Science and the Bible
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In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.
“Oh Really? Did he really?” the sceptic would say, “cos I’ve been taught that once upon a time there was a big bang in space and out of that came the solar system…and over millions of years plants and animals have evolved through genetic mutations in each generation, and as a result we have what we have today - millions of species of animals and plants and it’s all evolved over millions of years.
And like I said last week, when science removed God from creation it removed the ‘necessity’ of God from humankind. Because now EVERYTHING has a scientific explanation - and if it doesn’t, one day we will find an explanation.
And if science gets it wrong, that’s ok - cos science doesn’t claim to be absolute truth and it can change it’s view on any given thing at any given time as new research comes to light.
And that’s the way science works - science doesn’t NEED to know all the answers - science is always on a quest to FIND all the answers and it knows that there are things that can’t yet be explained, but it doesn’t worry about that, because so many things HAVE ALREADY been explained through science...
Including the origin of species...and it ain’t God.
And yet we have this book, claiming to be written by God that says that God created the world and he did it in 6 days. And yet, on the other hand, the atheistic evolutionist says that the world exploded into being, and everything in it evolved over millions and millions of years without the need for God. It just happened by chance and survival of the fittest.
So who’s right? This is the BIG QUESTION…
WHO…IS…RIGHT?
In this war over the origin of humankind, who wins? Cos the bible says one thing and science says another thing? So Who’s right?
Pause
Well, we’re going to look at that in a second, but first let’s look at an incident where science and scripture collided - a couple of hundred years before Darwinian evolution was even thought about.
This is the story of Galileo and how the church handled him when he brought a challenge to the bible.
We need to go back to the 15th century. Back then, everybody thought that the earth was the centre of the universe. The earth was stationary and the sun and moon and everything else moved around the earth.
[show slide]
So the earth stood still and the sun moved around the earth, just like it says in
The sun rises, and the sun goes down,
and hastens to the place where it rises.
So if the SUN rises and goes down, the bible clearly talks about the SUN doing the moving. Add to that
The Lord reigns; he is robed in majesty;
the Lord is robed; he has put on strength as his belt.
Yes, the world is established; it shall never be moved.
Say among the nations, “The Lord reigns!
Yes, the world is established; it shall never be moved;
he will judge the peoples with equity.”
You’ve got a pretty open and shut case, according to the bible, that the earth does not move - it is stationary and the sun moves around the earth. And the bible is the word of God so it can’t be wrong, can it?
Pause
Then along came a man called Nicolaus Copernicus, a scientist who proposed that the sun was the centre of the universe and NOT the earth. And interestingly, after his death and before Galileo came on the scene, there wasn’t much opposition to this thought. Not many held to it, but there was no real rebuttal.
Then came Galileo a few decades later and that’s when the church started to take notice. Galileo promoted Copernicus’ sun-centred universe and the church took offence at that for the reasons stated earlier - namely, the bible says that the earth is not movable and that the sun does the moving.
Galileo went on trial and was put on house arrest afterwards as a result, and it wasn’t until last century when pope John Paul II publicly apologised to the Galileii family for the way Galileo was treated.
Pause
But science said one thing and the bible said another thing. So, once again, who was right? Who won that face-off?
Now, it LOOKS like science won, because we all know that the earth is a sphere and that it is the earth that moves around the sun to give us the seasons, and it also spins around its own axis and THAT’S why we have night and day. And it’s the sun that is fixed and central.
So how can you trust the bible when it is so obviously scientifically wrong?
And to make matters worse, what about that battle in Joshua chapter 10, when God stopped the sun for 24 hours to allow more light during a battle?
Cos for the sun to stop in the sky, since the sun doesn’t move and it’s actually the earth spinning that makes it LOOK like the sun moves, for the sun to appear to stop, the earth would have to stop spinning, and if the earth stopped spinning gravity would cease and everyone would float away - so how can that happen?
Could it be that the bible isn’t describing science?
But what happened back then is exactly what is happening today with evolution.
And once again, how do we trust the bible when science is giving a completely different alternative to how we came about?
Well, various approaches are taken.
