The Empty Center: Why Apologetics Without the Gospel Fails

• Science and Faith Compatibility [00:00:00 ▶️ 📄]
  > The pastor introduces the series 'Reasons Not to Believe' and specifically addresses the first reason: that the Christian faith conflicts with science.
• Cosmological Conflict (Age of the Earth) [00:01:49 ▶️ 📄]
  > The pastor addresses the tension between the biblical six-day creation and the scientific age of the universe (13.8 billion years), arguing that Genesis is poetic, not scientific.
• Hermeneutics and Biblical Genre [00:05:21 ▶️ 📄]
  > The pastor argues for reading the Bible literally as in 'according to its genre,' explaining that Genesis 1-2 is poetic description, evidenced by the creation of light before the sun and God resting.
• Anthropological Conflict (Creation vs. Evolution) [00:08:43 ▶️ 📄]
  > The pastor shifts to the second conflict, arguing that the real divide is not creation vs. evolution, but theism vs. naturalism, and that God could have used evolution as His creative method.
• Scientific Evidence for Theism [00:11:37 ▶️ 📄]
  > The pastor cites the timeline of evolution and the improbability of chance formation of amino acids (citing Sir Fred Hoyle) to argue that evolution actually points toward a creative God rather than away from Him.
• Evolutionary Timeline and Probability [00:11:49 ▶️ 📄]
  > The pastor argues that the Earth's history is too short for naturalistic evolution to occur by chance, citing Sir Fred Hoyle's calculations on the improbability of amino acids forming randomly.
• Irreducible Complexity [00:15:23 ▶️ 📄]
  > Using the mousetrap analogy and the human eye, the pastor argues that complex biological systems require all parts to function simultaneously, suggesting they could not have evolved step-by-step.
• Macroevolution vs. Microevolution [00:18:22 ▶️ 📄]
  > The pastor distinguishes between adaptation within a species (microevolution) and the emergence of entirely new species (macroevolution), arguing the latter lacks scientific explanation.
• Origin of Life (Abiogenesis) [00:19:38 ▶️ 📄]
  > The pastor questions how non-life became life, dismissing naturalistic explanations as insufficient and comparing them to absurd transformations like an SUV becoming Optimus Prime.
• Thermodynamics and the Big Bang [00:21:47 ▶️ 📄]
  > The pastor cites the Second Law of Thermodynamics and the Big Bang theory to argue that the universe had a definite beginning, implying a cause outside of natural phenomena.
• Fine-Tuning of the Universe [00:26:24 ▶️ 📄]
  > The pastor discusses the imbalance between matter and antimatter, arguing that the universe's specific conditions for life suggest divine intervention rather than random chance.
• Fine-Tuning and Design of the Universe [00:26:24 ▶️ 📄]
  > The pastor discusses the improbability of matter existing over antimatter and the specific conditions required for life, arguing that the universe appears intricately designed rather than chaotic.
• The Anthropocentric Principle [00:32:05 ▶️ 📄]
  > The speaker explains that Earth is uniquely and 'freakishly' suited for human life, citing the Goldilocks zone, orbital speed, Jupiter's protective gravity, and atmospheric composition as evidence of design.
• Miracles and Science [00:36:51 ▶️ 📄]
  > The pastor addresses the perceived conflict between miracles and science, arguing that miracles are supernatural interventions that do not contradict science if one admits the possibility of God, whereas atheism is the actual scientific problem.
• Harmony of Revelation [00:39:45 ▶️ 📄]
  > The pastor concludes that the Bible and the created cosmos are two 'books' that reveal God's truth without contradiction, citing Psalm 19.
• Science and Faith Congruity [00:39:25 ▶️ 📄]
  > The pastor argues that science reveals truth about creation and does not contradict the Bible, but rather supports the existence of God.
• Two Books Theology [00:39:40 ▶️ 📄]
  > The pastor uses the analogy of two books (the Bible and the created cosmos) to explain how God reveals truth through both scripture and nature.
• [Psalm 19](https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Psalm+19&version=KJV) Exegesis [00:39:49 ▶️ 📄]
  > The pastor cites Psalm 19 to illustrate how the heavens declare God's glory (science) and the law of the Lord reveals His word (scripture).
• Future Sermon Announcement [00:40:41 ▶️ 📄]
  > The pastor previews the next week's topic regarding errors and contradictions in the Bible.

• Sermon Illustration [00:01:20 ▶️ 📄]
  > A joke about a boy asking his parents where humans came from; the father says apes, the mother says God's image, and the mother clarifies she was talking about her side of the family.
• Sermon Illustration [00:13:31 ▶️ 📄]
  > The pastor references Sir Fred Hoyle's calculation that the probability of 200,000 amino acids coming together by chance to form one human cell would take 293.5 times the estimated age of the earth.
• Sermon Illustration [00:14:33 ▶️ 📄]
  > The pastor uses the analogy of an iPhone and Apple's corporate campus being created by a single explosion in a garage to illustrate the impossibility of complex life arising by chance.
