NORTHSHORE CHURCH OF CHRIST

You cannot prove God exists using the scientific method. If God created all material things, He exists outside of the universe as we know it. The painter does not dwell within his painting.

By faith we understand that the universe was created by the word of God, so that what is seen was not made out of things that are visible. (Hebrews 11.3)

Atheists often demand we prove God from science, and they claim anything we cannot prove from science does not exist—which, we should reply, is absolutely, obviously, inherently false. We all know some things which exist in the real world but which we cannot detect or prove with science. I’ll give these two: Morality (good and evil / justice) and Logic (reality and truth).

Morality Exists. Therefore, God Exists.

If there is an ought—a real right and wrong—in this world, then there is a standard of authority. Where does that standard of authority come from? We have only two options: from heaven or from men.

Is evil real? Do we have a right to insist that murder and rape are wrong? By what standard? Who gets to make those rules? Is rape wrong just because some men got together and wrote a law? Is it wrong just because I think it’s wrong inside my brain? If man—either individually or collectively—decides morality, then no absolute standard of morality exists. One group believes it’s okay to rape while another believes it’s abhorrent. In the absence of an objective standard, who’s to say which is right?

If we say rape and murder are objectively and always wrong, we admit to a standard of ethics outside of man and mankind. Where did that come from? The One True God is the best explanation.

Scientists cannot account for love. Why would a father protect his son with his life? The evolutionist says it’s an inbred evolutionary response meant to protect the human species. But doesn’t evolution teach “survival of the fittest”? In this situation, the father would be the fittest and the son would be weakest, so why does the stronger give his life for the weaker? And why do all fathers everywhere nod their heads and agree he did the noble and right thing?

More generally, why do the strong care for the weak? Why do we have a moral tug in our hearts to stand against bullies and thieves?

Society says we should treat one another with respect, no matter our station in life, how much money we have, how strong we are, etc. In fact, we expect those with more to help more. This is what the government appeals to when they say the rich should “pay their fair share.” While this is a bully tactic of government to take money from the people, they are appealing to the standard of love we all know to be true. We all believe the rich have a higher responsibility to help the poor. (Stealing from the rich and giving to the poor doesn’t correct anything, morally speaking.)

Logic Exits. Therefore, God Exists.

We expect the sun and moon and stars to always be where they always have been. We expect the thing we throw into the air to come back down. We expect a chicken’s offspring to be another chicken. Our world demonstrates coherence, reason, and consistency. We can understand this world and explain many things in terms of mathematics, cause and effect, and scientific laws. There’s a reason why many great scientists have been believers—they believed in a rational God who created an orderly world. The atheistic evolutionist cannot explain why water always runs downhill. They believe in the law of gravity, but they don’t understand why the law exists.

Because things happen in orderly ways on this earth, we can reason from observable facts to make educated guesses and then test those guesses, refining them, and discovering more about this world. Albert Einstein shocked the world with his mathematical theorems, many of which turned out to accurately describe reality around us. How did he do it? He depended upon consistency in the natural order of things.

If laws exist, there must be a Lawgiver. Whoever knew a rule made by no one? Scientists do not make the rules; they merely discover and describe them.

Atheists claim that no one knows anything for certain. The so-called “rules” we know today might not be correct, but they are the best way of describing the natural world. Just because scientists don’t know things for certain doesn’t mean constant natural laws do not exist. It is good to realize the limitations of man’s ability to discover and describe reality, but only irrational fools claim reality does not exist.

He Exists!

We cannot measure God on our scales or see Him with the most powerful telescope or microscope. He created all the things we study with those instruments. We who live inside His painting are seeking Him in the brush strokes and colors. “Prove there is a painter,” the skeptic says. “I don’t see Him anywhere in this world.” That’s because He is not in this world. He made this world.

Though we cannot see Him, evidence of His handwork, design, and artistry lies all around. The moral laws and the natural laws around us lead us to know that Someone spoke those laws into existence long ago. Praise God, He has spoken and explained many things to us through His revealed word. The Painter has communicated with His art.

