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.
It should be mentioned that scientific method does not, in itself, have the capacity to prove either a young or an old Earth. Both positions use the same scientific facts to come to very different conclusions based on either presupposition or direct revelation. Some would say it this way: the differences are in the beliefs, and those beliefs are based either in presuppositions or in revelation. The same applies to Evolution. Scientists apply scientific method in order to use their beliefs to make speculations that are consistent with those beliefs about what happened in the past. Some are aware that this is the process that they are using, but most, especially those on the side of Evolutionism and Old-Earthism, are totally oblivious to their bias. Logic can only have at its basis one of three things: revelation, circularity, or assumption (which is vapor).
Evolutionism requires an old earth, a very old earth. It's interesting that in every place where scientific method is used to try to determine the age of the earth, that method is dependent on circular reasoning.
That is, by changing the assumptions you change the age of the earth. You can make it as old as you need it to be. And they call it, "science." It is make-believe science.
In addition, Long periods of time don't really help Evolutionism. They actually hurt the Evolutionistic story because entropy always devolves. Time and chance never add information to anything. Time and chance always subtract information from everything. Wind up toys always unwind. Everything always wears out unless there is something outside of it that has a plan, a method, and energy to re-build it. Buildings don't build themselves, improve themselves, or even maintain themselves. People, can improve a building, but they will have a plan, a method, and the resources to do so. People can write books, but books do not write themselves. People can write computer programs that can use random chance plus a known goal plus a computer program to seek that known goal and the computer will find that goal. Random chance does not know the goal and does not have a mechanism for reaching the goal. DNA did not create itself. DNA does not improve itself. Living things seek stasis. They seek to maintain the current status. Entropy works against stasis and random damage to cells and DNA results in a loss of information every time without any exceptions. Nothing creates itself. Circular reasoning says that the theory of Evolution proves that things create themselves, however circular reasoning is insane.
The Evolutionists will tell you a half truth about the Second Law of Thermodynamics. The Evolutionists will tell the half truth: "The Second Law of Thermodynamics only applies to isolated systems, so it’s not relevant to evolution, because the Earth is an open system." This is a clever lie. Here is the part of the truth that they are withholding: the Second Law of Thermodynamics was derived using theoretical isolated systems, but it applies to all systems, and can only be overcome locally and temporarily in open systems when stringent conditions are met. Not only that, but we are not talking about the Earth. The Earth is just a subsystem of a much larger system called the Universe. The Universe is an isolated system. Evolutionists claim that Evolution took place in this isolated system, but the Second Law of Thermodynamics tells us that their story is a myth.
Since scientific method determined that Evolutionism was statistically impossible, Evolutionists have made the claim that over huge amounts of time the impossible must happen. For this reason, they have tried to use circular reasoning to claim a very old universe in support of a dead theory of Evolution. Those who hate the idea of a soveriegn God buy into this religious theory of an old earth.