Kreitsauce's Musings

Recently I’ve been reading a book entitled Starlight, Time, and the New Physics, which was published in 2007 by Dr. John Hartnett, a professor from the University of West Australia. He has earned a Ph.D. in Physics, and he has published over 120 papers in scientific journals and holds two patents. Shockingly, Hartnett is also a young-earth creationist. The way Darwinists talk, Christians and physicists could never play nice, especially when it came to cosmology and the origin of the universe. What’s funny is that Hartnett has a scientific problem with the Big Bang Theory. Well, actually he has several.

1. Uniformity of Background Radiation- If the universe began 13.7 billion years ago courtesy of the Big Bang, why is the background radiation (the “temperature” of empty space) virtually the same in all directions? Unless Earth really is the center of the universe, or at least very close to it, the temperature of space in one direction of the universe shouldn’t be the same as in the opposite direction. The radiation from each end of the universe hasn’t had time to “blend” or balance each other out, since it should take twice as long (at least) as the universe has existed according to the Big Bang theory for radiation from one end of the universe to make it to the other.
2. Galactic Recession- No, I’m not talking about the results of Obama’s stimulus package. To the surprise of most scientists, a survey of the galaxies shows that they are all receding (moving away from) our own Milky Way. It shouldn’t be true that all galaxies are receding unless the Milky Way really is very near the center of the universe. Of course, this idea is unpalatable to Darwinists, since it would make our home planet seem too “special.”
3. Dark matter- Galaxies shouldn’t be able to hold themselves together without more mass, so scientists have assumed that unobservable “dark matter” must exist. Therefore, of all the matter and energy in the universe, scientists assume that roughly 21% of the matter in the universe is “dark.” This is compared to the 4% of visible matter that can be observed in the universe. Since dark matter is not visible, its existence has been strictly inferred. Some scientists include brown dwarf stars, which are far too rare to account for all the “missing” matter. Others include theoretical supermassive black holes and axions.
4. Dark energy- In 1998, scientists discovered that, contrary to popularly-held belief, the expansion of the universe was accelerating rather than decelerating. In order to explain why gravity wasn’t slowing the rate of expansion, scientists theorized that a phenomenon known as “dark energy” was acting on the universe to increase the rate of expansion. This dark energy is also inferred.
5. Quasars- Quasars are star-like phenomena thought to exist near the edges of the visible universe. The reason scientists believe that they come from near the edges of the visible universe is because of redshift. According to scientists, redshift occurs when light is “stretched” as it travels through an expanding universe, or due to galactic recession. Quasars are extremely red-shifted, which means that- according to the Darwinistic scientists- they came from very far away. That theory hit a brick wall a few years ago when scientists discovered a quasar in the heart of a galaxy only 300 million light years away. That’s way too close for comfort! How can the redshift be so high if the quasar is so close?

These problems- and others- could potentially have been resolved by Dr. Hartnett’s new creationist cosmology. His theory is based on Dr. Moshe Carmeli’s work on cosmological relativity. This theory is an expansion of Albert Einstein’s theories of general and special relativity. The difference between Einstein’s relativity and Carmeli’s relativity is that in Carmeli’s equations, cosmic time (t) replaces velocity (v) as the critical quantity, and observed time (13.7 billion years) replaces the speed of light (c) as a constant. You’ll have to go to the link above on cosmological relativity to see some of the equations, however, here’s the basic idea. Carmeli realized that it is possible that the galaxies aren’t merely moving away from us, but that space itself was moving away from us and the galaxies were essentially along for the ride. Carmeli’s equations treat the velocity of this expansion as another dimension of the cosmos. For him, the three dimensions of space, as well as time and velocity, are all dimensions that have to be taken into account when dealing with cosmological origins- 5D. In his equations, there is no need for dark energy or dark matter; this “stretching” of space would account for galactic mass and motion. His book includes a number of appendices explaining his equations in detail, but I’ve just decided to explain in practical terms what Hartnett and Carmeli are describing. This explanation will take a few posts to cover, but I think the possibility of a Creationist cosmology that resolves the problems with Big Bang cosmology and respects the Biblical Genesis narrative will be well worth the wait!

Recently I’ve been reading Hugh Ross‘ book Why the Universe is the Way it Is, and it has certainly opened up my eyes to the incredible fine-tuning of our universe. Dr. Ross has a Ph.D. from the University of Toronto and is the president of Reason to Believe ministries. He’s spoken at over 300 colleges and universities. While Ross’ book is by no means exhaustive, it does an excellent job of helping the reader realize how very, very, VERY unlikely it is for us to exist without a Creator. A disclaimer: Ross does seem to believe in some form of theistic evolution, at least to the extent that God allowed the universe to evolve and then stepped in to make humans several billion years later. I prefer to believe that God either created the entire universe with the appearance of age (since He did so with Adam and the rest of life on earth) or that- thanks to general relativity- God’s act of creation actually did some really cool things to the flow of time. I tend to go with the second option, but I’m not going to explain the whole theory in detail at this time. I also see some value in studying whether or not time or light itself could be slowing down.

