I get the feeling that this question is pondered upon a lot.
In particular, given my views of Scripture as a person who believes in
Creation, a Flood, and a Finale (Tribulation, Armageddon, etc.). These “sorts”
of people are no doubt the “foolish” of the world (good I say – that means at
least we are fulfilling Scripture; see 1 Corinthians 1). However in my
first blog post, I will give a very condensed overview of the intellectual journey one can take to
accept things that seem “foolish” to others.
1)
God and the universe
You have to start at the beginning. The universe – where did
it come from? Regardless of what you believe about whether recent BICEP2
findings (March 2014) around the Big Bang Theory "confirmation" are true or not (reports in
Nature [May 2014] are questioning its validity over dust particle emission), if we take
this “theory” as truth, it states simply that the universe had a beginning.
Steady state is unlikely, rather there was a “creation” event. The question is then
whether this “creation” was naturalistic or purposeful (designed). To
summarise, the “fine-tuning” problem is well described, and poses real evidence
for a transcendent designer to have at the very least caused the universe with
its laws, constants and physical properties to come into existence. Many high
level physicists will admit this is what it looks like. There are those that
will cling to multiverse, string theory and the like – these though are not
with anywhere near equal evidence for the fact that this universe is “fine-tuned”
for life. Therefore without going into the detail, we must accept that on what
we can observe and know, the best inferred explanation is that a transcendent
(outside of the universe) intelligent agent designed the universe we live in. I
should note – the best inferred explanation does not automatically equal the
right one. However, it is strong support for a truth and therefore in this case, for a designer.
2)
God and Earth’s life
The complexity of the simplest organism is astounding.
Unfortunately the axiom of universal common descent (UCD) and abiogenesis has
overwhelmed the scientific community since the very end of the 19th
century, many decades before we began to understand how complex cells were.
Epigenetic control and neuronal function are examples (from many) of areas in
biology we are just starting to scratch the surface on and throw huge challenges to Darwinian evolution. Our biggest enemy has
been that of apathetic rejection of function, usually in an effort to lump in
with evolution “useless” material we observe. Yet as we learn more and more, as
we humble ourselves to study what appears functionless in the hope of finding
function, we see even more evidence to point towards incredible complexity.
Such complexity has only ever been associated with design and this can be a
very rational conclusion. Most if not near all the pieces of evidence for natural
means producing life can also be attributed to a mode of a designer (e.g.
homology/similarity is no more evidence for common ancestry as it is for common
designer). There are some things that are difficult to explain, however that is
largely due to our wrong assumption that we understand more than we actually
do. Functional non-coding DNA is a powerful and recent example of this. Where we previously
saw no function and attributed transcribed bits of DNA to the result of
wasteful evolution (why WOULD a designer have functionless DNA present?), as
technology progresses we have begun to find more and more function, ruling
these aspects out as leftover evolutionary pieces. Furthermore, there are real
challenges with UCD, challenges that are most excellently addressed by Dr
Stephen Meyer in his insightful book, “Darwin’s Doubt”. I commend this book to
anyone seeking an open view on the subject. Certainly, there is much
intellectual satisfaction in a “Design hypothesis” for life on earth.
3)
God and His Word
The Scriptures are truly astounding. You can read many an
insightful book but nothing will ever compare to the richness observed in the
66 books of the Bible. Not only do these words not read like any other, not
only do they claim to be the very Word of God, but they are accurate in every
way we can assess them. That is to say, historically, archeologically,
culturally and reproducibly they surpass anything else. Josh McDowell’s “Evidence
that demands a Verdict” is a most excellent resource to demonstrate this, among
others. People like to often focus on apparent “contradictions” within the
Scriptures to show they cannot be God’s Word. Yet time after time, these oppositions
have been shown to be invalid. Furthermore what people do not grasp when making
these arguments, is the remarkable consistency and subtle details that fully
align across millennia of writings. Read Revelation in detail then look at
Daniel, Matthew, Joel, Zachariah, Isaiah, and the harmony is beyond
comprehension for a book written in 90A.D. with those written centuries before (except of course, Matthew).
Further to that, the evidence is overwhelming that Jesus lived, died, performed
miracles (extra-biblical sources refer to Him as known for performing “sorcery” or “magic”) and rose
from the dead. Jesus claimed to be the Messiah and even God Himself, therefore
if all this evidence states that the Scriptures are true then the Word of God must be
heeded. From a scientific point of view, the prophesies made in the Bible that
came true are of such a small chance to have been luck that the evidence for
the Revelation of this book being of God far outweighs any possible doubt. There
is no doubt in my mind that this set of books [the Bible] could not be anything but
the inerrant Word of God.
4)
The conclusion
Therefore the intellectual journey for me, traverses this
path. The evidence for a Designer in the universe is logical. The evidence for
a Designer in life on the Earth is undeniable. This naturally leads us to the question,
if there is a Designer, Who is that Designer? There are so many gods and
religions. We know the "god" has to be transcendent from the universe’s “creation”.
When we examine those religions left, and when we look at the religous texts and the
claims made, Christianity of the Bible is the only one that satisfies the required
criteria and we find an incredible set of documents that make no sense if they
were purely the thoughts and writings of only humans. Therefore, I
intellectually accept the Christian faith.
Some people say that faith is a blind thing, in the context
of “religion”. I disagree. Faith is a noun – it is a possession. It is actually
theologically a gift from God, but the things faith refers to in the Bible are
not “Faith is believing creation/heaven, etc”. Rather it is because of faith
that we accept those things unseen; things such as "God spoke and it came into
existence" or God has told us there is a spiritual afterlife. Christians accept
those things because they have faith, but not because faith is blindly believing those
things. Therefore you are led down the journey eventually to the point of
accepting things because you have a solid foundation of faith. Therefore, your
faith becomes the driver in your life.
Because of my faith I believe that despite what many
scientists would tell me, we did not descend from chimps. That is not blind faith
– I believe there is intellectual evidence to support rejection of the “well-established”
UCD view. However there are some things that may appear to align with the
thought that we descended from chimps, but my faith allows me to reject that
based on what God has said in His Word, and it also allows me to trust that
what appears to be evidence for one way of thinking, is merely a misinterpretation
of His creation, the Fall and other impacts of sin on this world. In time I trust
that this will be revealed and made known (ultimately to all). I do not in any
way find this intellectually unsatisfactory, despite what many people may think
it should be found to a scientist.
And so actually, I think it is quite easy being a scientist and a Christian. Every day I get to see new wonders of Creation that many others do not get to engage with. It is in fact, a privilege.
