scienceandbibleconflict

So. Do Science and the Bible conflict? The answer is "yes" and "no." This morning's message will be in 2 parts. I'll spend the first half of the message on why science & the Bible conflict and the second half will be on how science gives us evidence that the Bible is for real.

This is a different kind of message. It's different, because I'm going to encourage us to look at things from a more scientific perspective today. Now that doesn't mean I'm not a man of faith. I am. The entire leadership of this church is faith-filled. But today I want to try to be as much like Joe Friday as I can: "Just the facts, ma'am."

One more disclaimer. I'm going to refer to scientists today as a general group of people. However, I do understand there are scientists who do not fit the picture I will paint today. Alright? Let's get going.

Probably the single biggest idea that science & the Bible disagree on is Darwinism. The theory of evolution. There's been a rub about this in school systems for years & even recently we're heard SoundBits in the news about it.

"The diversity of life on earth is the outcome of evolution: an unsupervised, impersonal, unpredictable and natural process of temporal descent with genetic modifications (or genetic changes happening naturally) that is affected by natural selection, chance, historical contingencies and changing environments."

All right, now lets look at what Darwinism, or evolutionists believe. They say there was a Big Bang. In simplest terms, the Big Bang says: out of nothingness, there was a vacuum. And then there was an explosion in that vacuum that created the Milky Way galaxy of which Kokomo is a part. Astronomers estimate our galaxy to have 30 billion suns. From rim to rim of the galaxy is 200,000 light years. ONE light year is the distance light travels in a year. About 186,000 miles per second x the number of seconds in a year!

To give you an idea, if you could travel at the speed of light, it would take under 8/10ths of a second to go around the world. (I believe that would be a new Olympic record.)

OK, so out of nothing an explosion creates a galaxy 200,000 light years across; so big, we cannot comprehend it.

Then, after this big bang that created earth, just out of chance, a warm little pond of ooze is created. Then somehow, a cell; one cell spontaneously originates in the ooze.

What's a cell? A cell is the smallest unit of any organism (repeat). But inside just ONE cell, in its genes and chromosomes, there's about a trillion bits of data, scientists tell us.

As one man put it, the mathematical odds of a cell spontaneously originating containing trillions of bits of data, then somehow spontaneously forming with millions of other cells in just the right order is in the same line of thinking that an explosion going off in a print shop could result in a dictionary.

And we need to understand that the scientific method is based on being able to observe and test things. Yet there is no evidence such an ooze ever existed.

No scientist with all the intentionality, expertise and technology in the world, can come close to reproducing life coming from non-life. Yet, we are to believe that this did happen through no one's intervention. Life just happened out of a pool of ooze.

Now science is suppose to derive theories from evidence. There's no evidence of the ooze, no dried ooze deposits, we can't reproduce the ooze, mathematically life-giving ooze appears implausible. The ooze, or the evidence, does not exist.

In other words they've thought up the idea of life-giving ooze, out of their theory of evolution. The place where evolution starts has no evidence to support it.

As one writer put it, "Scientifically this is bad ju-ju!" And this ooze is key. Because the whole evolution theory starts with life coming out of the ooze. Without life spontaneously showing up, there can be no evolution.

OK, so out of the blocks, I have a problem buying the Big Bang from a scientific view. But let's move on, let's say it could happen; and let's look at the scientific case for evolution.

Basically, from this cell we have life. And this life now starts evolving, much the same way it came into being; it just does. Remember, "nature happens."

Now the key ingredient to evolution is time. If we have enough of it, amazing things will happen. For instance, if someone walked into a lab with a worm in his hand and said, "In a few seconds, this will become a man," everyone would laugh. But if the same man says, "In billions of years this worm will become a man," then we believe it.

Now the Darwinians will say that there were outside forces that were affecting the species in addition to time. And they will mention "mutations." Yet current science would classify nearly all observed mutations in animals as being negative ones.

Another thing we might hear is how insects are "evolving" by becoming immune to certain pesticides over time.

This is not evolution. This is adaptation. We can't prove they're on their way to becoming something else, only that they're learning to live with a certain kind of pesticide. Humans used to die by the hundreds & thousands from plagues and now we don't because of vaccines. Are we evolving, becoming something else? Or are we adapting? We're adapting.//

Scientifically to shore up one species evolving into another, we need evidence. Becoming immune to DDT isn't enough. We need some fossils. We need a half-fish-half bird; we need a fird fossil. We need a half-monkey-half-man; We need a MANkey fossil.