Below you’ll see a list of facts to support the anthropic principle, the belief that the universe exists specifically to support complex life forms:

• If the protons and neutrons (parts of an atom) were packed less densely in our universe, nuclear fusion would take place much more slowly or perhaps not at all. Anything heavier than helium- carbon, nitrogen, oxygen, sodium, potassium- wouldn’t form. If they were more densely packed, all of the hydrogen in the universe would fuse into elements at least as heavy as iron. The elements necessary for life wouldn’t exist.
• The center of the Milky Way Galaxy- or any galaxy for that matter- is the home a massive black hole and countless supernova remnants that spew forth lethal levels of radiation. Additionally, gravity from other stars would disturb the orbit of any planet significantly. Nothing could survive within 20,000 light years of the galactic center. On the other hand, if we were much further from the center of the galaxy, our planet wouldn’t have any of the heavy elements needed for life. I guess we’re “lucky” we live on a planet that orbits a star at just the right distance from the center of the galaxy.
• Even Earth’s location- 26,000 light years from the center- is not free from radiation from the rest of the galaxy. Only by virtue of the fact that our planet exists on the galactic plane between two spiral arms are we shielded from radiation. Furthermore, unlike most stars, our sun doesn’t “bounce” up and down on the galactic plane, so we won’t ever move above or below the spiral arms.
• In spite of what the picture above shows, the solar system is not within a spiral arm of the galaxy. We are actually between two spiral arms, which is fortunate for us since the stars and dense clouds of space emit more radiation and could unleash a severe dust storm, which would be sure to ruin our time on earth.
• Most of the time, anything lying between the spiral arms of the galaxy are eventually overtaken by another spiral arm. Our solar system lies very close to the co-rotation distance. At this distance, our solar system rotates around the center of the galaxy at almost exactly the same rate as the arms on either side. Fortunately for us, we aren’t exactly at the co-rotation distance. If we were, we would be buffeted by gravitational resonance and flung out of our sanctuary in the universe. Not a good experience!
• Of course, we’re also fortunate that the area of our galaxy that makes life possible also overlaps the co-rotation distance. I don’t think that’s a coincidence either!
• Most clusters of galaxies contain 10,000 or more closely-packed galaxies. Ours has only around forty. Little is a good thing, since galaxies tend to collide. We haven’t had a collision with another galaxy (something that can’t be said for our neighboring Andromeda Galaxy), and unlike most other galaxies, we don’t have any giant or supergiant galaxies for neighbors. If we did, we’d get blasted with deadly radiation fairly regularly.
• Our own galactic neighbors do help contribute to the stability of our galaxy. The Milky Way is fed gas and dust by a number of nearby dwarf galaxies. This gas and dust keeps star formation high, which helps reinforce the spiral arm structure. Without it, the spiral structure would collapse.
• If the earth had no moon (click link to hear Patrick Stewart [Jean-Luke Picard] narrate), our axis- and therefore our climate-  wouldn’t be stable. Our rotation would be faster, making weather patterns less even. You think global warming is bad! Tides wouldn’t exist, meaning that coastal toxins wouldn’t be removed and nutrients wouldn’t be brought in. Click here to check out a book on this subject.
• The four outer gas giants in our solar system- Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune- act as a defensive team to shield the earth from collisions with comets and asteroids, since their gravitational pull deflects or absorbs impacts. On the other hand, the other inner planets nearest to earth work to break up gravitational resonances from the gas giants to keep earth from changing orbit.

Truly the heavens declare the glory of God.

Next: A Room with a View!

Some scientists have been quite outspoken concerning their desire to purge religion from their ranks. In fact, a quick perusal of Paul Z. Myers’ blog Pharyngula will make it obvious that religion in general, and Christianity in particular, is to blame for most of the world’s evils. The major complaint against the use of religion in science is that (supposedly) science that seeks out a non-naturalistic cause isn’t very good science at all. I would like to suggest that there is a problem with religion mingling with science. It’s just that I disagree with some scientists on what the religious problem is. You see, modern science’s idea that naturalism alone can explain the universe isn’t just unscientific (springing from the field of metaphysics). It’s also an idea that has its roots in the Church.

Long before Darwin penned his Origin of Species, liberal Christian theology was already moving away from belief in a Creator that is also involved in His creation. Here’s a brief list of their arguments:

