Sermon Notes, July 27, 2014
Faith and Doubt—Faith and Science (Pt. 2), Isaiah 40:21-26
A lot of what has been written recently suggests that the rise of the scientific method and scientific
knowledge makes ideas of faith and belief in God obsolete, or undermines the credibility of the Bible. The
scientific method, some would say, is the only way to really know something. Therefore, they would say,
faith in God or belief in the supernatural is obsolete.
The questions we began with last week and will continue to look at together are:
Does the rise of science mean it no longer makes sense to believe in God?
Can you have faith in God and be utterly serious about and open to the findings of science?
That’s what we’re going to go after today. Last week I made two observations and this week I’ll conclude
this message with the third observation. A quick recap of last week.
1. First observation last week was this: I’m convinced that much of the supposed conflict between faith and
science in our day comes from a misreading of the Bible.
2. Observation #2 from last week: Science itself taps into a sense of mystery and wonder and a sense that
there is something about human existence that is beyond science itself.
There is something that seems to suggest that the universe (or the One who created the universe) had us in
mind.
In the last 40 years there has been a lot written about a dynamic that is called the “Anthropic Principle.”
This principle proposes that the universe seems to be “fine-tuned”—to be the kind of place that can
support life. Brandon Carter (the scientist who introduced this principle) said,
The more we learn from science, the more we find out that the universe in general, and the earth in
particular, is a remarkably special place, because so many things that would have to be exactly right in
order for life to arise are exactly right. So many laws, contingencies in biology and physics that would have
to be fine-tuned precisely are fine-tuned precisely.
I gave you a few examples of this from literally tons of them last week.
3.
Observation #3: The deepest questions of life cannot be answered by the scientific method.
According to the scientific method we make observations and generate a hypothesis. Then we test the
hypothesis, and, if it is confirmed, it might lead to a theory that can be empirically verified and so on.
That’s the scientific method—an amazing thing in its field.
To a large extent in our culture, in many educational circles and in much of the media, there is an
assumption that only the scientific method enables one to know something. Therefore, we’re told, we
cannot really know anything, for instance, about God.
The observation I propose here is that the deepest questions of life cannot be answered by the scientific
method. Yet, we must answer them in order to live. We’ve all got to live! Whether or not we do it
intentionally, formally, we all take a position on the questions:
Why are we here? What is our purpose? What should we do? How should we live?
Things like the “Big Bang” and natural selection and evolution try to explain how the mechanism of
change might take place, but they do not explain how existence springs from nothing. The real trick isn’t
changing one thing into another thing. The real trick is creating something out of absolutely nothing. That’s
the real trick.
We all want to know: Why are we here? That’s an interesting question. Sometimes there will be an
assumption that science can answer it, but I think, in a deep way, it cannot. Part of the question “Why are
we here?” is the question of origin: “How did we get here?” But a deeper part of that question is, “What
are we here for? What is our purpose? What is our meaning?”
I think it is a difficult thing—in fact I don’t understand how you could find a meaningful life in a
meaningless universe—but one possibility is that we live in a meaningless universe.
This is how Bertrand Russell, an atheist from a previous century, put it:
“In the visible world, the Milky Way is a tiny fragment. Within this fragment the solar system is an
infinitesimal speck, and the speck our planet is a microscopic dot. On this dot tiny lumps of impure carbon
and water complicated structure crawl about for a few years until they are dissolved again into the
elements of which they are compounded.”
That’s one view. Maybe the universe is a machine. That’s all it is—an accidental machine. And it will not
have made any difference in that day whether I loved my kids, or whether I beat them. We’re all just atoms.
But I don’t know anyone who lives consistently with that idea.
We have a hunger and thirst for meaning, and maybe part of the reason why we have this hunger and
thirst for meaning is that we were designed for it.
As I said last week, the foundation of all history is this sentence:
"In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth" (Gen. 1:1).
Therefore, we confess at the beginning of our creed: "I believe in God the Father almighty, maker of
heaven and earth." By this we mean that God created out of nothing everything that is not God. Nothing
but God the Son and God the Spirit is co-eternal with God. There is one God and therefore one ultimate
origin of all that is. "For from him and through him and to him are all things. To him be glory forever!"
(Rom. 11:36).
Paul writes in Romans 4:17 that "God calls into being things that are not as though they were."
"God commanded and they were created," the psalmist says (Psalm 148:5).
If you ever start to doubt the Word of God think on this: God can issue a command that is so powerful that
if nothing is there to obey, the word itself brings forth its own obedience through creation out of nothing.
If all that is not God came into being at the word of God, then it follows that every second of our
existence is owing to the word of God. The biblical teaching is that no creature has a principle of ongoing
existence in itself apart from God's perpetual preservation. Hebrews 1:3 says that Christ "reflects the glory
of God and bears the very stamp of his nature, upholding the universe by his word of power." If God
should ever cease to address your body and soul with the command, "Be!" you would cease to be. The only
barrier between you and nothingness is the word of God.
And when Isaiah (45:9) says, "Woe to him who quarrels with his Maker, to him who is but a potsherd
among the potsherds of the ground! Does the clay say to the potter, 'What are you making?' or 'Your work
has no handles?’” In other words, we all relate to God as creator just as much as if we had been the first
person made from the dust of the ground. We have been created by the all-preserving word of God and in
that we are as much clay in the potter's hand as was Adam.
So the biblical doctrine (or if you prefer the biblical picture of God) before us is this: God the Father,
through the agency of His eternal Son, created out of nothing all that is not God by His word of command,
and by that same word He upholds all things, so that the emergence of every new being is His peculiar
creation.
This universe is simply a masterpiece of wisdom and order. If you just take a part of it like the human
body—what an amazing work of knowledge and wisdom. Isaiah looks up at the star-filled sky in Isaiah
40:26. If Isaiah was stunned at the power of God to create and name and sustain every star in the heaven
that he could see, what would be his worship today if he were shown that the nearest of those stars in his
sky, Alpha Centauri and Proxima Centauri, are 25 million million miles away, and that what he was seeing
in his night sky was a tiny patch of our galaxy which has in it a hundred billion stars, and that beyond our
galaxy there are millions of galaxies?
The Bible says that behind everything there was a Creator. And He said, “Let there be light.”
And there was light. And it was good. And He created everything that was created! And it was a made out
of love. It was a gift of love. It was made for you and me. We’re to love it back, because He made it and we
love Him. And we want to take care of it, because it belongs to Him.
What is this universe but the lavish demonstration of the incredible, incomparable, unimaginable
exuberance and wisdom and power and greatness of God! What a God He must be!
God means for us to be stunned and awed by His work of creation. But not for its own sake. He means
for us always to look at His creation and say: If the work of his hands is so full of wisdom and power and
grandeur and majesty and beauty, what must this God be like in himself!! What will it be to see the
Creator himself? Not His works! Not even a billion galaxies will satisfy the human soul. God and God
alone is the soul's end. This is what Jesus taught.
You hunger for knowledge, because you were made that way.
You hunger for purpose, because you were made that way.
In Jesus, we find we are not an accident. Someone designed us. Someone designed you.
This is what Jesus taught, and you can come to know Him. That’s part of what we’ll talk about when
next we return to this.