All right, dear friends, I've got 630. Why don't we go ahead and start? Let's open in prayer. Father, we want to give you praise and thanks for your many blessings to us. Lord, it is good for us to give thanks and praise. It is good for us to rehearse in our own minds and with our mouths the goodness of God to us in Christ, the many blessings we have received. It's good for us to remember that these blessings have come to us at the price of the blood of your son. Jesus Christ, that we would get nothing good if Jesus hadn't died on the cross for us, that every good and pleasant, every good and perfect gift comes to us through Jesus and through His blood, coming down from the Father of the heavenly lights, who gives them to us through Jesus. And so, Lord Jesus, thank You for paying for our sins. Thank You for giving us every good and perfect gift. Thank You for Your suffering in our place. And Lord, as we're gathered tonight to study Your Word, we acknowledge again our dependence on you for it. Father, we know that apart from your power to interpret scripture, we would certainly go astray. Our minds are so twisted, our understanding so limited, our selfishness so evident. Lord, we would miss it. We would make many missteps. And so we ask now for the giving of your Holy Spirit again, a moving of your spirit, that we would be very careful how we think about your word, how we listen, that I would be very careful how I speak, all of us, as we speak your word, Lord, make it right and accurate according to scripture. Father, I pray as we consider tonight's topic that our hearts would be lifted up and encouraged concerning creation, the creation of God in the world, that we would see it as the handiwork of God and not have that stolen from us by bad doctrines and by the teaching and the cunning and craftiness of men and their deceitful scheming, but rather we would see the works of the Lord as what they really truly are, displays of your glory in this world. So I pray that you'd be with me as I discuss this tonight and that you would help us, O Lord, to meditate together in Jesus' name. Amen. So tonight's topic really is the proper relationship between Christianity and scripture, all that, and science. It's really a pre-lecture before we get into, just roll up our sleeves and dig into the issue of creation and evolution next week. So this is kind of setting the stage for it. And I just want to talk about the relationship, the proper relationship between Christianity and science. And, you know, specifically in the area of creation, we'll get to that more in greater detail next time. But in 2 Corinthians chapter 10 and verse 3 through 5, it says, For though we live in the world, we do not wage war as the world does. The weapons we fight with are not the weapons of this world. On the contrary, they have divine power to demolish strongholds. We demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God. And we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ. This is really talking about a spiritual battle that Christians are in, clearly a battle for the mind, a battle for how we think. There are pretensions that are set up. We're demolishing arguments. We're taking every thought captive. This is a battle for the mind. And so when we come to the creation and evolution discussion, we realize that we're really seeking to destroy the handiwork of the devil in faulty arguments and thoughts. It's actually, for me, very depressing to go on non-Christian websites on this topic and to swim in the sea of unbelief for a while. I can't do it for very long. After a while, I just have to leave it. Not because I'm threatened indirectly that I think somehow the Bible is going to come tumbling down because of some website But it's just my own weakness. I find myself subtly persuaded by certain elements of their reasoning and other things, and it's really not an easy thing to do. And so, therefore, you really have to protect your mind. It's the same way it is for me when I read liberal theology that attacks the inerrancy of Scripture, or when I read feminist theology that attacks the biblical doctrine of the roles of gender, of male and female, in the home and in the church. I can't read that stuff for very long, because it starts to influence me and it starts to drag me down. So for me, I think it's important for us to take a positive view of the scripture on science and try to understand what the Bible teaches us. And so before we even get to the handout, I just want to trace out some little elements of a proper view of scientific discovery in the Bible. I really believe that the Lord intended from the beginning that we should study the physical creation and discover Him there. I think that that's what we were intended to do. I think in Genesis chapter 2, when it talks about this one river going out into four headwaters and these four rivers that flow out from the Garden of Eden. And it talks about this specific land where there's gold and costly stones and onyx and other things there. Some of these things can only be gotten by mining, by technology, really, that they would have to dig to get the gold out and to refine it, etc. This is immediately, in Genesis 2, hinting at science. It's hinting at exploration and discovery. This was meant to be a good thing. The earth already filled with the glory of God and that we would fill it with the knowledge of the glory of the Lord as the waters cover the sea. And so, you know, I could imagine Adam and his sons and daughters and, you know, moving out from Eden where they were just supposed to start. That was the starting line. And they were supposed to spread out throughout the earth and discover what the Lord had put there and how exciting that would have been. And I really just translate that on into the new earth as well, the new heavens and the new earth, that we'll be able to discover new things. We're not going to be downloaded with instant omniscience the moment we're glorified, dear friends. We'll have things to learn even in our glorified state. Isn't that exciting? We're going to be learning things. And there's going to be things to learn in the new earth. So I say to you that science will go on forever. True science, the science of the study of things as they really are, as God really made them, as an act of worship, is going to go on forever. So science isn't our enemy at all. The perversion of science is our enemy. The way that Satan has taken hold of it and uses it, that's our enemy. But from the beginning, technologies and these kinds of things, I think, were good gifts that then the sinfulness of man then takes and uses for perverse things. So, I mean, you look right at the beginning, Genesis 2, I already hinted at, but look over at Genesis chapter 4. As well, there you get the first kind of inclinations of technology. In Genesis 4, verse 19 and following, it says, Lamech married two women, one named Adah and the other Zillah. Adah gave birth to Jabal. He was the father of those who live in tents and raise livestock. His brother's name was Jubal. He was the father of all who play the harp and flute. Zillah also had a son, Tubal-Cain, who forged all kinds of tools out of bronze and iron. So there, Tubal-Cain is the kind of a predecessor of technology. Forging is a technological process. The making of useful implements, a good gift of God. We shouldn't think otherwise than later when you have Hury or Bezalel or some of these other characters later on who have, by the Spirit of God, special skill and gifts in making jewelry. or being able to refine gold, or to set costly stones in a breastplate for the high priest. These kinds of things are gifts, and they're spoken of very positively, both for the tabernacle