• Sermon Illustration [00:15:42 ▶️ 📄]
  > The pastor uses the 'mousetrap' analogy, explaining that a mousetrap requires all five parts to function, illustrating the concept of irreducible complexity in biological systems.
• Sermon Illustration [00:20:03 ▶️ 📄]
  > The pastor compares the transition from non-life to life to an SUV transforming into Optimus Prime after going through a car wash to highlight the absurdity of naturalistic abiogenesis.
• Sermon Illustration [00:28:40 ▶️ 📄]
  > The pastor uses the analogy of finding a watch, a building, or a painting to argue that design implies a designer, and contrasts a natural log jam with the Hoover Dam to illustrate intentionality.
• Sermon Illustration [00:29:21 ▶️ 📄]
  > The pastor references the NASA Artemis II rocket launch, describing its complexity and power, and asks the listener to imagine finding such a rocket in a desert to argue that complexity implies a maker rather than chance.
• Sermon Illustration [00:32:59 ▶️ 📄]
  > The pastor retells the story of Goldilocks and the Three Bears to explain the concept of the 'Goldilocks zone' where Earth's distance from the sun is 'just right' for life.
• Sermon Illustration [00:39:40 ▶️ 📄]
  > The pastor uses the analogy of 'two books' given by God: the Bible and the created cosmos, which are not in contradiction but work together to reveal truth.

[00:00:00] [SPEAKER SPEAKER_00]
[00:00:00] The world is full of reasons not to believe in God. But what if they don't tell the whole story? What if those questions deserve a second look? You might find that belief makes more sense than you expected.

[00:00:15] [SPEAKER SPEAKER_02]
[00:00:15] Well, welcome to MEX Online Campus. Last week we started a series called Reasons Not to Believe.
[00:00:22] It's a series on the six biggest reasons that a curious, open-minded person, when looking at the Christian faith, would have the right to reject it and move on to something else.
[00:00:33] six reasons we're exploring in this series are true, you probably shouldn't believe the Christian faith. You shouldn't be drawn to Jesus. Here are the six. If it conflicts with science, if the Bible is filled with errors, if there's
[00:00:47] not an adequate explanation for the presence of evil and suffering in the world, if judgmental, hypocritical Christians legitimately undermine its validity, if Jesus wasn't who he said he was, and the one we kicked the series off
[00:01:02] with last week if Jesus didn't rise from the dead. Today we're going to take another step forward. We're going to be looking at whether the Christian faith and the Bible in particular conflicts with science. Because in the minds of a lot of
[00:01:15] people, science and faith just do not mix, or at least there's a lot of confusion.
[00:01:20] Like the little boy who went to his dad and asked, dad where did human beings come from? And his father says, well we descended from apes. The little boy then goes to his mother. She says, mom, where did human beings come from? And she says, well, we were created
[00:01:35] by God in God's image. And the boy said, well, dad said we came from apes. And she said, well, I was talking about my side of the family. So let's dive in and see if we can clear up some confusion and
[00:01:49] see what we find. When you think about where most people feel there might be tension, there's two big areas of interest. The first supposed conflict is cosmological in nature. Let's call it the six solar days versus 13.8 billion years dilemma. Here's how the conflict is usually presented
[00:02:09] according to the Bible, or at least how it's usually presented. According to the Bible, the world was created in six literal 24-hour solar days. From that, based on the histories and the genealogies that were given in the Bible, the age of the Earth is around 6,000 years old.
[00:02:27] Now, cosmologists would say that's crazy, that the age of the universe is right at around 13.8 billion years old. And they know that because of all the scientific evidence of the Big Bang happening about 14 billion years ago, the light we see coming from stars billions of light years
[00:02:44] away, the earth being around 4.5 billion years old, which is backed by geological stratigraphy.
[00:02:52] We see in places like the Grand Canyon, ranging from 200 million to 2 billion years ago, the age of fossils, dinosaurs. I mean, the evidence is overwhelming. It's not even a debate. The earth, much less the universe, is not 6,000 years old, but 13.8 billion years old. And they're right.
[00:03:12] But does the Bible actually say the earth is just 6,000 years old?
[00:03:16] Let me give you a taste of what it actually says.
[00:03:20] In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.
[00:03:23] The earth was formless and empty, and darkness covered the deep waters, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the surface of the waters.
[00:03:30] Then God said, Let there be light, and there was light, and God saw the light was good.
[00:03:36] Then he separated the light from the darkness, and God called the light day and the darkness night.
[00:03:40] And evening passed and morning came, marking the first day.
[00:03:45] Then God said, let there be a space between the waters to separate the waters of the heaven from the waters of the earth.
[00:03:50] And that is what happened.
[00:03:52] God made this space to separate the waters of the earth from the waters of the heavens and God called the space sky.
[00:03:58] And evening and morning passed and marking the second day.
[00:04:03] And on and on it goes, just like that.
[00:04:06] On the third day, God created the land and the seas and plants.
[00:04:10] On the fourth day, the sun and the moon and the stars.
