The Best Offense…
WHERE DID WE COME FROM?
We have a ton of stuff to cover this morning! I type out my messages in manuscript form – I don’t read them, but I do it because I’m going to put it on our website later, so I’d might as well kill two birds with one stone…Usually my messages are 4-5 typed pages – I’m not kidding when I tell you that at one point this week I had 20 pages of notes! But don’t worry! This message will not be four times longer than usual! I simply mention that because I want you know that there’s a lot more information available on this material, and much of it can be accessed through our library/media center.
I love my brother John Schweitzer. He’s such a blessing to my family, this church and me. His servant-leadership, generosity, and genuineness are evident to everyone who knows him. What you may not know is the boldness of John’s testimony. He reads his Bible in tree stands, and in the break room at work. He interjects a Biblical Worldview into the discussions between co-workers or family members – and if you know John, you know that when he interjects an opinion into a discussion, no one misses it! I’m privileged to be a ministry partner with this man.
John likes to wear Christian T-Shirts. A couple of weeks ago he wore a shirt in my office that on the front said, “If there is no God, nothing matters…” On the back, it said, “If there is a God, nothing else matters!”
Let me get right to the point. If there is no God, if this is all just made up, then we’re all fools. We’re just faking it, we’re just pretending, we’ve all been conned by a myth. If there is no God, if everything in the world is an accident, if everything is just random chance, there is no rhyme or reason, there is no designer, no creator in the world, if that’s all true then your life is worthless. Your life doesn’t matter. NOTHING MATTERS! Your life has no significance. There is no purpose to your life. If there is no God and we’re all just a result of a random chance, it was a chance that you were born and it’ll be a chance when you die, and there is no significance in the world. There is no right or wrong. There is no basis for law. There is no heaven or hell. There is no afterlife. Nothing really matters; it’s all just chance.
Here’s the dirty little secret about atheism: even those who proclaim it, don’t really follow it through to its logical conclusion. Just like last week, when we talked about Post-moderns, who want to proclaim that there are no absolutes, but rely on absolutes for their very existence, atheists want it both ways – they want to proclaim there is not God, that nothing matters, but they want everyone to know that they matter! Let me give you a real-life example…
Albert Camu was a French atheist philosopher who said the logical extension of atheism is despair. Camu’s most significant contribution to philosophy was his idea of the absurd, “the result of our desire for clarity and meaning within a world and condition that offers neither.” It is absurd for us to look for meaning in an existence that is meaningless! For his “enlightened” work, He became the second youngest person to win the Nobel Prize for literature…
[LONG PAUSE…..] Does that strike anyone as ironic? That a person who proposes that life has no meaning, no significance gets one of the most meaningful and significant awards for achievement…and that he actually showed up for it and accepted it?!
But the irony continues. By His own definition, all life is just a random accident, and you’re a random accident and nothing really matters. That’s Camu’s award-winning philosophy that is held by so many today. OK, so define irony: Camu died in an accident! He died in a car accident! Now that’s not funny – but it’s ironic that when he died, people mourned! There’s actually a bronze plaque on the corner in the small French village where he died in his honor! He was buried, and there’s a marker where his remains lay! The guy who said that it was absurd to look for meaning and significance in our lives was mourned and eulogized and recognized when his meaningless, insignificant accidental life accidentally ended!
In The Purpose Driven Life, on the first page of the book, Rick Warren quotes Bertrand Russell, another atheist, who says, “Unless you assume a God, the question of life’s purpose is meaningless.” Atheists want to believe there’s no God but they want to believe their life matters. They want to believe life has no meaning, but they want their life to be recognized because it’s meaningful. That’s why Camu - an atheist philosopher - said that the logical extension of atheism is despair.
Fortunately only about two percent of the people in the entire world deny the existence of God. Only two percent are genuinely atheists (and I’m suspicious even of those two percent!). So we don’t live in a culture of despair like that. We live in a culture that values life, which finds meaning in life – even by those who say that they are atheists!
We are doing a short series these days called “The Best Offense…” Jesus has called us to “go into all the world, and proclaim the truth…” In order to fulfill that great commission, we have to learn to engage our culture, we must be informed about the deceit that surrounds us, and we must be equipped to defend and proclaim the truth of Jesus Christ. To do that, we’re examining our culture through the lens of Worldviews.