And without faith it is impossible to please Him, for whoever would draw near to God must believe that He exists and that He rewards those who seek Him. (Hebrews 11.6)

Child-centric parenting has been the rage over the last couple of decades. An article extracted from Alfie Kohn’s book Unconditional Parenting is presented online entitled “Let Our Children Decide for Themselves.” The author says, “Our fundamental position should be to allow children to make decisions about things that affect them.” Kohn ends with: “Give them as many choices as possible.”

Many parents have incorporated this parenting methodology, including when teaching their kids about religion. They want the little children to decide for themselves one day, so they don’t want to tell them what religion to choose. They want to remain neutral in their parenting, they say.

These same parents, presumably, do not remain neutral when their child chooses to go naked to preschool or steal Grandma’s iPhone. But they want to remain neutral on what to believe about eternal salvation or damnation. Makes sense, right?

We have been told we should expect this neutrality from our schools. Miss Frizzle should not hold one moral position or another. She should only teach math, science, history, etc. Just the facts, Ma’am. Leave your moral worldview at home.

Professors at major universities—religious departments included—tell their students they give all sides of arguments equal weight and examination so the brilliant young men and women can make up their own minds. I recall the professor in my moral philosophy class at UAB attempted this. He would present the facts of some moral issue or another but would never say if it was a true or false argument. He tried to present all arguments as potentially having equal weight and value. I did not understand at the time that his worldview was pluralism, the assertion that there is no absolute moral truth but that all moral reasonings can be considered true at the same time. In his attempts to stay neutral with morality, he exposed his worldview of pluralism. He taught us we should (a moral statement) consider all moral reasonings as equally valid. One of my moral reasonings was that his moral reasoning spawned from the depths of hell. Make those compatible, Sir.

What are the problems with neutrality? The most glaring issue is…it’s impossible to remain neutral. Everyone takes a position, and everyone starts from some truth platform. Even the pluralist, who says all moral teachings are true, is making a truth statement. The fact that some take an opposite moral position (asserting all moral positions cannot be true at the same time) invalidates pluralism because it shows there is at least one position which cannot logically coexist with it. Of course, to hold the pluralist’s worldview, one must abandon logic.

Does God Want Us in Neutral?

Should we “fairly” examine all the evidence before we make up our minds? The young man who has never examined his faith gets to college, and his professor says, “You’ve never fairly examined what you believe. You need to act as if you don’t believe it for a while and examine all these other religions to make sure you are believing in the right thing.” This makes sense to the young man, and he abandons his faith for a while…perhaps forever. Was that fair of the professor? No, he was fighting dirty.

This may sound counterintuitive, but I’ll ask anyway: “What does God say about this?” Immediately, someone calls foul: “You can’t ask that question because first you have to figure out if there is a God before you can ask what He would say about things.” Here is the muddle mess. I already believe in God, and I already believe the Bible is His word. I have good reasons for believing this: (1) the Word itself is accurate, internally consistent, powerful in content and (2) by it, my life has been radically changed for the better. I have come to know God through His word. I will go to that word to see how God would have me interact with this world.

Does God tell me to have blind faith? No. Does He tell me to test the spirits? Yes, but I’m to test them to see if they are from God (1 John 4.1). If they are not from Him, I’m to reject them. Does He tell me to test everything? Yes, but I’m to test everything and hold fast to what is good (1 Thes. 5.20-21). That implies a standard by which to measure everything and categorize them as “good” or “bad.” God’s word provides the standard.

I find in Jude 3 that God wants me to “contend earnestly for the faith that was once for all delivered to the saints.” To contend earnestly is to fight with a passion, and Christians are called to fight for the faith. We are not to abandon the faith and try out everything else to see what else might be true. We are to hold fast the faith and fight for it. This includes instilling the faith in our children.

Peter said we should “be prepared to make a defense to anyone who asks you for a reason for the hope that is in you” (1 Pet. 3.15). This includes the schoolteacher or university professor who challenges us to “objectively” step away from our faith and examine it with all the questions and criticisms they hand us. We should be ready to give them a reason for the hope that is in us.

