God and Science

International Apologetics Conference June 6, 2008John Oakes PhD

Thomas Huxley, Darwin’s “bulldog”

“We are as much the product of blind forces as is the falling of a stone to earth, or the ebb and flow of the tides. We have just happened, and man was made flesh by a series of singularly beneficial accidents.”

In the universe of blind physical forces and genetic replication, some people are going to get hurt and other people are going to get lucky: and you won’t find any rhyme or reason to it, nor any justice. The universe we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is at the bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil and no good. Nothing but blind, pitiless indifference. DNA neither knows nor cares. DNA just is, and we dance to its music.

Accident or Design?

The Anthropic Principle

William Paley

Roger Bacon 1214-1292

To study nature, use

“External experience, aided by instruments, made precise by mathematics.”

Basic Assumptions of Science:

1.The universe follows a single, unchanging set of laws.

WHY?

2.The universe can be understood by human beings.

WHY? Can evolution explain this?

3.The universe can be described by mathematics.

WHY?

Predictions Based on Christian Theology:

1.The universe will follow a single, unchanging set of laws.

2.The universe will be understandable to human beings.

3.The universe will be describable by mathematics.

4.The universe will be designed so that we can observe it

1. Ideal solvent to support life (dissolves ions and molecules

2. Right boiling and melting points

3. High specific heat

4. Solid floats on liquid

5. Contracts from 0 to 4 degrees centigrade

Water

Designed Elements?

The Ozone Layer:Is oxygen a designed element?

a) b)

DNA

Protein

Simplest life form: break it down

• E. coli: about 1 trillion bits of information.

• E. coli have 3000-4000 different proteins.

• DNA and RNA to make and be made by these proteins.

• Lipids (membrane), Carbohydrates, etc.

• The simplest living cell is an unimaginably complex nano factory

Charles Darwin

“It is mere rubbish to think at this point of the origin of life. One might as well think of the origin of matter.”

Science before the 1950s:

The universe was NOT created.

Hebrews 11:3

“By faith we understand that the universe was created… so that what is seen has been made from things that are not visible.”

Genesis 1:3

God said “Let there be light,” and there was light.

The Big Bang

· 1929 Hubble. The Red Shift: The universe is expanding.

· 1965 Penzias and Wilson, background microwave radiation.

Physicists now:

The universe was created.

.00000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000001

Fine Tuning of the Universe 

Constant A Little Bigger A Little Smaller  1. Gravitational constant very short-lived stars no stars

2. Ratio of electrons to protons no stars or galaxies no stars or galaxies  3. Strong Nuclear Force no hydrogen, fusion only hydrogen  4. Weak Nuclear Force all H2 He at big bang no He at big bang

no heavy elements  5. Electric Force no chemical bonding no chemical bonding  6. Expansion rate of universe no galaxies universe collapses quickly

7. Ratio of matter to antimatter too much radiation for life not enough matterfor galaxies to form

  and many more….

The Right Kind of GalaxySpiral Irregular

Eliptical

The Right Kind of Star

The Goldilocks Star

The Right Kind of Planet

Right distance

Rocky planet with plenty of oxygen and water

Thin, light planetary “crust”

Huge moon for stable planetary rotation

Conclusion:

“Since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that men are without excuse.”

Romans 1:20

Did we “just happen?”

Part II

Science and the Bible

Delos B. McKown:

“Christianity is scientifically unsupported and probably insupportable, philosophically suspect at best and disreputable at worst, and historically fraudulent.”

Galileo Galilei 1564-1642

“The Bible was written to tell us how to go to heaven, not how the heavens go”

Papyrus Ebers

The Ebers Papyrus:

“To prevent hair from turning gray, anoint it with the blood of a calf which has been boiled in oil or with the fat of a rattlesnake.”

“A mixture of six fats, namely those of the horse, the hippopotamus, the crocodile, the cat, the snake and the ibex.... to prevent hair loss.”