[00:04:13] On the fifth day, he created the fish and the birds.
[00:04:16] On the sixth day, the animals of the earth as well as the first human beings.
[00:04:20] Let me read that part to you.
[00:04:22] So God created human beings in his own image.
[00:04:25] In the image of God, he created them male and female.
[00:04:28] He created them.
[00:04:30] And then when it was all over, there was this final declaration.
[00:04:34] Then God looked over all he had made, and he saw that it was very good.
[00:04:38] And evening passed, and morning came, marking the sixth day.
[00:04:42] So the creation of the heavens and the earth and everything in them was completed.
[00:04:46] On the seventh day, God had finished his work of creation, so he rested from all his work.
[00:04:52] And God blessed the seventh day and declared it holy, because it was the day when he rested from all his work of creation.
[00:05:00] There you have it.
[00:05:02] God did it.
[00:05:03] All of it.
[00:05:04] and it was good. That's pretty much the takeaway from Genesis. People who try to make it a scientific statement about seven literal 24-hour solar days marking the age of the universe at around 6,000 years, which flies in the face of everything science has discovered, simply aren't
[00:05:21] reading the text carefully. And I don't say that condescendingly. I guess I put on my old seminary professor hat on here. You might say, but aren't you guys supposed to take the Bible literally? And absolutely, but that's not taking it literally enough. To read the Bible literally
[00:05:38] means that you read it the way it was intended to be read, the way it was actually written.
[00:05:44] That means in accordance with its genre, in light of its language, the time in which it was written, and authorial intent. It's why people like me go to seminaries, or should, where we take classes
[00:05:56] in hermeneutics or the science of interpretation, why we study the languages of Hebrew and Greek, the languages in which the text was originally written, along with studying the culture of the ancient Near Eastern world. If you take Genesis 1 and 2 literally, meaning as they were actually
[00:06:12] written, then you need to read it as poetic description, because that's what it was. That was a genre. You just read it yourself. Did it sound like a scientific paper? Not even close.
[00:06:25] That's why pulling out some kind of scientific precision about literal 24-hour solar days when its poetry, is forcing something onto the text that just isn't there. You want a big clue about that? How could this be a scientific statement about literal 24-hour solar days when, according
[00:06:44] to the text, the sun and the moon weren't even created until the fourth day? You couldn't even have had a 24-hour solar day until the fourth day because there was nothing in existence to be solar.
[00:06:57] I think God could have inspired the writer to be a little more careful on that one if he meant it to be a scientific statement.
[00:07:05] And if you want one final hint, how about this one?
[00:07:08] As we read, it says on the seventh day, God rested.
[00:07:13] Since when does an omnipotent, omniscient being need to take a day to rest?
[00:07:18] Clearly, this is poetic, figurative, pre-scientific language.
[00:07:23] Absolutely true, absolutely inspired by God.
[00:07:27] I believe the Bible to be true to the core of my being, but you have to read it the way it's meant to be read.
[00:07:32] That's how you treat it as the inspired text that it is, the way God actually inspired the author to write it.
[00:07:38] Otherwise, you're standing over the Bible instead of the Bible standing over you.
[00:07:43] So what does it mean when it uses the word day?
[00:07:46] Well, the word used in the original Hebrew language for day is the Hebrew word yom, which, while it can mean a 24-hour solar day, it can also mean a segment of time, anywhere from weeks to a year to several years
[00:07:59] to an age or even an era.
[00:08:02] We use the word day in a similar way now.
[00:08:05] Talk about, oh, the time of our grandfather's day or the days gone by.
[00:08:11] The use of the word day or yom in Genesis could have stood for any period of time, including indefinite periods.
[00:08:18] It was a literary device.
[00:08:20] It was not a scientific declaration.
[00:08:23] So the supposed tension between the Bible and science in regard to the age of the earth is really just non-existent.
[00:08:29] Nothing in the Bible would go to war against the universe being around 13.8 billion years old, the earth about 4.5 billion years old, which are currently the best estimates of science.
[00:08:39] What you walk away from Genesis is that God did it, and it was good.
[00:08:43] Now let's move on to the second supposed conflict, which is anthropological.
[00:08:48] Let's call it the creation versus evolution question.
[00:08:52] Here's the way most have heard that set up.
[00:08:55] That the Bible says that God created man in a single instant from the dust of the earth.
[00:08:59] But the reality is that man descends from animals through the primates as a result of a process of evolution that took several billion years of time plus chance.
[00:09:10] And before we get into that, let me be clear.
[00:09:13] Christians, without a doubt, believe that God created human beings.
[00:09:17] If you are a Christian, you are, by necessity, a creationist.
[00:09:21] We do believe the Bible.
[00:09:22] And it tells us that when it comes to all of us, God was that creative force.
[00:09:28] God created it, including us.
[00:09:30] We believe that we were wonderfully and carefully designed, that the entire creative process was miraculously and supernaturally generated and guided by God.
[00:09:42] So does that mean that when it comes to creation and evolution, we have an insurmountable impasse?
