CAN SCIENCE PROVE GOD?

While most atheists acknowledge that science cannot disprove God, they claim that neither can it prove Him.

Since "proof" seems to convey finality or certainty, I will use the the more modest term "evidence." Yes, science does provide evidence for an intelligent Designer.

Had science revealed a world of chaos instead of order and design, I think that the atheist and science would be able to discount the existence of an intelligent Designer. However, all of the findings of science tell us just what our senses have always told us - that this cannot possibly be a world fashioned by chance.

In fact, science has taken us further than our immediate senses have. Science has shown us that life is more than a haphazard ball of jelly. Instead, it is a collection of cells, each containing an irreducibly complex array of machinery. Even the molecular components - proteins and DNA - are so complex and functional that they laugh at any naturalistic explanation.

Science has also revealed the fine-tuning of the universe, its constants calibrated just right to support life.

Even the exercise of science depends on the bedrock of the immutable, universal, and elegant laws/forces of science. Without these wonderfully designed laws, there could be no science at all. Consequently, the very fact that we can do science and accumulate knowledge depends on a God who has designed it all - the very God we stubbornly deny.

And what immutably maintains these laws/forces in a world of molecules-in-motion?

Everything we observe cries out "design," even the "natural" laws we now look towards as our Creator-substitutes.

Does science prove God? Science cannot utter a syllable without God. All of its findings should be labeled, "Disclosed and Made by the Designer."

In fact, the evidence for the Designer is so compelling, that it has compelled many to abandon atheism as a failed hypothesis. Former atheist and astronomer Alan Sandage wrote:

·       "As I said before, the world is too complicated in all of its parts to be due to chance alone. I am convinced that the existence of life with all its order in each of its organisms is simply too well put together. . . . The more one learns of biochemistry the more unbelievable it becomes unless there is some kind of organizing principle—an architect."

In "There is a God: How the World’s Most Notorious Atheist Changed His Mind," Antony Flew concluded that DNA requires an intelligent cause:

·       “It now seems to me that the findings of more than fifty years of DNA research have provided materials for a new and enormously powerful argument to design.”

·       “I now believe there is a God…I now think it [the evidence] does point to a creative Intelligence almost entirely because of the DNA investigations. What I think the DNA material has done is that it has shown, by the almost unbelievable complexity of the arrangements which are needed to produce life, that intelligence must have been involved in getting these extraordinarily diverse elements to work together."

Flew had become a theist based upon the evidence of science. Meanwhile, science offers no evidence in favor of non-design, especially at science's most seminal levels.

If science offers no evidence against the existence of the Designer, why is His existence denied? Purely by choice!

To this, the atheist responds:

·       "Science doesn't have anything to say about the non-existence of the good-tooth-fairy or the spaghetti-monster either, nor should it."

This objection misses the point. The spaghetti-monster is not a concern of science unless the atheist claims that this is the name of the Intelligent Designer.

Science, in regards to ID, is addressing a fundamental question of origin - did the world come into existence by itself or was it designed by a transcendent being? Besides, is it possible to invoke natural causation if the natural hadn't already existed?

To these questions, the spaghetti-monster is irrelevant.

Answering Atheists

 Did you know that the atheists have their own bibles containing hundreds of alleged biblical contradictions? These “bibles” also point to an assortment of Old Testament moral teachings that they find highly distasteful and want to shame and silence you with them. Therefore, they will throw this overwhelming collection at you, knowing that you cannot even begin to answer them.

Of course, you will not be able to answer them all. Instead, you will be on the defensive. However, I try to keep an assortment of answers in my arsenal, if not for them, then for me and for other Christians who might feel threatened by this torrent.

Here is one of their favorites. These verses give Israelites the right to marry captive women from the nations they have defeated:

• When you go to war against your enemies and the LORD your God delivers them into your hands and you take captives, if you notice among the captives a beautiful woman and are attracted to her, you may take her as your wife. Bring her into your home and have her shave her head, trim her nails and put aside the clothes she was wearing when captured. After she has lived in your house and mourned her father and mother for a full month, then you may go to her and be her husband and she shall be your wife.  If you are not pleased with her, let her go wherever she wishes. You must not sell her or treat her as a slave, since you have dishonored her. (Deuteronomy 21:10-14)

Initially, you will find this teaching disturbing. We can simply answer it by claiming that we are no longer under the Old but the New Covenant. While this is certainly true, these verses are still the Word of God, and we should be able to defend them as reflecting God’s wisdom, at least for that particular time in history.

