Creation: Believe It or Not, Part 1

Genesis, vs secular science explanations of origins

https://reasonandscience.catsboard.com/t1642-creation-believe-it-or-not-part-1

One common argument seen often spouted by uninformed atheists is that upon the advance of science, the gaps where God can hide are shrinking. The contrary is the case. The more science advances, the gaps where naturalism can hide, are shrinking, and only answers by proposing intelligence as a causal agency, is intellectually satisfying.

Genesis V1 and V16 :  
explains the origin of the universe, stars, and the earth.
V9 explains the separation of the land from the ocean
V11 explains the origin of vegetation and plants
V24: explains the origin of animals
V26 explains the origin of humankind, male and female, and the origin of the soul

We have in Genesis a COMPLETE account of origins.

How does science-based on naturalism explain all these things?


Atheism/materialism/naturalism explains, quite literally, nothing.

Atheism doesn’t explain
the existence of our universe
the fact that our universe is finely-tuned.
the origin and diversity of life.
the rise of consciousness and the mind,
objective moral values,
the evidence for miracles.


Science does NOT have conclusive, compelling explanations of:

- The origin and cause of the universe, nor it's fine-tuning. All that proponents of naturalism can do is speculate in regard to eventual, imagined scenarios, or admit ignorance. The usual explanations are

- virtual particles
- eternal universes
- multiverses, bubble universes, M-Theory, etc.

- Stars: the accretion theory proposed an impossible scenario, namely that gas exercised gravitational forces and clumped together to form stars. It has never been observed, and his highly speculative

- the separation of the land, and oceans: Science has no idea nor good explanations why and how it happened, or where the water on earth came from

- the origin of life: there are not credible naturalistic hypotheses. Rather than closing the gap, scientific advance exposes the impossibility.

- The origin of plants: explained by Darwins Theory, and the highly speculative idea that prokaryotic cells engulfed another cell, and by endosymbiosis, eukaryotic cells emerged.  There are several reasons why this is not compelling. Plants use photosynthesis as an energy source. Oxygenic photosynthesis has no known evolutionary precursors, and is extremely complex and requires several parts that are essential. No scientist has compelling answers to how photosynthesis evolved. Only speculation

- Animals: Darwins Theory is every day more under attack by the fact that science reveals, that the genome alone does not define body plans. Epigenetic codes are determinant, and cannot be explained by natural selection, drift, or gene flow.

- Humans: science has no explanation for the origin of sex, nor conscience, nor language, nor morality, nor why humans have inherent dignity, value, or meaning. Materialism has failed when addressing the question of our ultimate origins.

We have observed atoms having forced that keep them together. We have not explained what that force is, and why it persists. It is assumed to persist for various reasons, but no cause has ever been found, scientifically. The very mechanisms of life: DNA, replication of DNA and other microbiological processes have been observed, but never explained, because their very activity is driven by data processes, which have no known independent cause or source. The force of gravity has been observed, characterized, and tested, but its source of energy has never been explained through naturalistic processes or observation. Logic and mathematics themselves have been analyzed and understood, but what is never explained through naturalistic or materialistic methods or science is why they exist, or what enforces them. They “just are”, and that assumption is the biggest gap materialists make as they seek to explain everything without God. The very foundations of reasoning are the concepts that things are repeatable, and therefore testable and predictable, yet there is no explanation for why things are consistent, from a materialistic perspective. Believers in the one true God, on the other hand, have answers for all of those questions, and it is because we have answers to those questions that we can advance scientific understanding and practical application to our universe and to daily life. There is nothing in the theistic worldview that negates or limits scientific discovery, because we expect a consistent level of logic, predictability, order, material processes and that God wants us to intelligently utilize our world, the senses, and brains we are endowed with. We discover laws of physics, math, and science, and understand they exist and persist because there is a lawgiver. They are there for our benefit, and we are free to discover them and utilize them. To suggest otherwise is merely a statement from ignorance. Ignorance of the existence of God.

https://reasonandscience.catsboard.com/t1642-creation-believe-it-or-not-part-1

Creation: Believe It or Not  1

https://reasonandscience.catsboard.com/t1642-creation-believe-it-or-not-part-1

The issue of origins is absolutely critical to all human thinking, human behavior, and human life.  It is the foundation of our existence.  It is the foundation of our purpose.  It is the foundation of our destiny.  Without a right understanding of origins, there's no way to comprehend ourselves.  There's no way to understand our earth, our universe or the ultimate meaning of anything. 5

When it comes to explaining the possible mechanisms and cause of origins, the physical universe,  life, biodiversity, consciousness, moral values, and language, there are following options:
As the cause of: 
The universe and the physical laws: 
an intelligent creator(s),  random unguided natural events, or a creator could have created through random events or a mix of both. 
The fine-tuning of the universe and the origin of life: 
an intelligent creator, random unguided natural events, and physical necessity. Or a mix of it. 
Biodiversity, consciousness, moral values, and language: 
above, and evolution

Chance. What kind of causal power has chance? Chance expresses the odds or likelihood of an event taking place. Chance isn't a thing or a mechanism or a physical being or a causal agent. It's not a directing force. Chance doesn't make anything happen.  It's only a way to quantify the probability of an event taking place. But in modern thinking, chance is being transformed in the ingredient of evolution theory through random mutations, a causal ingredient of biodiversity. 2

Physical necessity is the term that is given to the situation where something is forced to take a certain course of action. Events that are conditioned by some values, forces, laws, norms or goals.  In physics,  the concept of necessity was applied to cases of strict determination and restriction due to so-called causal laws. It's the hypothesis that the constants and quantities had to have the values they do so that the universe and the earth could not take any other course, than the one it did. 1,3
Intelligent design/creation stands for guided, reason-based, directed, planned, projected, programmed, information-based,  goal-constrained, willed causation by a conscient intelligent powerful eternal, non-caused agency. Chance and evolution could be an included mechanism in the intended goal, but that would in the end still be an intelligence-based process.
Evolution: Biodiversity by evolution through random mutations and natural selection, genetic drift, gene flow, or pre-programmed evolution 

There are only these options.  Either is there an intelligent creator, or there is not. Those are the only options.  If there is no God, then everything is a result of ..... what exactly?
Chance, as exposed above, isn't a thing. Physical necessity could only act once a physical universe exists. Beyond the universe, there were no physical laws.

Once it's granted that nothing has no causal powers, it's evident the universe could not have emerged from absolutely anything. Nobody times nothing equals everything is irrational to the extreme nonetheless, some very "smart" people think that proposition makes sense, and write extensive books about the subject ). Or, behind this complex universe is an incomprehensibly intelligent and powerful eternal being who made everything.



Pennie Lee: Chance of the gaps. Chance did it. That takes a lot of faith since we've never observed CHANCE doing a single thing. Saying that something self-organizes and does it by chance is self-refuting. Secondly, it is a giant leap of faith. It appears to me that those who declare chance, are simply putting a different name on their god (of the gaps). They make observations of the occurrence but cannot tell us HOW it occurred. If they think that one day in the future this will be revealed to them by some chance, they are simply exercising faith. They are also exercising the logical fallacy of Appeal to the Future. No, what you think MIGHT happen in the future is not proof or even evidence for your present notions.

Genesis 1:1 is unique in all literature, all science, and all philosophy.  Every other system of cosmology explaining the universe, whether in ancient religious myths or modern scientific models, starts with the eternal matter, or eternal energy in some form.  Only the book of Genesis starts with eternal God.  Genesis then is the book of the origin of the universe.

In Genesis, we find the origin of order, information, and complexity.  There is order, there are physical laws that function of fixed rules, there is information, and there is life-based on cells, that are equivalent to factories and complex irreducible machines.  Order, coded information, and complexity never arise spontaneously.  They are always generated by a prior cause programmed to produce these things simultaneously.

We also find in Genesis the origin of life, the marvels of the reproductive process.  The almost infinite complexity programmed into the genetic system of plants and animals are inexplicable apart from special creation by a great, supernatural, powerful intelligence.