Paul wrote in Ephesians 4 that Christ has given the church apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors, and teachers who teach the word of God in such a way that the church will mature, and “we may no longer be children, tossed to and fro by the waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by human cunning, by craftiness in deceitful schemes.” God would have us grounded firmly in our faith, absolutely assured of the hope that is within us by the power of Christ and His Holy Spirit.

Our weapons are not fleshly (2 Cor. 10.4-5). We fight against arguments and opinions which are raised against the knowledge of God. We must first bring our own thoughts captive to Christ. Then we fight against the false reasonings around us. We are to love God with heart, soul, strength, and mind.

The Purpose of Education

Education should teach us how to think rightly, how to defend the faith, how to rightly divide the word of truth, how to understand the world, how to fight correctly against the powers of the other side.

But isn’t education about getting a job and making a living and supporting a family? The world would have us believe that is the main purpose, but they know it’s not! The forces we fight against are cunning and crafty—they have taken the mention of God out of our schools and convinced many that it's not a big deal. After all, the schools should remain neutral on religion because we are a pluralistic nation. It wouldn’t be fair to rank any one religion as more valuable or virtuous than another, right? So they say, “We’ll just teach math and history and science and reading – don’t worry, we won’t teach religion.”

But they do. Humanism is religious to its core. Religious thought drives the theory of macro evolution.

Neutrality is a myth. We must expose the wolves who teach it by stripping them of their sheep-wool cloaks. No one can or should remain neutral, and Christians should not fall victim to this false teaching.

God does not want us to study in neutral. He does not want us to parent in neutral (Eph. 6.1-4). He wants us fully engaged with our faith in the spiritual fight. He wants us to take up the whole armor He has prepared for us and for us to use it!

Remember, that armor includes a sword.

Atheists mock the Christian’s “God of the Gaps,” as they term it. Whenever we find a gap in science that we cannot explain, they fault us for quickly attributing it to God.

Carl Sagan wrote in The Demon-Haunted World:

“Hippocrates of Cos is the father of medicine. He is still remembered 2,500 years later for the Hippocratic Oath (a modified form of which is still here and there taken by medical students upon their graduation). But he is chiefly celebrated because of his efforts to bring medicine out of the pall of superstition and into the light of science. In a typical passage Hippocrates wrote: ‘Men think epilepsy divine, merely because they do not understand it. But if they called everything divine which they do not understand, why, there would be no end of divine things.’ Instead of acknowledging that in many areas we are ignorant, we have tended to say things like the Universe is permeated with the ineffable. A God of the Gaps is assigned responsibility for what we do not yet understand” (pp. 7-8).

Sagan makes the logical error of creating a false binary choice: either you can believe that God is responsible for things we don’t understand, or you can believe in science. Obviously, since many scientists also believe in God, these are not mutually exclusive positions. We believe in God who created science!

But the Atheist (who doesn’t believe in a god) must also pay homage to a higher power or principle than what can be directly observed in nature. As he laughs at the “backward” Christian who attributes all things to God’s power, he waves off troubling questions by appealing to his own god of the gaps.

How does the Atheist explain the universe, life, and morality?

Dan Barker once pastored churches and wrote religious music, fully participating in charismatic worship out west. However, in the 1980s he was “deconverted” (as he puts it) to atheism and became a champion evangelist for the anti-god cause. “I am a biological organism in a natural environment, and that is all there is,” he wrote in godless: How an Evangelical Preacher Became One of America’s Leading Atheists, p. 42. (Yes, it’s godless with a lower-case g.)

In Barker’s chapter on “Refuting God,” he writes,

“Many or most cosmologists are now convinced that some kind of multiverse is likely. A multiverse is a collection of universes, and there are many scenarios.” (p. 107).

“We have not proved such a multiverse of universes yet. All we know is that they are plausible, and that there is at least one. The important point here is that if there is more than one, then the numerator of the fraction that determines probability rises, making the ‘fine tuning’ of the constants (if they vary) to allow for life by random chance more likely” (p. 108).

In other words, Barker and these theorists use the all-powerful if to increase the odds in their favor. Nothing has yet been proved, but if it were true, it would make the creationist’s “fine-tuning of the universe” argument less powerful. I’m not a certified scientist, but I’m pretty sure that’s not how science works.

