Participants: Clifford Goldstein
Series Code: CFTF
Program Code: CFTF000001
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00:21 Hi, Cliff Goldstein here
00:23 and welcome to Contending for the Faith. 00:26 This is the beginning of an eight, 00:28 nine part series on a topic called "Faith in Science." 00:32 Where we are looking at some of the questions 00:34 regarding two very powerful forces in the 21st century, 00:39 faith, particularly religious faith and science. 00:44 Now, I don't think any one in recent years has predicted 00:49 that science would somehow go by the wayside. 00:52 But there have been prognosticators over the years, 00:56 who have predicted that religious faith 00:59 would eventually just vanish from civilization. 01:02 Well, I don't think there is any question 01:05 that at some places in the west, 01:07 religious faith and that's often understood 01:10 as traditional organized religion has declined. 01:15 But no way is in danger of vanishing. 01:18 Sure these things do ebb and flow and there is no doubt, 01:23 I think this gonna happen in the future 01:25 and with great force too. 01:28 But I have no doubt that religion 01:31 is going to still be around for a long time. 01:34 Thus, we have two very powerful forces in the world. 01:38 Two very powerful forces religious faith and science 01:43 and at least from my perspective today 01:46 as a believer for the most part these forces, 01:50 I don't believe these forces clash. 01:52 From what I can tell, science really at least for me 01:56 has been a very powerful force in terms of affirming my faith. 02:02 If for no other reason that science has greatly 02:05 expanded our understanding of the wonders 02:09 and the majesty of the created world 02:11 that God has given us. 02:14 [speaking in foreign language] 02:17 I will praise you because I am fearfully 02:20 [speaking in foreign language] 02:22 I will praise because I am fearfully 02:24 and wonderfully made. 02:26 [speaking in foreign language] 02:32 And wonderful are Your works 02:34 and my soul knows that very well. 02:38 These are the words of David in Psalms 139:14 said, " 02:44 I will praise you, he said, 02:46 for I'm fearfully and wonderfully made, 02:49 your works are wonderful, 02:51 [speaking in foreign language] 02:53 and I know that very well." 02:56 Now, think about this for a minute. 02:58 He knew that very well back then close to 3,000 years ago. 03:04 What would David say if he knew about 03:07 what science has taught us about the human body today? 03:12 David wrote that long before he knew 03:14 what red blood cells were and what they did in the body. 03:18 Long before he knew what white cells were 03:21 and what they did. 03:23 He knew that we were fearfully and wonderfully made 03:26 long before he knew anything about the doubled, the doubled, 03:30 the DNA double helix or about how the body 03:33 metabolizes protein or the inner ear functions. 03:37 David knew nothing about cell walls 03:40 or warts or corns or synaptic clefts in the brain 03:44 or neurotransmitters or endocrine function 03:47 or how bone marrow makes red blood cells. 03:50 David knew nothing about these things 03:53 and thousands more like them. 03:56 Things revealed to us by the power of science, 03:59 things which should, which should-- 04:01 which should help us all shout out with David 04:05 [speaking in foreign language] 04:09 I will praise you for I am fearfully 04:11 and wonderfully made. 04:14 You know, there's so much more about 04:15 the wonders of the natural world 04:17 that science has revealed to us. 04:19 That as I said in many ways science has confirmed, 04:25 confirmed my faith in the word of God 04:30 and the Bible. 04:31 Another, let me give you another quick example, 04:33 very important. 04:34 Look at what science has revealed to us 04:38 about the reality of the unseen world. 04:41 Think for a minute right now about radio waves. 04:45 About radio waves is real as my voice, 04:48 yet we can't see them, 04:49 we can't hear them, we can't feel them, 04:52 we can't taste them and yet they're here, 04:54 they're real as anything in this room right now, okay. 05:00 Science says right now we've also been bombarded 05:02 by subatomic particles that are going through us 05:05 right now, one in and out the other. 05:08 And yet we don't sense some, 05:09 we don't feel them, we don't see them. 05:12 Thanks to the world of science, 05:14 we should be able to accept the idea of an unseen world. 05:19 The idea of a supernatural world 05:22 not immediately accessible to us. 05:25 Now, please I am not saying that the existence of radiation 05:29 or cosmic rays or infrared light 05:32 or other physical phenomenon 05:33 that we can't see proves the existence 05:36 of an unseen supernatural world. 05:38 I am not saying that. 05:39 One does not lead to the other. 05:41 All I am saying, all I am saying 05:44 is that science has shown us 05:47 about the existence of unseen realities. 