Saturday, October 17, 2020

Creation Texts Must Reconcile with Science to Qualify as Truth part 1

         If Christians don’t rethink the Bible’s teaching on the relationship between biblical revelation and scientific knowledge, we will persist in our failure both to keep our children in Christ and reach intellectuals with the Gospel.  Likewise we will also fail to produce Christian scientists.

Creation Texts Must Reconcile with Science

            The Bible makes bold claims pertaining to both the natural order (science) and our relationship to it.  For example, Psalm 19:1 declares as true that both the starry heavens above and the array of living creatures and inanimate things below, in themselves, “declare the glory of God.”  The positive assessment this verse assigns to nature’s witness boldly underscores its’ innate trustworthiness.  Furthermore, Romans 1:18-20 warns that it is sinful to suppress truths derived from our observation of nature, specifically as they pertain to God’s existence.

            The Bible also, everywhere and without exception, assumes[1] as valid the Law of Non-Contradiction which holds that contradictory propositions cannot both be true in the same way and at the same time.  Also, Scripture demands our obedience to truth in this sense, both in our consciences and in all social interactions.[2]  Consequently, young-earth creationism (YEC) cannot be correct if it rejects evidence the universe is billions of years old based on data that is shown to be unassailable.  Even in legal courts, testimony must reconcile with facts and not vise/versa.  Indeed, despite YEC claims, the Bible never asserts its truthfulness by shunning knowable facts, but rather urges us to affirm its truth by testing it in light of the facts of science and history.[3]

Scientific facts DO NOT undermine the Bible.  Indeed, the text of Genesis 1 harmonizes far better with Big Bang Cosmology (BBC) than it does with the YEC interpretation.[4]  

Scientists Too Must Reconcile their Views with Science

               Yet it is not only Christians who must check their sources, but also scientists!  They too are vulnerable to error even in their own fields.  Just like the rest of us, they have biases and shortcomings.  So they too must heed both the principles of scientific methodology[5] (SM) and the validity of their data in order to ensure their conclusions are correct.  Yet many, (not all) of them corrupt their perceptions by insisting on the non-provable materialistic presumption that God (and other soulish beings) cannot exist. This bias leads them to evade all scientific indicators of that beginning, solely because it logically infers the reality of a transcendent[6] personal God.  Materialists also deny that humans (“soul-less machines”) have rational minds even while they absurdly laud the insights of its champions (which contradicts their very own tenet).      

Scientific Forces Cannot Possibly Have Created our Universe 

            While scientific data gives virtually unassailable evidence that our universe began out of nothing at the BB,[7] the cause of that beginning cannot have been a scientific force.  Since prior to its zero-volume singularity there existed neither matter, nor energy, nor space, nor time,[8] nothing material could conceivably have created it.[9]  Physicalist cosmologists seek to evade this problem by resorting to abstract conjectures as opposed to testable and measurable evidence.[10]  Yet this ploy disqualifies their “solution” from being scientific since conjectures, by definition, don’t have verifiable facts to validate them.  Science therefore cannot establish that the cause of nature is itself.  Its’ cause can only logically be God, the transcendent[11] Creator.

To be continued...



[1] Aristotle clarified but did not invent the principles of logic. Renford Bambrough, ed. The Philosophy of Aristotle. (Mentor, 1963) p. 160f.  

[2] Strong’s Exhaustive Concordance of the Bible. (Thomas Nelson, 2001) lists over 900 biblical references which affirm this concept of truth.

[3] Request my paper, “The Pervasive Employment of Apologetics in the Bible,” at my email address, gjensen549@gmail.com.

[4] See my two papers, “How Genesis 1:1 Easily Accommodates the Big Bang,” and “15 Clues from Genesis 1 that Creation is Ancient.” Op.cit. (3).

[5] Ernst Nagel describes SM as “the persistent critique of arguments [using] tried canons for judging the reliability of the procedures by which [evidence is] obtained, and for assessing the probative evidence on which conclusions are based.” In summary, although there is no single set of principles that apply to every context, SM calls for methodical care. J.P. Moreland. Christianity and the Nature of Science. (Baker, 1989), pp. 57f. 

[6] To “transcend” is to stand entirely outside creation. See my paper, “Was the Big Bang the Big Beginning?” Op.cit. (3).

[7] Hugh Ross. The Creator and the Cosmos. (RTB, 2018), pp. 85-107.  ** William Lane Craig. Reasonable Faith.(Crossway, 2008), pp. 126-150.

[8] William Lane Craig. Reasonable Faith. (Crossway, 2008), p. 140, states, “A watershed of sorts seems to have been reached with Borde, Guth, and Vilenkin’s formulation establishing that any universe which has on average over its past history been in a state of cosmic expansion cannot be eternal in the past but must have a spacetime boundary.

[9] Frank Tipler. The Physics of Christianity. (Doubleday, 2007), p. 2, says that “Many physicists dislike [an absolute beginning] because it requires the universe to begin in a singularity. That is, they dislike it because the theory is consistent only if God exists.” .

[10] Hugh Ross. The Creator and the Cosmos. (RTB, 2018), pp. 85-107.  ** William Lane Craig. Op.cit. (8), pp. 126-150.

[11] To transcend is to stand entirely the system or circumstance that is under consideration.               

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