[00:09:46] No.
[00:09:47] because the Bible only tells us that God created us.
[00:09:52] It doesn't tell us how God created us, which means the real divide when it comes to creation and evolution is not creation and evolution.
[00:10:02] It's the divide between theism and naturalism.
[00:10:07] A naturalistic view of the universe sees nature as all that there is, while a theistic view of the universe remains very much open to the existence and activity of a God.
[00:10:17] and believes that the existence and activity of that God interacts with his creation, the universe.
[00:10:25] In other words, the real divide is whether you have a creative process without a God or a creative process with a God.
[00:10:34] That's the real question.
[00:10:35] Now, evolution is obviously the leading theory in science as to the how, which if you're a Christian and you believe in the Bible, that's fine.
[00:10:45] If God used evolution as part of his creative process, so be it.
[00:10:50] All science is is discovering, from the Christian perspective, all science is is discovering what God has done.
[00:10:55] That doesn't mean there wasn't an original Adam and Eve that God breathed an actual soul into at the end of the process to mark the beginning of the human race as we know it today.
[00:11:06] Much less that there wasn't a God guiding the entire process and injecting himself into it.
[00:11:12] The real question is whether something like the theory of evolution explains away God as a creative force or by necessity pulls him in.
[00:11:22] And the truth is that the more you look at evolution in light of all that we know about science, the more the theory of evolution makes the case for exactly what Christians believe, which is the presence of God's creative work and his guiding involvement.
[00:11:37] Just think about the timeline.
[00:11:39] As mentioned, the age of the universe is around 13.8 billion years old, the age of the Earth about 4.8 billion years, but life didn't exist on planet Earth 4.5 billion years ago.
[00:11:49] It couldn't.
[00:11:50] It was a geologically violent time.
[00:11:53] There was constant bombardment from meteorites, and the Earth's surface itself had to cool and the surface solidify into a crust.
[00:12:03] Life on Earth, the latest and best scientific thinking goes, actually began about 3.8 billion years ago in the form of single-celled prokaryotic cells such as bacteria.
[00:12:15] Multicellular life didn't come into play until more than a billion years after that.
[00:12:21] It's only in the last 570 million years that the kind of life forms we're familiar with even began to evolve, starting with arthropods, by that meaning insects, spiders, crabs, centipedes, followed by fish about 530 million years ago, then land plants 470 million years ago,
[00:12:44] forests about 385 million years ago, mammals didn't evolve until about 200 million years ago, in our own species. Homo sapiens, the thinking goes, only about, get this, 200,000 years ago, at least in terms of DNA makeup. So humans have been around for a mere 0.006% of the Earth's
[00:13:06] history. That's the evolutionary timeframe, but also the evolutionary problem. Because the whole idea behind naturalistic evolution is, as I mentioned, it's a product of time plus chance.
[00:13:19] That's just not enough time.
[00:13:21] It's not enough time for the Earth to cool and life to be produced naturalistically by chance, not by the timeline that we have.
[00:13:31] For example, one time Plumian professor of astrophysics at Cambridge University, Sir Fred Hoyle, has determined that if you were to compute the time required to get all 200,000 amino acids for just one human cell to come together, by chance, it would take about 293.5 times the
[00:13:52] estimated age of the earth. Even further, Hoyle, along with his colleagues, calculated the odds for all of the functional proteins necessary for a one-cell animal to form in place by random events. They came up with a figure of one chance in 10 to the 40,000th power. That's one with 40,000
[00:14:14] zeros after it. Since there are only about 10 to the 80th power atoms in the entire universe, Hoyle and his team concluded that this was an outrageously small probability that could not be faced even if the whole universe consisted of organic soup. For the timeline to work,
[00:14:33] It really would be like having the working dynamics of the latest iPhone, along with the entire corporate campus of Apple that produced it, be instantly created by chance through a simple, single explosion in a computer geek's garage.
[00:14:50] I mean, it's just crazy to think about.
[00:14:53] So if you're going to embrace the theory of evolution, which is fine, you would also need to embrace seemingly some kind of outside guiding enhancing force that sped it along miraculously and guided it strategically in the time frame of the age of the earth.
[00:15:10] That's not all.
[00:15:11] Even if there was enough time, or perhaps you want to buy into mutations and evolutionary leaps filling all of the time gaps, you have the problem of the initial complexity of life.
