orleanschurchofchrist.orgorleanschurchofchrist.org/Word_Docs/DoesGodExist-IsEv… · Web...

$: orleanschurchofchrist.orgorleanschurchofchrist.org/Word_Docs/DoesGodExist-IsEv… · Web viewC:\Users\Mike\Documents\Christian Topics\Bible Study & Materials\Talks\Power Point Presentations\Topical$
document.docx

“Evolution Is a Fact”“Evolution Is a Fact” (…or so they would have you(…or so they would have you

believe!)believe!)

Scripture Reading: Gen. 1:20-25

Accompanying Song: #x “There is a God”

Subject: Apologetics, Evolution

Objective: To demonstrate that, contrary to what they proclaim, evolution has not won the argument

Location: C:\Users\Mike\Documents\Christian Topics\Bible Study & Materials\Talks\Power Point Presentations\Topical Lessons\Apologetics\ExistenceofGodSeries\DoesGodExist-IsEvolutionFact.docx

Introduction: 1. Someone once said, “The truth does not fear questions and honest hearts do not fear

truthful answers.”2. If there is no God, as the atheist suggests, it will do us no earthly good to insist that there

is…3. If there is a god, it only places people in grave danger, refusing to admit that He is God

and failing to obey Him.4. If we die, and are simply gone, then there is no fear in death. If there is a god in the

afterlife, then the preparation in this life is a most fearful and troubling thing indeed!5. We cannot scientifically prove that God exists, but we can logically reason that the

evidence indicates that evidence points to the existence of a design creator.

Michel D. Mahler Page 1 of 12

document.docx

6.

Body: I. I. Man Without Excuse Man Without Excuse

A. Rom. 1:20; enough evidence in the world to convince everyone. If there is a God we should be able to see evidence of Him, His fingerprint all over everything

B. 1 Pet. 3:15

II. II. Evolutionary Belief is a Religion (or at the very least a tool to escape one).Evolutionary Belief is a Religion (or at the very least a tool to escape one).A. Evolution cannot afford to consider that any god might exist, especially one like the God of

the Bible who imposes such strict moral standards.

B. At the time of his death, Time Magazine called J. W. N. Sullivan “one of the world’s four or five most

brilliant interpreters of physics to the world of the common man”. Yet this “brilliant” physicist — like many

others who call themselves ‘scientists’ — was guilty of an extreme prejudice against the possibility of God

and creation. Notice this quote:

“The beginning of the evolutionary process raises a question which is as yet unanswerable. What was

the origin of life on this planet? Until fairly recent times there was a pretty general belief in the occurrence

of “spontaneous generation.” It was supposed that lowly forms of life developed spontaneously from, for

example, putrefying meat. But careful experiments, notably those of Pasteur, showed that this conclusion

was due to improper observation, and it became an accepted doctrine that life never arises except from

life. So far as actual evidence goes, this is still the only possible conclusion. But since it is a conclusion that

seems to lead back to some supernatural creative act, it is a conclusion that scientific men find very diffi-

cult to accept. It carries with it what are felt to be, in the present mental climate, undesirable philosophic

implications, and it is opposed to the scientific desire for continuity. It introduces an unaccountable break in

the chain of causation, and therefore cannot be admitted as part of science unless it is quite impossible to

reject it. For that reason most scientific men prefer to believe that life arose, in some way not yet

understood, from inorganic matter in accordance with the laws of physics and chemistry.” (J.W.N. Sullivan,

The Limitations of Science, p. 94)


document.docx

C. Do you see that believing that there is NO God is also an act of faith? In fact, faith in evolution is a remarkable ‘blind leap’ because the evidence clearly points in the opposite direction. The only basis that ‘scientists’ such as this have for rejecting the truth about God and creation is that they just don’t like the implications.

D. “Our willingness ot accept scientific claims that are against common sense is the key to an understanding of the real struggle between science and the supernatural. We take the side of science in spite of the patent absurdity of some of its constructs, in spite of its failure to fulfill many of its extravagant promises of health and life, in spite of the tolerance of the scientific community for unsubstantiated just-so stories, because we have a prior commitment, a commitment to materialism. It is not that the methods and institutions of science somehow compel us to accept a material explaination of the phenomenal world, but, on the contrary, that we are forced by our prioriadherance to material causes to create an apparatus of investigation and a set of concepts that produce material explainations, no matter how mystifying the uninitiated. Moreover, that materialism is absolute, for we cannot allow a divine foot in the door.” - Richard Lewontin, Harvard Geneticist, Billions and Billions of Demons, The New York Review of Books, Jan. 9, 1997, pg. 31.

