A Conversation with CJ the Chemist

TNG Radio, where today's culture and timeless truths come together. It's reasoned, relevant content apologetics, worldview and answers to the questions that you need to know. From Alex McFarland Ministries, this is Truth for a New Generation Radio.

And now the man who preached in 50 states in 50 days, speaker, writer and advocate for Christian apologetics, Dr. Alex McFarland. The heavens and earth bear witness to the glory of God. You know, a number of scriptures attest to the creative power of God. Isaiah 40 verse 28 says, Do you not know, have you not heard, the Lord is the everlasting God, the Creator of the ends of the earth. The Creator. God is the Creator. Do you know Psalm 33 verse 6 talks about how God spoke the universe into existence. It says, By the word of the Lord the heavens were made. They're a starry host by the breath of his mouth.

Hi, Alex McFarland here. Thanks for listening to Truth for a New Generation. You don't want to miss this show because in a few moments you're going to meet an amazing individual, a chemist, one of America's top chemists, who after earning her Ph.D. for years was an atheist, but became a believer based on the incredible complexity of the universe. And one of the things I was talking to this dear sister in Christ who just happens to be top chemist at one of America's and really one of the world's preeminent chemical companies, but she was talking about how water, the cells of water, the binding of the elements that make up water, the angle is just so, and if it were off even in a minute degree we wouldn't have water, and if we didn't have water we didn't have life, and we wouldn't be here. I do love how the Word of God attests to the creative power of the Lord. And you know the world itself does bear witness to the creative power of God, and yet we live in a time for the last century and a half Darwinian evolution has poisoned the minds of millions of people, maybe billions of people, to reject the idea not only of God the Creator but to reject the idea of God the foundation of morality, right and wrong, God the foundation of righteousness, and the one to whom we are all accountable. And we are accountable to God. I was on a panel discussion and somebody asked, you know, other than the fall of Genesis 3, what's the worst thing that ever happened to the human race, second only to the fall into sin of Genesis 3? And of course that's the worst thing, and it's the fall and the sin that separates us from God, and the sin that if not resolved would condemn our soul eternally and we would be separated from God forever in hell. It was that sin and our fallenness that prompted God in His mercy to send Jesus to pay our sin debt on Calvary's cross, to be our Savior. We often say this, that Jesus is as close by as a prayer, and it is only through Christ that we are saved, only through a relationship with Jesus that our sins are forgiven. Make no mistake about that, but I honestly believe that second only to the fall of Genesis 3 is Darwinian evolution, because evolution has caused so many people to make their God science, and they've blocked out of their mind even the possibility that there could be the true and living biblical God, and yet evolution is mathematically, statistically, empirically impossible.

It's just amazing. Take for instance one cell. I was reading a book about the mathematical barriers, the insurmountable obstacles to evolution, and the cell, I was reading about how the cell is just so amazing, and you know all living things are made up of cells, and cells are enclosed in membranes, but yet the two major components of cells, the nucleus and the cytoplasm, are the two major components of cells, and even the membrane that surrounds the cell contains receptors that tell one cell what another cell is. It's amazing, and one single cell is just amazingly made up of 250 short proteins, and those 250 proteins are made up of 150 amino acids, and if you multiply that 250 proteins times 150 amino acids, you're looking at really 37,500 amino acids, and one writer said the odds that these 37,500 amino acids could all arrange themselves into a sequence whereby the cell could actually function is just unthinkable. In other words, statisticians believe the odds of that are one chance in ten to the 41,000th power. Now that's a one followed by 41,000 zeros. Okay, now this is a lethal problem for atheism, because even if the earth were 14 billion years old, and this is the oldest estimate that even the most hardcore atheists have and this is the oldest estimate that even the most hardcore atheists would allow for, there hasn't been enough time for that many rolls of the material dice.

Let me put this into perspective. 37,500 amino acids to produce one living cell. Okay, but there are ten, how many atoms in the universe? Ten to the 80th power. Okay, that's the number of atoms in the entire universe, it's estimated. Ten to the 80th power. Even if we allowed every atom in the universe one trillion atomic interactions per second for 14 billion years, we would have had how many interactions?

Ten to the 110th power. But again, to form one cell, we would need to run through so many iterations, ten to the 41,000th power. So, that would be many billions of times more than the 14 billion years that the universe, I mean the oldest estimates out there for the universe. So here's my point. Even if you run through as many cycles as you could in 14 billion years, every atom, one trillion atomic interactions per second for 14 billion years, that is still not enough time to randomly produce even one cell, much less the multiplicity of life all around us.