Barker answers the creationist’s argument that it’s highly improbable such complex life could have occurred through evolution:

“Using probability after the fact is like a lottery winner saying, ‘It was indeed highly unlikely that out of the millions of entrants I could have picked the right ticket, therefore someone must have caused me to win.’ It is indeed highly unlikely that any particular person can be predicted to be the winner—which is exactly what each contestant is trying to do when he or she obtains a ticket. But it is not at all unlikely that one person will win. In fact, we would consider it a true miracle if no one ever won a lottery.” (p. 110)

Now that is a good example of begging the question! It’s as if to say, “Well, since we are here by the process of evolution, I suppose that defeats your theory.”

The evolutionist must depend upon his god “enough time” in both the past and the future because it turns out he does not know anything. He speaks as if he is in lock-step agreement with all true scientists, and together they have proven these things. But when you dive in, you find suggestions and possibilities piled upon unproven theories. My translation of what the evolutionists are saying goes: “My dear scientifically illiterate Christian, if all the things we have dreamed up really did happen the way we hope they did, then we have explained away all of your points. Given enough time in the past, complex life as we know it today could have come about via evolution. Given enough time in the future, we will have the evidence to prove us right and you wrong. So trust us.”

Barker’s fictitious creationist continues to argue, “Everything has a cause, and every cause is the effect of a previous cause. Something must have started it all. God, who exists outside of time and space, is the eternal first cause, the unmoved mover, the creator and sustainer of the universe” (pp. 114-5).

Barker answers, “The major premise of this argument, ‘everything had a cause,’ is contradicted by the conclusion that ‘God did not have a cause.’ You can’t have it both ways…” (p. 115).

Yes, you can have it both ways if it is true. Just saying “you can’t have it both ways,” doesn’t automatically change reality. We have a book in which God has communicated to us and told us He created everything in heaven and on earth. This is not a theory for us. We did not dream this one up. We know it is true because God revealed it to us, which is the only way we could have known. This divine communication Barker has rejected completely, and now he must come up with all kinds of theories and if-statements and bad arguments blended smoothly so as to appear logical. Barker rejects the above argument as illogical because he has already rejected the premise that anything exists outside of the material universe (unless it’s more universes, of course).

Actually…perhaps I spoke too soon. A few chapters later Barker toys with the idea that something could exist outside the known universe—something that did Not Begin to Exist (NBE, as he termed it).

“But perhaps there could be something outside the natural universe that would be accommodated by NBE, besides God” (p. 133).

“If theists, however, allow the theoretical possibility of an impersonal transcendent object in NBE—and it seems they must allow this, or some other nontheistic hypothesis—and if they have not convincingly eliminated it (or them) from the set of actual items in NBE, then they must remain open to the possibility that the origin of the universe could be explained in a purely naturalistic manner” (p. 134).

“Who is to say that personality could not have arisen from an impersonal cause? The impersonal might be more complex. If this is impossible, theists must explain why” (p. 135).

Notice what he’s doing here. He throws out more wild theories and then tells creationists we have a duty to consider these possibilities. Why should we when we already have the most plausible answer staring us in the face? This man is a loose cannon on a ship—every time it fires, the canon knocks over the crowd behind it and ends up facing another random direction.

Years ago, Darwin looked to the future for validation of his theories of macro evolution. He just knew we would discover all kinds of transitional fossils which would fill in the gaps on his evolutionary tree.

“Why then is not every geological formation and every stratum full of such intermediate links? Geology assuredly does not reveal any such finely graduated organic chain; and this, perhaps, is the most obvious and gravest objection which can be urged against my theory. The explanation lies, as I believe, in the extreme imperfection of the geological record.” (The Origin of Species by Charles Darwin, 1859, p. 220).

Fast forward almost 200 years, and we still have not filled in those gaps. Instead, we have discovered biological complexity far beyond what even Darwin understood, making his macro-evolution theories less and less likely (and evolutionists to borrow more and more billions of years from their god of the gaps to make up for it).

