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Beginnings: Exploring the Origins of Faith – Part 1
Creation
January 6, 2013
PLAY CREATION VIDEO
This morning we are going to embark on a new series I’m calling:
Beginnings: Exploring the Origins of Faith
In this series we are going to begin with the book of beginnings –
the book of Genesis.
It’s been rightly said that Genesis is foundational to the rest of
the Bible in the way that a floor is foundational to a building.
I agree with Henry Morris who says, “Without Genesis – the
rest of the Bible would be incomprehensible.”
Genesis provides answers to the big questions about life.
Questions such as:
 Where did we come from?
 Is there meaning and purpose to life?
 Are we created in the image of God, or are we
just a cosmic accident of nature?
The answers to these questions affect everything.
They determine whether or not there are such things as
absolute truth and morality, right and wrong; and whether
or not there is a God to whom we are ultimately
accountable.
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The question of origins is indeed crucial, prompting Charles
Colson to call the issue of origins “the most pivotal question
facing us today.”
He said, “To evangelize our culture we can no longer begin
with John 3:16. We’ve got to go back to Genesis.”
And so that is what we will be doing over the next weeks and
months.
To begin we will start at the beginning: Genesis 1:1
In the beginning God created the heavens and the
earth.
- Genesis 1:1
The Bible asserts that everything began with God.
This is important to note.
This tells us that life is not essentially about us.
Certainly the Bible describes man as the apex, the crowning glory
of God’s creation.
Only man is said to be created in the image and likeness of God.
No other created being has anything close to the intelligence, or
the kind of self-awareness man possesses.
The Bible teaches that man was created for relationship with God.
In this sense, man is unlike the rest of creation, though still a
part of the created order.
Only God, the Creator, stands apart from creation.
Everything begins with God.
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Genesis 1:1 not only begins with God, but shows God creating
everything that is.
In the beginning God created the heavens and the
earth.
- Genesis 1:1
The word created, is the Hebrew word bara – and it is a word
used to mean created out of nothing.
Now if you can believe this first verse in the Bible, that God
created all that is out of nothing, you should have no trouble
believing anything else in the Bible.
If God can create the world out of nothing – then He can do
anything.
And only God can bara – create out of nothing.
Everything else is “made;” that is shaped or formed out of
existing materials.
We might “make” a table out of wood, or “shape” a bowl out of
clay.
Only God can create Ex Nihilo, “from, or out of nothing.”
How does God create out of nothing?
The Bible shows Him speaking the world into being.
Genesis 1
The earth was without form, and void; and darkness was
on the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God was hovering
over the face of the waters. 3 Then God said, “Let there be
light”; and there was light.
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God spoke the universe and everything in it into being.
This is the consistent witness of Scripture.
Psalm 148
Praise Him, sun and moon;
Praise Him, all you stars of light!
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Praise Him, you heavens of heavens,
And you waters above the heavens!
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Let them praise the name of the Lord,
For He commanded and they were created.
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Hebrews 11:3 say,
By faith we understand that the universe was formed at
God's command, so that what is seen was not made out of
what was visible.
– Hebrews 11:3
Ever since God gave this revelation about creation to Moses, who
recorded it in Holy Scripture some 3,400 years ago, few believers
have had reason to question the Genesis account of creation.
But over the past 100 or so years, an alternate view of origins
has been put forth, causing even some believers to question the
Genesis account.
This alternative view of the origin of life began to gain traction
with the publication in 1859 of Charles Darwin’s book: On
The Origin of Species, in which he put forth the tenets of his
Theory of Evolution.
As recently as 100 years ago, it was forbidden to teach Darwin’s
Theory of Evolution in our public schools.
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Today, however, though evolution remains an unproven theory, it
is taught as fact in every public school in America.
Christians who do not subscribe to the theory of evolution are
often depicted as; ignorant, unthinking, backward, biased
religious zealots who are afraid of allowing their faith to be
challenged by modern science.
While it may be true that some Christians are afraid of having
their faith eroded by empirical scientific study, no thinking
Christian needs to fear science.
Since God created the material world, Christians should welcome
the scientific study of God’s creation.
As a matter of fact, the Christian worldview, which believes that
God created the world with natural laws and orderliness, is what
undergirds the entire scientific enterprise.