[00:15:23] Darwin himself once said that if it could be demonstrated that any complex organ existed which could not possibly have been formed by numerous successive slight modifications, he said my theory would just break down. Biochemist Michael
[00:15:42] Behe speaks of Darwin's self-challenge in terms of a mousetrap. Now the common mousetrap has five parts to it. It has a base, it has the actual trap, you know the bar. It has where it clips, it has a spring, and it has the holding bar on it. Five things
[00:16:00] all come together by which to be a mousetrap. Now, you can't start with like, flip it over, just the base and have a mouse crawl on it and just somehow die. And then you add a bar and you
[00:16:14] catch a few more mice and you add a spring and you catch a few mice and it functionally evolves into the current design, step by Darwinian step, into the most effective mousetrap, which has all five parts. In order to even begin functioning as a mousetrap,
[00:16:29] there has to be a minimum number of interacting parts that are assembled that allow the catching of mice to begin developing into the more advanced levels of mice catching. In other words, for this to be an evolving mousetrap, you have to begin with all of this in place,
[00:16:47] already there. This would be the starting point. Take away any of the five parts, there's no mice being caught. The conclusion is that the mousetrap was somehow made as an intact system. It couldn't have evolved into that system. It had to have been designed for that purpose. And that's what
[00:17:03] you find with molecular biology. The basic forms of life are not simple, but they're irreducibly complex molecular machines that cannot be explained by natural selection working on variation. Think about something like the human eye. According to evolutionary theory, it would
[00:17:20] have started with a simple light-sensitive spot and then evolved into what we have today. The problem is that when we finally got to the point where we were able to study life at the molecular
[00:17:33] level, we found it wasn't simple. We found it was irreducibly complex, which means something or someone had to create that first, for example, light-sensitive spot. It couldn't have just come into existence by itself and then started to evolve because that first light-sensitive spot
[00:17:50] was irreducibly complex. It was not simple. You might be able to start simple and get to complex, which is what evolutionary theory maintains, but you can't start complex. So what or who started the complexity? In other words, what or who initiated or inserted that initial complexity
[00:18:12] for evolution to even get started.
[00:18:15] That's still not all there is to think about in terms of whether or not there is a God-shaped hole in all things related to evolution.
[00:18:22] How did a purely naturalistic evolutionary process create ever-increasing diversity?
[00:18:31] In other words, the idea of macroevolution, which is one species evolving into an entirely different species, that's different than microevolution, which is just changes or adaptations within a species.
[00:18:44] Microevolution is like a dog breeder who breeds a dog that sheds less hair or takes a poodle and a golden retriever and creates a different kind of dog like that.
[00:18:54] But it's still a dog.
[00:18:55] What they can't do is breed a dog that flies.
[00:19:00] But that's what naturalistic evolutionary theory says happened.
[00:19:04] That microevolution somehow led to macroevolution.
[00:19:08] That single-celled bacteria led to multi-celled bacteria.
[00:19:12] Multi-celled bacteria led to spiders.
[00:19:14] Spiders somehow led to fish, and fish somehow led to plants, and plants somehow led to mammals, and it all eventually led to us.
[00:19:23] But when it comes to the science of that, how one species creates a completely different species is, at best, vague.
[00:19:34] And then there's the biggest and most crucial area to think about of all, the beginning of life itself.
[00:19:38] You can't just say that life exists because 3.8 billion years ago it began evolving from single-celled prokaryotic cells.
[00:19:48] Evolutionary theorists have to ask how those first bacteria came to life.
[00:19:53] It's a profound question.
[00:19:55] How did life come from non-life?
[00:19:58] You can say that within chemically rich liquid oceans, organic molecules transition to self-replicating life.
[00:20:03] But that's like saying that your SUV became Optimus Prime after it went through a car wash.
[00:20:09] It doesn't just happen.
[00:20:12] And you can't say that it was just planted here on the back of a meteorite from another planet where life did exist because you still have the same questions.
[00:20:19] Well, how did life start there?
[00:20:21] You have the exact same set of challenges.
[00:20:25] So let's go back over what we have to think about.
[00:20:28] The lack of time for evolution to have done its work without outside help.
[00:20:31] that when you face and trace the origins of life back to the roots, its starting point was so complex that it couldn't have evolved naturally, step by Darwinian step, to get there.
[00:20:42] Again, it needed outside help.
[00:20:44] And the whole challenge of macroevolution versus microevolution, again, needs outside help there too.
[00:20:49] And life coming from non-life needs a whole lot of outside help.
[00:20:54] So is creation and evolution at odds with each other?
[00:20:59] you know, at odds with the existence of a God and an evolutionary process? No, no, no. Hardly.
[00:21:06] The evolutionary process couldn't have evolved anything without a guiding, intervening, outside force of some kind. So the two big conflicts between science and the Christian faith, the cosmological and the anthropological, they're not conflicts at all. But that isn't all
[00:21:28] there to think about. There's also the inability that science is having to explain the most recent discoveries in science, because the three biggest discoveries in science in recent years would make any honest atheist blush and do a double take. And the first has to do with the laws of
[00:21:47] thermodynamics, particularly what is known as the second law of thermodynamics, which is a law that contends that the universe is running out of usable energy. It's winding down. It's running out of gas. Now think about that. If it is running out of energy, it cannot be eternal. It must have
[00:22:05] at one time had an initial start of energy. Something doesn't wind down unless it's been wound up. This shook the scientific world because its operating premise until very recently was that the universe did not have a beginning, that it was eternal, that it did not have a creation point.