We need what science calls a transitional or intermediary life form; a "missing link" if you will. Something to link two different species together to form this evolutionary chain. But here's the deal. Archaeology hasn't conclusively produced in this area.

Dr. Colin Patterson with the British Museum of Natural History which houses 7 million fossils wrote a book on fossils. When asked why there were no pictures showing intermediary species in his book, he replied,

"I fully agree with your observation for lack of any transitionary forms in my book. If I knew of any fossils or life forms that supported it, I certainly would have included them."

"No wonder paleontologists shied away from evolution for so long. It never seems to happen. (Persistent) collecting (of fossils) up cliff faces yields zigzags, minor oscillations and the very occasional slight accumulation of change---over millions of years, at a rate too slow to account for all the (large scale) change that has occurred in evolutionary history. When we do see the introduction of evolutionary novelty, it usually shows up with a bang, and often with no firm evidence that the fossils did not evolve elsewhere!"

Let me be clear. We know there were dinosaurs, mammoths and other life forms that were here at one time. Scientific evidence proves that. What can be proved is they became extinct. What science does not prove is that species that are no longer with us, "morphed" or evolved into the species we now have.

Darwin's theory of evolution originally predicted that fossil hunters would eventually find a great many transitional intermediates, or missing links, but it has not happened.

Let's take a very small change, like a giraffe evolving from black & white eyesight to color eyesight. That's not a major change in the scope of evolution. Our giraffe doesn't have to grow any new appendages like wings or anything. Just change something it already has.

First our giraffe needs a whole potful (that's the scientific term) of complicated retinal chemistry to respond differently to different colors of light. Keep in mind this is something a chemical engineer couldn't make work on purpose, and we're assuming this complicated retinal chemistry can just happen accidentally by nature. "Nature happens."

The problem with our giraffe is color eyeballs are worthless unless there is a bunch of new complicated brain circuitry to interpret the retina's output---which also evolved by chance at the same time.

The thing is either one of those things, complicated brain circuitry & retinal chemistry are useless without each other. The giraffe has to simultaneously evolve two phenomenally tricky systems that are independently of no value at all without the other. And that's just to evolve colored eyesight. (Darwin quote?)

I want to quickly share some scientific discoveries that when first discovered were thought to be proof of "missing link" species and in many books I looked at, still are.

Archaeopteryx was thought to be the missing link between reptiles and birds. Later paleontologists categorized it as a true bird since they found a bird they believed was 75 million years older than Archaeopteryx. (strike 1)

In 1980 Science Digest reported a discovery of an alleged missing link between whales and cows; a whale w/legs. They even published an artist's rendering. But that hypothesis was based on a skull and some teethNOT a leg bone or any more of a skeleton. (strike 2)

In 1974 scientists found the alleged missing link between ape and man called Ramopithicus or "Lucy" as it was called. Scientists said more than any other find, Lucy showed proof of evolution. The biggest basis to believe it was our ancestor was because the hip and knee bone indicated it walked upright. Currently there are pigmy chimps in South America that walk upright. So that argument in itself is weak.

Also, Dr. Charles Oxnard's tests showed the hip was not human-like and the knee bone was found over a mile away from the rest of the skeleton. Lastly, since then, more skeleton's of the Lucy type have been found and many scientists say it is more like an orangutan than an ape. (strike 3)

Next came homo-erectus better known as JavaMan. Eugene Dubois claimed to find an ape-like skull fragment and nearby found a human leg bone, again showing an ape head on a human-like body. Before he died, Eugene Dubois confessed he found 2 human skull fragments at the same location and admitted the skull most likely belonged to a gibbon, not an ape-man. (strike 4)

Next there was a discovery called Piltdown man that was universally accepted as a total forgery shortly after its debut. (strike 5)

Neanderthal man. Found in the Neanderthal Valley in Germany, some were upright, but some were found to be severely hunched which lead us to believe they were missing links. Two scientists from Johns Hopkins University went to Germany and x-rayed the hunched over skeletons. They discovered they were hunched because they had Ricketts, or Artheritus or another serious vitamin D deficiency. So Neanderthal man was reclassified to be in the same class as man, NOT a missing link. (strike 6)

Lastly Nebraska Man Only thing found was a tooth and drawings of a missing link were theorized. Later it was discovered the tooth most likely came from a wild pig. (strike 7we're out!)