Men of faith like Sir Isaac Newton and Louie Pasteur have led the
way in scientific study.
There is no conflict with Christianity and Science itself.
Where conflict does exist, however, is in the area of Christianity
and scientific naturalism.
Naturalism is the belief that all phenomena can be
explained in terms of presently operating natural causes and
laws and that the world is a closed system without
involvement or interference from an outside source, such as
God or any kind of supernatural being.
In this system of thinking, anything that cannot be explained by
natural causes and known laws is rejected.
In naturalism, there is no place for God, or the
supernatural.
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So, while Christianity has no problem with science and the
scientific method, it does have a problem with a system of
thought that excludes the possibility of a Supreme Being.
For the past 100 years, our educational systems have become so
steeped in naturalism so as to have created a very strong bias
against belief in a Creator.
This anti-religious bias, as we shall see, is not based on solid
empirical evidence, or a convincing argument for a purely
naturalistic explanation for the origin of the Universe, but often
on a determined rejection of belief in a Supreme Being who
created all that is.
To this point I quote Dr. George Wald, who was a professor of
biology at Harvard University.
"When it comes to the origin of life, we have only two
possibilities as to how life arose. One is spontaneous
generation arising to evolution; the other is a supernatural
creative act of God. There is no third possibility...
Spontaneous generation was scientifically disproved one
hundred years ago by Louis Pasteur, Spellanzani, Reddy and
others. That leads us scientifically to only one possible
conclusion - that life arose as a supernatural creative act of
God...
I will not accept that philosophically because I do not want
to believe in God. Therefore, I choose to believe in that
which I know is scientifically impossible, spontaneous
generation arising to evolution."
- Scientific American, August, 1954.
George Wald (Nov 18, 1906 - April 12, 1997) was an American
scientist and Nobel Prize winner.
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Few men and women of science are so forthright in admitting
their anti-supernatural bias.
The fact is evolution is taught as fact though there is little in
science to support this theory.
We’re being fed such a steady diet of evolution today that many
people are accepting it without thinking it through.
William James said, “There is no idea so absurd but what if
it’s repeated often enough will eventually come to be
believed.”
News magazines, history museums, school textbooks, even
children’s cartoons are now insisting that we’re here by blind
chance, that somehow algae became apes or chimpanzees
became children.
As a Christian I don’t have a problem with a supernatural God
creating the world out of nothing.
Neither did the writers of the New Testament.
Every writer of the New Testament refers somewhere in his
writings to the first 11 chapters of Genesis.
There are at least 200 quotations or allusions to Genesis in the
New Testament.
In Mark 13:19 Jesus Himself refers to God having created the
world.
But because we live in a culture that has been led to believe in
naturalism and evolution, we need to examine the evidence, or
the lack thereof, in this theory.
I believe in the biblical account of creation because I believe the
Bible, but I also have problems with evolution for other reasons.
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For one thing:
 Evolution does not address the issue of the origin of
life
Evolution provides no explanation for how matter came into
existence, or how life came from non-life.
Though there is no record of life ever springing from non-life,
some evolutionists say that billions of years ago, perhaps the
conditions on earth were much different than today and that
some electrical storm caused an inanimate chemical mix to
receive the spark of life.
Even is such a thing were possible – evolution still does not
address the question of where the earth, or the chemicals or the
electrical storm came from.
Evolution has no answers for the origin of life – though some
evolutionists are postulating that perhaps life came to our planet
from another planet in another galaxy.
Well, where did the life on that other planet come from?
 The fossil record does not support evolution
If evolution has been taking place over millions of years, as the
evolutionists assert, then it seems there should be an abundance
of evidence in the fossil record to support this theory.
If lower forms of life graduated to higher forms, shouldn’t we
have all kinds of fossil evidence to verify that?
Shouldn’t there be hundreds of skeletons of missing links
between fish and mammals or between cows and horses or
something?
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This is not the case.
There is no evidence in the fossil record to support the notion of
one species evolving into another species.
"The extreme rarity of transitional forms in the fossil record
persists as the trade secret of paleontology. The evolutionary
trees that adorn our textbooks have data only at the tips and
nodes of their branches…
in any local area, a species does not arise gradually by the
gradual transformation of its ancestors; it appears all at once
and ‘fully formed.’"