05:51 So that should make the concept of unseen reality 05:54 such as supernatural realities, angels, demons, whatever. 05:58 That should be some thing easier for us to grasp 06:02 than it might have been for the ancients. 06:06 And there is more. 06:08 There is the incredible fine tuning in nature. 06:11 The fine tuning of what have been 06:13 called the fundamental constants. 06:16 Constants is another way that I believe 06:18 science has helped me believe in God 06:22 and the God revealed in the Bible more feasible. 06:26 And also, there is one last thought in this area, 06:31 something to think about. 06:33 Some argue that the whole scientific enterprise 06:37 demands a kind of rationality in nature. 06:42 A kind of set structure of order 06:44 that the natural world, that enables us to study it 06:49 and they believe that it exists only 06:51 because it was created by the kind of God 06:54 revealed in the Bible. 06:56 The kind of that gave order and rationality 06:59 to the structure of the universe. 07:01 Listen to this one quote from a British science, 07:05 British scientist, he said, "Our science is God's science. 07:10 He holds the responsibility for the whole scientific story. 07:15 The remarkable order, consistency, reliability 07:19 and fascinating complexity found 07:22 in the scientific description of the universe 07:25 are reflections of the order, consistency, reliability 07:31 and complexity of God's activity." 07:34 Pretty interesting thought I think. 07:36 Alfred North Whitehead, a philosopher 07:39 and mathematician of gigantic proportions, 07:42 proportions once wrote this. 07:45 "Modern science must come from the medieval insistence 07:49 on the rationality of God. 07:52 My explanation is that the faith 07:54 in the possibility of science, generated antecedently 07:59 to the development of modern scientific theory, 08:02 is an unconscious derivative from medieval theology." 08:07 C.S. Lewis expressed the idea like this. 08:11 "Men became scientific 08:14 because they expected law in nature 08:17 and they expected law in nature 08:19 because they believed in a lawgiver." 08:24 Wrote, John Lennox about the whole idea of order 08:28 coming from God even making science possible. 08:32 Listen to this. 08:33 "It was this conviction that led Francis Bacon regarded 08:37 by many as the father of modern science, 08:40 to teach that God has provided us with two books, 08:44 the book of Nature and the Bible, 08:47 and that to be really properly educated, 08:49 one should give one's mind to studying both." 08:54 In other words, what they're really saying here, 08:57 what they're really saying is that the whole reason 09:00 that science can be done is because there is an order 09:04 to the created world and sets of laws 09:08 that one would expect a creator to have, 09:12 in a creator and the desire to have 09:14 put in place to begin with. 09:16 Yes, I can say, I can say for the most part 09:21 that from the perspective of the Bible, 09:24 science has greatly helped increase my religious faith. 09:30 Now, all that being said on the other hand, 09:36 on the other hand, let me not be foolish 09:41 and that's because there is one area in particular, 09:44 one crucial area where so much 09:48 science has it is practiced now, 09:51 and I can't overemphasize 09:53 that phrase as it is practiced now. 09:56 There's one area where science as practice now 09:59 in a very strong way contradicts the most, 10:04 the clearest teaching of the word of God. 10:07 And that is in the area of origins. 10:09 To put in bluntly, let me put this bluntly, okay. 10:13 Almost the whole scientific community today 10:17 has as so much of the world's intellectually community. 10:21 They have accepted the neo-Darwinian synthesis, 10:26 in short evolution. 10:28 And I can't think of any teaching anywhere 10:31 that in every single way 10:33 contradicts the Bible in such a fundamental 10:37 and devastating way as evolution. 10:40 If evolution were true, the Darwinian model, 10:44 the neo-Darwinian synthesis, 10:46 if that were true the only honest thing, 10:48 the only honest thing, 10:49 I think anybody could do would be to scrap 10:52 the Bible as nothing but a bunch of myths. 10:57 That's have basic and cruel these issues really are. 11:02 Now, before we proceed, 11:05 let's get one definition straight. 11:08 Let's define our word term so, I suppose 11:12 if I want it to I can do a whole program here 11:14 and digress on just how problematic 11:17 is this idea of defining our terms, 11:20 but I don't want to go there. 11:21 Okay. 11:22 Anyway when I talk evolution, I'm not simply talking change. 11:27 I mean, if you simply mean by evolution only change 11:32 that species adapt and things change. 11:34 Well, then I think everybody believes that. 11:39 Instead by evolution, I am talking about the claim 11:43 that life began billions and billions of years ago 11:47 as some kind of simple form, though I don't know 11:49 if anybody can even conceive today 11:52 of the idea of life being simple. 