and also for the temple. And so this is the gift, these kinds of technologies. So here in Genesis 4, you have an inclination right away of the idea of technology. I could talk about Noah's Ark. It couldn't have been made without technology. Obviously, the ability to make a huge vessel that wouldn't sink Obviously, there had to be some kind of knowledge of woodworking and proper materials that could handle the salt water, etc., and even of the structure of a ship. You know, all of these things he had to know. And then in Genesis 11, we have also technology there with the Tower of Babel. Now, the whole world, it said, had one language and a common speech. As men moved eastward, they found a plain in Shinar and settled there. And they said to each other, come, let's make bricks and bake them thoroughly. They use brick instead of stone and tar for mortar. Then they said, come, let us build for ourselves a city with a tower that reaches to the heavens so that we may make a name for ourselves and not be scattered over the face of the whole earth. Again, this is technology, the idea of ceramics, the fact that building bricks and baking them thoroughly made better building materials than stone. stones harder to work with. You can imagine it would have taken an awfully long time to dress the stone and get it into a shape. And so, if you were able to make bricks in a certain mold, you know, the brick, the clay being soft and then fire it, you bake it, that's all technology, friends. That's what it is. And so, the ability to do this enabled them to make buildings. That's a good thing. The desire to build a tower that would reach to the heavens to make a name for themselves and not be scattered over the surface of the earth, that's a bad thing. And so the good gift of technology then taken by human beings and perverted and used for evil purposes. We see this again and again. We who have lived through the 20th century, now into the 21st century, should know better than anyone that's ever lived how technologies come to us as good gifts and then are very quickly perverted for evil means. We've seen it again and again. From the very beginning of technology, electronics, we've seen a lot of this kind of thing, how it could have had just nothing but a good use, but that was really impossible given the nature of human beings. To me, one of the key verses on science in the Bible is in Isaiah chapter 28, and I've mentioned this verse before, but I think it's very significant. If you have your Bible, just open up there in Isaiah 28, verse 23 through 29. There, Isaiah is talking, I think he's making a spiritual point about God's judgment, but he makes it in a way that brings in additional points concerning, I think, agriculture, which is itself a subset of technology. Okay, so, you know, technology or agriculture, science, it's just a study of the way things are, the way God made them and the ability to use things for a certain purpose. And what's so interesting here to me is God's personal involvement in the education of the human race concerning technology. Isaiah 28, 23 and following, listen and hear my voice, pay attention and hear what I say. When a farmer plows for planting, does he plow continually? Does he keep on breaking up and harrowing the soil? When he has leveled the surface, does he not sow caraway and scatter cumin? Does he not plant wheat in its place, barley in its plot, and spelt in its field? Now, here's the key verse right here. Look at verse 26. His God instructs him and teaches him the right way. That is maybe one of the most important verses on technology in the Bible. Look at it again. His God instructs him and teaches him the right way. What is the right way? Is this a moral issue here? There's a right way and a wrong way. Well, no, not really. It's just there's a good way and a way that doesn't produce as good results. Here it seems to be that you want to separate out the crops. They may have a different effect on the soil. Who knows what? But there's a right way to plant wheat in its place and barley in its plot and spelt in its field. And everything has to be done in a certain way. And the point here is that God teaches man how to do it. So I find that fascinating. And I think he'll instruct them whether they acknowledge him or not, whether they give him the glory or not. I think that God will instruct and teach non-Christian scientists principles about physics or biology or chemistry that are true, useful, beneficial, and they don't give him the praise and the glory. Well, that's their fault and they're going to be judged for it, but it doesn't mean the principle is any less true. God still instructs and teaches the right way. Carraway is not threshed with a sledge nor is a cartway rolled over coming. Carraway is beaten out with a rod and coming with a stick. Grain must be ground to make bread. I tell you, that's an interesting statement. You have to grind it to make bread. Well, isn't that obvious? Well, that may be obvious, but how you get coffee is not so obvious to me. I mean, think about the process. It starts as a bean growing in a tree somewhere. And how many steps before it finally ends up some kind of inky black fluid that you drink with only with some other ingredients that in my opinion alone make it palatable. All right. I just admire people that drink black coffee. I don't I just I don't know how you do it. But but think of all of the steps you know the grinding up of it and the putting of hot water through in a certain ratio and and allowing it to percolate until the you know the oils and all of the stuff comes out in a suspension and then you drink it and it tastes horrible. You know but then it's like all right but maybe if we did this or did that you know I actually believe Isaiah 28 is saying that God taught us how to make coffee that actually tastes good. He was the one that brought us through that whole process. All right? Grain must be ground to make bread. So one does not go on threshing it forever. Though he drives the wheels of his threshing cart over it, his horses do not grind it. Now, again, we get the same thing in verse 29. All this also comes from the Lord Almighty, wonderful in counsel, magnificent in wisdom. So this is about science, friends. It's about technology. It's about God's involvement in the burgeoning human knowledge of the surrounding universe, the world that we live in and the universe that's there. The best example of this actually going on is at the end of the book of Job, when God puts Job in his place by talking about what he's made and noticing features and aspects of the cosmos or of certain animals and their tendencies. Or Jesus when he says, consider the lilies of the field, right? That's a scientific process. It's an observation of the physical world. And what I'm saying is God is all over that and we ought to do it and we will be doing it for all eternity. There's going to be so much of the display of the glory of God in the new heavens and the new earth. We will be enraptured forever. Our minds will be active. We'll be studying and learning. I just don't think we'll forget anything we've learned. I think we'll just keep on going in one direction, learning more and more. You know, will He always have more things to show us? Yes, always, always more to show us. So for me, I think that Isaiah 28 teaches that God has been directly involved in the growth of human technology and science, whether we have acknowledged His role in it or not. God made it to begin with, and not only did He make it to begin with, He then takes us by the hand and shows us what He's done. And He's done it in a certain consecutive order with every generation building on the previous generation. I think this