OLD TESTAMENT TEACHINGS WERE DIVINELY TAILORED FOR A PARTICULAR PEOPLE AND SITUATION. When asked about divorce, Jesus answered that God only gave permission to divorce because of the hardness of the hearts of the Israelites (Matthew 19:1-8). This principle of accommodation can be applied to many other OT teachings like polygamy. In other words, God gave moral/legal instructions to control sinful practices, not to promote them.

SOLDIERS WOULD OFTEN RAPE, KILL, AND SELL THEIR FEMALE CHATTEL. However, this wasn’t allowed in Israel. Instead of raping and selling their captive women, the Israelites were instructed that their only option was to marry these women. After their families had been killed in battle, this might have represented the best possible option for them. Perhaps a woman left in such a vulnerable situation could expect nothing better.

ISRAELITE SOLDIERS HAD TO RESPECT THESE CAPTIVE WOMEN. She had to be allowed to mourn for a month before the marriage could be consummated, even though the mourning was for the enemy of Israel. She wasn’t a mere sexual object to be used and abused.

THE SOLDIERS COULD NOT SELL THOSE THEY HAD MARRIED. Even if the soldier had tired of his wife, he could not pass her on to others or sell her as a slave or a sex slave. Instead, she was given complete freedom. Why, because the husband had treated her wrongly. He had “dishonored” her! Elsewhere, we learn that anyone had the option of becoming an Israelite to enjoy the complete rights of an Israaelite. What other nation had extended such protections to captive women!

We have nothing to be ashamed of regarding the teachings of the OT. In wisdom, our God had given them to a previously pagan people, still inculcated with the same tendencies. Although these teachings might not have matched God’s heavenly ideal, they were just what such a people at that time required, as even the NT asserts:

• So then, the law is holy, and the commandment is holy, righteous and good. (Romans 7:12)

Do not be surprised that such an exposition will not satisfy your atheist associates. They too have their own belief system and faith to which they are entirely committed.

Contributions of Christianity: A Matter of Perspective?

Some regard suffering as a reason to disbelieve in God, while others have found a basis for belief within the same horrid conditions. Writer Paul Copan relates the experience of Canadian Broadcasting Corp journalist, Brian Stewart, and his “slow, reluctant conversion”:

• “I’ve never reached a war zone, or famine group or crisis anywhere where some church organization was not there long before me… I’m often asked if I lost belief in God covering events like Ethiopia, then called ‘the worst hell on earth.’ Actually, like others before me, it was precisely in such hells that I rediscovered religion.” (Christian Research Journal, Vol 37/Number 04, 46-47)

Often, the same events that turn some away from a faith in Christ, turns others in the opposite direction. In the process, some have attempted to denigrate the contributions of Christianity. Research Fellow Philip J. Sampson writes about how the same phenomenon can be interpreted in opposite ways:

• “Disappointed in not finding the field of licentiousness quite so open as formerly, they [the Western traders] will not give credit to a morality which they do not wish to practice or to a [Christian] religion which they undervalue, if not despise.” (6 Modern Myths about Christianity & Western Civilization, 111)

Consequently, this disappointment gave vent to charges that the missionaries were guilty of “cultural imperialism.” However, even Charles Darwin confessed that worthwhile fruit was born out of this form of “imperialism”:

• “Human sacrifice…infanticide…bloody wars, where the conquerors spared neither women nor children—all these have been abolished…by the introduction of Christianity.” (110)

Our oppositional opinions are often the product of oppositional worldviews. While some have insisted that the missionaries collaborated with the colonial powers, even to the extent of establishing plantations, historian Ruth Tucker places these appearances into an entirely different context:

• Missionaries in Africa were opposed to slavery from an early period, and they used a variety of means to oppose it, including buying slaves and establishing plantations for them to work on. (From Jerusalem to Irian Jaya,102)

• The missionaries insisted on treating native people as human beings who are entitled to the protection of the law, and this rubbed salt into the wound. It should come as no surprise, therefore, that colonists and traders often opposed missions.” (103)