11:54 So, let's say a relatively primitive 11:56 life form emerged billions of years ago 11:59 and over these billions of years ago, 12:02 billions of years, it learn to replicate itself 12:05 through this process of natural selection 12:08 and random mutation. 12:10 And this is how all life forms on earth today 12:13 from the bacteria to human beings exist. 12:17 That's what I mean by evolution, 12:19 that all life started with the common 12:21 natural primitive ancestor, 12:24 some life out of which all other life arose 12:29 after billions and billions of years of fits and starts. 12:35 Let me tell you something too. This belief is everywhere. 12:39 It has become part of the culture 12:41 and it forms the background assumption of pretty much 12:44 all intellectual and scientific thought. 12:47 Today, it's just understood, it's accepted 12:50 and in so many places it's not even questioned. 12:55 And as I said, as I said it contradicts the Bible 13:01 or at least any reasonable and honest interpretation 13:05 of the Bible in an irreconcilable way. 13:08 Thus I ask the questioner. 13:11 How are we believers to deal with this? 13:14 How are we to deal with? 13:15 The idea that evolution can be 13:17 either corporate into Bibles out there. 13:19 And it's getting more acceptable 13:22 even to Christians much to my astonish. 13:25 But this attempted synthesis of evolution in Christianity 13:30 represents in my view one of the greatest 13:33 and most tragic capitulations of Christianity to culture 13:38 since, probably the change of the Sabbath to Sunday. 13:43 But you see that's the power 13:45 that the name science holds over people, 13:50 so that when something comes with the label science, 13:54 even Christians capitulate, even as something as bluntly 13:58 and openly contradictory to the most 14:00 obviously readings of the Bible, 14:03 such as the crucial doctrine 14:05 and foundation doctrine of creation. 14:10 Yeah, we don't have to be poled into something 14:14 just because it comes with the imprimatur science 14:18 written on it. 14:19 As if something is labeled science, 14:22 it becomes absolute terminal truth. 14:26 And that's something I'd like to even share 14:28 a little bit from my own experience 14:31 because I think this could help us understand 14:34 some of the issues regarding faith and science, 14:38 especially in this crucial area of the question of evolution 14:43 and the Bible. 14:45 Now, I had been raised, 14:47 born and raised in a secular environment 14:51 and I was educated in secular school, 14:55 so I had been raised on evolutionary theory 14:58 right from elementary school through high school. 15:01 I mean, through college 15:02 I was taught the Darwinian model 15:05 as the basic explanation for life. 15:08 I can remember far back in the fifth grade 15:13 Mrs. Catholic's class in the fifth grade, 15:17 reading a science text book that thought us evolution 15:21 and two things stand out in my mind. 15:23 Even after all these years, 15:25 I can remember these two things. 15:27 I remember and I don't know why, 15:28 I don't have a particularly good memory, 15:30 but I can remember all the way back from the fifth grade 15:34 having memorized the supposed periods of the earth's history. 15:38 The Azoic, Archeozoic, Proterozoic, 15:41 Paleozoic Mesozoic, and Cenozoic eras. 15:44 With humans and dinosaurs arriving 15:47 in the late Cenozoic era. 15:49 As I said I don't have a great memory, 15:51 for some reason I never forget that. 15:54 Stayed with me over 50 some, almost 50 years. 15:57 And the other thing I remember too. 16:00 I remember they had a drawing. 16:02 It was like a shallow pool and then there would be 16:07 next to it as like some kind of single cell organism 16:11 and then something like a jellyfish 16:14 and then some kind of fish and then some amphibian 16:17 and then some kind of Hominid or some thing 16:19 and then the Neanderthal and then a human being 16:22 and they drew a life through it. 16:24 Showing that how this whole thing 16:26 it started in the pool 16:28 and eventually it evolved into human beings. 16:31 I can still remember it. That was in the fifth grade. 16:36 Then jump ahead now to about 1970. 16:40 I was in ninth grade biology class 16:43 with Mrs. Ruben from junior high. 16:48 And, you know, I thought I was hot stuff 16:51 because I knew the meaning of the real fancy term, 16:54 I bet you don't know what that is, 16:57 [speaking in foreign language] 17:01 Well, that's pretty impressive, I would now, 17:03 I thought I knew the term 17:05 and I thought that was hot stuff. 17:07 And it was this idea that in embryo, 17:11 if you look at in embryo it goes through 17:14 the various stages of evolution. 17:19 You look at, you could see the different, 17:20 like it has gills and fins and so on. 17:23 And I was thought that in the late 1960's 17:26 the only problem was for about 50 years 17:30 it was already proven to be a fraud. 