E. What this means is, that if the evolutionist wants any hope of living at peace with himself he needs to silence the argument that there is a God who demands that men live according to a strict moral standard.1. The evolutionist agenda:

a. They do not want to be responsible for their actions b. They want to be separate from God/hide from God so as not to be accountable to Himc. They want sexual freedom d. They want knowledge apart from God e. They want to destroy religion

2. "[Man] stands alone in the universe, a unique product of a long, unconscious, impersonal, material process with unique understanding and potentialities. These he owes to no one but himself and it is to himself that he is responsible. He is not the creature of uncontrollable and undeterminable forces, but he is his own master. He can, and must, decide and manage his own destiny."—*George G. Simpson, "The World into Which Darwin Led Us," in Science, 131 (1960), p. 966.

III. III. Though Science Cannot Prove the Existence of God, the Evidence Supports His Though Science Cannot Prove the Existence of God, the Evidence Supports His ExistenceExistence


document.docx

A. Mt. Rushmore (PIC) – we can see that it did not come as a result of millions of years of

erosion.

B. Even the atheists see problems with admitting that the universe came about through mere chance: “We have seen that living things are too improbable and too beautifully ‘designed’ to have come into existence by chance.” – Richard Dawkins, The Blind Watchmaker, 1987,

W.W. Norton & Co., New York pg. 43

C. In Ben Stein’s movie, Expelled, Stein interviewed Dawkins

1. a. Stein: Then who did create the heavens and the earth?

Dawkins: Why do you use the word “who”? You see, you immediately bait the question by using the word “who”.

Stein: Well then how did it get created?

Dawkins: Well, um, by a very slow process.

Stein: Well how did it start?

Dawkins: Nobody knows how it got started. We know the kind of event it must have been. We know the sort of event that must have happened for the origin of life.

Stein: And what was that?

Dawkins: It was the origin of the first self-replicating molecule.


document.docx

Stein: Right, and how did that happen?

Dawkins: I told you we don’t know.

Stein: So you have no idea how it started.

Dawkins: No, no. Nor has anybody else.

Stein: What do you think is the possibility that intelligent design might turn out to be the answer to some issues in genetics or in Darwinian evolution?

Dawkins: It could come about in the following way: It could be that at some earlier time, somewhere in the universe, a civilization evolved by probably some kind of Darwinian means to a very, very high level of technology and designed a form of life that they seeded onto perhaps this planet. Now that is a possibility…an intriguing possibility…

2. Just a moment before that Dawkins criticizes Stein for baiting the question with the word

“who” and then proceeds to answer the question with a “who” being little green men who seeded life on earth!

3. As Ben Stein put it, “I thought we were talking about science, not science fiction!”4.Additionally, evolutionists proposing this are admitting to intelligent design…just so long as it is not a god…someone we must be accountable to.5. Also, they are admitting to some being with infinite information. For one to plant life on

another planet, they must have, themselves been planted by a higher life form, who


document.docx

was planted by a higher life form, and so on until eventually we come to a system of infinite intelligence.

6. Still further, they are admitting to an eternal being, or in their case, and eternal chain of the existence of beings.

IV. IV. Which explanation does the evidence support?Which explanation does the evidence support?A. Illust.

1. Crime scene:a. Blood at crime scene matches the accused…b. Gun belongs to him…determined to be the murder weapon through forensics.c. Other DNA found on victim’s body…d. Motive revealede. No other explainable alternativef. Eye witnessesg. Accused has no alibih. Of course, the accused is guilty because the evidence all fits the theory.

B. DNA – information within would, by conservative estimates, contains enough information in one of your cells to fill 500 books, 1,000 pages each, close-typed written. Some estimates claim that estimate is now far too small.

a. Compare hard drives to cd to thumb drives, etc. We think we have it small!b. One web site reports that 1800000 to 2,4000,000 dead skin cells fall off of your body every

hour – each one of those cells carry with it that much information!