1. Some theologians believed that God would get more glory if He could simply produce matter, energy, and scientific laws to govern the universe. Cosmological and biological evolution would take place- in their minds- due to laws already put into place. In this view, special divine action should be minimized since Creation revealed a Designer God, not divine intervention. (Thomas Burnet [1635-1715], Anglican cleric, Telluris Theoria Sacra; John Ray [1627-1705], botanist and natural theologian, The Wisdom of God Manifested in the Works of Creation.)
2. Deistic theologians argued that religious belief was solely a product of reason and not an act of faith. The Deists rejected any doctrines that could not be deduced from philosophy or nature. If it could not be deduced, it was not essential for salvation. Ultimately, they rejected the Bible’s concept of an active, providential God. (Matthew Tindal [1657-1733], deist, Christianity as Old as the Creation)
3. Other scientists and theologians believed that God’s direct involvement with His creation would result in perfection. Evil as a moral category exists, and- to the mind of the theologically-minded scientists- evil existed in nature in the form of imperfections. To their mind, God clearly did not and does not directly intervene in nature. Looking at the geological records of his day, Thomas Burnet insisted that our world was a creation that was “lying in rubbish.” Philosopher David Hume (1711-1776) wrote that “a perpetual war is kindled amongst all living creatures.” Hume believed that God must be only transcendent and not immanent since such evil exists.
4. Finally, a movement within the church sprang up in the 1700s that sought to downplay and disregard the miracles of the Bible. Peter Annet argued against the existence of miracles because he believed that a God of infinite knowledge would not need to intervene. He could simply make things work out right the first time. He also believed that God would create a simple clockwork system that never needed to be adjusted and that God, being immutable, would never need or want to “contradict” His own laws.

The result of the above four movements was that naturalism was accepted first in the Church and then in the Academy. Because the Church was an avid supporter of discovering truths about Our Father’s World, theology dramatically influenced science. Naturalism became a self-fulfilling prophecy of sorts. Because the world was interpreted naturalistically by the theologians and then the scientists, all findings were viewed as supporting naturalism. The problem, of course, is that naturalism is not a finding of science. It was presupposed in the theological and philosophical realm and then superimposed on the scientific realm. Philosophical and theological naturalism came before scientific naturalism.

By the time of Erasmus Darwin, the grandfather of Charles Darwin, the results of naturalism in the theological realm bore fruit. Here are the words of Erasmus Darwin in his Zoonomia:

“The world itself might have been generated, rather than created; that is, it might have been gradually produced from very small beginnings, increasing by the activity of its inherent principles, rather than by a sudden evolution by the whole by the Almighty fiat. What a magnificent idea of the infinite power of the great architect! The Cause of Causes! Parent of Parents!”

In the 1800s, Charles Darwin’s own Origin of Species made many theological and philosophical arguments for his theory. In the first place, why would God make things “imperfectly” or with a boring pattern? He argued that patterns in species were “utterly inexplicable if species are independent creations.”(Origin, 73-74) He also argued that “the best adapted plants and animals were not created for oceanic islands, for man has unintentionally stocked them far more fully and perfectly than did nature.” (Origin, 398) In other words, Darwin believed that God would include more variety in nature and would put every living thing precisely in a habitat that would cause it to multiply the most rapidly. He also believed that the variety in “important” organs between species and within the same genus was nonsensical in the creationist’s paradigm. (153, 156) Why would God do reinvent the wheel?

Why would God create birds with webbed feet that rarely swam, and why would He create birds with no webbing that stayed mainly in the water? How can this be the product of special creation? (177) What about the “waste” of pollen in trees and plants? (469-470) All of this makes God a “mockery and deception,” says Darwin. (165-166) Note that Darwin says this as a person who believed in God, not as an atheist. He is careful to keep a lofty view of God intact when he argues that speaking of God as a Designer makes God seem too human. We should not “assume that the Creator works by intellectual powers like those of man.” (181-182) It’s fairly obvious to make the connection between the liberal theology in the centuries preceding Darwin and what Darwin believed he saw while writing Origin of the Species. The Church created Darwin.

Over the course of the past few years, I’ve made it a point to do a lot of reading on the subject of Christianity. I’ve read many books by Christians and Atheists to get their respective points, and it has occurred to me that works from both worldviews claim to be illuminating on the subjects of eternity, purpose, reality, and human nature. Christianity affirms inherent worth, describes our purpose, and reveals the nature of reality and, ultimately, eternity.What is also abundantly clear is that Atheism denies that a vast portion of reality even exists, and instead of reason uses sarcasm, intense emotionalism, and a fervent indignation toward those who espouse any faith. Hitchens’ major complaint is that he can’t see why anyone would want to serve a deity. Dawkins thinks that Christianity is a foolish relic of a distant age. Harris belittles anyone who believes in any god. There may be some justification for some of these thoughts, but they aren’t proper justification for a worldview. Atheism promises light, but only provides heat. It has the appearance of substance, but fails to deliver.

To be certain, there are people on both sides that are passionate. Heck, I’m passionate. There are even believers who are the epitome of “zeal without knowledge”; they are the results of soapbox preaching and topical Bible studies. They roam the internet and do some stupid if not deceitful things in the name of Christ. This isn’t exactly Christian, though. Christ wanted us to be above-board in our dealings with others, and we are admonished to grow in our faith and in our love for God- heart, soul, and mind.

Atheism, on the other hand, lays no such requirements on its adherents. I was recently at an event in which Christopher Hitchens spoke. After the event, I was talking with him and he said that he needed to get to the book signing because he’s needed to “move product.” Later, I talked with him again in the book signing line (hey, if I’m going to buy the book I might as well get it signed), and he told me that even though I didn’t agree with him he didn’t care because anyone who bought his product was a friend of his. The man is obviously in it for the money. Why not, though? If this life is all there is, and you can get rich in this life by selling what you believe, go for it! Christians who are in it for the money, on the other hand, ought to be kicked out of their ministries. They are an anomaly, not representive of Christianity. They may be leaders of megachurches, but they are not leaders in Christian thought or practice. In contrast, Atheists like Hitchens are leaders in atheistic thought and practice. They are heralded as revolutionaries.

