Discerning Truth: Evolution vs. Science

Biblical Science Institute

Subscribe

Download

Share

00

00:29

Hey folks, Jason Lau here with the Biblical Science Institute, and today I wanted to cover the anti -scientific nature of Neo -Darwinian evolution, and for that matter, other secular origins of belief, such as the

00:42

Big Bang, the Billions of Years, and so on. Now we've all heard the secular narrative that the scientific view, that's evolution, you know, you don't believe in evolution, well you're not being scientific at all, you don't believe in the

00:54

Big Bang, that's, well you're anti -science. And the ironic thing about that is that the opposite is true.

01:01

If the Big Bang were true, if Neo -Darwinian evolution were true, it would actually undermine the scientific method, and that's what

01:09

I want to discuss today. Now evolutionists sometimes will say, oh but you creationists, you don't use science to uncover how the world came to be and so on, you just look to the

01:19

Bible and, well yeah, because after all, when you ask about the origins of something, you're not asking a science question, not really, you're asking a history question.

01:29

You're asking about what happened in the past, and the best way to answer a history question is with a history book, if one is available, and it so happens we have a history book that records the origin of the universe, and the origin of life on earth, and that is of course the

01:43

Bible, and it's not just any history book, it's written by inspiration of God, so we ought to take it extra seriously, but in any case,

01:51

I want to cover this claim though that creation is somehow anti -scientific, when in fact the reverse is true.

01:58

When we ponder questions of history, we're not really dealing with science at that point.

02:05

Science really is concerned with how the universe operates today, in the present. Science is about uncovering the systematic, predictable way that God upholds his creation.

02:16

It's the way the universe works today. Now I'm not saying, by the way, that you can't use the tools of science to investigate possibilities about what happened in the past,

02:26

I think that's fine, but there are limits to that approach, to what's sometimes called forensic science.

02:31

There are limits to that, and you ultimately can't test your answer scientifically, because the past is gone, and so the best we can do is look up a history book and see if our guess was right.

02:43

So, the ironic thing about this claim that creation is anti -scientific is that the reverse is true.

02:50

Neo -Darwinian evolution is anti -scientific because biblical creation is the historical, foundational framework that makes science possible.

03:01

In other words, if the universe were not the way the Bible says it is, if history were not the way the

03:08

Bible records in Genesis and throughout, there would be no logical reason to trust in the scientific method.

03:15

And that surprises people, because they think, well, you know, the scientific method works. Yes, it does. That's because the

03:20

Christian worldview is true. And so the scientific method itself is based on the premise of biblical creation, and wouldn't make any sense apart from it.

03:31

Now, sometimes the objection that some evolutionists will give to this is really an irrational objection.

03:38

They'll say, but wait a minute, evolutionists have made scientific discoveries, and evolutionists can do science.

03:44

That's true, but that's irrelevant to the claim I've made. The claim I'm making is if biblical creation were not true, no one could do science.

03:53

It wouldn't make any sense. The method would be unjustified. There would be no logical reason to trust in it.

03:59

And so if anything, when an evolutionist says, but evolutionists can do science, that proves my point.

04:04

I say, yes, therefore the Christian worldview is true. The evolutionist is only able to do science because his belief about evolution is wrong.

04:13

If it were right, it would undermine science. And that's what I want to talk about today. And I want to give you kind of a way to help you remember the basic premises upon which science is built and the fact that these are creation premises.

04:29

So really anyone can refute evolution, and all you have to do is recognize that all science is based on three biblical creation principles, probably more than three, but three that I'm going to cover today.

04:42

And those three principles are, first of all, the reliability of senses. You assume, as do

04:49

I, that your senses are basically reliable, that what you see, what you touch, taste, touch, smell, and hear, and so on, corresponds to reality.

04:57

That my senses are telling me something about the external world. Reliability of senses.

05:03

Now they don't have to work perfectly in order to do science, but they have to work most of the time. They have to be basically accurate, otherwise you couldn't do science.

05:11

So reliability of senses. Secondly, rationality of the mind. In order for us to understand the universe, we have to be able to understand, period.

05:20

We have to have a mind that's capable of conscious thought, that's able to explore the various options and then choose the best.