- Dr. Stephen J. Gould, Harvard professor of biology and
geologyd, "Evolution’s Erratic Pace," Natural History 86,
May, 1977, p. 14.
There is simply no record of transitional forms in the fossil
record; no half dog-half cat, half horse-half cow, no half chimphalf man.
And yet, we hear trumpeted again and again of some find
somewhere that seems to support the theory of evolution.
Such as the July 23, 2001 edition of Time Magazine
which ran a cover story entitled,
“How Apes Became Human: What a new discovery
tells scientists about how our oldest ancestors stood
on two legs and made an evolutionary leap.”
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On the inside it read, “Meet your newfound ancestor, a
chimp-like forest creature that stood up and walked 5.8
million years ago.”
Wow, that sounds like a real breakthrough!
They found evidence of a chimp-like forest creature getting up
and walking like a man.
That must be some fossil!
The article goes on to describe the find that caused them to run
this as the cover story of this issue.
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Scientists are excited about discovering eleven bones from
at least five individuals they say are 5.8 million years old.
They uncovered a partial lower jaw and the piece differs in
shape from previous fossils, so they decided to classify the
new human ancestor as a “subspecies”.
One other factor was a toe bone that was discovered ten
miles away that they said was a few hundred
thousand years younger and that gave evidence of
upright walking, so they linked these bones together!
Time Magazine puts it on the front and says, “Meet your
ancestors.”
There’s such a dearth of evidence that they have to make it up.
William James was right when he said,
“There is no idea so absurd but what if it’s repeated
often enough will eventually come to be believed.”
- William James
In November 1999, National Geographic ran an article:
“Feathers On T-Rex: New birdlike fossils are missing links
in dinosaur evolution.”
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“It’s a missing link between terrestrial dinosaurs and
birds that could actually fly.”
Now that’s the feature article in National Geographic endorsed, I
think, by five PhDs.
But almost a year later, October 2000, on page 128, five
pages from the end of National Geographic, a retraction
was printed:
Last November the magazine trumpeted the fossils discovery
in an impoverished region of northeastern China as
providing a true missing link in the complex change that
connects dinosaurs to birds (and patted itself on the back for
helping fund the research), but two months later when it
turned out that the fossil had been artfully assembled from
parts of unrelated creatures, they said that it was a fraud.
Bill Allen, editor of National Geographic was shocked,
humiliated and furious.
Now why are they making it up?
Because there’s no fossil evidence to verify it.
They want to prove their agenda so badly.
Now the problem is that those kind of proven hoaxes are still in
textbooks across the country that people are teaching as facts.
This kind of sloppy science caused The New York Times to run
an article: “Biology text illustrates more fiction than fact.”
Evolution is being taught as fact when the fact is the evidence
simply does not support the theory.
Not every scientist, of course, is buying in to the theory of
evolution.
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In his book, The Case for a Creator, author Lee Strobel writes
this:
There were hundreds of them – biologists, chemists,
zoologists, physicists, anthropologists, molecular and cell
biologists, bioengineers, organic chemists, geologists,
astrophysicists, and other scientists.
Their doctorates came from such prestigious universities as
Cambridge, Stanford, Cornell, Yale, Rutgers, Chicago,
Princeton, Purdue, Duke, Michigan, Syracuse, Temple and
Berkeley.
Among them was the director of the Center for
Computational Quantum Chemistry and scientists at the
Plasma Physics Lab at Princeton, the National Museum of
Natural History at the Smithsonian Institute, the Los Alamos
National Laboratories and the Lawrence Livermore
Laboratories.
And they wanted the world to know one thing: they are
skeptical.
After spokespersons for Public Broadcasting System’s sevenpart television series Evolution asserted that “all known
scientific evidence supports Darwinian evolution” as does
virtually every reputable scientist in the world,” these
professors, laboratory researchers, and other scientists
published a two-page advertisement in a national magazine
under the banner:
“A Scientific Dissent from Darwinism.”
“We are skeptical of claims for the ability of random
mutation and natural selection to account for the
complexity of life. Careful examination of the evidence
for Darwinian theory should be encouraged.”