Another such revolutionary was philosopher Michel Foucault. Foucault wanted to experience life free of inhibitions after the death of God. This led him to try LSD in the wilderness and experiment sexually in ways that range from normative to the grotesque. As a result he died of AIDS. “To die for the love of boys,” he once told a friend, “what could be more beautiful?” Foucault lived out the natural result of an atheistic worldview. There was passion and fervency in his life and in his works, but there was no substance. It was heat without light. Like Stephen Jay Gould and a host of other atheists, Foucault believed that there were no answers.

Finally I turn to Sam Harris, whose Letter to a Christian Nation is the incarnation of the vitriol contained within the New Atheism. He asks where God is when children are raped (page 51) and when New Orleans was destroyed by Hurricane Katrina (page 52). His illustrations are intended to tug at the heart’s strings, and they certainly do so. I hope to deal with the problem of pain at a later date, but for now I’d like to focus on Harris’ assertion that Atheism is nonviolent in nature. Again, I would point out that unrestrained fervency in the last 100 years has been unleashed by those who espouse atheism.

It isn’t that Christians have not had cause to respond violently. The film adaption of The Last Temptation of Christ in 1988, Serrano’s “artistic” rendering of a crucifix in urine, The DaVinci Code, The Lost Tomb of Jesus, and almost any episode of Family Guy are all blasphemous enough to enrage most of the Christian population, but no rioting occurred. There were no deaths. No one was “roughed up” because of these blasphemies. They were decried, but there was no violent action taken or encouraged. Contrast this with what transpired after Proposition 8, the California proposition that defined marriage as occurring exclusively between a man and a woman, passed. The vast majority of homosexuals are atheistic and anti-religious, so it is not a leap to conclude that the reaction is largely the result of an atheistic worldview. Of course, I don’t have time to talk about the affects of Nietzsche’s atheistic writings on Hitler, who in turn passed them on to Mussolini and Stalin. Perhaps we should be reminded of the words of Hitler, inscribed over one of the gas ovens in Auschwitz: “I want to raise a generation of young people devoid of conscience, imperious, relentless, and cruel.” Fervency? Of course. Light? Nothing worth mentioning.

Christopher Hitchens

“As I write these words, and as you read them, people of faith are in their different ways planning your and my destruction, and the destruction of all the hard-won human attainments that I have touched upon. Religion poisons everything.” That’s how Christopher Hitchens ends the first chapter of his best-selling book god is not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything.

Frankly, Hitchens’ book- cover to cover-  is nothing more than a rant. It stirs the emotions of the reader, to be sure. It has some facts scattered throughout. It doesn’t have much substance, though. In fact, the thought strikes me that his book is basically nothing more than a 307-page opinion piece gone horribly wrong.

I’d read this book when it first came out, but I thought I’d read it again since I am going to hear him speak soon. I got it used, so as not to contribute in driving up sales. One of the first things that leapt out at me was the incredible arrogance of the book. Now, he hasn’t gone so far as some atheists (who want to refer to themselves as “brights”), but he is incredibly arrogant, nonetheless.

A Proud Look

Wasting no time in flaunting his presumptuousness, on page 7 of his book he says:  “How much self-respect must be sacrificed in order that one may squirm continually in awareness of one’s own sin?” Throughout the first few chapters, Hitchens asserts that Christianity is incapable of producing anything “intelligible or noble or inspiring” since the rise of science. He speaks of the wonder, majesty, and mystery of Hawking’s description of event horizon of a black hole and the symmetry of the double helix while he says of Jehovah: “Why, if god was the creator of all things, were we supposed to ‘praise’ him so incessantly for doing what came to him naturally? This seemed servile, apart from anything else.”

One has to wonder where Hitchens thinks the wonder, majesty, and mystery of nature came from in the first place. Art and music do not leap into existence on their own; it takes the will, power, and skill of a creator- a creator with passion and imagination- to form them. If we wonder at the creation, how much more should we wonder at the Creator? Hitchens would do better to be like his colleague Richard Dawkins, who at least admits the desire to feel grateful when he beholds the heavens.

Semi-intelligent Design

From Hitchens’ initial error in being arrogant a host of other problems come forth. For starters, he has espoused a Darwinistic/Atheistic worldview. He says of those that think like him: “We do not rely solely upon science and reason, because these are necessary rather than scientific factors, but we distrust anything that contradicts science or outrages reason.” This truism is not espoused solely by the Darwinistic and Atheistic faithful, however. It is accepted by Christians as well. As I’ve said many times before, Christianity was foundational and not incidental to the modern scientific movement in the West, and I can think of no Christian today that denies the importance of science and reason.