is wonderful, I think it's marvelous, I think it's a great tragedy that human beings who have received these gifts from God do not give Him the praise and the glory, but rather take the praise and glory for themselves. And they win their Nobel Prizes and they boast about themselves and they're arrogant and they never knew that the eureka, the aha moment came from God. That God showed them some aspect of biology or chemistry or whatever, it was God that showed it to them and they should have gotten down on their knees and given Him the credit and the glory, not their own wisdom and knowledge. But the thing that was discovered is true and valid and worth celebrating. That's what I'm saying. If it's a true fact, we celebrate it, we want to embrace it. We want to keep on considering the lilies of the field. That's not on your outline. It's just a diatribe on science. But it's in concert with what I want to say in this outline tonight. And that is that science is a good thing and that we should embrace it. But given the history of the wickedness of the human race, We need to be very, very careful about science these days. We need to be careful about, and it's not just these days, it's been going on a long time, really since before the Tower of Babel, but there it's very clear. When I preached on Genesis 11, I think I entitled this sermon, Good Gifts Gone Bad. And the two good gifts that I had in mind were human language and human technology. These were two things that were good gifts of God, and they're used for bad purposes. when they say, come, let us such and such. Hey, let's do evil together. That's the bad use of a good gift. Language, okay? So what does God do? Confuses the languages to slow the wickedness down, okay? Concerning the tower, God shut it down, okay? They couldn't continue building it, et cetera. Because it's a good gift gone bad. We Christians, we should do the opposite. We should use our language, skills, and power to glorify God. We should speak the truth to each other. We should encourage one another to praise and worship God. That's a good gift. that's used well. And the same thing with science. We should be studying these things to the glory of God. When I was at MIT, there's this place called Killian Court. It's this kind of cross-shaped thing. I noticed that it was a cross. I don't think they noticed, and I don't think it was intentional. But at any rate, it's just the way the courtyard is. It's shaped like a big cross. Up on the walls, up at the top, it's this two-story building, really high stories, too. And at the top, all around the top are these names inscribed of great scientists. Some of them are in bigger font than others, all right? So the ones that are on the faces like that, those are the big guys. There's Newton, Galileo, Archimedes, all right? These kinds of names. And then there are lots of smaller names of lesser known figures like Boyle and others. And so, you know, some of them I don't even know, can't remember. But they're celebrating the human beings that discovered these things, all right? I'm just telling you, Isaiah 28, Based on that, God showed all of that stuff to them. Galileo, it was God that taught all of this. And I'll say another thing. I've never found a book that did this. Maybe there is a book that does it. But the traces out scientists that pursued scientific principles openly to the glory of God were avowed Christians and were seeking to discover what God had made so that they could proclaim his greatness and his glory. Hello. Okay, he's a good example, but I'm just thinking there are many, many, many others like him. People who took their faith plus their scientific ability and used it all to glorify God. They're in the great minority. All right. What's that? Christian minorities. So, yeah, I would not be the first. I would not be the first to notice this. I came at it from church history and then found these guys and said, hey, there's a lot of them. Isaac Newton, a bit odd theologically, maybe even a lot odd, but still, you know, openly, avowedly desiring to do it to the glory of God. That's what he wanted. I mean, I don't know, you know, how many of these folks, you know, we would embrace all of their theological principles. I mean, I think definitely Pascal did it for the glory of God. He'd be another example. I mean, there are numbers of them. So the idea of the just openly pagan atheistic scientist is really an aggressive feature of the 20th century, not so much earlier than that. It's something that we really saw coming on then, okay? So, bottom line is, we should be scientists who are Christian. I am not saying Christian scientists, and I hope you know why, okay? It would be efficient to say it, but sadly, Mary Baker Eddy took that from us, so what can we do? We just have to say scientists who are Christians, or Christians who are scientists, things like that, okay? Well, let's look at the outline that I've given you. Today, I want to talk about creation, scripture, and science, and the relationship between scripture and the findings of modern science. So, when all the facts are rightly understood, I assert there will be no final conflict between scripture and natural science. This is the famous all-truth-is-God's-truth approach. Now, that's a bit naive when it comes to certain things. It is true to some degree, but just understand that a lot of stuff comes at us tainted by human interpretations. And, you know, it says in the Bible, lead us not into temptation. When you get into the halls of academia, you try to win a position or a prize or, you know, a government grant. There is a pull at that point and it's dangerous. But still, it's true. All truth really is God's truth. All right. When it comes to these things, there are certain possibilities as we try to look at creation and scientific aspects of creation. Francis Schaeffer gives us seven possibilities on that particular issue, the issue of where the universe came from, and Genesis 1 and 2, etc. These seven are listed. There is a possibility that God created a grown-up universe. You know, I think it bothers me when people say that that angle, that that aspect shows a certain deceptiveness on God's part. You know, that God is purposely laying traps for us. Scattering around all this evidence for evolution, but it isn't really true. God, the deceiver, God, the trickster. Well, first of all, I think that's ridiculous and unfair. God hasn't told us why he made everything as it was. But I know this. He created Adam, not only fully grown, but fully lingual. All right. Unlike any other human being, Adam and Eve both, I think, had immediately full capability to communicate verbally. OK. Was God trying to deceive? No, he's actually trying to instruct thereby. He wanted to tell Adam immediately what he could and couldn't do in the Garden of Eden. And so he gave him a full complement of abilities. It wasn't his ordinary way of doing it because then, you know, Cain and Abel were born and my feeling is that they had to learn language the ordinary way. You know, at mama's knee and, you know, little by little, gradually being instructed and trained. That's the ordinary way. But Adam and Eve were an exception, and we would have to imagine also the creation of the physical universe. I don't know what would have happened if you had cut down a tree, you know, there. Would there be rings in the tree? Would the rings be of all of them equal, concentric circles? Or, you know, what are you going to say? Who can say? The Bible doesn't address this. We're told that the thickness of the rings has to do with the growing conditions, right? If it grew well that year, the ring is going to be thicker than if it doesn't grow as well. What are you going