• Traders and colonists resisted the evangelism of native people, seeing conversion as the first step to indigenous people gaining access to the resources of Western culture and hence to the power that colonists wished to keep for themselves…Native people who wished to break free of the settler’s stranglehold and worship God were immediately persecuted by the white traders. (103-104)

Many other historians credit the missionaries with opposition to the abuses of colonialism:

• The missionaries [to New Guinea] from the start found themselves in bitter opposition to the white traders and exploiters… [who] placed men sick of the measles on various islands in order to destroy the population through disease. (Stephen Neill, History of Christian Missions, 355

Our new brand of militant atheists compete among themselves to indict Christianity’s impact on society, even to the point of charging “child abuse.” However, there have been many non-Christians who also have noted the contributions of the much-maligned Christianity. Copan cites the example of the late postmodern atheist Jacques Derrida:

• “Today the cornerstone of international law is the sacred… the concept of crime against humanity is a Christian concept and I think there would be no such thing in the law today without the Christian heritage.” (46)

Copan also cites “one Chinese scholar representing one of China’s premier academic research organizations:

• “In the past twenty years, we have realized that the heart of your culture is your religion: Christianity. This is why the West has been so powerful. The Christian moral foundation of social and cultural life was what made possible… the successful transition to democratic politics. We don’t have any doubt about this.” (46)

Copan calls atheist Jurgen Habermas “perhaps Europe’s most prominent philosopher.” However, even he admits:

• “Christianity and nothing else is the ultimate foundation of liberty, conscience, human rights and democracy, the benchmarks of Western civilization. We continue to nourish ourselves from this source.”

Clearly, our differing perspectives are our eyeglasses, determining what we see. However, this doesn’t mean that it’s all relative. Instead, Jesus taught that we walk around with logs in our eyes, making it easy for us to wrongly criticize. Yes, there is a reality to see out there, but first we have to deal with our blindness – that oft-invisible log (Matthew 7:1-5).

Pope Francis, Atheists, and Salvation

Huffington Post writes that during his homily at Wednesday Mass in Rome:

• Pope Francis rocked some religious and atheist minds today when he declared that everyone was redeemed through Jesus, including atheists.

What did the Pope mean when he asserted that “everyone was redeemed through Jesus?” Simply that He had died for the sins of the world? Most Christians already believe that! But did the Pope mean that Jesus had actually saved the world from eternal condemnation through His redemption? HP quotes the Pope further:

• “They complain,” the Pope said in his homily, because they say, “If he is not one of us, he cannot do good. If he is not of our party, he cannot do good.” And Jesus corrects them: “Do not hinder him, he says, let him do good.” The disciples, Pope Francis explains, “were a little intolerant,” closed off by the idea of ​​possessing the truth, convinced that “those who do not have the truth, cannot do good.” “This was wrong . . . Jesus broadens the horizon.” Pope Francis said, “The root of this possibility of doing good – that we all have – is in creation”

Pope Francis is certainly right that the disciples were intolerant and judgmental. They were always drawing the line in the wrong place. However, Pope Francis went further in his sermon to say:

• "The Lord created us in His image and likeness, and we are the image of the Lord, and He does good and all of us have this commandment at heart: do good and do not do evil. All of us. ‘But, Father, this is not Catholic! He cannot do good.’ Yes, he can... "The Lord has redeemed all of us, all of us, with the Blood of Christ: all of us, not just Catholics. Everyone! ‘Father, the atheists?’ Even the atheists. Everyone!".. We must meet one another doing good. ‘But I don’t believe, Father, I am an atheist!’ But do good: we will meet one another there.”

While the Pope is correct that we all have the commandment to do good, it seems that the Pope is suggesting that Christ not only died for the sins of the world but that the world and has already received the benefits of this redemption, apart from faith, enabling everyone to live righteously.

Well, let’s put aside the question of what the Pope really meant and simply look at the question:

• What did Christ teach about the necessity of faith in Him? Did He teach that salvation and redemption could only be accessed through faith?

