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Has Science Disproved Christianity?
Thank you Jason and thank you Sarah.
When a boy starts growing up, he goes through an intellectual cycle that goes, more or less, something like this: 
 
At first the boy knows he knows nothing himself, but that his dad knows everything.
This phase could be called the “trust” phase.
Then the boy finds out he does know a thing or two, but not as much as his dad.
This stage is an extension of the “trust” stage and one in which the boy still relies on his dad to show him the way.
All too soon after this, however, he starts suspecting that he actually knows stuff that his dad does not know.
This phase we might call the “suspicious” or “jealous” stage.
And from there, as is our nature, it does not take long before the boy realises he actually knows everything, and his dad is an ignorant dinosaur, out of touch with life and out of touch with reality.
That boy, now, has reached the “enlightened” stage.
And the father … well he had his turn, didn’t he?
As a side, on the other hand, there are those who are blessed and are a bit like Socrates.
Socrates said:
                        *“All that I know is that I don’t know.*
And then he said:
            *“I am the wisest of all men for I know that I don’t’           know”*
 
For the rest, obviously *he had to learn to trust, and believe* in something or someone who could not be explained by human experience.
And he believed in this so completely (in his case, truth)
that he died a death by poisoning for it.
But that’s not what today is about.
*/There is a sense in which the human race as a whole has taken a similar journey as the boy in my introduction.
/*
*/ /*
*/There was a time when everything was explained by religion.
/*
*/ /*
*/The weather, for instance,  was what God or the gods gave./*
*/ /*
*/But now we can explain so much without any reference to God. /*
*/ /*
*/Culture has moved from the “trust dad” mode to the /*
*/            “we know it ourselves, better than the old approach”.
/*
*/ /*
*/We can see this journey in history./*
Allow me to jump almost 2400 years ahead, from the time of Socrates in Greece,
            to Basel, Germany, where for a few moments we may         become part of a small group of rather inquisitive             onlookers on a strange site.
Let me try and paint a picture:
 
It is the middle of a bright sunny day.
A frail looking little man with a vigorous moustache, shoulders slumped, is walking slowly around and around the fountain on the village square.
In spite of the hour, he is carrying a kerosene lamp, as if lighting up the way.
One can tell that he is deep in thought.
He has a frown on his forehead and he is looking at his feet as he walks.
He is muttering to himself, and round and around he goes, slowly….
Suddenly he stops!
Softly, as if it has just struck him, he says:
                        * “God is dead” *
 
And again:
            “God is dead,” he says, this time a little louder.
And now he becomes almost frenzied:
            *“God is dead; God is dead; GOD IS DEAD!*
And then he stops, looks up at the crowd, and says:
 
                                                “And it is you who killed him!”
The man with the lamp actually lived.
He was Friedrich Nietzsche, a German philosopher, who lived at the height of Prussian army’s might.
Coincidentally, It was also the time of phenomenal scientific and technological advancement.
His thinking, I would suggest, is the product of this time of scientific knowledge advancement
 
Much has been written on whether he was a believing man, and the famous story of the incident on the village square has just confused the issue more.
Nietzsche himself declared that he was an atheist, and yet, the “God is dead” statement, makes it clear that he thought long and hard about God and of mankind’s interaction with God.
But, maybe, just  too long and to hard, leaving no room for the spirit of God to work.
…?
And is it from this kind of thinking, this human way of thinking in the age of reason and science and technology, that our question arises?
Is it this kind of “reasoning” that weakens our faith and makes us, eventually, unfaithful? 
*/Has our culture moved from the need for having God to explain things in life, to one where we can explain it all now with our “science”?/*
The question, as you know, I have been asked to prepare on is:
* *
*Has science disproved Christianity?*
The answer, I can tell you now, is *no*!
And now we can all go home …. and thank you for coming…
 
 
 
To work towards an answer to our question, let’s first then define the sources of information we will use to examine the question that has been raised.
Let’s go on another imaginary journey.
In our search for the answer to the question, let’s pretend that we are in the foyer of the biggest, best equipped library in the world.
In this library works the best librarian the world has ever known and this librarian has been busy, very busy:
 
We have sent word that she should gather all known books on science so that we may compare it to all the books she may find on Christianity.
So, to the best of her ability, this is what the librarian has done.
She has gathered together all the books on science she could find and have placed them on row upon rows of tables in the one side of the very large room.
A sign indicates that all of the books in this section are the “Scientific Knowledge” books.
And there, in a dark corner, on the far side of the room, on a single small table, the librarian has placed a single book under a sign that says: Christianity’s Book …
                                                and there we find …the Bible.
When we ask the librarian about this imbalance of material, she explains that while she was preparing for this showdown, for a moment she became worried that she couldn’t find, readily available, as many books on Christianity as she could on science,
 
So she started out by reading the one Christian book after the other, commentaries, bible studies, systematic theology, even ReJoySing II and the Book of Worship, all in a frenzied search for proof that she would be able to stack up against the hundreds of thousands of books on science that loomed in the other end of the room.
Until it dawned on her: all the books on Christianity was saying the same thing,
 
And everything all the books were saying, she discovered, was already contained in that one book, the Bible.
And what the Bible says, of course, is this:
 
*We are God’s people, living by God’s grace, in God’s world.*
And when she discovered this truth, the Librarian said, she knew it was good, and then she rested!
Wouldn’t it be great if those wayward scientists who had written all those other books, had done a bit of pre-reading too in this one book, too, and discovered this simple truth and indeed explanation, of our so-called scientific verifiable existence, too.
*/Some of them, of course, may have.
The bible and science as such are not opposed.
The bible gives us an explanation of how all of life began and continues- it’s by God’s creation and His ongoing providence.
/*
*/Everything works in a rational constant way because God is faithful.
/*
*/We can do science because God is constant and faithful.
Christians and non Christians can both do science.
/*
*/But one with his belief says God is the reason behind it all./*
*/ The other from his belief says there is no god; we don’t need a god-explanation anymore./*
Much of what scientists of the unbelieving kind today say as justification of their unbelief has been summarised in another book.
Some of us was fortunate to hear Dr Louw Alberts, internationally recognized nuclear physicist, speak in our church some two years ago.
Dr Alberts is as well known for his work in nuclear research in South Africa as he is for his book: Geloof versus Wetenskap (or Science versus religion)
 
And in this book he goes to great length to discuss the very question we are trying to answer this evening.
In this book, Dr Alberts lists three possible models people may cling to as the foundation for their beliefs of where and when everything had its origin:
 
Notice that the models at once also contain the basis for belief or unbelief, depending on what you prefer to believe in or, to use the popular term, depending what your “World View is.
The first group says: everything is coincidental.
Several universes or for that matter, our single universe, must developed spontaneously and we, purely coincidentally, are products of the only universe we know.
This group in their radical form base their belief on scientific findings like the “Big Bang theory and vigorously stand in opposition to Christianity.
The second group says: let us focus ourselves on what we can see and touch and experience.
We are limited to our experience of things and therefore there can be no answer to the question on where we originated from.
This is the agnostics at work, They too, on the grounds of sensory experience or observation, by implication deny the substance of the very essence of Christianity, our Lord and savior Jesus Christ, for He is today, in their way of thinking, not touchable or visible.
The third group, says, everything was created for a purpose by a supreme being (who we call God) and that God pre-existed before time and things.
Christians and their faith in Christ, or in short, Christianity falls in this group.
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