THERE ARE NO conflicts between Scripture and nature. Both are the work of God.
There are conflicts with theology and science because:
1.Theology is man’s study of God’s inspired Scriptures.
2.Science is man’s study of God’s created natural world.
Remember:
1.Both groups (theologians and scientists) are subject to error.
a.Galileo (1564-1642) was kept under house arrest by the church for
eight years for supporting the Copernican theory that stated the earth
revolved around the sun.
b.Scientists once believed in the eternal cosmos. They taught that the
universe had always existed up until the days of Einstein and Hubble.
2.Both groups are subject to correction by the other.
a.Science has refuted the flat earth theory so theologians can no longer
read the Scripture referring to the “four corners of the earth” as literal.
b.Science held to spontaneous generation until the mid-1800s even
though Scripture taught God made animal life to reproduce “according
to their kind.”
3.The Bible is not a science textbook, but it is scientifically accurate.
4.Science is constantly developing.
Bertrand Russell wrote in 1935 that science had successively refuted all the main tenets
of religion. He explained that the modern understanding of the universe was the product
of two major scientific revolutions:
1.The Copernican—showed that humanity was not the center of the universe as
the Bible taught
2.The Darwinian—demonstrated that it was no longer necessary to posit an act of
divine creation to explain the origins of human life
3.The Freudian—Sigmund Freud nominated his own discovery of the unconscious
as a “third revolution”.
Based upon these discoveries, Russell described humanity as a “curious accident in a
backwater.”
The ideas above gave Friedrich Nietzsche enough confidence to say what many people
in the Western world were thinking back in 1885: “God is dead.”
In 1917, Einstein published his theory of relativity and tried to conform it to the cosmology of the day, which was the Static Universe Theory. (This theory taught that the universe
was infinite in age and had always existed. Stars drifted randomly. The Milky Way was all
there was.) But Einstein’s general relativity equations demanded that the universe had
a beginning. In 1927, Edwin Hubble’s telescope showed there were galaxies far outside
our own. This was exactly what Einstein’s theory had predicted. Science then took a 180-
degree turn and developed what became known as the Big Bang Theory. After looking
through Hubble’s telescope, Einstein wrote that it was his desire “to know how God
created the world. I am not interested in this or that phenomenon, in the spectrum
of this or that element. I want to know his thought, the rest are details.”
A periodical from July 2000 called Science lists these recently established facts that are
demanding a response:
1.If the physical forces within stars were only slightly different, our universe would
be almost devoid of carbon and oxygen, and life would not exist.
2.If gravity was slightly stronger, all stars would be red dwarfs, too cold to support
life.
3.If gravity was slightly weaker, all stars would be blue giants, burning too briefly
for life to develop.
4.The mass of the neutron in an atom is delicately balanced with the mass of the
proton; if it were not this way, protons would decay into neutrons and make life
impossible.
This same article contained these quotes from scientists:
1.“I am not a religious person, but I could say this universe is designed very well
for the existence of life.”
2.“The basic forces in the universe are tailor-made for the production of . . .
carbon-based life.”
3.“Imagine a universe-creating machine, with thousands of dials representing the
gravitational constant, the charge on the electron, the mass of the proton, and
so on. Each dial has many possible settings, and even the slightest change
would make a universe where life was impossible.”
4.“The laws of the universe are cunningly contrived to coax life into being.” They
“somehow know in advance about life and its vast complexity.”
The 2000 Templeton Prize winner said, “The universe in some sense must have known
we were coming.”
If the nineteenth century understanding of the universe had been the same as that of
today, we would have avoided the entire “death of God” phase of Western history.
Here are some more facts concerning the perfect balance required in our universe for life
to exist:
1.Twenty-one percent of gases are oxygen. If it was 25%, fires would break out
spontaneously around the globe. If it were 15%, higher life would suffocate.
2.If proteins were not 1,836 times heavier than electrons, molecules would not be able
to form and there would be no chemistry, no life and no one to wonder why.
3.The position and angle of the earth is set. A few degrees closer to the sun, we
disintegrate. A few degrees away and the earth becomes a frozen rock.
4.The 23-degree axis of the earth provides equal distribution of sun and makes the
food chain possible.
5.The atomic clocks are the most accurate time instruments we have invented. They
are accurate up to within 3 seconds of a millennium. We use the rotation of the
stars to set and check these clocks.
6.After 150 years of study, fossil records are beginning to agree with Scripture’s
account that life forms appeared abruptly with no transitional forms.
Scientists today who reject the concept of God scramble to craft alternative
explanations for the obvious existence of God. They have come up with a variety
of ways to explain how life and the universe came into existence without a
creator. Each of their reasons agrees with Romans 1:21,22:
“For although they knew God, they neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him, but their thinking became futile and their foolish hearts were darkened. Although they
claimed to be wise, they became fools.”
Here is what the fools in science are saying:
1.There are “many worlds” and infinite universes. The odds are good that one would
produce life eventually. We were the lucky universe. (Now, if that is good science
then the lottery is a logical thing to invest in.)
2.The zillions of universes are like bubbles in foam. Each one contains more and more
little bubbles. (To believe this takes more blind faith than any religious explanation.
Thus, we see that this phase of science has entered the realm of religion.)
3.All possible states of a quantum interaction have to be actualized, so slightly
different versions of our universe are constantly splitting off, creating a nearinfinitude of new universes every moment. (One scientist points out that this
statement is not science when he says, “Invoking an infinitude of unobservable
universes to explain the one observable universe is a grotesque violation.”
Remember science is based in observation.)
4.Life must have been sent here in a spaceship from a dying civilization and perhaps
just the astronauts’ bacteria survived the journey. Two physicists conclude that
just the genetic material was sent here in the first place. Both of these last
two ideas come from scientists who have earned Nobel prizes and discovered
natural laws. (With this kind of science we are clearly headed back into the dark
ages. Bring your flashlights!)