[00:22:26] Not anymore. Now what we know is that somehow, sometime, somewhere, it got wound up and is now winding down. Which brings us to a second major discovery, the one that confirmed the second law of thermodynamics and raised even more questions, the Big Bang. The idea of the Big Bang was first
[00:22:44] forward by Dr. Edwin Hubble, the man who we named the Hubble Telescope after. His theory was that at one time, all matter was packed into a dense mass at temperatures of many trillions of degrees.
[00:23:00] And then about 13.8 billion years ago, there was a huge explosion. And from that explosion, all of the matter that today forms our planets and stars was born and the universe was created.
[00:23:12] Hubble's idea was confirmed through what was then called the discovery of the century.
[00:23:17] On April 24th in 1992, the Cosmic Background Explorer Satellite, better known as COBE, gave stunning confirmation of the hot Big Bang creation event.
[00:23:28] In many ways, that marked the birth of modern cosmology.
[00:23:31] Now we know that something cannot come from nothing.
[00:23:35] We also know now that the universe isn't eternal, that it had a beginning.
[00:23:40] So this is where it starts to get interesting.
[00:23:43] According to the science of the Big Bang, something did come from nothing.
[00:23:46] And that raises all kinds of questions.
[00:23:50] God-type questions.
[00:23:52] Because you can't just say that everything began with the Big Bang and act as if somehow you've explained the origins of the universe.
[00:23:59] Because that still doesn't explain where the matter that exploded came from or what or who exploded it.
[00:24:07] If you want to put the Big Bang in lay terms, or at least as questions, here it is. Where did the stuff that got banged come from and who banged it? Something or someone some way, somehow brought that first matter into existence from nothing and in such a way that it
[00:24:25] exploded into the universe. Something outside of space and time because space and time didn't exist before the Big Bang, which science says cannot have happened by the current laws of physics, which means we're talking about something outside of the laws of physics,
[00:24:43] something outside of all natural phenomena.
[00:24:46] There's a category for that.
[00:24:48] If something lies outside of natural phenomena, it's called supernatural, which puts us in God territory.
[00:24:57] This is why George Smoot, head of the COBE satellite team, who won the Nobel Prize in physics for his work, noted that when the COBE satellite had measured the ripples of the microwave background radiation that gave confirmation to the Big Bang theory.
[00:25:10] He said it was like looking at God.
[00:25:15] And why Dr. Robert Jastrow, professor of astronomy at both Columbia University and Dartmouth College, he was director of the Mount Wilson Institute, manager of the Mount Wilson Observatory for 20 years, director of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies, he made the following
[00:25:28] statement in regard to the COBE findings and the Big Bang confirmation.
[00:25:32] He said, now we see how the astronomical evidence leads to a biblical view of the origin of the world.
[00:25:43] Now, I know some might say, well, physics just hasn't found the answer to the something from nothing mystery.
[00:25:48] You can't just immediately jump to God.
[00:25:51] Maybe.
[00:25:52] But as one of the leading physicists of the day, Alan Guth at MIT, has written, even if you could come up with a theory that would account for the creation of something from nothing through the laws of physics, you'd still have to account for the origin of the laws of
[00:26:10] physics. You know, who wrote those into existence? Which brings us to a third discovery that is messing with people, the design of the universe, and particularly how finely tuned it is for life.
[00:26:24] Astrophysicists will tell you that what should have happened with the Big Bang and the creation was the creation of equal parts matter and antimatter. That's what should have happened.
[00:26:33] That is not what happened. Particles of matter barely outnumbered particles of antimatter by a rate of a billion and one to a billion. Without that billion and one to a billion imbalance between matter and antimatter, all mass in the universe would have self-annihilated,
[00:26:53] leaving a cosmos made of photons and nothing else. No planets, no stars, no nothing. That's what should have happened. Equal parts of matter and antimatter should have been created during the formation of the universe. The universe as we know it should not have come out of the Big Bang,
[00:27:12] but it did. Something somehow stepped in against all that we know about science and created an imbalance in favor of matter. And no one knows how. No one knows why. It was as if there was a
[00:27:29] divine intervention. Let's keep looking at what we're finding about how the universe was seemingly designed. The book of Genesis, the first book of the Bible and the one that contains most of the origins material, says that at the end of whatever creative process God used to create the universe
[00:27:43] and specifically our world and all living things within it, there was a single declaration. Let me read it. God looked over all he had made and he saw that it was very good. The idea was that it
[00:27:57] was good because it was good for the crown of creation, which was human life. What we're learning from science is how deep and wide that good goes, as in how everything about the universe and the Milky Way and our solar system and our planet is perfect for the existence of life.
[00:28:18] In other words, what came out of the Big Bang was not chaos, but life-giving, life-sustaining order.