to do with all that? The Bible doesn't address it. I'm just saying that God isn't trying to deceive. God isn't pulling anyone toward believing in atheistic evolution. God cannot be tempted by evil, nor does he himself tempt anyone. But he has his own reason for making rocks with certain certain mixtures of radon, plutonium and other things. And he's got his own reason for doing that. And his purpose is not to deceive. That's Satan's job. OK. So what I'm saying is, I don't think we can look at this universe around the way and then say, OK, based on what we're seeing, we can extrapolate back to 4.3 billion years and all that. Nobody was there. Nobody was there. And so basically you're taking what's there and you're making certain assumptions based on what you're seeing. So it is very possible that God created a universe that appears to be very old and really isn't. OK, that's one possibility. I'm not saying I necessarily believe that that's true. Because I mistrust the dating techniques. I think the dating techniques themselves have all kinds of problems. But even if we could accept, you know, a variety of problems there, still, you haven't proven anything. Because the thing can start, I mean, for all we know, the universe started yesterday. I just don't think it's a helpful way of looking at things. I'm just saying, I don't have any idea about the past other than what the Bible tells me. And so the bottom line is, when we read, the scripture, and when we look at it, we have to accept it as what it really is, the Word of God. So, bottom line, I think when we look at these things, whenever scripture and science contradict, that's where the rubber meets the road. That's when you start having issues and problems. Let's keep going with Francis Schaeffer's list. There is a possibility of a break between Genesis 1, 1 and 1, 2, or between 1, 2 and 1, 3. This is what's known as the gap theory. This is repugnant to answers in Genesis. He's just listing out, you know, various things. I have problems with the gap theory as well. But he's just listing possibilities. There is the possibility of a long day. This is the day-age theory. I have all kinds of problems with that. You want to know why? Ten Commandments is the number one problem I have with that. Ten Commandments. Remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy? Do all your work in six days and rest on the seventh day for God created heaven and earth in six indeterminately long periods of time and rested in the seventh indeterminately long period of time. It doesn't really make any sense at all. I mean, there's this indeterminate length that God called a day And then, but we're all supposed to live on this, there is evening, there is morning kind of schedule, all right? That's what we know. Wouldn't it make much more sense if God set up that rhythm right from the beginning since he was creating the universe with man as the kind of pinnacle of his creation to know his glory and to trust in him and believe in him? And that he sets up a rhythm that's helpful for us. There was evening, there was morning, the first what? Day. All right, I know that. I know what the sunrise and the sunset looks like. It seems like God would do that. It'd make more sense. But anyway, he's just listing possibilities. All right, there is the possibility that the flood affected the geological data. I would say more than just the possibility, I think it did. Fifth, the use of the word kinds in Genesis 1 may be quite broad. I think that absolutely is the case. There are different categories. Either that or Adam was unbelievably quick at naming all whatever million or billion different species there are. I think bottom line is he's just doing the king and queen, mama and papa species, you know, whatever. Either that or you're having problems on the sixth day. The sixth day would have to be a really amazingly busy day, which I think it was busy anyway. But moving on. There is the possibility of the death of animals before the fall. That's an interesting and controversial topic. I'm just reading a list right here. And where the Hebrew word bara is not used, there's a possibility of sequence from previously created things. That's his list of possibilities. There are others as well. The bottom line is there's all kinds of different ways of looking at this issue of creation and evolution. Now, let's talk about stepping back from all that, the basic concepts for Christians in dealing with science. First is that we ought to be humble. It really bothers me when people on both sides are so arrogant, thinking that they know everything. Our knowledge of both scripture and science is imperfect. We don't know. I really think one of the great effects of my time at MIT was to be humble about the amount of knowledge I have. I was much more arrogant as a senior in high school than I was a senior at MIT. By then I had been majorly put in my place. And I realized that I could study my own narrow field the rest of my life and still not be a master in it. I would have not even read all that there was of the literature available for my narrow field. I remember some statement about the difference between Harvard PhDs and MIT PhDs. I don't know if you've ever heard this before. At Harvard, you learn less and less about more and more until you know nothing about everything. And at MIT, you learn more and more about less and less until you know everything about nothing. So that's the difference. And if you know what I'm talking about, in technology, you have to focus and then focus again and focus again and again until you are just this narrow expert in some little arcane field. And there you make your money and you get your fame, all that. let's face it, there's just too much knowledge out there. And so we just ought to be humble people. We ought to be humble and say, I just don't know. We ought to say that a lot. And the Scripture itself is really remarkably deep. It is. I think the basic principles, God made the world, you know, there is a God, He is loving and good, and He sent His Son. Those basic things, the milk principles, are so clear and obvious anyone can know them. That's what the Bible was written for, is to give us the basic clear facts that we can be made wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus. So children can know it, Simple-minded people who aren't, you know, highly educated and really can't be, can know it. But that doesn't mean that's all there is in the Bible. And I think one of the things that really good, careful, systematic study of the Bible should do is humble you. I mean, you should get to the point where you're in awe at the Bible. I am. I mean, memorizing all the books that I've memorized has put me in absolute awe. I keep on learning new things in passages I've been over hundreds of times. There's always more to know. And so we really ought to be genuinely humble about both science and the scriptures. Secondly, a principle of non-contradiction. If all truth is God's truth, then no truth can contradict itself. That cannot be. Apparent conflicts between evidence coming from the physical universe and scripture cannot finally exist if God is in fact the author of both. Doesn't that make sense to you? So why then are we in error? That's a leading question. because we don't know the Scriptures or the power of God. So, just in light of this lecture, then, we're in error. We think there's a contradiction because we don't know the Scriptures or the surrounding universe like we should. There's some mistake there. If there's some apparent contradiction, it's that we haven't understood these things. Should there be an effort to harmonize Scripture and science? Should we make an effort to do that? Flynn, what