Genesis tells us about the origin of man, the most highly organized and complex entity in the universe, the origin of marriage,  the remarkable universal and stable institution of marriage as having been ordained by the Creator; the origin of evil.  The origin of physical and moral evil in the universe is explained in Genesis as a kind of temporary intrusion into God's perfect world, allowed by God as a concession to the principle of human freedom and responsibility and also to manifest Himself as Redeemer of sinners as well as Creator. In the book of Genesis, you find the origin of salvation by grace through God's mercy and a substitute.  That's all in Genesis and it starts to show as God is merciful to Adam and Eve and doesn't kill them, even though they deserved to die for their sin.  In the book of Genesis that we find the origin of language. How you go from apes to man not just making some physical transition but developing language, how you go from grunting and making unintelligible noises to human speech. is unexplained by modern science as well. The gulf between the mindless, instinctive chattering of animals and the intelligent, abstract, symbolic communication of man is absolutely and completely unbridgeable by any evolutionary process. You find in Genesis the origin of culture.  You find here such things as urbanization, the development of metallurgy, music, agriculture, animal husbandry, writing, education, navigation, textiles, and ceramics.  All of that starts in the book of Genesis. You find in the book of Genesis the origin of religion.  Both the true religion and false religions appear, first of all, in the book of Genesis.

Science knows nothing about origins. No wonder, when pressed hard, the last outcome most atheists come up with, is ignorance. We don't know yet. Science is working on it. 

Open questions in biology, biochemistry, and evolution

http://reasonandscience.heavenforum.org/t2299-open-questions-in-biology-biochemistry-and-evolution

When methodological naturalism is applied, the only explanation for the origin of life is abiogenesis, and of biodiversity, Darwins Theory of evolution. Proponents repeat like a mantra: Evolution is a fact. If that were the case, there would exist far more convincing, clear scientific answers to almost all relevant scientific questions and issues. This is far from being the case. Based on scientific papers, quite a different picture arises. Instead of compelling answers, question marks and lack of understanding, generalized ignorance in regard to almost all relevant issues,  and conceptual problems are the most common. Since the information is widely sparse and scattered amongst thousands of scientific papers, it's not so evident that this is the factual state of matter. The general public is duped by effect slogans, that give the false impression of certainty of naturalism. The standard answer, when proponents of naturalism are confronted with this situation, is: "We are working on it". Or: "We don't know yet".

Objection: more possible causal mechanisms exist, maybe even an infinity. 
Answer: What can be asserted without evidence, can be discarded without evidence.

Objection: the universe isn't obliged in any to conform to our model of reality. Just look at Einstein's relativity theories. They demonstrate that the universe can confound us.  That justifies not become attached to any viewpoint.
Answer: Even if a Grand Unified Theory (GUT) is not fully understood, the possible mechanisms to explain our existence are still the same.

1. http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0049237X09704124
2. http://www.gty.org/resources/sermons/90-208/creation-believe-it-or-not-part-1
3. http://www.reasonablefaith.org/design-from-fine-tuning
4. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grand_Unified_Theory
5. https://www.gty.org/resources/sermons/90-209/creation-believe-it-or-not-part-2

A well-known scientist named Herbert Spencer died in 1903. He discovered that all reality, all reality, all that exists in the universe can be contained in five categories...time, force, action, space and matter. Herbert Spencer said everything that exists, exists in one of those categories...time, force, action, space and matter.

Now think about that. Time, force, action, space and matter. That is a logical sequence. And then with that in your mind, listen to Genesis 1:1. "In the beginning," that's time..."God," that's force, "created," that's action, "the heavens," that's space, "and the earth," that's matter. Everything that could be said about everything that exists is said in that first verse.

Now either you believe that or you don't. You either believe that that verse is accurate and God is the force or you believe that God is not the force that created everything. And then you're left with chance or randomness or coincidence.

Spencer wrote that, as regards the origin of the universe, three hypotheses are possible: self-existence (atheism), self-creation (pantheism), or creation by an external agency (theism). Spencer argued that it is "impossible to avoid making the assumption of self-existence" in any of the three hypotheses, and concluded that "even positive Atheism comes within the definition" of religion.

I mean, if we just kind of summed up these two alternatives, the materialistic view would say, "Ultimate reality is impersonal matter. No God exists."
The Christian view says, "Ultimate reality is an infinite, personal, loving God."
The materialistic view says, "The universe is created by chance, without any ultimate purpose."
The Christian view says, "The universe was lovingly created by God for a specific purpose."
The materialistic view says, "Man is the product of impersonal time, plus chance, plus matter. As a result, no man has eternal value or dignity nor any meaning other than that which is subjectively derived."
The Christian view says, "Man was created by God in His image and is loved by God. Because of this all men are endowed with eternal value and dignity. Their value is not derived ultimately from themselves, but from the source transcending themselves, God Himself."
The materialistic view of morality says, "Morality is defined by every individual according to his own views and interests. Morality is ultimately relative because every person is the final authority for his own views."
The Christian view says, "Morality is defined by God and immutable because it is based on God's unchanging, holy character."
The materialistic view says about the afterlife, "The afterlife brings eternal annihilation, or personal extinction for everyone."
The Christian view says, "The afterlife involves either eternal life with God, or eternal separation from Him. Either the glories of heaven, or the terrors of hell."


Now, for a few minutes I want to get a little philosophical. I think you'll enjoy this. In the end the evolutionist, the naturalistic evolutionist says, and even the theistic evolutionist says that things happen by chance...chance. We get rid of the God of the Bible, we get rid of the God of Genesis, we get rid of the Creator and then we've got chance. Now this is a pretty interesting thing to think about. I have read this word "chance" over and over and over again in reading the writings of these people and the myth that drives the whole evolutionary process, this entire unbiblical, irrational, immoral idea of evolution, the myth that drives it is the myth of chance...chance. Chance is the cause. In contemporary science, chance takes on new meaning. They don't want God to be the cause, but something has to be the cause so the cause is chance.

Now when I say the word "chance" we take it back to its etymology, it once was largely restricted to describing mathematical probability. Where we could say, "Well, if I go over there there's a chance I might see her because she may be coming this way." Or, "If I put this money in this account there's a chance this might happen and I'll make this amount of money." "If I...if I move into that community and begin to meet some people there's a chance there that I might develop some interest in my business." There's a mathematical probability. That's what chance basically used to mean. And then it kind of got broadened a little bit and it took on broader application to include any unpredictable event, any sort of probability no matter how remote or any coincidence no matter how seemingly impossible.

I mean, this is so fraught with problems from a rational or philosophical viewpoint you hardly know where to begin. How do you get the initial matter upon which chance operates? Where does that come? You would have to say, "Well, chance made it appear." You know what? This sounds so ridiculous and yet this is the undergirding philosophy behind evolution. It is completely incoherent and irrational. But the new evolutionary paradigm is chance. And it's the opposite of logic.

You see, when you abandon logic and logic says, "Oh, there's a universe. Hum...somebody made it." What else would logic say? "There's a building, somebody made it. There's a piano, somebody made it. There's a universe, more complex than a building, infinitely more complex than a piano, somebody...somebody who is very, very powerful and very, very intelligent made it."

You say, "No, no, chance made it." Listen, folks, that's rational suicide, that's not logical.

Logic abandoned leaves you with myth and the enemies of mythology, the enemies of mythology are empirical data and God-given reason. So in order to be an evolutionist and believe that chance makes things happen, you have to do two things: reject the empirical data, and be irrational. But if you love your sin enough, you'll do it. You see, if you can just eliminate the empirical data, the evidence, and get rid of God-given logic and those two things are the essence of pure science, if you can get rid of those things then mythology runs wild. And as one writer said, "Chance is the new soft pillow for science to lie down on." Arthur Kessler said, "As long as chance rules, God is an anachronism." If chance rules, God can't rule. Chance deposes God. The very existence of chance rips God from His sovereign throne.

http://www.gty.org/resources/sermons/90-208

The Bibles exceptional information content

The Bible contains the highest information/semantic content in the world literature.