Richard Leiky, the most well known anthropologist of our time when asked to draw a family tree for man, said he would have to draw a big question mark.

So let's recap: We have a theory called the Big Bang that has no scientific evidence to support ooze existed that could spontaneously produce life. We know scientifically we've only seen life come from life.

And thirdly, the evolution theory has a humongus hole in it which is the lack of evidence to support the idea of intermediary or missing-link species. The proof is not there. Again, proof of extinct creatures IS there. BUT, to try to link these known species to present day species without solid evidence seems to me, scientifically unsound.

I personally find the evolution theory weak, based on scientific methods. And I am a person who grew up believing it. I saw it in text books. I saw it when my parents took us to museums. I saw the picture of ape and several creatures morphing into man over millions of years and I heard that scientists believed this theory and so I believed.

Right now, I believe we need to understand that many times when we see the pictures of monkeys evolving into man that all those links are not accounted for. They are artist's interpretation of a theory that does not have conclusive proof. Remember, even scientists call it the evolution THEORY; not the evolution fact.

So why do science and educational systems stand firmly behind this theory with such a lack of evidence? Good question. I don't want to get off on a rant, so I'll end the first half of this message right here.//(end Part I)

Let's change directions and talk about how science and the Bible work together. Science is by no means "evil." Science has done and will do great things. I just differ on their view of where life came from.

How old is the earth? We do not know. I won't give you theory, only that no one, theologian or scientist seems to give a case that all can agree on.

Biblically it tells in Genesis 1:1 that God first created Heavens and the earth. Later, He created man. How much later? We don't know. He could have taken a God-sized coffee break in between. We don't know how old the Earth is.

Did God create the universe in 7 actual days or was that 7 "figurative" days? Were they 24 hour days or was a day many years? Again, we don't know. How exactly did God create the universe and Adam & Eve? We don't know those details.

BUT, there are many things we do know and I'll try to take you through a quick synopsis of the Bible supported with scientific discoveries.

Alright, the Bible says life started in the Garden of Eden as a result of God's creation. It tells us that the Garden of Eden was on the Tigris & Euphrates rivers at their junction with the (Pee-shone) and (Gee-khone) rivers.(Pishon & Gihon) That puts it in the Caucasus mountain region of southwest Asia. This is about the center of the earth's surface.

Now, on the spot which is believed to be where the Garden of Eden was, is a group of mounds known as Eridu. In 300 BC, a Baylonian historian, chronicles the first two pre-flood kings as reigning in Eridu, or where we believe the Garden of Eden to be. We also have an ancient Babylonian inscription BC that says, "Near Eridu was a garden, in which was a mysterious Sacred Tree, a Tree of Life, planted by the gods, whose roots were deep, while its branches reached to heaven"

Also, when Eridu was excavated by Scientists of the British Museum, they found indications that it had been a prosperous city, and writings there tell us it was revered as the Original Home of Man.

And lastly on the Garden of Eden, ethnologists, who are scientists who study origins of races, also consider this region to be the original home of all of the present races of man. They also say it is the region that originated: oxen, goats, sheep, horses, pigs, dogs, apples, peaches, pears, plums, cherries, mulberries, olives, figs, dates, almonds, wheat, barley, oats, peas, beans, spinach, radishes, onions and most of our fruits and vegetables. Ethnologists consider it the cradle, or origin of the human race.

Let's talk about Adam & Eve. We have 2 ancient Babylonian seals that scientists have found that refer to Adam & Eve. One shows a tree in the center, on the right is a man. On the left is a woman picking fruit and behind her is a serpent standing as if it's whispering in her ear.

The other, shows an unclothed man and woman walking very downcast, being followed by a serpent. These 2 artifacts are from around 3500 BC, which is the beginning of recorded history. 3500 BC is the dividing line between the pre-historic and the historic periods. And these 2 seals strongly suggest that primitive man was fixed on the story of Adam and Eve approximately 5,500 years ago.