Here's the point. We don't see evolution happening. We don't observe things coming into existence from out of nothing. Evolution, the universe creating itself, it's not observable.

Beyond that, it's not even mathematically possible. Now stay tuned. We're going to talk with a chemist who, one of our top scientists in our nation, became a born-again believer because of the power of the evidence for design and the compelling world around us that said there must have been not only a Creator, but a Savior.

Stay tuned. Truth for a New Generation is back with Alex McFarland right after this. Have you ever wanted to raise your hand during a sermon?

Well, here's your chance. Hi, Alex McFarland here from the nationally syndicated radio program Exploring the Word. For more than 10 years, my co-host Bird Harper and I have taught Scripture and answered hundreds of Bible questions. We've compiled a brand new book of the top 100 Bible questions from listeners of all ages, from questions about supposed Bible contradictions to apologetics facts that prove the truths of Scripture. This new book features practical content that will make the Bible come alive for you.

Can we really be sure that God exists? Are there contradictions in the Bible? I need a book that will help me understand the Bible better.

There is so much good content in this book. 100 Bible questions and answers published by Broad Street Publishers and available at your local bookstores and also through resources dot afa dot net. You know, Alex has been writing for many years, and one of his classic books is still great today as a basic introduction to the Christian faith. It's called Stand, Core Truths You Must Know for an Unshakeable Faith.

This book will help you help your teens get off the roller coaster of doubt and onto solid ground. You'll read about the six pillars of biblical Christianity. They are one, inspiration of the Bible, two, the virgin birth, three, the deity of Christ, four, atonement, five, Christ's resurrection, and six, Christ's return. You know, Alex mixes it up with humor and stories he gleaned from decades of working with youth and encourages teens to build a foundation of faith that will stabilize their lives and help them take a stand for Christ. Simple and straightforward, Stand, Core Truths You Must Know for an Unshakeable Faith, available wherever Christian books are sold. For apologetics resources, books by Alex McFarland, and to find out where Alex is speaking, visit alexmcfarland.com. Welcome back to Truth For A New Generation Radio, talking about creation. And again, Psalm 19 is just one of our favorite scriptures, how the heavens and earth bear witness to the glory of God. Well, you know, folks, as I travel, I meet a lot of people.

And as might be expected, some make more of an impression than others. And recently when I was in Tennessee, I had the privilege of meeting a scientist, and we began to talk about creation. And I wanted you to meet this dear sister in Christ who happens to be a chemist and scientist. Her name is CJ.

I'm not going to tell you everything about her because she needs to preserve a certain amount of anonymity. But CJ, thanks for being on the program, and thanks for talking with me and helping me get a little better grasp on science. Oh, you're welcome.

Thank you for having me. So you are engaged in the hard sciences, and you're a Christian, right? Absolutely. I've been a Christian for six years. And you believe the Bible? From Genesis to Revelation.

God bless you. As you work in the world of chemistry, do you see order and structure that leads you to believe that, yes, this world is created and there is an omniscient God that made this world and runs this world? Do you see God in the laboratory?

Absolutely. You see him from the macroscopic scale, looking at energy spacings between atoms and molecules, the forces that hold the nucleus together in the atoms and the molecules, and you see those things and those patterns repeating all the way up to the macroscopic scale. So you're talking about the spiral arms of galaxies and the universe. So we see it all the time.

How did you, if you don't mind me asking, like, how did you not only become open to the idea of God, but ultimately become a believer in Jesus yourself? Essentially, I was doing an original research proposal as a part of my PhD, and I was looking at the diffuse interstellar bands, and they're called the oldest problem in spectroscopy. So we're trying to figure out what in outer space is causing specific absorption bands. And so one of the things that really kind of piqued my interest was that the interstellar molecular densities or the atomic densities, the number of atoms and molecules that exist in interstellar space, the populations are so small that we couldn't possibly form things like Earth.

We couldn't possibly form diatomic oxygen because the space between one oxygen atom and the next is light years apart. There's nothing driving them to find one another to make even one molecule little on something as complex as, you know, a rock or a person. And yet here we are.

Exactly. So it all points to a Creator. We weren't spontaneously formed from an explosion. So we were designed, and that's very evident from looking at things like, you know, how do you get phosphorus from hydrogen?