2. Morse code: could be used to write “help.”

a. b. We could even string beads on a rope to spell the word “help” in Morse code.

3. (In a crude analogy), DNA is like long pieces of rope within a cell containing molecules like beads on them that has all of the information about your body on it that builds you.

4. The human cell:


document.docx

a. Just as Pasteur proved that spontaneous generation was false, time will prove that many of the so-called facts upon which evolution is based will be disproven in time.

5. The evolutionist argument: given enough time, all of the DNA information could organize through chance over time.

6. Illust.

a. b. Hat – all letters of alphabet in a hat (numbers represent all of the elements present on

earth necessary to create human DNA)c. Students pass around hat and each draws a letter. By chance we have a word. Given

enough time we could have a sequence by chance…eventually sentences and so on. As improbable as it seems, there is always the possibility, you could get the right order and get the encyclopedia. DNA was like this – you do not need God!

d. BAT – who is that a word to? It means nothing to other cultures…only to someone who already has the language.

e. The order of DNA is meaningless unless you have, within the cell, a language system. Within the cell, there are chemicals that are necessary to interpret the DNA. It makes the order of DNA molecules meaningful.

f. Makes language system meaningful to make the language system to read the DNA to make the language system to read the DNA and so on. So you need to have the language system but you need the order of molecules.

g. For example:


document.docx

i. You need the proper order of words, but you need the proper language. What is the proper order of words w/o the language and what is the language without the proper order of words?

ii. Avg. automobile is made of over 100,000 parts. Not one part drives by itself. DNA like that. One part of the DNA would not mean very much if it were by itself.

7. Illust. What would DNA telling the color of your hair mean w/o your hair and what would your hair mean w/o your head and what would your head mean w/o brain cells and what would your brain cells mean w/o the rest of your nervous system, etc.?

8. Consider: where did the basic information, the blueprint for life come from in the first place, if there is no God?a. Blueprint: Would you believe that if we merely kept dumping a cup full of pencils and

some paper into a tornado, would you ever expect this to come out as a result?

b. The human cell is extremely complex.

c. David Berlinski, who has been a teacher of philosophy, mathematics, and English at Stanford, Rutgers, the City University of New York, the University of Washington, the University of Puget Sound, San Jose State University, the University of Santa Clara, the University of San Francisco, San Francisco State University, and taught mathematics at the Université de Paris stated:

“Nothing in the theory is precicely, clearly, carefully defined or delineated. It lacks all the rigor one expects from mathematical physics and mathematical physics lacks all the rigor one expects from mathematics. So we are talking about a gradual descent down the level of intelligibility until we reach evolutionary biology. We don’t even know what a species is for heaven’s sakes”! (Mr. Berlinski is an agnostic, by the way.)


document.docx

d. He remarked that in Darwin’s day scientific understanding of a cell, if it were looked at like understanding a mud hut, today it would be like understanding a galaxy. That is how much more we understand the complexity of a cell, and realize how much more there is to understand.

e. In fact, the very reason modern science proves itself unreliable is because it has been proven to be so many times in the past. For centuries, it was thought that life forms came from non-living organic materials. This was known as spontaneous generation. However, Louis Pasteur finally offered irrefutable evidence that this theory was false.

f. Within each living being, there are literally thousands upon thousands of automobiles, with their thousands of parts working together in harmony to make up that living organism.

g. Michael Behe, professor at a university wrote a book, Darwin’s Black Box. Within the book he described that just for a plant to be able to take light and turn it into electrical impulses, through photosynthesis it literally requires chemical, after chemical, after chemical, etc.

h. Everyone needs to be in the right place, at the right time, in the right concentrations or it won’t work. This is a biochemical machine!

i. In other words, one must believe in God because life must start with machines.j. Dr. Berlinski is critical of the theory of evolution calling it “a mess” and “full of holes”.