05:28

That's what rationality's all about. So reliability of senses, rationality of the mind, and then third, the regularity in nature.

05:36

That there are certain patterns that occur in nature. There's a sort of regularity in nature.

05:42

Not to be confused with uniformitarianism, the idea that rates and conditions have always been sort of what they are today.

05:48

That's not true. But nonetheless, there is an underlying orderliness to nature. And in a sense, science is all about finding out those patterns, discovering those patterns, those regular patterns in nature, and distinguishing those from the sort of elements where things can change.

06:07

There are certain things in nature that change, other things that don't change. And to a great extent, science is about discovering the difference between the two.

06:14

Discovering which category something falls under. Now all scientists assume these three preconditions.

06:23

They all assume their senses are basically reliable, they assume their mind is capable of rational thought, and they assume that there's regularity in nature.

06:30

But my point is, these are biblical creation principles. They would not make sense if Genesis were not literal history.

06:38

And so, conversely, if evolution were true, in the neo -Darwinian sense, there would be no reason to trust in the basic principles upon which all science is based.

06:49

And so it turns out that evolution ends up being sort of the evil twin of what its advocates accuse creationists of being, namely, an anti -science.

07:00

And so let's cover these one by one. First of all, the reliability of the senses, or maybe I should say the basic reliability of the senses.

07:07

I will grant that your senses can at times be fooled. You've seen perhaps an optical illusion, something that you know can't really be that way.

07:15

I get that. But those are kind of rare. For the most part, our senses basically reliably inform us about the universe, and that is a requirement of science.

07:24

You couldn't do science without observation, because that's one of the key elements of science. You do an experiment, you observe the results of the experiment, right?

07:34

Science involves observation. Now that would do no good if your sensory organs were not reliable.

07:40

If I couldn't trust that my eyes reliably informed me about the results of my experiment, I couldn't conclude anything about the results of my experiment.

07:49

And so obviously, that's a precondition for science, but it's one that makes good sense in the

07:54

Christian worldview. Why? Because my senses have been designed by God. That's a

08:00

Genesis theme, isn't it? Now it's reiterated throughout the rest of the scriptures, but God made my senses, and therefore they have a purpose.

08:09

They're designed to probe the universe, and so I expect that since there's a mind behind them, they're going to work.

08:14

They're going to have the ability to do what they've been designed to do. And again, there are a number of scriptures that teach this.

08:22

Proverbs 20, verse 12 says that God made the hearing ear and the seeing eye, and so I would expect they do what they're designed to do.

08:30

The eye can see, the ear can hear, because that's what God made them to do. But in a secular worldview, our sensory organs were not designed by a mind.

08:41

They're simply an accident of nature. There's something that happened over billions of years as organisms reproduced and mutations accumulated in their genome, mistakes, and lo and behold, eventually you get sensory organs.

08:54

But if that story were true, why would there be any reason to trust that our sensory organs are reliable?

09:02

Now some people say, but Dr. Lyle, I can see that my sensory organs are reliable.

09:07

I can confirm that. But what are you confirming it with? You're confirming it with your sensory organs.

09:14

You can say, I know that what my eyes see is reliable because I can touch it, and there it is, but you're just using one sense to confirm another.

09:21

How do you know that your sense of touch is reliable? How do you know that? How do you know that you're not just a brain in a jar, and all your sensations are just electrical input from some kind of computer simulation?

09:34

And there are some secularists who have proposed that as basically kind of reality, interestingly enough.

09:41

Now some evolutionists might say, but Dr. Lyle, natural selection guided the development of my sensory organs.

09:48

Well first of all, natural selection doesn't guide anything. Natural selection simply refers to differential reproduction, the fact that organisms that have traits that are favorable to survival tend to survive better than those that don't.

10:02

Sometimes to the point of extinction, an organism that doesn't have traits that are sufficient for survival eventually goes extinct.

10:10

And so that doesn't guide anything. It just means if you don't already have the traits that are helpful for survival, then you perish.

10:19

Secondly, natural selection would only tend to preserve traits that have survival value, not necessarily traits that are reliable or truthful.

10:29

And some people might say, but doesn't having reliable sensory organs help me survive? Potentially, if you're a mobile organism that can use them.

