Faith and Science

As opposed to "Faith VS. Science" Last updated on 9-9-09

Only a fool could believe that if you took paper, glue, and ink - no, the materials TO MAKE paper, glue, and ink - no, the atoms that make up those materials - and tossed them together, shook them up, and threw them in the air, that the whole concoction might somehow someday fall into place as a  Webster's Unabridged Dictionary with all the spellings, definitions, and alphabetizing in place properly - oh, and all in one language with all the proper grammar. 

No matter how many times you did this it could NEVER IN a quintillion years be expected to do that. And this example doesn't even start to approach the complexity of the Universe. Yet this is precisely what the modern twist on Darwin's Natural Selection theories expects us to swallow when we are told that the Universe is here by accident, and that it has been improving dramatically ever since. To believe this has never seemed anything like science to me, and I have Albert Einstein, Stephen Hawking, Isaac Newton, Copernicus and the vast majority of the other greatest minds in history (past and present) on my side here. But why do so many of the lesser scientists today go so far out of their way to separate God and science? How could the two NOT be intertwined?

"Great spirits have always encountered violent opposition from mediocre minds." - Albert Einstein

Things Fall Apart (just ask Chinua Achebe): On the question of improving over time: This does not happen. The second law of Thermodynamics is, in fact, one of the most fundamental scientific laws. It's called "entropy" and it spells out how all things fall apart over time - rather than improve - especially if left unattended. You see entropy at work in the aging process, or - more simply put - in the way that a room or a yard that is left to itself becomes less and less tidy and falls into disrepair...rather than the opposite.

Darwinism and Natural Selection: "For the record, Creationists do believe in Natural Selection, and in dinosaurs. Neither of those things is any challenge to Faith in God. Only an ignorant Creationist would say otherwise. But it takes several additional "leaps of faith (with a little "F") to go from that to believing that the Universe is a result of chance or that amoebas and monkeys became baseball stars a few million years later. 

True Natural Selection means nothing more than the following: If  there are black moths and white moths in a certain forest and a volcanic eruption covers the trees with black soot, then the black moths now have an advantage over the white moths in their ability to hide from predators and reproduce. To an observer, this could look like the moths were "adapting" and "choosing" somehow to become black in order to suit their new environment. In fact, though, the "white gene" is simply being "selected out." Not the same thing at all. The same phenomenon would appear to "make giraffes' necks grow" over time if the herd moved into an area where the food was on taller trees. The shorter necked giraffes would die out and what would be left would be the "long neck" genes.

"Adaptation" is not the Same as "Improvement": In addition to Natural Selection, there certainly is evidence that a set of genes contains a great deal of variable content by which an animal can adapt to its environment. Observe how the "dog" gene has so many vastly different trait potentials. The Chihuahua has the same genetic code as the Great Dane. Even more striking is the fact that water dogs have webbed feet! This would certainly seem to indicate that animals are capable of fundamentally altering their traits to suit their environment. But is it "improvement" to grow webbed feet or is it just "different." After all, even with all the various dog forms, can you really argue that the dog is any "better" than it ever was? Or are the various types of dog out there just very "different" from each other? Certainly it would be an easy point to argue that the original dog - the wolf - is far better adapted for survival than say, a modern Pug or a Pomeranian.

As a side note: While we're talking about genetic variation, I want to state the obvious and say that the volume of genetic information in DNA is very vast. I know we know this but I just want to point out here that the oft-touted similarities between us and chimps is overblown. You hear all the time that chimps are 97% "the same" as us. Yet the remaining three percent of "difference" between us is enough information to fill a stack of books from here to the moon and back. That's a lot of difference.

Lemmie chase one more rabbit, then I'll get back on track: That volume of information is why the human gene could not be decoded - even after we knew the structure - until the invention of Cray supercomputers. It took these machines to handle the sheer magnitude of the data. That's also why even the most complex computers can barely get a robot to walk without falling down...yet the human gene can produce Cirqu-du-Soleil performers. Intelligent Design has it all over technology and science every time, and should point out to us how limited we are compared to God., and how we could not do any of this on our own.

