Rev. David Holwick Z I Believe in God, But...
First Baptist Church
Ledgewood, New Jersey
July 30, 2017
Job 38:1-7, Genesis 6:11-14
DOES SCIENCE TRUMP GOD?
I. Science is big.
A. Consider some of the huge projects under way right now.
1) The Large Hadron Collider in Switzerland.
a) It is the biggest machine in the world.
b) It is a ring 17 miles in diameter bored through solid
rock, with 1,600 magnets cooled to -271.3 centigrade,
which is colder than outer space.
c) All this is to smoosh subatomic particles together
and discover what the smallest parts of matter
are made of.
d) Its greatest achievement so far is the confirmation
of the properties of the Higgs Boson, something
that apparently didn’t exist when I took high
school physics in the 1970s.
e) All this, for a cost of only $13.25 billion.
2) The Webb Space Telescope.
a) It is slated to launch one year from now.
b) Its mirror is seven times larger than Hubble’s.
c) Instead of being in a normal orbit, the telescope will
be almost 1 million miles from Earth.
d) Originally it was going to launch in 2011 at a cost of
$1.6 billion, but it has been delayed 7 years and
the cost has ballooned to almost $9 billion.
3) Space programs.
a) In the 1960s, we spent 4% of our Gross National Product
to get to the moon.
b) Today, the nation of India is spending only $68 million
to put a miniature rover on the Moon.
c) Even private companies are going into space.
B. Science had a big impact on my early life.
1) Before I became a believer at age 17, I would say that
science was my religion.
2) I loved the marvels revealed by science, and still do.
3) I believe that if you are a Christian, and don’t appreciate
science, then you really can’t appreciate God.
a) The God of the Bible has revealed himself in the
natural world.
b) By studying nature, we expand our knowledge of God.
c) Yet for all we learn, there is much we still won’t
understand.
1> God’s rebuke of Job in chapter 38 is meant to keep
us humble.
II. Christians have long been uneasy with science.
A. It has often been an adversarial relationship.
1) The Scopes Monkey Trial and Galileo’s heresy trial by the
Inquisition are famous confrontations.
2) In the minds of many, science and religion can’t mix.
a) Most major scientists today are atheists.
b) A tiny number are Bible believers like us.
B. Many skeptics resist the Bible because of scientific problems.
1) They may believe in God but they have difficulty accepting
his Book.
2) Issues like a divine creation of the world, the sun
standing still in Joshua, Jonah being swallowed by
a big fish, and a flood that covers the whole world
are stumbling blocks to many modern people.
3) The world tries hard to shut out our viewpoint.
Just this month, geologist Andrew Snelling dropped
his lawsuit against Grand Canyon National Park.
Snelling is a young-earth creationist who is director
of research for Answers in Genesis, the same group
that has the Creation Museum in Kentucky.
He had sued because the Park would not let him do
research because of his religious views.
The lawsuit was dropped when they allowed him in. [1]
III. A test case - how should you handle Noah’s Ark and the Great Flood?
A. It is a universally known story from the Bible.
1) Humans had become corrupt, so God decided to wipe them out.
2) One family was saved: Noah and his sons and their spouses.
3) They built an ark and brought on animals two-by-two.
a) Kids love this part.
b) Our own grandson has a wooden ark but the animals
tend to be one-by-one due to attrition.
4) Then the rain falls, the world is flooded, bad humans all
die.
a) (We don’t tend to emphasize this with kids.)
5) The waters eventually recede and Noah and his family
repoplulate the earth.
B. Scientifically it presents great problems.
1) Where do you get enough water to cover every mountain?
2) How could representatives from all the animals fit on the
ark?
a) This is especially difficult if dinosaurs are added
to the mix, as many young-earth creationists believe.
3) If it happened only a few thousand years ago, how do you
explain the widespread distribution of humans today,
and the evidence of human cultures on most continents
going back thousands of years?
IV. The main approaches to the text.
A. Purely literal. It is often called the fundamentalist approach.
1) Noah was a real person who lived thousands of years ago.
a) Jesus himself refers to Noah as a historical figure.
2) The flood affected the entire world.
a) When Genesis 6:13 says God is going to put an end to
all people, it means everyone on planet Earth.
b) When 7:19 says all the high mountains were covered by
water, this includes Mount Everest.
3) Where would all this water come from?
a) It was not just rain, but also great springs in
the ocean.
b) Supporters of this literal view see support in research
done in 2014, which showed that the zone between the
Earth’s mantle and crust could contain 2 to 3
times as much water as all the oceans. [2]
c) How this water came up, or went back down, is not
explained.
4) How would all those animals fit on the ark?
a) One website notes that every kind of animal was included
and this is a broader term than species.
b) On a conservative estimate, it comes to 16,000 animals.
1> The ark was quite large (1.5 million cubit feet),
and could accommodate this many.
2> Even 50,000 animals would take up only 1/3 of the
space in the ark, if they average sheep-size.
5) This view may have the most scientific problems, but its
proponents believe there are reasonable answers, and it
handles the text in the most straightforward way.
B. Purely figurative. More liberal Christians prefer this.
1) The story of Noah is a parable or myth.
a) The parable of the Prodigal Son or the Good Samaritan
were stories rather than real-life events, but
we still gain truth from them.
2) Noah didn’t really exist, but the story contains important
truths about humans and our relations with God and
animals, told in a dramatic manner.
3) Any science behind it is immaterial because it is just
fiction.
V. A middle path is gaining popularity.
A. Many Evangelicals approach the flood as largely literal.
1) Noah really existed and the Flood really happened, but
it was limited in scope rather than global.
