God and Science

Best-selling author, speaker, and advocate for Christian apologetics, Dr. Alex McFarland.

Best-selling author and apologist, Dylan Burrows. Together, bringing you truth. For a new generation, this is TNG Radio. Does Christianity conflict with modern science? Is creation a myth supported by true science or false assumptions?

Hi, Alex McFarland here along with Dylan Burrows. Welcome back to TNG Radio, Truth for New Generation. And we're going to talk about science and God. Can you be a Christian, a believer in God, and also recognize the validity of science?

Or if you believe in God, does that automatically mean that you're unscientific? So that's our topic today and we welcome you to the program. Dylan, it's good to be with you, my friend.

Great to be with you as always, Alex. Looking forward to being together here soon at Truth for a New Generation Conference coming up March 23rd and 24th in Jamestown, North Carolina. Have an exciting lineup of guests. We'll be addressing many of the issues in our culture today from a Christian worldview. And we're excited to talk today about this issue of what's one of the major barriers for skeptics today, this alleged conflict between Christianity and what the Bible teaches regarding creation and what science teaches in our world today. So let's dive right in here.

Get us started, Alex. Well, you know, I'm going to throw out a name that maybe people haven't heard in a while, Stephen Jay Gould. And before I tell you about Gould and some of his influence, the world this week is talking about the passing of Stephen Hawking, who is a theoretical physicist and he really got famous in the late 80s for a book called A Brief History of Time. And I've read a couple of different editions of that. And, you know, he was, Dylan, I also think, you know, very famous. He spent much of his adult life in a wheelchair and valiantly pursued science and his gifts. And Stephen Hawking was the author of A Brief History of Time.

It's been through several editions. I remember when it first came out in 1988, and I read it with great interest, because he, even though he was a Darwinist and believed in evolution, he did, in A Brief History of Time, talk about the fact that there had to be a first cause. There had to be God. Now, subsequent editions talked about there not being a need for a creator or a first cause. And in fact, famously a couple of years ago, Stephen Hawking said that the universe could have created itself. And Dylan, you know, whenever you use the words creation, I mean, you're talking about mind, intelligence, intent, design, order.

So the idea that nothing could create something, that chance could produce intelligence, and that all of the great complexity and order of the solar system, the universe, life on planet earth, the idea that all of that could have been created, quote unquote, by nothingness, I would say that's a much bigger step of faith required than theism, which is belief that God exists and God is the creator. So I think it's timely that we're looking at this topic, because really, you know, already Hawking is not even, you know, buried and have had a funeral, and really the media and much of the world is speaking of him in terms of deity, almost. And that's probably understandable, since science itself has almost been deified by a lot of people. But let's talk about science and God.

Dylan, let me throw another name out there. Stephen Jay Gould. Stephen Jay Gould got pretty well known in the 80s.

He was influential during the Clinton years in the Department of Education. And part of the reason that public school children are only given one model of origins, at least in part, is due to the influence of Stephen Jay Gould. Now, interestingly, and I've used this quote many times, but Gould himself admitted that Darwinism was based more on uniformitarianism, that there was no flood, the fossils came about gradually by slow incremental burial. Uniformitarianism, that says the present is the key to the past, a lot of that came about, Gould admitted, not through evidence, but through legalese and verbal sleight of hand, because Charles Lyell himself was an attorney, not a geologist. All of that to say this, Gould, Stephen Jay Gould, who is one of the people that we could thank, or I suppose blame, for the idea that belief in God is inherently unscientific, Gould talked about what he called NOMA, non-overlapping magisteria. Now what in the world does that mean?

NOMA. Listen very carefully, folks. Non-overlapping magisteria. What he basically was saying is, there are different ways to get knowledge. There's faith, that's one magisteria. You can believe in God, or you can believe in the tooth fairy, or there's whatever works for you that you have faith in. That's a way you see life. That's one of your magisteria, or a philosophy or an assumption that oversees how we think.

A magistrate. And then there's science. And the implication is the true truth. And Gould, and many of the evolutionists, and certainly Stephen Hawking was one of them, you dare not let the magisteria overlap.

Non-overlapping. In other words, you don't let faith into the classroom. You don't let faith skew your true truth, which is science. And science is, must be, forever will be, naturalistic. So if you want to believe in God, do that.

Do it on your own time, but we don't let that into education. Now, Dylan, I know that's a long, wordy introduction, but this is where we are in the 21st century. Despite the fact that really the discoverers and the founders and the icons in the sciences, almost all pre-20th and 19th centuries were believers in God, if not outright Christians. But here we are today where science has been predetermined, pre-defined, that it must and can only be secular.

