How can we know anything about anything
To try to explain truth to him who loves it not is but to give him more plentiful material for misinterpretation. George Macdonald
Do we have to make a choice between science and the Bible?
NO!
That is NOT where the problem is, but that is what everyone seems to want to talk about.
Take science as an example.
How can we know anything about the created material world around us?
How can we know anything from what we can see using natural sciences?
We all see the same things in the material world,
but we don't come to the same answers.
Why is that?
How can we know anything about the Bible and what it teaches?
Every person believes different things about the Bible and how it should be read.
Why is that?
Same scientific facts. Different answers.
Same Bible. Different answers.
Why is that?
The true question is this: How do we come to our answers that we get
from what we can see through science
or what we can read in the Bible?
How do we think about what we see using science or what we read in the Bible?
How do we analyze what we have seen and read?
How do we interpret what we have seen and read?
We use logic, but logic always has a foundation. Jesus talked about building on the Rock.
That Rock is Jesus Christ. He is the true foundation.
There are also the false foundations of the ungodly.
An example might help.
Question: Why do you believe in evolution?
Answer: Because my science teacher told me that evolution is scientific fact.
Question: Why do you believe your science teacher?
Answer: because he agrees with the textbook he assigned us to read.
Now, we have asked, "Why?" twice.
If we continued to ask, "Why?" we would come down to the foundation of this person's thoughts.
When we get down to the foundations, there are no more questions that can be answered.
So where to the foundations come from?
There are three possibilities.
- things that we make up, pulled from the air
- demonic lies
- divine revelation
Question: Why do you believe in creation?
Answer: Because God revealed this to me. He spoke to me through the Bible and gave me His faith
so that I could believe Him.
See how quickly we got to the foundation.
This is a belief that has a foundation that is solid and that cannot be moved.
In reality, the things that we make up, that are pulled from the air,
are actually from demons and all the lies of demons spring from the prince of demons, Satan.
So these are one and the same.
Divine revelation comes from the Almighty, Creator, God, Jesus Christ.
So there are only two choices, but how do we know there are only two choices?
Because God has revealed this truth to us.
The question then is how do we tell the difference between the revelation that comes from God
and the lies of Satan?
The answer is that everyone who sincerely wants to do the will of God will know.
Jesus said, "If you really want to obey God, you will know if what I teach comes from God or from me"
The rejection of the revelation that comes from God is not an intellectual problem.
It is a moral problem.
Jesus said, "Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and you shall find; knock, and it shall be opened to you:
For everyone who asks receives; and he who seeks finds; and to him who knocks it shall be opened."
*
Or what man is there of you, whom if his son ask bread, will he give him a stone?
Or if he ask a fish, will he give him a serpent?
If you then, being evil, know how to give good gifts to your children,
how much more shall your Father which is in heaven give good things to those who ask him?
Matthew 7:7-11 *
You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make him drink.
You can set the truth before someone, but you can't make anyone believe
those things that they don't want to submit to.
They have to want to obey God.
How frequently it is brought to our attention that nothing good can be done if the will is wrong! Reason alone fails to justify itself. Richard M. Weaver
Jesus said, "You will know the truth, and the truth will set you free" (John 8:32)
"If we are not prepared to buy the truth at the cost of our own humbling we shall not receive it"
Lies appear to have no price upon them.
They seem cheap and they abound everywhere.
But for the truth there is always an obvious price to pay.
"[God] has set a day when He will judge all the world's people with fairness.
And He has chosen the man Jesus to do the judging for Him.
God has given proof of this to all of us by raising Jesus from death" (Acts 17:31).
"There is a judge for the one who rejects Me [Jesus] and does not accept My words;
that very word which I spoke will condemn him at the last day" (John 12:48)
That also stands for every person who speaks the utterances of Jesus.
When we hear them, we hear Jesus Christ, and we either accept or reject.
Every person who follows Jesus Christ is commanded to only speak His utterances and not their own.
"When we love others, we know that we belong to the truth, and we feel at ease in the presence of God" (1 John 3:19)
Ravi Zacharias did two open forums in a university.
On the second night, one man told him that he had brought two Atheists in the night before
who said that the arguments presented were so strong that they could not contend with them,
but they were going to remain Atheists because that is what they prefer to be true.
In another case of just listening to an unbeliever and drawing out his reasoning,
the unbeliever finally came to his foundations.
They turned out to be assumptions that were pulled from the air.
When asked why he believed his basic assumption,
the unbeliever looked startled and blurted out,
"I guess I'm making the whole thing up."
It was quite a revelation to him since he hadn't even known that he had any assumptions.