Genesis 1.1:
In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.

That informs us in one short sentence our origins.

John 3:16
For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.

That informs us in one sentence of how we can be saved and receive eternal life.

Matthew 22:38
Jesus declared, “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment.And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’…

That informs us in one sentence of how we ought to live.

In information theory, semantics can be defined as the weight of the meanings” per sentence or per paragraph. There are literally thousands of books about origins, the beginning of the universe, life, and biodiversity, but none provide genuine answers. Max they can say is; " probably, most likely, we suggest, it seems, it appears " etc. That extends through ALL evolutionary biology. Nobody provides clear certain answers. The Bible, on the other hand, describes the origin of the physical universe in one remarkable sentence:

In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.  

(Gen 2:7). And the origin of man:    “And the Lord God formed man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and man became a living being” (Gen 2:7). These few words comprise a remarkable information content, since they provide answers to many questions.    A well-known scientist named Herbert Spencer died in 1903. He discovered that all reality, all reality, all that exists in the universe can be contained in five categories...time, force, action, space and matter. Herbert Spencer said everything that exists, exists in one of those categories...time, force, action, space, and matter.

Now think about that. Time, force, action, space and matter. That is a logical sequence. And then with that in your mind, listen to Genesis 1:1. "In the beginning," that's time..."God," that's force, "created," that's action, "the heavens," that's space, "and the earth," that's matter. Everything that could be said about everything that exists is said in that first verse.

The sentence can be divided in two categories: the physical universe: time, matter, and space
And the second:
God = the cause
action = the creation event.

Everything that BEGINS TO EXIST ( action ), has a cause. ( God ).

Once this is compared with the scientific evidence, and philosophical considerations, it provides an intellectually SATISFACTORY explanation of our origins. An epistemological sound triple team in action: science, philosophy, and theology.

In order to understand our place in the cosmos, and the reason of our existence, we need to know about our origins. The Bible gives that answer in an epic, remarkable, unique sentence in Genesis 1. The highest weight of meaning in one sentence.  

There is a dictum:   “Truth does not require many words, but a lie cannot use enough words”,

What we have here represents the highest possible semantic information density. Other passages in the Bible also exhibit superlative semantic densities (e. g. John 3:16 contains all the information necessary for man’s salvation).

Here you can download one of my favored authors and sources of sound scientific information:  Dr.Werner Gitt's excellent book for free:

In the Beginning was Information:

https://bruderhand.de/download/Werner_Gitt/Englisch-Am_Anfang_war_die_Info.pdf

Genesis, vs secular science explanations of origins

https://reasonandscience.catsboard.com/t1642-creation-believe-it-or-not-part-1#5719

One common argument seen often spouted by uninformed atheists is that upon the advance of science, the gaps where God can hide are shrinking. The contrary is the case. The more science advances, the gaps where naturalism can hide, are shrinking, and only answers by proposing intelligence as causal agency, is intellectually satisfying.

Genesis V1 and V16 :  
explains the origin of the universe, stars, and the earth.
V9 explains the separation of the land from the ocean
V11 explains the origin of vegetation and plants
V24: explains the origin of animals
V26 explains the origin of humankind, male and female

We have in Genesis a COMPLETE account of origins.

How does science based on naturalism explain all these things?

Science does NOT have conclusive, compelling explanations of:

- The origin and cause of the universe, nor its fine-tuning. All that proponents of naturalism can do is speculate in regard to eventual, imagined scenarios, or admit ignorance. The usual explanations are

- virtual particles
- eternal universes
- multiverses, bubble universes, M-Theory etc.

- Stars: the accretion theory proposed an impossible scenario, namely that gas exercised gravitational forces and clumped together to form stars. It has never been observed, and his highly speculative

- the separation of the land, and oceans: Science has no idea nor good explanations why and how it happened, or where the water on earth came from

- the origin of life: there are not credible naturalistic hypotheses. Rather than closing the gap, scientific advance exposes the impossibility.

- The origin of plants: explained by Darwins Theory, and the highly speculative idea that prokaryotic cells engulfed another cell, and by endosymbiosis, eukaryotic cells emerged.  There are several reasons why that is not compelling. Plants use photosynthesis as energy source. Oxygenic photosynthesis has no known evolutionary precursors, and is extremely complex and requires several parts that are essential. No scientist has compelling answers how photosynthesis evolved. Only speculation

- Animals: Darwins Theory is every day more under attack by the fact that science reveals, that the genome alone does not define body plans. Epigenetic codes are determinant, and cannot be explained by natural selection, drift, or gene flow.

- Humans: science has no explanation for the origin of sex, nor conscience, nor language, nor morality, nor why humans have inherent dignity, value, or meaning.

==============================================================================================================================================

No wonder, a dialogue with atheists goes not rarely like this :

Atheist; I don't believe in magic, and your imaginary friend. Prove, that God exists, and we talk.
Theist: So what is your alternative explanation of origins?
Atheist: you make the claims, not me. You have the burden of proof. I just don't believe you. Magic has never been a good answer. Believing in talking snakes and donkeys is not rational. Which of the thousands of Gods should I believe in? I just believe in one less than you do.
Theist: So what is your goal by telling me that?
Atheist: hmm..... ( thinks five minutes ) Well, religion is a disgrace to humanity, and has brought a lot of pain. Religion is responsible for wars, slavery, killings etc. God is a sadic tyrant and immoral monster, and it's not just to send people to hell for finite sins.
I want a better world without religion
Theist: Do you know what Jesus first command was?
Atheist: It makes no sense to debate with fundamentalist, illuded religionists like you. And, btw. You are stuuupid. Walks away.....

Um argumento comum visto muitas vezes provocado por ateus desinformados é que, após o avanço da ciência, as lacunas onde Deus pode se esconder estão encolhendo. O contrário é o caso. Quanto mais a ciência avança, as lacunas em que o naturalismo pode se esconder, estão diminuindo, e apenas as respostas, propondo inteligência como agência causal, são intelectualmente satisfatórias.

Genesis V1 e V16:
explica a origem do universo, das estrelas e da terra.
V9 explica a separação da terra do oceano
V11 explica a origem da vegetação e das plantas
V24: explica a origem dos animais
V26 explica a origem da humanidade, masculino e feminino

Temos em Gênesis uma narrativa COMPLETA de origens.

Como a ciência baseada no naturalismo explica todas essas coisas?

A ciência não possui explicações conclusivas e convincentes sobre:

- A origem e a causa do universo, nem o seu ajuste fino. Tudo o que os defensores do naturalismo podem fazer é especular em relação a eventuais cenários imaginários ou admitir ignorância. As explicações habituais são

- partículas virtuais
- universos eternos
- multiverses, universos de bolhas, M-Teoria etc.

- Estrelas: a teoria da acreção propôs um cenário impossível, a saber, que o gás exercitava forças gravitacionais e se aglomerava para formar estrelas. Nunca foi observado, e é altamente especulativo

- a separação da terra e dos oceanos: a ciência não tem idéia nem boas explicações, por que e como aconteceu, ou de onde veio a água da terra

- a origem da vida: não há hipóteses naturalistas credíveis. Em vez de fechar a lacuna, o avanço científico expõe a impossibilidade.

- A origem das plantas: explicada pela Teoria de Darwins e a idéia altamente especulativa de que as células procarióticas engolfaram outra célula, e por endosimbiose, surgiram células eucarióticas. Existem várias razões pelas quais isso não é convincente. As plantas usam a fotossíntese como fonte de energia. A fotossíntese oxigenada não possui precursores evolutivos conhecidos e é extremamente complexa e requer diversas partes que são essenciais. Nenhum cientista tem respostas convincentes sobre a evolução da fotossíntese. Somente especulação

- Animais: a Teoria de Darwins está cada dia mais atacada pelo fato de que a ciência revela que o genoma sozinho não define os planos corporais. Os códigos epigenéticos são determinantes e não podem ser explicados por seleção natural, deriva ou fluxo de genes.