Rather, Christians have exercised reason and interpreted scientific findings (something we all must do) in concluding that there is a flaw in the atheistic and Darwinistic worldviews. “Nothing comes from nothing, nothing ever could,” sang Maria Von Trapp, and she was quite right. Ironically, while Hitchens doesn’t believe in a Creator with a will and an intellect, he cannot avoid projecting those qualities on a theoretical blind process: “Evolution has meant that our prefontal lobes are too small, our adrenal glands are too big, and our reproductive organs apparently designed by committee.”

Standardless Morality

Hitchens also believes that a moral life can be lived apart from God. However, I would ask where Hitchens got the idea that morality and immorality exist. I wonder why he thinks that the moral path is better than the immoral path. If you can get to the top by cheating and swindling and never suffer the consequences you most fear, why not do it? There is no judgment coming in the atheistic worldview. If no one finds out about it, why not go for it?

Humans know that there is a difference between right and wrong, and things such as character and guilt prevent the vast majority of us from doing terrible things. This conscience tells us that there is a “better” and a “worse” in us, and I would say that if there is a “better”, then it is reasonable to assume at some point there is absolute Perfection. If there is absolute perfection, would not this Perfection be the standard for all? A perfect Being is one of the major aspects of the Judeo-Christian God. Hitchens denies the existence of Evil, preferring rather to blame man’s actions on an evolutionary hiccup that has resulted in humans being only partially rational. If this is true, where did the impulse to be good come from? Furthermore, how can I know anything about morality at all if my bodily organs are in control?

Religiosity vs. Relationship

This isn’t to say that Hitchens doesn’t have some leverage in his war against religion. In a sense, religion as we have come to call it does poison everything. Violence done in the name of a god or Eastern religion is tragic. Violence done in the name of Jehovah God is both tragic and grossly hypocritical. Jesus made it quite clear that His Kingdom was not of this world, and Paul said specifically that our weapons are spiritual, not physical. Our Enemy is Satan, not flesh and blood. If humans are made in God’s image and are potential temples for the Holy Spirit, why would any human exercise physical might in the name of God? They wouldn’t.They might have used His name in their crusade, but they have employed nothing of His character and obeyed none of His commands.

While Hitchens may find scientific discoveries “more awe-inspiring than the rantings of the godly”, I would conclude by saying that Christians are not followers of a religion, but partakers of a Relationship with the Divine. Every scientific discovery we make reminds us that “This is My Father’s World.” Every moment we live we are conscious of the fact that it is in Him that we live, and move, and have our being. Every aspect of our lives is a gift from the Creator and Sustainer of life, and we are moved by gratitude to worship and obedience. It is love and awe that is to be the supreme motivator in the Christian life, not fear or lust for power and control.

Herod's Temple

Last week I began by talking about the eternality of Jesus Christ as a support for the uniqueness of Christianity. This week I want to talk a bit about Jesus’ next unique claim.

We begin in John 2. Jesus performed the miracle at the wedding in Cana, and He moved with purpose to Jerusalem. In the Temple, He drove out the moneychangers. Enraged, the Jews said: “What is the basis of your authority? Show us a sign!”

“Destroy this temple, and I will raise it up in three days.”

John tells us that Jesus spoke of the temple of His body. Why did He give them a sign that they wouldn’t be able to see for years? The answer is that Jesus knew the heart of the particular Jews that asked Him the question. They weren’t skeptics searching for answers. They were skeptics who thought they already knew the answers. In fact, it is interesting to note that every time someone in Scripture asked for a sign of Jesus’ power and authority, Jesus had recently finished performing a great miracle! The miraculous propelled the faithful into greater faith but drove the unbelievers to further skepticism. It is no different today. The skeptics that question whether or not God exists do so with the mind given them by God’s creative power: a miracle. The skeptics that scoff at the idea of Jesus feeding 5,000 with five loves of bread and two fish forget that Jesus created the materials that make up the bread. It isn’t the lack of evidence for Who Jesus is that troubles skeptics, but it’s the implications of the evidence that makes them uncomfortable.

Consider some other miracles of reality, called to mind by Ravi Zacharias:

• The statistical probability of forming a single enzyme, the building block of the gene, is 1 in 10^40,000. That’s a larger number than all of the atoms in the stars in the known universe.
• A human DNA double helix has enough information to cover 600,000 pages of information, supposedly originating from nothing and no one.

Who, I wonder, has more faith: The believer or the materialist?

Yet the materialist who considers Scripture says with David Hume: “Does it contain any abstract reasoning concerning quantity or number? No. Does it contain any experimental reasoning concerning matter of fact and existence? No. Commit it then to the flames, for it can contain nothing but sophistry and illusion.” The problem is that Hume’s test doesn’t pass its own test; it is neither mathematical nor scientific. Such is the nature of materialistic claims.

“Destroy this temple, and I will raise it up in three days.”

What greater proof is there of Jesus’ authority than His resurrection?  He predicts a bodily resurrection within a specific time frame, and does so quite accurately. The soldiers guarding the tomb knew it happened, as did the religious leaders of Jesus’ day. That’s why the Pharisees in their extrabiblical writings refer to Jesus as a sorcerer instead of a liar. They couldn’t disprove the resurrection. Hundreds, in fact, saw Jesus after His resurrection.