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These were not narrow-minded fundamentalists, or rabid religious
fanatics – just respected, world-class scientists like Nobel
nominee Henry F. Schaefer, the third most-cited chemist in the
world, among others.
(The Case for the Creator, Lee Strobel p. 36-37)
I’m not a scientist, but I have my doubts about evolution, too –
and so should you, if you simply look at the evidence, or the lack
thereof.
I believe the Genesis account of creation because:
 Genesis presents a logical account of origin
Reason concludes it.
It’s just common sense that if you’ve got a creation you’ve got a
creator.
Order does not spring from disorder.
Complexity does not come from simplicity.
When primitive drawings are found in an obscure cave,
there’s an immediate and unanimous conclusion: Some intelligent
life had been in that cave.
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Those etchings did not occur by random chance; they are
evidence of an intentional design.
Now the human body is a trillion times more complex than
stick figures etched on the wall of a cave.
I’ve read that if you uncoiled all the information contained in a
single human cell that it would fill a library of 4,000 books!
The human body, the universe is incredibly complex and also
finely tuned so as to sustain life.
Evolutionists would have us believe that it all happened by pure
chance.
That would be like finding an iPad in the woods and thinking it
had just evolved!
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Or let’s say you spend the night at a hotel.
In the morning you get up and go to breakfast.
When you return to your room you find the bed is made, there
are fresh towels in the bathroom and there is one of those paper
loops around the toilet seat that let you know the toilet seat has
been cleaned.
What do you conclude?
The maid was here.
Beds don’t make themselves.
Towels don’t wash and fold themselves.
Toilets don’t wash themselves.
Order does not spring from disorder.
Now, let’s say you are a skeptic.
You don’t believe in maids.
So you convince yourself that maybe the bed did make itself.
Maybe when you tossed the towels into the bathroom they just
happened to fall on the towel rack in a neat, folded position.
And maybe you managed to make it through the night and the
next morning and you never went to the bathroom and so never
removed that little paper loop from the toilet seat.
But then you look on the top of the dresser and there is a hand
written note from the maid that says:
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I made up your room. If you need more fresh towels
just call housekeeping and we’ll be happy to supply
you with more.
Have a nice day,
The maid
Would you still not believe that a maid “made” the bed?
Some choose to deny the obvious and persist in believing in a
theory that is yet unproven.
It’s this kind of obstinacy that caused Paul to write in Romans 1:
Romans 1:
For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all
ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who suppress the
truth in unrighteousness, 19 because what may be known of
God is manifest in them, for God has shown it to them.
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For since the creation of the world His invisible attributes
are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are
made, even His eternal power and Godhead, so that they
are without excuse,
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because, although they knew God, they did not glorify Him
as God, nor were thankful, but became futile in their
thoughts, and their foolish hearts were darkened. 22
Professing to be wise, they became fools…
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In the time we have left, I want to share with you one more
reason I believe the Biblical account of Creation.
 The Bible and science affirm a beginning
Genesis 1:1 says, “In the beginning God created the heavens and
the earth.”
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For many years evolutionists and naturalists have stated that the
universe has always existed.
They said there was no beginning.
Everything that is – always was.
Or in the words of Carl Sagan:
“The cosmos is all that is, was or ever will be.”
But some 3400 years ago Moses, under the direction of the Spirit
of God wrote: “In the beginning God created…”
Much of what I am about to share comes from the bestselling
book, “What’s So Great about Christianity?” by Dinesh
D’Souza.
D’Souza writes:
In a stunning confirmation of the book of Genesis, modern
scientists have discovered that the universe was created in a
primordial explosion of energy and light.
The story begins about a century ago, as scientists began to look
for evidence that our universe – not just our planet or our galaxy
but all matter that exists – had a beginning.
The reason for the search is that one of the most universal laws
of physics, the second law of thermodynamics, predicts such a
beginning.
The law simply states that, left to themselves, things break down.
We see this all around us; highways and buildings decay and
collapse, people age and die, metals rust, fabrics become
threadbare, rocks and coastlines suffer erosion.
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Scientists use the term entropy as a measure of the level of
disorder, and the second law shows that the total entropy in the
universe is continually increasing.