And I think there's a lot of negative consequence that we're reaping because of that. Well, that's certainly the case. And one thing you mentioned that I want to bring up in more detail, is this idea that many people say that science has disproven Christianity, or the creation account of the Bible. Science is not one field, it's many fields. And so when people talk about science disproving the Bible's creation accounts, tell me which field of science are you talking about? Tell me which line of evidence are you talking about? And let's look at the information and see where it leads. So when we come back, we're going to talk more about this idea of the evidence in the sciences, whether it's biased, whether it's accurate, and where it leads in comparison with our Christian faith. So stick with us here at Truth For A New Generation Radio.

We'll be right back. Don't miss Truth For A New Generation, March 23 and 24, Greensboro, North Carolina. 1 Peter 3.15 tells us to be ready always to give an answer for the hope we have. We're instructed to be prepared to defend our faith. This is Alex McFarland for the Life Answers Teams, students we train at North Greenville University, a leading Christian college in South Carolina. The Life Answers Teams are made up of students who will inspire and equip your congregation. These apologetics teams we train speak in churches to youth groups and train Christians of all ages to address key issues of our times from a biblical perspective. Like is there a God? Is the Bible true? What about gender and moral issues? Call me at 864-977-2008 and we will arrange for the Life Answers Team to come to your church and give a presentation that will benefit your people for years to come.

864-977-2008 and always be ready. This is Dylan Burrows and Alex McFarland back with you on Truth For A New Generation Radio and we are talking about the sciences and how the sciences communicate ideas that may or may not be contradictory to the Christian faith. How do we know and what does the information say? Well as we left you in the last segment, we're talking about more than science in general, but what do the sciences say about the evidence for the created world we have here today?

So Alex is going to pick up where we left off and talk about this idea of the information behind the sciences and how it relates. You know this is all about the question of origins. Three things that every world view really has to answer is origin, purpose, destiny. Where did we come from? Why are we here?

Where are we headed? The Word of God says in the beginning God created. And Dylan, as I'm sure virtually everyone listening probably knows, what you believe about our origins really will inform what you believe about all these other points of life as well. I mean if we really are just an accident, if we're just a biological naturalistic accident, we weren't created by God, there's no objective truth.

I mean there's no real moral code that we have to follow. If God was not a part of our past, God is not a part of our future. If God is not our Creator, God is never going to be our judge. And really not only objective truth hangs in the balance, but what we might call transcendent meaning. Now let me explain what I'm talking about, and great thinkers throughout the ages have pondered this. Transcendent meaning would be something that is inherently a part of every person. I mean are we human beings, unique among the rest of creation? Do we have inherent worth and value and dignity? I mean is there even such a thing as personhood?

And friends, you've got to understand some of the cultural ripple effect of our embrace of Darwinism, godlessness, and certainly the strangle-hole really that naturalism like that advocated by Stephen Hawking has had on the classroom. Part of the reason that babies are killed in utero, that's abortion. Part of the reason that that's been sold to much of the world, and certainly America, is this naturalistic belief that it's not a human being made in the image of God, it's just tissue.

It's just tissue. And people found it more palatable to think of tissue being disposed of than the life, the eternal life, a soul, and a person, a human being made in the image of God being snuffed out. And so let's talk about some of these assumptions that really have touched all of our lives more than we might imagine. I'm holding in my copy a first edition of Darwin's The Descent of Man on the Origin of Species, and he says that on the last few pages, page 612-613 of Origin of Species, he says, I think these conclusions will be highly distasteful to many, Darwin says, but there can hardly be a doubt that we are descended from barbarians. And much more I could read, but he goes on to say, we'll have to look at both sides of the coin, the evidence. Now to his credit, at least Darwin understood the implications of his view. Either we live in a created universe and therefore God, or we live in an uncreated universe and there is no God. I mean, there's really not a middle ground.

Not a logical, defensible middle ground. So let's talk about the question, can you be a Christian, a believer in God, and also be scientific? Point one, as you said before the break, Dylan, there is no one universally agreed upon discipline called science, quote unquote. There are the sciences, and the different branches of science, chemistry, astrophysics, cultural anthropology, forensic pathology.

There are these sciences, and each branch of the sciences has its playbook, and there are postulates and discoveries relative to the different branches of science. But when someone just glibly throws out science is incompatible with God, I often ask, which branch of the sciences are you referring to? The second thing that I want to point out, second and third things though, naturalism does not guarantee rationality, and belief in God does not guarantee irrationality. Richard Dawkins has popularized the idea that if you believe in God, you also probably believe in the tooth fairy and all sorts of other irrational things, and if you're scientific, quote unquote, you are therefore seamlessly, flawlessly rational. Faith is irrational, they would say, science is logical and rational.

