Category Archives: Philosophy

Believing in Science

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The evidence for God’s existence is everywhere.  The same evidence is used by both atheists and evolutionists.  This evidence is found in biology, geology, chemistry, astronomy, paleontology, physics and everything else.  The most obvious evidence for God’s existence is the Bible.  It’s hard to top a written document that explains things, but somehow, this most obvious evidence, is often ignored.  This demonstrates that the problem isn’t evidence, it’s how that evidence is being interpreted.  Because evidence has to be interpreted, there is absolutely no way to do science without a faith.  Allow me to restate that.  If you must interpret scientific evidence, then your method of interpretation, or faith, is a prerequisite.

Let’s consider “faith” in “the law of cause and effect.”  We must “believe” in the law of cause and effect, or doing experiments wouldn’t be possible.  When we do an experiment, we naturally “believe” that the experiment is the cause and that the result is the effect.  If we didn’t then we couldn’t do any science at all.  We must also “believe” in the existence of “laws of nature.” Isn’t that what science discovers?  If there were no laws in nature, why do science?   Somehow, we “know” that nature has laws.  We make these assumptions and these assumptions form our faith.  The sum of all of the things we believe or “take for granted,” is what we call a “worldview.”

Requiring evidence for a worldview is not rational because your worldview tells you how to interpret evidence.  The Bible provides us with a worldview.  Requiring evidence for it would never prove it, because any evidence would simply be reinterpreted by the worldview of the person considering the evidence.

Did you know that there is a mathematical model for the geocentric (earth is the center instead of sun) view of the solar system?  I am told it is possible to chart the movement of objects in the sky using this model with success.  The model, however, is extremely complicated.  If one insists on the fact that the earth is the center of the solar system, the evidence can be interpreted that way.

I am also told that at one time, Galileo tried to convince the skeptics of his day that the moon wasn’t a perfect sphere, as Aristotle had stated.  He had them look into his telescope and see that the moon was covered with craters and valleys.  They refused to believe their own eyes!  They stated that there must be an invisible crystalline sphere that  covered the moon, filling in its valleys and craters.

These examples demonstrate the limit of evidence.  It cannot prove anything, ultimately.  It can confirm a person’s ideas but it is amazingly inconclusive when faith is involved, and faith is always involved.  Why couldn’t the earth be the center of the solar system?  Why couldn’t there be an invisible crystalline sphere around the moon?  Evidence alone won’t prove the point!  If you try to live by evidence without faith, you will always be easily confused.  I tend to believe the simplest answer, if God doesn’t say otherwise.  The Bible tells us that God is a God of love and hides things for us to discover.  It makes sense that God’s science would be fascinatingly simple.

The faith problem explains why so many evolutionists and atheists disregard the best evidence of God.  They find ways, based on their faith, to disregard things, like the Bible.  It is consistent with their faith to re-interpret evidence, but to so and then act like others shouldn’t, is very inconsistent.  I find that, in general, evolutionists and atheists don’t actually want evidence for God or the Bible, they already have faith in something else that causes them to use the evidence the way that they want.  They may think they are being “neutral,” even though that doesn’t exist, but they are merely holding to their worldview.  If something disagrees with their worldview, they simply create a new possibility, based on the unknown, and reinterpret the evidence.

Bible believers actually have a more strict position.  Unlike evolutionists, I can’t just make things up.  God’s words are pretty clear and never change, and I have to stay consistent with them.  It is true that when I don’t understand something I use conjecture, just like the evolutionists, but I try to stay within the confines of what God has said.  I’m not asking evolutionists for evidence, though, because I am aware that the real issue is that evolutionists have an opposing faith.

I have a good reason to believe in God and science.  Evolutionists and atheists don’t have a good reason to believe what they believe.  The demand for evidence is just being used as a way to suppress the fact that what they believe doesn’t make sense.  Take the “law of cause and effect” for instance.  How can evolution explain the existence of a law like that?  If things change randomly, what’s to stop the law of cause and effect from changing randomly?  As far as I can tell, evolution doesn’t provide a rational framework for the existence of any law.  In order for an evolutionist to believe in science at all, they must irrationally rely on biblical assumptions.  The Bible says that the earth was created by a Person who never changes and makes laws.  Because of that, I have a real reason to believe in science.  Evolution, however, cannot rationally support the worldview that must be assumed in order for science to exist.

 

The Fallacy of Neutrality

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Neutrality is actually a fallacy. That’s because “neutrality” is a position.

A person who decides to be neutral is taking a position of neutrality, therefore, they are not being neutral.   They are relying on a self-refuting logical argument. Not only that, they are implying that every philosophy that takes a position is wrong, usually while convincing themselves that it is an expression of tolerance!

It is not unusual to hear people assert that they come to scientific evidence neutrally, but this a denial of the obvious fact that everyone takes a position.  Evidence can’t talk (even though some say it speaks for itself). Evidence requires a method of interpretation or else the “evidence” is just a set of objects without significance.  To deny the method of interpretation is another way to deny taking a position.

It is also common for nations, business and individuals to claim the be neutral in regard to religious beliefs.  Once again, this attempt to tolerate them all, denies them all since all of them are asserting their own position.  Just because a person claims to not be doing something, doesn’t mean that that is what they are actually doing.  You can claim to love someone while harming them.  The same thing happens when a person claims to be religiously neutral and then disallows any of them to be expressed.  The fact is that a secular position is being promoted under the disguise of “neutrality.”

