Christian, what do you believe? Evolutionary Science or Scripture?
By Tec Clark
We are inundated with “research” and “data” of the physical sciences. Simply peruse the television to see countless programs documenting nature, and you will inevitably get evolutionary doctrine mentioned in every episode. “Millions of years”, “evolution”, “Darwin” all seem to be requisite words flowing freely from the mouths of the narrators. But hold on. When scientists produce data from the physical evidence (rocks, galaxies, coral, primates, etc.) they automatically look at the evidence with a particular “worldview lens” already in place: either uniformitarian or biblical. If a scientist does not believe in God or scripture, then the origins of life, the accounts of earth creation, and accounts of a global flood are all simply fictional stories and cannot be used in the interpretation of the evidence. This leads to fundamentally flawed data since interpretation and analysis never even get a chance to consider the possibilities of a Sovereign God.
How widespread is this lack of biblical worldview among scientists? Consider this.
“A study has shown atheism in the west to be particularly prevalent among scientists, a tendency already quite marked at the beginning of the 20th century, developing into a dominant one during the course of the century. In 1914, James H. Leuba found that 58% of 1,000 randomly selected U.S. natural scientists expressed “disbelief or doubt in the existence of God” (defined as a personal God which interacts directly with human beings). The same study, repeated in 1996, gave a similar percentage of 60.7%; this number is 93% among the members of the National Academy of Sciences. ” Source: Wikipedia: Demographics of Atheism.
Many have attempted to mesh science and scripture. The “gap theory” and “framework hypothesis” were both attempts to do this. It is difficult to challenge the most intelligent persons of our times. Even Augustine, Charles Spurgeon, and B.B. Warfield subscribed to scientific theories of their day that meshed scripture and science. Unfortunately these theories are not scripturally sound and they clearly create error and dispute in the word of God. That is placing science above scripture; that is placing man over God. At what point do you hold to your faith and question science? As Dr. John MacArthur, President of The Master’s Seminary & College states, “If you can’t believe Genesis 1 through 11, at what point do you start believing the Bible?” If we allow science to explain scripture how then will it explain a virgin birth? Or, the resurrection of our risen Lord? IT CAN’T!
Again, the brilliant minds of scientists can be articulate and convincing. But when you read the numerous secular papers, blogs, and discourse about how Jesus Christ’s resurrection could be a coma – then you must take Paul’s words to Timothy very seriously, “O Timothy, guard what has been entrusted to you, avoiding worldly and empty chatter and the opposing arguments of what is falsely called “knowledge”” (1 Timothy 6:20). To purport that the Lord our God was not resurrected from the dead, but was rather in a coma, is out and out blasphemy of the Bible and an absolute sacrilege of Christianity. Once science is given validity over scripture, we then allow man to be king, we then allow minds of the flesh to override the Holy Spirit, we then allow a fracturing of the word of God, and most horrifically, we have obliterated the redeeming salvation of the Gospel.
King Solomon writes in Proverbs 9:10 “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom, And the knowledge of the Holy One is understanding.” Solomon, a man wiser than any man before him or after him (1Kings 3:12), clearly states that the foundation of all understanding and knowledge begins with God. If modern science never even considers God in the evidence of creation or the origins of life (either as the Creator or scripture as the word of God) how then can outcomes, data or research be valid? Christian, what do you believe?