Richard Dawkins, another evangelist for atheism, writes in his acclaimed book The Blind Watchmaker:

“Given infinite time, or infinite opportunities, anything is possible. The large numbers proverbially furnished by astronomy, and the large timespans characteristic of geology, combine to turn topsy-turvy our everyday estimates of what is expected and what is miraculous” (p. 139).

The rest of the chapter Dawkins gives over to wild speculation about how spontaneous generation might have happened and the probabilities involved.

Atheists have their own gods of the gaps. Two are called “enough time” and “if.” It’s actually quite hilarious when you sit back and observe the lengths to which they go attempting to explain reality. You can quickly tell they do not have solid footing. Their house is built on shifting sand. Many of these men brilliantly defend their positions, from the world’s standards of brilliance, and it is a shame they have squandered the gifts God has given them. They bring darkness to the world, not light. They destroy hope in the promised life ahead. They severely limit themselves and all who would believe in their preaching. They believe their thoughts are deep, but by rejecting their Creator they reject true life and true light. Science cannot fill their gaps.

God’s kingdom will overcome all these tiny fiefdoms. May God reign, and may Jesus route and overthrow the enemy of His people.

Most everyone believes animals, plants, and humans change over time within species. The kind of evolution I’m addressing here is the theory that billions of biological changes over immense amounts of time produced all living things from a common ancestry. That is the “conventional wisdom” of our day.

Our schools have been teaching this for years as fact, and rarely will you find a biology or earth science show which does not use Evolution as its starting point. Many diet and sociology books depend upon the theory of Evolution as their philosophical starting point. Man has fight or flight instincts that were built into him over millions of years… Man eats plants because of the way he evolved… We are totally and completely a product of billions of years of biological tweaking (unguided, blind, random tweaking) that seems to have produced a rather startling number of positive results.

If Evolution Were True…

If you and I are simply bags of cells with nothing spiritual about us, what is the point in saving the planet? None of the other animals seem to care that much. They are just worried about their own personal survival. Did you know mother kangaroos sometimes drop their joeys when fleeing from predators? They can make another one in a few more months, so why not sacrifice the one they have to slow down their attacker and let them escape?

Male lions kill off all the male cubs in a pride when they defeat another male lion king.

If you want to see an ultimate picture of selfishness and literal animal-nature, observe the elephant seal. The male is sometimes seven or eight times the size of the females, and he lives to bellow at other males, fight, and breed with the 30 or 40 females he protects. Frequently, you’ll find these seals with nasty scars and gashes from these violent males.

Why do humans not live this way? Rather, why do we view humans who do act this way as immoral beasts? Are we better than the animals? In the theory of Evolution, we wouldn’t be here if it were not for those “lower” life forms – those are our evolutionary ancestors. Shouldn’t we look to them for guidance on how best to live? They’ve been doing it longer than we, right?

Why should we care about the poor and weak? An observable fact of nature is the principle of the survival of the fittest. Plants and animals only last if they are the strongest in the environment. The weak are quickly weeded out. The runt of the litter cannot find a teat from which to drink while all his stronger brothers and sisters push him out of the way and hog the food. The weakest and slowest of the herd succumb first to the lions, as the swiftest race away. Why do humans spend so much time and money caring for children born with various maladies, frail folks who cannot defend or feed themselves, orphans and widows who have no family to care for them? If Evolutionary theory is correct, the strongest among us shouldn’t really care about the weak.

If Evolution is correct, human males are the very top of the evolutionary pyramid. Stronger than women, men should be able to take from them whatever they are able. If they want to breed with ten or twenty women, why shouldn’t they?

If Evolution is correct, then racism makes sense. Allowing for an evolutionary chain, it makes sense that some human families are further evolved than others. Does it not follow that the stronger and smarter among us should rule the rest? And if we can convince a whole nation they are the pinnacle of the evolutionary pyramid, perhaps they would be emboldened to either kill off or subjugate the rest of the races around them. Come to think of it, wasn’t Darwin’s theory of Evolution a foundation for Hitler’s “Arian race”? If Evolution is true, why is Hitler remembered with such disgust and hatred? He was only practicing survival of the fittest.