Drugs of Choice in Papyrus Ebers:

• Lizards blood

• Swine’s teeth

• Putrid meat

• Moisture from Pigs’ ears

• Excreta from animals including human beings, donkeys, antelope, dogs, cats and flies

“I will not bring on you any of these diseases...”

Exodus 15:26

“The pig... is unclean for you...those that walk on their paws...the weasel, the rat...are unclean for you.”

Leviticus 11

“The sting of a hornet is healed by the house-fly, crushed and applied to the wound.”

“The gnat, feeble creature, taking in food but never secreting it is a specific against the poison of the viper.”

An ancient Hebrew medical manuscript.

“Whoever touches the dead body of anyone will be unclean for seven days. He must purify himself with the water on the third and seventh day...take some hyssop, dip it in the water and sprinkle the tent and furnishings and the people who were there.”

Numbers 19

Semelweiss

Vienna, 1847

• In maternity wards one out of every six women dies.

• Obstetricians ascribe deaths to constipation, fear and poisonous air.

Death Rate falls from 18% to 0.5%

Thymol

“As long as he has the infection he remains unclean. He must live

alone; he must live outside the camp.”

Quarantine for infectious disease

Leviticus 13:46

LEPROSY

• Killed millions of people in Europe and around the world for thousands of years.

• “Fear of all other diseases taken together can hardly be compared to the terror spread by leprosy.”

—Dr. George Rosen

Leprosy

MEDICAL COMMUNITY HAD NO ANSWERS

They taught that it was brought on by eating hot food, pepper, garlic and the meat of diseased hogs. Other physicians said it was caused by a

malign conjunction of the planets.

Leviticus 13:46“As long as he has the infection he remains

unclean. He must live alone; he must live outside the camp.”

The life is in the blood

Leviticus 17:14 “… the life of every creature is in its blood. That is why I have said to the Israelites, ‘You must not eat the blood of any creature, because the life of every creature is its blood; anyone who eats it must be cut off.’ ”

Bloodletting

The most common medical practice

in 1700s and 1800s

1693).

                                     

George Tiemann & Co. American armamentarium

Bloodletting Instruments from 1800s

“For the generations to come, every male among you who is eight days old must be circumcised...”

Genesis 17:12

Vitamin K

Prothrombrin: a clotting protein.

0

20

40

60

80

100

120

140

0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

days

% o

f n

orm

alClotting Protein Peaks on Day Eight

Available Prothrombin

Day Circumcised

Number of Hebrew Boys

Number of Deaths

1 823 4

3 759 6

5 693 8

7 855 3

9 770 2

11 698 4

Abraham’s Experiment

“He spreads out the northern skies over empty space; He suspends the earth over nothing”

Job 26:8

The earth is on the back of four elephants standing on top of a turtle, encircled by a serpent, swimming in a sea of milk…

The Sutras

Buddhist Cosmology

Egyptian Creation Myth

23:14—Creation from the clot of blood“Then we made the sperm into a clot of

congealed blood; then from that clot we made a lump; and we made out of that lump bones and clothed the bones with flesh.”

18:86—Traveling west…“… till, when he reached the setting-

place of the sun, he found it setting in a muddy spring.”

21:33—Sun and stars orbit the earth

34:9, 52:44—Piece of sky falls and kills someone

36:4, 23:14 Man deposits child into the mother

“The flood was produced by a union of the male waters, which are above the firmament, and the female waters issuing from the earth. The upper waters rushed through the space left when God removed two stars out of the constellation Pleaides. Afterward, to put a stop to the flood, God had to transfer two stars from the constellation of the Bear to the constellation of the Pleaides. That is why the Bear runs after the Pleaides. She wants her children back, but they will be restored to her only in the future world.”

—A Jewish manuscript of New Testament times.

The water cycle...Job 36:27, Amos 5:8

He suspends the earth on nothing. Job 26:7

Topics not touched on:

1. The origin of the universe.

2. The origin of life.

3. The origin of species; especially of humans.

4. The age of the earth.

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