Jesus taught a lot about the necessity of having faith in Him:

• “Just as Moses lifted up the snake in the wilderness, so the Son of Man must be lifted up, that everyone who believes may have eternal life in him.” For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.” (John 3:14-16; also 5:24; 3:36)

Clearly, Jesus taught faith in Himself. However, did He teach that faith is necessary for salvation? After telling the crowds that were following Him that they needed to labor for eternal life:

• Then they asked him, “What must we do to do the works God requires?” Jesus answered, “The work of God is this: to believe in the one he has sent.” (John 6:28-29)

Jesus gave no hint that there were any other good deeds that would take the place of faith. Nor did He ever suggest, as many do today, that the Jews had their own covenant and therefore didn’t need to find salvation through Him:

• “I told you that you would die in your sins; if you do not believe that I am he, you will indeed die in your sins.” (John 8:24; 12:44-48)

Even the Pharisees had to believe in Him to find salvation. There was no other means available (John 14:6)!

HP cites Reuters regarding other things that the Pope had stated:

• Atheists should be seen as good people if they do good, Pope Francis said on Wednesday in his latest urging that people of all religions - or no religion - work together.

However, none are good. That’s why, according to all Scripture, we need the Savior:

• As it is written: “There is no one righteous, not even one; there is no one who understands; there is no one who seeks God. All have turned away, they have together become worthless; there is no one who does good, not even one”…for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. (Romans 3:10-23) 

Can we ever be good enough to please God without faith – the acknowledgment that we need the mercy of God offered through the Savior? Scripture unequivocally tells us “no!”

• And without faith, it is impossible to please God. (Heb. 11:6)

Why is faith so critical to God? Without faith – the recognition of our utter spiritual poverty and need for His mercy – whatever good deeds we perform will simply make us arrogant and self-centered. A house can only be built on a solid foundation.

We do the atheist no favor by suggesting that they are good enough to obviate the need for faith in Christ. In fact, we simple enable them to continue to be hardened. In fact, one atheist Facebook group just wrote:

• Christians are furious at the Pope for saying that atheists can enter heaven. And I’m just sitting here not caring.

Perhaps they need to learn a lesson from Jodi Arias. When confronted with death, our self-confidence often evaporates.

“Christians – Children of God? Just Look at How They Act!”

Many militant atheists will say, “Christianity screws up everything,” citing warfare, slavery, the Crusades and intolerance.

Christians will generally respond in three different ways:

1. “Christianity is about Christ and not about individual Christians. I am deeply sorry about what people who have called themselves ‘Christian’ have done. However, I’m here to tell you about Jesus.”

While this response majors in the major – Jesus – it simply makes an end-run around the challenge. The challenge still remains: “How can those who claim to have God act so ungodly?”

2. “Let’s take the big picture and compare those nations that have emerged from a Bible-centered culture to those nations that haven’t. The former are superior in regards to any measure you want to use.”

Although this might be very true, it often leads into endless back-and-forth argumentation: “Well, the Christians did…” “Have you forgotten that the Communists did even worse!”

This approach also takes us away from what is central.

3. “Logically, you cannot bring charges against the Bible or against Christians because you, as a moral relativist, have no basis to make such charges. You are unable to demonstrate how any moral absolute has been violated.”

Although this is very true and perhaps the most effective way to respond to a militant atheist, it fails to win hearts for Christ. It also leaves people with a gut-level feeling that this is a mere cover-up for the failures of the church.

There is a place for each of these approaches. However there is also another approach. This one is intended primarily for in-house consumption. It is an approach that helps us to understand why we, both individually and church-wide, fail to look as good as we should.

1.      We endure great trials. When we are caught in the pressure cooker, steam pours forth in the form of bitterness, anger, envy and discouragement. God ordains these struggles so that we’d cry out for understanding and find our comfort in His revelations and in His Word (Psalm 119:67, 71).

2.      Trials begin with the church (1 Peter 4:17). Those whom God loves, He chastens (Heb. 12:5-11). We are therefore works in progress. Therefore, we are not going to look as morally competent as we would want to look.

3.      We are often perplexed (2 Cor. 4:8). This can be very discouraging and de-motivating. Although God is eager to grant us understanding, there is a great danger that understanding can produce arrogance and self-sufficiency (1 Cor. 8:2) if it comes to us before we have the spiritual capacity to handle it (Romans 8:24; 2 Cor. 5:7).