“Destroy this temple, and I will raise it up in three days.”

There’s something else to Jesus’ words than a “simple” reference to His Own resurrection. Notice the use of “temple” as a metaphor for “body.” Jesus reminds the listener that the physical body is sacred. It is sacred because it is a part of God’s special creation. Human rights, the sacredness of marriage, sexuality, and the command to love each other as we love ourselves all come from our bodies being a temple (at salvation) for God Himself. This is the distinction between Christianity and other religions.

In every other classic world religion there is a difference between the body and the place of worship. The body must perform specific deeds, say certain things, etc. in order to enter so-called holy places for worship. The human body must at least face in the direction of the place of worship in Islam if the worshiper is absent. Hindus, Muslims, and Orthodox Jews have engaged in violence toward one another over their sacred places. During Thaipusam, some Hindu devotees pierce their bodies in preparation for their journey to the temple of Lord Murugan. Indira Gandhi was murdered because she sent the military into a Sikh temple to obtain weapons. It is true that people have performed violence in the name of Christ, but Jesus was quite clear when He said that His kingdom was not of this world. It is not of weapons to do violence. We are His temple. How much suffering could have been avoided had we all simply listened to the claims of Christ?

The body is exalted because of Jesus’ conception, His unique expression of the Godhead, His physical sacrifice on the Cross, and His bodily resurrection. What greater sign or wonder is there than these?

“Destroy this temple, and I will raise it up in three days.”

Bertrand Russell

I’ve written a few posts on the religiosity of Darwinism, but now I want to turn my attention toward the “evangelical” aspects of the movement itself. The term “evangelical” is, of course, generally applied to a particular type of Christianity. Evangelicalism emphasizes a variety of means to bringing people to the truth as well as withstanding the advancement of sin or anti-Christian thought: preaching by evangelists, apologetics, sermons (both fiery and compassionate), and public outcry against heresy, apostasy, and immorality.

Strangely enough, Atheism and Darwinism share many of these same traits. They have evangelists: Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennett, Sam Harris, Christopher Hitchens, and others. These men preach powerful sermons and employ convincing apologetics. They warn the listener of the dangers of religion. They are no post-modernists; they see everything in terms of black and white. In fact, they even go so far as to speak in apocalyptic terms concerning the results of a truly Christian nation. To change one’s mind concerning atheism is viewed as  a type of apostasy. Dawkins himself went so far as to refer to Anthony Flew’s “conversion” from atheism to deism as “tergiversation”, a term that is synonymous with apostasy.

In addition to the nature-worship I mentioned at the end of the previous post, they also associate Charles Darwin with Messianic terminology. “Cosmology,” says Richard Dawkins in his debate against John Lennox, “is still waiting for its Darwin.” Stephen Jay Gould is even more explicit in the deification of Darwinin his “Sociobiology: the Art of Storytelling”: “All theories [of natural selection] cite God in their support, and … Darwin comes close to this status among evolutionary biologists.” Michael White echoed Gould in 2002 when he said: “Of course today, for biologists, Darwin is second only to God, and for many he may rank still higher.”

Once again, lest you think that I’m twisting words or “making a mountain out of a molehill”, allow me to quote Darwinist Michael Ruse on the subject:

“Evolution is promoted by its practitioners as more than mere science. Evolution is promulgated as an ideology, a secular religion — a full-fledged alternative to Christianity, with meaning and morality. I am an ardent evolutionist and an ex-Christian, but I must admit that in this one complaint — and Mr. Gish is but one of many to make it — the literalists are absolutely right. Evolution is a religion. This was true of evolution in the beginning, and it is true of evolution still today.”

Is Darwinism a sufficient faith? I think not. It does not answer the burning questions of the soul. Consider the words of Katharine Tait in her book My Father, Bertrand Russell:

I would have liked to convince my father that I had found what he had been looking for, the ineffable something he had longed for all his life. I would have liked to persuade him that the search for God does not have to be vain. Somewhere at the back of my father’s mind, at the bottom of his heart, in the depths of his soul, there was an empty space that had once been filled with God, and he never found anything else to put in it.

Lest someone accuse Tait of making her case a little too poignant compared to Russell’s own feelings, here is Russell in his own autobiography: “Nothing can penetrate the loneliness of the human heart except the highest intensity of the sort of love the religious teachers have preached.”

Darwinism, atheism, and their ilk are insufficient replacements for true faith in God, for in Him we live, and move, and have our being. Apart from Him, we are left with, in the words of Tait again, “a ghostlike feeling of not belonging, of having no home in this world.”

In my previous post, I contrasted Christianity and Pantheism, the belief that all of Creation is a god. Pantheism has taken on many forms, some of them more complex and articulate than others. Ancient animism, the New Age movement, and the Greek Pantheon all smack of Pantheism in one way or another. In contrast to these belief systems and others, which either attempt to pit various gods or spirits against each other or identify the universe itself as a god, Christianity asserts that God exists uncreated beyond space and time. He may choose to enter our world to accomplish His purpose, but He does not belong to It any more than Picasso belonged to one of his paintings.