Last week we rejected the worldview of postmodern thought. We asserted the existence of the absolute truth of God; evidenced through creation, conscience, Scripture and experience. We saw how relativism and postmodernism are destroying our culture, Nation and the world. The abandonment of absolutes leads to chaos and mayhem, and we see the results of it around us every day in the headlines. This week the Wisconsin Supreme Court decided to take a case to determine if Necrophilia is illegal. We need a ruling from our Supreme Court to decide if it is legal to dig up a dead body and have sex with it! Do you know why we need the Supreme Court to decide that? Because an Appellate Court said that it was not illegal! Postmodern thought has led to the death of common sense!
Today, we’re going to look at the most important questions we can ask: “Who am I?” And, “Where did I come from?” These are critical questions that impact so much of life because they determine the value of life. Where we come from determines who we are, and how we live. If we are no more than a cosmic coincident, or accident, then there is no moral or ethical order to the Universe. In the words of John’s T-shirt, “Nothing matters.” There is no basis for human value, law, truth or justice.
The most significant battle in the cultural war today is about origins. On one side is Darwinism and it’s offshoots, on the other is Intelligent Design. Darwinism is the religion of postmodern thought. It is the focus of postmodern faith. It is the bedrock foundation upon which everything else is built. When you kids are being taught Darwinism at school, it is far more dangerous than simply a study of evolutionary theory – it is the laying of the foundation upon which postmodern, atheistic thought is built.
American schools currently teach that the universe is self-generated, originating with the big bang. This worldview claims that the cosmos is all there is or ever will be. Naturalism teaches that life arose spontaneously in the oceans and gradually evolved from simple forms to complex forms, eventually to the complexity of human beings, through a process called Natural Selection, which was most famously described by Charles Darwin.
The National Association of Biology Teachers claims that life is the result of “an unsupervised, impersonal, unpredictable and natural process.” Professors, teaches and other academic organizations propose that any attempt to introduce intelligence into the universe is theology, not science. Which, if you think about it, implies that Darwinism excludes intelligence, which, as we will see, is close to the truth!
If Postmodernism has led to the death of common sense, then Darwinism has led to the death of rational science. Darwinism, the religion of modern postmodern society has closed and barred the doors to the scientific process. It’s a complete scam because no one can prove scientifically that the universe was self-generated; no one can prove scientifically that life was spontaneously generated; no one can prove scientifically that the obvious complexity and design of living things is anything other than just that – the result of a complex Master Designer.
In other words, the educational establishment presents unsubstantiated theories and philosophies, based on presupposed conclusions, contradicting the scientific method. Why would they do that? Why would scientists reject scientific methods? It is because the science leads them away from their worldview to a place that they are unwilling to go. The primary difference between the religion of Darwinism and the Biblical Theism is that I am willing to admit that I have a bias, which allows me to think honestly. Darwinists will deny that they have such a bias, and that self-deception blinds them to straightforward scrutiny of the data.
Let’s spend a few minutes looking at the material honestly and rationally.
First, what is the scientific method? It’s the backbone of science. Dr, Frank Wolfs, of the University of Rochester, describes it this way:
The scientific method is the process by which scientists, collectively and over time, endeavor to construct an accurate (that is, reliable, consistent and non-arbitrary) representation of the world.
The scientific method has four steps:
1. Observation and description of a phenomenon.
2. Formulation of a hypothesis, or theory, to explain the phenomena.
3. Use of the hypothesis to predict the existence of other phenomena, or to predict quantitatively the results of new observations.
4. Performance of experimental tests of the predictions by several independent experimenters and properly performed experiments.
He continues:
The scientific method attempts to minimize the influence of bias or prejudice in the experimenter when testing an hypothesis or a theory. If the experiments bear out the hypothesis it may come to be regarded as a theory or law of nature. If the experiments do not bear out the hypothesis, it must be rejected or modified. What is key in the description of the scientific method just given is the predictive power of the hypothesis or theory, as tested by experiment. There is always the possibility that a new observation or a new experiment will conflict with a long-standing theory.[i]
OK, So let’s look at the evidence. What do we observe about origins?
First, let’s do some “macro-observation’ looking at the big picture – the Universe.
q The universe is described as “anthropic.” It is perfect for human existence.
q Earth Gravity – perfect balance
q Earth Orbit – precise placement
q Earth’s axis – “wobble” – an amazing feature that produces our weather patterns and is integral to life on this planet
q But the complexity of life goes from the macro to the micro – at the sub-atomic level, at the very foundational building blocks of all matter – there is an amazing balance between protons and neutrons. No one has ever been able to explain the perfect balance between these positive and negatively charged elements. At the core of every cell of every object in the universe, on this planet and in your body is a perfectly balanced, intricately complex miniature “solar system” of elements.
