conclusion. Conclusion is the decision to reject the hypothesis. And the key here is that the hypothesis can only be falsified, it can never be verified. I'll give you an example of that. So again, the nature of the scientific method is that theories are never proved, they're only disproved. Proving a theory would require infinite knowledge. We never have access to that. Disproving the theory only requires what? One exception. And one of my favorite examples to use here is the example of the coelacanth. You know what a coelacanth is? The fish. So they found specimens of this fish in the fossil record. And it doesn't look like modern fish. It's got elongated fins, and you know, when they looked at the morphology of this fish in the fossil record, they said, well, you know, this could be a transitional form between fish and amphibians. It's got some characteristics of both. And oh, by the way, it's been extinct for millions and millions of years. I don't know, 60, 80 million years. So there's an example of a theory or hypothesis. The coelacanth is extinct. What does it take to disprove that theory? When they caught one. And boy that puts a wrinkle on things, doesn't it? It's a little embarrassing when you say something has been extinct for tens of millions of years and then you find one that's alive. So that's an example of how we have this idea, we have a theory. But then it only takes one exception to that theory to demolish it. And so, no, in fact, it's not extinct, number one. And number two, now that we've actually got a physical specimen, we can see that it's a fish. It's not part fish and part amphibian or something like that. But we can't fill in the details with our imagination. Now we have to deal with reality. Well, does everybody in this region remember when we used to hear like 10 years ago, you know, on almost like a weekly or monthly basis about the Preble's Mobile Jumping Mast? Do you know why you don't hear anything? Have you heard anything about the Preble's Mast? They're extinct. No, because they have... It was hilarious. I was involved in the environmental community at that time. I worked in it. And, you know, we had entire groups of people. They called it the mass scientific team, really. These people that met every month in either Colorado or Wyoming and they were talking about how it was the second most extinct mammal in North America, had all kinds of issues, all kinds of money spent. I know the Air Force Academy in particular spent millions of dollars on all this habitat improvement, mission projects could not go forward, etc. And then after a while, after all kinds of study, They found out that it was not at all extinct, that it was kind of all over the place. And so then they very quietly went away, but the muse didn't say anything. They did DNA testing and came back and said, oh, this is just a mouse. Well, no, no, it is a particular mouse. It is a particular mouse. However, what they did find is they found that it was not in danger of extinction, that it's actually quite vibrant and the population is not declining. If you think about it, that is their modus operandi, though. When something does not conform to their view, then they just shut it out. Then it's just quiet. And people don't know it, exactly. Then they don't have the whole thing of saying, Where did we go wrong in having that examination in the media and all of that, saying, why did we do this? Because the next time they pop up with saying the, you know, four-footed whatever is threatened, they're going to do the same stuff. They're going to spend the money. They're going to inform the team. They're not going to let you repair roads and utilities, et cetera. And here is the irony of that. If you are looking at the world with an evolutionary point of view, your response to that should be a collective shrug. Survival of the fittest. If such and such can't hack it, then it will go extinct and it will be replaced by something that is a more fit species for the environment. Again, that's the irony. We look for those kinds of inconsistencies. Richard, you just exercised the dominion mandate. That's what I did with the flickers on my house. I know I can't rattle it early in the morning, right? I don't like the holes that big. And squirrels. Right, Irwin? Yes, yes. Squirrels. The Dominion Mandate gives us the license to deal with those kinds of nuisances because there's not this sense of equality in the animal kingdom where we're just one of many kinds of animals and we've got to share the environment, as it were. It's not that we're not good stewards of the environment, I always make that qualification, but we are given dominion over it. And especially in a fallen world, if it hadn't been for the fall, then we'd get along with all of our critters. But since the fall, many of them have become pests and should be dealt with as such. Okay, so another point to add here. Science relies on complementary methods of induction, which is making generalizations from specific examples, and deduction, which is making generalizations, being specific from generalizations. and there's an example that Sproul uses that's useful to us. If we go out and observe squirrels in the wild, and we notice that every squirrel we see has a bushy tail. Okay, we're looking at specific examples of squirrels. Maybe these are the ones that are building nests in our attic, I don't know. But every squirrel we see has a bushy tail. So then we make a generalization from that. What? All squirrels have bushy tails. So that's an example of induction. And science does this kind of thing all the time. But what's the slight problem with that? There are squirrels that don't necessarily have bushy tails, but more generally what's the problem? You can't see all squirrels. Yeah, I haven't looked at all of them, have I? Maybe I looked at a hundred squirrels and they all had bushy tails, so I proposed the idea that all squirrels have bushy tails. That's representative sampling though, so therefore it's probably true. But see, sampling doesn't work. You can't rely on sampling. You have to have comprehensive knowledge. You can't look at a subset. Yes, but we scientists believe that representative samples are the way we go. And we use those to draw conclusions. But the problem with sampling is that the conclusions we draw from it always have the possibility of being false. Because it may not be a representative sample. And especially if we're making a generalization about squirrels, how many do we need to disprove the theory? All it takes is one squirrel that doesn't have a bushy tail to ruin our theory. So part of what we need to understand and part of the reason why science cannot be authoritative is that science is never a source of absolute certainty regarding its theories and laws. Even when we talk about the law of gravity, how do we know for sure the law of gravity operates the same everywhere in the universe all the time? We'd have to have comprehensive knowledge or omniscience in order to be able to say that this is a law, right? And you probably understand what I'm referring to by this next comment. There's no such thing as settled science. Because every theory is subject to being revised or replaced on the basis of the next experiment. So if someone says, I'm a scientist and such and such a theory is settled science, you know they're telling you a story. Because