Biblical historians place Adam & Eve about 4,000 BC. If that date is correct, we have abundant pre-flood writings within approximately 500 years of Adam & Eve.

In fact from 3500 BC to 100 BC we have unearthed hundreds of thousands of tablets and documents. In the city of Nippur alone, (which was one of Nimrod's cities in the book of Genesis) scientists found 50,000 tablets, including a library of 20,000 volumes, archives of kings and complete works on science, literature and religion.

We even have extensive historical records prior to 2400 BC ; There have been ELEVEN pre-flood cities excavated by scientists. Of which some are mentioned in the Bible.

But all good things come to an end. The Bible tells us that God sent a flood to destroy the human race except for Noah and his family around 2400 BC.

First, it's important to note that every branch of the human race around the world has in its culture, an ancient flood story that destroys all mankind except for one family.

Secondly, we have many recovered tablets dating between the time of the flood (2400 BC) & the life of Abraham (2000 BC) that clearly mention a great flood. One Sumerian tablet of 2000 BC gives a full account of a flood. And yet another Babylonian inscription after naming all of the 10 pre-flood Kings says, "Then the flood overthrew the land."

There has also been hard evidence for the flood found in three separate places: The first city is Ur. Historically it's important to know that Ur was the most magnificent city in the world at it's time. Abraham, the father of the nation of Israel, spent much time in Ur. We can now walk the same streets Abraham walked.

Anyway, serious flood evidence was found in Ur, which was 12 miles from the Garden of Eden. At Fara, the traditional home of Noah, 60 miles north. And at Kish, another 100 miles up river. You can go to the library and see multitudes of artifacts of these citiesthey are among the oldest historic cities unearthedscientist consider these some of the foremost examples of earliest civilizations.

In all three locations, archaeologists found a layer of clay that was 8 feet thick. What is amazing is that above this clay layer is evidence of human existence: skeletons, tools, homes etc. This 8 foot layer of clay had no trace of human existence in it; it was pure water-laid clay. And underneath the 8 feet of clean clay was evidence of man again.

Dr. Woolley said that 8 feet of sediment implied a very great depth and long period of water, that it could not have been put there by any ordinary overflow of the rivers, but only by some such vast inundation as the Biblical Flood. The civilization underneath the flood layer was so different from that above it, that it indicated a "sudden and terrific break in the continuity of history."

Alright, moving on to after the flood. We're all familiar how Moses led the Hebrews out of Egypt. This happened about 1400 BC. Scientifically, we can't be positive who was Pharoah during the Exodus. But we can narrow it down to Ramses II, or "Ramses the Great" as he's known or Amenhotep II.

It's also noteworthy that neither Ramses nor Amenhotep were succeeded by their first born sons, which would line up with the Biblical account of the death of the 1st born sons in Egypt. But either way both of the mummies have been found. We could actually look at the face of the man Moses dealt with on a very intimate basis.

During this time, the Hebrew slaves were being used by Pharoah to build the Egyptian cities. In Exodus chapter 5, Moses makes Pharoah mad and Pharoah says,

"I will not give you any more straw. Go and get your own straw wherever you can find itSo the people scattered all over Egypt to gather stubble to use for straw" (Ex 5:10-12)

The lower levels of brick were filled with good chopped straw; the middle layers of brick with less straw, that included stubble picked up by the root; and the upper level of bricks containing no straw whatsoever! What a clear confirmation of the details of the second book of the Bible, confirmed by science.

In the book of Joshua we are told of the battle of the city of Jericho. In the 2nd chapter of Joshua it tells of a prostitute named Rahab. She hid 2 men in her house that Joshua had sent to spy on Jericho. After the coast was clear, in 2:15 it says,

"So she let them down by a rope through the window, for the house she lived in was part of the city wall."

Jericho has been extensively excavated. The excavation showed the wall around the city was actually 2 walls that were 15 feet apart and 30 feet high. They also discovered the walls were linked together by houses built across the top between the 2 walls. Once again, we see science confirm a small detail of the book of Joshua.

Also in the book of Joshua, God told Israel to exterminate the Canaanites. God was passing judgement on them and wiping out idolatry. God was setting up the Israelite nation to pave the way for the coming of Christ and to cement the idea of ONE TRUE LIVING GOD.