Let’s observe further, and look at the theories of Life. We’ve said that Darwinism proposes that life started spontaneously. Darwinism further proposes that life evolved from form to form by natural selection over countless millennia.
Observations:
q No one has ever succeeded in creating life from non-life.
q There is a massive complexity to the DNA on every cell of every living thing, the spontaneous creation of which has never been observed or attempted. (The old image is of a tornado sweeping through a junk yard and spontaneously creating a fully functional Boeing 747 Jumbo Jet!)
q Gaps in the fossil record do not verify the claim of Darwinism. There is not a single example of an intermediate fossil – one where the creature was “between species.” Not one! While there are examples of adaptations to environmental conditions within a species, there has never been any example, in fossils or living species of a transition from one species to another. They say that the bat, for example, is a descendent of a mouse, but no one has ever found a fossil or other evidence of an intermediate “bouse.”
q Darwinism is further discredited by the concept of irreducible complexity. Now, don’t let the sound of that fog your brain – the idea is relatively simple. In fact, Darwin himself admitted that complexity gave him “a cold shudder.” He could not explain the evolution of the human eye, for example. The eye is so complex, that if you work backward in it’s development, it simply does not work at all – how could something develop slowly over thousands of years that does not work at all. Were the early human ancestors, for the thousands of years that the eye was evolving, blind, until it reached it’s complex, complete state that we have today? If so, wouldn’t those blind humanoids have been easy lunch for the other animals? The same argument is made in the evolution of the bat – if Natural Selection tells us that the week and vulnerable species are all killed off, then wouldn’t an intermediate “bouse” – a mouse somewhere in the middle stages of developing short front arms connected by flesh to form wings, unable at that point to either walk well, or fly at all – be extremely vulnerable – and destroyed by Natural selection?
q Darwin’s theory depends on a gradual, random mutation of speices over long – and I mean Looooong periods of time. But scientists today tell us have recently began to point to what they call a “Cambrian Explosion,” when seemingly thousands of species all show up suddenly in the fossil record – all at the same time. Darwin, obviously before this “explosion” was known, once said that the discovery of a sudden emergence of species would invalidate his theory. Scientists today are frantic to try to explain this away.
What are the conclusions of these observations?
Intelligent Design proposes that complex organic systems point to a rational, intentional Master Planner. That is a statement that is scientific – it rises from observation of other phenomena, it is able to be tested by the existence of other phenomena. No one would logically or rationally find a cellular phone and deduce from examining it that it happened randomly! You might be surprised by one of the most famous guys to promote Intelligent Design – Albert Einstein said, “The scientists' religious feeling takes the form of a rapturous amazement at the harmony of natural law, which reveals an intelligence of such superiority that, compared with it, all the systematic thinking and acting of human beings is an utterly insignificant reflection.”
Darwinism, on the other hand, asks us to believe this:
[Show video - BluefishTV The Big Bang]
Darwinism asks us to believei n the most amazing set of coincidence, random chance and accident, resulting in amazing complexity. We are asked to believe that the “tornado in a junkyard” illustration has some merit and could happen if we gave it enough time and opportunity. We are asked to do so by ignoring the laws and methods of science itself. Newton’s Second Law of Thermodynamics states that, left to their own devices, all things tend toward chaos, confusion and collapse – what scientists call “entropy.”
So, using the Scientific method, let me ask you, which gives us an accurate (that is, reliable, consistent and non-arbitrary) representation of the world? Which stands up to basic, empirical observation, and which ignores the obvious? Which requires more faith? Now, I know I’m preaching to a biased crowd, and I acknowledge my own bias – but I’ve got to tell you, the answers seem pretty obvious to me.
In the first book of the Bible, in the first chapter of that book, in the first verse of the first chapter of the first book of the Bible it says this in Genesis 1:1 “In the beginning, God.” Let me stop right there –If you can’t get past these four words then really life has no meaning, it has no purpose, it has no significance. But the Bible says “In the beginning, God.” God existed long before the universe, long before this planet, certainly long before the human race. “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.”
Isaiah 40:28 says, “Do you not know? Have you not heard? The Lord is the everlasting God, the Creator of the ends of the earth.” Isaiah is asking a rhetorical question there. He’s saying, in effect, “Hello!!?? Look around! Are you so blind that you cannot see the evidence all around you? Can you look at the night sky and deny the existence of God? Can you hear the symphony of a flock of birds in the trees on a beautiful spring morning and NOT know that there is an everlasting God, the creator of the heavens and the earth?”