Neither "Change" nor Similarity within Species dis-proves God: Going back to the fact that genes have a lot of variation potential built in...that all the more supports the idea of the genes having been intelligently designed, and does nothing to dispel the idea of God...quit the opposite, in fact. He saw fit to provision us with adaptability. To show that God is not a static, unchanging figure does nothing at all to detract from the credibility of His existence and His Design. In fact, I rather like that about Him. In addition to that, still other folks point out our similarities with water mammals as proof that we are related. This is partly true, in so far as we were designed by the same Creator, who had a good model for structure that He liked and stuck with.

Evolution as it is defined today is nothing more than a DESPERATE, vain, and foolish attempt to remove God from the equation.

Divided Minds: For some reason, modern society feels the need to separate what we believe about our origins when we are in Church from what we talk about when we go to school or work. Why does the modern idea of logic try to reconcile two (or more) means by which everything came into being? Not logical. There has to be a singular Truth about how these things happened. Just as the table in front of me now has a specific construction history and location. That fact is not open to my opinions or beliefs - no matter how complex or "heart felt" or culturally relevant I choose to make my beliefs. My opinions on the matter are completely and utterly irrelevant if they go against the Truth of its origins.

Of course I realize that the "bigger questions" are harder to ascertain than the origins of my table...but we make a logical error when we take the DIFFICULTY of ascertaining concrete Truth as evidence that it is somehow inherently "gray" or "fuzzy." Yet that is exactly what we do in our modern, relativistic world.

The Bible talks repeatedly about the coming time when "man will not endure sound doctrine."  When I hear people talk about the "relativity" of something as immutable as Truth, I have to think we may have reached that point. 

I know I need to point out here that I do not feel I personally possess the whole collection of Truths...but I am saying that they are out there...and more of them are understandable to us that we used to think...thanks to scientists who are brilliant enough to understand and explain them...people like Einstein, or Stephen Hawking....who by the way openly acknowledge the necessity and import of a Creator, just as has most every scientist and philosopher in human history.

Creationists are not anti science, rather we put science in its rightful place...subject to God rather than above God.  When we do this, science becomes the means by which we explain what God does in our world.

It is no challenge to my belief in God, for example, to say that human growth is explainable. To be able to observe how matter is transferred from food sources to cells and added to our total mass is merely man's unique-among-the-animals ability to understand some of the processes God uses to perform a miracle. Doing this does not at all make the idea in practice any less miraculous, and our ability to do this is what I LOVE about science. If you say here that that is just the way I am looking at it, you are right...that's where Faith does in fact change one's perspective. And I would say that that Faith puts everything in a far more logical context than does "accidental" creation and evolution.

It is far more logical to place one's Faith in God than it is to place it in "it-all-just-fell-into-place" theories or human-centric science that changes its whole paradigm every few decades or less. That's part of the reason that the Bible calls man's knowledge - when it's all by itself - a "foundation of shifting sand." If you think about it, all things - scientific or otherwise, require faith. Science itself, in fact, is the practice of saying "If ______ is true, then it follows that _____ is also true." To do this is to place one's faith in the original "if" supposition. Carbon dating, for example, requires that we fist accept on faith that the rate of decay has always been the same from the dawn of time. The whole of its practice is predicated upon this assumption.

 Where did God come from in the first place if He Created everything?  Who knows? I do not. I can't grasp it either. The Bible says that God was not Created....that He just IS. His own Name for Himself is The Great "I Am," meaning that He just has always BEEN. I don't even start to grasp that. Yet consider this...God's existence is not the only imponderable that is nevertheless a fact. There is an even more demonstratable example of an imponderable that can be used as an illustration that undeniable facts can be impossible for us to understand. Example? Have you ever tried to imagine the limitlessness of Space? You can't do it. Yet we know that it is limitless, but we cannot ponder that limitless. Your mind will eventually place a limit on its extent. Our minds cannot process limitless, because we are ourselves limited. Yet we know that Space "JUST IS" limitless. It has to be, and we accept that as true. One of the ways that we know this is the fact that there is no gravity out there...because there is no center.