do you think? Should we make an effort? Okay. It glorifies God to All right, when you come up short, you haven't been able to harmonize them, what should you do? Well, stick with the Bible. We'll get there in a moment. Yes, stick with the Bible. All right. Fearless investigation. Thus, no Christian should ever be afraid to investigate the evidence from both scripture and science very carefully. Nothing will ever be dug out of the earth to destroy the word of God. Amen to that. All right. So it does not matter what people find in all that. And it doesn't mean that, you know, Doesn't mean that there aren't some things that, boy, that's a tough one. I don't know how that works or how that fits. And there are definite moments like that. But another thing that helped me at MIT is I'm not in awe of these people. I don't care how many PhDs they got and all that. I see the humanness in all of it and the limitations of it. I really believe that you can only function in science by having a heart filled with faith. You've got to believe. You know what you're trusting? Fellow scientists and their research. because you can't redo their experiments. You just have to trust what they've done that it's going to work for you. Sometimes you don't even have time to read their articles. You just have to read the synopsis of the article. What do you think, Will? Do you trust other scientists in your field? OK. Oh, OK. It failed. OK. OK. But seriously, in that case, maybe he didn't do his work well or maybe he falsified his evidence, which is all part of my lecture tonight as well. And it may not have been willful. It's very hard to capture an experience in words. Seriously, I'm sympathetic to those that write the assembly instructions for a complex toy. I mean, that is just hard to do. I mean, there it is, fully assembled. Now, there it is in 1,500 parts. And you have to come up with a line by line description, verbal description of do tab A, slot A, tab B, you know, all that. By the way, you never put tab A in a slot B. I hate that. Why do people say that tab A in a slot B? That's where you go wrong. Tab A always goes in slot A. All right. You know, you have to be careful about these things. But at any rate, the point is it's hard to capture these things. However, this is my point. Scientists must rest on other scientists to do their work. They openly acknowledge that. I've stood on the shoulders of great men. Even Isaac Newton said that. You have to accept what they've done and move on. You can't redo everything. Or you could just spend your whole life redoing some other scientist's life. You know, what's the point in that? There, you got most of his same findings. And look, now you want to move on. So you accept by faith a lot of what they do. And that's even more true now, when knowledge is multiplying, going faster and faster, and there's this incredible exchange of information, with English being the number one scientific medium, kind of somewhat reversing the Tower of Babel. English plus the Internet, there's so much exchange of information going on right now, and in my opinion, the proliferation of evil thereby. But at any rate, you have to accept what other scientists have done to make progress. Yes, sir? Is it possible that creation could have been done without things orbiting like they are now? Don't everything have to be orbiting and the earth revolving at the right speed otherwise? I don't know. I think it was set up kind of the way we know it now. I don't see how it could be any other way and that's where you get your 24 hour day. I think so. Obviously, there are mysteries, like in the book of Joshua, when God made the sun stand still. That's a poser to me. I don't know how you do that. What do you think, Flynn? How did he do that? How did God do that? I think probably suspended some laws of physics. Yeah, just stop the earth from rotating, which will cause all kinds of physical problems on the earth. But just don't underestimate what God can do. God can do anything. But the bottom line is, I think he set up the universe we know. I do. And that's why I also believe that the new heaven, new earth will be very familiar to us, like Jesus in his resurrected body was familiar but different. I think that the new heaven, new earth will be familiar but different. It's not going to be some weird kind of science fiction kind of world. It's just going to be a perfect world. All right, now, here's an important point. Suspicion of science before suspicion of Scripture. First of all, can we just have no suspicion of Scripture? How about that? Okay? Scripture is the Word of God. All right, if you have doubts about that, you've been listening to Satan. That's his job. Did God really say he's been doing that from the beginning? But should we be suspicious of science? Yeah, because it's a human endeavor, you know, from top to bottom. I do believe God prompts and whispers into the ears of scientists, but we don't always hear properly. All right, so what is the nature of the scientific method and the explosion of knowledge? Well, warning, science is an ever building, constantly changing and very human thing. All science is built on previous work done by others. Since we are not in the lab with them, and since data can be interpreted many different ways, we should be cautious in accepting theories. Science is constantly undergoing major seismic shifts in understanding, such as the seismic shift that happened with a couple of papers that Albert Einstein wrote from the Swiss patent office at the beginning of the 20th century. With Newtonian physics, they're just having a little bit hard time understanding the behavior of distant starlight, like around the sun and things like that, couldn't quite get that figured out. But Newton covered everything else. I mean, Newton's laws of motion just pretty much had it. And I think they weren't troubled by these little problems they were seeing there with light and all that. So they basically figured they knew everything that they needed to know about physics. Newton had done it. They'd figured it out. It was done. It's for that same reason that around that time the U.S. Patent Office said that they were thinking about shutting down because everything that could be invented had been invented. There was just nothing else to do. Well, physics had some tricks to show in the 20th century, didn't it? I mean, obviously, lots of electricity and magnetism stuff and some physics stuff, too, coming our way in the 20th century. And so, Newton wrote, you know, on the theory of relativity and described why it was that the starlight behaved that way around the sun. different things. He predicted some things accurately and we started getting up into behavior of particles and issues closer to the speed of light and Newton couldn't cover that and all of a sudden science is reborn into a whole new era. All right, so all I'm saying is those kinds of seismic shifts happen. Now don't misunderstand me. We're not starting from scratch every day. Okay, there are some valid observations that we have made that are true and we just keep building on that. But I'm just saying let's not be so Absolutely trusting of science as though it's this monolithic, perfect thing. Let's also remember the nature of the human heart. Scripture tells us that human beings have a natural hatred for God, the creator and ruler of the universe. They will thus suppress the truth and unrighteousness. Romans 1, the wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all the godlessness and wickedness of men who suppress the truth by their wickedness. Since what may be known about God is plain to them because God has made it plain to them. For since the creation of the world, God's