The second law has a startling implication.
Consider the example of the sun.
As time passes its fuel reserves decline, so that eventually the
sun will run out of heat and go cold.
But this means the fires of the sun must have been ignited at
some point.
The sun has not been burning forever.
And this is also true of other stars.
They too are gradually burning out, suggesting that they too were
set aflame some time ago.
As the great English astronomer Arthur Eddington once put it, if
the universe can be compared to a clock, the fact that the clock is
continually running down leads to the conclusion that there was a
time when the clock was fully wound up.
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The universe originated with its full supply of energy and that is
the fund that has been dissipating ever since.
These facts were known as far back as the eighteenth century,
but scientists didn’t know what to make of them.
In the early twentieth century Albert Einstein published his
equations of general relativity and a Dutch astronomer, Willem
de Sitter, found a solution to them that predicted an expanding
universe.
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This, too, was a highly significant prediction because if the
universe has been expanding and if galaxies are moving farther
apart, this implies that in the past they once were closer
together.
If the universe has been “blowing up” for the duration of its
existence, that means that it must have an actual beginning.
Einstein, who didn’t realize that his equations suggested an
expanding universe, was distressed to hear about this implication
of his famous theory.
When Russian mathematician Alexander Friedmann tried to
persuade him, Einstein sought to prove Friedmann wrong.
In fact, Einstein was wrong.
The great physicist was, by his own account “irritated” by the
idea of an expanding universe.
He went so far as to invent a new force, the “antigravity” force,
as well as a number called the “cosmological constant,” to try to
disprove the notion of a beginning.
Later Einstein admitted his errors and called his cosmological
constant the biggest mistake of his life.
In the late 1920’s, astronomer Edwin Hubble, peering through
the hundred-inch telescope at Mount Wilson Observatory in
California, observed through the “red shift” of distant nebulae
that galaxies were moving rapidly away from each other.
The impression that many people had long held of the stillness
and changelessness of space was an illusion.
Hubble noticed that planets and entire galaxies were hurtling
away from one another at fantastic speeds.
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Hubble’s findings, subsequently confirmed by numerous others,
generated great excitement in the scientific community.
Scientists realized right away that the galaxies were not flying
apart because of some mysterious force thrusting them away
from each other.
Rather, they were moving apart because they were once flung
apart by a primeval explosion.
Extrapolating backward in time, all the galaxies seem to have had
a common point of origin.
Scientists projected a moment in which all the mass of the
universe was compressed into a point of infinite density.
The entire universe was once smaller than a single atom.
Then in a single cosmic explosion – the Big Bang – the universe
we now inhabit came into existence.
“The universe was filled with light,” Steven Weinberg writes.
In fact, “It was light that then formed the dominant constituent of
the universe.”
(This, by the way, agrees with Genesis 1:3 which says,
“Then God said, let there be light” and there was light.”
It isn’t until verse 14 of Genesis 1 that we see the creation
of the sun.
Christians have long struggled with this apparent
“mistake” in the Bible - but it turns out there is no
mistake. The Bible was right all along – light preceded the
creation of the sun).
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The temperature at the moment of the Big Bang was about a
hundred trillion degrees Centigrade.
Then, in a process vividly described by Weinberg in his book, The
First Three Minutes, the first protons and neutrons began to form
into atoms.
Once matter was formed, gravitational forces began to draw it
into galaxies and then into stars.
Eventually heavier elements like oxygen and iron were formed
and gave birth to our solar system and our planet.
Crazy though it may seem, our terrestrial existence, indeed the
very matter of which we are made, owes itself to a “creation
event.”
(This comes – not from theologians – but from scientists).
This theory of an expanding universe was consistent not only with
the second law of thermodynamics but also with Einstein’s theory
of relativity.
Astronomer John Barrow calls Hubble’s finding of an expanding
universe “the greatest discovery of twentieth-century science.”
Even so many scientists were visibly upset by the concept of a
Big Bang.
Like Einstein, other prominent scientists began to advance
theories that would eliminate the need for a beginning.
They worked very hard to find a credible way for the universe to
have existed forever.
Astronomers Herman Bondi, Thomas Gold and Fred Hoyle
advanced what became known as the “steady state” universe.
