Letting the Scientist Speak

Mark Dunagan
08/08/10 - Sunday Morning

Often when one talks with someone who does not believe in God, the inspiration of the Scriptures or Creation, they will often dismiss what the Christian is saying because they have been told that “smart” men and women do not believe such things. There have been many excellent comments from “smart” men and women over the centuries – but many modern readers equally reject such comments because it is not the latest information. Well, in this lesson I want to do two things. I want to present the “latest” information – from a very smart man. Dr. Francis Collins is head of the Human Genome Project and is one of the world’s leading scientists. In 2006 he wrote a book entitled, The Language of God, in which he explained how a scientist such as himself could believe in God, Jesus and the Scriptures.

Evolution

Dr. Collins has had the move from atheism to faith in God and at this time still believes in the theory of evolution. He is a theistic evolutionist. Yet I found it interesting to note what he honestly said about what current science knows about the origin of life:

“But how did self-replicating organisms arise in the first place? It is fair to say that at the present time we simply do not know. No current hypothesis comes close to explaining how in the space of a mere 150 million years, the prebiotic environment that existed on planet Earth gave rise to life” (p. 90). Thus, currently, evolutionary theory has no answer when it comes to “how did life arise?” “DNA, with its phosphate-sugar backbone and intricately arranged organic bases, stacked neatly one top of one another and paired together at each rung of the twisted double helix, seems an utterly improbable molecule to have ‘just happened’ – especially since DNA seems to possess no intrinsic means of copying itself” (pp. 90-91). “No serious scientist would currently claim that a naturalistic explanation for the origin of life is at hand” (pp. 92-93). In other words, life could have not “just happened” here. This is one reason why some scientists have proposed that life forms must have arrived on Earth from outer space, either accidentally or intentionally from some ancient space traveler. Or, in other words, the concept of Genesis 1:1 is true, life on this life came from preexisting life and could not have just happened.

The Fossil Record

“The timeline revealed by the fossil record is woefully incomplete... Suddenly, approximately 550 million years ago, a great number of diverse invertebrate body plans appear in the fossil record. This is often referred to as the ‘Cambrian explosion’” (p. 94). Therefore, the fossil record of this planet states that an abundance of life “suddenly” in tremendous variety saddened appeared on the planet. This fits means that the fossil record and the record of Genesis 1 are in agreement. Life, in all its diversity and complexity suddenly appears. I think the six-day creation of Genesis chapter 1 fits perfectly into what we actually see in the fossil record.

The End of the Dinosaurs

“There is now general acceptance that their (the dinosaurs) reign came to a sudden and catastrophic end approximately 65 million years ago, at the time of a collision of planet Earth with a large asteroid” (p. 95). Science is right about a sudden and catastrophic end – but the means is incorrect. What wiped out most life on the planet years ago was not a collision with an asteroid, it was Noah’s flood (2 Peter 3:5-6).

The Age of the Universe

Collins says that the current theory of Evolution teaches that the universe is approximately 14 billions years old, with the age of the earth being 4.55 billion. He then says that for the first 500 million years the earth was a very inhospitable place. These are large numbers and so I found that the following illustration was helpful: “If the earth was formed at 12:01 a.m., then life would appear at about 3:30 a.m. After a long day of slow progression to multicellular organisms, the Cambrian explosion would finally occur at about 9:00 p.m. Later that evening, dinosaurs would roam the earth. Their extinction would occur at 11:40 p.m., at which time the mammals would begin to expand. The divergence of branches leading to chimps and humans would occur with only one minute and seventeen seconds remaining in the day, and anatomically modern humans would appear with just three seconds left” (pp. 148-149). This is an excellent illustration and one of the major reasons why I reject the concept that God used evolution and that the universe is billions of years old. Did God actually go through all this trouble and time for man – and the history of man’s redemption to show up in the last three seconds? By contrast, the Biblical writes saw something completely different. They did not see vast periods of time when the earth was devoid of life or incapable of maintaining life:

• “For thus says the Lord, who created the heavens (He is the God who formed the earth and made it) He established it and did not create is a waste place, but formed it to be inhabited” (Isaiah 45:18).

Neither did the Biblical writers interpret the “days” of Genesis into long ages:

• “There was evening and there was morning, one day” (Genesis 1:5).
• “Let there be lights in the expanse of the heavens to separate the day from the night, and let them be for signs, and for seasons, and for days and years” (Genesis 1:14).
• “For in six days the Lord made the heavens and the earth, the sea and all that is in them” (Exodus 20:11).

Neither did Jesus interpret Genesis chapters 1 or 2 in a figurative manner – and He is the Creator (John 1:3). He did not see Adam and Eve showing up in the last three seconds, rather Jesus placed the original couple and the chapters in which they are found from the beginning:

• “But from the beginning of creation, God made them male and female” (Mark 10:6).
• “But from the beginning it has not been this way” (Matthew 19:8).

Atheism

“Atheism played a minor role in human history until the eighteenth century” (p. 162). “The major and inescapable flaw of Dawkin’s claim that science demands atheism is that it goes beyond the evidence. If God is outside of nature, then science can neither prove nor disapprove His existence. Atheism itself must therefore be considered a form of blind faith, in that it adopts a belief system that cannot be defended on the basis of pure reason” (p. 165).

Moving Towards God

“The Moral Law still stands out for me as the strongest signpost to God. More than that, it points to a God who cares about human beings, and a God who is infinitely good and holy. The other observations, discussed earlier, that point to a Creator – the fact that the universe had a beginning, that it obeys orderly laws that can be expressed precisely with mathematics, and the existence of a remarkable series of ‘coincidences’ that allow the laws of nature to support life” (pp. 218,219).

Jesus

“During my boyhood years sitting in the choir loft of a Christian church, I really had no idea who Christ was. I thought of Him as a myth, a fairy tale, a superhero in a ‘just so’ bedtime story. But as I read the actual account of His life for the first time in the four gospels, the eyewitness nature of the narratives and the enormity of Christ’s claims and their consequences gradually began to sink in. Here was a man who not only claimed to know God, He claimed to be God. No other figure I could find in any other faith made such an outrageous claim. So I became convinced that God’s arrival on earth in the person of Jesus Christ could serve a divine purpose. But did this mess with history? But the more I read of biblical and non-biblical accounts of events in first-century Palestine, the more amazed I was at the historical evidence for the existence of Jesus Christ. First of all, the gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John were put down just a few decades after Christ’s death. Concerns about errors creeping in by successive copying or bad translation have been mostly laid to rest by discovery of very early manuscripts. Thus, the evidence for authenticity of the four gospels turns out to be quite strong” (p. 223).

Remember, this is one of our foremost scientists speaking and speaking in our time period. What he found is:

• There is a God
• Atheism is a blind faith
• God is moral, holy and good
• The word “sinner” might sound old-fashioned, yet that is what we are.
• Jesus Christ really lived and He is the Son of God
• The Bible has been accurately translated and transmitted

So why have other “experts” told us the exact opposite over the years? Collins says, “My desire to draw close to God was blocked by my pride and sinfulness, which in turn was an inevitable consequence of my own selfish desire to be in control, Faithfulness to God required a kind of death of self-will” (p. 222).