invisible qualities, his eternal power and divine nature have been clearly understood being, have been clearly seen, sorry, being understood from what has been made so that men are without excuse. For although they knew God, they neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him, but their thinking became futile and their foolish hearts were darkened. Now that is key right there for the scientific process. Thinking became futile, foolish hearts were darkened, and now go do science with that. Do you see the problem? Big problem. All right, verse 22, although they claim to be wise, scientists, right? Scientists are just from the Latin root, knowers, people who know stuff. All right, though they claim to be wise, they became fools and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images made to look like mortal man and birds and animals and reptiles. Now the phrase suppressing the truth, the Greek word is literally holding the truth somewhat like holding it down. It's like it's an enemy, like the truth is an enemy. It's this beast coming after you in the middle of the night, or like one of those cheap Japanese horror Godzilla films, or something like that, with some creature coming up from the subterranean, like the subway system of New York City, and you gotta hold the manhole cover down, and the truth is gonna come get ya. I mean, it's so sick and perverted, but that's how they look on the truth. I have never heard a statement that displayed this attitude more plainly than these two. Listen to these two examples of suppressing the truth. This is by Richard Dawkins. Biology is the study of complicated things that give the appearance of having been designed for a purpose. But if that's not a plain example, how about this one? All right. Biologists must constantly keep in mind that what they see was not designed, but rather evolved. They've got to work hard at keeping that in mind. Hey, look, when you're like holding on, you know, and like you're about to be swept downstream to actually believing in God, you've got to hold firmly and not let go of what you know. It really was evolved despite all of the contrary evidence. Isn't that sad? I mean, look at these two guys. These guys are brilliant guys. They really are far more intelligent than me or any of us. But they're fools. because they can't see the glory of God in biology or physics or other things, all right? That's what it's there for. It's very, very obvious the nature of the human heart. So what does that mean? What does that mean for the scientists in the laboratory? He's going to be interpreting his data through a religious grid that's contrary to scripture. He's going to be twisting his interpretation. First of all, one of the most important things he's going to tell you about the data is it has nothing to do with God at all. That is a twist. It's a bent away. Do you see that? The secular aspect of science is twisted. It may be one of the main reasons that Christie and I have homeschooled our kids. I'm not saying you have to homeschool your kids, but one of the things that bothers me the most about the government education is its secular nature, that it tells you that God has nothing to do with English literature or American history, that God has nothing to do with sociology, has nothing to do with psychology, has nothing to do with science at all. leave that at home or in the church. But we can teach you and educate you in such a way that God will be left out entirely. How does that relate to Romans 1? Well, it's everything to do with Romans 1. God has to do with everything. God's at the center of everything. I want to tell my kids that. I want to tell them about God in each of these subjects and put God at the center of each one of those things. So we've got to fight this secularizing tendency all the time. Emperor's new clothes and professional pride. This is a big issue here. Science is not some flawless monolithic structure that cannot be questioned. The principle of the emperor's new clothes functions in a huge way. In Anderson's classic story, the adults were all told that if you could not see the emperor's new clothes, you were incompetent for the position you held. Everyone began praising the emperor, though he wore no robes at all. Nobody wants to be told they're incompetent for the position they hold. What does that have to do with evolution? I think it has a lot to do with evolution. Because the entire academy is telling you that you're not fit for the academy if you don't believe in evolution. And so you have to start singing from their piece of sheet music, or you have to be extraordinarily excellent in some other way so that you can get a position despite your aberrant view on this one thing. It's very, very tough to get the societal accreditation without singing from their piece of sheet music. And so you've got to say, oh, I see it, it's just... And some people even go so far, I love it. Have you read The Emperor's New Clothes? How the elaborate praise given to the emperor's clothing. Oh, it's magnificent, it's beautiful, it's all this, they're doing all this stuff. I've read praise of the elegance of the theory of evolution like that. How beautiful it is, how wonderful that our lives mean nothing and that when we die, we'll all be worm food and then the worms themselves will be worm food, that we're all just cosmic dust. It's a beautiful thing. Isn't it beautiful that you are meaningless? I mean, just I don't know the beauty. I'm missing the beauty of it, the elegance of it. Yeah. All right. So also in science, if you begin to question evolution, evolution, you will be mocked, scoffed at, excluded, even professionally evicted. Research dollars funding gets cut off, not awarded. Meanwhile, millions of dollars are available for those who are researching, especially human origins. Not so much money. At the other end, the beginning of evolution, very little money available for the first living cell. You know why? I don't know how in the world you're going to do that. Where do you get life out of nothing? Where do you get life out of chemicals? You know, that's why I appreciate Will. I think down at the protein level, that's where it gets really tough to explain evolution. I don't know how they organized themselves into amino acids and eventually became a cell wall. that respirates and all this kind of thing. Where in the world do you get the first living cell? I'll never know. We'll get to that next week. All right? We'll get to that next week. Evolution's weak link is the first living cell. All right? It's not, you know, Australopithecus or whatever. That's their wheelhouse. That's where they live. And the similarities of the skeletal structures of certain hominids and, you know, apes and all that, that's their wheelhouse and that's where the funding goes. All right? That's where people get famous, like the Leakeys and all that. That's where it happens. But down at the first cell, not too much work being done. Do you know of any work on the first cell where that came from? I know there was a prize some time ago. We'll talk about that. But do you know of any research being done toward a plausible explanation for the first living cell, Will? No, but I'm not the best one to ask that. Oh, OK. Do you have any idea where the first living cell came from? Probably with all the other living cells. They're all in, you know, yeah. People like Stephen Jay Gould, former professor of geology at Harvard University, probably the leading popular apologist for evolution, is now deceased. People like him make absolute statements in popular magazines like Time and Newsweek. And it's intimidating. You read this kind of stuff and say, gee, I must be an uneducated dunce. I don't