Likewise, so is the existence of God something that just is, even though we cannot process that He has just "always just been." It must be true because the evidence of intelligent design are all around us. You don't need me to point them out. Everything fits together so well into a (chemical, biological, ecological, cosmological) system in our Universe that if you need me to point out examples then you must not have been paying attention all your life. I mean seriously, we exhale what plants need and they respirate what we need. The Earth is EXACTLY as far from the sun as it needs to be for us...on and on like that. Accident? No, sir. Caretaker. It's too evident.

Someday, for those who go to Heaven and are no longer limited by finite minds, many people will be able to process God and all His mechanisms. And it is perhaps possible that the next Stephen Hawking may be able understand and explain more of it with some new physics theory. I do have enough interest and faith (with a little "f") in science to anxiously await that possibility. But if that happens, it will be an updated explanation of how God does things....rather than a replacement for Him.

Maybe God Created Everything, but used Evolution to do it: This one always fascinates me. Many Christians even would like to think this. After all, it certainly would make it easier to swallow when we sit in the classroom with our Faith and hear a professor talk about how fish became gymnasts. But that's all this can be...an attempt to reconcile two competing beliefs so that life will be more comfortable...so that we don't have to suffer the slings and arrows from open-minded academics and fellow humans when we question these theories.

Certainly God could have done things this way, with help from mommy nature, chemists - and perhaps us too? Why not, as long as we're asking God to share credit for His Creation and to change His-tory to fit OUR model? (note: I love how God needs glasses in the cartoon above....subtle genius).  But why would He have? If He single-handedly possesses the Creative Power to speak all things into existence, then why not just do that, rather than give narcissistic humanists any ammunition for their assertions? After all, God is all about offering us Proofs of Himself, rather than trying to confuse us. Only the enemy is interested in confounding us on our path, and but he never created anything so he's not too relevant to this discussion. 

If you are a Christian reading this, and accept the Biblical account, then know that evolution and Creation cannot really be reconciled. Namely because an evolving Creation is at odds with the Biblical account. For evo-Creation to be true would mean that a lot of struggle, carnivorous activity, death, and decay (all part of the evolutionary process) happened before the Fall of Man. Yet we believe (yes "only" through Faith in the Bible) that these things only happen in a fallen world, and the world was not a fallen one from the beginning.

The Big Bang: Scientists have in fact observed that the Universe as we know it is expanding from a seemingly central point. They posit that this is proof that the Big Bang happened and a lot of people like to use this as a "gotcha" when challenging Creation Scientists. I actually have no problem believing that the Big Bang is a possibility. Who's to say that God's Creative Act didn't produce a Big Bang? But ask yourself this...where did the matter for the Big Bang come from without God? That's a big blank spot in our understanding of that theory, as we all know that nothing can come from nothing....that matter is never created or destroyed...it just changes forms. So, again...where did it come from?

Further, scientists theorize that someday the Universe will stop expanding and actually start to contract. The Bible does talk about the day when the Earth will wear out "like an old garment" and also talks about the coming time when there will be a "New Heaven and a New Earth." Maybe when the Universe implodes is about the time all this will happen. Again, I don't know at all but I'm just trying to point out that these things are not mutually exclusive with Faith.  

There are far better people for discussing this stuff than me. One of the best places I have found is www.answersingenesis.org It's the website of scientists who have explored the mechanics and the evidence of Creation...the kind of things you will not hear in public school anymore. There are also many examples you will find there of where humanistic theories and experiments that were discredited decades ago - even by faithful evolutionists - still appear in our textbooks. They are still there because for scientists to admit that they ever made a mistake casts doubt that they do not want us to have in them.