First of all, there those who believe that the world was created in 6 24-hour days, out of nothing, just as the bible says. There are many Christians who believe this and to be fair, there’s no reason why God couldn’t do it that way. That means that if you take the genealogy of all the people of the Bible, from Adam to Jesus, and the length of years each of them lived then the earth is between 6-8 thousand years old.
This is called young-earth creationism, and Answers in Genesis are a Christian body who promote this. You may have been to seminars by Ken Ham - he came to Great Victoria Baptist about 20 years ago and did a seminar there. I loved that man and the way he taught. He’s very easy to listen to, but he categorically refutes evolution - to him and other creationists (as they are also called) - evolution is a load of tripe. The bible clearly states how God created things out of noting in 6 literal 24-hour days, and it’s there in black and white - evolution is wrong … and they use other sources of science to try to disprove evolution.
So that’s one approach…and it’s a very popular approach among conservative Christians.
Pause
Another approach is that people try to marry the two - to bring science and the bible together and try to fit evolution into the biblical narrative. In other words, people try to see how a theory of evolution can be read into the BIBLICAL TEXT so that creation and evolution can co-exist without any issue.
So for example...
In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. The earth was without form and void, and darkness was over the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters.
And God said, “Let there be light,” and there was light.
Some people say there is a gap of millions of years between and . And during this time evolution occurred. This is called the Gap-theory. It allows for the biblical account to exist and also allows for science to have it’s place, placing the theory of evolution at the start of the bible - the millions of years of struggle where the dinosaurs etc. existed and THEN starts to tell how everything else came into the form that we know today.
The argument against that is that it puts death and decay, which is a result of sin, BEFORE the fall of Adam, which goes against the order of things. Especially when God says, after each day, that it was GOOD. Their argument is, how can God call millions of years of death and suffering GOOD?
Some people think of each day as as an age - an expanse of time rather than 6 24-hour days, during which evolution took place until the end result is mentioned in the bible.
So after millions and millions of years of evolution, we have birds…after millions and millions of years of evolution we have land animals, and so on. That’s called the Day-Age theory. They deny that the days are literal 24-hour days.
Now, creationists would argue against this saying that the Hebrew word for day - YOM, accompanied by the words, ‘morning and evening’ - always means 24 hours. And that’s hard to argue with.
And you, O profane wicked one, prince of Israel, whose day has come, the time of your final punishment,
And says...
And the number of the days that David lived in the country of the Philistines was a year and four months.
Same word - YOM - here, but different meanings other than 24 hour days.
Pause
So, what’s happened is that some people say that the bible says NOTHING about evolution and therefore evolution MUST be wrong. Others say that you can fit evolution into the bible and they spot places where you can shoehorn evolution in so that it doesn’t contradict the bible.
Pause
Back to Galileo for a second - today we don’t argue about whether the sun moves around the earth, because that’s a generally widely accepted scientific ‘truth’ - now not everyone believes this. A good friend of mine who used to be a doctor and is now finishing a masters in physics - so he’s a smart, well educated guy…he believes the earth is flat and the sun actually DOES move around it - and there are many like him.
But the point is, we widely accept that the earth revolves around the sun and it spins on its own axis to give us night and day.
But what about those passages in the bible that talk about the sun moving etc. - what do we do about them, cos the bible says that the sun rises and sets? Why is there not the same concern for these passages as there is for the opening chapters of Genesis?
Well, Calvin answered that for us when he wrote that...
God accommodates his language to our tiny minds. In other words, we can’t understand HOW God does things and HOW things work - at least, not like God can... so when the bible was written, God watered-down things that were just too mind-blowing into stuff that we would understand - hence, the statement that the sun rises and sets is because that’s what we APPEAR to see when we’re looking at the sky.
Now THIS is the main point here… That verse in
What does man gain by all the toil
at which he toils under the sun?
A generation goes, and a generation comes,
but the earth remains forever.
The sun rises, and the sun goes down,
and hastens to the place where it rises.
The wind blows to the south
and goes around to the north;
around and around goes the wind,
and on its circuits the wind returns.
The sun rises, and the sun goes down,
and hastens to the place where it rises.
All streams run to the sea,
but the sea is not full;
to the place where the streams flow,
there they flow again.
All things are full of weariness;
a man cannot utter it;
the eye is not satisfied with seeing,
nor the ear filled with hearing.