believe in evolution. I mean, it's very easy to feel that when you're in lectures, you know, in college, you just like, you know, you get laughed at. You don't believe in, you know. And so this kind of thing, like Dorothy, we're not in Kansas anymore. It was when Kansas Board of Education, you know, decided to, the Kansas Board of Education removed evolution from the state's public school science curriculum. Gould was not in favor of that action. And Time put it on a cover article, How Man Evolved, you know, right there, right there in front. There's no question about it. Gould's article was, Dorothy, it's really Oz. So it's like this mental problem that you would even think that evolution isn't true. He's making fun of Kansas, that we're not in Kansas anymore. This is what Stephen Day Gould wrote at the time. Teaching biology without evolution is like teaching chemistry without the periodic table or American history without Lincoln. He also says that the struggle between evolution and religion is completely unnecessary. He said this, no scientific theory, including evolution, can pose any threat to religion. For these two great tools of human understanding operate in complementary, not contrary, fashion in their totally separate realms. Science as an inquiry about the factual state of the natural world. Religion as a search for spiritual meaning and ethical values. Now here's the thing, it may seem to you that he's saying the same thing I did at the beginning of this lecture. We're saying very different things. I believe there's a complete harmony of the two possible. And if we can't harmonize, that's our problem, not science or Bible's problem. Okay? He's saying there's no harmony needed, perhaps even possible. They're two entirely separate realms. Well, that teaching, entirely separate realms, that is secularization. That's the very thing I was telling you. They should be kept separate. And you don't teach religion in school. So you just teach science with no God at all. So there are two things that Gould is saying in this little article there. Number one, evolution is an indisputable fact of science, not merely a theory, because teaching evolution is like teaching American history without Abraham Lincoln. It's just indisputable fact. Secondly, evolution and Christianity can peacefully coexist. All right, now, number one should be rejected by open-minded scientists. We'll talk about that in due time. Both of these facts must be rejected by Bible-believing Christians. Now, I know that some people do try to harmonize evolution and creation. I just don't think it can be done. And I'm going to make that case somewhat today and more next week. I just don't think it can be done. Furthermore, I think the pressure to do it is not coming from the Bible. And when that pressure is coming from man, from society, from pleasing people, then be suspicious. When you take that desire to please people and go back to texts of Scripture and start looking at them differently, that's a danger I have to face as a pastor, as a preacher, that I take human opinion about controversial issues and bring it back and look again at a text and say, gee, you know, maybe we could look at it this way. That's dangerous and it's something I face not just in this area, but in lots of different controversial areas. Now there are six or seven hot button issues, hot potatoes that pastors get in trouble for all the time. You want me to list them, I'll do it another time. But I know what they are. You probably can, come on, give me one or two of them that get pastors in trouble. What do you think? Calvinism, that's one of them. Certainly. Gender roles. Gender roles have gotten some people in trouble before. Divorce and remarriage is tough. Homosexuality. Materialism. Various things. I mean, there are different aspects and you start preaching on that stuff, you're going to get in trouble. And if you take that stuff and you go back to the Bible and say, you know, maybe it doesn't, that's a bad methodology. Nathan, were you going to say something? All right. The rapture. I'm going to get to that real soon, guys. You get to hear me preach against the secret rapture in probably three weeks from the pulpit. That'll be loads of fun. So, in due time. I think it's unbiblical. I think it's unbiblical. Wouldn't it be cool if like everyone but me got raptured in the middle of the sermon? That would be really exciting. I would immediately repent of my faulty views. I wonder if it was too late to get the tail end of that rapture. I need to move on. All right, let's just move on. No, but I'll stick to my guns. I'll stick to my guns on the secret rapture. As lightning that appears in the east is visible even in the west. That's the coming, the second coming. It's no secret. I mean, you're going to get me started. Don't get me started. That's for another day. All right, some theories about creation seem clearly inconsistent with the teachings of scripture. Secular theories. Any purely secular theory about the origin of the universe is unacceptable. Secular means does not hold that an infinitely powerful personal being purposefully and personally created the universe by intelligent design. Big bang, eternal universe, purely materialistic Darwinism. That's obvious. Well, that's just pure atheism is all that is. I mean, that's just, I mean, that's not even a Christian effort. there is no God that made anything, well then you're just flat out an atheist and you don't even worry about the Bible at that point, you just don't believe anything in the Bible. But then there's this issue of theistic evolution. What is theistic evolution? Well, it's a merging together of Darwin's evolutionary concepts with biblical faith. Problem, it's a desire to serve two masters. What to do when there seems to be a contradiction? You know what generally gets pitched? The scripture generally gets pitched. Generally when they go head to head, you're going to accommodate scripture because it's flexible. You know, it's poetic or, you know, it's symbolic or different things, but this is science. This is indisputable fact, that kind of thing. So they tend to get pitched. Are there some objections to theistic evolution? First of all, the purposefulness of God's creative work versus the randomness of evolution. Essence of God's creative activity is purpose in everything he does. Essence of evolution is random mutations There's a big difference between the two. I can look at something and say, it was made that way for a purpose. God did it that way. There's a purposefulness. Random mutations are the key to evolution. I mean, that's really where it all comes from. Now, what the theistic evolutionists say is, well, they're not random. God kind of tweaked the mutation to make it happen, etc. But I just think it's just evidence of serving to message. Why do you even need to talk like that? You know, etc. You know that God created it originally for a purpose. You know, intelligent design. God said, let the land produce living creatures according to their kinds, livestock, creatures that move along the ground and wild animals each according to its kind. And it was so. So, I mean, you look at the verbs and what's going on there. The creatures are created to do stuff. Consider the birds of the air. Jesus didn't just call them birds. He called them birds of the air. So they had a realm to operate in. They were created to fly. They didn't evolve up to fly. God wanted them to fly from the beginning. And so their realm was the air. The fish's realm was the sea. And so they were made with gills and other things because that's where they would be. Our realm is the whole planet. And so we can see that we can move through the sea better than any fish and move through the air faster than a bird and higher too. Not in the same way. They have a certain natural freedom that we don't have. But we are more versatile than any other creature by far. There is no creature that goes to the depths of the sea and goes up to the moon as well. I mean, basically, that's because we're in the image of God. But the earth was given to us to rule because we're created in the image of God. We all have a place, a scope, a realm. So consider the birds of the air, the fish of the sea, these kinds of things. They were made that way from the beginning. You know, evolution, random mutations. And God said, let the earth bring forth living creatures according to their kinds. 