Most recently, Darwinism has crept on the scene as the “new” pantheism. In the evolutionary paradigm, lifeless matter and energy somehow- and most scientists are careful enough to inform us that they don’t know how- spawned or created life. Not only did the lifeless universe produce life, it produced information to allow life to reproduce. Where did this information- this DNA- come from? Computer programs, books, magazines, and even Snickers wrappers tell me that an intelligence created them. When I see these things, I know a mind has been at work.

Whether they realize it or not, in the unbelievers’ effort to banish God from their minds, they have replaced Him with something preposterous. They have returned to a sophisticated kind of pantheism. Instead of spirits, gods, or a living universe creating life, they have attributed life to an unliving universe. They have attributed information to a universe without a mind. They have endowed mere matter and energy with god-like creative powers.

Am I going too far in comparing Darwinism to Pantheism? I think not. Consider the words of atheist Carl Sagan in his work Pale Blue Dot:

How is it that hardly any major religion has looked at science and concluded, ‘This is better than we thought! The Universe is much bigger than our prophets said, grander, more subtle, more elegant’? Instead they say, ‘No, no, no! My god is a little god, and I want him to stay that way.’ A religion, old or new, that stressed the magnificence of the Universe as revealed by modern science might be able to draw forth reserves of reverence and awe hardly tapped by the conventional faiths.

Sagan obviously believes that the universe is far more magnificent than God. Consider also the words of Paul Davies, who believes that mathematics (which he ascribes intelligence, personality, and inherent power to) alone could produce our universe:

There’s no need to invoke anything supernatural in the origins of the universe or of life. I have never liked the idea of divine tinkering. For me it is much more inspiring to believe that a set of mathematical laws can be so clever as to bring all these things into being.

Richard Dawkins has similar things to say. When John Lennox concluded his debate with Dawkins by pointing to the resurrection of Jesus Christ as the focus of the Christian faith, Dawkins responded by saying: “Having proven some case for a deistic God, you fall back on the Resurrection. It’s so petty, it’s so trivial. So unworthy of the universe.”

Darwinists cannot escape the striking beauty, majesty, and wonder of the universe. Without a God to be grateful to and worship, they are only left with an undue reverence for God’s Creation and a desire to attribute intelligence and life to that which is unliving and thoughtless.

As Paul writes in Romans 1:

Because that, when they knew God, they glorified him not as God, neither were thankful; but became vain in their imaginations, and their foolish heart was darkened. Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools,and changed the glory of the uncorruptible God into an image made like to corruptible man, and to birds, and fourfooted beasts, and creeping things. . . .Who changed the truth of God into a lie, and worshipped and served the creature more than the Creator, who is blessed for ever.

3,350 years ago Moses commanded Israel to worship only God and to remember all that He had done for them “lest thou lift up thine eyes unto heaven, and when thou seest the sun, and the moon, and the stars, even all the host of heaven, shouldest be driven to worship them, and serve them, which the LORD thy God hath divided unto all nations under the whole heaven.”

1400 years later, Paul wrote in Romans 1:21-23: “Because that, when they knew God, they glorified him not as God, neither were thankful; but became vain in their imaginations, and their foolish heart was darkened. Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools, and changed the glory of the uncorruptible God into an image made like to corruptible man, and to birds, and fourfooted beasts, and creeping things.”

These two men, speaking on behalf of God, reminded their audience to avoid confusing Creation with its Creator. In contrast to the polytheism and pantheism of the ancient cultures, the Jews and Christians  recognized only one God Who is distinct from His Creation. Consider the following verses:

• Isaiah 57:15 calls God “the High and Lofty One that Inhabiteth Eternity.”
• Deuteronomy 3:24 says: “O Lord GOD, thou hast begun to shew thy servant thy greatness, and thy mighty hand: for what God is there in heaven or in earth, that can do according to thy works, and according to thy might?”
• John 1:1 tells us that when the universe began, the Word (Logos) already existed.

According to the Biblical paradigm, God exists beyond space and outside of time. In his Theology of the Early Greek Philosophers, Werner Jaeger writes that the Word is the Supreme Intellect or Supreme Power “who is stationed outside the world and brings that world into existence by His own fiat. The Greek gods are stationed inside the world ; they are descended from Heaven and Earth…they are generated by the mighty power of Eros who likewise belongs within the world as an all-engendering primitive force….When Hesiod’s thought [the Theogony]at last gives way to truly philosophical thinking, the Divine is sought inside the world- not outside it, as in the Jewish Christian theology that develops out of the book of Genesis.”

Surely, men such as Xenophanes attributed the existence of our universe to one supreme God, but monotheism rarely existed outside of the Judeo-Christian religion. It was this Judeo-Christian message of monotheism that distinguished the forces of Nature from the Creator of nature. Furthermore, it was upon this foundational belief that the scaffolding of European science was built. Pantheism in its many forms portrayed our universe as mysterious and unknowable because our world was filled with various deities with vast creative and destructive powers. In contrast, believers saw the world as knowable and logical because it was the product of the mind of a reasonable God.