- Humanos: a ciência não tem explicação para a origem do sexo, nem da consciência, nem da linguagem, nem da moral, nem da razão pela qual os seres humanos possuem dignidade, valor ou significado inerentes.

In fact, i have nothing against the proposition of abiogenesis, and evolution. Even cosmic evolution. No problem at all. Fact is, even IF the history of the physical universe would be best explained by the three: Cosmic evolution, chemical evolution, and biological evolution, that would STILL not remove God as necessary being, which started it all. God would have simply told an other narrative to Moses, and Jesus would have confirmed it.

But the evidence simply DOES NOT point into that direction and the Bible also confirms another story. The evidence is overwhelming, that God had his hands right from the start in everything. For that reason, it makes most sense, its rational, to stick to the " God created it all " inference.

Genesis, vs secular science explanations of origins

One common argument seen often spouted by uninformed atheists is that upon the advance of science, the gaps where God can hide are shrinking. The contrary is the case. The more science advances, the gaps where naturalism can hide, are shrinking, and only answers by proposing intelligence as causal agency, is intellectually satisfying.

Genesis V1 and V16 :
explains the origin of the universe, stars, and the earth.
V9 explains the separation of the land from the ocean
V11 explains the origin of vegetation and plants
V24: explains the origin of animals
V26 explains the origin of humankind, male and female

We have in Genesis a COMPLETE account of origins.

How does science based on naturalism explain all these things?

Science does NOT have conclusive, compelling explanations of:

- The origin and cause of the universe, nor its fine-tuning. All that proponents of naturalism can do is speculate in regard to eventual, imagined scenarios, or admit ignorance. The usual explanations are

- virtual particles
- eternal universes
- multiverses, bubble universes, M-Theory etc.

- Stars: the accretion theory proposed an impossible scenario, namely that gas exercised gravitational forces and clumped together to form stars. It has never been observed, and his highly speculative

- the separation of the land, and oceans: Science has no idea nor good explanations why and how it happened, or where the water on earth came from

- the origin of life: there are not credible naturalistic hypotheses. Rather than closing the gap, scientific advance exposes the impossibility.

- The origin of plants: explained by Darwins Theory, and the highly speculative idea that prokaryotic cells engulfed another cell, and by endosymbiosis, eukaryotic cells emerged. There are several reasons why that is not compelling. Plants use photosynthesis as energy source. Oxygenic photosynthesis has no known evolutionary precursors, and is extremely complex and requires several parts that are essential. No scientist has compelling answers how photosynthesis evolved. Only speculation

- Animals: Darwins Theory is every day more under attack by the fact that science reveals, that the genome alone does not define body plans. Epigenetic codes are determinant, and cannot be explained by natural selection, drift, or gene flow.

- Humans: science has no explanation for the origin of sex, nor conscience, nor language, nor morality, nor why humans have inherent dignity, value, or meaning

The Bible's Wisdom

The Bible holds a wisdom so profound,
Its words can shape the human mind.
In Genesis, our origins are found,
A truth so simple, yet so divine.

John 3:16, a message of love,
A promise of life eternal and true.
Its power can change our hearts above,
And give us a purpose to pursue.

Matthew 22:38, a command so clear,
To love our God with all our might,
And love our neighbor, far and near,
To bring joy and peace to our sight.

But what if we knew it was all a lie,
That there was no God, no divine grace.
Would we still choose to live by,
The Bible's teachings, its moral embrace?

It would still be wise to defend,
The Biblical worldview, for it is good.
For without a creator, there's no end,
To man's selfish ways, his evil mood.

Atheism in power has never thrived,
But ended in tyranny and pain.
The Bible's wisdom, it has survived,
And shaped our world again and again.

So let us hold fast to this sacred book,
And let its words guide us through life.
For in its pages, we can always look,
And find the way to overcome strife.



The Bible contains the highest information/semantic content in the world literature.

Genesis 1.1:
In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.

That informs us in one short sentence our origins.

John 3:16
For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.

That informs us in one sentence of how we can be saved and receive eternal life.

Matthew 22:38
Jesus declared, “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment.And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’…

That informs us in one sentence of how we ought to live.

If someone can propose a better/higher moral standard, which ,if followed, would provide better good for humans to live together in society, i would like to hear it.

Now let us suppose that you would KNOW with absolute certainty that the whole Bible is a made up story by some genious guy, and that ontologically speaking, there is no God, but the material world is all there is, and brought forward life and humans. Not only that, but you had the BEST arguments to back that up.

It would still be more reasonable to defend the Biblical worldview, because it shapes humanity to the better. In contrast, without a creator, there can be no enforcing agency of moral good, and man basically could give a free go to his own inclinations, without fear of consequences besides eventually the direct consequences of his actions.

The only manifestation of atheism in state power is totalitarianism. No exceptions. For two centuries-- from 1789-- every atheist philosophy that has risen to power has brought hell to earth among the people under its boot. Atheist 'secular humanism' has one salient characteristic-- it never survives the rise of atheism. What begins with an edited Jefferson always ends with a pockmarked Caligula. Atheism in power has always been totalitarian.

The Bible, or modern science, whom to trust first?

https://reasonandscience.catsboard.com/t1642-creation-believe-it-or-not-part-1#7552

I have learned that the one that made the world, has also the capacity to communicate to us how he did it. So I give God's word MORE value and credence than to what man says. Until about a hundred years ago, the scientific claim was, that the earth is 100 Mio years old. Now, we are at 4,7bio. It was also claimed that the universe is eternal. Now we know better. While this, God's word has not changed. And the more science has progressed, the more it had to admit that the Bible was right. The universe had a beginning. Noah's ark was with high probability found - the worldwide flood confirmed.

Even today science claims that dinosaurs are hundreds of million years old. Soft tissue confirms thousands of years. Fits perfectly the biblical timeline. Science said the Biblical timeline was false. Nathan Hoffman has shown in his wonderful video, how it is correct. Science has claimed that many figures mentioned in the Old Testament never existed. Today we have found evidence for the Exodus, King David, the reigns mentioned in the Old Testament, the places mentioned in the gospels.

Christ upholds the universe by the word of his power ( Heb 1:3).  Spacetime is not fundamental but emergent from entangled quantum information  - God's mind.  All that exists is sustained by God's word - information. Today we know that all universe is permeated by information. The laws of physics work upon precise rules of mathematics - information. The universe and biochemistry work based on finely-tuned parameters - information. Life is permeated by genetic and epigenetic information.

All energy cycles are irreducibly complex and interdependent - which demonstrates, a stepwise evolutionary development of those is not possible. It is an all or nothing business. Without cyanobacteria, there would be no ammonia production, essential for the basic building blocks of life, DNA, and amino acids. And there would be no oxygenic photosynthesis - essential for all advanced lifeforms.

If the days in Genesis one were ages ( or long periods of time ), there would be no production of the building blocks of cells to make plants and trees on day three, since Cyanobacteria were created on day six. For ages, there would be no production of life-essential amino acids, nor DNA, which depends on Cyanobacteria, and nitrogenase, a marvel of molecular engineering, and the nitrogen energy cycle. It had to kick-start all together, all at once.

Without Viruses, there would be no ecological balance of bacterias - and no life. Without bacteria, there would be no energy cycles. Without energy cycles, there would be no higher life-forms.

Ecology works like a pulsating vivid interdependent complex system together. The atmosphere, the plant world, microorganisms, and animals.

That is a clear SMACK-DOWN to the day-age hypothesis, sorry OEC guys... but science confirms God's word. He created it all in six literal days, of a normal 24h timespan - that's where I think, the evidence points to - show me better if you can.  

So, thank you very much. I am intellectually satisfied by not putting science and the Bible equal. I put God's word first because God NEVER lies. And he knows how to care about his word and to preserve its truth through the ages.

True faith does not doubt God's truthfulness and his word. Do you? Then let scientists struggle. Once they align with the biblical narrative, they will have it right.