The claim: “I am neutral” is itself a non-neutral claim because it assumes that “Neutrality exists.” Asserting this claim, is taking a position against those who don’t believe it exists. When a person asserts a position, they are not being neutral. Therefore, the claim that neutrality exists is a fallacy.  Dr. Jason Lisle calls this fallacy: “The Pretended Neutrality Fallacy” in his book “The Ultimate Proof of Creation”.

Both Evolutionists and Creationists aren’t really neutral. They may convince themselves that they are, but by choosing to believe in neutrality they are not only taking a position, they are being irrational. It’s understandable that evolutionists would be irrational, because they don’t have a basis for logic or morality in their worldview, but Christians actually have a moral obligation to be rational because it’s biblical.

Christians are supposed to be honest about the fact that they are not neutral. Jesus said that people were either for Him or against Him. He never said that there were people who were “on the fence.” Instead, He made it clear that the fence didn’t exist. By doing this, He exposed everyone’s position. Claiming to be neutral is to say that Jesus is wrong. When you say that Jesus is wrong, you taking a very bold, non-neutral position.

So, the claim that a person is neutral is fallacious because it is based on the non-neutral position that neutrality exists.  Christians should be aware of this and not be persuaded by the fallacy of neutrality.

Further Study

What is a Worldview
We all have a worldview. We see the world through a set of presuppositions that we can’t prove scientifically.  This is how I describe it.

Science Opposes Evolution

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Science is the study of physical things that can be repeatedly observed, and by doing experiments, it has been observed that order is a fundamental element of physical systems.  In living systems, this order takes the form of programming, which we recognize as a very complicated form of linguistic information.  This doesn’t fit well with the ideas of evolution because evolution usually tries to explain change as a random process that happens when energy is applied to matter.  I believe, that at least one reason we don’t consider this to be a problem, is because we were only exposed to part of the truth about the fundamental elements of universe in school.

In an effort to stay within the bounds of naturalism, public schools teach two things that don’t work together.  We see this in the difference between what was taught in health class and what was taught in science class.

In health class, we are warned about germs and ways to protect ourselves from doing things like eating canned goods that have had the seal broken.  We are told that as long as the seal of a canned item is unbroken, an unwanted organism cannot get through and contaminate it.

Now when we go to science class, we are told something else, but it isn’t obvious at first.  Evolutionary science teaches something that could be simplified into a formula like this:

Matter + Energy = Life!

One thing that was shown to me is that we are capable of doing this experiment ourselves, but I suggest that we go back to health class to do it!  Let’s take a sealed can of beans and put it in a shaking machine.  Let’s also heat it up to just above room temperature.  Let’s leave it there all day.  Then let’s open it up at the end of the day and see what kinds of new life has formed.

Note that we had this formula:

Beans + (Shaking and Heat) = ?

To our dismay, when we open the can we find no new life.  There is no mold or anything.  We added a significant amount of heat and shaking.  The amount of pounds of pressure that was sent through the can could probably have built a house.  What we are experiencing is a way in which the formula we are taught in science class doesn’t appear to work.  We still eat cans of beans that haven’t been opened yet, even though the temperature has changed, it has been shaken and light has been showing on it.  We could have even been exposed to an magnet.  Did you realize that this experiment is performed over and over every day all over the world?  There are literally millions of cans being stored every year. The government is so concerned with the reality of this that they make laws to ensure that business abide by health class rules and not science class rules.

Here’s the formula being carefully controlled by health organizations:

Matter + Energy + Information = Life!

I would argue that there are actually three fundamentals of nature and one of them isn’t physical.  Information is from outside nature.  It’s “super” natural, and we don’t observe nature without it.  Once the right kind of information is introduced into a can of beans, we quickly discover new life forms.  If information is kept from being introduced into the experiment, only the existing life forms are left, but only until they break down (but that’s another topic).

The Bible has been telling us the truth the whole time.  Even when we didn’t understand the nature of germs or DNA yet.  Unlike a science book, it didn’t have to change to protect its philosophy.

 

Wisdom and the West

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The word “Philosophy” when literally translated means “lover of wisdom.”  Being a philosopher is a good thing in that sense, according to the Bible.  Here’s what the Bible says in Proverbs:

Whoever loves wisdom brings joy to his father;

Proverbs 29:3a

The western world has a big problem, though.  What they call “philosophy” isn’t what the Bible says is philosophy.  The problem has to do with the word “Wisdom” that the philosopher is supposed to be loving.

According to the Bible, “Wisdom” means something very specific.  Wisdom starts with believing in God.  That’s what the Bible says.

The fear of Yahweh. is the beginning of knowledge;
but the foolish despise wisdom and instruction.

Proverbs 1:7

Obviously, you must start at the beginning, and to begin you must fear God.  It’s difficult to fear God when you don’t even believe in Him.  So, what does “Wisdom” call a person or a nation that doesn’t believe in God?  Well that’s here too.

The fool has said in his heart, “There is no God.”

Psalm 14:1a

Now, that’s pretty strait-forward, don’t you think?  But that’s not all, it also says this:

There is no wisdom nor understanding
nor counsel against Yahweh.

Proverbs 21:30

Remember, Yahweh, is a representation of the biblical name of God.  “Yahweh” is the God of the Bible not the God of any other religion.  What the Bible is saying is that anyone who doesn’t start out believing in the God of the Bible, can’t be wise.  There is nothing “progressive” about throwing the Bible away.  If the western world doesn’t go back to the God of the Bible, foolishness is all that is left.