10:38

But how do you know that you're a mobile organism that can use senses? I mean, after all, senses are not required for survival.

10:45

Grass doesn't have sensory organs, and it survives perfectly well. It's done better than we are by the numbers.

10:51

A lot more blades of grass on the planet than there are human beings. And you say, but I'm not like grass,

10:57

Dr. Lyle. I am a mobile organism. How do you know that? You see, you're using your senses to tell you that, but that's the very thing

11:04

I'm questioning, is how do you know that those sensory responses, that what you perceive really has some kind of connection to the real universe?

11:13

That's what I want to know. Some evolutionists might say, but Dr. Lyle, you biblical creationists, you trust your sensory organs.

11:21

That's true. But you see, I have a good reason for that in my worldview, because in my worldview, my sensory organs are designed.

11:29

See, both creationists and evolutionists trust that our sensory organs are basically reliable, that what we see and taste and touch and smell and hear corresponds to the real universe.

11:40

But the evolutionist never comes around to having any actual reason for why those organs should be basically reliable, whereas in the

11:49

Christian worldview, we do. We'd say, well, God made our senses, so of course they're going to be basically reliable, perhaps not perfectly reliable because of sin and the curse.

11:59

We understand that. We live in a fallen world. Things break sometimes. We get that. And I'll grant that I must first believe that my sensory organs are basically reliable in order to read in the

12:11

Bible that they've been designed by God. Some people think that presents a problem. Not really.

12:16

A lot of beliefs are justified after the fact. You believe in something first, and then you find you had a good reason to believe it.

12:22

And that's what we find in the Christian worldview. But in the evolutionary worldview, they trust their senses, and they never come up with a reason for why they should be able to trust their senses.

12:33

And so it turns out to be an irrational belief. Rational people have good reasons for what they believe.

12:40

I have a good reason to believe my senses are basically reliable. The evolutionist also believes his senses are basically reliable, but he never comes up with a good reason for it.

12:49

It's just something he accepts as a mystery. Second, rationality of the mind. Our minds have the capacity to reason, to examine and evaluate truth claims using laws of logic to discern truth from falsehoods.

13:06

We can do that. It's an amazing gift. Rationality is essential to science because we have to understand what we observe.

13:14

We have to understand what our observations mean, right? We reason from our observations. You couldn't do science from observations alone.

13:21

You have to think about what you've observed. And so when Isaac Newton observed that an apple falls from the tree, he doesn't just say,

13:29

I'm observing an apple falling from a tree. That's a necessary first step. But he then thought about it.

13:34

He thought, well, there must be a force between the apple and the earth. And through reasoning it through, he realized that force has to be proportional to the product of the masses and inversely proportional to the distance squared and so on.

13:46

And so he discovers the formula for gravity, which applies everywhere. It's amazing. And so he was able to do that.

13:52

He was able to do that because he could reason from his observations. Now, rationality makes sense in the

13:58

Christian worldview because human beings are made in the image of God. To be rational is to think in a way that is consistent with God's character, to think as he thinks, at least in a finite way.

14:11

We can't fully think like God thinks, but we can think in a way that's consistent with the way he thinks, with what we call laws of logic, which are a reflection of the characteristics of God's thinking.

14:22

So it makes sense that we can think after God. We've been made in his image.

14:27

And that doesn't refer to a physical image because God is nonphysical. So it can't mean that. It has more to do with his moral character, his rationality, and so on.

14:38

And where do we learn that man is made in God's image? Well, that's in Genesis. So again, this is a biblical creationist principle.

14:46

We're made in God's image. God is ultimately rational. He's the source of all rationality. And therefore, we have the capacity to think, at least in a finite way, some of God's thoughts after him, as it were.

14:58

Johannes Kepler said that's what science is all about, thinking God's thoughts after him. But in the secular evolutionary worldview, your brain is just another accident.

15:09

There's no mind behind it. And so why would your brain have the capacity to reason?

15:15

How does that make any sense? You spill some milk on the floor and the milk starts to reason, hey, the square of the hypotenuse of a right triangle is equal to the sum of the squares of their two sides.

15:26

Well, no, it doesn't. Because milk can't do that. It can't think. It's just molecules. That's all it is.