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Basically, Bondi, Gold and Hoyle hypothesized that as energy
burns up over time, new energy and new matter are somehow
created in intergalactic space.
So, despite entropy and the second law of thermodynamics,
everything remains in balance and on an even keel, and thus it is
possible that the universe has always existed as a sort of
perpetual motion machine.
As late as 1959, this view commanded the support of two-thirds
of astronomers and physicists.
The implications of a steady state theory, its advocates freely
conceded, were largely atheistic.
If the universe has always existed, then no one created it.
It has simply been there all along.
In the 1960’s however, the steady state theory suffered a
devastating blow when two radio engineers making use of a large
communications antenna owned by Bell Labs, Arno Penzias and
Robert Wilson kept hearing a constant background noise – a
steady, steamy hiss that made any experimental work
impossible.
The noise was unrelenting and unfocused.
It came from every point in the sky, day and night, through every
season.
For a year the young astronomers did everything they could think
of to track it down and eliminate the noise.
They tested every electrical system.
They rebuilt instruments, checked circuits, wiggled wires, dusted
plugs.
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They climbed into the dish with brooms and scrubbing brushes
and carefully swept it clean of what the referred to as “white
dielectric material,” or what is commonly known as bird poop.
Unknown to them, just thirty miles away at Princeton University,
a team of scientists was working on how to find the very thing
Penzias and Wilson were trying so diligently to get rid of.
Penzias and Wilson soon learned that scientists had been
predicting that, if the universe began in a single explosion…, then
some of the radiation from that fiery blast would still be around.
It was this radiation – coming now in the form of microwaves that
was creating the persistent hiss.
What Penzias and Wilson had discovered was the ghostly whisper
from the original moment of creation.
This cosmic background radiation is something we have all
experienced.
Tune your television to any channel it doesn’t receive and about 1
percent of the dancing static you see is accounted for by this
ancient remnant of the Big Bang.
The next time you complain there is nothing on TV, remember
you can always watch the birth of the universe.
For their “discovery” Penzias and Wilson received the 1978 Nobel
Prize in physics.
The Princeton researchers got only sympathy.
(A Short History of Nearly Everything by Bill Bryson P. 1112)
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In his book God and the Astromers, Robert Jastrow argues
that the reason several leading scientists were troubled by the
notion of a big bang is because, if true, it would imply that there
was a “moment of creation” in which everything – the universe
and its laws – came into existence.
Scientists call the starting moment of the universe a “singularity,”
an original point at which neither space nor time nor scientific
laws are in effect.
Nothing can be known about what came before such a point.
Indeed the term before has no meaning since time itself did not
exist “prior to” the singularity.
Once upon a time there was no time.
Jastrow’s implication was that such concepts, which border on the
metaphysical, give scientists a very queasy feeling.
If the universe was produced outside the laws of physics, then its
origin satisfies the basic definition of the term miracle.
This term gives scientists the heebie-jeebies.
Scientists have, sometimes reluctantly, endorsed the conclusion
of a supernatural beginning to the universe.
Arthur Eddington, who finally conceded the veracity of the Big
Bang, acknowledged that “the beginning seems to present
insuperable difficulties unless we agree to look at it as frankly
supernatural.”
Astronomer Robert Jastrow puts it even more vividly, “For the
scientist who has lived by his faith in the power of reason, the
story ends like a bad dream. He has scaled the mountains of
ignorance; he is about to conquer the highest peak. As he pulls
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himself over the final rock, he is greeted by a band of theologians
who have been sitting there for centuries.”
Lee Strobel, in his book, “The Case for the Creator,” writes
about one scientist who after spending half a lifetime looking at
the evidence made a giant shift in his beliefs.
Allan Rex Sandage, the greatest observational cosmologist in
the world – who has deciphered the secrets of the stars, plumbed
the mysteries of quasars, revealed the age of globular clusters,
pinpointed the distances of remote galaxies, and quantified the
universe’s expansion through his work at Mount Wilson and
Palomar observatories – prepared to step onto the platform at a
conference in Dallas.
As he approached the stage at this 1985 conference on science
and religion, there seemed little doubt where he would sit.