Well tonight, as you know if you were here this morning, I'm going to begin a new series that I've been sort of working on for a long time, a series on origins. And I don't know how long this series is going to run exactly, I do know that I'm going to spend a little time on an introduction and then we're going to launch right into Genesis 1:1 and take the whole account of creation verse by verse, phrase by phrase and let the Lord unfold its significance to us.

Now I want to begin with a few sort of disclaimers, if I can, a few things that maybe you need to keep in mind. First of all, I'm not a scientist. I don't claim to be a scientist. Any teacher in my past whoever taught me science could stand up and testify to that fact. I am a theologian, I am a Bible teacher, I am a part-time philosopher, but I am not a scientist. And so, when it comes to those matters which are scientific, I have to basically move to somebody else and trust them as an authority where I am not an authority. This will not largely bea scientific study, in fact that's not our intent at all but it will be a study of the Scripture, a study of theology with a little bit of rationality thrown into it.

Secondly, I will not answer every question tonight. I know that what I don't say tonight is going to create questions, I will get to those questions as we move through the text of Scripture. I will deal with things like theistic evolution. I will deal with things like day-age theory, deal with viewpoints like progressive creationism as we go along, but we'll not be able to deal with all of that tonight. And I really do believe that you're going to find the answer to your questions about origins primarily from the text of Scripture. The issues such as progressive creationism, theistic evolution are really answered by the text itself. And so we're going to find our way through the text of Genesis chapter 1 into chapter 2 and therein we're going to secure the great answers to the questions that arise about origins.

But to begin with tonight I...I want to address the concept, I want to sort of set the picture in your mind as to the debate. This is critical for...for all of us and it is most critical for those who are students. If you are a junior-high student, if you are a high-school student, if you are a college or university student in any other than a distinctively Christian school, you are going to be given this indoctrination about evolution as if it were fact and you're going to find that what I'm going to be saying to you is contrary to just about everything you hear. We'll set the stage for that contrast tonight, and then we'll get into the text of Scripture and see how Scripture itself addresses popular evolutionary theory.

It is also important to all of us because understanding origins in the book of Genesis is foundational to the rest of the Bible. If Genesis chapter 1 and chapter 2 don't tell us the truth, then why should we believe anything else in the Bible? If it says in the New Testament that the Creator is our Redeemer, that God is not the Creator, then maybe He's not the Redeemer either. If it tells us in 2 Peter that God Himself will bring about an instantaneous dissolution of the entire universe as we know it, that God in a moment will uncreate everything, then that has tremendous bearing upon His power to create...the same One who with a word can uncreate the universe is capable of creating it as quickly as He desires.

So what we believe about creation, what we believe about Genesis has implications all the way to the end of Scripture, implications with regard to the veracity and truthfulness of Scripture, implications as to the gospel and implications as to the end of human history all wrapped up in how we understand origins in the book of Genesis. The matter of origins then is absolutely critical to all human thinking. It becomes critical to how we conduct our lives as human beings. Without an understanding of origins, without a right understanding of origins, there is no way to comprehend ourselves. There is no way to understand humanity as to the purpose of our existence, and as to our destiny. If we cannot believe what Genesis says about origins, we are lost as to our purpose and our destiny. Whether this world and its life as we know it evolved by chance, without a cause, or was created by God has immense comprehensive implications for all of human life.

Now there basically are only two options. You can either believe what Genesis says or not. And that is no over-simplification. Frankly, believing in a supernatural creative God who made everything is the only possible rational explanation for the universe, for life, for purpose and for destiny.

Now the divine equation given in the Bible in contrast to nobody times nothing equals everything, the divine equation is found in Genesis 1:1. "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth." I don't know how it could be said any more simply or more straightforwardly than that. Either you believe God did create the heavens and the earth or you believe He did not. Really those are the only two valid options you have. And if you believe that God did create the heavens and the earth, then you are left with the only record of that creation and that's Genesis 1 and you are bound to accept the text of Genesis 1 as the only appropriate and accurate description of that creative act.

So again I say, you're left really with two choices. You either believe Genesis or you don't. You either believe the Genesis account that God created the heavens and the earth, or you believe they somehow evolved out of random chance.

Looking at the account of Genesis 1:1 for just a brief moment, the words in that first verse are quite remarkable. They are indicative of the incredible mind of God. God says in that first verse everything that could have been said about creation and He says it in such few terms. The statement is precise and concise almost beyond human composition. 


A well-known scientist named Herbert Spencer died in 1903. He discovered that all reality, all reality, all that exists in the universe can be contained in five categories...time, force, action, space and matter. Herbert Spencer said everything that exists, exists in one of those categories...time, force, action, space and matter.

Now think about that. Time, force, action, space and matter. That is a logical sequence. And then with that in your mind, listen to Genesis 1:1. "In the beginning," that's time..."God," that's force, "created," that's action, "the heavens," that's space, "and the earth," that's matter. Everything that could be said about everything that exists is said in that first verse.

Now either you believe that or you don't. You either believe that that verse is accurate and God is the force or you believe that God is not the force that created everything. And then you're left with chance or randomness or coincidence.

the 19th-century English philosopher and sociologist Herbert Spencer wrote that, as regards the origin of the universe, three hypotheses are possible: self-existence (atheism), self-creation (pantheism), or creation by an external agency (theism). Spencer argued that it is "impossible to avoid making the assumption of self-existence" in any of the three hypotheses, and concluded that "even positive Atheism comes within the definition" of religion.


This is more than just a secondary issue. Someone wrote a letter to the president of the Promise Keepers, and I'm not particularly singling them out except that the illustration is so clear because of the response they wrote, asking them about their stand on the creation issue. The assistant to the president responded with this statement, quote: "You need to know that the ministry of Promise Keepers takes no stand on issues like this. In fact we specifically try to avoid such debates. Our efforts are designed to bring men together based on the historically essential doctrines of orthodox Christianity as represented by our Statement of Faith, or to focus on things that unite the body of Christ instead of those which tend to divide it. Since different churches and individual Christians hold varying views about creation, it is one of those things we believe falls under the category of secondary doctrines, secondary doctrines such as spiritual gifts, eternal security and the Rapture, etc. In short, when it comes to subjects like creation, we believe Christians need to extend grace to each other as summed up in the statement in essentials unity, in non-essentials liberty,in all things charity," end quote.

Now that's a pretty aggressive statement about the secondary nature of a belief in the Genesis account, isn't it? It doesn't address the issue that if you don't believe the book of Genesis you're not believing the Bible. I'm not trying to throw aspersions on that organization but simply to say that this is what is generally the view of the majority of Christian people. Whether the world was created by God or evolved by chance without cause has been debated a long time. It's been debated since Darwin. But the debate comes down to this, either you believe the Bible or you don't. Either you believe the book of Genesis or you don't. And if you don't believe the book of Genesis, then what do you believe? Well in most cases you believe in naturalistic evolution. There would be some who would be theistic evolutionists who would say well God sort of launched it all, but then evolution took over and they would deny that the Genesis account is accurate in saying that God created in six twenty-four days. Progressive creationists would essentially say the same thing that creation is not...did not occur as Genesis says but rather it was over long ages and God sort of progressively injecting Himself into the process did some creative work alongside the evolutionary process.

Those views, theistic evolution, progressive creationism, also deny the straightforward text of the book of Genesis. So I say again, you either believe Genesis or you don't. If you don't, you have some options. You can be a theistic evolutionist or you can be a naturalistic evolutionist. Among Christians there are some who are theistic evolutionists but among those who make up the unbelieving world they are naturalistic evolutionists. And so they are left with the incredible notion that nobody times nothing equals everything.

Douglas Kelley(?) who has written on this subject with great insight says, "There is no doubt that the biblical vision of man as God's creature whom He made in His own image has had the most powerful effect on human dignity, on liberty, on the expansion of the rights of the individual, on political systems, on the development of medicine, on every other area of culture. How different...he writes...from the humanistic viewpoint of man as merely an evolved creature, not made in God's image because there is no God. Such a premise has enabled the Marxist Totalitarian States conveniently to liquidate millions of their citizens because of the assumption that there is no transcendent person in whose image those citizens are created, no being to give those citizens a dignity and a right to exist beyond what the state determines," end quote.