15:32

And it doesn't have that capacity. Now, in the secular worldview, your mind is just your brain. And your brain is just chemistry.

15:40

But chemistry can't think. And therefore, no combination of chemistry can think.

15:45

That's not going to work. Rationality requires that we can consciously consider the various options and then freely choose the best.

15:54

But chemistry has no consciousness and it can't choose anything. Right? Chemistry does not have a choice.

15:59

You mix the vinegar and the baking soda, it will fizz. There's no choice about it. That's what happens under the laws of nature.

16:06

And so the ironic thing is, if our mind's just our brain and our brain's just chemistry, there is no basis for rational thought.

16:15

You see, in the Christian worldview, my mind's more than just my brain. Now, I have an immaterialist spirit.

16:21

And somehow that interfaces with my physical brain in a way that we don't fully understand. But at least we have a worldview in which it's possible because we can have immaterial things influencing material things.

16:33

After all, God is immaterial and he's sovereign over the entire universe. So that's not a problem in the Christian worldview.

16:39

But in the secular worldview, it makes no sense. Your brain's just chemistry. Chemistry just does what chemistry does. Now, the secularist says, but I can think.

16:48

And often, you know, my reasoning is very successful. I've been able to survive this far and so on.

16:54

Yes, because you're made in God's image. And as a result, you have the capacity to think and to be rational.

17:00

But how would that make sense if your brain's just an accident? Well, it conveys some kind of survival value.

17:07

Again, most organisms on Earth don't have a brain at all. Grass does not have a brain and it survives just fine.

17:14

So again, natural selection is not going to preserve something that might in the future be useful. It's just going to preserve those things that have survival value now.

17:24

Some people might say, well, regardless of how our mind came about, it's obvious that I can reason rationally.

17:31

So they'll try an after -the -fact justification for the rationality. I know

17:37

I can be rational. How do you know that? Well, clearly, because I've been able to reason and so on.

17:44

What are you using to evaluate the rationality of your mind? You're using the rationality of your mind, right?

17:50

Basically, the secularist is saying, I know my mind's correct because my mind tells me that my mind's correct.

17:57

But that's arbitrary. That doesn't prove anything at all. That's a vicious circular reasoning. That's what that is.

18:04

And again, the secularist will say, but you Christians assume that your mind is rational. That's right. But we have a good reason for it.

18:11

That makes sense in our worldview because God has designed our mind. And so, of course, it's going to have the capacity to reason, to think

18:18

God's thoughts after him. That's what it's all about. And again, I'll grant that I must first trust in the rationality of my mind before I can read in the

18:28

Bible and comprehend that fact that I should be able to reason. That's inevitable.

18:35

Many beliefs are justified after the fact. You jump on something, you believe on it first, and then you find out later that you had a good reason for it.

18:42

And that's what we find with our reliability of our senses and the rationality of our mind. Of course, in the

18:48

Christian worldview, God has revealed himself in nature as well. He's hardwired his moral law into our hearts, as the

18:55

Bible teaches in Romans chapter two. And so God can hardwire knowledge right into us. Babies are born believing their senses are basically reliable and believing that they have some limited capacity to reason, which, of course, they can.

19:08

And it's only later when they get older that they can read the Bible and find out, yes, that makes sense. That makes sense.

19:14

In a Christian worldview, God designed the mind, God designed the senses. And so, of course, they're going to be able to function the way that they do.

19:22

But you see, in the evolutionary worldview, he thinks his brain is just an accident of nature, yet he trusts that it can distinguish truth from error.

19:31

But how does that go together? Granted, he has to justify it after the fact, but the problem is he's never able to justify it at all.

19:40

Not at all, because if the brain is simply an accident of nature, it shouldn't have the capacity to reason.

19:46

And so if the evolutionists were consistent, he should come to the conclusion that he can't come to any conclusions.

19:54

And that's not the conclusion that he comes to. So he's not being rational. Finally, let's discuss regularity in nature.

20:03

Now, we use this principle all the time in science. We use science to discover patterns in nature, laws that work everywhere, and a lot of them can be written down in nice, neat, little mathematical formulas like E equals mc squared and F equals ma and so on.

20:19

Now, that would be totally unreasonable to try and find patterns in nature if there were no patterns in nature, right?