However, he decided to remain an Atheist because he didn't want God to rule over him.
If Post Modernism makes sense, then it makes sense to believe in the Easter Bunny. Consider the following humor:
Now, under post-modernism and chaos theory, it is said that nothing can be proven for certain. At the same time, given infinite time and space, anything is possible-nothing is impossible. As we acquire knowledge through observation, something may become very probable or very improbable--but never impossible. All is relative say the intellectuals. The only thing that is absolute is that nothing is absolute.
If these folks are right, then there is no right and wrong, no black and white-only shades of gray, which must be a great comfort for those faced with conclusions they are trying to avoid. And the grays are only defined by who wins. The only thing that is wrong is to think that there is such a thing as right and wrong. Who could argue with the level of authority that the intellectuals possess?!! They must be right.
Now that we know how things really are, we can boldly state that both evolution and the Easter Bunny are viable theories. (Please don't think that I am trivializing EasterBunnyism by comparing it to evolutionism. If all is relative, then we have no right to take a negative attitude toward the theory of evolution.)
Observation cannot disprove the theory that the Easter Bunny comes to every home every year and distributes colored eggs and candy; it can only make it improbable. As we calculate the number of homes on the earth and the amount of time available to the Easter Bunny in one night, the hypothesis becomes more improbable, but certainly not impossible. When we get older and, by observation, notice that we are putting the eggs out for our own children and that no Easter Bunny helps us, the hypothesis becomes more improbable, but not impossible.
Conflicting data can only make the Hypothesis improbable. It cannot disprove the hypothesis because everything, given infinite time and space, is possible. The hypothesis of the Easter Bunny coming every year and depositing eggs in every home is, of course, simply a working tool for the scientist, a working tool, just like evolutionism.
Another hypothesis, which cannot be proven false by scientific means, is the hypothesis of Biblical error. Even though none of the disciplines of science (astronomy, physics, chemistry, archaeology, statistics, biology, paleontology, cosmology, history, etc.) have uncovered any evidence that proves the existence of error in any part of the Bible, we can't say that scientifically there are no errors in the Bible. Since anything is possible, there may be errors. Indeed, from time to time scientists have jumped to conclusions a bit too quickly and were a bit too certain of information, which they had thought disproved some part of the Bible. In some cases they have admitted their errors after they were brought to light. In many cases they did not. Though there is no evidence to support it and a great deal of evidence to refute it, the hypothesis of Biblical error is not impossible. It is merely highly improbable-just as EasterBunnyism is merely highly improbable.
Even though there is no evidence from any scientific discipline to indicate that the universe was not created in six twenty-four hour days, as the Bible seems to indicate, we can't prove that the earth was created in six days. All we can scientifically prove is that, since no actual observation conflicts with this data, a six-day creation is not statistically improbable.
On the other hand, there is a discipline that allows us to know many things that science cannot teach us. This is the discipline of the Spirit where the Spirit of God reveals what can be known. Knowledge, in this discipline, is not obtained by human effort. God determines what will be revealed and to whom. All the recipient of this revelation can do is to accept (or reject) the revelation. In this discipline, a sincere submission to the Spirit of God creates a situation where God is able to reveal Biblical truth. This is not to be confused with theology which is based on human effort: rational-lie-zed speculation, materialism and perhaps some scientific method. When the theological discipline is mixed with the spiritual discipline, the result can be compared with mixing pure water with sewage.
Revelation is based on God's effort and God's method. Unlike all the hypotheses of the scientific discipline, the conclusions of the Spiritual discipline are absolute. The spiritual discipline is an ever deepening relationship between the Sender and receiver of knowledge, wisdom, revelation, faith, hope, power, joy, peace, healing, miracles, and love. The spiritual discipline provides greater understanding of the material, rational and spiritual realms.
Hypothesis is speculative. In the pseudo-scientific discipline, speculation is encouraged. Speculation is also encouraged in the theological discipline. In the spiritual discipline, speculation is absolutely not part of the process. A 99% accuracy record is not sufficient in the Spirit's realm. For instance, In ancient Israel any prophet who prophesied anything that didn't materialize was not to be respected, because that prophet had then been shown to be a speculator.
By the way, at the risk of being called an absolutist, I will admit that I personally don't see much credence in EasterBunnyism-just like I don't buy into revisionist history, evolution, materialism, naturalism or uniformitarianism.
If Post Modernism, Chaos Theory, and Evolution make sense, then it makes sense to believe in the Easter Bunny.
It's not really surprising. "because the carnal mind is enmity against God, for it is not subject to the Law of God, neither indeed can it be." Rom 8:7