And Dylan, that's just not logical at all. Some of the best and brightest minds of history who have been the pioneers in these sciences have also been believers in God, if not Christians themselves. But we're to a point in our culture, Dylan, where it's really almost like what I would call a false dichotomy. Either you believe in God, or you are scientific. And that's just not a necessary bifurcation at all, is it?

No, it's certainly not. Historically, as you mentioned, some of our greatest thinkers throughout the generations have been people of faith, whether it be people prior to the time of Christ's coming who held to view of one God, as in the Jewish tradition, and certainly throughout the Christian era, there have been many of the top scholars and philosophers who have pondered these questions who come from the church, who are people who believe in Jesus Christ as the resurrected Lord. And one thing I think that people often miss is that they only look at one side of the information. Like you mentioned, they see Darwinian evolution in a textbook at school, and that's the only information you get, and therefore that must be correct.

But as you mentioned, this is one view. The Bible presents another view, and there's scientific evidence for both views. And what we'll discover is that the information for the biblical worldview of creation is growing, and that it's compelling, and it's now to the level that it cannot be ignored. And some of the top scholars of our time are starting to talk more about this view of what is called intelligent design, where there is a being, an all-powerful Creator behind all that we see and hear.

Exactly. You know, God was no problem for Blaise Pascal, Louis Pasteur, Isaac Newton. One writer who I enjoy reading, Dylan, is a writer named Dr. Mario Livio, L-I-V-I-O. He's a senior astrophysicist at the Space Telescope Institute in Baltimore, Maryland, and he wrote a book called Is God a Mathematician? And Livio says that there must be a God because there is mathematics. Now, I don't know if he's a born-again Christian, but he says, look, in a naturalistic, Darwinistic world, a world with no God, we would not have math.

And we have pure mathematics, and math is objective, absolute, nonphysical. Thanks for joining us at Truth For A New Generation. Stick with us. We'll be right back. I interviewed hundreds of children, ages five to twelve, and we address actual questions from actual children, the spiritual issues that are on the minds of your kids.

Did Jesus ever sin? The book and video lessons are great for groups of any size and was produced with the goal of equipping kids to stand strong for Christ in any situation. The 21 toughest questions your kids will ask, the book, study guide and video series. You'll find it at AFASTORE.net. That's AFASTORE.net. Attention all Christians who believe that America needs a spiritual revival, an awakening, a message of the gospel for our times. This is Alex McFarland encouraging you to attend the 2018 edition of Truth For A New Generation, the conference on apologetics, worldview and evidence for the Christian faith.

Greensboro, North Carolina, March 23 and 24. Hear an amazing lineup that includes Josh McDowell, apologist J. Warner Wallace, Lauren Green and Todd Starnes, both from Fox News, attorney Abe Hamilton III of the American Family Association, music by the bands and orchestra from North Greenville University, and much, much more. Sessions for all ages, equipping you to share your faith confidently in any situation. Visit truthforanewgeneration.com. That's truthforanewgeneration.com TNG 2018 to save a nation.

March 23 and 24 brought to you by North Greenville University, where Christ makes the difference. Welcome back to Truth For A New Generation radio. Alex McFarland, Dylan Burroughs, and we're going to continue talking about God and science. Hey Dylan, I've got to tell you, I am super pumped about Truth For A New Generation coming up, and it's going to be great to come to Greensboro and hear speakers like Josh McDowell and J. Warner Wallace. He might not be as well known as Josh, but one of our speakers, Dr. Juan Valdez, is a great thinker, and he has one of the great talks on God's existence that I've ever heard. People like J. Warner Wallace, Todd Starnes from Fox News. Folks, you don't want to miss it.

And this is a perfect event for people of any age, but especially young people. And the website Truth For A New Generation dot com. There's still time to register to come to Greensboro and to learn how to defend the faith, and maybe change someone's eternity by bringing them to hear these great defenders of the faith and bringing them under the sound of the gospel. But Dylan, let's talk a little bit about this. The fact that science has not enjoyed the unified front that a lot of people oftentimes assume. I think in the media, and certainly in many public school classrooms, it's assumed that all of science is inherently Darwinistic, and therefore naturalistic, and let me just say, atheistic. And not all of science is like that, is it?

