Christian University?
Christian Science?
Breakin’ down the wall
Worldviews of faith and education
(10 mins)
Your thoughts (5 mins)
Application of worldviews in the science
classroom. (15 mins)
Leave you alone…or
Hear more of your thoughts
How big is the wall?
Depends on your Christian
worldview.
1.Against/conflict
2.Paradox
(dualist)
1919-1962
3.Transformation/
conversionist
Christ against Culture
For the wisdom of this world is foolishness
with God. 1 Co. 3:19
Because you do not belong to the world, but
I have chosen you out of the world –
therefore the world hates you. Jn 15:19
My kingdom is not of this world. Jn 18:36
Do not love the world or anything in the
world. The love of the Father is not in those
who love the world. 1 Jn 2:15
Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean
not on your own insights. Pr 3:5
Against leads to isolation
or separation…
Quality education in a
Christian setting
Spiritual
Dualist
World
Christ and Culture in paradox
You are the salt of the earth…
You are the light of the world. Mt. 5:13,14
…go and make disciples of all nations,
baptizing them…Mt. 28: 19
Work in the world so that our tithe may support the
missionaries.
Must do excellent work so that our colleagues will
respect us when we offer our Christian witness.
Your work place is your mission field.
Even the most tedious, lousy job, can have
opportunity to witness during coffee breaks, etc.
Take it to the limit…..
If all the world were reached
with the Christian message?
Then would there be value to
work?
If Adam hadn’t sinned?
Then would we work, study
engineering, economics,
science, and have careers in
these fields?
Else, would we be sitting
around singing hymns and
swinging in our hammock?
At these limits we have the dualists catastrophe.
The model doesn’t work.
R.G. LeTourneau says…
Now I ask you, what’s the use of having a
religion that won’t work? If I had a
religion that limped along during the
week, and maybe worked only on
Sunday, or while you’re in church, I don’t
think I’d be very sold on it. I think I’d turn
it in on a new model that worked seven
days a week, that would work when I was
at church, at my home, or out at the plant.
R.G. LeTourneau: Mover of Men and Mountains, p. 203
Spiritual
World
Educational Philosophy (LeTourneau University College Catalog)
… all truth is regarded as God-given and is considered
sacred. It should be pursued with diligence and received with
humility.
http://www.letu.edu/academics/catalog/tu2003/perspective/philosophy.html
Christ transforms Culture
For by Him all things were created: things in heaven and on
earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or
rulers or authorities; all things were created by Him and for
Him. Col 1:16
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. For God did not send His son into the world to condemn
the world but to save the world through Him. John 3: 16-17
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and
the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning.
Through Him all things were made; without Him nothing was
made that has been made. John 1:1-3
For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities-His
eternal power and divine nature-have been clearly seen,
being understood from what has been made, so that men are
without excuse. Romans 1: 20
R.G. agrees….
When He created the world
and everything in it, He didn’t
mean for us to stop there and
say, “God, You’ve done it all.
There’s nothing left for us to
build.” He wanted us to take
off from there and really build
for His greater glory.
R.G. LeTourneau: Mover of Men and Mountains, p. 1
Intermission
• Comments?
• Discussion?
Our worldviews
influence our
science.
Our science
influences our
world views.
Ptolemaic Solar
System:
Worldview:
Earth was at the center of
the universe.
Planets went around the
earth in perfect circles.
Stars were motionless.
Copernican
Solar System
A sun centered solar system defied the
worldview of an earth centered system.
But still held to a worldview of perfect
circles.
Keplerian
Solar System
A sun centered solar system defied the
worldview of an earth centered system.
Elliptical orbital defied the worldview of
perfect circles.
Mercury
Venus
Earth
Mars
Jupiter, across Green street
Pluto, more than a kilometer away
The nearest solar system?
Alpha Centauri, 4400 miles away, in the middle of the Pacific Ocean
So what?
This model of the solar system implies that
the earth is not the center of everything.
The earth is insignificant compared to the
sun, and the sun is one insignificant star
among billions and billions of stars.
How could we be important to God, if God
saw us as such an insignificant layer of
slime on an insignificant hunk of rock
going about an insignificant star?
Not only are we insignificant in space, we
are also insignificant in time.
Contrasting Elements of Worldviews
Science
support by reason
consistent physical laws
process of creation
The Wall
Christian
accept by faith
divinely inspired
instantly mature
creation
by an imminent God
with a purpose and
destiny for our lives
of a materialistic universe
without a purposeful destiny
In life, Sue must have cast an imposing figure. She stood some 13
feet high at the hip, and measured 42 feet from head to tail. Her
five-foot-long skull contained 58 vicious teeth. There were some
features, however, which suggest she was as much prey as
predator, for Sue bore wicked battle scars. During some past
encounter, Sue had broken several ribs. In time they had healed
over, leaving visible abnormalities. But a subsequent encounter
had broken them a second time.
But according to a straight-forward reading of Scripture there was
no death in the beginning, no carnivorous activity, no burial, no
fossilization. There was no pain, no suffering. No animal attacks,
no infectious diseases, no broken bones.
So that's the question. Did Sue live and kill and suffer and die in a
world deemed "very good" by the gracious, loving God of
Scripture? Or, did these gruesome aspects and activities follow
the ruination of the "very good" creation by Adam's sin and the
resultant curse?
Which type of world could God call "very good"?
Conflict
Surely some things just can't be. (emphasis added)
by John D. Morris, Ph.D.
Institute for Creation Research
•Conflict
•Independence
‘Science gets the ages of rocks, religion
the rock of ages.
Science studies how the heavens go,
religion determines how to go to heaven.’