This point has been explored at length by Baron Erik Von Kuehnelt Leddhin of Austria who may be the century's greatest scholar on questions of liberty and totalitarianism. He has written a very important book called Leftism Revisited From Dessau(?) and Marx to Hitler and Pol Pot which deals with those issues. And in it he shows that apart from the belief that mankind is created in the image of a transcendent God, the divinely derived dignity and liberty of human beings completely disappears. He says, "For the genuine materialists there is no fundamental, only a gradual evolutionary difference between a man and a pest, a noxious insect," end quote. And his conclusion is the issue is between man created in the image of God and the termite in human form.

He's right. We have two options. Either we evolved out of the slime and can be explained only in a materialistic sense, meaning that we are made of nothing but the material, or we have been created by God and made in His image in a heavenly pattern. And the debate is not just biological, that's what I'm trying to say, it's not just biological, it's moral and it's spiritual. The debate gets to questions about man's dignity, about man's nature in the image of the heavenly pattern, the image of God. It asks questions about the issue of control, who is sovereign in the universe, who is in control. It asks, "Is there a universal judge? Is there a universal moral law? Is there a lawgiver? Are people to live according to God's standard? Will there be a final assessment of how men and women live? Is there a final judgment?"

You see, these are the questions that evolution was invented to avoid. Evolution was invented to kill the God of the Bible not because evolutionists and materialists and naturalists didn't like God as creator, but because they didn't want God as judge. Evolution was invented in order to kill the God of the Bible, to eliminate the lawgiver, to eliminate the inviolability of His law, the binding standard for human thought and conduct. Evolution was invented to do away from universal morality and universal guilt and universal accountability. Evolution was invented to eliminate the judge and leave people free to do whatever they want without guilt and without consequences.

I mean, if we just kind of summed up these two alternatives, the materialistic view would say, "Ultimate reality is impersonal matter. No God exists."
The Christian view says, "Ultimate reality is an infinite, personal, loving God."
The materialistic view says, "The universe is created by chance, without any ultimate purpose."
The Christian view says, "The universe was lovingly created by God for a specific purpose."
The materialistic view says, "Man is the product of impersonal time, plus chance, plus matter. As a result, no man has eternal value or dignity nor any meaning other than that which is subjectively derived."
The Christian view says, "Man was created by God in His image and is loved by God. Because of this all men are endowed with eternal value and dignity. Their value is not derived ultimately from themselves, but from the source transcending themselves, God Himself."
The materialistic view of morality says, "Morality is defined by every individual according to his own views and interests. Morality is ultimately relative because every person is the final authority for his own views."
The Christian view says, "Morality is defined by God and immutable because it is based on God's unchanging, holy character."
The materialistic view says about the afterlife, "The afterlife brings eternal annihilation, or personal extinction for everyone."
The Christian view says, "The afterlife involves either eternal life with God, or eternal separation from Him. Either the glories of heaven, or the terrors of hell."

Now, folks, let me tell you something. Which of those views you take is not a secondary issue, it is a primary issue not only for science but for theology. How in the world can Christianity view those as secondary issues? This is the foundation of all truth.

Francis Schaeffer the apologist said, "If he had an hour to spend with a person on an airplane, a person who didn't know the Lord, he would spend the first 55 minutes talking about man being created in the image of God. And the last five minutes on the presentation of the gospel of salvation that could restore man to that original intended image."

Christianity does not begin with accepting Jesus Christ as Savior. Christianity begins in Genesis 1:1, God created the heavens and the earth for purpose and destiny which He Himself had determined. Understanding and believing the doctrine of creation in the book of Genesis is foundational in accepting, listen carefully, that the Holy Bible is to be taken seriously when it speaks to the real world.

People say, "Well, the book of Genesis is myth and legend and fantasy and allegory and tradition it doesn't really speak about real facts to the real world." Yes it does. The Word of God is to be taken seriously when it speaks to the real world on any and every subject. If we avoid dealing with what the Bible says about the creation of the material universe, then there is a tendency for our religion to be disconnected from the real world. There's a tendency to put Scripture in to some mystical category, to put Christianity in to some stained-glass closet, as Douglas Kelley puts it, that doesn't impact the space/time world.

You start out with the book of Genesis, tampering with the literal nature of that text and you have created a mystical approach to Scripture at the very launch point. The Scottish theologian James Denney(?) made this point in the late 1890's, I quote, "The separation of the religious and the scientific means in the end, the separation of the religious and the true, and this means religion dies among true men." You can't pick up the book of Genesis, take chapter 1 and say this is a fairy story, this is not real history, this is not reality, this does not reflect a real understanding of the real world in real space and real time without severe implications to the rest of the message of Scripture. The doctrine of creation as identified in the book of Genesis is foundational, it is where God starts His story. And you can't change the beginning without impacting the rest of the story and the ending. In the Bible God speaks and He speaks in Genesis 1:1 and says He created the heavens and the earth. He is the one who spoke in Genesis 1:1 and who speaks right through Scripture till its very end.

When you tamper with Genesis 1 you are tampering with the Word of the living God and you are taking the divine account of real creation in real space and real time and you're saying...It is not accurate, it is not legitimate, it is not the truth. That is a serious assault and it loosens up the Scripture from reality and divorces religion, the true religion, from reality. That is severe.

So evolution would love to do that. It would love to ungod God, it would love to strip Scripture of its veracity. It wants to reject God as lawgiver, judge, Savior. It wants to destroy the dignity of man as created in the image of God. And it gets pretty ridiculous, doesn't it? According to evolution man is quantitatively better than the animals, that is he has some features that animals don't have, but qualitatively he's not better. He has a bigger brain quantitatively but qualitatively he was not created in God's image. Therefore it is ethically wrong to violate the rights of other animals who are our literal brothers, evolutionarily speaking.

And we hear all that today, don't we, all the time? That infamous organization called PETA, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, their national director, Ingrid Newkirk made this famous statement, "A rat is a pig is a dog is a boy." No difference. All higher forms of life, a rat being a higher form of life in her view, are to be considered equal.

We have a funny organization called The Church of Euthanasia, believes that animal rights are superior to human rights. A representative from that organization, he told a TV audience, a national audience, and I quote: "If we're going to kill off species, let's kill humanity first because humans are only a minor species with a minor role to play in the overall diversity of nature," end quote.

And you've read it all. I've read animal rights groups that maintain eating meat is murder. Man is the tyrant species, killng cows is murder. And there was one who said that killing chickens is equal to the holocaust, perpetrated by the Nazis on the Jews. This kind of idiocy comes because these people really do believe that man is simply the end of an evolutionary series of chance occurrences that has no purpose and has no destiny and is not made in the image of God. He is not bearing any dignity beyond any other along the line in that evolutionary process.

And you know what? If evolution is true, you can't argue with them. We're just animals. We have just evolved. And their argument may be pretty valid. All of these animal rights advocates, writes Marvin Lubenno(?), who have expressed themselves publicly on the subject are evolutionists. According to evolution it's merely the luck of the draw that man has evolved the big brain. Had certain mutations not happened in our ancestors and instead happened in the ancestors of the chimpanzees we might be where they are, in the zoo, and they might be where we are. Hence, "I have no ethical right to use my superiority achieved purely by chance to violate the rights of other animals who through no fault of their didn't evolve the same abilities."

If man is only a animal, an accident of nature, a collection of chance mutations, then where is his meaning? Where is his dignity? Where is his absolute value? What is his purpose? Obviously he has none.