Two examples of Scientific Fraud: remember Haekel's drawings of comparative embryos in your college textbooks (an adaptation of those drawings is shown right). They are still there despite the fact that his "research" has been discredited repeatedly since 1874. Don't take my word for it, look up the controversy for yourself. Despite all of this, the images persist in our schools as proof that all of us animals arose from the same protoplasmic goop.

Did you also know that the Brontosaurus never existed? Of course there were dinosaurs, but that particular sauropod is a mis-match of bones that were found. In both these cases the establishment was afraid to self-correct for fear that it would cast doubt on their other evolutionary theories among the faithful.  

It shouldn't surprise you that you will not hear about mistakes or competing theories in the mainstream media, or in school. School ceased to be an open forum on most every subject decades ago (perhaps it never was)...and the topic of Creation is no exception. Political correctness and thought-policing are far important ideas in our schools and universities than open debate or honest exploration of ideas. You don't need me to point this out. You know well that if you raised your hand - even, no especially, in a university classroom - and questioned many different issues, you would be lambasted and told that you were not "thinking right." Evolution, abortion, race relations, global warming...you already know that there is a politically correct, right way to think about these issues and that questioning any of that will make you persona non-grata in the classroom or at the water cooler where you work.   That's what I mean by "thought-policing" political-correctness. It kills academic exploration and free thought...and none of the great philosophers or scientists could have been what they are if they had chosen to be PC. Such people do not tolerate it.

Missing Link: Of course, we all know what this is. But what amazes me is that so many people hold to their faith in evolution without it. I mean, without the missing link, the differences in the remains that have been found can be said to be separate creatures and not indicators of any linear progression within a species. Even the "ape men" that are said to be our fore-fathers can be said to be just "different" humans, just as there are so many different types of dog living now within the same time period as other dogs. I could show you the remains of modern pygmies and they would look "primitive" too.

Why doesn't anyone point this out? Because it is not "correct" to do so. It's the 500 pound gorilla in the room that everyone tries to ignore. A very poignant example of the problem of lacking a missing link is the link that's missing between dinosaurs and birds. That's the vogue theory on dinos, by the way...scientists have now changed their minds about dinos having been reptilian and now say they were more likely to be the fore bearers of modern birds instead. Yet if that is true then how do they explain the fact that modern birds use their hollow bones as part of their respiratory systems? We have dino bones and we "know" that dinos did not breathe this way. So how did the "missing link" manage to breathe during the transition from solid bones to hollow, breathing bones? And why is this never discussed? Would you feel free to ask that question in a classroom if you had noticed this disparity during a lecture on "dino-to-bird" evolution? You'd be heckled as a hillbilly for questioning "science." Yet that is precisely what we should do with science...question it...just as we question our Faith in order to deepen our understanding of It.

Along the lines of the dino missing link, what do you think would happen if all of mankind were suddenly forced to live in the water? Would we adapt and grow gills? No. Every last one of us would simply drown. The modern idea of evolution wants us to believe that we would be able to dog-paddle long enough to not die the first night from hypothermia, continue to hunt, reproduce, and grow gills eventually. That's another one of those obvious questions that no one is supposed to ask about.

Time Passages (remember that Song?) Of course, the answer to most of these questions from the faithful evolutionist would be to say that the change would be more "gradual" than that. A big part of how all of this is made more palatable is to tell us that a VAST amount of time has passed. It's the same thing that makes human reproduction or the growth of a tree more believable...that it takes time and happens slowly enough that we cannot observe it. If an embryo became Andre the Giant in five minutes - or a seed a Redwood tree - you'd call it a miracle.  Yet the fact that these things take time should do nothing to diminish the "I-can't-believe-that-just-happened!" quality of the event. The time just convinces us in an emotional and perceptual way that the whole thing is commonplace, but it is not. Yet we are very accustomed to seeing these miracles, and evolutionists want to use that same kind of "gradualness" to make their miraculously absurd assertions seem more likely somehow. Yes, I would call it nothing less than absurd to think that Unabridged Dictionaries can come from nothing, as in the illustration I used to start this article. Yet modern society tries to use vast time to make it all seem more likely. It's not any more logical at all just because time passes, and I think it's pretty unscientific to try to sell it to us that way.   

