Biology - The study of living things.
Science versus The Bible??
Heliocentric solar system
Galileo - the idea of a heliocentric solar system. The Church condemned heliocentrism as contrary to Scripture, leading to Galileo’s trial and house arrest.
Psalms 113:3 From the rising of the sun to the place where it sets, the name of the LORD is to be praised.
Joshua 10:12-14 On the day the LORD gave the Amorites over to Israel, Joshua said to the LORD in the presence of Israel: ‘Sun, stand still over Gibeon, and you, moon, over the Valley of Aijalon.’ So the sun stood still, and the moon stopped, till the nation avenged itself on its enemies, as it is written in the Book of Jashar. The sun stopped in the middle of the sky and delayed going down about a full day. There has never been a day like it before or since, a day when the LORD listened to a human being. Surely the LORD was fighting for Israel!
The Book of Jasher, which means the Book of the Upright or the Book of the Just Man, is a lost book mentioned in the Hebrew Bible, often interpreted as a lost non-canonical book.
Non-canonical book - NOT part of a set of works or subjects that are generally agreed to be good, important, and worth studying.
Creation:
1935 - Bertrand Russell’s Book “Religion and Science” Said at a subatomic level classical nuclear physics had explained the mysteries of the atom. And quantum physics had taken it a step further. At the cosmic level, Einstein’s theory of relativity was expanding Newton’s explanation of the workings of the universe. At a planetary level, Darwin had explained the existence and development of life. Some even declared that science has neared the end of it’s journey. THAT was 1935….
Newton’s (1643-1727) explanation of the workings of the universe.
Darwin (1809-1882) had explained the existence and development of life
Einstein’s (1879-1955) theory of relativity
1965 Big Bang is established by the discovery of background radiation at Bell Labs’ Holmdale New Jersey, that there was indeed a creation event.
Astrophysicist Robert Jastrow (In 1961, he became the founding director of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies and served as its director until his retirement from NASA in 1981) ““At this moment it seems as though science will never be able to raise the curtain on the mystery of creation. For the scientist who has lived by his faith in the power of reason, the story ends like a bad dream. He has scaled the mountains of ignorance; he is about to conquer the highest peak; as he pulls himself over the final rock, he is greeted by a band of theologians who have been sitting there for centuries.”
Famous astronomer Fred Hoyle (who coined the term Big Bang) He admitted that his atheism was greatly shaken when he calculated the chances of all this happening by accident. He wrote this in the November 1981 issue of Engineering and Science: “A common sense interpretation of the facts suggests that a super intellect has monkeyed with physics, as well as with chemistry and biology and that there are no blind forces worth speaking about in nature. The numbers one calculates from the facts seem to me so overwhelming as to put this conclusion almost beyond question.”
(Fred Hoyle November 1981 issue of Engineering and Science:)
Superintellect: Fred Hoyle dedicated much of his effort to the “Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence” SETI
Stephen Hawking - A Brief History of Time
I will speak slowly, but consider these numbers…
Hawking writes: “Why did the universe start out with so nearly the critical rate of expansion that even now, 10 thousand million years later, it is still expanding at nearly the critical rate? If the rate of expansion one second after the Big Bang had been smaller by even 1 part in 100 thousand million million, the universe would have recollapsed before it ever reached its present size. On the other hand, if the rate of expansion had been greater by even 1 part in a million, stars and planets could not have been able to form.”
“The existence of a universe as we know it rests upon a knife edge of improbability.”
“In fact, if one considers the possible constants and laws that could have emerged, the odds against a universe that has produced life like ours are immense.”
“It would be very difficult to explain why the universe should have begun in just this way, except as the act of a God who intended to create beings like us.”
(Stephen Hawking book “A Brief History of time”)
Albert Einstein (“I am not an atheist”, preferring to call himself an agnostic)
“science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind”
Age of the earth:
Based on the Old Testament and the biblical patriarchs’ ages, archbishop James Ussher (1581-1656), ruled that the Earth was formed in the year 4004 BCE, around 6 pm on 22 October to be precise.
Young Earth Creationists - the Genesis account is the only measure of understanding the universe and it is science.
Ken Ham’s argument is… “You were not there… Only God was present at creation. God has given us a divine book so anything that contradicts with the divine book has to be wrong”.
Evolution
Darwinist Evolution - all human life as a result of natural causes. Diverse groups of animals evolve from one or a few common ancestors, and the mechanism by which this evolution takes place is natural selection.
Francis Collins - (Collins led the Human Genome Project and other genomics research initiatives as director of the National Human Genome Research Institute (NHGRI). The Language of God: A Scientist Presents Evidence for Belief.
Science Advisor to the President - President Joe Biden
Director of the National Institutes of Health - Barack Obama, Donald Trump, Joe Biden
Biologos - Evolution as understood by Darwin and others is supported by analysis of DNA. God is the author of all creation as well as DNA and through it all life was conceived. A special intervention into this creation set man apart as being in the image of God.
DNA – The potential of everything
CS Lewis - For long centuries, God perfected the animal form which was to become the vehicle of humanity and the image of Himself. He gave it hands whose thumb could be applied to each of the fingers, and jaws and teeth and throat capable of articulation, and a brain sufficiently complex to execute all of the material motions whereby rational thought is incarnated. The creature may have existed in this state for ages before it became man: it may even have been clever enough to make things which a modern archaeologist would accept as proof of its humanity. But it was only an animal because all its physical and psychical processes were directed to purely material and natural ends. Then, in the fullness of time, God caused to descend upon this organism, both on its psychology and physiology, a new kind of consciousness which could say “I” and “me,” which could look upon itself as an object, which knew God, which could make judgments of truth, beauty and goodness and which was so far above time that it could perceive time flowing past.”
CS Lewis “The Problem of Pain”
What about Darwin?
At a dinner party with two atheists in 1881, Darwin asked his guests, “Why do you call yourselves atheists?” saying that he preferred Huxley’s word, “agnostic.” One of his guests replied that “agnostic was but atheist with respectable, and atheist was only agnostic who is aggressive.”
As a source of conviction in the existence of God, connected with the reason and not with the feelings, impresses me as having much more weight. This follows from the extreme difficulty or rather impossibility of conceiving this immense and wonderful universe, including man with his capacity of looking far backwards and far into the future, as the result of blind chance or necessity. When thus reflecting I feel compelled to look to a First Cause having an intelligent mind in some degree analogous to that of man; and I deserve to be called a Theist.
The Autobiography of Charles Darwin, 1809–82 by Charles Darwin (first published in 1887, five years after his death, complete edition did not appear until 1959)
Atheist use scientific information to deny faith but science reveals God.
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Adam - Jesus challenges our basic instincts
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Wonder / Mystery
Biologist J. B. S. Haldane once famously observed - The universe is not only more unbelievable than we suppose, it is more unbelievable than we are able to suppose.
Psalms 19:1 The heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of his hands.
Psalms 8:3-4 When I consider your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars, which you have set in place, what are mere mortals that you are mindful of them, human beings that you care for them?
No art or creation of man rivals the beauty of nature
Genesis 1:1 “it is good!”
Adam - Biology of belief. What you believe is powerful!