When I read that verse, I think of another verse from Paul’s writings, written a thousand years after Isaiah, to believers in Corinth. He wrote,
Where is the wise man? Where is the scholar? Where is the philosopher of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world? For since in the wisdom of God the world through its wisdom did not know him, God was pleased through the foolishness of what was preached to save those who believe…For the foolishness of God is wiser than man's wisdom, and the weakness of God is stronger than man's strength.
I think of those verses every time I take Andrew and John down to U-W Madison. A place of such incredible study and learning – but filled with so much foolishness! It’s a slam dunk, folks! Darwinists can be as condescending and arrogant as they want, but they are ignoring the facts. Your kids are going to be ridiculed if they stand for Intelligent Design in their classrooms – but the facts, the truth, have a way of standing the test of time…but we have a responsibility to know and pass on those facts to our children, and the rest of culture.
In closing, let me make one quick point. It’s interesting that the Bible doesn’t spend a whole lot of time talking about how God created the universe – or defending that He did so – it is simply knowable by scientific observation. Instead, the Bible spends almost it’s entirety explaining WHY God created everything. Why did He do it? Why did God create the universe? Why did God create the earth? Why did God create human beings?
Hebrews 2:10, in the New Living Translation, says,
And it was only right that God who made everything and for whom everything was made should bring his many children into glory. Through the suffering of Jesus, God made him a perfect leader, one fit to bring them into their salvation.
It says God created it all for Himself, by Himself, to enjoy it Himself. He did it because He wanted to do it. And it says He wanted to have many children share His glory. Who’s He talking about? You and me. If I had time to take you through scripture I could show you that the Bible very clearly teaches that God wanted a family. God wasn’t lonely. He didn’t need us. But He wanted us. The Bible says that God is love and that we were created as objects of God’s love. We were made simply so that God could love us.
If you want to know why you’re sitting there right now, why you’re taking the next breath, why your heart is beating the next beat, it’s because you were made to be loved by God. If God hadn’t wanted to love you, you would not be taking the breath you’re taking right now. In fact, the Bible says that God created the entire universe just so that He could create this galaxy just so He could create the earth, just so He could create the human race, just so He could create you so He could love you. And love me.
Ephesians 1:4 says, “He chose us in Him before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless in His sight.” Isn’t that amazing? It continues, “…in love He predestined us to be adopted as His sons through Jesus Christ…” God created the universe so that he could create you and me so He could love us, and adopt us into His family.
David says this in Psalm 139 “You, God, made all the delicate inner parts of my body and you knit me together in my mother’s womb. Thank You for making me so wonderfully complex! [Very few things are more complex than the human body.] Your workmanship is marvelous and how well I know it. You watched me as I was being formed in utter seclusion [in other words when you were conceived in your mother’s womb God saw it happening. He watched you.] You watched me as I was woven together in the dark of the womb. You saw me before I was born.” God custom designed you because He had a place and a purpose and a plan for your life. And He oversaw that creation. You would not have been created without it.
Don’t ever let any parent, professor or philosopher tell you that you are an accident. You’re not an accident. There are accidental parents. But there are no accidental babies. God planned you. Your parents may not have planned but God did. Really it has nothing to do with whether they were good parents or bad parents or indifferent parents. Maybe you didn’t even know your parents. Maybe one of your parents died before you came to know them. Or whatever. It’s irrelevant. God choose your parents because they had just the right DNA to create you. He wanted you and He had you in mind, and He wants you to be part of His family. If you’re here, (and the scientific method tells me that you are here!), it’s because He wanted you here. And that’s pretty amazing.
Parents, your children are being brainwashed with this stuff every day - even though it is absurd to believe the claims of Darwinism, they will believe it in the absence of truth - it is your responsibility to give them the truth, and it is our responsibility as a church to equip you to do so.
Prayer:
Before you were born God knew that you’d be at Gateway Community Church on November 11, 2007. He’s got your attention. He’s saying to you, I made you. I thought you up. I created you. I sent My Son to die for you. I want to forgive you. I want to put dignity in your life again.
Will you pray this prayer: in your mind say, Dear God, thank You for creating the universe. Thank You for creating this world. Thank You for thinking of me before You created it all. I'm amazed that You would love me that much. Thank You for wanting me to be a part of Your family forever. Jesus Christ, I thank You for dying for me. I don’t understand it all but I want to trust in You. I invite You to fill my life with Your life and Your Spirit. I ask You to make me a part of Your family. Thank You for making me for a purpose. Please forgive all the things I’ve done wrong. Help me to treat everybody I meet with dignity and to share this good news with those who don’t know it yet. I pray this in Your name. Amen.