87,492,871 attempts, God finally made a mouse that worked. Theistic evolutionists are in effect saying this. For them to answer, but God intervened in the process along the way, one no longer has true evolution. No secular scientist would call it guided purposeful intervention evolution. If a Christian's going to argue for that, why not simply for a direct immediate creation of a fully functioning mouse without the millions of years of transitional forms? You know why? Because the Christians are intimidated by the old earth theories and they say there's no answer for it. And so they say, well, we've got to fit in and we've got to accommodate it. So they say, well, then we just fit in evolution to what we know about the Bible as best we can. All right. Especially note, dear friends, since there's no fossil evidence for such transitional states that God is finally a working mouse. There are no transitional states for the evolution of the mouse. That's huge. We'll get to that next week, all right? There should be transitional states, not just for man, but for every species we see around. We should be tripping over them. We should have a hard time driving home for the transitional states. We'll get to all that. Anyway, scripture pictures God's creative word bringing immediate response. By the word of the Lord, Psalm 33, verse six, by the word of the Lord with the heavens made in their starry host, by the breath of his mouth, for he spoke and it came to be. He commanded and it stood firm. Well, that's the cosmos. Look again at the top of the page. And God said, let the land produce living creatures. See, there's a direct activity of God. He speaks and it is. Not he speaks and we'll get to it eventually. You know, he speaks and it is. Things just come into being. Like Malchus's ear after Peter cut it off. And Malchus didn't have millions of years to wait for another one to evolve. God made a fully functioning ear immediately. He has that kind of power. And the fish, the loaves and the fish, did they come out cooked? Were they ready to eat? They were ready to eat fish? I think they did. What do you think, Nathan? Five loaves and two fish. I'm thinking the loaves were fully cooked. It's not a bunch of ingredients. Wait a minute. We'll get to you. We'll be back. We got to cook. I mean, that'd take a long time. Those were hot, steaming loaves ready to eat. And those were fish that were cooked and ready to go, unless they were sushi or sashimi, in which case, I don't know. But there's no evidence that the Palestinians ate sushi or sashimi. I think they were cooked, they were ready to go. They came into the world ready to eat. I had never thought of that before, but there it is. All right. Thirdly, God creating kinds such that living things reproduce according to their kind. This destroys evolution. You know, the essence of evolution is that kinds change. All right. How do you know a kind? It has to do with reproduction. OK, if the Chihuahua can get together with the St. Bernard and they can make something. All right. I don't know what, but they are of the same kind, aren't they? Yes. But you don't get despite what National Enquirer tells you, you don't get species that come across. Yeah, they cannot reproduce. And so reproduction, from Genesis 1, it has to do, they come according to their kinds and let them be fruitful and multiply according to their kinds. And they multiply, the word kind ends up being huge. And so it has to do. But evolution teaches that at one point these could not mate, but then they evolve and they can. Or things that came from different kinds, they originally came from the same kind. That's actually completely different than what we have. And we don't see that going on at all. See, microevolution going on for sure, but you never see things that couldn't mate at one point down the road their great-great-great-great-grandchildren can mate. That never happens. Has to do with kinds. Reproduction. All right. God is a hands-on creator in Genesis. Theistic evolution is more hands-off. It really heads toward deism at many levels. God just doesn't get involved. There are different types of theistic evolution. You know, one is that God just kind of rigged it all to evolve and just didn't need to interfere. It's by how he set it up. at the beginning, but others say God just kind of interferes and does the mutations. But I just see that throughout the Bible, God just interferes all the time. I mean, do you see that? That God just steps in. I mean, look at Psalm 104. This is a hands-on world. I would put it this way. It's a needy world, a dependent world. God did not create an independent world. He created a world that depends on Him to do stuff. And so it says in Psalm 104, How many are your works, O Lord, in wisdom? You made them all. The earth is full of your creatures. There is the sea vast and spacious, teeming with creatures beyond number, living things both large and small. There the ships go to and fro, the Leviathan, which you form to frolic there. That's an anti-evolutionary verse. It was made to frolic there. God formed it for that purpose. These all look to you to give them their food at the proper time. When you give it to them, they gather it up. When you open your hand, they are satisfied with good things. When you hide your face, they are terrified. When you take away their breath, they die and return to the dust. That is a God active in the world verse. God is just feeding and bringing to life and killing living things all the time. Hands on for people as well. The Lord God formed the man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life and the man became a living being. Job 10, 8 through 12, your hands shaped me and molded me or made me. Will you now turn to destroy me? Remember that you molded me like clay. Will you now turn me to dust again? Did you not pour me out like milk and curdle me like cheese? Clothed me with skin and flesh and knit me together with bones and sinews. You gave me life and showed me kindness. And in your providence watched over my spirit." That's an active relationship of God the creator. That's a very anti-abortion verse or passage right there. God directly active in that process, et cetera. Ecclesiastes 11 5 just as you do not know the path of the wind and how bones are formed in the womb of the pregnant woman so you do not know the activity of God who makes all things powerful God is active in natural the natural world and Psalm 139 teaches the same thing God creates all of our own form beings now I'm going to start here next week I'm going to talk about the theological issues that depend on on one man one woman Adam and Eve from the beginning the fact that that's really the the linchpin to my argument. You can't have evolution and still have Adam and Eve. And if you don't have Adam and Eve, you don't have original sin, you don't have gender and authority roles, you don't have a lot of stuff that comes from Adam and Eve. We'll talk about that next time and a bunch of other things besides.