•Dialogue
•Integration
When I consider the heavens,
Gaseous
the work of your fingers,
Pillars in
the moon and the stars
that you have set in place,
M 16
what is man that you are mindful of him? Hubble
Space
Telescope
- David, King of Israel, Psalm 8:3
The size of the universe does not diminish
our significance to God, but adds wonder to
the knowledge that God is mindful of us.
For he knows how we are formed, he remembers
that we are dust.
As for man, his days are like grass, he flourishes like
a flower of the field; the wind blows over it and it is
gone, and its place remembers it no more.
But from everlasting to everlasting the Lord’s love is
with those who fear him.
Psalm 103:14-17
With the Lord, a day is like a thousand years, and a thousand
years are like a day.
box
2 Peter 3:8
dot
top
inflated
side
unrolled
line
rectangle
The Illusion of Time
3-D cube seen
instantaneously
in time
3-D cube seen in all time
What we see as a choice in time from our perspective might
be seen by God as having been. Maybe the Arminians and
the Calvinists were both right?
Does God allow choice and randomness?
Would you have been blessed if you had gone to a different
college?
Can bad things happen to good people?
Might there be multiple paths that a person may take in life
and still have God’s destiny before him?
He causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and
sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous. Matt
5:45
Neither this man nor his parents sinned, but this happened
so that the work of God might be displayed in his life
John 9:3
And we know that in all things God works for the good of
those who love him, who have been called according to
His purpose. For those God foreknew he also
predestined to be conformed to the likeness of his Son.
Romans 8:28-29
What of life forms?
Is ours the only soulful life form that might have
been?
Would it matter if we had six fingers on each
hand?
Are the natural process involved in the evolution
of stars, planets, and galaxies paralleled in
natural processes involving the evolution of life
forms?
Is the universe expressing itself through natural
processes that God enabled?
What of the universe?
Is ours the only universe that might have been?
Does God allow us and the universe different
choices?
Might the universe have chosen a different path
leading to different planets and different solar
systems?
(Y(x))2 gives the probability
of finding the particle at any
location, x.
If the Y(x) collapses to a single
value, then we know 100% the
position, but nothing of the
momentum, as the wave is lost.
Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle
Process of
making and filling
1. Day and night
2. Sky above, waters
below
3. Land and sea
4. Sun, moon, and
stars
5. Birds and sea
creatures
6. Land animals and
man
Notice the inclusion of all time, space, and things
contained within
The Problem of Pain C.S. Lewis
From the doctrine that God is good we may confidently deduce
that the appearance of reckless Divine cruelty in the animal
kingdom is an illusion.. p. 133
The
origin
of animal
suffering
could be before
traced by
earlier
But,
what
of pain
and suffering
the
fall?
generations,
to thesuffering
Fall of man-the
whole
world
was infected by
Could
pain and
be part
of the
process?
the uncreating rebellion of Adam. This is now impossible, for
we have good reason to believe that animals existed long
before men. p. 137
It seems to me therefore a reasonable supposition, that some
mighty created power had already been at work for ill on the
material universe, or the solar system, or at least the planet
Earth, before ever man came on the scene. p. 138
At least one respected Christian apologist allows for the
presence of pain and suffering before the fall.
A world containing significantly free persons making choices
between moral good and evil and choosing a significant
amount
of moral
is superior
a world
lackingTheology?
Maybe
thesegood
ideas
fit well to
with
Christian
significantly free persons and moral good and evil.
Al Plantinga, The Free Will Defense
If the free will defense works in explaining why God might permit
the existence of moral evil, then it also provides an explanation of
why God might bring about the existence of much natural evil.
A universe in which we could entertain a free-process defense,
would be one in which there could be people to whom the free-will
defense could be applied.
Reichenbach and Polkinghorne, The Free-Process Defense
Try to exclude the possibility of suffering which the order of
nature and the existence of free-wills involve, and you will find
that you will have excluded life itself.
C.S. The Problem of Pain
Contrasting Elements of Worldviews
The Wall
Christian
accept by faith
divinely inspired
instantantly mature
creation
by an imminent God
with a purpose and
destiny for our lives
Science
support by reason
consistent physical laws
process of creation
materialistic universe
without a purposeful destiny
Christian Science
accept by faith and support by reason, a divinely
inspired process of creation, consistent with physical
laws, by an imminent God with a purpose and destiny
for our lives
Spiritual
World
Christian University?
Is this what R.G. had in mind?
Thousands of students will go
out to witness to the fact that
every vocation is sacred when
Christ lives in the life of the
worker. (or scientist)
-parenthetic added
Nels E. Stjernstrom
R.G. LeTourneau: Mover of Men and Mountains, In
Memorium, p. 285
LeTourneau Students!
Tear down this Wall!
Remove barriers that prevent God’s love from embracing all of
us in all that we do.
Find a calling in any activity of this God-given life.
Read the writings of God’s special and cultural revelations.
Revelations that point to a need for God’s redeeming love in
all of our created world by breakin’ down the wall..
Bibliography
Holy Bible, NIV
H.R. Niebuhr, Christ and Culture
R.G. LeTourneau, Mover of Men and Mountains
R. DeWitt, Worldviews, An introduction to the History and Philosophy of
Science
S. Weinberg, The First Three Minutes, A modern view of the Origin of
the Universe
Simon Singh, Big Bang, The Origin of the Universe
I.G. Barbour, When Science Meets Religion
C.S. Lewis, The Problem of Pain
Al Plantinga, God, Freedom and Evil
Pink Floyd, Another Brick in the Wall
Tears for Fear, Shout
Led Zeppelin, Stairway to Heaven
Jim Croce, Time in a Bottle
Bach, Tocatta and Fugue in D minor