20:28

And if the universe were not upheld by a mind, why would you expect to find patterns in it? That's what I want to know.

20:34

In the Christian worldview, we expect to find patterns in nature because the universe is designed and upheld by the mind of God.

20:42

God has imposed order on his universe, and he continues to impose order on his universe. He upholds it in a consistent, logical way.

20:50

He does that for our benefit. And frankly, the same God that created the universe also designed my sensory organs.

20:57

He designed my mind. And so those three things, they go together. It makes sense that my mind, which

21:04

God made, can use my senses, which God made, to find patterns in the universe, which

21:09

God has placed there. It makes perfect sense. And so science makes sense in the

21:15

Christian worldview, and we're motivated to do it. It tells us something about the nature of God. But in the secular worldview, there's no mind behind nature, behind the universe, so why expect to find rational patterns in a chance universe?

21:29

Rationality implies there's a mind behind it. And so if there's no mind behind the universe, there's no rationality to be found.

21:36

We would not expect to find patterns in a chance universe. Einstein once said, the eternal mystery of the world is its comprehensibility.

21:44

The fact that it is comprehensible is a miracle. And I don't think he meant that in a Christian sense. He just meant that it's amazing from his, because he was not a

21:53

Christian, from his non -Christian perspective, that the universe should be understandable. And that is amazing in a secular worldview, but it makes perfect sense in the

22:01

Christian worldview. The universe is comprehensible because there is a mind behind it. There is comprehension.

22:06

God upholds the universe, and we're made in God's image, and therefore have the capacity to understand, at least in part, aspects of God's creation.

22:16

But many secular physicists are fond of the saying, the most incomprehensible thing about the universe is that it is comprehensible.

22:24

And I think that's an interesting way of putting it from a secular perspective. It's just a big mystery. But again, rational people have a good reason for what they believe.

22:34

And so, if the secularist doesn't have, ultimately have any reason for trusting that there should be patterns in nature, he really ought to relinquish that belief.

22:42

You ought to say, yeah, yeah, science really shouldn't be possible, so I'm going to stop doing it. Now, fortunately, most of them are not that consistent, but inconsistency is irrationality.

22:54

One aspect of these patterns that we find in nature and the way we discover them, it's called induction.

23:03

Science is primarily an inductive endeavor. And in induction, what you do is you look at particular instances of something, and then you conclude a general pattern.

23:14

And so, when Newton, again, sees the apple fall, he didn't just say that particular apple at that particular time fell.

23:20

He drew a general conclusion that apples generally fall that way.

23:25

And it wasn't just apples. He thought, well, everything must fall under the force of gravity. He was generalizing. But how do you know that?

23:33

I mean, if you're a strict empiricist, and you think, well, you know, observation's how I know everything. Really? Because people assume that apples, when you let them go, they will fall to the ground, even in the future.

23:44

Yet, none of us have observed the future. So how do you know that? How do you know that if you let go of an apple in Antarctica, it'll fall?

23:53

Have you been to Antarctica to observe that? Most people have not done that experiment. Probably no one's done that experiment, actually.

24:00

And so, we believe in something, but what is the basis for it? It can't be observation.

24:06

Not just observation. Well, in the Christian worldview, we could say, ah, I would expect that there would be general laws that would work the same everywhere, because there's a

24:16

God who upholds the entire universe by the word of his power. In the Christian worldview, we expect to find patterns, because God is self -consistent, and he's sovereign over all creation.

24:28

And so, the way he rules here is the way he rules in Antarctica, or in the

24:33

Andromeda Galaxy. The way he's ruled in the past is the way that he'll rule in the future, in terms of general principles.

24:40

And so, when we as a Christian notice that when you drop something, it always falls under the force of gravity and so on, we can conclude that that's very likely something that is

24:52

God's consistent way of ruling. And so, we expect that that will continue to work in the future.

24:58

We expect it will work in locations that we've never observed. That makes sense in the Christian worldview, because we have an underlying regularity in nature.

25:07

But in a chance universe, why would you expect any regularity whatsoever?

25:13

It's a chance universe. There's one type of regularity in particular I want to emphasize, because it's especially important in science, and that is a regularity between past and future.