Now what evolution basically says is that over time by chance matter evolved into the entire universe. Jacques Monod won the...this is unthinkable...the Nobel Prize for biology and in his book Chance and Necessity he says this, "Man is alone in the universe's unfeeling immensity out of which he emerged by chance." That's the Nobel winning biologist. Chance alone is the source of every innovation. Chance alone is the source of all creation in the biosphere. He writes, "Pure chance absolutely free but blind is at the very root of the stupendous edifice of evolution." So Monod says it's just chance.


Noted evolutionist J.W. Burrow writes in his introduction to The Origin of Species, "Nature, according to Darwin, was the product of blind chance and a blind struggle and man, a lonely intelligent mutation, scrambling with the brutes for his sustenance. To some the sense of loss was irrevocable. It was as if an umbilical cord had been cut and men found themselves part of a cold passionless universe. Unlike nature as conceived by the Greeks, the enlightenment and the rationalist Christian tradition, Darwinian nature held no clues for human conduct and no answers to human moral dilemmas," end quote. I mean, man was just cut loose from any meaning whatsoever. He is a lonely intelligent mutation produced out of chance. He is protoplasm waiting to become manure. Now that is a far cry from being created in the image of God. This evolutionary idea not only strips man of his dignity and his meaning, this is more than just stupid, it is more than irrational, it is more than depressing, it is more than humiliating, it is more even then immoral. This evolutionary idea is deadly. And in our history, our recent history in western civilization, no one demonstrated the deadly character of this evolutionary idea better than Adolph Hitler and he was followed up by Joseph Stalin and all of those who massacred masses of people, millions of people, and committed genocide. At the bottom, at the base of their belief system and philosophy was evolution.

For example, Hitler saw in evolutionary theory the scientific justification for his personal view just the same as social Darwinists of the nineteenth century did for their terrible abuses. There's no question that evolution was behind all Nazi thought from beginning to the end. And yet few people were aware of that and Hitler even sucked up a quasi Christian commitment from the church of the state of his day. Eric Fromme wrote, "The religion of social Darwinism belongs to the most dangerous elements within the thoughts of the last century. It aides the propagation of ruthless national and racial egoism by establishing it as a moral norm. If Hitler believed in anything at all, then it was in the laws of evolution which justified and sanctified his actions and especially his cruelties." How does that work? Evolution is the survival of...what?...the fittest. Hitler was just playing out the evolutionary role. He was the fittest and so he massacred everybody else under the evolutionary thesis that he was perpetuating the strongest and he was aiding in the development of the super race. That was all born out of evolutionary theory. And Mein Kampf, My Struggle, was basically Hitler's evolutionary theory working its way out politically and was the justification for the destruction of the masses who threatened the continued evolution of the super race. In Mein Kamph Hitler wrote, "He who would live must fight. He who does not wish to fight in this world where permanent struggle is the law of life has not the right to exist. I do not see why man should not be just as cruel as nature. Nature likes bastards only a little," And finally he said, "All that is not of pure race in this world is trash." And so he destroyed the Jews, he destroyed the blacks, he destroyed the Gypsies and he was aiding natural selection and fulfilling the evolutionary biological dream.

The head of the Nazi Labor Front said that Hitler's massacres expressed, and I quote, "The highest and best in manhood." Julian Huxley, a biologist and evolutionist wrote Essays of a Humanist in 1964, said, "Evolution is the most powerful, most comprehensive idea that has ever arisen on earth." And you know what? He's right. It is the single, greatest, satanic lie the world has ever known cause it eliminates the need for a creator. People can avoid God all together, particularly the biblical God.

Darwin didn't care if you wanted to worship another god. I don't think Hitler cared if you wanted to worship another god, just not the God of the Bible, just not the God who created. When Darwin first published his Origin of the Species it was largely rejected by the scientific world of his day because they universally held to a belief in divine creation. There was no other rational explanation, you have effect, you have to have a cause. When he wrote Origin of the Species, of course it had critical reviews from the very outset. The scientific world was almost wholly against it. In later years, Thomas Huxley speaking of the year 1860 described the situation by saying, and I quote, "The supporters of Mr. Darwin's views were numerically extremely insignificant. There is not the slightest doubt that if a general council of the church scientific had been held at that time, we should have been condemned by an overwhelming majority."

It was a hard sell. Even Darwin had a hard time with it. If you read anything of Darwin's you find he's continually filling all his writings with tremendous doubts. For example, he says in the sixth chapter of his Origin of the Species, "Long before having arrived at this part of my work, a crowd of difficulties will have occurred to the reader. Some of them are so grave that to this day I can never reflect on them without being staggered." In his chapter on instinct he conceded such simple instincts as bees making a beehive could be sufficient to overthrow my whole theory. And to think he said that "The eye could evolve by natural selection seems, I freely confess, absurd in the highest possible degree." In his chapter on imperfections in the geological record he complained that the complete lack of fossil intermediates in all geological records was perhaps, quote, "the most obvious and gravest objection which can be urged against my theory." In other words, he was at least honest enough to admit that the thing didn't make any sense.

Darwin wrote that he was deeply conscious of his own ignorance. In his personal letters he wrote about having awful misgivings, of having deluded myself and devoted myself to a fantasy. But Darwin was determined to escape from a personal God at all costs. He said that. "I am determined to escape from design and a personal God at all costs." To the end of his life he was in that war, trying as he would to escape from God he never really could. And finally his emotional life atrophied under the strain of the battle, religious feelings disappeared and with it everything else, the world became cold and dead. And in the end Darwin apparently received a taste of his own medicine. He had deprived the universe of God and all meaning and so he had deprived himself of all meaning.

James Moore wrote a biography of Darwin called The Life of a Tormented Evolutionist. In some of his letters Darwin referred to his theory, quote, "As the devil's gospel." And even after he had sort of won the day because he did liberate men from the God of the Bible, he did free people to enjoy their sin without the thought of a judge, he had begun to win the battle but his psychological suffering was so profound, his physical symptoms continued. He was literally not only killing God for himself but killing God for everybody else. One writer says, "His life was one long attempt to escape from the church and to escape from God. It is this that explains so much that would otherwise be incongruous in his life and character."

So, let's just get the record straight here. This is all about getting rid of God...the God of the Bible, the authority of Scripture with its moral implications. And even Christian people who want to go to Genesis I don't believe have the liberty to tell us that Genesis 1 doesn't mean what it says. Why would we want to join forces with those whose effort is directly against the authority of the God of Scripture? Just...I just need to put that in perspective.

Now, for a few minutes I want to get a little philosophical. I think you'll enjoy this. In the end the evolutionist, the naturalistic evolutionist says, and even the theistic evolutionist says that things happen by chance...chance. We get rid of the God of the Bible, we get rid of the God of Genesis, we get rid of the Creator and then we've got chance. Now this is a pretty interesting thing to think about. I have read this word "chance" over and over and over again in reading the writings of these people and the myth that drives the whole evolutionary process, this entire unbiblical, irrational, immoral idea of evolution, the myth that drives it is the myth of chance...chance. Chance is the cause. In contemporary science, chance takes on new meaning. They don't want God to be the cause, but something has to be the cause so the cause is chance.

Now when I say the word "chance" we take it back to its etymology, it once was largely restricted to describing mathematical probability. Where we could say, "Well, if I go over there there's a chance I might see her because she may be coming this way." Or, "If I put this money in this account there's a chance this might happen and I'll make this amount of money." "If I...if I move into that community and begin to meet some people there's a chance there that I might develop some interest in my business." There's a mathematical probability. That's what chance basically used to mean. And then it kind of got broadened a little bit and it took on broader application to include any unpredictable event, any sort of probability no matter how remote or any coincidence no matter how seemingly impossible.


Chance doesn't exist, it's nothing...it's nothing. Chance is a word used to explain something else. But chance isn't anything. It's not a force. Chance doesn't make anything happen. Chance doesn't exist. It's only a way to explain something else. Chance didn't make you meet that person, you were going there when she was going there, that's why you met her. Chance didn't have anything to do with it because chance doesn't exist. It's nothing. But in modern evolution its been transformed into a force of causal power. It's been elevated from being nothing to being everything. Chance makes things happen. Chance is the myth that serves to undergird the chaos view of reality.