The discussion would be about the origin of the universe, and the
panel would be divided among those scientists who believed in
God and those who didn’t, with each viewpoint having its own
side of the stage.
Many of the attendees probably knew that the ethnically Jewish
Sandage had been a virtual atheist even as a child.
So Sandage’s seat among the doubters was a given.
Then the unexpected happened.
Sandage set the room abuzz by turning and taking a chair among
the theists (those that believed in the existence of God).
Even more dazzling, in the context of a talk about the Big Bang
and its philosophical implications, he disclosed publicly that he
had decided to become a Christian at age fifty.
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The Big Bang, he told the rapt audience, was a supernatural
event that cannot be explained within the realm of physics as we
know it.
He would later tell a reporter:
“It was my science that drove me to the conclusion that the
world is more complicated than can be explained by science.
It was only through the supernatural that I can understand
the mystery of existence.”
- Allan Rex Sandage
At the same conference, prominent Harvard astrophysicist
Own Gingerich also stated that:
“The Big Bang seems to fit best into a theistic
worldview.”
- Own Gingerich
All of this leads to the question:
If modern science is on the side of the biblical account of
the origin of the universe – why do so many scientists and
philosophers continue to posit a world without a Creator?
I believe the answer to this question is found in Psalm 10:13
and is addressed in the latter part of Paul’s message in Athens.
First, Psalm 10:13:
Why do the wicked renounce God?
He has said in his heart,
“You will not require an account.”
– Psalm 10:13
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I believe the biggest reason many scientists, philosophers and
atheists in general renounce belief in God is because without a
God there is no final accountability.
Many choose not to believe in a God who created all that is –
because if there is a Creator – One to whom we owe our very
existence – there is the distinct possibility that we are ultimately
accountable to that Creator.
In a rare moment of frankness, atheist philosopher
Thomas Nagel makes this admission:
I want atheism to be true and am made uneasy by the fact
that some of the most intelligent and well-informed people I
know are religious believers.
It isn’t just that I don’t believe in God and, naturally, I hope
that I’m right in my belief.
It’s that I hope there is no God!
I don’t want there to be a God; I don’t want the universe to
be like that.”
– Thomas Nagel
(From The God Question by J.P. Moreland)
The famous atheist Aldous Huxley made an even bolder
admission:
I had motives for not wanting the world to have meaning;
consequently I assumed that it had none, and was able
without any difficulty to find satisfying reasons for this
assumption…
For myself, as no doubt for most of my contemporaries, the
philosophy of meaninglessness was essentially an
instrument of liberation.
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The liberation we desired was…liberation from a certain
system of morality. We objected to the morality because it
interfered with our sexual freedom.
– Aldous Huxley
“Why do the wicked renounce God?” asks the Psamist?
“He has said in His heart, ‘you will not require an
account.’” Comes the answer.
People don’t want there to be a God – because they don’t want
there to be final accountability for their actions.
Note how Paul in his address to the Athenians links the
idea of a God who created everything – with this theme of
final accountability.
Acts 17
“God, who made the world and everything in it, since He is
Lord of heaven and earth, does not dwell in temples made
with hands. 25 Nor is He worshiped with men’s hands, as
though He needed anything, since He gives to all life,
breath, and all things.
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And has made from one blood every nation of men to
dwell on all the face of the earth, and has determined their
preappointed times and the boundaries of their dwellings,
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so that they should seek the Lord, in the hope that they
might grope for Him and find Him, though He is not far from
each one of us; 28 for in Him we live and move and have our
being, as also some of your own poets have said, ‘For we
are also His offspring.’
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Therefore, since we are the offspring of God, we ought
not to think that the Divine Nature is like gold or silver or
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stone, something shaped by art and man’s devising. 30
Truly, these times of ignorance God overlooked, but now
commands all men everywhere to repent,
because He has appointed a day on which He will judge
the world in righteousness by the Man whom He has
ordained. He has given assurance of this to all by raising
Him from the dead.”
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If you need further proof that God created all that is – He
demonstrated his power over nature when He raised Jesus from
the dead.
The Bible may not answer every question about science, about
creation.
I agree with Galileo who said:
“The Bible isn’t a book that tells us how the heavens go, it’s
a book that tells us how to go to heaven.”
And that it does very well.