2) The world “all” in the Bible is often used as hyperbole.
a) For example, the Apostle Paul says in Colossians 1:6
that the gospel is bearing fruit all over the world.
b) Romans 1:8 says that the faith of the Christians in
Rome was also being reported all over the world.
1> This was in the first century, when Christians
numbered a few tens of thousands.
2> England and Germany were in the Roman Empire and
Paul knew this, but few think he thought that
these areas already knew about Christianity.
c) Therefore “all” in Genesis 6 and 7 doesn’t have to
apply to every human and every mountain.
1> No Asians or Africans are mentioned in the
Table of Nations that follows the Flood story.
2> And one group, the Nephilim, are mentioned before
the flood (Gen 6:4) and after it (Num 13:33)
so they would seem to be survivors along
with Noah’s family.
3> Christian scholar Bernard Ramm says Noah was
referring to the scope of his own world, the
world that Abraham came into. [3]
B. Tim Keller is a noted Evangelical in Manhattan.
In one of his books he writes:
“I believe Noah’s flood happened, but that it was a regional
flood, not a world-wide flood.
On the one hand, those who insist on it being a world-wide
flood seem to ignore too much the scientific evidence
that there was no such thing.
On the other hand, those who insist that it was a legend
seem to ignore too much the trustworthiness of the
Scripture.
“After Genesis 1, the rest of Genesis reads like historical
narrative.
If, it is asked, ‘what of the Biblical assertions that the
flood covered every mountain over the whole earth’
(Gen.7:19,21), we should remember that the Bible often
speaks of the ‘known world’ as the ‘whole world’.”
#65890
C. But these same arguments can overturn other Bible truths.
1) One commentator on Keller’s book showed the dangers of
his logic by arguing facetiously:
“Applying that approach, let me lay out my own assumptions
regarding the resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ.
I believe Christ’s resurrection happened, but that it
was a spiritual resurrection, not a physical and
bodily resurrection.
“On the one hand, those who insist on it being a physical
and bodily resurrection seem to ignore too much the
scientific evidence that there can be no such thing.
On the other hand, those who insist that it was a legend
seem to ignore too much the trustworthiness of the
Scripture.”
#65890
2) I myself would like to think the flood was localized
because it is easier to line up with science.
a) But I can see the dangers if this approach is extended.
b) When the Bible and Science conflict, you cannot always
side with Science.
1> What is a solid theory today might be discarded
tomorrow.
2> The same can be said of some Bible interpretations.
3) Another great scientist agrees with me.
Our own Jonathan Sloane will soon have a doctorate in
astro-physics from Rutgers University.
I asked him how he handled this issue and he wrote me:
“Interpreting the Bible is difficult in many places.
I personally do not believe that the Bible is entirely
literal.
For example, it is my opinion that the creation of the
universe took more than 168 hours.
[Actually, only 144 since he did the creating in 6 days.]
I also believe that God could have created the universe
in a moment should He have chosen.
“I believe that Christ literally died and came back to life.
(I believe in the omnipotence of God and so I am open to
miracles which break the laws that He set for the
universe.)
“Once we allow that some of the Bible is not literal, and
some of it is literal, it can be difficult to draw the
line.
It is my approach to assume the Bible is literally true as
much as is possible.
Where I feel forced to take something as figurative, I do.
I think it is very important to recognize that I might be
wrong about anything that I take to be figurative.” [4]
VI. Like Christianity, Science is a quest for truth.
A. Science grows out of the Judeo-Christian worldview.
1) Nature has been created with rules.
2) By studying nature, we can know more about God.
a) Psalm 19:1 says, “The heavens declare the glory of
God, the skies proclaim the work of his hands.”
b) Romans 1:20 says, “For since the creation of the
world God’s invisible qualities ... have been
clearly seen, being understood from what
has been made...”
B. Science is self-correcting.
1) Science is always adjusting itself to new knowledge.
a) Old laws may be found to be false, or to need
tweaking.
b) Even laws that have been accepted for centuries
can be modified or even rejected.
2) Christianity should have the same attitude.
a) We have to keep studying the Bible and keep
asking questions.
b) There is more to know about God than we comprehend
right now.
C. We can’t answer every question on this issue, but we can believe.
1) We can commit ourselves to what we know now.
2) Submit your mind to God.
3) Submit your heart to him as well.
=========================================================================
SOURCES FOR ILLUSTRATIONS USED IN THIS SERMON:
Portions of this sermon were adapted from my message “The God of Science”
preached on July 26, 2015.
1. “Grand Canyon Gives In to Creationist Suing for Religious
Discrimination,” by Sarah Zhang, July 3, 2017; <link>.
2. “Scientists Detect Evidence of ‘Oceans Worth’ of Water in Earth’s Mantle,”
by Andrew Williams, Astrobiology Magazine, August 21, 2014; <link>.
3. “Re: does the text of Noah’s Flood, not require us to believe that all
humanity was wiped away?” by Stephen E. Jones, November 25, 2007;
<link>.
4. Email from Jonathan Sloane on July 27, 2017.
#65890 “Was Noah's Flood World-Wide Or Regional?” by Rachel Miller,
January 11, 2012; <link>.
Quote is from Tim Keller, “Genesis: What Were We Put in the
World to Do?” [New York: Redeemer Presbyterian Church, 2006],81).
Response is by “Eileen” on January 12, 2012.
These and 35,000 others are part of the Kerux database that can be
downloaded, absolutely free, at http://www.holwick.com/database.html
=========================================================================
Copyright © 2024 by Rev. David Holwick
Created with the Freeware Edition of HelpNDoc: Easily create HTML Help documents