Problems with Evolutionary Theory

We should remember that Evolution is theory; it has never been proven by factual data. In fact, Evolutionists are still searching for Darwin’s hoped-for transitional fossils which would connect his biological tree. Periodically some paleontologist will present some missing link between the apes and humans, but those always tend to be mistakes or fakes. With fossil records allegedly reaching back into the billions of years, scientists expected to find tons of evidence for the gradual evolution of living things. Rather, they continue to find distinct animal groups—no transitions. A passing comment on the “Missing Link” entry on Wikipedia states, “The scarcity of transitional fossils can be attributed to the incompleteness of the fossil record.” Indeed.

As we discover more about the incredible complexity of living things, such as how DNA and cells work, the idea that living things could have evolved one tiny change at a time becomes more and more ludicrous.

Evolution theorizes that all things today proceed pretty much as they always have in the past. The theory overlooks the idea of catastrophism (at least when convenient for the theory).

An amazing event happened May 18, 1980—Mt. Saint Helens blew its top off! Hundreds of vertical feet of strata were laid down in just a few hours or days from this event, which shows that this earth sometimes undergoes catastrophic events which can cause massive changes to the landscape in short periods of time. Evolutionary theorists conveniently overlook this fact; they reject the idea of a world-wide flood and how such an event can explain the incredible strata and fossil record found all over the world.

All things do not happen today as they always have.

The Mockers

Interestingly, Peter considered this in 2 Peter 3.3-6:

Know this first of all, that in the last days mockers will come with their mocking, following after their own lusts, and saying, “Where is the promise of His coming? For ever since the fathers fell asleep, all continues just as it was from the beginning of creation.” For when they maintain this, it escapes their notice that by the word of God the heavens existed long ago and the earth was formed out of water and by water, through which the world at that time was destroyed, being flooded with water.

These mockers claim all things are as they have always been. They reject events of “biblical proportion” as many dismissively refer to the flood. First, there was Creation itself, in which God did amazing things such as gathering up the land in one place and placing boundaries for the waters. How did He do that? Were there lots of moving parts and placing them just so? Second, there was a global flood which would have radically adjusted the landscape of the time, laid thousands of feet of debris in places, and then washed out massive gullies (canyons) as the waters receded.

The mockers cannot accept these events because it would mean there is a God, and if there is a God they are accountable to Him as their Maker. They must come up with other theories, such as the theory of Evolution, to explain this earth, its billions of organisms, and the universe at large.

Science and the Bible

Despite the world’s “conventional wisdom,” many scientists are also creationists because they do not mock; they accept what they see, and it fits snugly with what the Bible declares in Genesis 1. They accept the Bible, generally, and Genesis 1-11, specifically, as real history given by the Witness who was there at the time.

If you come home and your house has the front door ripped off and your stuff strewn all over the front lawn, what happened? You are observing the evidence before you, but you didn’t see the event. You can come up with several theories for how things got to be the way they are, but wouldn’t it be wonderful if your neighbor came over and said, “I saw what happened, let me tell you”? After you hear the account, you can then fit the details of what you see into that account. Evolutionists do it backward; they have an eyewitness telling them what happened—all they have to do is fit the details of what they see into the history that has been told. Instead, they make up stories that seem to fit the evidence. Speculation may be a fun mental exercise, but it’s rarely the way to truth.

God’s warning stands:

For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men who suppress the truth in unrighteousness, because that which is known about God is evident within them; for God made it evident to them. For since the creation of the world His invisible attributes, His eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly seen, being understood through what has been made, so that they are without excuse. For even though they knew God, they did not honor Him as God or give thanks, but they became futile in their speculations, and their foolish heart was darkened. Professing to be wise, they became fools (Romans 1.18-22)

Let us resolve to hold fast to the word of God. It’s a platform that cannot be shaken. Theories of men come and go as more data arrives. Years ago, the scientists of the day thought the earth was flat and the sun revolved around the earth. But that was way back when we didn’t know as much. Right. And 100 years from now humanity will look back on this generation and shake their heads at this generation’s ignorance and stupidity.