What scientists found in excavations in the Canaanite regions, were temples where the Canaanites worshiped multiple gods around 1500 BC. In these temples they found great numbers of jars containing the remains of children who had been sacrificed to their gods.

Another horrible practice uncovered was called "foundation sacrifices." When a house was built, a child would be sacrificed and its body built into the wall to bring good luck to the rest of the family.

Also, in the temples were found enormous quantities of images of their gods that were grotesquely erotic in nature, that were designed to foster perverse sensual feelings during worship.

So for anyone asking how a "Just God" can wipe out civilizations, science gives us proof of a people that practiced abominable child sacrifices and sexual perversion as part of their worship in line with Sodom & Gomorrah. Here science helps us understand the wrath of God against the wickedness of nations.

Let's fast forward to the New Testament just after the time of Jesus' death. The Nazareth decree is an inscription cut on a slab of white marble. And it says this,

"Ordinance of Caesar: "It is my pleasure that graves and tombs remain undisturbedIfany man lay information that another has either demolished or extracted the buried, or has maliciously transferred them to other places in order to wrong them, or has displaced the sealingstonesLet it be absolutely forbidden for anyone to disturb them."

In another writing, (swee-toe'-nee-us) Suetonious, a Greek historian, writes that the Nazareth decree was done, "At the instigation of one, Christos," or Christ.

The Bible tells us in John chapter 19, that the crucifixion took place outside the city referred to as "the place of the skull." "Calvalry" in Latin and "Golgotha" in Hebrew both mean "skull." And today there is a place outside Jerusalem still called "Skull Hill," because it has a striking resemblance to a human skull.

In John 9:7, Jesus after curing a man's blindness said, "Go, wash in the Pool of Siloam." A version of this pool still exists in the southern tip of the Old City of David.

In 1990 an Israeli archaeologist excavated a tomb on a hill to the south of Jerusalem. On one of the resting places the name "Caiaphas" was etched. Caiaphas, the high priest from AD 18-36 was mentioned 9 times in the Gospels and book of Acts.

The Bible tells us Christ's death was ordered by Pontius Pilate. During the excavation of Caesarea, the name of Pontius Pilate has been found on a fragmentary inscription.

I'll leave you with this last bit of evidence. It says in John 19:41-42, "At the place where Jesus was crucified, there was a garden, and in the garden a new tomb, in which no one had ever been laid. Because it was the Jewish day of Preparation, and since the tomb was nearby, they laid Jesus there."

In 1881, Gen. Christian Gordon unearthed a garden at the west foot of Skull Hill where Christ was crucified. After excavating, they found a tomb of Roman times cut in a wall of solid rock, with a trench in front where a stone would have rolled to the door.

There were 2 graves inside. One had not been completed. The other indicated it had been used but there were no markings of human decay. In John chapter 20 it tells us Mary Magdalene went to the tomb at dawn to find the stone rolled away.

It tells us she bent over, looked in the tomb to see 2 Angels. It turns out, this tomb is located such that at dawn, the sunlight shines in allowing one to see the grave where Christ's body was and the Angels later were.

What's more, it's recorded that the Roman Emperor Hadrian, in his persecution of the Christians, in AD 135, built a temple of Venus over the tomb where Jesus had been buried. Then later, in AD 330, Constantine, the first Christian emperor, destroyed the temple of Venus.

In Gordon's excavation, they found traces of a building that had been erected on top of the tomb. They found a shrine-stone of Venus and 2 recesses that were characteristic of Venus temples, on top of the tomb.

And lastly, in a vault adjoining the tomb, a tombstone was found that was inscribed, "Buried near his Lord."//

Now this is the point where I normally would have written a conclusion to this message. But I didn't. Not because I forgot; but because the conclusion is largely up to you.

The evidence I shared today is just a brief smattering of what is available. One thing I've learned about Christianity, is the more I pursue it to see if it's true, the more I will be convinced that it is.

Even as I prepared for this message, my faith has been strengthened by what I've read. So again, the conclusion today is yours.

If by now you believe more than ever the case for Christ is true, then in a few weeks, Mark Matthews will share the ultimate conclusion to today's talk with a message entitled, "Why become a Christ-follower?"

The conclusion for today ultimately requires a decision to accept or reject Christianity. Next week we'll give you a chance to hear what exactly Christianity is; and give you a no pressure opportunity to sign up.