17:33 It had been known for decades that it was a fraud 17:36 and yet here I was all the way in the late 1960s 17:40 being thought that in a science class 17:46 in decades, decades later, okay. 17:49 Now, and I remember even in college too, 17:53 I was an English major but I've had some science 17:56 and I remember we were just taught some evolution. 17:59 But here is the issue I want to talk about. 18:03 I don't want to talk about the fact 18:04 that I was taught evolution. 18:06 I mean, this was a secular colleges, secular schools, 18:09 what else was I going to be, going to be taught. 18:12 How else were they gonna teach about origins? 18:15 Rather the issue, the issue that I want to look at 18:19 'cause this is crucial and just get this point 18:22 if you don't get anything else about what I am saying. 18:25 The crucial issue here was how I was taught it? 18:30 I was taught it in this-- as an absolute fact 18:34 unconverted, unquestioned, unchallenged. 18:37 I don't remember one time ever hearing the possibility, 18:42 ever hearing the possibility that it could be wrong. 18:45 I never one time heard 18:46 any other explanation for it, never. 18:49 It was just how it was. 18:51 Everybody understood it and you didn't questioned 18:54 that anymore than you question 18:55 that the earth revolved on its axis. 18:59 After all, this was science right. 19:02 In our day and age, 19:03 science has given a special epistemic status. 19:08 It's viewed as a certain kind of knowledge 19:11 that different than say history or art and so on. 19:15 And I suppose to a degree it is. 19:18 And this whole ideas 19:19 when science teaches us something, 19:22 well, then who what arrogant fool dare to challenge it. 19:25 Science comes with this-- 19:27 science just had become sort of a high priest, 19:31 of a higher kind of knowledge, 19:32 sort of these bearers of some kind of sacred fire. 19:37 Because in their labs, 19:38 in their rational objective pursuit of truth, 19:42 they ideally get closer to the truth 19:44 and the rest of us are mere morals, right? 19:48 Well, that's what we're thought. 19:50 Well, then one day 19:53 I found myself in my yearly 20s, 19:55 I was a born again believer in Jesus. 19:59 You see at that point I'll you, I knew nothing about the Bible, 20:03 nothing about sin, nothing about anything. 20:06 If somebody would have told me I was a sinner, 20:08 then I would have looked at them like they were crazy, 20:10 I don't know what you are talking about. 20:12 But I had become a born again believer. 20:16 And even though I couldn't put my finger on it, 20:18 I sensed a kind of tension 20:22 between my new found faith and this evolution 20:25 that I had been so dogmatically taught. 20:28 I felt a discomfort there. 20:31 Okay, God had just changed my life, 20:33 but I just couldn't see how I can fit him in 20:36 with this theory of origins 20:38 that I had been taught and that's all I knew. 20:42 Well, anyway, 20:43 early on some of my friends seeing my struggle, 20:48 they gave me some creationist literature. 20:51 Now, whether that was well done or not, I don't know. 20:54 I mean, you can have some pretty poorly done 20:56 creationist literature out there, 20:58 think as you can have some poorly done 20:59 evolutionary literature. 21:01 And anyway I started reading through some of this staff 21:06 and let me tell you it changed my life. 21:10 Why? 21:11 And again I don't even know if the literature was any good. 21:14 It might had been, it might had not been, 21:16 I wasn't in a position to tell. 21:18 But here's what happened. 21:20 This is what happened and it was an eye opener to me 21:23 scales fell off my eyes. 21:26 Because it was the first time in my life 21:29 that I was ever presented 21:32 with an alternate explanation of the facts. 21:36 Yes, for the first time in my life 21:38 I was sure there were other ways 21:41 of interpreting the evidence. 21:44 Look, no one's gonna deny 21:46 that the dinosaur bones are in the ground. 21:48 I mean, I heard the Satan created 21:50 the bones to confuse us. 21:51 Let's don't go there, we make ourselves look like idiots 21:54 when we talk about that. 21:55 No question, the bones are in the ground. 21:58 Of course, they are there, no one's gonna deny that. 22:01 But what I was shown, 22:03 it was the first time in my 23 years of life, 22:08 I was shown that there was another way 22:11 other than the Darwinian evolutionary model 22:15 that I had been taught since childhood 22:17 there was another way to look at it. 22:20 I mean, I was blown away, okay. 22:23 As if my life already hadn't been shaken up 22:25 enough becoming born again believer. 22:28 This was a fascinating revelation to me. 22:31 It was something that I had never, 22:33 never, never taken in to consideration 22:36 before that there are other ways 22:38 of looking at the evidence. 22:39 Other ways to explain it and to interpret the data 22:44 and this leads to a crucial concept in science, 22:48 a crucial concept, and many believe 22:50 it's a fundamental weakness of science 22:53 that they still haven't addressed 22:55 and we'll deal with that later on. 22:58 But let's go back to the bones in the ground. 