[00:28:24] so much order that it appears to be intricately designed, particularly when it comes to planet Earth? How is that accounted for? This is such an obvious question that has been with us from the most ancient of days. I mean, we're going all the way back, talking all the way back to
[00:28:40] it first being raised by the Greek philosopher Plato. Here's the thinking. All designs imply a designer. If you find a watch, you would understandably assume a watchmaker. If you see a building, you would assume an architect. If you saw a painting, you would take for granted
[00:28:58] that there was a painter. The greater the complexity of the design and order of something, the more a designer begs to be considered. I want her to put it this way. It's one thing to
[00:29:09] see a log jam in a stream and wonder if there was a beaver behind it. It's another to see Hoover Dam and question whether there was intentionality and purpose behind its creation. Or think of it this
[00:29:21] way. Week four last, NASA launched Artemis II, first crewed mission to the moon in 50 years. It was amazing to watch. It used NASA's Space Launch System, a 322-foot-tall super heavy lift rocket designed for deep space mission. It was the most powerful rocket ever launched. It produced 8.8
[00:29:46] million pounds of thrust at liftoff using a central orange core stage, two white solid rocket boosters to send the Orion capsule to the moon. If by some chance you missed the launch, okay, here's a taste of it. And here we go. 10, 9, 8, 7, RS-25 engines,

[00:30:08] [SPEAKER SPEAKER_01]
[00:30:08] 4, 3, 2, 1, booster ignition, and liftoff! The crew of Artemis II now bound for the moon.

[00:30:20] [SPEAKER SPEAKER_03]
[00:30:20] humanity's next great roll pitch roger roll pitch houston now controlling the flight of integrity on the artemis 2 mission around the phone integrity amt target milestone mission control houston seeing good performance space launch system core stage integrity three miles in altitude traveling more than 1200 miles

[00:31:02] [SPEAKER SPEAKER_02]
[00:31:02] forever. Now, what if you didn't run across that rocket on the launch pad of the Kennedy Space Center? What if you came upon a rocket like that in the middle of the desert? All of that
[00:31:19] complexity, all of that technology just sitting there. Okay, you could reason that it came together by chance, that the metals flung together by way of a chaotic sandstorm, that the instruments and panels and advanced technology were all brought together by a freak accident of nature.
[00:31:36] but it is highly unlikely that would be your first thought.
[00:31:40] If you came upon the rocket used for the Artemis II mission in the desert, your initial thought would likely be, somebody made this.
[00:31:47] Now let's take that kind of thinking to the universe.
[00:31:50] There's staggering design and order in the universe.
[00:31:53] So much design and order that it seems way too much for mere chance.
[00:31:58] So staggering that it compels many people to consider a great designer.
[00:32:04] But it goes deeper than that.
[00:32:05] Many speak of what's known as the anthropic principle, from the Greek word anthropos, which means man or human, where we get our word anthropology.
[00:32:14] The idea is that our world is uniquely suited to human beings and carbon-based life, which is the only form of life known to science.
[00:32:23] But that would be putting it mildly.
[00:32:24] In truth, it is freakishly suited to human life.
[00:32:28] There are so many dynamics that if they were changed only slightly would make it impossible for us to exist, that you can't help but stand back with your mouth open that all of them came
[00:32:41] together in one planet, in one solar system, in one galaxy, in one universe. For example, the earth is in what is called a Goldilocks zone around the sun. You remember the Goldilocks story, little girl lost in the woods find a house where three bears live and she
[00:32:59] tries some porridge they had left one was too hot one was too cold one was just right that's what scientists call where we live the Goldilocks zone the just right zone the only part of the solar system that's just right for human
[00:33:12] life it's not too far or too close to the home star for life if we were any closer to the Sun all the oceans would have evaporated for any farther away it'd be a frozen tundra. Then there's the speed of our planet. Our speed enables
[00:33:27] us to maintain a stable orbit around the Sun while never getting too close or too far away. The precision to maintain the right distance at all times while in orbit calls for a very specific speed. So much so that if you were to increase the
[00:33:44] Earth's orbital speed by no more than the square root of 2, in other words just 1.4 times its current speed, we would achieve escape velocity.
[00:33:53] We would fly right out of the solar system.
[00:33:57] Then there's how the planet Jupiter, with its mighty gravitational field, bats out of harm's way the vast majority of comets that would wreak havoc on the inner solar system and specifically Earth.
[00:34:08] It's like this mighty shield has been perfectly placed to protect our planet.
[00:34:15] There's also the oxygen-rich atmosphere that not only allows life but the existence of ozone in the upper atmosphere that serves as a shield that protects the Earth's surface from most of the sun's molecule-hostile ultraviolet
[00:34:29] photons. Now these are just samples of all that has come together on planet Earth to make life possible. Things we didn't know we needed, that we didn't know were somehow in place until recently. Now I know some of you might be
[00:34:45] thinking, well, aren't we finding other Earth-like planets? Not exactly. You know, here you got to get a little bit behind the press headlines because Earth-like only means that it might have one or two, maybe three of the 20 plus elements needed. Every Earth-like planet we
[00:35:07] find keeps falling dramatically short of everything that came together on planet Earth.
[00:35:12] So here's the real scientific headline.
[00:35:14] Our galaxy contains more than 100 billion stars.
[00:35:18] The known universe harbors some 100 billion galaxies.
[00:35:22] The latest best estimates suggest there may be as many as 40 billion semi-Earth-like planets in the Milky Way alone.