25:25

We've noticed that if you do a particular experiment under certain conditions at one time, if you do the same experiment under the same conditions, or as nearly identical as you can get them, you're going to get the same result at other times.

25:38

Okay? And so, we can use past experience as a basis for what is likely to happen in the future.

25:45

And that makes sense in the Christian worldview. In fact, it's a biblical creationist principle, because God promised in Genesis chapter 8 verse 22, that there will be certain cycles in nature that will continue as long as the earth remains.

26:00

And God specifically addresses the day and night cycle and seasons. God has promised that those cycles will continue in the future as they have in the past.

26:10

Now, that doesn't mean identity. That doesn't mean that this summer will be exactly as hot as last summer, but it just means we're going to have summer.

26:17

Okay? Those cycles will continue. Can we trust God about that? Well, of course.

26:23

He's God. He doesn't lie. Truth is his nature. Of course, he's in a position to know because God is beyond time.

26:31

He made time. He's not bound within it as we are. So, God knows the future every bit as well as he knows the past.

26:37

There's no doubt about that. God is omniscient by his very nature. He knows everything. And finally,

26:43

God is the one that's causing this uniformity that we have, this regularity in nature.

26:48

God's the one that causes the day and night cycle to continue, the seasons to continue. And so, as a biblical creationist,

26:55

I have a very good reason to believe that past experience will guide my future endeavors because God's promised a regularity between past and future.

27:06

Now, again, some things God allows to change, but there are certain things that he doesn't, like the day and night cycle. He doesn't allow that to change.

27:13

Our belief in the regularity of nature is something that God knew we would need before we even read the scriptural basis for it.

27:23

So, it's something he's hardwired into us. Babies know that, you know, if they burn their hand on the candle, they don't do it again because they assume it will hurt again, which, of course, it will because if the conditions are similar, you get a similar result.

27:37

That's a biblical creationist principle. God hardwired that knowledge into us. But my point is, in the secular worldview, that it would make no sense to believe that there is any regularity between past and future, that we can learn something about what will happen in the future based on what has happened in the past.

27:56

And yet, science assumes that. That's foundational. That belief is so central to our very existence, you couldn't get up in the morning without it, that it is our tendency to assume it as its own foundation.

28:12

And so, when you ask a secularist, how do you make sense of the fact that the future is like the past in terms of general regularities?

28:22

A lot of times, his response will be, well, because that's always worked in the past, therefore, I expect it will work in the future, which begs the question.

28:31

And in fact, that is a logical fallacy, and it's such a good one that in their book,

28:37

Introduction to Logic by Copey and Cohen, they actually use this very example of the irregularity in nature, or induction, as an example of something that people try to use to justify itself and therefore commit the fallacy of the

28:54

Petitio Principi begging the question. And so, I thought I'd read, they've stated it very well. They've said, powerful minds sometimes are snared by this fallacy, as is illustrated by a highly controversial issue in the history of philosophy.

29:10

Logicians have long sought to establish the reliability of inductive principles by establishing the truth of what is called the principle of induction.

29:19

This is the principle that laws of nature will operate tomorrow as they operate today, that in basic ways, nature is essentially uniform, and that we may rely on past experience to guide our conduct in the future.

29:31

Okay, that the future will be essentially like the past is the claim at issue, but this claim, never doubted in ordinary life, turns out to be very difficult to prove.

29:41

Some thinkers have claimed they could prove it by showing that when we have in the past relied on the inductive principle, we have always found that this method has helped us to achieve our objectives.

29:51

They ask, why conclude that the future will be like the past? And answer, because it always has been like the past.

29:58

But as David Hume pointed out, this common argument is a petitio. It begs the question, for the point at issue is whether nature will continue to behave regularly.

30:08

That it has done so in the past cannot serve as proof that it will do so in the future, unless one assumes the very principle that is here in question, that the future will be like the past.

30:18

And so Hume, granting that in the past the future has been like the past, asked the telling question with which philosophers still tussle, how can we know that future futures will be like past futures?

30:29

They may be so, of course, but we may not assume that they will be for the sake of proving that they will. And so it is an arbitrary, vicious, circular argument to assume that the future will be like the past as the sole basis for arguing that the future will be like the past.

30:46

The Bible gives us an independent answer. God has told us that the future will be like the past, and he is in a position to know because he is beyond time.