No, it's not. And what we find out if we look at the latest discoveries in science regarding the beginnings of our universe, that much of our textbook material is an entire generation behind. I was talking not too long ago with Stephen Meyer, who's co-founder of the Intelligent Design Movement. He has a PhD from Cambridge and has studied molecular biology and what that shows regarding information that points toward an outside creator of all time, matter, space, and information. He talks about the analogy of computer programming.

He says, you know, you have to put in code to get code out. It doesn't come from nothing. It can't come from non-existence to existence. And the same is true in our created universe. You can't simply have material that comes from nowhere. It has to come from a point of origin, and that point of origin is what we would call God. So this doesn't take care of all of the issues that we have as Christians where we debate the age of the universe, perhaps, but it does give us a unified platform of information and a growing level of evidence that shows there is an intelligent designer behind all that we know.

Exactly, exactly. And you know, talking about the absence of a unified front, that not all PhDs are atheists, not all scientists reject belief in God, Darwin himself didn't always have a unified front. As I said in Origin of Species, he said it should be debated. But listen to this, Darwin said elsewhere, he said, another source of conviction in the existence of God, connected with the reason and not with the feelings, impresses me as having much more weight. And he talked about design, specifically the eye, that he felt like the human eye, it's a stretch to believe that that could have evolved. And he said, quote, when thus reflecting, I feel compelled to look to a first cause, having an intelligent mind in some degree, analogous to that of a man, I deserve to be called a theist.

End of quote. Now again, theism, T-H-E-I-S-M, theism, if you are theistic, you believe in God that there was a creator. Now, Christian theism, that's another step in the argument. But on the one hand, Darwin said, there's no doubt that we have descended from barbarians. On the other hand, he says, there has to be a designer, someone with a mind, an intelligence. We call that omniscience. And by the way, science itself, the word science, is a derivation of the word for knowledge.

And true science should be the quest for knowledge wherever that quest might lead. For so much of American academia though, even though modern discoveries point to God, it's being suppressed. It's certainly being withheld from young people. It's being ignored, suppressed. People are being demonized because they have decided, thanks to people like Stephen Hawking and Stephen Jay Gould, that we cannot let the idea of a creator into the great conversation or into the classroom. And we're paying the price for it. And so, scientists have not enjoyed the unified front, many have assumed. And let me just say this as we sadly are kind of running out of time.

I'm going to make two points, Dylan. Number one, innovators and innovation has always faced resistance. The evidence for God is compelling, growing, and can't be ignored forever.

And this is a bombshell for many. I'm looking at so many quotes. Isaac Manley of Harvard Medical School, an MD, he said, quote, evolution is a fairy tale myth.

Society has suffered as a result of this adult fantasy. Evolutionists claim their theory is scientific, but where is the science? End of quote. Dr. Ken Hsu, president of the International Association of Sedimentologists, a scientist in the area of geology, he says, quote, we've had enough of the Darwinian fallacy. It's about time we cry the emperor has no clothes.

Arnold Penzias, a Nobel Prize winning physicist. Creation is supported by all of the data so far, quote unquote. Right now the story that our culture has decided to embrace largely has been that there is no God. There are no morals. We do whatever we want to do. But we've got to be revolutionary. We've got to pray.

We've got to stay informed. We've got to speak truth. Speak it in love.

Speak it respectfully. Be prepared to defend what we say. And the truth is pointing to the evidence of our great Creator and Savior. Psalm 19, I love it. In the Word of God, it says the heavens and earth bear witness to the glory of God and the salvation of God. When I think about the human eye with 137 million rods and cones processing 180 million pixels or images per second, sending electrical impulses to the brain at a speed of over 300 miles per hour, the eyes dart and move and watch and internalize images more than 100,000 times a day during your waking hours.

Darwin was right that this could not have evolved by undirected chance or accident. It's time to speak up, unashamedly, confidently say we recognize the Creator and He's not only God the Creator, He's God the Savior who offers Himself to each and every person if we're brave enough, courageous enough to act on His overtures to us. Truth for a New Generation, in association with Alex McFarland Evangelistic Ministries, exists to equip Christians with a biblical worldview through conferences and camps. For information about upcoming events, visit truthforanewgeneration.com or give us a call at 877-YES-GOD-1. That's 877-YES-GOD and the number 1. TNG radio is made possible by the friends of Alex McFarland Evangelistic Ministries, P.O. Box 485, Pleasant Garden, North Carolina, 27313. That's P.O. Box 485, Pleasant Garden, North Carolina, 27313. Or give online at alexmcfarland.com or truthforanewgeneration.com. Thanks for listening and join us again next time as we bring you more truth for a new generation on TNG radio.