4.      Perhaps the greatest fruit—the one that underlies them all—is humility. Humility teaches us that it’s about Him and not about us. This is something we need to learn if we a really going to trust in Him—something that can only arise out of affliction and failure:

·        We do not want you to be uninformed, brothers, about the hardships we suffered in the province of Asia. We were under great pressure, far beyond our ability to endure, so that we despaired even of life. Indeed, in our hearts we felt the sentence of death. But this happened that we might not rely on ourselves but on God, who raises the dead. (2 Cor. 1:8-9)

Only after we despair of our good deeds and merit can we learn to trust. We are simply far too addicted to self-reliance and our own giftedness to rely on an unseen God. If the other “fruits of the Spirit” aren’t built upon self-despair, they’ll produce arrogance, self-reliance, and eventually contempt for others—the very opposite of what God wants to accomplish in our lives.

5.      We Christians were scraped from the bottom of the barrel, and so we’re going to look so good. Because many of us come out of broken and abused circumstances, we’re not going to look very appealing to the rest of the world and even to the faithful.

·        He chose the lowly things of this world and the despised things--and the things that are not--to nullify the things that are, so that no one may boast before him. (1 Cor. 1:28-29)

Unbelievers often exhibit personal qualities that make us envious. However, without the presence of the Spirit to shape and guide them, they will eventually become corrupted. A rose can look wonderful after it is cut and placed in a vase, but it nevertheless is dying.

6.      It’s when we are struggling with weaknesses and even moral failures that we become spiritually strong:

·        But he said to me, "My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness." Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ's power may rest on me. That is why, for Christ's sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong. (2 Cor. 12:9-10)

God has a vested interest in keeping us humble. He will not exalt us when we are strong, self-sufficient, and morally adequate in our own eyes (Luke 18:14). This would merely enable us to become proud, arrogant, and look down on others, convinced by our successes that we deserve God’s good graces. Instead, God targets the needy and broken as recipients for His comfort (Isa. 57:15; 66:1-2; Psalm 34:17-18). Eventually, we will bear good moral fruit.

7.      God loves us too much to make the faith-walk easy for us. He might even restrain our attempts at moral rectitude. Instead, He uses the struggle to make us like Jesus:

·        We always carry around in our body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be revealed in our body. For we who are alive are always being given over to death for Jesus' sake, so that his life may be revealed in our mortal body. (2 Cor. 4:10-11; Hebrews 12:8, 11)

8.      Being morally successful in the eyes of the world might not produce an eagerness for Christ. Instead, it will allow us to feel too comfortable in this world:

·        We ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for our adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies. (Romans 8:23; 1 Peter 4:12-13)

Consider this scenario: Christ returns and we tell Him, “Jesus, would You just delay for another week. There’s a ball-game and a new Chronicles of Narnia movie was just released and…” This is the antithesis of the joyful meeting Christ has in store. But such a meeting is only possible if we are longing for His return because this life isn’t so pleasant. If, instead, we become a moral success-story, we might simply become too comfortable here.

Nevertheless, we have to continue to model ourselves after the moral example of Christ (1 Peter 1:15-16). However, it is inevitable that we will fall far short of this goal.

9.      Moral success might produce complacency, not a love for God and His Word:

·        He humbled you, causing you to hunger and then feeding you with manna, which neither you nor your fathers had known, to teach you that man does not live on bread alone but on every word that comes from the mouth of the Lord. (Deut. 8:3)

Trials bring out the worst in us, at least at first. We scream and complain but are humbled in the process. It’s only when we’re humbled and despair of self and our own opinions that we come to rely on His Words. We have to grow less in our own sight so that He might become greater. Therefore, God might withhold moral success until we have acquired the understanding to handle it.

10.  Moral success can prove counter-productive, unless we are prepared. Some of the most moral people have become the most vicious people. Their moral success had enabled them to believe that they were more valuable and deserving than others. And once they have this entitlement mentality, they can easily justify abusing others.

The examples of this are inexhaustible. Many Communists had devoted themselves so sacrificially and completely to their cause that they had convinced themselves that they were entitled to exterminate any who didn’t fall into line behind their moral cause.

Of course, none of these ten points should be used as an excuse to not act morally. However, I would instead hope that these would help give us some degree of cognitive peace when we are troubled by our own failures and also those of the church. Although we should grieve over our moral failures (Matthew 5:3-4), let’s not become discouraged.