30:55

And so the creationist can answer this question and therefore justify induction, a central issue in science.

31:05

All science is predicated on induction. It uses other techniques too, deduction and so on, but it is predicated on induction.

31:13

So all seculars assume that because God has hardwired the same knowledge into them that he has into me. There is no doubt about that, but they are not able to justify that belief within their own professed worldview of nature is just all that there is and there is no mind behind it and so on.

31:29

And I will give you just a couple quick examples of this. Let's suppose you get up in the middle of the night to get a drink of water and it is dark and you stub your toe on something and that just hurts.

31:40

Now the next night you get up to get a drink of water, you are very careful not to stub your toe again because you assume that if you stub your toe again it will hurt again.

31:49

And so you say this time I am not going to do that, I am going to turn the lights on this time. I am going to take it extra slow, be extra careful because you assume that if you have the same conditions you are going to get the same result.

32:00

And in the Christian worldview we have a promise from God that yes indeed that will happen because there are cycles in nature that God promises will continue.

32:09

Again he gives the day and night cycle and the seasons as examples and through science we have discovered other patterns that God holds constant and so we have a basis for that.

32:18

But in the secular worldview there is no reason to expect any kind of regularity in nature and so perhaps the next time

32:24

I stub my toe it will be the most enjoyable experience of my life. The fact that it hurt last time has no connection to what will happen next time in a chance universe.

32:34

Another example, you go to start your car and it doesn't start. Have you ever had that happen?

32:40

Now you probably think well conditions have changed. The battery has gone dead.

32:47

Maybe the starter has gone bad. You assume that conditions have changed. It probably doesn't occur to you to think that laws of nature have changed or that they just don't exist anymore.

32:57

Right? It probably doesn't occur to you to think well yeah I mean it is a chance universe. I am surprised it has worked in the past frankly.

33:04

It is amazing it has worked this long. You see in a chance universe there is no reason to expect any kind of regularity whatsoever.

33:10

Yet all technology is based on that premise that there are laws of nature that don't arbitrarily change with time because God is upholding them in a consistent way.

33:21

Now not that God is required to. God can do a miracle but miracles are by definition rare. They are unusual, extraordinary manifestation of God's power rather than the ordinary everyday operation of God's power which sometimes is called providence.

33:37

So literally every discovery that has ever been made in science is a confirmation of biblical creation because it could not have been made without trusting in the reliability of our senses, the rationality of the mind, and regularity in nature.

33:53

And those are biblical creation preconditions. They are things that only make sense in the biblical worldview with Genesis at its foundation.

34:04

And so this is one reason why I am not terribly worried about some new discovery allegedly overturning creation.

34:11

Oh they finally found proof of evolution. No that will never happen because whatever the discovery is it could not have been made unless biblical creation is true.

34:22

And when you understand that boy it is amazing. You realize that all the successes in science are based on biblical presuppositions.

34:31

And again the argument is not that people must profess a belief in creation in order to do science.

34:39

The claim is that biblical creation must be true in order to do science.

34:45

And so what evidences in science are confirmation of biblical creation?

34:51

The answer is all of them, literally all of them, because they are using a method that is predicated on biblical creation.

35:01

Now I have written on this topic. I have written a book called The Ultimate Proof of Creation which you might want to check out. You can get this on our website,

35:07

Ultimate Proof, and it goes into more detail as well. And I have an article on our website at biblicalscienceinstitute .com.

35:13

There is an article called Evolution versus Science. It goes into some of the details that we have covered today.

35:19

But I just wanted to hit that briefly and of course we will come back and talk about these things if the

35:25

Lord wills in future episodes. But that is just kind of an overview of how it is that science is predicated on biblical creation.

35:33

And so evolution, if it were true, would undermine the scientific method. There would be no logical reason to trust in the scientific method if evolution were true.

35:42

But in a biblical creation worldview we have every reason to believe that science is a good method for testing certain kinds of truth claims.

35:50

It is not an infallible method but it is a good method and it has allowed us to make wonderful discoveries because God has been so kind as to uphold his creation in a consistent, regular way.

36:01

And because God has designed our senses and God has created and designed our mind as well. So I hope that has been enjoyable to you.