I mean, this is so fraught with problems from a rational or philosophical viewpoint you hardly know where to begin. How do you get the initial matter upon which chance operates? Where does that come? You would have to say, "Well, chance made it appear." You know what? This sounds so ridiculous and yet this is the undergirding philosophy behind evolution. It is completely incoherent and irrational. But the new evolutionary paradigm is chance. And it's the opposite of logic.

You see, when you abandon logic and logic says, "Oh, there's a universe. Hum...somebody made it." What else would logic say? "There's a building, somebody made it. There's a piano, somebody made it. There's a universe, more complex than a building, infinitely more complex than a piano, somebody...somebody who is very, very powerful and very, very intelligent made it."

You say, "No, no, chance made it." Listen, folks, that's rational suicide, that's not logical.

Logic abandoned leaves you with myth and the enemies of mythology, the enemies of mythology are empirical data and God-given reason. So in order to be an evolutionist and believe that chance makes things happen, you have to do two things: reject the empirical data, and be irrational. But if you love your sin enough, you'll do it. You see, if you can just eliminate the empirical data, the evidence, and get rid of God-given logic and those two things are the essence of pure science, if you can get rid of those things then mythology runs wild. And as one writer said, "Chance is the new soft pillow for science to lie down on." Arthur Kessler said, "As long as chance rules, God is an anachronism." If chance rules, God can't rule. Chance deposes God. The very existence of chance rips God from His sovereign throne.

If chance as a force exists even in the frailest form, God is ungoded...if there's such a word. The two are mutually exclusive. Either there is a God who created the universe, who sovereignly rules and sovereignly controls, or there's not. If chance exists, it destroys God's sovereignty. If God is not sovereign, then He's not God. If He's not God, then there is no God and chance rules. That's frightening.

But chance is not a force. Chance can't make anything happen. Chance isn't anything, it doesn't exist. It has no power to do anything because it isn't anything. Its impotent because it's nothing. It has no power because it doesn't exist. Are you getting it? Since chance doesn't exist, it can't produce anything. It can't be the cause of any effect. Yet modern evolutionists talk about chance all the time. It's just nothing but hocus-pocus. It's the oldest and most inviolable law of science, logic and reason. Any of you who ever took debate or studied any of the rational philosophers remember the statement, "Ex nihilo, nihilo fit(?)," out of nothing, nothing comes...and chance is nothing. This is rational suicide.

So when scientists attribute instrumental power to chance, listen carefully, they have left the domain of reason, they have left the domain of science. They have turned to pulling rabbits out of hats. They have turned to fantasy. And then all scientific investigation becomes chaotic and absurd because it can't really yield what it should yield because they won't allow it to. Today the absurdity of evolution goes largely unchallenged and all these universities and colleges, they keep pounding on this stuff. Every time I pick up a Newsweek or a Time magazine, I get another one of these wild kind of evolutionary articles, particularly because I read National Geographic, I'm exposed to that as well, and they keep trying to make us believe that chance exists as a force. That everything by chance spontaneously generated. Nobel laureate, George Wald, brilliant man, I quote him, "One has only to wait, time itself performs the miracles. Given so much time the impossible becomes possible, the possible probable, and the probable actually certain," end quote. What in the world is that? That is just double talk. That is absolutely meaningless. Self-creation is absurd no matter how much time because chance does not exist...it doesn't exist.

There's no explanation of the universe without God. I'll give you one little scientific illustration. Have you ever heard of quantum theory? Well, you've heard about a quantum leap. People say, "Somebody made a quantum leap." Let me tell you where that comes from. Quantum theory goes back to a scientist Max Planck who in 1900 presented the theory that energy comes in discreet units called quanta. I'm not going to take you too deep here cause I can't go too deep myself. But energy can be broken down into units and he said these units, these units, identifiable units are called quanta. In 1927 Werner Heisenberg(?), a German physicist, found that when a photon strikes an atom it boosts an electron into a higher orbit. And when that occurs the electron moves from the lower to the upper orbit, listen to this, simultaneously without having transversed the intervening space. That's a quantum leap. Let me say that again. When a photon hits an atom it boosts an electron to a higher orbit from the lower orbit simultaneously but it never transverses the space in between. What happens is the electron ceases to exist at one point and simultaneously comes into existence at the other point. This is the famous quantum leap. It goes out of existence and comes into existence simultaneously.

All the time...all the time in all the atoms all the time through all of created history it keeps doing that. By chance? To say it's a quantum leap doesn't explain it. There's only one thing that explains it and that is the ongoing creative power of God. He sustains the universe and its creation by keeping up all the necessary creative acts, even down to the level of an electron in an atom. He upholds all things, Hebrews 1, by the Word of His power.

I'm going to give you one more closing thought here. Well, I'll tell you what, I'll save it till next time. I'll save it till next time cause I don't want to get into it and then leave you somewhere between the lower and the upper. Now...I mean, I realize that some of this stuff is stretching your brain, and that's good, that's okay. We're going to do this one more time next Sunday night and then I'm going to explain how this has implications in the gospel and then we'll get into the actual text of the book of Genesis. Join me in prayer.

Father, as we contemplate these thoughts, as we endeavor to use the minds that You've given us which are evidence of the image of God in which we were made, we...we just pray that You would guide us so that we might understand just exactly how we are to think by using the Scripture and the reason that You've given to us. Protect us from any thought or any belief that would equivocate with Scripture, that would deny its straightforward statements. Protect us from any absurdity, any irrationality, any failure to use the minds that You've given us. And by Your Holy Spirit prompt us so that we might think as we ought to think. We grieve, O God, that man has sought to destroy you, sought to eliminate You as the Creator, such a dishonor to You is tragic, such a disgrace to those who do it is tragic and has eternal consequences and we grieve over the lostness of those who believe in evolution, we grieve over the meaninglessness, the emptiness of life that belongs to those who want to live any way they would like to live without guilt, without responsibility, without having to answer to a judge, without having a standard established for them. We grieve, Lord, because the consequence of such life, the consequence of such sin is eternal damnation. We would have no part with those who deny the Word, we would have no part with those who equivocate on Scripture but we want to take Your Word as You have given it to us, believing that what You said is exactly what You meant to say. And so, lead us, Father, as we contemplate these things to have a strong and a firm foundation in Your Word, to know You as our great Creator as well as our Redeemer. We'll thank You for the opportunity to know You better as our Creator and thus worship You as You should be worshiped. And we pray in Christ's name. Amen.

1) http://www.gty.org/resources/sermons/90-208

Is the Bible a book of science? Of course. The word is from Latin: Scientia or knowledge. The Bible is the foremost and only TRUE science book. It is the source of knowledge of reality, the foundation, and the grounding of it. It informs us in absolute terms about our origins, moral code, place in the world, the human condition, and God's plan of salvation.

It not only tells us how God made the heavens and the earth, namely through his Word,

John 1: 3
Through him all things were made; without him, nothing was made that has been made.

and his power:

Jeremiah 27:5
“I have made the earth, the men and the beasts which are on the face of the earth by My great power and by My outstretched arm, and I will give it to the one who is pleasing in My sight.

but also, how we can go to heaven:

Acts 16:30-31
Then he brought them out and said, “Sirs, what must I do to be saved?” And they said, “Believe in the Lord Jesus, and you will be saved, you and your household.”

Without God's revelation, we cannot know anything for sure and are doomed to stick to nihilism.

The Bible also contains the highest information/semantic content in world literature.

Genesis 1.1:
In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.

That informs us in one short sentence of our origins.

John 3:16
For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.

That informs us in one sentence of how we can be saved and receive eternal life.

Matthew 22:38
Jesus declared, “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’…

That informs us in one sentence of how we ought to live.

Whenever human scientific research agrees with the Bible, it is good science. Whenever it disagrees, more work is required, until it conforms with the Bible. Until then, scientists have not done their homework appropriately, or have yet to find evidence in nature, not found yet, that permits them to come to case-adequate conclusions.