Today, some unbelievers criticize Christianity because they say that it is lazy to believe that God is involved in any way in Creation. They believe that science blended with naturalism is the only way to rightly view the world. However, belief in God as Creator is not the same thing as belief in God as a motivating force in the physical universe.

James Clerk Maxwell knew these truths when he inscribed the following on the doors of the Cavendish Physics laboratory in Cambridge: “Great are the works of the Lord; they are pondered by all who delight in them.”  He recognized that the wonder of the universe was meant to point us to a God Who is distinct from his Creation. God is the Creator, not the universe itself.

Perhaps an illustration would be helpful.

Suppose I was completely computer illiterate, but I decided to buy a Dell laptop. I have two options for explaining how my laptop works:

1. I could hold to a view that the computer was made to function in a certain way and given all of the parts necessary to fulfill its purpose.  In this view, “Dell” is the creator of the computer, but as such he is distinct from the computer components themselves.
2. I could also assume that “Dell” was inside the computer causing the various functions of the computer to take place. To do so would be to make the same mistake as the Greeks in their pantheon.

Of course no one is so foolish as to make this second assumption. To figure out the “mechanism” behind the computer, you would have to figure out which parts performed what function. You could also learn about the physics and chemistry behind it if you wanted. However, even those who hold to a “mechanism” view of the computer would still believe in the existence of “Dell the Creator.”

Similarly, Christians do believe that nature’s “mechanisms” should be discovered. However, they also hold that God is the Creator, the Uncaused Cause of reality. There is no conflict in the Christian worldview, for the only other options are pantheism or atheism. Just as “Dell” is not a mechanism of the computer, God is not sitting in some darkened corner of the universe waiting to be discovered nor is He mysteriously guiding the forces of nature. Eternity beyond our universe is His abode. The Creation itself is merely the outworking of His beauty, majesty, wisdom, and power. To truly find Him, He must reveal Himself and Reality somehow. In fact, He has in His Word. (It’s just too bad that Dell doesn’t explain themselves so well in their instruction manuals.)

Given the heated debates of recent years between scientists and Christians, one would think that all- or at least the overwhelming majority- of scientists historically and contemporarily are either atheists or agnostics. Strangely this isn’t the case.

According to Dr. John Lennox, a 1910 survey of 1,000 scientists in America found that 41.8% believed in “a God who answered prayer and in personal immortality” while 41.5% said they did not. The remaining 16.7% were agnostic. Larry Witham, author of Where Darwin Meets the Bible, administered this same survey in 1996 and found that 39.6% believed in “a God who answered prayer and in personal immortality” while 45.5% said no. The remaining 14.9% were agnostic. While the scales have turned marginally in favor of atheism, this is hardly a landslide for atheism.

For the rest of this blog article and perhaps another after this, I’ll let the philosophers and historians of science speak for themselves so that we can see what they have to say about the relationship between science and their worldview. Obviously, I don’t agree with everything these men say. My point is that the same men can look at the same data and reach different conclusions based solely on worldview.

“Science, the system of belief founded securely on publicly shared reproducible knowledge emerged from religion….Only the religious- among whom I include not only the prejudiced but the underinformed- hope there is a dark corner of the physical universe, or the universe of experience , that science can never hope to illuminate.”- Peter Atkins, Professor of Chemistry at Oxford University

“The world needs to wake up from the long nightmare of religion….Anything we scientists can do to weaken the hold of religion should be done, and may in fact be our greatest contribution to civilization.”- Nobel Laureate Steven Weinberg

“Our science is God’s science. He holds the responsibility for the whole scientific story….The remarkable order, consistency, reliability, and fascinating complexity found in the scientific description of the universe are reflections of the order, consistency, reliability, and complexity of God’s activity.”- Sir John Houghton

“For many years I have believed that God is the great designer behind all nature….All my studies in science since then have confirmed my faith.”- Sir Ghillean Prance

“As I try to discern the origin of that conviction [that the universe is orderly and therefore can be discovered by man's reason], I seem to find it in a basic notion discovered 2,000 or 3,000 years ago, and enunciated first in the Western world by the ancient Hebrews: namely that the universe is governed by a single God, and is not the product of the whims of many gods, each governing his own province according to his own laws. This monotheistic view seems to be the historical foundation for modern science.”- Melvin Calvin

“Modern science must come from the medieval insistence on the rationality of God….My explanation is that the faith in the possibility of science, generated antecedently to the development of modern scientific theory, is an unconscious derivative of medieval theology.”- Sir Alfred North Whitehead

“The chief aim of all investigations of the external world should be to discover the rational order which has been imposed on it by God, and which He revealed to us in the language of mathematics.”- Johannes Kepler

“The laws of nature are written by the hand of God in the language of mathematics.”- Galileo

“The visible order of the universe proclaims a supreme intelligence.”– Jean-Jacques Rousseau

“Science brings men closer to God.”– Louis Pasteur

“From a knowledge of His work, we shall know Him.”– Robert Boyle

“Subsequent scientific findings are clearly pointing to an ex nihilo creation consistent with the first few verses of the book of Genesis.”- Quantum chemist Henry F. Schaefer III