[00:35:31] Yet still, in all that vastness, all those planets, only one can sustain life.
[00:35:38] And the odds of finding another one are so remote, it staggers the imagination.
[00:35:43] Because the odds of everything coming together the way it did on Earth are considered virtually impossible.
[00:35:49] Owen Gingrich, professor of astronomy and the history of science at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge, noted this.
[00:35:58] He said, there are so many wonderful details which, if they were changed only slightly, would make it impossible for us to be here.
[00:36:05] that one just has to feel somehow that there is a design in the universe and therefore a designer to have worked it out so magnificently.
[00:36:16] World-renowned physicist Stephen Hawking once told a reporter this.
[00:36:20] He said, The odds against a universe like ours emerging out of something like the Big Bang are enormous.
[00:36:26] I think clearly there are religious implications.
[00:36:29] Going even further, Hawking conceded, 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.
[00:36:43] Now, some of you, I know, might be saying, but there are things in the Bible and that the Christian faith asks you to believe that do go against science.
[00:36:51] Those things are miracles.
[00:36:54] That's the one clear undeniable area where you cannot mix faith and science.
[00:36:57] The Bible is full of these supernatural events, everything from the parting of seas to the feeding of thousands with a few loaves of bread and some fish. That is a direct conflict with scientific law. You just cannot have the disruption of the
[00:37:10] physical laws of the universe that way. Miracles are scientifically impossible. And you're right.
[00:37:17] You're right. Miracles are scientifically impossible. They violate every scientific law in principle. The Bible's record of miracles is 100% guilty of flying in the face of what science would say can happen if you're a scientific naturalist, but not if you're a scientific
[00:37:38] theist. If there is a God or you would admit to the possibility of a God, miracles are just not an issue because a miracle, by definition, is the suspension of the physical laws of the universe. They are supernatural interventions that circumvent
[00:37:57] the natural laws. That's what makes them a miracle. And miracles are no problem for a God.
[00:38:04] If the matter needed for the Big Bang could only have come into being by something or someone outside of time and space and outside of the laws of physics, creating that matter from absolute nothingness, which is also scientifically impossible, but what science says happened,
[00:38:24] then it's not much of a leap to that something or someone suspending or overruling the laws of science for a miracle or two after the Big Bang as well. The only way miracles would not be a
[00:38:39] problem with believing in science and in God would be if science has categorically, unequivocally disproved the existence of God. But as we've seen, science has done anything but that.
[00:38:50] But what we've seen, if anything, is that science has left that door wide open, which means miracles are not a scientific problem.
[00:39:00] Atheism is the scientific problem.
[00:39:04] So where has this led this?
[00:39:05] I'll tell you where it's led me.
[00:39:07] It's that God's truth and scientific truth can both be embraced because there isn't a scientific mind and then a Christian mind.
[00:39:14] There's just the mind.
[00:39:15] It's been given to us by God to use.
[00:39:18] There's not biblical truth over here and scientific truth over there.
[00:39:20] There's just truth.
[00:39:22] And all truth is God's truth, which makes it true wherever you find it.
[00:39:25] And the more you look at science, the more you see there is no conflict with the Christian faith or what the Bible says.
[00:39:31] In fact, if anything, there's enormous congruity, and the science almost begs for the existence of a God to explain what it's finding.
[00:39:40] It's as if God has given us two books to draw from, and they are not in contradiction with each other whatsoever.
[00:39:45] And those two books are the Bible and the created cosmos.
[00:39:49] The 19th Psalm in the Bible, I think, captures this dynamic in a beautiful way.
[00:39:54] First, it says, the heavens declare the glory of God.
[00:39:57] The skies proclaim the work of his hands.
[00:40:00] Day after day, they pour forth speech.
[00:40:02] Night after night, they reveal knowledge, science.
[00:40:08] Then it says, the law of the Lord is perfect.
[00:40:10] The statutes of the Lord are trustworthy.
[00:40:12] The precepts of the Lord are right.
[00:40:14] The commands of the Lord are radiant, giving light to the eyes, his revealed word.
[00:40:20] two books science reveals truth about what god has done in creation and through creation the bible gives us the truth that god has revealed to us as that creation so there you have it but are we done with questions and reasons not to believe oh not even close we have four
[00:40:41] big ones yet to go next week whether it's the bible is filled with errors and contradictions that ought to be a fun ride i hope you won't want to miss it but until then between finishing this
[00:40:53] this conversation with science and starting one about whether the Bible is filled with errors until then let me pray for us Father thank you that all truth is your truth that there's nowhere we can look and not find you
[00:41:05] the wonders of your creation and the wonders of your word combine to tell us the story of our lives and most importantly the story of your love for us for we were fearfully and wonderfully made
[00:41:16] for one reason you wanted to be in a relationship with us I pray that every one of us would pursue the purpose of our creation which was to be in relationship with you with the utmost earnestness.
[00:41:28] It's why we were created and I pray this in the name of Jesus.
[00:41:34] Amen.