Then Why Do So Many People Believe In Evolution if it's not Scientific? You will eventually get around to the "bandwagon" assertion if you discuss evolution (or anything) long enough. Same with Global Warming and other popular notions. I have always found that interesting. Why in blazes should any of us care what the general public thinks on any issue? I mean, we all know that the "wise" or "intelligent" among us are in the minority. Otherwise, we would call them something more commonplace. I'd rather ride with them than with the crowd. I will not hitch my star to any bandwagon on the basis that it is "popular."  That's for high school, not thinking adults. I mean, c'mon, why talk at all about most people when we all know that most people can't merge into traffic; and that most people talk about a presidential candidate's hair or ethnicity more than his or her policies? Most people think the U.S. is a democracy...most people don't know who won the Rock Climbing World Cup in 1999 ... okay, so maybe I'm being a little "single-interest" on that one :-) ... but I could keep going all day on this rant...

Having said all that, though, if you need other "fellow travelers" to comfort you, know that you are not alone in your belief in God. Every independent study ever done comes up with numbers in the high nineties for the percentage of humans who believe in God.  If this is true, then why all the effort to take God (or god) out of daily life, and out of science? That which is True should not be contained and set aside for Sunday mornings and deathbeds. It is a very recent development in human history to think that ecclesiastical concerns somehow have no place in the classroom.

Human Ego: I also think there is a reluctance among modern scientists to say "I don't know" the way Socrates could (who in fact said that the highest wisdom was 'being aware of that which you don't know').  When faced with obvious "don't know" situations concerning our origins and the origins of God; many modern scientists choose instead to grope blindly for something that will justify their grants, the letters after their names, all the money they spent on their education, and all the fawning of talk shows and the press who regularly need experts for commentary. Add to this the humanistic twist of modern science, and you get a recipe for over-complication of common sense problems.  People accept many of these theories from them for the same reasons...because they are willing to assume that - when these theories fly in the face of common sense - that these "edumacated fellas" must know more than I do.

In closing, most of the great scientists in history - and not just the "old" ones - revere the idea of Creation and recognize the Handiwork that is evident in it. All the Universe contains the clear imprint on it of a Mind at work. That's why I didn't title this article "Science VERSUS Faith." It is "Science AND Faith." Far from being mutually exclusive, they cannot exist apart from each other.

Einstein said that he "wanted to know the Thoughts of God," and that "all the rest are details."

and that

"Science without religion is lame; and religion without science is blind."

(Right): The Creation Museum: For those of us who are too scientific to believe that you could get a Webster's Unabridged Dictionary with all the spellings, definitions, and alphabetizing perfectly ordered...simply by throwing paper, ink, and glue into the air ... even for millions of years. And yea, those are dinosaurs in the logo, of course. If you thought creationists didn't believe in them, then you have bought the pop culture caricature. Go deeper by clicking the logo

(Book links left) Scientific approaches to Creation

(Right): "Expelled" is the number one documentary of 2008. It gives voice to the common sense questions about the holes in evolutionary faith. Ben Stein goes all over the world to get input from evolution's zealous and repressive supporters in academia, then gives rare voice to the critics. You don't have to believe in a Sunday School Adam and Eve to see an Engineer behind the intelligent design of the universe. You already know you couldn't openly discuss this topic in a classroom, so the movie's premise is unassailable; and all sides are presented on video in their own words. Click the logo for the website...and be sure to watch the movie (if you're not "too open-minded" to do so :-)

Back to Main Christian Page

Links