Scientist’s in Darwin’s day simply did not know what they did not know. k. Left without answers, evolutionists are left with their only defense, which is the

argument that the loss in scientific data came about by chance. Impossible? Their best defense is to argue that anything can happen given enough time. Granted millions and billions of years something significant could come about through random chance!

l. There is just one problem with the Darwinian thought of belief. They offer very beautifully depicted drawings of evolution. One simplified version:

m. The biggest problem is you never see slow, gradual changes in the species of living

organisms. You only see abrupt changes in life forms. As far back as you trace dogs, you still find dogs. As far back as you trace a horse, you still see horses, but you never see something that looks like something in transition between one organism and the


document.docx

next. In fact, the very drawing of this tree leads one to a biased conclusion. What if each branch were not part of one tree, but each branch were its own tree?

n. In fact, the closest Darwin, ever came to proving evolutionary theory was his observation of finch beaks. He tried to use the finch to demonstrate how a species could evolve. However, each of these finches existed at the same time. These did not occur over millions and billions of years. Additionally, every farmer knows that crossing two animals will result iin a combination of those two animals. Specialty animal breeders especially observe this, as they try to breed different animals to bring out a particular desirable trait to create the breeding they desire.

o. Berlinski describes what is going on in the scientific community and their support of evolution as “One hundred years of fraudulant drawings suggesting embryological affinities that don’t exist…”

C. Werner Gitt, in his book, In the Beginning Was Information writes that “…there is no known law of nature, no known process and no known sequence of events which can cause information to originate by itself in matter.”1. He further states: “There is no known natural law through which matter can give rise to

information, neither is any physical process or material phenomenon known that can do this.” – Gitt, Werner. 1997. In the Beginning Was Information. CLV. Bielfeld, Germany. Pg. 64-67, 79, 107.

2. In other words, information only comes from information.D. Illust. If the presence of the basic building blocks of life being present is the major

component that matters then consider:1. All of us have hit thousands of bugs with our cars.

2. If the elements to create life being present were all that were necessary, why would we not see bugs recreate themselves, even create new species as the bug guts get mixed on your windshield?


document.docx

3. Why do bugs die when hit? Because their body parts/chemistry becomes disorganized. Once disorganized, it cannot, of its own volition, pull itself together and become a living, breathing being again. Earth, by observation, shows us that non-living matter is not able to organize itself into a living, breathing life force.

4. Illust. Consider a frog in a blender.

a. Though we might blend the frog and the blender could blend perpetually, we all know that we could blend for all eternity and no frog would climb out of the blender although every element necessary for primordial soup would be present.

Conclusion:Conclusion: 1. Finally, what would life look like had a god created it in six literal days? Would science be

able to recognize it if it were staring them back in the face?

2. Can we scientifically prove the existence of God? No. But we can logically defend that God exists by showing that it harmonizes with everything that we observe while on earth within the present world.

3. However, for the atheist who believes that a. Matter existed eternallyb. Matter, by itself organized itself into information systemsc. Matter, by itself, organized into highly complex micro machinery that organized itself

to work together with other machinery and so on to create the first living, working organisms?

2. In order to believe in evolution, you must begin to deny so much of what we naturally observe surrounding us every day.

3. Evolutionists would have you to believe that to doubt evolution is equivalent to doubting that the earth is round or that gravity is not real.


document.docx

a. “Why does this argument fail? We’ll show you. Take a pencil or pen. Hold it in the air. Then drop it to the floor. That’s gravity. Next, make a single-celled organism—like an amoeba—turn into a goat. Go ahead. We’ll wait. . . . No? As you can see, there’s a fundamental difference between operational science, which can be tested through repeatable experimentation, and historical science, which cannot.´ - http://www.answersingenesis.org/get-answers/features/arguments-evolutionists

4. Science has lost its objectivity, integrity and honesty and has degraded into a religion that is based as much or more upon anecdotes than fact. Berlenski states, “Let’s be reasonable. We’re all sophistocated men and women here. The popular myth of science as a uniquely self-critical institution and scientists as men who would rather be consumed at the stake rather than fudge their data, I mean, that’s o.k. for a PBS special, but that’s not the real world. That’s not what’s taking place. People fudge the data whenever they can get away with it and they will committ themselves to fraudulant drawing just so long as they’re convinced that no one’s looking over their shoulder.”

Invitation:Invitation: 1. There is a God who has proven His existence to us time and again throughout the universe…2. Would you serve Him?


orleanschurchofchrist.orgorleanschurchofchrist.org/Word_Docs/DoesGodExist-IsEv… · Web...

Documents

Transcript of orleanschurchofchrist.orgorleanschurchofchrist.org/Word_Docs/DoesGodExist-IsEv… · Web...