What has been is what will be,
and what has been done is what will be done,
and there is nothing new under the sun.
Is there a thing of which it is said,
“See, this is new”?
It has been already
in the ages before us.
ecc 1:
...is part of a longer portion of scripture. That verse is NOT biblical proof that the sun is the celestial body that moves - it’s a part of a BIGGER THEOLOGICAL point - it’s not in any way concerned with the motion of the sun. It’s point is theological, NOT scientific.
And in the same way, Genesis is NOT concerned in any way with the scientific means by which human beings came into existence - it’s part of a BIGGER THEOLOGICAL point.
In other words - the bible is not a science text-book, it’s a theological book - it tells us about God and points us to Jesus, not to science.
Another thing to note is that the bible is NOT a scientific document - it’s a theological document - it tells us about God and points us to Jesus, not to science.
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And here’s where, I believe, we come to an understanding between the bible and science...
The struggle that people have is trying to fit science INTO the bible - and with every new scientific breakthrough that challenges the words on the pages of scripture we try to figure out a way to make it fit so that the bible isn’t contradicted.
That, I believe, is our mistake...
Genesis was written NOT to tell us the manner in which God created...
Genesis was written to tell us THAT God created - that we have an origin and it is God himself. Genesis tells us that we were created by God in his image and therefore we are not like the rest of creation, but we have something of the image of God in us. It tells us that there is someone bigger than us - someone outside of creation who created us for a purpose and a reason. It tells us so many awesome things that are way more important than the means of creation.
And if we’re spending all our
And so by actually giving science its place and the bible its place, they don’t need to contradict each other - cos the bible isn’t a scientific textbook.
For example, I believe that God created us out of scratch and quite possibly in 6 days. I believe God can do whatever he wants and he has the power and ability to do that. He’s all-powerful and I’m happy to accept Genesis literally…
And to be honest, I can’t get my head around evolution - there are too many things that I don’t understand for me to be able to accept it - and we won’t go into that now - but there ARE Christians who DO accept the theory of evolution, and I have no issue with that. I don’t necessarily agree, but that’s ok.
But I’m not overly concerned with the METHOD in which God created - I’m more concerned and in awe of the theological implications of a loving God who made everything.
And so because I’m not concerned about the MANNER in which God created, I don’t feel any need to fit evolution into the bible, and so I don’t have a problem between the two - cos IF evolution is true then God must have used it to design us according to the laws of nature - and I’m ok with that…Cos the fact still remains - GOD CREATED male and female in HIS OWN IMAGE. How he did that, to me, is up for discussion. What’s important is that he DID IT!
Pause
Evolution, by itself, teaches that we happened by accident and by chance, and that God had nothing to do with it - and we’re no different to any other ‘animal’ out there - we’re just further down the evolutionary path, and we take our moral standards from wherever we want.
The bible tells us MORE - it tells us that we ARE different from all the other animals - it tells us that we are special to God…that YOU are special to God. It tells us that YOU matter, that you’re just not some other animal who’s evolved slightly more than the monkeys, but you actually MATTER to the one who made you.
It tells us that as people created in the image of God, we all have some resemblance to our creator and we must treat each other accordingly.
You see, evolution, by itself, allows racism and bigotry - because ‘white people are better evolved than black people’, or that a certain type of people are better than others, which is a load of rubbish.
But when you see EVERYONE as created in the image of God, it eradicates racism because we’re all created, male/female, black/white, protestant/catholic/muslim... all of us created in God’s image and we need to treat each other accordingly.
Pause
And THAT’s what we take away today. That science does not need to interfere with the bible, because the bible isn’t a scientific document - it’s a book that speaks about God and points us to Jesus.
Let science do what it does and let the bible teach us about Jesus and how to treat other human beings in the way that Jesus would want us to treat them - as equals, as people made in the image of God - people to be loved and not oppressed, people to be given respect and not shunned.
Because God made us all - because the bible tells us so…how he did it, we may never know…but the point is that he did it - and he’s going to do it again…and this time, it will stay perfect.
Relieve yourself of the tension - the bible isn’t a scientific document - it’s a book that speaks about God and points us to Jesus.
Let’s pray.
Cos