You know, that's very difficult to do when you don't have enough hydrogen in the area or enough helium or a driving force to make those form. Do you think many people realize how improbable life is? I mean, there's the solar system, there's planet Earth, and here we are, the human race. If you would, CJ, speak for a moment about, I mean, it's just unlikely, and yet we're here. I mean, life on Earth must have been intentionally created.

Absolutely. I mean, when you look at the placement of our planet, we're in what's called the Goldilocks zone. So if our planet was just, you know, a few hundred miles to the left or to the right or up or down in terms of the spacing of the sun, you know, we get too cold and we freeze to death. So Earth doesn't exist the way that we see it now. If it's too close to the sun, we burn up.

If our atmosphere has more carbon monoxide, we become Venus and we can't breathe and we die. Life is very, very fickle. Most of the time, you're looking at destruction of cells. It's very rare that you actually have something formed together and become more sophisticated. That goes against the laws of thermodynamics, which favors disorder.

Exactly. And I've often heard theists, and by the way, theism is belief that a Creator God exists. We are specifically Christian theists.

We believe not only in God but in Jesus. But I've heard the term anthropic principles or the anthropic constants that point to the fact that this universe and this planet specifically seems intentionally orchestrated to support human life. Just that the word �anthropic� indicates that God created man and God deemed man to exist, right?

Absolutely. I mean, without God, man does not exist. The science doesn't back up man existing without a Creator. As Christians, we believe that Creator is Jesus Christ and ultimately his Father God.

I mean, there's just no evidence to support it without that. How does chemistry point to a Creator and a Designer? Do you see design, structure, purpose within chemistry?

Absolutely. You see it all the time in basically the molecular geometry. So you take something like water. It's something we all know.

It's essential for life. We look for water on all the other planets on our solar system as a sign of inhabitable life in that area. So the bond angle of water is 109.5 degrees. If that bond angle was 180 degrees, ice doesn't form. The density of water changes. We don't exist. Our cells can't take in water.

Without that bond angle, set very precisely, 109.5 degrees, without that, we don't exist. This is fascinating because I have to say this is not what I was taught in school. You know, K-12 public education, public university, I didn't hear any of this. If God did come up in my college classrooms, it was a denial of God. That's had an impact on millions of lives, hasn't it?

Absolutely. So when I started to college, I actually renounced my faith in God and became an atheist because it seemed like all the credible scientists were atheists. And it wasn't until the Lord led me to diffuse interstellar bands and molecular densities and interstellar space that I started to realize that I really have the wrong picture here. Without him, I mean, how do we get anywhere? How do we explain anything? He's the origin for all of our logic, all of our rules, all of our science. We don't have a single scientific theory that disproves the Bible. We spend billions of dollars every year researching things that the Bible's told us from the get-go.

You know, colleges do a great disservice. Universities do a great disservice trying to persuade individuals that the Lord doesn't exist, that God doesn't exist. We don't have a Creator.

And it's all futile. I mean, we have a Creator. You see that from looking at the single cell organisms, you know, how our body takes in oxygen, how it breathes out carbon dioxide.

You see that at, you know, the spiral arms of the galaxies. All these things have structure, and they follow laws and rules, and they do it repeatedly. So we have to have a Creator. And universities are really doing people a disservice by dissuading that.

And honestly, I believe it's in the sake of their own egos. We're going to come back. Stay tuned, folks, when Truth or New Generation returns after this brief break, we'll continue our conversation with chemist CJ. Don't go away, folks.

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Welcome back to Truth for a New Generation. Thrilled to be having this conversation with CJ the chemist. You and I, before we began to record, we were talking about Pi. Not cherry or apple, but one of my favorite subjects.

3.14. Part of mathematics, we all studied it in high school. Over the last few years, I've seen a few books. There seems to be a lot of publishing going on around Pi and math. What's interesting to me, more than a few math books are talking about a Creator. Do you see math as pointing to the reality of God?

Without God, we wouldn't have math. Math is ultimately structure and order, and so if we go with the philosophy of no Creator, things devolve. That's anti-math, so of course math points to a Creator. I mean, it's logical, and anything with logic points to a Creator who ordered the logic and structure.

And yet, I mean, you know, few things, well maybe nothing in the universe is as absolute as mathematics. This idea that science must necessarily be godless, that's a rather recent trend, isn't it? I mean, the classic, the scientists we all studied in school, like Newton or Bacon or Tycho Braun, I mean, they weren't atheists, were they?