23:01 Okay, I mean, and do they have 23:03 stamped on them where there come from. 23:07 Did they say, hey, we were created 23:09 in the late Cenozoic era 250 million years ago. 23:13 Of course not, instead someone had to look on them 23:16 and working from presuppositions, 23:19 working from ideas based on things 23:21 other than the bones themselves, 23:24 they had to give their own interpretation of the bone. 23:29 So here's the question I asked though. 23:32 What were those presuppositions 23:35 in which they based their interpretation of the bones? 23:37 How valid were those presuppositions, 23:40 and if they were valid, 23:41 how did they know they were valid? 23:43 What criteria do you use to judge their validity 23:47 and what is the reason for trusting that criteria. 23:50 It might be fine and dandy. But how do you know? 23:53 Maybe you fundamental presuppositions are wrong 23:57 which means your interpretation could be wrong as well. 24:00 Is that not possible? 24:01 And please, if you look at the whole history 24:05 of science of presuppositions 24:09 that existed for centuries that were later overturned, 24:13 you realize that the odds 24:15 in favor of those presuppositions 24:18 or actually the odds in favor of them being wrong. 24:22 Which means, you interpretation 24:24 could be wrong as well, or may be 24:26 if your presuppositions are right. 24:28 You may be, you applied them in a wrong way 24:30 in your conclusions all wrong. 24:32 Yes, there's no question the bones are in the ground. 24:38 But there could be other ways of explaining 24:40 how they got there other than the commonly held 24:43 Darwinian model of them. 24:46 And this was a complete eye-opener to me 24:49 and it's not just with the bones in the ground, 24:52 but it's a issue that all science 24:54 has been grappling with from the start. 24:57 How do you know that your theory, 24:59 how do you know that your interpretation, 25:01 your explanation is the right one? 25:05 Indeed, scientists bring their own rules 25:08 and assumptions and principles to the bones in the grounds 25:11 that they get from somewhere else 25:13 and maybe they don't really properly fit. 25:16 Some argue, some argue that scientists 25:18 were looking at the bones can't even really look at them. 25:22 Don't even know what there were looking at 25:23 without bringing their own presuppositions 25:27 into their own preconceived ideas. 25:31 Some people talk about the fact they say 25:33 the idea that all facts are theory-laden. 25:37 It means you can't determine what a brute hard fact is 25:41 without already having some ideas 25:43 before hand of what you are looking at. 25:46 Anyway, I just wanted to touch on this, 25:49 bring this up because it's this idea 25:52 that scientists come in with this pure objective 25:56 view of looking at things and it doesn't work that way. 25:59 The bones are in the ground. 26:01 They are there, but they have to be interpreted 26:04 and there is an incredible amount of diverse opinion 26:08 in the scientific community in regard to what 26:11 it means to even interpret a fact in nature. 26:14 A lot of controversy about what it means to have 26:16 scientific evidence for something in nature. 26:19 What it even means to make a theory or a hypothesis. 26:23 All these things are highly contested 26:26 among those who study them. 26:28 And if you really get into this, 26:31 I think most people would be amazed 26:32 in how these fundamental issues of science. 26:35 There's so little agreement 26:38 among scientists today about that. 26:41 And yes, folks, we are talking science here 26:46 which is nowhere near its objective and certain 26:49 and it's deductive as we are led to believe. 26:53 And the point on all of these is there's a lot more faith 26:57 in science than most people realize. 27:00 And it takes a lot more faith 27:02 to believe in some of these things 27:04 that scientists teach than most people realize too. 27:08 And once you do and start studying this 27:12 and realize this, it become so much easier 27:16 not to surrender clear biblical teachings 27:20 just because something comes 27:21 with the imprimatur science on it. 27:25 And that's what I want to talk about 27:27 in part of the series here. 27:29 There's no question, 27:31 science has done a lot of good in the world. 27:33 It's a great way of looking at the world. 27:36 And science too has done a lot to increase my faith, 27:41 but there is a flip side to all this. 27:45 And if science as it is now practiced is right on origins. 27:51 If they are right with almost all that-- will of them teach? 27:55 If they are correct then my belief 27:58 in the Bible would be nullified. 28:01 That's how big I believe the issues are. 28:03 Fortunately, once we realize some of the issues involved 28:09 in the practice of science, 28:12 we realize we don't have to surrender our faith 28:15 or anything crucial to. |
Revised 2015-01-01