there is no subtle science. What was the naturalistic theory before Dharma? I'm not sure. That everything came from pond scum. I'm serious. This is serious. That what they said was that pond gases came through and mixed with the pond scum created life. That's what they believe. And so then you go to Darwin, who says, no, it all evolved from a chemical reaction. And then they go on from there. So this didn't start with Darwin. It goes back. They're suppressing the truth in unrighteousness, and that's the way they do it. Yeah, and any time the weight of the data is such that the theory can no longer stand, then we come up with another theory that is equally absurd. Like if we can't explain the origin of how life began on Earth, then what do we do? We'll just shuffle it off to another planet and say, well, aliens dropped some primordial seeds of life on planet Earth billions of years ago, and that's where it came from. Notice that skepticism is the driving force behind scientific progress. Even if there is total agreement within the scientific community about a certain theory, all it takes is one scientist coming along and saying, wait a minute, what about this? Well, that's what's ironic. Even within evolutionists, there's a lot of division amongst themselves, and they keep quiet about it. It's not monolithic. They appear unified to us, perhaps, but they aren't. Yeah, they try to make it look like there's this unified idea that we evolved from simpler forms of life, but there is not a monolithic agreement, even within those who believe in evolution. That's one of Diana's happy stories. Fairytale for apes. Yeah. Except it's not a really happy story, I don't think. Well, I guess so, but not for us. It's kind of demeaning for humans to suggest that we're relatives with apes. So it's important to see that there's no such thing as a theory that can no longer be questioned. That rises to the level of religion. when we can no longer question the beliefs. Now the stuff we've talked about this morning is encapsulated in this one quote by a Harvard geneticist, and I've highlighted some of the key things that he says. So let's look at this. This is pretty interesting. It's almost like, you know, you stop by your favorite pub on the way home from work, and you run into a guy named Richard, and he's already had a few beers, and he's feeling kind of loose, and you ask him, say, hey, what do you do? He says, oh, I'm a, you know, biologist or geneticist. Oh, yeah, well, what do you think about, you know, what do you think about science? And he gives you this kind of an answer. We take the side of science in spite of the patent absurdity of some of its constructs, in spite of its failure to fulfill many of its extravagant promises of health and life, in spite of the tolerance of the scientific community for unsubstantiated just-so stories, because we have a prior commitment, a commitment to materialism. It is not that the methods and institutions of science somehow compel us to accept a material explanation of the phenomenal world. On the contrary, we are forced by our a priori commitment to material causes to create an apparatus of investigation and a set of concepts that produce material explanations, no matter how counterintuitive, no matter how mystifying to the uninitiated. Moreover, that materialism is absolute. for we cannot allow a divine foot in the door. Have another beer. That gives us the basis for what we believe. Otherwise you end up just going off in the weeds and making up stories. I was just going to say, you know, the Bible says the fool says that in his heart there is no God. Yeah. And that's the biblical assessment, that it's the fool who says there is no God. There are many different ways that we could attempt to prove the existence of God, but it's a rational necessity. A simple way to look at that is to say that if anything at all exists, then something must exist necessarily. There has to be something that is eternally existent. in order for there to be anything at all. There has to be a first cause. We don't have this infinite regress where, you know, this causes this, that causes this, and we go back and back. There has to be a first cause. In fact, the law of causality, the way that the law of causality is structured actually points to that idea, that there must be a first cause, that not everything can be an effect. There has to be something that is not an effect. And so those kinds of things, just by reason, we can come up with the notion and the understanding that there has to be a creator. That doesn't tell us who he is. We have to go to the scriptures for that. But as Paul said, from nature we can know that there is a God. We have knowledge of God just by virtue of the created order. So Lewontin's quote here really captures the whole enchilada. It basically says, look, we start out, not from a scientific standpoint, but we start out with a philosophical commitment to materialism, and that means there are no miracles allowed, no supernatural events, God is excluded, everything has to be explained in terms of materialism or naturalistic kind of laws. So, at the end of the day, it's really not science at all. But in order for the scientific enterprise to function, it has to use Christian presuppositions. The assumptions that we listed here at the beginning of class are necessary for the operation of science, but they don't come from science. So when Bonson talks about how to defend the Christian worldview, he points out that, look, the unbeliever is using your Christian assumptions to argue against you. And so that's part of what we're seeing here, is an example of how scientists are relying on Christian assumptions about the operation of the universe, and yet at the same time, what are they doing? They're denying that God exists and that he gives us the basis for those assumptions. Questions or thoughts? I'm curious. He obviously had enough guts to admit it, but what did other people respond to that? I would expect that would cause a little flurry of activity. I don't know, because I got this quote out. I've seen pieces of this quote before, but the lengthier version of the quote that I have for you in your notes here today is in DeSouza's book, What's So Great About Christianity. I did not go back to the original source on that. But over the years what I've done is made a point of collecting quotations like this, what I refer to as honest moments in science. And it's amazing what scientists are willing to admit at times. Again, this is not what you read in the news on a daily basis, but scientists understand that there's a lot of uncertainty about what they're doing as a scientific enterprise. All right, let's pray. Father, thank You for our time together. I pray that You would give us understanding about these things, that You would give us discernment to know that truth ultimately comes from Your Word, that what we do in the world has to be grounded in the assumptions that you give us in your word, that you govern the universe by the power of your hand, and that you give us the basis for studying and understanding the world around us. Help us to use this to be better apologists, that we can recognize the weaknesses of arguments that come against Christianity, and give us the courage to do that as we interact with others in our domain. We pray these things in Christ's name. Amen.