Absolutely not. They weren't necessarily professed Christians, but they did profess belief in some type of Creator. So the Albert Einstein's of the world, you know, the de Broglie's of the world, those kind of core fundamental scientists that really built the foundation that we have all of our hard sciences off of now, they were believers in a high or something. Maybe not God as we call him in Christianity or Christ, but they did believe in a Creator. It's only been within modern science era that we really start having people profess there is no Creator. It's the Stephen Hawkings and the Neil deGrasse Tysons that are really kind of ushering in that era of science without a Creator. Why do you think, what's the motive for trying to define that science necessarily must be godless?

Why the incentive for that? I mean, ultimately, in my personal opinion, I think it's ego because you want to be the person who has planetary laws named after you. You want to be the next Einstein. You can't do that if the Lord is more important.

If the Lord is orchestrating how atoms and molecules move, you don't get your law. You don't get your famous discovery. So ultimately, I think it's ego because it's the cool hip thing now to be atheist and to be lawless and unaccountable to anyone but yourself. What's the quest for a legacy? I mean, in a Darwinian universe, you know, I remember one of my books said, some quote, nature is red in tooth and claw. Look, if we live and we die and there's no ultimate purpose, why do we want to be remembered anyway? Who cares?

We die, we turn back to worm food, you know. This thing about a legacy shows that maybe they're not as secular as they would lead us to believe. Absolutely. I mean, since the dawn of time, man has been battling with wills against God. And ultimately, you know, by professing atheism, we're saying that there is no will that God has over us.

So ultimately, it's this latest version of atheism that's coming out in science now. It's ultimately because that's the legacy that they want to leave is that they are somehow superior and not under the rule. The laws of God and the universe don't apply to them. And ultimately, I think that's the legacy that they're trying to leave is that, you know, they're the special case.

You know, they have the special rules and the special laws that don't apply to them, but they apply to everyone else. So ultimately, it goes down to trying to make ourselves significant. And we're trying to make ourselves more significant than our Creator. CJ, what do you say to the person, maybe they're educated or maybe they don't have a degree, but admitting there's a God and saying, hey, I'm accountable to that God, but God loves me and Jesus Christ, God incarnate, died, rose again. What do you say to the person that deep down inside they would like to believe, but maybe two decades of education stands in the way and they're wondering, is it really real? Dare I believe that the Bible is true and that God is real?

And presently, they just don't know. What do you say to that type of skeptic or searcher? So I've personally been in that boat before. It's a scary place when you start to think, you know, am I really in this universe completely by chance? Or by chance, is there a Creator who has me here for a specific purpose? And ultimately, when I was in that boat, the question really boiled down to, do I want to place, you know, a bet on eternity if for chance it exists? Do I really want to spend an eternity in hell because I denied this Creator God? Or do I want to live, you know, 70 to 80 plus years, you know, living under some, you know, rules that are in all intents and purposes, things I would follow anyways. You know, I'm not going to go steal something from someone.

I'm not going to murder. And so ultimately, you know, I would say to that person, you know, start looking for where is your, you know, where is your battle? So the Lord used interstellar molecular densities to me because that's the language that I speak.

He may speak to them in a different language. And so, you know, I would tell them to be open, to look for the evidence. The Lord places evidence all around us. We just can't be blind to it. So when you see something that is contrary to what you initially think, perhaps try looking at it from a different view. Maybe it's supporting a different theory than what you originally thought.

So ultimately, that would be my advice is look for the evidence. The Lord will present it to you. And you'll have your answer there. And it will be deeply personal to you. And it will make sense to you.

You will find your own interstellar molecular densities. And isn't it beautiful that, you know, we're not just cognitive. We're emotive.

We don't just think, but we feel. And even as scientists, you realize Jesus loves me. And I want to say to everybody listening, our message to you, and we've had hundreds of guests on this show from all professional disciplines, but God is real. And God does love you, just like CJ.

CJ was open to the truth. She found a relationship with Jesus Christ. God loves you. And if we can help you, just reach out to us. My website is alexmcfarland.com. You can e-mail us.

No strings attached. We just care about truth and you finding it. Thanks for listening to Truth For New Generation. God bless you and stand for truth.

That's 877-YES-GOD and the number 1. Or give online at alexmcfarland.com. While you're there, listen to program archives, read Alex's blog, invite Alex to speak at your event, or contact Alex with a question or comment. alexmcfarland.com. Thanks for listening today and join us again next time as we bring you more truth for a new generation on TNG Radio.